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 a "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, but not items hidden inside an ancient danger.

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 23 scythers.

A scyther is worth 150 combat points. A generic tribal is worth 35-60 points, while a decently armed pirate is worth 90 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. These 3 colonists are unlikely to handle 9 scythers, and defintely unable to beat 21 scythers. The more extreme the difficulty, the more wealth matters. For example, the same  20000 could increase 5 scythers to 7, which is quite a large increase.

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 and 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?

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 NUMBER OF SCYTHERS SAVED

Wealth control strategies

• Destroy items you do not need. Burn corpses and any useless weapons that raiders drop.
• Combine rooms into 1

Burning corpses and wooden bows, avoiding over production, combine rooms into one to save on the costs required for a given mood buff, and allowing excess items to deteriorate such as furs and leathers which can be rapidly accrued through hunting, or metals (in particular less useful ones such as jade or gold).

Wealth investment strategies

Buy doomsdays, neurotrainers, psylink neurformers, bricks, better weapons, Trade = investment but also = control - trade price improvement means your net wealth is always decreasing when you sell something for silver (unless you're selling buildings potentially) and always decreasing when you buy something with silver. So buying a doomsday for 200 silver mark up makes both reduces your total wealth by 200 but also improves your ability to defend the remaining wealth.

When bonded, persona weapons have no value, both for trade and for the purposes of raid points.

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Guides

Progression

Quickstart Guides • Basics • Intermediate Midgame Guide • Advanced Endgame Guide • Ending the game

Scenarios

Lost Tribe Guide • Rich Explorer Guide • Naked Brutality Guide • The Mechanitor Guide

Survival

Extreme Heat Guide • Extreme Cold Guide • Extreme Desert Guide • Ice Sheet Guide • Sea Ice Guide • Events Guide

Combat

Defense tactics • Offense tactics • Weapon Guide

Construction

Colony Building Guide • Defense structures

Production

Food production • Money making guide

Other

Skill Training • Permadeath save conversion guide •
Ideology Min-Maxing