Rainwater efficiency

[arjensmit79]

I just made a little excel to calculate rainwater efficiency. Right now, i did it for the crude workstation. I will share the excel if asked for, but its really basic and i know noone will check the formulas so probably noone will ask.

Everything is about worker time. So i count seconds in value. Assumed is:

Woodcutter cuts 4 wood/minute, so cost of 1 wood = 15
Rain collector collects 6/min so cost = 10 (with geyser it would be cost = 3)
Solving 1 cyst costs 10 wood (150) + about 40 for production + ~40 for burning = 230
16 water makes 1 cyst, so added water cost for cyst = 15. Total water cost = 25. (18 for geyser)

Now i throw in excel the production per minute, the used water and wood per minute and calculate the total cost in seconds per plank produced. I come to the following result:

No water used: 78 seconds
level 1 water: 83 seconds
level 2 water: 78 seconds
level 3 water: 79 seconds

So it seems that the cost of producing planks is rather constant regardless of water usage level. If i change the values of input to 6 fiber and value each fiber 30, we get a similar sort of outcome, except that the fabric costs 100-110 seconds instead of ~80. Small changes in the input values don't dramatically change the picture for either.

If i change the waterprice to what it would be for a geyser instead of collector we get for wood

No water used: 78 seconds
level 1 water: 79 seconds
level 2 water: 72 seconds
level 3 water: 72 seconds

So this confirms what i think most of us intuitively felt already, that if you use water, you dont want to use it at level 1, you want to use level 2 to grab that yield bonus.
Also, considering the cost of infrastructure and stress/risk of blight fighting is not included, we can say that it is a bad plan to water the crude workstation with collector water and the advantage of using geyser water is not so big that this seems like a great plan. (but ofc if you have the geyser running anyway it might be)

I will try to put in the numbers for different buildings later and see if there are any buildings where water use shows a profound benefit or loss. I would expect to see better results for buildings at the end of longer and more complicated/expensive production chains. Unless they balanced that all out in the water consumption of course.
That however requires testing, and i will be going on a little vacation, so it might take a while before you see any more results.

Has anyone else done similar analysis and what did you find ?

[Spacesuit Spiff]

Interesting. I for sure wouldn't bother with a rain collector year 1 if that explodey glade event didn't need it.

[KD.AltQQ]

I suppose you will have to throw in the cost of producing 4 pipes? (and also the rain collector costs planks and parts) as a sort of "initial investment" cost of sorts to set up... you can then calculate how many planks produced is needed to offset this cost.

Yup, just confirms what I know already; rainpunk kinda sucks and its bonuses are rather marginal (not to say they are not useful in very particular situations though) at the end of the day.

[arjensmit79]

Originally posted by Spacesuit Spiff:

Interesting. I for sure wouldn't bother with a rain collector year 1 if that explodey glade event didn't need it.

You don't build that preemptively just for that reason do you ?

I routinely open at least 2 dangerous glades at the start of year 2, not carefully and hesitatingly, no simply selecting both to be opened simultaneously. And then a third might follow as well. I have never preemptively produced water to fix it. I see it at most once in 10 times. You dont want to be building that piece of trash for nothing 9 out of 10 times.

If i find it, i guess i always solved it differently, obtaining the stuff i need for the other option trough trade/caches/orders. I think it would also be an option to build 2 collectors (if you didnt find a geyser while opening the glades) quickly in order to get the needed water fast enough as well, but have never done that. I have allowed small 6 tile explosions to happen as well, bigger ones too actually. Worst comes to pass, its a wasted glade and you gained nothing for your 30 hostility rise. If that happens once in a 100 times, we can live with that too.

Originally posted by KD.AltQQ:

Yup, just confirms what I know already; rainpunk kinda sucks and its bonuses are rather marginal

Note that this is just about the opening. About a rain collector for a crude workstation while making blight-fire from wood.

-As we have seen, a guyser will already give water a tiny edge.
-If you have seamarrow, the cost of fighting blight drops dramatically and it will have a much larger edge.
-Other production chains like for example pie or cookie production have much more stuff and thus value going into them. I have no doubt that we will see a significant value for water usage here.

All together, i have no doubts that rainwater is a valuable mechanic to use in the game. I just want to have more insight into the extend of its value so i better know when or when not to use it.

