Trying to automate things by hiring employees and dealers are NOT worth it. Horrible game design

[Bozo The Clown]

wrong

[Cake for Mumm-Ra]

You do need to have enough customers who are buying enough products from your dealer(s) per day to legitimize having workers. If you're running a small scale operation, your costs could easily be greater than your earnings.

I'd suggest not rushing to get workers until you have a solid network of buyers in the area - check your map and pass out samples to everyone who is available. By the time you have two dealers working for you, your demand should be high enough that you'll want the help so you're not doing it all yourself.

Get dealers: Once you've unlocked everyone in the area, focus on selling only to the people adjacent to the dealer. Make your buds available on the market, and 'just say no' to anyone who isn't pals with the dealer.

One more thing about workers: you do not need to pay them every day. If you've made a ton of product and are waiting for your dealers to sell it all, don't pay your employees to just stand around and stare at you all day. Empty their briefcase. They're not going anywhere.

[RICH HOMIE TWON]

your botanist can handle 8 pots, you should be getting 10-20 jars per day from each botanist, and you only need 1 handler for all botanists

[Calruin]

Hmm, I'm simply selling the basic weed (first one, and grandfather), with only 8 plants in the Bungalow. I didn't think there was enough room in there to even try to automate it so haven't tried. But my dealer is selling enough to make anywhere from 1200 to 2200 per day. That doesn't count the extra I sell as well (i maxed out the customers my dealer has at 10). Maybe it's too early to do meth? Not that I can say anything, I haven't put in as even half as much time as you yet. But maybe go back to basics first, and try that?

[[SiN]Rabbit]

Originally posted by RICH HOMIE TWON:

your botanist can handle 8 pots, you should be getting 10-20 jars per day from each botanist, and you only need 1 handler for all botanists

And you can let your workers take time off while you sell all the stuff they've made.

[di eshor ribly]

Originally posted by Calruin:

Hmm, I'm simply selling the basic weed (first one, and grandfather), with only 8 plants in the Bungalow. I didn't think there was enough room in there to even try to automate it so haven't tried. But my dealer is selling enough to make anywhere from 1200 to 2200 per day. That doesn't count the extra I sell as well (i maxed out the customers my dealer has at 10). Maybe it's too early to do meth? Not that I can say anything, I haven't put in as even half as much time as you yet. But maybe go back to basics first, and try that?

There's plenty of room to automate in the bungalow. My basic weed set up is 3 large storage shelves against the back wall of the bedroom, a trash can in the center of the room, 8 plant pots, and then a packager/extra shelves in the kitchen. 3 beds in the living room (cleaner, handler, botanist). The handler moves seeds and soil off the two extra shelves into the botanist's supply shelf, and then off the output shelf into his packager. Then they pull jars off another shelf, package stuff up, and shuffle it to extra shelf #3 and #4.

Meth is easy too, 2x chemistry stations, 2x lab ovens, a bed, and 3-4 shelves in the sweatshop or storage unit. Fill up the chemistry stations manually and put $2100 in the chemist's briefcase. Come back a week later to refill the stations, pay the chemist, and walk out with 200 meth.

[RegularGuy]

I think your math is a little off. You assumed that botanist only got 7 buds a day. They actually get around 30 buds a day, from one plant(at least mine do). And I do not have any handlers for any of my botanists. I do agree that the 20% cut is pretty steep.

[di eshor ribly]

Originally posted by RegularGuy:

I think your math is a little off. You assumed that botanist only got 7 buds a day. They actually get around 30 buds a day, from one plant(at least mine do). And I do not have any handlers for any of my botanists. I do agree that the 20% cut is pretty steep.

At optimal conditions (no travel time, etc.) a botanist will complete 4 cycles per day, or 32 plants. The general average is 3 cycles per day, or 24 plants.

The big issue here is if you're using grow tents or plant pots (always plant pots!). There's a big difference in profit when a botanist is making 192 buds per day instead of 288.

[Sistermatic™]

Money is ridiculously easy to make in Schedule 1. I'm doing about $70k per day with less than 30 employees.

