Station build speed

[pref]

Heyho!

When i played last with station builds (pre sol dlc) i had issues with my megalomaniac plans and stupid earth days consisting of 24 hours only. Had to keep the game running overnight on vanilla to finish some builds and i really hate to do that.
Do builds take as long as back then?

If yes, is there a safe mod i can use to speed things up and which does not mess with any other parts of the game?
Found a mod on steam (Station Module Build Time Reduction (10x)) but first comment says it no longer functions with latest version.
Alternatively can someone hint at what should i be looking at if i want to fix that mod?

It's not about income, i'm after stuff like this - especially curious about the boron stations:
viewtopic.php?t=443849

Also - are there any bottlenecks as time passes? Remember claytronics got scarce in later game for some players - does one need to rush any sort of production?

[GCU Grey Area]

No change to build speed that I'm aware of & have played at least one game in each version. My largest stations (over 3k modules in some cases) always take several weeks to build. That's in-game time by the way, it's several months of real time. Doesn't bother me personally though, more than enough stuff to do in the game to keep me occupied while my stations are built in the background.

If you're really keen to own a big station without waiting for it to be built it is possible to plan a station in a one game, save the plan, then start a new custom game with that station already built as one of your starting assets. Sometimes use that approach to see what a station's going to look like before I spend several weeks/months building it the slow way. Might be handy if the main thing your interested in is station building as an artform (rather than a source of wealth or resources).

[adeine]

I know this has been discussed before, but it's a pity we can't assign multiple build ships to a plot to build modules in parallel.

[taztaz502]

Take like 10-15 mins per modules, just make sure your stations have all the build materials and stick SETA on for awhile.

[A5PECT]

I like that big station projects take a long time, gives a reason to build multiple smaller stations instead of only megacomplexes. But I get that it's frustrating that station building speed is such an immovable bottleneck.

I wouldn't mind something like being able to assign multiple builders to speed up construction, but with diminishing returns. 1x builder = 1x build speed, 2x builders = 1.5x speed, 3x builders = 1.75 speed, etc.

[adeine]

I like that big station projects take a long time, gives a reason to build multiple smaller stations instead of only megacomplexes. But I get that it's frustrating that station building speed is such an immovable bottleneck.

I wouldn't mind something like being able to assign multiple builders to speed up construction, but with diminishing returns. 1x builder = 1x build speed, 2x builders = 1.5x speed, 3x builders = 1.75 speed, etc.

Parallel building of modules is preferable to having a speed multiplier.

A multiplier would allow you to build single modules faster than their base speed. Building modules in seconds and being incentivised to throw tens of builders at even small station builds is not great. With parallel building, it still scales well with large builds but doesn't allow for the same kind of silliness. Smaller builds wouldn't benefit as much from additional builders - if you only have 4 modules, assigning more than 4 builders would just be a waste. Nor could you build e.g. administrative modules in seconds. It'd just even out the difference between building several smaller stations or one big production complex, as it logically should be.

[pref]

My largest stations (over 3k modules in some cases) always take several weeks to build. That's in-game time by the way, it's several months of real time.

Yes, that's going to be several years for me.. this being my favorite part of the game it's a real problem.
Ideally it should build quickly, while income would be reduced to just even out the cost until the real build time expires to not destroy economic challenges completely.

[A5PECT]

A multiplier would allow you to build single modules faster than their base speed. Building modules in seconds and being incentivised to throw tens of builders at even small station builds is not great.

In the scaling model I proposed, you'd never go beyond 2x speed, no matter how many builders you assign. So you'd never reach the point where a station module takes only seconds to build. Parallel module construction would already be faster with 2x builders equaling 2x build speed, and then scale even further from there. It'd shift incentives towards building larger stations, because there would be no construction efficiency cost, given enough build ships.

Either way, I would expect there to be hard limits on the maximum number of concurrent builders, for the sake of both game playability and programming practicality.

[ballti]

To avoid starting NON stugle maybe is better to complet some condition, like 95% open galaxy, all research done.. for uniqe 1x mode for extra ~50% drones, and later BP for MkII drones.

[adeine]

In the scaling model I proposed, you'd never go beyond 2x speed, no matter how many builders you assign. So you'd never reach the point where a station module takes only seconds to build. Parallel module construction would already be faster with 2x builders equaling 2x build speed, and then scale even further from there. It'd shift incentives towards building larger stations, because there would be no construction efficiency cost, given enough build ships.

