How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

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BitByte
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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by BitByte » Fri, 7. Jan 22, 02:45

dmk wrote:
Thu, 6. Jan 22, 14:04
BitByte wrote:
Tue, 4. Jan 22, 20:17
Like Imperial Good said it's made by purpose player won't get more than 20%.

So X4 can stated to have exploration, war and (unfair) trade elements containing game.
Money is problem in many games (not only in X4) - you don't have it when need the most (by meaning at the begining of the game) and when you have it you don't need it (or it doesn't have anymore meaning so much).
actually it's incorrect i do forced to repeat assemble fleet missions with building base all over again,
and actually i don't want to do it, i would probably agree to be payed slightly less but automatic,
but i should decide for how much i agree to sell ships from my shipyards, if AI does not want them for that price - they just should not buy,
that's why this behavior now is a bug.
I agree that we should be allowed to set price and if it's too high then AI wouldn't buy (this was the case before 4.00). As I remember I kept price in 103-105% and that was price range AI bought ships. If raised price to 110% or more then buys become less frequent or ended.
Currently only option is limit buys (at the moment only SCA can buy new ships from me) and sell them as scrap metal to get reasonable price for investment (of module, ship and equipment blueprints + resources consumed to build ships). Most probably this will change in future too and devs reduce the price what we get from ships going to recycle.
Also this new reward style (from deliver station / fleet) I stopped do those missions totally. Not worth of time.

Future will show what devs decide and how X4 evolves. And what ideas they take with to X5 when it's that time.

teknosvk
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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by teknosvk » Mon, 9. May 22, 16:57

any update on this? i hate that my new shipyard is selling heavy fighter equipped for like 500k

BitByte
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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by BitByte » Mon, 16. May 22, 12:54

Deny buy of ships from others, build bunch of self designed ships (fully or well equiped) and sell those ships directly to wharfs (S/M ships like heavy fighters...) or shipyards (like destroyers, freighters, construction ships...).
You get much better income and then can transfer credits (or part of sell profit) to your stations so they can keep up building new ships for you.
This isn't ideal and requires manual work but atleast I've seen this better option until you get invested credits back and some buffer to your account.

E.g. from fully equiped rattlesnake you get approx 7m credits compared to sell it by yourself 22-26m credits.

jlehtone
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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by jlehtone » Mon, 16. May 22, 21:02

There is at least a kind of tradeoff: option A (full automatic) gives you 7m and a fully equipped ship to NPC, while option B (manual work) gives 26m to you but only some materials for the NPC.
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Rei Ayanami
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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by Rei Ayanami » Tue, 17. May 22, 00:42

Personally I don't see an issue with player shipyard/wharf prices being lower than that of the factions. The end-game credit gain is ridiculous via normal gains and there is not much to spend it on, so having additional income via Wharfs/Shipyard don't matter a lot. I see Wharfs and Shipyards more of an opportunity to support factions instead of making profit, so as long as Wharfs and Shipyards break at least even with their income I'm fine.

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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by KalisaFox » Wed, 18. May 22, 01:16

I do wish we could raise the price higher and npcs just not buy the ships or buy allot less, but i also dont mind the current setup, its weird that i can sell a ship directly to an npc warf and get paid several times more for effectivly selling them scrap as they turn it into raw materials, it feels almost opposite of what it should be, where selling ships directly to their warf should pay only a fraction since they dont use it, and i think thats where the imbalance really is noticable, I tend to avoid using the warf as an income source and use it more to support the faction i want to see grow, im used to playing X3 where we couldnt even own a shipyard to sell to npcs, our shipyard was only for our own ships so the bonus here is at least nice compared to that but the whole system feels like its been overtweaked right now and there needs to be more balance thought in it going forward.
But I certainly still get the value out of a warf/shipyard, not having to fly all over the galaxy when i build a ship cause all the components are at 1 place is nice, and of course its far cheaper and more reliable to support my own shipyard for my ships, and then of course faction guild missions where they request ships, thats my main area where i "sell" ships since it at least again directly effects the faction im selling to and i like to customize these ships, but i play the game in a very specific way where i play more on the sidelines, supporting a specific set of factions so they gain power well i dont take space of my own beyond like 1-2 sectors. I can see how this warf income can really effect other peoples playstyles though.

