# Influence Crew Market - Food Production

This is the tenth in a series stepping through the crew market for [Influence](https://www.influenceth.io/), hoping to find some small nuggests of alpha to help you to make informed decisions when it comes to secondary purchases. For those not familiar, please reference the [Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here](https://wiki.influenceth.io/en/gameplay/crew-members). Check out other installments in this series [here.](https://hackmd.io/@Coldsnap)

Usual caveat: figures and ETH prices in the article were accurate only at the time of writing, but likely to be rapidly outdated as the market moves and new crew are minted. (Maybe not so rapidly these days! Game cannot launch soon enough.)

### Numbers

Clearly, the production, transport and consumption of food across the belt is going to be a pretty vital in-game concept, hence there are multiple job departments devoted to the notion, Food Production being one. Food Prod is the third largest job department.

Not many details have been released on the specific mechanics around food production, and I think this is reflected in the fact there hasn't been a great deal of chat specifically on food so far, that I've seen anyway. So, apart from the fact that it is these crew who will perform the task, details around how food is produced, from what, and where are as yet to be confirmed.

All we know is that it is going to be important, potentially lucrative. You don't want to be left foodless in the middle of the system. Also, Miners gotta eat. Otherwise they, erm, die. Is that going to be a mechanic, I wonder? Maybe they can craft their own default food-sludge.

Tier distribution:

|Tier| Job |Total | Specialists|Citizens|
| ----------- | ----------- | -- | -- | -- |
| T1 | Plant Geneticist|37|8|29
T2 | Nutricianist|117|33|84
T3 | Field Botanist Engineer|260|49|211
T4 | Farmer|326|37|289

### T1 - Plant Geneticist

|Tier | Class| Job | Total | Specialists|Citizens|Floor
| ----------- | ----------- | -- | -- | -- |--|--|
| T1 |Miner| ||||
T1 |Engineer |||||
T1 |Merchant |||||
T1 |Scientist | Plant Geneticist|35|7|28|0.67
T1 |Pilot |Plant Geneticist|2|1|1|9.99

Food Prod crew are some of the cheapest available, and the Scientist T1 is no exception at 0.67 ETH right now. There are several on the market for well below 1 ETH. I think this reflects the above comment re: we're not sure how this is going to work yet. I suspect that the penny has yet to drop as to how important food will be, so for that reason alone is see these prices as bargains. Neglect hunger at your peril!

I do enjoy the pricing of the lone Pilot / Plant Geneticist at close to 10 ETH. Even that might be short selling in the long run, but who has the balls/liquidity to test that right now? Certainly not me!

To be fair, I can see potential for a Pilot who produces their own food. Sure, you're sacrificing Pilot-relevant bonuses (eg Navigation) but given food is something all crews need I can see this being a very handy combo in many situations. Shipping, for example. If you don't absolutely need a min/max pilot why not get double use out of it like this?

### T2 - Nutricianist

|Tier |Class| Job | Total | Specialists|Citizens| Floor|
| ----------- | ----------- | -- | -- | -- | -- |--|
| T2 | Miner| Nutricianist|61|16|45|0.09
T2 |Engineer |||||
T2 |Merchant |||||
T2 |Scientist |Nutricianist|53|15|38|0.24|
T2 |Pilot |Nutricianist|3|2|1|na|

Same story here as T1, with the addition of Miners to the mix. Miner + Food Prod is definitely a synergistic combo to my mind - it's surprising these don't occur at T1. Here you would have a mining crew with bonuses towards food production in addition. I think that's a useful-sounding mix.

Also, at 0.09 ETH these are dirt cheap for T2s across all departments. I think there's some value there.

### T3 - Field Botanist

|Tier | Class| Job | Total | Specialists|Citizens|Floor|
| ----------- | ----------- | -- | -- | -- |--|--|
| T3| Miner| Field Botanist|127|25|102|0.055
T3 |Engineer | ||||
T3 |Merchant | Field Botanist|54|9|45|0.074
T3 |Scientist |Field Botanist|79|15|64|0.12
T3 | Pilot |||||

So T3 drops Pilots, but adds Merchants. Again, I can think of several Merchant-related tasks that would suit a Food Prod role, so at 0.074 these seem good value. It will come down to how food prod mechanics actually work and whether food prod is an entirely stationary task or you can perform off-asteroid. I suspect the latter.

### T4 - Farmer

|Tier |Class| Job | Total | Specialists|Citizens|Floor|
| ----------- | ----------- | -- | -- | -- |--|--|
| T4 | Miner|Farmer|203|25|178|0.029
T4 |Engineer|Farmer|52|2|50|0.038
T4 |Merchant|Farmer|71|10|61|0.039
T4 |Scientist |||||
T4 |Pilot |||||

No Scientists this time, still no Pilots, but Engineers added. I find that anti-thematic... surely there's plenty of Scientists out there who would fancy themselves as Farmers in their dotage?

Lastly, lots of Farmers available - these are some of the cheapest crew you can pick up.

### Summary

My gut feel is that we will see many mass-scale food production teams hanging out on C and CI rocks exploiting organics. There will likely then be separate tasks to transport the food wherever it needs to go (ships, your other rocks, markets, further processing etc) prior to preparation and consumption.

Assuming the above is true, we can theorycraft a stationary food production team as follows:

* 3x Any / Food Prod
* 1x Engineer or Scientist / Technology (for researching better tech and buildings)
* 1x Engineer / Logistics or Maintenance (build and store better)

Get another crew to transport the output. Have another crew mining the rock.

Beyond that, if you have a mixed crew and you fancy the notion of dipping toes into making food, then it doesn't sound like a terrible move just to add a Food Prod crew member (of any kind) if you can spare the slot. As always, we'll see!