Best production facility to start with?

[Mari]

I just got the Sunvale business permit but it seems like every single production facility needs a dozen other things to produce even the most basic items and that's when I'm specifically looking for raw materials production to start with because I figured it would be simpler

[Flicken]

You begin with a coal min in silverbloom HQ, so expanding that, or using the coal to smelt steel at fair isles mines is pretty good. From there, you can expand to make tools/steel beams at crossington town, which also buys most items at a positive markup. You will have to setup most of the raw stuff, but buy orders, combines with clever freight routes can hand most of that.

[Katieclysm]

Originally posted by Flicken:

You begin with a coal min in silverbloom HQ, so expanding that, or using the coal to smelt steel at fair isles mines is pretty good. From there, you can expand to make tools/steel beams at crossington town, which also buys most items at a positive markup. You will have to setup most of the raw stuff, but buy orders, combines with clever freight routes can hand most of that.

Any chance you could elaborate on the first possibility? Coal seems to sell for next to nothing. How would you start the "expanding that" first step?

[Mari]

Originally posted by Katieclysm:

Originally posted by Flicken:

You begin with a coal min in silverbloom HQ, so expanding that, or using the coal to smelt steel at fair isles mines is pretty good. From there, you can expand to make tools/steel beams at crossington town, which also buys most items at a positive markup. You will have to setup most of the raw stuff, but buy orders, combines with clever freight routes can hand most of that.

Any chance you could elaborate on the first possibility? Coal seems to sell for next to nothing. How would you start the "expanding that" first step?

Here's what I did:

- Set up automated buying orders for extraction tools in Crossington Town (I set it to buying 20 of them daily but you can increase or decrease the amount however you want)
- Set up a ship to bring half of the extraction tools to Silberblum HQ and set up automated orders to produce coal chunks and sorted coal there
- Build a mine in Fair Island Mines with the business permit, send the other half of the extraction tools from Crossington Town to the mines, and set up a ship to bring the sorted coal from the HQ there (you produce a lot more sorted coal than you need for this so you don't need to send everything)
- Fair Island Mines already has a foundry built and you can freely use it, so set the mines to produce iron ore and the foundry to produce iron ingots
- The iron ingots sell for 16,5% higher than the base price at the Silberblum HQ, so set up a ship to take the ingots there. You can set up a single ship to bring the coal from the HQ to the mines and to take the iron ingots from the mines to the HQ
- Since you're producing a lot more sorted coal than you need, you can sell the surplus to make even more money. Dawn Islands Town buys sorted coal at 16,5% higher than the base price so it's a good choice
- Crossington Town also buys iron ingots at 16,5% higher prices and sorted coal at 10% higher than the base price so you can also sell there. I like to use the ships I use to bring the extraction tools to also take some of the ingots and coal to Crossington Town

[Mari]

Originally posted by Mari:

Originally posted by Katieclysm:

Any chance you could elaborate on the first possibility? Coal seems to sell for next to nothing. How would you start the "expanding that" first step?

Here's what I did:

- Set up automated buying orders for extraction tools in Crossington Town (I set it to buying 20 of them daily but you can increase or decrease the amount however you want)
- Set up a ship to bring half of the extraction tools to Silberblum HQ and set up automated orders to produce coal chunks and sorted coal there
- Build a mine in Fair Island Mines with the business permit, send the other half of the extraction tools from Crossington Town to the mines, and set up a ship to bring the sorted coal from the HQ there (you produce a lot more sorted coal than you need for this so you don't need to send everything)
- Fair Island Mines already has a foundry built and you can freely use it, so set the mines to produce iron ore and the foundry to produce iron ingots
- The iron ingots sell for 16,5% higher than the base price at the Silberblum HQ, so set up a ship to take the ingots there. You can set up a single ship to bring the coal from the HQ to the mines and to take the iron ingots from the mines to the HQ
- Since you're producing a lot more sorted coal than you need, you can sell the surplus to make even more money. Dawn Islands Town buys sorted coal at 16,5% higher than the base price so it's a good choice
- Crossington Town also buys iron ingots at 16,5% higher prices and sorted coal at 10% higher than the base price so you can also sell there. I like to use the ships I use to bring the extraction tools to also take some of the ingots and coal to Crossington Town

Okay so I'm a moron and only now figured out you can use the coal and iron ingots to produce steel ingots at Fair Island Mines which sells for a higher price at the same locations as the iron, so just replace most of the mentions of iron ingots in my first comment to steel ingots and it's pretty much the same strategy

[Katieclysm]

Originally posted by Mari:

(you produce a lot more sorted coal than you need for this so you don't need to send everything)
----snip----
- The iron steel ingots sell for 16,5% higher than the base price at the Silberblum HQ, so set up a ship to take the ingots there. You can set up a single ship to bring the coal from the HQ to the mines and to take the iron steel ingots from the mines to the HQ
- Since you're producing a lot more sorted coal than you need, you can sell the surplus to make even more money. Dawn Islands Town buys sorted coal at 16,5% higher than the base price so it's a good choice

Thanks! The theory makes sense to me, but I'm breaking down on specific logistics. How do you keep from the HQ warehouse filling up entirely with coal and sorted coal, and not being able to use it for anything else? Seems like you'd quickly not be able to even drop off the ingots to sell.

