Advanced Satellites and other equipment trade - is it broken?

[szafran]

Hello guys, X2 veteran here. I bought X4 recently with intention to play as a trader and I found something strange.

At first I thought that 100.000 profit in one run of medium transporter is quite a good business, but...
After couple of hours playing I noticed price differences in ship equipment, guns and so. Also prices of deployable equipment varies.
Advanced Satellites cought my attention, because this is quite expensive stuff for novice.
Then I realized that I can buy Advanced Satellite in one station for ~80.000 and sell on another station (using upgrade/repair) for ~150.000.

Using recon ship.

Which can carry 50 of these.

Quick calculations:
1) buy: 50 x 80.000 = 4.000.000
2) sell: 50 x 150.000 = 7.500.000
3) repeat
So, 3,5 milion profit in one run of a small ship between neighbouring systems.

So I bought few more recon ships. And two fast M transporters, which can carry 100 pieces of stuff.

Two hours ago I had 3 small ships, courier, medium transporter and 1 million in my pocket.
Now, after 2 hours of somewhat tedious clicking, I have way over 100 millions.
Prices changed of course, but there's still huge profit (and lack of some materials in the market, which I possibly broke).

First question: does it work as intended? Sorry, this is not challenging in any way.
I remember that in X2 purchase of a new and bigger ship was an accasion to celebrate, but it looks like in X4 I can buy hundreds of frigates or fleet of L freighters right from the start.

Second question: is there a X game more challenging concerning trade? I played X2 long time ago, now I play X4 so there's a huge time gap between, maybe I should buy other title from the series.

Fly safe and let the profits be with you!

[jlehtone]

Xbtf did start from "scratch". Every game after that has been more "casual" that the previous ones.

You might have credits to buy 100 ships, but do the Wharfs have resources to build 100 ships for you?
That is the new thing; Ships (and Satellites) are constructed from wares.
Their price is affected by the supply status as well; well stocked Shipyard has "discount" on prices.

As time progresses and stations are* better supplied, those profit opportunities evaporate.

(* If they are. Might go to worse too.)

[Falcrack]

Equipment docks generally are much better stocked with wares to construct stuff like satellites, because while shipyards are constantly busy building new ships with satellites, when was the last time you saw an npc ship lay down satellites, hence need to go get their satellites resupplied at an equipment dock? So the EQ dock just gets a large stock of wares needed for these sats without npcs placing orders for them.

Because of the large stock of sat components available, that drives the price of satellites down there. So just buy a bunch there, and sell to a place that has a shortage. Massive profits ensue.

The funny thing is, the place you sell them to will pay for the full price of the sats based on the price they would be willing to pay for the individual components, but DOES NOT EVEN RECYCLE THESE COMPONENTS AND ADD THEM TO THEIR STATION STORAGE.

Because these sat components are not recycled and added to the station storage, the price the station is willing to pay you for sats will not decrease as you sell more and more sats to them. Of course you could drive the price of sats up at the places you are buying them from, because you are actually diminishing their stockpile of sat components when you upgrade your ships to add them there.

[szafran]

Xbtf did start from "scratch". Every game after that has been more "casual" that the previous ones.
[cut]

Thanks for your answer, but my questions are still relevant.
1) Is it considered an exploit?
2) I read good opinions about X3: Terran Conflict and X3: Albion Prelude. Are they more economically challenging? And if so: which one would you suggest?

[Falcrack]

Xbtf did start from "scratch". Every game after that has been more "casual" that the previous ones.
[cut]

Thanks for your answer, but my questions are still relevant.
1) Is it considered an exploit?
2) I read good opinions about X3: Terran Conflict and X3: Albion Prelude. Are they more economically challenging? And if so: which one would you suggest?

It is not technically an exploit, but IMO the devs should take steps to address it. One thing which would decrease the effectiveness would be to make it so that selling equipment to a shipyard or eq dock causes the components to be recycled and go into their storage. This would make it so that the insanely high profit margins do not stick around for so long the more you do this.

[Tamina]

It is an exploit because those satellites are not deconstructed and added to the wharfs inventory but scrapped. So the price stays high. Maintenance docks are strange on top of that, as they don't serve much of a purpose except selling cheap equipment to the player. Making the problem worse.

[dtpsprt]

1) Is it considered an exploit?
2) I read good opinions about X3: Terran Conflict and X3: Albion Prelude. Are they more economically challenging? And if so: which one would you suggest?

