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Primary Resources section shows all the resources needed for production and their current stock level. The number underneath in \ [Brackets\] is the required amount per cycle. If its red, it means there are not enough resources available to start production
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The upgrade progress will then be displayed with the remaining time left. The factory will not produce anything while the upgrade is in progress. Once the upgrade is complete, the factory production will start again
3 Running a Station
You have a number of options available to run your station, the options available will depend on the type of station, ie if its a Factory, Complex, Dock or your Headquarters.
3.1 Adjust Station Parameters
The Adjust Station Parameters menu is used to control your factories settings as well as transferring wares between factories and docked ships.
3.1.1 Transferring Wares
To Transfer wares to a ship, you need to access the "Adjust station parameters" menu via a docked ship. If you access it directly from the station, it will only transfer to your own ship, if you are docked, or wont give the option to transfer at all if you are not docked.
The Top of the Menu will display the products/resources stock, this is where you transfer between the selected ship
The "Stock" level is the amount of wares currently in the stations hold, and the "Ship" level is the amount in the Ship
The Transfer Bar will be displayed at the bottom
Here we are transferring 37 units to the ship. You can transfer wares back and forth between the ship and station.
3.1.2 Single Factory Settings
The Products and Primary Resources section shows the stock level and allows transferring to a ship. These only appear if you have a selected ship.
- Product Selling Price Setting
This displays the product (only 1 for single factories).
"Avg Cr" is the Average Cost of the ware, all wares have an average cost, generally its best to buy wares below its average, and sell them above.
"Cr" is the current price you are selling at. Any ships that dock to buy your product will pay this price. You ships working for the factory will use this price as the minimum value (although will attempt to get a higher price if possible)
"Jumps" this is the number of jumps where a station is available to buy at the price you set. Showing "None" means there are no stations in range willing to pay the price.
NOTE: the Jumps will only include stations known to you, and doesn't take into account stations that might be blocked via the Blacklist.
The Trade bar at the bottom is used to change the current price between its minimum and maximum price
The number in [Brackets] shows the current production cost. This is how much it costs to produced, based on the current price of your resources. So setting a price above this will make a profit.
- Primary Resource Buying Price Limit
Similar to the Product Selling price (above), this is the price that resources are bought at. And ships docking to sell their wares will receive this price per ware.
- Minimum Storage
The Minimum Storage value is used to keep a certain amount of products. If the amount of available products is below the minimum storage, then they will not be sold. They will however be used by your own ships when they want to resupply, but not if they are trading.
So if you set the value to "100", and you have 110 stock level, only 10 items will be buyable.
This allows you keep some wares, like Energy Cells, available for when your ships need to resupply, or if you want to keep a certain amount of wares and only sell the excess
- Fund Transfer
This allows you to transfer funds between the station and your personal account. This allows you to give the station money so it can buy its resources, or take the profit so you can use it for something else.
All ships working for the station will used the stations account instead of your personal ones, so you may want to make sure it always has money available if it needs to buy things
- Maximum Jump Range
The 2 jump range options allow you to set a range that ships working for the station will trade at. This only applies to your ships working for the station, and doesn't include NPC ships that are coming to buy/sell wares.
You can set a different range for buying and selling, and allows you to keep your ships away from hostile sectors by limiting their range
- Other races can Trade
When disabled, this prevents any trade ships from docking and trading with the station, this includes some of your own ships like the Trade Command Software MK3. But any ships assigned to the station will continue to work
3.1.3 Dock Settings
You can also build your own Trade and Equipment docks, that allow buying and selling of wares, as well as for storage.
Unlike factories, these stations do not produce any wares
They also allow you to transfer any wares from your ship to the station, which will then be added to the stations available list. Transferring is done in the same ware as factories, only they are displayed in different categories.
The common options work the same as for factories, so see above for more info.
As well as storing wares, you can also get upgrades and equipment (Equipment Docks only)
These do cost money to apply however, the same cost as if you bought them at NPC docks, and are purchased in the same way.
NOTE: Equipment needs to be unlocked via Diplomacy before they are available.
The main difference between docks and factories, is that you have control over the individual wares. This is found in the "Tradable Settings"
Select the ware and open the settings to apply to each ware.
The "Ware Type" is how the station handles the ware.
- Tradable: This option makes wares both buyable and sellable and is the default setting. This also functions the same as in previous games
- Product: This option make the ware act as a product, IE, the station will only sell it, and not buy it
- Resource: This option makes the ware buyable, but will not sell the ware
- Storage: This option prevents trading of the ware at all, and keeps it in storage
The Price Settings works the same as for Factories, and controls the price your buy/sell at
The Minimum Storage only applies to wares set to "Tradeable" and "Product" and is the same for Factories
Due to how the Headquarters stores its wares, it will have an additional option called "Maximum Storage". This is because for normal docks, each ware has an independent storage, that is limited, and not effected by the storage of anything else.
