Plantations Insight

[Captain Jack]

Ahoy all,

A few hours ago we fixed the first crucial bug in plantations. To explain what we fixed, we need to reveal some functionality.

Your workers can tire. New workers you add, are neither rested, nor exhausted. They are on average condition.
All workers, those at the fields and beyond, tire based on the Workload you set.

If a worker ends up too exhausted, he dies. This is why, early on, on undeveloped plantations, most workers will eventually die as long as they work. However, by adding new workers, you extend their time as new, fresher workers come in and help those tired to save strength.

The bug was that the system calculated tiredness in reverse. The more hours you would put, the less tired your workers ended up. As a result, most plantations grew too large (in terms of workers).


==============

Bottom line:
Consider this as a welcome period to all those who tried Plantations early on, as the bug was beneficiary. However, in the same time, prepare to witness some severe drop in population. You can mostly change this by adding more immigrants but eventually, it will drop.

We tweaked the system a bit, in regards to death rate,to be more close to the profitability metrics and breaking point we had before. If you have kept this number of fleets as our study there, you will notice slight differences (you probably noticed an increase all these days and better conditions).

At all cases, we will revise as needed, if needed, as we want to ensure that even undeveloped/developing plantations will be a profitable business to run. Developed will be profitable by far.

[sXs]

I am losing more workers per hour than I can replace using all my fleets. Actually.... I am losing nearly twice what I can replace in a single plantation. this rate seems a little excessive.

Lost 710k in one port so far

[sXs]

1.3 million now...... in one port? Really over the top i think.

[sXs]

I have lost 25% of my worker population. Since the change and still losing. ......

It may have been a bug, but the change seems extreme. Everything I had set up has had to change and now I am basically back to square one.

If the current loss levels is correct, there can be no profit and least nothing eve close to what normal trade would bring let alone party trading. Also, Plantations will neve be able to replenish markets such as Goroum and Psaral.

I had 6.2 million workers in one plantation when you made the change, now down to 4.85 mill. 1.4 mill lost in 5 and a half hours. 2 hours after your post I dropped my hours worked down to 8 hr a day. That hasn't slowed down the loss.

I think it is extremely unfair that this change was made with no warning. Spent 3 weeks doing nothing but transporting workers to ports under the mechanics that were in place and in under 6 hours 25% of that has been completely wiped out. I undersatnd you needed to make the change, but maybe there should have been a reset of "tired" workers in each plantation beforehand and a notice of what was about to change.

I will be honest. I am about to toss plantations completely aside now.

Oh and by the way ..... in the time it took to type this post I lost another 45,000 workers ........ in only one of my plantations...... Not even watching the others.

[Captain Jack]

It is not a change but a bug fix. The workers you are losing now, should have been dead a long time ago. All this time that they survived, they were actually beneficial to you.

The reality is much harsher but profitability is still competitive. What you got, was extra profitability that was never part of the equation. Still, like I said above, regard it as a welcome gift for trying it first. Taking it to the other side and complain why this gift does not continue is something I cannot follow.

Like I said above, there are some crucial points you need to be more careful now. Like Workload first and foremost as this is where the bug was located. Then, incoming rates play a significant role. With no incoming fleets, there is no "balance point" as some other players found and entitled the procedure. Which means that ultimately, with no new immigrants, your plantation will drop to 0.

So, what really happened in regards with your actual experience is this:
-You filled a plantation to 6.2M with less fleets than it actually required, harvesting the extra profit during this time.
-Once the bug has been fixed, workers started to die like flies, as they should, as there is no support from incoming immigrants.
-Now populations are moving to their true breaking points.

For reference, I had report of players that they actually needed like 1 fleet to maintain population on big plantations. If this was a developed one, it would be realistic. But at an undeveloped, it is not.

Of course, I understand the adaptability confusion. This is why I shared some insight in the kope that this info will help you understand what exactly happened, retaining past accumulated wisdom.

