factory help x3AP stuck.

[Gandalf The White]

hi all,

well i bought my first factory in AP. but i seriously need help.

as some of you especially the older timers among us will know i'm blind. i never used to be but now i am totally.
i've gone and bought a factory which is cool because that's exactly what i wished to do. i bought it and placed it. it's an ore mine. *hopes he's put it on the right peace of rock* lol.
anyway i'm having real trouble setting this factory up.
the OCR that i use in conjunction with my screen reader is really not helping me at all. so i'm getting lost in factory setup. prices of products i've set up but it's the rest of it that i cannot set up. basically because i don't know the layout i don't know what i'm doing. can someone tell me please as best they can the exact order of the factory trading menu where you set all this up and what the (default settings) are please? assuming the following peramitors:
1. this is the first factory to be set up.
2. i haven't yet upset any of the races. my nid status is still unholy nomad and split is shameless creature.
in time i will be able to memorise this and hopefully a script can be developed that can perhaps textually output all the settings etc including parameters.

thanks all. i know this is quite a weird sounding request but it will help me a great deal.

[Timsup2nothin]

This one might take a minute to get a good reply. The only way I could answer is to open the game and load a save where I'm more or less equipped to buy a factory and set it up. I'm not at my gaming computer right this moment, and I'd guess that many people who would be happy to help you are going to be similarly stuck at least temporarily.

Be patient and I'm sure you will get an answer. If you don't get a good answer before i get a chance I'll get you one.

[Gandalf The White]

thank you. any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Gandalf The White]

if it helps and you have a dropbox i can send you my save so you can look, at it yourself?

[radcapricorn]

When you're not docked at the mine yourself and open its "Adjust Station Parameters" menu, this is what will be presented for an Ore Mine (I'll use commas to separate entries for clarity, they're only separated with whitespace in-game):

"Product Price Setting, Avg Cr, Cr, Jumps"
"Ore, 128, 128, number"
Under the second "128" would be a number in brackets (by default it's "[96]")

The first number doesn't change, it's the average price for this particular ware. The second number is your desired price. The third is the minimum distance in jumps that a ship assigned to this station will have to travel to sell the Ore at the designated price. This number is not adjustable, it is derived from your price setting, the station's location and what consumers are in the nearby sectors. The number in brackets below the price setting is the minimum price you need to set in order for the factory to break even, i.e. as long as your desired selling price is greater than that number the station would be making a profit. You don't set that number directly, it only changes when you adjust resource prices.
By default, the cursor would be already on that line, so using arrow keys Left and Right adjusts the desired price by 1, and Enter will confirm the new setting.

One tap of the Down arrow activates the next menu entry, which for this station is:
"Primary Resource Buying Limit, Avg Cr, Cr, Jumps"
"Energy Cells, 16, 16, number"

As before, the first number is not adjustable. The second one is the desired price of Energy Cells, can be adjusted as before. When you do confirm the new price setting, the number in brackets under the Ore's price setting will also change. Energy Cells, being resources, do not have a number in brackets below the price. As with the Ore, the third number (Jumps) shows how far away the nearest source of Energy Cells for the desired price will be.

Next one Down is:
"Funds Transfer, Factory, Ship"
"Credits, 0, amount of money in your personal account"

This is where you transfer the station's operating budget. If you don't give it any money, it won't buy any resources, and thus will stall. Left/Right arrows set how much money you wish to transfer to/from station respectively, Enter confirms.

Next one Down:
"Maximum jumps, <<< 5 >>>"
It's the maximum distance the ships assigned to this station would travel. Left decreases, Right increases, Enter confirms.

Next one Down:
"Other races can trade with this station, <<< Yes >>>"
Title should be self-explanatory. Left changes "Yes" to "No", Right changes "No" to "Yes", Enter confirms.

If you are docked to your mine and open the "Adjust station parameters" menu, which has the same hotkey as trading (default "d"), the menu will be slightly different. Before the parameters will be the standard trading menu that you find on NPC stations, so that you can load/unload products and/or resources yourself. First entry will be for Ore, second for Energy. So the parameters menu start with the third menu item.

As with regular trading, price adjustments and fund transfer menu items also allow you to first enter the desired step using numeric keys (regular ones, not numpad). After you've input the desired step, Left/Right arrow keys will adjust your desired change by that amount instead of default "1". A tap of the Backspace key will reset the stepping back to "1".

For other stations, the menus will vary. A factory or complex may have more than one Product, and/or Secondary Resources, which will follow Primary Resources. Hope this helps. If you could indeed upload a save to a dropbox and share the link we could check why exactly is your station isn't working.

