SPP not making money in KE

[flagg209]

Hi - I just don't get what I am doing wrong.

First off running ver 1.4 with bonus scripts (from this site)

The SPP is in Kingdom End - it has 2 Dolphins (1 to sell wares, 1 to buy)
Max jumps is set to 3 (don't want anything wandering into President's end or some pirate sectors)

Right now I have about 180 chrystals and close to the max on Ecells.
I have C price set for max (my ships weren't leaving the station if I didn't)
and I have sold Ecells for anywhere between 18-24


My seller ships sell out (I'll get down to about 2500 Ecells, and I'll be looking good credit wise (usually about 300k) - When I run out of Chrystals, my buyer ship seems to drain me down to about 50k - then when there is a big surplus again, I am back to only 300k.


Can someone tell me what might be going wrong? Is it because I am setting the buy C price to max and selling lower then max?

And on a side note - does the 1684 trick work in ver 1.4? I tried it and my ships never left the dock

[fchopin]

I would change the Max Jump to 1 if i was you, if you are short on crystals you can change to 2.

Edit: Also get a faster selling ship.

[Dunners]

I would leave your crystals at 1684.

You need to check on the update factory setting screen what the jump required is to get the crystals. It will be in brackets afterwards, set your max jump to that initially.

Sell at 21.

How much money have you left in the kitty?
I would recommend 300,000 credits.

Dunners

[Beta1]

on the page where you set thte selling price the value underneath in brackets is the price you need to sell at to break even given the current crystal buying price. If you sell for less than this you make a loss. Simple as that.

In the KE area you should be able to by crystals at 1684 with a 1 jump limit as there are trading stations that stock them and always sell at that price. My guess is that your buyer is getting to the fab before the supply ship from the trading station - ash a result the trading stations are always out of stock and you pay the higher price. If you reduced the price to 1684 then your ship wont buy from the crystal fab which will let the trading station buy it instead. You ship will then get it from the trading station at the lower cost (mad isnt it). So what I would do is set your station to buy at 1684 and sell at 18-20 (at this price other stations will buy from you as well as your seller so while you make less money/cell your spp will never stop working because it is full. set the jumps to one or two and if you have a spare 5 minutes go and buy up all the crystals you can from the trading stations around argon prime/herons neb etc and dump that in your SPP with a couple fo hundred thousand credits. You should see the results pretty soon.

[Fekin]

You'll have no problems selling them on at 22 cr per cell with a selling ship and a sector radius set to 1 or 2, all my SPP's sell at that.

[jaguarskx]

Keep your Crystal buy price at 1684 credits. It has been stated many times that there is a bug with the game where if you change it to anything higher, the TS buyer will not buy Crystals from any trade stations.

At average price your cost should be 13 credits per E-Cell. Set the sell price between 18 - 21 and set the jump to 1. The Dolphin is the slowest TS there is. Make sure that you maxed out its speed to 120 m/s.

[flagg209]

Thanks everybody - that really clears things up for me!

I try to leave at least 100k, but usually once it passes that I don't take from it until it gets to about 500k - even then I usually only take about 2-300k out leaving at least 200

I did max out the dolphins speed -

[freespirited]

As everyone has said stick to 1684 for crystal prices but IMHO the best ship to buy crystals is the split M4, scorpion. With its high top speed it will get to the trading stations before other vessels getting all the crystals you need. Don't worry about the low cargo hold it has, as getting crystals in groups of 24 or 32 works great.

All my SPP's are set up this way and do great. If you can't trade with split yet, any M4 will do, as capping bayamons works well too, or the boron mako is fine....

Doing this will get the credits rolling in, plus i only keep a float of 150,000 credits in each station and they do great.

[RJV]

Hi,

If I were you I'd invest in a faster buyer and seller. The Dolphin has the largest base capacity, the vast majority of which will remain completely empty given the small quantities of crystals you will able to buy. Switch to a full speed mercury and you should notice an improvement. Also change the seller ship for a faster one.

And as above, never set your crystal buying price above 1684. Max jumps 2 at most. Selling price of 21, watch the money roll in. Then use the Dolphin for hauling silicon.

Cheers,

Rob

[JungleJim]

The Dolphin is great for peddling ecells but sucks eggs at buying crystals.

You want the speediest ship that you can get for your crystal buyer. The forumlaic reponse is to use Scorpion/Iguana BUT anything that's pretty quick AND can carry crystals will work (Iguana, Hermes, Express, Mako, etc.).

If you can find enough crystals in range, set your jumps = 1. However, I would not set jumps to anything larger than 2 (your seller won't be able to keep up with production).

[Deepstar]

Kingdom Ends is on the corner of the Universe and the Argons are near, i think the Dolphin is too slow against the Argon TS. Maybe a Split Kaiman or a full tuned Merkur will be better.. or try a TP like Manta or whatever