Industrialist background pointless?

[Katieclysm]

So, let's compare backgrounds here.
I'm comparing these on the basis of having any kind of usability at all in the earlier chapters. Comparing them later is utterly pointless, because you can have all the licenses easily enough once you get further in.

Combat: Easy peasy. Pick up bounties, shoot pirates. Useful from the start. Also the game distinctly supports this decision, as combat is required for the main story.

Shipping: Not too bad. Most things that require a shipping license need more cargo space than you're likely to have in a fleet for the first couple chapters, but you can warehouse it and make more than one trip. Still a solid source of early game money.

Industrialist: WTF? These contracts almost always need absurd amounts of starting funds and resources, and nearly always require you to actually build the dang factory just to complete them - which locks those out entirely until you're far enough in the story to get business licenses! Completely useless early game, and by the time you can do it, completing the requirements to get the production license is no particular challenge. Zero reason to pick this start other than... what... RP purposes? Start with one of the others to finance yourself through the first few chapters.

Am I missing something critical here? This seems like it would be a ridiculous game design flub. Why is one of the primary starting options nonviable?

[jay.ss]

Originally posted by Katieclysm:

So, let's compare backgrounds here.
I'm comparing these on the basis of having any kind of usability at all in the earlier chapters. Comparing them later is utterly pointless, because you can have all the licenses easily enough once you get further in.

Combat: Easy peasy. Pick up bounties, shoot pirates. Useful from the start. Also the game distinctly supports this decision, as combat is required for the main story.

Shipping: Not too bad. Most things that require a shipping license need more cargo space than you're likely to have in a fleet for the first couple chapters, but you can warehouse it and make more than one trip. Still a solid source of early game money.

Industrialist: WTF? These contracts almost always need absurd amounts of starting funds and resources, and nearly always require you to actually build the dang factory just to complete them - which locks those out entirely until you're far enough in the story to get business licenses! Completely useless early game, and by the time you can do it, completing the requirements to get the production license is no particular challenge. Zero reason to pick this start other than... what... RP purposes? Start with one of the others to finance yourself through the first few chapters.

Am I missing something critical here? This seems like it would be a ridiculous game design flub. Why is one of the primary starting options nonviable?

Hi, thank you very much for your post. The intention behind the industrialist background is to allow players who enjoy getting sidetracked to build things to access licenses early and engage with the production questline without needing to complete the industrialist quests. If this felt unfulfilling to you, your feedback is duly noted.

[Katieclysm]

Originally posted by jay.ss:

Hi, thank you very much for your post. The intention behind the industrialist background is to allow players who enjoy getting sidetracked to build things to access licenses early and engage with the production questline without needing to complete the industrialist quests. If this felt unfulfilling to you, your feedback is duly noted.

This is actually the exact type of playthrough I was hoping for. It was frustrating to select it but be unable to actually get into that style of gameplay until almost the same point in the storyline as any other background. Would love to see some kind of starting assist here. Thanks for the reply!

[Duneman]

Well, if you don't start with that background getting the license for it can be a pain. You need to bring something like 3,000 units of materials to the Industrial Yard. In comparison the hunting license just has you hunting 3 or so bounties and it is done. Industrialist is definitely a rabbit hole if you let it be. Funnily enough there are some procurement requests that can turn a profit if you merely buy the required materials. But by investing in crafting the stuff yourself, and using cheaper precursor stuff when you need to buy something you can stretch the profit out that much more.

[Humble]

Well, you do make more profit when you take quest when not pick background, it is lot of work trying found resource, buy there and bring to quest person who gave you license.

[Flicken]

A ship with 10 slots is enough to grab all the commission items as they never need more than 10 stacks of an item. This is easily done with the smallest ships in the game. Every time I have in a commission, I send another ship to restock it ready for next time I pass through. Great little money maker, and doesn't really need that much to get going, just bring plenty of oak planks with you to build a level 1 warehouse, or have a ship follow you full of them instead. Some of the lucrative ones need a bit of an investment, but doing story line and selling captured ships is easy money. Industrialist makes you think more, and use your spare ships to better effect, not everyone's cup of tea.

