Avorion – All Economics of Stations

Choosing a location

It’s absolutely critical that you scout the local price conditions before you place a station. If the local prices are -30%, your sales are going to be terrible. If the raw materials cost +30% locally, you probably won’t turn a profit at all.

To see the local prices for a sector, you need an Orange or better Trading upgrade in your ship.

The higher the cost of the input goods, the slimmer the basic profit margin, the more the sales price matters. And the price of the materials, though it’s usually much easier to find a sector where sales are at +30% than one where all the input materials are -30%.

على سبيل المثال, a Small AntiGrav Unit Factory will generate about $4.3 million per hour profit in a +0% sector, لكن $9.6 million in a +30% sector, over twice the profit. That’s because the sales price goes up but the materials cost stay fixed.

Mines and other stations that have no material cost are the least sensitive to local prices. +30% يكون +30%, since there’s no material cost eating into the basic profit in a +0% sector.

Local production of parts doesn’t matter.

If a factory requires Energy Tubes, and there are no Energy Tube factories nearby, NPC traders will sell Energy Tubes to your station anyway.

Stations allocate space for materials and products based on the cargo bay size. The larger the bay, the more products it will store, but also the more materials it will buy.

Thus it’s important to keep the size of the station’s cargo bay small. If you build a super-large cargo bay, the station may happily spend hundreds of millions on materials.

Best in class stations

Assuming you spend about Cr 5 million on building the station itself, and you keep the cargo bay down to about 100 minutes of production, your return on investment is going to be between 4% per hour and 26% per hour. That is, if you spent Cr 20 million founding an building the station, you can expect between Cr 0.8 million and Cr 4 million per hour in income.

The stations with the best return on investment in each price bracket are:

Note that the popular Gold / Platinum mine only returns about Cr 0.82 / hour and costs Cr 14 million if you include build costs.

Most stations assume a +20% local price. Processor factory assumes a +30% local price, because that’s common.

Actual station costs

ال “cost to found” for a station is only part of the picture. You still have to build the physical plant and pay for raw materials. I assume building the physical plant, including defenses, will cost at least Cr 5 million. Closer to the core, and at higher difficulty, you may want to spend considerably more in shields and weaponry to keep the station alive during an attack.

For stations that require raw materials, I also include the cost of 100 minutes of those materials. You want enough storage so the station doesn’t stall, and the station will attempt to keep the space it allocates for raw materials full at all times.

على سبيل المثال, I give the the total cost of an Ammunition Type 1 factory as Cr 27,390,000. Cr 19 million in founding fee, Cr 5 million to build the station, and Cr 3 million in materials.

Cargo Bay usage

Stations divide their cargo bays into space for products and raw materials.

على سبيل المثال, suppose a factory turns part A, مقاس 6, and part B, مقاس 2, into part C, مقاس 2. The station will allocate 60% of its cargo bay to buying part A, 20% to buying part B, و 20% to storing finished products.

هكذا, a station can’t stall because it’s clogged with too many raw materials, because it always reserves space for products. The only way you can stall a station this way is you use a manual transfer to fill up its cargo bay.

When I talk about sizing a cargo bay for “100 minutes of production,” I mean adding up the total size of the raw materials and the finished product, and multiplying that by 100 دقائق.

Prices and the station slider

Stations sell their goods to NPC traders. If the station needs raw materials to make its products, it also purchases those raw materials from NPC traders. هو - هي does not matter if there are no local factories producing the raw materials, NPC traders will arrive with those materials anyway.

There’s a local price for every good in the game that varies from +30% ل -30% of normal. You can see this with an Orange or better Trade Upgrade installed.

Each station has a price slider that runs from +20% ل -20%. This adds to both the purchase price for raw materials, and the sales price of finished goods.

Factories have a built in +20% bonus to sales price for finished goods. That is, the sales price is:

Base price * (100% + 20% + Local Market Price + Station Slider)

The cost of raw materials is:

Base Price * (100% + Local Market Price + Station Slider).

