GPPC Forge Complex

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RobM37
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GPPC Forge Complex

Post by RobM37 » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 14:51

Ello peeps.

Hoping I could get a little help/advice. I've saved up 70+ million and was playing around with the complex creator spreadsheet and decided (lord only knows why) to create a complex.

For reasons best known to myself, I decided to go with a GPPC complex, and I'm starting small (ie only 1)

My complex is created and the intermediaries are flowing quite nicely (if a little slow, but they are building) but the PPC production has yet to start.

The complex is no longer flashing yellow, so I take this to mean its happy with what it has in order to start producing, but nothing is happening on the PPC front.

If my understanding on this is correct, and from what I recall from X/XT/X2, factories only really need cash if they are buying resources, and as this is self sufficent, money shouldn't be needed, right?

If it helps, heres the list of factories in the complex (all Argon)

1) GPPC Forge (naturally)
1) SPP M
1) Ore Mine M (21 yield)
1) Silicon Mine M (26 yield)
1) Crystal Fab M
1) Cattle Ranch L
1) Cahoona Bakery L

According to the sheet, everything should be good (except for a small shortage on the crystal front, but not enough to really hold up production.)

Am I just being impatient (highly possible) or am I missing something vital (also highly possible)

Thanks in advance folks.
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Al
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Post by Al » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 14:53

If its not flashing then its got everything it needs to produce the goods. Just sit back and wait, I suspect the production time for GPPCs is going to be pretty big :)
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RobM37
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Post by RobM37 » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 14:58

5hrs 40mins (lol) according to the production timer. Guess its going to take a little while even for the first percent to show on the progess bar.

Just me being impatient then... a watched kettle and all that....
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KipperTheFish
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Post by KipperTheFish » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 15:15

Have you given it a few e-cells to jump start the progress?
It won't start with out them.
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RobM37
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Post by RobM37 » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 15:26

yeah, like I said all the intermediaries are building quite nicely. If anything I think I have an abundance of e-cells so may use some of them as fuel for my ships' jump drives.

the rest of the items; food, ore and silicon are just right to keep each other ticking over.

I have a TL (I brought it at the same time to aid building the complex, didnt want to hire one) collecting ore/silicon in sector to provide any missing reserves, but so far, it doesnt appear to be needed.

But thanks for the suggestion KipperTheFish (great name btw)
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[AOB]Pepe
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Post by [AOB]Pepe » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 16:15

I've got the same problem, on a slightly larger scale... just built this.

Code: Select all

Cahoona Bakery M	1
Alpha HEPT Forge S	1
Cattle Ranch M	1
Gamma PPC Forge S	1
Bio Gas Factory L	3
BoFu Chemical Lab M	1
Beta PBE Forge S	1
Shield Fact 1 GJ S	1
BoFu Chemical Lab L	3
Bio Gas Factory M	1
Crystal Fab M	6
Beta Flak Artillery Forge S	1
Shield Prod. Facility 125 MJ S	1
Alpha Flak Artillery Forge S	1
Solar Power Plant XL	1
Soyfarm M	1
Alpha PAC Forge S	1
Beta PAC Forge S	1
Soyery M	1
Chelt Space Aquarium M	1
Rastar Refinery M	1
Beta HEPT Forge S	1
Shield Prod. Facility 25 MJ S	1
Silicon Mine L	1 - 54
Ore Mine M	1 - 13
Ore Mine L	2 - 25
Silicon Mine M	1 - 13
The FLAKs and the GPPC facts have not yet started, despite having enough resources...

However, everything else took a little while to start, and it seemed that it might have had something to do with the size of the final ware, or it's value, because it seemed, for example, that an AHEPT started up quicker than a BHEPT...

Or is this just my imagination...?

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Carlo the Curious
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Post by Carlo the Curious » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 17:32

I wouldn't worry about it (yet).

I have a bunch of weapon complexes and most of them took a while to get going. Even though there are enough resources on hand it can sometimes take a while before production actually starts - possibly they were having a teabreak. Length of tea break being stated in the workers' contract as a percentage of production time :p.

WebWalker
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Post by WebWalker » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 17:36

Big complex setups take a lot of love to get them chugging along, I normally have a TL ferry in ~30,000 E cells and dump them in the complex, all those factories require E cells and a megga complex like that might eat 20,000 or more Ecells just to get enough products to get the SPPXL working. Honestly a TS 3-4k load of E cells just vanishes in seconds and does not even get half of the stuff through 1 production cycle let alone enough to the get SPPXL going. Once the Spp is running the rest of the complex will slowly come to life.

