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[Joshua]

What's the optimal way to use fabricators? I particularly have in mind a flight hack build like Valguris's 2-prop or otherwise. I used to go straight to fabbing needed items when I found one, now I am wondering if it's better to put in Trojan(Report) and wait until the fab network gets a larger matter allocation. Has anyone done science and graphed this over time? I believe it's every 500 turns but I don't know if the network is guaranteed to get a net increase in matter over that time or if the complex's fab use could also result in a net decrease.

In the game I just got played I got locked out before the one item I started was even finished fabbing on -1 so I am also not sure whether it's better to try to start as many items as possible simultaneously (if the fabs are close enough to each other) or do only one at a time with siphon and space them out to avoid tripping the lockout threshold.

Any thoughts?

[Valguris]

At first I tried to fab one item and wait for matter restock to fab another. Then I changed my strategy to just fab as many items as I can in as little time as I can. I don't have any data on that, but I find the latter approach to be superior.

Nowadays I'm looking for a few nearby fabricators on a level and I start fabricating at those with help of trojans until matter runs out. Then I wait to see if matter restocks or I get locked out.

[Joshua]

Some quick and dirty Science! on -7: I threw Trojan(Report) on the first fab I found, then dug myself inside a wall and waited.

Code: [Select]

     Turn   +Mtr    Bal
      706    389     874
     1208    361     884
     1707    501     963
     2202    356    1029
     2700    406    1086
     3201    477    1197
     3702    351    1144  <<
     4204    459    1269
     4699    418    1275
     5199    469    1364

So it seems the matter allocation does drift upward over time (there was only a net decrease on one of the refills). It amounted to about 56% over 5000 turns which is a significant increase in the number of items you could fab. But probably not worth the number of turns it cost.

My gut feeling is probably waiting until a refill to fab is optimal - that is at least a local maxima and there is at least the chance that you won't get detected before the next refill, without spending thousands of turns waiting for the matter budget to go up significantly.

[sleekie]

I don't see the point of waiting. I fab the reserves dry at the first opportunity. For one thing, you may need to leave the floor in a hurry, and for another, I'm not convinced that trying to remain undetected by the fab network is worth it. I fabbed four flight props in Armory and it shut down the network. If you're going to get caught with 2000+ matter available, you're going to get caught on most normal floors too. May as well empty the bank and if it fills back up enough to use again, well great. It's not as though leaving it nearly empty guarantees a lockdown anyway.