Stone quarry

[clementvw]

Logging site makes 2 logs per 10 minutes at 1d each, that's 6 per 30 minutes = 6d profit (12d profit per 30 minutes if you manage to sell at mills for 3d))
Quarry produces 2 stones per 30 minutes at 2.5d each = 1d profit per 30 minutes.

Stones with a margin of 1/6 or even 1/12th of timber, If that's as intended, i predict serious stone-shortages,
and i call building the quarry an expensive lesson.

[VDZ]

If it really produces 2 stones for 5d, the problem gets worse: You would have to sell at 3d, which means Stonemasons would buy at 4d, resulting in 8d production cost per block, with export price currently at 11d (because we consciously waited with exporting until April to raise the price), expected to drop to 10d in April due to all stone blocks getting exported; at that point 9d would be the only viable sale price, meaning the Stonemasons would make 1d profit per 10 minutes (1s44d per day at an initial investment of 20s90d; 14.5 RL days to break even, not including skill cost). (Current profit margin on Stonemasons buying Stone at 3d is 4d per 10 minutes, 5s76d/day (3.6 days) expected to drop to 3d per 10 minutes, 4s32d/day (4.8 days).)

The logging site is also better than described here, as it produces 3 timber per 10 minutes at 3d, being sold at 2d means 3d profit per 10 minutes = 4s32d/day with an initial investment of 7s65d (1.8 days to break even).

Furthermore, I just constructed my first Sawmill and noticed that (in addition to counting 33% less towards the net worth limit which is currently very relevant, and in addition to being on the same skill as the logging camp) the profit margin is extremely high compared to its stone equivalent: Buying timber at 3d (which is hardly necessary; there's always plenty of timber for sale at 2d) it produces 2 wood per 10 minutes for 18d, selling at 14d for a profit margin of 5d per wood (10d per 10 minutes) for a massive profit of 14s40d per day (1.26 days to break even). This at a lower initial investment (18s10d as opposed to 20s90d for Stonemasons) with a more useful skill (Lumberjack as opposed to the super-specific Stonemason), slower value loss (at a max loss of 1d per year, wood will lose 20% of its current profit margin per year while stone blocks lose 25% per year), greater guarantee of supply (due to the lumberjack skill being much more useful there are far more logging sites than quarries), greater natural demand (wood is needed in tons of buildings; stone is barely needed) plus easy self-stocking (as logging site is on the same skill, there's no reason to not also have a logging site)...all that even if quarries get buffed to be on par with logging sites. And this is after adobe and I made a conscious effort to get the port price to rise by not exporting until April.

Mit, I'm starting to grow rather concerned about the game balance on Lovelace. For now you've been fixing problems as they pop up, but as you'll be getting busier later there might be significant economic problems if the later buildings also have these kinds of issues.

[Mit]

I disagree a bit here :]

@VDZ: your calcs are based on current export prices which are still very askew from their more usual levels ; Wood is currently at the top end of its price range and stone blocks are towards the low end of theirs. The relative amounts of exports of wood to stone mean that its likely that stone will continue to rise for a while and wood will almost certainly continue falling. (I shouldnt really be telling you that of course, but hey, its a public forum :] ). I'm happy enough to leave that to balance itself naturally, partly because it has given wood exporters a boost when the world is in it's particularly difficult early stages.

The feedback system for the export price is critical to self-balancing the economy in its early stages, but it doesn't do it quickly. (I could be tempted to up the export re-calc rate to 6 months instead of 12 but I don't think thats necessary and would probably cause more grief than it saves). Yes, the wood price means lumberjacking is obviously particularly profitable at the moment, and sure there may well be a stone shortage for a bit, but that won't last long if wood remains the primary export. (Which for a while, it probably will).

Separately, most of this is focused almost entirely on the export market - and although that's the focus initially, that should (assuming people continue playing :]) change over time as demand for items for construction and internal production increases. Stone (via concrete) and Stone Blocks are required for all second and third level building construction (factories, warehouses and all the larger farms, mines etc) so demand for those will increase as the world gets wealthier.

