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I don't have any numbers from the raws, but I do have some rough empirical values derived from actual transactions. Preliminary results below.

Sculptures are, indeed, an exception to the rule when made from large materials, stone in particular. However, small materials such as uranium, gold, and silver, appear so far to be very much unprofitable; take for instance a superior small silver sculpture, which sold for 940 silver¹. The raw materials were 70*20=1 400 silver, amounting to a net loss of 460. A masterwork sculpture of the same material sold for 1 878², netting a profit of 478, but without a legendary artist, such items are exceptions rather than the rule.

Stone, on the other hand, does seem to be a potential source of profit. 135 stone bricks could be bought in one case for 1.37³ per brick, for a total raw material cost of 184.95 silver. The resulting normal granite sculpture made from said bricks was sold for 560 silver. This leads to a net profit of 375 silver, over double the initial investment! The downside to this, however, is that while, for instance, large sculptures most materials take little work to make (ranging from 560 for wood to 1 600 for plasteel) stone bricks take a wholloping 3 611 work to make⁴. So, the savings in materials are diminished somewhat by the cost in labor, though I couldn't say whether such a tradeoff is worth it.

In short, art does seem to be a valid export, at least for stone. Research is ongoing for other, more exotic materials, and the wiki seems to indicate that uranium may be profitable as well, however I'm still waiting for confirmation on that. (Come one, you darn bulk traders. I need me mah uranium!) Cloth is always reliable, and something as simple as selling corn also seems to be profitable, if done in bulk. Hopefully we can find some more interesting ways to make money, though, especially if you need that steel for your ship.

If you don't have any traders, the best way to get steel might be to melt down their low-quality weapons. It's a waste financially, but if you don't have anyone to trade with, that might be what you have to work with. I will note, in case anyone else is like me and never bothered before, that disassembling mechanoids is crazy profitable; components and plasteel. Almost makes me wish for an attack...

Also, thank you for the compliment, Rim Soldier! I hope to have another, more extensive one up in time. Just gotta record all the raw data for it. >.>

¹: Data taken from the survey results at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QK82OL72nri6z-5EwWqMj4YYdbGHO5J4UtUHivDQCHc/edit?usp=sharing
²: ibid
³: ibid
⁴: Rimworld wiki at http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Large_Sculpture

EDIT: Addressing reply

This is actually exactly the question I'm researching. Although I haven't gotten to that point myself, making it personally moot, the idea behind a colony so successful that they've exhausted local nonrenewables poses an interesting problem. So far a small profit margin can be made by manufacturing sniper rifles, importing the raw materials (steel, components) and exporting the rifles. I'm currently looking into other venues (e.g., art, melee weapons, rare materials) and seeing if anything is more profitable than simply growing and selling crops. Because let's face it; useful as crops are, they're boring.

Shurp is right when he says trading is broken. At the moment the only incentives for domestic production are domestic resources and skilled laborers; if you happen to have a lot of steel, it might be more profitable to turn that into a sword with your planet-class master smith than sell the steel raw. But if you don't have steel, then you're SOL; it'd cost more to import the steel than you'd make by selling the sword, barring a truly exceptional craftsman. So at the moment, the best options seem to be making things locally; beer, clothes, and food.

Food in particular can be a nice, basic profit source if you have lots of visitors; a simple meal from corn, for instance, costs ~$4.90 in materials (10 units of corn at $0.49 each) and makes a ~$11.00  meal. That's a pretty good profit margin for early-game. For late-game, the best seems to be a highly skilled tailor cranking out high-quality clothes. It's not glamorous, but it pays the bills.

There's some merit to that argument; in games, fun tends to be king. I enjoy realism in my games, personally, insofar as possible, but sometimes realism and fun are, like you said, mutually exclusive. I will note that, as per my analysis, a profit CAN be earned with a sufficiently skilled craftsman. It's just a pain to set up. Of course, that's sort of a pedantic point, seeing as how there are other more profitable industries as-is; your point stands.

And before someone replies, "no, we want more accuracy", let me remind you of the accurate version of Rimworld: <snip>

Also worth noting, that's a strawman argument. "We want more accuracy" =|= "we want complete accuracy". One can have accurate economics but flubbed physics, just as one can have fairly accurate combat but flubbed economics. :p

The above aside, yeah, fun economics would be a lot better. In particular, maybe some way to establish periodic trades; right now the storytellers LOVE to starve me for traders all year then send them all at once, half the time in the wrong order. Some way to set up a recurring trade, like when you sell them more goods than they have silver to afford, or spend above a certain threshold or something, they say, "Okay, we'll see you same time next month/season/year." Build a relationship with them merchants. \

Between that and maybe having the work add to the value (e.g., a 120 work-to-make item costing less than an otherwise identical 300 work-to-make item) could go a long way towards making the economy a lot more satisfying to play in. And if that work-to-make price scaling breaks something (e.g., buying components) then perhaps only apply it to complex industries like firearms. Or, of course, let components be more expensive and give players a reason to get the component assembly bench; as is you, on average, lose 30 silver per component compared to just buying them pre-assembled.