1) It's not not an exploit of the game but an exploit in the Galactic Economy.

2) X4 is more economically challenging, since everything boils down to resources, even for the AI factions and actual trade is hard to do unless you start building your own stations (that 100 mil will come very handy). That said, all X games before X4 left the joy of flying in space, exploring etc to the player, while in X4 the player eventually spends more time in the map micro or macro managing than flying... Take your pick... X3 TC and AP were the top of the X Universe (and IMHO still are).

[GCU Grey Area]

1) Is it considered an exploit?

Debatable. Fairly sure it's not a method of getting rich that the devs really intended, but possibly more of an oversight than an exploit. It is however not a method of obtaining wealth I'd be happy using. Prefer to take things relatively slow in the early-mid game & get my cash primarily from trading & missions. However can also see that other players, who are more interested in the late game, might welcome an additional means of getting to that point sooner. You'll have to decide for yourself which category you're in & whether you enjoy the game more if you use such methods, or if they're best avoided.

2) I read good opinions about X3: Terran Conflict and X3: Albion Prelude. Are they more economically challenging? And if so: which one would you suggest?

They were damn good games for their time. Must have racked up thousands of hours playing both & thoroughly enjoyed them. However vastly prefer the economy in X4. In comparison the economy in earlier games was ultimately meaningless, except as a means for the player to obtain wealth. No matter what you did the economy wasn't what determined the ships & stations available to each faction, since all that stuff was simply spawned into existence as needed. Prefer X4 because my actions can have direct consequences on the factions with which I interact (& with those I don't). Conduct a lot of trade with a particular faction & it can make them noticeably stronger. Hunt their mining ships or freighters & it starves them. Buy lots of ship/station building materials from one faction, then sell all that stuff to their enemies (or build them defence platforms with it) & it can dramatically swing the balance in a war. Been having a ton of fun trying different approaches that simply weren't available in the older games. Much as I enjoyed them have no interest whatsoever in playing them now.

[Imperial Good]

The buy and sell price is based on the current market rate of the place used. NPCs base this on the supply availability. As such you are technically trading goods doing this and hence it makes complete sense.

The part that does not make sense is that they pay you and get nothing in return. Downgraded stuff that leaves excess wares does not refund the excess wares to the facility, likely to prevent a deadlock caused by too much excess wares that have low demand. This can be exploited as a way to burn away NPC warf wares while not losing much, if even any, money.

[Falcrack]

The part that does not make sense is that they pay you and get nothing in return. Downgraded stuff that leaves excess wares does not refund the excess wares to the facility, likely to prevent a deadlock caused by too much excess wares that low demand. This can be exploited as a way to burn away NPC warf wares while not losing much, if even any, money.

What should happen is that when recycling components, any resulting excess wares beyond the station limit get ejected into space around the station. Or loaded into the cargo bay of the ship being worked on. Or some combination of the two. And the wares the station cannot accept due to lack of space, it does not pay the player for.

[Imperial Good]

What should happen is that when recycling components, any resulting excess wares beyond the station limit get ejected into space around the station. Or loaded into the cargo bay of the ship being worked on. Or some combination of the two. And the wares the station cannot accept due to lack of space, it does not pay the player for.

I agree and have been a strong support of some kind of refunding of wares for a long time. This would be a useful feature for 4.00 along with complete ship disassembly at player owned facilities. This would allow players who want to act like pirates to convert their captured ships into other ships they may need.

[sh1pman]

The part that does not make sense is that they pay you and get nothing in return. Downgraded stuff that leaves excess wares does not refund the excess wares to the facility, likely to prevent a deadlock caused by too much excess wares that low demand. This can be exploited as a way to burn away NPC warf wares while not losing much, if even any, money.

What should happen is that when recycling components, any resulting excess wares beyond the station limit get ejected into space around the station. Or loaded into the cargo bay of the ship being worked on. Or some combination of the two. And the wares the station cannot accept due to lack of space, it does not pay the player for.

Transfer excess to build storage, then transfer back as needed.

[jlehtone]

What should happen is that when recycling components, any resulting excess wares beyond the station limit get ejected into space around the station. Or loaded into the cargo bay of the ship being worked on. Or some combination of the two. And the wares the station cannot accept due to lack of space, it does not pay the player for.

Indeed.

