[Help!] First Factories - The Road To Money

[Zealot644]

New player here. Clocked in 25 hours in X3:TC and feel like I've made some good progress overall. I'm currently at 4million credits with a great fighter ship and a couple of acquired freighters (I found that hunting Duke's transports to be great for this). I noticed that I am able to purchase small factories, but I'm lost when it comes to the entire process of setting them up and having them run properly. I've looked at the stickied posts with guides, but I'm still totally lost when it comes to first steps.

1) I don't know which factories to buy. I could potentially check what sectors need in terms of supplies and go from there...

2)I haven't a clue which combination of factories I will need to ensure smooth operation if I can determine suitable factories.

3)In regards to freighters and various ships used in trading, I don't know how to make them run goods back and forth on their own - or efficiently.

4)Is there a way to make a self sufficient grouping of factories with good profit?

[euclid]

Welcome Zealot644

Essential for setting up a (self-sustained) complex are the necessary resources and, since you need energy for every product, this means silicon roids. Remember: silicone + food -> crystals, crystals -> ecells.

So find a sector with some juicy asteroids (si & ore) and place/plan the first steps of a complex by setting up an energy production. After that you still can decide what else you want to connect (i.e. produce).

There are a few very good complex planners out there. I bet you've found them already


Cheers Euclid

[NeverSnake]

1. Avoid weapons and shields but apart from that you'll generally have no problem selling anything from your first dozen factories. The biggest markets seem to be those things that appear at trading stations and pirate bases - microchips, quantum tubes, spaceweeds etc. but things like food and secondary resources have large amounts of buyers too. Oh, avoid energy cells too, they don't make much money.

2. Have a lot at the online complex calculator or the xadrian complex calculator.

3. You either want to use the buy/sell ware for best price commands (simple and self-explanatory) or the commercial agent command that comes with the bonus pack. Make sure you set the freighter's homebase to your factory and turn autojump on in the command console.

4. Not really. Self-sufficient complexes are nice because they need fewer ships but energy cells have a small profit margin so creating your own doesn't increase your profit that much. A self-sufficient complex will make less per hour than a complex of the same price that buys in it's energy cells. And there are lots of energy cells being produced so you can easily run a complex of 50 or 100 factories from fairly local sources.

Also, if you're planning to built large complexes then I'd grab the complex cleaner mod. The standard complex system results in abysmal performance (for everbody).

[gbjbaanb]

I always found the 1mj shield factories to be very efficient at making more - at least there's never any 1 mj shields in the factory for long!

You could look for areas that have deliberately borked economies - think what bottom-rung trade goods might be in demand around, Ringo moon for an example.

[brownthomasw]

My in the beginning 4 mil credit plan was a wasp missile group. I no longer want wasps after trying them. Too slow, I'll stick to hurricanes. Most other missiles cost a bit more or may have higher race rep requirements to get. Choose a missile, hurricane, or Thunderbolt- there are better thunderbolt level missiles ie the tempest or typhoon which are significantly more expensive. You may want wasps or hurricanes (light)and then thunderbolt or tempests (medium). Choose one Light and one medium. Best to wait i suppose and skip wasps and thunderbolts in my oppinion. If you can wait and ho,d out. Do hurricanes and tempests. Hurricanes cost as much as a thunderbolt factory for a weaker faster missile but being a lower class costing the same one assumes hurricanes are better. Tempests cost 2 mil more than thunderbolts, are the same class, are slightly weaker but auto retarget which is frugal and a bit fancy compared to the plain old thunderbolt.

Once you decide what you want (get adv drones instead or something non combat). 1st figure out where you can buy the end factory you want, you'll be at the mercy of hired TL's until you get your own and you don't want to send them too far across dangerous places. So you want to start your complex near where you can get the factories easily. You'll al;so likely need a sector with roids to set up in.

Drop the ore or silicon mine on an asteroid. Drop the food both raw base food and refined food next to your mine. Link em all up and assign a cag to buy ecells for them all together. If doing wasps with 4 mil, drop a wasp factory with it too from the start, make sure to give it money and come back to collect your missiles.

Wasp complex- 1.5 mil wasp fac, 1 mil cahoona burger (M), .5 mil argnu beef (M), .4 to .6 mil ore mine (M), 1 mercury TS .5 mil = about 4 million credits. Plus starting credits for him to buy ecells. Hurricane or thunderblot starters adds 1.5 mil from the 3 mil for the missile factory itself, total 5.5 million. It will take a fair time to make your money back especially if you start shooting off missiles at everything. This is more for supplying yourself than making money but they can be good money makers too. Exception being it is hard to sell hurricanes and you have to do it manually because they're not available in stores, they'll make money just you have to do it. Wasps are an Argon staple commodity that your traders will unload if you like.

