Are Chip Plant and SQUASH Factory worth it? (x3tc)

[Symont]

Hi,
in the Hub plot, i need a lot of microchips. There are very few chip plants out there (some seem to have disappear) and the price is high. I figure i should buy a station - maybe more - to get the chips for the hub plot and to make money since it is in sort supply accross the universe.

I'm pretty confident that a chip plant will be worth it. Now i'm not so sure with a squash mine factory. I'm near the end of the Goner plot and need to get my hands on some of those mines. Same problem as the microchips : not many factories and high price. The difference is that those mines are illegal for many races and i'm wondering if it's worth building a factory at over 2 millions credits. Is it better to simply buy the mines since the factory will not be profitable?

As of now i have no factory of any kind and this is the first of any X games i play so i'm not familiar (yet ) with the production side of the economy. Any comments / suggestions is welcomed!

Thanks

[Cpt.Jericho]

Both are worth the effort. The main difference is just that mine plants may be illegal depending where you set them.

[TTD]

Hi, and welcome to the universe of X games.

In TC the various main plots are designed to encourage you to learn the various skills you need to make it your own universe.

The Hub plot is particularly no exception to this.

In this plot , you can learn to build factories, complexes and supply chains.

There are so many ways to do this plot.
The easiest and by far the longest way,is to let the plot run in the background, just using traders and pricing your goods.
You can get some of your traders assigned to the Hub as homebase,put some funds there,and the traders profits will go to the Hub to pay for the resources needed.
Marking up the price you are willing to pay NPCs will encourage them to assist you aswell.
The only real work you will have to do in this method is to get the Nividium, iirc.

If you decide to build stations and complexes for your Microchips, yes, it will pay dividends for long after the Hub is complete.
There are many threads here on this subject, so take a look and find other ideas too.

[ancienthighway]

Recommendations for completing the Hub often include 10-20 chip plants and up to 40 crystal fabs. Microchips will constantly sell once you no longer need them and will easily pay off the investment to make pure profit for you. It's pretty much the same for crystals you don't need for SPPs.

There's always a market for illegal goods also, space fuel, space weed, SQUASH mines, and even swamp plant, which isn't illegal but used to make space weed. Set up your illegal manufacturing in Unknown or Pirate sectors and you'll have no problems with any race.

[Bill Huntington]

Good questions.

Squash mines are not hard to come by. Use the Encyclopedia to find out where they are. Sometimes they are gone. You can wait for a while. OR you can find just one of them, and clone them in Rhonkar’s Trial. You have better things to build than a Squash mine factory. It seemed like Squash mines didn't sell very well when I had a factory. I had to have my traders do it.

Microchips (MC) will always sell. And you will need a lot of them. Each phase of the HUB plot takes longer than the one before it. And the MC phase is the longest of all. I set up ASAP in a game to build MC. I turn the whole of Barren Shores into a MC complex, and only take the extra for the HUB plot, and don’t allow NP trade. I even do it in Ore Belt and Mines of Fortune. I do these before I start the HUB plot. I shift production in Ore Belt and MOF to the current product, but keep Barren on MC. Even with all that, I’ve still needed more time to finish the MC phase. Most of the time I don’t need much more. The point is, you need a lot of MC. So build MC ASAP.

[RayF]

exactly what Bill said.
20 mc plants i think is the minimum. crystal phase was done with just 12-15 plants. MC production is very slow.

[IanFitzJo]

SQUASH fabs are worth having for the Goner plot too. The amount I needed to complete it exceeded the amount available in my whole universe so I built fabs. In Mines of Fortune lol

Now there's a pirate base in MoF and I make a tidy packet selling them SQUASH mines.