Colony management
Colonies are the method in which players interact with planets via Planetary Interaction. Colonies are established by procuring a Command Center the same type as the planet, and landing it on the planet. Doing so will allow you to build other buildings, and link them together for the purpose of mining the raw resources of the planet and producing goods from them.
Overview
High-level review of managing multiple planets.
Colony Types
Colonies at a high level can be grouped into a few different types, though by no means does this limit players to only aim for these setups. Experiment to your heart's content!
Strip Mine
The simplest and most straightforward of the industrial ideology, just a ton of extractors with 1 or 2 storage facilities and a command center. Requires the least micromanagement, but does require reorienting the extractors with new deposits when the current one runs dry, for each extractor. If you use the slower/longer deposits then this setup could run for at least day or two without attention.
Note: The output of this colony may (total stab in the dark - confirm / comment?) strain the capacity of your Command Center to launch rockets with the raw materials, due to the sheer quantity. A Launchpad would cut into productivity, however. This may make the pure Strip Mine colony a rarity versus the similar Mining Complex colony type.
Mining Complex
Generally the same as a Strip Mine, but with one or more level 1 production buildings thrown in. Hooks the extractors to storage or directly to processors and produces tier one products instead of exporting the raw materials directly. This can be done with a single colony on a single planet, and is probably what most non-dedicated PI-ers will go into, if they don't want to bother shuttling materials from colony to colony to further production. Requires the same attentiveness as a Strip Mine, with the added bonus of dealing with production plants, schematics, more complicated routing, and as such, giving it a tad steeper learning curve.
Since the goal is to convert most if not all raw material to tier one products, the quantity of goods to export is substantially lower than a plain strip mine, and the m3 is likewise lower. This way a Launchpad could likely be avoided. You may have to include storage facilities in the logistics chain to not waste materials due to occupied processors.
Factory Complex
This colony type relies on input from the market or other colonies and as such requires the inclusion of a Launchpad. It will likely be just one planet in a longer chain owned by a single player (or group of cooperating players), though it could also be a standalone turning one product made from market materials into a more profitable market product. Extractors could be added for additional profit, but may eat into the needs for the processors that make up the colony's primary purpose.
High-Tech Composite Plant
This colony is specific to tier four (and maybe five?) products that require both tier one and tier three products. To cut down on logistics, this colony is established on a barren or temperate planet with the raw material for the tier one product component of the desired target product abundantly available. Extractors feed tier one processors that produce that component in-place, and a Launchpad imports the required tier three components for the High-tech processor.
Full Chain System
Multiple colonies built expressly to complement each other make up a full production chain. There are many variations possible, but maybe some more interesting ones can be put here sometime.
Building Types
Market interaction
Stuff on the market
Moving goods
Maybe move the renamed section from the main page here? Was just renamed to Interplanetary Logistics. Could alternatively have a brief intro on the front page and then be linked to this section on this page.
Player cooperatives
Hippies in space. On planets. In space.
Colony Layouts
Post effective colony layouts here, with classification as to its goal, and, if possible, a cropped picture of the colony layout.
When designing the layouts, note that PINs in the arms can be linked together and only 1 link sent back to the main colony rather than needing to directly link to the destination PIN (eg having a bunch of extractors off away from the command center can be linked one to another, and then only one link goes to the command centre). However, you can only setup a route that makes up to 6 hops.
Also mention the trade-offs between building a link back to your main colony or eating the import/export taxes, CPU/power costs of a launchpad, and lack of automation if you have an isolated sub-colony over on the other side of a very large planet. This is of particular note for a pure mining colony where the export charge was a planned "sunk" cost that you have to pay either way.
- Elite Barren Planet Strip Mining Colony
File:Barrenext.jpg
This is a highsec Barren Planet. There are 18 extractors, 4 processors, 1 command center. 99.35% power grid usage. 5 extractors are for the 2 less abundant resources and 4 extractors are for the 2 more abundant resources. The extractors for a specific resources are separated from each other to reduce depletion of resources but they are group with 1 of each of the other resources to reduce the amount of links required. The extractor clusters are placed where resources overlap. All extractors route resources directly to command center where they are rerouted to processors. The placement of extractors and links were designed so that all resources could reach command center without exceeding waypoint maximums. The processed materials are sent to Command Center for storage until they can be removed from planet. You can remove an extractor from your most abundant resource and add an advanced processor.
