Merciless Wealth management.

[Sometenranadom]

So I started my 50th merciless Cassandra run, can't say I've made it past day 250 on any of them but, I decided to finally cave in and do wealth management. But I keep reading that buildings around the map don't effect my wealth(unclaimed buildings). Yet at the start of the game I have 5000 building wealth? Yet I've seen it on so many posts. Is there something I don't know? Is the graph inaccurate?

Also what about creatures wealth. I had a plains run where I had over 60 animals around my wood lodge core. Maybe 6 colonist but 20 wild boars 30 alpacas 2 grizz 5 timber 2 cougars a some tortoises. I got a huge raid of 20 high level mercenaries rocket launches and all. Despite feeling like I kept my building and item wealth low. The "Formula" on the wiki only mentions item and building wealth.

Is everything around wealth and raids mythos? Is everything is speculation other than the obvious fact that the bigger your colony is the more resources you need to dedicate to defense?

[zizard]

defloor fren

welcome to black fr mosque of wealth control

[5thHorseman]

I'm not sure what a fren is or a black fr mosque, but no Wealth Control is not guesswork. Someone looked at the actual code and posted it somewhere. I don't remember the details but they're on this forum somewhere and it boils down to 100% of your pawn and item wealth + 50% of your building wealth = your raid wealth. That's not the only factor in raids (number of colonists is too) but it's a (or the) major one.

Ripping up floors helps but is not critical. It's good advice, as those resources work great as building material for your own base and are easier and cheaper to get than most any other building material.

Far more important is to make sure as much of your wealth as possible is put into weapons and defenses. On merciless, you should also let production materials that degrade sit outside until they are at like 20%, so they're worth less. And burn/blow up/caravan and dump/sell/gift every single thing you don't need to survive. Including stuff on the ground outside your base dropped by raiders.

[AileTheAlien]

I'm not sure what a fren is or a black fr mosque

I think they're making a joke, that the person BLACK_FR often posts in threads like this (pertaining to balance, playing "optimally", how to "win" the game, etc), with such conviction and single-mindedness that it feels like holy scripture or religious zeal.

EDIT:
Pre-emptive, "That's the joke!". :P

[attachment deleted due to age]

[jpinard]

So I started my 50th merciless Cassandra run, can't say I've made it past day 250 on any of them but, I decided to finally cave in and do wealth management. But I keep reading that buildings around the map don't effect my wealth(unclaimed buildings). Yet at the start of the game I have 5000 building wealth? Yet I've seen it on so many posts. Is there something I don't know? Is the graph inaccurate?

Also what about creatures wealth. I had a plains run where I had over 60 animals around my wood lodge core. Maybe 6 colonist but 20 wild boars 30 alpacas 2 grizz 5 timber 2 cougars a some tortoises. I got a huge raid of 20 high level mercenaries rocket launches and all. Despite feeling like I kept my building and item wealth low. The "Formula" on the wiki only mentions item and building wealth.

Is everything around wealth and raids mythos? Is everything is speculation other than the obvious fact that the bigger your colony is the more resources you need to dedicate to defense?

How do you check your wealth level?

[walleras]

I can only get to day 5-20 of my merciless cassandra naked run, so that's how I manage my wealth, by being so bad I can't gain it. 

[5thHorseman]

How do you check your wealth level?

History button, check all the tabs there. The graphs show how it's grown but another tab whose name escapes me shows exact numbers for the colony currently.

[BLACK_FR]

Hello, new acolyte of Wealth Control Religion. You can check my Holy Temple in my signature, you will find all what you need there.

P.S.: in my current Really Merciless Naked Brutality run (it's like normal merciless naked brutality but much more brutal) I don't use "hp control" at all, I play as if health of every item affect it's utility (and for weapons and apparel it is). So only wealth control that I use is "don't own stupid stuff". And I can say that it's enough for me, because I can launch a ship while staying in "low expectations".

[zizard]

I meant that the 5k building wealth is probably from floors in the ruins placed around the map, so i suggest you deflooring, frend

[jpinard]

I hate doing "wealth management" in this game.  I think a better way is to just change the mob formula values.

[fritzgryphon]

Be warned the various kinds of wealth have different weights.  For example, colonists make up a small part of your total wealth, but they have a large impact on raid points.

If you're curious about how much something is contributing to difficulty, I suggest making changes in dev mode then checking how the debug graph reacts.  For example, my 12 population colony starting at 110 raid points:

20 labrador retrievers added 14 points.
2 random unequipped colonists added 14 points.
2 charge lances added 4 points.
2 power armors and helmets added 3 points.

From this it seems like animals are pretty cheap for their combat power.  Unequipped, low-skilled colonists cost a lot of points while being pretty useless.  Power armor and a lance is worth about 50% the points of a random colonist.  Also, the lances count for as many points as the power armor despite being 1/10 the market value.

[zizard]

To avoid the lag in the graph, use the dev mode option "write storyteller". Once it is enabled, click the magnifying glass button.

[5thHorseman]

I hate doing "wealth management" in this game.  I think a better way is to just change the mob formula values.

You can do that quite easily by not playing on Merciless (which is what I personally do)

[jpinard]

I hate doing "wealth management" in this game.  I think a better way is to just change the mob formula values.

You can do that quite easily by not playing on Merciless (which is what I personally do)

I have a lot of wonderful mods and some accidentally inter items that blow your wealth up.  I only play on Cassandra medium.  So I hate having to do wealth management anytime.

[ashaffee]

Merciless min maxing goes further than that. Here are a few things.

Never tame any creature unless you 100% need their materials. Like need fur because your map never spawns enough creatures. Creatures almost always produce a negative on food worth compared to labor/colonist wealth managements. Exception for animals that 100% graze and everyone that isn't part of the breeding stock shows value in every battle based on your strategy.

Haulers are worth it imo but either use them in the same strategy as above or keep a small ratio. I having fined tuned it but guessing 2 haulers for ever 6 colonist might be a nice number.

Stock piles should basically contain nothing (Although I say screw this part because micromanagement is boring). Everything you want to build you plan exactly how many resources to mine. Exceptions are medicine and food. Food is game by game basis but plan per season helps.

Keeping base small and minimizing amount of extra space given to colonist helps. Drugs if used properly can give the moods needed more efficiently than the wealth increase of 2 large statues in every ones bed room.

Minimize turret defenses used. I try to have 1 central fall back spot where turrets do work at. Everyone pot shots through doors and such and tries to retreat to that fall back spot. Enemy usually scatters around my defenses breaking into sections of my base at a time. Basically leads to small trickling to their deaths.

Last message. You don't really need to min max to win. I obey some of these things not all (some people do way more crazy things that require tons of micromanagement). The key is just have a plan when you land. Build a base around that plan. Key to all the plans is fall back spots. Places to heal in the middle of battle (3x2 hospitals) that act as buckers for firing back. Things like that.