Official News page 2

HOW TO BUILD A GRAVING DOCK EFFICIENTLY

by Hazed

Plutocrats who haven't yet built themselves a graving dock need to get themselves organized. After all, you need a whole load of commodities to complete the build, and if you don't want your workthings to be standing around twiddling their tentacles (or equivalent) because they are missing some vital ingredient, you need to make sure all of the materials needed are available when they are needed. The build takes five days under the best of circumstances, and you don't want a shortage of something important to extend that to six days... or seven... or longer.

So, the first thing to do is look at the list of commodities needed and compare them against your exchange. Remember, the goods can come from any of the planets in your cartel's hub system so you should have at least three to play with, and maybe up to five if you've taken full advantage of the possibilities. You will find that your planets produce many of the commodities needed, so for those, set your stockpiles high to produce lots of goods, and then post jobs to the workboard to move the goods around between your planets. When they are delivered, they'll get diverted to the graving dock warehouse.

You may be able to do some extra builds on the planets to bump up production of some of the commodities needed, too.

But there are always going to be items you don't produce in your star system, so for those you need to get your member POs to raise their stockpiles and post jobs to deliver the goods to your cartel. You can also get them to do a bit of hauling to bring you the goods directly. As a last resort you could actually get into your ship and haul something yourself...

A well-balanced cartel should have planets at all different levels that produce just about everything you need, but if there are still shortages, then do a deal with other Plutocrats to raise their stockpiles, so you can go buy the goods and haul them back to your cartel. In return you can do the same to provide what they need.

This way, with a bit of organization, you can make the building process painless and fast.

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