Profitability

[Z-Man]

I'm trying to improve my game, so if anyone who understands this better than I do can offer some insight I would be very grateful. Apologies in advance - I am SURE this has been discussed before. I just can't find the discussion. :(

Let's say that I mouse over a water pump and see it is earning me a net profit of 274/hour. Then, I mouse over a greenhouse and see it is earning me a net profit of 56/hour. I am trying to shift my production towards whatever will earn me the highest income.

My assumption has always been that even though the greenhouse has a smaller net profit number, the cost of the water input is being calculated at the current market rate that earned me a net profit of 274/hour, so the net income of 56/hour is actually 274 + 56. I assume this because if the net profit gets negative the greenhouse will automatically shut down - the game is telling me I'm better off selling the water as it, rather than converting it into food.

Now I'm wondering if I've been reading this all wrong and I'm actually better off manually putting food production on hold in order to sell all that water at a 5x higher profit/hour. That can't be right, can it?

I think I have overthought myself into a state of utter confusion.

Right now, under my original assumptions, if I can turn a positive net profit on manufactured goods, I tend to shift my production towards those (steel, food, fuel, chemicals, glass, & electronics) and ease off producing and selling the inputs (water, iron, aluminum, carbon, silicon, and oxygen*). I sell just enough surplus of the input to keep the price down, but I generally try to reduce production so that I have almost no surplus at a stable or declining price that is profitable for my manufactured goods if they show any kind of stable or rising profitability, regardless of how much less the net profit per hour is than the net profit per hour of the input.

I guess I'm just wondering if I have been doing this wrong all along and I should actually be waiting for the net profitability of the manufactured goods to be greater than the net profitability of the input goods. Like, should I wait until steel is getting me a net profit of 300 before shifting toward steel production and away from raw iron that is earning me a net profit of 299? Or am I better off chasing the net profit of 15 on the steel because it is actually 15 *better* than the iron's profit because it is assuming I'm *buying& iron at the current market rate (so a net profit per hour of 314)?

Does my question make any sense?

[Sagi]

Offworld is complex in this matter and i am no expert.
However raw resources like water are quikly gathered and are therefore quikly sold on the market wich usually makes so that it stays cheaper.

As for the conversion know that you don't convert 1:1
Productivity bonus from processing buildings like the greenhouse are only applied to it's output. Thus More productivity means that you can make alot more food from 1 water but it goes at a slower income compared to raw resources.

When the raw resource is expensive and you have a lot you better hold on to it if you have a monopoly or sell it to get actions and refuse the high price to an opponent.
Producing food when water is high price isn't the best idea but when everybody thinks this then logicly the price of food can skyrocket pretty fast atil it is interesting to produce.
All this is wht offworld is a very very fun game and it's a shame it is so underrated or simular heavy dynamic markets don't find their way into other games (imagine a war rts game with offworlds resource gathering and market fluctuations...)

[hexapus]

I think you are reading it right, only if you have a water surplus. So if you anticipate that water price will drop soon, you are probably okay sticking with producing food.

On the other hand, if you have to buy water to produce food, i.e. you are negative in water, then the profit is $56 as stated.

The general consensus is keeping primary resources like water and don't auto sell them. This allows you to stock up cheap resources so that you can go into negative to overproduce something and kill a market, as well as selling the primary resource at a high price when the opportunity comes.

[Z-Man]

Thank you for your responses. I am beginning to see this as a function of time and land management.

I am beginning to think that what is really going on here is that this is a reflection of /hour profitability --- so even though I may be "buying" water (or forgoing selling it) and converting it into food at a "profit" the reason the number is lower is because I am converting it so slowly on that individual unit. In order to get equal profits, I'll need more greenhouses. So, the water pump has higher profits per tile used up on the board, but the greenhouses would have higher profits per resource.

[Hasefrexx]

I agree with your initial assumption. Your second comment confuse me. On the one hand two water pumps will be much more profitable short term but you will quickly flood literally the market and kill it while creating a demand for water with greenhouses will stabilize its price until someone else produce more of it at least.

I'm not sure why you would care about profit per good. Profit per tile however is definately something to account for. 200 profit on water pumps is definately not something you want to miss.

You shouldn't move from 299 profit iron to 300 profit steel because you would decrease iron demand and increase steel offer so that steel would quickly earn lower profit than iron. OBviously though that would depend on what your opponents are doing and what your stockpiles are like.

Overall I think you are underestimating the usefulness of raw ressources.