Getting started in Antares

Subtitle: Promitor is actually fairly mediocre.

Promitor is often considered “the best start”. While it’s true that Promitor has the highest fertility, how does it compare to other starting industries? Turns out that with a modest investment, there are plenty of starter builds in ANT that will double the daily income of farming on Promitor.

When compared to other turds, Promitor is the best turd.

Promitor features an top-notch fertility of 112%. So with the COGC and 5 experts, your farms will operate at almost 180%. Surely this means you’ll make fantastic money on Promitor, right? Let’s take a look at a farm focused base:

See Base

With the free starter CM, this base costs $390k to construct and makes…. $37,372 per day. You can do better. It’s got an admittedly decent ROI of 10.43d. I’m here to show you there are plenty of better starting choices.

Antares, the best region

Keep in mind that the Antares Development Initiative gives new players in Antares space 750k AIC grants. For most of these base designs, this is enough to complete your first 500 area base, especially if you get discounted building materials. For more information, join the Antares Development Initiative Discord. A pro license is required to receive contracts and grants.

However, all of these designs work if you don’t get a grant. Build the buildings incrementally. Be sure you save money for production inputs, workforce consumables, and taxes.

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Bases that are better than Promitor:

Planet and Base	Income per Day	Base Cost
💩 Promitor - Farms	$37,372	$390k
💩 Harmonia - Farms	$30,959	$390k
🏭 Hephaestus - Manufacturing PE	$72,343	$880k
🏭 Hephaestus - Other BMP	$100,000	$880k
🏗️ Deimos - Metallurgy - AL	$47,646	$880k
🌲 Nascent - Carbon Farmer	$75,786	$900k
🚰 Norwick - Drinking Water	$98,029	$800k

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Starter Bases in Antares

🏭 Manufacturing Start

One starter option is manufacturing on Hephaestus in Antares:

See Base

At around double the cost, you make around double the profit. That’s $72,343 per day. Right around double what you’d make on Promitor. Once those sunk costs for HB1s are paid, you’re left with a permanently higher income per base. And that’s assuming you’re making PE. PE is a good choice for a new player since it moves fast, and demand is high. But if you want to get creative, you can mix in other products. This works especially well if you’ve got an pre-arranged buyer, in a group like ADI, the Antares Development Initiative.

You could readily make OFF using EPO and PG bought off the CX. This has a drastically higher profit rate of 243k per day for the planet. You probably can’t sustain that unless you’ve got good contacts, but mixing that in as appropriate will boost your average profitability nicely.

What if you’re a new player and you’ve got two 500t/500m3 ships that you can utilize for your profits? Make MCG! Haul in that LST and SIO from the CX, and you’ll be making 108k per day. Thousands and thousands of units of MCG are used each day, and it’s pegged at the MM price.

Want to do it with minimal importing? A base full of BMPs making SEA produces $108k per day on Heph.

🏗️ Metallurgy Start

Antares is hungry for Aluminum, which is easy to ship compared to Iron. A base full of SMEs makes $47,646 on Deimos. It costs more than a FRM base, so has a slower ROI, but it can also synergize well with other starts.

See Base

You can also mix in other metals, they tend to have higher returns, although AL is always guaranteed to sell. LI and TI are good higher income options that still move relatively quickly. Later you can transition your Deimos base to make alloys with an ASM.

🌲 Carbon Farmin'

Nascent is a great planet to run INCs. It’s not a starter planet, but you can move yourself on over, and throw down some INCs.

See Base

Just like that, $75,786 per day. And everyone loves carbon, so you’ll also make a bunch of friends!

🚰 Good ol’ drinkin’ water

There isn’t a “starter pack” for Food Processing, but a drinking water base is probably simpler than any of the other recommended starts, and it makes great money with just Pioneers.

See Base

Start on Norwick and build towards 12 HB1s and 29 FPs. Import water, which is at a fixed price on ANT, and you’ll be making 98k per day on a 808k buildout cost, for a ROI of 8d. Shipping the H2O will probably keep your two ships pretty busy. If you run low on shipping capacity, switch to the Drinking Water recipe that uses PG. It will reduce your income to 87k per day but cuts your shipping imports in half to 465t per day.

Want even more money on a simple Pioneer only starter base? Make rations using whatever crops you can buy off the CX for 101k per day of income. This will also work out to around 500t of shipping per day, once your base is full. (as you are starting with a partial base, it’ll be lower, of course).

🌱 Farming: A comparison Harmonia vs. Promitor

A Harmonia farming base is a little worse than Promitor, due to the fertility difference.

See Base

So it’s 31k/d on Harmonia vs 37k/d on Promitor. 20% better is nothing to sneeze at, but less than 40k per day for a permit also isn’t amazing. But if you decide you want FRM products in Antares space, Harmonia is a fine option. Keep in mind that people often forgo a 25% COGC bonus, and when mixing experts, they can lose out on up to 60% efficiency bonus. So 20% isn’t that big a deal.

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Why do people recommend Promitor?

Returns on Promitor aren’t great. You don’t have to be worried about missing out on such a low-income planet. But the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is often stronger than rational thinking.

If you don’t start with a base on Promitor, you’ll never be able to get one!

This is true, but also consider:

If you don’t grab this turd right now, you won’t be able to grab it later! 💩

You will be okay if you don’t start on Promitor. Just because it’s the best FRM planet, doesn’t mean it’s the best starting planet. Yes, if you feel the need to build a FRM base, Promitor has a 20% edge over another FRM planet like Harmonia, but it’s not a big deal.

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Common Concerns

But I need farm products

I hear you say “But I need farm products for my entirely self-sufficient chain, because it’s the only way to make Carbon”.

This is a common trap for new players. You don’t need to make everything yourself. Especially in cases when the prerequisite materials are easy to come by on the CX, it can be more profitable to buy them than try to make them yourself. For specialty items, certain inputs may not be consistently available, but that’s not what you should be focusing on as a new player.

I need my low profit base to support my high profit base

“I need my 30k/d base to make farm products, so I can have a more profitable RAT base”.

That’s fine, as long as you understand the opportunity cost of that decision. If you want vertical integration more than profits, go for it, just make sure you have enough profit to keep growing and enjoying the PRUN.

Promitor is full so I gotta start there!

If you don’t start on Promitor, you will probably never be able to have a base there. That’s true. You’ll miss out on a very low profit planet. 🤷 Oh well!

If I don’t make farm products, who will?

I dunno, probably the free hand of the market. Or when you get bigger you could make a HYF base and instead of producing 228 farm products per day in your FRMs, you could make 770 Mushrooms per day or $90K worth of HCP. Those base costs are higher, but when you start running out of permits, you’ll need it.

Noobs don’t care about profit per day, just profit per capital invested

This one is a fair concern. A FRM base is only 400k to build, while most other options are 800k. But today we live in a world with tons of available capital, either in the forms of loans or grants. New players aren’t as constrained by capital or availability of resources. Being able to quickly get a new player into a position where they are making enough of their own money to do interesting things and fund their own expansion is good for the whole universe.

I’m new and it’s boring to have a base with just one type of building

It’s true, most new players end up with a bunch of different buildings on their first planet. They throw out the efficiencies of the COGC in favor of a more interesting start in what is normally a very very slow part of the game. I had a friend who played for 3 months and never got his starting planet half full. But those days are over. Make an efficient first base quickly using loans or grants, or even partnership agreements with other players. Then expand and make an interesting multi-planet empire!