The game is on sale for all those who have followed the thread and want to jump in. Now in my library.
Yup! It can be a difficult game to get into, but it’s so worth it if you’re able to power through the learning curve.
Where do I get Thermal Disintegrator from? I thought I’d read with a split faction, but I don’t even know who they are. Are they the fallen families? Where on the map would I find them?
Towards east, orange/yellow sectors. I found the weapons to be abysmal and completely useless against anything below capital class. Slow projectile speed ruins the weapon.
@KevinC @Bateau @Mysterial I could really use some help. I’m ready to start building facilities to start bringing in major money but I don’t know what to build and where to build it. I see a lot of conflicting information on-line. I’ve read to build hull parts factories next to shipyards of factions at war. But that seems expensive and several have a hull parts factory in their shipyard sector already. Others said to build one in Flashpoint. Or build Claytronics. My fear is spending all my money to build these bases and then not getting business. I’d wondered about building in a more central location to feed a lot of places and not having plot costs by building in Nopileo’s Fortune. At 5 sectors away, it could feed Argon, Teladi, Paranid, HOP. But several are the max distance of 5 sectors so not sure if they’d buy hull parts from there when other hull part factories are closer.
My other concern is where to put the places to refine minerals and gasses. One for each element right on top of a sector with an abundance of those minerals that are within range of the stations that needs it? Or right on a station that’s making goods so there’s no delay on production?
I started from the bottom up with the goal of eventually supplying my own shipyards, so that meant no claytronics and the like for a while. I started with the simple stuff: solar cell stations, refineries, and then making basic goods. Refineries were placed where I needed them, e.g. the sectors where I had my miners operating. Hull parts were always a good seller for me, but it’s also been 2 full DLCs since I played so YMMV.
It’s hard to say with certainty what will be profitable because it really does depend on the state of your game universe. The economy is not faked, there is real supply and demand. So the best way to make a profit is to find out where demand outstrips supply. Hull parts for factions at war are a good bet because they can deplete that resource as they construct replacement ships.
If you haven’t already, you should drop sensor satellites near each shipyard. If you haven’t, I would get started on that. If the Argon shipyard is stuffed full of hull parts then you’re not going to move many units. Find another good or look for other areas of space where they are in short supply.
I have satellites everywhere to track prices. So did you make like one of each thing? Outside of refineries did you build most of it together in the same sector? Or close to where the elements0 were being refined?
If this was mostly to feed your shipyard, how did you make money along the way? Did you sell goods from each station, or excess to help fuel your economy?
Also, do minerals or gasses get depleted? I could be wrong, but it seems like Nividium concentration is lower than it started in the sector I’m mining in the game, but I hope it’s just my memory being off.
I first built one gigantic megastation that basically did everything but I wouldn’t recommend that. It may have changed but at the time it could really tank performance in the sector. :) So then i switched up to building more discrete stations.
I tended to have my stations clustered in sectors but depending on the good and the raw materials needed that’s not always efficient. That’s where a fleet of freighters comes in handy so they could shuttle large quantities of goods around for me.
I made money along the way by selling what I was making. Early on maybe that was just metals and silicon, then started producing hull parts and microchips, that sort of thing. Shipyard is kind of the very end goal, so the goal along the way was to A) make money and B) use that money to further build out my industry. Once I had my shipyard up and running fully supplied by myself it was basically a money printer so that’s where I decided to resign. I told myself an intersolar consortium broke up my company on anti-trust grounds and I retired the richest man in the galaxy. :)
I’m pretty sure this was reworked not long after I last played. The various resource fields used to regenerate at what seemed like a fixed rate so I could definitely over-mine them but never completely deplete a region of space. That might be different now, I would look for info online or wait for someone with more recent play experience to answer here. :)
Is it possible to track how much overall profit a station is making?
Also, how do I determine how much storage I need? It seems like the more stuff you have in storage, the lower the price you can get for those goods.
There is a ledger in one of the station management tabs.
You generally want enough storage to store a couple hours of resource consumption + production. The relation between storage contents and price is just the automated system; you can manually set whatever price you want.
I wanted to share what happened in my game yesterday, and wow was it an amazing and jaw dropping experience!
