Demand

Overview

 * Demand consists of 7 categories: Food, Tools, Meat, Drink, Spices, Goods, and Security.  Each of these categories has either one or more associated shops that are unlocked after either reaching a certain level or completing specific quest lines.  You can access the demand window by either clicking on the population icon in the lower right of the screen or by clicking the on the demand specific icon in the upper left of the window where you choose goods from a shop.


 * Demand Window.jpg
 * Picture needs to be replaced with an updated picture that shows the white bars.


 * The numbers on the left show how many workers you have devoted to each Demand category (how many people are at work in Farms, Fields, Raptor Ranches, et cetera). The colored bar to the right shows a vague representation of how much Demand there is for each category in your Outpost.

How the Demand Bar Works

 * The colored bar for each category starts filling from the left to the right (see table below for rates). Each time you order a good from a shop the demand bar decreases based on the total XP reward of that job. You will also notice a white line close to the left end of the bar. This white line represents the minimum amount of demand necessary to receive full gold and XP benefits from each good in your shops for that specific category. Each category takes approximately 1 hour 15 minutes to refill to the white line after being fully depleted.


 * It is important to note that the gold and XP rewards do NOT increase the higher the demand bar fills. All that matters is that the demand bar is at or above the white line to receive the full rewards.


 * Below is the demand table extracted from game files (specifically economy.json). At each level, it shows the hourly demand recovery rate and the maximum demand for each category.

Blue Arrow Goods

 * A green arrow next to a job represents that demand is at least at or above the white line and you are receiving full gold and XP benefits if you start the job. However, you will notice that usually there is one good that has a blue arrow.  This represents an item that is in higher demand, which just means that it is receiving an extra bonus to both gold and XP for a limited period of time.


 * The time that an item keeps this extra bonus can vary between a minimum of 4 hours and a maximum of 30 hours. The extra bonus can vary between 50% and 150% to both gold and XP.


 * It is usually recommended to run the job that has the blue arrow, but there are instances in which that may not be correct. See the strategy section for more information on this.

Strategy

 * This strategy section is aimed for players trying to maximize their XP output. To do this requires multiple check-ins per day as it is important to stagger your production jobs within each demand category.


 * Choosing the Right Shops
 * The most important thing to do is to have the highest XP output shop in each category that you are able to build or afford if it is a nanopod shop. To determine the best shop in each category, you can refer to the efficiency tables at the end of this article. The important column for comparison is XP/Hr. To maximize XP output you want to earn as much XP/hour as possible regardless of how many population are used. To do this you may need to turn off military buildings and/or resource nodes. This is the order of shops in each category from lowest to highest XP/Hour...


 * Food - Bakery < Farm < Field < Convenince Store < Protein Factory < Organic Grocer
 * Tools - Tool Shop < Machine Shop < Zoey’s Tool Shop
 * Meat - Raptor Ranch < Sandworm Ranch/Mammoth Pen(both are roughly equal) < Boar Pen** < Frontier Butcher < Ramsey's BBQ
 * Spices - Greenhouse (only shop available)
 * Drink - Distillery < Brewery
 * Goods - Sweatshop < Uniform Factory < Plantation < Orphanage
 * Security - Home Security Store < Home Defense Expo


 * ** Now that when the Boar Pen has two blue arrows it is better than Sandworm Ranch/Mammoth Pen


 * If you are not yet at the max level you will likely want to keep around your lower XP shops as you may need them for missions. Once you complete all of the missions, go ahead and delete them to build better shops. You can always rebuild deleted shops if needed again for a mission.


 * Understanding How to Use Demand Bar
 * Two of the most important things to understand are that the demand bar cannot go negative and that it is NOT a bad thing if you get the message that demand has been met. In fact if you are managing demand properly, you should get that message nearly every single time you start a job.


 * It’s easiest to explain with an example. These are made up numbers to simplify the example. Let’s say a full demand bar has a value of 100, the recovery rate is 10 demand/hour, and the white bar is placed at 10, meaning demand has to be at least 10 to get the full gold and xp. Now let’s say that the 24 hour job uses up 95 of the demand. So if you have a full demand bar it goes from 100 to 5 and demand is met because it is below 10. You will receive the demand has been met message, but will still receive the full gold and XP rewards for the job.


