hello everyone...what to build first?

[Arcano[ITA]]

I would like some advice on the first factory to build,
How much money should I have to avoid having funding problems and maybe where to build it?
Thanks for your help

[Sasheria]

This is my personal opinion, but you should find an asteroid and tow it to a place that can sell gold/platinum (good pricing) and set that up to produce money. It should be your first "fire and forget" once set up, it is a passive income for your future endeavors.

Now, even better, if you do not mind parking in a friendly area (where your mine is safe with NPC protections in earlier areas) you can earn a lot of credits while you physically sleeping ;) (it will pay for your salaries and make money)

That is what I did. I set mine up in the starting area since it is a no-PVP safe zone. I put up a mine gold/platinum and left it there. (note: it cost me around 9 million credits, which I got from scraping the area mining a lot of iron, and selling it )

[Firefrye]

A few other options:
1 - Aluminum mines are my usual first starter mines
2 - Any of the "first page" of low tier factories *can* be good, but you should avoid the high-volume and low value goods like water or gases. The AI doesn't have ships large enough to buy your goods in meaningful quantities
3 - Carbon factories (second page I think?) are super consistent. Especially if you make the pre-reqs yourself (with a corn farm for example). This can be a useful starting point for learning simple factory supply chains. Water collector (or ice mine) + Solar factory -> Farm -> Carbon factory

Here's a great tool for figuring out how many of what size factories you need (each upgrade for a factory essentially adds another "small" factory worth of output)
https://avofactory.scrap-yard.org/en/factory-calculator.html

[Josh]

You can sell steel almost everywhere for a good profit, I usually start with a coal mine and later add the steel factory itself.
Try to get a good trading subsystem which allows you to have an economy overview of the galaxy.

[voidCaster]

I'm a new player, but I recently had good luck with a Coal Mine followed by a Scrap Metal Factory followed by a Steel Factory, which I then spent a LOT of time figuring out how to dock together.

I don't think the material you choose is too important though. What is important is this:

1: Location, Location, Location

1a: Use a Trading Module to find out what products are in high demand and short supply in the area where you will build it. You want a product listed at +30% in the resale-over-market-value column.

1b: If you're just looking for fast money up front, gold/platinum is fine.

1c: If you're looking for such a massive income that you can quit worrying about it for awhile altogether, look for an area where Coal and also Scrap Metal are both at over +20% and Steel is closer to +30%. Then get the Coal and Scrap Metal producers going first.

1d: If you can find a sector, in a high-value area, where other factories or stations will buy your products directly, that is even better.

2: Trade Goods Settings

2a: Turn off the options to Buy Goods From Others and Actively Request Goods. You'll just get your cargo (ie space for produced goods) filled up with garbage.

2b: Turn on the options to Sell Goods To Others and Actively Sell Goods. If you picked a sector where other stations need your goods, set them up in the Deliver Goods to Stations area.

2c: Set your sell price to at least -6%. This means you're selling cheap, but the game automagically factors in the over-value percentage separately so it's "relatively cheap" and it ensures that you get more random visitors, if you build in a highly populated area. If you look at "profit/production" in the upper right corner, as little as $1000 profit per production is going to be massive in the end.

2d: Make sure you fully upgrade the shuttles per delivery at the bottom as fast as possible. Upgrading the number of simultaneous productions is also important, but will take a lot longer.

3: Be patient once you get something going. No matter what product you produce, a good location with a high cargo capacity and a low selling percentage versus a high demand percentage value is going to work. A water factory works just as well as anything else. A steel factory will blow your mind with profit, once you get it and both the production stations set up and selling, just make sure you get the right Type of steel factory so it only needs coal and scrap metal, not carbon.

4: DON'T FORGET

4a: You need docks for other ships to come and buy stuff. You want some nice, big docks, especially if you're going for the coal/scrap/steel path because getting things to dock together and look half decent is a giant PITA but bigger docks are a little easier to deal with. That is big as in wide, tall, and LONG! It's best if your docks can reach clear out a long way from the station itself.

4b: SAVE COMBAT SUBSYSTEMS AND TURRETS TO ARM YOUR STATION, OR YOU MIGHT LOSE IT!

[Slartibartfast]

Mines are only setup costs then zero expenses. If you check with the highest trading subsystem you can get for the furthest reach see if it lists any basic mine producing goods then cross reference with best price (highest price, water for instance is always in demand but the price is dismissal). This will give you an idea of what will sell the best.

You can check the supply and demand, what sells where sheets, because it is a procedurally made game and find what is missing in the supply chain especially around sectors with 5 or 6 of one type of factory. I was planning on this myself for a second play through since my first play through was basically straight to the core and built a turret factory to produce 2 40k damage launchers and soloed the end game.