Chef Archive
Thread: factories help
and im unsure how to go about setting up my factories/harvesters. can i make casks/barrels ect in a food factory or will i need a different one. Grats Casks, Barrels, Glasses - all made in Food/Chem Factories. And if you happen to need some I have two on my vendor 
Defining the good products depends largely on your customer base. The buff drinks Vasarian Brandy, Accaragm, Garmorrl (spelling... I hate those names) are requested much. I have requests for all kinds of stuff ranging from Blue Milk (mind healing) and spiced tea (small mind buff with almost no filling) to Kanali Wafers (to get that extra bit of Const to squeeze into armor), Bespine Port (artisan experimentation), stat buffs (dodgeand KD resist so far)and some crates of Bofa Treats (petfood).
).Common enough questions...at least a couple of them, for me. See sig for why.
The factory you need is determined by the tool you use to make the schematic. If you usea Food/Chem tool, you need a Food Factory (dunno why the chem part gets left off).
The difference in worthbetween heavy and medium harvs is entirely dependant on personal preference. Me, I use heavies, except for the unmovables that sit on PA mates' lots. But I can use more resources in one factory run than a chef will in a month . Currently doing a max run of Heavy Minerals (165 deeds) that will take a total of 4,621,125 resources.
If you really want to stockpile your resources, then you will want heavies. This way you can get as much of "the good stuff" when it spawns as possible. Heavies are the king of mass extraction.
Mediums are more efficient though.A 10BER medium costs 2/3 (0.6667)what a heavy does (maint and power....purchase is separate)....but pulls 10/13 as fast (0.7692). So bang for your buck, if on a budget, mediums are your choice. Also good for those times when nothing in the galaxy is worth pulling, but you may as well pull something to grind another profession with, or to sell on bazaar/vendor.
Initial cost: Medium mineral are much cheaper than heavies (30k vs 160k)......Waters are closer (30k vs 75k)....Chem andFlora close too (75k vs 160k)....Gas a bit more spread (75k vs 250k). The prices vary based on resources required (more ore = more cost), as well as Architect to Arcitect and Galaxy to Galaxy. Heavy Gas actually require less total resources than the other heavies...but instead of 6 walls that can be made of junk, you have to use 3 walls plus roughly 10x the "good stuff" in the final combine. Water and mineral mediums use Structural modules (250 units/ea) instead of the walls (3k units/ea) in the other mediums. Basically, the higher the cost of an architect item, the lower the profit margin the architect actually makes.
Hope that helps, and for the other questions, the experts in the Chef field will have to answer those .