Either way, I would expect there to be hard limits on the maximum number of concurrent builders, for the sake of both game playability and programming practicality.

Yes, exactly. With parallel construction you can scale further without compromising the build time of individual modules or small stations.

Why should large stations be disincentivised if you have the money and resources to build them? The way the game works right now is a little immersion breaking. It really shouldn't make any difference whether you build three stations with four modules each right next to each other vs building one station with 12 modules. As it stands, the latter would take three times longer. Even if you built everything at 2x speed, it would still be slower, a difference that would only increase as the number of modules escalates. Then people would be calling for 3x, and 5x, and so on.

I disagree with the imposition of hard limits for the sake of hard limits. There are no programming constraints that I can see; UX wise, the assigned builder is a list item in the menu, the same list that can hold any number of station modules. You can already build any number of station modules concurrently, as long as they belong to different plots. Similarly, nothing is stopping you from parking a fleet of hundreds or thousands of ships in a sector, or building a station with thousands of modules.

X4 deliberately lets players scale to heights that will definitely have a performance impact, and I think that's a good thing. Imagine there was an arbitrary hard limit of not being able to own more than 50 ships, or build more than 100 station modules per sector. The game already scales impressively well for large numbers of ships and modules, and hardware only keeps getting better.

[GCU Grey Area]

Why should large stations be disincentivised if you have the money and resources to build them? The way the game works right now is a little immersion breaking. It really shouldn't make any difference whether you build three stations with four modules each right next to each other vs building one station with 12 modules. As it stands, the latter would take three times longer.

Think you're looking at it the wrong way round. Suspect the 1 builder per station limit is to avoid disincentivising construction of multiple smaller stations with the same overall production capacity as a single big one. It ensures the choice of whether to build big or to build many remains a meaningful one, with pros & cons for both approaches.

[adeine]

Think you're looking at it the wrong way round. Suspect the 1 builder per station limit is to avoid disincentivising construction of multiple smaller stations with the same overall production capacity as a single big one. It ensures the choice of whether to build big or to build many remains a meaningful one, with pros & cons for both approaches.

I don't think it makes it particularly meaningful, it just makes building big more tedious. To the point where you yourself suggested getting around it by starting a new custom/budgeted game with the station already built. Not exactly fun.

There's still pros and cons and other factors to consider even if you get rid of the time difference. Building a huge production complex in one sector might have you run into issues with resource depletion, or turn into a logistical nightmare if you have to import/export wares from/to the entire rest of the universe. Whereas building several smaller ones is more hassle to micromanage and defend, while allowing access to fresh resource areas and shorter cargo runs.

I think the current design is likely just an oversight/underestimating the kind of factory complexes some players like to build and just how long it would take. It certainly doesn't make a lot of sense in-universe (this is not like building a skyscraper on a planet, where module #1 is load-bearing for module #2 etc.).

[Baddieus]

My opinion is that greater pilot & crew skill totaled could equal the option to use more than 30 drones, thus cutting the time by how ever many more.
So a 3 star pilot with 100 3star or more engineers use the 30 drones, but a 5 star with 100 5star or more engineers can use say 50 drones ... or something like that.

=Baddieus=

[Bozz11]

Time is a very big con for megastations, there should be something very meaningfull to discourage people from doing it and I find that time is perfect, otherwise there would be no debate between megafactory and multiple stations.
I don't feel like they should touch this at all.

[GCU Grey Area]

I think the current design is likely just an oversight/underestimating the kind of factory complexes some players like to build and just how long it would take.

Find that a rather dubious assertion. Suspect that by now they must have a substantial collection of saves submitted with bug reports. If they want to know what players are building all they need to do is look. Furthermore some of the updates have included significant upgrades to the station build planner, both in terms of the tools available & the magnitude of stations that can be built (early versions used to struggle when they got to around 2k modules on my machine, HQ in my current game is over 3k & still have not found the limit). Doubt they'd go to the trouble of making such changes if they didn't think some players would find them useful. They even ran a station building competition a while ago, some of the entries for which were really quite substantial. My own entry consisted of over 2.5k modules (details here if curious). Think it's safe to say they're aware of the scale of stations that some players like to build.

[Baddieus]

It could be that "a watched pot never boils" but a timed pot that you do or don't watch boils in about 12min every time.
I have built many large stations, and posted several to the construction forums, so am no stranger to the build times.
The way I deal with it is to do other things and just check back every so often to see how close it is to being complete.

