What is the best (most profitable) product to produce?

[Antikcommando]

What is the best (most profitable) product to produce? What is best to produce in the game so as not to lose control too quickly for management?

[Harris]

Alright, let's get to the nitty gritty. There are 4 products you can produce (aside legal ones, you can make an empire of selling chicken for fun and memes if you so wish):

(from least to most profitable)

1) opium
2) cannabis
3) meth
4) cocaine

Opium is a drug introduced for the purpose of "early game", hence it did not even exist in the demo. As you can deduce, it's something you can safely start with as a newbie. However, pro tip is to simply ignore it - the profits are too bad to bother, especially considering there's now an upkeep you have to pay on airports (they used to have none before). They have roughly the same throughput of whatever you sell, so it's a no-brainer you best sell more valuable goods than less one valuable ones for better profit.

Cannabis is likely the most common and go-to stuff you will make. It is very balanced, with a decent price and a fairly simple production chain (farms/plantations => drying rack. It doesn't require much research investment to set up either. And there's a lot of upgrade potential. Cannabis likely benefits the most from drying rack upgrades, doubling the produce at tier III. Frankly, a couple Workshops III producing cannabis + spice (so 6 cannabis per production cycle) will have you covered.

Meth. This is something you can produce for an even better profit than cannabis, but you don't really need to - the game is simply not optimized for profits like that atm - you'll have nowhere to spend it and no way of laundering it either. Besides, the production chain is pretty complex, and requires much research investment, so at the point of the game you get it - you don't really need it anymore.

Cocaine. That's logically the most profitable stuff, which gets even better when you run a max level "deal" and put a lieutenant with +30% price "dealer" perk. It's also less research-demanding than meth, so you'll be able to set it up faster. The downsides are pretty complicated production chain (you'll need many warehouses), and severe lack of areas with good fertility (you only get 100% in Foscani, IIRC). However, even a small Foscani setup has potential to give you more money than you'll ever need.

TL;DR to answer your question - just start producing cannabis ASAP and then simply upgrade your production chain as needed. I finished Survival Mode without ever producing anything else.

[Antikcommando]

Originally posted by Harris:

Alright, let's get to the nitty gritty. There are 4 products you can produce (aside legal ones, you can make an empire of selling chicken for fun and memes if you so wish):

(from least to most profitable)

1) opium
2) cannabis
3) meth
4) cocaine

Opium is a drug introduced for the purpose of "early game", hence it did not even exist in the demo. As you can deduce, it's something you can safely start with as a newbie. However, pro tip is to simply ignore it - the profits are too bad to bother, especially considering there's now an upkeep you have to pay on airports (they used to have none before). They have roughly the same throughput of whatever you sell, so it's a no-brainer you best sell more valuable goods than less one valuable ones for better profit.

Cannabis is likely the most common and go-to stuff you will make. It is very balanced, with a decent price and a fairly simple production chain (farms/plantations => drying rack. It doesn't require much research investment to set up either. And there's a lot of upgrade potential. Cannabis likely benefits the most from drying rack upgrades, doubling the produce at tier III. Frankly, a couple Workshops III producing cannabis + spice (so 6 cannabis per production cycle) will have you covered.

Meth. This is something you can produce for an even better profit than cannabis, but you don't really need to - the game is simply not optimized for profits like that atm - you'll have nowhere to spend it and no way of laundering it either. Besides, the production chain is pretty complex, and requires much research investment, so at the point of the game you get it - you don't really need it anymore.

Cocaine. That's logically the most profitable stuff, which gets even better when you run a max level "deal" and put a lieutenant with +30% price "dealer" perk. It's also less research-demanding than meth, so you'll be able to set it up faster. The downsides are pretty complicated production chain (you'll need many warehouses), and severe lack of areas with good fertility (you only get 100% in Foscani, IIRC). However, even a small Foscani setup has potential to give you more money than you'll ever need.

TL;DR to answer your question - just start producing cannabis ASAP and then simply upgrade your production chain as needed. I finished Survival Mode without ever producing anything else.

Wow !!! Thank you very much for your long, very detailed response. I sincerely appreciate it!

[Agent Orange]

Yes, even with opium you can produce more money than you are able to spend. You just need lots of farms/plantations (around 15 farms or 5 plantations) with 100% and you won´t be able to spend your money.