[spheniscine]

After playing all three backgrounds I'd say industrialist is actually the best background; the catch is that a beginner may get confused at the quest asking for some good, but not knowing where it is sold; you probably thus thought that you need to make the good yourself, which, yeah, does often take an extreme amount of investment up front

Some tips:
- buy the "insight" available in the supply stores of some regional towns; this unlocks the market info for the entire region without you having to visit each town individually, making it easier to find sources for goods
- you can treat it as a logistic mission "in reverse"... but it's also possible to semi-automate it; first you need to set up workshops both at the destination and where you want to obtain the good, then set up a freight route to fetch the good for you. You need a hangar at one of the endpoints; the ship would permanently occupy that hangar slot; thankfully, you have lv1 hangars at many places for free. You probably want a ship with 10 slots (finally, a use for those gunboats you get gifted early in the story; replace the guns and magazines with cargo rooms and you're good to go). You *can* also use the auto-buy; but note that procurement quests take two days to refresh (from the time you turn it in), while most places will restock every day, so it's possible to get flooded with the good. You do also need to be on-site to turn quests in, and right now there are no indicators as to when quests refresh if you're not on-site (probably ask the devs)
- another good thing with starting as industrialist: you don't need to do the career quest later. As others have noted earlier in the thread, industralist has the most annoying career quest, basically requiring a large volume of goods (often more than you can buy at once from a single source) to be shipped to the Laventum Industrial Yard at once... and then all the cargo/warehouse capacity you needed basically goes to waste for the actual procurement quests, since they only take 10 slots, but are spread out over the map
- there are a few places where you can actually buy what you need right on-site (usually at a markup, but even then, you can make a healthy profit. Examples: Blueglade Town [Regenerative Coating], Laventum Industrial Yard [Large Reaction Vessels]). I also found a useful two-way route: transport Himmelrite Ingots from Greenvale Town to Aberdonia Town, then transport Ship Rigging back
- here's one thing that you can do with any background - you start with the colliery in Silberblum HQ fully upgraded for free. Have a ship transport extraction tools from Crossington Town (set up maintenance auto-buy at Crossington for the tools), then order the colliery to constantly convert it to sorted coal (the orders to sort coal should take priority over mining, set two sort orders, followed by two mining orders). You can then set the ship so that it transports exactly as many tools as required (though you may want to buy some tools from the HQ to "kickstart" the process so that the ship doesn't have to wait for the colliery to output the coal). Every now and then, sell the sorted coal from the Crossington warehouse; you can do this from anywhere. It won't earn you very much, but it's almost passive income

As for other backgrounds, in my opinion the ranking goes: industrialist, combatant, then logistician (worst)... the issue is that the logistic quests often don't really pay well for the time investment needed; they're really there to just make a little extra cash if you happen to be going that way anyway. Funnily enough the logistician career quest is actually pretty lucrative, another reason *not* to pick it at the start...

[RosCo]

Originally posted by spheniscine:

After playing all three backgrounds I'd say industrialist is actually the best background...

Thanks for all of that advise, I am going to have to read and dissect it next time I load up the game. I was having a bit of an issue trying to understand the economy (supply/demand).

I had just figured out the "buy insight" option playing last night, and I have been trying to figure out the full benefits of having that knowledge.

The most immediate effect it had is that I had more places to store ships I captured.

[Katieclysm]

Appreciating the advice!

Originally posted by spheniscine:

You can then set the ship so that it transports exactly as many tools as required

I'm missing this bit of info right here, though. How do you properly moderate auto-purchases, if transporting it? I can set it to always try to buy a specific amount at the purchase location, but once it's moved out, that "desired" number is back to zero and it buys more. And the cargo destination is just filling up as fast as the ship can make a round trip.

[spheniscine]

Originally posted by Katieclysm:

Appreciating the advice!

Originally posted by spheniscine:

You can then set the ship so that it transports exactly as many tools as required

I'm missing this bit of info right here, though. How do you properly moderate auto-purchases, if transporting it? I can set it to always try to buy a specific amount at the purchase location, but once it's moved out, that "desired" number is back to zero and it buys more. And the cargo destination is just filling up as fast as the ship can make a round trip.

You can set the autobuy to maintain a certain supply level at the warehouse (you generally need to set it to several times the required amount for a single trip, since the autobuy periodically runs a check to see when it should restock)