Masochisto wrote:Sorry for the lack of updates regarding my game.
There is a nagging problem with traps still being on standby when I check on them even tho the station they are on is at or below their target price. It crushes my confidence in the whole system...
The script has to cycle, and a trap ship that isn't moving isn't the highest priority. They do cycle eventually though and the delay doesn't have any terrible effects in my observations, except under some odd circumstances that I have had to work around. (involved using a trap with a string of load and unload up to commands designed to establish a pricing ladder effect and the workaround got very complex before I decided on a different approach)
That said, I have come to believe that the script doesn't cycle at all if the property window is open. Don't know what conflict it would cause if it did but I suspect there's some sort of intent at work there.
It does cycle, but the particular traps I am worried about are traps at XL SPP's, especially the one in Akeela's Beacon... Because I have a couple of active complexes in the Aladna Hill area (making Steak) there are energy shortages. Many times when I check that trap it is empty with two distributors waiting on it to buy- the ECell price is at 12 and is still at 12 after I manually buy a load
Perhaps I need a bigger trap there....
How much of your income comes from buying weapons and tech outputs and selling them?
Masochisto wrote:
How much of your income comes from buying weapons and tech outputs and selling them?
Current game very little as yet. Tech is the last thing I take over, other than crystals.
I'm in game day four working in OmLy region. I control all e-cells at 12/17, wheat at 30/50, beef at 70/105, ore at 50/129, silicon at 300/550, cahoonas at 40/73, and crystals at 1600/1801. I'll buy a trading station or EqD and set it up to control everything else then leave the region.
Ultimately tech provides the most money but it's hardly worth doing until the infrastructure to keep the fabs running is in place.
Masochisto wrote:Many times when I check that trap it is empty with two distributors waiting on it to buy- the ECell price is at 12 and is still at 12 after I manually buy a load
Its a Mercury Hauler (6000) with the way points of:
Factory: Akeela's Beacon SPP XL
Fly to station
buy 6000 ec's at 12
It has 6 different Mercuries (3000) drawing from it and flying the cells to the complex with the waypoints of:
Ship: Mercury Hauler Trap
Fly to Station
Load 3000 Energy Cells
Factory: Akeela's Beacon Substation
Unload 3000 Energy Cells
The number of ships is due to them being half the size of the trap compounded with how huge AB is.
The only thing I see here that is different from what has worked many times is the 'fly to station' on the haulers loading from the trap.
A possible failure mechanism might be that the waiting haulers are unloading the trap so quickly after it buys that its own script is failing to recognize it has been emptied. Leaving it in 'I just bought I must be full' and not going through the actual checking cargo routine.
I would set the freighters doing the picking up to fly to a nearby station, then load at the trap to see if that solves the problem, which would support my theory.
On a somewhat related note...
What you are doing gets your trap emptied quickly, but puts wait times on your haulers. I like to have my energy haulers moving all the time. So I trap enough product that they never have to wait. Bigger trap, definitely. I use 9000 tanks, and on an XL plant I often use two. Then I give the haulers multiple loading points, switching the order around so they don't all go for the same one at the same time.
The Fly-to is to make sure the haulers start travelling back after the unload, even if the buyer is empty. I like to keep them moving too, great place to farm logisticians from...
If I replace the trap with a bigger ship, or even two that should fix the problem. What ship do you prefer for your 9000 unit tanks? I lookied at upgrading Dolphin Haulers for that purpose near Argon Prime, not sure what is available mid map at that size. Guess I could use a Mistral SF.
Masochisto wrote:The Fly-to is to make sure the haulers start travelling back after the unload, even if the buyer is empty. I like to keep them moving too, great place to farm logisticians from...
If I replace the trap with a bigger ship, or even two that should fix the problem. What ship do you prefer for your 9000 unit tanks? I lookied at upgrading Dolphin Haulers for that purpose near Argon Prime, not sure what is available mid map at that size. Guess I could use a Mistral SF.
I steal them. Mostly Demeter super freighters.
Getting them headed the right direction was why I suggested having them fly to a station near the SPP...but if you give them multiple pickups that should work. All traps empty at the same time should be pretty rare.
I can report back about my CLS Traps, Basically its not working very well, thye seem to be constantly on Standby, further investigation points to Ore Price - I seem to have flooded the Market in CBSE with Ore as the prices have been at around 60-80 for a long time, my Traps on the Ore Stations are filled with Ore, the Ore Mines are Full of Ore thanks to my CLS E-Cell Supplier keeping them loaded with E-Cells.