If something else maybe you can't afford now you can have another ship sell the food and ore as i or use a ts manually to do that... for now. Then add the high tech good you want later. Some use ore some use silicon.

[stoudtlr]

I had good luck starting with mines. The only resource they need is energy which can he bought cheap. I bought one ore mine and had two ships set to it. One buying energy and the other selling the ore. Once I made the money back I bought another ore mine, then another, and then a few silicon mines. Once you have a few mines it won't take long to accumulate enough credits to turn them into complexes.

For the ships, assign your factory, ore mine or whatever, as their home station and then configure one to buy resource at best price and the other to sell product at best price. They'll keep the factory running automatically then. CAG pilots are another option for keeping your factory running. There are a few good guides for setting up CAG and CLS pilots in the guides sticky thread.

[darth_adversor]

I only skimmed the thread so apologies if this has already been said, but space fuel/weed complexes in unknown sectors (or Teladi in the case of weed) are huge moneymakers. Mine are always sold out.

Also, yes...1MJ shields sell very, very well.

[Timsup2nothin]

What sells well depends on where you are.

I suggest doing some trading with your freighters in the immediate area. Go in a sector, look for what you can buy cheap and buy it. Look to see if you can sell it in that sector for a high price, if not look for places that use the product in nearby sectors and try to sell it there.

In looking at all these factories you will notice things. Like 'wow I wish I had a load of that, they will pay max price' and 'wow this stuff was cheap and now I know why, it's next to useless and I'll sell it as cheap as I got it just to unload it'.

After a few trades you will have a very good idea what would make sense to build in the area you are in.

Shortcut:

Spoiler

Show

Around Argon Prime there is plenty of wheat and 15 trading stations buying Cloth Rimes. Build a Rimes Fact and you can basically print money.

Around Omicron Lyrae there are a huge number of cahoona bakeries and Rimes Facts. There is almost no wheat. You can build five M or two L wheat farms and not keep up with demand, so you can sell for near max price as long as you deliver it yourself.

Around Aladana Hill there's a cahoona shortage, but you will want to match a cattle ranch to your bakery since there's not an abundance of cattle either.

In Boron space up Kingdom End way you can do well with a bogas plant, but you have to make sure the bofu fabs (who buy your product) are supplied with e-cells or they won't need it, and you will also need to ship their bofu to the trading stations for them. Both supplying them and moving the bofu are very profitable, but it will take ships.

Other Boron areas I'm not familiar enough with to say for sure.

I seldom do anything in Paranid space but hunt.

Teladi space is universally short on Nostrop. If there are plenty of flower farms build a nostrop refinery, if there aren't plenty of flower farms build that too.

Split space, in my experience, generally has all the fabs they need but they are so spread apart and the sectors are so large that they have endless transport problems. I mostly avoid them.

[Zealot644]

Thanks for the information guys. I'll see what I can do after reading what has been posted!

[Mousse9]

The closed complex "loop" is basically:

Silicon -> Crystals -> Energy Cells -> Silicon

Silicon Mine -> Crystal Fab -> Solar Power Plant -> Silicon Mine

It is a loop because a Silicon Mine needs Energy Cells to work. But you get a ton more Energy Cells, so that powers the food factories (dependent on race), and those food factories make the end product.

Some observations about closed loop complexes:

Efficient complexes usually overproduce a slight bit more than is really needed to keep the loop going. You almost always get a small surplus of an intermediate product. In most cases, the biggest surplus is Energy Cells.

That can be a GOOD thing. Either sell the E Cells for profitssss, or use them for yourself, for jumpdrives, which I do. This way, you almost never have to buy E Cells for jumps.

Open Loop complexes, one that are not selfsufficient, are usually dependent on Energy Cells from NPC Solar Power Plants. You would need a TS to regularly buy E Cells to keep it going. If your TS gets destroyed by Xenon or pirates, you'd have to replace it. (Put it in a safe core sector if you want open loop.)

Closed Loop pros:
No micromanagement necessary, it's selfsufficient.
If the complex makes stuff you use yourself, like missiles, you can put it in the middle of nowhere, far away from other NPC's since you don't need them.
In the long run, much more profitable, since you're not buying anything, only selling. Once you've recouped the building costs, it's all profitss thereafter!

Cons:

It's EXPENSIVE. You need many millions to make it closed loop.
You need a sector with Silicon asteroids.
Huge complexes cause lag if you're in the sector with the complex.

