CLS vs MK3, how and why

[Timsup2nothin]

This thread started out being about using the HUB to isolate sectors from NPC traffic...but got hijacked somewhere around page two for a lively debate about automated trading systems. The experiment with the hub had been completed, pretty much satisfactorily, so I changed the title.






Let's say I want to be sole supplier and buyer in a sector, providing all the resources at exorbitantly high prices and buying all the products at rock bottom. Okay, that's easy to say. I always want to do that.

But if I try to do that pesky NPC traders are always horning in on my deal. They supply resources before the fabs are desperate enough to pay my price. They haul off goods before the price hits rock bottom. Goods that are rightfully mine! Well, goods that I am claiming are mine anyway.

So I thought about this and came up with an obvious solution to these NPC traders. Kill 'em. All of 'em. Set up sector patrols that are hostile to everyone and dare any lame NPC freighter to try to get to my chosen credit pumps.

Hmmm. Obviously there's a problem there, since in fairly short order I wouldn't have anywhere to sell the goods or buy the resources, which is okay because the stations in my sector wouldn't let my freighters dock anyway.

Now, here's a theory. The reason this is a problem isn't because my guys are blowing up the freighters that are trying to poach my stuff. It's because they are also blowing up all the through traffic. Simple NPC freighter just flying through, and my guys call him a poacher and blow him to bits. Military task force on the way to wherever to blow up whatever, my guys pick a fight. If they would just let the through traffic go and only blow up the poachers my trading empire and mission activities should be able to balance out the rep hits. But there is no way to program a patrol so it can tell the difference between actual poachers and passing traffic.

Dead end sectors obviously don't have any passing through traffic. Unfortunately they also have very limited usefulness because they are sorely lacking in stations. So, what if I can use the hub to ELIMINATE all the passing through traffic in sectors with some useful stations? Then I can set up the patrol to kill anyone who comes in, knowing that they are indeed there for a purpose I am not willing to allow. Then I can buy at rock bottom and sell at max price to all those stations.

That's the objective of my current game.

[Snafu_X3]

Umm.. I fail to see your objective (as stated) combining with your method(s) in any meaningful way

Is your (true) objective to keep NPC local trade down? If so, what purpose does it serve, other than to make the local economy reliant upon you? You should have pots of money by this stage in the game; you're perfectly capable of doing this without bothering the NPCs one bit

Alternatively you may be trying to 'own' (in all but name) one sector currently assigned to some other race. This is doomed to fail as GoD will continuously (slowly) respawn <race> fabs & docks ad infinitum, until the local economy can stand it

Perhaps you're trying to gain race and/or trade rep? Race rep certainly won't work WRT the method you've set out; trade rep is easily gained from other methods; no need to concentrate in one sector (whether owned by you or not)

Money gain - at this stage it's effectively worthless; you can make far more liquid funds far more quickly by doing other things than you can by wiping out a sector's trading ships & replacing them with your own

So, what is your goal in this endeavour?

[Simoom]

Umm.. I fail to see your objective (as stated) combining with your method(s) in any meaningful way

Is your (true) objective to keep NPC local trade down? If so, what purpose does it serve, other than to make the local economy reliant upon you? You should have pots of money by this stage in the game; you're perfectly capable of doing this without bothering the NPCs one bit

Alternatively you may be trying to 'own' (in all but name) one sector currently assigned to some other race. This is doomed to fail as GoD will continuously (slowly) respawn <race> fabs & docks ad infinitum, until the local economy can stand it

Perhaps you're trying to gain race and/or trade rep? Race rep certainly won't work WRT the method you've set out; trade rep is easily gained from other methods; no need to concentrate in one sector (whether owned by you or not)

Money gain - at this stage it's effectively worthless; you can make far more liquid funds far more quickly by doing other things than you can by wiping out a sector's trading ships & replacing them with your own

So, what is your goal in this endeavour?

