LSFKing wrote:Luckily, in this playthrough, I'm focusing on shipping between NPC stations and keeping my own to a minimum. Knowing GoD, this will happen to me anyway
Well, you'll be interested (and likely happy) to find out that trade is more profitable than industry (though the latter is often eventually needed to meet specific shortages - for instance, a race's food production may be insufficient for all its industry; also, and this is guaranteed if you take your game far and use missile ships - universal supply of Tomahawks, Flails and Hammers tend to fall somewhat short of Armageddon requirements
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There are some reasons for the above. Firstly, industry requires factories and (ideally) freighters, while trade only requires freighters, but that's just the initial outlay. Over time, though, industry is constrained by production cycle time + transportation times, while trade is ONLY limited by the latter, transportation times. Also, in many cases the value-add of buy-low-sell-high is greater (conditional on the market) than the value-add of converting resources into products. While I can't off the top of my head tell you the conversion rate of a mine turning ECs into ore (in terms of value added to the wares), I can illustrate with the following: until you *seriously* deplete or level the market, you can buy ore for 50 just about at any time, and sell it for 150-200. That's a trebling to quadrupling of the invested amount, so 200-300% profit, for simply moving it from one place to another, without having to invest in mines and wait out production cycles - and as soon as you've made the delivery, you are ready to make the next.
By the way, despite being a base resource, ore is one of the most lucrative wares to trade - it's a good one to start with, make good profits to launch financing expansions to your trade operation. However, as industry typically requires mineral+food+energy, you will need to move into those markets, too, otherwise your client factories will be sitting flush with ore/silicon but not consuming it, stalling your trade.
Since you are familiar with both CAG and CLS2, here's a quick outline for something I do early on to make huge initial profits. It's a hybridisation of CAG and CLS2 made possible with a small complex (no more than 2 member factories are needed at first - you want the complex mainly for its greater docking capacity, which is very important.) The following is not all hard-and-fast, I'm just using an example to illustrate the principle (and I REALLY should make a separate post of this so I can just link to it whenever it's relevant - this is literally the 4th or 5th time I'm explaining this scheme, hehehe)
- Set up ore mines on two ore-bearing asteroids near each other, and link them into a complex. Face the complex hub toward the nearest gate, and try to set this up close to a gate, as gate-to-plex travel and vice versa is a factor in your turnaround time.
- Initially, turn off both mines. Later on, when things are flowing amply, you can turn them on and contribute their production for added profit.
- So if the mines are turned off, what's their point, you might ask. Well, what you want here is the ore storage and the docking ports, to create a makeshift ore and energy trading station.
- Use CAGs to buy energy, and sell it using CLS2s
- Use CLS2s to buy ore, and sell it via CAGs.
- The above means that you are inverting the conventional flow of goods - you are buying products (which CAGs can only sell) using CLS2, and selling resource (which CAG is only allowed to buy) also using CLS2.
- Your CAGs will autorefuel when docking here (technically, the way the script works, it makes sure the ship is fuelled before it sets off), and if you include 'load X energy cells at this station' waypoints to your CLS2s, they will also be refuelled here.
- The reason not to run the mines at this point is that they will consume ECs and you will be constantly finding yourself out of balance, short of ECs for refuelling, your CAGs prioritising EC purchases, while your ore is full and not being exported. Later one, when you have enough freighters operating from this base, you can tweak things such that you get a surplus of ECs, allowing you to turn on your mines, and make extra profits via production (small compared to the trade income you will generate, but every bit counts, yes?)
- An ore mine's (or other factory's) dock can accommodate up to 5 ships, while complex hubs have four such docks, so can handle up to 20 ships, hence why it's a good idea to plex a couple of mines, though the system will also work with just a single mine, though you will eventually (once your trading fleet grows to a certain point) run the risk of a serious jam, which will bring the whole thing to a halt. Now, while the plex dock-port can cope with 20 ships, when everything's running smoothly your freighters will be spending little time docked, mostly they'll be flying to or from. Oh, by the way, I STRONGLY recommend barring NPCs from docking at that station/plex - they will sell ECs for more than your CAGs will be paying and buy your ore for less than your CAGs charge, but worse than that, they will loiter and clog up your parking lot.
A very good place to try the above is in the Argon Prime neighbourhood - you're looking at a 3x5 grid of densely settled and highly industrialised sectors, with more markets not far from there. This has become my standard way and place to get started whenever I am playing as an Argon (at least, if starting in the Argon Prime region - though I use the same principle with any race and in any location.)
Herron's Nebula is well situated for this, as it's almost central, just 1 North of Argon Prime, or if you prefer to set up on richer asteroids with a view to the long term, there are 2 ore asteroids in range of each other with yields of 90-something in Auntie's Gone Memorial
) I've in fact used that same combination (Ore Mine and Wheat Farm or Cahoona Bakery) to accomplish this setup (Cahoona Bakery is also good as it then additionally opens up Meatsteak trade as well - something to consider, but it IS a lot more expensive, of course.) I also recommend going with the L variants of factories whenever possible, as they have much larger stock capacities.
) which primarily monopolizes the Space Fuel, IBL and PBG forges in Yaki and all pirate space for maximum profitsss. I'm going to have a TM per forge that buys the guns at minimum, jumps to the closest equipment dock, off-loads to a 'tank', and then jumps back so I can manually sell them at my convenience. 
But I must say, I'm glad to see that spamming factories isn't nearly as OP as it could have been. Kudos to the devs for this bit of balance!
