IRR (Rate of Return) for Profit, and other crop research.

That's not quite silly enough for me. I prefer to torture myself a little when I do these.

 

I just found this outstanding year-old thread. Hoping the author is still checking in occasionally.

I'm a semi-retired pricing actuary, so IRR and the PVIS are meat and potatoes. Lots of outstanding modeling here, but I have a few questions that all relate to Spring of year 1:

1. Since this is intended for the growth stages of the farm, did you ever put something in for the return accruing from foraging or farming skill gain? In particular, minimizing the cost (see #2) to get to 6 farming (quality sprinklers) by Summer 1 and 6 foraging (lightning rods) by early Summer are central goals for me.
2. In defining what "cost" is, I always say energy is the primary constraint during Spring 1. However, working through the thread, it looks like you wave off energy as a concern, because salads can be bought to replenish energy at slightly less than 2g/E so you can simply invest in the energy required to do anything. Did you consider ways to adapt the model to an environment with full investment regarding energy? Said otherwise, assuming energy is replenishable at cost may not be realistic (if you are not carrying a balance sufficient for food), so it could actually constrain the amount of your plantings. I understand this makes the problem far more complex.

2 things I noted when analyzing Spring 1 crops were that:
1. Spring wild crops are not worthwhile. It's a better use of energy to simply sell the seeds from any wild seeds acquired for 350 per unit of 10. Compare, for example to cutting trees with the same energy and the resulting cash flows/foraging gains are much more attractive.
2. Strawberries (when seeds bought at festival) have the highest return in terms of both gold per unit of energy and (more importantly) farming skill per unit of energy.

Truly outstanding stuff in this thread and it's worth a review to anyone who loves the math of the game.

 

"this sheet should help" absolutely not
everything was clear until I looked at that sheet now I don't know wtf I'm doing

 

While the concepts are still valid, the numbers are likely off as this was done prior to the 1.1 'berry nerf'. It also seems to have been done more for those of us who work with spreadsheets daily, rather than being exported into a more 'executive friendly' format.

Then again, that's what happens when you bump a two or three year old thread...

 

Not only are the numbers going to be off due to the berry nerf, but for those who play SDV with a focus on making money, other strategies are now available that mean that, with strategic planning and sufficient gaming skill, almost immediately, your crops cannot be constrained by money but by available time and land space, and come summer you simply plant starfruit for maximum profit per tile per day, and get down as many as possible.