What to do in a borked economy

myosin2p · Post by **myosin2p** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 08:03

Hello all,

So I somewhat unwisely decided that my first station would be a cattle ranch in cloudbase SW, thinking that with two cahoona bakeries there and the nearest cattle ranch two sectors away, I could turn a pretty decent profit. HOWEVER, the whole market for argnu beef in the area seems to be saturated-- I can't even sell any at 90/unit (well below average), and at the local stock exchange the argnu beef index is at 122 (seeing this, I bought some, and only later realized IT'S ALL CONNECTED).

So the economy seems to be in a bit of a bind, my station is full up on beef and nobody's buying it-- what to do?

1) Scrap it-- is it possible? Worthwhile?
2) Wait for a better beef market? Will it happen? Ever?
3) ATM I have only one mercury supplying E-Cells and am relying on on-site sales for profit. I'm toying with getting another mercury to sell the beef at best price instead, but I don't know if this is just flushing more credits down the toilet.

Hemmingfish · Post by **Hemmingfish** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 08:59

Adding another mercury to sell the meat will work because NPC goods don't usually propagate very far. It's very likely that two or three jumps away are a bunch of factories starved for it, which is great for your bank account.

Another way to do it is to complete the loop: make factories that require cahoonas to draw from the nearby bakeries and they'll start to source more agnu beef for the best prices, which is likely to be your own.

myosin2p · Post by **myosin2p** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 09:06

Update: Cahoonas themselves are also in pretty high supply. It's been so difficult to sell my beef that my factory filled up and there was no point in buying any more e-cells. So I decided to make the supply mercury sell the beef for best price, and now it's stuck with 700 units of beef or so. Getting another mercury is, for the moment, a moot point.

TTD · Post by **TTD** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 09:32

Save up for a complex that requires your beef.
The end prduct should be something that is needed ,either by you ar the npc trade.

Maybe start with a shield factory or adv. satelite factory, and gradually turn it into a full complex.

For now I would trade in ore and silicon and get the first mercury trading on it's own as a MK3 trader.
That will start your credit supply.
Aim for about 20 MK3 traders upgraded to Local Traders (TC and later), overlapping them by one sector,set to 2 or 3 sector radius.

Captain Chris sTc · Post by **Captain Chris sTc** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 13:09

can you not sell the the meat steaks, then automate doing that with CLS?
(see bonus plugins)

Imgran · Post by **Imgran** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 13:42

Captain Chris sTc wrote:can you not sell the the meat steaks, then automate doing that with CLS?
(see bonus plugins)

He just said, the meatsteaks themselves are also saturated. The nearest spot that is seriously desperate for them is uncomfortably close to Pirate Alley.

I like the suggestion other people are making (but not necessarily fully articulating).

Add a Cahoona Bakery, Also add a factory that has Meatsteak Cahoonas as a primary ingredient. If you have the cashola, I highly recommend an Argon chip plant or crystal fab, Crystal Fab L's are particularly food-hungry. Also particularly expensive, but they do tend to pay out.

Basically, build around this failed factory until not only do you not need to sell its saturated good, but become a purchaser of said good, with your failed factory now supplying the good to drive down cost while you also buy the surplus off the market.

*checks the Roid situation in CBSW in particular*

Looks like all there is in CBSW for mining is one mediocre Ore roid. That's OK, that and a Cahoona Bakery would be enough to supply, say, 2 PAC factories and there's several equipment docks handy to sell the wares off to. I guarantee that makes you a pretty neat chunk of change in the long run. And if you can't afford something to mount a tractor beam yet, the Ore Belt isn't that far away anyhow, you can buy what you need off the market.

Infekted · Post by **Infekted** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 13:48

At the moment, until you can afford to add more stations to it, you are not going to see a good return on investment. Beef is slightly over supplied more or less everywhere.
You'd be better off leaving it alone. Using up it's energy for jump fuel, and using your ships to trade.
When you can afford to, you'll want to add a cahoona bakery, an ore mine, and some 1MJ factories to end up with something like this:
http://tinyurl.com/kppo7dm
Adding the cahoona will make it marginally more profitable, and the Ore slightly more again. And then when you add the shields fabs you should start seeing a decent return.

ajax34i · Post by **ajax34i** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 15:29

Either:

1. Turn off production and leave it alone.

2. Get a trained CLS TS trader. The CAG Commercial Agent script allows you to extend the range of your trader to the entire map (if you want), while also allowing you to blacklist sectors (so it doesn't go into pirate areas) or specify a whitelist (so it only goes into Argon areas). The more Argon areas you're serving, the better your chances to find deals to sell your product.

3. Attach a Cahoona Bakery to your Ranch, and then attach a factory that will sell well, such as 1 MJ shields or Mosquitoes, Chip Plant, IRE. This will use the beef and cahoonas, and you can buy energy and ore cheaply from the various solar plants and mines, and you'll produce something that sells profitably.

