TD's Guide to the World of Solar Power Plants! -1.4 Update-

[KiwiNZ]

Hasn't anyone got ratings of other sectors apart from the 3 or 4 mentioned already?

there are only three categories:

100%
150%
450%

the latter one is unique.

you can easily find out in which group any particular sector falls by opening the Universe map.

[Dscaper]

RoT = 200%
LooManckStrat's Legacy = 0%

[Nukester]

Hasn't anyone got ratings of other sectors apart from the 3 or 4 mentioned already?

there are only three categories:

100%
150%
450%

the latter one is unique.

you can easily find out in which group any particular sector falls by opening the Universe map.

What are you on about? didn't you understand my question? Im talking about the rating system that some one used, i was asking for other sectors and reasons for good/bad trading not the percentage of the Sun!

[BoomAM]

To save me
making a new thread;
----------------
Ive setup a SPP in the exact center of rolks drift.
It has 2xBoran Dolphins with max speed, 3x5mW Shielding, one with Mk1 Trading, and one with Mk2.
I have these settings;
ECs sold at =19
Crystal Buy Limit =1684
Funds @ SPP =50k
Max Jumps =1

Will the above be ok? Will it make some money for me?
Is it worth increasing the max jumps? Or will 1 suffice?

Thanks in advance.

[VincentTH]

Make jump=3 at Rock Drift, in order to pick up the Trading Station in Rock's Fate. After that you can afford a crystal fab in Rock Drift, drop the jump to 2.

Also use a Scorption or Mako or Bayamons to buy Xtals, and use Manta to sell ECs. Speed is King.

[-TD-13-]

And you may want to invest a little more than 50k into it. 100k is a good start. Usually crystals will be found in packs of 8, 16, 32 and occasionally 64. 2 trips of 32 crystals will cost you around 100k. 64 crystals will make you around 167,000 credits (63,000 of that profit), and will only take you an hour to make.

Also, you may want to raise that selling price up to 20 or 21 every once in a while, and see how that works out for your factory. That can make the difference between several tens of thousands an hour.

Selling@16= 35,632*
Selling@17= 45,016*
Selling@18= 54,400*
Selling@19= 63,784*
Selling@20= 73,168*
Selling@21= 82,552*
Selling@22= 91,936*
Selling@23= 101,320*

*credits an hour

[VincentTH]

Second TD on the price. I set my SPP at RockDrift to sell at 22, and my stock is always low (can't keep up with demand). Unlike TD use of single ship, however, I have 1 Manta + 1 Hermes + 1 Iguana Selling ECs, and 1 single Scorpion buying Xtals. Note that when I have multiple ships serving a factory doing the same function, I select ships with different speed to get them out of sync (well most of the time, not always)

Someday I will write a script that force the 2nd freighter to choose the next best station, instead of all freighters going to the same place, be it on buy or sell orders.

[C5Guy]

...TD, this was a great help.

I had sort of got there on the first round of playing but made some big mistakes in placements and transports.

I used you strategy second time round and it was instrumental in getting a good flow of credits flowing...

Once again, Thanks

C5Guy....

[High_Pinger]

Wish i had found this thread when i started playing. I now have powerplants in about 8 of the sectors described, but i found out about them the hard way.

[BoomAM]

Bad news.
I think;
When a khaak spawns in a system, does that mean that they`ll keep appearing regularly? Or is intirely random apart from the sectors like presedents end & priests pity.

The crystal fab at Kingdoms End & Queens Space are all out of crystals, so i brought about 70 of them in in my Nova from another sector. About 5 mins after i re-docked at my SPP, a lone khaak m3 & m5 appeared 40km away from my SPP, traveling away from it. Into blank space.

So will i have probs with these khaak appearing in RD? Or is just a one off/not very often thing?

[VincentTH]

Don't worry about Khaaks in Rock Drift, because there is a destroyer there that would take care of the Khaaks. Do order your ship to dock if the Khaaks are near them, and the destroyer is far away. Also drop an Advanced Nav Sat at the middle of the sector, and load the ASEWS (Adv Sat Early Warning System) script to help you detect Khaak spawns.

[Bemused]

Deserves a *Bump*

The "Search disabled" is making it hard for noobs (like me) to use this forum.

This is a fantastic post - great to see some detailed and intelligent work set out for all to use.
Hope it makes others think about their approach to gaming as much as it did for me.

Thanks. Sterling work.

[Rambletripe]

I haven't read the whole thread but if over the next few patches the economy's SPP problem is 'fixed' alot of people will have to restart!

Sorry made me smile thinking about it .

[BoomAM]

Can someone explain whats happening at my SPP.
I have these settings at my SPP;
ECs sold at = 20Cr (changed to 19 before i quit X2)
Crystal Buy Limit = 1684
Max Jumps = 3
Funds at SPP (when i went on x2 about 2 hours ago, i pumped more cash in so it was 100k summit, then before i went to do some bulletin missions, it was at 180k) = 148k
Trade with other races = yes.
ECs in stock = 4968.