Seconded. Greed can only go so far - I think there are some limits to how greedy you can be in X3, and even though we all want to maximize profits, I think your methods will end up being highly inefficient and cost you much more in terms of micro-management time and need to maintain a large military fleet than you otherwise would.

1) If you really want to get rid of lots of NPC traders, but remain on friendly (trading) terms with NPC factions, you can't be killing these NPC traders yourself. One way of doing this is by using the Hub to connect a Xenon section with a heavy trading lane. Then the Xenon ships will kill lots of NPC traders for you - BUT that also means Xenons have easy access into the rest of the universe, which means less security for your own ships and factories. Do you really want that? Alternatively, you could connect the Hub in such a way that opposing factions fight each other (for example, connecting Neptune to Commonwealth space will often result in a large fleet of ATF ships going around killing all the Commonwealth traders going through the Hub).

2) Unfortunately, you can't do much about NPCs "buying products at rock bottom" and "Selling at top price". That's what they do. The game also continuously spawn new trading ships just to do that (even if you use the Hub to destroy a large number of them, or even if you personall command a bunch of combat ships going around the universe killing every trading ship you find, there's no way that you could have nearly even put a dent into the overall trading ship population). The only way for YOU to beat them to the deals is to have YOUR OWN large fleet of jump drive-capable traders. Some people like Universe Traders, some don't - some prefer Local Traders or meticulously setting up CLS traders. I for one just set up 40-50 Universe Traders and forget they exist - such a high number of UT's do saturate the economy but I also take a lot of station-building missions to constantly introduce new business opportunities. If you don't want to saturate the in-game economy, 30 Universe Traders should be good enough to make max-profits on every trade run while still keeping the NPC factories producing.

3) Same thing with your own factories - jump-capable Commercial Agents will be able to easily beat NPC traders to good deals (buying resources for your factories cheaply, and selling products at high price points). You really don't need to go into such lengthy trouble to manipulate the in-game economy by personally killing all the NPC traders (which is a futile task, IMO).

[Timsup2nothin]

Is your (true) objective to keep NPC local trade down? If so, what purpose does it serve, other than to make the local economy reliant upon you? You should have pots of money by this stage in the game; you're perfectly capable of doing this without bothering the NPCs one bit

There are lots of ways to 'make pots of money' in this game. I try to find different ones. I personally have no problem with 'bothering' the NPCs.

The key point is that the NPC traders tend to prevent good profits. They are perfectly happy buying at one under average and selling at one over average. As I see it the objective is to push them out of the way to allow the classic 'buy low sell high' to come into effect.

Alternatively you may be trying to 'own' (in all but name) one sector currently assigned to some other race. This is doomed to fail as GoD will continuously (slowly) respawn <race> fabs & docks ad infinitum, until the local economy can stand it

Here you definitely missed the point. NPC stations are the bottomless wells from which credits are pumped. I have no intention of blowing up stations. This does lead to a question about my patrols though...can I make them hostile to everyone without them taking it into their heads to blow up the stations?

Thanks...that gave me something to think about.

[glenmcd]

I see your key objectives here as succeeding in selling at max price and buying at minimum price. And I believe that the hub can help you achieve close to this. But killing off NPCs seems to me to be counter-productive and unnecessary. By using jumpdrives to trade with the entire universe and setting prices carefully, it is possible to continuously achieve the above goals.

First, setup the hub for sales only. If you want to buy from NPCs, then do this on separate EQDs and use CLS freighters to transfer wares to your hub. This way, you can set optimum prices rather than some compromise (average) price.

There's value in looking carefully at each ware separately and even each target station type separately. So let's take ECs first. It's relatively easy to get 19 credits continuously for ECs. You will be competing with large, slow freighters that don't use jumpdrives. Once a station is offering 19 credits, there will be at least one NPC EC freighter assigned to deliver ECs to it. You need to get there before it does. So use a freighter that gets there in time, even if it's a bit smaller.

