Yet another economy breakdown
Posted: Sun, 12. Jun 05, 03:56
this is my take on the X2 economy. it's more like an overview of how to go about it with some random garbled thoughts thrown in at the end. this is based off my last game in the default universe where i had insane amounts of cash rolling in.
Phase I
go around and put a spp in every sector you can pipe silicon into. local source or through transports. in split space rhonkar's clouds can power the entire area. use SDS or FLDS or whatever to get them running. sell the power cells to the surrounding area at whatever the market will bear until you start phase II by the time you start phase II you should already be making enough to put factories down and still have money left over. i started phase II with 100 million and still had 50 million in the bank when i got done. that was after dropping the cash for a split carrier so i didnt have to keep making trips back with the elephant to get more ships. (hint, dont buy a paranid TL they're too SLOW). i was using a pair of elephants by mid phase I. also hint from personal experience: there's 4 26 yeilders in seizwell... put 3 of the loops in other sectors. i put them all in seizwell early in the game and it was bad.
Phase II
go change all your power plants to sell at 17 at this time.i know thats alot of factories but its essential to phase II
go around and put in factories that generate Primary resources that are in demand. IE great reef needs bofu, so does reservoir of tranquility, as well as depths of silence. use sector planner for this, or if you want the challenge do it without outside help. do not power your "primaries" factories off of your power loop. use bph or similar system and set the price to 16. i'll explain why in a minute. goto phase III when you've covered all the primary resource demand for the map. there are going to be places where you cannot put anything because they dont need anything so you're making alot of ecells that nobody wants... yet. goto phase III
phase III
ok all those places where they dont have a need for primary resources so your SPP's are sitting full all the time now we have to make a demand for them. so it's time to place Secondary resource factories where there is a demand for them and the local ecell supply is still saturated by npc spp's. you need to use bph or similar scripts to buy from the npc spps at 16 or better.
ok, now that i've told you what to do. let me explain why you do each phase in case you dont get it.
Phase I
the purpose of phase I is to get your infrastructure in place so that you can make money. there's nothing like an SPP to make money too. you put an SPP in every sector you can reasonably reach. some of them wont make money early on, some of them will be empty all the time at max price. dont worry about the ones not making money. some of my best SPPs sat dormant until i hit phase III and then became my best sellers.
Phase II
this phase has two purposes. 1) to increase the local economies consumption of Ecells. this is accomplished by providing primary resources where needed. a factory cannot produce anything if it's out of primary resources. 2) to eat up NPC ecells. this is the evil part and the more important of the reasons for phase II. in some areas you will be using up the NPC ecells so fast there are not any left except your Phase I ecells... cha ching! i think you may be catching on at this point.
Phase III
blah blah blah, etc etc etc... pretty much a repeat of phase II only you're using secondaries because there were no holes in the primary resources to fill. split space is a prime example of this. lots of demand for secondaries. little demand for primaries. family whi will be a phase II sector, but thuruk's pride will be a phase III sector. there are a number of sectors that will be phase III only. preist rings priest's pity dukes domain and empires ridge are all phase III only! there is zero primary demand there.
Additional notes
do the argon space around argon prime last with the exception of three worlds, herrons nebula and antigone memorial. you're gonna need firepower to hold the ore belt since thats where all your silicon is going to come from for the other sectors. and firepower costs money which you'll need to make before you can hold ore belt. so do argon space last.
do not clear out any of the northeastern xenon sectors. while this is fun and interesting all those xenon capital ships trouncing along through the sectors between 472 and the 3 xenon sectors in the northeast can make it impossible to put ships on patrol there to protect your loops in that area. so just dont do it. if you need to trounce xenon, go into 472 since thats where the shipyard is. you can clear out 347 because there are not enough capital ships in between 472 and 347 to kill the xenon cap ships that will fly there when you kill the current ones. but be aware that many of your ships will get killed in the process if they are too close to the center of the zone. i lost a station or two and many a transporter when i did that.
one SPP loop can support 9 factories. some people try to say that at 450% sun like in akeelas beacon they can support more. false, they can still only support 9 factories. the higher sun value only makes them produce faster, not more. 2 crystals = 276 cells whether you make them in 2 minutes or 1:30. it doesnt change the math.
northern teladi and boron space suks. there's not enough silicon to spread across the whole area. you gotta import. good luck with that. i just went straight to phase II in any sector i didnt have a SPP in.
and speaking of that, one NPC SPP can support 4 factories. each one makes 66 cells in the same time your spp makes 276. it doesnt use crystals to do it though.
make backups regularly and pay attention. in cho's defeat i used the 26'er on the left side of the map and didnt notice until later that there's a bad nebula nearby that was causing me grief. on the other side of the sector there is 2 separate 'roids that do the same job only no nebula.
and on the subject of 'roids and yeilds. 26 yeild is what it takes to run a loop. if you do it with 26 one yeild 'roids you will make more trips to supply power initially but they still generate the exact same amount of silicon as one 26 in the exact same amount of time. . also to note is that it takes the exact same amount of ecells to make the same amount of silicon. so what i'm trying to say is that 26 yeild is 26 yeild. that goes for big 'roids too. a 64 yeild roid isn't better than 2 26's, you have some left over but if you're running two loops off of it you still use the same amount of ecells to do it. if you sell some of the silicon you can actually cause yourself trouble because the ecells it took to make the "extra" silicon came out of your loop and now you're using more power than you planned out of that loop and eating away at your profitsss. selling the "extra" silicon is not worth it unless you need to as a phase II or phase III measure to generate demand.
Final Thoughts
the whole point in this post was pretty much to say, dont use your own power. if you soak up the NPC power the NPC factories have to come to you to buy power. or if you're selling to them without waiting for them to come to you it causes their buying price to be much higher. this increases your ecell Profitsss and on top of that your phase II and phase III factories will be turning a small profit as well.
go go gadget Profitsss!
