Plantations profitability

[Cutpurse]

. any adjustment to profits on plantations should be made with great caution, so it would be profitable to average joe to start succesfull plantation, but not to allow too much profit.

what i did mean to say, is that i would like to see plantations working in a way, that everyone can run small plantation succesfully without loss. plantation of 5k acres should not yield same profit as plantation of 50 acres, if both plots are ran in same fashion. edit- that is if profits are compared as productivity per acre/ per worker and so on. scaling would be the main thing- this may actually already be built into the game already, many parts are still unclear to me. as larger plots with millions of workers may be demanding far greater investment, and still have similar productivity than tiny "deathcamp" without any investment.

in short, id like to see life of a tiny plantation owner to be easier than life of mega plantation owner. in time, owner of mega plantation owner can reach out the gap in productivity per acre, or however it might be measured, but it takes an large investment, and shouldnt happen in matter of days,

overall, i think is way too early to be speaking about profits, as we are still in trial phase. who knows, many things might change tomorrow? i myself cannot estimate any profit, untill i know what my final investment will be

[Captain Jack]

What we want to achieve in terms of profitability is the following scenario, based on the facts I list below.

Let me start with facts.
A fleet of 5LMM with no buffs (no party cards, no duke bonus, no indian companies at all, no warehouse bonuses) can currently produce around 90k daily, trading.

100 such fleets, cost around 18.5M to build plus 2.5k turns. Actual sale worth though is around 2 credits per LMM, so the actual total cost is around 40M.

If we take as base, the expansion from 200 ship to 300, then the officers costs are (example includes 6% discount from officers contracts, easy to achieve at that level):
Total Cost for 100 Captains is 121,128,227
Total Cost for 20 Admirals is 13,559,562
Total Cost for 20 Merchants is 6,779,770
So, the overall cost would be at this case would be around 180M.

If the player owner decided to expand from 300 to 400, the officers costs would be instead (again with 6% discount):
Total Cost for 100 Captains is 247,356,761
Total Cost for 20 Admirals is 22,313,112
Total Cost for 20 Merchants is 11,156,546

So, the overall cost would be at this case would be around 320M.


Finally, if the expansion was from 400 to 500 ships, the costs would be:
Total Cost for 100 Captains is 360,079,480
Total Cost for 20 Admirals is 32,420,632
Total Cost for 20 Merchants is 16,210,308

Overall cost (officers + fleets) = About 450M

No matter at which stage one would do such an investment, the payback would be the same: 90k per fleet daily or 1.8M overall.
At first case, the fleets would generate initial investment in 100 days
At second case, you would need 177 days
At final case, you would need 250 days

Of course, various buffs increase profitability. One could get up to 140k per fleet for example, using voodoo and other investments. We will not step into this though, as we want to compare plantations versus basic trading.

Let's get to fact #2, optimizing a trade route with a plantation, which is still a basic trade action. Let's suppose you have a goldsmith at a port. The goldsmith requires resources to run. The fleets that carry resources to this goldsmith are not exactly generating much profit, if any. Such fleets, can actually bring Immigrants to your plantation at half the cost as instead of making like 21,600 gc profit on their way back (standard profit for 5xLMM), they could bring immigrants back.

Here is how this metric plays a role:
Trade Fleet 1: 5xLMM doing basic trading (no buffs) at best route: 90k
Trade Fleet 2: 5xLMM bringing supplies to goldsmith: Around 22k
Trade Fleet 3: 5xLMM bringing one way immigrants: Around 22k
Trade Fleet 4: 5xLMM bringing supplies to goldsmith and returning immigrants: 0k

So, when we count plantation profitability, we need to calculate it, taking in mind the difference from what we would otherwise get from the fleet we use for immigrants, as this is the basic run cost.

So, if plantation A needs 10 fleets (Trade Route 3) to operate, then the owner is actually making 220k per day from these fleets. Out of the maximum 900k, the difference is 680k. If the plantation makes 680k or more, then it outperforms the best trading route.

Exploring these metrics further, we can see that immigrant cost for this plantation is 90-22 = 68k per fleet (daily).
However, if this is combined with a resource fleet used for a goldsmith, it will drop to 22k per fleet. That's three times less.

