Nevermind, answered my own question. The answer is Steel contracts, and leveraging the power of debt by taking as much debt as you can over the longest term period you can to reduce repayments as much as possible, then smashing out large profitable infrastructure.

Hi, do not take too much debt, because the profits are low and interest rates will grind your economy to a halt and you will not be able to afford the mega factory at the end.
I have started with steel industry and paid off my loan in 3 years. Then got another loan and bought 90% shares of competitor before it went from 7M to 17M net worth to grab land for half the price and paid back the loan as quickly as I could. Then focused on the computer R&D. At the very end, I got max loans with max duration to pay for the mega factory.

most profitable > oil > gas > coal > sand = wood > steel > copper wire/tubing > least profitable.
Anything else (cans, ceramics, factories, farms) is unprofitable if you run out of contracts. Also don’t do shipping too early, because the warehouse upkeep is high and it will kill you. (I made that mistake) Deliver everything with trucks until you own 3 states and own all the raw resources (oil, gas, coal, sand, wood).

I wrote up notes while finishing this scenario. I could write up a detailed walkthrough, if somebody needs that.

Hi Peter,

I would like a write-up, as someone else trying the scenario out. I'm finding it tricky not to go bankrupt at the start.

Thank you!

Your way sounds easier.

Instead I used a lot of debt for the first 10 years, taking greater and greater debt, building first the steel industry, then taking the oil and gas industry, finally the clothing industry. iI took advantage of every deal to reduce new or existing loans, and when I got such a deal I would get a big loan that would pay off all the rest. By about year 10 I started paying off the debt. By year 15 I was getting 500,000 to a million profit, and started researching all the components. By year 16-17 I started building the infrastructure.

It was a stressful way of playing though, it was risky, and there was always the danger that I'd taken on too much bankruptcy. The game is too inconsistent with the numbers to know whether something risky is ever going to work.

Word of warning for anyone attempting this. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Binary Switcher takes 120 days to produce! Then the component it's apart of takes another 240. And another component that takes 240 days you need 3 of! So you need to plan for that.

My contracts never seemed to run out, kept doing Steel and Cans the whole way through, they were the only way I got through actually. Kept getting clothing contracts but it stuffed up my chain too much so I started ignoring them.

Oh, and hilariously just as I was going to build the Megafactory I got PR where all buildings were 33% off, so I got the Megafactory at a CHEAPO 33 MILLION!!!! AAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

I didn't buy out my competition either. I did buy Red's Clearview for the Oil and Gas but I didn't buy any shares. I was going to but my town grew too fast and by year 2-3 I got a clothes store and decided to supply Summer Clothes instead. Make fashion, not war, always the way.

And don't even talk to me about shipping, my god! So frustrating! And not in a good way.

The Meet Demand button doesn't take into account travel time. If a shop is over, say, 13 days away, then the items get there inconsistently and I'd get a stockpile. And there was some weird thing where because Warehouse trucks take 2 items, if Supple wasn't divisible by two then, again, you'd miss out on that last item, and I'd get stockpiles. So I either let them take 1 at a time or I send them 2 at a time to the Warehouse. The Warehouses seem to be fine with odd numbers when they're close by, but too far away it does some weird stuff.

Normally detail like this isn't necessary but because Waterworld is so hard my supply chains were designed to perfect efficiency, so if one tiny thing went wrong, I'd get stock piles of Cans, mainly Cans. And then because I was't getting the income from the Cans my whole economy would collapse. My economy was on a knife's edge the entire time.

So anyway, I couldn't be bothered with the frustration so I built a big 'ole Warehouse in Playa Fortuna and sent my Steel, Cans, and Copper Piping there. Besides, at the beginning of the game, before you can build a bridge from Kardinya to Playa Fortuna, I worked out it was cheaper by $300 per despatch to use the Warehouse because the trucks have to travel via Emporium and Wagnagh.

Nice, finishing with a dept cycle is a great challenge!

"The Meet Demand button doesn't take into account travel time."
I completely agree, the "meet demand" and "wait until full" have their own annoying bugs.

