Surprise concept ship reveal today, lets take a look:
New Refinery Concept Ship: MISC Expanse
- Thread starter Montoya
- Start date
The MISC Expanse looks interesting & like it will definitely work well with a Prospector or possibly a MOLE. Depending on its size, you could team it with a couple Prospectors & a Liberator to have a long term asteroid mining unit that would definitely want to hire escorts to protect them on their way back to cash in their materials.
But where is the buy link!?
Gah. Teasing us with JPEGs we can't even own.
I'd kinda be curious to know what the price for this will be... On one hand, a $300-$340 Starfarer/Gemini can only refine fuel. On another hand, they called this a "starter," as if it's not going to be several hundreds of dollars.
I also wonder if Starfarer has some high level of specialization in its refinery that allows it to produce fuel at like 20x the speed as you would with Expanse.
Gah. Teasing us with JPEGs we can't even own.
I'd kinda be curious to know what the price for this will be... On one hand, a $300-$340 Starfarer/Gemini can only refine fuel. On another hand, they called this a "starter," as if it's not going to be several hundreds of dollars.
I also wonder if Starfarer has some high level of specialization in its refinery that allows it to produce fuel at like 20x the speed as you would with Expanse.
The Starfarer carries a lot of cargo, can refine fuel, can (probably) still scoop raw materials to turn into fuel, can refuel ships, had a huge amount of firepower, can utilize and house a lot of crew, etc.
The expanse can accept pods from a miner, refine them, and pass them off to cargo ships to haul to market. It’s for a single player, and I don’t expect it to have large amounts of weapons or defensive capabilities. Honestly, it’s going to need to be cheap because the Starfarer does so much more at a 300 dollar price point. They still need to leave room for a medium ore refinery ship, while keeping the Orion as the top dog in terms of mining/refining.
The Prospector has 4 bags with a total capacity of 32 SCU. A skilled, steely-eyed miner with cat-like reflexes (like me...I also happen to be incredibly good looking), can fill that thing with 1 good rock in about 10 minutes. The Argo MOLE has 8 bags with a total capacity of 96 SCU. Takes a half hour or so to fill that sucker. Imagine a refiner with twice THAT capacity or more! Fill it up with 4 or 5 prospectors worth of ore, or even 4 or 5 MOLEs worth, let it chew on that stuff for awhile, then call in a cargo hauler to take the refined booty to sell. Call out the beerfarer and take care of any repairs, have a sammich and a beer, and get back to mining. I'm gonna keep an eye on the specs for this thing, it intrigues me. Whoa! Deep thought! Have a starfarer loitering to refuel your miners and refiners, AND to carry the refined ore back for sale!
i wonder if you can call your NPCs to drive your other ships from spaceports to your location that would be amazing and would make such good use of having multiple ships.
Han Burgundy
Space Marshal
I love the smell of LOOPS in the morning....
Miners call in Refiners who require Haulers who attract Pirates who necessitate Escort/security. The Org Ops for some serious Ca$h are comin', guys and gals!
Miners call in Refiners who require Haulers who attract Pirates who necessitate Escort/security. The Org Ops for some serious Ca$h are comin', guys and gals!
MISC Expanse 2 -> Multi crew as a 'companion' to the Mole
Thank you, Glorious Leader!
It's very vertical, almost V shaped to allow the saddle bags to droop off the sides like that. I think Concept price will be what the Prospector is flyable at about $150ish, going up to the $200's for fully flyable given it's suite of reactors.
Anyway, on to the important part:
In the UK the ground floor is the one denoted by the "G" on the button. This is the floor that usually has the buildings entrance/s on it, at "Ground" level. The 1st floor is the next floor up from that.
I believe in the US the Ground floor is referred to as the 1st floor and there is no Ground floor reference which I think is where this ribbing has come from.
Personally I'd call it Floor Zero or Ground Zero, but Ground Zero has a negative connotation to it so in 'BobFace's world lets just call it Zero. Anything below is traditionally known as Basement Level but by calling Ground Level Zero, we can call anything below that Sub Zero. "Sub" is easier to say than "Basement", it's much cooler, and that coolness makes up for not having any windows to gaze out of.
"I got the job!"
"Oh, didn't you say it was in an office below ground? Won't that get a bit crummy being away from daylight for 8 hours a day?"
"No way dude, it's a Sub Zero office! There is daylight and there is being Sub Zero!"
And there we have it, another amazing 'BobFace solution to the perils of the modern world.
It's very vertical, almost V shaped to allow the saddle bags to droop off the sides like that. I think Concept price will be what the Prospector is flyable at about $150ish, going up to the $200's for fully flyable given it's suite of reactors.
Anyway, on to the important part:
In the UK the ground floor is the one denoted by the "G" on the button. This is the floor that usually has the buildings entrance/s on it, at "Ground" level. The 1st floor is the next floor up from that.
