-->Grind Does Not Equal Interesting Game Play...

[GCU Grey Area]

As a result you now need 10+ times the amount of ships on your stations, building a wharf or ship yard is entirely pointless as it will simply never reach its ROI anymore in a single persons lifetime. On top of that you have to deal with manually finding and killing Khaak installations every couple days and are more busy with baby sitting your employees and replacing lost ships than anything else.

10x as many is a wild exaggeration. Was playing the beta while the mining changes were taking place. Added a few extra miners to each station but nowhere near as many as you claim. As for Khaak installations, I use L miners & simply ignore them. No need to hunt the installations if the ships they make are utterly irrelevant to your miners (Khaak don't have a weapon powerful enough to overcome the regen rate of even a single L class shield).

[XGamer]

As a result you now need 10+ times the amount of ships on your stations, building a wharf or ship yard is entirely pointless as it will simply never reach its ROI anymore in a single persons lifetime. On top of that you have to deal with manually finding and killing Khaak installations every couple days and are more busy with baby sitting your employees and replacing lost ships than anything else.

10x as many is a wild exaggeration. Was playing the beta while the mining changes were taking place. Added a few extra miners to each station but nowhere near as many as you claim. As for Khaak installations, I use L miners & simply ignore them. No need to hunt the installations if the ships they make are utterly irrelevant to your miners (Khaak don't have a weapon powerful enough to overcome the regen rate of even a single L class shield).

Off topic here. But nope, you can keep claiming that doesn't make it true. From maybe 14 ships -> 180 ships, single station. Of course it depends on the area and station, but it's ridiculous regardless. Same with shipyards, they never make their ROI in your lifetime with 4.0. Anyway I'm done with this hot garbage patch....

[Slashman]

As a result you now need 10+ times the amount of ships on your stations, building a wharf or ship yard is entirely pointless as it will simply never reach its ROI anymore in a single persons lifetime. On top of that you have to deal with manually finding and killing Khaak installations every couple days and are more busy with baby sitting your employees and replacing lost ships than anything else.

10x as many is a wild exaggeration. Was playing the beta while the mining changes were taking place. Added a few extra miners to each station but nowhere near as many as you claim. As for Khaak installations, I use L miners & simply ignore them. No need to hunt the installations if the ships they make are utterly irrelevant to your miners (Khaak don't have a weapon powerful enough to overcome the regen rate of even a single L class shield).

Shhhh!!! Your logic and common sense will break some folks' reality. Don't be the bringer of doom...

[grapedog]

However I do generally agree that grind is not what this game needs, it did fine without it. However at some point during 4.0 development someone must have lost their mind, went crazy and decided that we must have grind and tons of it apparently.
As a result you now need 10+ times the amount of ships on your stations, building a wharf or ship yard is entirely pointless as it will simply never reach its ROI anymore in a single persons lifetime. On top of that you have to deal with manually finding and killing Khaak installations every couple days and are more busy with baby sitting your employees and replacing lost ships than anything else.

Shipyards are still stupid profitable, even shipyards that have to buy every single item they need to produce a ship. My two shipyards in my current save, that buy everything they need from the map, average between them about 750 million EACH every game day. And that is with a unified paranid, and no xenon anywhere except Litany of Fury. If I decide to have the paranid go to war with everyone, I imagine my profits will shoot through the roof...

This was my first save, so I didn't know better. But now I do, and I limit myself to only one shipyard per game in my other saves, in order to keep the money machine somewhat in check.

If you're don't have a highly profitable shipyard/wharf, you're doing something drastically wrong.

[XGamer]

Shipyards are still stupid profitable, even shipyards that have to buy every single item they need to produce a ship. My two shipyards in my current save, that buy everything they need from the map, average between them about 750 million EACH every game day. And that is with a unified paranid, and no xenon anywhere except Litany of Fury. If I decide to have the paranid go to war with everyone, I imagine my profits will shoot through the roof...

