I think people should create their own Excel sheets

[Sir Prometeus]

Instead of using the current existing ones. For starters, many new players get overwhelmed by how complex this game can be. And if they see a complex Excel sheet they might think that it's too difficult for them to understand

Second, it's better to start with something simple, that the player improves over the course of time. It serves a better purpose to learn how the game works, and what you need

Maybe, you can ask for suggestions about what things you should add to your own Excel sheet, but you should try to write them yourself. At worst, it would make you better at Excel

And to be honest, it isn't that complicated. You need to keep in mind things like:

- Buy / Sell price of raw materials and products (keeping in mind that if you use your own products as raw materials in another step of the production chain, the buy price should be the cost of producing that amount of materials, instead of what the market says)

- Profit and cost per batch (to know how much money is locked until the product sells, and the profit you expect in comparison with the hauling costs)

- Profit per hour (to know what to produce) (keep in mind that if you self-produce part of the materials, you need to keep in mind the time it takes to create them)

- Expenses per round trip of your ships

- Expenses per day, because your workers will consume materials no matter what, or they will stop working


There's lots to add to this list, but this should be enough for starters. I never mentioned efficiency, or luxury consumables

About the market. You should learn to know what prices you can expect by reading the chart. Try to use high and low prices that are usually triggered for many days in a row. Learn about the amount of units traded each day, in price info (it's better doing so a few hours before the day ends so the amounts are reallistic) to identify price roofs and floors within the order book, and place your orders accordingly

Another thing that should be obvious is using all of your production lines 24/7 if possible (less likely when you are a beginner, but try to produce something)

And never forget to restock fuel and basic consumables

[Twitching Finger]

I would venture a guess saying 90% of my time involved in this game have been in spreadsheets but, I like things like that. I mean there are only so many zombies and pvp player(s) one can kill, right ?

My ship(s) are consistently going to n' from exchanges selling/buying materials to keep me afloat. I'm just hoping that my last venture pays out, as I've dumped 50% of my money into a large production line, that IF the market holds true, I could double my investment in the next 5-days and prove that I have somewhat of a grasp of this game.

In the long run, my spreadsheet skills have picked back up, along with my script coding, so this is a plus. For a FREE game, you can't beat it, IF your into things of such.

So much depth, other than production lines, ships, market etc.. Like having to keep your workers/population happy, miss a day of food/drink/clothing, your production suffers, which inserts another variable into the profit(s), production time and getting goods sold off to make the ol' mighty $$.. or €€, depending on where you hail from.

[S'Aarum]

I think i am the only guy who play this game without a spreadsheet, maybe i should learn Exel at some point.

[Lord]

No Excel, and definitely don't pay for that, just use LibreOffice Calc.

Yeah I'll be doing my own spreadsheet stuff I think. Although it's kind of a shame there isn't something like this built into the regular user interface for convenience, and maybe a 'stickynote' type thing too. I'm having way too much fun playing around with UI customization stuff - it's damn cool, even if the fonts are a bit small at times.

[Subak]

It's probably a good way to teach yourself how to use spreadsheets to calc complex things and even webservices consumption/integration (FIO).

But if you already grok all that pretty well, there's not much reason imo to reinvent the wheel except that even the nicest sheets have their gaps and variances from how you maybe want them to work instead.

[Red Leaf]

I started out with making my own spreadsheet, followed the format "kind of" of petertaylortx youtube videos. Then I looked at ones that other people did and can't get a grasp of how to use them. They look so complicated.

[Lord]

Yeah I can't be bothered figuring out those complicated prebuilt ones. Just do your own IMO, I agree with the OP.

[SkeL]

GoogleSheets is free and good enough for a game like that.