Profitability

Overview
This page covers the profitability of the structures in Paradise Island HD. All structures have different income in varying time spans, making it difficult to see their relative profitability at a glance.

Also, even when your Island's borders are extended all the way, you will not be able to fit all structures on it at their maximum number. So at some point you will need to decide which structure to build in your remaining available land. In the beginning of your game you might opt for quick money makers, whereas later you might want to build some slower cash cows.

Take a look at the tables and graphs below for help with this decision. They show a variety of considerations, from the effect of totems to accounting for energy requirements. For this reason it is important to look at what factors apply to each graph or table and how they relate to your island and current goals for the game.

For ease of comparison the income figures for all tables and for each upgrade level have been converted to income per hour.

Income per hour without repair costs
The last column shows the Income per Hour per Tile, which are the best figures for comparison. If you have built one or more Totems of Prosperity, add 10% to these figures for every Totem you have. More of that in the next chapters.

Table of income per hour without repair costs



NOTE: The graph shows income per hour collecting income continuously. Once the green $ appears the building stops accumulating income, so if you leave the green $ sitting there, income per hour will drop. Note also that the graph holds true for collecting income at any time during the yellow $. ie. If you hit the Hot Dog yellow $ every 84seconds (1:24) which is the fastest you can hit it, you will collect $24to$25 x 43 times (give or take rounding) = $1050. Waiting for the green $ to appear but not linger, you'd collect $35 x 30 = $1050. (Ignoring repair costs and times, see next chapter).

Income per hour, repair costs included
The earnings are greatly impacted by the cost of repairs made to your structures. Each structure's Upgrade level has its own repair cost. With the repair costs and time taken into account, the profit figures dramatically change, a structures with an apparently high income per hour can turn out to be one of the worst performers.

The user ParadiseAdi found, via reverse-engineering, the code used for the repair probability:


 * isBroken is invoked after every collection (click on yellow/green buck) of the money
 * repair_counter counts collections until the building is broken which resets the counter
 * randomInt(a,b) returns an integer x: a <= x < b

This means the following per structure:


 * In the first 7 collections after a build, repair or upgrade of that structure, you will never get a repair.


 * after that, the chance on a repair increases with each collection


 * if you survived 22 collection for that structure, you will get a repair at collection 23.

The long term chance to get a repair is 7.236%

The income per hour after repair is calculated as:

income_per_hour = (income - (p * repaircosts)) / (income_hours + (p * repair_hours))

with p = 0.07236

The repair costs differ per structure, but all repair costs increase with 20% for each Upgrade level. During the time a structure is being repaired, it does not generate any income.

Table of income per hour inclusive repair costs and time

The next graph shows that it is not profitable to upgrade a Burger restaurant. Its highest hourly income is in its initial state ($ 607, after upgrade 5 it is $ 217.). However, XP does increase at levels 2 and 4, which is important to note for such a low cooldown building (for most of the game XP is more important than money). Update a Firework store and a Villa to max upgrade 3, and a European Country house and Bavarian Inn to max upgrade 4, after this the income per hour is lower. <= Noting that all these examples as with the graph below are based on zero Totems and zero Oracles. With 3 Totems and 3 Oracles, they all increase in Profitability each upgrade, so a Level 5 Burger restaurant and a Level 5 European Country house give both an increased Income per hour and also very high XP per hour.



Take into account Repair costs and Repair rates, which are fixed regardless of collecting on the yellow or green dollar, and you find that collecting on the yellow dollar massively reduces your profit per hour. That is, your repair cost overhead is a much larger percentage of your taken income.

eg: The Burger Restaurant at Level 0 - collect on the green $ as soon as it changes green, you get $ 607 / hour. But collect on the yellow $ as soon as it appears, you actually lose $ -286 per hour.

So be aware that collecting income on the yellow will slide every bar graph down.

Other interesting graphs would be income per hour per cell space. Hot Dog stands, gift shops would shoot up higher, Golf Courses drop way down, and all the casinos, pyramids, etc drop several places.

The cost of building, staffing cost, generator cost and upgrade cost all need to be taken into account before earning a net profit. eg: A Bavarian Inn takes 150 power units and 65 employees to get off the ground, which costs about $1.5m in overhead costs before spending the $700,000 building cost.

And to get a pizza place from Level 4 to Level 5 costs $730,808 to upgrade for an extra $ 556 per collection. That means you need to wait for 1316 x green $s for the upgrade to pay for itself. After more than 1 year you have one upgrade level paid for. Then start paying off the admin staffing costs and generator costs. Then you can start earning an hourly profit.

Limited Editions income per hour including repairs
Table of income per hour including repair costs and time for Limited Edition structures

Note: Given the cost to acquire these limited structures and the relatively very low upgrade costs, it would be pointless for anyone not to immediately upgrade these to their highest level, thus lets just use the Upg Level 5 values for comparison of these moving forwards.



Special Events income per hour including repairs
From late in 2011 the game started offering Time Limited Special Events. They make available limited buildings that can only be bought using special resources collected by participating in the event and by completing all tasks issued you can complete the event by building a unique very special building.

Note: Given the cost to acquire these limited structures and the relatively very low upgrade costs, it would be pointless for anyone not to immediately upgrade these to their highest level, thus lets just use the Upg Level 5 values for comparison of these moving forwards.

