It's probably in poor form to open a guide by asking your reader to download and install something, but I promise each of the software listed below will make your life MUCH, MUCH easier.
I'll even provide you with download links to make it more convenient.


Whether you're playing X3:TC or X3:AP you should be using the bonus packs, as they have amazing utility. Using these won't mark your game as **modified**, and will still let you earn achievements. Of special importance for our complex-building guide are the CLS/CAG plugins, and the Hephaïstos station building service if you're playing AP.

• Bonus pack for TC[www.egosoft.com]
  
• Bonus pack for AP[www.egosoft.com]

Or TCM for short. In vanilla, stations in a complex are connected by tubes, which are ugly, destroy your framerate when you are in sector, and the autopilot also really likes to crash into them. These tubes are an utter abomination, and should absolutely be removed. I cannot imagine building anything in X3 without this mod.

The best part is, it doesn't list your save as **modified**, so you can use it and still earn Steam achievements.

• TCM, works for both TC and AP.[forum.egosoft.com]

This third-party software makes it trivial to plan out your complexes, by listing production statistics, prices of stations, where to buy each station, asteroid yields for each sector, and more. Like the Tubeless complex mod, I consider it absolutely mandatory to complex-building. It's lightweight, easy to use, and has a great UI.

• Xadrian.[kayahr.github.io]

This mod allows you to order all the stations in your complex at once (except mines) provided you can pay for them, and let a fleet of NPC TLs place them all in tight orderly cubes without any input on your part, saving you from having to place each station individually yourself.

This mod isn't mandatory, and is already included by default in the bonus pack for X3:AP.
However, you can also use it in X3:TC, but it will mark your save file as **modified** , preventing you from earning achievements. Therefore I recommend using it if you do not care about achievements.

• Hephaïstos mod for TC.[forum.egosoft.com]

Phew, we're done ! That wasn't so bad, right ? Now we can delve into the subject proper.

Let us now talk about ingame prerequisites to building a complex. Don't worry, there isn't that much you need.

• Several million credits. Use Xadrian to plan out your desired complex to find out exactly how many.
  
• Enough reputation with the various races to buy the stations you are going to need
  
• A TL-class ship equipped with a jumpdrive, if playing TC and not using Hephaïstos, or if incorporating mines in your complex
  
• If building mines, a ship with a top speed of at least 80 m/s capable of equipping a tractor beam. Most Commonwealth M6s will do the job.
  
• One advanced satellite.

If this is your first complex, the most expensive of these prerequisites is probably the TL-class ship, which costs about 30 million. You can hire a NPC TL for cheap, but I do not recommend it for complexes that are bigger than ~5 stations, as the NPC TL takes forever to go back and forth between the shipyard and your building site, due to its lack of jumpdrive, and lack of upgraded max speed.

I recommend using the Argon Mammoth as your first TL, as it has the largest cargo bay of the purchasable TLs by far. Once you have the marines to board one, the Atmospheric Lifter is the best TL in the game.

I can sum up this section in two words : USE XADRIAN. Seriously, it does all the work for you.

One thing Xadrian does not do, is give advice on where to place your complex, so that's what we'll talk about briefly in this section.


If building an open-loop complex (i.e. a complex where you buy resources such as energy cells, ore, silicon and the like, and then sell the finished product), it is important to build close to the NPC stations you're going to be sourcing from. That is to say, if you're buying energy cells, it's not a good idea to build 3 sectors away from the nearest solar power plant.

With regards to selling your product : NPC traders will only buy from your station if the price is lower than average (even average - 1 credits works). On the other hand, they'll buy even if they can't sell everything they buy. I've had NPCs buy 7000 units of space fuel at once from my complex, even though you probably can't sell more than 3000 units at a time even if you were to sell to every station that buys space fuel in the entire universe.

Therefore, since NPC traders will buy your stock no matter if they can sell it or not, it's usually less of a priority to build close to NPC stations that will buy your finished product. Of course, you usually make (a bit) more profit selling to NPC stations in need of your product using CAGs, than letting NPC traders buy from you.

