Prosperous Universe is a game that can be played with a relatively small number of clicks and button strokes per day, simply considering the actual game client. However, the community resource list has many tools and tables that you can use to model to optimize your virtual business. I use the first table in this list called Rain's Master Base Planner. Enter your basic statistics, such as the buildings you own, the recipes you produce, and the efficiency bonuses you get from a variety of sources, and the table shows how profitable your base is. So after saving a bit of money, I can use the table to simulate the extension: should I buy another air work platform, another page, or rather a food processor? Depending on my situation and market prices, the table shows me the best options. Therefore, most of the "game" takes place at the table, not at the game client.
After some successes and failures in using spreadsheets to compile the basics, I realized why some of the basic devices that spreadsheets think are good don't work well in the game - the spreadsheet model is based on the price market. , as if there is unlimited capacity and regular trading in this market. . Apparently, the previous "universe" had an exchange of goods on the planets, which allowed the inhabitants of several selected planets to trade directly between the base camp and the market. If you are a new player and produce a fairly common product in small quantities, your transaction will not have a major impact on the market price. Thus, the table "works" to some extent as a model.
In today's universe, commodity exchanges are now located in orbital stations, so the inhabitants of the planets in this system also have transportation costs. And the farther you go from the 4 major commodity markets, the more important the delivery becomes. You can actually design a ready-made PP1 complete factory base within walking distance to the nearest market, and the table says it's very affordable. the amount of iron and limestone you just need to import is actually more than you can handle with your two ships, so the base doesn't really work. You can also design a very affordable base mass on a table that produces rare items; but if you do, you will see that there is not much demand for this rare item, and if there is, your actual earnings will be less. The table also uses the current price. Thus, if you do not begin to change these market prices manually, the risk of market price fluctuations is not well protected.
Once you understand the limitations of the model, you can always use tables in a meaningful way. You just need to do more research than net profit: import and export volumes, estimated "off-bill" shipping costs, manual entry of alternative prices to test for sensitivity to price changes, and so on. But my question is to what extent this is limited to the models in which the market price of intermediate goods is considered. This is not necessarily the case with real companies: it is often easier to negotiate with an intermediary based on the realization cost than the market will pay.
An example in the Prospero Universe is the production line leading to padded PWO overalls. Well, PWOs are called luxury consumer goods, but for the Pioneers, who are the most basic form of employee. Therefore, many people use PWO to increase work efficiency. When combining the figures in the table, it is not profitable to prepare PWO with COT cotton cloth. However, this is due to the lack of a liquid market for cotton fabrics. It seems that most people who produce cotton have a material that requires more skilled workers (settlers) to produce it, as well as less complex buildings that convert TOC into PWO. A better profitability model for the entire supply chain can be achieved by simply treating each intermediary (water -> raw cotton -> cotton fabric -> general lining work) as a wage. By treating the intermediary as "cheap", all the profits of the whole chain arise in the final stage, in the production of PWO, the commodity you are actually selling.
My observations in the Prosperous Universe are that when I tried to find products that involved settlers using an ordinary basic glider table, none of them really worked. This is contradictory, because there are many end products that attract invaders at any stage. I haven't found a way to make this clearer in the tables / templates I use.
