I don't know if this is helpful Andy, but I made a spread sheet of what I needed to be able to be self sufficient in shuttle production. All these numbers are current and as you can see there is a massive amount of corps that are needed for just creating the items needed to allow Shuttles to be produced. By my calculation in order to self supply 1 shuttle company you need: 1 Fuselage, 3 Engine, 2 Extensions, 1 Booster, 9 Components. This means that in total roughly 17 corporations are needed to just be able to supply the space products for a single shuttle corporation.
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Shuttles need the following items for 1 years production:
Boosters 60, Components 26880, Engines 36, Extensions 60, Fuselage 5
Fuselage corporations produce: 8 per year, Needs components 7020 per year
Extensions corporations produce: 36 per year, Needs components 3600 per year
It is easy to look at details like that an attempt to highlight things that don't seem to make sense. It has required many corporations to have a successful shuttle operation and at one time I had about 3 dozen corporations set to this task.
What drove me out of that business is the gold coin market for shuttles. Other players were willing to manage these corporations and sell their shuttles for less than I calculated the effort to make the same shuttles on my part was. So what happened? I closed my entire shuttle operation and bought the shuttles I needed off of the market.
My shuttle fleet currently consists of about 1500 shuttles and the current direct trade market allows any player to have a very competent fleet for a few coins. In this context, is there a problem in shuttle manufacture?
That said, there is a major problem right now, and its solution could change this equation. With the introduction of a corporation that
Supersoldier, Thanks for the numbers. We know them but others may not.
As I said before, we will improve the numbers.
You should not need so many corporations to support one cargo shuttle producer.
Their profitability will improve. Their sale price is depressed by the contract only limitation.
There are more places where we intend to make world trade possible.
Aries
It did cross my mind to have the possibility to move shuttles back to the country of the owner.
I will look at the possibilities to add to the game.
The Cargo shuttle industry now makes sense and it is profitable.
we have introduced several products to create markets for products that were not consumed.
Some were not produced at all which represented a problem when someone needed them.