[EXPERIMENT] Station Founding Guide Experiment

[Echo-107]

Like, Hello there.

 

As beautiful as the ships people are building are there is a VERY distinct lack of dedicated stations and stationary facilities in game. But i have noticed that a LOT of ships require some serious clout and supply when building stations, so i decided to run some experiments to help out the creative community when building stations or other stuffs. This is the result of those experiments.

 

(EDIT) I didnt make it clear enough so i'm editing the original post. THIS IS NOT AN EXPERIMENT ON FACTORY PRODUCTION MECHANICS. I REPEAT NOT AN EXPERIMENT ON FACTORY MECHANICS. This is an experiment on SHIPBUILDING STATISTICS to help as a BASIC GUIDE FOR BUILDING SHIPS THAT WILL LATER BE CONVERTED INTO FACTORIES. This is why the thread is in the Creations forum specifically. The statistics and scaling and all such is presented as a testing guide to help those who CREATE ships and stations to give them an idea on what to expect in game when they make their creations. I apologize if i failed to make this clear enough :)

 

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS JUST AN EXPERIMENT. THIS SERVES AS NOTHING MORE THAN A BASIS OF RECORDED DATA TO USE AS A BUILDING GUIDE FOR STATIONS AND STUFF. I AM YET TO FIND ANY REAL DATA FOR SHIPBUILDING, SO THIS IS JUST A FIRST GO TEST RUN FOR FINDING THE OPTIMAL PARAMETERS FOR MAKING A STATION BUILDING GUIDE FOR CREATORS. USE, ADD AND ADAPT THIS THREAD AS YOU SEE FIT.

 

EXPERIMENT DETAILS

ALL DONE IN SURVIVAL MODE FOR MAX ACCURACY

ALL DONE IN SINGLEPLAYER (as im too much of a chicken for multi)

ALL BUILT FROM SHIPYARD IN SURVIVAL MODE ONE BY ONE FOR MAXIMUM ACCURACY

 

Five of the exact same ships, built from the same shipyard piece by piece on the same seed.

Each ship is max scale, max volume, built from specified materials.

Each ship is converted into specified base structure and the changes to ship stats are recorded.

 

 

EXPERIMENT START:

 

NAME: TEST1 BASE

MAX CREW: 8500

MIN CREW: 885

ENERGY GEN: 0.19TW

REQUIRED ENERGY: 0.16TW

VOLUME: 41.46mill m3

$$$ COST: 5 283 323

MATERIAL COST: 574 699 IRON 140 064 TITANIUM

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EXPERIMENT RESULT:

 

NAME: TEST1 Solar Array

MAX CREW: 8500

MIN CREW: 956

ENERGY GEN: 0.26TW

REQUIRED ENERGY: 43.06GW

VOLUME: 47.92 mill m3

$$$ COST: 9 183 323

 

EXPERIMENT RESULT:

 

NAME: TEST1 Glass

MAX CREW: 8500

MIN CREW: 929

ENERGY GEN: 0.19 TW

REQUIRED ENERGY: 43.1GW

VOLUME: 46.01mill m3

$$$ COST: 8 751 323

 

EXPERIMENT RESULT:

 

NAME: TEST1 Microchip

MAX CREW: 8500

MIN CREW: 932

ENERGY GEN: 0.19TW

REQUIRED ENERGY: 43.1GW

VOLUME: 46.26mill m3

$$$ COST: 8 836 823

 

EXPERIMENT RESULT:

 

NAME: TEST1 TeslaCoil

MAX CREW: 8500

MIN CREW: 932

ENERGY GEN: 0.19TW

REQUIRED ENERGY: 43.1GW

VOLUME: 46.26mill m3

$$$ COST: 31 741 823

 

CONCLUSION:

 

Cost Increases - SERIOUS clout is needed for building stations obviously :)

MINIMUM crew requirement increases - requires a good solid amount of crew capacity and space before and after ship conversion. Not only does the ship itself need crew, but the new function of the ship needs crew, forcing new crew to be added after each conversion.

Power Output increases or decreases depending on station - solar farm and other stations produced or drew more power based on functionality.

Power draw decreases substantially - ship no longer uses hyperdrive or thrusters or stabilisers, so power draw is almost cut in half.

 

IF YOU WANT TO INCLUDE MORE PARAMETERS FOR TESTING, PLEASE TELL ME AND I WILL CONDUCT THE TESTS SO YOU DONT HAVE TO. IT TAKES A LOT OF TIME THE WAY I DO IT.

[thedude]

Hi Echo.  :) 

I've a thread about my factory network on Freerealms (great server) connected through a holo grid here on these forums.  I put 14 or more factories conducive to producing the components for launchers and lasers.  What i found is there was little incentive to building these factories on any sort of large scale.  Once familiarized with the process I would slide the credit cost up to around 30000 and check mark auto filling crew requirements, so transporting the factory to its location would not be a chore.  I noticed little difference in the speed with which the component production would take place, once stocked with ingredient supply, in relation to the size of the factory.  I might be incorrect on this point.  To be honest, right now i'm not sure why scaling the factory size is an option, outside of the one obvious factor, that being shield size.  Far better to make a smaller factory and add shields once its converted in its spot.  This is likely an area that the devs plan to implement changes.  but who knows.  The factories work well though despite their small credit cost and size.  :) 

 

Having 14 factories (with average of 70 crew) and 3 relatively large cruiser ships (between 600 and 900 crew), i'm still fairly easily able to keep up with the pay roll (need to beat guardian into submission on a routine basis if i'm logged in though).  I really wouldn't want to try and keep up with the costs if they were any bigger than they are currently are, not to mention add any more factories to the chain at this point.   

