Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

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grapedog
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Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

Post by grapedog » Wed, 7. Apr 21, 22:42

So, I've been running two resource trading posts now for quite some time.

The idea is to maximize miners time mining, and making money, and reduce waste. All the trade ships are miners too, since they're the only ships that can carry resources. In this fashion, you don't have miners running off doing full trade runs, they just go out and mine, and return home to fill the storage. Then I'll typically use faster mining ships to do the deliveries... smaller holds, but they're rarely delivering an entire hold full of resources anyhow. And they get back much quicker for the next order. This one uses ALL M mining ships because it was my first attempt and I didn't want to throw a bunch of L's at it, but depending on location of resources... if resources are close by, L's could reduce the amount of ships you need, while also being nearly immune to kha'ak aggression. M miners as my selling/trade ships are always moving around near stations and highways, never sitting still, so I don't have to worry about the kha'ak with them either.

The last and probably biggest benefit, is the mining range.... managers level quite quickly, so it doesn't take long before your mining ships and mining trade ships have a 5 sector reach from the trading post location. This post in Saturn can reach the entirety of the Sol system, from Earth to the far out PIO sector Segaris, as well as Antigone Memorial and Second Contact. I have another trade post in Hatikvah's Choice which can service a very large chunk of the map as well, with a 5 sector distance.

https://i.imgur.com/kNrk3H5.jpg
Super basic build plan

For this station I went with 2 piers, an 8m dock(for ease of traffic), a 3M6S luxury dock because I like em, 1L Solid Storage, 1L Gas storage, and 1S container storage(largely unused- needed it to get drone parts). I'm not actually operating any L miners at this station, but I also will buy resources at the lowest price if they're selling, because I can sell for more usually.... so that's like free workers. You could get by without having piers, but I like to have them just in case an L wants to sell cheap, or I decide to upgrade in the future.

https://i.imgur.com/PVjkWOk.jpg

This is showing how I setup my wares. I do buy resources, at the lowest possible price, because you're often times going to be selling for more. Also, this is usually only in the beginning. It does take a little bit of cash to start putting out a good profit. You could give it zero cash, and just let it slowly make it's own. It's operating budget right now with mostly full storage is about 160k credits, so WAY less than a million, but when you first start it up, and it's got completely empty storage, it's asking budget is a good deal higher. But you can either finance it right away, or let it build it's own bank account up over time.

I also set a manual storage limit on Ice, as it's usually the least profitable. I'd rather have my miners selling Ore and Silicon, but Ice is needed too to keep stations running that need water, so it's always good to make sure you have some Ice around to deliver.

https://i.imgur.com/5AlCil0.jpg

I do have one trader assigned to the station, the SNT ship, because I had a mission to assign a trader. He also went around and got my drone parts for me, now he just sits there collecting a paycheck... what a bum. All the rest, both Miners and Traders, are all mining ships. This station is mostly Plutus Sentinels to mine, Plutus Vanguards and Alligators to sell. It has a smattering though of Manorina's, Drills, and Bolo's as well.

https://i.imgur.com/l5zuHXl.jpg

As you can see, it does a pretty brisk business for just mining and selling. This station averages probably 3-4 million every 2-3 hours. It keeps the NPC factories fed constantly, and with very little waste. The one downside would be that I have to manually clear out my miners holds from time to time, as they come back full of say Ore, and can only deposit 30% for example... so once a game day or so, I'll just check up on all of them, for deposit what resources I can, and clear the holds of the rest.

One caveat, there will be times when you're selling for the minimum, but that's ok... because your'e spending very little to nothing at all to get your resources. You could actually go with smaller storage as well to bring up your prices, since each sale will deplete a larger portion of your available inventory, causing the remaining inventory to have a higher sell price. This was my first attempt, so I wasn't super worried about turning max profits... but tinkering with prices could be done to increase profits even more.... like setting slightly higher minimum sales prices.

This might be my new favorite first station to setup to really get a solid income stream rolling in. It's super low maintenance, requires very few blueprints to steal, and M mining ships are pretty cheap, so quite quickly you can have it running at full speed.

You could also use this setup, with trade rules, to eliminate the need for other stations you create to have their own mining fleets or resource storage. Depending on your resource needs, a station like this could service multiple player owned stations at the same time. You'd just have to scale your mining and storage accordingly.