I was inspired to start this quest by my current game where i was planning the stuff to do after opening my glades in year 2 and it looks like i'm rather tight on basic stuff food and planks so i was thinking "would it be worthy to build that water collector to enhance my limited food in the field kitchen and speed up my huge plank appetite?"
The answer for the planks is thus a no*, i will build a second crude workstation instead if i can find the manpower to operate it. The field kitchen probably will also be a no. I know people do it, and i never believed it to be efficient, but now its the next thing i will calculate. (looking purely at food quantity, not valuing the resolve, if you need resolve, the field kitchen sure is a decent tool for that)

*it is still something to consider actually because while it doesn't give a calculated benefit in value, it does offer you the opportunity to borrow value from the future.
The infrastructure costs little or nothing since you got the goods on embarkation. The cost of fighting the blight can be postponed to year 3 if you use just enough water to stay below 100% during year 2. If the map has seamarrow, there is a decent chance you will be able to use that in year 3 to "pay of the loan" and actually make it a sweet deal. Sort of like how the real world economy is always in debt and borrowing from the future, expecting the value of the borrowed sum to be lessened by a growing economy.

So that brings me back to spacesuits preemptive building, i actually am now considering to build it in year 1 before the storm my next game on maps that contain seamarrow. It will enable me to gather water during year 1 storm, giving me that little extra kick in building materials from the crude workstation in year 2. I could optionally use it for drizzle water in year 2 as well if i luck out on a food building. At the very least i could spend 15 water in the building and just turn it of before producing any cysts.

[KD.AltQQ]

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

Originally posted by Spacesuit Spiff:

Interesting. I for sure wouldn't bother with a rain collector year 1 if that explodey glade event didn't need it.

You don't build that preemptively just for that reason do you ?

I routinely open at least 2 dangerous glades at the start of year 2, not carefully and hesitatingly, no simply selecting both to be opened simultaneously. And then a third might follow as well. I have never preemptively produced water to fix it. I see it at most once in 10 times. You dont want to be building that piece of trash for nothing 9 out of 10 times.

If i find it, i guess i always solved it differently, obtaining the stuff i need for the other option trough trade/caches/orders. I think it would also be an option to build 2 collectors (if you didnt find a geyser while opening the glades) quickly in order to get the needed water fast enough as well, but have never done that. I have allowed small 6 tile explosions to happen as well, bigger ones too actually. Worst comes to pass, its a wasted glade and you gained nothing for your 30 hostility rise. If that happens once in a 100 times, we can live with that too.

Originally posted by KD.AltQQ:

Yup, just confirms what I know already; rainpunk kinda sucks and its bonuses are rather marginal

Note that this is just about the opening. About a rain collector for a crude workstation while making blight-fire from wood.

-As we have seen, a guyser will already give water a tiny edge.
-If you have seamarrow, the cost of fighting blight drops dramatically and it will have a much larger edge.
-Other production chains like for example pie or cookie production have much more stuff and thus value going into them. I have no doubt that we will see a significant value for water usage here.

All together, i have no doubts that rainwater is a valuable mechanic to use in the game. I just want to have more insight into the extend of its value so i better know when or when not to use it.

I was inspired to start this quest by my current game where i was planning the stuff to do after opening my glades in year 2 and it looks like i'm rather tight on basic stuff food and planks so i was thinking "would it be worthy to build that water collector to enhance my limited food in the field kitchen and speed up my huge plank appetite?"
The answer for the planks is thus a no*, i will build a second crude workstation instead if i can find the manpower to operate it. The field kitchen probably will also be a no. I know people do it, and i never believed it to be efficient, but now its the next thing i will calculate. (looking purely at food quantity, not valuing the resolve, if you need resolve, the field kitchen sure is a decent tool for that)

*it is still something to consider actually because while it doesn't give a calculated benefit in value, it does offer you the opportunity to borrow value from the future.
The infrastructure costs little or nothing since you got the goods on embarkation. The cost of fighting the blight can be postponed to year 3 if you use just enough water to stay below 100% during year 2. If the map has seamarrow, there is a decent chance you will be able to use that in year 3 to "pay of the loan" and actually make it a sweet deal. Sort of like how the real world economy is always in debt and borrowing from the future, expecting the value of the borrowed sum to be lessened by a growing economy.

So that brings me back to spacesuits preemptive building, i actually am now considering to build it in year 1 before the storm my next game on maps that contain seamarrow. It will enable me to gather water during year 1 storm, giving me that little extra kick in building materials from the crude workstation in year 2. I could optionally use it for drizzle water in year 2 as well if i luck out on a food building. At the very least i could spend 15 water in the building and just turn it of before producing any cysts.

You don't think that spending 5 planks of a raincollector or 9 for a geyser pump would actually require you to build close to 50-100 planks before the extra bit of "time" would give you a net profit? (I'm not considering the fact that you can salvage the pump yet... which I guess you can do)

There's also an opportunity cost; 9 planks in my hand right now spent on a pump are 9 planks that could've gone to something else more urgent, if applicable.

One thing about sea marrow... they sell for a lot and can be used to open caches... pretty sure 3 sea marrow is worth more than 10 wood (clearly, because we cannot sell wood on trade routes but sea marrow seems to go for ~0.4-1 amber per unit).