However, starting in Xbtf, there has been "player can sell current guns at every Dock" feature. It was crucial in Xbtf. Less so in later games, where its exploit has been debated. Alas, while that (legacy) is most likely reason why it is in X4, it doesn't justify the mechanic. Not any more?

X2/X3 had Satellites at Trade Docks, which do not buy more than they can keep. X4 has them at same place as guns. X4 made them exploitable.


I have noticed (but not paid more attention) that I accumulate credits by boarding SCA Destroyers. I don't sell the ship, but equip it for use (Teladi shields, Paranid L, Argon M). On every Dock replacing "foreign" (and damaged) guns is profitable. Kind of makes sense; Dock gets foreign tech to study. Industrial espionage.
I do sell most consumables too; SCA has Mines and they are substantial profits.

For Pirate life-style the ability to sell accumulated items is important. If every Dock would not buy all that I've got, then I would have to find a Dock that still has space. If I'm "productive" and no NPC consumes materials for Mines from Docks (since SCA does spawn), then all Docks would fill up (if Mines are broken back to components). Life of Pirate is short?

If Dock dumps excess to space (or to ship), then we would not "sell to Dock and get credits", but "convert item to wares at Dock". Useful feature, indeed.

[Tamina]

It won't change much, though. You can carry waaaay more satellites in a single S ship, then the components needed for their construction. Even when refunded, shipyards are going to buy at max price, and maintenance bays will sell them at the lowest possible price.

They should rather lower the rebuy price to half of what it is worth, or lower the difference between highest and lowest price.

[Falcrack]

It won't change much, though. You can carry waaaay more satellites in a single S ship, then the components needed for their construction. Even when refunded, shipyards are going to buy at max price, and maintenance bays will sell them at the lowest possible price.

They should rather lower the rebuy price to half of what it is worth, or lower the difference between highest and lowest price.

The amount of satellites that small ships carry in X4 is unbalanced. I noticed that in the VRO mod, this value was revised downward, to 15, a value which is much more sensible.

[szafran]

Great replies, thank you. Now I know how it works (and why does it work).

Anyway, it appears to be game breaking issue, at least for me. Too much money, too early.
I just bought Nomad - only to see how does it look with my logo, and I could buy 10 of these, no problem. At the beginning of the game. I don't even know what exactly to do with this ship.
I don't think it should work this way.
Of course one solution is to set own rules, like "don't make money on equipment", but perhaps developers should address what appears to be an game breaking issue. It looks like they created rules of economy, then broke them and (surprise surprise) it doesn't seem to work as it should.

Again, thank you for answers, very informative.

[pref]

after 2 hours of somewhat tedious clicking, I have way over 100 millions.

It's your choice to do the tedious UI clicking, really far from game breaking.

With a couple hours of crystal gathering you can also make lots of money, or by boarding some L ships, or by mining nvidium. None of those need any serious investment and can be achieved in a couple hours.
You method seems even more like work in comparison so why not let you have that 100m.

Also this game is not about money, but more about ware/resource availability. All that cash will mean nothing when you cannot build your station or equip an L ship due to missing wares.

[sh1pman]

It's your choice to do the tedious UI clicking, really far from game breaking.

With a couple hours of crystal gathering you can also make lots of money, or by boarding some L ships, or by mining nvidium. None of those need any serious investment and can be achieved in a couple hours.
You method seems even more like work in comparison so why not let you have that 100m.

Also this game is not about money, but more about ware/resource availability. All that cash will mean nothing when you cannot build your station or equip an L ship due to missing wares.

Yeah. It’s a single player game, so it’s up to the player if they want to use these crutches or not. Hell, they can just manually edit the save file to get a trillion bucks. But that’s basically a “skip the entire game” button. That’s not why I paid the full price for the game. I want to get as much enjoyment from it first!

[szafran]

[cut]
I just bought Nomad - only to see how does it look with my logo, and I could buy 10 of these, no problem. At the beginning of the game. I don't even know what exactly to do with this ship.
I don't think it should work this way.
[cut]

After a while I realized that situation with Adv. Satellites is even more exploitable and I hope devs take care of it, but I am here to say (completely off-topic, Moderators forgive me) that I finally learned how to use auxilliary ships and I fell in love with my Nomad. Best ship ever. Logistics for the win!
Also, what a surprise, the best source of information seems to be freakin' game manual.

Fly safe!