I am thinking i have set up the pricing wrong, i have supplemented CBSE with E-cells from the Wall - this CLS is making me tons of money selling them, i also have a few more traps set up in Ringo Moon for Cahoonas so help send them to CBSE - this has been a disaster, i bought them and can't really off load them.
Can you give me a basic Price range to set for Cahoonas, Ore & E-cells? i realise it will vary from game to game but once i know what to price things at i shud be grand for future games. i.e do i lower the buying price average less 1 or shud i have it average less 4 etc, same as selling, shud i have it set to average plus 1?
Thanks.
X3TC - Awesome
AP - Just started playing - Looks impressive
don't play Reunion - Too old
Rebirth - we all know the problems here
I'm experiencing the same issue with Steak and Ore that you describe, and I have the network set across all 16 sectors of the Argon Prime region. I did the math, and the supply and the demand is roughly balanced when you look at all 16 sectors, but there are many stations that will fill up and stop consuming causing a glut of supply.
To get it all working smooth you have to setup ships to buy from those factories too (Dragonfly missiles, high end weapons and shields etc) and sell the weapons manually at an equipment dock.
Because these wares have a slight oversupply you need to buy at minimum and try to sell at average+1. If you sell at avg+1 you may lose the sale to an npc if your seller has to travel at all, so you may want to set your sale price at avg-1, or create a dedicated seller to camp each factory.
For me, I am using buy at min, sell at avg-1 for these three wares. I am making a ton from energy cells however, and all of them are sucking up millions in inventory before starting to actually turn a profit each hour.
Tim used a logistician with a jump drive to dump excess stock in neighboring sectors that consumed it as a secondary resource. I will be implementing that once I increase my tank sizes so that there is a good place to draw that from.
This whole approach is a very delicate wire balance, but once you have it setup well it functions great.
The key point to deal with in these marketing networks is that they effectively hit a turbo button on the economy.
When everything is left up to the NPC haulers factories spend time stopped. A cahoona bakery is out of e-cells, it stops. NPC energy hauler finally comes by and delivers it starts again, but it fills up and stops. Food hauler makes a buy and it starts again, but then stops because it is out of e-cells again. Gets some e-cells and runs out of beef.
When you start putting in networks the factories are reliably supplied with resources and get their products hauled off efficiently...so they never stop. Players complain all the time about "I can't equip my ship", "I can't get these missiles", "these lasers are impossibly rare". Being at the far end of a chain that goes all the way back to e-cells and subject to not only their own stoppages but all the stoppages in the bio fabs, food fabs, mines, and power plants it is no wonder that the final product fabs barely work.
The trick is that you ultimately have to take over everything. If you start supplying energy reliably to the bio fabs and don't do something to keep the food fabs consuming you will be up to your eyeballs in bio. But when you provide bio and energy to food fabs you are up to your eyeballs in food instead, so you have to keep the food buyers eating, which means they need minerals and they need energy...and then you find out that all that 'hard to find' tech is piling up in the factories and shutting them down unless you do something to get rid of it. I estimate that in a fully networked region the output from tech and weapons fabs is increased somewhere between ten and fifteen times over.
So, specifics of pricing...I'd say Maso has hit it pretty well. If you have a selling trap right in the fab average +1 is a mortal lock to get the deal. If the delivery has travel time maybe a little below average. If your supply traps are getting far more than you need even buying at minimum price then expand your customer pool. Distribute further. Set up an exporter to ship the overage into some other region.
I managed to get an hour or so played last night so i took on your advice, i set up my Ore Seller with a jumpdrive, then i give him more waypoints, he is set up to get 300 e-cells at 16 before he gets the Ore, he will never buy/hold anymore than 300 at any 1 time, i have got him supplying CBSE selling at average price, but i have also give him free reign over this part of Argon space, so he can supply other sectors with the Ore once they hit the right price, he is set to sort out CBSE first, if the prices do not match then he will look elsehwere, this has worked a treat so far. I then let him clear out my Ore Traps so that i could restart their orders to buy at 60 instead of 75, the reason for this is that the Ore mines are full to the brim and i think buying at 60 is a good price to aim for.
I also took my E-cell seller for CBSE and turned him into my Cahoona Seller, the reason for this is he is now a logistician, i pretty much set him up the same, sell at average price and have the Traps buy at 45, again these are filled to the brim as i have them supplied with e-cells, i will consider selling them Beef shortly to make extra money, keep supply going and then sell the beef e-cells to help cover the costs.
There is a lot of work setting this up, but im hoping i have it sorted for now, i will take a look at the Bio/Bo gas area in Queens space later today, but i tell you what, getting these freight ships is helping, the Paranids & Split are not very happy about it though.
