Honey is actually pretty profitable.

[Dave1029]

It requires minimal micromanaging and actually can turn hefty profits with the right flowers. Wouldn't put them in my greenhouse but as a constant source of income that literally requires no managing other than collecting and planting flowers the first day of the season, it does pretty well.

[titanopteryx]

Wild honey can be turned into mead and then aged in a cask. I'm not sure if flower honey or aged mead is better for selling, but mead makes a good gift for some npcs.

[Dave1029]

Originally posted by red255:

due to the length of time it takes flowers to grow some of your honey will be wild honey regardless of whether or not you plant flowers.

the main issue is honey requires a colossal amount of coal

40 wood, 8 coal, 1 iron bar, 1 maple syrup

essentially 13 pieces of coal to make one.

whereas a keg just takes 1 iron bar 1 copper bar 30 wood 1 oak resin, essentially 5 coal.

do a field of starfruit 1000 starfruit 63 kegs. 3,150,000 less the 400,000 seed cost.

so did some math, went with worst case 125 quality sprinklers costing 3 coal each, so 690 total coal, 53 beehouses.

53 bee houses make 1113 honey thru the year. but the honey would need to be worth 2470 to make it comparable to the similar cost in starfruit per coal.

and it doesn't come close to that.

Coal is meaningless when you have a greenhouse full of ancient fruit. This isn't about maximizing profits.

[titanopteryx]

Originally posted by red255:

due to the length of time it takes flowers to grow some of your honey will be wild honey regardless of whether or not you plant flowers.

the main issue is honey requires a colossal amount of coal

40 wood, 8 coal, 1 iron bar, 1 maple syrup

essentially 13 pieces of coal to make one.

whereas a keg just takes 1 iron bar 1 copper bar 30 wood 1 oak resin, essentially 5 coal.

do a field of starfruit 1000 starfruit 63 kegs. 3,150,000 less the 400,000 seed cost.

so did some math, went with worst case 125 quality sprinklers costing 3 coal each, so 690 total coal, 53 beehouses.

53 bee houses make 1113 honey thru the year. but the honey would need to be worth 2470 to make it comparable to the similar cost in starfruit per coal.

and it doesn't come close to that.

Actually if you combine lots of crab pots with some recyclers, you end up with a bunch of coal driftwood and trash both have a chance to return coal. I have over 400 coal in a chest where I store my stuff from recycling.

[Chronie]

Well even for a low micro-management idea it takes a long time to set it up and earns around 6300 a year (no skill bonuses) per Bee House. The only reason it may be a bad idea is that you still need to earn a lot of coal via mining and need to wait almost a week for each tapper to produce 1 maple syrup. All the hard work is in the setup for artisan goods requiring several steps to set it up and often stockpiling of goods for a whole year worth of un-interrupted production.

[Dave1029]

Originally posted by Chronie:

Well even for a low micro-management idea it takes a long time to set it up and earns around 6300 a year (no skill bonuses) per Bee House. The only reason it may be a bad idea is that you still need to earn a lot of coal via mining and need to wait almost a week for each tapper to produce 1 maple syrup. All the hard work is in the setup for artisan goods requiring several steps to set it up and often stockpiling of goods for a whole year worth of un-interrupted production.

The tapper is the only true bottleneck but that is true of kegs too.

[GumWax]

Originally posted by Dave1029:

It requires minimal micromanaging and actually can turn hefty profits with the right flowers. Wouldn't put them in my greenhouse but as a constant source of income that literally requires no managing other than collecting and planting flowers the first day of the season, it does pretty well.

I disagre. Your wrong and you're point is dumb!

[Chronie]

Originally posted by Dave1029:

Originally posted by Chronie:

Well even for a low micro-management idea it takes a long time to set it up and earns around 6300 a year (no skill bonuses) per Bee House. The only reason it may be a bad idea is that you still need to earn a lot of coal via mining and need to wait almost a week for each tapper to produce 1 maple syrup. All the hard work is in the setup for artisan goods requiring several steps to set it up and often stockpiling of goods for a whole year worth of un-interrupted production.

The tapper is the only true bottleneck but that is true of kegs too.

Yeah people tend to get fixated on the biggest profits numbers and dont realise it takes a game year or more to setup a single income source for mass production. Not saying it is a bad idea as such as I also have 20-40 Bee houses in year 2 but it is unusual for someone to play for more than a few game years. Great source of income on the side but not worth a huge time investment and it is responsible for about 5% to 10% of my farm's income in year 2.

[titanopteryx]

Originally posted by Chronie:

Originally posted by Dave1029:

The tapper is the only true bottleneck but that is true of kegs too.

Yeah people tend to get fixated on the biggest profits numbers and dont realise it takes a game year or more to setup a single income source for mass production. Not saying it is a bad idea as such as I also have 20-40 Bee houses in year 2 but it is unusual for someone to play for more than a few game years. Great source of income on the side but not worth a huge time investment and it is responsible for about 5% to 10% of my farm's income in year 2.

Sometimes you gotta play for max profit, and sometimes you gotta roleplay a bee farmer or a lumberjack who gets his money only from trees or a flower farmer. It's those latter 3 options that would have someone play for longer than a few game years.

[Dave1029]

Originally posted by titanopteryx:

Originally posted by Chronie:

Yeah people tend to get fixated on the biggest profits numbers and dont realise it takes a game year or more to setup a single income source for mass production. Not saying it is a bad idea as such as I also have 20-40 Bee houses in year 2 but it is unusual for someone to play for more than a few game years. Great source of income on the side but not worth a huge time investment and it is responsible for about 5% to 10% of my farm's income in year 2.