However, I dont get why you made cans. Here is the math:
iron/coal mine is producing every 20 days 5 ores, which means 7.5products/month, which means 41.25 / 7.5 = 5.5K upkeep/product
Doing same calculation for steel smelter: 10K upkeep/product
Doing same calculation for can smelter: 17.5K upkeep/product

So to produce one can, you need the upkeep/product for 9 ores, 3 steel and 1 can: 5.5K*9+10K*3+17.5=49.5+30+17.5=97K
So just the upkeep of the production is 97K without any transport. On top of that it takes forever to produce it, which means until your ship with 15 slots gets full, you get a huge pile of cash locked up in physical assets (15*100K=1.5M), causing strong fluctuation to your cashflow.
However, I guess you like challenges ;)
I only wrote the math here, so that people dont try to follow you on this.

Originally posted by pixelpox:

Hi Peter,

I would like a write-up, as someone else trying the scenario out. I'm finding it tricky not to go bankrupt at the start.

Ok, I will try to get a detailed description. Please give me some time. :)

You might be right. I agree those numbers would make it seem like it would be impossible to make a profit with Cans, in fact numbers like those would mean most products in the game are highly unprofitable, and yet playing I know they are. So I'm not sure those numbers reflect what's going on. I'm not dissing your maths either, if anything I'm saying the maths of the game is what the problem is. I've done a lot of work with the numbers and they don't make sense a lot of the time.

In my experience of the game my impression is that most, if not all, tiers are supposed to be more profitable than the tiers below them, after all, if they weren't what would be the motivation to make them? The upkeep is higher, but the profits are way way higher, making the investment worth it.

Off the top of my head the profit of:
Iron ore is $3000
Steel is $10,000
Steel Barrel is $20,000
Steel Can is $30,000

I used 15 days as my standard period, and in 15 days I can produce:
Iron ore 3.75 at a profit of $12,000
Steel 1.12 at a profit of $11,000
Steel Barrels 1.5 at a profit of $30,000
Steel Can 0.64 at a profit of $19,600

Even just looking at these numbers they don't actually convey how profitable cans are, at least in my experience, because in the report sheets Cans are always much more profitable than Barrels and stupidly higher than Steel. For example, off the top of my head:
Monthly profit of 1 Can is $100,000 inc. distribution and exp
Monthly profit of 7 Oil is $30,000 inc. distribution and exp

The higher tiers are way way more profitable than the numbers would suggest and I'm not quite sure why. Especially when it comes to the 12-month report, there seems to be very little relationship between the monthly report and the annual report, like literally some product will have 12 individual months of negative money and then on the annual report it'll magically have $120,000 of profit. Very odd.

To me focusing on the difference between standard price and buying price in the shop is a much better indicator of whether something is going to be profitable or not.

But if anyone wants to number crunch I'd be interested to find out more.

If you are talking about the Production Overview sheet in the game, then I believe those numbers are fake. It is using "Ingredients Value" and not "Ingredients Production Cost". We are producing everything above standard prices in this scenario, so the more ingredients a product has, the more fake the data becomes.

"most, if not all, tiers are supposed to be more profitable than the tiers below them"
Lets approach the problem differently. You have 3 steel at hand and an ironmongery is next to you. You can sell the steel for 32.74K each, making 98.22K or combine the three into a Can and sell it for 83.81K. How would that be more profitable? Transporting 3 products instead of 1 will probably not cost you 98.22K-83.81K=14.41K. Based on my understanding, the goal of higher tiers is that you have higher asset value density and it enables you to sell more products without requiring exponential amount of shops in cities to match your growth. So in normal games, it allows you to sell more products, while still being profitable to grow your economy. But this scenario is, as always, a different story.

Okay, so, I did an experiment on Steel, Cans, and Barrels in the Waterworld scenario. In the three conditions I sold the equivalent of 2 cans, so 2 cans, or 3 steel, or 3 barrel's, with their corresponding infrastructure intact.

It was as I said, Cans are much more profitable.

In fact, given that I had to take a loan in order to pay for the factories, Cans allowed me to pay my loan repayments and still make a profit, while the other two I had a loss each month.