This was my first save, so I didn't know better. But now I do, and I limit myself to only one shipyard per game in my other saves, in order to keep the money machine somewhat in check.

If you're don't have a highly profitable shipyard/wharf, you're doing something drastically wrong.

Why would anyone sell a complete (!) ship with weapons, shields, equipment 3 Sats, 1 Adv Sat complete together for LESS THAN what one would have to pay for a single Adv Sat? Or sell an entire ship including equipment, weapons, etc. for less than what the bare hull is worth? That's a stupid business decision and does not make any sense whatsoever.
It's neither logical, nor explicable.

[grapedog]

Shipyards are still stupid profitable, even shipyards that have to buy every single item they need to produce a ship. My two shipyards in my current save, that buy everything they need from the map, average between them about 750 million EACH every game day. And that is with a unified paranid, and no xenon anywhere except Litany of Fury. If I decide to have the paranid go to war with everyone, I imagine my profits will shoot through the roof...

This was my first save, so I didn't know better. But now I do, and I limit myself to only one shipyard per game in my other saves, in order to keep the money machine somewhat in check.

If you're don't have a highly profitable shipyard/wharf, you're doing something drastically wrong.

Why would anyone sell a complete (!) ship with weapons, shields, equipment 3 Sats, 1 Adv Sat complete together for LESS THAN what one would have to pay for a single Adv Sat? Or sell an entire ship including equipment, weapons, etc. for less than what the bare hull is worth? That's a stupid business decision and does not make any sense whatsoever.
It's neither logical, nor explicable.

I'm sorry that you're doing something drastically wrong... perhaps post a save and we can take a look at it and fix your shipyard so it will make money.

[SunGod1]

To be fair it is a single player game so you could MOD to avoid some grind.

[XGamer]

Why would anyone sell a complete (!) ship with weapons, shields, equipment 3 Sats, 1 Adv Sat complete together for LESS THAN what one would have to pay for a single Adv Sat? Or sell an entire ship including equipment, weapons, etc. for less than what the bare hull is worth? That's a stupid business decision and does not make any sense whatsoever.
It's neither logical, nor explicable.

I'm sorry that you're doing something drastically wrong... perhaps post a save and we can take a look at it and fix your shipyard so it will make money.

It's not that it isn't making _any_ money. It's the fact that it isn't making what it ought to make, by simple business logic.
You just don't sell a package of stuff for considerably less than what a single component going into it costs, at least not long term if you want to survive.

I actually ran a test and it turns out that on SETA it makes ~72 mill in 3 hours of game time. Which translates to a mere ~575 million / day. In addition in between it was more like 450 million a day after approximately 2 hours. So there is obviously quite a bit of variation going on.
In the event that orders are consistent 24/7 and taking the 3 hour average it's ~24m / hour, which isn't even a Rattlesnake an hour in terms of payout.
That shipyard costs about 600 million and takes several days to construct, which does not include the ships required to keep it afloat, nor any money spent on blueprints for the modules or the ships/equipment.

Regardless of how much a shipyard does or doesn't make, it is highly stupid to be selling entire ships for less than what even a single component on said ship costs, let alone for less than half of the base hull without anything. It's illogical and stupid. Nobody would do it.

[XGamer]

To be fair it is a single player game so you could MOD to avoid some grind.

It's a single player game, so no need to nerf the game to death and force everyone the grind that very few people asked for (if any) or enjoy.
If you want more grind, you can always mod the game to add more too...
Similarly if you thought earning money after having invested days upon days building a wharf, was somehow undeserved, you could've modded the game to reduce the income.

There is something to be said for wanting to play a vanilla game.

[Slashman]

To be fair it is a single player game so you could MOD to avoid some grind.

It's a single player game, so no need to nerf the game to death and force everyone the grind that very few people asked for (if any) or enjoy.
If you want more grind, you can always mod the game to add more too...
Similarly if you thought earning money after having invested days upon days building a wharf, was somehow undeserved, you could've modded the game to reduce the income.

