Labor Cost Analysis - Ideas

betame · 2019-01-30 13:29:20

How would YOU quantify the labor cost of items?

any ideas at any time appreciated
(My best {non-useful} attempt at an answer is in the following post)

Why the question:
Essentially everything in the game can be ascribed a labor cost***. The common metric of labor would allow comparisons between, say, the cost of iron vs soil. Or help decide if upgrading a well will improve the quality of life for your village overall. All this to improve decision-making in order to save effort.

I’m defining labor as: the subjectively boring parts of the game. (i.e. repetitive crafting, carrying, etc.)

Personally, my primary goal is to define the relative cost of food options because I like feeding masses, but don’t like the work.

***When thinking about what each object in the game took to make, it always boils down to the labor costs of gathering specific natural resources plus the labor cost of crafting them together.
For example,
water costs: crafting labor + gathering wood + an axe chop for the kindling.
That axe chop in turn costs: crafting labor + gathering wood + gathering iron
So water essentially costs: crafting labor + gathering wood&iron

DISCLAIMERS:
Because labor is subjective, so is cost; If a bunch of people have fun making carrot pie, let them eat pie!

Also, value is not dictated by cost nor by utility; If the smith is down to just steel scraps, the next shipment of iron is much more precious than if there was already an iron pile by the forge. And if someone’s life goal is to build a room, they’ll place value in big stones and couldn’t care less about milkweed.

Cost =/= Value
Profit ~= Value - Cost

Last edited by betame (2019-02-28 05:14:30)

betame · 2019-01-30 13:30:28

(Gameplay tests would give the most accurate results, with enough data samples.)

Here’s my current best attempt at labor quantification:
It’s centered around the time spent carrying items between locations, though in real villages the distribution of locations varies. Also, I haven’t yet factored in crafting time (once all ingredients have been brought together) — total # of clicks / clicksPerSecond is probably a good start.

Notes:
Walk speed = 3.75 tiles per second (via Jason’s post)
Horses double the walking speed (see OneTech)
Carts/ baskets reduce the number of trips needed by their holding capacity

RENEWABLE NATURAL RESOURCES have the simplest cost: once found, how long does it take to walk there/back? (Their scarcity based on their respawn rate changes value, not cost)

NON-RENEWABLE NATURAL RESOURCES have a growing cost: the ideal case is that we grab the nearest resource at all times, but in reality, there’s a cost of exploring to find the resource, and also those resources are clustered

For the case of iron,
IRON COST: ~3 minutes per iron?

viewTiles = [5~15]
Chance for badlands biome = 1/7
Chance the tile has an object ~= 8.37 (based on Jason, and overworld pictures)
Chance the object is iron = 1.43% (auto-calculated on OneTech)

If you walk in a straight line in uncharted territory,
Mindless walk time per iron = 7*8.37*(1/.0143) / (~10 viewTiles * 3.75 tile per second) = ~2 minutes per iron + the walk through the pre-searched territory

Ideal WalkTime to ground iron = sqrt([radius from settlement to first badland’s iron*2]^2 + [ground iron gathered/(.0143/7/8.37)]) / 2 / 3.75
Ideally, the first 15 ground iron may be found in a 30~60 second walk.
The 50th ground iron would be ~60 second walk.
The 200th ground iron would be ~120 second walk.

I’d say the reality falls somewhere between mindless and ideal, but who really knows.
Another limitation of this kind of analysis is that iron is clustered, and veins expedite things.
Surface iron represents 1/3 of the total iron in a given area.

SOIL COST (+~15 pie food): ~12 seconds?
One pie-compost cycle involves moving between stations ~43 times if cartless. If each station is about 5s away, that’s 3.5 minutes of walking for each pie-compost cycle (16.75 soil profit, plus 4 mutton pies and 1 sheepskin). So each soil would cost ~12 seconds of labor
Note: the labor cost of the ~.00175 iron is less than a second

WATER COST: ~1.5 seconds?
Every 20 buckets of water from a Newcomen pump involves moving between stations ~6 times. If each station is about 5s away, that’s 30 seconds for 20 water.
Each water would cost ~1.5 seconds, plus a tiny amount of iron for the kindling.

If you’ve looked this far, maybe also see my resources per food statements.

Bread vs Popcorn?
Stew vs Mango?
My current estimates would place soil as the main factor, so popcorn and stew.

Kerosen Upgrade?
It's a very rough guess, but I'm not convinced it saves labor overall, even for a full week town.

Backpacks, carts, horses?
I'm pretty sure those can all be proved worth their crafting time.

