Ecell complex query

[Oldhairy]

Hello, I've started playing this game again after years away.
I never really got to grips with the factory thing before, but I've now built a wheat farm in Home of light and was thinking of building an energy cell 'loop', with Crystal fab, Solar power plant, Meat steak cahoona factory
Cattle ranch and Silicone mine, am I right in thinking this would be self sufficient? Thanks and great to be back playing again.

[ancienthighway]

Those are the complexes needed for a closed loop complex using Argon crystals. One food chain per crystal fab. The number of crystal fabs depend on the size of the SPP.

Unless you are planning to use the e-cells for your own stations and you have a lot, you are better off buying energy cheap from the NPC stations. You will make better profits without the high start up cost.

[RAVEN.myst]

Self-sufficient, yes. Profitable, less so - granted, it will generate free ECs, so in a sense it'll yield "infinite" profit, but in terms of credits per hour, it's rather slow. Still, it's a good exercise, arguably important to experience, to decide whether it works for you.

(Here's a significant economic subtlety: it is more lucrative to sell one's products and then re-purchase them when needed as resources, than to use one's products directly as resources elsewhere. I'll illustrate with an example I use often: consider an ore mine, generating ore. If you feed its output into a weapon factory, every unit of ore out of the mine is a unit of ore going into the weapon factory - obvious enough. However, if you SELL the ore, you can usually get ~200 per unit - you can then buy ore from NPC mines, and often you can get it for 50 per unit. In this case, each unit of ore that you extract in your mine becomes FOUR units going into your factory. Even if you don't reach those optimal figures, you will still get at least 2 for each 1, more often 3. This principle applies to all the basic wares - minerals, food, energy.)

EDIT: As ancienthighway notes, the start-up costs of a loop like that are high - the crystal fabs aren't cheap, and the SPPs even more so. Consequently, if you intend to build one anyway, I would suggest not going straight for it, but rather taking the time to set up other revenue streams first.

[ancienthighway]

Taking Raven's advice on the buying ware cheap for your use and selling your wares high, if there is an abundance of a resource in an area, but consumers are out of it, you are better off just buying from the NPC close to minimum price and selling to the consumers close to maximum price. Once those number start to even out you can determine if building a station to supply that ware would be profitable.

On the subject of ore, mobile miners (Mercury, 1 25mj shield, ore collector, special command software, an IRE or PAC, and maybe navigation software, speed and steering upgrades optional, cargo hold expansion not worth it) can be set up cheaply for even more potential profit. It doesn't work so well with silicon because there's usually too many suppliers for the number of consumers.

[Sirrobert]

Ecells are very low profit in general. It's better to make finished products, and buy the raw materials for cheap

[Oldhairy]

Thanks folks, I see what you mean.
I like trying stuff so I'll have a look at some other way.

[Sirrobert]

For a small tip for money makers: Illegal goods are always an easy sell.

Just remember that factories that produce goods that are illegal will get blown up by race military, so you have to build the stations somewhere where the illegal goods are not illegal (usually in unowned space. Pirate and Yaki works to, but you'll have to keep the locals happy.).

If you open your station to race traders, and set the price at average -1 (NPC ships only buy goods when price is below average), you will never need to send a ship to offload your product. Illegal goods always sell out whenever you have some in stock.

An easy complex would be a SpaceFuel Distillery + Wheat farm (space fuel), or Bliss Place + Dream Farm (for space weed).

If you hook them up like that, you just need a single freighter to ship in Ecells (cheap), and NPCs will flock to you to buy the product

[ancienthighway]

Another way to go would be to set up a Space Weed complex in Teladi or Unknown space. If you set one up in Unknown space you can add a Space Fuel operation too. Cheaper to get into and very profitable.

[RAVEN.myst]

For a small tip for money makers: Illegal goods are always an easy sell.

Just remember that factories that produce goods that are illegal will get blown up by race military, so you have to build the stations somewhere where the illegal goods are not illegal (usually in unowned space. Pirate and Yaki works to, but you'll have to keep the locals happy.).

If you open your station to race traders, and set the price at average -1 (NPC ships only buy goods when price is below average), you will never need to send a ship to offload your product. Illegal goods always sell out whenever you have some in stock.

Indeed. However, one thing: I wouldn't worry about trade-ships being intercepted - in several years and thousands upon thousands of hours of play, I have NEVER had a CAG carrying contraband (or any other ship I'm not piloting, for that matter) get stopped by the coppers. Despite what most people think, it very much looks to me that the cargo-scans are only ever carried out on the <Playership> Thus, I would close trading to other races and just export the stuff instead, resulting in higher revenues. If wanting to role-play the whole "this is illicit stuff, so let's smuggle it" despite the safety from scanning, one can opt for faster ships to export with, thus pretending to "avoid the cops" even if it is only for fun (that being said, faster movement DOES improve chances to avoid pirates, Xenon, Kha'ak, and also does mean faster deliveries, though the latter is not really significant - the limiting factor is production rate, not speed of deliveries.)

