There should be an option to build stations faster

[Matthew94]

Mega-complexes are better than having multiple stations in every way except for build times. You use a single logical view to organise every module, you only deal with one manager and budget, and it requires fewer overall ships.

The build times are what cripple them. Whether you have 10 million credits or 10 billion credits, they take the same amount of time to build. It would be a massive benefit if we could assign multiple builder ships to a single plot or something similar.

This is one of the biggest late-game bottlenecks in terms of empire expansion unless you want to deal with the headache of managing dozens of individual stations.
I've tried managing multiple stations but it increases the time to execute a single action massively.
For example, I wanted to restrict trading in every station in one sector to my faction only and I had to open 15 different logical views to complete the action which was an absolute pain.
When I want to check on the production statistics of that sector, again I have to click on 15 different stations and, every time you have to scroll through the list of stations as it resets you back to the top of the list when you exit out.
On that topic, a keybind to move to the next station/ship in the list would make empire organising much faster.

[Falcrack]

If we could hire multiple builders for a single station, combining their build rates, this would go a long way towards helping this.

[MHDriver]

I have found that there has been a change recently in how stations are built. The construction vessel will complete the structures then depart leaving many of the modules incomplete now. Since the last patch I noticed that 3 stations that I built in the new sectors that ES added took nearly 4 days of game time to complete the defense modules. Even with 4 trade vessels assigned to the build storage of each station the completion of delivery of wares required to complete the build was painfully slow. I have not seen this type of behavior before and find it a ridiculous waste of game time.

[Burneyx]

I have found that there has been a change recently in how stations are built. The construction vessel will complete the structures then depart leaving many of the modules incomplete now. Since the last patch I noticed that 3 stations that I built in the new sectors that ES added took nearly 4 days of game time to complete the defense modules. Even with 4 trade vessels assigned to the build storage of each station the completion of delivery of wares required to complete the build was painfully slow. I have not seen this type of behavior before and find it a ridiculous waste of game time.

If you don't care about a **modified** the buildtime for one part is 1 min. with the right mod in use....

But even with that a small support factory, lets say 600 parts is still 10 hours build time.....
10 hours Time of your life....and that only for a small one.....

[Browser_ice]

How about building speed based on the following factors:

- builder experience: since architects don't exist in X4 then I assume the builder NPC is the captain or an engineer?

- amount of building drones: this assumes we have some kind of control on how many drones get assigned to the ship (if it is our own)


Above assumes building storage has all the necessary materials.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

I would just have the build drone count be a factor to module build speed if you have more drones you can get the job done sooner per module or if you have a lot of drones you can do two modules at once instead of focus on just one at normal speeds for both but if you focus on just one it gets done faster.

[MHDriver]

I have found that there has been a change recently in how stations are built. The construction vessel will complete the structures then depart leaving many of the modules incomplete now. Since the last patch I noticed that 3 stations that I built in the new sectors that ES added took nearly 4 days of game time to complete the defense modules. Even with 4 trade vessels assigned to the build storage of each station the completion of delivery of wares required to complete the build was painfully slow. I have not seen this type of behavior before and find it a ridiculous waste of game time.

If you don't care about a **modified** the buildtime for one part is 1 min. with the right mod in use....

But even with that a small support factory, lets say 600 parts is still 10 hours build time.....
10 hours Time of your life....and that only for a small one.....

Yes, I should have mentioned that I was using a station build time mod but it seems to not be working the same way now. The station construction is still fairly quick compared to vanilla but the defense modules are no longer finished with the station. They end up with 5-7k turret components and advanced electronics still missing after the CV departs so none of the defenses work initially. Slowly one will come online at a time as trade ships continue to deliver the wares over the next several days.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

Build time mod I used a few times on workshop steam and build time per module is 10s same for ships

[Shuulo]

It is a confirmed bug that defense modules do not finish quickly, and dev stated that itll be fixed in upcoming beta 6, so this may be the reason.

[Ezarkal]

It is a confirmed bug that defense modules do not finish quickly, and dev stated that itll be fixed in upcoming beta 6, so this may be the reason.

It's not just the defense modules...
Since a couple of patches ago, modules that would steadily take 15-20 minutes to build now can take up to 1.5h, with the same maxed-out builder ship (meaning full drone count and fully crewed with experienced engineers). And it varies from one station to the other. I just completed a M habitation that took 1h to build yesterday, but when I built earlier stages of the same station much earlier in the game it would only take 15 minutes.
(Yes, building storages are full.)

I don't really mind, since I's personally rather build many smaller specialized complexes and expand then step-wise, but it must be quite the annoyance for massive complex builders.
It would be great if this bug could be ironed-out. (Or if it's intentional, then please explain the feature. If we know why a build suddenly takes longer, then we can try to control the parameter through gameplay.)

