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 a Blue or better Trading upgrade permanently installed 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%.

For example, a Small AntiGrav Unit Factory will generate about Cr 14 million per hour profit in a +0% sector, but Cr 23 million in a +30% sector. 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% is +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.

When selling to NPCs traders, stations have an automatic 20% bonus to the sales price. That is, if the local price is Cr 100 per unit, NPC traders will buy items for Cr 120.

Mines and raw-resource stations have no overhead, so the profit of the station is local market price * 1.2.

While profit margins for factories vary, almost all of them have a basic profit margin of 30%. That is, if the average price of the product is Cr 100, they require Cr 70 in parts to make the product. This is the profit before the 20% bonus or adjustments for local prices.

Local prices for goods and ingredients have a strong effect on overall profit. When the local market price is +20% over normal, and the ingredient prices are +0%, the station's profit is 250% of the basic profit.

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 15% 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 3 million per hour in income.

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


Most stations assume a +20% local price.

Note that the popular Gold / Platinum mine only returns about Cr 0.93 million / hour and costs Cr 14 million if you include build costs, for a 7% return. Like most mines, it's not a very good investment.

Multiple factories of the same type in the same area are a bad idea, because they'll depress the local price of their goods. This doesn't affect single factories, just multiple factories of the same type. If you really want to build a lot of a singe type of station, separate them by 20 sectors or so to avoid this problem.

For large investments, most factories over about Cr 25 million in total startup costs will yield a 14%-15% return, with little variation. Choosing whatever high-cost good is in high demand locally is a sound strategy.

Some stations require Assembly Blocks to improve their Production value, or they will be very slow to produce goods. Basic stations like mines generally don't need Assembly blocks.

Stations have multiple production tracks. For a newly-built station, it's 2 tracks.

A production track requires

Effort / (Production + 100) seconds

to complete. The minimum time is 15 seconds, no matter how high the station's production is. All stations have an inherent production of 100 that isn't displayed, so if a station shows "100 production," its real production is 200.

The Optimal Production for a station is the total displayed production required to reach a 15 second production time. I've listed this for every station.

Adding additional tracks does not increase production time. If a station takes 15 seconds to produce with 2 tracks, it will take 15 seconds no matter how many tracks you add.

Effort required is the total value of the products created, multiplied by the Product Level. "Product Level" is a property that isn't visible in the game; you'll have to check the Wiki to find the Level of any given good. In general, the Level of a good depends on how many different steps it takes to produce it.

Cattle requires Wheat, and Wheat requires Water, and Water requires a Water Collector. This makes Water a Level 0 good, Wheat a Level 1 good, and Cattle a Level 2 good.

For a Cattle Ranch 1, the effort per product track is 4,490.

With no Assembly Blocks, the time required is 4,490 / 100 = 45 seconds. To get it down to 15 seconds, we need 4,490 / 15 - 100 = 199 additional production. That's about 165 Trinium assembly blocks.

The "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.

Most factories require Assembly Blocks to run at the maximum speed of 4 production cycles / minute. I'm including the cost of those assembly blocks at roughly Cr 1,600 per production point.


For example, an Ammunition Type 1 factory costs Cr 15.2 million to found. Add Cr 5 million for defenses, Cr 5.2 million for 3,276 Production in assembly blocks, and Cr 7.2 million for 100 minutes of parts, and the total is Cr 32.6 million.

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

For example, suppose a factory turns part A, size 6, and part B, size 2, into part C, size 2. The station will allocate 60% of its cargo bay to buying part A, 20% to buying part B, and 20% to storing finished products.

Thus, 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 minutes.

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. It 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% to -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% to -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 * (120% + Station Slider) * Local Market Price

The cost of raw materials is:

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

The exact price formula is visible in game. If you hover over the price of an item in the "Trade" dialog for your factory, it will show the base price of the good, the multiplier for the station slider (and +20% bonus), and the multiplier for the local price.

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.

Usually there's a range of prices where enough traders sell to the station to keep it running, and enough traders buy from the station so it doesn't fill up. Sometimes, though, setting the price high enough to keep it running will kill sales.

You can fix the "not enough parts" problem by building stations to supply it, or buying from NPC stations directly if they're in the same sector. Often this is a good deal, since some stations may sell below local market price.

You can fix the "items not selling" problem by selling directly to stations in the same sector, or by building a station that consumes the product.

For example, a Mining Robot factory can sell directly to mines in the same sector. This is always less profitable than selling to NPC traders, but if the NPC traders aren't arriving, you have little choice.

Mining Robot factories also produce scrap metal. If the factory stalls because the scrap metal isn't selling, you could build a Steel Factory (Scrap Metal) to consume it. Steel usually sells easily.

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


Note that you may have a hard time finding +20% sectors for many of the types with low demand, like Plankton Collectors.

With these types of stations, there's a distinct danger that you won't have enough NPC pilots showing up to buy the finished products. This is true even if local demand (and hence price) is high.

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

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

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.

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.

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 often get +20% sectors because mines consume them, and mines are extremely common. Mines don't actually use Mining Robots to produce anything, but they do buy them and use them up regardless.

Some stations produce nothing, such as Habitats, Biotopes, Shipyards, Equipment Docks, and Repair Docks.

You can set these stations to buy goods from NPC traders. By default, this is disabled. If open the "sell to station" dialog, there's a button in the upper right which enables buying consumer goods.

Consumer stations will periodically sell goods to their population. For example, a Research Station might buy 50 Satellites, and then later the population will consume them.

Consumed goods make you a 10% profit. If the local price is Cr 1000 per item, the station will pay you 1,100 Cr per item when it consumes them.

This 10% profit is less than the automatic 20% profit for selling to NPC traders. Unless your Station Slider is -10% or more, you'll make more money selling to NPCs. It's something to try only if your station can't consistently sell goods with the slider above -10%.

On the positive side, consumer stations affect local demand, and thus Local Market Price. A Research Station in the same sector as an Antigrav Generator Factory or Accelerator Factory may boost the sales price from that factory as much as 10%.

It's unclear exactly what determines how often the station will consume goods, or how many goods the station will consume. There is no way to get a history for how much a station has consumed.

A newly-built station has 2 production tracks. All of the estimated returns in this guide assume a station with the initial 2 tracks. You can upgrade this to 3, 4, or 5 parallel production tracks.

The price of the upgrade is based on the basic profit for that kind of station. The first upgrade is roughly 2000 x the basic profit, the second is 3000x, and the third and final upgrade is 4000x.

The additional production track adds 240 productions / hour.

However, because the actual sale price is 120% of the normal price, and local prices can be as much as 130% of normal, most stations make 170% - 250% of the "basic" profit. The return for a new production track is usually 600x the basic profit per hour.

In practice, this means that the first upgrade usually has a return on investment of 30% / hour, the second is 20% / hour, and the third is 15% / hour.

Since no stations have a return of over 15% / hour unless local prices are very favorable, it's almost always worth upgrading to 4 or 5 production tracks.

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. Don't. 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.

I built an AntiGrav Generator Factory 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 x Wire, for a total of Cr 990 / cycle. Suppose that the NPC traders rarely showed up to supply wire. It happens, 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.