[Captain Jack]

What we want to achieve, is to make expansion at more than 500 trading ships an investment that pays back less when compared to a naked (no infrastructure) plantation with reasonable permission/rental costs.

If we look to the top 10 plantations in terms of production per acre, we will get the following:

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#      Owner   Size   Production
per Acre (Units)
1   New Land   Feniks (#65591)   Large   107
2   Psaral   Banger (#67360)   Large   104
3   Psaral   Noffin (#53779)   Mega   102
4   Thorakas   william one eye (#58369)   Large   82
5   Goroum   Noffin (#53779)   Large   77
6   Goroum   Feniks (#65591)   Normal   77
7   Baramas   Astragek (#66222)   Oversized   76
8   Goroum   Jim Hawkins (#14972)   Large   70
9   Vaasburg   Jim Hawkins (#14972)   Oversized   68
10   Chalkos   Lodswe (#35322)   Oversized   63

It is still too early and we expect this figures to improve considerably. It plays a great role whether you have excess acres on this stat. Feniks is pulling 77 on a normal sized plantation for example and 107 at a large size production. Surely, this new ranking category will help you all determine what to improve and get the most out of every acre.

Another decisive factor is how many workers you employ to other infrastructure and whether or not the acres applied there are well distributed.

Finally, it is important to underline that laborers can take a large portion of production early on if you are using them in mass to speed construction. At our profitability measurement, we do not want to include their cost as this falls into another category; the profitability of a developed plantation.

We will focus here for profitability on plantations with no infrastructure, to get to the point we want.

So,we need to beat 250 days ROI for certain. Then perhaps compete a bit with real profit as well. All the stats we will use, will be based from the stats you have managed to produce early on at this 2 weeks that plantations have been with us. This is the fair way to go forward as this feature at some point will be a case for newcomers too.

So, our top 10 stats right now signify that the average top production per acre, is 83 units per acre. This generates 83 * 7 = 581 gc per day. A 1000 acres plantation, as a result, will generate 581k of income per day, on these metrics.

What we now need to get, is how many fleets are needed to keep the needed workers to produce these, when health and morale is at 0%. An average as many other things matter.

To get this, we will have a look at deaths yesterday versus units production. From the top producing ones, only 2 had casualties yesterday and this makes them candidates for our metrics:

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Astragek 76.4 units, 188,645 casualties
Jim Hawkins 68.1 units, 41,553 casualties


If we check top casualties instead, we get these:

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Owner   Units   Casualties
The Accountant   122,510   252,082
Astragek   267,432   188,645
Black Sparrow   78,052   162,212
Caladan   56,777   123,865
xXMontyXx   21,386   117,029
Caladan   52,060   103,802
Kangaroo   59,729   95,394
The Accountant   96,201   94,009
Kangaroo   68,900   77,756
Adam Smith   54,530   70,937


Before we analyze the data above, let's estimate capacity per 5xLMM fleet per day.
That's 600*2*12 = 14.4k immigrants per fleet
At a cost of 22k to 68k


Income generated: Crates Produced * 7
Fleets required: Casualties/14.4k

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Owner   Total Income   FleetsRequired
The Accountant   857,570   17
Astragek   1,872,024   13
Black Sparrow   546,364   11
Caladan   397,439   8
xXMontyXx   149,702   8
Caladan   364,420   7
Kangaroo   418,103   6
The Accountant   673,407   6.5
Kangaroo   482,300   5
Adam Smith   381,710   5


If we want to calculate actual plantation profit based on fleets required for those above, then we get this table:

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Owner   Profit
Astragek   142,899
The Accountant   103,150
Kangaroo   89,319
Adam Smith   77,486
Kangaroo   63,114
Caladan   50,554
The Accountant   48,988
Black Sparrow   48,502
Caladan   46,205
xXMontyXx   18,420


The tables above, signify the maximum, currently available, profit per fleet without calculating the other half of the journey for the fleet.
Now, if we add 22k to each fleet, that they should definitely be making at the very least, then we can see the following:

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Astragek   164,899
The Accountant   125,150
Kangaroo   111,319
Adam Smith   99,486
Kangaroo   85,114
Caladan   72,554
The Accountant   70,988
Black Sparrow   70,502
Caladan   68,205
xXMontyXx   40,420


I am not saying that any of the above is making this profit yet though, as we do not know how many fleets they actually employ and what kind of fleets these are. However, the metrics above show how many fleets they need to maintain current profitability. There are surely rooms for improvement.