What does this mean?
Does it mean that im making more than im selling? Should i assign my "dormant" Mk3 trading Boran Dolphin, upgraded with the Mk2 trade thing, and set that to sell?

------
On a side note. I was doing a transporting mission, "Rolks drift" to "The Wall" in 20mizueas, with a payment of 31.5k, me in a pegasus, with a max speed of 1009m/s. Just got to "The Wall", and i got a message saying that i was too slow! Is that a bug or summit?

------
Oh, and the khaak M3/M5 that was flying around Rolks Drift, cot completely annihilated by a Boran Ray!. I zoomed in to watch, and neither khaak ship got a single shot in before they were destroyed in a barrage of weapons fire from the Ray!.

[Naranek]

It's been interesting reading (most) of this thread - I'd set up a solar power plant and a silicon mine, partly because the silicon mine factory was relatively cheap. But of course until I'd got them set up I hadn't appreciated how many energy cells were needed to get a unit of silicon wafers out. If I was lucky, and a local plant was totally out of wafers, I might make say 500 credits profit per wafer. Whereas the solar power plant, although more expensive to get running, was clearly capable of making 500 profit as a bare minimum based on average crystal prices; the only potential limiting factor being availability of crystals and travel time required to get them. But once you have a surplus stock that's not an issue of course. It does surprise me that solar power plants are completely out on top - I thought perhaps weapons factories might end up on top for per-unit profit, but then as people have observed the start-up costs are massive.

In terms of tips to get started - don't knock scavenging. If Khaaks are still around it's tricky, but selling a few hornet missiles early in the game really helped out; between that and free cargo if you can dodge Khaaks and pick up the pieces it's well worth it... Oh, and also, look out for stations that have absolutely no energy cells (or other resource) left. The bulletin board should allow you to make a nice extra profit on any resources you've just carried in which they're out of. Just take the mission to get the resources, hit escape, then return, and you'll have done the mission in record time (!) and gotten the bonus. I don't know if there's a script that can do that, but if you get lucky trading manually it's useful free credits.

[-TD-13-]

Deserves a *Bump*

The "Search disabled" is making it hard for noobs (like me) to use this forum.

This is a fantastic post - great to see some detailed and intelligent work set out for all to use.
Hope it makes others think about their approach to gaming as much as it did for me.

Thanks. Sterling work.

Thanks!

I haven't read the whole thread but if over the next few patches the economy's SPP problem is 'fixed' alot of people will have to restart!

Sorry made me smile thinking about it .

Very true. Well, unless they have made as much money as I have with my SPPs... then they should have more then enough money to "adjust" to the new economy. However, I will most definitly restart my game anyway. If they do fix the economy, I'll want to start from the beginning and explore it from the start. It'd be a totally different game, and a new (and much better might I add) adventure! A fresh new beginning. Just thinking about it gets me excited.

Can someone explain whats happening at my SPP.
I have these settings at my SPP;
ECs sold at = 20Cr (changed to 19 before i quit X2)
Crystal Buy Limit = 1684
Max Jumps = 3
Funds at SPP (when i went on x2 about 2 hours ago, i pumped more cash in so it was 100k summit, then before i went to do some bulletin missions, it was at 180k) = 148k
Trade with other races = yes.
ECs in stock = 4968.

What does this mean?
Does it mean that im making more than im selling? Should i assign my "dormant" Mk3 trading Boran Dolphin, upgraded with the Mk2 trade thing, and set that to sell?

------
On a side note. I was doing a transporting mission, "Rolks drift" to "The Wall" in 20mizueas, with a payment of 31.5k, me in a pegasus, with a max speed of 1009m/s. Just got to "The Wall", and i got a message saying that i was too slow! Is that a bug or summit?

------
Oh, and the khaak M3/M5 that was flying around Rolks Drift, cot completely annihilated by a Boran Ray!. I zoomed in to watch, and neither khaak ship got a single shot in before they were destroyed in a barrage of weapons fire from the Ray!.

-------------
Well, first your SPP made money. Then, it's transport bought some crystals, and you lost a little money. Your stocks of Ecells however are at their max, so I definatly suggest using that dormant TS to sell the energy. Make sure that the Dolphin has a good amount of Cargo Bay upgrades and Engine tunnings. The more Ecells you can take in one trip, the more money you will make. Be careful though, and keep an eye out for the TS here and there. A TS with cargo bay extensions are pretty expensive, so if you lose it to the Khaak, it could set your SPP back several hours.
------------
Could be bugged. I've heard a couple of reports on bugged BBS missions, and if you were going straight to the wall in a maxed Pegasus, I think you should have won. Maybe you needed a ship with a jumpdrive to jump there directly, as the time limit was so short.
------------
Very Cool. Thats why I love Rolks Drift. (That and my most profitable SPP is there!)

