9.14.2 Autofactories
Autofactories are space structures (see HELP STRUCTURES) that take refined goods (see HELP REFINERIES) and manufacture them into intermediate and finished goods used across the Sector for a multitude of purposes (see HELP MANUFACTURING).
To use an autofactory, you must have materials stored at an autofactory structure, or on your ship while being close to the autofactory. The materials you need will depend on what you are trying to produce (see below). Submitting an autofactory job costs marks, paid to the structure owner depending on their Marks per Cycle fee. Recipes require a varying number of Cycles (see below). You may also have to pay Production Tax or Piracy Extortion Rate if applicable (detailed in HELP MANUFACTURING).
Useful autofactory commands include:
AUTOFACTORY LIST [NEARBY|MINE] List autofactories in space.
AUTOFACTORY SHOW <autofactory> Show details on an autofactory.
AUTOFACTORY JOB LIST List your autofactory jobs.
AUTOFACTORY JOB QUEUE <amount|ALL> <comm> Queue up an autofactory job locally.
AUTOFACTORY JOB SHOW <job id> View info on an autofactory job in progress.
Jobs can also be queued up remotely using AUTOFACTORY JOB QUEUE <amount|ALL> <comm> AT <autofactory>. The required materials must be at stored at the autofactory for this.
The job queue command can be shortened using AUTOFACTORY Q ...
Autofactory owners, see STRUCTURE syntax and HELP STRUCTURES for making changes to your autofactory.
Manufacturing Recipes
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To view what is required to make an item, use the following syntax:
AUTOFACTORY WHATMAKES <item> View the manufacturing recipe for an item.
AUTOFACTORY WHATFROM <item> Show what you can make from a commodity.
AUTOFACTORY TYPES ... Review autofactory categories.
AUTOFACTORY TYPE <type> Review recipes of the specified type.
Recipes have 3 components: Materials, Batch size, and Cycles:
MATERIALS are the commodities you need to have at the autofactory to queue up one production run. These recipes can be modified by Efficiency Bonuses at an Autofactory (see below).
BATCH SIZE is the amount of commodities output by a single run. For instance, transteel has a Batch size of 1, meaning 1 run of transteel outputs 1 transteel. Repairkits, on the other hand, have a batch size of 75, meaning 1 run of repairkits outputs 75 repairkits. The amount of output you receive is also modified by Production Bonuses at an Autofactory (see below).
"CYCLES" represents the complexity of the manufacturing task and contributes to how long the recipe takes to manufacture and how much the job costs to submit.
Autofactories have a "Cycles per Second" stat shown in AUTOFACTORY SHOW which is an approximation of how many cycles the autofactory can process per second. They also have a "Marks per Cycle" fee to determine how many marks 1 Run will cost. Transteel for instance costs 600 Cycles per Run. An autofactory with 3 Cycles per Second will take approximately 200 seconds to complete 1 Run, whereas an Autofactory with 40 Cycles per Second will take approximately 15 seconds to complete 1 Run. If the Marks per Cycle fee is set to 1.00, the job will cost 600 Marks to submit, plus any tax or extortion. The Cycle cost of recipes can be modified by the Cycle Mod Bonus at an Autofactory (see below).
Autofactory Bonuses
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There are three types of bonuses at an autofactory: Efficiency Bonuses, Production Bonuses, and Cycle Mod bonuses.
>> EFFICIENCY BONUSES target particular refined commodities. For instance, having a bonus of +2 Titanium Efficiency at an autofactory would reduce the titanium cost of all recipes involving titanium by 2, to a minimum of one. This would take the Transteel recipe from 4x Titanium and 2x Magnaril down to 2x Titanium and 2x Magnaril. Efficiency cannot reduce a recipe's material cost to 0. Thus having +2 Magnaril Efficiency would modify the Transteel recipe to 1x Magnaril, not 0x. Nothing in the Sector is free, after all.
>> PRODUCTION BONUSES will produce an additional bonus commodity for every X output. Production bonuses target particular Autofactory Categories.
For instance, say we have an Autofactory with a production bonus set to produce 1 additional commodity of the Nonmetals type for every 4 output. Submitting a job for 10 runs of Nanoplastic would normally output 30 Nanoplastic (since its batch size is 3). With a 1:4 production bonus on Nonmetals, the job would output 7 additional nanoplastic, taking into account 28 of the 30 nanoplastic output.
The unbonused remainder is remembered on a per-client basis at the structure, so say you now submit a job for 2 runs of nanoplastic and expect 6 output, the job will carryover the 2 unbonused nanoplastic from before and now apply its bonus to 8 nanoplastic, thus producing 2 additional nanoplastic. Such records of unbonused remainders are deleted after 90 RL days of inactivity. The autofactory owner may set the factory to take some of the bonus production for themselves, but you will always get the full regular batch size.
>> CYCLE MOD BONUSES reduce the Cycles requirement of particular Autofactory Categories, effectively reducing the production time of commodities of that type. For instance, having a Cycle Mod bonus of -50% for Alloys would mean that Paristeel, Transteel, and Modular Frames all finish their production at half the Cycle cost.
NOTE that the amount of marks you pay the structure owner in the form of Marks per Cycle uses the unmodified job cycle cost. Thus even if an autofactory only takes 300 cycles per run to manufacture Transteel, you will still be charged a fee assuming the job requires its normal 600 Cycles per run. However, your job will complete in half the time.
Keep in mind, you do not need to transport goods to autofactory structures yourself, you can use cargo contracts (see HELP CARGO CONTRACTS) to have other players or NPCs ship the goods for you. You can also fully automate the process of shipping, refining, manufacturing, and marketing using offices (see HELP OFFICES).