There is something to be said for wanting to play a vanilla game.

Yes but then you accept what the vanilla game gives you to work with or you mod it. That works both ways for the people who want it easier and the people who wanted it to be less of money printing venture. Who is right? No one can say.

However I think it is more desirable to have it be harder to make money from a shipyard than not with so many additional ways to generate cash in the game. I mean you could argue that shipyards were not as well thought out as they could have been when introduced...but steps have been taken to correct that. Either live with it or mod it...its your choice.

[XGamer]

However I think it is more desirable to have it be harder to make money from a shipyard than not with so many additional ways to generate cash in the game. I mean you could argue that shipyards were not as well thought out as they could have been when introduced...but steps have been taken to correct that. Either live with it or mod it...its your choice.

Well I'd argue it was fine the way it was, certainly more logical than right now.

Which way you choose to make your money should be up to the individual player though.
Some people might make billions grinding through stealing ships and selling them repeatedly.
Others might not like to do any of that, and spent time grinding repetitive missions for some change.
Others build an empire and grind their way to a shipyard, spending hours putting it together, literally billions upon billions to buy blueprints and wait days for it to eventually be finished to make their money back.

Whichever way you choose to make your money, they should all be viable options and people should be able to enjoy to play the game in their way. Yet they nerfed a single one of the aforementioned options heavily, namely the third one. All the nerfs they did in 4.0 affect the third way to make money, but not in the slightest any of the other ways.
I'd also argue that if you go through the effort of doing the empire way, it is not unreasonable for that to eventually make more money an hour too, seeing how it takes a crapton of money and time to get there in the first place.

[GCU Grey Area]

Off topic here. But nope, you can keep claiming that doesn't make it true. From maybe 14 ships -> 180 ships, single station. Of course it depends on the area and station, but it's ridiculous regardless. Same with shipyards, they never make their ROI in your lifetime with 4.0. Anyway I'm done with this hot garbage patch....

Wow, 14->180? Really? What on earth were you doing? If I had to guess huge mega-complex supplied entirely by a single low-yield core sector, totally reliant on the bug which meant that miners would continue to gather resources even in sectors which were utterly depleted?

If so, very different situation here. My setup during my 4.0 beta game was a distributed network of smaller stations supplying my HQ (which nevertheless did end up getting quite big: https://www.dropbox.com/s/it2je17hd3x05 ... 1.jpg?dl=0). However all of those supply stations had their own blacklisted areas of the map (so they wouldn't be competing with each other for resources) & as a whole they were gathering resources from I'd estimate at least 1/3 of the map. Didn't have to make nearly so drastic a change to keep my setup running adequately throughout the 4.0 beta mining changes - just needed to add a few more sectors to each station's travel blacklist & a few more miners to compensate for the longer journey times to get to those new sectors.

[Slashman]

Which way you choose to make your money should be up to the individual player though.
Some people might make billions grinding through stealing ships and selling them repeatedly.
Others might not like to do any of that, and spent time grinding repetitive missions for some change.
Others build an empire and grind their way to a shipyard, spending hours putting it together, literally billions upon billions to buy blueprints and wait days for it to eventually be finished to make their money back.

If you've spent billions on top of billions then you were already rich and therefore not making money at an accelerated pace really doesn't put you out does it? I mean you already spent billions to put up the shipyard...those billions could have been spent on fleets or other stations so I'm failing to see what the issue is here. The shipyards are not unprofitable...they are simply not as profitable as you want/believe they should be...two very different things

Whichever way you choose to make your money, they should all be viable options and people should be able to enjoy to play the game in their way. Yet they nerfed a single one of the aforementioned options heavily, namely the third one. All the nerfs they did in 4.0 affect the third way to make money, but not in the slightest any of the other ways.
I'd also argue that if you go through the effort of doing the empire way, it is not unreasonable for that to eventually make more money an hour too, seeing how it takes a crapton of money and time to get there in the first place.

