Plantations Expansion

[Captain Jack]

Yes but this is more workload for the end user. The acres workload should not be a hassle unless there is an attacker.

Here is a screenshot I took a few hours earlier:

[Shadowood]

Whatever question you might have, please ask me. I should be able to give you the details. If not, we will have Jessica to code it.

EDIT: 3,300 posts! yay! DezNutz will soon eat my dust and Shadowood will never reach me.

I may never reach you... but before I die, I will have that cutter of yours sir!

[sXs]

After all this back and forth and explaining I think it may have been easier to leave this in governors control.

It seems to me the coding would have much easier. Governors would simply need some sort of plantation interface screen. As initially discussed, governors negotiate, enter agreements into the interface, once the bidder agrees to terms, acreage is issued. instead of daily upkeep, the fee would be a one time fee payable similar to loan payments, based on the payment schedule similar to loans.

Price set for the 90 days once agreed upon.

The problem with daily updates is certainty of investment. You invest so much into plantation development ie. workers, supplies and associated costs, you should have some certainty your investment is safe for longer than 24 hour.

I do see your thought process though CJ. There maybe some interface issues with other upgrades that make this more complicated than I understand. But as a stand alone, I believe the original idea would be easier for developers and players alike to understand.

Either way..... still very interesting.

[DezNutz]

Yes but this is more workload for the end user. The acres workload should not be a hassle unless there is an attacker.

Here is a screenshot I took a few hours earlier:

Ok, I can only give input on what I know and have visibility to. I think the process can still be streamlined, but how it looks for the end user doesn't have to be how I described it. I used the exchange as it is what I have visibility to see and provides a decent structure. It could easily be setup from a single point as it looks in your image.

[Jessy's Dream]

It's a big bad beast similar to Hydra. Every time you cut off a head (give a solution), two more heads pop again.

There is definitely going to be a Hydra Quest once we are done here.

[sXs]

It's a big bad beast similar to Hydra. Every time you cut off a head (give a solution), two more heads pop again.

There is definitely going to be a Hydra Quest once we are done here.

[Bomont]

Sorry - didn't get a chance to get back here and follow up until now...

I used 500 gc as an arbitrary number. I did not calculate out the plantations data, just used the number as an example.

I figured it was just a number for your example, not that you thought that was the actual price we'd pay. I've seen lots of widely varying numbers in the discussion and I got curious so ran some rough numbers,then thought I'd toss it out there in case anyone was interested. Your post was just the most recent so I grabbed it.

But it did make me think. Is this update intended to make some ports more desirable than others? If we assume the ongoing daily costs of workers, guards, building maintenance, etc. are the same for all ports, doesn't that mean that the amount you can afford to pay for acreage is much higher for the higher base cost commodities? This means that the Governor, King and Nation that owns a rum port makes much more than one owning a cotton port, making it much more desirable.

For instance (using arbitrary numbers for illustration purposes), if want to make at least 0.25 gc/crate on a 1,000 acre field I'll make about 26,250 gc/day (.25x105x1,000 but depends on productivity variables - workers' conditions, buildings, guards, etc.). Assume it costs me about 0.75 gc for production costs excluding acreage (workers, building maintenance, etc.). So 1 gc covers everything but the acreage rental cost. If cotton sells for about 3 gc per crate, I have about 2gc/crate that I can use for rent. If rum sells for about 9 gc/crate, I have about 8 gc for acreage rent. That's a big difference for the nation (2 gc/crate x 105 crate/acre = 210 gc/acre vs. 8x105=840 gc/acre in this example).

Is that how it will work or will there be variation in the costs of workers, building maintenance, etc. that makes the various ports roughly the same profitability for the nation?

[sXs]

Sorry - didn't get a chance to get back here and follow up until now...

I used 500 gc as an arbitrary number. I did not calculate out the plantations data, just used the number as an example.

I figured it was just a number for your example, not that you thought that was the actual price we'd pay. I've seen lots of widely varying numbers in the discussion and I got curious so ran some rough numbers,then thought I'd toss it out there in case anyone was interested. Your post was just the most recent so I grabbed it.

But it did make me think. Is this update intended to make some ports more desirable than others? If we assume the ongoing daily costs of workers, guards, building maintenance, etc. are the same for all ports, doesn't that mean that the amount you can afford to pay for acreage is much higher for the higher base cost commodities? This means that the Governor, King and Nation that owns a rum port makes much more than one owning a cotton port, making it much more desirable.

For instance (using arbitrary numbers for illustration purposes), if want to make at least 0.25 gc/crate on a 1,000 acre field I'll make about 26,250 gc/day (.25x105x1,000 but depends on productivity variables - workers' conditions, buildings, guards, etc.). Assume it costs me about 0.75 gc for production costs excluding acreage (workers, building maintenance, etc.). So 1 gc covers everything but the acreage rental cost. If cotton sells for about 3 gc per crate, I have about 2gc/crate that I can use for rent. If rum sells for about 9 gc/crate, I have about 8 gc for acreage rent. That's a big difference for the nation (2 gc/crate x 105 crate/acre = 210 gc/acre vs. 8x105=840 gc/acre in this example).