Phase I
go around and put a spp in every sector you can pipe silicon into. local source or through transports. in split space rhonkar's clouds can power the entire area. use SDS or FLDS or whatever to get them running. sell the power cells to the surrounding area at whatever the market will bear until you start phase II by the time you start phase II you should already be making enough to put factories down and still have money left over. i started phase II with 100 million and still had 50 million in the bank when i got done. that was after dropping the cash for a split carrier so i didnt have to keep making trips back with the elephant to get more ships. (hint, dont buy a paranid TL they're too SLOW). i was using a pair of elephants by mid phase I. also hint from personal experience: there's 4 26 yeilders in seizwell... put 3 of the loops in other sectors. i put them all in seizwell early in the game and it was bad.
Phase II
go change all your power plants to sell at 17 at this time.i know thats alot of factories but its essential to phase II
go around and put in factories that generate Primary resources that are in demand. IE great reef needs bofu, so does reservoir of tranquility, as well as depths of silence. use sector planner for this, or if you want the challenge do it without outside help. do not power your "primaries" factories off of your power loop. use bph or similar system and set the price to 16. i'll explain why in a minute. goto phase III when you've covered all the primary resource demand for the map. there are going to be places where you cannot put anything because they dont need anything so you're making alot of ecells that nobody wants... yet. goto phase III
phase III
ok all those places where they dont have a need for primary resources so your SPP's are sitting full all the time now we have to make a demand for them. so it's time to place Secondary resource factories where there is a demand for them and the local ecell supply is still saturated by npc spp's. you need to use bph or similar scripts to buy from the npc spps at 16 or better.
ok, now that i've told you what to do. let me explain why you do each phase in case you dont get it.
Phase I
the purpose of phase I is to get your infrastructure in place so that you can make money. there's nothing like an SPP to make money too. you put an SPP in every sector you can reasonably reach. some of them wont make money early on, some of them will be empty all the time at max price. dont worry about the ones not making money. some of my best SPPs sat dormant until i hit phase III and then became my best sellers.
Phase II
this phase has two purposes. 1) to increase the local economies consumption of Ecells. this is accomplished by providing primary resources where needed. a factory cannot produce anything if it's out of primary resources. 2) to eat up NPC ecells. this is the evil part and the more important of the reasons for phase II. in some areas you will be using up the NPC ecells so fast there are not any left except your Phase I ecells... cha ching! i think you may be catching on at this point.
Phase III
blah blah blah, etc etc etc... pretty much a repeat of phase II only you're using secondaries because there were no holes in the primary resources to fill. split space is a prime example of this. lots of demand for secondaries. little demand for primaries. family whi will be a phase II sector, but thuruk's pride will be a phase III sector. there are a number of sectors that will be phase III only. preist rings priest's pity dukes domain and empires ridge are all phase III only! there is zero primary demand there.
Additional notes
do the argon space around argon prime last with the exception of three worlds, herrons nebula and antigone memorial. you're gonna need firepower to hold the ore belt since thats where all your silicon is going to come from for the other sectors. and firepower costs money which you'll need to make before you can hold ore belt. so do argon space last.
do not clear out any of the northeastern xenon sectors. while this is fun and interesting all those xenon capital ships trouncing along through the sectors between 472 and the 3 xenon sectors in the northeast can make it impossible to put ships on patrol there to protect your loops in that area. so just dont do it. if you need to trounce xenon, go into 472 since thats where the shipyard is. you can clear out 347 because there are not enough capital ships in between 472 and 347 to kill the xenon cap ships that will fly there when you kill the current ones. but be aware that many of your ships will get killed in the process if they are too close to the center of the zone. i lost a station or two and many a transporter when i did that.
one SPP loop can support 9 factories. some people try to say that at 450% sun like in akeelas beacon they can support more. false, they can still only support 9 factories. the higher sun value only makes them produce faster, not more. 2 crystals = 276 cells whether you make them in 2 minutes or 1:30. it doesnt change the math.
northern teladi and boron space suks. there's not enough silicon to spread across the whole area. you gotta import. good luck with that. i just went straight to phase II in any sector i didnt have a SPP in.
and speaking of that, one NPC SPP can support 4 factories. each one makes 66 cells in the same time your spp makes 276. it doesnt use crystals to do it though.
make backups regularly and pay attention. in cho's defeat i used the 26'er on the left side of the map and didnt notice until later that there's a bad nebula nearby that was causing me grief. on the other side of the sector there is 2 separate 'roids that do the same job only no nebula.
and on the subject of 'roids and yeilds. 26 yeild is what it takes to run a loop. if you do it with 26 one yeild 'roids you will make more trips to supply power initially but they still generate the exact same amount of silicon as one 26 in the exact same amount of time. . also to note is that it takes the exact same amount of ecells to make the same amount of silicon. so what i'm trying to say is that 26 yeild is 26 yeild. that goes for big 'roids too. a 64 yeild roid isn't better than 2 26's, you have some left over but if you're running two loops off of it you still use the same amount of ecells to do it. if you sell some of the silicon you can actually cause yourself trouble because the ecells it took to make the "extra" silicon came out of your loop and now you're using more power than you planned out of that loop and eating away at your profitsss. selling the "extra" silicon is not worth it unless you need to as a phase II or phase III measure to generate demand.
Final Thoughts
the whole point in this post was pretty much to say, dont use your own power. if you soak up the NPC power the NPC factories have to come to you to buy power. or if you're selling to them without waiting for them to come to you it causes their buying price to be much higher. this increases your ecell Profitsss and on top of that your phase II and phase III factories will be turning a small profit as well.
go go gadget Profitsss!