Author Topic: Factory Output  (Read 12437 times)

idea weenie

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Re: Factory Output
« Reply #30 on: 01 June 2018, 20:58:39 »
One side note - if you look at the Objective Raids and similar sources you see that on nearly no assembly line all parts are produced onworld. That means for each mech you have to import critical parts from several other worlds sometime many jumps away.
From my understanding the crush on the interstellar trade with the Amaris Civil war and later the SWs is one major reason why production numbers of existing lines decrease.

You should still be able to get similar speeds as the original, as long as you have a steady supply of components to be fed to the proper locations.  I.e. imagine a Marauder plant that used to have a linked PPC manufacturing center where the PPCs were built in a separate building and sent via railcar to the main mech assembly area.  However, the PPC manufacturing center got destroyed.  So now the owner of the factory has PPCs shipped in, a basic crane system used to load PPCs onto railcars, and the railcars come in are at the correct rate.  If the supply of PPCs gets disrupted, the factory will slow down/stop, but as far as the main assembly line is concerned, it is still receiving PPCs from the subfactory.

Of course, you might have a small file receiving errors from the PPC factory monitoring software (main factory can't make contact with PPC factory), so it adds a single line to an error file.  Each time it the factory builds a Mech it has another line in that file, and this causes a gradual slowdown in production (all of the error files are reviewed before commencing assembly, and the factory engineer know to press the 'acknowledge' prompt to get the factory going for each Mech).  So over time there is a gradual increase in time for each Mech to be made, too slow to notice, and nobody knows why (secondary diagnostic building was cannibalized to keep Mech factory going).

The other fun is a factory where a printer buffer problem is just waiting to show up.  (Short version.  Automated factory in US suddenly halted all production in middle of the day.  C-level types, Main Engineers, and similar high-ranking people are immediately called with orders to FIX IT!  On way by one of the interns spots a printer that is out of paper, and fills it up.  Printer begins printing again, and within a couple minutes the factory just starts back up again.  Turns out the factory computer wrote reports to that printer, and the printer ran out of paper.  Reports filled up printer buffer, until buffer was full.  Factory stopped until room was available in buffer.  Once the printer started printing, the buffer soon had room, and the factory started back up again.  New standing instructions were to make sure that printer always had paper.)

Col Toda

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Re: Factory Output
« Reply #31 on: 02 August 2018, 05:02:33 »
A very long time ago I used the Bezerker fluff text as a guideline.  A small factory assembling 1200 tons of complex mechs using advanced tech . Reduce production by a factor of 10 .  Also increased by 10 for tournement legal stuff . So combat vehicles are not complex unlike mechs using tournement legal would have the same factory churn out 120,000 tons .A large factory i muliply the numbers by 3.  To determine choak point say each District has 1 large factory to make a particular componant like Gaurdian ECM so 2400 units from 3600 tons of production . While the same factory would churn out 180 units of Angel ECM during eras in which it was experimental tech . Since you have to put aside a least 1/3 of the units for combat replacement would mean you could not produce 1800 units with Gaurdian ECM or 120 units with Angel in a given year there . Quantity is a quality all by itself . So for every 1,000 tons Tournement legal combat vehicles you have 100 tons of tournament legal mechs , 10 tons of advanced tech mechs an 1 ton of experimental tech . Treating Clan tech as always advanced gives rise to invading Clans using inner sphere factories and equipment when the have to defend 200 times or more territory . It is also why in later ERA there just is not 1 tech base . If you can produce 100 Inner Sphere med lasers or 10 Clan ones while needing to defend 20 sta4 systems the math is easy . You have to compromise somewhere . This seems to fall in line from what I see fielded everywhere in any ERA . Does this seem correct to you ?

SCC

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Re: Factory Output
« Reply #32 on: 20 August 2018, 05:00:46 »
It's important to remember that capital outlay for a new factory is HUUUUUGE.  You want to build 80 atlases a year?  Well don't expect to turn a profit soon, because I'm sure that tooling up that factory will cost you in the range of 15-20 BILLION c-bills, using the rule of thumb that 5% returns on Capital are the expected norm.  And that's if you can find a buyer for the 1600 atlases you'll need to sell to get your creditors off your back.  And that the Atlases don't have any cost for their components at all, which is frankly highly questionable.  If you're only looking at a 5% margin on your Atlas production, then you're only pocketing 38.5 million C-bills a year for a factory that produces 80 of the largest Mechs in the inner sphere.  This is actually a pretty lousy way to make money, I'm gonna retool my factories to make Widgets and Gadgets for the civilian market.
Considering that that Atlas has a 100% mark-up over component cost, I'm guessing that the profit margin is higher.

 

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