RobM37
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Post by RobM37 » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 17:37

ah yes, the great "tea break clause"

Lol.

and Pepe... :o killer complex....
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[AOB]Pepe
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Post by [AOB]Pepe » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 17:39

WebWalker wrote:Big complex setups take a lot of love to get them chugging along, I normally have a TL ferry in ~30,000 E cells and dump them in the complex, all those factories require E cells and a megga complex like that might eat 20,000 or more Ecells just to get enough products to get the SPPXL working. Honestly a TS 3-4k load of E cells just vanishes in seconds and does not even get half of the stuff through 1 production cycle let alone enough to the get SPPXL going. Once the Spp is running the rest of the complex will slowly come to life.
The key to beating this problem is to first dump 10k or so worth of e-cells in there, but also dump about 500 crystals in there at the same time, then the SPP goes straight to work and it should allow your crystal fabs to get up and running in time to produce more crystals by the time the first lot runs out.

Edit : Just looked at the figures on this...

1 Crystal will produce 138 ecells in 118 seconds, irrespective of the size of the SPP. (Different sizes of SPPs will affect the multiples of input/output, but ratio always stays the same)
1 Crystal takes up 4 cargo space, and is 34.5 times more space efficient... meaning you can kick off a big complex like that with a large fighter's load of Crystals, or maybe a TP worth anyway...

And Rob, cheers :) Took many nights to put that together, what a pain! But it's completely self sufficient, designed to equip Hyperions, LXs, Eclipses and Pythons... and a tidy profit for the leftovers :D

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Post by pjknibbs » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 17:54

You have to bear in mind that the cycle time for a factory begins as soon as the factory is built, even if the factory does not have the resources available. Therefore, if you built a GPPC forge, then dumped all the resources required to build a GPPC into it, it wouldn't even start building until the first "empty" cycle was over--which would be more than 5 hours later.

So, you could have a pretty lengthy wait on your hands before your forge starts producing anything.

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Carlo the Curious
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Post by Carlo the Curious » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 18:11

pjknibbs wrote:You have to bear in mind that the cycle time for a factory begins as soon as the factory is built, even if the factory does not have the resources available. Therefore, if you built a GPPC forge, then dumped all the resources required to build a GPPC into it, it wouldn't even start building until the first "empty" cycle was over--which would be more than 5 hours later.

So, you could have a pretty lengthy wait on your hands before your forge starts producing anything.
I'm pretty sure it wasn't 5 hours for the last GPPC complex I put together, more like an hour.

The forges (5) got connected before anything had enough resources, and some of them started producing pretty much as soon as the resources were available.

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Post by Bucky_kat » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 18:37

pjknibbs wrote:You have to bear in mind that the cycle time for a factory begins as soon as the factory is built, even if the factory does not have the resources available. Therefore, if you built a GPPC forge, then dumped all the resources required to build a GPPC into it, it wouldn't even start building until the first "empty" cycle was over--which would be more than 5 hours later.

So, you could have a pretty lengthy wait on your hands before your forge starts producing anything.
Really? Is there anyway around this becuase 5 hours for a cycle is rather along time to wait, especially when you know the factory has the resources?

I suppose adding the GPPC forge (or end product) last would prevent this stall time? Ive always built my complexes from the top down, not bottom up. (mainly because Im not always sure what the factory needs, so Ive always placed the end product factory first, still learning the game.)

Deleted User

Post by Deleted User » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 19:20

the cycle time for a factory begins as soon as the factory is built, even if the factory does not have the resources available
Er.. not as far as I know,
there may (will) be a minute or two pause after resources become available though,
before the 5hr 50min starts ticking down (ie gPPC have started being made)
It's that pause that can be the killer, escpecially with large asteroids attached,
cos just as you thought it might start, some other complex intermediate nicks enough of the
ECells (say) to make the gPPC forge wait another 1 or 2 minutes.

It's this that causes some complex setups to need a full stock of
all intermediates in order to smoothly produce high end products.

EDIT: for clarity
Last edited by Deleted User on Thu, 26. Jul 07, 19:25, edited 2 times in total.

muadiib
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Post by muadiib » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 19:22

Did the first empty cycle apply to X2 as well?

Instead of saving up and build the whole complex at once wouldnt it make sense to build the energy loop first for example silicon C Fab, Food supplies then add your extras once you have an abundance of power in your complex. Thats how i worked it in X2 on closed loops. So built it up slowly instead of trying to jump start a boeing 747's engines with a hairdryer...

