How to calculate price

Place to post guides, observations, things related to modding that are not mods themselves.
User avatar
darkfrei
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 2905
Joined: Thu Nov 20, 2014 11:11 pm
Contact:

How to calculate price

Post by darkfrei »

Hi all!
How to calculate prices in the game? For example, iron ore needs 2 seconds to mine and one item of iron ore costs 20 credits.

How much costs the iron gear? https://wiki.factorio.com/Iron_gear_wheel
User avatar
DaveMcW
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 3717
Joined: Tue May 13, 2014 11:06 am
Contact:

Re: How to calculate price

Post by DaveMcW »

darkfrei wrote:one item of iron ore costs 20 credits.
There are no credits in the base game, you have to look at the source code of the scenario you are using.
User avatar
darkfrei
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 2905
Joined: Thu Nov 20, 2014 11:11 pm
Contact:

Re: How to calculate price

Post by darkfrei »

DaveMcW wrote:
darkfrei wrote:one item of iron ore costs 20 credits.
There are no credits in the base game, you have to look at the source code of the scenario you are using.
I don't have any scenario. I want to know how to calculate prices.
Nel
Burner Inserter
Burner Inserter
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2017 12:39 pm
Contact:

Re: How to calculate price

Post by Nel »

From my perspective, it is not very clear what exactly you mean, since the game does not have a "price" mechanic, i.e. there is no "currency" with which all items are evaluated by.

Speaking more generally, the price of an item in the normal economy is practically only decided by supply and demand (for some simple item like a toothbrush). The price that an item is usually offered at first is basically the sum of its cost (raw materials, machines, energy, labor, logistics, advertising) plus some kind of desired profit margin, and VAT.

If you want to know how much resources you need to provide for a machine to work at full speed, you use:
[number of raw material] * [final crafting speed of machine after modules etc.} * [time required per recipe as stated in the recipe]
User avatar
bobingabout
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 7352
Joined: Fri May 09, 2014 1:01 pm
Contact:

Re: How to calculate price

Post by bobingabout »

Yeah, I have no idea what you mean either. there is no concept of value in the base game, except for that one scenario where you have the market.
Creator of Bob's mods. Expanding your gameplay since version 0.9.8.
I also have a Patreon.
mrvn
Smart Inserter
Smart Inserter
Posts: 5884
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2016 9:10 am
Contact:

Re: How to calculate price

Post by mrvn »

For me in vanilla the price of something would be the energy required (recursively) to produce it.

- 1 iron ore needs 2s @ 90kW = 180kW to mine
- smelting 1 iron ore takes ~4s @ 180kW = 720kW
- 1 iron plate then costs 900kW
- 1 iron gear wheel needs 2 iron plates and 0.5*0.75s @ 150kW = 56.25kW

for a total of 1856.25kW ignoring inserters (which I do because I'm too lazy to calculate per item cost of inserters at the moment).

This works perfectly fine as long as there is only one way to produce something. In vanilla Iron gear wheels are always made from iron plates, which need iron ore. Everything has a set price and you can compare different production methods like steel furnace vs. electric furnace easily enough.

With Bobs+Angels on the other hand you have various ways to make iron ore that consume different angels ores and produce different side products. Some of those side products you also need. Others you have way too much. So one process might produce more iron ore than another but because you can't get rid of the extra silver ore it produces it is a bad choice. You need dynamic prices there that adjust to the supply and demand of materials. I have a price model there that gives everything a price depending on how much of it available and then recipes have a positive or negative cost computed as price of outputs - price of inputs - energy cost.
Post Reply

Return to “Modding discussion”