Cargo Bays

[Korvin]

Question about Cargo bays.

Cargo Bay vs Advanced Cargo Bay - what better for long-term development?

Cargo Bay - need more research points, but less solars for build.
Advanced Cargo Bay - need less RP, but more solars for build.

So, my question to old players - any advices about cargo bays development? And what is more problem on middle game stage (and later) - solars or research points?

P.S. (yes, i know about build time, but this is another question...)

[Matamaure001]

You need adv. cargo bay when you begin the game. The difference in cost is quite important, in the order of the double cost for ADV. cargo bays. I personnaly use cargo bays now, they are MK MD and give 37575 m3.  To acheive that you need a lot of research. Also the modules take much more time to build. It means you also need better planing.

[Dadds]

yeah early on get your advanced sciences done. You need less time to build them, less space on the ship required than the equiv basic modules. then it is your preference to pursue longer researched, longer build timer modules or stick with advanced technology. I prefer the advanced tech for rapid response build times (so long as there is an income stream or mats stream), others like matamure prefer the slow methodical approach to buy the cheaper builds (in solar cost only). Remember, what a lot of people forget in the game is: Time is money as well. I dont see a lot of people factoring this into their down times, or their module builds, when quoting on the advantages of cheaper material-ed modules

[JamJulLison]

Then there are some like me who try to focus on both kinds of things.  Cheaper mats for some ships which I don't mind waiting longer, and then more expensive mats for others. 

[lisunken]

cargo bay is easy for begin because you can mine it cheap and no need to spend solars. 16 nitrogen 5 aluminum 20 iron-nickel space for 100 for level I. it easy to find and mine and just build up the levels. As you start get better you should look in to advanced cargo bay mining or cheap way is doing com. spacial the station one they do drop mines you need to build advanced cargo bay . I get alot of advanced cargo that way. 19 mercury 11 cabriite 36 taenite space for 300 level I. just keep in mind to upgrade your sciences to get higher level.

[Antilak]

Good advice here. I'll be saying the same thing with numbers.

Estimated cost:
S 093 2400 m3 = $117552
A 029 2400 m3 = $245398
Estimated research:
S 2400 m3 - MK 93 (10,490,400 total) (10,382,400 actual)
A 2400 m3 - MK 29 (6,525,000 total)
Estimated manufacturing time:
Standard Mk 93 (2400 m3) 279 hours
Advanced Mk 29 (2400 m3) 87 hours

Something similar happens wiht a lot of the modules, I believe. I haven't dug deeply into the other module systems yet, though. I guess in this game (fast) time is money. If you want to get things done fast then you have to have the solars.

Keep in mind sometimes getting things done fast is strategically and/or economically better. Let me try to give an example by creating a scenario to explain it. Lets say I spend $223 in transportation costs to acquire and sell $1205 of materials in the span of 72 hours. If I instead spend $446, which is twice as much, to get the same job done in 48 hours then in 72 hours the net result is I spend $669 and sell $1807 of materials for a total profit over the former example of $156. In this particular case anyway, one has to (ideally) graph these linear equations and see where they intersect to know when the profit switches hands.

You have to look at the numbers.

[Matamaure001]

This is an opinion, I have chosen the complete opposite way and stick to it. I can do 2 times and more of the regular modules for the same solars as advance modules. I am patient, I have MK4000 modules in the burner. Look at my score, do I seem to be at lost?

[Fenix]

Yea something Mata is very well aware of is that saving money is kind of a big deal. A lot of us would rather spend some more money and get things done faster, I myself try to stick to as many of the basic modules as I can but there are some things I just don't want to wait on. Whether it is better to use the basic or advanced modules is a matter of opinion really as well as whether you have an abundance of money or time.

I made a spreadsheet a long time ago to help me look at modules, compare them as well as tell me how many of each material I need to upgrade/make certain levels of them for the sake of making my life a little easier. My sheet shows that once your advanced modules get past around mk 30-35 then creating a basic module with an equivalent effect will take you 5x longer than creating the advanced module, on the other hand the advanced module will cost 2.5x more than the basic module. That is just a rough estimate as I recal having this conversation just a bit ago with Jam about shields lol.

If you stick to using basic modules like Mata does and you save enough money over time then you can start to make up for how much time they take to build by using the money you saved for more factory ships and you can work on a lot more modules at once. Still that is a great deal to juggle and I can imagine there are a lot of people that would rather not deal with the headache of managing building hundreds of modules at all times and figuring out which ones go to which ships and all of the planning ahead that it requires to be effective. Lord knows that if I didn't organize all this information into spreadsheets then I would have quite the headache trying to formulate any kind of good plan lol.