Many bio, food and tech wares are consumed as a secondary resource. If you don't go to the extent of setting specific prices for specific station types, then a useful strategy is to set sale price to max price as a secondary resource. Wares such as teladianum, plankton, soja husk, crystals, quantum tubes, computer components, Delexian wheat, stott spices, scruffin fruits, cloth rimes, warheads, nostrop oil, rastar oil and sunrise flowers can be sold to NPCs for their max (as secondary resource) at a constant rate regardless of production status. For many of these, the price is also suitable when considering sales "as primary resource".

If you have the time and inclination, setup CAGs to target specific station types also. For example, sell ECs to weapon forges at 18cr min, not 19cr. Some even get "Stuck" offering only 17cr yet can't produce without more ECs. But offer ECs to all for 17cr and your profits plummet.

[Timsup2nothin]

Greed can only go so far -

Ahhhh...but how far? That's the question, eh?

I think there are some limits to how greedy you can be in X3, and even though we all want to maximize profits,

My own observation is that very few X players are actually the least bit interested in maximizing profits. Since there is literally no way to not profit I find trying to maximize profit to be the main point of interest.

I think your methods will end up being highly inefficient and cost you much more in terms of micro-management time and need to maintain a large military fleet than you otherwise would.

Hence the expirement.

1) If you really want to get rid of lots of NPC traders, but remain on friendly (trading) terms with NPC factions, you can't be killing these NPC traders yourself. One way of doing this is by using the Hub to connect a Xenon section with a heavy trading lane. Then the Xenon ships will kill lots of NPC traders for you - BUT that also means Xenons have easy access into the rest of the universe, which means less security for your own ships and factories. Do you really want that? Alternatively, you could connect the Hub in such a way that opposing factions fight each other (for example, connecting Neptune to Commonwealth space will often result in a large fleet of ATF ships going around killing all the Commonwealth traders going through the Hub).

The difficulty here is that the Xenon would also be killing my freighters. Not much point in isolating sectors from NPC traffic if I can't take advantage of the subsequent trading opportunities.

2) Unfortunately, you can't do much about NPCs "buying products at rock bottom" and "Selling at top price". That's what they do.

No, they don't. They buy at anything below average and sell at anything above average, happily making unit profit of two credits wherever they can.

The game also continuously spawn new trading ships just to do that

But when it spawns them it doesn't spawn them particularly in the sectors of concern. If you drive them off they only trickle back because they get sidetracked by deals close to where they spawned. I'm not trying to take over all trade in the universe, just in sectors I can isolate.

I for one just set up 40-50 Universe Traders and forget they exist -

Remember when I said most players show no interest in maximizing profits? I rest my case.

If you don't want to saturate the in-game economy, 30 Universe Traders should be good enough to make max-profits on every trade run while still keeping the NPC factories producing.

Putting 'universe trader' and 'max profits' in the same sentence is the funniest thing I've seen today. UTs are just as lame as NPC traders, perfectly happy to buy just under average and sell just above it. They have three differences...they can jump, they aren't limited in the wares they trade, and they work for you. While this gives them advantages it certainly won't lead them to 'make max profit on every trade run'.

3) Same thing with your own factories - jump-capable Commercial Agents will be able to easily beat NPC traders to good deals (buying resources for your factories cheaply, and selling products at high price points). You really don't need to go into such lengthy trouble to manipulate the in-game economy by personally killing all the NPC traders (which is a futile task, IMO).

I'm not really planning on building any factories. There are very few wares that aren't produced in abundance in the universe anyway, so I'm usually not interested in adding production. When I am I just take station building missions, because NPC factories are the source of all credits, other than mission payouts...so the more NPC factories the merrier.

[Timsup2nothin]

I see your key objectives here as succeeding in selling at max price and buying at minimum price.

Indeed.

So let's take ECs first. It's relatively easy to get 19 credits continuously for ECs. You will be competing with large, slow freighters that don't use jumpdrives. Once a station is offering 19 credits, there will be at least one NPC EC freighter assigned to deliver ECs to it. You need to get there before it does. So use a freighter that gets there in time, even if it's a bit smaller.