Raptor34
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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by Raptor34 » Wed, 18. May 22, 07:19

I assume it's to not make the early game harder for people which is why they don't just nerf direct sell prices.
And my free trade shipyards are all making good money anyway.

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grapedog
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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by grapedog » Sun, 22. May 22, 17:45

ultimately it is a single player game, if you feel the need to build ships yourself and sell em to NPC's for profit... have at it.

My shipyards, which produce none of their own goods, make ridiculous amounts of credits for me. Could I make more, sure.... but why do I need to? The system as it is works great for making money... because it used to be OBSCENE how many credits they printed.

No points in ruining it for everyone. Do i care that people sell ships to NPC's that they built? Nope... have at it. But lets not make the game ridiculously unbalanced by bringing back old pricing.

Caedes91
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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by Caedes91 » Mon, 23. May 22, 18:02

I don't understand why this is a discussion at all. The current prices are nonsensical. Period.
Generally a final price consists of the cost for material, operating costs, worker costs etc + PROFIT

Pretty embarassing for a game, that promises complex simulation.

In this game, resources may come "out of thin air", but you still have to invest and build up the infrastructure. Even then you would not sell the final product for less than the components.

Can you imagine anybody running a company at such a loss IRL? You would be fired. The endproducts obviously have to be costlier than all the components combined.
Why investing effort and time to putting a car together, when you make much more money by simply selling its tires.

The fact that this is still not fixed after so much time, just to artificially impede the player, is just unacceptable. No goal after building a wharf? Then it's either your job to add late game content, or tell players with too much time, to play with self imposed restrictions. It's a sandbox game after all. Terraforming, the only sandbox endgame activity currently in the game, has not received any content since 4.0.

It even would be such a simple fix: Just restore some code/modifier back to normal or at least to reasonable. The employees who greenlighted this change and still did not bother to fix it, despite the backlash, should feel ashamed.

exogenesis
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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by exogenesis » Mon, 23. May 22, 20:02

Can't see why people stuggle with this, it's not a problem...it's a solution :)

A.
Could you sell wares that go into making a ship at your shipyard for more than the ship sells for ?
Yes.

Could you sell anything like that amount of wares compared to the constant demand for ships
No, not by some factor (10 ?, & maybe demand stops almost completely at some point).


B.
Can you sell ships you make to factions at a much higher price than letting them buy ships from you ?
Yes.

Can you sell anything like that number of ships to factions (they just 'recycle' them, rather than actually use them)
No, not by some factor - without causing a slow/locked queue of sold ships at faction shipyards (recycling speed ?).


So :

1. getting a 'good' price for a constant demand for ships allows you to 'sell' those wares, whereas you wouldn't otherwise.
......and you make a great deal of money !

2. selling those ships allows factions to use them, rather than getting a bad clog-up with unused ships.

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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by Raptor34 » Mon, 23. May 22, 20:13

What loss? My wharves buying resources from outside is making money hand over fist.
So show me where this supposed loss comes from.
And nonsensical is what it once was. No one would buy at crazy mark ups. Hell, the first advice being to put your price at 150% and still selling out should be pretty telling at how broken the whole thing is.
Honestly with how much money they are making, I wouldn't even have been aware it's been nerfed.

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Re: How devs justify current prices in equipment dock / wharf / shipyard?

Post by jlehtone » Mon, 23. May 22, 20:59

Caedes91 wrote:
Mon, 23. May 22, 18:02
In this game, resources may come "out of thin air", but you still have to invest and build up the infrastructure. Even then you would not sell the final product for less than the components.
Most NPC do that all the time; their factories lose credits non-stop. True, most players are obsessed with credits.

Since there are multiple testimonies that one can procure materials (from NPC), build ships and make profit, I'm ready to believe that the witnesses are honest.

Do you mean that if you procure same amount of materials, but rather than building ships, you sell those materials to NPC and you end up with more profit that if you had sold ships?
Good for you.

As Teladi say: "You lose profitss!" When you are already selling as much materials to NPC as they can buy (which drops your profits) you can build ships from surplus materials as that is an additional market.


Should we lament how it is way too easy to board ships and you get way too much credits by selling those ships? Yes, let every board op make you public enemy number one and cut those "Take my scrap" profitsss to be in line what my Wharf gets ... :roll:

Someone did already demand that the reward of "Assemble a fleet" mission has to be cut down ...


Disclaimer: I don't sell ships. Period. My interest on the matter is purely academic. :boron:
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