HQ Production Speed

[Ramdat]

What governs how long something takes to build/repair/reverse engineer?

Is there any plan to change the scaling? Currently it seems non-viable to use the HQ to do anything except building unique ships/weapons because it takes so long. For example, it takes 2 hours for a single Experimental MAM Launcher, 12.5 hours for a single Mule, and over a hundred hours for a single capital ship.

[Thurston Beers]

Someone posted about this in another thread. But yes, I agree that production speed should be increased. The current PHQ is perfect for the early game experience. However, I find the limitations rather frustrating in the mid to end game. Perhaps there could be a way that the PHQ could level up and increase production speed and number of docking bays? Perhaps a hanger for M6, and transports?

[Da-V-Man]

Imagine being able to apply the station upgrade kits to the PHQ. Mmmm, 20 Kyotos at a time with an XXL PHQ Though I don't think that would be the right approach. I also think it would nice to have faster production times because it seems impractical to build yourself an empire unless you put the game on SETA overnight. Alternatively, having multiple production lines could be nice too.

[Raptor34]

What's wrong with 20 Kyotos at a time? The bottleneck should be resources available not how much RL time and money you have.

[Utsuho Reiuji]

Yeeessss, please decrease both production and reverse engineering time. Building bigger ships is almost not worth it due to the time alone.

[chip56]

Yeeessss, please decrease both production and reverse engineering time. Building bigger ships is almost not worth it due to the time alone.

If you dont care about playing modded you easily edit the "HQ" file. That has values for time, credits, ressources for recyling, repair, reverse enineering and building. The parts you want are looking like this:

<production time="100" money="100" resources="100">
<repair time="100" money="100" resources="100">


Personally i modded that to increase the speed of everything exept reverse engenieering a lot and removed the resource cost for repairing while also reducing the credit cost.

With those changes building ships is somewhat reasonable if you have your own complexes supplying them. And 5% credit costs for repairing feels in my opionion reasonable considering that you:
1) have tools to repair for completly free
2) Are limited to 1 ship at a time in the HQ
3) Need to travel there.

the counter point why i made repair not fully free in my own mod:
1) You get the HQ rather early, earlier and cheaper than drone carriers
2) You as player can do something else while the HQ repairs a ship

I would however be in favor of increasing the speed of of everything (execept reverse) in the base game and reducing the costs for repair massivly there too.

[Ketraar]

Some adjustments will come with 1.2 but the PHQ should not crack out massive amounts of ships or stations, so while some reductions to time will be included dont expect massive drops all around. As suggested people can then mod their version as it fits their preference.

MFG

Ketraar

[bounty_hunter66]

I'm curious. Why not though? Why the long build times? What is the point? Why not massively increase resources needed and significantly lower build time. At least then the player will have to go through proper gameplay by building infrastructure rather than.....AFK-ing with J

I liked the approach in X-Rebirth with low build time but more rare and expensive resources needed.

What's the point of wasting the player's time like this?

I know the HQ values are there since Reunion but why not implement an Upgrade function like with other stations? Upgrade production times, docking slots, storage etc.

[Ketraar]

Because there is a range, some lower tier things will already only take like 2 minutes, if a thing is set to be worth 500x it will take the equivalant time (and resources) more. You cant just make everythign take 2 minutes (well you could I guess but it would not make much sense).

MFG

Ketraar

[bounty_hunter66]

I'm not saying everything should take 2 minutes lol. But the bigger ships could use at least a 50% reduction in the time it takes to repair/produce.

It doesn't make sense for bigger ships to take this long to produce either. Since you can buy them anyways. There comes a point where you invested and built so much that you make alot of money and can buy big ships VERY fast. This makes the HQ redundant in this regard. Do you see my point? On top of this, the time spent to build your money making empire is just a one time investment, whereas the HQ wastes your time EVERY time it builds a big ship.

[bounty_hunter66]

I'm going to take this idea a step further and say, it would make much more sense to have the production/repair time reduced only for the common ships(ones that you can buy at the shipyards) and for the unique/rare ships to stay the same.

But i'm going to take a guess and say this sort of granularity is hardcoded and might require a change in the source code rather than changing the hq xml file.

I was just questioning the initial design choice for the HQ.

[Ketraar]

I think it should be possible to add variation for single type and define it on its own. The main issue here is, its going to be a mess and take a HUGE amount of time to do it for all ships individually. Not something any of us is keen on doing, but mostly because as I said, times and production are tied to the VALUE of the thing. If its 500x more valuable should it not scale accordingly? I think it should.

MFG

Ketraar

[Diegoteijeiro]

How about having a "shipyard" station that can build blueprinted ships like the HQ, so you can build multiple ships in parallel? That way you are limited by money and resources. If you want to build faster, you build more of those shipyards. I find the minutes-long build times in X4 kinda silly, you basically materialize a kilometers long vessel in minutes?? yeah sure. The problem here is that you can only build one ship at the same time, while IRL you would be capable of building multiple at the same with with enough resources. I don't mind long build times, they make sense, but you need to be able to produce more than one at a time to allow it to scale properly in the late game, when your are supposed to need entire fleets.

