Economy grinds to a halt?

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THE_TrashMan
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Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by THE_TrashMan » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 12:06

Early game, several hours in, I have 3 stations (HQ, energy cell factory in GetsuFune and another solar power plant mission order in Teladi space) under construction.
They have been under construction for hours and haven't budged an inch.
Economy, both terran and others seems to have ground to a halt. Massive shortage of not hull parts (surprisingly).

Any advice other than manually hunting for materials? I have 1 M freighter and 2 S ones. Can even assign them to the build storage for some reason. Can only do that for HQ.
Also bought one L gas miner to try to bring needed resource for TER factories.
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Repli
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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by Repli » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 12:38

Hey,
AFAIK a manager is needed to assign ships as traders for the station and the build storage, observed this with my stations as well. And you can not assign a manager if there is not at least one finished stationpart.
But for the overall problem of missing hullparts, I think the only option is to trade raw materials and intermediates to the hullpart-factories to speed up the process :|.

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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by Scoob » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 13:29

I noticed that sometimes the traders from other factions simply do not seem to want to sell to my build storage. This happened a lot during the early-game. I initially thought the economy had stalled totally, and there was just no supply. However, as I explored more, I saw there was ample supply, so I fetched it myself. Now, later in the game, as soon as I start a build, the wares are on their way almost immediately. Perhaps because they like me more? There's still a slight shortage of Advanced Electronics and both Shield and Turret Components. Other than that though, the economy is ok. I will ultimately fill the various shortages myself, if another Faction doesn't beat me to it.

Note: You can assign ships to a station's build storage, but there are several things to be aware of:

- That Station MUST have at least one completed Module.
- That Station MUST have a Manager assigned.
- You need to be aware that assigned ships will have their trade distance limited by the Manager / Pilots level - highest level dictating sectors travelled.

Also, it used to be that you could only assign a Manager to a station with at least one S/M Dock. Now, if you use the "Work Somewhere else for me" for an already hired Crew member - say someone on one of your ships - you can assign them if ANY modules is built.

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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by TheDeliveryMan » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 13:35

Repeat Orders work like charm.

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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by sh1pman » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 14:28

Scoob wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 13:29
I noticed that sometimes the traders from other factions simply do not seem to want to sell to my build storage. This happened a lot during the early-game. I initially thought the economy had stalled totally, and there was just no supply. However, as I explored more, I saw there was ample supply, so I fetched it myself.
There is a bug in 6.00HF5 where build storage stops making any buy offers, even with enough budget. The fix is to open the construction screen, drag the planned module around a bit and accept "changes". The buy offers will immediately appear, and AI traders will start bringing the materials.

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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by CBJ » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 14:29

sh1pman wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 14:28
There is a bug in 6.00HF5 where build storage stops making any buy offers, even with enough budget.
Is this reported somewhere, with a savegame and details on how to reproduce it?

sh1pman
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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by sh1pman » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 14:34

CBJ wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 14:29

Is this reported somewhere, with a savegame and details on how to reproduce it?
I don't think I saw it on Tech Support forum. Ok, I'll make a report with a save file next time I encounter it.

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SphinxofBlackQuartz
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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by SphinxofBlackQuartz » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 16:55

THE_TrashMan wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 12:06
Early game, several hours in, I have 3 stations (HQ, energy cell factory in GetsuFune and another solar power plant mission order in Teladi space) under construction.
They have been under construction for hours and haven't budged an inch.
Economy, both terran and others seems to have ground to a halt. Massive shortage of not hull parts (surprisingly).

Any advice other than manually hunting for materials? I have 1 M freighter and 2 S ones. Can even assign them to the build storage for some reason. Can only do that for HQ.
Also bought one L gas miner to try to bring needed resource for TER factories.
If you're facing a network-wide hull parts shortage, here are some things you can do to remedy that, more or less in order of increasing investment:
  • Buy miners and set them to auto-mining ore. Early on, you probably won't have any three-star pilots, thus you'll be limited to Local Automine — so put them in sectors with ore refineries.
  • Buy trade vessels, use skill books to train the pilots to two stars, and set them to Fill Shortages on Graphene and Refined Metals. This will keep the hull parts factories churning away. If there's a particular area of interest to you, you can use a block list to limit your shortage-filler's options to that region or faction. And be sure your auto-trader's block list excludes dangerous sectors, like XEN space, and possibly Hatikvah's Choice I and Two Grand.
  • Build a mining depot, preferably in or near a sector with multiple ore refineries. All you'll need is a small dock module and medium solid storage, so a couple hundred hull parts, tops. Assign three or four mining ships to Mine For Commander and one or two mining vessels to Trade For Commander. The practical upshot of this is your miners will harvest nearby ore where it is richest, then your traders will sell it where it is most profitable needed.
  • Build your own hull parts production. Probably not an option for you right away, since you need to invest a lot of hull parts to build the station, and it will take several hours to pay for itself, but eventually a galaxy-wide hull parts shortage can become an opportunity for profitsss. 🦎
I hope that helps!
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Admiral Sausage
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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by Admiral Sausage » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:15

