quickie: How many flail/hammer fabs for personal use?

[Coruskane]

I am building a big supply complex (sufficient ore/silicon for 63 weapon fabs) and am going to stick a few flail/hammer fabs to supply my M7M. How many is enough? I haven't really used M7Ms before so I have no idea how many I will get through in a typical Xenon Sector fight etc etc. I am thinking 15 flail/10 hammer fabs, producing 90/40 per hour respectively. Will that probabaly be enough?
thanks

[Fendalis]

Personally I only have 1 hammer/1 flail forge, and I keep a dolphin parked there to accumulate excess missiles. I don't use my Ares all that often, but by the time I do it's well stocked again. Got one Tomahawkr forge there as well in case extra bite is required.

[1muvwndr]

I found that for me the perfect balance in flail/hammer factories is 5 flails and 2 hammers. In fact 5+2 is enough for me. I use my M7M as fighting ships occasionally so I don't really use a lot of hammers (flails are just too good for fighter cleaning). If I'll end up using more than one at a time, I'll just double the 5+2 formula.

[admiral6436]

It all depends on how much you wish to use an m7m. They are an extremely powerful class, but it all depends on how you wish to fly it. My idea is that i'd just build a good amount of fabs and sell the excess. So I have a 2:1 ratio of flails to hammers. Though i normally don't fight that much in it and instead use my cobra to board ships. but just for the sake of it, i have 10 flail and 5 hammer fabs.

My normal setup is that an m7m would hold 500 flail and 100 hammer and my complex keeps a good ratio going for this. Also, you should be the only one flying it, the AI is just not trustworthy in it, (its firing 20 hammers when being shot at with prgs and having them all blow up on its hull= a loss of 40,000,000 credits). So don't plan for more than supplying 1 m7m IMHO.

[Coruskane]

ah I did not realise the AI would be bad at it. I was looking forward to ordering a couple of M7Ms to launch enough hammers to take out a capital in one volley. Thanks for your advice, I was about to commit to 20 flail and 10 hammer fabs. I will go for 10/5 and use the spare 15 fabs for more P PC

edit: final set=up Clicky. This complex uses every single asteroid in Gunne's crusade for a profit of 13.9m per hour. 1 sector down, about 100 to go...;p

[NUKLEAR-SLUG]

I built 10 of each, but I like blowing stuff up..

If you're worried about AI issues then let them have the Flails and you keep hold of the Hammers.

[admiral6436]

damnnnnnn, thats alot of PPC and ion cannons. Umm, maybe you should diversify a bit, U know build some lower weapons. CIGs would always be useful on corvettes and frigates. Same goes with Flaks except with frigs and capital ships.

[Mugenjin]

I use my m7m quite often, so I had to stock up on the missile fabs: currently about 30 flails and 20 hammers. But I always seem to be short on hammers, flails are enough though.
Then again my m7m is my main combat vessel and pretty much all the time in use ^_^

[Coruskane]

damnnnnnn, thats alot of PPC and ion cannons. Umm, maybe you should diversify a bit, U know build some lower weapons. CIGs would always be useful on corvettes and frigates. Same goes with Flaks except with frigs and capital ships.

if you notice, this is a pure boron complex. Boron are excellent at cheaply building capital class weaponry, and the ion tech. Flak they cannot build, same as CIG. I will, in due course, build another racial complex to fill in the holes. PPC/ION take up the most resources, as each of my battleships normally carries them on mains and left/right turrets, as I don't like being raked down the side by sneaky sneaky Q's...18PPC per destroyer = lots of PPC fabs!!!