Asteroid Silicon yield/ Silicon Factory building X3TC (noob)

[TheGoldElite]

Hey I was just in omicron lyrae, and I scanned all the asteroids, one had a yield of 31. It's early in the game for me, and I'm a total noob for efficient factory running. Is it worth buying a Ore mine to put on it? I'm assuming I just hire the nearby TL, load the ore mine in, but then what? I noted there are 3 stations in the sector which require silicon. Is it worth the investment? I have a spare demeter tanker which I could set to Buy/Sell station automanage, jumprange 2 sectors. Is this a good idea? any thoughts on buy /sell prices though : S My account atm is 1.2mil. Worth the investment??

[wathman00]

In general, you'll want to put mines on Silicon asteroids with 26 yield or better. It isn't terribly great profit per hour, but it isn't bad at that yield. That's also the smallest size you'll be able to effectively make a self sufficient energy loop with I think.

[Catra]

you tell the captain to drop the freight and select where to put it.
For mines: always start from the highest yield roid down to the lowest, and never use an M sized mine.

You could probably get away with setting the Ecell price at 12, and put the price of ore to one credit below average price.

No, it isn't worth the investment, getting a ship and slapping trade mk3 on it would be better, or some cattle ranches + wheat farms.

[TheGoldElite]

Well the shipyard there only sells M mines. I think I'll actually go for a L Cattle thingy, it's about 600k, but there's only 2 in the nearest 2 sectors, and there's 7 places to sell to. Better idea then? I have to Mk3s, and they are both in terran sectors atm, they arent on standby very often so it seems to work, but I hate not knowing how much they are making :/ isnt there something I can do to see a log or something?

[Carlo the Curious]

Is it worth buying a Ore mine to put on it?

Not to put on a Silicon asteroid .

(You will actually still get some production if you put the wrong mine on - it will just be really slow[/i])

[TheGoldElite]

Haha you know what I meant : P

[Jawms]

If your curious about outputs, i find THIS to be really helpful.. Just find a silicon mine, give it a yield, and check the output.. and/or what it needs to run.. Have fun

[msexbriefing]

Hey m8,

You pretty brave setting up shop in omicron lyrae, I have hundreds of stations, thousands of ships, and I still havn't put anything in omicron lyrae or the surrounding sectors, It is ok if you build a complex and pack a freight ship with PPC them and sell them, however, omicron lyrae is right in the middle of the two xenon sectors and a usual xenon "catch up for old times sake and fry some argon" place, beetween the two zenon sectors sectors.

MAKE SURE YOU SAVE, AND NOT AUTOSAVE.

[TheGoldElite]

Well there was once an entire Fleet of Khaak there, 2 destroyers, 3 pages of scouts, but the sector was untouched thanks to the centaurs and theres a destroyer or something too, its got core security so I wouldn't mind too much I dont think. I picked terran start, so that's the safest sector I know! Thanks for the Station thing Jawms! Turns out the break even time for the silicon mine at 36 is about the same as the other factories I can afford anyways, one day ( Idealy)

[paulhamm]

Erm, Profit Center Alpha and Nostrop Oil. Basic resources are in good supply. E-cells and minerals are universal. Food can be unobtainable due to a number of factors including, race specific, travel distance, and shrink (loss of goods).

[jlehtone]

In general, you'll want to put mines on Silicon asteroids with 26 yield or better. It isn't terribly great profit per hour, but it isn't bad at that yield. That's also the smallest size you'll be able to effectively make a self sufficient energy loop with I think.

If you only put a Mine to an Asteroid, then yes.

However, when joining multiple Mines to a loop, only the total productivity does count. While minimizing the number of Mines is good, getting the ends meet is nice too.


The basic consumption cycle of Silicon Wafer is 90 seconds long. Every Wafer consumer uses that rate. Crystal Fab L -- being of scale L -- does consume 5 Wafers in 90 seconds. (The real cycle time of the Fab is something different, but a rate is a rate.)

The yield 26 Mine produces a Wafer in 89 seconds. Beats the need barely, which is good. Mine L naturally produces 5 Wafers and thus matches Crystal Fab L. The yield 31 Silicon Mine cycles in 76 seconds.

[fisiu]

Well your early in the game so you probably don have alot of money or reputation to buy something better, I wouldn´t personally get any silicon or ore mines for anything ele except a loop (to supply crystal fab with silicon or forges with ore). Allthough cheap and available early in the game you dont make a great profit out of them (i.e the income - expense = profit is really low and profit/hour for the matter of fact too) added to this is that both ore and silicon require a great amount of cargospace and just isnt profitable.

Lets say you fill up the cargo space to the max with 100k worth of ore that you sell at 120k, the net profit is 20k, if you fill it out with something more expensive/cargospace used, lets say 500k and sell for the same %-difference you make 100k.

