Re: Questions about economy.
Posted: Mon, 18. Mar 19, 00:53
Hmm, I don't purposely try to shut down the NPC economy. I don't care for its well being too much would be a more correct way of putting it.
I have to admit, I absolutely hate building complexes. I love designing complexes, planning them carefully, making sure there will be no shortage of resources and whatever, but the actual process of putting factories in place drives me nuts. Dragging asteroids is a pain. Mines themselves look atrocius and no matter how hard you try for them to look decent along with the other factories, it just won't happen. Then, trying to align factories so they look at least a bit tidy, everything just to end up with a spaghetti meatball network all over the sector I'll probably never visit again because of the ugliness of that thing (and 0.2 fps in-sector).
That is why it takes me a lot of time to decide to actually build something. And once it's finished I don't want to be tweaking it anymore. Imaging building a large cube of doom like this https://i.imgur.com/fx3V4T2.png featuring 70-something chip plants, only to find out you can't sell that many chips and end up disabling half of them and having to build "an annex" with different factories that will never match your original design and hurt your FPS even further. In my opinion it would be best to pre-plan the complex with as much effort as you can, and once you're 100% sure on what you'll have, try to think of some kind of layout for your application and build the complex the way you want.
Let's see for example mentioned above complex in Barren Shores. The sector doesn't contain any Ore and a lot of Silicon asteroids. Seems like a perfect spot for a non-military production of any kind. Setting 78 chip plants for the HUB plot seems like an amazing idea, but once the plot is over, you don't need that many chip plants. So, you would either let your freighers get full every once in a while and then perform the "sell on shipyard" trick to get rid of the stock, or disable/destroy the unneeded factories and replace them with other types, I don't know...tubes or satellites.
Other way of doing things would be having resource loop and production loop (chips) separated from the beginning, Merge all the Silicon Mines with relevant number of SPPs and support, and set some CLS freighters to haul silicon/energy cells (or silicon/crystals) over to a different loop with only chip fabs/support, and once you're done with the hub plot, maybe disable some of the chip plants and make your freighters supply loops for other kind of production with the surplus you now have.
But what do you think of the following idea: I build a closed-loop complex featuring not 78 but, let's say, 20 chip plants, and the rest are a mix of of other non ore-consuming factories I might be interested in. In a sector nearby (or maybe even the same sector) I build another "open" loop with just 58 chip fabs (and maybe their support). The idea here is - during the HUB period I disable everything in the closed-loop complex besides chip plants, and feed surplus resources to the "open" complex, to match a total production of 78 chip plants. Once the HUB is over, I stop supplying "open" loop (even destroying it would be OK), and re-enable the rest of the factories I left dormant for the time being. This way I can think about the "final" layout from the beginning. I know destroying from 58 to 170 something fabs would be a waste of credits, but I would much rather prefer that to having non-producing factories lagging up my game.
The same example can be used with Ore Mines for hub plot. After finishing that part, repurposing them for military use would be the best. Say, you found out there is a lot of Ore and Silicon in Savage Spur, and decide to plop a L-mine on each and every of them for the HUB plot, join them with complex kits along with some SPP loops and enjoy your nice Ore income (along with some surplus silicon). Once the HUB plot is finished you might want to repurpose this huge array of mines into some military use, soon to find out that you'll run out of silicon for powering your extra factories before you can use even half of your ore production. Again you'll be presented with a choice, either disable the surplus, or import silicon from elsewhere. Why not plan it ahead and instead of building in a single sector with poor Silicon to Ore balance, choose a couple of lesser sectors for your mining, which instead can be repurposed fully afterwards?
Let's say I want to get rich by building 1MJ shield fabs in President's End. After building 11 of such fabs, the sector's ore supply is depleted, but the universe needs more of my shields! At this point I can either bring more ore from Ore Belt using CLS, or build another complex elsewhere. But I'd much rather have a single closed complex within a Ore/Silicon rich sector for such high-demand ware. If only I knew beforehand what sells in ample amounts and what doesn't, I could plan ahead of time on which sectors to choose for certain wares. As you might have noticed, open loops for some reason bother me. Same goes for mobile mining. Despite having used both technics very successfully in previous playthroughs, I feel well-planned industries can work just fine without relying too much on them. In my opinion, mobile mining takes away all the challenge of complex design - just build as many fabs as you want and get some CLS going. And disconnected loops feel more of a "I couldn't manage to plan this in one chunk so I had to fragment it instead" kind of situation.
And these are the considerations I had when I first decided to open this thread. What I want to find out is, to what extent can I build a decent empire, including completing hub plot within reasonable time, building infrastructure for widely used shielding/missiles/armaments/ammo, getting some nice money makers going, aswell as stocking some commonly needed consumables like sats/drones/ecells using only the simple stuff - mines, factories, complex kits and my arch-nemesis, the tractor beam.
