Which is better for money?

[Bosh]

Large sculptures or grand sculptures?

[bearhiderug]

large

[whatamidoing]

Small sculptures give more value/material, grand give more value/work, large are intermediate between the two.

[Wasted]

i usually build large most of the time

[nosedigger]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

Small sculptures give more value/material, grand give more value/work, large are intermediate between the two.

And what about material ? From what I learned, wood is best for leveling up artistry and stone are more work, but are they more valuable than wood or steel ?

[Astasia]

Generally small is optimal for selling, large is optimal for creating for your base, and grand is optimal to burn an inspiration on.

Small gives you the most value per material and is the easiest to sell without going over the trader's available silver. Basically think of it like currency and inverting the trade situation, you are after candy instead of silver, and you have cash bills instead of sculptures, going up to a random candy dealer that just has a bunch of loose candy in their pocket, you are going to be able to clean them out more easily with $1 bills than $10 bills. With larger bills you will have to barter more and potentially buy things you don't need, or waste partial value of a bill. The downside is small sculptures do take up more space in a stockpile while waiting for the next caravan. The value per work aspect isn't particularly relevant here IME, if you are making wood small sculptures full time with one colonist, then they are likely producing more than you can sell and you'll probably be limiting them on the bill.

Originally posted by nosedigger:

And what about material ? From what I learned, wood is best for leveling up artistry and stone are more work, but are they more valuable than wood or steel ?

Wood is the best for selling. Stone is comparatively fairly bad, but if you have a lot of stone you want to get rid of it's still fine. For leveling it doesn't matter, they get exp per time spent working, which material they are working with doesn't make a difference in exp gains. I guess making them out of stone would "waste" less material on low quality sculptures. Since wood and stone are both very low value materials and is what you'd be selling though, it doesn't really matter.

Higher value materials like jade or silver you'd want to wait for a higher skill crafter to use and those are better for your base not selling. Gold isn't really feasible, but has a substantial market value penalty and you'd definitely not want to make with the intention of selling.

Steel and plasteel probably shouldn't be used for sculptures, though steel is very similar to wood in profitability. Uranium, I mean sometimes you can get a lot of that and not have many uses for it, it would be alright.

[nosedigger]

Early, I use wood, then move to steel when drilling starts. In mid-late game if I have more than 30k silver, and artist have 18 skill, then I will give him silver.
Gold is usually reserved for Inspiration, and if I do not need it anymore for advanced components, but I never tend to have more than 1k

[Astasia]

The reason wood is typically the best for money making is it has a significant work time reduction. Steel for example has 50% more base value than wood and so steel sculptures are worth about 50% more than wood sculptures, but wood sculptures craft about 50% faster. You get a similar amount of "silver per hour" making wood sculptures as you do steel sculptures, but you do so using a much cheaper and usually easier to get base material.

As for silver, if your goal is making silver, consuming it on art doesn't really work. The main limitation on how much silver you can actually get over time is how much traders have available and how often you can trade. Building up a good supply of silver requires cleaning out many traders. So making silver sculptures isn't really earning you silver, it's earning you wealth, and wealth mostly only increases difficulty. Legendary and masterwork small silver sculptures are also beyond the budget of most caravans. Using my previous analogy it's like going to that candy seller with a $100 bill, they don't have $100 in candy, so they end up like, "Here, you can have my pants and shoes to make it even." Sometimes you just want candy, not used clothing.

[whatamidoing]

The value of sculptures (and other stuffable trade goods) is the costs of the materials plus the amount of work required multiplied by a constant, then modified by quality (a multiplier, but the amount that can be added is capped) and a slight bonus unique to sculptures.
There isn't really a "best" size or material for sculptures, it's very situational and pretty much just preference. Since the value increase from labor is the same any way (excluding on high-quality statues made from valuable materials), just pump through what you have. Small sculptures if you're short on material, large if you're short on labor, cheap and/or easy to work materials for low-skill artists, expensive and/or hard to work materials for high-skill artists, but the most expensive/hard-to-work, or whatever's most beautiful, to keep around your base.
Since material is usually a lot easier to get than labor, I usually make small wood or stone sculptures for selling, and jade or, if I'm feeling really lavish, gold grand sculptures for decoration.

