Mineral-plexing Aldrin

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Masochisto
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Mineral-plexing Aldrin

Post by Masochisto » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 16:16

Does anyone have any tips on connecting the asteroids in Aldin?

They are so spread out that I only see 3 options:

Drag all mines together
I'd be living up to my name here... doesn't seem like a viable option.

Leave them semi-standalone, using Internal Logistics to supply them.
Seems like a decent option - but I'm not certain if they are so far apart that it would result in 97 Mines that all need energy seperately. That would keep a fleet very busy and clutter up my property screen.

Drag mines into clumps
This may be more reasonable than dragging all of them,

Connect mines with other stations Torus style
The sector would be a great place for a Crystal plex, so perhaps I should use Bio, Food and Crystal fabs to tie the mines together. Planning the placement would be quite a chore.

Find another sector
Mine's of Fortune, Tkr's Deprivation, and Tears of Greed also look promising and will be plexed eventually.. perhaps I should start there.

I haven't done the Aldrin plot yet, so the stations are in their original position, there are no accelerators yet... Does anyone have any experience with this that can offer wisdom?

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Post by Naroku » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 16:27

I have considered doing something like this but the distance and the lag rock in the middle keep me in the rest of the universe. Someone mentioned reducing the size of the middle rock w/o the mod tag in a post a few months back ,but i personally lost it. If i could get rid of the big rock in the middle i would use that space for infrastructure.
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Aldrin Mineral!

Post by David Howland » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 19:45

Ok fellas, I have plexes in all sectors Masochisto mentioned and have a small plex in Aldrin.
If you are fresh to Aldrin and have not developed other promising sectors I would recommend exploiting them first and save Aldrin for later, for these reasons:-
1. If you keep a springblossom on alternate Map Sector/Scan Asteroids duties you will find that more and more asteroids are discovered over time. The more asteroids you have before having to joining them the easier it will be. I have had a wing of Springys doing this for over a year and they are still discovering asteroids!
2. I have seen pic.s of fantastic plexes in Aldirin; single ring, double ring and chunky cubes. These however have been done players whose 'thing' is mega plex building, they do not mind the sector lag it can cause, as long as it looks good. They also often work in Reunion where game lag/freeze/crash problems are not as great. Having said that, developing my little plex in Aldrin is on my to-do-list, but I do not supose I will be able to return to the sector personally, once the plex is finished.
3. Obviously the size of the sector, the size of the plex, the potential lag problems require more knowledge and skill than most other sector plex building, so develop your skills elsewhere first!
4. Yes do Aldrin Expansion plots first, in fact do all plots first, the greater your knowledge of the X universe, the better you will understand how any local decision fits in it!
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Post by Sovereign01 » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 20:02

I'm guessing that if you don't mind the modified tag, the complex cleaner would be your friend here, but as I don't use it myself I can't say if it would be a good idea in your case.

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Post by Kryten » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 20:58

I find aldrin a sector that I just can't stand to be in, I'd never consider building there, Its way too big for starters and using autopilot in it gives you a headache. I think the devs where taking the piss when they added this sector :o

Because its got a planet right in the middle Its going to take a lot longer to tow stations, I would rather setup a complex in a small sector with few npc stations.
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Masochisto
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Post by Masochisto » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 21:21

I think I ahve already mapped all of the asteroids.. had a kestral scanning and searching while i was working remotely. I also put 10 ST's in Aldrin to keep everything flowing and they did a good job of fleshing out the map too.

The best sectors to build huge complexes in are the ones you don't want to go into. Collision detection is not the friend my freighters - so I stay out of those sectors. My farme rate is about 13 with my huge complex in Savage Spur, and the Aldrin rock doesn't seem to hurt me too bad when I am in there now. I do have the tubeless complex mod and the low poly asteroids mod- neither tags your game *modified*.

I'm going to build elsewhere first, but I still would like to hear more from people that have mastered Aldrin!