** one small note I'll add, a tip from another poster, without going into too much detail... Your captain, your ship setup, and your crew have a HUGE effect on how well your ships operate. The difference between a less than 1 star captain, and a 2+ star captain that you paid 10k in credits for seminars for, is very large. They mine faster, and find resources much easier. Same thing with crew, you want to make sure your ships are fully crewed if you can afford it. A good captain with a good crew makes a very big difference. Ship setup is important too... for M's you want to make sure you have your main mining turret, but the additional turrets don't provide much more benefit. There is some small increase in how quickly they work, but it's well into the range of very diminished returns. It's a personal choice at that point whether you want to add the additional mining turrets, but they don't add much at all. On L size miners, mining drones offer a big big boost to mining speed, and again, as long as you have your L mining turret, M mining turrets don't add much. If the ship has no L mining turret, then you want a full loadout of M mining turrets. But load those L ships up with plenty of mining drones. For L ships, I'll typically go 2 cargo, 1 repair, 7 mining drones.

If you have any questions, or advice since I'm still tinkering with the setup, please let me know! Good luck and enjoy the X universe.

https://i.imgur.com/1JL0vI1.jpg
Just another day of work at my Saturn resource trading post...
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Raptor34
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Re: Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

Post by Raptor34 » Thu, 8. Apr 21, 07:02

Crap, I gave my Ls minimal mining drones as I wasn't aware how helpful they were.
That's annoying.
And thanks.

Raevyan
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Re: Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

Post by Raevyan » Thu, 8. Apr 21, 19:35

Would have probably be better idea to post that in the General discussion instead of spoiler forum :)

TwistedSeven
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Re: Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

Post by TwistedSeven » Tue, 13. Apr 21, 07:23

Remember when running a gathering hub, the digger ship mod (if you have unlocked the HQ and the research), boost your mining multiplier.
,,?,,
O_O TwistedSeven

peteran
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Re: Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

Post by peteran » Fri, 3. Sep 21, 19:32

grapedog wrote:
Wed, 7. Apr 21, 22:42
For this station I went with 2 piers, an 8m dock(for ease of traffic), a 3M6S luxury dock because I like em, 1L Solid Storage, 1L Gas storage, and 1S container storage(largely unused- needed it to get drone parts). I'm not actually operating any L miners at this station, but I also will buy resources at the lowest price if they're selling, because I can sell for more usually.... so that's like free workers. You could get by without having piers, but I like to have them just in case an L wants to sell cheap, or I decide to upgrade in the future.
Have you experimented with L miners yet? I'm thinking about it, but only for Helium mining to a separate trading post in Mercury.

I built my current trading post very early in Saturn I with the following modules:
  • Terran S Container Storage
  • Terran S Liquid Storage
  • Terran S Solid Storage
  • 4M10S Luxury Dock Area
  • Terran 3-Dock T Pier
The 4M10S Luxury Area is a likely bottleneck and the storage needs to be increased, but it provides a steady stream of income even before I've dragged the Terrans to any large-scale wars.

It also trades all Terran wares of the container kind and it seems to have increased profits noticeably.

Another thing I'm thinking about is setting up Energy Cell production in Mercury and setting up a Repeat Orders transfer to Saturn I.

Imperial Good
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Re: Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

Post by Imperial Good » Sat, 4. Sep 21, 03:44

The main issue with this is that it quickly saturates all NPC consumers nearby dropping the sale price to minimum. That is not optimal.

Instead you can use the price limit mechanic to artificially inflate the sale price and keep it high. Since there is a shortage of the mineable wares the price will always bounce back up to your limit. What this means is that not only are you selling roughly as much as you were with minimum pricing, but now you are getting paid above average pricing for it making a lot more money in the process. You can also use bigger mining ships as traders as well since now they will always haul full cargo loads.

You can also set up another trade station in the same area to move the products from those mineables to consumers. Not only does this generate additional money, but also assures constant demand for the mineables. This can be expanded to intermediates as well to assure constant economic flow of goods and so constant demand.

An overall long term issue with the mining trade post concept in general is that you are selling the mineables to the NPCs. It does not take that much more to convert those mineables into end products, especially with Terran wares, and sell those instead. Not only do you make more profit this way due to the value added by processing the wares, but you also have full control over the supply chain and hence also the demand of mineables. As such I do recommend the resource trading post approach early game but you should quickly move away from it to your own industry supply chains to make money from as trading posts have limited room for growth.

