Recycling at docks

[Falcrack]

When we buy or upgrade stuff at docks (shipyards, wharfs, and equipment docks), the wares used for the upgrade get consumed to make the new items, as they should, and we are charged for the items based on the price at the dock for the wares used for the upgrade. But, when we sell back stuff (whether weapons, engines, deployables, etc), we are refunded the cost for the items based on the price at the dock for the wares, BUT the items do not get recycled back into whatever was used to make them. They are instead lost forever.

I am not sure whether this is a bug or intended. If intended, I disagree with the decision. I mean, we are getting paid for selling stuff back to the dock, and the dock is getting nothing in return. If we got no money for the stuff we are selling back, I would understand, but we are paid.

This behavior actually would be a fun way to cripple a faction, just send a big ship to their docks and repeatedly upgrade your ships, then sell back the upgrades, over and over. You will not lose out any money (in fact you can made a tidy profit doing it), but the dock you are doing this at could be depleted of all the critical wares in not very much time at all. I think next time I fire up X4 I'm going to cripple the Teladi by doing this, and see if they start to lose sectors to the Xenon. All the while I will be doing this, they will be thanking me for doing business with them!

[radcapricorn]

I'll say cautious "yes", with a huge "but" attached:

There's a possibility that at the time you're selling equipment, there might not be enough space in the station's storage to accommodate the parts. So there has to be thought put into that transaction. What I don't want to see (and given Ego's track record so far regarding ship construction and upgrades it's a possibility) is yet another case of a ship sitting stuck at an Eq. Dock because it can't sell components back

[mr.WHO]

"yes yes yes" - this would be huge thing for pirate players - who would not be able to easily obtain build resources.

[Imperial Good]

I would really like to see unfitting components refund 80-90% of the excess parts back, making it a lossy process if used to downgrade equipment but better than currently where it is a total loss. Like wise AI warfs/shipyards/equipment docks should factor this in and pay you less for recycling when there is excess to accommodate the loss in parts.

To stop shipyards, warfs and equipment docks getting too full the manager should automatically try to sell excess that accumulates, potentially at below minimum price to encourage traders to move it. Player stations need the player to explicitly manage this with sell orders since they can set sell orders from the logistics view. If the AI shipyards, warfs and equipment docks get too full of a component that is not selling it should discard some of the excess, this way assuring its storages never get too cluttered even if it does not make total economic sense.

Additionally it should not be possible to downgrade software. Currently one can perform an infinite money exploit by upgrading software at ones own shipyards, warfs or equipment docks and then selling that software to NPC ones.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Providing there is room in the relevant ware quotas then yes - they should be recycled back to the raw components (possibly at 100% efficiency). Any wares excess to the available quota space should probably be either further broken down or destroyed.

[sh1pman]

18 votes, 100% yes so far. Egosoft should probably take note.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

I agree, recycling should be a thing. To avoid a money exploit, the dock should pay you like half the price for the recycled wares.

[radcapricorn]

18 votes, 100% yes so far. Egosoft should probably take note.

https://steamdb.info/app/392160/graphs/

18 votes out of 100k .. 200k buyers just on Steam

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

18 votes, 100% yes so far. Egosoft should probably take note.

https://steamdb.info/app/392160/graphs/

18 votes out of 100k .. 200k buyers just on Steam

They're over 20 "yes" now.

[radcapricorn]

They're over 20 "yes" now.

A substantial difference.

[Falcrack]

I'll say cautious "yes", with a huge "but" attached:

There's a possibility that at the time you're selling equipment, there might not be enough space in the station's storage to accommodate the parts. So there has to be thought put into that transaction. What I don't want to see (and given Ego's track record so far regarding ship construction and upgrades it's a possibility) is yet another case of a ship sitting stuck at an Eq. Dock because it can't sell components back

In this case, any wares beyond what can be stored at the dock could get shoved into your ship's cargo hold. If that doesn't work, then the recycled wares simply disappear. And you will only get refunded for the wares that the dock can store after the recycling, since they are not going to be paying for stuff they can't store. This station storage limit would include any pending trade deals where there are inbound wares, so that the ware reservation system doesn't get broken.

