Roenie’s Guide to Open and Closed Loops (warning: images)

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Roenie
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x3tc

Roenie’s Guide to Open and Closed Loops (warning: images)

Post by Roenie » Sun, 16. Jan 05, 14:43

Update 1/14/2006: Links fixed.

Roenie's Guide to Open and Closed Loops.

(Or: R-GOCL, that’s like, almost an article. Well atleast it sounds kinda like it.)

This guide has its roots in an earlier thread of mine about loops that turned messy and wasn’t perfect, and I hope to have improved on just about every aspect of it, to now provide a good, complete Guide, with a capital G. (SDS, BPH, and looping without scripts are all included.)

What started out as a search to learn about loops, then bad loop profits, then many pencil scribblings on a note-book at night and me wondering why I was too stupid to figure this or that out, evolved into a set of general-purpose crystal/spp loop photoshop .PSD files *, which are neatly designed, in order to be easily editable by anyone with with half-decent photoshop skills. (Even if you don't have any of those, you may still find the schematics I created useful, because they are very clear graphical representations of different kinds of loops.) GIF-images are provided within this post. I will use them to bit by bit uncover the secrets of loops in a clear manner. *UPDATE: Sorry, I was able to keep the pictures up, but the .PSD files were lost when I switched ISPs.

I don't pretend to be an expert, I'm not very experienced with loops, so don't take these schematics as being the one and only best thing to do. I did a lot of thinking and research on the subject, though, so they should be pretty good, and give you plenty to think about.

Lone Factories
Lone factories, especially SPP's, are the most profitable. The problem is that your empire tends to spread out over a huge number of sectors, making all those lone factories very hard to defend. It's also just plain handy to have things grouped together more. You could throw several factories in one sector, or in a few sectors that are close together, but often times and sooner or later you will find yourself running low on resources, or unable to sell your wares if you have several factories of the same type. You can make it your job to support the local economy with whatever low-level wares the AI factories need, but if you don't want to do that, or only want to sell wares that give the best returns…

Loops
This is where loops come in. There are two types of loop, closed and open.

Closed Loops
Generally used to create “for free”, tech items for personal use. They give you a certainty that the wares go from player station to player station through direct delivery. The downside is that if one of those freighters gets destroyed, the whole loop grinds to a halt. More importantly, Closed loops aren't very profitable at all in comparison to open loops and lone stations. Personally, I would use open loops, even if it was just to make tech items for personal use. Then atleast you make an (extra) profit along the way. “Closed loops generate a product economically, not so much money, because the credits are simply passed from your right hand to your left.” (*thanks for that quote, b-b-q). So selling the end product does give you a profit, but open loops generate more of it. You really should only use Closed loops if you’re going to use the end product yourself, and you really don’t want any fuss, e.g. just deliver the wares from one station to the other and not worry about selling and buying. If you don’t need any more credits and you just want to make sure you always have 125MW shields at the ready, set that 125MW factory to not trade with the locals, and this is the way to go. (Store them elsewhere and keep producing, then prepare a Julian invasion - triggered by too many Split being in their sectors.)


Open Loops
They are essentially a number of stations strung together, like in a closed loop, with two major differences. (1)The supplying factories passively sell their wares to trading stations at maximum price. Then the next factory in line, which needs those wares, buys them back from the trading stations at average price. This adds extra profits, when compared to a closed loop. (2)Although the end (tech) product of a closed loop can be sold, it often isn't because the player who owns the loop would like to keep its product for his own use. The Open loop is different in that all the products it creates are sold for profits (except the primary food, which the trading stations don’t buy, and is often too scarce to be able to buy back). And as a general rule, whatever your open loop takes from the sector/area it is in, it should also provide to the sector/area. Combinations of the closed and open loops are ofcourse possible. P.S.: I don’t consider a loop that buys its energy cells an open loop, because that seems rather pointless to me. My idea of an open loop is a closed loop that sells its products along the way, including the end product, but not necessarily including the primary (low level) food product.

The Profitability Spreadsheet
To find out which end stations' products make the most profit when said end station is supported by a loop, use this spreadsheet created by Merroc and myself. It can be found here:
http://www.egosoft.com/x2/forum/viewtopic.php?t=73918

The spreadsheet does many things.