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Re: Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

Post by grapedog » Sat, 4. Sep 21, 06:47

peteran wrote:
Fri, 3. Sep 21, 19:32
grapedog wrote:
Wed, 7. Apr 21, 22:42
For this station I went with 2 piers, an 8m dock(for ease of traffic), a 3M6S luxury dock because I like em, 1L Solid Storage, 1L Gas storage, and 1S container storage(largely unused- needed it to get drone parts). I'm not actually operating any L miners at this station, but I also will buy resources at the lowest price if they're selling, because I can sell for more usually.... so that's like free workers. You could get by without having piers, but I like to have them just in case an L wants to sell cheap, or I decide to upgrade in the future.
Have you experimented with L miners yet? I'm thinking about it, but only for Helium mining to a separate trading post in Mercury.

I built my current trading post very early in Saturn I with the following modules:
  • Terran S Container Storage
  • Terran S Liquid Storage
  • Terran S Solid Storage
  • 4M10S Luxury Dock Area
  • Terran 3-Dock T Pier
The 4M10S Luxury Area is a likely bottleneck and the storage needs to be increased, but it provides a steady stream of income even before I've dragged the Terrans to any large-scale wars.

It also trades all Terran wares of the container kind and it seems to have increased profits noticeably.

Another thing I'm thinking about is setting up Energy Cell production in Mercury and setting up a Repeat Orders transfer to Saturn I.
I haven't updated it in a while.

I do use L miners, but only for the mining. I keep M mining ships for sales.

The L miners have zero issues with kha'ak, which is probably the best reason to use them. They also just don't need to spend as much time getting to and from the trading post. They don't get bogged down in gate traffic or traversing gates over and over. They can go to their mining spot, mine, and return. The speed benefits of the M ships help with making deliveries in a timely fashion and keeping product moving, and they traverse the map much quicker. Plus, often times, you're not going to be able to deliver a full L hold of raw resources at an NPC station. M miners fit the bill better for delivering smaller amounts quicker.

I'm sure some math could be done to test which sells better, but I haven't done it. My current setup of L's for collecting, and M's for distributing, works very well. Very simple and practical way to get a good income stream, while also gets products built.

Also, I know you're building terran here with your example, but I find that the 3M6S luxury dock, and the 8M dock, have a pretty TER look about them, and I don't think they would look out of place too much on a TER station. I love the 8M dock for my resource trade stations. I probably don't need 8M, but I just like the look of it.

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Re: Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

Post by grapedog » Sat, 4. Sep 21, 06:52

Imperial Good wrote:
Sat, 4. Sep 21, 03:44
As such I do recommend the resource trading post approach early game but you should quickly move away from it to your own industry supply chains to make money from as trading posts have limited room for growth.
I'd agree with this, other products are more profitable in the long run and later in the game, but the resource trading posts are great early... and continue to provide decent income throughout a long game. Especially as both you and NPC's build more station and ship attrition through wars. I think there is a tipping point somewhere, though I'm not sure where it is. I typically only build 2, maybe 3, of these posts throughout the universe in a game... and I spread them far apart. It really depends on how many factions I am friendly with.


I think in my current long game I have one in Antigone Memorial, one in Bright Promise, and one in Family Nhuut... and that's mostly because I'm playing as SPL, so feeding my own territory up north... and then feeding ANT as well, because together we're destroying the douche terrans. ANT is doing a decent job expanding in behind the space I create.

I like them as early game stations though, they're great for it.

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Re: Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

Post by Imperial Good » Sat, 4. Sep 21, 18:00

grapedog wrote:
Sat, 4. Sep 21, 06:52
and continue to provide decent income throughout a long game.
You start to compete with yourself which is not good for your late game profits. Ideally you only want to sell finished products since that way you control the entire supply chain. Every mineable you sell to the NPCs detracts from your finished product sales as it will eventually be converted into them and traded by NPCs. Late game you want the NPCs to be running at massive mineable deficits since that way they do not have a choice but to buy your finished products for high prices.

As such you should migrate from resource trading posts to selling finished products, repurposing the mining ships to only work for your factories. This can start out as having the trading post sell to your own processing factories first before redeploying the miners once you are consuming the entire output. They can also be used to bypass the maximum subordinate limit.

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Re: Guide - Raw Resource Trading Post

Post by SphinxofBlackQuartz » Sat, 30. Apr 22, 00:54

grapedog wrote:
Wed, 7. Apr 21, 22:42
If you have any questions, or advice since I'm still tinkering with the setup, please let me know! Good luck and enjoy the X universe.
Thank you for taking the time to write and post this! This isn't quite how I run my mining depots, but it gave me some ideas for improvement.
THE HAPPINESS OF SEEING AGAIN THE SLIGHTLY DISGUSTING ALIEN FRIENDS. EXTREME DELIGHTFUL.

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