Best Hub for Complex?

[chisom]

Hey you guys. I loved X2, so I recently upgraded to X3TC. I like the bonus pack additions. ATM, I'm Nividium mining, just because I like mining.
Have you got the time to help a relative newb with a complex question?

What's the best station to start a complex with or the most useful one? Would it be an Argon Free Trading Port or an asteroid or two, or maybe an XL SPP?
Can you put the player HQ in a complex?

Any help appreciated.

[Alan Phipps]

You cannot put the PHQ, Player Trading Stations, Equipment Docks or equivalents into a complex unfortunately. As to what stations to use in complexes, that would depend what products you want to use or trade.

There are several X3TC/AP Complex Calculator tools that you can Google for that will help you to design an efficient complex for desired outputs.

By the way, the first stations you drop are not the 'hub'. That is a special dock module that you get pretty much for free when you connect a pair of stations and/or complexes together with tubes. You only ever have one hub docking module per separate complex and you have some control over where it is and the direction it faces throughout building and additions.

This is all for the vanilla game of course.

[Bill Huntington]

Welcome to TC, chisom!

There's a lot of good answers to your questions. Prepare yourself!

Avarice is a good choice in TC. It's between Montelaar and New Income. You can build a self sufficient structure there and have your own home base. You can sell spacefuel and/or spaceweed, make money, and improve your rep with the pirates, all at the same time.

[pjknibbs]

Any complex is going to need energy, so if you want yours to be self-sufficient, you also need silicon (player SPPs require that, NPC ones don't). So, I would get a silicon mine set up first, then link it via the complex hub to a solar power plant--once you have a self-sufficient energy complex like this you can build on that. IMHO, of course.

[Fulgrymm]

It doesn't need silicon directly, it needs crystals that are then made from silicon. So you will need Crystal Fabs as well as Silicon Mines. And then hook all that up to a Solar Power Plant. It's hella expensive, and honestly, I don't bother with that early in the game. It's enough to set up a complex so that you need only feed it Energy Cells to keep it running.

[jlehtone]

What's the best station to start a complex with or the most useful one?

What's the most useful one [station]?
That depends.

If you are low on credits (i.e. still at start) and do the build to get credits ... cannot help in that. I don't do such thing.

If you wan't to get the PHQ in X3TC, then Chip Plants. Everything else (particularly the Minerals via automated mobile mining) you can gather in reasonable time, but NPC Microchip production is too slow for most of us.

A third business model focuses on Flails and Hammers.


Station to start a complex with?

You can build a Complex Hub when you have two stations to connect. Further stations can be connected to that Hub.
Two Hubs can be connected too, but the second of them vanishes, leaving only one for the whole Complex.

You can connect to a Hub only the objects that are within 20km of the Hub. You can tow Mines closer, but you cannot tow a Hub.


Adding stations gradually to a complex does make sense on the "invest as soon as you can afford it" business model. However, it can resemble patched quilt, particularly if it grows big.

My preference is to build "final complex" in one go. Lay out all stations, connect them all, and then start business. That obviously requires some "spare cash". (Credits are quite cheap in TC, particularly when compared to X2.)



A Factory converts (some) resource(s) into a product.

If you connect an array of factories of same type together, you scale up the factory. X2 had no such option.

If you connect Cattle Ranch and Bakery, you get a pipe that converts energy to Cahoonas. You can scale up pipes.

If you connect Ranch, Bakery, Silicon Mine, and Crystal Fab, you have a pipe (production line) that converts energy to Crystals. (Mobile miners can replace the Mine.)

If you connect Crystal pipe to SPP, you get the loop that you probably had in X2, but there you had to use ships to implement it.

Just like in X2, you can connect additional production lines to the loop in order to refine the "surplus" energy into high tech products (or booze).


You can still use ships (for example, CLS1 or CLS2) to haul wares between your Complexes.

[chisom]

Thanks, guys. So, I don't need anything special to start a complex, just an ore or silicon mine, maybe. You've certainly motivated me. I'll get right to it.

[Sovereign01]

I cannot recommend Xadrian highly enough, it's the first and last thing you need for planning complexes. When it comes to the build itself, there are several tools available.

[DrSuperEvil]

Early on go for either a BoGas or Dragonfly/Wasp Missile Factories since those have a fast return on the investment.

In general build L mines first for complexes since you will need to pull them with a Tractor Beam and want to have as much free space to maneuver. Otherwise build what ever you want.


A general rule of thumb is every 10 yield supports a medium or two small stations and 40 yield of silicon can make a self sufficient complex to utilise 50 yield of ore.

[RainerPrem]

Hey you guys. I loved X2, so I recently upgraded to X3TC. I like the bonus pack additions. ATM, I'm Nividium mining, just because I like mining.
Have you got the time to help a relative newb with a complex question?

What's the best station to start a complex with or the most useful one? Would it be an Argon Free Trading Port or an asteroid or two, or maybe an XL SPP?
Can you put the player HQ in a complex?

Any help appreciated.

Hi,

To make money: 1MW shields, Mosquito missiles (best in a sector containing an equipment dock selling those), microchips

To provide equipment for your ships: Hammers and Flails, Drones, your favorite missiles, Terran heavy lasers

cu
Rainer

[DrSuperEvil]

1MJ shield factories only make 73k per hour, mosquito missile factories only make 80k per hour while for the same investment and resources you can get 130k per hour from other missile factories (shadow missile factories make 149k per hour). You can sell missiles to any equipment dock using the manual trade run command.

Chip plants only make 73k per hour so the silicon is better used to make energy cells to convert ore into finished products.

[Sovereign01]

If it's pure profit you want, set up a space fuel/weed complex in a pirate sector, especially one rich in Silicon asteroids. Space fuel/weed sell extremely well.