Questions - tractor beams, seeding and selling chips

[johnnywas]

Trying to build factories for the Hub and running into problems

1. I equiped a tractor beam to my magnetar - the inf says it fits - and I pressed F1 until it apeared in screen so I assume I'm in the right turret - but I can't fire it although I'm well within 2 Km. Is this a bug. will a different ship work. which ones work best.

2. The next question is about seeding shipyards. I'm sure the trick is very well known but I'll use the spoiler

Spoiler

Show

I have tried selling 25k sheilds to the equipment dock in Light of heart in he hope that when I trade I'll get a fully equiped superfrieghter - but although the equipment dock bought I still couldn't buy the Superfrieghter. How do I make this work. If I can't get it work then I can't grow my fleet because the 25k factories are sold out and take ages to restock

3. Finally how many chips will an argon free trading centre buy (if it buys chips ). Can I build endlessly big complexes in these sectors and sell everything that I produce after I've finished the Hub (edited)

4. What about Crystals

[jlehtone]

1. The weapon system of the game uses classes and one of the classes contains Repair Laser, Mobile Drill (MDS), and Tractor Beam. Magnetar can mount that class and carry Tractor Beams, but it does not have weapon energy to fire the Beam. The same applies to TS ships too: they are not supposed to use the Beam, just the MDS.

Big ships like M6 and TL can tow.


2. There is no such trick. That Dock does not stock those shields, I believe, and even if it did, it would not affect whether the Shipyard (SY) sells fully shielded TS. Whether SY offers the "M" and "L" packages is entirely random.

[Snafu_X3]

3. 20, I think.. at least that's all that's stocked before NPC traders grab them

4. Not sure.. over 200, I'd guess

Why not buy a trading station & try it out?

If you're stocking for the HUB your best bet is stuff all the goods in the biggest cargobays you can get - Aran or Atmospheric Lifter. You'll need about 2 ATM or 1.5 Arans-full of uChips for completion in v3.1 vanilla

[Carlo the Curious]

2. If you're thinking of cloning, that effects which wares are available to buy from the shipyard when you're equipping ships you've just bought, not whether S/M/L are initially available (which is purely random).