[Gandalf The White]

ok cool. so what about assigning friend foe to various races or is that based on your ratings? i seem to remember somewhere a long time ago that you could deny races entry to your stations. for example if you wanted to say no to the split and yes to the paranid then you could do that.

[radcapricorn]

Ah, that setting isn't made per-station. The only thing in station itself you can do is to deny all NPC access by using that "Other races can trade with station" option.
Setting races as friend/foe is done via Main Menu, Personal, Global Commands. The very first list in that menu are the per-race friend/foe settings.
Ratings is the other way around: it's what they think of you. So even if you have Split set to "Friend" in global settings, they may still be hostile toward you and deny you docking, or even presence in their sectors.

[Gandalf The White]

thank you, you've been really helpful
1 further question if i may, i'm assuming that if your status with a particular race was to change for example, i became an enemy of the borons for example would i then have to change that in my globle settings for the sake of my factories so they would defend themselves should it prove necessary or do they change automatically based on your ratings? i guess what i'm asking here is do you have to do anything with your globle friend foe menus at all or based on your status with various races/factions etc would factories just respond accordingly?

[radcapricorn]

I actually don't know for sure. I think that so long as people are actually hostile, they'd be treated as such by your assets as well. But don't quote me on that
In fact, there's an override for friend/foe settings that, unlike stations, you can do per-ship, and with it there's a "Show as enemy if enemy to me" option, but I don't know if that has any effect on the ship's AI, or does it just purely mean what it says, i.e. just "show", for the player's benefit.

[Gandalf The White]

thank you again. i've just thought of 1 more question lol. how do i get to the command to set how much i want the factory to have at any given time? i know it's in the command console of the factory but i can't remember how you do it or even how to find the relevant command.
thank you again.

[radcapricorn]

You're welcome
There is only one-way automatic money transfer, i.e. from station to your account when the station accumulates enough. AFAIK, there isn't a command that lets you auto-transfer the other way around if station's budget goes below some point.

Anyway, this is in the station's Command Console:

- When docked to the station, you'll need to go Main Menu > Station > Advanced > Command Console
- When in property list or on the map, select station in question, Enter -> Advanced -> Command Console

It'll be a list of 10 command slots, named "Slot 1" through "Slot 10". Select any one and Enter. A list of possible commands will pop up. The "Auto money transfer to player account" is by default option 3 in that list. After selecting that, a window requesting numeric input will pop up. Here you enter the threshold, when station goes above it it'll transfer any surplus to your account. Enter the desired amount, press Enter, and the command will start running in the command console slot you've selected. To cancel it, open the Command Console again, select that slot, press Enter, and in the list of commands select "None".
Some commands don't actually occupy a slot as they're one-shot (for example, there's a "Report inbound ships" command that will send you a message listing all the ships the station is currently expecting), but you still run them via slots, I guess it's just the limits of the UI.

[Gandalf The White]

right so are there shortcut keys i can use to get to these menu's?

[radcapricorn]

For adjusting station parameters (ware prices) there is, by default it's "d", highlighting station in any menu (property, map) and pressing that key will open the parameters. But sadly there isn't one for the Command Console, you have to go the long way

[Gandalf The White]

that's ok. ok lets try this another way. sorry about the questions. assuming that the moment i dock or the moment i hit i for info how many arrow presses do i have to go to get to each option necessary to do what i need to do?

[radcapricorn]

When in flight, targeting station and pressing "i":

- press "d" to get to "Adjust Station Parameters"
- to get to Command Console, three Down, Right, Enter

Having just docked, the Station menu opens automatically.

- just press "d" to get to "Adjust Station Parameters"
- to get to Command Console, two Down, Right, Enter

When highlighting station through map or property menu, press Enter and then:

- press "d" to get to "Adjust Station Parameters"
- to get to Command Console, two Down, Right, Enter

Note that for Command Console, there are three "down" in the "i" menu, but only two in other menus.

[Gandalf The White]

hi,

but if i press d that takes me into the trade menu screen. where i adjust factory prices and such. so how can i go right in there?

[radcapricorn]

Sorry, what I wrote likely was confusing. What I meant is it's either. As if, having the "i" menu open, if you want to adjust prices, just press "d", but if you want to go to Command Console from the "i" menu, then go three down, right, Enter

[Gandalf The White]

thank you again! that helped a great deal! i managed to do it. i take it that i can just write in the transfer box 200000 no ,'s or anything like that?

[radcapricorn]

Nope, no separators, just numbers.

[Gandalf The White]

ok. so now i'm having trouble assigning a ts transporter to buy resources for my factory. i've managed to assign it to my factory as a homebase, but i can't seem to assign it to buy energy cells.