"I have a dream..." To own a:

[JonnyRocket72]

Split Raptor, or even a Monitor.

Ever since I played Split Vendetta and having seen these vessels, I WANT one in that order. They take rank, are very expensive and the parts are always in shortage.
I don't know enough about the supply chain to work it. Should I buy a trader and move the parts myself? Or build factories? If I move the needed components to make one of these, how do I know that MY ORDER is filled first (and not some AI ship?)

Thanks!

[Ezarkal]

It depends on you.
If you have plenty of cash and just want the ship, moving the parts is enough.
If you have time and want to make some cash along the way, build the right stations to supply the shipyard. (Scan the shipyard to over 50% and you'll be able to see it's storages and see what wares it's missing or low on.) You get the extra benefit of a passive rank increase with the faction as your station will trade constantly with the shipyard.

Word of advice, though, as far as the raptor is concerned: I read somewhere that the NPC shipyard does not store enough resources to fully arm one in a single go. (Never happened to me, as I built mine at my own shipyard.)
So you would do best to order a bare-bone raptor at the shipyard, then equip it at a nearby equipment dock, which are usually better stocked than the shipyard. You may also want to equip it in stages, just to be sure.


As for ship building orders, my understanding is that shipyards and wharfs have multiple queues. Your ship will eventually end up at the top of the queue, but that does not prevent the shipyard from building from another queue in parallel. Per experience, I found it is more a problem on wharfs than shipyards, though.

Have fun!

[Falcrack]

Word of advice, though, as far as the raptor is concerned: I read somewhere that the NPC shipyard does not store enough resources to fully arm one in a single go. (Never happened to me, as I built mine at my own shipyard.)
So you would do best to order a bare-bone raptor at the shipyard, then equip it at a nearby equipment dock, which are usually better stocked than the shipyard. You may also want to equip it in stages, just to be sure.

Equipping in this manner would be the cheaper option for sure.

[NightmareNight91]

You can steal moniters from free families with no rep loss, raptors are a bit harder to find since zyarth loses all theres in the first day or so of playtime.

[grapedog]

You can steal moniters from free families with no rep loss, raptors are a bit harder to find since zyarth loses all theres in the first day or so of playtime.

You will lose rep with free families boarding their ships.

You will lose rep also with fallen families boarding their ships. But as fallen families are a pirate faction, it doesn't have much impact long term.

[NightmareNight91]

You can steal moniters from free families with no rep loss, raptors are a bit harder to find since zyarth loses all theres in the first day or so of playtime.

You will lose rep with free families boarding their ships.

You will lose rep also with fallen families boarding their ships. But as fallen families are a pirate faction, it doesn't have much impact long term.

Only if you destroy modules like turrets and such, monitors have massive blind spots on the sides that you can launch pods from. All you need to do is lower the hull a bit if you want to make crew bail out, otherwise launch pods and profit after a long wait period.

[jlehtone]

Split Raptor, or even a Monitor.

Ever since I played Split Vendetta and having seen these vessels, I WANT one in that order. They take rank, are very expensive and the parts are always in shortage.
I don't know enough about the supply chain to work it. Should I buy a trader and move the parts myself? Or build factories? If I move the needed components to make one of these, how do I know that MY ORDER is filled first (and not some AI ship?)

My first ingame goals were:
1. Get Dragon
2. Get Raptor
That was before I had seen them nor knew whether they are any good. I had them in X3's so I just had to get them in X4 too.

FRF has better resources that ZYA. The ZYA's mining areas are under Xenon threat and ZYA loses a lot of ships. Hence their Shipyard has severe shortage. FRF can be under attack too, but not as much. Furthermore, FRF has smaller fleets, less ships to replace. Then again, FAF is their hungry client.

I did accumulate traders to haul wares. That yields profits and reputation too. MORTs (Manually Operated Remote Traders). I like to tell ships what to do rather than rely on any "auto".


Player orders have higher priority than NPC orders. However, Shipyards have both L and XL bays. The L bays tends to consume resources.

On ZYA SY their own order for Raptor was continuously postponed because they were building Rattlesnakes non-stop. I had to have many freighters fully loaded next to the SY (but not ordered to deliver) until both L bays had just started a build. At this point SY has big buy offers; its stocks did just drop. Then I ordered mass-delivery. The trick was to deliver enough for XL Raptor to start build before the L builds completed and next L took their cut.

Does L/XL competition affect player's queue priority? I don't know.

[JonnyRocket72]

Hey thanks!

Well, I just bought a stripped Raptor at ZYA yard.. It's #1 in queue, and I need to come up with 90 engine parts. Not too bad I suppose. I will arm it over time as long as I can keep it safe. lol.

[jlehtone]

When I had managed to spoon-feed ZYA SY enough so that they managed to build "Flagship Raptor" the result had only a fraction of turrets and shields.
Did they arm it over time? No. It did sail to ARG sector -- with only two fighter escorts. The ARG were not many, but they were enough to kill her.

