Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2
CLS monopoly network on all ice and water transport in Terran space
CLS monopoly network collecting all output of five Teladi weapon forges for free
CLS monopoly network adapted for cornering the e-cell trade
I wanted to take the time to share what struggles I have had, and the lessons I have learned in hopes of refining my use of this playstyle. Hopefully, many of you have also been toying with this technique and will share the experiments, challenges and successes you have had too. My apologies for the weight of this post.
Attempt 1 - Terran Space:
My first restart was a fresh copy of XRM-AP with the Aldrin Adventurer Start, my goal was to dominate Terran Space and Aldrin, since I was in Terran space I used the Baldric and Baldric SF. My first step was to train 30 CLS2 pilots using fly to waypoints as we have been doing for years now. Once they were at Cargo Messenger or so I bought a mix of TS's and started configuring them for work sector by sector starting with the Moon. I had a trap to buy every Energy, Bio, Food & Mineral resource. Another parked seller every energy, bio & mineral resource. I had a resource cache in every sector, and dedicated ships to move resources from one sector cache to the next moving away from the origin. I then had several ships setup to shuttle resources from the caches to the sellers and back to the cache.
Example Waypoints Used
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Buyer: Fly to Station, Buy Ware at Minimum Price
Seller: Fly to Station, Sell Ware at Avg+1 Price
Transport: Load Ware at Buyer_1, Load Ware at Buyer_2, Load Ware at Buyer_3, ..., Unload at Sector_Cache
Distributor: Load Ware at Sector_Cache, Unload Ware at Seller_1, Unload Ware at Seller_2, ..., Unload at Sector_Cache
LR_Distributor: Load Ware at Sector1_Cache, Unload Ware at Sector2_Cache
Ship cost is very important
This setup was very expensive in terms of ships, but was also expensive in terms of how much resource stock needed to be held. This layout had also resulted in a large number of ships, as I had several dedicated to each npc station.
Docking space is precious
With so many ships travelling to and from each station I could see ships being bounced to space in order to free up docking space. There were also ships idle because they could not dock at the sector_cache.
Inventory is expensive
Baldrics hold quite a bit more than a stock Mercury and cost much more too. I underestimated how important it was to minimize ship costs and to reduce size of inventory.
Managing long waypoint lists takes too much time
I was also spending alot of time refining long waypoint lists trying to get each ship to handle more, and having redundant coverage for each station woven between transport pilots.
Long waypoint lists are not effective
The long waypoint lists also resulted in many stations not being serviced well, primarily because they were low on the list
Dedicated LR_Distributors are difficult to pace properly
Early on I had too many LR_Distributors assigned which resulted in the caches being emptied too fast for the normal distributors to keep their sellers stocked, reducing their count caused some backlog so that resourced did not flow to the next sectors as fluidly as I hoped.
Ship deployment takes too much time
Configuring ships was difficult, as the closest place I could purchase CLS2 was Black Hole Sun (SY from XRM), in Vanilla it would have been worse unless or better, depending on whether the Equipment Dock in Omicron was alive. I ended up using a small fleet of Rapiers as shuttles to buy CLS2 software and bring it back to the Terran Shipyard. I was not seeing much returns, primarily due to ship costs and inventory costs; I restarted in order to go vanilla before all those Baldrics filled with inventory - at which point I believe the returns would have began flowing.
Attempt 2 - Argon Prime:
The second restart was a Vanilla AP Humble Merchant start and my goal was to dominate the Argon Prime area. I typically hate the Humble Merchant start, but figured it was ample considering the trading nature of the goal. I began much the same way, but wanted to reduce the number of substations by limiting them to the middle column of sectors and having them service the sector they reside in as well as the sector to the east and the west. The first was built in Power Circle. I reduced the size of the ships by using Mercuries for Sellers & Transport, and used Mercury Haulers for Buying Traps and Caches. I only had Caches in the sectors with a substation, and was relying on transporters to pickup from their substation and distribute to sales traps they were assigned. I also did not pretrain my pilots and tried to keep each ships waypoint list lower, but tried to have fewer idle ships. After a day an a half in game, and expanding to about 6 sectors (Power Circle, Antigonie Memorial, Three Worlds, Cloudbase North West, Herron's Nebula & The Hole) I couldn't take the Humble Argon start anymore, and realized I had made a few mistakes setting up the network - mostly tho, I wanted to restart as Poisened Paranid. TBH, the restart had nothing to do with anything other than my preference for fast ships and realizing it was going to take me some time before I could snag a Kestrel, Springblossom, Splitfire or Hyperion.
