Build Module Ship Cost %

[Eyeklops]

Once a player shipyard or wharf is setup I would think the first thing most players do is increase the ship cost to 150% to maximize profitsss right? But does this have any other effect beyond that? Will the AI factions buy more ships if the slider is set to the minimum %? AI factions have unlimited funds so it's not like they won't buy something because they can't afford it.

Some time was spent developing this feature (at least some UI time) so I feel like there should be a "If you increase this 'X' will also happen" mechanic at play. I just can't seem to understand what "X" is in this instance.

Is the only purpose of this slider so role playing folk can turn down the profitsss? Do any of you do this?

[Imperial Good]

I think there is logic for the AI to choose cheaper prices over more expensive ones. However in practice either the AI has so many resources they almost always buy from their own ship building facilities no matter how low the price is set (TER/PIO) or they are always in chronic shortages so will order huge amounts at maximum price anyway (TEL, HOP, PAR, ZYA, MIN,...).

They already nerfed the price players can sell ships at to compensate for the always 150%. I honestly would not mind if the slider was removed completely and 150% was made into the default and only sale price for the player. New players would welcome 1 less slider that is effectively a trap.

[Eyeklops]

I honestly would not mind if the slider was removed completely and 150% was made into the default and only sale price for the player. New players would welcome 1 less slider that is effectively a trap.

This is what I was thinking but I'm not sure if it's worth spending (precious) dev time to remove it lol. In a situation where the UI is being redone that would be the best time to remove it.

[GCU Grey Area]

I would think the first thing most players do is increase the ship cost to 150% to maximize profitsss right?

Not true for everyone. Lower end of the slider's there for people who want to support one or more NPC factions in their war efforts without becoming ludicrously wealthy in the process. Excessive profits from shipyards makes all other sources of credits pretty much meaningless. What's the point of sending off a freighter on a trade run if a shipyard's already made 10x as much profit before that freighter's even reached the first gate on it's journey? Even 50% is a bit too high for me, ideally would prefer to be able to set it a lot lower.

[jlehtone]

Is the only purpose of this slider so role playing folk can turn down the profitsss? Do any of you do this?

I don't use the slider because I don't sell any ships. If I would want to help a faction by selling ships, then the 50% would still be too high.

[Imperial Good]

Not true for everyone. Lower end of the slider's there for people who want to support one or more NPC factions in their war efforts without becoming ludicrously wealthy in the process. Excessive profits from shipyards makes all other sources of credits pretty much meaningless. What's the point of sending off a freighter on a trade run if a shipyard's already made 10x as much profit before that freighter's even reached the first gate on it's journey? Even 50% is a bit too high for me, ideally would prefer to be able to set it a lot lower.

This was fixed in a patch around 4.00 odd. Selling at 50% can lose you money on some ship designs (Terran), making more profit selling the raw materials to NPCs.

Most of your income will be from intermediate and ship building ware production. Ship building now is largely about saving yourself money and making your own demand. As ship building is an end chain industry it is where most of your profit will accumulate, however that profit includes the value earned by all other supporting industries so is not at all representative of the amount earned in the process of building ships.

[GCU Grey Area]

This was fixed in a patch around 4.00 odd. Selling at 50% can lose you money on some ship designs (Terran), making more profit selling the raw materials to NPCs.

Not fixed enough as far as I'm concerned. Did a brief test back in 5.0 selling only S ships to just a single faction (ARG). Made over 10 million within 5 minutes. Marginally better than the previous time I'd let a shipyard sell ships (in 3.0) but still orders of magnitude more than I could make with my trade fleet. Ended up reverting to an earlier save. Still need that slider to go substantially lower than 50% before I can use it without spoiling my enjoyment of other aspects of the game.