It's been interesting reading (most) of this thread - I'd set up a solar power plant and a silicon mine, partly because the silicon mine factory was relatively cheap. But of course until I'd got them set up I hadn't appreciated how many energy cells were needed to get a unit of silicon wafers out. If I was lucky, and a local plant was totally out of wafers, I might make say 500 credits profit per wafer. Whereas the solar power plant, although more expensive to get running, was clearly capable of making 500 profit as a bare minimum based on average crystal prices; the only potential limiting factor being availability of crystals and travel time required to get them. But once you have a surplus stock that's not an issue of course. It does surprise me that solar power plants are completely out on top - I thought perhaps weapons factories might end up on top for per-unit profit, but then as people have observed the start-up costs are massive.

In terms of tips to get started - don't knock scavenging. If Khaaks are still around it's tricky, but selling a few hornet missiles early in the game really helped out; between that and free cargo if you can dodge Khaaks and pick up the pieces it's well worth it... Oh, and also, look out for stations that have absolutely no energy cells (or other resource) left. The bulletin board should allow you to make a nice extra profit on any resources you've just carried in which they're out of. Just take the mission to get the resources, hit escape, then return, and you'll have done the mission in record time (!) and gotten the bonus. I don't know if there's a script that can do that, but if you get lucky trading manually it's useful free credits.

Scalvaging is great! Thats how I started off. Only I did a little more in station cargo container scalvaging. A few Laser Towers/Squash Mines/Hornett missiles saved me up enough to fix my TS and buy my ship new equipment.

Missions that request energy are great- these are what really really got me started off in the game. You can easily make 150,000-200,000 with them. And if you have your own SPP in the same sector, these missions can be even more profitable!

As for the economy, yes, it caught me off guard as well. I really didn't understand why high end factories weren't profitable, and why SPPs were the only real "good" factory in the game. If your still interested in X2's economy, and what to know why it's economy is flawed, here is the original topic that started it all:
http://www.egosoft.com/x2/forum/viewtop ... c&start=30



If anyone's got any questions feel free to post 'em here and I'll be sure to answer them. Also if anyone would like to do more sector rating's for SPPs, post them here, and I'll add them to the list and give you credit for them. Just make sure you use the same format as in the originals.

If I have time tonight, I'll add some of my own Sector Ratings to the list.

[BoomAM]

Hmm. Thanks for the help.
Slight update.
At my SPP. With 1 Manta buying, and 2 dolphins selling, it seems to spend an awful lot of time with the Manta Doing nothing. IE; Max crystals.
It seems to be because the Dolphins have a max speed of 100m/s, and they allways seem to sell at cloudbase northwest.
Should i buy more dolphins to ship stuff out?
Cos i`d like to get my SPP working like clockwork, efficiently as possible, before i start on my pirate hunting again!.

-------------
And what sector should i send my Dolphin w/Mk3 to? Preferably an Argon Sector, to get my ratings up a little.
It has 51mW Shields(2x25mW & 1mW), max speed, no weapons.

[Naranek]

One solution might be to use Mantas all round? 500 less cargo than a standard Dolphin but more than double the speed, so you'll get more turnaround out of them. I have this problem myself - you tend to get a pause in production because your own ships just can't sell quickly enough. My compromise is to bring my sale price down so that some cells are bought by third parties. You won't get as much profit per unit produced, but you'll get some and it'll allow you to keep producing sells. It's a trade off between maximising profits through maximised resale price and maximising profits by continuous production. Presumably a couple of maxed out Dolphins could help seriously dent any surplus stock, but that'd be v. expensive..?

[Conor]

I followed your guide to setting up your first spp but now I have a problem no one buys from my station!!! (Kingdom End)

I had barely enough to get everything for the station so not enough to buy a ship to start selling the energy. I now have a full station selling at 19 which is less then the other spp in the sector. I postioned it to the right of the trading station near all the factories but none of the other factories buy from me. I have it set to trade with other races or whatever it is but nothing.

This is very frustrating as I was hoping I could finally stop going back and forth trading in other sectors and just sit back and watch the credits roll in!!!

PLEASE HELP!! (if you can?)
Thanks

[BoomAM]

Already got those Dolphins though. Seems a waste to sell them.
Ive brought a 3rd Dolphin for the SPP Sell. Thats potentially 4500 of the 5000 ECs stock from the SPP being sold.
I might, prehaps, when i get enough to build a factory in Argon Prime (suggestions?), transfer the dolphins to that, and have Mantas only for the SPP. But it`ll be a while till that happens.
I`ll keep you all updated on the "situation".
Thanks for the previous help bty.