They nerfed an option that was too good to something on the level of the other options. And you can absolutely enjoy the game in your own way...it is simply not sanctioned officially by Egosoft.

[grapedog]

Off topic here. But nope, you can keep claiming that doesn't make it true. From maybe 14 ships -> 180 ships, single station. Of course it depends on the area and station, but it's ridiculous regardless. Same with shipyards, they never make their ROI in your lifetime with 4.0. Anyway I'm done with this hot garbage patch....

Wow, 14->180? Really? What on earth were you doing? If I had to guess huge mega-complex supplied entirely by a single low-yield core sector, totally reliant on the bug which meant that miners would continue to gather resources even in sectors which were utterly depleted?

If so, very different situation here. My setup during my 4.0 beta game was a distributed network of smaller stations supplying my HQ (which nevertheless did end up getting quite big: https://www.dropbox.com/s/it2je17hd3x05 ... 1.jpg?dl=0). However all of those supply stations had their own blacklisted areas of the map (so they wouldn't be competing with each other for resources) & as a whole they were gathering resources from I'd estimate at least 1/3 of the map. Didn't have to make nearly so drastic a change to keep my setup running adequately throughout the 4.0 beta mining changes - just needed to add a few more sectors to each station's travel blacklist & a few more miners to compensate for the longer journey times to get to those new sectors.

crystal mining, shipyards, 3 star pilots, autotraders, mining.... some people cannot adapt, cannot figure out new ways to do things...

[dtpsprt]

Yes but then you accept what the vanilla game gives you to work with or you mod it. That works both ways for the people who want it easier and the people who wanted it to be less of money printing venture. Who is right? No one can say.

However I think it is more desirable to have it be harder to make money from a shipyard than not with so many additional ways to generate cash in the game. I mean you could argue that shipyards were not as well thought out as they could have been when introduced...but steps have been taken to correct that. Either live with it or mod it...its your choice.

Indeed you are right... but I have to say that some nerfs are really preposterous:
The nerf to 1/10 to shipyard profits, the "final" nerfing on crystals (made me think that all other crystals except Bandanite were removed, one Steam validation proved me wrong), the nerfing down to 5% of original values on the resources around the "ring" (and even those are already "in use" by NPC's).
It shows some "lack of thought" for all kinds of players who use the game, vanilla should not be "accommodating" to only one (maybe two) types of players or the "sandbox" should be taken out of the description.

[dtpsprt]

crystal mining, shipyards, 3 star pilots, autotraders, mining.... some people cannot adapt, cannot figure out new ways to do things...

It's not about adapting... it's about freedom of choice and not being coerced into a certain way (mind you not ways!!!) of playing...

[Slashman]

Indeed you are right... but I have to say that some nerfs are really preposterous:
The nerf to 1/10 to shipyard profits, the "final" nerfing on crystals (made me think that all other crystals except Bandanite were removed, one Steam validation proved me wrong), the nerfing down to 5% of original values on the resources around the "ring" (and even those are already "in use" by NPC's).
It shows some "lack of thought" for all kinds of players who use the game, vanilla should not be "accommodating" to only one (maybe two) types of players or the "sandbox" should be taken out of the description.

I don't think the term sandbox has any bearing on the relaitve difficulty of the game. I mean I came through the system with a new game from 4.0 and there was no lack of anything to do to make money. What I found myself encouraged to do was to try different things at differrent times to make my money. But really...after you have enough for a couple mining ships and a large trader, what money woes could you have?

[Midnitewolf]

However I think it is more desirable to have it be harder to make money from a shipyard than not with so many additional ways to generate cash in the game. I mean you could argue that shipyards were not as well thought out as they could have been when introduced...but steps have been taken to correct that. Either live with it or mod it...its your choice.

Well I'd argue it was fine the way it was, certainly more logical than right now.