 * This is where strategy comes into play. We already established that demand cannot be negative. Thus, any job which would reduce demand to less than zero reduces it to zero instead. So if you do the 24-hour job which in my example is worth 95 demand when the demand bar is at 10 instead of at 100 you get the full benefit but only had to let demand rise to 10 instead of waiting for it to rise to 100. So in this example I could run ten 24-hour jobs in the same time it takes a person who is letting demand completely fill to run one job.


 * Thus, the best strategy is not to sync up all of your shops, but rather to stagger them so that you start a new job each time the white bar reaches the white line. In the actual game that time is approximately every 1 hour 15 minutes.


 * The higher the demand bar is does not mean you will get higher xp or higher gold. All that matters is that the demand bar is above the minimum threshold. If you let it rise above that you are actually wasting some amount of demand because you could have started a job sooner than you did and thus be able to start the jobs after that sooner. If you are doing this correctly it should look like your demand is completely empty for all categories all the time.


 * With the exception of when you wake in the morning, if demand is significantly above the white line each time you log in, either you could have more shops in that category, or you could check in more often to increase your XP output, or both.

Tips and Tricks

 * 1 - If you have two or more shops in the same category available for use and demand has just met the white line. Any job you start will likely completely deplete demand.  Instead of letting the other shops sit idle, start short jobs in them, so they are available again by the time demand recovers and you check in again.  Don’t let them just sit idle, unless you need the population elsewhere.


 * 2 - If demand is a little above the white and you have two shops open and a longer job is a blue arrow job, Don’t start that job first. Run a short job in the first shop, so that demand does not dip below the white line, and then run the long job.  If you do this in reverse your short job will be run with depleted demand.  This takes some practice to know if you have enough demand built up that the first job will not bring demand too low and is usually a strategy that is useful in the morning.


 * 3 - Better storage is a hidden bonus to XP production. This is because it frees up workers to build more shops to produce more XP.


 * 4 - Assisting Shops instead of resources or military buildings will help jobs finish quicker and help you earn XP quicker. This is a key part of the strategy used by players who are able to prestige 4+ times per day.  They find other friends who also will assist only shops and then each player benefits from the increased XP.

Food

 * Good-BoarPen-05.png objects are provided by buildings such as the Farm, Bakery, Field, Convenience Store, Protein Factory, and Organic Grocer. They are the earliest items which can be made, and possess the highest amount of demand.


 * Cabbage : When at lower levels, if you are able to play continuously for a length of time, plant cabbage every 5 minutes in a few farms. It will help you progress very quickly because it has one of the highest gold and XP yield per minute and you can harvest 12 times per hour.

Tools

 * Tools are made at the Tool Shop or Machine Shop. A single Tool Shop will not deplete its demand in any significant fashion.

Spices

 * Spices are provided only by the Greenhouse. Demand should be managed closely when using more than one.

Meat

 * Meat is provided through the Raptor Ranch, Boar Pen, Sandworm Ranch, or Mammoth Pen. The only one that requires nanos is the Mammoth Pen and it is not significantly better than either the Boar Pen or the Sandworm Ranch, both of which are fairly equal in terms of XP production.


 * The Boar Pen is one of the best non nano shops for XP production.

Drink

 * Drinks are produced in the Distillery or Brewery, and meet their own special Demand category. Breweries have a fairly significant edge on Distilleries from an XP perspective, and at only 25 nanos it is worth an upgrade to Breweries if you are aiming to maximize your XP output.

Goods

 * Goods are provided by the Sweatshop, Uniform Factory, and Plantation. The Plantation is the best from an XP perspective; however, it costs 70 nanos, which may turn some people away.


 * The Plantation differs from the two shops above in that it receives it's bonuses from agricultural boosts like the farm and the field and also only uses 3 workers instead of 4.


 * The Orphanage easily holds the title for best non-nano shop. Unfortunately it's not unlocked until level 49.

Security

 * Currently there are only two shops for Security, the Home Security Store and the Home Defense Expo. The Store is built using resources and the Expo is built using nanos.


 * The Home Defense Expo is the best buy in the game in terms of XP value compared to nano cost. The 24-hour job is always a blue arrow item (not reflected in the calculations as the amount of bonus varies) in addition to usually 1 other item, which makes it unique compared to other shops.  You can buy 6 Expos for the same price as a single Organic Grocer.  If you are planning to buy more than one or two it really helps if you understand how demand works and know how to manage it.  If you do, this shop will generate an enormous amount of XP.