First of all, it proves the fact that selling surplus energy cells directly is less profitable than using them to create a product (e-cells is a possibility!) and then selling that. You might notice the SPP is the most profitable station on the list, by far. Meaning, an SPP supported by another SPP that also supports itself, is more profitable than e.g. a Drone Factory that is supported by an SPP that also supports itself. But don't be a fool and support one SPP with the other like that. Build them seperately and let them each support themselves. Incase you have two: that way they both sell 50% of the total e-cells and do 50% of the total supporting, instead of one doing all the supporting and the other doing all the selling, which is more dangerous - if one freighter goes, everything suffers instead of half of it.

A lone SPP that lets its supporting factories buy their own e-cells, is only more profitable than a 'looped' SPP (=provides the e-cells for its supporting factories), if they can buy them at <9.56 Cr per e-cell. Assuming they can't, the best way to go, is build looped SPPs (all seperate from each other) that sell their remaining e-cells, until the market starts to saturate and your selling price has to drop dramatically. When that happens you can either move on to a new area/sector, or start building loops that produce an end product, e.g. Drones, which is the next most profitable thing. (provided you can sell them)

The sheet contains a huge amount of interesting data, but it applies to closed loops that only sell their end-product. You *can* use it for open loops, in that case you just get extra profit from the trading station trick, on top of what is shown. If you use it for open loops though (to determine what end product you want to create) keep in mind that even though a certain end product (drones) potentially makes the most profit, you should also think about the total profit the entire loop makes. In other words, the profits of all the individual stations in the loop, added up. Each inbetween product in an open loop sells its product at max, and then it gets bought back at average. The difference between max and average, the cycle time and the number of products produced per cycle, determine how much one factory makes per hour, by using the “trading station trick”. I’d love to add all that data to the sheet, but I have other things to do, unfortunately. My sheet and guide creation time has run out.
--------------------------


Objective 1:
Make loops so that factories don't have to be built several sectors apart, keeping our empire compact.

Objective 2:
Within that framework, make the most profit possible. As I said, I don't have the required data as to which stations to choose for the absolute max, but atleast we'll get close.

What I want to do, is show you how you can create free energy cells, in the most profitable way. (Which means: by using open loops.) Then I'll show you an example of what you can do with those new energy cells of yours.

Before we continue…this is what you can do with the energy cells, in basic terms:
A) Sell them. (not recommended)
B) Use them to support factories to sell wares locally in demand, for extra profitssss over A, and improving the economy.
C) Use them to support factories to create tech products for personal use.
D) Use them to support factories to create tech products to sell, for more profitssss over A and B, and hope to actually sell them fast enough. That’s what I will do, for this guide. From there you should be able to figure out how to do B and C.



Let’s get moving.
I’m going to take you on a bus tour along the images, sorted by the yield that the silicon mine has, starting at the lowest yield. If this seems odd, trust me: I’m not entirely insane (yet…). First it will be all about understanding the logistics of a simple loop, and once that’s been covered, we’ll start producing a product. It’s very important that you have these images with the text that you’re reading, so modem users: I’m sorry, but this is the way it’s gotta be. They are .GIFs though, so not that big in filesize.

A simple loop, selling energy cells while making use of trading station profit:

Loop Image #1:
Asteroid yield 25
(or 23-26, opinions seem to vary on how much you need to supply exactly 1 factory)
[ external image ]

The "sell for max price" green arrow exiting the SPP isn't counted as a ship. (This makes it easier to imagine what happens if you add factories there instead of selling the e-cells.)

What you’re looking at here, is a simple, basic SPP loop using SDS. The SPP when built in a sector with 100% solar intensity can support upto 9 factories. In 150% sun, it’s 10. The SPP itself, needs 4 support factories to run, and they need power. Therefore, in 100% sunlight, 4 of the 9 go to those factories, and the surplus of 5 (the green “sell for max price” arrow leaving the SPP at the bottom) can be used to do whatever, or can be sold. ‘Make sense?