I think to avoid an exploit from repeatedly selling upgrades and buying upgrades at a dock (currently you can make a profit doing this because buying upgrades creates a shortage of wares, which increases the price of the wares and hence the refund amount when you sell back), there could be a 10% or more markdown when selling back to the dock.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

They're over 20 "yes" now.

A substantial difference.

If you have a population of 1M and only 1 person decides to vote with the rest abstaining/not-caring then that view single point is still significant.

While I voted yes, I also would not care if Egosoft did nothing about it though... there is always the option of adding a mod for something along the lines of what the OP is asking for and is being discussed.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I'll say cautious "yes", with a huge "but" attached:

There's a possibility that at the time you're selling equipment, there might not be enough space in the station's storage to accommodate the parts. So there has to be thought put into that transaction. What I don't want to see (and given Ego's track record so far regarding ship construction and upgrades it's a possibility) is yet another case of a ship sitting stuck at an Eq. Dock because it can't sell components back

In this case, any wares beyond what can be stored at the dock could get shoved into your ship's cargo hold. If that doesn't work, then the recycled wares simply disappear. And you will only get refunded for the wares that the dock can store after the recycling, since they are not going to be paying for stuff they can't store. This station storage limit would include any pending trade deals where there are inbound wares, so that the ware reservation system doesn't get broken.

I think to avoid an exploit from repeatedly selling upgrades and buying upgrades at a dock (currently you can make a profit doing this because buying upgrades creates a shortage of wares, which increases the price of the wares and hence the refund amount when you sell back), there could be a 10% or more markdown when selling back to the dock.

Give the player options would be a relatively simple answer:

• Sell the ship and you would get back the value of the ship and the ship would become owned and used by the shipyard
• Salvage the ship where the player would pay a fee (perhaps scaled based on ship value) for the ship to be recycled and the wares stored in designated player owned vessels

In the salvage case, the player would have to assign ships with enough total cargo capacity for the wares. If the player does not assign enough ships then the shipyard has the option to keep or destroy any excess wares.

[radcapricorn]

If you have a population of 1M and only 1 person decides to vote with the rest abstaining/not-caring then that view single point is still significant.

Oh, Roger, never fails... 1 out of a million is just an anomaly, Roger. Especially when the majority isn't even aware of the question being posed.
2% of the US population think the Earth is flat. Is it significant wrt. the shape of the Earth? No, it isn't.

While I voted yes, I also would not care if Egosoft did nothing about it though... there is always the option of adding a mod for something along the lines of what the OP is asking for and is being discussed.

No. Something has to be done about it. It's an exploit, it needs to be fixed. That is significant. What isn't, really, is the 24 or however many are there now, votes for this particular solution proposed by Falcrack.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

No. Something has to be done about it. It's an exploit, it needs to be fixed. That is significant. What isn't, really, is the 24 or however many are there now, votes for this particular solution proposed by Falcrack.

How is it an exploit? What exactly are you referring to?

I believe what Falcrack is proposing is a solution that allows for the recovery of ship building materials from unwanted vessels that have been acquired by any of a number of means. The ONLY aspect of this proposal that some might consider an exploit is recovering the materials as well as being paid for the vessel.

The ability to sell ships almost arbitrarily has long been a part of the X-games, it is not truely an exploit in any shape or form - even if we consider the ability to build ships our selves and sell them elsewhere. It requires a not insignificant investment in time and in-game money to reach that point.

[radcapricorn]

I'm referring to exactly what Falcrack wrote in his OP. Please read it.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I'm referring to exactly what Falcrack wrote in his OP. Please read it.

I read it the first time, and have just read it again - no "exploit" present nor described as I see it.

There may be no recycling of equipment/ships into wares currently, the same seems to be true for player owned shipyards/wharfs/equipment docks, but that does not make it an exploit nor a bug per se.

The desire for recycling/salvaging wares from equipment/ships has some merit but is not a fix for any actual issues - except perhaps cases where specific players may be having ship building wares supply issues, something that is not universally a major concern.