Otherwise, I agree being able to add multiple builder ships to a station would be a neat feature.
It would be pretty awesome to quickly spawn defense stations in poorly defended enemy territories using 4-5 builder ships. XD

[Nort The Fragrent]

Station build time is still too fast, on a realistic level it would take years to build these mammoth stations.

Having a station built needs to be hard and take a long time. The game is way too easy as it is. building stations faster would spoil the challenge.
Blatt, an other station appears. Boring….

No appreciation for the hard working workers who toil in space putting together your Billion airs project. Oh do it faster !

Na, not keen on faster build times. Thats a cheaters cop out again.

[Shuulo]

Btw, are you on 3.0 beta? For me it was fixed with beta (new game), never I had this thing, but in 2.6 construction ships lost build drones from time to time and the lead to long build times

[Misunderstood Wookie]

Station build time is still too fast, on a realistic level it would take years to build these mammoth stations.

Having a station built needs to be hard and take a long time. The game is way too easy as it is. building stations faster would spoil the challenge.
Blatt, an other station appears. Boring….

No appreciation for the hard working workers who toil in space putting together your Billion airs project. Oh do it faster !

Na, not keen on faster build times. Thats a cheaters cop out again.

You deffo smoked something before writing that.
In a realistic time-line relevant to X4 (key point there is time-lines) workers are not toiling away at all it is all done with build drones to construct the skeleton of the station and much of the rest just like how ships are seemingly constructed from what appears to be matter building micro machines.

Doing it faster should in theory only be more compute power and a hell lot more drones to complete the same task with more workers.


If we look at this subject purely as gameplay one station is not really much of a reward given then fact that the entire ecosystem of the game relies on supply and demand and stations need to be replaced for the AI if we waited some three weeks for a station to be built an in-game time the entire economic system would probably come to a screeching halt and at very least suffer some major shortages in a few areas, not to mention stations can be destroyed far faster than you can build them already in vanilla modded actually makes stations survive a bit more usually.

The entire view is subjective to personal taste anyway and at least for me, I don't feel like treating the game like an MMO where I have to really wait a week to get one goal done. 10min - 2min module builds are fine even with the build times in vanilla it still takes well over a day to make a somewhat realistic station I mean I literally had to use SETA to build my solar array which had six by six long energy cell production just watching them build that took two a couple working days, in reality, to get to the point it even began to produce energy and the design was not even complex.

It consisted of a T dock, 1 6S3M docking bay, four or so habitat mix of M and L, Cross Connectors a couple of straight connectors, 4x L Container, 1x L Liquid, 1x L Solid, 5x Defence platform and 1x Administrative. A week later it is STILL not finished it is doing the defence modules now as I made the station in two stages a small one so it was built faster than the second build to add more production and defence after it generated what I wanted. I started it on Monday it is now Sat and I left the game going over-night a couple of times.

Why did it take so long well because my game is at war and shortages appear to crop up all over from time to time so I sat around waiting for ages for delivery's the speed could be better I hate to see how long it would take to build a mega-complex when all I have done so far is a single solar array and it took 5 days in a game with just over 1 whole day game time on the save file maybe 2 days now.

[Matthew94]

One solution to this would be "virtual complexes".

You could designate a master station and then assign subordinate stations to it. The game would merge the logical views and the game/manager would treat them all as a single station and move the goods between them automatically using its trade ships.

You could restrict this to a single sector to make it fairer, otherwise it'd be too easy for empire building.

It's like fleets for stations.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

One solution to this would be "virtual complexes".

You could designate a master station and then assign subordinate stations to it. The game would merge the logical views and the game/manager would treat them all as a single station and move the goods between them automatically using its trade ships.

You could restrict this to a single sector to make it fairer, otherwise it'd be too easy for empire building.

It's like fleets for stations.

But there really is no need for that, Just assign a station trader and it will go fetch what it needs, if we are talking about distributing wares between stations, then we have the distribution behaviour in vanilla or modded you can simply use Tater Trader or 3 other mods likely your best bet if not going with tater will be Mules and Warehouses v4 which is basically the king of player property management station wise.

I forgot to mention before that there is NO WAY to change the build que, what-ever order you place a module down in is the order it builds it there is no SMART algorithm to station building that goes I have production module and a bay maybe I should now make way down to building some storage before doing other bits, this means if you just build a lot of production first then add storage last you will have to WAIT the entire time it builds the rest before it will even begin to produce anything and that was the case with my solar array which is why I scrapped it and rebuilt it with a smaller array 1 production module then storage options confrim plan change then after it was dumping energy into the storage I updated the plan to my original concept and hit confirm lol

[Matthew94]

One solution to this would be "virtual complexes".