[Timsup2nothin]

For a small tip for money makers: Illegal goods are always an easy sell.

Just remember that factories that produce goods that are illegal will get blown up by race military, so you have to build the stations somewhere where the illegal goods are not illegal (usually in unowned space. Pirate and Yaki works to, but you'll have to keep the locals happy.).

If you open your station to race traders, and set the price at average -1 (NPC ships only buy goods when price is below average), you will never need to send a ship to offload your product. Illegal goods always sell out whenever you have some in stock.

Indeed. However, one thing: I wouldn't worry about trade-ships being intercepted - in several years and thousands upon thousands of hours of play, I have NEVER had a CAG carrying contraband (or any other ship I'm not piloting, for that matter) get stopped by the coppers. Despite what most people think, it very much looks to me that the cargo-scans are only ever carried out on the <Playership> Thus, I would close trading to other races and just export the stuff instead, resulting in higher revenues. If wanting to role-play the whole "this is illicit stuff, so let's smuggle it" despite the safety from scanning, one can opt for faster ships to export with, thus pretending to "avoid the cops" even if it is only for fun (that being said, faster movement DOES improve chances to avoid pirates, Xenon, Kha'ak, and also does mean faster deliveries, though the latter is not really significant - the limiting factor is production rate, not speed of deliveries.)

I'm going to dispute this by adding a short extension.

You've never had a CAG "get stopped by the coppers" that you noticed. It does happen, but the CAG pilot will just dump the cargo and go their way. They don't notify you, so unless the loss of cargo is such a big financial blow that you feel it you wouldn't know about it.

How I know this:

I started a game, humble merchant, and pretty much immediately set up the freighter with CLS to pick up fuel and sell it at the trading station, then added a couple pirate bases. He was buying as much as I could afford every time he loaded up. When he made a buy I would be very close to zero credits until he made a sale, then he would go back and get an even bigger load. I was just flying around in the disco opening up the map so being "fully invested" in his cargo was not a problem. Until he jettisoned my entire bankroll.

At least that's the only thing I could ever think of to explain how he ended up with no cargo and no credits to buy any cargo not too long after buying just over four hundred units of space fuel.

Keep the cargo small and it won't hurt when they occasionally have to dump it. Or make such tremendous profits that even a big cargo dump doesn't really hurt. Either way works.

[RAVEN.myst]

OK, that's all plausible. It's true that, given how lucrative a Hub+CAG combo is, without any notification the only way to notice a cargo being jettisoned would be to actually see it, and even if it were possible to do so, I have much better things to do than to watch 40 or 50 CAGs' cargo holds More compelling yet is your anecdote - I, too, can't off the top of my head think of a plausible reason for that loss in those circumstances, and the conditions you described were perfect to unequivocally reveal such a change. So I stand (well, sit, really) corrected - thanks

(It WOULD be nice if there could be a notification message from an AI-piloted ship, informing of run-ins with the law. This was added in Rebirth - one of the relatively few improvements implemented there, heheh)

[Timsup2nothin]

OK, that's all plausible. It's true that, given how lucrative a Hub+CAG combo is, without any notification the only way to notice a cargo being jettisoned would be to actually see it, and even if it were possible to do so, I have much better things to do than to watch 40 or 50 CAGs' cargo holds More compelling yet is your anecdote - I, too, can't off the top of my head think of a plausible reason for that loss in those circumstances, and the conditions you described were perfect to unequivocally reveal such a change. So I stand (well, sit, really) corrected - thanks

(It WOULD be nice if there could be a notification message from an AI-piloted ship, informing of run-ins with the law. This was added in Rebirth - one of the relatively few improvements implemented there, heheh)

I've been giving it some thought...

There's a log file option. Someone could activate the log file on the CAGs and then scan through them for two "load cargo" entries in a row with no sale in between.

And typing that made me wonder if that log file might actually record the dumping of the cargo directly. I have almost never used the log file thing, so I have no idea.

[RAVEN.myst]

"scan through them for two "load cargo" entries in a row with no sale in between." - good thinking!

I, too, have never bothered with the log files (for CAGs, UTs, or anything else), but the info may indeed be contained therein - perhaps I'll take a look at some point (though I dislike activating stuff that may add performance overheads - and given that I typically have 80+ CAGs by the time a game of mine "matures", it could end up being not insignificant... Still, may be worth taking a peek, at least )

[Oldhairy]

Wow, so much more to learn, I've only ever scraped the surface of Terran Conflict. Cheers.

[RAVEN.myst]

Innit great?

[Timsup2nothin]

Wow, so much more to learn, I've only ever scraped the surface of Terran Conflict. Cheers.

In my opinion the real greatness of it is that I've been playing, a lot, for a long time and I still have so much more to learn.

[ancienthighway]

As late to the party as I am, this is probably moot now, but I agree with what Tim said about the police scans. If you are out of sector, no "drop" actually happens, and the only way to tell in game is to put everything on hold and watch a couple of smuggling runs.