Unfortunately, that 'big slow energy freighter' that you have beaten to the deal doesn't just disappear. It arrives, sees it has been beaten to the deal, and looks for a new deal. It might find a factory right there in the same sector willing to pay 17, and it will take it. So that deal your fast ship never has a shot at. If the NPC haulers would insist on 19 you could beat them to every deal, no sweat...but they don't.

[Simoom]

There are lots of ways to 'make pots of money' in this game. I try to find different ones. I personally have no problem with 'bothering' the NPCs.

The key point is that the NPC traders tend to prevent good profits. They are perfectly happy buying at one under average and selling at one over average. As I see it the objective is to push them out of the way to allow the classic 'buy low sell high' to come into effect.

Have you actually paid attention to the in-game economy when no player traders are present? NPC traders are horribly inefficient. Lots of factories are sitting around with full wares and empty resource gauges.

Part of the issue is a lot of them get destroyed en route, since they don't know how to use jump drives. The other part of the issue is the fact that they don't use jump drives, so their travel time is insanely long - by the time they reach their intended destination and pick another trade run, the original factory is once again full of wares and/or lacking supplies.

So on your notion that NPC traders "Prevent good profits", I simply disagree. In theory, yes they would - but ONLY if they were actually efficient at their jobs; but they aren't. With the player's own trading fleet capable of beating them easily to the deals using jump drives, I simply don't see how NPC traders prevent good profits. Assuming you didn't saturate the in-game economy by having too many traders, your traders will almost always be buying at the lowest and selling at the highest. I know mine did - up until I decided to train 50 of them; at this point I would rather the NPC factories stay supplied and functioning, rather than concern myself with making maximum profits per trade run. All my complexes are maxed out at 2 billion credits, my main account is at 2 billion credits, my sub account... I don't even know how much money is in there because the counter is broken (it shows I only have slightly over 1 billion in my sub account, but whenever I dump 2 billion credits into a new factory, my main account magically goes back up to 2 billion and the sub account value doesn't change at all).

Here you definitely missed the point. NPC stations are the bottomless wells from which credits are pumped. I have no intention of blowing up stations. This does lead to a question about my patrols though...can I make them hostile to everyone without them taking it into their heads to blow up the stations?

Thanks...that gave me something to think about.

Actually I was confused about your "method" as well... I mean, okay, you are using the Hub to force NPC trading traffic through, so you can have your patrol ships blow them up inside the Hub sector... is that about the jest of it?

1) How will your patrol ships distinguish trading ships from non-trading ships such as military ones? You can't program them that way, and they will just attack everybody.

2) What do you define as "poachers"? I mean, unless you are MANUALLY examining each trading ship and determining their destination, and then checking said destinations to see if their wares are full/empty and whether or not said trading ship is imposing on a potentially "good deal", which is... a more tedious process than I can even imagine (and I have quite a lot of patience). By the time you even finished all those examinations, the trader probably left the sector already, which means your patrols have to go outside to chase them down, potentially making you lose tons of rep for killing in a racial sector - meanwhile dozens, if not hundreds, of other freighters are passing through your Hub unchecked, waiting for you to do another thorough examination of their destinations and whether or not they are worthy of extermination.

3) So since it's too tedious to check each trading ship and determine who is a "poacher" and who isn't (which, IMO, is a bit of a silly way to look at them, but okay...), it's easier to just arbitrarily destroy every single trading ship you see. Well... how are you going to do that? In OOS combat, ships need to be chased down to be destroyed, since weapon range is almost non-existent. Unless you stuff hundreds of patrols in the Hub, chances are a lot of trading ships will get through anyway (I mean, they make it through Xenon sectors... and they don't even go through them in the same kind of volume you are proposing here). And even with hundreds of patrol ships chasing down trading ships, how will you stop them from wasting time chasing the same ships (which gives other ones time to escape)? For such a scenario to work, each patrol ship has to independently target a different trader, otherwise somebody will get through.

