IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FED2
BUSINESSES AND FACTORIES
DECIDING WHAT FACTORIES TO BUILD
Your shiny new business with its huge depots is no good at all unless it produces something. In order for the business to make lots and lots of lovely money, you must build factories full of whirring machinery and whizzing production lines, which are probably going to be extremely noisy, annoy all the locals, and contribute to the pollution of the atmosphere, should the planet have one. Still, that's progress for you!
But before you go rushing off to buy a factory on any old planet, it pays to put some thought into what commodity you want to produce, and where you want to produce it, since there are limits to how many factories you can build (and how many you can afford).
First, what should you produce? Each factory can only produce one commodity, and in order to run it needs raw materials out of which the commodity is made, and workthings to operate the production lines. An extremely complicated table showing the requirements in materials and labor for each commodity appears on the web site here.
If you look at the table, you will see that some commodities need more inputs than others, and some need a greater number of workthings. These will affect the profit you could make on a commodity. You must also take into account how easy it is to sell a commodity - there's no use producing something that is very expensive, but that no exchange will buy!
Since you are going to buy more than one factory, it is a good idea to look at commodities that many other factories can use as inputs. This will come in handy when you expand Newbod Enterprises - you can set up a chain of factories across the Galaxy, all producing things other factories need, and move the output from one factory to become the input for another.
You should take into account what factories other players have already set up. If many other players are producing the same commodity as you, it will make it more difficult to sell your goods. If there are already lots of factories needing the same inputs as you, you may have difficulty getting enough. And if the planet on which you want to build already has lots of factories, you may have to pay over the odds for the labor force needed to run the factory. Workthings, being mercenary souls, will go work for the company which pays the highest wages. And who can blame them!
Fortunately, you can find out what factories already exist on a planet using the very useful 'DI PLANET planetname' command. Here's what the display looks like:
Rigel, Rigel 4 system - Owner Pugwash
Economy: Agricultural Workforce: 414/1000
Shipyard markup: 0% Merchant Fleet: 15 ships
Approval rating: Satisfactory
Commercial Activities:
6 warehouses:
Depots:
Widgets & Gizmos Inc
Newbod Enterprises
SuperMegaGigaCorp
Consolidated Amalgamated Distributed Fabrications
Cottage Industries
Universal Exports
Factories:
SuperMegaGigaCorp #1 plant producing Crystals
Cottage Industries #2 plant producing Petrochemicals
Universal Exports #1 plant producing Alloys
Universal Exports #4 plant producing Livestock
Widgets & Gizmos Inc #5 plant producing Nanos
The two significant things here are the workforce - that is, how many workthings are available to toil in your factory - and the list of existing factories.
Don't pick a commodity that uses inputs that are very hard to come by. Since you won't be buying a business until you've done a fair amount of trading on the planetary markets, you should have a fairly good idea of which commodities the exchanges tend to run out of quickly, and which are always available.
Don't be tempted to put too many factories on the same planet. It might be convenient when keeping an eye on prices, but you will soon run out of room in the depot, not to mention straining the planet's workforce.
If you're building on a resource planet or higher, keep an eye on the approval/disaffection level for the planet - if approval drops below zero, it turns into disaffection which means there's a chance of riots which could result in one of your factories getting destroyed.
You should also take a look at the infrastructure that has been built on the planet, using 'DI INFRA planetname'. Infrastructure builds affect many things, but of chief importance when deciding where to site a factory are the builds which increase the efficiency of the exchange because this will have an effect on the speed with which the exchange produces inputs you need, or consumes your outputs.
The Galactic Trading Guild have decreed that no factories can be built in Sol. There are no restrictions on where you can build outside of the Solar System - you don't have to get the owner's permission to erect a factory on an out-of-Sol planet. However, POs can kick unwanted property off their planets by expropriating factories, without paying any compensation, so you shouldn't get used to building where you know you will be unwelcome.
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