Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

[ancienthighway]

I thought I picked up from the many threads dealing with OOS that turrets and missiles don't come into play. It is possible that I remember wrong though.

[Timsup2nothin]

My position on the issue of defenses is that good CLS pilots will go idle so they won't run into trouble except for very very rarely...making defenses pretty much superfluous.

On the down side, all the careful route planning in the world gets thrown out the window when the nitwit pilot sets off to god knows where looking to buy the drones or mosquito missiles.

So I very studiously just don't equip them with fight command software and call it good.

[MarvinTheMartian]

I thought I picked up from the many threads dealing with OOS that turrets and missiles don't come into play. It is possible that I remember wrong though.

I really don't know, if it was common then things would go pop a little too easily I guess but I'm reasonably sure that missile boats use them OOS at least.

I've just blindly been fully equipping my freighters like the official CLS/CAG instructions said to so I might review that now

[Timsup2nothin]

At a guess, and it is just a very wild guess...

Missiles use collision detection, so they are not going to work OOS.

Of course the immediate counterargument is that OOS combat already is nothing like IS combat so missiles may be factored in somehow.

[sithneverdiealone]

well my solution to the drone supply problem is that i set up (thanks to a tip from tim on how tou distribute universaly) a distribution network for a large complex that unloads to nodal idle drone factorys set for minimum price and no npc trading. this is, however, something you can only really afford after you build a complex for the hub.

[zazie]

I have long time played X3TC in "Vanilla only"-style and therefore made extensive use of the "Buy/Sell wares at best price"-settings - I think those commands help significantly to keep the AI-economy running.
I laos have some experience with CLS2 as some of my games include Bonus Pack. Actually I play XTC with BP.

One of the assets of CLS2 is that you can keep the AI-production of important goods running (in my case: Military Shields that are ONLY available through AI-economy. NPC-fabs 'secured' from GOD with own docked ships).

But for a constant supply of EC/Ore/Food at those several 'valuable' fabs you either need own Food production (per race, of course) or several CLS2-suppliers (one per race e.g.) or own Trading Stations/EG docks as "nodes" in an extended Supply-net.

Tonight (no joke ) I had another idea that I have never seen being discussed somewhere - so I ask here:
Has anybody made some experience with the "cooperation" of CLS2 and "Buy wares at best price ?

We all know that the AI may produce an overflow of some wares (here: Food) in a sector; the player can profit of that overproduction and buy Food at minimal price. "Buy at best price ..." with a low limit of sectors works fine here.

Instead of delivering those wares to a Trading station or another expensive part of a trade-net, the player could build a fab (or a smaller complex) needing that food within the overproducing sector (or very close to it). One freighter would obviously buy the needed food at AI-stations (for best price".

Now the CLS2 : This (fully equipped and trained) ship would dock at the player owned station (fab or complex) and "load" food. After it would fly to those AI-stations producing the valuable and rare goods and unload the Food.
Of course the CLS2 loading Food could evetually lead to a halt in the production of your own fab/plex. But imo the overproduction of food at AI-stations could easily 'compensate' this - giving the "buy at best price"-freighter more jobs, but hardly ever empty runs.

If this works as set up here, it would be - compared to other trading-nets - by far a less expensive method to guarantee a constant supply for the production of rare goods that can only be produced by the AI, or for maintaining a prosper AI-economy in remote parts of the Universe.

I will test this in my game but you might have done it before !?

[ancienthighway]

Tim recently started combining CAG with his CLS2 operations. See [urlhttp://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=378522] this post.[/url]

One of the problems with the Buy at Best Price command is as soon as the product is average - 1, the trader sets out to buy it. Need isn't considered. Multiple ships doing the same purchase will go to the same station, but only the first gets the "best price". CAG will prevent these problems, not buying if the ware isn't needed and sending only one ship.

... a less expensive method to guarantee a constant supply for the production ...

If you include the cost of the stations you build to trigger the best buy/CAG, this is not less expensive. E-Cell trade can be set up relatively cheaply using this method, but for food and mineral to be resources, the stations become expensive ones that produce end products, tech or armament. A trade network set up with captured ships, occasionally augmented by 2nd hand ships, that only have speed and rudder upgrades applied is dirt cheap. Flying around safe territory, a shield really isn't needed, but adding a few 1mj or 5mj shields is low cost as well.

