Is production actually profitable?

[jeffrey_green1]

so i just did the program on my calculator and realized that my oat fields are more profitable by a significant number than the bread that i can produce from the oat flower. the numbers are something like 320k too 210k. i thought that maybe it was because bread is basic, but then i checked clothing, and discovered a similar recording. the max market value for cotton is 3680, and for clothing its 18,400. when you process that cotton to cloth, you discover a factor of 5. meaning for every 5L of cotton you put in, you get 1(unit) of cloth.
3580x5 = exactly 18400. no profit and in fact you lose from the building purchase and factory costs.

soooo... what am i missing here... whats the point?

[Samtana]

Before an answer can really be given we'd need to know what map that is to verify, but based off of what you think you observed it doesn't make sense.

That said, you almost certainly made an error yourself somewhere or other.

[Brandl]

It depends on the map you are playing and the difficult level....prices can be very different then.
For myself i think you can make more money using the production lines because sometimes (on some maps/buildings/mods) the usage of grain for example is 2:1 but the selling price is 3-4 times that high....depending of what you produce of cause....so its not that simple to answer your question.

[jeffrey_green1]

Im playing Erlengrat and no im not wrong. ill break it down, first with bread.
Oat has the best return so well use those numbers.
as we know, recipe for oat flower is 15 oat for 19 flour.

making it simple, lets go with 1500 oat. in which 1900 flour is produced.
with that 1900 flour, we make bread, using a formula of 2 flour for 1 bread.
thus, we can produced 850 bread, starting from 1500 oat.

the bread hits high market value in January, peaking at 3274.
total value of bread: 2,782,900

however, oat has a max value rate of 2052, once again in January.
total value of oat, 3,078,000.

so from this experiment, oat is worth more when stored and sold as opposed to processed into bread.

[Brandl]

Originally posted by jeffrey_green1:

however, oat has a max value rate of 2052, once again in January.
total value of oat, 3,078,000.

Well on my map oat have a value of about 800....so like i said...it depends on the map.

[Joe the Smoe]

sounds like a modded problem to me. Original prices i have in minde are 600-800 for Oat, Wheat and so on and roundabout 2500 to 3200 for bread, which makes bread a little better than just selling the Oat. But you have extra working steps

[Samtana]

I currently am playing on Wild West 16x and on there oat is roughly 1600 while bread is roughly 4300. 5 grain makes 4 flour. 2 flour makes 1 bread. Essentially it takes 2.5 oat for every 1 bread. 2.5x1600=4000 making bread a little more profitable with the extra work, though. This isn't a completely accurate calculation as it doesn't include the upkeep of both production facilities. These types of results are going to vary based on maps and settings.

Now as to the original question of if production is profitable...well that's just an obvious yes because all it took was some fuel, seeds, and worker wages which is going to be nowhere near the amount of money I'll get from a harvest. Some products will bring more money for less work. That's just the nature of production.

[Brandl]

Originally posted by Joe the Smoe:

sounds like a modded problem to me. Original prices i have in minde are 600-800 for Oat, Wheat and so on and roundabout 2500 to 3200 for bread, which makes bread a little better than just selling the Oat. But you have extra working steps

Yes, thats correct. You can define all the numbers in some xml files, but dont ask me in which one...im no modder ;)

[Quyessial]

Your math is off. Specifically regarding the processing of cotton to clothes.

Spinnery is 5 cotton to 3 fabric.
Tailor is 2 fabric to 1 clothes.

So 5 cotton turns into 1.5 clothes, not 1.

This means 18,400 worth of cotton (5*3680) sells for 27,600 worth of clothes (1.5*18,400)

[danloveschrista]

The guide "The Farmer's Handbook" has really in-depth info on all productions. It's based on easy settings, but the ratios apply to all difficulty levels unless you have mods that change them. Based on that, the best price of bread is around 2x the best price of the oats to make it. Somewhere you miscalculated. On easy level, oats peak in January at 2414, while bread peaks in January at 5793 (your number is way low). Given a ratio of 1.5 oats to 1.88 flour to 0.94 bread, 1000 oats sells at a max of 2414, while the bread brings a max of 5445.
On the highest difficulty, oats would max at around 800, and bread around 1800.
Sorghum actually gives a slightly better return per liter, and way more per hectare, if you're planning to make bread, and no straw handling.

Cereal is a production that is a huge waste of time and resources for almost no profit, but most productions are profitable.

[thelamaknows]

Very long term.
I bought the oil mill on Elmcreek and grew sunflowers and a bit of canola. I had an absolutely massive sunflower operation (98% yield increase every year) and it barely kept the mill running until the next harvest. I would have owned 1/4 of the map to keep the oil mill filled year round.
Part of the problem was having to farm at that large of a scale- meaning large, expensive gear with long hours meant I got to a point where expansion became difficult. I rarely had money to make major purchases for new or larger gear AND expand my fields to make more product.

By far the easiest money is greenhouses and chickens and bees. You lose a lot by auto-selling, but if you're willing to manually load a ton of pallets- it's crazy money.