The Headquarters on the other hand has a shared storage space, so when you add wares, it will reduces the available storage for all other wares. The Maximum Storage limits the maximum capacity so it works more like a normal dock (although the storage is still shared).
This can prevent the station filling up with just one ware leaving no room for anything else.
3.2 Station Command Console
Some additional control of the station is available via the ships command console. This includes some additional settings and the ability to run certain commands on the station.
This is found in the Advanced Submenu
The command slots allow you to select additional commands to run on the station. Each command needs a separate slot, and are mainly used to automate certain areas of the station. This includes things like the Station Manager, Automatic Money Transfer and Automatic Pricing.
The Configuration Options will depend on the type of station
Factory:
Dock/Headquarters:
The Factory Serial simply changes the name of the factory, so if you have multiple factories of the same type in the sector, you can tell them apart.
Don't show warnings will remove the flashing yellow warnings you receive when the factory is unable to produce anything
Add/Remove Available wares is only available on docks, and allow you to control the wares list on the factory, here you can add a new ware, or remove an existing one if the stock is empty.
Property Configuration
The Property Configuration is used to configure how the station is used in the Property Owned Menu, this allows you to Hide the station, set it to favourite so it appears in the Favourites Tab, or change the custom grouping. The custom grouping is only used when the Property Owned Menu is set to group via the Custom Groups.
Station Manager/Supply Stations
These are the settings used by the station manager (see Station Manager for more info)
Adjust Friend/Foe
This is the Friend/Foe settings, of how the station sees any faction ships.
3.3 Automating Station
While you can manually transfer wares, or rely on the NPC traders to buy/sell at the your stations, its often best to run your own ships instead and automatic the buying and selling of wares.
If you prefer, you can hand control over the station to the Station Manager, who will take control of the ships and buy/sell wares where needed. This however costs you wages for the station manager, and reduces the control you have over the station and ships.
3.3.1 Assigning Ships
If you prefer to maintain control yourself, you can assign ships and issue commands individually to keep the station running.
To assign a ship to the station, you need to set its homebase option in the ships command console.
Most of the Station Ship commands require a Homebase to be set before they can be used.
3.3.2 Buy/Sell Ware commands
The Buy and Sell ware commands are simply commands where you define the ware and the destination station to buy or sell at. These commands simply follow you orders and don't make any actual decisions themselves.
The ships requires the Trade Command Software MK1 to make use of these commands, and are found in the Trade Submenu in the ships command console
When selecting the command you need to choose the ware you wish to trade with, when using Buy Ware, only the resources/tradeable wares will display, and Sell ware only the products/tradeable wares will display
The Buy Ware section contains the options for the command.
- Repeat Indefinably: When set to "Yes" the ship will keep going back and forth until you manually stop the command. If set to "No" they will just make a single trip and return.
- Wait until Full: When set to "Yes", the ship will remain at the station and wait until it can fulfil the order, when set to "No" will buy whatever it can then return, even if it cant get the full amount.
- Amount: This allows you to set the amount you want to buy
- Fill Cargo: This will buy enough to fill the cargo bay of the ship, when set to wait, will not leave until the cargo bay is full and it cant fit anymore wares
- Needed: This will buy the amount thats needed by the station, upto the maximum of the cargo bay size. This depends how full the station currently is
- Custom: This will buy a set amount, you can set how much you want it to buy each time
The ship will only buy/sell if it meets the price set in the station options. So if its buying a resource, it will only buy if the price is at or below the value set in your stations settings. If its too expensive, it will either return, or wait until the price drops, depending on if you set the Wait until Full option.
Finally, the Destination Sectors shows all the know stations where the ware is available. Simply select the one you want it to goto and the command will start.
The stations highlighted in red are either not dockable, or are being blocked by you Global Blacklist
3.3.3 Buy/Sell ware for Best Price
Unlike the basic Buy/Sell commands, the Best Price commands dont require you to set the destination station, instead they will search the universe and select the best station themselves based on their Homebase's settings.
These commands require the Trade Command Software MK2 to be installed. These commands are easier to setup, and will generally work better, but gives you less control about where they will go.
If the Command is not available, then you dont have the required Software installed. You can view what each command needs in your Encyclopaedia.
You simple have to select the ware you want it to trade with. You can only trade with 1 ware per ship. So if you want to trade with all the wares in the station, you need a separate ship for each one.
If you assign multiple ships to the same ware, they will coordinate with each other so they dont end up all going to the same station. This cooridnation also extends to all your ships, regardless of what command they are running, this includes the Local/Universe Trader and Station Managed ships.
