[TC] Help with booze and wackie weed complex.

[wgentry99]

Ok I figured i'd try out the illegal complexes that i've heard of from a few post and o boy they weren't kidding when they said there would be a traffic jam from the amount of traffic. So far I have 2 large silicon mines: 1 55 and 1 22, 2 L Bliss Places, 3 L Cahoona Bakeries, 3 L Cattle Ranches, 3 L Crystal Fabs, 2 L Dream Farms, 1 XL Solar Plant, 2 L Space Fuel, and 2 L Wheat Farms. Ok now for my question, I am having a problem keeping a decent stock to sell, too many Wood Stocks and Frat Parties going on I guess, it's gotten to where each freighter is only taking a tiny fraction of their cargo holds every trip, has anyone prefected a complex that will produce enough product that will somewhat be able to keep up with demand? I'd like to have someone's advice on the number of factories so i won't approach the project blind.

[Deadbeat_Spinn]

A lot and I mean a lot. In one of my older games I had two 40 station complexes set up in Avarice and they couldn't keep up with demand. Energy was supplied by the NPC's so I had a 20/20 station setup of Bliss/Dream and Fuel/Wheat (all were L sized). I even let the two get fully loaded with product and then opened up to NPC trade......within 15min both were completely empty.


IIRC people have made massive Weed/Fuel complexes where the station number was in the 100's and the complexes still couldn't keep up with demand.

[Cataclysm Effect]

A lot and I mean a lot. In one of my older games I had two 40 station complexes set up in Avarice and they couldn't keep up with demand. Energy was supplied by the NPC's so I had a 20/20 station setup of Bliss/Dream and Fuel/Wheat (all were L sized). I even let the two get fully loaded with product and then opened up to NPC trade......within 15min both were completely empty.


IIRC people have made massive Weed/Fuel complexes where the station number was in the 100's and the complexes still couldn't keep up with demand.

By that point I don't see how you could have any money problems at all. All of my complexes are closed and I stopped auto-transferring funds and just use them as piggy banks. Booze/Weed is great for money but Ore/food/energy is great for the economy as a whole.

[Wargod.]

I hadn't even thought of this. I know what my next complex is going to do.

What sector have you set this up in? Pirate or Race sectors? Do the authorities have, uh, issues with this sort of activity?

[MadMan983]

try the unknown sector betwen new income and montalar, thats where my weed megaplex will be

[Bobucles]

The important thing is to "recycle" your illicit goods early on. Scan ships as they return to normal space, liberate the goods, and return it to your complex. The various races will love you for policing, and you profit from selling your goods twice!

[pjknibbs]

I can't help feeling that there are better ways to make money personally than just ripping off your illegal goods customers, Bobucles--just searching round the place for second-hand ship bargains would probably earn you more per hour!

[happy halfling]

The important thing is to "recycle" your illicit goods early on. Scan ships as they return to normal space, liberate the goods, and return it to your complex. The various races will love you for policing, and you profit from selling your goods twice!

I'm also looking into building a booze / weed plex at the moment. I've looked at this sector. It has a total of 129 silicon across 7 roids. By using a complex calculator, I can get a plex that runs a total of 7 weed and 6 booze (L) factories.

My only concern is this leaves all of the ore (144 in 8 roids) unused and no way left to power any factory using them other than buying the energy in.

Does anyone know of a good sector for a weed / booze plex that does not contain much (or any) ore?

And, for information, here's the plex I was thinking about. It's broken up into 3 stages. Initial cost is 34M, then a further 73M for the second stage, followed by a final stage costing 76M.

-------------
Stage 1

2 x SPP M (Boron)
1 x Crystal L (Boron)
1 x BoFu L (Boron)
1 x BioGas L (Boron)
1 x Bliss L (Teladi)
1 x Dream L (Teladi)
1 x Fuel L (Argon)
1 x Wheat L (Argon)
3 x Si Mine L (Teladi) (Yields: 12, 6, 5)
11 x CCK (Boron)

12 Stations
34 Million

-------------
Stage 2 (stations to add)

1 x SPP XL (Boron)
2 x Crystal L (Boron)
1 x Crystal M (Boron)
2 x BoFu L (Boron)
1 x BoFu M (Boron)
2 x BioGas L (Boron)
1 x BioGas M (Boron)
3 x Bliss L (Teladi)
3 x Dream L (Teladi)
2 x Fuel L (Argon)
2 x Wheat L (Argon)
2 x Si Mine L (Teladi) (Yields: 55,
22 CCK (Boron)

22 Stations
73 Million

-------------
Final Stage (stations to add)

1 x SPP XL (Boron)
2 x Crystal L (Boron)
2 x BoFu L (Boron)
2 x BioGas L (Boron)
3 x Bliss L (Teladi)
3 x Dream L (Teladi)
3 x Fuel L (Argon)
3 x Wheat L (Argon)
2 x Si Mine L (Teladi) (Yields: 22, 21)
21 CCK (Boron)

