Requirements to produce CMM Composites

[Ian Doncaster]

Was looking for a chart like that but this works too

You can also get info in-game by looking at the commodity in the market.

In chart form it's available as a side-effect of

Trade specialisation

Summarizing everything I found in this thread, for the ultimate refinery system:

• Find and claim a system with a HMCW. Primary build should be a civilian or commercial outpost port.
• On the HMCW build a surface civilian port. Build 2x a refinery.
• Must be built on rocky/hmc not icy/rocky icy otherwise the surface port will turn into industrial & eat up all the CMM.

You want Rocky, not HMC, ideally. HMC isn't terrible (because Extraction doesn't interfere much) but Rocky actually gives you extra points of Refinery which will help resist weak links later.

[*]CMM is only available from ground bases.
[*]Orbital above HMCW + refineries = Steel and Titanium but no CMM's
[*]Note that CMM composites are consumed by High Tech and Military economies.

And also Industrial.

CMM has (after the boosts Frontier gave it earlier) enough production baseline to reliably survive a weak link or two; just keep it away from strong links or planetary influences of those types.

[*]If you have ANY industrial settlements or outpost in the system whatsoever, the new economy calculation will cause your refinery's economy to be massively overtaken by an industrial demand. A single tiny industrial settlement somewhere in the system will cause all ceramic composites and semiconductors to disappear from your surface refinery's market. Even when it's a large T3 surface refinery.

Slightly more complicated than this. A single weak link shouldn't have that much effect on most products, especially if you have planetary as well as strong link influence building up the refinery ... but it can. Those two products are particularly vulnerable to bad luck
- ceramic composites should usually survive a weak link or two provided the basis is strong enough, but demand is extremely variable (much more so than supply) so you can get unlucky
- semiconductors have extremely variable supply and demand so anything could happen
- and for an orbital, insulating membrane has so low production that even a single weak link can consistently cause a lot of damage if your refinery baseline is too weak.

It sounds like a dedicated system is ideal.

Focusing systems on single economy types which are supported by their planet types [1] is definitely better if you want consistent exports.
(Or indeed if you want consistent imports. Something like Progenitor Cells will get produced by economies even with a tiny fraction of high-tech ... but who are you going to sell it to?)

[1] Easier for some economies than others.

Facilities anywhere in the system that negatively impact refinery are:
- Industrial, high tech, military

Also terraforming, though for a smaller range of products.

Facilities that don't negatively impact refinery are:
- Extraction, agriculture, tourism

Depends what exports you're after, here. Certainly they're less bad than the big three which consume almost everything a refinery exports, but even these three can cause problems.
- Extraction consumes Explosives
- Tourism consumes Silver and Gold
- Agriculture consumes Biowaste
(Biowaste is the only one needed for future colonisation, but the other three can be useful for source-and-return missions)

 

[Greasetrap42]

It is interesting that when building a colony, an architect must put 90% of their thought into what NOT to build.

Without much research a player would naturally assume that building additional facilities would improve their colony. Especially facilities typically considered "complimentary" like Industrial, High Tech, and Security. I wouldn't naturally think additional facilities would reduce production capacity available for sale (markets). Sure some output would get redirected, but overall output capacity should increase, not decrease. That is why modern cities grow with industry... not shrink. For example the availability of HighTech (better equipment) and Security should have an overall boost to refinery output. But instead it works against the output.

 

[Kira Goto]

Well, previously the fairly binary economy system of Elite worked fine because nothing really depended on it that much/self-consuming binary NPC economies don't appear to be that frequent (and/or have some supply/demand for things anyway). Colonization, however... well, I guess it just got a lot more people to think about the 'market game' as I'll call it. And I'm one of those people that would say (may already have said) additional/minor economies coming in should support the main one and increase its supply by some amount to at least offset their consumption... but at that point the weak link might as well just not exist.

Planet Geo gives bonus. The type of Geologicals doesn't matter.

Sure about this? Planetary geologicals (which equals "volcanism" that you've said to avoid, now that I'm re-reading while writing) on a landable give industrial. And a lot of it. I know from experience, where 4 refinery hubs are not/barely enough to counter geologicals on a planet while relying on the luck of market rolls to have any metals in their supply. Pick a high metal content without geological signals.

For the purposes of my (semi-)bricked refinery, I am planning to finish an already started surface port "to see what happens", but not too soon as I will continue to use the titanium and steel which has somehow managed to survive the industry nuke, until I deem it practical to risk losing it.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

For example the availability of HighTech (better equipment) and Security should have an overall boost to refinery output. But instead it works against the output.

And generally does if you don't count the weak links, too. That kind of cross-benefit was (and still is to an extent) represented fairly well by the various global variable boosts.

- HT buildings generally come with a development level increase, which increases production and consumption levels globally
- higher Security means less chance of Lockdown (very bad for production) and potentially an easier route to Civil Liberty (which increases production levels of most things)
- there may also be links into increasing station populations, which can significantly boost production levels themselves, which we didn't really get to see under the old economic model

It is interesting that when building a colony, an architect must put 90% of their thought into what NOT to build.