Big closed loops seemed to take ages to jump start in X2 and from what i read complexs seem to work the same way except without the transports...

1 month till i return to england already shopping around for a Fast laptop to power my meglomanic tendacies and X3....
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Post by jlehtone » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 21:14

Dave Toome wrote:Er.. not as far as I know, there may (will) be a minute or two pause after resources become available though, before the cycle clock starts ticking down
Yes, and it is in no way uniform. I just dumped 10k of ECells into 9-factory complex (each requires only energy). Being short-cycled, they need very little to have enough for all, maybe 1k ECells together. So they had instantaneously enough. But they did not start simultaneously. Actually of one pair of identical factories, the first was already on second (1-minute) cycle before the other had had its regulatory tea. This complex has existed (without any resources) for over a game-day, so the workers had a very long dark teatime for their souls.
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tclord
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Post by tclord » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 21:33

I should hope that is not the case (about a production cycle starting as soon as a factory is built, and if the resources are not available at the start of a cycle, it waits until the cycle would end to try again). It would be pretty monumentally stupid since ALL factories will not have the required resources when you first build them. It takes a little time to dock a supply ship to it or to connect it to an existing complex, so it'll take a little bit of time minimum to have the resources required available. Waiting 5 hours after you build a GPPC before it even starts to produce anything is just bad design. As a programmer, I would think some short, random time to put it in the queue with makes a lot more sense, and is probably what they did. I guess I'll see when I get to the point of making a GPPC factory.

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Post by Painman » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 22:10

There seems to be a timer in place at factories, etc. that governs things like the AMTPA command - the money transfer doesn't happen until a cycle is completed. Maybe the same thing governs how/when a factory checks to see if it has resources to start a production run.

I had 5 GPPC forges in my big complex last game. They didn't start up right away due to competition over ore with the more nimble HEPT/PAC forges, but ISTR that they were all building GPPCs well before 5hr 40min had passed.

5i1
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Post by 5i1 » Thu, 26. Jul 07, 22:58

Once you have the money I recommend an self Sustaing Capital Ship Supplier. (Note I haven't tested this, but according to the Factory Complex Calculator It should be self Sustaining)

Stations Required:
4x GPPC Forges
4x BFAA Forges
4x BPPC Forges
3x AFAA Forges
1x 10 GJ Shield Factory
4x 1 GJ Shield Factory
1x Cahoona Bakery L
1x Cattle Ranch L
7x Bofu Labs L
7x Bio Gas Factory L
1x Cahoona Bakery M
1x Cattle Ranch M
3x Bofu Lab M
3x Bio Gas Factory M
1x Ore Mine L Yield 51
3x Ore Mine L Yield 26
2x SPP XL
1x SPP M
12x Crystal Fab M
2x Silicion Mine L Yield 64
64x Complex Tubes

Cost 358,649,299

GPPC made per hour 0.71
BFAA made per hour 0.92
BPPC made per hour 0.92
AFAA made per hour 0.84
10 GJ shields made per hour 0.21
1 GJ shields made per hour 1.94


Max profit per hour 3,306,719
Avg profit per hour 3,073,293
Min profit per hour 2,839,872

Break even 116.7 Hours

RobM37
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Post by RobM37 » Fri, 27. Jul 07, 12:47

Lol, dont think my machine could handle a complex of that size (nor could i come to think of it. My brain struggled getting my little 7 factory complex together)

Thanks all for the comments and advice. Unfortunatly due to a corruption in one of my save games I've had to back track to a save before I created the complex. Atleast now I will have a better understanding of the order inwhich to place the complexes and how to place them (that last one was fugly, those nodes are a bi... pain to spot and align.)

Luckily, I'm not that far away from where I was when I decided to create the complex so will be playing around with it again tonight.

TBH droppinng 10k's worth of E-cells doesnt appeal to me, and the factory seemed fine with the 2k that I did give it. Most of the facts are M or L sized, including the SPP, so not sure if thats the governing factor.

Bottom line is I was impatient and didnt anticipate the ~6hr production time, but now I will be better prepared..... like with a good book or movies... or I may just wait for another 30mill to come in and go down a different path. As long as I learn from my mistakes (like regular backups of saved games :evil: ) I'm a happy bunny.

Cheers all, safe flying.
"There's someone in my head, but its not me"
Pink Floyd - Brain Damage, The Dark Side of the Moon

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