Sometimes you gotta play for max profit, and sometimes you gotta roleplay a bee farmer or a lumberjack who gets his money only from trees or a flower farmer. It's those latter 3 options that would have someone play for longer than a few game years.

My goal is to produce everything in decent quantities.

[Killroy]

Enjoy wine to be honest. Makes the most financial sense long term to me.

[titanopteryx]

Originally posted by red255:

Originally posted by Chronie:

Yeah people tend to get fixated on the biggest profits numbers and dont realise it takes a game year or more to setup a single income source for mass production. Not saying it is a bad idea as such as I also have 20-40 Bee houses in year 2 but it is unusual for someone to play for more than a few game years. Great source of income on the side but not worth a huge time investment and it is responsible for about 5% to 10% of my farm's income in year 2.

If you plant 30 oak trees in the first 10 days of spring, 15 of them will be ready by the end of summer, and the other 30 for the most part will be ready by the end of summer.

if you tap them thats 45-90 oak resin for 45-90 kegs. it takes 2 months, not a 'game year'

You also gotta get stuff to put in the kegs. Like honey. You probably won't have access to ancient fruit or starfruit in the summer of your first year. Hops is an option too. But the point is kegs are only part of the process.

[General Ginger]

Honestly there are 2 separate arguments here: Comparing Setup costs and Profits, and Comparing Maintenance costs and profits. Maintenance costs for honey would be the purchasing of flowers every season (And Speed-Gro for the Fairy Rose so you can get an extra cycle of Honey.)

Purchasing values of the building materials, it requires about 114,150 gold to buy their way to a semi-maximized single flower honey farm (38 Bee houses, I know that the prices rise in Y2, and instead of accounting for the maple syrup itself, I accounted for a number of tappers to acquire 38 Bee houses before the fairy rose was fully blossomed. It was about 13 by Summer 8.) I also know that if you really squeeze in, you can get another 6 Bee Houses, but I like my Honey Donut. Assuming you only get 1 season of fairy rose honey before winter hits, you would earn about 129,200 gold by Winter hits Y1. This means you just about break even on the costs in the first 20 days you got the honey, and then it is (mostly) pure profits from there.

The second argument is for Maintenance costs, after all of the original costs have been accrued, what does it take to make this machine run in perpetuity? One flower a season, plus a speed-gro in fall. In total, the cost of all of these from Pierre for the year combined is 430 gold.
NOTE: I do not factor out the expenses before dividing by them in my ROI equations. Anything below 100% for ROI in my equations is a net loss, and anything above is a net profit.

First year, the total profit margin (for only the fall season) would be about 113.18% of costs, so it isn't a great investment, assuming we only delegate the costs to that season and that season alone. If we ended the game at Y1 S4 D28 it would be considered incredibly underpowered.

Now for the next year we only match the costs accrued that year to our honey farm. In a year, Without the Artisan Profession, also accounting for the flower's sales at the end of the season and the Wild Honey made before the flower was grown, and turned the Wild Honey into Mead (Keg Costs not Included anywhere here), you would make 291840 gold, or about %67869.77 profit. Now THATS a good profit margin

But in the business world, accountants depreciate costs over the lifespan of the asset. So lets do that and keep the small maintenance costs in their years. For starters, the true fixed asset cost is about 300 less than the setup cost, as the setup also included the fairy rose and Speed-Gro for that season too. So, we have a depreciable amount of 113,850, I am going to assume Y3 is the end and Y1 S3 is the start (because as another comment pointed out, you wont play for more than a few years,) and we will be using straight line depreciation (Constant depreciation, over the full lifespan of the asset.) We will also assume that the Winters, despite not producing honey, count as a season to depreciate.
The results? Y1: Expenses- 23070 gold. Revenue- 129200 gold. ROI- 560%. Y2&3 (Same calculation applies to both): Expenses- 45970 gold. Revenues- 291840. ROI- 634.85%.

So the question: Is Honey Overpowered? Depends on how you slice it, and how long you play for. It is an immense setup cost, but a trivial maintenance cost.

Another note about all of this: These costs can be reduced by getting the materials yourself. Like you dont need to buy every single piece of Coal from Clint, or every wood from Robin, but because those are grounded metrics in game, that can be used as a backup if you fall short on your quotas, they make a good ruler for calculations.

Yet another note: The Artisan profession is great for making that maintenance cost seem even more trivial than it already is. Granted, Kegs would also benefit from this too, just not in the maintenance oriented way.

Final Note I Swear: It is incredibly hard to measure how much Starfruit Wine is going to be with my method, as it has so many unforeseen costs. Like how the Travelling Cart isn't a reliable vendor of Starfruit seeds, or how you would have to pay 42,500 gold just to have the ability to reliably acquire Starfruit seeds, or how it is a plant that doesn't have multiple harvests so you have to buy the seeds each time you do this plan. Or the fact that I dont have any presumptions of when the kegs need to be done by, ergo I dont have a reliable method for telling how many tappers you need. Additionally, 1000 starfruit seeds cost 400,000 for a crop that if we are measuring by the same time constraint here of "Y1 Goals" then it is incredibly difficult to overcome that mountain. Honey being a Y1 Goal was difficult enough on a 2 player server I am running, and that is worth approximately 1/4 of the costs, and an extra half a season of growth. To achieve an approximate for Y1 with Starfruit Kegs, you would need about 9 people all working together to get a Y1 Starfruit Keg Farm if the difficulty is the same. Good Luck in the short run! Incredibly high prosperity in the long run. Even if Starfruit Wine is better, Honey is not as bad as some commenters would like to make you think it is.