[Imperial Good]

Not fixed enough as far as I'm concerned. Did a brief test back in 5.0 selling only S ships to just a single faction (ARG). Made over 10 million within 5 minutes. Marginally better than the previous time I'd let a shipyard sell ships (in 3.0) but still orders of magnitude more than I could make with my trade fleet. Ended up reverting to an earlier save. Still need that slider to go substantially lower than 50% before I can use it without spoiling my enjoyment of other aspects of the game.

I doubt the sustainability of 2 million a minute without a huge supply chain, in which case you are just gathering the value off the supply chain.

It is also possible to make 2 million a minute selling food related products to the Terrans. Once you have industry making millions worth of product every minute, earning millions per minute becomes easy, with or without ship building.

[GCU Grey Area]

I doubt the sustainability of 2 million a minute without a huge supply chain, in which case you are just gathering the value off the supply chain.

It is also possible to make 2 million a minute selling food related products to the Terrans. Once you have industry making millions worth of product every minute, earning millions per minute becomes easy, with or without ship building.

Sustainable indefinitely when you've got something like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/k9ik4u7yq1yey ... 1.jpg?dl=0. It was built to terraform, it was barely ticking over while building ships. Manufactures hull parts (etc) at a faster rate than it can produce ships, even with 6 S/M fabrication bays. Key difference though when comparing ship-building to trade is that there's a lot more control over how much trade such a station can conduct; amount kept in reserve, prices, how many ships are assigned to the task, etc. In contrast for automatic ship sales it's simply a matter of turning it on & unleashing an absolute torrent of cash that I neither want nor need. Only control is that 50%-150% slider & the lower limit is simply far too high for me to to be able to supply favoured faction(s) with ships while still retaining any enjoyment of the Trade aspect of the game. Would honestly prefer to be able to give away the ships for free than to ruin that part of the game. Bear in mind too that 10+ million in 5 minutes was just from selling S ships to a single faction at 50%. Could easily be multiplied many, many times over by also selling M/L/XL ships & to multiple factions.

[Imperial Good]

Sustainable indefinitely when you've got something like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/k9ik4u7yq1yey ... 1.jpg?dl=0. It was built to terraform

The station is making millions worth of product per minute, so logically it can sell millions worth of ships per minute. It would make a similar amount of money selling the wares directly to NPC ship building facilities.

Once you get to a huge station size it is expected to make a huge amount of money. Especially given that building such a station likely takes weeks of play time.

[Eyeklops]

Bear in mind too that 10+ million in 5 minutes was just from selling S ships to a single faction at 50%. Could easily be multiplied many, many times over by also selling M/L/XL ships & to multiple factions.

Have you ever let this run "wide open" for 5 or 6 hours to see what the income is at steady state? The AI has a maximum fleet size right? I understand wars constantly deplete their fleets and their own typical infrastructure leaves them with a large backlog of ships that need built. I'd surmise that initial first 5 minutes is just the AI buying to get back to max cap. Once the cap is reached they should only buy ships as they are lost in battle. All that said...I wouldn't be surprised if each faction has a multi-billion credit backlog of ships.

[jlehtone]

The station is making millions worth of product per minute, so logically it can sell millions worth of ships per minute. It would make a similar amount of money selling the wares directly to NPC ship building facilities.

It would, if GCU would let it sell. If. The point is that we seem to have better control on how much we sell wares than how much we sell ships.

How much would it affect your profitss, if we could yank the slider to -10% for our amusement?

[Imperial Good]

Have you ever let this run "wide open" for 5 or 6 hours to see what the income is at steady state? The AI has a maximum fleet size right? I understand wars constantly deplete their fleets and their own typical infrastructure leaves them with a large backlog of ships that need built. I'd surmise that initial first 5 minutes is just the AI buying to get back to max cap. Once the cap is reached they should only buy ships as they are lost in battle. All that said...I wouldn't be surprised if each faction has a multi-billion credit backlog of ships.

