The reason that knives becomes better is because you have reached lowest possible steel price at Dakota's sisters store.View attachment 3622820
I did some math a few weeks ago. Depending on supply and market location: knives, rifles, shotguns, and plasma rifles shuffle in and out of being most profitable investment. When knife supply is at lowest level, they win out overall.
And while that may seem like a good thing... It actually is a very bad thing for the long term sustainability of the production.
Why? Because a single efficient workshop, with 9000 production points, will consume 1800 steel per day and only 140 steel per day will replenish on a dying world (and I'm guessing 700 on non-dying world).
So, when producing 900 knives per day you will reduce the available steel market supply by 1100-1660 units per day.
If instead producing 100 rifles, you will only consume 600 steel per day, which will then never run out on normal difficulty and last several years longer on a dying world.
It is of course possible to avoid this by producing plasma rifles, but then the problem shifts towards lack of dura steel instead.
Which probably means that the best compromize is auto rifles.
If you wanted to visualize this dimension, then you could simply add a production points per day value, somewhere in the sheet, and then add columns for steel and durasteel consumption per day, based on that value.
Last edited: