Station Consumption Calculator

[BankruptAssasin]

Hi, I have a question regarding Station Consumption - I like to play my games supporting the local fabs & using the proceeds to buy the stuff i want - Ships/Weapons/Shields/Missiles etc.

Obviously im a fan of Tims CLS guides, but i was wondering how people worked out what a Wheat Farm/Sun Oil Refinery/Cahoona Bakery etc consumes an hour?

Do you base it on stations you owned at one time? or is there a spreadsheet/program I can use?

I've just started a new game, Humble Merchant - A start I have not played in years and think it's the perfect time to use Tims Guide properly once and for all and adjust them to suit my own needs.

Thanks

[Alan Phipps]

You could check out some of the calculators linked here.

[ancienthighway]

I generally don't pay attention to how much is consumed an hour, but instead focus on buying cheap and selling expensive. That's not to say that sometimes average ends up in the loop for one or the other sometimes, though.

There are some weapons forges that require close to all of the ore it can stockpile to make just one weapon. If it's a weapon I want like CIGs and IBLs, I'll keep a close eye on the station to make sure it produces.

[jlehtone]

S&M

The game knows the correct values. They can be accessed. They have been accessed. The numbers have a meaning.

A 'standard factory' uses ECells at a rate of 900 per hour (if running non-stop and scale=1). An L Farm has scale 5, so it could burn 4500 ecells per hour. Likewise, Bakery L uses 4500 ecells per hour and same amount of Beef that the Farm per hour.

This should hold for NPC factories as well, but only for the primary resources. The secondary resource consumption at NPC stations has entirely different laws.

SPP's and Mines are not 'standard factories'.

[jorganos]

S&M

SPP's and Mines are not 'standard factories'.

Unfortunately, the caclculation of these is anything but intuitive.

Fortunately, if you decide on an open economy where intermediate products maybe bought from or sold to NPCs, a rough estimate with some overproduction at each stage will be more profitable than a tightly calculated, closed system.

[TTD]

I always use Xadrian
I usually over-produce too. Not had any real problems that way. over-production means another avenue for more profitsss.

[Rapier]

A 'standard factory' uses ECells at a rate of 900 per hour (if running non-stop and scale=1). An L Farm has scale 5, so it could burn 4500 ecells per hour. Likewise, Bakery L uses 4500 ecells per hour and same amount of Beef that the Farm per hour.

And whatever is produced by one factory is consumed by another at the same rate (once you've adusted the scaling factors for L, M etc.). This applies to primary resources, for secondary recources the rate is approximately one third that of primary resources (though the calculation method introduces some 'rounding' artifacts) The exceptions are solar power plants (which consume crystals slightly faster than production, scale by 1.2) and mines where the consumption is scaled by yield (yield of 25 scales as 1, 50 as 2, 75 as 3; approximately, it's a curve rather than a linear relationship).

[DiArmada]

this is how I do it, hopefully it'll be of some help:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 22#4333822

[hisazul]

I don't understand why you won't just use Xadrians calculator >_>
Why spreadsheets? If complex gets bigger you are also either going to need to double check station counts and redo all that math in your head or write it down as soon as you want to do something with it. With Xadrians you just press save button.

No way in hell I would ever even consider drowning myself in papers and spreadsheets to deal with a 2k+ station large plex. That's just...

[DiArmada]

No way in hell I would ever even consider drowning myself in papers and spreadsheets.

if you understand the basics you can do it without calculator or spreadsheets at all.
basically all stations do the same, so once you know the trick it's fairly easy.

[BankruptAssasin]

Thanks For All Your Replies - Xadrian seems to be the way to go, was able to use it to work out the output of The Teladi Weapon Forges in the PTNI Area (Timsup2nothin Example) and his figures pretty much match.

My only other question, Stations the Player can't buy/own like Medium Shield Complex, Heavy Weapons Forge, Light Weapons Complex etc. where they produce different wares from one station, is it possible to workout what they use an hour?

Xadrian have the stations separate for the way a player buys a station & works it out for that one station, say 25mj & 200mj shields, the 25 use 1000 e-cells per hour, 200 use 1500 per hour, do I add these together to make up the total number the NPC Medium Shield Complex uses per hour? is it this simple?

Thanks

[DiArmada]

a 25 MJ shield factory requires 15 energycells per minute.
a 200 MJ shield factory requires 15 energycells per minute.
both stations are small factories and use the same amount of energy per hour.

even the site of Roguey, which is an awesome site, states that some factories are Medium, but they're not.
some examples are ISR, PPC, FLAK. these are all small stations.

[BankruptAssasin]

So if one factory (Medium Shield Complex) supplies both the shields, then I should assume that it needs 30 energy cells per minute?

Thanks

[jlehtone]

No. I did suspect that you are primarily talking about NPC Factories, but the Complex Calculators are about player Factories. They are close, but no cigar.

The secondary resources have been mentioned already. Then there is the classic Argon Bakery. Bakery is a Food factory. Food factories convert Energy and Bio-product into Food. Two primary resources. However, the Bakery stocks both Wheat and Beef. Two primary Bio-products. One production cycle consumes only one Bio. Therefore, one cycle takes either Wheat or Beef; it does not consume both.

There are other Factories that have two primary Minerals, aren't there? Same story.


Then are the NPC Complexes. The question is, are they a stack of Forges like the player would build, or are they a single production line with multiple products? I would rather search through all the posts of Cycrow than claim that I remember correctly, but I would bet on the latter possibility. In other words, that the Medium Shield Complex runs only one cycle at a time and the product (as well as resources/cycle) is chosen at the start of each cycle. If this is true, then the Complex consumes 15 ECells per minute.


@hisazul:
There are tables of game data and equations. It does not make big difference whether you have them in calculator like Xadrian, in a spreadsheet-based calculator, or in memory. Whatever is the comfy UI.

In my experience a more real challenge was (X3R) to track how many of those 2k+ stations had already been built and what was still missing. That is a calculator-independent problem.

[hisazul]

No way in hell I would ever even consider drowning myself in papers and spreadsheets.

if you understand the basics you can do it without calculator or spreadsheets at all.
basically all stations do the same, so once you know the trick it's fairly easy.

You misunderstood me lol.

I got a save with about ~2400 station large complex there are some other complexes I got but nothing on that scale. Opening property menu simply crashes the game more often then not entering that sector drops fps to about 1-2, and it's build outside away from where you look as you enter the sector so nothing I could do to reduce the lag further unless I build it in a sector that has fog/mist that removes textures at certain distance... I dislike all those sectors and they are in lousy positions and they are owned by someone, anyway... not really to my liking. Even if it didn't, scrolling though hundreds of stations just to remember how many of what stations I got is simply a chore I see no reason to do if there is an easier solution, namely a calculator that allows me to save my set-up. Yes in the same manner you could simply write down how many station of what kind you have and numbers for production consumption... but that's a lot of typing and retyping and making sure your math didn't go sideways simply due to a typo.

@jlehtone
Well, I can agree to using what feels more comfortable. But I still like a more stable and less prone to mishaps way of doing math(then again... that's just me lol). At the same time I really like X3 menus... so meh... people and opinions.

[DiArmada]

2400 stations in a complex, that's really an accomplishment.
where does the complex get all it's silicon and ore from?
I assume that the local yield isn't sufficient to keep that beast running.
do you give the stations a number?
that's what I do with large complexes to keep track of things.
I also like to build stations in sheets, so it's easy to see where stations are still missing.
do you build sheets on top of each other?
2400 stations take a considerable amount of space in a sector.

[TTD]

If all built at the same x,y,z, location

or at least all like stations built that way,except for mineral mines, then lag would not be so much of a problem.

Can't do it prior to TC, but TC and AP is possible.

[jlehtone]

You misunderstood me lol.

So did I. Now I see that we faced the same question: "What do I have in the game?"

You were careful to build what you had planned.
One could use a script to write the list of stations.
I did use the Uplink, but rather than uploading, I did parse the file myself.

When you have "enough" stations in the sector, renaming them would be a pain.


@BankruptAssasin:
Up to X2 the NPC Stations were quite static and optimizing your operations was thus "simple".
From X3R on the GoD manipulates the number of NPC Stations (within preset limits) by some "economy event rules" and therefore a sitting duck has evolved to a wild goose. I don't say that you could not corner it. I say that there is more fun in the chase.