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NidPuterGuy
Fearless Paladin
Joined: 08 Jan 2003
Posts: 237
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| How does the economy work? |
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I can't see much rhyme or reason to it. In a sector where energy sells are selling for 14 I can sell my cells for 19. A wheat farm is a waste of money. A crystal plant in Herons Neb is making more money than my SPP in the same sector. I have know idea how to analyze a sector to determine what to build besides it needing a good that isn't being made. Any help would be great! |
Fri Apr 30, 2004 1:15 am |
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Lintra
Elf Friend
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 9448
Location: Bermuda, the triangle place with SANDY BEACHES |
There are a lot of moving parts. As a primer I would recommend this article. The site has many such. I also suggest setting up a spread sheet or two to demonstrate to yourself how things work.
And be careful! That crystal factory maynot be making as much as you think, given the sometimes very high costs of the inputs.
I am not familiar w/ Herron's Nebula, but how many SPP's are there? It could be that you have just flooded the market. A great hint for SPPs is to build them near trading stations that sell crystals. That way you are guarenteed a price of 1684 (at least I THINK it's 1684!!).
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=Member of The Nonflamers' Guild=
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Fri Apr 30, 2004 1:44 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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There isn't a lot of rhyme or reason to the economy.
You can sell energy cells for 19 in a sector that is selling for 14 because you're faster than the computer transports and can undercut them. There's nothing more to it than that... the long computer travel times helps you beat them to the punch.
Crystal fabs can make a lot of money. Actually infinite if you use an exploit that hasn't been fixed yet. However, as Lintra pointed out, you have to watch how much their very expensive primary resources is costing you.
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Fri Apr 30, 2004 2:13 pm |
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Lintra
Elf Friend
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 9448
Location: Bermuda, the triangle place with SANDY BEACHES |
Xen - You have 27(?) factories ... any suggestions or hints?
I have one observation followed by a ton of questions:
My first SPP was in Kingdoms End. I figured it was isolated, and only had one SPP and there were numerous Crystal sources. All in all, not a bad choice (not an original idea on my part, but I liked the look of the sectory, and I LOVE the Boron TP (the Manta) as my main workhorse).
My second SPP was in Red Light, and I was having TONS of trouble keeping it in crystals so after skrimping and saving like crazy I built ...
My first Crystal Fab in Red Light as well (I figured that would make defence easier) with the goal of lightening the shortage of crystals with out having to sell direct. It worked!! After a couple of hours SPP2 had a stockile of almost 200 crystals.
Conclusion: If there is a shortage of a particular good, you CAN correct it.
Okay, now for the questions:
1. Right now my economy seems pretty balanced. So I am hesitant to muck with it (which is why I am mining), but I know that where long term I need more factories. So would you suggest building all in one sector (such as Kingdoms End), or would you suggest spreading out?
2. Should I go into the raw materials (Si, Ore) or go for the food part of the chain?
3. Also, how many more SPPs can I add to the mix, and do you have any suggested locations?
4. Lastly, I can see where I might want to build up my own arms industry ... have you tried this, and is it worth it?
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Mon May 03, 2004 1:17 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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I have SPPs all over the place... and any place that was short on crystals or highly lucrative I've dropped full supply chains. 100% profit is nice, though realistically it would take a chain something like 100 game hours of profit to pay for the 5 factories and all the transports. The crystal supply is
consistant in any case.
I've tried building weapon chains... they've always ended in a reload. Getting, placing, paying for the initial materials, and remembering to store the finished goods . Weapon factories in particular tend to only be able to hold a half dozen of their weapon type, or less - which when coupled with the slow production time (20 hours to make a 125 MW shield) makes the endeavor... well... aggrevating.
Were my capital ship fleet any larger I'd probably deal with it, though. I hate paying the computer millions for capital weaponry.
As for other factories... I have Drone factory that makes a pretty penny, and afew scruffin farms that do OK... and a Teladinium foundy in Boron space (replacing a 8 jump trade route for the computer... lets me jack the price to maximum and it makes a good profit).