P.S. Argh , the long post again... I'm sorry. I promise my next post will be some interesting info. Stay tuned!
I have to admit, I absolutely hate building complexes. I love designing complexes, planning them carefully, making sure there will be no shortage of resources and whatever, but the actual process of putting factories in place drives me nuts. Dragging asteroids is a pain. Mines themselves look atrocius and no matter how hard you try for them to look decent along with the other factories, it just won't happen. Then, trying to align factories so they look at least a bit tidy, everything just to end up with a spaghetti meatball network all over the sector I'll probably never visit again because of the ugliness of that thing (and 0.2 fps in-sector).
That is why it takes me a lot of time to decide to actually build something. And once it's finished I don't want to be tweaking it anymore. Imaging building a large cube of doom like this https://i.imgur.com/fx3V4T2.png featuring 70-something chip plants, only to find out you can't sell that many chips and end up disabling half of them and having to build "an annex" with different factories that will never match your original design and hurt your FPS even further. In my opinion it would be best to pre-plan the complex with as much effort as you can, and once you're 100% sure on what you'll have, try to think of some kind of layout for your application and build the complex the way you want.
Let's see for example mentioned above complex in Barren Shores. The sector doesn't contain any Ore and a lot of Silicon asteroids. Seems like a perfect spot for a non-military production of any kind. Setting 78 chip plants for the HUB plot seems like an amazing idea, but once the plot is over, you don't need that many chip plants. So, you would either let your freighers get full every once in a while and then perform the "sell on shipyard" trick to get rid of the stock, or disable/destroy the unneeded factories and replace them with other types, I don't know...tubes or satellites.
Other way of doing things would be having resource loop and production loop (chips) separated from the beginning, Merge all the Silicon Mines with relevant number of SPPs and support, and set some CLS freighters to haul silicon/energy cells (or silicon/crystals) over to a different loop with only chip fabs/support, and once you're done with the hub plot, maybe disable some of the chip plants and make your freighters supply loops for other kind of production with the surplus you now have.
But what do you think of the following idea: I build a closed-loop complex featuring not 78 but, let's say, 20 chip plants, and the rest are a mix of of other non ore-consuming factories I might be interested in. In a sector nearby (or maybe even the same sector) I build another "open" loop with just 58 chip fabs (and maybe their support). The idea here is - during the HUB period I disable everything in the closed-loop complex besides chip plants, and feed surplus resources to the "open" complex, to match a total production of 78 chip plants. Once the HUB is over, I stop supplying "open" loop (even destroying it would be OK), and re-enable the rest of the factories I left dormant for the time being. This way I can think about the "final" layout from the beginning. I know destroying from 58 to 170 something fabs would be a waste of credits, but I would much rather prefer that to having non-producing factories lagging up my game.
The same example can be used with Ore Mines for hub plot. After finishing that part, repurposing them for military use would be the best. Say, you found out there is a lot of Ore and Silicon in Savage Spur, and decide to plop a L-mine on each and every of them for the HUB plot, join them with complex kits along with some SPP loops and enjoy your nice Ore income (along with some surplus silicon). Once the HUB plot is finished you might want to repurpose this huge array of mines into some military use, soon to find out that you'll run out of silicon for powering your extra factories before you can use even half of your ore production. Again you'll be presented with a choice, either disable the surplus, or import silicon from elsewhere. Why not plan it ahead and instead of building in a single sector with poor Silicon to Ore balance, choose a couple of lesser sectors for your mining, which instead can be repurposed fully afterwards?
Let's say I want to get rich by building 1MJ shield fabs in President's End. After building 11 of such fabs, the sector's ore supply is depleted, but the universe needs more of my shields! At this point I can either bring more ore from Ore Belt using CLS, or build another complex elsewhere. But I'd much rather have a single closed complex within a Ore/Silicon rich sector for such high-demand ware. If only I knew beforehand what sells in ample amounts and what doesn't, I could plan ahead of time on which sectors to choose for certain wares. As you might have noticed, open loops for some reason bother me. Same goes for mobile mining. Despite having used both technics very successfully in previous playthroughs, I feel well-planned industries can work just fine without relying too much on them. In my opinion, mobile mining takes away all the challenge of complex design - just build as many fabs as you want and get some CLS going. And disconnected loops feel more of a "I couldn't manage to plan this in one chunk so I had to fragment it instead" kind of situation.
And these are the considerations I had when I first decided to open this thread. What I want to find out is, to what extent can I build a decent empire, including completing hub plot within reasonable time, building infrastructure for widely used shielding/missiles/armaments/ammo, getting some nice money makers going, aswell as stocking some commonly needed consumables like sats/drones/ecells using only the simple stuff - mines, factories, complex kits and my arch-nemesis, the tractor beam.
P.S. Argh , the long post again... I'm sorry. I promise my next post will be some interesting info. Stay tuned!