Open Loop pros:
Much smaller, you don't need a lot of factories because you're buying the resources. For most factories you just need to buy food and E Cells, that's it.
Much, much, MUCH cheaper. Did I say it was cheaper?

Cons:
Constantly needing to buy resources, and if your resource-buying TS gets destroyed, that's a lot of hassle.
Less profitsss than closed loop.


Wow, this comment became huge. I'll stop now. XD

[Timsup2nothin]

Cons:

Less profitsss than closed loop.

Not wanting to revisit an old argument, but this is mathematically incorrect. If you put the same amount of credits into open loop complexes or factories as you put into a closed loop complex you will get much greater return per hour.

[Mousse9]

Really? I thought that after you recoup the initial cost, it's all profits afterwards.

Hm, if open loop is actually more profitable, I've been doing it wrong...

[Timsup2nothin]

Really? I thought that after you recoup the initial cost, it's all profits afterwards.

Hm, if open loop is actually more profitable, I've been doing it wrong...

The key words are 'after you recoup the initial cost'.

It is indeed 'all profits afterwards'.

Take any closed loop complex you like. Say a 1 MJ shield complex. Work out the total cost. Now spend that total cost on a complex that produces ore and food internally, but buys the energy, and also produces 1 MJ shields.

The open loop will be producing about three times as many shields, so three times the income per hour. It will of course be spending about a third of that income on e-cells...but that still leaves it making twice as much per hour.

In other words, it will recoup the initial cost in half the time, and continue to generate twice the hourly income forever.

If you don't generate anything internally and spend the entire sum on 1 MJ shield fabs, buy the ore at 100 and the food at something close to average, it will make even more.

NOTE: this does not mean you have been 'doing it wrong'. You have just been paying for the convenience of not having to secure the resource supplies. But it's always good to know that you are paying for something. I'm generally inclined to buy e-cells, mobile mine the ore, and pay for the convenience of internal food production.

[Infekted]

Bang on the money by Tim there. Early on for pure profit and ROI open is the most efficient (no need to say best).
But when you can afford to, closed offers many advantages. Not being reliant on NPC factories being a major one.

[Rive]

I would start with a silicone mine. Some 'L' variant, on an asteroid with good yield. In a sector where there is enough asteroids with good yield.
Silicone mines can be turned into a closed loop crystal complexes, which will be very useful later on: also as ware, also as fuel for your SPPs.

You will notice soon that 4 mil is not a really big money to start an industry, so that mine will keep you occupied for some time

[Gregorovitch]

Bang on the money by Tim there. Early on for pure profit and ROI open is the most efficient (no need to say best).
But when you can afford to, closed offers many advantages. Not being reliant on NPC factories being a major one.

I would agree with that.

I reckon 1 XL SPP closed loop produces enough surplus ecells to power ~35 assorted stations, so 20x1Mj Shield + 4xBeef(L) + 4xBakery(L) with some to spare for example.

The XL SPP closed loop complex costs about 40m (maybe a tad more) and the 20x1Mj complex costs about 45m.

If the SPP complex charges the 1Mj complex 12Cr for ecells (via CLS1 delivery) then very roughly for every 8Cr earned by the 1Mj complex, 3Cr will end up with the SPP leading to the general rule that @ 12Cr ecells account for about 40% (37.5% in this example, but it's rough enough to round up) of gross earnings on average.

So if you build a 40x1Mj complex instead with your 80m Cr and buy in ecells you double your income but pay 40% of it for ecells (assuming you can buy enough of them @ 12Cr). This works out you increase your RoI by ~25%. Plus of course you can start small and gradually expand your 1Mj complex in small increments.

However if you can't lay your hands on enough ecells @12Cr on the open market your RoI starts to crash and burn.

[Timsup2nothin]

Bang on the money by Tim there. Early on for pure profit and ROI open is the most efficient (no need to say best).
But when you can afford to, closed offers many advantages. Not being reliant on NPC factories being a major one.

I would agree with that.

I reckon 1 XL SPP closed loop produces enough surplus ecells to power ~35 assorted stations, sowith some to spare for example.

The XL SPP closed loop complex costs about 40m (maybe a tad more) and the 20x1Mj complex costs about 45m.

If the SPP complex charges the 1Mj complex 12Cr for ecells (via CLS1 delivery) then very roughly for every 8Cr earned by the 1Mj complex, 3Cr will end up with the SPP leading to the general rule that @ 12Cr ecells account for about 40% (37.5% in this example, but it's rough enough to round up) of gross earnings on average.