Basically, a SPP can power 9 factories. If you put a loop in that's something like 5 gone. If you add another type of factory that's usually another 2. This still lets you sell the surplus energy cells once every factory is happy with their stockpile.
I tend to just have the chain and replace the rest of the power supply with traders... IE: I can put three or four traders on a station instead of powering 9 factories. After a while this means each launches with 256 cells so I've played around with using faster ships that hold less... like the Split Iguana, or Teladi Harrier. Even my Disco has a job... it sells Drones to a trading station.
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Tue May 04, 2004 2:50 pm |
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Lintra
Elf Friend
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 9448
Location: Bermuda, the triangle place with SANDY BEACHES |
Okay, how the HECK do I tell my SPP not to charge MY carriers anything for the engery? Is this possible, or do I just have to veiw the exchange of credits from one pocket to the other as a cost of doing business? Currently I have both SPP at sell of 22 and they are doing just fine, never have a backlog. So I figure either they are well placed or the "Sell Best" ignores the 22 threshold and just sells for the highest possible price *grin*
The odd thing is my crystal fab only buys energy at 14 and is never short. So there are some pretty big out of balances in the economy at the moment.
Also one last question (for now): When transfering funds from the factory to the 'ship' is there anyway to set the transfer rate? I'd love it if it could be set to 5k and just stay there. I spend way to long moving 200k from the fac while trying to leave about 80k behind.
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Tue May 04, 2004 3:02 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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I close all my factories to aliens. I sell to them... it works so much better, and allows me to set all my prices to minimum (your sellers don't care that you're selling energy cells for 9... they'll still try and get 22 for your cells whenever possible) to keep my cash transfer between factories minimal.
It is all your money... there's no cost of doing business. I keep all factories at 50k balance, and the power plant at 150k.
As for the 'set to 5000 and keep it'... ah, grasshopper... are you not aware you can use the numeric keypad to enter how much you want to transfer? I just take it all and transfer what I want back in two easy steps. 
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Tue May 04, 2004 3:10 pm |
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Lintra
Elf Friend
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 9448
Location: Bermuda, the triangle place with SANDY BEACHES |
*Chereet* *Chereet*
(the closest I can come to grasshopper noise), D'oh. No I did not know that. Thanks Xen. That'll speed things up a good bit.
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Tue May 04, 2004 3:15 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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It took me a week to figure it out.
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Tue May 04, 2004 5:05 pm |
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Lintra
Elf Friend
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 9448
Location: Bermuda, the triangle place with SANDY BEACHES |
Xen - I was thinking about something you'd posted before, and so set up a spread sheet to test it ... but first the back ground:
I have been very impressed with the profit made from the SPP and CFab together. The CFab drove availability of Crys up (at max sale price) but was only buying energy at a max of 14 ... possible due to me flooding the market with energy (I have the selling floor at 22, but I don't think this influences the SellBest function ... does it?).
So I then asked myself, exactly HOW much does a closed loop make, and much do you lose through lost arbitrage opportunities? I set a up a spread sheet for a self contained Argon SPP loop, converted all the production and consumption rates to minutes and set up a grid that varied the price of the inputs.
Results:
1. The surplus energy produced is 78/minute, selling at 20 a pop that is 1,560/min.
2. If you where to go to the open market and sell your energy at 20, but buy at 14 (what I am currently doing, but am actually selling at closer to 22 on average) the profit = 1,920/min.
3. If I allow for the crystal exploit, that increases the total profit to 2,172/min.
4. Since I am able to sustain at least a 30% arbitrage off the average for energy it seemed reasonable to assume a 10% spread on all the other goods (that is a mark down of 10% of the distance from the low to average and a mark up of 10% of the distance from average to high) and that adds a surprisinly low 108/min (at 20% it is 217/min at 30% it is 325/min).
