[X3AP] Time to Show Off My Second Vanilla Factory Complex. :D

[Simoom]

Hey everyone! Some of you may have already read my vanilla factory complex construction guide, which I compiled over the course of my first factory complex in Antigone Memorial (a 66-station light weapons/shield complex). As I mentioned, I used Factory Complex Constructor back when I played X3R/X3TC for convenience, so doing everything the vanilla way proved to be quite challenging - but IMO, rewarding as well.

My first factory complex, however, was not perfect. I was learning a lot of things as I went, and some mistakes were made early on (and discovered too late) which led to visible asymmetry (you can't really see it by looking at the tubes, but when you look at the complex from top-down, you will spot some visible deformations in the formation).

My second factory complex, a 91-station missile complex in Spring of Belief, is a drastic improvement over the first. I have developed a few new techniques, the most important one being "Tube-matching" (I will update my complex construction guide later today with detailed info), which results in much more precise rotational alignments. This meant most of the buildings in this complex was able to be position-matched (Num Pad 5) to their counterparts for a near-perfect complex geometry.

The purpose of this thread is simply to show off some in-progress screenshots of this new complex, so I will stop yammering now. More detailed info to come in my tutorial thread when I complete this complex (including final screenshots of the Terran fabs and mines when they are attached to the complex).

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It started simply with this... These initial stations only took about 40 minutes to align and plop down.

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By the end of the day... WHOA! Sure has grown! The complex uses a variant of the "Horizontal Zig-Zag" layout, which I call "Beehive". Self-explanatory I think?

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Here are some close-up shots of the "Beehive" layout; left and right side respectively.

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Second day, the "Vertical Zig-Zag" stations were added. The third solar power station added at the center-bottom will act as an important junction for the "Square-Wave" stations.

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A head-on view of the complex - thanks to precise geometry, this 40KM-wide complex is perfectly flat.

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A close-up of the "Vertical Zig-Zag" stations. Two Crystal Fab M's, which are L-split stations, were used as the joining points for the horizontal & vertical layouts.

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Third day, the "Square-Wave" stations are added, seen at the bottom (below the Solar Power Plant L). These are mostly missile factories - 4 Flails, 4 Hammers, a Silkworm and a Rastar refinery M (I ran out of U-split factories and it made an acceptable substitute).

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A close-up of the "Square-Wave" layout.

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A nice perspective shot with the planet in the background.

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Perspective shot from the front - I just realized the complex looks rather like a big bird. Think it can fly?

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Talk about precision planning! You can actually see the symmetry of the layout in the sector map.

Updates soon, so stay tuned. Feel free to share your thoughts, or show off screenshots of your own complex!

[TTD]

They look cool !

[psyclon]

This is poetry in construction