It is very easy to create degenerate situations where all the ships you build die within a few minutes, or even seconds, of construction. The NPC AI is not smart enough to blacklist ship building facilities due to high reinforcement attrition. All the player has to do is use the same facility to build ships at the same time for two factions at war with each other and the demand for ships becomes practically infinite.

Examples of such pairs...

Spoiler

Show

ZYA/RHK + ARG/ANT
YAK + VIG
HOP + PAR (start -> escalation)
TRI + ANY (unification + starting a war with a major faction)

The player can set up collection ships with repeat orders to constantly salvage the inventory items that drop from the destroyed ships. This is an easy way to farm basic ship mod components in huge quantities.

[Eyeklops]

Have you ever let this run "wide open" for 5 or 6 hours to see what the income is at steady state? The AI has a maximum fleet size right? I understand wars constantly deplete their fleets and their own typical infrastructure leaves them with a large backlog of ships that need built. I'd surmise that initial first 5 minutes is just the AI buying to get back to max cap. Once the cap is reached they should only buy ships as they are lost in battle. All that said...I wouldn't be surprised if each faction has a multi-billion credit backlog of ships.

It is very easy to create degenerate situations where all the ships you build die within a few minutes, or even seconds, of construction. The NPC AI is not smart enough to blacklist ship building facilities due to high reinforcement attrition. All the player has to do is use the same facility to build ships at the same time for two factions at war with each other and the demand for ships becomes practically infinite.

Examples of such pairs...

Spoiler

Show

ZYA/RHK + ARG/ANT
YAK + VIG
HOP + PAR (start -> escalation)
TRI + ANY (unification + starting a war with a major faction)

The player can set up collection ships with repeat orders to constantly salvage the inventory items that drop from the destroyed ships. This is an easy way to farm basic ship mod components in huge quantities.

I've had that happen. The main reason to do that tho is for the profitsss. I don't think GCU would set that up considering he's trying to make less money. Who know tho, maybe he would just for the lulz.

[GCU Grey Area]

I've had that happen. The main reason to do that tho is for the profitsss. I don't think GCU would set that up considering he's trying to make less money. Who know tho, maybe he would just for the lulz.

No, would not do that intentionally. However in one of my games did have ANT/ARG ships flying out of their fabrication bays directly into a firefight with invading HOP forces lurking right outside my shipyard. Many of those ships were almost immediately destroyed, triggering replacements to begin construction right behind them. Epitome of attritional warfare & made billions in the process. That was the game where I discovered the downside of shipyard profits spoiling my enjoyment of other aspects of the game. Had a really fun time building that shipyard (construction plan & screenshots: viewtopic.php?f=195&t=442996) & thoroughly enjoyed watching all the battles it provoked. However would really have preferred not to have all those billions of credits it generated. Restarted just a few days later - the game had simply ceased to be as much fun after the shipyard was operational. Have not let my stations sell ships to NPC factions since then, except for testing purposes.

[jlehtone]

Had a really fun time building that shipyard & thoroughly enjoyed watching all the battles it provoked.

In other words, for the lulz would be great without the unnecessary credits.

[GCU Grey Area]

Had a really fun time building that shipyard & thoroughly enjoyed watching all the battles it provoked.

In other words, for the lulz would be great without the unnecessary credits.

It's generally a bit more than just 'for the lulz'. My favourite way to play X4 is to pick a faction & support them in their wars. Usually this is determined by the character's starting scenario (i.e. if playing as an Argon I'll usually have the same allies & enemies as ARG). Then I do what I can to support that faction & their allies. I choose plot outcomes which align with their interests &, if war guild missions are available, I'll let the relevant faction(s) pick targets for me. This, for example, was the end result for HOP in the game mentioned in my earlier post where I built the big shipyard to supply ARG & ANT: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ynya9g3qpnem1 ... 1.jpg?dl=0. Game works quite well played that way. However it is distinctly frustrating that one of the most powerful tools available to support a faction (i.e. ship-building) can't be used if I want to be able to enjoy the Trade aspect of the game as well.