Likewise, NPCs will only sell things to your station if you buy them above the average price. Most basic resources (especially energy cells) are available in surplus from NPC stations, so it is usually better to have your own automated ships (using the CAG plugin from the bonus pack) buy these instead of letting NPCs deliver them to you.


If building a closed loop (a.k.a. self-sufficient) complex, i.e. a complex that does not purchase any resources from NPC stations or traders, the limiting factor is going to be energy cells, and thus silicon. Suns also affect energy cell production, but not by much : each 50% of suns above 150% increases production by 2/9ths of the base amount, and each 50% below 150% reduces it by 2/9ths.

Therefore, when picking a sector for your self-sufficient complex, it's usually best to pick by looking at the available silicon asteroïds. Note that it's never a waste to build a silicon mine, even on a 1 yield asteroid : all yield does is increase the production speed of the mine, but the ratio of energy cells consumed to silicon wafers produced always stays the same.

If you are using the Hephaistos station building service mod, you can ignore most of this section, as the mod will conveniently place all the stations you buy in a neatly packed cube. You can then connect each of your stations using complex construction kits. You'll still have to place mines yourself, and maybe move them in range of your complex hub using your M6 and tractor beam, but that's easy enough.

Now, for the people who play TC and don't use the Hephaïstos station building service, here's the most important part of all :


Knowing these controls will make building stations precisely where you want them a cinch. You can use these controls when the game opens the sector map and asks you where to put your station after you select "build". They mostly use the numpad, and are as follow :

• Numpad 4, 6, 2, 8 : Move station **IMPORTANT**
  
• Numpad 7, 1, 3, 9 : Rotate station (Not very important if you use the TCM like I asked you to)
  
• Numpad 5 : Jump cursor to an already existing object : **IMPORTANT** This is the single most important key when building complexes, as it allows you to effortlessly align stations when combined with the move station keys
  
• Insert : Changes the axis of the sector map. Useful for building in cubes instead of squares
  
• Home : Zooms in on the sector map
  
• End : Zooms out on the sector map
  
• k : Overlays advanced satellite camera on the sector map **IMPORTANT**

Let's get on to actually building our stations. This part uses screenshots from a microchip complex I am building in my current game of TC for illustration.

First things first : pick a location in sector for your complex, and drop an advanced satellite. This will let you use the overlay camera when placing your station, which will make it a lot easier to check for collisions before actually placing your station.

Then, place your first station. I recommend placing your complexes not too far from a gate, and also a bit above or below the ecliptic plane, but you can place them wherever you want. Just make sure you have enough room to work with. Also keep in mind you can only link stations that are within 20 km of your complex hub. It's no big deal if some stations are too far away, since you can always link those into a second complex hub, and then link the two complex hubs together.

Then comes placing the other stations : First, press 5 and hover your mouse over one of your already built stations. This will snap your cursor to that station. You can also zoom in with the Home key until you're comfortable with the view provided


Then, press the K key to activate the advanced satellite overlay camera, again zooming to your liking.


Then, move the station using the Move station keys, and make sure it doesn't collide with anything using the overlay camera



Finally, press Enter to place your station




You can repeat this process to build neat little arrays of stations, and then link everything up with CCKs.

Once you've built all your stations and linked them all into a single complex, you can then begin bringing your mines (if there are any) within 20km of the complex hub using the tractor beam ship we talked about earlier, and then link them up as well.

A question that often arises in the minds of players looking to build their first complexes is : Should I make it self-sufficient, or buy some freighters to buy resources from NPCs. While self-sufficient complexes (also called closed-loop complexes) sound more appealing at first, the answer to the question above is actually a lot more nuanced than you might think.


In almost all cases, open-loop complexes have a better return on investment than closed-loop complexes. Let's look at an example to see why : A simple complex supporting 5 1MJ shield factories. This is a common complex to make in the early game, as it is very profitable and the merchandise is easy to sell in bulk to NPC traders.

The production statistics for the open-loop version are the following :



Adding the cost for the one or two freighters that will supply our complex with energy cells, the overall cost of it is 15 million credits, for a profit of 430k credits per hour. This complex thus has a ROI of about 2.86% /hr.