SphinxofBlackQuartz wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 16:55
...since you need to invest a lot of hull parts to build the station...
This is one of the most frustrating parts of the game: There's no hull parts anywhere, so you decide to build a hull part factory. But you can't, because you need hull parts. Ok, so buy some ships to assist the existing NPC hull part factories. Oh, you can't do that either because the wharf needs hull parts to build ships.

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chew-ie
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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by chew-ie » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:22

Admiral Sausage wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:15
SphinxofBlackQuartz wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 16:55
...since you need to invest a lot of hull parts to build the station...
This is one of the most frustrating parts of the game: There's no hull parts anywhere, so you decide to build a hull part factory. But you can't, because you need hull parts. Ok, so buy some ships to assist the existing NPC hull part factories. Oh, you can't do that either because the wharf needs hull parts to build ships.
It isn't like that - the universe still has hull part factories and they still produce, but you have to be ~very~ quick because of the high demand to get your needed materials. You can't be stuck there as you could e.g. just switch over to the terran space and buy ships from them (they don't rely on hull parts).

There will be always shortages of some wares (hullparts, nanotronic, adavanced electronics, turret and drone parts...) - players best invest in a small factory of those critical wares to either help the faction economies or quickly full fill the own needs. But as a german saying goes - "Von nichts kommt nichts". (doing nothing will yield nothing).
Last edited by chew-ie on Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:33, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by Scoob » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:31

sh1pman wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 14:28
There is a bug in 6.00HF5 where build storage stops making any buy offers, even with enough budget. The fix is to open the construction screen, drag the planned module around a bit and accept "changes". The buy offers will immediately appear, and AI traders will start bringing the materials.
Thanks for the tip, though my stations were correctly showing Buy offers. As there have been issues with this in the past (usually with station trades, not build storage in my experience) I always check that the appropriate trades have been produced.

There is a long-standing issue where if a build plan is in progress - with a module mid-construction - and a new module is added, the Build Storage Buy offers will NOT be updated until that WIP module is complete. I.e. the current build plan has THREE Solar Modules, with the Second currently building. Player then adds additional Container Storage and confirms the changes. Despite the increased material requirement for the build, the Buy offer will not update to reflect this until the current module is complete.

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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by SphinxofBlackQuartz » Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:33

Admiral Sausage wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:15
This is one of the most frustrating parts of the game: There's no hull parts anywhere, so you decide to build a hull part factory. But you can't, because you need hull parts. Ok, so buy some ships to assist the existing NPC hull part factories. Oh, you can't do that either because the wharf needs hull parts to build ships.
I've never seen the entire gate network run so entirely out of hull parts that you couldn't find the 100 to 150 necessary to build a small miner or trader — at least, not in the early game. In my experience, factions tend to start with nice stockpiles of components; they're just rubbish at replacing them.

That said, it's probably not impossible. You may have been very, very unlucky when X4 was rolling up your universe. Out of curiosity, has this happened to you more than once? And in which versions of the game?
chew-ie wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:22
But as a german saying goes - "Von nichts kommt nichts". (doing nothing will yield nothing).
Hey, I like that sound of that. I'll try to remember it! (Though I'll probably mispronounce it horribly, so my apologies in advance...)
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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by TheDeliveryMan » Sat, 3. Jun 23, 09:58

Admiral Sausage wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:15
This is one of the most frustrating parts of the game: There's no hull parts anywhere, so you decide to build a hull part factory. But you can't, because you need hull parts. Ok, so buy some ships to assist the existing NPC hull part factories. Oh, you can't do that either because the wharf needs hull parts to build ships.
There are always sufficient Hull Parts to get a bare bones Scrap Recycling factory up and running. From that point onwards you just need wrecks to produce construction materials. The ALI Wharf in Trinity Sanctum sells trade ships and tugs and is usually very well supplied.

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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by blackphoenixx » Sat, 3. Jun 23, 11:40

The main thing the NPC economy struggles with is raw resources. Feed them those and they're generally fine on their own unless you've got a Xenon capital camping a gate and destroying dozens of traders somewhere.
It's one of the many reasons mining stations are so good as an early game investment - you can get credits in other ways, but they don't help much if you can't buy any ships with them for lack of materials.