I believe in the US the Ground floor is referred to as the 1st floor and there is no Ground floor reference which I think is where this ribbing has come from.
Personally I'd call it Floor Zero or Ground Zero, but Ground Zero has a negative connotation to it so in 'BobFace's world lets just call it Zero. Anything below is traditionally known as Basement Level but by calling Ground Level Zero, we can call anything below that Sub Zero. "Sub" is easier to say than "Basement", it's much cooler, and that coolness makes up for not having any windows to gaze out of.
"I got the job!"
"Oh, didn't you say it was in an office below ground? Won't that get a bit crummy being away from daylight for 8 hours a day?"
"No way dude, it's a Sub Zero office! There is daylight and there is being Sub Zero!"
And there we have it, another amazing 'BobFace solution to the perils of the modern world.
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Ground floor and first floor are synonymous in the US. It is (normally) street level for the street that matches the address. (Sometimes a large building that is on a steep hill might have a side or rear entrance that is one or two levels above or below the main floor.
The main difference is that over here, we refer to the floor above the main floor as "the second floor" and so on. (Of course, we also call the 13th floor the 14th floor too, but occasionally, the 13th floor does exist and it's a maintenance/laundry/machinery/non-public floor, or called the 12th floor atrium, but that's a different can of worms) I think the reason we call it the second floor is because the second level of a house is usually called the "second story" (second storey in UK spelling) over here. So it's the first and second story (storey) and people shorten it to the first and second floor, not ground and first, but I can certainly see why some customs may refer to it as the ground floor and the first storey.
That said, this is a ship, so with what I see, the main deck is the same as the flight deck, and the entrance is on Deck 2. (first deck below the main deck)
From Paul Jones : "it is a one man ship". It looks really big for a 1 crew ship, nice !
Thanks for the kind explanation that Ground Floor is also used in the US and it's storeys really making the first floor the second floor... I still thing Zero is a solution and it helps the first rise as the first floor ;-)
Additional question based on this: in the US if the first rise is the second floor does that make the first basement floor Zero, or does that make it the Second Basement floor?
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Shadow Reaper
Space Marshal
The obvious question seems to me to be whether it can refine quantanium. Since Q goes BOOM shortly after being mined unless it is refined, removing the time delay between mining and refining is huge. Additionally, carrying Q refining capability with a deep space exploration fleet means it will forever always be able to Q travel. This could easily prove to be a huge big deal, but apparently CIG was not clear about this?
How to share profits...
For an org group, everyone gets a share of the final sale amount. Miners, Haulers, Refiners, Escorts, Carrier ship (Liberator/Kraken), support ships, etc.
For an independent, here is how I see it going.
Miners will be responsible for mining and paying for their escorts out of any profits they make. When they are starting to get full, they decide to either fly back to a refining location, or contact someone operating a refinery to come to them, detailing the amounts of ore they have (I have 16 SCU of quantanium, 8 of Agricium, 4 of Laranite, and 4 SCU of inert material. I need you to be here in 5 minutes. In return the miner says I pay X amount for quantanium (lets say 47 aUEC/cSCU) 15 for Agricium, and and 17 for Laranite,
Adding that up, we get 80,000 aUEC for the Quantanium, 12,000 aUEC for the Agricium, and 6,800 for the Laranite. This translates to a total offer of 94,000 aUEC for the mining load. (some refiners may not pay anything for low value ores like aluminum or quartz for instance, considering it to be the same value as inert material...unless that was the specific material they were looking for. This gives more money to the miner than they would get from selling raw ore, but less than if they refined it at the station themselves.
From the refiner's perspective, I now have a choice. I can do a fast cheap refine on it, a fast expensive refine, a slow expensive refine, slow cheap refinery process, or somewhere in the middle. Whatever I choose, I am then committed to that process. If only a few people are mining and lot of refineries are about, I might go with a slow process that nets me the most gain, even though is makes lower aUEC/hour because there is no other orders out there so it's no value to me to be fast about it. OR, I might choose a fast process that doesn't net me as much refined ore out, but since there are lots of mining ships out today, I get more aUEC per hour by doing a quick refine than I would with a slower more efficient technique.
I am including cost to refine in here because I am using refinery station info. We have no idea how that will translate into refinery ship costs.
