Wealth management

Wealth management is the practice of managing the wealth present in a colony to reduce the difficulty of the raids that it encounters.

Effect of wealth

Main article: Raid points

Colony wealth is one of the key determining factors in determining the raid points available to the storyteller, both directly contributing raid points itself, and scaling the points added by each colonist.

"Storyteller Wealth" = (Colony Wealth (items) + Colony Wealth (people and animals) + ( (Colony Wealth (buildings)) * 0.5 )

"Storyteller Wealth" is linearly interpolated on a graph to create "Wealth Points".

Graph	Points	Storyteller Wealth
	0	0
	0	14,000
	2,400	400,000
	3,600	700,000
	4,200	1,000,000

Items on the ground that you can see are counted towards wealth. This includes any amount of corpses and their clothing, items dropped by sieges, and items held by pawns, but not chunks or items hidden inside an ancient danger. Items in a caravan stop counting as soon as they leave your colony.

The maximum wealth is 1,000,000 for the purposes of raid points, and the maximum number of raid points is 10,000. If one of these two caps are reached, then there is no point managing wealth any further.

Empirical testing

Due to rounding and other modifiers to raid size, including the type of raid, these numbers may not be entirely accurate.

A colony starts with 3 colonists and about $105000 wealth. They suddenly gain 1666 beer, worth just under  20000. For a scyther-only mechanoid raid:

• Strive to Survive (100% threat): 3 scythers increases to 4 scythers.
• Losing is Fun (220% threat): 9 scythers increases to 10-11 scythers.
• 500% threat scale: 21 scythers increases to 25-26 scythers.

To be specific, raid points have increased by 120, which is then multiplied by threat scale (e.g. 220% more points for Losing is Fun). A scyther is worth 150 points. A generic tribal is worth 30-60 points, a fairly well-armed pirate is worth 90 points, and the strongest pirates are worth 150 points. A centipede is worth 400 combat points, or 2.66 scythers.

The 1-2 scyther difference might seem small, but keep in mind that this is after reaching $100000 wealth. For example, the same  20000 could increase 5 scythers to 7, which is quite a large increase. These 3 colonists will have a rough time handling 7 scythers, let alone 9 or 21.

Analysis

While wealth is clearly a primary driver in the raid point scaling, the effect is often exaggerated and certain causes of wealth blamed unnecessarily. Put simply, it takes a significant amount of wealth to noticeably affect raid sizes. Often, it is colonist count and the normal scaling causing the actual problem.

That does not mean that wealth management is without merit - it just means that the gains must be considered objectively. E.g. Is a strategy requiring significant micromanagement worth it when it reduces raid size by one scyther?

In general, wealth starts to matter more in the higher difficulties. It has a minimal impact in Adventure Story, for instance.

Strategies

Wealth management strategies can be broken down into two general classes:

1. Wealth control, or wealth minimization, where the intent is to control the total wealth accrued by purposefully reducing both the total wealth of the colony and the rate of accrual.
2. Wealth investment, where wealth gain is not retarded in any way but instead steps are taken to ensure that sufficient wealth is reinvested into advancing the colony to keep up with advancing raid points.

For example, a colony without wealth management might mass-produce flake, sell it, and leave silver for later use. A wealth controlling colony might avoid growing psychoid all together, or limit its production. A wealth investing colony would create flake as needed, but use it to buy items like components and doomsday rocket launchers to better deal with the increased raid points.

When considering cost savings, relate it to how many raiders you'd save. In Strive to Survive, an extra tribal raider is worth roughly 45 CP, or  7500. In Losing is Fun, the raider would be worth  3400. At 500% threat, they'd be worth  1700.

Wealth control strategies

• Destroy useless items. Burn corpses and smelt any unecessary weapons from raiders. Fire makes quick work of any flammable objects; just put them in a fireproof room, first.
  • If you can't destroy them, then at least let them deteriorate - water errodes the fastest.
  • Weapons are quite valuable, despite traders only paying 20% for them. 30 heavy SMG-level firearms equate to 10k wealth, though this is before HP.
  • Rotten corpses and damaged clothes are worth single-digit numbers of wealth. Fresh corpses are worth a fair amount, about 200/corpse, which is relevant for large raids back-to-back.
• Gift excess items to other factions. You shouldn't need 3000 units of rice to feed 5 colonists, even in the worst volcanic winter. Excess food, leathers, drugs, and even silver may not help your colony for the near future, and can easily be acquired later on. They can be donated to other factions for a goodwill boost. Eventually, you can call said factions as an ally, turning this into an investment that completely destroys wealth.
  • Traders will visit your colony every so often, or you can create a caravan or deploy transport pods.
  • Simply destroy those items, and try not to overproduce. If you can't be bothered to give them away, then destroy the items with fire, frag grenades. or dump them on the world map with a short caravan trip.
• Have rooms perform multiple functions. For example, combining Dining and Recreation rooms into a larger one has 0 penalty, giving both Impressive moodlets for the cost of 1.
  • Turning bedrooms into barracks does lower mood. However, combining the barracks with their dining, recreation, and even work rooms allows you to make them all Impressive. This usually makes up for the mood loss.
  • Throne rooms and ritual rooms do not allow beds or work stations, and throne rooms do not allow ritual items. However, they can be combined with dining and recreation. Ascetic pawns do not have any requirements for their bed and throne rooms. Meanwhile, the ritual room standards are only enforced at fairly high expectations.
• Accept a lower amount of "progress". You don't need an opulent carpet if your colonists are just fine with concrete and a few flower pots, or a dirt floor planted constantly planted with daylilys. Upgrades may seem small, but upgrading everywhere will quicky pile up wealth.

Wealth investment strategies

When interacting with any trader, your colony will always buy and sell at a Market Value loss. At most, it's net equal. Therefore, selling your flake actually lowers your wealth.

• Doomsday and triple rocket launchers will greatly soften up enemies. Against human raiders, rockets have the potential dispel an entire raid with 1 burst. Once used, their wealth is fully consumed.
• Better weapons, armor, and defenses - or the components and metal required to produce them.
  • Reinforced barrels, to replenish mortars.
  • When bonded, persona weapons have no value, both for trade and for the purposes of raid points.
• Skilltrainers and psytrainers, which are consumed to improve pawn stats.

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Guides

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