4) It still doesn't answer the question of rep loss, which should be your primary concern. Killing traders in such numbers ensures that nobody will ever want to trade with you, not even if you are doing missions constantly (you can only do missions so quickly, and typically for one faction at a time - meanwhile your rep for every other faction remains rock bottom).

So... yeah. Like Snafu, I just am not sure what you are trying to accomplish... or rather, I understand your underlying logic, but 1) I don't see any feasible way you can pull it off, 2) I don't see any point to it even if you can, since like I said, your own trading ships are far more efficient and won't have trouble getting "max profits" out of their trade runs.

[glenmcd]

Unfortunately, that 'big slow energy freighter' that you have beaten to the deal doesn't just disappear. It arrives, sees it has been beaten to the deal, and looks for a new deal. It might find a factory right there in the same sector willing to pay 17, and it will take it. So that deal your fast ship never has a shot at. If the NPC haulers would insist on 19 you could beat them to every deal, no sweat...but they don't.

I guess the only way you'll stop NPCs from selling is to sell at below average price to all. Obviously this is a losing proposition in a trading scenario but could possibly work with enough self sufficient complexes. I haven't tried it.

[Simoom]

But when it spawns them it doesn't spawn them particularly in the sectors of concern. If you drive them off they only trickle back because they get sidetracked by deals close to where they spawned. I'm not trying to take over all trade in the universe, just in sectors I can isolate.

But how many sectors can you isolate with the Hub? You only got three sets of gates, that can only intersect three junctions.

Remember when I said most players show no interest in maximizing profits? I rest my case.

Depends on your definition of "maximizing profits". Having 50 UT's saturating the economy means I am not making max profits per run - but I am still making more money overall than if I had less UT's making more profit per run.

In this sense, I am already juicing out as much money as I can from the pre-existing in-game economy. Hence in my own book, this maximized my profits.

Putting 'universe trader' and 'max profits' in the same sentence is the funniest thing I've seen today. UTs are just as lame as NPC traders, perfectly happy to buy just under average and sell just above it. They have three differences...they can jump, they aren't limited in the wares they trade, and they work for you. While this gives them advantages it certainly won't lead them to 'make max profit on every trade run'.

Not nearly as funny as attempting to "maximize profits" by examining and hunting down individual NPC traders. Not to mention the fact that you can't even isolate a fraction of the universe by using the Hub - so I don't see how your financial gains will be drastically improved overall even after going through all these efforts.

Unless your little experiment is ONLY limited to the few sectors that you manage to isolate, AND your own trading fleets are only limited only to these sectors, then you may have some success. But since the number of sectors you can isolate using the Hub is inherently limited, even if you managed to prove some sort of a point with this little experiment, it still WON'T affect the overall economy of the universe and how much your traders can earn (if their jump ranges aren't limited). So on the grand scale of things? Sort of pointless, IMO.

I'm not really planning on building any factories. There are very few wares that aren't produced in abundance in the universe anyway, so I'm usually not interested in adding production. When I am I just take station building missions, because NPC factories are the source of all credits, other than mission payouts...so the more NPC factories the merrier.

"There are very few wares that aren't produced in abundance in the universe" - heh, I don't think it get further from the truth than that. Have you actually bothered to check production & demand of the vanilla universe? I am not even talking about the fact that a lot of weapon types are vastly under-supplied. I mean a lot of food fabs don't have enough bio fabs supplying them, either (ever looked at Terran space? Tons of MRE fabs but not many Protein Paste fabs. Same thing with Ice/Water.)

If your universe is fully explored, check your in-game encyclopedia; easy way to gauge supply & demand. I am pretty sure the devs intentionally made the game so its economy is imbalanced - hence giving the player the job to fix it.

[Timsup2nothin]

Actually I was confused about your "method" as well... I mean, okay, you are using the Hub to force NPC trading traffic through, so you can have your patrol ships blow them up inside the Hub sector... is that about the jest of it?