Last edited by betame (2019-01-30 14:02:34)

Booklat1 · 2019-01-30 15:47:29

There are a few things that seem to be easy to find records of, which might give us some ideas on actual labour involved. How much iron can someone usually forge in one go? how many pies can be cooked?

For now I think the best thing is having a realistic grasp of how much iron costs in labour as most non-labour costs of goods can be transformed into iron costs. Since there is both ground iron and mine iron each should also have their own average costs involved. I believe there might be slightly less rng for ground iron (since its frequency of biomes x frequency of iron that matters, without accounting amount of iron per mine).

antking:]# · 2019-01-31 01:34:57

I see what you mean, this is also how life works, the happier some thing makes you the more likely you would want to have it, however this depends on the situation!
EXP.
you are stranded in the desert and you get the option of a Dimond or a water bottle. Now most people would choose the water bottle as it increase your chances of survival!
however if you were in a game show, most people would choose the Dimond, because they don't need the water as urgently!

Now think back to the scenario of you in the dessert, in stead of only being offered one Dimond or water bottle every 50 feet you are given the same option. at first the clear choose would be the water bottle, but the more water bottles you get the less urgent your situation becomes, so the value of the water bottle increase, and soon your choosing the Dimond over the water bottle, because you have enough bottles to survive the trip.

most of use live in the area where the Dimond would always be more valuable then the water. even in OHOL you can see this, at first people concerned about survival and then crowns and yum meter. it's all about perspective!

betame · 2019-01-31 12:30:25

Booklat1 wrote:

There are a few things that seem to be easy to find records of, which might give us some ideas on actual labour involved. How much iron can someone usually forge in one go? how many pies can be cooked?

My estimates:
---Pies per hot oven depends on how many people are helping. Each person can probably bake at least 30 if not 60 pies in the minute it remains hot. I'm imagining the frequency in which I can grab raw pies.
---Iron ore->wrought iron->steel ingot->steelwork. Imagining myself, I think with good setup I can heat about 9 objects and progress each of them one step of the chain with each firing forge. Pein appears to be the master at this, and can time multiple steps together. Pein's also noted that having a smart assistant can squeeze more out of each firing. It's hard to say what the average is.

But I believe the time-sensitive parts of pies and forging are a detailed fraction of the labor required for their whole crafting process, even if a second kindling has to be thrown in due to a slow/failed attempt.

Booklat1 wrote:

For now I think the best thing is having a realistic grasp of how much iron costs in labour as most non-labour costs of goods can be transformed into iron costs. Since there is both ground iron and mine iron each should also have their own average costs involved. I believe there might be slightly less rng for ground iron (since its frequency of biomes x frequency of iron that matters, without accounting amount of iron per mine).

yep.
When thinking about what each object in the game took to make, it always boils down to the labor costs of gathering specific natural resources plus the labor cost of crafting them together.
For example,
water costs crafting labor + gathering wood + an axe chop for the kindling.
That axe chop in turn costs crafting labor + gathering wood + gathering iron
So water essentially costs crafting labor + gathering wood/iron

Iron is the most precious natural resource, but I'm stuck unable to refine my estimates.

Last edited by betame (2019-02-07 02:58:44)

Starknight_One · 2019-01-31 17:04:52

betame wrote:

Booklat1 wrote:
There are a few things that seem to be easy to find records of, which might give us some ideas on actual labour involved. How much iron can someone usually forge in one go? how many pies can be cooked?
My estimates:
---Pies per hot oven depends on how many people are helping. Each person can probably bake at least 30 if not 60 pies in the minute it remains hot. I'm imagining the frequency in which I can grab raw pies.

I've never had 10 baskets of pies to bake before. That would be fun.

I think the last time I baked, we had, oh, around 18-20 pies. Most of them loose. But there were 3 of us, so we easily got them done. I could have done them all myself, if they were in baskets, with time to spare... so 30 sounds like a decent average. I can't even imagine having 60 plates available!

CrazyEddie · 2019-02-12 21:57:53

Just wanted to (finally!) add that this is a heroic effort, one which I appreciate. I'm not sure a conclusive analysis is workable, but I think a stab in that direction is worthwhile.

pein · 2019-02-13 15:36:51

labor cost nothing, thats why you raise babies, everyone knows that

Anandamide · 2019-02-13 17:04:11

Yasss, for some time during my eve chaining, I was like ,"I'm not doing anything I don't already know how to do why is this so hard" and then it occurred to me that free labor is the best labor.

ryanb · 2019-02-28 08:47:10

While not exactly the same as labor costs, I plan to improve the difficulty calculation on onetech.

