Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

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CorruptUser
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Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by CorruptUser » Tue, 24. Aug 21, 19:20

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One of the things I discovered a while back was that rather than bother with a pathetic ore mining fleet, I could instead make a far, far faster profit loading up a scout with 50 advanced satellites from one equipment dock or wharf, then selling them at another place for a huge markup. Scouts move a lot faster than freighters, obviously. Sometimes, the price could be 46000 in one station and then 75000 in the other station in the same sector! I'm wondering, was this intentional?
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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by Ezarkal » Tue, 24. Aug 21, 20:16

You're already in the spoiler forum. No need to put a spoiler tag in addition to that. :wink:

My understanding is the buy/sell price of ship equipment is dependent on the market price.
Advanced satellites are mostly made out of advanced electronics, so if you buy them at a shipyard that's full of that ware, and sell them at another shipyard craving for them, you may very well reap a profit.

So IMO it's trading business as usual, but being able to use a fighter to make these trades is a bit of an oversight. :)
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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by CorruptUser » Tue, 24. Aug 21, 21:40

Not to mention being able to transport FIFTY at a time. Depending on the universe, I could make 5m in just one run.
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Good Wizard
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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by Good Wizard » Tue, 24. Aug 21, 21:49

I want to add, that ES seems to have seen the problem and done something in 4.1 - have no access to the Beta, know no details.

IMHO the advanced satellites are just a bit too expensive. This creates problems of this kind.

And I have to admit: I (ab)used this too, but I think in a acceptable way: I just bough Scout ships (Rapier) at Segaris Wharf, equipped them normally, and filled them up with adv. sats. Then they flew to Argon Wharf, where they sold as many adv. sats as necessary to compensate the ships price. This works fine, and gives one several scout ships at the start for free, which can be used to explore, drop satellites, and so on.

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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by Imperial Good » Tue, 24. Aug 21, 21:56

Compared with the modify loadout exploit that used to let you own a shipyard and warf in under 30 minutes of game start, this is nothing.

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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by Good Wizard » Tue, 24. Aug 21, 21:58

Imperial Good wrote:
Tue, 24. Aug 21, 21:56
Compared with the modify loadout exploit that used to let you own a shipyard and warf in under 30 minutes of game start, this is nothing.
I am curious (and the bug/exploit is long fixed I think): How did this work?
:D

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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by Imperial Good » Tue, 24. Aug 21, 22:07

Good Wizard wrote:
Tue, 24. Aug 21, 21:58
I am curious (and the bug/exploit is long fixed I think): How did this work?
The game used to credit you with the refund from "downgrade" modifications before any equipment was actually changed. Since you cannot have negative money, you could "steal" this money by giving to a build storage and then cancelling the modification while at 0 credits, generating the amount you should owe. The rate you generated money was entirely based on how fast you could input the sequence of mouse interactions to modify, store money and then cancel. For reference a construction ship full of advanced satellites made over 10 million free money per cycle, with cycles taking well under a minute.

This was fixed by only paying you after the equipment has actually changed. As such you cannot be left in a situation where you technically owe money but due to other constraints do not have to pay it. Honestly this exploit was so major I was put off from playing X4 until it was fixed, which fortunately it now is.

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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by CorruptUser » Tue, 24. Aug 21, 22:23

I'm in 4.1 now, and while I don't see Adv Sats trading for 100,000+, I saw a wharf and equipment dock in the same sector with 46,000 and 74,000. 1.4m in about a minute. Like I said, to avoid abusing this I've only limited it to using the money for mapping the whole world. Then I can focus on what I really want; non-consensual borrowing of a Dragon ship to facilitate the borrowing of every last minotaur pillager I see, then loading them up with marines to help borrow a rattlesnake. It does feel weird that a little scout is able to take on a corvette all alone, but that's what happens when your ship has lots of forward-facing guns but lacking in turret coverage and shielding. If it drops with the combat engine 4, even better.

Then from there, well, get a second 'snake. And third.
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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by Ezarkal » Thu, 26. Aug 21, 21:40

CorruptUser wrote:
Tue, 24. Aug 21, 22:23
[...] Then I can focus on what I really want; non-consensual borrowing of a Dragon ship to facilitate the borrowing of every last minotaur pillager I see, then loading them up with marines to help borrow a rattlesnake. It does feel weird that a little scout is able to take on a corvette all alone, but that's what happens when your ship has lots of forward-facing guns but lacking in turret coverage and shielding. If it drops with the combat engine 4, even better.

Then from there, well, get a second 'snake. And third.
I like how you think! :pirat:
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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by Falcrack » Mon, 30. Aug 21, 15:42

Buying adv sats at equipment docks and selling to wharf seems like an exploit, but it is actually not. You are, in effect, transferring adv electronics from an equipment dock with high supply to a shipyard with high demand. Those adv sats, when sold, do in fact get dismantled at the shipyard back into their original components, at least 50% of the original.

Your effort to make money buying and selling adv sats can well mean the difference between a NPC shipyard producing ships, and stalled production.

Although, logically the shipyard should probably only pay you for the cost of the adv sat components it is able to recover, since half of the original components are lost upon recycling. If this were the case, buying and selling adv sats would not be profitable at all.

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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by Good Wizard » Mon, 30. Aug 21, 21:00

Falcrack wrote:
Mon, 30. Aug 21, 15:42
Buying adv sats at equipment docks and selling to wharf seems like an exploit, but it is actually not. You are, in effect, transferring adv electronics from an equipment dock with high supply to a shipyard with high demand. Those adv sats, when sold, do in fact get dismantled at the shipyard back into their original components, at least 50% of the original.

Your effort to make money buying and selling adv sats can well mean the difference between a NPC shipyard producing ships, and stalled production.

Although, logically the shipyard should probably only pay you for the cost of the adv sat components it is able to recover, since half of the original components are lost upon recycling. If this were the case, buying and selling adv sats would not be profitable at all.
Good explanation! I also watched the price of adv. satellites go up where I buy them, and go down where I sell them. So it can be abused (a bit), but if you overdo it, it regulates itself.

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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by NightmareNight91 » Fri, 3. Sep 21, 13:22

You can still find plenty cheap advanced sats, i started a new game with the current beta. Found a split eq dock selling them for 39k.

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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by Submarine » Sat, 9. Oct 21, 00:23

Its trading pure and simple, buy low sell high. IMHO its not abuse its intentional gameplay. :D

The devs are well aware of the balance as the prices and differences were nearly halved in 4.10.

It is self balancing to an extent because receiving station prices drop when stocks increase and early game its hard to abuse as you need so much capital to fill a S ship.

If you want to optimise batch sizes, you can buy low at shipyards up to 250 units with a L ship and then dock that at a wharf and transfer wares to M ships to sell 100 at a time. What that does is bork the market for longer so you cannot buy or sell as often but you get a bigger wad of money every time you do.

In my last start I was trading suit components and ship fittings, mining crystals as well as doing missions and trading sats, to optimise the cashflow. Even so it still takes hours to get enough for a L freighter and enough capital to fill it and it all gets soaked up by equipment upgrades.
bloop

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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by budforceuk » Thu, 2. Dec 21, 14:30

I dont have an issue with these kind of exploits, end of the day it's a single player game, you have decide yourself whether it'll ruin your fun or not.

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Re: Abusing Equipment Docks for Profitsss

Post by gorgofdoom » Fri, 10. Dec 21, 22:38

It's not even an exploit.

The Paranid plot has Argons buying split weapons for what i assume is exactly this purpose. I took it as a suggestion and ran with it.

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