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Post by Alan Phipps » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 21:25

I found that the area of Aldrin South-South-East between the two South Trans-orbital Accelerators (post Aldrin Plot reshuffle) is great for a 26 station (incl 4 mines) pretty self-contained basic foodstuffs and minerals complex with associated complex station traders and CAGs plus Local Traders.

It is situated near enough to the jump beacon and Aldrin 2 Accelerator, has the four necessary asteroids fairly close, has local sources for initial resourcing when setting the complex going, and a good sustained market for the eventual products both local and within 1 jump.

The complex did not take long to set up as I only needed to be IS when I was ready to drop and connect all the actual stations (with a bit of mine towing, I admit). I have not needed to go back since and it makes a good steady income as well as keeping the Aldrin economy steady and stopping GoD removing Aldrin stations through keeping up frequent tradeship visits to most stations.
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Masochisto
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Post by Masochisto » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 21:31

Alan,

Is the primary purpose of your complex profit, or just to keep GoD in check?

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Post by Alan Phipps » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 21:45

The aim was to keep GoD happy (I had already lost the EEMPC Forges and a Weapons Base despite having many STs/LTs there - I know I should have parked ships in them but I thought then that indigenous ware trading was enough). Further income is always nice but I suppose that I really didn't need much more as I was in the later stages of my vanilla game. I am now enjoying XRM.
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Post by TTD » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 23:50

re 'roids qnty...

According to Xadrian's Complex Calculator there are 32 Silcon 'roids and 64 Ore 'roids.

That's 96 mines to tow somewhere safe !

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Masochisto
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Post by Masochisto » Sat, 27. Aug 11, 23:54

TTD wrote:...that's 96 mines to tow somewhere safe !
I'll figure out some way to avoid towing more than a few of them.... even if I have to build a torus...

EDIT: BBCode Failure

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Post by PabloRSA » Sun, 28. Aug 11, 11:35

Lucky i bookmarked this.

vanilla safe mods - no modified tag
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=278257

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Masochisto
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Post by Masochisto » Sat, 3. Sep 11, 22:37

I chose to megaplex Spring of Belief rather than Aldrin, but now that that is complete my attention is back to "whats next" and Aldrin is still the most rich sector still untapped....

My Universal Traders have been busy trading in the sector, but the Aldrin food and bio fabs are completely full still, the hull plating facilities are both full and the weapon facilities are churning... So, I've realized that Not only does Aldrin contain an abundance of Minerals and Suns, but also of bio and food!

A great place for a Crystal-plex that uses NPC food and energy instead of player food and energy.

Crystals are a foundation piece for player complexes, they are the most compact form of energy, but consume quite a bit of energy in order to create them via the food and minerals required (roughtly 44.5%). If I can subsidize my crystal creation with cheap Aldrin energy and cheap Aldrin food then I can expand my operations elsewhere that are currently unattractive due to low Silicon reserves...

Anyone out there that has done similar? Thoughts?

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Post by TTD » Sat, 3. Sep 11, 23:05

You are giving me ideas...

select a sector.
work out what the best production complex for resources are.
send those resources to other complexes that don't have them.

ie build a megaplex lacking e-cells end crystals
Build a complex to supply crystals.
another to supply e-cells.
each complex/megaplex in different sectors.

hmmm you could even break that down much further.
:idea:

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Post by rwhiteruff » Sun, 4. Sep 11, 16:44

Masochisto wrote: Anyone out there that has done similar? Thoughts?
No way I've done anything similar. Masochisto projects are a bit beyond my self-torture threshold, but I can be an armchair pundit for you:

As you said, energy and food are abundant in Aldrin, so use Terran fabs. That leaves you with chip plants and wafers on your end. Luckily there's tons of viable silicon asteroids in Aldrin. Rather than stringing them all together, I'd recommend clustering them together into a couple of complexes in close proximity to the trans-orbital accelerators. CAGs can purchase the needed food and energy for you, and sell off any excess chips not funneled into storage and productivity.

