Tips for wealth management?

[jpinard]

So my solid gold vault filled with jade and silver, movie theater with excellent or better devilstrand chairs in front of the megascreen TV, 60+ rooms with excellent or better furniture, medical complex, full armory, prison bunks with hospital, and hundreds of hydroponics might be whats making my raids so big?  But my fancy killbox and artillery park dont seem to have issues with them.

Would you post a picture of this?  I need a good design.

[fritzgryphon]

Keep in mind that 'creatures' wealth counts for much more than other forms of wealth, despite looking quite small on the graph.  I had 10 colonists in a modest base with a few turrets, and I added 10 more colonists with debug tools.  The total wealth increased by 15% but the Fun Points increased by 70%.

Beware of non-violent colonists as each additional person increases the difficulty quite a bit.

IMO walls lined with traps are a pretty good investment.  Only costs 2 or 3 thousand to make another layer of wall around a small base.

[jpinard]

I just really hate how the wealth quotient for raids is generated.  It's ridiculous you can accidentally end up with too much wealth

[Hoshi]

This entire game seems to just revolve around wealth, it shouldn't be that big of a factor to the point where it can make or break your game imo.

[TheMeInTeam]

This entire game seems to just revolve around wealth, it shouldn't be that big of a factor to the point where it can make or break your game imo.

It was pushed more in that direction since this thread was started, both directly and indirectly.  By the latter I mean that means of defending yourself cleanly became more scarce, which disincentivizes scaling raids into large numbers because some of them have fewer/messier counterplay options.

Wealth management is therefore a significant part of the game, heavily emphasized by the design despite some comments not to worry about it in the past.

[Hoshi]

This entire game seems to just revolve around wealth, it shouldn't be that big of a factor to the point where it can make or break your game imo.

It was pushed more in that direction since this thread was started, both directly and indirectly.  By the latter I mean that means of defending yourself cleanly became more scarce, which disincentivizes scaling raids into large numbers because some of them have fewer/messier counterplay options.

Wealth management is therefore a significant part of the game, heavily emphasized by the design despite some comments not to worry about it in the past.

I think while the possibility of higher threat raids should still be there and certainly more probable, there should also still be the chance of smaller and less threatening raids as well, instead of wave after wave of increasingly dangerous raids. Having lots of wealth and having nice things is a fun part of the game, but it seems like it's just punished to heavily in an all to obvious and eventually overwhelming fashion. It also seems like every time I make something nice or store something up, there will be a constant fear of it ending my game making it not worth it at all.

It also makes no sense that I'm putting myself in danger because I have too many piles of rice, some nice furniture, and some very nice T-Shirts. This system needs some changes.

[BLACK_FR]

I made a nice guide that includes all tips to wealth management (see my forum signature).

In my current run I don't use any of that except "dont own anything you don't really need) and I'm finishing all research needed for ship and my current wealth it still hovering around 15k wealth. My wealth will spike when I build the ship, but those 35k wealth + ~5-6k for additional turret defense are not that scary, it will amount for ~6 people raids. For now I still have laughably easy raids (I play on merciless and my pawns hadn't been downed ever).

Regarding specific questions.
0) You can check your wealth in history tab in statistics section. For raids building wealth is halved. You can check how much each item is adding by looking for it value in description of the item.
1) Get hp of your weapons low and get better weapons. Longbows (even legendary) are crap, get some bolt-action for long distances and heavy smg's for medium ones
2) Muffalos contribute substantial amount to wealth. Do you really need them? If yes, do you really need that many?
3) Almost all things and buildings count to wealth (even corpses of animals). Just use wood floors and make some good jade sculpture to boost impressiveness of the room. You don't need anything else. You will also get good mood buffs from that.
4) Damage your furniture. If you don't want to do that, then use bad one. Only beds have to be as good as you can build.
5) Tolerance applies for different types separetly, so beer and pekoe tolerances go down simultaneously. But overdose summs all drugs used.
6) Traps increase wealth but not that much. You should definitely use them a lot, they are very good. They are even better if made from steel.

@Limdood
"use smooth stone floor" - bad advice. Smoothed floor adds to wealth too and not a small amount and you can't ever remove that wealth (you can't unsmooth it back like you can deconstruct floor).
@Hans Lemurson
Animal corpses add to wealth quite a lot, related how much meat in them.

[mebe]

Anyone else utterly bored with the concept of gaming the system through wealth management? Yeah you can make your end game raids consist of 5 one legged club weilding morons but actually all you are doing is making the game easier, not demonstrating anything interesting or any real skill.

[TheMeInTeam]

Anyone else utterly bored with the concept of gaming the system through wealth management? Yeah you can make your end game raids consist of 5 one legged club weilding morons but actually all you are doing is making the game easier, not demonstrating anything interesting or any real skill.

You will find that any consistent process used by good players in a game makes it "easier".  Being better at a game implies succeeding more often.

Deliberately exposing pawns to colony-risking RNG is bad play (and a standard mistake by newer players, to varying extents).  Any action that avoids this will lead to more consistent "success".  Distinguishing between these actions requires some standards to be non-arbitrary.

Based on what is quoted it doesn't appear there's a sound grasp of what actually optimizes utility:wealth, so it's strange to claim someone else who actually evaluates utility:wealth is employing less skill.

[Shurp]

If you're optimizing utility:wealth by building a plasteel turret instead of a plasteel bed, that's one thing.

If you're optimizing wealth by punching your hi-tech research bench until it is worth $0.40, that's something else.

You can think of taking advantage of exploits as "skill"... but it's not the sort of skill that most players want to employ.  It mitigates the "fun" factor.  And keep in mind that a "sandbox" game isn't about "success", it's about doing something "interesting" and "fun".

And I'm tired of using so many "quotes", so I'm going to stop here