Super-nerfed workshops

[matko1990]

Hi

I know the workshops were too powerful before, but you guys made a mistake when you nerfed it. I just checked it ingame because i was wondering why no money at all is made in the workshop.

1 Metal Sheet is now made to 2 Sliced metal sheets. These are then made to 2 License plates. That´s how it is in the release notes and also ingame. But the price of the license plates is 5$ each ingame not 10$ as it should be. So I buy 80 metal sheets for 800$, produce 160 license plates and sell them for 800$. Now THAT´s a deal!

please fix this soon

matko

[Axios]

go for wood.....

[Meeeps]

I can confirm the nerfed workshop earns around 60% of the former income, costs are around the double. This nerfs only affect the starting prison where it hurts, IMO it was a bad choice to nerf it, I also vote for reverting it. I also wonder, who ever requested a nerf or was this a solely decision of devs?

Edit: My Workshop experience is documented here: Workshop efficiency comparison

[_alphaBeta_]

I can confirm that license plates sell for $5/plate. The Alpha-16 change log says $10.

- Workshop balance nerf
The workshop has been judged far too ridiculously profitable
Cutting sheet metal and stamping license plates now takes twice as long as before
Sheet metal now costs $10 per sheet, and produces 2 license plates which sell for $10 each, giving $10 profit
(Previously $3 per sheet, producing 3 license plates selling at $10 each, giving $27 profit)
Workshop saws and presses now cost 50% more to build

I can also confirm that the price of sheet metal is indeed $10. From my observations it looks very much like each sheet really does create two plates. If it does, the license plate industry is non-profitable. Meeeps are my assumptions incorrect? Not sure where you're getting 60%, but perhaps that including some wood.

[silent_thunder_89]

I can confirm that license plates sell for $5/plate. The Alpha-16 change log says $10.

That should be fixed, but I think the nerrf is ok. We have the wood logs for a new prison to give a little push but with the grants and grants mods its not that big of a deal.
for the later game, this will force you to get more High Risk prisoners because since alpha 15 higher risk gets you more money. It becomes harder to reach that balance to make a steady income (but whats the fun in that?), and I think the game needs this, so far it has been a bit too easy.

[b0rk]

I agree with _alphaBeta_ there is something wrong balance wise at least on the PC / Steam build, 2 license plates sell for $10 or $5 each so the industry isn't generating any profit after costs.




I do however think that workshops needed nerfing as profits where obscenely easy, tbh adjusting the game so that license plates had to go out the front door may have been a better nerf.
Small prison's generally don't seem to be delivery/garbage limited whilst on a very large jail managing deliveries and garbage is critical to keeping workshops fed with plates.

[knoest26]

He solely looks at the amount he earn at night, not at the amount of sheetmetal he has to buy.

And offcourse you can set a price for sheetmetal in the materials.txt so you could revert it yourself

[Chris]

I'm fairly sure that finished license plates sell for $10 each during the auto-sell event that occurs at midnight. However if you sell finished license plates using the new Sell button and clicking on them, you'll get $5 per item currently, which is a bug. So long as you wait for the auto sell you should get the correct amount of cash.

[_alphaBeta_]

You're probably correct Chris, and thanks for responding! We've been making the assumption that the same code is invoked when using the "sell" button and clicking materials as the auto-sell during the night. Next time playing I'll wait for the auto-sell instead and do the math.

I just spotted the following in another thread. It is safe to assume that using the new "sell material" feature halves the income for wood and license plates? The player has no choice for unprocessed logs since they don't automatically sell.

I noticed that processed wood stays on the saw. T means the saw cannot process any more wood or sheet metal, if I sell the wood on the saw manually I get $500 for a 20 x stack, or $1000 if I wait until it gets sold automatically at 1am.

So if I have a lot of logs to process in a day i sell some manually to make room to process more, but it still gets automatically sold at 1 in the morning.

[_alphaBeta_]

As an update, using the sell command does indeed halve the income for both license plates and finished wood planks. Here's what I've seen:

Code: Select all

Sell Command
------------
License Plates: $5  / ea
Wood Planks:    $25 / ea
Logs:           $50 / ea


Overnight Auto-Sell
-------------------
License Plates: $10 / ea
Wood Planks:    $50 / ea

Logs do not auto-sell, so it's hard to say if they're being halved as well.

In general, I agree that the license plate industry needed to be nerfed a bit. Though it feels like the new wood industry is just as overpowering as license plates were. All told, we can't really know for sure until the entire game is balanced. Who can say whether a $10 profit per sheet metal makes sense until the price of all the objects and materials is established.

[bandon41]

All told, we can't really know for sure until the entire game is balanced. Who can say whether a $10 profit per sheet metal makes sense until the price of all the objects and materials is established.

true, it's hard to talk about it beeing baalanced before it's even completed

[_alphaBeta_]

Alpha-18 brings the requirement for a safety class before anyone can work in the workshop. Given those additional costs and time commitments, I'm really thinking that the industry needs to go back to where it was as far as profitability. On Alpha-17 I usually had 3 full workshops going with close to 30 saws and presses to maintain a healthy income. Given the training delay, and the fact that prisoners serve out their sentences way too fast still, I'll be luckily to keep one going. Is anyone else having trouble maintaining a suitable income on Alpha-18?

[nini]

'm really thinking that the industry needs to go back to where it was as far as profitability.

Pre A12 days of just a workshop assigned room and nothing in it but you get money anyway? Sounds good. I think that the new way is more just a foundation for newer types of industry rather than saying "here you go you untrained oafs, saws and presses for you to use. Don't get maimed and make it up as you go along, it'll be fine" because you really can't have someone with no knowledge of how to operate a saw or press and expect them to turn out grade A product without injury or failure. Never noticed how that bugged me until now.

Figure maybe they could do with some form of unskilled labour like rock breaking or ditch digging, I'm sure chaingangs could work but eitherway they really need to have something for those who just want their inmates to work and make money.

[raresteak]

Default prison sentences are way too short for longer trainings to be viable. Also it doesn't scale down with larger prisons (that slow down time), so some prisoners are coming in on day 1 and leaving on day 3 even.

[_alphaBeta_]

I agree that it makes sense that people would need training before being pushed into a workshop. I like the concept, but it's made the current economic model in the game unsustainable. I loaded my Alpha-17 prison that had 60 workshop jobs. Of course no one is qualified out of the gate but only 16 are even interested. That's not good as there's no way I'll be able to pay the bills like that. We've also taken a more liberal view on prison labor in that prisoners need to be interested in working to even be trained and therefore working is voluntary. I like that it can be seen as a luxury to get out of your cell, but I'd also like the option for it to be less voluntary if the player should so choose. Perhaps that makes sense for less skilled labor to be introduced, as was mentioned.

Lowering the profitability of industry previously made sense, but that was when I could easily send half the prison population into the only viable way to earn funds in this game for half the day. That's no longer possible, so i think it needs to be more profitable when you actually get some prisoners in there working. The early-game needs another source of income, or perhaps we could use some mid-Alpha phase balancing.

Another point is that there's only one foreman allowed currently, so if you have multiple workshops you can essentially only train 5 people a day. More information here.