That L gas miner is a good start, but you'll probably want a lot more - especially mineral ones - to keep things running smoothly. Though for gas miners you can generally use M miners since they don't spawn Khaak attacks when mining.
TheDeliveryMan wrote:
Sat, 3. Jun 23, 09:58
The ALI Wharf in Trinity Sanctum sells trade ships and tugs and is usually very well supplied.
The same applies to the ALI wharf in Windfall, though it only sells a few traders. Also the RIP scrap recycling stations in Avarice pretty much always have plenty of hull parts and claytronics for sale.

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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by Admiral Sausage » Sat, 3. Jun 23, 16:22

chew-ie wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:22
It isn't like that - the universe still has hull part factories and they still produce, but you have to be ~very~ quick because of the high demand to get your needed materials. You can't be stuck there as you could e.g. just switch over to the terran space and buy ships from them (they don't rely on hull parts).
Of course it's never the case that it's impossible to build anything, but it can take a stupidly long time. And yes, there are some factions that never have problems at all, but the two best performing factions, TER and HOP, are also the most belligerent, and so may not trade with the player. TER also only exist if you have the DLC.
SphinxofBlackQuartz wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 20:33
I've never seen the entire gate network run so entirely out of hull parts that you couldn't find the 100 to 150 necessary to build a small miner or trader — at least, not in the early game. In my experience, factions tend to start with nice stockpiles of components; they're just rubbish at replacing them.

That said, it's probably not impossible. You may have been very, very unlucky when X4 was rolling up your universe. Out of curiosity, has this happened to you more than once? And in which versions of the game?
Not the entire network, but enough that it took a very long time shipping wares across the galaxy. In a game started in 6.0, trying to help the Boron who for plot reasons have a broken economy and are hardly able to make anything at all. The two closest factions are ZYA who are enemies and had no ships left due to the Xenon anyway, and ARG who should be good trade partners but had no ships left due to the Xenon (even now the game is 10 days old and I'm supplying them with wares, they still struggle to build ships for themselves). All of the games I've played have had some economic problems, but this one has been the worst.

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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by Surimi » Sat, 3. Jun 23, 19:38

SphinxofBlackQuartz wrote:
Fri, 2. Jun 23, 16:55
[*]Buy trade vessels, use skill books to train the pilots to two stars, and set them to Fill Shortages on Graphene and Refined Metals. This will keep the hull parts factories churning away. If there's a particular area of interest to you, you can use a block list to limit your shortage-filler's options to that region or faction. And be sure your auto-trader's block list excludes dangerous sectors, like XEN space, and possibly Hatikvah's Choice I and Two Grand.
You can also use trade stations. Since initially all they need is a dock and a storage module, it's pretty cheap and means you only need to provide seminars for one manager rather than multiple pilots. It also gives a lot of granular control and means traders have their own separate budget from which to draw rather than using your general money for everything.

I think it's tempting intially to only invest in miners as the investment is low and the profits are much bigger relatively speaking, but adding some freighters to the mix is a good forward-thinking move. Building up the AI economy early means its going to be in a better position later when you need it.
Admiral Sausage wrote:
Sat, 3. Jun 23, 16:22
Not the entire network, but enough that it took a very long time shipping wares across the galaxy. In a game started in 6.0, trying to help the Boron who for plot reasons have a broken economy and are hardly able to make anything at all. The two closest factions are ZYA who are enemies and had no ships left due to the Xenon anyway, and ARG who should be good trade partners but had no ships left due to the Xenon (even now the game is 10 days old and I'm supplying them with wares, they still struggle to build ships for themselves). All of the games I've played have had some economic problems, but this one has been the worst.
Yeah, the boron economy is extremely isolated and will often have major shortages due to missing industries.

Although, you can exploit this to a degree by finding things the boron economy can't produce and shipping them long-distance into boron space using repeat orders or big manual orders. I find boron space kind of fun for this reason, because it is so isolated that the player has to work at developing it. I do wish doing so came with a bit more reward other than not having to wait ages for orders at the shipyard though.

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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by SphinxofBlackQuartz » Sat, 3. Jun 23, 23:59

Surimi wrote:
Sat, 3. Jun 23, 19:38
You can also use trade stations. Since initially all they need is a dock and a storage module, it's pretty cheap and means you only need to provide seminars for one manager rather than multiple pilots. It also gives a lot of granular control and means traders have their own separate budget from which to draw rather than using your general money for everything.
I'm sure all that is quite true! Unfortunately, somehow I've never quite gotten the hang of trade stations. They never seem to work quite how I want or expect. Ah, well; perhaps in another thousand hours of gameplay it'll make sense. 😅
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Re: Economy grinds to a halt?

Post by THE_TrashMan » Wed, 7. Jun 23, 13:24

Do you think sectors need more resources? More ore, more gas?

I find it funny that in just a couple of years tops, an entire system is strip-mined.
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