Fighters are the main weapon of a Carrier. (Ok, the Raptor and Tokyo have some turrets, but fighters are still fun.)

[Nort The Fragrent]

Interesting to hear the troubles some have getting ships built !
Or is it you are wanting things straight away, at once, rush, rush !
When I order a ship, so it takes a while! I then ignore the order, and go do lots of other stuff.
The Ship eventually gets built no matter what!
Never had one not get built.
The games mechanics are designed to get you more intertwined, ( give the shipyard what it wants ) But if you are patient , the game gives up in the end ! And the ship is built.
This patient method , allows me to play my way, and not get drawn into stuff I don't have the time or the wish to be doing.

[Midnitewolf]

Split Raptor, or even a Monitor.

Ever since I played Split Vendetta and having seen these vessels, I WANT one in that order. They take rank, are very expensive and the parts are always in shortage.
I don't know enough about the supply chain to work it. Should I buy a trader and move the parts myself? Or build factories? If I move the needed components to make one of these, how do I know that MY ORDER is filled first (and not some AI ship?)

Thanks!

The good news is that because the player has nothing to limit their power creep in any way or fashion, eventually you will be able to buy....not not buy, make dozens and dozens and dozens of these, almost without stop, it just takes a bit of time, urr...umm....200 or so hours, to get there.

Honestly the toughest part is station out, especially since they nerfed crystal mining into the ground however the method I use still remains the same.

1. Do whatever you can to earn enough for a miner. While doing this explore as much as you can and find sectors with both resources and stations buying those resources. Drop some resource probes in these sectors near the resources. There should be at least one sector per faction that contains both resources and stations buying that resource. Sometimes it might take a bit for the NPC to build a station to buy the resources but eventually they will have one.

2. Buy a M miner. Have it sector automine. It will mine resources and automatically sell to the stations buying the resources in that sector. This also has the benefit of building your relationship with the faction where your mining and selling the resources.

3. Use the profits to buy another M Miner, then another and another. Keep buying miners. Put about 10 miners per faction so that you can build relationships with all factions. Eventually you will have 60-80 miners and making millions a hour. Note: After adding maybe 5-10 miners, maybe through in a transport ship and set it up as a trader. These can make good money but I generally prefer just using miners because traders use your money to make money meaning with traders you end up having a significant amount of credits tied up in the trades and unusable for buying new ships or whatever. With miners your mining a free resource and selling it so all your money is available for anything you want to buy.

4. By this time you should have your PHQ. Add about half a dozen energy cell production modules (solar collectors) to the PHQ. Sell energy cells. You will likely have to manually reduce the cost to near the minimum but energy cells require no raw resources and no support so are basically free to produce so who cars if you have to sell them for 10 credits each. In any case just 6 energy collectors will net you between 1-3 million per hour.

5. Now pick a faction you want to support and build, probably a hull parts factory near their Wharf. That is the most common items they are short on supply on. Other potential options are Engine Parts, Turret Components or Advanced Electronics. You can figure out just what they need by going like your going to buy a ship and looking at the low resource warnings. If buying one ship doesn't trigger a warning, que up like your going to buy 10-20 ships and eventually you will see they are short of hull parts or whatever. Ideally though you want to pick a faction that can't build ships at all without a delay or after queing up only 1-2 ships. This will cost you quite a bit but with time you can probably see 6-12 million and hour coming out of this station.

6. Build more stations like this and or just save up for a Wharf.

7. Build a Wharf. Don't try for a self-sufficient one, just build the S/M fab, docks, container storage and add a few Energy Cell production modules. You will be able to import all the other resources you will need and although it will be costly, it is cheaper than building a self-sufficient wharf. If you want one later one, find build it but you don't need it. It will cost a amazing amount, enough to buy probably 3+ Raptors but do it anyway. Buy a S Fighter blueprint and all its equipment and weapon option blueprints. Buy the Mk 3 or in the case of the split mk 4 of engine and mark 3 combat thruster, don't buy the mark I and II version. I usually recommend starting with a Chimera since for whatever reason, the Split economy fails almost immediately and they will not be able to make their own ships almost at all and your construction bays will likely be filled all the time. Chimera's sell for between 1-4 million, the most I have seen any S fighter and many M ships sell for. You can add in other ships as you want though nothing sells as good as Split and nothing for the same price as the Chimera. Once you get the Wharf up your done...well at least your done financially. You should see between 20-120 million in profit an hour. Shortly thereafter you will be a multi-billionaire and be able to buy/build anything and everything in any quantity you need. Then just build ships and more ships and overwhelm every factions through sheer numbers with no challenge at all.

[jlehtone]

Interesting to hear the troubles some have getting ships built !

I don't think anyone had that in this thread.

Your "patient method" could in theory see XEN and ARG to blow up the ZYA SY before your order is complete.