Introducing the Revab Report: what are the most profitable items to produce?

Revab™ stands for Real Value After Bonus. It calculates how much one hundred base production points generate in market value (btc) when applied to a given production item under the best currently available bonuses. The table below shows the latest values for the index.

The Revab™ Index #1 - How much are my 100 production points worth?

Keep in mind that bonuses change over time, so beware of short-lived deposits, battlefield conditions and political trends. The chart below displays the evolution of the Revab™ index over the last two weeks.

Heavy ammo has consistently under-performed, while most other items hover around the 12.5 to 13 Revab™ zone. Petroleum, however, has struggled below that point, while the pill has seen a recent revival with a price increase and the Moroccan narco turn. While still lagging behind top earners, cooked fish, livestock and grain have also gained traction in the last few days.

The Revab™ Report will be published periodically as long as there’s interest from the community. Please don’t hesitate to engage in a debate about the index, even if it means suggesting changes or pointing out flaws or mistakes. This is just a first attempt.

·       The Revab™ index doesn’t consider income taxes, see Revabat below for hired workers.

·       For processed items, the Revab™ index values inputs (e.g. iron for steel) at current market prices. For vertically integrated enterprises, that is, for those that produce their own inputs, see Vertical Integration below.

Further information on the Revab index

The Revab (Real Value After Bonus) index pulls data from the official War Era public API and considers the price of a commodity, input costs (for processed items), the required production points and the best available production bonuses available around the world. We then calculate how much one base production point would generate in profit if the product were to be sold on the market and finally multiply that number by 100 for better visualization.

Revab Formula

Let’s get into a practical example. Right now, livestock is being sold at 1.57 btc. It’s a raw product with no input costs and producing one livestock unit (informally known as a cow) requires 20 production points. There’s currently a 60% bonus in Connacht, Ireland.

Example: Livestock

That means 100 base production points spent on producing livestock in Connacht, Ireland, will generate 12.56 btc on the market (minus the sales tax).

For processed commodities, we simply deduct from the item price the cost of the inputs at current market prices. For instance, the production of one steak, priced at 3.68 btc, requires one livestock (1.57 btc) and 20 production points, with a current bonus of 15% in Serbia.

Example: Steak

Therefore, if the factories are already installed, producing livestock is currently more profitable than producing steak. We’ll consider the cost of relocation and chasing bonuses around the world further on.

Vertical Integration

What if instead of sourcing livestock from the market, I chop up my own cows? With vertical integration, the Revab index of this combo will lie somewhere in-between. In fact, we should consider the pair as a single commodity with the price of the processed item (in this case, steak), no input costs, and the sum of the production points required. However, we must consider the production bonuses for both items, which effectively reduces the necessary production points. With 60% bonus, to get one livestock (20 production points), we only use 12.5 (20/1.6). To avoid applying the bonus of the processed item to the input item, we should treat it in the same way. With a 15% bonus, one steak takes 17,4 production points (20/1.15).

Example: Steak + Livestock (Combo)

The table below lists the Revab index for currently available combos.

Revab - Combos

Deposits, politics and chaos

The Revab index is useful to determine in which commodities production points are most profitably applied. A seasoned industrialist, however, knows that bonuses can be fleeting. Deposits come and go, elections can change a government’s priorities, parliaments may pick a new specialization item. And moving isn’t free, neither is converting factories to a different type of production.

In theory, the market should adjust so that items with short-lived production bonuses (such as deposits) achieve higher prices to compensate. In practice, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The current top item, steel produced in South Africa, does not rely on deposits. Generally, chasing short-lived deposits is not worth it unless an industrialist can mobilize a massive amount of production points.

In any case, it is possible to estimate potential gains from sudden deposit discoveries. When it comes to passive income, a fully upgraded company will generate 168 base production points per day. The cost of moving and converting a factory is approximately 16 btc under current prices. For a one-day bonus, therefore, one would need over 9 points in Revab increase to compensate (16 divided by 168, multiplied by 100), which is nearly impossible considering that the top-rated item currently hovers around 13 Revab (that is, production generates 13 btc in total for 100 base production points). That cost is diluted daily, but even for a bonus with a duration of 5 days, a 1.9 Revab increase would be needed, which is still unlikely to occur.

On the other hand, the cost can be diluted much more if self-work and hired workers are involved. In that case, a single company can process many more production points for the duration of a bonus. Currently, a non-deposit item (steel) sits at the top, but the Revab index may indicate profitable deposit-chasing opportunities in the future.

Revabat

The issue with hiring workers is that, as has been noted elsewhere, this activity is usually not reliably profitable at the moment except through crony arrangements. Nevertheless, the Revab index can be extended to assess the profitability of such enterprises. Notably, income taxes should be taken into account. With that in mind, we calculate the Revabat index – Real Value After Bonus and Taxes. Revabat shows how much a worker would earn if he was paid the full value of his production points, minus what is taken away by taxation. The capitalist in charge, of course, will want to pay as little as possible, and in a competitive labor market, lower taxes mean you can pay lower gross wages while workers get the same net wages. In fact, tax disparities make the Revabat ranking look quite different from the Revab one, so keep that in mind if you’re relying on hired labor.

Revabat (Real Value After Bonus and Taxes)

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