A few structure/economy questions

(from a noob)

First off, let me say THANKS for making a game that's actually worth spending money on. I think it's a first for 2008.

I've only played three skirmishes so far so I'm pretty newb and still getting the hang of everything. I've got a few questions about the refinery and trade station structures though.

I've noticed that the refinery earns different amounts in different systems, and the tooltip says it will pull resources from surrounding systems, etc. What is the case with this? It seems to be gathering resources at a faster rate in some places rather than others (or maybe it was because of allegiance?) but so far I haven't been able to pinpoint why they do better in one area, and poorly in others. I'd really like to know if there's a pattern to this, or if it's all based on allegiances/resources in the area which they're built, whatever. If it's based on that sort of stuff then I can figure out the best spots to build them, and how many I want to build there.

The other, and simpler question is about trade stations. (which seem to be a very popular target for pirates!) Is there any purpose to stacking multiple of them in one planet's gavity well? I've always assumed that it was for inter-system trade and that putting two at one planet would not do anything. But a few people have mentioned that it's a good way to get fast cash. So what are the details surrounding these structures? Best built one per planet? multiple per planet? Any bonuses for having long chains of them or what?

Thanks!

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Since this hasn't gotten a response, I'll give you a general guide to these buildings. Specific values will be absent but you'll get the gist of how they work.

Refinery - If you mouse over one of your metal/crystal extractors, you'll see a statistic that reads something to the tune of 'Quota - x/3'. Each extractor can be influenced by up to three refineries and each refinery will service extractors in the zone where it's placed and all adjacent zones.

I'm not sure if there are diminishing returns if you go above three refineries so if that was a question, I'll leave the answer to someone else.

Trade Stations - Each station will give you roughly 1 extra credit worth of income regardless of where you place it (unless the planet has a specific trade boosting/hindering effect on it) or how many centers are in a zone. If you build 5 trade centers, you'll get 5 credits in extra income.

There 'is' a bonus to that amount which, I believe, equates to another .1 credits per sequential zone in which you have trade centers. If you build trade centers in adjacent zones and mouse over your credits at the top of the screen, you'll see a white line appear on the map highlighting your longest trade route. For a larger bonus, do what you can to make that line longer. Uncolonizable zones won't break the chain so don't worry about those.

Hope that's of some use.

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