Shop Price
Steel - 34k
Barrel - 43k
Cans - 85k

My Total Profit each month was this:
Steel only: -3k
Steel producing 3 Barrels only: -107k
Steel producing 2 Cans only: 60k

So as you can see Cans are super profitable. Cans have a total profit $63k greater than if you just sold the Steel in the first place. As I said, the higher tier items are much more profitable than the numbers suggest, and upkeep isn't accurate when it comes to figuring out what will be profitable.

As I said before, however, I still don't know where the numbers actually come from.

As a surprising bonus, I discovered the cashflow of cans was superior to the cashflow of steel and barrels too. My guess is the fewer the items, and the longer they take to be produced, the more they are protected from the fluctuations of source materials down the supply line.

My best advice to any new players is to focus on the difference between the Average Price and the Buying Price of the different products. Percentage increase doesn't mean anything, because having 150% increase in sand raises it from 2k to 3k. Woohoo! While having a 150% in Cans for example raises it from 57k to 86k, a much heftier amount.

Matter settled :)

Sry, you are right, I remembered incorrectly. You are producing 2 cans from 3 steel, not 1 can from 3 steel. :)

To get back to the math: 97K upkeep will produce 2 cans.
And if you have 3 steel and you sell each for 32.74K, you make 98.22K, but 2 cans gives you 167,62.K

Originally posted by peter:

Sry, you are right, I remembered incorrectly. You are producing 2 cans from 3 steel, not 1 can from 3 steel. :)

Yes, that's correct.

You've forgotten that it takes longer to make Cans than it does to make Steel. Sorry, I should've explained that properly. Every 15 days you need 3 Steel to create either 2 Cans or 3 Barrels. Obviously that doesn't make sense because Barrels require 2 Steel, but it makes sense in terms of the supply and demand of the production chain. I forgot to convert my maths language into communicable concepts haha! In terms of production, it's 6 Steel, 3 Barrels or 2 Cans but in terms of a 15-day time period its 3 Steel, 3 Barrels and 2 Cans.

That's where your calculation of 3 Steel vs 1 Can is incorrect. In the same amount of time I can create the 3 Steel that is needed for the 2 Cans, I can create 2 Cans.

So every 15 days I can sell either the 3 Steel for 98k or I can sell the 2 Cans for 166k.

Does that make sense?

Steel is produced every 26.67 days, while Cans are produced every 46.67. So I only need to produce Steel slowly while the Cans are being produced. If we convert that to 15-day periods, then I only need to make 3 Steel for every 2 Cans that are produced.

:)

Yes, I will add Cans to my walkthrough write-up, it seems profitable. I did calculate the production time of 46.67 days into the upkeep/product calculation.

Do you have any tips/tricks that I should consider for the walkthrough for beginners?
I will start writing it this weekend.

I think shipping has so many pitfalls that I can not recommend it to beginners.
It's a logistic nightmare, needs a lot of attention. It locks up cash into products that wait for a full ship, causing cashflow fluctuation. Each warehouse costs 600K and 21K upkeep/month. If you forget to select "wait until full", it will send 1 product/ship, causing financial damage. When you are sending ships to fulfill steel contracts, you may end up sending too much or too few by accident. Trucks are way easier to deal with.

When you say 'beginners' I assume you mean people who are trying to complete Waterworld. Beginners shouldn't attempt Waterworld until they're familiar with the game.

I would like to say that those attempting Waterworld would understand the complexities of the game and so would be able to handle all the niggling subtleties of Warehouse use. BUT because the Warehouses seem to add more frustration than anything else, I don't think it's necessary to include them. You can still turn a profit without them. I never used any ships/trains/zeppelins to finish the scenario. For anyone new their goal is probably just to finish it, let alone finish it with all the bells and whistles the game offers.

Every product can turn a profit, it's just knowing which products are the most profitable and weighing that against whether they can pay off the loan repayments necessary to build the infrastructure.

Also, though I have no evidence, it feels like population growth is related to contracts. If the cities aren't growing the contracts will dry up, which means you can't just focus on purely profitable products, you also have to fully supply some of the products.

I've ended up liking this scenario because you have to balance profit and contracts with loan repayments and fully supplying products to keep growth up. And unlike the normal game if you can't balance all these things you won't turn a profit.