 

Things i'm curious about include:

1. If your logged out and another player is in a sector with your factory, do your crew draw a salary from your credit pool while that sector is active, even though your not in game?

 

2. If other players purchase from your factories, do you get paid in credits for the transactions? 

 

3. When logging out and giving orders to "guard this position" to sentry ships in the area of your factories, will they protect your factory chain for you will your logged out?

 

4. Will devs be implementing a means to lock in a reserve of inventory so that you don't have to pull vital turret components from inventory before you log out to avoid the risk of someone just buying them up.  It is a bit of a pain to clean out cargo holds with out building a holo transport network (which works very well for passing inventory to a ship dedicated to being a storage vault).  Another method of inventory control would be to add a 'F' dialogue option where you can close or open the factory trade option, thereby locking in your inventory for your own use.  I bet they've already thought of this.  :P

 

[Echo-107]

Hi Echo.  :) 

I've a thread about my factory network on Freerealms (great server) connected through a holo grid here on these forums.  I put 14 or more factories conducive to producing the components for launchers and lasers.  What i found is there was little incentive to building these factories on any sort of large scale.  Once familiarized with the process I would slide the credit cost up to around 30000 and check mark auto filling crew requirements, so transporting the factory to its location would not be a chore.  I noticed little difference in the speed with which the component production would take place, once stocked with ingredient supply, in relation to the size of the factory.  I might be incorrect on this point.  To be honest, right now i'm not sure why scaling the factory size is an option, outside of the one obvious factor, that being shield size.  Far better to make a smaller factory and add shields once its converted in its spot.  This is likely an area that the devs plan to implement changes.  but who knows.  The factories work well though despite their small credit cost and size.  :) 

 

Having 14 factories (with average of 70 crew) and 3 relatively large cruiser ships (between 600 and 900 crew), i'm still fairly easily able to keep up with the pay roll (need to beat guardian into submission on a routine basis if i'm logged in though).  I really wouldn't want to try and keep up with the costs if they were any bigger than they are currently are, not to mention add any more factories to the chain at this point.   

 

Things i'm curious about include:

1. If your logged out and another player is in a sector with your factory, do your crew draw a salary from your credit pool while that sector is active, even though your not in game?

 

2. If other players purchase from your factories, do you get paid in credits for the transactions? 

 

3. When logging out and giving orders to "guard this position" to sentry ships in the area of your factories, will they protect your factory chain for you will your logged out?

 

4. Will devs be implementing a means to lock in a reserve of inventory so that you don't have to pull vital turret components from inventory before you log out to avoid the risk of someone just buying them up.  It is a bit of a pain to clean out cargo holds with out building a holo transport network (which works very well for passing inventory to a ship dedicated to being a storage vault).  Another method of inventory control would be to add a 'F' dialogue option where you can close or open the factory trade option, thereby locking in your inventory for your own use.  I bet they've already thought of this.  :P

 

First of all, i have edited the original post, its obvious by your reply i was not even close to clear on the intent for the thread. This was originally a experiment guide for SHIPBUILDERS to help them figure out what kinds of minimum parameters they would need to create some ships specifically for station building should they ever want to do that. My apologies if i wasted your time :)

 

To answer your questions, Scaling is important because of SILLINESS and CREW SIZE.  I have included SCALING as a parameter because i'm checking to see what kind of scale is needed for a 'realistic' feel to a station. Its just an experiment to see what kind of stuff is actually viable for not only functionality but also aesthetic.  Firstly, if you have a dinky little dinghy and convert into a solar array, first of all its going to look absolutely silly, with a tiny little station sporting this HUUUUGE array of solar cells. Thats... silly and lets face it very unrealistic. Immersion is key. Secondly, as the data suggests crew size is important because depending on the factory you build the crew you need usually jumps up 50-100 people. Crew cap is vital and if you build stations with defensive capabilities (whenever the devs add that in to the game anyway) crew cap is even more important, making scale a factor in the data because more crews quarters are required.

 

As for your questions:

Things i'm curious about include:

1. If your logged out and another player is in a sector with your factory, do your crew draw a salary from your credit pool while that sector is active, even though your not in game?

2. If other players purchase from your factories, do you get paid in credits for the transactions? 

3. When logging out and giving orders to "guard this position" to sentry ships in the area of your factories, will they protect your factory chain for you will your logged out?

 

I'm afraid i cannot answer this. I'm too much of a coward to play multiplayer, so i cant provide answers. If you can recommend servers that are PvE only and active, please do i'd love to give it a shot.

 

As for the last question, i dont know but it seems like a sound thing to do so we can only hope that its the case.