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Five-ish years ago, I did a little project on this forum, doing an economic analysis of the Rimworld economy. At the time, I just thought it was fun, and was so happy to see other players help me gather data. Realizing that I apparently like to look at prices for fun, I decided to see if I could get a job doing that, so I applied to graduate school. In the interview process, that project came up, and apparently impressed the professors who were interviewing me. Looking back, I suspect it was more about my enthusiasm rather than technical skill, but either way, it helped!

I got my PhD in economics this year. Though this forum seems much less active than it was back then, I still wanted to post here to thank the community. If y'all hadn't been so keep to help out my random pet project, I don't think I could call myself doctor today! This is one of the best communities I had the pleasure to participate in. Y'all rock!

[EDIT 2016-11-18: The first of the studies is complete! It can be found in this thread here. More data is always needed though! Thanks to the dynamic nature of the spreadsheet, it'll be automatically incorporated into all future studies. Thank you so much for the help everyone!][EDIT 2016-11-23: Fixed broken link.]

Howdy, y'all!

Tl;dr: I'm doing more research on profitable goods, and I'd appreciate help.

Long version:

So, now that Alpha 15 is out I'm going to invest some time and energy into gathering lots of economic data because I'm a nerd like that. Now, with the exception of one dedicated forumite, it seems that nobody used the forms I'd made to help me with that, which is understandable because they were clunky as hell. So I've spent a few hours researching and honing my Google Sheets skills and managed to make a spreadsheet which seems much cleaner to use, particularly when making multiple entries.

My statement of purpose is thus: In order to better inform players of which goods are the most lucrative, and to better enhance players' abilities in their chosen styles, it is my intent to compile a broad range of economic data, independent of the raws, including item, material and quality if applicable, type of trading partner, and the social skill of the trader. This data will be analyzed with respect to material, item quality, cost of materials, and final item value. All data in totality, analysis, and conclusions will be posted here.

Assistance in populating the raw data sheet is appreciated. To contribute, simply go to the sheet linked below, and add as much data as you like. It should be fairly straightforward, and the drop-down menus will hopefully make things easier.

The sheet can be found here I'd request that nobody vandalize it, though I rather doubt anyone who's read this far would care enough to do so. :p

Things like trader type, social skill of the pawn dealing with the traders (labeled "PoC Social" for "Point of Contact's Social Skill") are of least importance. Of highest importance, for the purpose of this study, is the revenue gained from selling an item (for finished goods), cost of item (for commodities), and item material and quality if applicable.

I hope that this project interests other forumites, and thank you all for your assistance should you give it, and your attention thus far if you do not.

Sincerely,
--Andrew Whitaker

[Rimworld Firearms Economics Reviewby Andrew WhitakerAbstract:]

Rimworld Firearms Economics Review
by Andrew Whitaker

Abstract: Exporting goods in Rimworld has been a necessary component of colony success for some time. Goods such as medicine are critical for a colony and can only be acquired through trade. A constant struggle is providing enough goods with which to trade for such required goods, but as soon as local resources have been exhausted, the economy becomes much less manageable. Once local resources, such as steel, plasteel, and precious metals have been processed, manufacturing presents a possible avenue for additional income. This paper explores the profitability of the manufacture and sale of firearms in the Rimworld universe.

Purpose: The purpose of this report is to determine the most profitable firearm to manufacture and export in Rimworld or, if a net loss is found, determine the minimum item quality necessary to turn a profit.

Materials: One copy of the Rimworld simulation, one spreadsheet, significant time.

Procedure:
   Firearms of several types were manufactured, and their value recorded. All items were normalized for normal quality by dividing by their quality factor (e.g., dividing by 1.2 for a good item, dividing by 0.8 for a poor one.) Items were also normalized by wear, dividing by their conidtion percentage. For instance, an intact item was divided by one, while an item at 62% condition was divided by 0.62. In addition, other goods of normal value were recorded for future analysis. Listed market value obtained from the information screen were recorded as "true value".
   Over the course of seasons, data from all traders were recorded, using merchant selling prices for steel, plasteel, and components, and colony selling price for all other goods. The quartiles of the prices were found, and compared to the items' true values, developing a merchant discount and mark-up for buying and selling respectively, using the lower and upper quartiles respectively.
   For each individual type of weapon, the cost of all components was adjusted by the buyer's mark-up and summed into total cost. The true value was modified by the seller's discount to find the true sale price. The difference between these was calculated to determine total profit, which was divided by the total cost to determine the profit margin percentage.

Data and Calculations: Data and calculations are found in the attached spreadsheet.

Results: The vast majority of weapons are unprofitable. At normal quality, profit margines range from -10% for Assault Rifles to -65% for survival rifles. The one exception was sniper rifles, which had a meager 1.74% profit margin. Good and better qualities permit greater profit margins, allowing other weapons to turn a profit, though sniper rifles continued to provide the best profit magin.

Conclusion:
   Firearms are not a profitable export. Despite their high per-unit value, the cost of their components remains high enough to sap any profit from their production, and in many cases creep into a loss. Higher quality items, as always, can dramatically increase the profit margin, but the lack of renewable sources of local materials remains a crippling factor to any domestic firearm production. Other commodities, in particular agricultural products which don't suffer from require imported raw materials, may prove a much more profitable long-term industry.



The above is the small lab report I compiled regarding domestic firearm production in Rimworld. See, I had a talented craftsman, and was curious whether or not I'd make any money off of it. Turns out, the answer is "no". Even if I bought all components (much cheaper than producing them domestically, incidentally) then I'd barely turn a profit. I figured if I wanted to know the answers, others might want to as well.

Of course, me being the giant nerd I am, my first thoughts on this are, 1) "How can I increase the sample size for better data?" and 2) "Would anyone else be interested in this?" So what I'm here to ask, Forumites, is this: What do you think of the above, and would you like to see more like it? If so, would anyone be interested in helping, and what topics are of interest? (E.g., textiles, foodstuffs, blacksmithed weapons, et cetera.)

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