Spawn chance of natural objects is the key factor. Any object can be broken down to its natural ingredients which determines how difficult it is to find them and therefore craft them together.

The number of crafting steps should be factored in. Doing 100 transitions is more difficult than 10 transitions.

Transition time is also important. The bell tower is fairly easy if you don’t consider the 3 hour transitions. Transition times which can be done in parallel should not add together.

Reusable objects should be considered. If you use the smithing hammer 10 times to get a shovel, it shouldn’t count as crafting 10 smithing hammers. Only one hammer is required, but we need to consider the durability used on that object.

I have yet to find an elegant solution for computing this for onetech. We need to track all consumed objects and leftover objects to see what is overlapping when combining objects together. For example, if two objects require a fire somewhere in their tree then we only need to craft one fire. However what if one object consumed the fire so it is not reusable, could you craft the other object before the fire was consumed?

Here are some other questions I have:

Should the number of biomes needed to visit increase the difficulty?

Should transitions with objects that decay quickly be more difficult? For example, working with Newcomen engines and forges should raise the difficulty since it requires precise timing.

Should we look for shortcuts in difficulty? For example, one use of a ball of thread from sheep might be less difficult than milkweed if we are crafting something which requires a ton of thread.

In a similar vein, should we be able to check an object’s difficulty given certain conditions? For example, what if you have a sheep farm setup? All the basic tools made? Exausted the nearby iron? Low on milkweed? These all play a part in object difficulty.

In that case, it is possible to reach circular dependencies which is a whole ball of wax that I don’t want to tackle.

betame · 2019-03-10 03:07:30

ryanb wrote:

While not exactly the same as labor costs, I plan to improve the difficulty calculation on onetech.
Spawn chance of natural objects is the key factor. Any object can be broken down to its natural ingredients which determines how difficult it is to find them and therefore craft them together.
The number of crafting steps should be factored in. Doing 100 transitions is more difficult than 10 transitions.
Transition time is also important. The bell tower is fairly easy if you don’t consider the 3 hour transitions. Transition times which can be done in parallel should not add together.
Reusable objects should be considered. If you use the smithing hammer 10 times to get a shovel, it shouldn’t count as crafting 10 smithing hammers. Only one hammer is required, but we need to consider the durability used on that object.
I have yet to find an elegant solution for computing this for onetech. We need to track all consumed objects and leftover objects to see what is overlapping when combining objects together. For example, if two objects require a fire somewhere in their tree then we only need to craft one fire. However what if one object consumed the fire so it is not reusable, could you craft the other object before the fire was consumed?
Here are some other questions I have:
Should the number of biomes needed to visit increase the difficulty?
Should transitions with objects that decay quickly be more difficult? For example, working with Newcomen engines and forges should raise the difficulty since it requires precise timing.
Should we look for shortcuts in difficulty? For example, one use of a ball of thread from sheep might be less difficult than milkweed if we are crafting something which requires a ton of thread.
In a similar vein, should we be able to check an object’s difficulty given certain conditions? For example, what if you have a sheep farm setup? All the basic tools made? Exausted the nearby iron? Low on milkweed? These all play a part in object difficulty.
In that case, it is possible to reach circular dependencies which is a whole ball of wax that I don’t want to tackle.

As you've shown, 'Difficulty' much like 'labor cost' is subjective. I don't believe its possible to create a wholistic picture by looking at the game files. (e. g. a fed domestic lamb is relatively easy to make, but in practice you must also make a pen) I'd leave it to the players to decide, but OneTech remains a powerful information tool.

I really have no clue how OneTech could get any better

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-01-30 13:29:20

Labor Cost Analysis - Ideas

How would YOU quantify the labor cost of items?

#2 2019-01-30 13:30:28

Re: Labor Cost Analysis - Ideas

#3 2019-01-30 15:47:29

Re: Labor Cost Analysis - Ideas

#4 2019-01-31 01:34:57

Re: Labor Cost Analysis - Ideas

#5 2019-01-31 12:30:25

Re: Labor Cost Analysis - Ideas

#6 2019-01-31 17:04:52

Re: Labor Cost Analysis - Ideas

#7 2019-02-12 21:57:53

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#8 2019-02-13 15:36:51

Re: Labor Cost Analysis - Ideas

#9 2019-02-13 17:04:11

Re: Labor Cost Analysis - Ideas

#10 2019-02-28 08:47:10

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#11 2019-03-10 03:07:30

Re: Labor Cost Analysis - Ideas

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