Trading madness

[SpaceDorf]

If you are into breeding you could look into boomalopes.
Chemfuel has always been a stable source of income.

[Shurp]

My skill 5-10 tailors usually produce pretty mediocre products -- shoddy to normal.  Add a 30% penalty on top of the quality penalty... and selling the raw cloth is usually more profitable.  But you have a point; if I keep at it, eventually my tailors will get good enough to make really good stuff which will sell well.  Thanks for the encouragement!

As for boomalopes, well, I never see them wandering around in the tundra, but I'll keep it in mind if I ever see an orbital carrying some.

[khun_poo]

Actually, I'll prefer to raise a cat farm since kitty sell a ton of silver (around 100 silver with good social colonist) and they breed like crazy. But sadly in A18, they can't hunt for themselves (maybe a bug, I've report it already https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=36668.0 ) which will burden your colony food supply.

With around 20-30 of them, they will most likely give you around 3 kitties per days. Sadly, you'll need to call for exotic good trader every day to sell the kitties before they run over your colony though 


(Pic: Aoshima island, Japan)

The substitute for cat is Cobra. This nasty snake breed and mature rather slow than the cat but they eat less. The plus is that they can be train to release and they're not having name like cat which help a lot when you need to count their number. They're the only carnivore in the game that can hatch egg too.

[Dashthechinchilla]

I have been using the mineral scanner and finding a lot of jade. One precious minerals cash can get you enough jade for about 8 large sculpture. Traders buy them for about 750 to 1k each depending on quality. Plus you can raid the map for any other useful stuff.

[Shurp]

You'll probably make more money if you sell the jade raw and have your sculptors manufacture granite sculptures for 250 ea.  The extra time they spend sculpting is offset by not needing to spend as much time mining and caravanning.

I really wish Rimworld would balance the economy so that it would be profitable to *buy* jade and manufacture sculptures with it.

[Shurp]

So in my latest game I decided to take another look at this situation... and I can confirm it's definitely a clothing penalty.  It's right there on the item information tab.  "Sell price multiplier, 70%", don't even need to be in a buy/sell screen with a trader.

Where is this attribute set?  And why is it set only for clothing?  Because it is annoying that it completely eliminates the added value of a medium skilled tailor who is producing normal goods.  The raw cloth/leather/whatever has the same value.

(Of course more skilled tailors can actually make a profit.  This game I'm going to stick with it and see how the legendary parka trade works out

[Scrabbling]

Where is this attribute set?  And why is it set only for clothing?

The attribute is set in Apparel_Various.xml in the definition for "ApparelBase" which is used as parent item for all clothing. And it's not only used for clothing but also for weapons with an even harsher penalty (SellPriceFactor 0.2 for "BaseWeapon" in Weapons_Base.xml).

[Shurp]

Yes, I did omit the weapons penalty -- I at least understood the motive there, to reduce the value of loot from raids.  But now that clothing from raids is generally worthless thanks to the "D" tag I figured the clothing penalty doesn't make much sense.

Thanks for pointing out where it is!  I'll see about editing it so my tailors can start making some money!

[Scrabbling]

I had a look at the market value calculations for cloth parkas to see at what quality it becomes profitable:

MarketValueUnfinalized = NumberClothNeeded * ClothMarketValue + 0.0036 * WorkToMake = 120 * 1.5 + 0.0036 * 24000 = 180 + 86.4 = 266.4
So without further PriceModifications the parka's market value is determined to roughly 2/3 by the material used and by 1/3 by the work put into it.

This unfinalized value is then modified by quality and the SellPriceFactor of 0.7 discussed above and the item's hitpoints: MarketValue = MVUnfinalized * QualityFactor * ItemSellPriceFactor * HealthFactor

(All other modifications to sell price like Selling vs. Buying, TraderType, Social Skill etc. should be the same for cloth and parkas and thus irrelevant when comparing selling raw ressources vs. manufactured goods.)

I will assume full hitpoints (factor 1.0) since the item is newly crafted.

The QualityFactor is defined in Stats_Basics_General.xml:

• Awful 0.4
• Shoddy 0.6
• Poor 0.8
• Normal 1
• Good 1.2
• Superior 1.5
• Excellent 2.0
• Masterwork 3.0
• Legendary 6

Which results in the following market values for cloth parkas (I ignored rounding for simplicity's sake); the SellPriceFactor 0.7 is applied to all qualities so the starting value is 266.5 * 0.7 = 186.48:

• Awful: 186.48 * 0.4 = 74.592
• Shoddy: 186.48 * 0.6  = 111.888
• Poor 186.48 * 0.8 = 149.184
• Normal 186.48 * 1 = 186.48
• Good 186.48 * 1.2 = 223.776
• Superior 186.48 * 1.5 = 279.72
• Excellent 186.48 * 2.0 = 372.96
• Masterwork 186.48 * 3.0 = 559.44
• Legendary 186.48 * 6 = 1118.88

So awful, shoddy and poor parkas are worth less than the cloth used to craft it (< 180), normal quality results in a minimal profit and good or above quality increases the profit margin significantly. A masterwork parka for example has 310% percent the market value of its ingredients.

I have to say I find this plausible. If you are a master craftsman and have an apprentice you are fully aware that there will be mistakes and bad results that will waste ressources and gain you next to nothing. That's okay if he learns and his future work (hopefully) pays for it.

[Canute]

Thanks for pointing out where it is!  I'll see about editing it so my tailors can start making some money!

Don't forget a thing.
While steel/plasteel is more or less limited and weapons don't get so much damaged on combat.
Textiles  got an endless supply.
Because of these endless supply, smokeleaf joints allready got nerved as primary trading good.

I think you shouldn't modify much at these numbers, i think its pretty balanced.
If you want that your tailer are geting more out of the material, try the mod Static quality ++.
Then your crafter don't get this big randomness at their product quality.

[glob]

the realmoney go from thrumbo horns and skyther blades. getting 20+ blades from a single raid - priceless. Parcas can be good too if you have very good crafters who produce masterwork and legendary stuff from thrumbo and llama wool

[Shurp]

Textiles require a lot of labor to turn into clothing. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a profit off of that. Smokeleaf takes all of a few seconds to turn into a joint so should not be worth much more than the material. Parkas should be worth much more than cloth.

Especially out in the tundra where cotton is scarce and freezing colonists abound...