Production

Are you ready to join the capitalist swine that the Workers Union despises?

## General

### Obtaining stations

From the outset of the game, you have the opportunity to buy a few of the stations you dock at. The reality is that you won't have the capital in those early days, because even the least expensive stations go for around 30K credits. But not too far into the main campaign you'll be given Bastille station.

Just because a station is buyable doesn't mean you need to buy it quickly. You can wait as long as you want and the station will still be buyable. Nobody else will buy it and it won't become unbuyable later.

Once you buy a station, it's yours for keeps. There's no way to sell it. Don't buy a station that's one of your major suppliers without thinking it through. The current owners have their own automatic supply lines set up, and you'll lose those when you buy the station. You'll constantly need to keep the station supplied once you buy it, and if you buy too many stations (or the wrong stations) you could find you don't have enough time to keep your production empire running smoothly. Automated transports (see below) can help if you own stations that produce the needed supplies, but they have their own limitations.

### Types of stations and products

There are three stages of product. Industrial products are made from refined materials, which are produced from natural resources. The production of natural resources can only occur at ground bases that have access to those resources. Refining always occurs at ground bases, often at a ground base that is producing one or both of the required natural resources. The manufacture of industrial products always occurs at space and aerial stations. The one exception is that production of nutrients from water (by farming) can occur anywhere.

Any station can also have one or more habitats. A habitat provides living space for 300 people, and consumes nutrients and oxygen. Habitats don't seem to be important, but the game places one at almost every station that it provides. A habitat can produce 50 credits every 12 hours of travel time, but that's chicken feed, especially considering the cost of the nutrients and oxygen.

### Production facilities

You can add new production facilities at any base or station that you own (appropriate to the station type), up to a limit of thirteen facilities (fifteen for disc-style space stations). Building a new facility typically requires between twenty and forty ship parts, which will cost you perhaps 5000 to 10000 credits to buy.

There are never any undiscovered or unexploited resources at ground bases. You won't be able to build an extractor or mine for a resource that the site didn't already have an extractor or mine for.

One production cycle occurs every 12 hours of travel time. If you're not traveling, nothing is being produced. Traveling at a leisurely speed will help get production numbers up without wasting your (the player's) time, but be sure the required supplies won't run short. Travel time only counts within the same star system. Whenever you leave through a wormhole, production (and automated transport) is paused until your return.

You can't enable or disable production. Each facility will run as long as it has the supplies that it needs and the warehouse has less than 100 units of the product. If two facilities at the same station are competing for a particular supply material, you can't force one facility to get the supply unless you're able to cut off a secondary supply to the other facility. For example, if you have a station that produces both space suits and medicine, you can shut off the medicine lab by depriving it of nutrients, but you can't shut off the space suit production to get more medicine because the space suit factory only needs chemicals. In some cases it can be useful to put a factory facility on a different station so that you can control its supply lines, even though it's less convenient. For example, putting a weapons factory at a different station from the ship parts (shipyard) module.

Given enough time, each production facility will reach its limit of 100 units in the warehouse and will pause operation (this assumes that inventory isn't being spirited away by automated transports, see below). Any supply material for that factory will then start accumulating in the warehouse. If the supply comes from the same station, the facility producing it will also pause when the warehouse reaches 100 units. A common example is a station that produces electronics which are used to produce hardware which in turn are used to produce space station parts. When the inventory of space station parts reaches 100, hardware will begin to stack up in the warehouse. Once the hardware inventory reaches 100, electronics will begin to stack up. This process usually experiences temporary disruptions when you sell off some product, probably to satisfy a Transport or Smuggle contract, but that's actually desirable because the whole point of producing products is to sell them (or use ship parts to build a new production facility).

