SPP in complex production stopped?

[therocksteady]

Hey everyone, this is my first post in this forum. So far I've been able to answer most of my X3 questions by doing a little searching here, but this issue has me stumped.

I have a weed/fuel complex in Elena's Fortune, 3 L's of each, with all supporting stations. The SPP XL seems to stop functioning at intervals I can't predict. I'll have full crystals and silicon, but it will just sit there idle. I had to assign a few tankers to bring in energy cells to "kick start" production, and it seems to have worked. The SPP is working again, but can anyone tell me why it stopped? I'm playing X3R with RRF and CMOD.

Thoughts?

[Alan Phipps]

If you have (produced) enough crystals by when an SPP needs them then it will not stop working. The SPP XL needs a lot of crystals in one go before it starts a production run and if after it has started one batch of e-cell production there are not yet enough crystals left in stock for the next, the complex will flash yellow even though the Crystal fabs may well have made enough by the time the SPP actually next needs them. As long as you have the right crystal production balance for the needs of the SPP at the times it actually wants them, you can ignore the yellow flashing as the SPP will be working in any case.

The same applies to crystal fabs and their supporting food or silicon production.

By the way, it is often more efficient to seed a self-sufficient complex with crystals rather then e-cells in order to get things going more quickly.

Of course if you over-produce e-cells the SPP will stop when full up.

[perkint]

When you say it stopped working, do you mean it was flashing yellow, or it had genuinely stopped? Can't remember if you had the progress bar in X3R but is that what you are referring to?

What stations are in your complex? What stock levels did it have when it stopped?

Tim

[BeidAmmikon]

I've noticed this (in TC, anyway): if in the depot of a factory there is not enough free room to push the entire batch of products at the end of a production cycle, then that factory stops producing until there's enough room to store the entire batch. So, the batch that was in production keeps "waiting in queue" until some of the stored products get used up, so it can fit inside the depot again, in their place. (hope I made myself clear :) )