Complex Woes - Show me the money!

[Stryke11]

Hello,

I've been teaching myself one aspect of the X universe at a time, and last night was complex building.

Up to this point I had only experience cheating in a spectre missle fab in Terran space as I needed spectres and any unaffiliated ones in Terran space were either destroyed or dismissed, because I searched each sector and found nothing. Also, you can't buy one, even after you get to buy Terran stations. It has supplied me and turned a tidy profit.

This time I wanted to do it legally, so I went to Argon Prime, hailed a TL, and built a solar power plant. This was good, I had one mercury set to get crystals, and I was making money.

I'd heard so much talk about complexes, though, that I figured I'd give it a try. Since the only input of SPP is crystals, I decided to build a crystal fab. Bad idea, because now I needed two transports which cost more money to get silicon and cahoonas. At this point the factory was dead, no money was being made, only spent. I fiddled with selling intermediate goods, but that didn't really help either.

There were no asteroids, so silicon was out of the question, so I figured I'd build cahoonas. I bought wheat farm, and cattle ranch, and set them up (no additional inputs necessary), and then finally a cahoona bakery.

So now, I have a 5 factory complex in Argon Prime that only has one pure export (the wheat, which I thought was an input for the beef, but wasn't) and a surpluss of energy I have no idea how to sell, since you can't pick one good, you either have to sell all intermediates (and I need the rest to keep the cycle going) or none.

In hindsight, just building a solar power plant and a wheat farm as separate entities would have been much more profitable, unless I'm doing something radically wrong. I don't see any benefit to this complex for all the money I sunk into it.

Now granted, there probably are complex schematics that make sense and I, in my experimentation, just failed miserably. However, I don't want to just give up and build a space weed complex somewhere, so if anyone has any recommendations for my current mess of a complex and ways I can make it profitable, please let me know!

Also - do all complexes have to be in a line? I tried to make mine compact, but the TL would only land new factories near either edge and would only connect it to the ends, not for example as a T connection between two other factories.

[CaptG]

Complexes do not have to be in a line. I always set mine up in a grid, usually 3x3x3 or more.

One of the things you can do to make the complex work better is rotate the complex hub before you place it so that the docking ports are pointed straight down. When I place stations to attach to the complex, I will always place them at the same Y position on the map, and then start the grid on the X and Z. I always overlap the station icons on standard zoom on the sector map so that the corners of the icon overlap.

[Ulan Dhor]

[steelviper266]

One station supplies another when building a complex hub, connect your stations using complex connectors found @ any shipyard, for instance i built a 52 station complex hub:

7x Chip Plants

5x Solar Power Plants M

12x Cattle Ranches M

4x Flower Farms M

4x Cahoona Bakerys M

3x Cahoona Bakerys L

6x Crystal Fabs M

1x Delexian Wheat M

1x Sunoil Refinery L

1x Cloth Rimes M

1x Dream Farm L

1x Teledianium Foundry L

1x Firefly Missile Factory M

1x Phased Reapter Gun Forge

1x Energy Bolt Chain Gun Forge

1x Energy Bolt Chain Gun Ammunition Factory

1x Gauss Cannon Ammunition Forge

1x Advanced Drone Factory

PRODUCTS SOLD:

Phased Reapeater Guns

Energy Bolt Chain Guns

Firefly Missiles

Teladian

Swamp Plants

Cloth Rimes

Micro Chips

Energy Bolt Chain Gun Ammunition

Gauss Cannon Ammunition

Fighter Drone MkII

For the ore and silicon, 22 Vulture Haulers L mining 24/7

Profit margin 550/800 million 96 hrs.

[Etolf]

ok, how to make it profitable... I'm assuming that all your stations are size M...

first, scan the asteroids in Herron's Nebula, there are a couple of good Silicon ones there, iirc, and it's next door... build a L sized mine on the best (never use M sized mines on good asteroids as you can't update them later, and an M sized mine is a waste of a good asteroid)... you will also need lots of Silicon later in the Hub missions... this will supply your complex with Silicon...

next, add a Space Fuel fab to your complex, this will use your excess wheat, and be very profitable... Space Fuel is still legal in Argon territory, iirc...

finally, add a Microchip factory or 2... this again is very profitable, and will also stand you in good stead for the Hub.

remember, complexes always need priming, to get them going, this is always a good investment, and will pay you back many times over...

I also overlap factories on the map, I try to get them as close together, without touching, as I can... in this way your complexes are smaller, with less sprawl... it's not necessary, but it's how I like to do it... putting two SSP XLs on top of each other (on the Z axis) is interesting, and it's possible to get them very close too...

Complex building can be fun, as long as you don't take on one too big, then, imho, it becomes a task...

good luck with your complex...

@steelviper
why not put that complex in a sector with Silicon and Ore asteroids which you can mine and add to the complex? it'd alleviate the need for those Vultures completely!

[Stryke11]

Wow, thanks everyone for the help. I didn't know the key commands to help with placement. I just eyeballed it in the main screen and made sure it was close on the grid with the mouse. That will be very helpful.

As for the 52 unit complex. Wow...that must have taken some time, because a lot of that stuff is non argon so you would need to with the years for the TL to bring it to your complex. Also, isn't one of those (dream farm) illegal? So you would need it to be in a non-race sector, right?

[steelviper266]

My 52 station complex hub needs no attention, however it was difficult to build.

[steelviper266]

The dream farm is legit only the product is illegal.

[pjknibbs]

[Khensu]

I only ask 1 thing, HOW ON EARTH can your pc handle this much bases and nodes?

I have a little complex of 24 bases, but when I look at it my PC goes to "WTF" mode and gives like 2-5 fps max -.-

so I dont look at my complex to much, but sometimes I have to... and other sectors with many bases make my PC go "WTF" to


btw, use the Self-sufficient E-cell Loop, that costs: 45,937,828 credits ( http://tinyurl.com/dn2nc9 ) its a little base, that gives away a lot of energy and can generate a lot of cash

[Targ Collective]

Complexing Ore Belt is a long-term goal of mine. It's easy to do on paper.

[Stryke11]

In the self sufficient ECELL loop, what does NaN mean in regards to the number of energy cells produced?

[steelviper266]

[Ulan Dhor]

[Killjaeden]