Not enough Alpha Flaks?

[Iari]

After countless hours of work by my horde of universe traders, i've finally scraped together enough money to buy my first destroyer, eventually deciding to go for the Argon Titan (for a variety of reasons, not least the fact that it's the cheapest).

I've had no problem locating and purchasing the required number of BPPCs, GPPCs and 1GJ shield generators, but I just can't seem to find enough AFAAs to fill all the turret slots I want them in. I must have scoured pretty much the entire universe yesterday and managed to scrape twelve out of a desired twenty units.

Am I missing something here? Are AFAAs particularly rare or have I just been unlucky in my timing? I've been considering trying to set up an AFAA production complex but complex construction is still somewhat of a mysterious area for me.

Has anyone else had this problem, or got any advice on new places to try looking, or even building a complex to fix it?

Thanks,
Iari

[jannix]

In my game Beta Flaks are even harder to find. But yes, Alpha and beta FAAs are hard to come by through traditional means

You can of course go down the the nearest xenon sector and convince them to donate you some flaks! This is what I do, and it seems much more effective than hunting for it across the universe. (not to mention more fun)

[Azanor]

If you read the manual came with the game (yes regular official manual ) even there its mentioned player can have difficult time obtaining weapons for capital ships. The solution offered was either collecting them everytime you find one or building your own factories (which doesnt make production time any faster, Alpha flak still takes 3 hours to produce without Seta)

[crawlerw]

i get my flak from a AFLAK complex i created
and from xenon donation
they gave me 9 last time

[Iari]

In my game Beta Flaks are even harder to find. But yes, Alpha and beta FAAs are hard to come by through traditional means

You can of course go down the the nearest xenon sector and convince them to donate you some flaks! This is what I do, and it seems much more effective than hunting for it across the universe. (not to mention more fun)

Wierdly, Beta Flaks seem to be really common in my game (which is annoying since practically no ships are capable of equipping them). I did some (very) preliminary sourcing for my next cruiser which is going to be a Split Python, and I was able to get all the required Beta Flaks in no time at all.

I'd not actually considered raiding the Xenon as a viable way of getting Alpha Flaks, I'll have to give it a try since all I'm doing at the moment is cruising around looking for assassination missions and optimistically checking every equipment dock for more Alpha Flaks. Thanks!

[Etolf]

I find that building a complex works best, as if you think outfitting the first one is hard, the second is even worse, and so on, so it pays to make your own...

[Iari]

I find that building a complex works best, as if you think outfitting the first one is hard, the second is even worse, and so on, so it pays to make your own...

What sort of infrastructure do you need in place to construct a self contained alpha flak production complex? Complex construction is a bit of a black spot for me at present.

[XanII]

Build your own Alpha Flak forge and make 2 of them. Mine is making surplus flaks for sale nowadays mostly though.

Later GOD will fill the universe with more flak factories so the alpha/beta flak amounts will surge slowly.

[Azanor]

What sort of infrastructure do you need in place to construct a self contained alpha flak production complex? Complex construction is a bit of a black spot for me at present.

It needs meal , mineral (ore) and energy like other weapon factories. Energy requires crystals, crystals requires energy , meal and slicon, meals require raw food and energy. Do you see where its going? You dont need to build a self contained complex if its only gonna be for alpha flak. AF production cycle is 3 game hours. Your best chance if you run non stop x10 seta , you will be required to supply new resources every 18 real minute. You might stop seta once in a while so in average you may end up sending new resources there every half hour .

Complexes are good if they are part of a bigger plan, or if you really need to produce your own resources.

One self supported complex for AF (for Aragon factory)
Buy Crystals Factory
Buy Meatsteak Bakery
Buy Cattle Ranch
Buy Wheatfarm
Buy SolarPowerplant
Find Slicon Astroid (same sector)
Buy Slicon mine
Buy Solar Powerplant
Find Ore Astroid (same sector)
Buy Ore mine
Buy AF forge
Buy 7 Complex Construction Kits

One AF factory:
Buy at best price
Buy ore at best price
Buy meatsteak for best price

[Choublanc]

You can start with a small and (relatively) cheap self-sufficient solar power plant size M complex.

First find a safe place where you have one ore asteroid (yield 11 minimum) and one silicon asteroid (also yield 11 minimum) near of each other.

Then drop the following stations
- Ore mine L and a silicon mine L on the 2 asteroids
- A Solar Power Plant size M
- 1 Crystal fab M (Boron or Split, because afaik only this 2 races are producing AFLAKs)
- 2 BoGas (or Chelt Aquarium) fab M. Be careful to buy food fabs from the race you got the crystal fab.
- 2 Bofu (or Rastar oil) fabs M.

Link the factories with construction kits, give some crystal to the SPP (minimum 200), and let the complex fill in a couple a hours.