[Falcrack]

No. Something has to be done about it. It's an exploit, it needs to be fixed. That is significant. What isn't, really, is the 24 or however many are there now, votes for this particular solution proposed by Falcrack.

How is it an exploit? What exactly are you referring to?

I believe what Falcrack is proposing is a solution that allows for the recovery of ship building materials from unwanted vessels that have been acquired by any of a number of means. The ONLY aspect of this proposal that some might consider an exploit is recovering the materials as well as being paid for the vessel.

The ability to sell ships almost arbitrarily has long been a part of the X-games, it is not truely an exploit in any shape or form - even if we consider the ability to build ships our selves and sell them elsewhere. It requires a not insignificant investment in time and in-game money to reach that point.

I'm not actually talking about recycling ships, though I'm not against that either. I am talking about components (guns, shields, deployables) etc that are installed on ships, which when sold back to the dock, the wares used in their construction are not recycled back.

As for the exploit, consider this. Buy a massive number of upgrades for a large ship, it costs maybe 9 million credits. Now you have depleted the wares from the station, so the ware prices increase due to scarcity. Now sell back those same upgrade you just purchased. The dock offers you 10 million credits to buy all that stuff back, due to increased ware prices, so you make 1 million credits just by buying and selling back the same upgrades. Buy upgrades again for 10 million, sell for 11 million, again due to greater scarcity than before, because there was no recycling the wares just keep getting destroyed with each successive upgrade/sell back cycle.

I actually tested this out to confirm that this happens. The best way to prevent this exploit, as far as I am concerned is to make it so that when you are paid for items sold back to equipment docks, just knock off maybe 10% or so of the sell back value. Or, make it so that only 80-90% or so of the original wares used for the component construction can be recycled back, and so you get paid less for selling back the same items that way too.

[Imperial Good]

Give the player options would be a relatively simple answer:
Sell the ship and you would get back the value of the ship and the ship would become owned and used by the shipyard
Salvage the ship where the player would pay a fee (perhaps scaled based on ship value) for the ship to be recycled and the wares stored in designated player owned vessels
In the salvage case, the player would have to assign ships with enough total cargo capacity for the wares. If the player does not assign enough ships then the shipyard has the option to keep or destroy any excess wares.

Ships sold to the NPCs usually are removed when out of sight. With the salvage system the NPCs should instead order them to their shipyard/warf to be salvaged into parts. This way they can use those resources to build ships they need as opposed to basically paying the player money for nothing.

The NPCs should not offer salvaging services to the player. Instead that functionality should be for the player owned shipyards/warfs.

As for the exploit, consider this. Buy a massive number of upgrades for a large ship, it costs maybe 9 million credits. Now you have depleted the wares from the station, so the ware prices increase due to scarcity. Now sell back those same upgrade you just purchased. The dock offers you 10 million credits to buy all that stuff back, due to increased ware prices, so you make 1 million credits just by buying and selling back the same upgrades. Buy upgrades again for 10 million, sell for 11 million, again due to greater scarcity than before, because there was no recycling the wares just keep getting destroyed with each successive upgrade/sell back cycle.

Or one can install free software at ones own equipment dock/shipyard/warf and then sell the NPCs the software. Yeh currently this is hyper exploitable, especially because you get paid for stuff the AI does not receive.

I actually tested this out to confirm that this happens. The best way to prevent this exploit, as far as I am concerned is to make it so that when you are paid for items sold back to equipment docks, just knock off maybe 10% or so of the sell back value. Or, make it so that only 80-90% or so of the original wares used for the component construction can be recycled back, and so you get paid less for selling back the same items that way too.

Recycling should be 100% when changing between components. Only the excess left after all modifications should be subject to some loss, eg 10-20%. This way it costs you nothing to change where/how the components are invested, but does cost you something if you effectively try to take components out. This would work very well with a salvage system since then 80% odd of a ship could be converted into another ship.

[phrozen1]

Yes it should be recycled into parts but there should also be some loss.
Also i don't like how all the parts get assembled at the Shipyards.
I think it would be much better if there would be stations that produce the final wares like weapons and
then those very expensive things get hauled to the shipyard. Would make pirating much more interesting too.