To be exact:
100% sun supports 9.2 factories. (I will simply call 9.2 “9”, in this guide)
150% sun supports 10.22 factories.
200% sun supports 11.04 factories (only in Reservoir of Tranquility)
450% sun supports ~12.0 factories (only in Akeela's Beacon)

To be too thorough and break the flow of the story at the same time:
SPP in 100% sun requires 1.0x CFab
SPP in 150% sun requires 1.1x Cfab
200% sun requires 1.2x Cfab
450% sun requires 1.3x Cfab
(Thanks for crunching the numbers for me, JungleJim. :) Copy/paste rules.)


(I will take 100% as default for this guide.)

The black SDS arrows represent freighters using the signed SDS script, because (aside from some other advantages) it allows you to use one ship to deliver a station’s product to a maximum of 3 other stations, so you need less ships. If you’re not using scripts, replace each black arrow by a red one. In this case you will also need to manage selling prices correctly, on stations that also sell their product to the public; if you then want freighter A to buy a product from your station X, it will only do so if station X is selling at a price that competes with that of the AI factories.
That’s what makes scripts like SDS so nice; you don’t have to worry about your selling prices. For more information about SDS, scroll down below.

The Soyfarm represents any primary food factory. The Soyery represents any secondary food dactory. Because the Crystal Fab here is a Paranid one, it needs Soja Husk, which the Soyery produces. The Soyery in turn needs Soja Beans, which the Soyfarm produces. In the case of the Argon, the Soyfarm would be a Cattle Ranch, and the Soyery would be a Cahoona Bakery. Some images enclosed in this post have Soyeries and Soyfarms, others have PRI and SEC Food factories – same thing.

The Soyery sells its secondary food product to the AI, passively. (Please ignore the fact that the Soyfarm is closed, for now – it doesn’t sell to the AI. We will get to that, later.) It has the Soja Husk selling price set to maximum. Secondary food is always in demand, so Trading Stations are happy to send over their freighters to buy it from us, even at max price. The coolest thing about that is that Trading Stations always sell their stocks at average price, no matter what they bought it for, so you can buy it back again, at average.
As you can see on the image, the “AI buyer” takes the food to the Trading Station, and the “Buy for best price” freighter that belongs to our Crystal Fab then buys it back at average price, for use in crystal production.
Then, the Crystal Fab repeats the trick. It lets the AI come and buy the Crystals at max price, and then the SPP’s freighter buys it back at average. To further explain this trick, for those who are not familiar with it:


Option A) If you simply deliver the crystals from the cfab to the spp, you are getting the crystals in your SPP at "whatever the cost was for you to produce them."

Option B) If you sell a crystal at max from your cfab, you get 1936 in your cfab. Then when your SPP buys it back, your spp pays 1684. Profit: 252. It's the same as delivering the crystals directly, only this time with 252 extra profit per crystal. If you sell crystals to a trading station and then buy them back, you also paid "whatever the cost was that you produced them for", but you get a bonus of 252 per crystal.

You have to think from the player's incomes and expenses point of view. Don't think: "the SPP gets crystals for nothing in A), but in B) it has to pay 1684 and therefore makes less profit in B)." That is true, though: The SPP makes less profit in B, but YOU make more profit.


You will need to transfer some starting funds to your Crystal Fab and SPP. The CFab needs to be able to buy back the secondary food from the trading station(s), and the SPP needs to be able to buy back the crystals. Once they start making money, they'll be using part of their own income to buy these resources.

When the loop has just been put into place and the local Trading Station doesn’t have enough food and crystal supplies, it can be a good idea keep the Soyery and Crystal Fab closed for a short while, to allow your CFab to stock up on some food and the SPP to stock up on some crystals. All you need to do to start with them closed, is set "trade with other races" to no, and lower the selling price. (Your Cfab’s food buyer will automatically go to your Soyery to get its food, and your SPP’s crystal buyer will automatically go to your Cfab to get its crystals.) This eliminates the Trading Stations from the loop, which in the beginning is a good thing, because it can take a long time for the AI freighters to get to you and then to the Trading Station with the wares. Only once that has happened can you start buying them back.