Regarding me having time to make fixes: As the range of prices that export items can go through is now directly linked to the cost of production (without me having to manually calculate them) its a lot less work for me to have to maintain than previous. Minor adjustments to that linkage formula are still possibly of course, and no doubt will happen over time. I am going to be restricted in terms of large, new feature additions (e.g. minigames) for a while but a good part of the work i've been doing recently (including adding in lots more data-points and macro-economic monitoring tools) has been to ensure the world & game can be maintained more easily.

Beyond the addition of the Stonemasons, there's not too many other differences in the production chains between Grey and Lovelace.

Btw, theres no specific 1d limit on export price value change.. in extreme cases it can be up to 25% of the price range variation. (i.e. if a product's export price can vary from 10d to 100d, it could (theoretically) change 22d (25% x 90d) in one year).

I do agree though that the skill prices are a little wrong and both Quarrier and StoneMason should be less than Lumberjack, which I'll change. Stone quarry will be producing at 10 mins, not once every 30. (I upped the rate of the logging sites after earlier discussions, and hence will have to change others in line).

Also: The min buy-in-price for a 2.5d item should be 4d, not 3d - Think I got the rounding wrong on that in a couple of places and may have to adjust things. I'll check into that and the export price ranges will get an equivalent bump if it needs changing.
(Edit: For now, to keep things simple, i've lowered quarry production cost to 4d per two - so buy-in prices don't need to be adjusted).

[VDZ]

You make valid points, but I still think that the balance difference will at least cause a serious stone blocks shortage for the foreseeable future unless someone chooses to consciously take a serious opportunity loss for the benefit of the economy as a whole. Particularly considering...

Also: The min buy-in-price for a 2.5d item should be 4d, not 3d - Think I got the rounding wrong on that in a couple of places and may have to adjust things. I'll check into that and the export price ranges will get an equivalent bump if it needs changing.
(Edit: For now, to keep things simple, i've lowered quarry production cost to 4d per two - so buy-in prices don't need to be adjusted).

My rant above on the superiority of the wood industry was based on the assumption quarries would at least be buffed to viably sell at 2d per stone. As this is apparently not happening (producing at 2d means selling at 3d) the prospects for stonemasons are even bleaker: If quarries are selling at 3d, stonemasons must buy at 4d (assuming natural economic transport and not self-stocking which AFAIK you want to discourage), resulting in a production price of 8d per stone block. At an export price of 11d (current) you could sell at 10d for a profit of 2d per 10 minutes (2s88d/day, 7.3 days to break even).

If we assume the price rises 1d every single year, this would be the prospects for profit assuming constant supply of material:
Nov 9th: 3d/10m - 4s32d/day - 4.8 days
Nov 12th: 4d/10m - 5s76d/day - 3.6 days
Nov 14th: 5d/10m - 7s20d/day - 2.9 days
Nov 17th: 6d/10m - 8s64d/day - 2.4 days
Nov 19th: 7d/10m - 10s8d/day - 2.1 days
Nov 22nd: 8d/10m - 11s52d/day - 1.8 days
Nov 24th: 9d/10m - 12s96d/day - 1.6 days
Nov 27th: 10d/10m - 14s40d/day - 1.5 days
Nov 29th: 11d/10m - 15s84d/day - 1.3 days
Dec 2nd: 12d/10m - 17s28d/day - 1.2 days

It would take well over three weeks to get the stonemasons to an equivalent break-even point to how sawmills are now. Obviously sawmills will decrease in value over time (and I've already noticed the oversaturation of sawmills has caused efficiency to drop below maximum), but these estimates are based on an ideal situation for stonemasons. In practice, stone supply will be hard to come by (dropping production efficiency and thus daily profit): government stone supply will dry up as less people mine the rock, and quarries are currently terrible so nobody will want to invest in them (and especially their skill) unless they get a better profit margin; if they will only get going by selling at 4d the above numbers are going to look much worse even. And unlike with the Lumberjack skill, you cannot self-supply unless you dedicate a second skill slot. Which brings me to...