4. Do step 3 above but attach a factory for stuff that you will need. HEPTs for your future M3 fleets, PPC for your capital ships, or the always needed Flail Barrage and Hammer Torpedo missiles, which you will shoot by the hundreds from your M7M to capture ships for sale or for yourself.

Imgran · Post by **Imgran** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 16:15

I tend to combine 3 and 4. Plex what I need and then also sell it on the open market.

Sovereign01 · Post by **Sovereign01** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 18:11

Self-sustaining complexes are what I rely on, spacefuel/weed complexes in pirate space never go wrong

Timsup2nothin · Post by **Timsup2nothin** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 18:33

Don't know about AP, but this would work in TC and might in AP.

Pump e-cells into rival cattle ranches.

Make sure no bakeries anywhere in the region ever show a price above average by selling them beef at below average prices (this may take more beef than you are producing unless the cahoonas really are saturated, in which case the bakeries will stop using beef and their price on it will stay low).

The cattle ranches will fill up with beef, because NPC bio haulers that buy beef will fly long and far before they can sell and they won't come all the way back.

Once the cattle ranches are stuffed with unsold beef and have enough e-cells that energy haulers won't stop there they will have no traffic.

After a period of time with no traffic and a full product bay the GoD engine will remove your rival beef suppliers.

PS...the bio haulers that fill up with cheap beef will look for a place they can sell it for at least average plus one, and the nearest place will probably involve flying through pirate territory. If you need more beef to keep the bakery prices down you could bargain with those haulers. Trading PAC blasts for beef is cheap and effective.

Virtualaughing · Post by **Virtualaughing** » Sat, 27. Jul 13, 21:12

The best multitasking complexes are those where resource needed. They can involve NPC factories and become training facility for CAG pilots....
Just make sure you build them where the required resource is plenty and one of your basic product can support them.

There is no lack of trading opportunities just lack in imagination.... ;p

Alexei_Gladkikh · Post by **Alexei_Gladkikh** » Sun, 28. Jul 13, 07:11

I would not say economy borked, you just made poor choice. All area around argon very saturated with food, which you can easy see if you look on local stock exchange.

What is profitable there if weapons and missiles and shield factories that use argon food.

myosin2p · Post by **myosin2p** » Sun, 28. Jul 13, 07:50

So I got a lot of GREAT feedback about how to turn around that cattle ranch int the long run, and I'll for sure be turning to that when I have the credits to do so.

What I ended up doing was finding a 40-yield asteroid in cloud base SE, right next to more than a few ore-requiring factories. Also not too far from the Boron, who tend (in my experience) to be short on ore. So far so good.

So I bought, with manual trading proceeds, a third (counting my start ship) mercury to sell the ore at best price. This seems like it will work out pretty well, but I am majorly strapped for cash, the new ship+ mine having cost about half a mil.

What I'm confused about is that my E-cell supplying mercury is only bringing back about 100 cells/run, which means my ore mine is going in fits and starts. It *should* have enough cash from the station to buy more-- is there some setting that I've screwed around with that's causing this?

Hemmingfish · Post by **Hemmingfish** » Sun, 28. Jul 13, 07:59

My initial thought was lack of supply, but there's plenty of solar power plants that start around there. It could be your setting for price of energy cells: if it's too low it'll stop buying when it drives up the price from purchasing energy cells itself.

myosin2p · Post by **myosin2p** » Sun, 28. Jul 13, 08:02

Buying price is 16-- also, do automated traders buy incrementally so that the price has a chance to go up *while* they buy? That seems to be what your post is implying.

Hemmingfish · Post by **Hemmingfish** » Sun, 28. Jul 13, 08:23

I don't think they do, now that I think about it. You'll have to take a look at nearby solar power plant prices to see if they're above 16. Otherwise I'm not sure what could be happening.

TTD · Post by **TTD** » Sun, 28. Jul 13, 08:25

As a rule of thumb,until you know what the prices are...

sell at average minus one
buy at average plus one

eg...
e-cells
buy @ 17
sell @ 15

so set e-cells at 17 or higher

myosin2p · Post by **myosin2p** » Sun, 28. Jul 13, 08:30

I may have just not had enough money at the station. Now my lastest haul is in the thousands, as it should be.

Alexei_Gladkikh · Post by **Alexei_Gladkikh** » Sun, 28. Jul 13, 09:10

Your station just did not had money. You can check amount of available money in adjust station parameters. I usually use 12 for buy price of energy if I have my own freighter assigned. I do give him jump drive and permit autojump so he will get it. Usually when I notice that my station flashing ellow first thin I check is amount of money station has, next I check range in which resources avalible for price I put. It range > range I use I increase buying price untill there source in range.

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What to do in a borked economy

What to do in a borked economy