[arjensmit79]

Originally posted by KD.AltQQ:

You don't think that spending 5 planks of a raincollector or 9 for a geyser pump would actually require you to build close to 50-100 planks before the extra bit of "time" would give you a net profit? (I'm not considering the fact that you can salvage the pump yet... which I guess you can do).

No
You spend 4 minutes during storm to gather 45 water.

2 guys in the crudeworkshop using level 3 water produce 13 instead of 5.3 planks per minute using 13 water per minute to do so.

After 3,5 minutes, (4 with break) you run out of water, having produced 45 planks instead of 17 and you have produced 2 blight cysts, allowing you to postpone that issue till year 3. Build your town of beaver houses and destory the collector if you like.

Of course to make the comparison fair, you could have also spend 8 instead of 4 minutes in the crude workstation and produced 34 planks. So basically you gained 12 planks at the cost of having to deal with 2 extra cysts in year 3.

There is actually something i have to check and that is what happens when you have water turned on only during part of the production cycle, just the start or end, could you get the 25% yield boost for just a drop of water ? That would be a micro intensive, but very profitable thing for early game.

[Clawyer]

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

There is actually something i have to check and that is what happens when you have water turned on only during part of the production cycle, just the start or end, could you get the 25% yield boost for just a drop of water ? That would be a micro intensive, but very profitable thing for early game.

According to an older post in this forum it works. I am interested in your findings but the older post states that if you deactivate rainwater completely or at least go down to level 1 and only upgrade to level 2 shortly before the production cycle finishes you will get the 25%. The only way to stop this from happening would probably be to gain cumulative percentages of double production chance while the machine is on.

I think this will not get fixed as it is a lot of micromanagement for relatively little gain. It would be optimal, though..

[Urza]

I pretty much just use lvl 2 water for compound crit value. Speed scales more linearly so lvl 3 looks to me just like more of a headache when its time to fight blight.

I never touch rainpunk anyway till I have some kind of very strong fuel building or fuel cornerstone.

[Spacesuit Spiff]

Originally posted by Urza:

I pretty much just use lvl 2 water for compound crit value. Speed scales more linearly so lvl 3 looks to me just like more of a headache when its time to fight blight.

I never touch rainpunk anyway till I have some kind of very strong fuel building or fuel cornerstone.

This. If you're juicing 2-3 steps in a supply chain (suppose ranch -> jerky -> skewers) that's suddenly huge. Probably overkill but still.

[bluemonkey]

OP overlooks some important assumptions in the calculations:

The production doubling bonus (not sure what it is offhand)
The bonus wood to production from beavers
The bonus to purging fire production from harpies
The notion that not everyone's time is equally valued
The notion that most items are limited in quantity

Ignores lizards getting a Resolve bonus for blightpost duties but not while cutting wood/pumping water/or possibly during manufacturing

Ignores foxes getting a Resolve bonus for pumping water but not while cutting wood, blight posting/or possibly during manufacturing

*************
(P15) All told, I wouldn't usually spend the pipes to outfit the crude workshop with rainpunk. I'd rather have the bonus production in a more specialized supply chain rather than a building I intend to scrap at first opportunity.

[LotusBlade]

Well then it is balanced i suppose, devs did good job there. I mostly use green geyser to boost one complex food production building to rain lvl-2 for extra yeild and finish run by year 4-5, in most cases don't even need to build blight post and take care of crysts, cus they are not reaching 100%. But that depends on difficulty, yet majority of players would have similar experience to me.

[Vegetable Vampire]

Those calculations are nice and all, but once you get the trait that gives -10 hostility per 3 cysts burnt, all of that becomes irrelevant as hostility (and impatients) are really the only two limiting factors in this game.

[LotusBlade]

Originally posted by Vegetable Vampire:

all of that becomes irrelevant as hostility (and impatients) are really the only two limiting factors in this game.

Time lenght for wins also important since seals release, cus you aim for fast runs at 4-5 years max.

[Clawyer]

Originally posted by LotusBlade:

Originally posted by Vegetable Vampire:

all of that becomes irrelevant as hostility (and impatients) are really the only two limiting factors in this game.

Time lenght for wins also important since seals release, cus you aim for fast runs at 4-5 years max.

That might be true for the first 50-100 hours of the game until you finish the upgrade tree, after that seals don't do anything (yet).. It's only your own ambitions that push you forward after that point.

[Urza]

Originally posted by Clawyer:

Originally posted by LotusBlade:

Time lenght for wins also important since seals release, cus you aim for fast runs at 4-5 years max.

That might be true for the first 50-100 hours of the game until you finish the upgrade tree, after that seals don't do anything (yet).. It's only your own ambitions that push you forward after that point.

I frankly dont like playing fast, even if im getting more used to it. If they dont find ways to also reward other playstyles I think they'll have missed the mark.