Yes. I think the current changes have "narrowed the middle" as it were.

The original system:
- if you know nothing about how ED's economy works and just guess based on "I'd like it to work this way" you will probably end up messing up your markets one way or another
- if you know the basics about which economy produces what product and read the documentation, you can produce more-or-less whatever markets you want in both single-type and hybrid forms
- if you know the hidden depth of the economy sim's iceberg (and three months ago basically no-one to within rounding error cared about any of that) you'll know to stay away from the hybrid ones
- almost any system can be turned to almost any use

The new system:
- if you know nothing about how ED's economy works and just guess based on "I'd like it to work this way" you'll probably get a mess still, but a mess which exports something, and that'll keep you happier
- if you know the basics you'll probably realise that you're in trouble but only after it's too late
- if you know the iceberg you'll have been pointing out exactly how this was going to go since Frontier's original announcement and be entirely unsurprised about it doing that, and might just about be able to plan a system around it, but you've still got a definite choice between "build interesting system with lots of Odyssey settlements to visit" and "have predictable exports"
- systems really have to be tuned to their available planets; no taking that system just because it looks nice if you don't also have a complementary plan for it.

Well, previously the fairly binary economy system of Elite worked fine because nothing really depended on it that much/self-consuming binary NPC economies don't appear to be that frequent

They're pretty common, but mitigated by:
- other than literally a few hand-placed cases, they only ever had at most two types
- very few people actually cared if system A stocked Power Generators specifically, so long as they could obtain them somewhere
- widespread use of tools like Inara meant that people actively avoided learning that Power Generators were an industrial export in the first place

The main effect was that "Source HE Suits" missions were surprisingly difficult because almost all HT stations in the bubble are actually 20% Extraction or Refinery as well.

 

[Greasetrap42]

Planet Geo gives bonus. The type of Geologicals doesn't matter.

Sure about this?

No I am not sure. I just summarized the idea from elsewhere in the thread. But now that I think about it I I don't belive it is correct but I have no testing evidence either way.

@Phil W post certainly does not say that planetary geo gives refinery bonus. It just says major or pristine resources.

Industrial and Refinery Economies:

• Boosted by:
  • In a system with major or pristine resources

I am going to remove this point from my summary post.

 

[Greasetrap42]

- systems really have to be tuned to their available planets; no taking that system just because it looks nice if you don't also have a complementary plan for it.

I am realizing the best long term colony is actually 3 systems in close proximity.

• Each system designed with specific function.
• All 3 systems don't need to have an overall magnificent map. Just find 1 great system with two pretty good system (with purpose in mind) nearby.

Admittedly it is difficult to find a great system, never mind compound the search with two additional nearby systems. And compounded with ability to claim only one system at a time per cmdr.


Edit:
I agree that cmdrs building a new system will be happier to have immediate results that aren't just poop factories. It is frustrating to build your first coriolis to have a market of only hydrogen and biowaste, and no UC. It seems like a useless waste of time. The new system is better in this regard.

A typical cmdr trying to find and build a single amazing system that eventually becomes awesome with tons of cool development is eventually going to become disappointed. When they discover that some facilities actually worked against their grand design they will become frustrated.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

You can probably get by with just one system, I think, if it's got a few rocky moons and a decent number of other bodies with multiple orbital slots. It'll just look a bit odd as to which components of it do what.

1) Rocky moons get built up as refineries with colony-type ports and lots of hubs. These are where your T3s go, if you want any of those. Repeat on as many rocky moons as possible to get the refinery hubs cross-supporting each other's markets with weak links too.
2) T1 intrinsic economy ports don't generate weak links, or pick up planetary influence, so you can put them in orbit around other bodies safely for your HT and Industrial needs
3) If you put two T1 ports around the same planet, the weak links from your refineries will only stick to exactly one of them (the older one), so you can get single-type economies here by building a decoy [1]. Since you're not building it for exports anyway, Military T1 outpost built first as the decoy, then Industrial/HT as the economy should be a good combination. You can do the same on the surface with the intrinsic T1 surface outposts.
4) If you have ring systems with two slots you can do the same to get an Extraction economy: build a Coriolis first as the decoy, then an Asteroid base for the economy
5) Comms, Satellite and Government installations can be safe ways to fill extra slots as they don't have an economy type so don't generate weak links
6) Then you're only missing Agricultural, and you have enough stations protected from weak links by decoys that you can afford to just build a bunch of Odyssey agri settlements elsewhere in the system, because you'll only lose biowaste exports on the refineries and the decoys, but not the whole system, and hope between them that they either produce what you want or you get it via weak links somewhere.

[1] You also have the option to build a higher-tier port as the decoy, and then build order doesn't matter, so you could stick a Coriolis or Orbis out here (for shipyard, outfitting and general population/stats boosts) to shield the outpost from weak links.