Impact of 70% Collections
Collecting at 70% will increase the XP gained per hour because you get full XP, you can demonstrate that the XP increase will always be 40.75 % as shown below. But the money profitability will decrease. The income will be 70% of the full income, keeping the income per hour the same, but because the cycles are shorter and the probability and costs of repairs don't change, the costs of repairs will increase. In some cases, collecting at 70% will make you lose money. A few examples: Note that Cottage and Burger Restaurant would generate loss if collected at 70%, Burger Restaurant specially will be a disaster in that case, with a loss per hour greater than the gain of most buildings. On the other hand, the Bungalow will loose only 5%. This is determined by the Repair Cost/Income Cost Ratio, the greater it is, more you will loose collecting at 70%.

Impact of Totems and Oracles on profitability
Totems and Oracles greatly impact the profitability of each structure by both increasing the profit per collection and reducing repair costs and duration. In general it is more of an advantage to purchase Totems of Prosperity as opposed to Oracles of Fortification; though some structures are exceptions to this rule.

The modified calculation for profitability is: Repair Required Percentage (RR) = 7.236% = 0.07236 Totem Bonus (TB) = 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 [zero, 1, 2, or 3 Totems] Oracle Bonus (OB) = 1.0, 0.9, 0.8, 0.7 [zero, 1, 2, or 3 Oracles] Income Per Hour = (Income*TB - RR*RepairCosts*OB) / (IncomeHours + RR*RepairHours*OB) Income Per Hour = (Income * 1.3 - 0.07236 * RepairCosts * 0.7) / (IncomeHours + 0.07236 * RepairHours * 0.7)

For example the Luxury Cottage at upgrade level 5 will produce an after repairs income of $1364/hr with no Totems, $1917/hr with 3 Totems of Prosperity, $1524/hr with 3 Oracles of Fortification, and $2083/hr with 3 of each Totems and Oracles.

A second example is the Burger Restaurant at upgrade level 5 will produce an after repairs income of $217/hr with no Totems, $1846/hr with 3 Totems of Prosperity, $1800/hr with 3 Oracles of Fortification, and $3446/hr with 3 of each Totems and Oracles.

It is important to keep in mind on the short duration collection structures such as the Burger Restaurant this assumes perfect collections on the green $, which is an unlikely 160 collections per day. A more conservative estimate of 54 collections per day (3 times per hour for 18 hours) would change the IncomeHours value from 0.15 to 0.44 and radically alter the profitability numbers [Burger Restaurant: $75/none, $638/Totems3, $618/Oracles3, $1183/Totems3+Oracles3]

Profit per Hour per Tile Minus Repairs
{Charts Updated Jan 28th, 2012 to include all current buildings} Ezcry4t3d 01:57, January 18, 2012 (UTC)

Details, for those that care, are below the charts. Some repair values used for the newest buildings are estimates.

With NO bonus buildings, and subtracting repair costs, the top profit/hour/tile buildings, including space for roads and power are:



'With 3 Totems of Prosperity and 3 Oracles of Fortification', and subtracting repair costs, the top profit/hour/tile buildings, including space for roads and power are:



'''Top Profit/Hour/Tile (Including Road & Electric) Minus Repairs with 3 Totems and 3 Oracles Weighted bias for collection times! '''



'''New Chart! No €? No Problem! Here's the top Profit/Hour/Tile (Including Road & Electric) Minus Repairs with 3 Totems and 3 Oracles Weighted bias for collection times for buildings that can be built without using € only!'''



Additional information:

Some values are ESTIMATES or were obtained from unverified online sources. Some values may change in newer game versions. PLEASE let me know if something needs corrections.

These assume you are collecting income as soon as the $ turns green. Obviously this is an unrealistic scenario, especially for buildings that have short collection times. It is impossible to properly weight for this in a spreadsheet, as it is an individual preference how often you check the game. The weighted bias chart attempts to estimate profit based on 3 collections per day (roughly every 8 hours).

The numbers after the building name are the improvement level. The charts have been changed to show only fully improved buildings because we assume you'll upgrade fully eventually.

This assumes you have intelligently laid out your roads to use the least road possible, and are not "cheating" by deleting your roads after the buildings are placed.

The space used for power is estimated based on game experience. Differing combinations of windmills, generators, and/or nano-generators will slightly change these values, however, even changing them by 50% has little effect on the rankings.

Without any of the bonus buildings, EVERY building makes a profit over the long term. If you don't believe it, write down how much money you have and stop collecting from all but the building you suspect to be unprofitable. After a few 100 collections, notice that you now have MORE money than you started with. {The Villa was unprofitable at some improvement levels when first added to the game, but this was corrected in a later game version.}

I have an extensive interactive Google Spreadsheet which calculates a huge amount of information about Paradise Island. This information is currently maintained by ezcry4t3d and Sir Awesome III. This information was gathered from a statistical analysis of the game, and various data sources online. You can view my spreadsheets HERE {Use the File -> Download As option to save a copy of the spreadsheet if you want to edit the values.}

 If you'd like to see other variations of the charts above feel free to download a copy of the spreadsheets, change the variables you want on the variables sheet and check out the chart sheets that automatically update. If you're not great with spreadsheets, I'll happily create almost any chart for an appropriate PayPal Donation. :P Ezcry4t3d 01:57, January 18, 2012 (UTC)

Edit: I have updated the spreadsheet with all missing buildings and will update it from time to time. If you are interested in downloading just visit my Profile Page Mister MS (talk) 23:47, November 13, 2012 (UTC)