Consider keeping an 'arm' of the Xenon HUB connected somewhere between Neptune and Aldrin 2, and constructing a storage depot somewhere in there (likely best in Aldrin 2) or using the hub itself for your chip clearing-house. CLS1 ships can keep the rest of your infrastructure drowning in chips.

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Post by TTD » Sun, 4. Sep 11, 17:00

Consider keeping an 'arm' of the Xenon HUB connected somewhere between Neptune and Aldrin 2,
But be aware of the new Xenon Migration route through there. :!:

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Post by kurush » Sun, 4. Sep 11, 18:16

I had most of my complexes in Aldrin in one of my games. There are plenty of reasons to do this:
1) Once you build big, you will get sector lag anyway. So, why not use the sector where lag is inherent?
2) Security. There are no enemies in Aldrin, you don't need to worry about pirates or anybody other than Terrans. There is a bunch of indestructible ships flying there and it helps :)
3) Availability of minerals. You would be hard pressed to use all the roids there.

I did tow the mines and it wasn't really a big deal on SETA. My complexes were for weapon and missile production (including ~10 shadow missile fabs :twisted: )

A couple of things you should be aware of:
- collision detection. Find some *really* empty space before building. I had an issue with stations being placed 20+ km from where I was trying to place them because of that. Using a terran SPP probably contributed to this issue.
- finish all plots before building. Dragging my springy's a$$ to one of the stations for the New Home mission there was almost unbearable. On low end machines it just dies completely when you have a lot of stations there. I had to fine-tune my otherwise OK hardware to complete the mission.
- There are several roids, at least one of them with high yield, that cannot be moved once you build your mine on it. Mine is OK and doesn't lose its shields but once you try to tow it, it blows. It looks like it is actually stuck in the big rock in the middle or may be one of smaller rocks.

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Mine Is There!

Post by David Howland » Sun, 4. Sep 11, 19:18

TTD,
I have had mine connected there since the Aldrin expansions a year ago, I moved it from the South gate of TUS2 to the North and I was amazed how much difference it made Xenon traffic dropped from frequent to rare and since I made the move I have only had to jump in once to help my forces out. Mind you since then I have improved my blockade in the Xenon sector next to TUS3 so that will have had some effect!
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Post by Masochisto » Sun, 4. Sep 11, 19:57

rwhiteruff wrote: No way I've done anything similar. Masochisto projects are a bit beyond my self-torture threshold, but I can be an armchair pundit for you:

As you said, energy and food are abundant in Aldrin, so use Terran fabs. That leaves you with chip plants and wafers on your end. Luckily there's tons of viable silicon asteroids in Aldrin. Rather than stringing them all together, I'd recommend clustering them together into a couple of complexes in close proximity to the trans-orbital accelerators. CAGs can purchase the needed food and energy for you, and sell off any excess chips not funneled into storage and productivity.
The Aldrin Food fabs produce every type of food, so I was going to balance which race fabs I used. I was going to do the math of course...

I was thinking about clusters too, probably a big cluster near each food production plant containing the cystal fabs and any additional food. Then mineral clumpses spread about where convenient.

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Post by Masochisto » Sun, 4. Sep 11, 20:02

kurush wrote:I did tow the mines and it wasn't really a big deal on SETA. My complexes were for weapon and missile production (including ~10 shadow missile fabs :twisted: )

A couple of things you should be aware of:
- collision detection. Find some *really* empty space before building. I had an issue with stations being placed 20+ km from where I was trying to place them because of that. Using a terran SPP probably contributed to this issue.
- finish all plots before building. Dragging my springy's a$$ to one of the stations for the New Home mission there was almost unbearable. On low end machines it just dies completely when you have a lot of stations there. I had to fine-tune my otherwise OK hardware to complete the mission.
- There are several roids, at least one of them with high yield, that cannot be moved once you build your mine on it. Mine is OK and doesn't lose its shields but once you try to tow it, it blows. It looks like it is actually stuck in the big rock in the middle or may be one of smaller rocks.
Thanks for the tips Kurush! This is exactly the type of experienced knowledge I hoped for!

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