[Timsup2nothin]

If you include the cost of the stations you build to trigger the best buy/CAG, this is not less expensive. E-Cell trade can be set up relatively cheaply using this method, but for food and mineral to be resources, the stations become expensive ones that produce end products, tech or armament. A trade network set up with captured ships, occasionally augmented by 2nd hand ships, that only have speed and rudder upgrades applied is dirt cheap. Flying around safe territory, a shield really isn't needed, but adding a few 1mj or 5mj shields is low cost as well.

To set up a CAG food or mineral buyer I use a complex of one or two large whatever I want to buy, say Cahoona bakeries or ore mines, with a mosquito fab stuck on them. The fab is pretty cheap, and the storage is supplied by the large production units. Since the product I want is now an intermediate product I can set CAGs to buy it.

I've had a lot of success buying up wheat for near minimum price around Argon Prime and shipping it to OmLy to a distribution complex, and buying up cahoonas with a complex there and shipping them back to Argon Prime for distribution.

I had a CLS energy grid around Argon Prime that supplied everyone but the cahoona bakeries though. It wasn't as easy to operate as the new CAG grid, but gave me a lot of power over the economy.

[zazie]

Thanks for replies !
@ancienthighway:
"One of the problems with the Buy at Best Price command is as soon as the product is average - 1, the trader sets out to buy it. Need isn't considered. Multiple ships doing the same purchase will go to the same station, but only the first gets the "best price". CAG will prevent these problems, not buying if the ware isn't needed and sending only one ship. "
Agreed concerning the weak sides of Buy at Best Price-Traders (BBPT), but in my setting I would only use one per sector.
But I think you are wrong about the price setting: If you choose a low price for food or other resources, the BBPT will only buy if the ware is available within the station's jumping range at that price or lower! I usually set the price at minimum+10 - works for all races' Food production.

@timsup2nothin:
Your example (Cahoona/Mosquito) is kind of confirmation of the concept I wrote above. It is profitable in the first days of a game to buy food and EC at lowest prices from the AI. On longer terms, nothing beats own fabrication. But then we are normally at a financial level counting credits in M or L, not in XS

[Timsup2nothin]

@timsup2nothin:
On longer terms, nothing beats own fabrication.

I disagree. Every NPC fab is a credit pump. They buy high and sell low, pouring out endless credits to traders. While turning Silicon into credits is consistent and reliable, it does not compare with pumping credits out of NPC stations.

The difficulty is that AI traders invariably screw things up, by keeping NPC fabs from routinely getting to extreme prices. If you can fend off the AI so that extreme prices can develop, and simultaneously master just in time delivery so you can reap the profits without the fabs having a lot of down time, you can produce comparable revenue streams without the expense of building gigantic complexes to turn asteroids into products that need to get dumped into space.

[pref]

I'd be curious about a comparison.
How much investment is needed to set up, and then to maintain the sytem as for credits and play time.

Closed loops seem to get you an income with an hourly return rate of about 1/60 for high end products: 600M initial investment will get you around 10M/hour, a 300M plex around 5 mills etc.
Initial time investment must be around 4 hours or so for the 600m plex (training TSes if needed + placing the plex).

[sithneverdiealone]

I'd be curious about a comparison.
How much investment is needed to set up, and then to maintain the sytem as for credits and play time.

Closed loops seem to get you an income with an hourly return rate of about 1/60 for high end products: 600M initial investment will get you around 10M/hour, a 300M plex around 5 mills etc.
Initial time investment must be around 4 hours or so for the 600m plex (training TSes if needed + placing the plex).

In my experience a CLS 'backbone' network for the argon prime cluster runs about the same as a medium (10-30) complex and produces about the same money.

In Terran space I have in the main Terran sector (Mercury - Ort Cloud) several corporations: Hydro of Jupiter(HCoJ), Soylens Verindas of Saturn (SVoS), Tesla of Venus (TCoV), Ferrum et Sanguinem of the Belt (FSoAB), and Techpriests of Mars (TPoM) for water, food, power, minerals, and tech, respectively. Together they let me control and support Terran space, regardless of the GoD engen. Mind you there are about 250 ships involved in this, so its best to set up each company one at a time. This one cost in the neighborhood of 500 million and produces a bout that much every 2-3 hours(after a 5 hour 'filling' delay).

