Naremus

That factory link is great, thanks!. It's amazing how much goes into even moderate level factory chains. The mods look nice too, I play on a server though so I'll have to talk to the server owner about incorporating anything. I'll definitely look into getting a mine going then, sounds much simpler to get started with and the calculations for profitability looks a bit more favorable. Do stations/mines get attacked regularly when you aren't around or only when you are in the same system?

I've been reading up on player made stations, particularly I've seen recommendations to build water/solar plants mostly out of rock to have small crew. With the out of sector updates working now, is this a sustainable income source? The wiki lists solar plants as earning 200 credits a cycle, with the only reference to cycle I could find putting that at 15 seconds. This works out to 60*60/15*200 = 48,000 credits an hour Subtract crew costs out of that and you are running on fumes pretty quickly, plus you have to pick up and sell all the modules yourself taking away from time spent doing anything else. Can player factories be made reasonably profitable considering the cost it takes to even get started with them, without requiring you to babysit the thing 24/7? I don't care if it doesn't make me billions or anything like that, it would just be nice to have a steady income or to fill in gaps for a turret factory supply chain while still having time to go fight some pirates and aliens.