So if you build a 40x1Mj complex instead with your 80m Cr and buy in ecells you double your income but pay 40% of it for ecells (assuming you can buy enough of them @ 12Cr). This works out you increase your RoI by ~25%. Plus of course you can start small and gradually expand your 1Mj complex in small increments.

However if you can't lay your hands on enough ecells @12Cr on the open market your RoI starts to crash and burn.

A closed loop XLSPP puts out about 47000 cells per hour. A standard factory uses 900. So it will power 52 standard factories.

20x1Mj Shield + 4xBeef(L) + 4xBakery(L)

Is equivalent to 60 standard factories, so you are 12% over. You actually are looking at 18 final output factories, assuming mobile ore mining.

Total outlay 80 million. Profit per hour about 2.25 million. Payoff ~ 36 hours.

80 million buys a self feeding complex of 38 final output factories. Sales per hour 4.5 million. Hourly energy consumption 97k cells, call it 100K, bought at 15 is 1.5 million hourly cost. Hourly profit 3 million. Payoff ~ 26 hours.

So it pays off ten hours earlier, and makes seven and a half million more per hour for the rest of time.

Notice I used a purchase price of 15, not 12. Buying at 15 it is not only possible, but easy, to 'lock down' the entire output of NPC power plants. If you build in a good spot with multiple SPPs where you can live with a trapping rate of 40-50% you can buy at 12. But since this only increases profit 10% it is seldom worth the risks of, as you say, RoI crashing and burning.

By the way, my current project has initial cost of 5.5 million, and hourly profit of 275 thousand for a payoff of 20 hours. The smaller size is probably more in line with the topic at hand.

[brownthomasw]

Take it a step further and for every resource you use if you bought it from npc's at bottom price they would be losing money at 12 cr for ecells assuming everyone pays that. Thier loss can be your gain as even your internal food production would be done cheaper if outsourced but then you've got transports flying all over and you likely can't get food at bottom price all the time. Energy and ore yes, but then when you close the loop you're not paying anything eh idk.

I'm just sure it is cheaper than if you bought energy and then made these things yourself. I was always concerned about what spp's can sustain too. They never seem to make enough ecells but I don't have a good idea of how many you need and then it seems like they can barely support the silicon, food and crystal plants they need just to run at all.

I'm making tons of crystals for the HUB in TC and i'm not sure if i want to stick spp's on them when i'm done and make microchips for free or sell the crystals, keep buying energy and make more profit that way.

[Gregorovitch]

So it pays off ten hours earlier, and makes seven and a half million more per hour for the rest of time.

Er, do you mean 750K?

My rough and ready made it 25% better RoI, you make it 33% and I'm sure you've worked this out more exactly.

You're probably right about the 12% etc, what I do is add an SPP, build up ecell stocks, build some more stations in chunks, notice ecell stocks are now falling at the SPPs, so build another one and so on. So I probably overestimate how many stations they can support.

However, you are putting the cost of ecells @15 to be about 33% of gross on average and although I'm sure you've worked this out much more exactly than me I'm struggling to square this with my own observations. If I get the SPPs to CLS1 ecells @15 I consistently find about 50-60% of the cash I transfer out of station accounts comes from the SPP complexes.

[Timsup2nothin]

So it pays off ten hours earlier, and makes seven and a half million more per hour for the rest of time.

Er, do you mean 750K?

My rough and ready made it 25% better RoI, you make it 33% and I'm sure you've worked this out more exactly.

You're probably right about the 12% etc, what I do is add an SPP, build up ecell stocks, build some more stations in chunks, notice ecell stocks are now falling at the SPPs, so build another one and so on. So I probably overestimate how many stations they can support.

However, you are putting the cost of ecells @15 to be about 33% of gross on average and although I'm sure you've worked this out much more exactly than me I'm struggling to square this with my own observations. If I get the SPPs to CLS1 ecells @15 I consistently find about 50-60% of the cash I transfer out of station accounts comes from the SPP complexes.

Yeah, slipped there...I usually work with daily rate not hourly. Millions looked more familiar.

Anyway, I don't use CLS 1 for transfers, since I don't do internal transfers, so I can't account for your observations, but I have a guess. An XLSPP closed loop does produce about 47,000 per hour so if your CLS 1 transfers them at 12 it should profit about 550,000 per hour. Changing it to 15 will make a big difference to the SPP complex, raising it to close to 700,000 per hour, but since your final product complexes are so much more profitable the same 140,000 credit per hour change will appear much smaller.

By the way, 18 million more per day for the rest of time is a huge difference in return on 80 million invested..