Over all i would say that there about the same short term but long-term, after a local saturation point is reached the CLS networks earn more. they are *defiantly* more reliable if your gonna purchase NPC equipment, and you can set them up gradually, unlike than the 'closed loop' witch needs like 10(plus any 'product' stations) stations before it doe anything.

[pref]

That 2-3 hours roi sounds sweet for 500m... loops can't come close to that im sure.

[Timsup2nothin]

I'd be curious about a comparison.
How much investment is needed to set up, and then to maintain the sytem as for credits and play time.

Closed loops seem to get you an income with an hourly return rate of about 1/60 for high end products: 600M initial investment will get you around 10M/hour, a 300M plex around 5 mills etc.
Initial time investment must be around 4 hours or so for the 600m plex (training TSes if needed + placing the plex).

This comparison includes some very nebulous measurements.

What does it cost to set up a CLS network? Primarily the cost here is ships. There are some incidental small complexes, but really the expense comes from needing dozens of ships, and a standard size freighter with a full complement of shields costs as much as a cheap bio fab. So one could look at a network of fifty ships and say that it costs as much as a small closed loop complex.

On the other hand, I generally buy ten ships at a time and throw them on ten trainer routes in place of ten ships that have been running those routes for the previous twelve to fifteen hours. Those are the ten ships going into the network, and my training routes are designed so that those ten ships have already more than paid for themselves at the very least, and usually have paid for themselves several times over. Effectively the entire network is made up of free ships.

So how do I compute return on investment when there is no actual investment?

[pref]

If you view it that way a plex is full of free stations after 3 gamedays or so.
I assume you'd train the plex servants the same way, some CLS fetch and then CAG for ex. Still you had to provide the ships.

Investment needed time and credit wise is what i was curious about. And how much does it get you hourly/daily in the end.
Ship and storage price, or ware costs until it starts to bring in money. Time spent on setting up the network, training etc.

Just wondering how does sucking every credit from AI market compare to lazy plexes.

[Timsup2nothin]

Free after three game days is substantially different from throwing stuff you already have into a network. The whole "free after three days" concept leaves me shaking my head. Things that don't pay for themselves in a day generally don't interest me at all. A CLS ship on a training route should pay for itself in less than half a day, and I take them off training routes and put them in networks so they generate income faster.

[sithneverdiealone]

That 2-3 hours roi sounds sweet for 500m... loops can't come close to that im sure.

Part of that involves dumping the excess weapons/drones/etc. at the equipment dock in Omi Ly for about 50% profit... and it takes a whole lot of tiping to organize everything. 250 ships is a lot of names. after its set up your basically reselling the product of the entire Sol system's military-industrial complex

[Timsup2nothin]

That 2-3 hours roi sounds sweet for 500m... loops can't come close to that im sure.

Part of that involves dumping the excess weapons/drones/etc. at the equipment dock in Omi Ly for about 50% profit... and it takes a whole lot of tiping to organize everything. 250 ships is a lot of names. after its set up your basically reselling the product of the entire Sol system's military-industrial complex

OmLy? I can't think of anything significant that can't be dumped into the Saturn Research station.

[sithneverdiealone]

That 2-3 hours roi sounds sweet for 500m... loops can't come close to that im sure.

Part of that involves dumping the excess weapons/drones/etc. at the equipment dock in Omi Ly for about 50% profit... and it takes a whole lot of tiping to organize everything. 250 ships is a lot of names. after its set up your basically reselling the product of the entire Sol system's military-industrial complex

OmLy? I can't think of anything significant that can't be dumped into the Saturn Research station.

...never thought of that. Force of habit says equipment dock so I went with that.

[MrFiction]

Excellent guide! Enjoyed reading through it.

But I have to wonder, are there any objective measurements for advanced CLS pilots and let's say level 20 MK3 pilots? Because the claims that a CLS makes a lot more profit compared to universe traders are hard to substantiate.