I’m trying to be friends with everyone so I can test ship variants, weapons etc. So I had mass turreted several entry points of incursion from the Xenon to keep FRF safe. I’m not friends with the HOP yet, but they’re on my list of people to get my rep up. I’m off doing the main storyline mission and as I’m passing through the HOP sector True Sight, to my horror I see the Xenon have wiped out nearly every single station in the entire sector, including the defense platforms. As I auto-jet the highway I see 3 Destroyers heading toward the last station in front of the southern jump gate. As luck would have it, I have a laser turret Mk2 deployer frigate with 100 turrets the next sector over. I hop off and command it to get here asap.
When it arrives I teleport in and beeline for the station. I get there just as long range weapons from the Destroyer start hitting the station. I queue up 100 turrets for deployment, and start circling in between the station and the closest destroyer. My Frigate has Plasma turrets, which is fun because as I come into range from turret-laying, they kick in to hit it. I weave as best I can through fire, and as my shields become compromised I scoot away, wait for recharge and come back. All the turrets I lay are between the station and the Destroyers, but a bit low, so as I lay each one, they start targeting key systems on the bottom of the Destroyers in unison. It is such a glorious sight seeing so many lasers baking the engines, shields, and turrets! Despite this, they are obliterating the station. One section explodes. Then another, and a third, and yikes… a fourth. Looking pretty bleak. But suddenly a bright spot! I notice a Destroyer has lost all its underside turrets. So I scoot up just under it, and start laying turrets there, getting shielded by fire from its 2 friends. The benefit here is my plasma turrets are pounding it as well and actually hitting. In little order, the laser Mk2 turrets have wiped out the shields and I scoot away as it explodes. HOLY COW. We could pull this off! Oops, spoke too soon as another station module explodes. Yikes. The problem here is if the station can’t shoot, or draw fire, then I am toast and the sector is lost.
I try to do the same thing with the other 2 Destroyers, but I misjudge who has effective turrets and get blasted. Shields gone, hull at 10%. As I turn to run away, with no boost, I doubt I can make it outside of Destroyer range. But just as I curse the fact I didn’t quick-save recently, a barrage of fire comes from the station. Somehow between the laser Mk2 turrets and that set of shots from the station, #2 Destroyer explodes. Woohoo! Last Destroyer. This one I can go into normal mode. Come up behind and slowly/carefully take out turrets. By this point I’ve pooped out my last turret, and I’m elated and exhausted as this has been going on for at least 20 minutes straight. As the last Xenon blows up, I look at the tattered remains of the station and realize it’s going to stand the test of time (maybe) as its now forever defended by the massive amount of laser Mk2 turrets still remaining.
It’s been many hours since, and the HOP have now rebuilt the entire sector. You’d think they’d be appreciative of my heroic actions, but no… they’re still pink enemies. Unappreciative jerks! LOL
I so wish I’d recorded this battle. It was truly spectacular.
That’s a great story! All hail Jeff, the Hero of True Sight!
That’s frickin amazing. Emergent gameplay at its best. I got into a bit of a gaming slump after my vacation so I haven’t resumed my save yet but I think reading this story just now will got me hooked again :).
I’m curious if you’ve added any additional mods since you were last asking about them? Especially now that you’re familiar with the game and its systems.
Yes totally. Here’s my list:
(just one more at the bottom as it wouldn’t all fit in the screenshot)
I had to use that hero invincible ship one once when I forgot to save much earlier before I got swamped in a battle, and didn’t want to lose hours and hours of progress. So I quicksaved just before I died, loaded this up, scooted my ass outta there, and when safe, turned it off.
Wow look at this mod that was just suggested to me today. This is going to make managing ships sooooooooo much easier!!!
That’s an amazing find. No more having 50 traders clutter my asset list! Thanks JP!
I know. Can’t believe it’s not in the vanilla game.
For real, I guess they were counting on players assigning ships to other objects, since that removes them from the default unassigned view.
I am finally making fantastic money. I’m not sure what happened. One moment my stations were barely clearing 80,000 per hour, now I’m suddenly at a million. A lot of things in flux so hard to pin down.
Let me know when you get back into this. I’m curious if you feel any performance hit, or stuttering on the main map in with the tabbed interface. I can’t tell if what I’m experiencing is because the fully explored map is swamped with units, or if its the interface stuff. I’ve been switching back and forth and having a hard time being obective.