Your Best Complex Money Makers

[astroshade]

What is everyones favorite station complex to make $$? Currently I've got a 2x chip plant running in Argon Prime that can't stay in stock, it's making about 1.5 million an hour. I've been tempted to keep expanding it, but since we don't have any infinite sinks in this like X3 I'm not sure how much you can push any one market.

With that in mind, what have you all found that makes good money?

[Ranix]

sunrise flowers and energy cells in Grand Exchange, they really kickstart the local economy and let your traders get some deals

[JamesTheClarke]

• Collect underpants
• ???
• Profitsss

[Frenchie2403]

I have a chip factory in argon prime also. It makes lots of cash but I find that I have to manually sell the products. Assigned ships will only buy resources.
What have you set your sell price to, or have you left that on automatic?

[Ranix]

set the price a little low Frenchie, the sell price only directly affects the npc ships buying from your station. The ships that are autotrading will sell to any station that is buying for at least your cutoff, at the price the station is buying for. Don't forget you need a manager in the station and the manager has to have some place to sleep. If there is no habitation zone in your station, park a ship there for him to sleep in. Also the manager won't sell to random npcs if there are no credits in the station account so put at least one in

[astroshade]

I have a chip factory in argon prime also. It makes lots of cash but I find that I have to manually sell the products. Assigned ships will only buy resources.
What have you set your sell price to, or have you left that on automatic?

I was having that problem too, but it was fixed once I set some of the freighters to only sell the chips. They reset themselves occasionally and go back to trading everything, but if I do it like once an hour or two it's fine. I also just filled up the storage on everything else and it's self sufficient so the only thing they have to move is the chips.

On a related note, does anyone know how to manage the storage so that it doesn't split it evenly between inputs/products? I don't need 60,000 storage wasted on energy cells.

[Frenchie2403]

I'll give that a go, thanks!
I did try setting the ships to only trade in chips but found they reset very quickly. I'll give it another shot when I get finish work.

[Arvel]

I have a station complex in Morning Star III. I have a fleet of mining ships assigned to it so it doesn't have to buy any raw materials. It's currently selling Energy Cells, Water, Meat, Refined Metals, Silicon Wafers, and the real moneymaker - Microchips. My game's economy (up until quite recently, when fighting seems to have broken out somewhere) has been very slow, so I've needed the diversity in order to maintain a decent income despite the stagnant economy.

I'm currently planning on adding Spices & Wheat to its production line so I can start selling those as well as crafting Food Rations and Medical Supplies, which are what I'll need once I start adding habitation modules full of workers, if memory serves.

[astroshade]

I have a station complex in Morning Star III. I have a fleet of mining ships assigned to it so it doesn't have to buy any raw materials. It's currently selling Energy Cells, Water, Meat, Refined Metals, Silicon Wafers, and the real moneymaker - Microchips. My game's economy (up until quite recently, when fighting seems to have broken out somewhere) has been very slow, so I've needed the diversity in order to maintain a decent income despite the stagnant economy.

I'm currently planning on adding Spices & Wheat to its production line so I can start selling those as well as crafting Food Rations and Medical Supplies, which are what I'll need once I start adding habitation modules full of workers, if memory serves.

How do you handle having so many outputs on the same complex in terms of selling wares? Do you just set the prices super low and have everyone come to you, or do you have like 500 couriers assigned to it to actually sell 10 different products?

[Arvel]

How do you handle having so many outputs on the same complex in terms of selling wares? Do you just set the prices super low and have everyone come to you, or do you have like 500 couriers assigned to it to actually sell 10 different products?

I've been letting the station manager set the prices, which seems to be working out alright so far. The station has proven a far more reliable source of income than my galaxy traders.

I do have a few of my own traders assigned to the station (though they didn't actually work until patch... 1.10, I think). However, the vast majority of my business comes to me. I have the T-shape L/XL ship dock, and I also have two 3M6S landing pads.

Even with 6 medium landing pads there's still a bit of congestion between miners dropping off materials and traders coming to purchase goods, so I may add more. For now it just means some traffic is pulled inside the station while loading/unloading and wait to take off again till the landing pad is free.

[Eukatae]

Anyone have a production chain sheet of some sort?

[Apollo99]

Anyone have a production chain sheet of some sort?

This thread has some good discussion on production flow. It has a chart for food production and tech production.

[otto_deluxe]

I built a station with "one of everything" in Hatikvah's Choice 3, for easy mining. It seemed that with one of every production type module, the station was fully self-sufficient and I had access to all products, but the game seriously didn't like me to open the details tab on the station in the map view. I went from steady 60 fps to roughly 4. After some SETA-ing, the whole universe filled up with wares due to lack of conflict, and my station was pretty much useless. The only things that still sold were missile parts, food and meds