Smart Chips factory is always at a loss due to wrong prices - Misunderstanding of production quantity

[reanor]

The big problem - Takes silicon wafers and Energy Cells to make a Smart Chip, which at it's highest price costs 50 cr LESS than a Silicon Wafer at its LOWEST cost. So Smart Chip factories are ALWAYS at a loss and the whole frigging galaxy wants them smart chips. PLEASE FIX ASAP.

[LennStar]

I am quite sure you get mroe than one smart chip out of one silicon wafer.

[linolafett]

Here is the math:

Every 10 minutes you get 80 Smart Chips (195 Cr * 80 = 15.600 Cr)
Needed resources for that:
- 50 Energy Cells (16 Cr * 50 = 800 Cr)
- 20 Silicon Wafers (299 Cr * 20 = 5.980 Cr)

This results in:
Price for res: 6.780 Cr
Income: 15.600 Cr
Profit: 8.820 Cr

Where do you get your numbers from? Smart chisp should be worth around 200cr.

[Iguanabob]

In addition to the faulty maths, why would you only build the smart-chips fabs without setting up a silicon wafer +e-cell module in the same complex as well?
It's one of the simplest yet most affordable production chains imo and can be started in each factions main systems near their wharfs and hightech fabs.

You could start just setting up the silicon wafer modules + e-cells and let them mine for a while, and later go for this:
Smart-Chips-Fab

As long as nearby wharfs are in high demand of smart-chips you can either later expand it by addind 5-10 more smart-chips fabs (1 silicon wafer-module is enough for 20 smart-chip-modules ) or add 1 micro-chips fab and maybe habitation modules for increased efficiency. If you have any left-over silicon wafers, nearby high-tec fabs will use these as well.
Depending on faction's economies in your game, you should be able to have 10x smart-chips running at teladi, paranid and argon spaces without the demand for them ever drying up.

I've got this one running in Trinity Sanctum 3 and it's been printing money ever since:
Chip-Fab TS3

it took a while to get to sell out by itself, but now Smart-Chips are always empty at selling Price 195cr , because the nearby wharfs have demand at 215 cr and my traders are kind souls. I can't keep up with demand in paranid-space.
Since my nearby claytronics fab also produces microchips on the side, demand for these is slowly decaying - so I may re-arrange and instead use them for ship-tech end-products instead.

[reanor]

Here is the math:

Every 10 minutes you get 80 Smart Chips (195 Cr * 80 = 15.600 Cr)
Needed resources for that:
- 50 Energy Cells (16 Cr * 50 = 800 Cr)
- 20 Silicon Wafers (299 Cr * 20 = 5.980 Cr)

This results in:
Price for res: 6.780 Cr
Income: 15.600 Cr
Profit: 8.820 Cr

Where do you get your numbers from? Smart chisp should be worth around 200cr.

Thanks for the math! It's obvious I didn't do mine! Of course as the above poster says I can also supply my own mats. Without doing it however, all 3 of my smart chips 3 factory complexes are not profitable. And that's considering that EVERYONE in my game needs tens of thousands of smart chips. How is it possible that all three are not profitable at all? They simply run out of purchased resources and stop. I have 1 million storage, 10 times the amount of needed habitat and I keep needing to feed these factories money. So the only way to make it profitable, is to supply your own mats?

[Alan Phipps]

Moving this from Tech Sp to the main X4 gameplay forum.

[Fenhris]

Here is the math:

Every 10 minutes you get 80 Smart Chips (195 Cr * 80 = 15.600 Cr)
Needed resources for that:
- 50 Energy Cells (16 Cr * 50 = 800 Cr)
- 20 Silicon Wafers (299 Cr * 20 = 5.980 Cr)

This results in:
Price for res: 6.780 Cr
Income: 15.600 Cr
Profit: 8.820 Cr

Where do you get your numbers from? Smart chisp should be worth around 200cr.

Thanks for the math! It's obvious I didn't do mine! Of course as the above poster says I can also supply my own mats. Without doing it however, all 3 of my smart chips 3 factory complexes are not profitable. And that's considering that EVERYONE in my game needs tens of thousands of smart chips. How is it possible that all three are not profitable at all? They simply run out of purchased resources and stop. I have 1 million storage, 10 times the amount of needed habitat and I keep needing to feed these factories money. So the only way to make it profitable, is to supply your own mats?