Loop Image #2:
Asteroid yield 25
[ external image ]

As you can see, comparing this image to the previous, using BPH has reduced the total amount of required ships by 1, because now one freighter supplies the Cfab with both Soja Husk and Silicon. Note that this is only possible if the Mine here isn't selling surplus silicon wafers. You can't buy a certain ware from a player factory, if it is selling that same ware to the AI (passively or actively). Why? Because your buying freighter won't go to your own player factory unless the selling price competes with that of AI stations. You could lower your selling price, but that would ruin your profits. Instead, keep the price high, and just remember: You can't buy and sell the same ware from the same player station. If you’re powering another set of factories with your surplus e-cells (in other words: your loop creates an end product), then you can get rid of another freighter here. Do you see how? You let the first SDS freighter of the SPP (black double arrow at the top) also deliver to the Mine, and then you can add “energy cells” to the list of things that the Cfab’s BPH freighter will buy. (Don’t forget to lower the e-cell selling price, just take it all the way down.)

For more information about BPH, see <Your X2 directory>/ReadMe-Liesmich/Readme(EN).htm, which should be there if you installed the script. It explains it better than I ever could. Knowing about the “goods prohibited” settings etc, is vital for knowing how to apply BPH to the loop examples in this guide.


Loop Image #3:
Asteroid yield 33-49
[ external image ]

I wouldn’t bother trying to sell surplus silicon (or ore) on a mine with a yield below 33. You should make your own decision as to when you want to start selling any surplus. The mine in the image has a yield of 33, and I want to start selling what I don’t need for my Cfab. I’m now forced to swap the BPH freighter for a "buy for best price" and an SDS freighter, because of the problem that the mine can’t sell properly if I’m buying from it too, as I explained earlier.

Loops should be seperate if possible, not combined (double). The ones you’ve seen so far are separate/single loops, with a surplus of 5 out of 9 parts energy. Have a look at this. Guess what, it’s two loops:

Loop Image #4:
Asteroid yield 50
[ external image ]

Don’t be fooled by the Mine delivering to both Cfabs. These loops are what I call separate. I will explain this in a bit. With a roid yield of 50, you can have two loops running off the same mine, like this. If the yield exceeds 50 you could decide to sell the surplus, like we did in Image #3, where we had one loop. Selling the surplus means you won't be able to use the "BPH saves out on a ship" trick anymore though.


Adding BPH to save out on a ship:
Loop Image #5:
Asteroid yield 50
[ external image ]

Easy.


Now, this is a double (=combined) loop:

Loop Image #6:
Asteroid yield 50
[ external image ]

Okay – forget the fact that the food factories aren’t selling to the Trading Stations. That’s besides the point I want to make here. After looking at the image you may *think* that combining the loops into one like this, improves nothing over having two seperate ones, and only makes it less reliable - you've still got a surplus of (9-4)+(9-3)=11 parts energy in total, but now if one ship is destroyed, the whole double loop is affected. And if you guessed that, you were absolutely right. :D Don't use double energy loops. There is another mistake in this one, did you spot it? It's the fact that the second CFab isn't selling to the AI trading station(s), missing out on extra profits.

Now, (“FINALLY!!” you scream, still in pure agony) let’s start producing something. As mentioned before, I will be using option D of the things to do with the energy cells, which was: “Use them to support factories to create tech products to sell, for more profitssss over A and B, and hope to actually sell them fast enough. From there you should be able to figure out how to do B and C.” Scroll up if you need to, to re-read that section (below the Objectives).

Looking at the excel sheet I linked to near the start of this post, we learn that Drone Factories are quite profitable, provided we can sell the Drones ofcourse. So let’s setup a Drone production loop, based on the energy loops you should now thoroughly understand:

Loop Image #7:
Asteroid yield 25*2
[ external image ]

Mental Note: 11 ships used.
In the case of the Argon, Prereq. 2 here is a Cahoona Bakery. (prereq. = prerequisite, meaning, a factory required for the end station, also known as the drone factory) As shown here, the drones are sold passively to the AI, not actively (=using a selling ship).
Equipment Docks are like Trading Stations in the sense that they will only pay top dollar if they buy from you. They’ll just pay average price if you sell to them actively.

When using your e-cells to produce a product, some of those require an Ore Mine instead. In that case, replace the Silicon Mine on the right side with an ore Mine. ‘Make sense? Thought so. You should be able to figure out by now, what to simply do if there was a silicon surplus here.


