Editing Advice for potential camp owners

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This was taken from a post on the forums.  It needs to be reformatted.

Question posted by Tango:

what advice would you have for someone looking to buy their first camp? I want to manufacture equipment for my own use. I'm at least a few months away from having the money for doing this. What kind of resources should I have on tap? I'm thinking a lorry to move materiel to the camp and at least a half dozen 100+ mechs, lots of raw material and cash, at least 5-10 million. 

Also where would you want your camp to be, in retrospect? I see some owners selling their camp and moving further south, I'd rather just deal with setting it up and getting it going once. 
Any regrets on where your camp is, or reccomendations? 

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Responses

'''Joel Autobaun - Joels Bastards'''

In all honesty: 

Don't do it. Join a good one out there that's established and throw the same amount of resources at it and the camp owner, unless he is a total douche', will give you far more bang for your buck than all the effort to build your own and maintain it and try and keep people interested in it. 

If you must own your own, I would first post in market that you are interested in one - people might want to sell. 

South camps can build more interesting things if they are well supported. Northern ones are typically better for single or small group operations.

'''Longo - Longos Merry Men'''

There is alot of involvement in camp ownership and management. I started to write a long article on building and management of camps, however stopped near the end because, to be honest with ya, I just couldnt throw my knowledge out there to all of my competitors. But Ill get ya going here - 

1) First things first, get yourself a good partner. Its tough running things alone. If you are low on food and are having company for the weekend, its great to PM your partner and ask him if he can run some up there for ya, rather than you running a travel while the in-laws sit patiently waiting for you. Ive had great partnerships - Latte and I running Southern Pride and now Longoville with Desertfox. A few good camp members always help too. 

2) Camp location - Where do you scout the most? Put your camp here. If your "thinking" of moving south, go try all of the towns, and find one that you like best. Consider the maps, the town, and the degree of difficulty. Realize that you will be doing ALOT of lorry runs to your new camp. Can you successfully do these in this area? Check the wiki and look at the mats to build just 1 building. 1 building will require numerous full lorry loads.... 

3) Surveying your camp map - You will need to describe to Sam what size camp map your looking for, and where you would like it. He will then tell you it will cost so much to survey this map, which you will have to pay up front (most likely a few million dollars.) Then your surveyed map will go up for auction, and you will have to bid on it and win. If you lose, you lose your survey fee. This is a bummer, I would only hope that if someone did this to you, they would pay your fee back to you. Ive seen people lose their surveyed map a few times already, so be forewarned. 

4) After you win, you will need to start running lorries out to camp with materials for your buildings. Keep in mind that without any storage facilities, anything left outside at camp will be damaged by the acid rain. A few things are not damaged by acid rain however, specifically scrap metal and stone, so bring these up first. You may want to build a storage building first in order to store your cps and eps. Also keep in mind that until you have a mech shop built, your vehicles will not be able to be repaired at camp. So try and keep travel damage to a minimum. Your gonna need more than that 1 lorry... 

5) After your up and running, your gonna need more than just 6 mechs. Each mech shop requires 4 mechs to run it. Even the smallest of camps have 4 mech shops. Thats 16 mechs.... 

Your camp will take up alot of your time and lock up alot of your gangers (as mechs), but it can be quite fun. If all that I explained to you seems like too much, consider buying an already built camp and testing the waters. Good luck! 

-Longo

'''*Marc5iver*  - 5ive Crew'''

I cannot imagine how much time/effort it would take to support my camp all on my own. The Pentagon is going strong but not because of anything I do; it is the great members who keep it going so well. 

As far as the raw materials, cash and lorry you are right on; you will need a bunch. With only a half dozen 100+ mechs, you still won't have a very high Mechanic Rating because it is not calculated by taking an average rating of all the Mechs skills. It is one of Sam's hidden numbers. Not sure what you are wanting to build, but with 6 Mechs I would estimate your MR to be under 70 or so, but that is just a guess. 

55555

'''JS - Hitmen Trucking Inc'''

Building and running a camp has been one of most interesting things I've done in this game. It's a long term effort and commitment. Here's a couple tips from someone who has done it recently. 

Cost - Probably between 20-40 million all told just to get the camp. This depends on a lot, if someone tries to out bid you there are some deep pockets out there. Camps up north may not be as "desireable" to the monied. No guarantee though. In our case we had a benefactor front a lot of money. Without which we likely would not have won the auction. Buying an existing camp is an option, but building one is a ton of fun. 

Time - It will take 3-5 months to get it up and running. 

Teamwork - Get 2-4 partners (as noted above) to share the effort/cost. 

Raw materiels - Don't fret on this too much, we stockpiled a bunch of crap, but didn't exactly need it (plus it was a lot less than we needed anyway). If you have the cash to buy a camp you likely have the resources to buy what you need/capture the rest. the best way to stock a camp is to scout from it. This requires some logistics, ammo, fuel etc. It gets crazy sometimes. 

Building - Wow, it takes A LOT of stone and crap to make the buildings. this means Lorrys. Learn how to move them around before you start. 

Mechs - Yes, you need good ones. However, even a 70-90 MR can repair most equipment. they can put A armor on for free, and fix armor for free. so a low MR is not the end of the world, you just won't be making Ambulances any time soon. come to think of it, neither am I... 

Location, Location... yeah, you get the picture. Northern camps are easier to get to(ish) and smaller. The southern camps are larger (I suppose you could try to get a small camp in the south but don't know why you would). We put ours half way between GW and Morgan, anticipating Morgan opening soon. Doh! Not so much. But GW is a good scout location. Would I change it? Maybe, but one thing is certain, it ahs helped in our travels to not be delaing with BL type adversaries all the time. But it's a trade off, because the loot is more limited. Also, the camp build up would be much more difficult down south. You have to have the gangers who can escort, and that means good gunners. 

That's just a few things off teh top of my head, IM me any time you have any questions, glad to give my opinion..

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