Here is a table of the various costs/outputs for each process
| Process | Raw Quantanium In | Quantanium out | Time (hh:mm:ss) | Cost | Raw Material Cost | Value (for 88aUEC/cSCU) | Profit | Profit/hour | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cormack | 1600 | 1064 | 00:26:40 | 6,400 | 75200 | 93,632 |
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| Dinyx S. | 1600 | 1520 | 21:20:00 | 3,200 | 75200 | 133,760 |
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| Electrostarolysis | 1600 | 1292 | 01:46:40 | 6,400 | 75200 | 113,696 |
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| Ferron Exchange | 1600 | 1520 | 07:06:40 | 6,400 | 75200 | 133,760 |
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| Gaskin Process | 1600 | 1292 | 00:53:20 | 19,200 | 75200 | 113,696 |
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| Kazen Winnowing | 1600 | 1064 | 01:20:00 | 3,200 | 75200 | 93,632 |
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| Pyrometric C. | 1600 | 1520 | 03:33:20 | 19,200 | 75200 | 133,760 |
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| Thermonatic D. | 1600 | 1292 | 05:20:00 | 3,200 | 75200 | 113,696 |
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| XCR R. | 1600 | 1064 | 00:13:20 | 19,200 | 75200 | 93,632 |
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So for the Agricium (shortened table)
| Process | Time | Profit | Profit /hour | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cormack | 00:10:00 |
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| Dinyx S. | 8:00:00 |
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| Electrostarolysis | 00:40:00 |
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| Ferron Exchange | 02:40:00 |
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| Gaskin Process | 00:20:00 |
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| Kazen Winnowing | 00:30:00 |
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| Pyrometric C. | 01:20:00 |
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| Thermonatic D. | 02:00:00 |
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| XCR R. | 00:05:00 |
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And Laranite
| Process | Time | Profit | Profit/Hour | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cormack | 00:05:10 |
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| Dinyx S. | 04:08:10 |
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| Electrostarolysis | 00:20:40 |
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| Ferron Exchange | 01:22:40 |
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| Gaskin Process | 00:10:20 |
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| Kazen Winnowing | 00:15:30 |
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| Pyrometric C. | 00:41:20 |
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| Thermonatic D. | 01:02:00 |
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| XCR R. | 00:02:35 |
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Based on this, if I could get a good supply of ore every 15-20 mintues, I would run
3 reactors of Quantanium using Cormack resulting in a processing time of 12 minutes
2 reactor of Agricium using the Gaskin Process (10 minutes)
1 reactor of Laranite using the Gaskin process. (10 minutes)
That would result in a profit of 16912 per batch or about 50,736 to 67,648 aUEC per hour and 62-83 SCU of cargo I need to move every hour. via a contracted hauler
If I could get 1 refinery load like this per hour instead of ever 15-20 minutes, i would run
3 reactors of quantanium using Electrostarolysis
1 reactor of Agricium using Electrostarolysis
1 reactor of Laranite using Pyrometric C.
This would result in a profit of 40916 per batch. This would result in a 41 minute refining time, giving me plenty of time to get to a location to sell, saving me hauler fee, but probably not an escort fee at a purchase rate above the going rate at the refinery station. If I could undercut it because I am going to the miner, this makes me even more money
Obviously, since I am saving the Miner time shuttling back and forth and letting them find new rocks to mine, I don't actually have to offer above station value for their ores. I could probably undercut the station by a few aUEC/cSCU. so maybe 40 or 41 aUEC/cSCU. which would significantly increase my income per hour. By going to 39 aUEC/cSCU (5 under). the miner would get 62400 instead of 75200 for the Quantanium, but my profits would go up to about double, which would easily pay for a full time hauler and an escort or two. That said, assuming the prospector spends about 1/3 time traveling and 2/3 of their time mining and the average mining round trip takes 1 hour to go from start to finish, their profits vs just selling to the station goes from the quantanium alone goes from 70,400 to 93600 per hour for the quantanium alone, even with the reduced price.
Thinking even more..I would probably outbid the refinery if I stayed near the refinery and let the miner come to me. If I was going to the miner, I would undercut the refinery as I was taking more risk.
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Shadow Reaper
Space Marshal
Wow. Hand that man a cigar!
However, I would note that it doesn't take much skill for a player to learn to run missions, and they would regularly make 15X what your escorts would. I'm not sure how you could afford to pay escorts with these numbers.
However, I would note that it doesn't take much skill for a player to learn to run missions, and they would regularly make 15X what your escorts would. I'm not sure how you could afford to pay escorts with these numbers.
This they have clearly said no to. While it is possible to hire NPC's/PC's by service beacons the standing understanding is that NPC's will not fly your other ships if your not on them. It does ask the question of what happens if you fly a ship like a carrack and then hop into the runabout to check out a cave. So there are lots of edge cases that have not been addressed but Chris has from the very beginning been adamant that he doesn't want NPC's to take over for multiplayer interaction or turn players into fleet captains of NPCs.
I thought they said the Starfarer will not be able to mine quantanium while it still will be able to harvest gasses and refine quantum it will not be able to mine it itself.
Correct. It will be able to collect and refine reaction fuels, but not collect quantanium
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