Let’s see how BPH applies to this loop:

Loop Image #8:
Asteroid yield 25*2
[ external image ]

7 Ships. What?! Yup. That’s 11 minus 4.
This is not only a nice difference in starting investments, but also: the fewer ships you have per loop (or per station), the less you will have to scroll through your menus later, and the fewer annoying log messages you will receive about destroyed freighters. It’s even easy to remember for this loop, where we have BPH and where we don’t. They're simply buying all the resources the the Cfab/Drone/Tech tier factories need. Note (I shouldn’t have to say it but I will) that this BPH trick is possible because a) we’re not selling to the AI from the mines – that’s 1 ship’s difference per side (right/left of the spp), and b) we’re not selling to the AI from the SPP either – that’s another ships’s difference per side.

Here’s a tip. If you have more than one energy loop each producing a product, you might want to start thinking about grabbing those surplus energy cells that you aren’t using. Remember, an SPP has power for 9.2 factories, minus 4 (its own support). So that’s 5.2 to use. A tech loop only uses 4 of that 5.2, so the remaining 1.2 will just end up in your factories’ stockpiles, if you don’t do something with it. You could add another low level (read: requiring only e-cells to operate) factory to each loop, like a Cattle Ranch, but everyone knows (well, now you do, too) that they aren’t very profitable. They’re only cool for nice guys who like to pamper their local AI economy. For badguys like us, it would be better to use the 1.2 surplus from 3 loops (1.2*3=3.6), or maybe even 4 loops if you're worried about flashing yellow, which is 4.8, in another production loop. Ship those e-cells over to another sector or to some player (trading) station’s stock for later use, or even sell them if you must (try an M4 or something) but don’t just let them rot.


This is what it would look like without scripts:

Loop Image #9:
Asteroid yield 25*2
[ external image ]

Woopteedoodle. If there never before was a valid reason to register your game in order to download and install signed scripts…this definitely changes that.

Now, I didn’t create any images for spp-loops with silicon roid yields over 50. That’s because I don’t have to: You’ll get the idea from the other images.

Additional Information #1:
I tend to not sell primary foods and prerequisites, so I also kept those factories closed in the schematics. The reason I keep them closed, is just to avoid some hassle. They aren't very profitable, so I don't bother. If you feel like it, you can ofcourse open them up, letting the AI stations buy the products at max price, and then have your next factories in line buy them back. But there's often a very high demand for these low level goods, trading stations for as far as I've seen don't buy/sell them, and therefore it might be tricky to buy it all back.

Additional information #1 part B
Stations that produce second tier wares, which *are* traded by trading stations, such as Soja Husk, I would likely open up to sell to the AI (if I was using BPH on my cfab and/or end product factory*), but maybe not if the demand for them is very high. Why? AI Stations normally don't get to the wares in trading stations before you buy them back, because they're just that much slower and dumber than your freighters are. (for as much as that is even possible, heh). But if demand is so high that 25 AI ships immediately go to the trading station after your wares are in it, you might lose to one of the AI ships, trying to buy the wares back. It's sector and ware dependent whether or not you should open the factory to the AI...ofcourse if you supply the sector with more than you need of a certain ware, it isn't a problem.

*By now, I shouldn't have to tell you why, but: it's because it doesn't take any extra ships. If not using BPH I wouldn't bother buying an extra "buy for best price" ship per opened low level factory, to buy back those low level wares from the trading stations.

Additional Information #2:
Furthermore, you might wonder why I use SDS to take wares from one station to the next. Well, I prefer to use SDS over "buy for best price" even if it's only delivering to one station, because it allows you to set it to not charge the target station anything, which causes the credits to 'shift' down the line to the next factory, so that as much money as possible ends up in the factory/factories furthest down the line. You don't want to have to collect credits from all of them. E.g. with SDS a soyfarm (primary food factory) always has 0 credits - aslong as it's closed. It goes without saying that for closed loops, this SDS feature (delivering at no charge) is invaluable. Though to be fair, I should say that the signed SMS (Station Management System) script in its simplest (and cheapest) mode can automatically transfer credits from your stations to your player account for free, taking into account any user-specified minimum number of credits to remain in the station.

