Plant yourself

[Noffin]

Even on a fully developed plantation the max workload you can run is 10hrs without changes happening.

[Most Lee Harmless]

This leaves me confused :

2 plantations : same acres : same worker : same hours : same food.

Plantation A has many stars. Including 3.5 on housing.

Plantation B has one half-star on housing and none elsewhere.

Both have 30-40% health and 0% mood on workforce.

Both have the almost the same daily production. 'A' produces about 10 crates an hour more.

So.. investing many hundreds of GB extra on 'A' makes 240 crates more per day. Go figure.

[Grimrock Litless]

There is a production per acres thing, when you hit about 80 per acres when it's a big plantation, it becomes hard to increase that ppa.

[Most Lee Harmless]

They aint big... and both aint anywhere near 80 ppa... just cant see why one being so much more developed than the other doesnt seem to be making much difference...

I have 4 plantations..the 2 described plus 2 others of different size (bigger) and different level of development.... and they all got the same production... size and development dont seem to be having any effect...

What does seem to have a quantifiable effect is workers hours... that does move production.

I am tempted to leave one undeveloped and just replace dead workers and see if that is any worse for production against the fully developed one.

[DezNutz]

I think Developed vs Undeveloped matters for Production per Acre to reach the higher numbers on larger plantations. When my plantation was really small (100 acres). I was hitting 60-70 PPA on 8 hours of work per day. It was rather easy since I was able to keep happiness and health high on the low numbers. Once I expended my acres, my production rate took a hit, but overall I was still producing more. On top of that, I had to increase work to 12 hours per day to get half the rate per acre I had before. My plantation is far from being "developed" and due to how I have mine set, I won't make any progress until I develop it out a bit more.

[Most Lee Harmless]

I fear then its like goldsmiths... bugger all use until you get to lvl14... still not much even then... and only really makes coin once you go above lvl17.

Maybe plantation development is yhe same.. its only the top level that you can see doing anything for you.. the lower levels being sucg a miniscule percentage boost.. it csnt be seen.

[The Lamb]

A few things I noticed. I have a proportion of acres that I use on different buildings compared to working fields. The stars on my buildings decrease slowly with the increase of population (or at least it seems), so I am forced to reinvest when stars drop. I guess i could stop transporting and see if stars just decrease over time. Like grimrock, I focused on happiness first, got that to 100, then the rest started falling in place.

I am by no means a master at this plantation thing, but so far so good for the one I am running, but I have nothing to compare it to.
2000 acres total with less than 1500 for fields
2 mil workers
100% health
97% happiness
9 hours a day
6 meals a day
67 ppa

[Most Lee Harmless]

I suppose we all just mess about changing stuff until we stumble on a plan that seems to work.. but I doubt many of us have the slightest notion as to why anything works or doesnt work or works but, if only we knew how, might work better.

The time-table showing gb remaining and time to use it up is a big improvement and shows that info can be given.. it wont break the internet.

Player-based production is way too important to be left to chance or fiscouraged by excessive opaqueness. My plantations are struggling to support their own need for resources never mind produce a surplus to feed into the market and replace the lost automatic resupply of port markets of times past.

Maybe the bar needs to be lowered some to help the plantation pioneers really build a solid foundation for player-produced resources. Potential riches a yrar or three down the road wont do that.. its this year that worries me as ports keep running out of stocks.

[Bomont]

A few things I noticed. I have a proportion of acres that I use on different buildings compared to working fields. The stars on my buildings decrease slowly with the increase of population (or at least it seems), so I am forced to reinvest when stars drop. I guess i could stop transporting and see if stars just decrease over time. Like grimrock, I focused on happiness first, got that to 100, then the rest started falling in place.

I am by no means a master at this plantation thing, but so far so good for the one I am running, but I have nothing to compare it to.
2000 acres total with less than 1500 for fields
2 mil workers
100% health
97% happiness
9 hours a day
6 meals a day
67 ppa

For comparison, I have a similar plantation - 2,000 acres with 1460 acres in fields.
2.4 million workers
0% health and happiness
8 hr per day
4 meals per day
63 production per acre

You didn't say what you have for stars, but from what you said, and your happy/healthy rates, I'm guessing you have 4 or 5 stars on everything. I have 3, 1.5, 0, 0, 1, 0 stars. I purposely quit investing in utility buildings because more stars means improvements go faster, which means spending more on gold bars. I continue to spend gold bars on improvements, but at a slow enough rate that it isn't eating me alive. I wonder how much more you've spent on gold bars than me for that 4 per acre improvement?

This is my least developed plantation, and comparing it to my others I don't see much sense in worrying about improving them. If you've got nothing else to spend your money on, go for it. You'll eventually make a lot of money. But you may have to play the game for 20 years to get your investment back.

[Stan Rogers]

I am curious to learn if the size and development of the utility building has anything to do with rate other plant buildings degrade. Of course the acreage dedicated to utilities plays a definite roll in how fast improvements are made to other buildings.
It's confirmed that population size varies the support buildings decay rate or ability to service, but I have not been able to determine if utility bldg slows down that process.