It's usually prudent to resist overbuilding. *In the long run,* a single factory facility (on a space station) will produce enough product to satisfy the needs of even the largest star system. In the example above, a single electronics factory, a single hardware factory, and a single ship parts (shipyard) module are sufficient to provide all of the system's needs for those items, after enough time has passed for factories to start pausing. The major point is that although your station won't say that it's producing electronics and hardware, once the shipyard module has hit its limit, hardware inventory will build and then electronics inventory will build. All of that *does* take quite a long time, and if you're in a hurry and don't mind giving up the ship parts needed, go ahead and build extra factory facilities.

For ground bases, the situation is a bit different, because you're probably your own biggest (or only) customer. You'll want to produce enough chemicals and metal parts to keep your factories running. Metal parts tend to be in highest demand, because electronics, hardware, and ship parts all require them. Chemicals are needed for electronics, but also for space suits and medicines if you're making those. It helps that a single extractor or mine already produces multiple units of its resource. You can run three forges from a single oxygen extractor and a single metals mine, and two chemical plants from a single water purifier and a single mineral mine.

You can demolish a refining or factory facility, or a farm or habitat, to make room for a new facility. Natural resource extractors, including mines, cannot be demolished. Demolishing a facility, farm, or habitat doesn't give you anything back but it also doesn't cost anything.

### Automated transport routes

When you own multiple stations, automated transport routes (no cost) are created for each product demanded at one of your stations and produced at another. These transports are set inactive by default.

Automated transports don't travel in straight lines that could possibly run through the star. Instead, they follow a Type I Hohmann transfer orbit. That trajectory will stay between the planetary orbits of the supply and demand stations, and it can become very lengthy if it has to wrap way out around the star. Don't be deceived by the apparent closeness of two stations when they're on opposite sides of the star.

The automated transports can be a weak link in the logistics chain. Only one ship can be in transit on a particular route (fortunately, the return trip isn't a concern). The ships are slow and can't carry a lot of cargo. Consequently, cargo throughput on some routes might be limited, especially over longer distances. Automated transports also are subject to predation by pirates.

On the other hand, automated transports can bleed the supply site dry when the distance is reasonably short, because they have top priority for inventory. That can be a problem if the supply site needs some of the carried material for its own use. Unless inactivated, transports continue to run as long as they can obtain enough product. The automated transports usually will prevent the supply facility from reaching the 100-unit pause level. Automated transports also don't respect the 100-unit limit at the destination site and can produce huge inventory levels if they're moving more than is needed.

Automated transports certainly are useful, but they need to be monitored to be sure that they're moving enough material but not too much. There are advantages to taking care of logistics yourself most of the time.

## Solar System

The stations initially available for purchase in the Solar System are:

* Bastille (Belt, space, granted free). Has a farm that takes water and produces nutrients, an electronics factory that takes chemicals and metal parts and produces electronics, and a shipyard that takes hardware and metal parts and produces ship parts.
* Hera (Jupiter, ground). Has mines for minerals and metal ores, a forge that takes oxygen and converts metal ores into metal parts, a uranium refinery that takes uranium and produces nuclear fuel, and a habitat.
* Pitagoras (Jupiter, space). Has an electronics factory, an engineering module, and a shipyard that together consume chemicals and metal parts to produce ship parts.
* Gray Matter (Earth, space). Has a spacesuit factory that turns chemicals into spacesuits, a shipyard that turns hardware and metal parts into ship parts, and a habitat.
* Titan (Saturn, space). Has an electronics factory that takes chemicals and metal parts and produces electronics, and a shipyard that takes hardware and metal parts and produces ship parts.
* Galileo (Uranus, space). Has a shipyard that turns hardware and metal parts into ship parts, and a habitat.

Two more buyable stations are added at the completion of the main campaign:

* Copernicus (Uranus, ground). Has a uranium mine and a habitat.
* Pegasus (Saturn, space). Has an electronics factory and an armaments factory that together consume chemicals and metal parts to produce weapons, and a habitat.

Vertical integration is going to require owning a ground base, and initially there's only one available. Buying Hera should be a priority for the budding capitalist. After the main campaign is complete, Copernicus opens in the Uranus system, but it's not conveniently located and produces only uranium.