Additional Information #3:
You might choose not to use BPH and miss out on saving out on a ships or two, in favour of simplicity. Do realise that the only place where this BPH trick actually works is for the freighters that keep your CFabs supplied, so it isn't that hard to remember where you're using BPH and where you aren't. Handy tip: In summary:
1) When selling no surplus from the silicon mine, the BHP ships owned by the CFab buy all three: secondary food, silicon and e-cells.
2) When selling a silicon surplus, they only buy secondary food and e-cells.
3) If you are selling e-cells from the SPP, remove e-cells from points 1 and 2.

Those 3 points are true for single loops, and also for single loops (more than 1) that share the silicon mine. Simple. Also simple, is this conclusion: If you're selling both e-cells and a silicon surplus, BPH is useless for that loop. (but you might want to use it anyway just incase that changes)

Using BPH as opposed to SDS does require some money transfer between factories. Nothing that the SMS script can't fix, but maybe you want to let that influence your choice.

About SDS
SDS is a script for TS freighters, that allows them to deliver the product of their home station to upto 3 other stations. To use it, simply buy the SDS ship extension from one of the Paranid Equipment Docks that have it (and put it on a TS-class freighter). Then to activate it, go to the command console of the freighter -> Trade -> SDS Deliver to X, where X is the number of stations you want it to deliver to. The map will come up. Select the sector, then the homebase of the freighter. Then it will ask you for the number of credits to charge the target station(s) for the products delivered to it, so enter it*. Now select the target station. If you chose “SDS Deliver to 2”, you will be asked again to select a target station. If you chose “SDS Deliver to 3”, then again you will be asked, this time for the third target station. You will now receive a message in your log, confirming the SDS settings for that freighter. If you don’t, you did something wrong.

*For a closed loop just enter 0. For an open loop you need to check if the sds freighter's home station needs money from its wares, if it does, calculate about how much it cost the home base station to produce the product, and use that value plus a slight margin. This ensures that your factories can keep running.

For further info on SDS, see: <Your X2 folder>/ReadMe-Liesmich/ReadMe.KriMe.SDS.Delivery.txt, which will be there if you installed the script.


----------------
That’s all, folks!

I hope this guide helps many a player. I have put a lot of time (days) and effort into it, and hopefully didn't leave too many stones unturned.

If you found this guide helpful, please write a short reply so I know I've just helped someone, and so that others can find this thread. Thanks.

-Roenie
-----------------
Last edited by Roenie on Thu, 5. Oct 06, 01:53, edited 33 times in total.

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JungleJim
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Post by JungleJim » Sun, 16. Jan 05, 15:46

Roenie,

Excellent guide. This should be included in the latest ultimate guide. Although I've espoused that SPPs support the number of factories that you mentioned, I recently recheck and my latest calculations indicate that these are the proper numbers:

Sun - Num supported
100 - 9.2
150 - 10.2
200 - 11.1
450 - I haven't checked but bet its 12.1.
Be seeing you,


[ external image ]

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Logaan
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Post by Logaan » Sun, 16. Jan 05, 15:49

Nice one, I added it to the Resource site

IIRC its 450% sun in Akeelas Beacon

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TheReddeH
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Post by TheReddeH » Sun, 16. Jan 05, 15:55

Great work there dude!!! :o

Looks like im missing out on some profit with the loops i currently have :oops:
Will be a pain to give a zillion ships new commands :evil:



(I know Roenie irl)

*feels proud* :roll:

[ external image ]

GET IT OFF!!!!

Merroc
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Post by Merroc » Sun, 16. Jan 05, 18:12

OMG its HUGE.... Ive only skimmed it, looked at the pictures, but it sounds great :++ (EDIT: I REALLY have to spend less time in the chat. Its :thumb_up: not :++ as it is in the chat...). I have to read it sometime...
TheReddeH wrote:(I know Roenie irl)

*feels proud* :roll:
:rofl:

I helped him for a small part (the excel sheet in the other thread)

*Merroc feels proud too :)*

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Herbium
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Post by Herbium » Mon, 17. Jan 05, 01:18

This does indeed belong in the next guide :D

Ive probably played the game altogether about 5 hours, but this is going to give my trading a jumpstart 8)
Cap'n Crimson: "Arr treasure indeed. Pornography... and biscuits!"

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/32/

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The_T
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Post by The_T » Mon, 17. Jan 05, 01:53

okay... I just read that top to bottom :o .

awesome work, just two things;
first, where do you recommend setting up loops of different kinds of goods to make the best profit?

and second; secondary has no 'u'.