No. The idea is to use the hub to allow the through traffic to bypass a sector or sectors. For example, if you set one gate set between Kingdom End and Three Worlds, and one set between Queen's Space and Menelaus' Frontier, there will be no through traffic in Kingdom End, Queen's Space, Or Rolk's whatever it is that's between them. Passing through traffic will just enter the hub gate at one end, turn in the hub, and come out the hub gate at the other end. So anything that comes out of the hub into Queen's Space or Kingdom End is headed to somewhere in those three sectors and can be killed.

Of course that's a bad example, because most of that traffic will be Borons and there's no way to hold rep under that kind of bleed. Pirate sectors are the only possible option.

I think that with just the first gate set active I can make through traffic bypass Olmankatslot's treaty and Bala Gi's Joy and use the alternate route through Elena's Fortune instead. With all three sets I can definitely isolate those, plus Freedom's Reach, Danna's Chance, Nopilios Memorial, and whatever that sector east of Split Fire is called. I'm certainly open to batter suggestions though.

[Simoom]

No. The idea is to use the hub to allow the through traffic to bypass a sector or sectors. For example, if you set one gate set between Kingdom End and Three Worlds, and one set between Queen's Space and Menelaus' Frontier, there will be no through traffic in Kingdom End, Queen's Space, Or Rolk's whatever it is that's between them. Passing through traffic will just enter the hub gate at one end, turn in the hub, and come out the hub gate at the other end. So anything that comes out of the hub into Queen's Space or Kingdom End is headed to somewhere in those three sectors and can be killed.

Okay, I think I see what you are saying. You are using the Hub as a "filter" to determine their destinations. So if you blow up all the trading ships coming into said sectors you can potentially starve the economy there and maximize profits for your traders going there.

It's an interesting concept, but again the scale of such operations is extremely limited due to inherently limits of the Hub itself. As for locking down pirate sectors - most NPC traders going into pirate sectors are not pirates at all (only pirate traders are Duke's - I haven't noticed any regular pirate ships engage in any sort of trade). So you will still suffer lots of rep loss with all the main races doing this. Rep loss is the primary issue with your idea, IMO.

[Timsup2nothin]

No. The idea is to use the hub to allow the through traffic to bypass a sector or sectors. For example, if you set one gate set between Kingdom End and Three Worlds, and one set between Queen's Space and Menelaus' Frontier, there will be no through traffic in Kingdom End, Queen's Space, Or Rolk's whatever it is that's between them. Passing through traffic will just enter the hub gate at one end, turn in the hub, and come out the hub gate at the other end. So anything that comes out of the hub into Queen's Space or Kingdom End is headed to somewhere in those three sectors and can be killed.

Okay, I think I see what you are saying. You are using the Hub as a "filter" to determine their destinations. So if you blow up all the trading ships coming into said sectors you can potentially starve the economy there and maximize profits for your traders going there.

It's an interesting concept, but again the scale of such operations is extremely limited due to inherently limits of the Hub itself. As for locking down pirate sectors - most NPC traders going into pirate sectors are not pirates at all (only pirate traders are Duke's - I haven't noticed any regular pirate ships engage in any sort of trade). So you will still suffer lots of rep loss with all the main races doing this. Rep loss is the primary issue with your idea, IMO.

Agreed. The rep loss is a lot less blowing them up in pirate sectors than in their own race space though, so if it can be done I suspect that's the only option. Plus hopefully once all the through traffic is eliminated there won't be all that much to be blown up.

[glenmcd]

I am pretty sure the devs intentionally made the game so its economy is imbalanced - hence giving the player the job to fix it.

It's possible to check the balance of a player complex with something like complex calculator. I made a script to do this universe wide, and one that checked per race. Overall, the universe is extremely closed to balanced if you ignore "end products" that are of course impossible to check balance on. But there's a big difference between NPC systems and a player complex. Products almost instantly become available as resources where it's needed. With NPCs, it takes so long for a freighter full of product to get to where it can be used, that meanwhile factories can't produce. So that further delays it getting its next lot of product to some other factory that's waiting for it.