Put simply, if you're buying buildings and automating and not making money you're doing it wrong, very wrong. At a quick glance, it seems you're adding all the costs needed to produce better product and then you're not producing better product.

But this....

It's not worth it to mix if you have to hire employees such as a chemist who charges $300 on top of the $400 it takes for a handler/botanist. Even without a dealer and just selling product yourself, you have one jar (53*10 = 530) - 400 for the two cheapest employees (botanist and handler) = 130 in profit from a single jar, which takes ages since the employees are slower than you are if you just did things manually. But if you then order deliveries ***you are actually in the negative and losing money because the delivery fees are like $200 or something***

Sorry, but your maths sucks. You're claiming $400 in wages per day but you're only making and selling 10 buds!?

One botanist will do 8 pots. That's 48 buds PER grow session and without additives, it should be 3 times per day (7 hours per IIRC ) so a total of 144. If you use additives, way more than that.

So a botanist and handler (why would you even use them for 10 buds?) is $400 per day, but at $50/bud you're making $7 THOUSAND in product per day.

(as an aside, a jar holds 5)

Now let's look at adding one single chemist with back of envelope maths.

You claim you're selling green crack for ~$50 dollars. A simple 3 mix will double that, let's say $100 per deal.

Using employees only, a 3 mix weed chain can be done with 1 botanist, 1 handler and 1 chemist. That's $700 per day.

At $100/baggie - your employee costs every day is covered with just *7* sales.

You should be selling many, many times that without raising a sweat. In fact some customers will buy that in 1 single sale.

Stop doing maths and just make and sell drugs

[Maya-Neko]

Workers aren't there for generating profit, but to automate a process that takes up more and more time as you progress through the game, constantly unlocking new customers left and right.

Nobody stops you from doing all that for yourself, but i personally don't see it that enjoyable to take care of like 16 plants 2 times a day, making some meth and selling stuff, just to waste 10 minutes on 4am every single day without advancing time at all and thus reducing the overall income due to taking longer to reach the various resets (especially when it comes to customers).

And it's definitely not a money drain. The bungalow made so much stuff, that i had a hard time selling it all, still making more money than losing though, given that i made like 10k+ per day on it on some days. Like you need to forget buying incredients for a few days to make it not worth it anymore.

[Calruin]

Good ideas, i'm going to try it then, i've got a safety net of 20k in the bank (bought a veeper recently), plus 10k on hand, so i'll grab the storage unit and see how it goes :)

[Tox]

If having employees is preventing you making profit, you're straight up doing something very, very wrong.

TL;DR: OP's math is completely off.

Let's look at a day of high quality meth production as an example

Meth production has the simplest math involved with no need to account for plant yield or growth additives.

We will assume the production line (lab -> oven -> packed) can spit 2 to 3 "runs" out per day, call it 2 for safety once equilibrium is established, each "run" is 1 pseudo, 1 acid, 1 phosphorous to make 10 meth per lab + oven.

We will use 1 chemist assigned to 2 labs & 2 ovens and we will use 1 handler for automated packaging.

Meaning we are looking at a production rate of 40 meth per day in a minimalist setup. (Keep in mind that this scales up for larger operations)

Employee wages:
- Chemist (2 labs, 2 ovens) = $300
- Handler (packaging) = $200

Ingredients:
- 4 high qual pseudo = $440
- 4 acid = $160
- 4 phosphorous = $160

Materials
- 40 baggies = $40

We total the ingredients; $760 and divide that by 40 which is $19.
Add the materials cost; $1 per baggy; $40.

Each bag of meth costs $20 to make.
20 * 40 = $800.

Meth's recommended sale price is $70:
70 * 40 = $2,800

Minus 20% if using a dealer to sell.
2800 * 0.8 = $2,240

Minus the production cost.
2240 - 800 = $1,440

Minus the wages for the day.
1440 - 500 = $940 net profit per 40 bags

If you add another chemist assigned to a further 2 labs and 2 ovens, for a target production rate of 80 meth per day, you'd be looking at slightly more than double the profit margin: $2,080 instead of $940 (+$240, which hilariously then pays for your packaging handler + a bottle of acid or jar of phosphorous OR pays for 1 packet of high qual pseudo, 1 bottle of acid and 1 jar of phosphorous with $50 change leftover).