Without having actual knowledge of these numbers, have you considdered that maybe your 10 times population buys food and Medical enough to eat the profits you earned from the smart chip? Also, check that you havnt restricted trade with other factions, and are indeed selling your Smart Chips.

[darthraven]

The big problem - Takes silicon wafers and Energy Cells to make a Smart Chip, which at it's highest price costs 50 cr LESS than a Silicon Wafer at its LOWEST cost. So Smart Chip factories are ALWAYS at a loss and the whole frigging galaxy wants them smart chips. PLEASE FIX ASAP.

Well you've definitely got this all wrong, even if your buying all resource wares at max price and selling all products are min price you still make a profit. I mean look: you need 300 Energy Cells and 120 Silicon Wafers per hour to produce 480 smart chips per hour. At max price the energy will cost you 6,300 cr and the silicon wafers would cost you 39,480 cr per hour, for a total of 45,780 cr. At the lowest possible price, you can sell the 480 smart chips you make per hour for 84.480 cr. So at the very worst without habitation (with would make you even more money) your still making 38.700 cr per hour per smart chip module. Now as others have mentioned you could add in a silicon wafer production module which can support 20 smart chip modules (without habitation) or 24 smart chip modules with full habitation.

The only reason I can think of that might be the reason you need to put in some money is that you didn't put in enough at the start to fill up storage, there is always a major investment in initial stock if you're not going to produce the resource wares yourself.

Have a look at this link (I don't know how to do the small url): http://www.x4-game.com/#/station-calcul ... 01,count:1

This is my setup for smart chips, as you can see I buy in the energy cells because there is so much around in the galaxy (the whole Ecell economy is messed up right now anyway) and with full habitation, I get that extra % of products so this factory makes me almost 2.5mil an hour.

I should just point out, having had a pretty good look at the economy so far (almost 200hours) I have not found a factory setup that would lose money, you always seem to make money because of time spent making a product. By that I mean the product is always worth more than the combination of the resources because (I assume) the time spent making them adds to the final price of the product, which is why even if you buy all resources at max price, and sell all products at min price you still make money. The only problem you may come across is not being able to sell, which would mean you made the wrong choice in which product to produce or found the wrong place to build it.

[Vandragorax]

As someone said above, your population on the station will be eating all your profits and then some, because the station manager will be buying huge quantities of food and medical supplies.

Once those are all stocked up to the max, then the profits will start to stack up slowly, but it's likely that you are massively over-populating.

Start spending some time looking through all of the station production screens and understand how much each module uses and produces /hr, and how much workforce is needed. You do this by clicking on the products bars in the logistical overview to see drop-down information.

Always provide only the minimum of what's needed, providing additional over what you need in either workforce or production at any stage in the chain is just wasting you money. Like in real life, cut out the stuff you don't need from the 'company' (station) to increase profits.

[darthraven]

As someone said above, your population on the station will be eating all your profits and then some, because the station manager will be buying huge quantities of food and medical supplies.

Once those are all stocked up to the max, then the profits will start to stack up slowly, but it's likely that you are massively over-populating.

Start spending some time looking through all of the station production screens and understand how much each module uses and produces /hr, and how much workforce is needed. You do this by clicking on the products bars in the logistical overview to see drop-down information.

Always provide only the minimum of what's needed, providing additional over what you need in either workforce or production at any stage in the chain is just wasting you money. Like in real life, cut out the stuff you don't need from the 'company' (station) to increase profits.

But it's not possible to overpopulate, the population increase stops once it goes a little past the max needed, so if you need only 1000 workers and have space for 4000 workers you'll max out somewhere between 1000 and 1050 workers. BUT yes the storage capacity for food and medical supplies will take a lot of credit to fill up.

[reanor]

As someone said above, your population on the station will be eating all your profits and then some, because the station manager will be buying huge quantities of food and medical supplies.

Once those are all stocked up to the max, then the profits will start to stack up slowly, but it's likely that you are massively over-populating.

Start spending some time looking through all of the station production screens and understand how much each module uses and produces /hr, and how much workforce is needed. You do this by clicking on the products bars in the logistical overview to see drop-down information.

Always provide only the minimum of what's needed, providing additional over what you need in either workforce or production at any stage in the chain is just wasting you money. Like in real life, cut out the stuff you don't need from the 'company' (station) to increase profits.