[Antilak]

.........
I made a spreadsheet a long time ago to help me look at modules, compare them as well as tell me how many of each material I need to upgrade/make certain levels of them for the sake of making my life a little easier. My sheet shows that once your advanced modules get past around mk 30-35 then creating a basic module with an equivalent effect will take you 5x longer than creating the advanced module, on the other hand the advanced module will cost 2.5x more than the basic module. That is just a rough estimate as I recal having this conversation just a bit ago with Jam about shields lol.
........

According to the math I did, it's only 5x longer very early and the advanced module can't cost 2.5x more. With increasing MK levels, the advanced multiplier (slowly) approaches ~2.231540084x (8462/(3*1264)). Research (slowly) decreases to <1.5x (I don't know the exact math for this one). Manufacturing time (slowly) decreases to ~3x (3 * 25 = 75).

Estimated solars cost:
S 093 2400 m3 = $117552
A 029 2400 m3 = $245398 = 2.087569756x
S 399 10050 m3 = $504336
A 131 10050 m3 = $1108522 = 2.197983091x
S 1398 35025 m3 = $1767072
A 464 35025 m3 = $3926368 = 2.221962659x

Estimated research cost:
S 2400 m3 - MK 93 (10,490,400)(10,382,400) = 1.591172414x
A 2400 m3 - MK 29 (6,525,000)
S 10050 m3 - MK 399 (191520000)(191412000) = 1.4759195x
A 10050 m3 - MK 131 (129690000)
S 35025 m3 - MK 1398 (2346962400)(2346854400) = 1.450286986x
A 35025 m3 - MK 464 (1618200000)

Estimated manufacturing time:
Standard Mk 93 (2400 m3) 279 hours = 3.206896552x
Advanced Mk 29 (2400 m3) 87 hours
Standard MK 399 (10050 m3) 1197 hours = 3.045801527x
Advanced MK 131 (10050 m3) 393 hours
Standard Mk 1398 (35025 m3) 4194 hours = 3.012931034x
Advanced Mk 464 (35025 m3) 1392 hours

[Fenix]

Well like I said I was specifically remembering talking about shields with Jam, cargo bays could certainly follow a different formula. I will however look real quick to see if my sheet shows the same thing, I don't think I bothered to put standard cargo bays on it because cargo space is the one thing I refuse to wait on but it won't take long to put it on there.

[Fenix]

Your solar cost for standard cargo bays is off slightly other wise manufacturing times look good, of course your manufacturing times are based on not having the manufacturing officier where as mine would be based on having it but the the ratios should remain unchanged for the most part.

Somewhere along the line I was looking at something on my sheets and saw some similarities and I must have made an assumption that it was the same between all basic and advanced modules but it clearly isn't. Shields are 5x longer and 2.5x more expensive, the cargo bays are 3x longer and roughly 2x as expensive. I haven't looked at weapons but I would guess they are also different, of course you have to remember to take into account the bonus damage lasers will do when comparing them to vipers as pretty much everyone uses shields.

[Antilak]

Your solar cost for standard cargo bays is off slightly other wise manufacturing times look good, of course your manufacturing times are based on not having the manufacturing officier where as mine would be based on having it but the the ratios should remain unchanged for the most part.

Somewhere along the line I was looking at something on my sheets and saw some similarities and I must have made an assumption that it was the same between all basic and advanced modules but it clearly isn't. Shields are 5x longer and 2.5x more expensive, the cargo bays are 3x longer and roughly 2x as expensive. I haven't looked at weapons but I would guess they are also different, of course you have to remember to take into account the bonus damage lasers will do when comparing them to vipers as pretty much everyone uses shields.

My solar cost estimates are accurate. There's a spreadsheet somewhere around here which shows the same estimates too.

$1264 per MK. Advanced is $8462. Hence, as MK increases, the difference between the two approaches but never reaches (8462/(3*1264)=2.2315x. The initial expense to get standard up to 300 m3 throws it off at first.

I'll acknowledge I haven't looked at other modules. I really need to do that soon to be effective.

[Fenix]

Ah, again the dam text screws me over. It seems a mk 1 cargo bay requires 16 Nitrogen and not 15, though they look exactly the same and I couldn't tell the difference until I checked what a level 2 cargo bay took. My bad there... or should I say SirEmi's bad design choice making the text so dam small lol. Well better I fixed it on my sheet now than have to do it later after buying several million worth of materials and then not have enough.