The_Mess
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Post by The_Mess » Mon, 17. Jan 05, 02:06

:D wow, this is going to be very helpful, although while open loops are fairly profitable, there are times when selling secondary food to the AI and buying it back doesn't work out to well. My crystal fab loop in Shore of Infinity keeps flashing due to the AI buying up the BoFu i'm selling before the BHP freighter form my crystal fab can.
Once again thanks!

Roenie
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Post by Roenie » Mon, 17. Jan 05, 02:52

The_T wrote:okay... I just read that top to bottom :o .

awesome work, just two things;
first, where do you recommend setting up loops of different kinds of goods to make the best profit?

and second; secondary has no 'u'.
Thank you.

1) That's upto you to figure out. I think that's what makes it fun, having to look for opportunities and then exploiting them. The most profitable ware on the excel sheet might not be what you can sell where you are, so you have to decide how far down the profit list you want to go, or how much you want to risk not being able to sell the wares.

Besides, I don't have the data to be able to provide decent help on that, and I don't intend to check the whole universe to see what is in need where, within X jumps. :D I'll leave it upto random tips people might give in this thread. *hint* *hint*

2) I agree. I always used to write an 'o', atleast I thought I did. Then in some thread on some forum (not sure if it was on here), I suddenly saw several people writing 'u'. That got me thinking they might be right: "maybe I always used to use a 'u'", because I know I used to be right. When writing this guide I used 'u'. Afterwards it did seem odd to me, but couldn't be arsed to look it up. :lol:

Off to fix the error...
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Roenie's Guide to Open and Closed Loops (X2)

Roenie
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Post by Roenie » Mon, 17. Jan 05, 03:22

JungleJim wrote:Roenie,

Excellent guide.
<snip>
My latest calculations indicate that these are the proper numbers:

Sun - Num supported
100 - 9.2
150 - 10.2
200 - 11.1
450 - I haven't checked but bet its 12.1.
Mind explaining how you got to these new figures?

[edit]
Explained in a different thread.
[/edit]

P.S. If someone could provide me with the number for the cycle time of an SPP in akeela's beacon (450%), so that I could check that last figure, that would be great.
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Roenie's Guide to Open and Closed Loops (X2)

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Post by Creston » Sat, 22. Jan 05, 20:44

Great stuff Roenie!

Just out of curiosity, about how much does that whole fighter drone loop make, per hour?

Also, I know you can ship the fighter drones to an Equipment dock for max dollar, but isn't there a limit to how much it buys? I mean, as far as I can tell, nobody ever buys those things, except for a few universe traders. Aren't fighter drones a (rapidly) dying market?

But I'm definitely going to be setting up some loops, it's time I start making my own guns and shields, instead of paying through the nose for them. :)

Thanks for all your work and the great explanation!

Creston

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Post by dzhedzho » Sat, 22. Jan 05, 21:30

Wow, good job. And I read it all. BTW, why use sms to transfer money? Cant you use the auto transfer money option?

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Post by DenYaSis » Sat, 22. Jan 05, 21:33

rounda about guess is the Akeelas beacon Cycle is 1:30 for a SPP. I am pretty certian on that one.

Its not a huge difference from the 150 sun (around 1:45??) but it does make a difference. My SPP in Akeelas demolished my poor CRSFAB in Aldana Hill before I was able to get food factories tfor it

BTW way very good article. I'll definitely have to look into the using the SDS scripts.


Also Some one asked for locations:

Lucky planets has a lot of factories(including a CRSFAB) but NOT ONE SPP.
-You are very guarrenteed a market. A good market.
-Also there are a number of BioGas and BOFU facts next door in Great Trench. In addition to some asteroids that have silicon (usually)
-This means that while you are setting up your loop, the local economy has resources that can support your stations while your saving up money for the next factory. (I built my loops in parts, not enough money)
- Well protected too and multiple shipyards, EQ docks and trading stations nearby (boron, Argon, and Parinid). I haven't ever had Khaak problems there (knocks on wood).