You could designate a master station and then assign subordinate stations to it. The game would merge the logical views and the game/manager would treat them all as a single station and move the goods between them automatically using its trade ships.

You could restrict this to a single sector to make it fairer, otherwise it'd be too easy for empire building.

It's like fleets for stations.

But there really is no need for that, Just assign a station trader and it will go fetch what it needs, if we are talking about distributing wares between stations, then we have the distribution behaviour in vanilla or modded you can simply use Tater Trader or 3 other mods likely your best bet if not going with tater will be Mules and Warehouses v4 which is basically the king of player property management station wise.

And as I said before, if you have multiple stations and want to change policy then you need to change it for every station. If I want to restrict the purchase of energy cells to my faction only, or change buy/sell prices in a region, then I need to edit N stations' logical views instead of just one.

And regarding mods, I feel that's a non-argument as you can change nearly anything with mods. I'm discussing the vanilla game.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

One solution to this would be "virtual complexes".

You could designate a master station and then assign subordinate stations to it. The game would merge the logical views and the game/manager would treat them all as a single station and move the goods between them automatically using its trade ships.

You could restrict this to a single sector to make it fairer, otherwise it'd be too easy for empire building.

It's like fleets for stations.

But there really is no need for that, Just assign a station trader and it will go fetch what it needs, if we are talking about distributing wares between stations, then we have the distribution behaviour in vanilla or modded you can simply use Tater Trader or 3 other mods likely your best bet if not going with tater will be Mules and Warehouses v4 which is basically the king of player property management station wise.

And as I said before, if you have multiple stations and want to change policy then you need to change it for every station. If I want to restrict the purchase of energy cells to my faction only, or change buy/sell prices in a region, then I need to edit N stations' logical views instead of just one.

And regarding mods, I feel that's a non-argument as you can change nearly anything with mods. I'm discussing the vanilla game.

Okay ... Vanilla
Solved!
https://i.imgur.com/2bNROWL.png


{Images posted directly to the forums should not be greater than 640x480 or 100kb, oversize image now linked - Terre}

[Matthew94]

But there really is no need for that, Just assign a station trader and it will go fetch what it needs, if we are talking about distributing wares between stations, then we have the distribution behaviour in vanilla or modded you can simply use Tater Trader or 3 other mods likely your best bet if not going with tater will be Mules and Warehouses v4 which is basically the king of player property management station wise.

And as I said before, if you have multiple stations and want to change policy then you need to change it for every station. If I want to restrict the purchase of energy cells to my faction only, or change buy/sell prices in a region, then I need to edit N stations' logical views instead of just one.

And regarding mods, I feel that's a non-argument as you can change nearly anything with mods. I'm discussing the vanilla game.

Okay ... Vanilla
Solved!

How is that remotely the same as changing the policy of multiple stations at one time?

[Misunderstood Wookie]

How is that remotely the same as changing the policy of multiple stations at one time?

You seriously asking me this question, you got some aggression there bud.

If I want to restrict the purchase of energy cells to my faction only

Well, I just sent you an image which will do just that..
Using the global policy in a sector/sectors you choose this will make it so no longer will other factions have the right to trade/ do much with anything in a sector you choose after you confirm this global.
Not to mention you can now disable this global on a per station basis as needed if you would like to say have a Trade Station of sorts that you supply. However, you may better of changing the global order to Trade instead of Activities with Trade you can choose which factions the order applies too and this for sure never effect your own property.

[Matthew94]

How is that remotely the same as changing the policy of multiple stations at one time?

You seriously asking me this question, you got some aggression there bud.

If I want to restrict the purchase of energy cells to my faction only

Well I just sent you an image which will do just that..
Using the global policy in a sector/sectors you choose this will make it so no longer will other factions have the right to trade with your stations in any sector you choose after your confirm this global.
Not to mention you can now disable this global on a per station basis as needed if you would like to say have a Trade Station of sorts that you supply. However you may better of changing the global order too Trade instead of Activities with Trade you can choose which factions the order applies too and this for sure will never effect your own property.

I used that as an example of policy changes and you took it to mean that I only care about restricting trade of ECs.

1. Your blanket ban then affects every ware in a station, not a single ware as I said.

2. it doesn't remotely solve any of the other issues like changing buy/sell prices, setting trade deal amounts etc etc

3. Your solution recreates the exact problem that this thread is about, which is the tedium of microing multiple stations.

"you can now disable this global on a per station basis as needed "

Great, your solution to the problem is to recreate the problem and make it worse. Bravo, 10/10.