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Once a station is built or upgraded, it's production lines can work straight away if you manually supply materials. However, for it to really work for you, it needs a Manager and ships assigned to the Manager (see below). The Manger will begin to advertise Buy and Sell orders for wares using a budget that you can define the size of within the Manger's Detail Menu. Those trade deals may be fulfilled by NPC traders, your manual traders or civilian ships that you assign to the Station Manager (recommended to reduce the chance of a ware shortage stopping production). Production Modules will often need multiple types of cargo (Bulk, Container, Energy and/or Liquid) in order to function smoothly, assigned ships offering relevent types.
Station construction
Regardless of the faction's economy type (e.g. Albion with Food Rations vs Argon with BoFu), all All stations are built from the same a very similar collection of wares:
- Reinforced Metal Plating
- Fusion ReactorsBio-Optic Wiring
- Energy Cells
- Food Ration
- Bio-Optic Wiring or Plasma Pumps (Albion/DeVries/Home of Light vs Argon economies)
- Optional surface elements (weapons and Force Field Projectors)
Civilian ships working for stations
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