Make this station only obtainable by building it in the HQ, and work like a shipbuilding-only HQ, not like a normal shipyard. You start with the HQ, it's fine for early and mid game, but when the building time becomes a nuisance, in the late game, you have money and/or resources to build at a faster pace, but you are stuck with the HQ buidling queue. With this station you can invest some time and resources to increase your ship production capabitlities. With the current state it is not feasible to be entirely selfsuficient, you can't have the ship buidling capacity to compete with other factions, you are limited to one ship at a time and long build times for capitals. Can you buy/build normal shipyards? I haven't reached that stage yet.

Also, maybe a kind of upgrade kit for the HQ that just adds "slipways" to the HQ, allowing it to create multiple ships at the same time. You start with one at a time, build this upgrade kit (again, only available to build in the HQ, not for buying from other factions' shipyards), apply it, you can build two ships a the same time, build and apply another kit, you can build 3 ships simultaneously, etc. That way you don't spam stations and your shipbuilding is centered around the HQ, which i think was the intention for it. Although i'm not sure how it would handle potentially spawning several finished capitals at the same time, spawn them in space close by? I think it is already done that way for TS-size ships when the external docks are full.

[bounty_hunter66]

I think it should be possible to add variation for single type and define it on its own. The main issue here is, its going to be a mess and take a HUGE amount of time to do it for all ships individually. Not something any of us is keen on doing, but mostly because as I said, times and production are tied to the VALUE of the thing. If its 500x more valuable should it not scale accordingly? I think it should.

MFG

Ketraar

Yes, most definitely it should. I was just arguing that, for the sake of gameplay, it would benefit more to rebalance the core way the HQ calculates value/time/resources and shift the balance away from time and more into resources. The value would be the same but there will be less wasted time. As the player would spend more time developing the infrastructure to sustain the building of ships rather than AFK-ing with SETA.

I am not saying this as a suggestion for the next update. I realize it would take a huge time to rebalance. This was merely for discussion sake, as I was not around in the Reunion days to participate in such discussions(if they even took place)

[Utsuho Reiuji]

If you dont care about playing modded...

I would have done that already but that voids my chance to get the achievements. I am ok with construction taking some time, but considering my rather limited time to play the production/reverse engineering times are rather excessive.

[bounty_hunter66]

How about having a "shipyard" station that can build blueprinted ships like the HQ, so you can build multiple ships in parallel? That way you are limited by money and resources. If you want to build faster, you build more of those shipyards. I find the minutes-long build times in X4 kinda silly, you basically materialize a kilometers long vessel in minutes?? yeah sure. The problem here is that you can only build one ship at the same time, while IRL you would be capable of building multiple at the same with with enough resources. I don't mind long build times, they make sense, but you need to be able to produce more than one at a time to allow it to scale properly in the late game, when your are supposed to need entire fleets.

Make this station only obtainable by building it in the HQ, and work like a shipbuilding-only HQ, not like a normal shipyard. You start with the HQ, it's fine for early and mid game, but when the building time becomes a nuisance, in the late game, you have money and/or resources to build at a faster pace, but you are stuck with the HQ buidling queue. With this station you can invest some time and resources to increase your ship production capabitlities. With the current state it is not feasible to be entirely selfsuficient, you can't have the ship buidling capacity to compete with other factions, you are limited to one ship at a time and long build times for capitals. Can you buy/build normal shipyards? I haven't reached that stage yet.

Also, maybe a kind of upgrade kit for the HQ that just adds "slipways" to the HQ, allowing it to create multiple ships at the same time. You start with one at a time, build this upgrade kit (again, only available to build in the HQ, not for buying from other factions' shipyards), apply it, you can build two ships a the same time, build and apply another kit, you can build 3 ships simultaneously, etc. That way you don't spam stations and your shipbuilding is centered around the HQ, which i think was the intention for it. Although i'm not sure how it would handle potentially spawning several finished capitals at the same time, spawn them in space close by? I think it is already done that way for TS-size ships when the external docks are full.

This is also an excellent ideea. This is always how I thought it should be. Much like having more production buildings in RTS games to pump out units faster.

[Ketraar]

For modded you can have multiple HQs, there are even 2 more models from the older games (Boron and Terran looks).

MFG

Ketraar

[FankX]

I think it should be possible to add variation for single type and define it on its own. The main issue here is, its going to be a mess and take a HUGE amount of time to do it for all ships individually. Not something any of us is keen on doing, but mostly because as I said, times and production are tied to the VALUE of the thing. If its 500x more valuable should it not scale accordingly? I think it should.

I can totally agree.
But it would be nice to scale "horizontal" by e.g. building shipyards which can produce too.

[Ramdat]

Some adjustments will come with 1.2 but the PHQ should not crack out massive amounts of ships or stations, so while some reductions to time will be included dont expect massive drops all around. As suggested people can then mod their version as it fits their preference.

MFG

Ketraar

Can you state what these adjustments are?

I was considering using a mod to increase the speeds, but due to Steam achievements being disabled in modded games, I have to choose between the fun of hunting achievements and the fun of having an HQ that is useful.

And, as you said, a simple global reduction in the time would be an improvement but still troublesome because the range is so large. With a 5x reduction, a Mule still takes 2.5 hours, a capital ship still a full day, and small ships are produced almost instantly. Certainly not ideal.

[bounty_hunter66]

From what I recall you can tweak per ship class. As such, bigger ships need the most reduction. Small ships are ok in terms of production time.