Buying ships at a shipyard : How about a queue? - Dev answer now!

[Rei Ayanami]

Greetings.

I don't know if this has been answered somewhere already, but i'd like to know if the L/XL ship dealers of shipyards will be improved in X4 in terms of being able to sell ships to the player.

Many times in X:R i've encountered the situation where i really need a certain freighter for a station or a capital battle ship for defense/offense, but all shipyards are already busy building other capital ships and extremely slow in finishing their current building task, not to mention situations where they start building a ship but run out of ressources, so then they're stuck mid-production until someone brings them ressources.

And if they finally finish their production they'll immediately start another one, so unless i constantly check every ship dealers building status every 30 seconds it's possible to not find any available ship dealer for some ships for hours.

Question : Would it be possible to add queues to ship dealers, so if they are currently busy building something we can still order a ship, which they'll build once they're done with their current npc ship build task?

[ajime]

if x4 stays closer to x3 style u can build ur own shipyard

[Alan Phipps]

It has already been confirmed in the X4 dev's Q&A Index Sticky that the player can build shipyard modules onto their stations.

That said, an answer from the devs to the OP's question on the ship-ordering situation at NPC shipyards and before the player can afford personal stations and docks would still be helpful.

[Falcrack]

Or instead of needing to build all ships every time you want a new one, how about making it so the NPC shipyards would prebuild a number of ships for immediate purchase, in anticipation of future orders? That way, you could either choose from something already available, or have it custom built in case what you want is not already there for you.

[Skeeter]

Instock would work as prebuilt small ships up to a certain class assuming theres a few docking station modules attatched as they can hide ships underneath the bay doors on the floor. But cap ship sizes i dont think will work for prebuilt instock as no where to really store them. Unles.. The shipyard has several long arm docking platforms where cap ships are moored ready to be sold off.

Thats the only way id imagine it working as they couldd cheat and spawn ships out of no where but no one likes magic like that in sim games so best they dont do that.

[Falcrack]

Speaking of no magic ship spawning, I also think there should be no magic ship DEspawning, that is, you sell ships to a shipyard, and they do not automatically disappear, but are instead added to the stock at the shipyard for others to buy. If there are too many ships there, excess ships could be recycled for raw materials to make new ships.

[Skeeter]

I still think a 2nd hand ship dealer should be in game so u have option to buy cheap but fixer uppers, even better if they looked old and well used instead of brand new not a scratch looking ships which I'm really surprised no one really does in space games. Especially live in space, long play, games. Give me my rust bucket 9f a ship lol.

[Fedora01]

Speaking of no magic ship spawning, I also think there should be no magic ship DEspawning, that is, you sell ships to a shipyard, and they do not automatically disappear, but are instead added to the stock at the shipyard for others to buy. If there are too many ships there, excess ships could be recycled for raw materials to make new ships.

I still think a 2nd hand ship dealer should be in game so u have option to buy cheap but fixer uppers...

This could be an excellent basis for pirate shipyards. Instead of producing ships entirely from scratch, (save for what comes from raiding parties and a handful of pirate stations) most ships at a pirate shipyard would be stolen/captured ships. And what ships are to destroyed to repaired, and sold at a profit, would be broken down for use in pirate ships.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Skeeter: If you look closely at some of the DeVries Styrvok ship models flying around in Rebirth, the NPC ones in use are old and tatty, but the ones you can buy from the shipyard are new and shiny. See the in-game encyclopaedia description for that ship.

[Xenon_Slayer]

I don't think we covered this when we spoke about shipyards but seeing as it's a simple question, I'll give a simple answer. Yes, there is a queuing system at shipyards.

[Sandalpocalypse]

styrvoks have some other features that wern't widely used in XR though, like the destructible cargo pods.

[Rei Ayanami]

I don't think we covered this when we spoke about shipyards but seeing as it's a simple question, I'll give a simple answer. Yes, there is a queuing system at shipyards.

Thank you!

That said, an answer from the devs to the OP's question on the ship-ordering situation at NPC shipyards and before the player can afford personal stations and docks would still be helpful.

Thank you for reminding me that we can also build our own shipyard modules. Yea, my concern was the situation before you can build your own shipyard-modules (or if you don't want to build your own shipyards).