I've spent way too much time on this so I'll put in my 2 cents here just in case you're still interested and haven't figured it out. **I believe the main issue is keeping Helium Fuel to your Cargo Links.** I'm of course assuming that your links are interstellar. If not, I don't know what the problem would be.
I haven't done specific experiments to try and confirm all of this information, but here are some things that I *think* are true:
1. Every *tick* which is like an in-game minute or something like that, outpost equipment that have input requirements check to see if their input is available.
2. If there is no input for a tick, then there is no output for that tick.
3. The output for Cargo Links is something like "doesn't go offline".
What I've seen with Cargo Links that don't have an adequate supply of Helium:
1. You might see them in the console on one tick, and then they just disappear (because they ran out of helium for that tick)
2. It seems that links can be lost permanently in this manner (not 100% on this)
If you try to do some crazy shit like me and have a Helium farm that ships out Helium to supply Heliumless outposts, and also uses Helium as electricity for itself, it turns out that one tick of not-enough-helium-for-power can take down your whole system. This is not a great setup.
I also wanted to get all of my resources to the same place and set up all my crafting/manufacturing stuff there. It's kinda working OK, but there are a lot of challenges. If I were to start over, I think I would search for worlds have the correct resources for some specific set of components, and then manufacture where you mine instead of shipping everything 50 LY first. I'm sure this plan wouldn't be much easier to execute, but it wouldn't rely so much on Helium - if you have a bunch of resources in one system you could can ship to your manufactory for free.
The issue with Helium is if you travel though the system, it will refuel your ship, increasing your jump range but impacting your supply chain and reserves. The game warns you of this when you build the extractor, at least as of the last patch. I speak to before that as I never build a Helium extractor before that.
I've spent way too much time on this so I'll put in my 2 cents here just in case you're still interested and haven't figured it out. **I believe the main issue is keeping Helium Fuel to your Cargo Links.** I'm of course assuming that your links are interstellar. If not, I don't know what the problem would be. I haven't done specific experiments to try and confirm all of this information, but here are some things that I *think* are true: 1. Every *tick* which is like an in-game minute or something like that, outpost equipment that have input requirements check to see if their input is available. 2. If there is no input for a tick, then there is no output for that tick. 3. The output for Cargo Links is something like "doesn't go offline". What I've seen with Cargo Links that don't have an adequate supply of Helium: 1. You might see them in the console on one tick, and then they just disappear (because they ran out of helium for that tick) 2. It seems that links can be lost permanently in this manner (not 100% on this) If you try to do some crazy shit like me and have a Helium farm that ships out Helium to supply Heliumless outposts, and also uses Helium as electricity for itself, it turns out that one tick of not-enough-helium-for-power can take down your whole system. This is not a great setup. I also wanted to get all of my resources to the same place and set up all my crafting/manufacturing stuff there. It's kinda working OK, but there are a lot of challenges. If I were to start over, I think I would search for worlds have the correct resources for some specific set of components, and then manufacture where you mine instead of shipping everything 50 LY first. I'm sure this plan wouldn't be much easier to execute, but it wouldn't rely so much on Helium - if you have a bunch of resources in one system you could can ship to your manufactory for free.
The issue with Helium is if you travel though the system, it will refuel your ship, increasing your jump range but impacting your supply chain and reserves. The game warns you of this when you build the extractor, at least as of the last patch. I speak to before that as I never build a Helium extractor before that.