Then drop and add 2 aFLAK fabs (same race as food fabs)

That's it! And this complex will also produce a surplus of 2160 ecells/hours. Enough for example for a teladianium fab M

*Edit* If the total Ore + silicon asteroid yield is bigger than about 32, the complex will be short on ecells for a while. Could be annoying. One of the possible solutions is to buy manually ore and silicon and fill the mines with it. Then the 2 mines will produce exactly the needed amount.

[Iari]

You can start with a small and (relatively) cheap self-sufficient solar power plant size M complex.

First find a safe place where you have one ore asteroid (yield 11 minimum) and one silicon asteroid (also yield 11 minimum) near of each other.

Then drop the following stations
- Ore mine L and a silicon mine L on the 2 asteroids
- A Solar Power Plant size M
- 1 Crystal fab M (Boron or Split, because afaik only this 2 races are producing AFLAKs)
- 2 BoGas (or Chelt Aquarium) fab M. Be careful to buy food fabs from the race you got the crystal fab.
- 2 Bofu (or Rastar oil) fabs M.

Link the factories with construction kits, give some crystal to the SPP (minimum 200), and let the complex fill in a couple a hours.

Then drop and add 2 aFLAK fabs (same race as food fabs)

That's it! And this complex will also produce a surplus of 2160 ecells/hours. Enough for example for a teladianium fab M

That looks pretty good.

I'll have a trawl around the shipyards later and work out how much it'd cost to set-up. In the short term I think I can get what I need for one destroyer by buying from the computer factories (now that I've figured out that none of them had resources!) but since I'm eventually planning to get at least one of each destroyer to play with, this looks like a good investment.

Thanks.

[Azanor]

You can start with a small and (relatively) cheap

Link the factories with construction kits, give some crystal to the SPP (minimum 200), and let the complex fill in a couple a hours.

Then drop and add 2 aFLAK fabs (same race as food fabs)

That's it! And this complex will also produce a surplus of 2160 ecells/hours. Enough for example for a teladianium fab M

It would still depend on authors original intention. Complex is a good idea if the intention is making money from it. But if one has no intention of becoming a weapon dealer, complex invesment doesnt easly pay off for itself. The factory list given previous post for complex requires roughly 25 million credits investment. An average price of AF is 470k. You need to produce 54 free AF for getting your initial investment back. Plus building a complex this size which includes two mines is not the best idea as first complex. If Iari doesnt care about how his sector looks , or has no intention to step into that sector that might be fine. Anybody who wants to build an average looking complex in their first project would spend good amount of time.

Too much time and credit to invest for getting 8 more AF for your destroyer. If one only buys the factory and supply the resources outside it would cost 150k to produce each AF. Or he simply can wait till NPC factories produce more .

On the other hand, if buying AF for destroyer just became an excuse and Iari decides to use this as a good oportunity to expand his invesments and learn more about complex building he can definetly go for it and profit

It would be great if somebody have made calculations for me when I decided to build my first complex.

[RegisterMe]

It would be great if somebody have made calculations for me when I decided to build my first complex.

They did

[Carlo the Curious]

It doesn't take all that many capital ships to use up 54 FAA.

Personally I prefer building my own weapons complexes. When you don't need the weapons you can have a CAG or MORT sell them to make a tidy profit (as well as MORTing the weapons from NPC fabs) - my arms complexes make more money than most of my other fabs (including weed/booze complexes).

Of course, stockpiling weapons from NPC fabs to equip your ships is a perfectly viable strategy. It's just less profitable .

[Azanor]

If he will go for it then our friend needs Factory Complex Constructor Script. You can find it in Scripting & Modding Forum, community scripts list. Default complex builder is the weakest part of X3 and good amount of salvage insurance on hand. Its always good idea to saving and checking the pipe connections and reloading if further adjustment is necessary while adding each new factory to complex.

Good luck with it and have fun...

[Iari]

All right. After examining the three npc alpha flak factories they all seemed to be suffering from the same problem, they all had enough energy cells to push their buy price up to average (so NPC traders wouldn't sell to them) but apparently not enough to begin production. I've sold them the energy cells they need and I've got a couple of my UTs pulled off duty in order to regularly ferry them resources. It shouldn't be too long before I've got the 8 alpha flaks I need.

Looking more long term, I'm definately going to construct the self sustaining alpha flak complex once I've got the money together, as I can foresee needing an awful lot of them to outfit more destroyers. And if I find out I've got more than I need, then another source of income is always nice.

Thanks to everyone for their help!

[jlehtone]

Strange that nobody has mentioned the "buy dozen identically equipped ships, even when the open market has only one gun in stock" exploit.

[XanII]

Ssh! that wouldt be any fun would it.

[Etolf]

Strange that nobody has mentioned the "buy dozen identically equipped ships, even when the open market has only one gun in stock" exploit.

dozen? in my game you can only do it with 10 maximum... do you have a script to increase that number?