[sXs]

I disagree with "realistic" I just did the calculations.

Even if these losses were spread out over the 21 days that plantations have been running. I would need 14-16 fleets doing nothing but bringing in workers constantly. Add to that the 2-3 fleets needed to keep them fed.

I am still losing workers in that port so not sure exactly where those numbers will end up.

16-19( or more fleets) just to maintain. based on current production per 10 minutes my "potential sales revenue" per day is 975,744 gold coins.

I am dumping 1000 gold bars in that port per day trying to get improvements up. That alone is 2.5 mill a day. that is a daily loss of over 1,500,000 per day with a commitment of 16-19 fleets.

Where is the profit? You are inn essence saying i should have lost more per day? This is truly worse than building a goldsmith to profitability.

[Adam smith]

I had to add 4 more fleets, bringing new immigrants to slow down deaths. To calculate required incoming fleets, I used the formula,1 fleet (600 cargo, which can carry 1200 immigrants) per 240.000 workers I already have. So, if I want 1.5M workers, I would need 1.5m/240k = 6-7 fleets. This seems to be working.

I ended up to this after reading the metrics here: viewtopic.php?p=77060#p77060 and comparing to my plantations/setup. Perhaps it can help you as well. I use 8 hours at workload for this and 5 meals per day.

Profitability is being reduced but it was super before so there is not much I can complain for. Now, I am expecting around 100k per fleet, before other costs. The same fleets make 66k minimum and 90k maximum to other ports (to get 90k, I use my duke bonus at both ports I use + indian company voodoo). I do allocate a large portion of them though as laborers.

[sXs]

I had to add 4 more fleets, bringing new immigrants to slow down deaths. To calculate required incoming fleets, I used the formula,1 fleet (600 cargo, which can carry 1200 immigrants) per 240.000 workers I already have. So, if I want 1.5M workers, I would need 1.5m/240k = 6-7 fleets. This seems to be working.

I ended up to this after reading the metrics here: viewtopic.php?p=77060#p77060 and comparing to my plantations/setup. Perhaps it can help you as well. I use 8 hours at workload for this and 5 meals per day.

Profitability is being reduced but it was super before so there is not much I can complain for. Now, I am expecting around 100k per fleet, before other costs. The same fleets make 66k minimum and 90k maximum to other ports (to get 90k, I use my duke bonus at both ports I use + indian company voodoo). I do allocate a large portion of them though as laborers.

I have run all the numbers backwards and forwards.

At best plantations will equal regular trade routes once improved. But that does not take into account the acreage rental fees, operating permissions, construction permissions, or gold bars needed to improve. You will never recoup the costs associated with plantations.

The reason many of us were running 16-20 hours a day to begin with was because we were trying to get levels that were just equal to what we were making trading beforehand. At 20 hours per day, I was close, but not quite equal.

Now 33% of that work for the last 3 weeks is gone, production has been cut in half, down to 8 hours a day, and fleet commitment needs to be doubled.

1 good thing is now I only need 650 gold bars every 24 hours per plantation instead of 1000 because I dont have enough laborers to keep up the same pace of improvement........ in other words, improvements will now take 30% longer

[sXs]

Another 48,000 workers gone in last hour in that 1 port.

Would take 86 fleets just to keep up with the loss rate.

48000 x 24 =1,152,000

At 550 cargo per fleet(1100 immigrants) and 1 turn every 2 hours.

1100 x 12(loads per day)= 13,200 workers can be brought in per fleet per day.

1,152,000 / 13,200 = 87.27 fleets needed just to keep up with loss rate in one plantation.


................Why even try

All fleets halted...... no point in even continuing with plantations.

[Captain Jack]

We finished our simulations and tweaks. The results show that actual profitability of undeveloped plantations has remained intact and the base calculated profit per fleet remains decent and can be better than simple trading. The combos and the ways to increase profitability with various methods, this is something we leave to you.