Flying Lab Software has published a lengthy dev journal detailing their plans to tackle economic problems within Pirates of the Burning Sea.
Over the last several months, the Design team has been gathering data about the economy from a wide variety of sources. We looked at how goods were produced, how often they were made, how they were exchanged, where they were distributed, and how those goods were consumed. We looked at topics in the forums and survey results and tried to match them up with hard data.
The Economy was designed with one main goal in mind: large scale construction of ships. It is successful at this goal but only in a certain context. Large Societies can effectively plan out huge production chains with efficient output and virtually guarantee they have the goods they need at any time. There are some byproducts to this: a well executed production chain has very little left over to sell to outside customers. It also limits the flexibility of individual players in the chain, as they must perform specific tasks at regular intervals, in order to maintain the flow of ships and not waste labor.
Read more here.