3.3.4 Jump Drives
To allow ships to get to their destinations quicker, they can make use of the Jumpdrive and to as close as possible to the destination and back again. They can only jump to actual gates (Not Trans-Orbital Accelerators), so they will just the closest sector with a gate and travel the rest of the way
To make use of Jumpdrives in the trade commands, you first need to install them along with the Navigation Command Software MK1 to your ships. You can make use of the TerraCorp Jumpdrive Installation Kits, which will install both the Jumpdrive and the Software to your ship.
Then you need to set the Advanced Jump Settings in your ships command console to enabled Auto Jump.
Setting Autojump to "Yes" will automatically use the jumpdrive to jump to the destination sector as long as there are enough energy cells
The Minimum Jump Range determines when the jumpdrive will be used, the sector must be at least as far as this otherwise the ship will fly instead. This is to allow faster ships to simply fly short distance rather than waste energy cells.
Setting it to 1 will jump to all but the current sector, and setting it to 0 will also jump in the same sector if another gate is closer.
You will also need to setup the Fuel Resupply settings so the ship can refuel itself. The buy/sell commands do refuel themselves automatically if the Autojump setting is enabled, but you can override the amount they will load if you want them to keep extra on board just incase (IE to used emergency jump, or if they need to change destination mid flight).
Setting this value to at least twice the jump radius of the Homebase, so they have enough fuel to get there and back. However, if the price changes before they arrive, they may find another station to goto before returning, therefore using extra energy.
3.4 Distributing Goods between your Stations
As well buying and sell wares, you can also move goods between your own stations, and essentially connect multiple stations together via ships rather than relying on NPC stations.
You can do this by assigning ships to your station and using either the basic Fetch/Deliver commands, or the more complex Trade Distribution Run.
The Fetch/Deliver commands work in the same way as the Buy/Sell ware commands, except they will use your own stations as the destination, and they will not use money, just loading and unloading wares between stations
These commands are also limited to 1 ware per ship.
The Trade Destruction Run command can setup a trade route between your stations, its more complex to setup, but allows you to moving multiple wares, between multiple stations without only a single ship.
3.5 Reports and Graphs
To help you run your stations, there are a number of reports and graphs available to see how your station is doing
3.5.1 Account Transaction Report
The Account Transaction Report will display all the money coming into and going out of the station account, so you can see where the money might be going to.
3.5.2 Trade Reports
Trade Reports can be found in the Reports Menu
Every trade made by the station will be added to reports depending on the settings.
There is the Global report that contains all the trades, and individual reports, that will contain a separate report for each trade that's made
Automatically use homebased ship reports: When this is set on, then any ships that are homebased to the station will add to the stations reports, instead of to their own reports.
This option allows you to combine all the trading into the same report regardless if its the station, or the ships that made the trade
Enabled Reporting: This option will allow you to enable the various reports:
- No: Disabled, saves no reports
- Global: Only saves to the global report
- Individual: Creates individual reports for each trade
- All: Creates Individual reports, and stores them in the global report
The Global Report option will open the current global report.
All the individual reports will then display in the Reports section, where you can select each one to view or delete.
The Report will show all the wares bought, and their price, as well as all the wares sold.
If its the global report, then each trade will add to the existing report
And individual reports will create a new report for each trade, so will only list the wares bought/sold in a single trade
NOTE: selecting each ware allows you to jump to the ware page in the encyclopedia
The Combined price combines the bought and sold wares together to display the profit of each ware
The options allow you to choose what will actually be included in the report display. This does not remove the wares from the report itself, it only filters what is being displayed.
But the total profit is based on what's currently being displayed rather than the whole report. So you can exclude certain things to see what the profit is like without them included.
The Exclude option will exclude a number of special wares, and the Filter options can filter different types of wares.
Your Empire Trade report works in the same way, but includes everything across your whole empire, so all ships and stations will report to the Empire trade report as well as their own. Even if the reports are disabled for the station, they will still add to your overall empire report.
3.5.3 Graphs
There are a number of graphs available to display
The options under "Compare Stations" allow you to select multiple stations and plot them on a graph together so you can compare things like profit over time.
The Station Net Worth graph displays the worth of the station overtime, this includes the cost of the all the wares currently in the station/ships as well as the amount in the account.
You can select the individual key elements to show/hide each of the data lines. The axis will also adjust based on whats currently showing.
The Adjust Time Axis parameter can adjust how it display the time for the station, either the stations age, where 0 is time the station was created, or the Playing time, which shows with respect to the current ingame time. This allows you to switch between them to compare against different stations.
Most of the items in the Graph show the cumulative values over time. The Profit line however shows the profit per hour and the Total Profit shows the current amount of profit made including the initial cost of the station.