[Mari]

Originally posted by Katieclysm:

Originally posted by Mari:

(you produce a lot more sorted coal than you need for this so you don't need to send everything)
----snip----
- The iron steel ingots sell for 16,5% higher than the base price at the Silberblum HQ, so set up a ship to take the ingots there. You can set up a single ship to bring the coal from the HQ to the mines and to take the iron steel ingots from the mines to the HQ
- Since you're producing a lot more sorted coal than you need, you can sell the surplus to make even more money. Dawn Islands Town buys sorted coal at 16,5% higher than the base price so it's a good choice

Thanks! The theory makes sense to me, but I'm breaking down on specific logistics. How do you keep from the HQ warehouse filling up entirely with coal and sorted coal, and not being able to use it for anything else? Seems like you'd quickly not be able to even drop off the ingots to sell.

Upgrading the warehouse to have more slots helps, and shipping part of the coal to Crossington Town and Dawn Islands Town to sell directly should keep the warehouse reasonably empty. You don't need to be at the specific port to sell things in its warehouse, you can do it from anywhere in the map via the inventory button, so if push comes to shove you can just sell the coal at the HQ itself

[Katieclysm]

Originally posted by Mari:

Originally posted by Katieclysm:

Thanks! The theory makes sense to me, but I'm breaking down on specific logistics. How do you keep from the HQ warehouse filling up entirely with coal and sorted coal, and not being able to use it for anything else? Seems like you'd quickly not be able to even drop off the ingots to sell.

Upgrading the warehouse to have more slots helps, and shipping part of the coal to Crossington Town and Dawn Islands Town to sell directly should keep the warehouse reasonably empty. You don't need to be at the specific port to sell things in its warehouse, you can do it from anywhere in the map via the inventory button, so if push comes to shove you can just sell the coal at the HQ itself

Fair, I guess I'm too hung up in the mindset of automation games, where having to manually intervene means you screwed up. That doesn't seem to be how it works here.

[Mari]

Originally posted by Katieclysm:

Originally posted by Mari:

Upgrading the warehouse to have more slots helps, and shipping part of the coal to Crossington Town and Dawn Islands Town to sell directly should keep the warehouse reasonably empty. You don't need to be at the specific port to sell things in its warehouse, you can do it from anywhere in the map via the inventory button, so if push comes to shove you can just sell the coal at the HQ itself

Fair, I guess I'm too hung up in the mindset of automation games, where having to manually intervene means you screwed up. That doesn't seem to be how it works here.

I don't know if it's just me not knowing how to navigate the game's ui but I couldn't find an automate selling button anywhere, so I think you need to manually sell things anyway

[Flicken]

To expand on Mari, I used Crossington town as my centre point, fully upgraded warehouse, everything got shipped there. Had a ship auto grab tools, to make enough coal to fill the ship. Seeded a load there so it would keep producing while moving coal to Crossington and back. Coal sells decently at Crossington, as the tools and cost of workers is F all when you consider each one gives a full stack of coal. I thin made iron and steel at fair island mines, and shipped the steel to Crossington, bringing back the tools and coal to make steel. At Crossington, it has a metal works, so you can further refine the steel into steel beams. You can also now make the tools, instead of buying them. I added Pirnmill town for making oak planks/shafts (For tools), and then Huntington Quarry for the sand/limestone bricks. And then Laventum Lake for water to sift sand. Finally, I added machine oil over in the town on the far east island by itself. Probably somewhere closer to do it, but it is perfect for machine oil.

All this pretty much made me fully self sufficient, and I make money like crazy, as Crossington town buys almost everything. Anything else, or if they run out of money, goes onto my 50 slot ship and flown somewhere else to sell.

[Katieclysm]

Originally posted by Flicken:

so you can further refine the steel into steel beams

Welp, I'm sold.

So, since you've pretty much mastered this, it sounds like, is there a way to automate selling? Or do you just click over to Crossington every day or so to sell everything?

[Flicken]

With everything going full bore, I find that most of the stuff goes into the Steel, and Machine Oil, But it isn't hard to check while coasting from town to town, if Crossington is getting full. If it is, you'll easily tell which resource is taking up the most room. You can also automate moving the sell-able resources (Steel Beams for instance) to where ever you want to sell them (Laventum City off the top of my head) which will give you even more of a buffer. You ill have to be the one to Shift Click to sell the entire inventory of it though, but if you fully upgrade the warehouse, that'll be a long time!