This is what I found with ore and silicon, a full cargohold of them isn´t enough to make a profit since it is a cheap ware, so even if you find a good %-profit (i.e high difference in max-min price) it won give you much cash.

I would recomen investing in something else, someone said better to make a UT by buying TSE Mk3, but that is more expensive then a mine and probably you dont have cash for that, I would do some manual runs with the trader to turn that 300k or so needed for a mine to something more and then invest in something better. Try trading in crystals those are really expensive and for 300k you will barely fill up 20% of you cargo but when you sell them you get a couple of k´s in return, usually factories have a high demand for them so you will be able to sell them at max price, problem is finding a crystal fab that sells them for min price. But there is alot of money to make there and you really only need 1 ts for that since crystal practically take no room.

I would recomend investing in a bliss/dream farm (i dont remember now which one makes the weed out of swamp plants and which one makes the swamp plants) making swamp plants, later when you get richer and get a higher reputation with the tealdi you add the other one so that you get a complex producing space weed. Space weed gives one of the highest incomes/hour of all plus that it doesnt use alot of cargospace, so you only really need a small freighter selling it. Just be sure putting this in tealdi space, since space weed is illegal everywhere except teladi sectors. Teladi = Holland.

As for Omicron Lyrae, I would not recommend putting anything there. At least in my game I have alot of invasions going on there coming from the xenon sector south of scale plate green and also from the eastern sectors. I would skip putting anything ranging from scale plate green to tears of greed. I put my first factories in PTNI HQ and had a hastle sometimes getting EC because you have cheap EC in Nyanas Hidout and Circle of Labour and often the TS´s got attacked in Scale Plate green and I had to jump em out, it´s not a problem now since I got the means to deal with em but when your starting you can not do anything abotut it but flee. I´ve read that many people have had such invasions around scale plate green, but luckily the xenons nor khaaks never went up to PTNI HQ

[TheGoldElite]

Hmmm alright then, tbh I make alot of money manually from piloting my M4, making 100s of thousands per mission often : ), but I'll have a look using console commands to trade crystals with my spare demeter, see how that works out. I need to set up a sat network first I guess. I havent explored much space yet really, I guess I'll look west some time and check out the teladi sectors there, and the North east ones too, and it's a dream farm for the plants, which has a better Payback time according to complex calculator, and is way cheaper. Any Idea of good sectors to put the one producing the plants?

[fisiu]

I put up mine in Spaceweed drift and that sectors name suits it quite well. Funny though how there isn´t any bliss place there despite the name so it kind of even invites you to put up a bliss place there. It has many teladi sectors around, it´s deep in teladi space (less chance of traders going out of teladi space), it´s only got 2 ways in so it rarely get´s enemy company plus you can defend it easily, and it has a trading station you can sell the weed to not to mention that all sectors around also have one and u got XL SSP nearby.

Ohh and the dream farm was more of an start, you can sell the plants before you get money to get a bliss place to produce weed and make it into a complex.
And I don´t know if you were refering to the ore mine or bliss place when you said dream farms got better income/hour. Bliss place for sure has more income / hour than dream farms, so in the future you´ll be wanting to add bliss places to the dream farms with weed as the final product. Don´t bother getting a closed loop (a BIG investment, it will take long before you get the money back, many days) since you got 12-14c EC available nearly all the time, put the money into something else, like more bliss/dream . I used this approach and now I got a 5 * bliss 5*dream complex spitting out weed.

If you wanna know where it is check the map at x3tc.ru or if you dont want to see the whole universe you haven´t scouted yet but only wanna find spaceweed drift then

Spoiler

Show

Starting position Omicron L, since I know that you know where it is.

W W N W N W N W W W

then either
S S W N N N W
or
N N N W W S S

7 or 8 sectors will be split depending on which way you go, rest will be teladi, basically you go through a quite big split space to get to the teladi space your aiming for. I know the split didn´t like me in the start so I had to run there when I was exploring space but with a fast ship it was no problem.

[TheGoldElite]

Alright thanks for the advice. I remember the sector you are reffering to from X3R : )

[Jawms]

Friend, i have your EXACT station setup in Omicron Lyrae.. never had problems with Xenon.

This was my first station, all i did was setup a Solar Power Plant M nearby to supply the mine.. The SPP can be supplied by the Crystal Fab that is right In-Sector.

BTW: That SPP is BEAUTIFUL! Get yourself a Mistral, and pack it with E-cells.. Whenever you run low, call it in for a refill, and send him back home.

Good Luck!

[DiveBomberDave]

I think that if you're doing combat missions in an M4, maybe a secondhand Nova M3 is a better investment?