Now, let us look at the closed loop version :



A cost of 51 million credits, nearly 3.5 times the initial cost of the open-loop complex, for a profit of 1.126 million credits per hour. This gives us a ROI of about 2.21% /hr.

The open loop complex has a better ROI then the closed-loop complex, and significantly so : about 30% more ROI. In other words, the open-loop complex will pay for itself in about 35 game hours, and the closed-loop version in about 45 game hours.

While open-loop is significantly more profitable, it suffers from a fatal flaw, that closed-loop does not : open-loop complexes need to buy their resources from the NPC stations.

NPC stations are limited in number (especially the magic NPC power plants that produce energy cells out of thin air), and may not be able to support large complexes, at least not without starving the local NPC economy of resources. For reference, large complexes can require the full production of 3, 4 or more XL solar power plants, which is the energy consumed by about 8 entire sectors. Sourcing such large amounts of resources from NPC stations might not be feasible. As a rule of thumb, I like to make my complexes closed-loop when they have more than 30 stations making the end-products (not counting mines and food factories).

Closed-loop complexes are also superior when you do not intend to sell the output of your complex : for example when building complexes for the Hub plot, or building complexes to supply and equip your own fleet.

In short, closed-loop complexes are superior to open-loop in two cases :

1. The complex is too big to be supported by the local NPC economy
   
2. You do not intend to sell the final product of your complex.

If you're lazy and just want the short version, here it is :

Open-loop complexes :

• + Require much less initial capital
  
• + Are more profitable
  
• + Are less of a pain in the ass to build because they have a lot less stations
  
• + Increase your trade rank more because you buy products from NPC factories
  
• - Are limited in size by the local NPC economy
  
• - Need to sell their products to be sustainable

Closed-loop complexes :

• + Are only limited in size by the available silicon, which is much less restrictive
  
• + Do not need to sell their products to be sustainable
  
• - Require a lot more initial capital
  
• - Are less profitable
  
• - Can be a huge pain in the ass to build
  
• - Don't increase your trade rank as much (or not at all if you only sell to NPC traders and not stations)

When building your first complexes, you're probably looking for passive income. Thus, I recommend building open-loop at first, and then switching to closed-loop when building the more sizeable plexes which you need for the Hub plot, or to equip your own fleet.

Finally, a small word about micromanagement of complexes : Some people hold the misconception that open-loop complexes require more micromanagement than closed-loop complexes. This is false, and in fact both types require zero micromanagement beyond the initial building and setup.
Simply use CAG or CLS ships to automate the supplying of your open loop complexes, and I promise you they will run in the background without a hitch.

Here are a few suggestions on what to build in the early stages of the game for new players looking for passive income.

• 1MJ shields and Impulse Ray Emitters : Both of these wares are readily bought by NPC traders, equipment docks and trading stations, and complexes making those are both profitable, and don't require much initial capital. My personal pick for a first complex.
  
  
• Drugs : Space weed and Space fuel, mostly. These wares are illegal in most sectors and thus highly profitable. Of note, you should build these complexes in Pirate or unknown sectors, (or Teladi sectors for space weed), since your stations will actually be shot down by the military if you don't. Hey, it's illegal after all. It's best to be friendly with the Pirates before building these, as they'll be frequent customers.
  
  
• Microchips : Again, a highly profitable ware. You will also need lots (LOTS) of them for the Hub plot, so it's a good idea to start with an open-loop complex, and then to close it when you need the chips for your own use. Also used in the construction of ships at your player headquarters, so always useful.
  
  
• Teladianium : A very simple chain of production since you just need energy cells. Less profitable than microchips, but also needed in massive amounts for the Hub plot, and for building ships at the PHQ.

This small list is in no way exhaustive, and if you have suggestions, I'll be happy to add them in.

If you managed to read all that and get here : congratulations, and thanks for sticking with me until the end. I wish you the best in your complex building endeavours.

If you think an improvement can be made to a part of the guide, or if you spot a mistake you would like corrected, do not hesitate to leave a comment.

See you out there, pilot !