So yes the player can "fix" this, but there's more than one way to do so.

[Timsup2nothin]

I am pretty sure the devs intentionally made the game so its economy is imbalanced - hence giving the player the job to fix it.

It's possible to check the balance of a player complex with something like complex calculator. I made a script to do this universe wide, and one that checked per race. Overall, the universe is extremely closed to balanced if you ignore "end products" that are of course impossible to check balance on. But there's a big difference between NPC systems and a player complex. Products almost instantly become available as resources where it's needed. With NPCs, it takes so long for a freighter full of product to get to where it can be used, that meanwhile factories can't produce. So that further delays it getting its next lot of product to some other factory that's waiting for it.

So yes the player can "fix" this, but there's more than one way to do so.

And this is actually 'fixed' eventually by the NPC traffic in most cases.

Take argnu beef. Despite being vastly overproduced, at game start the cahoona bakeries routinely run out. But after a couple game days there are so many bio haulers stuck with loads of beef that as soon as a bakery buy price pops above average a bio hauler that is right nearby just idling will usually dock and sell.

Your traders aren't just competing against NPC haulers that set out from the cattle ranch. They have to compete against these floating idlers. That's why even if you have fast freighters and jump drives you can't sell for more than a few ticks above average.

Sometimes if you look you will see bio haulers just sitting in the bakeries. They got there too late to make the sale, and they literally have nowhere to go. There's no way to compete with that unless you sell below average.


As to the 'balance' in end products...the thing that throws this balance off is YOU. If it weren't for us equipping our ships with guns and shields, firing off missiles like they are bottle rockets, and all the other things we do to create demand the docks would eventually fill up.

By the way, I assume your universe wide balance noted that there is an honest to goodness shortage of Nostrop?

[glenmcd]

By the way, I assume your universe wide balance noted that there is an honest to goodness shortage of Nostrop?

Indeed.

ECs: +7%
Cahoonas: -17%
Bofu: -15%
Soja Husk: +3%
Rastar Oil: -33%
Nostrop Oil: -24%

31 factories produce Nostrop oil
115 factories use nostrop oil as primary resource
53 factories use Nostrop oil as secondary resource

All of these ignore usage as a secondary resource. I don't know whether NPCs even bother to deliver to factories that buy wares for "secondary resource usage". If they do, then that would lower the above figures except for ECs.

Where NPCs fail badly:
Silicon Wafers: 102%
Ore: +61%

I see many mines with full product bins but also factories not producing due to mineral shortage. I guess the key here is freighter speed/size, simply not enough to keep up.

[Larxyz]

hm, perhaps combining alot of laser towers with the hub is an way to remove the NPC traffic?:)
that way wont get so high ship loss costs...

just a thought

[Timsup2nothin]

hm, perhaps combining alot of laser towers with the hub is an way to remove the NPC traffic?:)
that way wont get so high ship loss costs...

just a thought

Since it looks like I will be buying laser towers at minimum price in O Treaty I was planning to use them for the blockades.

[Timsup2nothin]

I have activated the first set of hub gates and put it on the west gate of Bala Gi's Joy.

Watching the gates for thirty minutes there was only ONE ship that came into the sector that would be in the 'just passing through' category. There is a soyery in Brennan's Triumph right near the north gate. Even with the extra distance of crossing the hub getting to that plant from Atreus' clouds is still shorter this way. Everyone else was headed in to buy my e-cells, tubes, or chips, so I blew them up.

Even with the occasional innocent passer by I think I can afford the rep hit. So I will be setting up fleets to blow up anyone who comes through from the hub or enters O Treaty through the south gate.

[Tohron]

If you want to kill lots of traders with no rep-loss, there is an alternative: find a major thoroughfare sector (possibly using the Hub to increase traffic even more) with at least on large asteroid, put a mine on the asteroid, tow the mine in front of a gate on the route, blow it up, then sit in-sector and watch those poachers explode against a thousand tons of rock.