*coughs!* Yes. <.< I knew that. I... was just testing you. >.>

Fix'd. Thanks for the catch.

Now awful stuff maybe should still be worth less without an awesome trader, while shoddy compares to standard business margins (2-6% profit on raw mats). Normal and above should start producing a decent margin for profit. This assumes, of course, that the trade is fixed in A14 to where being a factory colony is actually viable.

Just as a side-note here, the real world also has a significant industrial base which leads to specialized equipment. That sort of thing, especially when you account for economies of scale, can significantly cut down on the per-unit costs. In Rimworld, we're basically trying to start with two rocks to bash together and make a crude toolshed.

This is exemplified no better than in http://www.thetoasterproject.org/. The tl;dr is that a guy tried to make a 4 GBP toaster from scratch, and ended up spending tremendous time and effort on it and, incidentally, far more money. This translates well to this discussion as it shows how, without some extensive equipment, there can be significant waste in and by-hand industrial processes.

The way I imagine this is that there are some glitterworlds that have completely automated gun factories. Basically, it eats raw material and spits out guns, maybe tacking on a 1% value to cover its initial investment and make investors happy. In such a situation, they could easily make up for per-unit price with volume, and in doing so saturate the market with low-cost ordinance, thus effectively setting the price to that gunPrice=sumOfMaterialCost(gun); formula. Our poor colonists, who without making an exceptional piece of hardware, just can't compete with normal-quality mass produced goods.

Of course, mass-produced goods also can be much better quality than a handmade one, but that's a different issue.

Also worth noting, 0 profit is, from a macroeconomics standpoint, expected. In fact, it's one of the core principles of most macroeconomic theories, insofar as I understand it. If profit COULD be made off of normal weapons manufacturing, every colony and its raiders would be manufacturing guns, undercutting the competition until we're back to that 0 profit scenario. Really, the only thing that would make a difference is, for instance, having a talented gunsmith cranking out superior to masterwork weapons and calling the extra profit "Ricardian Rent". (I always hated that idea, incidentally, but screw it, we're in economics land now and I bow to long-dead theorists.)

Of course, all the above is strictly a moot point; fun to talk about, but no bearing on the world because as it happens, I agree with you that the trade system is broken; our poor colony is always selling at low, low prices without the benefit of high volumes. It'd be nice to be able to sell guns at normal-to-high prices, say, to visitors or passing caravans or even to pirates. It seems to me to make sense that, for local (read: intraplanetary) trade, we could charge up to and including space merchant prices, though, realistically, splitting the difference between the lowest of space merchant prices and the normal local price would seem more agreeable.

As fun as the above would be, it's also asking a bit much for an already complicated game. Economists spend lots of money trying to make accurate simulations, so asking a game to have dynamic markets seems a bit... ah, unreasonable. This is coming from the guy who WANTS IT. I WANTS IT BAD. (Seriously, if Factorio met Rimworld met some sort of economics simulator, that'd be it. I'd never need another game again.)

*coughs!* Anyway... I happen to agree with you, Thane, that the economy system is a bit out of whack. I'd like to see a change, I think, but until that change comes (or I break down and start using mods- thanks, Shurp! Yours is first on my list) I'll just look at the vanilla world as-it-is and present my findings here.

EDIT: Changed credit to where it was due

Howdy y'all! My name is Andrew, I'm an unabashed economics nerd and simulation enthusiast who stumbled onto this game by chance. See, I play another game called Prison Architect with a very similar visual style. I saw a screencap of this game, thought it was a mod, checked it out, and then saw the words "Dwarf Fortress meets Firefly." Those being two of my favorite things, I bought it on the spot. I have no regrets.

Okay, it sounds like there's some interest in knowing how profitable precious materials are, particularly as they relate to art and crafted weapons. While I'm at it, I may as well look at textiles and reexamine firearms, because why not? I've whipped up a Google Form for anyone who wants to help by submitting pricing data; the more data you give me, the happier I'll be, statistician that I am, so anyone who completes it has my deep gratitude. (Linky: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1BUCcncADfHRizAsavulwi4Kr6yy1b5kdA761bLFf9GY/viewform )

Also, the above form was really thrown together, so if anyone has any suggestions or feedback, feel free to let me know. I'd rather make submitting data as painless as possible, because nobody wants to jump through hoops just to help another guy out.

Thank you all for both the feedback and your help! Now off to do !!Science!!. May my colonists survive it.

[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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