The station slider also affects how often NPC traders arrive to buy and sell. If it’s too high, not enough traders will arrive, and your factory won’t sell all its finished products. If it’s too low, not enough traders will sell your station raw materials, and your factory will stall.

There’s no way to determine exactly what the local market will tolerate short of trial and error. Sometimes traders won’t arrive to buy even if the slider is at -20%, though this is only really a danger with low-end goods.

Mines and other raw material stations

Mines and stations that don’t require materials, here’s what you can expect in a sector with +20% demand, from best to worst:

Cr 10 million and under

Profits assume +20% price for the finished goods, و +0% for the raw materials.

Clothes and Fish assume +0% for the finished goods, because only Trading Posts purchase those goods. Finding any local demand is going to be incredibly rare.

Factories from Cr 11 million to Cr 25 million

Jewelry and Protein assume +0% for the finished goods, because only Trading Posts purchase those goods. Finding any local demand is going to be incredibly rare.

Factories from Cr 26 million to Cr 50 million

Factories from $50 million to $100 million

Note that I rated the Processor factory higher in the “best in class” summary, because Processors are quite often at +30% demand. Lots and lots of factories use them.

Factories over $100 million

Note that it’s often difficult to find +20% sectors for many of these, because the number of consumers is low. In particular, only Research Stations by Accelerators, so it’s pretty common to see +10% at most.

Mining Robots are probably the worst in this respect, because they’re only consumed by Planetary Trading Posts, and those are few and far between.

The AntiGrav Generator Factory is probably the best in this regard, since a number of factories consume these.

Production Chains

Factories which are part of the same production chain have unexpected synergies, because of the mechanics of prices.

If Factory A produces AntiGrav Generators, and Factory B consumes those, the obvious thing is to ship AntiGrav Generators from A to B. لا. You’re better off letting NPC traders buy and sell those goods.

Stations ignore their own effect on the Local Price. If the Local Price is 100% in a region, and you build a Processor factory, this might cause the Local Price to drop to -10% (90% of normal), because of the increased supply of Processors. Yet the factory sells to NPC traders as if the local price were still 100%. The Processor Factory drives up the Local Price for Microchips, but it still pays the Local Price before you built the factory.

It’s an important mechanic. It’s not realistic, but it’d be kind of awful, building factories, if factories immediately reduced their own profitability the moment you built them, by lowering the prices on their products and driving up costs for the parts they need.

If you build a production chain, where Factory A supplies goods demanded by Factory B, this effect gives you a significant extra boost. Factory A lowers the cost of parts at Factory B, and Factory B increases the value of sales at Factory A.

The AntiGrav Generator Factory has the highest return on investment in the game. I built one near the Core. To support it, I built an AntiGrav Unit Factory, which supplies the single most expensive part for the Generator factory. Before either factory, the Local Price was +0% (100% of normal). After both factories, the Local Price is still +0%, because supply and demand are exactly the same.

The factories didn’t use 0%. The Unit Factory sees the Local Price as +13%, increased by the demand from the Generator Factory. The Generator Factory sees the Local Price for AntiGrav Units as -12%, depressed by the supply from the Unit Factory.

By letting NPC traders buy and sell those generators, I get a 25% profit compared to shipping the generators from the Generator factory to the AnitGrav Unit factory. This added Cr 1 million / hour to my profits.

The effect on local prices is the real benefit from building consumer stations like Shipyards and Habitats. They increase the Local Price for the goods they consume. A Shipyard in this sector added Cr 1.3 million / hour profit to AntiGrav Generator Factory, even though I never ship Generators to the shipyard.

The benefit of a supply chain is much smaller if you transport the parts from the support factory the consumer factory, since you don’t get the +20% NPC trader bonus, and you don’t get the Local Price modifiers.

There are cases where you might want to do it anyway. The cheapest part the AntiGrav Generator factory consumes is 10 × سلك, for a total of Cr 990 / cycle. Suppose that the NPC traders rarely showed up to supply wire. يحدث ذلك, I had a Laser Compressor factory that was chronically short of wire. It’s worth forgoing the trade bonuses to directly supply wire from a Wire Factory if the AntiGrav Generator factory regularly stalls from lack of wire.