Newbie economy questions

[Helbent]

Hey all! New player here, and I have a few questions I haven't been able to find answers to in the various guides:

1. When is a good time to get into the economics of the game? Should I be spending money early on to get started and use my hours? Or focusing on leveling/purchasing ship upgrades until I have the money and rank to get better trader ships and more efficiently run production?

2. How many production buildings can we have? Is it 5 per port or 5 total? It is not clear from the UI at the moment.

3. Is shipbuilding a good place to start? Since the economy is still in transition, not sure if just building things to sell and then buying ships is a better/easier path for a new player or if the profit margins are so slim for the stuff that I could start crafting that I should just dive into shipbuilding. Not really worried about the complexities of collecting everything, just the time/money sink.

Thanks!

[Zorg the Merciless]

Hi - in relation to question 2, its 5 total.  You can upgrade the production buildings which leads to an increase in storage space and production. Once your buildings have started production you can convert the materials to resources and sell in the store. This uses labour hours. I have done quite well with a farm and its generated tons of cash for me.

 

I have also started visiting ports to see what the demand/supply is and have been trading my produced resources to them. This has been reasonably profitable but its quite time consuming. I think it woudl be more profitable if I had a bigger ship. Once you have visited a port in the map it shows what each one produces/consumes.

 

Cheers!

[Fastidius]

Sell your hours early to finance ships as you grind up.  Ask for ingot making if possible as it gives you the most XP.  once you hit lvl 15 you can make mid grade notes which is decent money but slows down you craft XP.

 

Really crafting is not going to make you money until 3rd rates and higher now really so you really are making trader cutters for XP (its the best XP per click) until you hit 35.

 

really you are just trying to get crafting up so you can be a force when there is a full wipe.  Currently many crafters are just making ships for Blueprints and XP as ship turnover is way down.

 

Production Buildings is 5 total in friendly port outposts.   Iron is probably the only old school that makes money now however if your making your own notes you may want silver and coal also.

 

not sure on the new ones but people like skully, kanay & john worden are able to tell you in seconds when they are online

[Skully]

Knowledge is your top priority: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15480-the-definitive-pricing-guide/

And get the Trader Assistance Tool: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/12052-public-api-for-naval-action/

You can also use Navalactioncraft: http://www.navalactioncraft.com/

Your second priority should be earning gold. With gold you can scale.

Some commodities provide good profit, but only when you can actually sell the stuff.

For example, Tobacco, Compass Wood or Sugar. Basically anything high value, low weight.

(Which reminds me, I must add weight to the pricing guide.)

So like Fasti says, boot up with selling hours.

Switch to finding your own Coal and Iron Ore for crafting into Iron Ingots/Fittings. It's not a very profitable market, but a steady one.

This will ensure you get lose from any labor hour agreements.

You can then find out how people really value labor hours.

(Look at the option to produce Iron Ore yourself, ignore Coal.)

Doing ship building can be rewarding or a bear trap. It's for everyone to decide for themselves.

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15403-npc-ships-ridiculously-low-prices-time-to-get-rid-of-this/

By now you should be able to identify trade/craft opportunities.

Go retail: http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/15026-pvp1-july-tobbies-tobacco-imperium/

Or go sub crafter with Med/Large Carriages.

And finally barter back to breach the different money models each clan has.

At the end everybody pays the same amount of resources for a given set of materials.

(Not to mention bypassing the contract cost, which should really be eliminated anyway. )

[mikawa]

Make the decision whether to craft or not depend on the fact if crafting is enjoyable for you or not. I thought at the beginning it's way too complex for me to enjoy but when I managed to craft the first few ships my opinion changed. It's really nice to be able to craft your own gold ships and not to depend only on the ship market. Now I'm level 33 and I can help I you have further questions.

[Helbent]

Thanks for all the replies. It's been helpful!

A follow up question: when you guys talk about selling hours, I am assuming you mean I don't do any actual material collection myself? Just use my hours to convert other people's material for them and charge them a fee per hour I used? Which gives me some money and also the craft XP I need?

[Helbent]

Yep you got it

Alright I will give that a try tonight when I get on! Thanks for the help!