The only sources of oxygen and water in the Solar System are on Earth, and those stations aren't for sale. You'll need to buy your oxygen and water from them and haul it to your own stations.

It's tempting to add an engineering module to Bastille to fill the gap between the electronics factory and the shipyard. On the other hand, Pitagoras already has that gap filled, and it's in the same planetary system as Hera. The short travel path between Hera and Pitagoras makes for an improved logistics chain from the automated transports. There's still a problem, though. Pirates tend to attack your transports if they think you're too far away to stop them.

## Other star systems

After you've completed the main campaign, you're able to buy stations in other star systems.

The star systems operate separately. You can haul cargo through a wormhole, and your credits are good everywhere, but otherwise there are no commerce connections between the stars. It looks like this is designed to compensate for the game having only one game save slot, by letting you create up to 54 different and unconnected businesses within the one game save.

Time passes only in the star system that you're traveling in. When you leave that system, production is paused and any transport ships that are in transit stop moving.

There's a lot of similarity between the star systems. A *typical* star system might have:

* Three or four planets and two or three asteroid belts
* One of the planets is a Jupiter or Uranus type
* Four buyable stations, no two in the same planetary system
* One buyable station produces 4x Oxygen and 4x Water (unlike the Solar System, oxygen and water are readily available), initially owned by Theta
* One buyable station produces 4x Water and 3x Metal ores, initially owned by Concordia
* One buyable station produces Space suits, initially owned by Theta
* One buyable station produces Electronics, initially owned by Concordia
* Almost all of the ground bases, including the buyable ones, are on asteroids or minimoons
* Two permanent pirate locations: an outpost and a depot (both are unguarded except for point-defense)

Don't focus on the similarities between the star systems. Focus on their *differences.* Sometimes the differences are minor, and sometimes they're large. Alpha Centauri (the first system through the wormhole at the bottom of the Solar System map) is a paradise compared to most of the other star systems, with eight planets and some beautiful ground bases. In contrast, Sirius (a few jumps away from Alpha Centauri) has only a single planet and no buyable space stations, so you'll have to content yourself with producing raw resources and refined materials if you accept the challenge to set up shop there.

Do your market research for any system you're considering as a business opportunity. Is there somewhere nearby you can pick up the materials you'll need, and somewhere to sell your products?

Other stations may become buyable as you travel around within a system other than the Solar System, but it's not clear if that will happen until you've already bought at least one station in the system. Some new stations will start springing up, too, and those may be buyable. When considering buying a station outside of the Solar System, keep in mind that other stations may become available shortly. Settling for second-best just because it's currently available might prove to be a mistake. Also, building up a ground base is usually unnecessary unless it's got a great location.

The two pirate bases -- a depot and an outpost -- don't have any direct function, and no pirates will be found at either of them. They merely occupy spots that other stations could use. If one is located in a spot where you'd rather see a station, you can destroy it. If there are other empty spots, it will probably reappear in one of those. Most of the time you can ignore them, but in particular the Sirius system has so few stations that it might be helpful to make room for one or two more.

The automated transports don't seem to be quite so subject to pirate attacks outside of the Solar System. Something that might be confusing at first is that the list of transport lines shows not only the ones in this system, but also those lines in other systems that have transports frozen in transit. When you're going to go work in a different system for a while, you might want to deactivate all transport lines in the current system and wait for any ships to reach their destinations. That's just for appearances, though.

If you decide to set up shop in a fairly distant star system, you might want to weigh the relative costs of fuel and repairs for bringing your transporter ships to the new system, versus the cost of simply buying new transporters there.

Once you begin operating in more than one additional star system, you should start keeping track of the names of the stations you leave ships parked at, and which star systems they're in. When you look to see where your ships are parked, the game will tell you the station names, but *not* the system names. A similar but less troublesome problem occurs in the transport lines list, which will show transports that are frozen in transit in another system, but doesn't say which system is involved.

### Related pages

* Ground Bases
* Space and Aerial Stations
* To The Stars
* Notable Star Systems