I do agree though that the skill prices are a little wrong and both Quarrier and StoneMason should be less than Lumberjack, which I'll change.

The prices of the skills are not the problem. The two problems (in the context of this situation) are

• You are limited to only three skills at a time, and you must have the skill for every building you own; and
• With each skill you learn, skill learn times increase significantly

The problem with the former should be obvious. I've already ditched Stonemason to learn a different skill (went for Farmer but got 'Upgrade Required' instead; see my other thread) due to lack of economic viability; each skill you possess comes at the opportunity cost of not being able to have a different skill instead. And for Quarrier it's even worse; who is going to keep a skill that nets them an (unstable) maximum of 2s88d/day per building after making further investments? If I ever made the mistake of learning that myself, I'd ditch it immediately after seeing how terrible quarries are.

The latter discourages switching and experimenting. Temporarily having Quarrier because you still have unused skill slots is actively punished; you should go only for the skills you really want, because every 'mistake' you make in skill selection will have lasting repercussions until your character dies. It's like drinking from the well; at times it's necessary, but people avoid it like the plague and for good reason. Permanent debuffs are extremely discouraging, and while this works great to discourage people from becoming jacks-of-all-trades, it also discourages people from taking the 'bad' skills which has obvious effects on the economy.

(FYI: I've been offering my two stonemasons for sale at a low price for almost 24 hours now, and since about 8 hours ago they've been at the lowest possible price, but there are simply no takers; nobody seems interested even way below construction price. I will likely demolish them soon as they do nothing for me without having the Stonemason skill.)

(While we're at it, by the way, the government imports are selling Stone rather than Stone Blocks in the 'construction materials' section. I assume this is unintentional?)

Separately, most of this is focused almost entirely on the export market - and although that's the focus initially, that should (assuming people continue playing :]) change over time as demand for items for construction and internal production increases. Stone (via concrete) and Stone Blocks are required for all second and third level building construction (factories, warehouses and all the larger farms, mines etc) so demand for those will increase as the world gets wealthier.

I think you're overestimating natural player demand here. Construction is an inherently limited resource sink; only so many buildings need to be built and unless building decay gets turned up to 11 (I would highly recommend against that) there won't be all that many stone blocks used for construction - not even remotely close to the volumes of wood being exported. Furthermore, I've noticed that on Grey exports were always the main source of economic value. Even for the advanced stages of production (steel etc), pricing at every point was in some way derived from the value of exports made using the products; influence of exports dwarfed influence of natural player demand on Grey, and we even had a larger (and richer!) playerbase there. The science production chain ended up fizzling not because of labor shortages - top players were getting employed the the science buildings to keep them running and grab the high wages - or lack of funds (ATC was filthy rich), but because players didn't really see any point in continuing the production chain with seemingly no relevant reward being offered at the end of it (unlike other production chains where the end result was an exportable item). In all my time on Grey, I'd never been burned as hard economically as by investing in science buildings; there was simply zero profit to be made in there because there was no real demand. Some external factor needs to keep demand going and the internal factors are insufficient (with stone blocks only being used for construction; unlike stuff like fuel or food/drinks which are being consumed in great amounts in all forms of gameplay).

It's not really any of my personal business anymore as I've now ditched the stone industry and don't plan on returning to it, but I can see this causing problems for the broader economy further down the line. Be careful that the economy doesn't get stuck because nobody is incentivized to get into the stone industry.

[VDZ]

I'll have to take back my comment on my stonemasons not selling due to lack of demand. It appears I've overestimated the playerbase; while my two stonemasons were on sale for the lowest possible price of 11s each, two players each built a new stonemasons, even though just the sheer cash cost after tax is higher than that (12s50d, not including the 60 wood it also requires).

Sigh.