Then you have to factor for customers offering far more than the asking price of $70, thus increasing that minimum profit even further, especially if you sell some of the product yourself.

Also, if you're using jars, you save $2 per 5 product.
If you're packing into bricks, that requires no extra packaging cost aside from the handler employee. In fact, if you want to be a real cheaparse, give bricks to your dealers for a day, go pinch the breakdown leftovers, unpack them for free jars and baggies, repack the product into bricks and give it back.

----
Order of operations fixed thanks to review from

Originally posted by Mew28:

There is an issue in your math the dealer cut comes off the total sell price not your profit so he cost 1032 rather then the 790 you proposed

[This PC]

me dropping 640 120$ weed per day full steam ahead with something like 2 botanists, 2 chemists, 4 handlers x_x they charge a pittance for the work they do rofl, can still add a couple more to dry the weed :P

[Tox]

Originally posted by This PC:

me dropping 640 120$ weed per day full steam ahead with something like 2 botanists, 2 chemists, 4 handlers x_x they charge a pittance for the work they do rofl

Mhmmm, and yeas during the early - mid game it's not uncommon to send yourself broke for a few days while you mass-produce. But once those drugs hit the streets, the money you get back is well and truly worth it.

Once you work the math out, spending $40k on mass production will easily net a tidy profit with or without employees and dealers on your roster.

[Tox]

Let's look at producing green crack jars instead, to use OP's example

TL;DR: OP's math is still completely off, and they are misrepresenting things either accidentally or on purpose.

The setup will be 1 botanist assigned to 5 pots (suspension rack, full spectrum light, air pot, single-use soil), 1 handler for packaging into jars. We will include the use of fertiliser for higher quality product, but we will not use pgr as it is unnecessary.

We have chosen 5 pots to keep the math simple.

A single botanist to 5 pots can grow at least 10 plants from seed to harvest per day.

A weed plant grown in a pot + suspension rack setup produces 12 buds instead of the 8 from using grow tents.

So in this example we are looking at approx 120 green crack buds per day.

Employee wages:
- Botanist (5 pots) = $200
- Handler (packaging) = $200

Ingredients:
- 10 green crack seeds = $400
- 10 single-use soil = $100
- 10 fertiliser = $300

Materials:
- 24 jars = $72

----

We total the cost of ingredients and divide that by the amount of buds they produce:
(400 + 100 + 300 = 800) / 120 = $6.6666666666666666666666666666667.

Divide the jars cost by the amount of buds they need to hold and add that to the cost per bud:
(72 / 120 = 0.6) + 6.6666666666666666666666666666667 = $7.2666666666666666666666666666667.

Total production cost per bud multiplied by a total of 120 buds:
7.2666666666666666666666666666667 * 120 = $872

----

Green crack's recommended sale price is $43:
43 * 120 = $5,160

Minus 20% if using a dealer to sell:
5160 * 0.8 = $4,128

Minus the production cost:
4128 - 872 = $3,256

Minus the wages for the day:
3256 - 400 = $2,856 net profit from a day's worth of green crack production without mixing.

As you can see, you have PLENTY of room to even add a chemist and do a 4 ingredient mix which will exponentially increase the profit margin if you know how to calculate the profit from various mix combinations.

If you add another botanist handling their own 5 pots for a doubled target production rate of 240 buds per day, you will again see that your profit margin is actually slightly higher at $5,912 instead of $2,856 (+$200, which also hilariously then pays for your packaging handler).

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Order of operations fixed thanks to review from

Originally posted by Mew28:

There is an issue in your math the dealer cut comes off the total sell price not your profit so he cost 1032 rather then the 790 you proposed

[Mew28]

There is an issue in your math the dealer cut comes off the total sell price not your profit so he cost 1032 rather then the 790 you proposed