Tips on stocking Insulating Membranes?

[kepler68]

I've been playing with the Trade Specialization calculator (https://cdb.sotl.org.uk/specialisation/hybrid), and collectively 0.3's worth of Industrial, Hightech, and Military influence is enough to flip 4.1 Refinery influence from exporting IMs to almost always importing them. Playing with the numbers further it's only likely that i'll be able to export Insulating Membranes by nuking my system security and tech levels.

These numbers are pulled from the hypothesis of 0.8 per strong link 0.05 per weak link. I have a plan for my target star drafted up where the intent was to make a station-building supply hub with all the essentials for a primary port (CMMs, IMs, Fruits and Vegetables, etc.), but IMs seem to just get devoured by any other economic influence

 

[kepler68]

Medical Diagnostic Equipment also just gets devoured by Military influence sheesh!

No matter what i do my system will need three Military buildings to maintain High-Security

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If you want a system which produces everything colonisation required it's possible but difficult, I think - and does require particular things to be in the system

- body 1: 2x intrinsic HT surface port and/or 2x intrinsic HT orbital
- body 2: 2x intrinsic Ind surface port and/or 2x intrinsic Ind orbital (or alternative use the colony ones around icy worlds)
- body 3 (rocky): colony surface port and orbital (multiple of each optionally, or repeat for some other rocky bodies)
- body 4 (large landable non-volcanic non-atmospheric HMC, not tidally-locked) colony surface port and as many agri settlements as will fit; colony orbital and agri installations optional if there's space
- bodys 5 onwards: intrinsic military orbitals and government installations to recover security (at +2 per orbital slot, you might need a lot to get high security, but you should be able to at least keep it positive even in smaller systems)
- optional belt cluster: you can throw in an asteroid base if you want for some Extraction output

The only things generating weak links in this scenario are the agri settlements. For each of your other economies, they've got a decoy station to absorb those, except the refineries and optional extraction which only lose Biowaste production from the agri links and can therefore ignore that as your other stations will generate enough.

The Agri is the weakest spot as you have no choice but to hybridise with the planet economy. But if you can keep that to a single-type 1.0 and pack on the settlements you should at least get the specific commodities you require for onward colonisation out of it, even if you don't get everything.

 

[James Razor]

Welcome to the hell of mixed economy weak links.

I have a HighSec System, which leaves me with almost no Agri Commodities and almost no special commodities like CMMs, etc.
Also, keep in mind that everything else basically eats up Agri, so your Agri Output will most likely be low or non-existent in any case.