Example Waypoints Used
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Buyer: Fly to Station, Buy Ware at Minimum Price, Unload at Substation
Seller: Load at Substation, Fly to Station1, Sell ware for Avg+1 at Station1, Sell ware for Avg+1 at Station+2, Sell ware for Avg+1 at Station3
LR_Distributor: Load at Substation1, Unload at Substation2, Unload at Substation3, Unload at Substation4
Overblown Ambition
I had reduced ship costs by using cheaper ships, and simplified deployment by starting in Argon space. However, the large target area I was starting with was too large, making some wares have to be transported to a few different sectors before they could be used. Wares couldn't effectively be brought to market unless I was willing to wait until the network was expanded to where the demand was, or was willing to assign sellers on long distance sales trips. This resulted in substantial rework once the network expanded to those areas. I do not really have the resources to start this big first thing in a new game, and need to locate a better starting point.
Moar Inventory management
I was still holding on to too much inventory, as some sellers were full with all of there stations full, where as other sellers were still empty and all of there stations were empty. Some stations only use small amounts of a ware per hour, so even the 3000 cargo of the Mercury is cavernous, and the excess on the selling ship is
Moar Distribution flow
I was still having difficulties controlling the pace of wares flowing from one substation to the next, as one sector had to fill completely before things were overflowing to the next.
Attempt 3 - Poisoned Paranid - Aladna Hill
For my next restart I chose my 2nd favorite start, PP. The reward is nice, especially so early in the game. And the bad Paranid Rep early on gave me license to harass Paranid shipping. I started in Preacher's Refuge; so I am close to two good Argon Shipyards to make sourcing a CLS2 fleet easier. I just need to work up reputation a bit. I began my planning by looking at the factory distribution. Energy is available in Akeela's Beacon, Aladna Hil and Avarice, I lost the Ore mine in Montalaar before I got to it, so I have to go to Avarice, Rolk's Legacy or Nopileos' for Ore. There is tons of demand for food and ore, all the food is produced in Light of Heart and its a bit lite (about 13 factories light).
I'll use bio and food factories as substations eventually, and have them producing to balance the demand. But I don't have the reputation to buy food fabs yet, but I want to get the economy going so I don't lose anymore fabs. I have been trying to devise a better distribution model. My initial notion was to use much the same as attempt #2, but stock Mercuries are only available Legend's Home, but there is no navigation command software there. Shuffling NCS made me rethink my options, including the idea of using one Mercury Hauler per station that handles multiple wares, or the idea of daisy chaining the sellers so that they become the cache's and the distributors, or even a hybrid of those two approaches.
Proposal 1: Multiware Sellers
A typical station consumes wares at the following rates per hour:
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[b]Ware Units Volume[/b]
energy cells 900 900
Meatsteak 600 2400
Ore 150 1200
Silicon 38 684
Argnu Beef 180 720
Delexian Wheat 600 1200
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[b]Combo Volume Stations[/b]
energy only 900 Ore Mine, Silicon Mine, Cattle Ranch, Wheat Farm
energy, beef, wheat 2820 cahoona bakery
energy, wheat 1500 rimes fact, space fuel distillery
energy, meatsteak, ore 4500 various weapon & shield fabs, Quantum Tube fabs, Lasertower Fabs
energy, meatsteak, silicon 3984 chip plant, computer plant
energy, meatsteak, silicon, majaglit * satellite factory [i]not going to provide the majaglit at this time, going to roll this in with chip and computer plants[/i]
energy, meatsteak, ore, silicon 5184 various missile fabs
Example Waypoints Used:
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Buyer: Fly to Station, Buy Ware at Appropriate Price, Unload at WareCache
Packager: Load upto 900 Energy Cells From EnergyCache, Load upto 600 Meatsteak from MeatsteakCache, Load upto 150 Ore from OreCache, Load upto 38 Silicon from SiliconCache
Seller: Load upto 900 Energy Cells From Packager, Load upto 600 Meatsteak from Packager, Load upto 150 Ore from Packager, Load upto 38 Silicon from Packager, Sell Each at Station1, Sell Each at Station2 (, Sell Each at Station3+ once experienced)
Proposal 2: Serialized Sellers
Instead of having sellers pickup from a cache, or be delivered to by a distributor we could make our sellers distribute to the next seller in the chain:
Example Waypoints Used:
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Buyer: Fly to Station, Buy Ware at Appropriate Price
Seller1: Load upto max cargo at Buyer, Sell at appropriate Price to Station1, Sell at appropriate Price to Station2, Unload upto MaxCargo at Seller2
Seller2: Sell at appropriate Price to Station3, Sell at appropriate Price to Station4, Sell at appropriate Price to Station5, Unload upto MaxCargo at Seller3
Seller3: Sell at appropriate Price to Station6, Sell at appropriate Price to Station7, Sell at appropriate Price to Station8, Unload upto MaxCargo at NextSectorSeller1
Proposal 3: Serialized, Multiware Sellers
A combination of the two approaches, using multiware sellers that deliver to one another in a serialized fashion. Distributors could inject into the supply chain by distibuting to sellers in the sector.