Rimworld Economic Analysis of Firearm Exports

[brcruchairman]

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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[Kryc8]

One word "Wow"
+3
And if you want help you can ask me I also some kind of nerd but my english is not perfect so I can collect data.

And about topic of interest I would like to see something about art prices (buy gold , make good statue and then try tomake profit)

[Tagasaki]

This is so professional.

Now I'm kinda interested in statues and blacksmithed weapons made out of rare materials and expensive materials.

[Wex]

I found cloth to be an excellent export. renewable, fast to grow and can be used as an ingredient for building other goods.
I am not good with the details, so I am a horrible researcher; but I would like to know if raw cloth is worth more or less than the clothes it can make (at average quality), with the % of weariness being 0 (100% condition) and if yes, what is the best export item.

[brcruchairman]

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.

[Shurp]

Firstly, your paper is hilarious.  I loved it!  Thank you!

Secondly, Rimworld's economy is totally broken.  Manufactured items receive no additional value from manufacture.  They are worth only the value of their components, +/- quality adjustments.  If you have a manufacturer with skill 10+ who can consistently produce high quality items then it can be worthwhile, but otherwise you're better off selling the raw materials.

With this in mind, your best trade is to grow corn/rice and sell it to buy steel.  If you have trouble with raw goods traders showing up, it can be worthwhile to grow hops and manufacture beer so you can sell it to pirates.

[SpacekatTommy]

One thing is for certain. Your dedication to such an endeavor is as equally matched to the market spreadsheet game i used to play in Eve Online. The amount of items i had, the locations i was selling, and the profits per item, quantities moved.. etc etc.. The spreadsheet and time that was invested in the game... A LOT.

GG sir. GG.

[cultist]

Secondly, Rimworld's economy is totally broken.  Manufactured items receive no additional value from manufacture.  They are worth only the value of their components, +/- quality adjustments.  If you have a manufacturer with skill 10+ who can consistently produce high quality items then it can be worthwhile, but otherwise you're better off selling the raw materials.

I'm not sure I understand the logic of this statement. Why should a low quality item be worth more than its raw materials? Especially in the case of expensive materials, one might argue that your crafter wasted the original value of the materials by turning them into a shoddy item.

[Thane]

I'm not sure I understand the logic of this statement. Why should a low quality item be worth more than its raw materials? Especially in the case of expensive materials, one might argue that your crafter wasted the original value of the materials by turning them into a shoddy item.

Many of us in the developed world purchase goods from countries who use cheap labor and inexpensive materials to turn out some pretty 'shoddy' products. However, to us as consumers and retailers those cheap toys and shirts are worth more to us than their constituent parts even if the raw material was technically more useful and so 'wasted' in production. The labor adds value to the raw materials even if the labor is on the 'meh' side.

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.

[brcruchairman]

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

[Thane]

*Shurp* Shurp made the trading mod.

[brcruchairman]

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

Fix'd. Thanks for the catch.

[Shurp]

Who wants an accurate simulation?  We want a *fun* simulation.  Surely Rimworld would be more fun if it were profitable to manufacture SMGs and sell them to pirates?  Even more fun if those same pirates then turned around and came back at you with the same guns you just sold them.  The dark side of being a weapons dealer...

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

   Your cryopods strike the atmosphere of a gas giant.  The heat shield protects them from
   the initial impact but they are crushed by the fantastic atmospheric pressures deep below
   the clouds.  Everyone dies.  Game Over.  Play again? (y/n)

[brcruchairman]

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.

[mrofa]

Well at some time there ware mods to fix that, not sure if they are updated anymore. Raiders are only profitable source, cloths,weapons, body parts, meat and leather from them are the most cost efficient trading goods atm. You can boost that with the skilled tailor to make leather parkas from them.
But that are realities at rimworld