I find that doing sculptures takes WAAAAAAAY too much time. (unless the material i make them matters and i make it with the wrong material, i used marble.)
So when i start i try to get someone with high animal skill, capture and sell them, muffalos fetch a great price for their wildness.
I also chop up all humans and sell human leather or have human leather stuff made and sell them.
If i am on a biome with all year growing time, i sell potatoes, corn or rice.
Any other ways to make money that i missed?
I'm not sure how much silver it gives you, but you can try smelting weapons. I have ended up with several silver maces of awful quality that contain a good amount of silver.
i get a colonist going with crafting, and make surplus clothing from cloth, whenever a trader come around i sell all my cloth clothing (i keep anything made with good material) or i get a dedicated cook and sell surplus simple meals ($6-$7 each, better than raw food if not using meat)
Cobra farms.
I sell baby cobras to the market at around 60-90 silver each.
A single cobra pair produces like 6-8 eggs which hatches after about a month.
It was my main source of income on an empty tundra map once...
Aside from skinning visitors and trespassers alike.
Quote from: A Friend on March 19, 2016, 11:55:19 AM
Cobra farms.
I sell baby cobras to the market at around 60-90 silver each.
A single cobra pair produces like 6-8 eggs which hatches after about a month.
It was my main source of income on an empty tundra map once...
Aside from skinning visitors and trespassers alike.
I dunno how ot get them to breed
I live on a ice sheet, so when visitors drop, they leave their weapons. And sometimes it's a golden club or shiv. LOT'S OF SILVER IF YOU SMELT IT
Quote from: SwiftShadow on March 19, 2016, 12:03:56 PM
Quote from: A Friend on March 19, 2016, 11:55:19 AM
Cobra farms.
I sell baby cobras to the market at around 60-90 silver each.
A single cobra pair produces like 6-8 eggs which hatches after about a month.
It was my main source of income on an empty tundra map once...
Aside from skinning visitors and trespassers alike.
I dunno how ot get them to breed
Oh, it sort of just happens randomly. Females lay eggs, and a male should have access to those eggs to fertilize them and make baby cobras.
in my mega fortress i produced a lot of cotton/cloth that i just sold as i made it. Alpaca wool was also good once i got a lot of them. I also had a surplus freezer for foods to sell
hops -> beer. But you need a big freezer while you wait for the bulk trader or pirates to show up.
Hmmm, but what is the deal with rice and hydroponics? And what is this "fertility factor"? It seems like rice grows much faster in hydroponics than anything else.
Quote from: SwiftShadow on March 19, 2016, 11:23:16 AM
I find that doing sculptures takes WAAAAAAAY too much time. (unless the material i make them matters and i make it with the wrong material, i used marble.)
if u look in the material info, u'll see how much it offsets working.
i sell fish.
Quote from: Shurp on March 19, 2016, 02:16:38 PM
hops -> beer. But you need a big freezer while you wait for the bulk trader or pirates to show up.
Hmmm, but what is the deal with rice and hydroponics? And what is this "fertility factor"? It seems like rice grows much faster in hydroponics than anything else.
Fertility factor is how much soil quality affects growth rate. Potatoes, for example, have a fertility factor of 0.4, so they only get a small bonus/penalty associated with soil quality. Rice has 1.0 fertility factor (they are the only crop that has it apart from corn, which can't be grown in hydroponics), so they get the full benefit from the tables, but grow very poorly in poor soil.
I usually try to get an artist, and lock him up making sculptures. They work pretty fast when they hit 20 skill, and make decent worthy results too. It's not that big of an income, but sooner or later you swim in silver and start building with silver.
Quote from: Grimandevil on March 19, 2016, 03:48:14 PM
Quote from: SwiftShadow on March 19, 2016, 11:23:16 AM
I find that doing sculptures takes WAAAAAAAY too much time. (unless the material i make them matters and i make it with the wrong material, i used marble.)
if u look in the material info, u'll see how much it offsets working.
i sell fish.
Wait what u can fish in this game?!
Quote from: SwiftShadow on March 19, 2016, 04:00:54 PM
Wait what u can fish in this game?!
with the fishing mod (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=13172.0).
Crops make money....if you overgrow your food, so you have far more than you could ever use at all, you can easily sell large surpluses to bulk traders. Hops falls into this category too (you can also brew beer which gives about the same per-material bonus as hops, but can be sold to pirates as well). Using sun lamps in self contained rooms works well to keep crops growing faster than in a regular day/night cycle.
If you have good plant growth around or a high yield tree-farm, you can make big money sculpting from wood....it makes less money than stone, but takes WAY less time.
Some animal breeding setups produce good money. Chickens breed very fast, but can get crazily out of hand while waiting for a merchant.
Smithing great bows is a pretty strong return on cash vs. time/resources
So here it is:
Pirates:
Great Bows
Beer
Slaves & body parts (imho, not worth the mood penalty)
Bulk Goods:
Hops
Crops
Live Animals
Animal/human leather and human meat (worth the tiny, singular mood penalty)
Exotic Goods:
Sculptures (wood)
dead raiders' clothing
Live Animals
Combat Supplier:
Great Bows
Dead Raider Weapons (only merchant for melee weapons)
Same as you mention. My favorite income lately is taming muffalo and alpacas and selling them to traders.
selling weapons in general is a huge source of income, and also clothes once the pirates come in quality clothing. I generally keep sniper rifles, charge rifles, frag and emp grenades and sell almost everything else.
crafting clothes can increase the value per quantity of leather and things taht you get from hunting animals.
wood sculptures are made quickly and sell for ok money once you gain the skill. I usually skill up art with stone materials and then craft from wood if there's wood around.
also, save medecine, you need it for infections , diseases and surgery, but from my experience, all normal wounds can be healed without medecine. so you can save a lot of money by not wasting medecine on normal wounds.
don't sell silver maces - you can melt them for 750 silver instead of selling for 200.
I've had colonies in the tropics before where I'll start massive devilstrand plantations and then have all of the colonists sweat-shopping t-shirts and stuff.
Honestly I just wait for raids, then take all of their stuff off their dead bodies and sell that stuff.
build trading stations in the killbox and you wont' have to bother hauling all the crap that drops. strip the bodies on the ground before you haul them to the freezer for butchering, saves time and work. then just sell when the traders come around.
I really hate it when the freezer gets full of clothes
Yes, if you're not playing on an ice sheet you can get a great return on investment from wood (bows / sculptures). Although growing sequoia trees inside on a tundra map seems a bit silly :)
Once your artists start dedicating their full time to sculpting, you'll find the wooded sculpture market to be a huge boon. Because soon they're getting excellent and superior sculptures that sell for hundreds of dollers. Plus you can then grab the occasional marble sculpture for your own colony and boost room stats to the stratosphere! Don't underestimate the value of a few sculptures around your defenses as well, as they will counter the uglyness of sandbags, turrets, and dead bodies.
I think having multiple income sources is also good, so follow everyone else's advice. Crafters should focus on stone for construction, but later tailoring because it boosts stats faster.
raider skin clothing sells for a nice price lol
i also mass breed chickens
I made a 8 men cooking freezer, where I made an enourmous amount of food. I believe I sold about 1200 meals for 5,3 silver each.
I took what, a month in game to do that? Besides it, the rest of my colony hunted, farmed, and skinned other people for meat and leather.
That was my most successful colony, with 18 colonist escaping the planet. Also, My main cook was a 54 years old with bad back and a peg leg called Sanji. That was a real coincidence.