We've adjusted the processing rate of composters in an attempt to find a meaningful way to nerf scrap farming while also improving server performance. We've not seen any noticeable improvement in performance as of yet.
The dilemma currently is there are only 2 routes to go about squashing the pickle meta due to how the margins of profit are right on the line of either being profitable or not at all. This is because in order to produce 2 fertilizers, you need 12 pickles which costs 2 scrap. You then sell the 2 fertilizers for 3 scrap, yielding a single scrap in profit.
Because of that, there's absolutely no way of nerfing that. The only solution would be to average out the margin to make pickle farming no longer profitable but still have an option to turn pickles found out in the wild into fertilizer for profit by increasing the price to buy pickles, thus forcing players to break even instead of profiting.
The alternative is to nerf the composter processing rate like it is now to reduce potential profit over a period of time. The problem is, doing so may encourage players to build larger farms to compensate for the change, but I strongly feel that doing so would make it far too cumbersome and make it a far less efficient method of farming scrap.
Before going any further, I'd like to get your opinion and to see whether or not you utilize this method of farming and gather ideas to destroy the endless scrap farming meta without entirely killing your experience. If you vote, please let me know your thoughts in the comments!
TL;DR
Pickle farming is fucked. It allows players to easily farm millions of scrap per week with minimal effort, which has a huge impact on both the player's progression, the progression of the server, and the player economy. If you vote, please let me know your thoughts in the comments!