=Baddieus=

[adeine]

Time is a very big con for megastations, there should be something very meaningfull to discourage people from doing it and I find that time is perfect, otherwise there would be no debate between megafactory and multiple stations.
I don't feel like they should touch this at all.

Why should people be discouraged from doing it though? Let people choose whether they want to build wide or tall. It makes little sense that building the same number of modules can take 1 hour or 100 hours depending on whether they're part of the same plot or not.

There'd still be trade-offs for either approach even if you get rid of the time discrepancy. One is not inherently better than the other if it wasn't artificially made more tedious, as you seem to imply.

I think the current design is likely just an oversight/underestimating the kind of factory complexes some players like to build and just how long it would take.

Find that a rather dubious assertion. Suspect that by now they must have a substantial collection of saves submitted with bug reports. If they want to know what players are building all they need to do is look. Furthermore some of the updates have included significant upgrades to the station build planner, both in terms of the tools available & the magnitude of stations that can be built (early versions used to struggle when they got to around 2k modules on my machine, HQ in my current game is over 3k & still have not found the limit). Doubt they'd go to the trouble of making such changes if they didn't think some players would find them useful. They even ran a station building competition a while ago, some of the entries for which were really quite substantial. My own entry consisted of over 2.5k modules (details here if curious). Think it's safe to say they're aware of the scale of stations that some players like to build.

Oh, they certainly know now. But if you look at the early videos showcasing X4 all of the station building is very small-scale. Egosoft have many times talked about their surprise at the speed and level of progression in some savegames. I think the design was literally just 'if you want to build a station, assign a build vessel to the construction site', without really thinking in depth about how that might impact large vs small stations at scale. It's not a very meaningful difference if you build in the tens of modules, which is what playtesters and probably the majority of players do.

This is a change that would benefit a very small minority of players, those of us who like to build large megaplexes and/or those who do terraforming missions which do require infrastructure on a bigger level. It makes sense that it never has been addressed (or even occurred to people as a problem).

[Zloth2]

They're working on an 'end game' system right now that will be for an even smaller minority of players.

I'm not buying the "they just weren't thinking about it in depth" bit at all. This is their day job! What's more, sprawling stations go back at least to X3:TC.

[pref]

Time is a very big con for megastations, there should be something very meaningfull to discourage people from doing it and I find that time is perfect, otherwise there would be no debate between megafactory and multiple stations.

Why would you discourage such a thing? Don't think a bunny dies every time a megastation is built.
You are already better off with small stations due to more precise placement with respect to supply/demand, docking/transport times and fps in general.

All these points about eco balance or forcing a build method on players is meaningless, just the ability to build those big ones means player is past any economic challenge as the real bottleneck is build material availability and that can only come from the player. There isn't really a need to force a mid sized build a to be 2 week playtime project. Access to build material is enough of a limit on its own. I'd rather tighten that then have these insane build times.
That amount of production is also irrelevant from the universe economy's point of view, as all the factions together won't buy up all that stuff anyways. It will just sit in your full warehouses, while production is blocked waiting for your next giga project.

And If you're worried about having to defend a 100 stations you can still build all those in a single sector - it will just look real bad compared to a nicely designed single complex.
So punishing big builds does not force you to spend more on protection.

This is just about aesthetics.


It would be great if player stations would be allowed to overlap with a warning or such, with only dock paths getting checked. Then one could build a seemingly single giant from smaller parts. Think transport already occurs between nearby stations via drones. At least it did in the past.
There would be a need to be able to align them properly though (visibility of existing structures inside the area, perhaps even snap). Maybe an option to merge them after completion.

Or let it be built parallel by multiple construction vessels.

Or let player build the outside shell of the station quickly, while eco functions' availability take as long as they do now. But the first two options would be really nice.


These build times just lock out one of the most unique and best feature of this game imo.
If using mods didn't mean being locked out of features that would be another good way out.

[As25]

10-15 min per module is fairly pointless. The only reason I can think of for a timer is so stations don't just pop up instantly like in X3.

With a timer the station is visually being built overtime, but you don't need 10 minutes for that. Even with a timer of 5 seconds the modules don't pop up instantly so you don't need these unnecessary long times to simulate/show the building process.

A small 10 modules station takes like 2 hs of real time. That's too long for a small station in a single player game. And yes, you don't have to sit there waiting for it to be finished, but that doesn't change anything about how unnecessary long the building time is.