-I have loops there and upnorth around Akeelas beacon. This way, with a range of 5 jumps, I can trade with every race and there are shipyards of every race available along with EQ and Trading stations. Meaning that I can create "higher tech" items and still have some ablility to sell tham in addition to the E-cell market. Your only competition is the SPP market in Akeelas beacon, and I haven't had a problem. A crsfab there does well.

Note around Aldana Hill and Akeelas, I have found a number of Khaak clusters. So some ability to defend is nice

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Post by JungleJim » Sun, 23. Jan 05, 02:49

Roenie,

This may be a bit Ex Post Facto at this point. But you asked me why I changed my numbers to:

Sun --- Supported factories
0% ---- ?
100% - 9.2
150% - 10.2
200% - 11
450% - 12?

I checked the cycle times for those sun factors (haven't rechecked the 0% & 450%) and recalculated the number of cells/hr at

100% - 8280
150% - 9200
200% - 9936
450% - ?10800-11040?

Then take these numbers and divide by 900/hr and you get the number of supported factories.
Be seeing you,


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Post by Rapier » Sun, 23. Jan 05, 19:16

I checked Akeela's Beacon and posted in the other thread. The cycle time is 90 seconds, giving a total production of 11040 Cells per hour (and using 4800 in supporting factories.
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Dedodido
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Post by Dedodido » Sun, 23. Jan 05, 22:48

I'd seen this thread before, but just thought "that guy is insane, posting something like that" and went off again. But this evening, I suddenly realised "I don't have a clue about factories" and read it all.

I must say, I am very impressed with that, just one spelling mistake throughout the whole thing :P j/k!
In fact, I'm so impressed, I'd still be very impessed with it even if it was done by a proffessional guide writer. This is the quality of stuff people pay for.

Thankyou once again, this will help me no end! :)

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Post by ehaefele » Tue, 1. Feb 05, 06:55

Great Job definately adds some potential to my closed loops.
I will try selling sec. food and crystal to the AI. I have worries about being able to buy it all back but I'll start small.

Good (and bad) factory locations in my game
Spoiler
Show
Argon Prime - Drone, Quantum Tube, and Satalite factories always selling faster than I can produce.Worst I've ever seen is 16 in stock. 125MW shield not so good but it is for personal use anyway. Would probably help if I was buying out the equipment dock but it's not really worth the trouble for an extra 8000 every 8:20.

Depths of Silence - One Crystal fab usually has 60 or so in stock when I check.
GPPC not so good but again for personal use.

Lucky Planets - Power plant always good. The only place I've ever found myself close to "max profit" on a SP with no micro management. Surplus silicon selling well.

Ore Belt - Crystal fab usually about 50 in stock

Spring of Belief - Quantum and Wasp Missle selling faster than I can produce. Ore mine, can't remember the yield but it makes 5 every 1:10. Had to set it about 150 selling price but it stays empty now. Plus yet another Crystal fab. Adv.Satellite my first bust factory. Selling about 100 under average and still usually full stock.
I got leary after this fiasco which is why I have so many Crystal fabs selling, at least I know they will sell. Unfortunately the only solution I know for a crap factory is my Ody or 250,000 in hornets.

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Post by The_T » Tue, 1. Feb 05, 08:04

thanks again ronnie, the pics are awesome, i used the drone fac one to set up my first loop (first half in herron's, second half is going in ringo, except with a tube fab)

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Post by ehaefele » Wed, 2. Feb 05, 06:11

Roenie

A couple of questions. I am trying to open up some of my closed loops and see a couple of problems coming down the road.

If a power plant is now buying crystals for average price and has to supply nine plants while "selling" to only one how much does it have to charge the BPH buyer from the Crystal Fab so it doesn't run out of money? Or should I set the sell price and the SDS deliver price to the same level. This would be difficult if the primary food remains closed.

If your SP "sell" price is greater than or equal to AI power plants in the sector what's to keep the BPH buyers from buying AI product? Again your SP will run out of money.

Sorry if this was explained but I can't seem to find it. If I'm just clueless about why this isn't an issue feel free to launch a volley of hornets my way. Of course, I'll just out run them but the message will be clear.

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Post by ehaefele » Wed, 2. Feb 05, 06:28

Oops I found it. Use SMS to transfer between factories. Guess I'm off to read the SMS FAQ.

Thanks for the great post.

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