21 Stations
76 Million

-------------
Final Plex
2 x SPP XL (Boron)
2 x SPP M (Boron)
5 x Crystal L (Boron)
1 x Crystal M (Boron)
5 x BoFu L (Boron)
1 x Bofu M (Boron)
5 x Bio Gas L (Boron)
1 x Bio Gas M (Boron)
7 x Si Mine L (Teladi)
7 x Bliss L (Teladi)
7 x Dream L (Teladi)
6 x Fuel L (Argon)
6 x Wheat L (Argon)

55 Stations
183 Million

[Kor'ah]

Don't bother with the full SPP loop. Seriously, just have enough SPPs to run the complex and buy the crystals off the NPC market. The profit is still large and there will be a point in time when you are trying to figure out what to do with 2-3 thousand crystals per hour.

Farnham's Legend Special

Code: Select all

10x Bliss Place L
10x Dream Farm L
10x Space Fuel Distillery L
10x Wheat Farm L
2x Solar power Plant XL

That will make 2.9M profit per hour buying crystals at near AVG. When you are supplying your own crystals it goes up 5.1M per hour. NPC crystal market is good for over 2k crystals per hour at the start of a new game.

Although, these days I would rather spend that starting NPC crystal budget on a CAG run weapons complex that's both cheaper and earns more profits than booze/weed. I just go where the money is.

[Black_Shade]

The important thing is to "recycle" your illicit goods early on. Scan ships as they return to normal space, liberate the goods, and return it to your complex. The various races will love you for policing, and you profit from selling your goods twice!

I'm also looking into building a booze / weed plex at the moment. I've looked at this sector. It has a total of 129 silicon across 7 roids. By using a complex calculator, I can get a plex that runs a total of 7 weed and 6 booze (L) factories.

My only concern is this leaves all of the ore (144 in 8 roids) unused and no way left to power any factory using them other than buying the energy in.

Really, since you can't build these complexes in race sectors, not using the ore roids isn't a huge problem. You can just build a comlex that does use ore roids in a safer sector (hopefully near an EQ dock for selling). Since booze complexes are built in pirate/unknown sectors, its not a huge deal. The profit loss can be large, missiles (the best profit margin) are nearly double that of a booze/weed complex, but again you're going to be in pirate sectors where shipping your products can be a pain, where as with booze they come to you.

Heres a crazy complex in Savage Spur (uknown off empires edge, near yaki space). This probably shouldnt be a booze complex though since Savage Spur is a very safe sector if you havent pissed off the yaki. Also, if you're working on the hub plot this is a great sector for crystal making- netting you ~6000 crystals/hr if you ditch all the booze/weed/additional SPP not need to power the fabs. So you could initially make it for your hub, and then switch it over to booze or missiles once you're done.

http://tiny.cc/4cww0


A missile complex here instead of booze will net you 41 Million an hour instead of 25.

[EnderIII]

I have a few chip complexes left over from the hub plot, and I have more money then I know what to do with.

Is booze and weed even more profitable then chips?

[dbrowdy]

I've read a bit about these complexes and read about other more profitable ventures so I decided to start with 1MJ and Mosquito missiles and see how that goes. Mosquito missiles sell...slowly but I never fill up. 1MJ shields sell within seconds of completing a batch. I currently have 3 1MJ shield factories in a plex that can't keep em in stock. I'm on a huge roid so I think I can support like 9? and I guarantee they'll sell as fast as I can make em.

They're higher margins than booze/weed apparently so if you're in it for the money (rather than role playing) I'd say you're better off going hi-tech. My $0.02.

[Black_Shade]

I've read a bit about these complexes and read about other more profitable ventures so I decided to start with 1MJ and Mosquito missiles and see how that goes. Mosquito missiles sell...slowly but I never fill up. 1MJ shields sell within seconds of completing a batch. I currently have 3 1MJ shield factories in a plex that can't keep em in stock. I'm on a huge roid so I think I can support like 9? and I guarantee they'll sell as fast as I can make em.

They're higher margins than booze/weed apparently so if you're in it for the money (rather than role playing) I'd say you're better off going hi-tech. My $0.02.

You can do both, as the complexes go in very different sectors. It's also very easy to saturate the mosquito missile market- 2 factories will do it in most cases. I currently have 8 shield/missile complexes set up across the universe. Basic format is 8 1 MJ shield factories, 2 mosquito missile factories, and 2 L bakeries/ranches. The shields sell well... the missiles not so much- they are always capped out once the EQ dock fills up, even selling at no profit to me. It's also possible to saturate the shield market if you go much more than what I have there. The equivalent 2L booze/1L weed complex only makes 3/4 of what the shield/missile complex does, but you can't really saturate that market.