Remember, these are not the best case scenarios. We just took the top 10 plantations with most casualties. I am assuming that these plantations have already reached 0 health and 0 morale and most , if not all, are using workers for improving infrastructure.


The examples above do not include improvement costs - these are not of our concern anyway as we do not want to calculated developed plantations profitability (which should be great anyway, as it will be mostly passive).

We do not include operation/rental costs (these will be dictated by players. We only need to provide more metrics to everyone involved to allow you to calculate easier what you want to spend to compete).
We do not include upkeep costs - but these should be near 0 anyway as most of your workers will work at the fields.
We not include initial construction permission cost. These should zero with time though as they are permanent so it would not be prudent to include them. With current credits value, its around 20M which is not a big figure for anyone running 20+ fleets.

We are mostly comparing plantation income versus trade income based on initial investment.

[Captain Jack]

-reserved-

[Grimrock Litless]

I feel like it's unwise to compare between making money using plantation over making money over trading using the best ports.

Wasn't the point of plantation is to place production of goods into the hands of players? So far, the ports are still commonly having 0 stocks because most players stores them instead of selling them off on the bat. I can easily see a future where the game is populated by players who can afford plantation and those who can't and end up trying their best to make money using trading unless you pirate.

Of course there is a chance that people would just produce too much and is forced to sell them off to the market, but that kinda looks unlikely.

Plantation to me looks kind of like a mix of bank's slow but steady money making from loans and high investment from goldsmith, while at the same time trying to be something it shouldn't be.

[Captain Jack]

I just want to ensure that everyone will use this feature as it is important for the game. We do not want profitability to mess this up.

Our plan after all is to have large margins of profitability that will be chunked either from poor management or bad/aggressive deals at rent and operating permissions.

Plantations should also combo with many current player strategies.

The posts above, have already signified the need to introduce further metrics to your disposal in plantation management, to help you take the right decisions easier.

[Adam smith]

Based on my data and report (sent already), profitability is very dependable on the final price paid by the port. The numbers above are correct when the port pays the maximum price per crate (ie, goroum's maximum price is 7, similar with the study above) so your numbers are very close to what I realistically get.

However, I do have laborers working but you do not calculate the food cost. For me, its 4k crates day, so around 28k a day. This means my actual profit is around 350k per day. I employ around 10 fleets of your example, so my final profit is 23k (I already make) + 35k (from plantation) = 58k per fleet.

If I use 5 fleets as you suggest to maintain the number, then my profit would be 23k + 70k = 93k which I find better than I can pull with a similar fleet elsewhere right now.

I will actually reduce my fleets to 5 today and see if I can maintain the number of workers there. If it works, it would be a good way but more profit will be needed later, in order to be able to pay rent + permission.

[Adam smith]

I just realized that since Goroum is empty of production, some of my fleets are making 0 return profit based on this. So it is important to keep all production in warehouse to avoid this pitfall. My profit would be better if I have seen this earlier.

[Kangaroo]

Currently none of my plantations release goods to market, my trade profits on relevant fleets are up considerably as they have multiple zero cost high yield loads, some bidirectional. This does not (yet) balance out the costs of zero profit fleets running workers.
I had to fire 1.3M workers in one port and 500k in another as productivity was plummeting.
I am now allocating a lot more acres to utility and starting to see some payback from the increased laborer count.
I am very much enjoying the new challenge, it's a long game though as it is clearly designed to be, I do feel the facility improvement factor is somewhat out of balance with the amount of workers one can ship.
In the real world it would not be possible to employ 1.7M workers without any facilities, despite efforts to build them, I don't yet understand the mechanics anywhere near as well as I would like but I do feel there would be a better incentive to continue to funnel huge sums if that nalance could be tilted slightly the other way,

[Captain Jack]

Firing workers should not improve many things as stands now. We want to change this and make firing as a tool to increase overall condition of your workforce (by firing the weakest and most hungry ones).

We are exploring the addition of an npc manager that would play the simulation role in this.