Is that how it will work or will there be variation in the costs of workers, building maintenance, etc. that makes the various ports roughly the same profitability for the nation?

If I am understanding this correctly, you feel the production cost of goods produced by plantations should be tied to a base price much like market pricing is currently.

In other words..... cost to produce a crate of food should be cheaper than the cost to produce a barrel of Vanes finest rum.

if Food and Rum cost the same to produce, then nations holding ports that produce Rum hold an advantage?

If this is your concern it is a simple fix unless admin has already factored it into the equation.

2 possible fixes.

#1 Production cost proportionate to base price.
#2 Production time production proportionate.

#2 is simple to explain. Lets say each acre on a plantation can produce 1 crate of food per day. (values for ease of math) 1000 acre plantation therefore has a base production capacity of 1000 crates per day not counting the external factors CJ laid out.

To make it fair across the boards then maybe Rum based plantation could only produce 1/4 crate per day.

I believe #2 is the better option. Pricing should continue to be strictly market based.

I do believe CJ mentioned something like this, or explained production rates similar to this in an earlier post.

[Bomont]

Yes, I'm wondering whether it is intended some ports are better to own than others. Or, as you pointed out (1) production costs will be proportional to base prices or (2) production quantities will be proportional.

I haven't noticed any discussion that mentioned anything like (1). This post back on page 10 seems to be saying (2) is not the case:

I can provide them yes, but they are under revision.

The key number for what we got now in the game, is that plantations sooner or later will need to meet a demand around 3M crates per day, per port. Now, some ports might have greater production according to needs. But in general, 3 * 21 = 63M crates is the reasonable current demand number.

If we take a normal sized plantation at 500-1000, the we speak about 25 to 50 plantations per port (maximum). The maximum is very important though. The defined consumption helps us here. The maximum allowed production should be able to feed the maximum amount of citizens.

Therefore
Max Population = 2.1B * 21 = 44.1B
Max Consumption = 44.1 * 0.0025 = 110M per day
Max Acres = 50.000 acres * 21 = 1.050.000 acres
Max production per acre = 105 crates/day

So, a 1000 acre plantation, should produce about 105.000 crates a day.

Let's use Food as our example here which is the best candidate for a series of reasons which I will not explain to save time and space.

Food will be possible to be sold at 7gc maximum.
So, maximum income = 7 * 105000 = 735k

Of course, one could run a 5000 acre plantation, so maximum income could be 3.675M gc per day, which is closer to what we want.

5000 acres plantations per port, if we get 2-3 of each, then we will end up with a total of 315,000 acres used, for a total production of 33M crates. Which means that current world metrics can sustain more plantations or larger plantations. So we could even see a few mega plantations at 10k acres each, which will theoretically could generate 7.35M per day.

Plantations of 10k, mean a number of around 5 plantations per port. I am not sure if we want this though. We probably want more owners and higher income for owners so that the rest features that will be connected to plantations will have profitability room. For example, plantation income should be thriving if there is not enough supply and in this case the profit should be so large that they will be able to overpay needed supplies to enlarge their plantation while being able in the same time to pay high fees to ports hosting them.

The metrics, to be honest appear to be nice. The problem is what I described above and for this issue we are more contain to make mega plantations work rather than mess with the metrics. Another thing we can also do, is to limit running expenses that flow towards the game to near 0 (not building expenses though). Otherwise we should change max production per acre. Truth is that max production per acre should be increased in order to also meet player demand. Perhaps all the above, tweaked in a limited way can produce the final result.

I haven't advocated for any position (yet - since my nation owns a cotton port, I might end up doing that ). Just want to see if I understand correctly.

[sXs]

I have been getting alot of questions about plantations in last 2 days, most of which I could not answer. So I went through this entire thread and copied and pasted all of CJ's and JessyA's posts that were relevant to the development of this feature.

This included the original post, updates, Answers to development questions, and answers to the relevant mechanics of the upgrade.

The word document is 39 pages long. In other words, there is a lot to this update, and there is a lot of confusion.

From reading all 39 pages it is apparent that this has evolved into something that is quite a bit different from the original suggestion. Hell up until someone explained a few things to me yesterday, I still thought governors were negotiating pricing and operating permissions.

Reason for this post is this. ..... some of the original post is no longer valid. CJ has done a great job of updating it here and there as things change, but some things in OP may not work as originally described. I do not want to disturb CJ or JessyA with this until release, so I am trying to update the original post with updates and explanations of mechanics using CJ's responses not my interpretation of them.

I do not claim to know any more than anyone else on this subject, just trying to organize things in a way that will help everyone using CJ's words, not mine.

39 pages of notes is a lot to go through. Hopefully have it organized after reset tonight.