Which way you choose to make your money should be up to the individual player though.
Some people might make billions grinding through stealing ships and selling them repeatedly.
Others might not like to do any of that, and spent time grinding repetitive missions for some change.
Others build an empire and grind their way to a shipyard, spending hours putting it together, literally billions upon billions to buy blueprints and wait days for it to eventually be finished to make their money back.

Whichever way you choose to make your money, they should all be viable options and people should be able to enjoy to play the game in their way. Yet they nerfed a single one of the aforementioned options heavily, namely the third one. All the nerfs they did in 4.0 affect the third way to make money, but not in the slightest any of the other ways.
I'd also argue that if you go through the effort of doing the empire way, it is not unreasonable for that to eventually make more money an hour too, seeing how it takes a crapton of money and time to get there in the first place.

This is my argument as well. Ultimately this is a single player game and it is up to you yourself to control the experience. That being said, if you found that a Wharf made too much money and kind of cheapened your gameplay experience, you could always choose to not build a Wharf or reduce your margins on sales. I mean I do tons of things like that.

For example, I made a mistake and bought the wrong S/M fabrication module because I didn't realize that Terran ones had their own unique appearance. Whelp I couldn't sell back the wrong blueprint and it took me 100 hours to actually be able to afford the 125m for the Blueprint in the first place, I was stuck with mismatched appearance or I would have been if I hadn't I downloaded a cheat menu mod to give myself just enough money to buy the Terran version of the Fab module. From a gameplay standpoint, I gave myself 125 million credits which sounds like a huge cheat until you realize that the way I used that 125m was to just buy the S/M fab module with the correct appearance. Since I am not going to use the Split version EVER, the fact that I gave myself 125m credits offers no "cheat" or advantage so my CONTROLED gameplay experience remains the same. How this ties in to what I was saying about the Shipyards above is that just because I can use this mod to give myself a trillion credits and/or "cheat" in a dozen other ways, I CHOOSE not to do any of that which is exactly what players could have done had they left the Shipyards making the I am going to call it, the "correct" amount of credits. I call it "Correct" because it is very unrealistic and immersion breaking to be selling ships at 10% of what you could buy it for.

Of course I felt that the mechanics behind Wharfs and Shipyards was broken in the first place because it should have been a rare occurrence to be able to sell ANY ships at 150% mark up. Instead is should have been demand based and you would have found your actual sell prices range between 10% (which it is hard locked at now) and 150% depending on how desperate the NPC factions were ships. I expect if it had been working correctly, 10-30% markup would have been the norm which would in general mean you earned more than you do now but significantly less than you used to earn. Personally I am less opposed to earning less than the immersion breaking and unrealistic locked 10% markup.

[grapedog]

crystal mining, shipyards, 3 star pilots, autotraders, mining.... some people cannot adapt, cannot figure out new ways to do things...

It's not about adapting... it's about freedom of choice and not being coerced into a certain way (mind you not ways!!!) of playing...

You're not being coerced... Ego is making changes to the game that they believe are for the better. You may disagree, and that's fine... but you're not being coerced.

Things change, adapt.

[GCU Grey Area]

you could always choose to not build a Wharf or reduce your margins on sales.

Unfortunately neither of those options is a good one. Know this because have been stuck with that choice for my last couple of games. Not building a shipyard means you miss out on a fairly significant chunk of the game, if you want to be able to support a favoured faction by providing shipbuilding facilities to help them in a war. However building one in a 3.0 game ruined my enjoyment of other aspects of the game, particularly Trade (made it utterly pointless). As for reducing margins, even setting prices for NPC's to the absolute lowest the game would let me still made me ludicrously wealthy in a VERY short amount of time (about 300 million per hour, despite only selling to 2 factions & with prices set to 50%). Frankly I'm very grateful they have adjusted the profitability of shipyards. Might actually risk building one in my current game, though still a bit wary of them.