Conclusions: It is worth it to let the market dictate your energy costs, and of course you should use the crystal exploit, but the available arbitrage on the other goods most likely makes it not worth it. The only reason I can see to build the SiFac, Bakery, or Ranch is to address shortage issues.
The only problem with above reasoning that I can find is the silicon. There the variance in cost is SOO high (a low of 220 and a high of 780) that it seems there MUST be huge profit potential, but the production rate of the average silicon mine is very slow at 5/8 of unit/min. (Higher rates are available, but the energy cost goes up as well).
If anyone wants a copy of the Excel spread sheet, just let me know (PM me an e-mail address if yours is not public) and I'll ship you a copy.
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=Member of The Nonflamers' Guild=
=Just plain clueless= |
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Wed May 05, 2004 1:34 pm |
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Chekote
Where’s my Banana?!?!
Joined: 08 Mar 2002
Posts: 1540
Location: Dont know, looks kind of green |
They should just call it "X2:Space Accountant" 
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IMHO my opinion is humble |
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Wed May 05, 2004 1:45 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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Spreadsheets are all well and good... and likely perfectly correct (though you didn't account for travel time for goods).
However.... Ocean of Fantasy, which has a full chain and five systems within one jump, blows the competition away for profit... and before I put the chain there it was barely keeping up with several others. How much does it blow it away? Well, in the same length of time it takes Kingdom's End to make 800k (which isn't long) Ocean makes upwards of 1.2 million (after all factories income is harvested and redistributed, of course).
Granted, the other three of my top four factories are stand alone. Kingdom's End is a consistant money-maker, as is Paranid Prime, and Argon Prime. A full loop therefore isn't neccessary (though I am certain that even Kingdom's End would make more with free crystals... I don't want to mess with a winning formula.)
Family Pride and Seizewell's stand alone SPPs didn't do well at all... but adding a full chain to Seizewell brought it back up into the black... with enough surplus to run a Drone factory and all associated fabrications (the drone factory makes a respectable profit on its own). Family Pride I salvaged, profit wise, by putting a Scruffin farm in. It always is out of stock, full of resources, and selling for max... just the way I like my factories.
Preacher's Refuge was a loss until I built a chain, and now it's top 10 moneymakers...
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Wed May 05, 2004 2:15 pm |
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Lintra
Elf Friend
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 9448
Location: Bermuda, the triangle place with SANDY BEACHES |
Xen - you are right about travel times. Since two selling mantas and one buying express seem to keep each SPP at or near empty (okay, occasionally they'll get up to 2 to 3k), it didn't seem like an issue ... but then I have not tried stressing the system yet! So far, my 2 SPPs and one C Fab have only had very local impacts on the economy.
I am dying to get some more serious playing time in. I figure that a couple of hours of intense mining should net enough to build an couple more SPPs and another CFab (combined with the income from the existing factories) ... then I'll be looking at netting close to 250k per non SETA hour from the factories and then soon after that be thinking of the next step up from the Nova ..... at least that's the plan *grin*
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Wed May 05, 2004 2:47 pm |
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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
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The most important factory to build for your Crystal factory is a Sillicon factory on a 26+ yield asteroid. They're cheap, easy to maintain, and drastically increase the money your crystal fab can make... not having to pay at least 200 per unit of sillicon.
_________________
Estuans interius, Ira vehementi
"The old world dies and with it the old ways. We will rebuild it as it should be, MUST be... Immortal!"
=Member of the Nonflamers Guild=
=Worshipper of the Written Word= |
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Wed May 05, 2004 3:47 pm |
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Ican
Captain of the Guard
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
Posts: 185
Location: UK |
The economic balance may well change with the next patch. TP's are going to be downgraded ......no more using them for transporting XL sized goods. In other words, in some instances you will have to use true freighters to do your haulage work. And they are damn slow. The computer will become more competitive as it won't always be beaten on delivery times. |
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Wed May 05, 2004 10:32 pm |
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