[Vyrex]

Just sell human meat and skin from all the raids you get, im literatly sitting on 50k worth of human meat and skin and cant sell it faster enough

[Astasia]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

The value of sculptures (and other stuffable trade goods) is the costs of the materials plus the amount of work required multiplied by a constant, then modified by quality (a multiplier, but the amount that can be added is capped) and a slight bonus unique to sculptures.
There isn't really a "best" size or material for sculptures, it's very situational and pretty much just preference. Since the value increase from labor is the same any way (excluding on high-quality statues made from valuable materials), just pump through what you have. Small sculptures if you're short on material, large if you're short on labor, cheap and/or easy to work materials for low-skill artists, expensive and/or hard to work materials for high-skill artists, but the most expensive/hard-to-work, or whatever's most beautiful, to keep around your base.
Since material is usually a lot easier to get than labor, I usually make small wood or stone sculptures for selling, and jade or, if I'm feeling really lavish, gold grand sculptures for decoration.

The value gained from labor is relatively small though. The majority of a sculpture's worth is the base material and quality, so making them faster is more beneficial.

A masterwork quality small wood sculpture has a value of 255s from 60s worth of wood, and takes 12,600 ticks to make. A gain of 195s at 1.54s per 100 ticks.
A masterwork quality small granite sculpture has a value of 325s, from 45s worth of granite blocks, and takes 23,400 ticks to make. A gain of 280s at 1.19s per 100 ticks.

So making small wood sculptures will earn you 30% more silver per time spent working over granite sculptures.

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

The value of sculptures (and other stuffable trade goods) is the costs of the materials plus the amount of work required multiplied by a constant, then modified by quality (a multiplier, but the amount that can be added is capped) and a slight bonus unique to sculptures.
There isn't really a "best" size or material for sculptures, it's very situational and pretty much just preference. Since the value increase from labor is the same any way (excluding on high-quality statues made from valuable materials), just pump through what you have. Small sculptures if you're short on material, large if you're short on labor, cheap and/or easy to work materials for low-skill artists, expensive and/or hard to work materials for high-skill artists, but the most expensive/hard-to-work, or whatever's most beautiful, to keep around your base.
Since material is usually a lot easier to get than labor, I usually make small wood or stone sculptures for selling, and jade or, if I'm feeling really lavish, gold grand sculptures for decoration.

The value gained from labor is relatively small though. The majority of a sculpture's worth is the base material and quality, so making them faster is more beneficial.

A masterwork quality small wood sculpture has a value of 255s from 60s worth of wood, and takes 12,600 ticks to make. A gain of 195s at 1.54s per 100 ticks.
A masterwork quality small granite sculpture has a value of 325s, from 45s worth of granite blocks, and takes 23,400 ticks to make. A gain of 280s at 1.19s per 100 ticks.

So making small wood sculptures will earn you 30% more silver per time spent working over granite sculptures.

Yeah, wood is better than stone, but if you don't have wood to go around, stone's better than nothing. If you really wanted to optimize it, I guess you could calculate the average quality your artist(s) can produce, then find the material and size that would produce a statue that would get a quality bonus just below the cutoff? I've never thought about it that much until now, I just usually have stone and, biome/base setup permitting, wood to throw away and can keep enough of a stock of statues around to buy what I want from visiting traders. I find the artist xp gain more valuable than the actual wealth, to maximize the chances of a legendary sculpture with inspiration to toss up in common areas.

[Ivarukฅ(^•ᴥ•^)ฅﾉ彡]

Can't forget marble for the stonework since it has the beauty improvement over the other materials. I try to get marble and granite on my bases so i get the strongest and prettiest blocks to work with

[Astasia]

Ya I usually do stone because I'm constantly cutting more blocks and I just want to find a use for the ones I'm not building with. It's not a conscious effort to make money though, it's just making art for my base and selling the ones I don't need. I don't know if that is some element of compulsion on my part to clean every single stone chunk off the map though. I probably shouldn't be stonecutting forever on multiple benches for every type of stone, but I do.