Plant yourself

[Stan Rogers]

This is a good one ! My adviser tells me
" I noticed that some workers are hungry. This could potentially lead to problems. Make sure that the workers are fed well."

Now, this report comes from a food plantation with 200K of stocks in the warehouse, 3 star kitchens and 4 meals per day consuming over 3000 crates per day.
Why would there be hungry workers ?
It defies logic and there is no discernible solution to the problem that can be applied. Is there something hidden that plantation owners need to know ?
The one thing I have not tried yet is to increase the size of the kitchen. This however would be odd as all my plants have the same size kitchen acreage and some with larger populations that ,as yet, suffered no problems

[DezNutz]

This is a good one ! My adviser tells me
" I noticed that some workers are hungry. This could potentially lead to problems. Make sure that the workers are fed well."

Now, this report comes from a food plantation with 200K of stocks in the warehouse, 3 star kitchens and 4 meals per day consuming over 3000 crates per day.
Why would there be hungry workers ?
It defies logic and there is no discernible solution to the problem that can be applied. Is there something hidden that plantation owners need to know ?
The one thing I have not tried yet is to increase the size of the kitchen. This however would be odd as all my plants have the same size kitchen acreage and some with larger populations that ,as yet, suffered no problems

Yes most likely it's an insufficient kitchen size. Although I don't listen to my advisor, as he is hanging from a yardarm.

[Vane]

Stars are efficiency of production. With no production there is no efficiency thus no stars.

No acres or permissions and your workers will still remain as long as you have food to feed them and they only continue to die at the normal set rate based on age. This is how i understand it and from having almost all my workers upon joining the game once more after 3 months away.

[Noffin]

This is a good one ! My adviser tells me
" I noticed that some workers are hungry. This could potentially lead to problems. Make sure that the workers are fed well."

Now, this report comes from a food plantation with 200K of stocks in the warehouse, 3 star kitchens and 4 meals per day consuming over 3000 crates per day.
Why would there be hungry workers ?
It defies logic and there is no discernible solution to the problem that can be applied. Is there something hidden that plantation owners need to know ?
The one thing I have not tried yet is to increase the size of the kitchen. This however would be odd as all my plants have the same size kitchen acreage and some with larger populations that ,as yet, suffered no problems

I actually would get the same message from the advisor on a fully developed plantation (5 stars on everything) and 100% health and happiness and still be feeding the workers 8 times a day only working 10hrs a day. And many wonder why I want to kill the advisor so much

[Stan Rogers]

Stars are efficiency of production. With no production there is no efficiency thus no stars.

No acres or permissions and your workers will still remain as long as you have food to feed them and they only continue to die at the normal set rate based on age. This is how i understand it and from having almost all my workers upon joining the game once more after 3 months away.

That explanation makes sense. " Efficiency of Production".
So all buildings have a 'double' metric applied that makes the stars.
The ability of the building to service the population and also, the population to service the building.
I will try to work on that theory for a while to see if my production numbers can be increased or leveled out to consistency.
Plantations just seem to all of a sudden take wide swings in their production abilities for as yet, unknown reasons.
I fired 100K workers off the plant to rule out overpopulation but after 24 hrs, no effect on abilities to feed themselves.
So an increase in the kitchen by 10 acres as well. I'll give it a few hours to adjust.

[Stan Rogers]

Well..almost 30 days later, I made reference to inexplicable losses in production for no apparent reason.
After numerous tries at reversing the trend by doubling resources and abilities to feed my workers in Chalkos to no apparent effect, I have no choice but to call out the feature as containing a bug.

I will withdraw the charge if a reasonable explanation to why my plantation woes are , to me, an unsolvable problem.

Now, I can ***** and moan all I want but the truth be, without plantations, the game cannot continue for any length of time due to player generated resources. For this reason alone I ventured into Plantations.

The mechanism for generating those resources are sheathed in secrecy and it is impossible to tell if they are working the way developers intended.
How many bugs have been reported so far with this feature ? How many player discovered bugs ?

When a new feature is released and the player base cannot tell if it is working the way intended, this puts the base at a big disadvantage and I will not play against a stacked deck.

This will be my last quarter for resource development and production after 6 months of investment and time and attempts of understanding how this is suppose to work.
As others who have made the investment of time and gold bars encounter similar road blocks as I have, they too will make the decision to continue or throw in the towel.
When the resources are gone, I cannot see any reason to hang around either as the end will be not too far behind.

[Grimrock Litless]

Plantation suffers from the lack of viable information, which is why it sucks like, a lot, but it works.

[DezNutz]

What I found to be the best approach to plantations was to work small until you find an setup that works.

I still don't have an optimum setup, but the setup I have is sufficient while I optimize my production. I bring in about 100k per day and my production is not that much.

I built my plantation using 15 ships. 1 - 5 ship fleet fishing. 1 - 5 fleet ship bringing workers. 5 - 1 ship (Cutter) fleet for all resources.

It took a some time to build up, but currently my rate of production per acre is on par with the only other producing plantation in Akro. I have 1 1/2 stars combined for all my plantation buildings.

I have yet to utilize all my acres (500 total) and my total workers is only around 250k. My workers fleet supplies just enough workers to counteract the deaths. Once I get the facilities built up a little bit further, I will fire all my workers and start from scratch with fresh workers to see if there are still adjustments to be made.

What I think kills plantations is the operating permissions costs. You have to eat a ton of money unless you get a super sweet deal and the governor gives you the permission at almost minimum cost.

[Stan Rogers]

Dez... I completely agree with your approach as that is the model I worked on. Over 6 months I managed to build up 8 ports and consistently put 3,4-5 plants in the top 10 producers per acre. Any drops in production could be attributed to some form of shortage and would be corrected as best as the available info would allow.

The last straw comes when a consistently good producer starts getting messages from the 'Adviser" that many of my workers are not well fed. This started a month ago when I first posted in this thread.
Since then, every step has been attended to ensure the workers are properly well fed, doubled the size of kitchens so they almost equal housing size and give each worker 4 squares a day.

My adviser continues to claim some workers are not eating and my production in that port has fallen by almost 50%

Now... there is nothing more that can be done within reason to increase their abilities to eat and no other plant suffers anywhere near the losses despite there being much less resources /infrastructure to maintain the population.
I can only conclude that there is a bug in either the port of Chalkos, a food port or there is some sort of secret disease that the workers have contracted that is not reported preventing them from eating despite the tables being full and they have double the food servers and space to eat over any other port of the 7 ports I farm in.

My statement is not a spur of the moment outburst but rather a 'report'' on what could be a potential bug or something else entirely different.
Regardless, I'm not playing anymore with something that may or may not be right as essentially, I don't have to and I don't play this game to get more aggravation in my life.

[Noffin]

Aye these problems are there for even the smallest of plantations (fully developed ones at that) so just imagine how much more it is for the larger plantations.