[Suggestion] Official List of Demands & more

[DezNutz]

I ran a single plantation of roughly 1500 acres for about a year and made some 282M gc. I don't know my exact expenses, but I know it wasn't anywhere near 282M.

Now in the short run (first 90 days), you aren't going to run a profit on a plantation, but once you are setup and running, you should be bringing in more to make up any early loss and bringing in steady profits.

[Stan Rogers]

Plantations can be profitable but only if there is a huge invest made as well. Just like warehousing, if you spend tens and even hundreds of mil in increasing its size, you can earn back 10's of mil in a transaction.
There is a cost to do this. The same thing goes for plantations only the big difference is, the game will survive nicely if warehousing is attacked or robbed.
If a ship or fleet is attacked or even 100 fleets is attacked, the percentage of damage it does to the game is very small.
IF every player had a plantation, the result of an attack is also very small but alas, this is not the case.
If plant attacks come to pass, which they eventually will, should it be against the workers or the infrastructure ?
Is there any benefit to a pirate to steal workers or outright kill them ? As workers in a plant cannot transfer to another port or be rehired if fired, No money in any of that for a pirate.
So, it becomes a grudge card with no benefit other than pissing someone off.
If plant infrastructure can be damaged or destroyed, I submit then it should also be open game on marina's goldsmithing, banking, ship building etc. as these things also earn income

[Stan Rogers]

I ran a single plantation of roughly 1500 acres for about a year and made some 282M gc. I don't know my exact expenses, but I know it wasn't anywhere near 282M.

Now in the short run (first 90 days), you aren't going to run a profit on a plantation, but once you are setup and running, you should be bringing in more to make up any early loss and bringing in steady profits.

Set back to us when you have calculated the costs as I for one would be very curious.
Why did you stop plantations if it was such a big earner for you ?

I think you quit because your workers went to hell and started dying off and the expense and effort was not worth the income hassle to rebuild it ?

[DezNutz]

No, my workers didn't go to hell, although that took some getting right, I did kill quite a few, but I kept my plantation well supplied. I stopped only because I wasn't active enough to keep up with the acre bids. I would bid up to keep my plantation going but just wouldn't be on when the bid was finalized. I'd get back online to find that I was outbid. I couldn't be on enough to ensure my acres counts remained stable, and I wasn't going to run a partial plantation, so I chose to shut it down.

Expense wise I was probably at about 140-160M,
Operating Permissions ran for me about 10M every 90 days. 4 Renews (1 Year or 360 days) = 40M gc
1500 acres @ 250gc (peak cost average was more around 35 gcpa) per acre = 375k gc x 18 (18 x 20 day rental period = 360 days) = 6.75M
Resources evened out because any loss I had by storing in port, I made up with the oversupply of food from fishing.
So my expenses ran around 47M besides GBs.
And I spent probably a good 120M on Gold Bars, most of which was at the beginning on utility building. Averaged out to about 900-1000 GBs a week over the year. Before I closed up shop, I was running maybe 400 GBs every 7-8 days, depending on what I was improving.

While 100-120M is not a huge profit over a year, it is a decent profit for the cost.

[Stan Rogers]

Your numbers look realistic and I agree maintaining a stable acreage/worker ratio can be a challenge. Your GB consumption may be on the light side but that is a personal choice. Plant buildings degrade and the cost of workers to keep them fresh and able to work over 5 hrs a day without them degrading I would say you are also on the low side of the GB scale as well
1500 acres you want perhaps 1.75 mil workers approx. and to what cost is that?
How about adding in the gc equivalent of 100 credits and then we have a good idea of what it cost to run the plant for a year.

[DezNutz]

Your numbers look realistic and I agree maintaining a stable acreage/worker ratio can be a challenge. Your GB consumption may be on the light side but that is a personal choice. Plant buildings degrade and the cost of workers to keep them fresh and able to work over 5 hrs a day without them degrading I would say you are also on the low side of the GB scale as well
1500 acres you want perhaps 1.75 mil workers approx. and to what cost is that?
How about adding in the gc equivalent of 100 credits and then we have a good idea of what it cost to run the plant for a year.

Yes, I was on the low side of total GB use. All of my buildings were 1.5 stars. I only used enough GBs to maintain after I got to the 1.5 stars point. My plantation income was sufficient to sustain both acreage rental and sufficient GB purchases to maintain and still have gc remaining. It was self-sufficient.

1.7M workers was about what I had. I had it calculated out exactly based on the acres allocation.
I purchased only about 600K workers. I think at 12gc each so, 7.2M. The rest I had by bringing them over via trade route.
I maintained my worker levels by trade route, which is free outside of ship upkeep which was covered by fishing and resource surplus.
I didn't consider my workers an expense as when I ended my plantation run, I sold all of them for about 19M, which was significantly more than what I spent to bring them in or the cost of the ones I bought.

100 Credits. At the time, I think a credit was running about 230-250k per. So 25M.

So my expenses if you include credits was closer to 170-190M. Even if I put that at 200M in expenses, that's still 82M in profits over a year. And that's with part of the year bearing no profits. And that's also considering that the plantation wasn't entirely optimal. Before I closed up, I was pulling in about 1.15-1.3M per day, IIRC, and again the plantation wasn't optimal, but was self sufficient.

365 days @ 1.15M = 419.75M
365 days @ 1.3M = 474.5M

Even If I I was spending 220M a year in expenses, that's a projection of 200M-250M a year in net profit. Not a killing, but entirely safe and clean profit.

And to even low ball the profit. Let says 365 @ 900k = 328.5M That's still a projection of 100M in safe net profit.

[Stan Rogers]

If one was to try to find a voodoo curse for specifically plantations, it should not be a grudge card and it should bring some rewards to the caster.
Why not something like "Shanghai" where a pirate can grab some plant workers and cart them off to some other plant and sell them for a profit ?
That would make more sense than a card that just destroys infrastructure for no personal gain

[DezNutz]

If one was to try to find a voodoo curse for specifically plantations, it should not be a grudge card and it should bring some rewards to the caster.
Why not something like "Shanghai" where a pirate can grab some plant workers and cart them off to some other plant and sell them for a profit ?
That would make more sense than a card that just destroys infrastructure for no personal gain

That's not a bad idea.

x% of workers are stolen and sold to the port.

Default is 9gc per worker I think.

[Haron]

I agree that something like this is a good idea. A voodoo card that lets you attack plantations with fleets. Much like HNs or FFJs allows you to attack trade fleets with ships.

[Stan Rogers]

If one was to try to find a voodoo curse for specifically plantations, it should not be a grudge card and it should bring some rewards to the caster.
Why not something like "Shanghai" where a pirate can grab some plant workers and cart them off to some other plant and sell them for a profit ?
That would make more sense than a card that just destroys infrastructure for no personal gain

That's not a bad idea.

x% of workers are stolen and sold to the port.

Default is 9gc per worker I think.

I was thinking more along the lines of ...
After casting on somebody's plant
"You have filled all your cargo holds with X number of Happy, Rested, Healthy workers of Novice/ Competent/Proficient/Expert skill.

They can be sold at various pricing at any port where they are needed/ wanted but that can be worked out.
The number depends on your cargo hold space thus enticing more ships to be active in a plant raid.

Happy competent workers are worth way more than sick novice ones obviously and I think one gets 5 gc for unskilled regular serfs of which one must currently populate their plants with unless they buy from another plant owner where the price is market driven in according to skill and state of health