But it's not possible to overpopulate, the population increase stops once it goes a little past the max needed, so if you need only 1000 workers and have space for 4000 workers you'll max out somewhere between 1000 and 1050 workers. BUT yes the storage capacity for food and medical supplies will take a lot of credit to fill up.

Yeah, the thing is that stations are stocked well on medical supplies and food, to the max, what runs out quick is energy cells and silicon wavers. I guess I'll increase the number of chip factories in each plex, to justify the storage and provide factories of mats to support all that. At least something to do, since there is nothing else. Where are all the enemies? Why Xenon and Khaak are so passive and why they are not trying to take over any sectors? I hate to start from scratch for the 5th time with FOCW mod.I think a very big flow in game currently - enemies are so weak. Xenon only own a few sectors and they don't seem to have enough resources to build fast enough AND their ships are not strong enough to go against the combined faction alliances. War Effort missions are stupidly tough, like even to start one I have to find a ship that transport spaceweed through a sector. People spent trying to catch one all day and inventory scanning shows it's empty. After 1.5, people say that criminals don't show their noses in the sectors any more. Why can't these missions actually be scripted to a certain point to start the real conflict. Every faction is fat and lazy no matter what I try...

[caltrop]

If you have independent autotraders (I.e. not assigned to the factory) that are selling your smart chips or other wares from the factory, any money made will go to your account, not the factory account.

Also a single solar cell plant and silicon wafer fab can support 20x smart chip fabs (more with habitats). If you have less than this and your energy/silicon is being used up quickly, it sounds like those products are being sold off. You will make more money out of them if you turn them into smart chips first ^_^

[Nesterus]

I am having trouble getting my smart chips to sell when there is a massive demand for them

[grapedog]

and if you're going to make a smart chips complex, you might as well make it a smart chip/microchip complex. Both are good sellers, and both have the exact same resource requirements. ECells and Silicon Wafers. Granted, if you're low on cash, it requires a good deal more investment to create it, but it's a great money maker.

[Nesterus]

i noticed that trinity sanctum 3 and antigone memorial both had buy orders in the 100k range for smart chips so i made 2 smart chip factories in each, adding microchips would indeeeed be smart, but im putting all the main production chains at my player headquarters trying to prepare for ship building when it comes out

[r4tch3t]

Just a thought, is your storage full yet? Because all your profits will be going into buying more resources. Until the storage are full you won't get any money.
My mega factories 1.7 billion credits have something like over 100 large storages. It takes hundreds of millions of sunk credits to fill the storage with ice helium etc before it starts generating money.
You mentioned having 10 times the storage so that's where your money is going I think.

[caltrop]

I am having trouble getting my smart chips to sell when there is a massive demand for them

Set up independent autotraders to sell your smart chips (not station traders)

As your smart chips fabs are in the same sector as the demand set buy gates & sell gates to 0, wares traded smart chips only, plus an L trader works well as it’s close by

[Nesterus]

thanks for the advice!

[blueangel42]

I am having trouble getting my smart chips to sell when there is a massive demand for them

Set up independent autotraders to sell your smart chips (not station traders)

As your smart chips fabs are in the same sector as the demand set buy gates & sell gates to 0, wares traded smart chips only, plus an L trader works well as it’s close by

I am having this same problem, massive demand, no one buys the chips. Setting the traders to not affiliate with station, and auto trade smart chips, they do nothing. My station is full of the chips, and some stations demand 100k+, but no one will buy and only manual trades would work, way too tedious to do one at a time.

[caltrop]

I am having trouble getting my smart chips to sell when there is a massive demand for them

Set up independent autotraders to sell your smart chips (not station traders)

As your smart chips fabs are in the same sector as the demand set buy gates & sell gates to 0, wares traded smart chips only, plus an L trader works well as it’s close by

I am having this same problem, massive demand, no one buys the chips. Setting the traders to not affiliate with station, and auto trade smart chips, they do nothing. My station is full of the chips, and some stations demand 100k+, but no one will buy and only manual trades would work, way too tedious to do one at a time.

If you have a clear cut example where the autotrader should be trading, but isn’t - single ware, gates set correctly, clear demand, cargo bay is empty, you have reset the trader etc that can be reported as a bug, with the save game as evidence.

In the meantime you could also try using the independent trader “distribute wares” command instead...