The only issue i have found is buying the products from the Tech Fabs, i had a dememter buying 25mj shields but he wouldn't sell them to the equipment dock, i had to manually sell them so i need to get this fixed, i am also considering setting up a HQ for E-cell storage, but i don't know what use it is to me, i mean do my guys just buy ecells and dump them in the HQ or is it overspill from what they cant sell etc
X3TC - Awesome
AP - Just started playing - Looks impressive
don't play Reunion - Too old
Rebirth - we all know the problems here
I think you can set your buy price for ore at 50, you just need to trap more ore mines. Also be on the lookout for old mines respawning, as they will disappear quickly if you don't trap them.
This site is pretty good for seeing where the stock factories are, so you can be on the lookout for what is missing in your game to reappear: http://x3ap.e0b.eu/en/
I setup a large TS at an equipment dock and have my tech buyer unload at that TS at the end of its script. If I am low on cache I look through this TS and sell off what I don't need. In my current game it is at OTAS HQ.
Thats a good idea about the TS at the EQ dock, may use this. I am going to try to do Tims Teldai Forge one, step by step, but i think i will need more money & more "Free" TS ships before i try this.
X3TC - Awesome
AP - Just started playing - Looks impressive
don't play Reunion - Too old
Rebirth - we all know the problems here
I've been busy, but I also have not been setting up traders so much as I've been exploring and doing plots. To be honest, setting up CLS2 traders has felt like too much work as I spent too much time doing it at the start of the game. It is now day 4 or so, I have all of Argon Prime and Aladna Hill sectors setup since the beginning of day 2, and they make decent coin, but not nearly comparible to what I can make doing missions yet.
I have about 400 Million saved up and have some marines nearing ripeness so I am trying to decide whether to expand into more sectors, build a M7M support complex or change directions. Likely, I will do a little of both.
Tim enjoys capping frieghters way more than I do so I've been buying mine. I attempted capturing them but it wasn't my thing. It is important for them to be easy to configure and cheap, so I find Cloudbase South East to be the best place to buy freighters from, and it is much more critical for me to get them cheap. Capped frieghters often have upgraded holds but I think its best to limit upgrades when your buying them (max out speed of course).
Currently, I have most sectors setup to have a substation with a 6000 ware cache parked there for each ware. Each station has a buyer parked there to buy at a buy price (usually min) and a distributor is setup to ferry whatever is bought back to the cache. From the cache, sellers are setup to sell at avg+1. I think this setup is suboptimal, for reasons Tim has stated previously.
Most of the pilots are Logisticians now, so I am considering changing my setup to leverage them by setting up a large regional cache rather than a sector cache, then having JD equipped Logisticians distribute and buy with dedicated sellers sitting in each factory selling for avg+1. The regional cache would consist of 2 L fabs worth of inventory for that ware, so it should have a nice inventory.
One Logistician with a Mistral SF should be able to service one sector for one ware and would replace the Cache and up to three distributors for that sector, and I wouldn't have to build substations everywhere.
For the dedicated sellers I want to use stock mercuries where I can, but will probably use a multiware hauler for bio & food fabs to handle multiple wares and save on docking space. I am hoping that having dedicated sellers at avg+1 will allow me to lock up the monopoly on the sales side, and prices will drop to my buy price of min.
I have noticed that with all of the mineral fabs I have trapped that most are at min price nearly all the time. It has already been said that the npc haulers seem not to haul it effectively, and they certainly don't. I am going to use an M7M production complex to dump excess minerals to so that these mines will keep buying energy. These fabs will have their own supply mines too, but I will shut them off, and turn them off and on in order to try to balance supply with demand within the universe. This means I will trap every mineral mine to buy at min and trap every buyer I can to sell at avg+1. Certainly, the sell price could be much higher, but an occasional mineral hauler will get through... I'm not sure if that would result in more profit overall, but avg+1 is still a solid profit.
As far as I know nothing can match what you can make doing missions, so I'm a mission doing machine, always.
That said, I'm in game day five this play and I only have one region (OmLy) sewn up, so you seem to be doing very well overall. In my defense I chose the OmLy start because I expected the Xenon and pirate highways to make it challenging, and they have. But my businesses there are on auto and are making enough to start buying their own defense fleets so I can take my mission gig on the road.
By the way, I use cap ships for traps, but agree that the freighters that do the actual flying around are best bought and set up at the shipyard. I've been buying Merc Tankers at OmLy right along in blocks of ten.
Masochisto wrote:
I did not realize you purchased your moving ships but it makes sense, limiting yourself to capped ships would drastically slow your expansion.
Plus as you say they are just too hard to get equipped and ready to go. Traps just need software. If they are moving they need speed upgrades, shields, might be odd sized...too many problems.
