Colony management: Difference between revisions

Much like the Mining Complex, this colony seeks to process raw materials into exportable products. However, the goal of this colony is to produce at least Tier 2 products from a single planet's resources. Coolant from a Gas Planet, for example. Extractors must be split so as to generate an equal amount of each raw material needed. Basic Processors then convert the raw into Tier 1 products. Finally an Advanced Processor is needed to create the Tier 2 product. This colony requires a fair bit of work since raw materials must be located in close proximity to each other and in sufficient quantity to support the multi-stage production. Layout of links becomes critical to conserve CPU and yet be able to handle the flow of materials from all the extractors. Given the need to manage so many products flowing through so many processors, it is often wise to build a launchpad in the center of the complex to serve as both a storage facility and a clearing house for finished goods, ready for export.

With a resource-rich planet and Command Center Upgrade to III or (ideally) IV, it is fairly easy to build two extractor control units and enough extraction heads to feed four basic industry facilities producing two different P1 commodities, which will in turn feed two advanced industry facilities producing one P2 refined commodity. This is an effective way of producing PI materials given the relatively low volume of stuff to move around and the overall low taxes paid. Each advanced industry facility producing 5 P2 commodity per hour, such a planet will produce 7200 P2 products per month (about 10000 m3/month).

These operations must be done in the system and undocked, and this exposes you to risk, which you should minimize by doing most of them at a safe spot, preferably cloaked or tethered. There are two ways to get goods off a planet (Customs Office, and Launch Container) and one way to get goods down to the planet (Customs Office). Only the actual transfer of goods is done near the "Customs Office (Planet Name) [Owner Name]", which you will have to add to your overview. The Customs Office is like any other container, in that you must be within 2,500 meters to transfer things into and out of it. However it is like your personal hangar in that things placed in it can only be seen by you.  However, unlike your personal hangar, it has a capacity of only 35,000 m3.

The Launchpad has the greater cost up front, but is far superior to the CC and exports for 2/3 of the cost. It can also launch far larger amounts, and is the only way to import stuff on to the planet. However, keep in mind that you are charged 50% of the export fee to import items to your launchpad. Consider the costs carefully before setting up a multi-planet production chain. Player corporations now own all high-sec customs offices and can set any tax rate they wish—if you have an large factory system making Level 4 items and need to import and export this needs to be kept in mind.

That being said, the resource distribution on each planet combined with the items required to make those end items means that no single end item can be produced on a single planet. In addition, the limit of planets that each player may have is 6 and most Tier 4 items take around 7-10 planets to complete a production chain. Please note that even if you were able to effectively produce the nescessary Tier 4 items by yourself on up to 6 separate planets, the odds are that other players are doing that too! Higher supply means lower demand which means less money for you. Therefore, the best thing to do is to start a cooperative with your friends!  

#Next, find those resources that are going to be "problem children". These are the ones that take resources from two or more planets to manufacture or that only occur in low concentrations. Then, set up some planets to extract and refine those resources. Some of these can also be set up with a single Advanced Industry facility to recieve items from other planets to make the Tier 3 items. 

#Finally, set up a single Temperate planet with a High Tech Industry facility to fabricate the final product. Dump all the Tier 3 items your cooperative has made into the launch pad and route it to the facility and route the output back to the launch pad.

In a buffered setup where the ECU feeds into the Launchpad (or other storage building), you will not lose any raw materials if the BIFs cannot keep up with the extractors.  As long as the field produces more then the BIFs can convert, a small surplus of raw material will build up in the storage location.  Later on, when field production drops, the BIFs will catch back up and convert that surplus.

*Open up the Extractor Control Unit. What we need to achieve here is a {{co|coral|program output higher than 12,000 Units per hour to achieve maximum efficiency}}. You longer that you set the Extraction Area Size (This is the amount of time that the planet will run for) the less the per hour output will be. The more Extractor Head Units that you use, the higher the per hour output will be. Do this for both Extractor Control Units, making sure you are extracting the required P0 resource. Play around here, see what works, but generally 4 Extractor Heads and a 1 day Extraction Area Size should be more than enough to achieve maximum efficiency in NullSec. Always try to aim for as much as you can per hour though, as this will leave a surplus supply of P0 resources in your Storage Facilities that will allow the planet to continue to produce P2 if you are a couple of hours late to reset it, or just forget entirely.

*Now is the tricky bit. We need to create routes to ensure that our products flow correctly between the various Industry Facilities and and up as P2 commodities in our Launchpad. Unfortunately this cannot really be shown with images.

We will assume that, after setting up the above 5 times, that by the time someone has trained Command Center Upgrades V that they have a solid understanding of how the process works.

Command Center Upgrades V allows us to add 2 additional Basic Industry Facilities and 1 addition Advanced Industrial Facility. This will increase the productivity of the Planet by 33%. To achieve maximum efficiency, the Extractor Control Units will need to be running at 18,000 Units per Hour to keep up with the increased demand. You will likely need to drop to 3 Extractor Heads on one resource to have enough space to fit the Advanced Industrial Facility. With some re-positioning of the Extractor Control Units closer to the main site, you can free up some fitting space by reducing the lengths of the links between the Extractor Control Units and the Storage Facility, which should allow you to place that fourth Extractor Head back out. It takes a little effort to get the positioning right and can be fiddly, but at an increase of 33% it definitely is worth the added effort.  

An example of a P2/P3 production world with (3) launchpads surrounded by (6) AIFs (Advanced Industrial Facilties).  Each cluster is designed so that you can load about 10k m3 of product into the Launchpad and the (6) AIFs around that Launchpad will convert it into the next level of product.  This could be P1 to P2 or P2 to P3 steps.  In general, a setup like this will allow you to queue up about 54 hours of material for conversion into the next tier.  If you are doing a (3) input P3, however, this will only let you run for about 36 hours.  You could use all three clusters to do the same conversion, or you could convert 3 different sets of products at the same time. Setup cost is 4.2M for the Command Center plus about 7.2M ISK for the (18) AIFs, (6) LPs and the links.

Here is a complicated set up that utilizes a variety of P1, P2, and P3 materials to consistently make a P4 (this P4 uses 3 P3s as its input). In the center is the HTIF being constantly supplied by the surrounding AIFs (16).   

In this particular setup, one P3 is purchased or produced from another planet to cut down on the total needed production plants. Supplying this P3 allows the HTIF to be constantly supplied with its three requirements using only 4 AIFs (1 P3 from storage, 2 P3s produced using 2 AIFs each for a total of 4 AIFs).   

The remaining outer AIFs are used to supply the P2s to the P3 AIFs (the P3s running only require 2 inputs). Based on producing all of the P2s for the AIFs making P3s, it would require 4 AIFs per P2 product, this means an additional 16 AIFs would normally be needed. Since this setup is running off of a level 5 command center, the Power and CPU limits how many AIFs that can be built. To balance for this, one P2 product is provided, cutting the needed P2 AIFs down to 12.  

The outer AIFs are producing the P2s (4 AIFs per product) to the inner plants. This has a leftover 2 AIFs that can be used for side manufacturing (I use it to produce surplus P2s from my extra materials, covering some of the commodities I buy).