How to get a built shipyard to make ships ?

[exogenesis]

Built an S/M PAR ship fab, with L & S/M docks & L container storage & L habitat.

Assigned 6 mercurys, got many S/M ship PAR blueprints, assigned manager & ship merchant.
Gave manager loads of cash.

The mercurys are just milling about, thought they'd be buying resources.

What else do I need to get the station to build ships ?

NPC ships are paying small amounts to repair, but nothing else...

[Falcrack]

I had a problem with getting lots of orders, but when I bought a bunch of HOP blueprints (sentinel variants for fighters), the order started rolling in. Previously, I just had Argon orders, which had dried up in terms of orders. I think by selling to both sides of the war, this stimulated massive buy orders from both factions.

My shipyard is in Second Contact II. I got Odysseus Sentinel blueprints, and now the sector is a massive warzone swarming with these destroyers. All built at my shipyard of course

I am many hundreds of millions credits richer in a VERY short time.

Only downside, it is getting a bit too chaotic. I am upgrading a station with a hired Mammoth, which is under attack from the swarm of HOP destroyers.

Interesting phenomenon is that HOP seems to be doing almost all of it's ordering through my shipyard. Which means, their primary sector Holy Vision is a bit barren of ships to defend it, and is starting to get overrun by Xenon. While HOP is at the same time overrunning ANT in Second Contact II.

[martimus]

Make sure you have all the proper fitting blueprints as well as the ships. The factions buy fully fitted ships, not bare hulls. If you have HOP ship BPs, then get the HOP shields, turrets, and engines to go with them, and buy the proper weapon blueprints. HOP will be your best customer, because they cannot keep their own wharf stocked.

[Sanshy]

Last comment is not true. The NPC faction will buy ships if you have the blueprint of that ship but will equip them disregarding the equipment blueprint you have. You only need to own the ship BP.

[exogenesis]

What I meant was : am I missing anything in the build plan, like do I need storage other than container ?

And should I expect the assigned autotraders to start buying anything straight away & stocking up,
or do they only do that after a ship has been ordered from the ship fab (or not at all) ?

EDIT: just started an X4 session & the mercurys are starting to buy hull parts,
seemed to take a long time to 'get going' ...

[Karmaticdamage]

You only need container storage on a shipyard, solid and liquid containers are only for mining storage. You have to buy all the terrible blueprints along with the good ones. Those crappy mk1 and mk2 shields and engines? Yeah you have get those too. Set the price of your ships to 150%, they will buy it up even at max price. Once you have your first set of blueprints and the wharf goes online, the order queue fill instantly. I only assign one trader to my wharf to get the upkeep mission to go away, the station is mostly supplied by my other station's traders and npcs. You want to have your own supply of engine parts, smart chips, advanced electronics, hull parts, and weapon components. The rest of the wares required for ship building are abundant in the game world.

[Falcrack]

Those crappy mk1 and mk2 shields and engines? Yeah you have get those too.

When building your own fleet of ships, don't discount those crappy MK1 and MK2 items. They cost a lot, lot less than the MK3 versions, and MK3 only gives a marginal increase in ability, so you may be able to afford to build a very large fleet using the lesser versions.

[Imperial Good]

The mercurys are just milling about, thought they'd be buying resources.

If the manager is new they only have 1 sector range which is not very good for accumulating product. Also make sure restricted trades is disabled since that is required for the traders to buy from NPCs.

There is also quite a bad bug, at least in 2.50 B3 but possibly from earlier versions, which results in station ships getting confused as to who their manager is and so acting as agents for other stations or even free trade agents. For example subordinates of my shipyard run off to buy spaceweed in large quantities just to hold onto (no sale target) so police catch them despite the shipyard having nothing to do with spaceweed. Same story with Refined Metals except this time the ships actually buy from a NPC station to sell to another NPC station despite the shipyard not processing Refined Metals and rather dealing with Teladianium. This is apparently scheduled for fix in a later build (B4 or release).

What else do I need to get the station to build ships ?

Preferably you want to set up your own complete supply chain so as to not rely on NPCs at all. This maximizes profits and limits bottlenecks.

NPC ships are paying small amounts to repair, but nothing else...

Make sure you own all the NPC blueprints. They can only order what they want and they can only build what they want if you own all the blueprints for it.

Only downside, it is getting a bit too chaotic. I am upgrading a station with a hired Mammoth, which is under attack from the swarm of HOP destroyers.

Build your own construction ship and replace it with that. They will leave yours alone. Seeing how much money the shipyard makes this is very cheap, especially if self built.

Interesting phenomenon is that HOP seems to be doing almost all of it's ordering through my shipyard. Which means, their primary sector Holy Vision is a bit barren of ships to defend it, and is starting to get overrun by Xenon. While HOP is at the same time overrunning ANT in Second Contact II.

They should be redeploying the ships they build as needed. However there are some bugs in 2.21 which mean that they might not redeploy and instead the ships get stuck on the last assigned job, this should be fixed in 2.50.

then get the HOP shields, turrets, and engines to go with them

HOP use the same shields, turrets and engines as PAR who are also prone to ordering a lot.

Last comment is not true. The NPC faction will buy ships if you have the blueprint of that ship but will equip them disregarding the equipment blueprint you have. You only need to own the ship BP.

It is true. They can only equip them with the blueprints you own so if you do not own what they need to fulfil the minimum spec for a job they will not order from you. Anything else is a bug that should be reported to be fixed.

What I meant was : am I missing anything in the build plan, like do I need storage other than container ?

Only if the shipyard will be producing other products that need solid or liquid wares. A pure shipyard just needs container.

When building your own fleet of ships, don't discount those crappy MK1 and MK2 items. They cost a lot, lot less than the MK3 versions, and MK3 only gives a marginal increase in ability, so you may be able to afford to build a very large fleet using the lesser versions.

In sector they make a huge difference. A ship with Mk3 combat engines and thrusters will be hit a lot less than one with only Mk1. Additionally despite the huge difference in resource cost, the actual per unit cost for you to build them is still trivial for S and M ships, with the only exception being Mk3 Thrusters on L and XL ships.

[Karmaticdamage]

Those crappy mk1 and mk2 shields and engines? Yeah you have get those too.

When building your own fleet of ships, don't discount those crappy MK1 and MK2 items. They cost a lot, lot less than the MK3 versions, and MK3 only gives a marginal increase in ability, so you may be able to afford to build a very large fleet using the lesser versions.

Once you have your own wharf/shipyard, credits are no longer a concern. Hundreds of millions pouring in an hour. Its actually more profitable to buy your own ships from the empires still while leaving your wharf/shipyards to only sell to the empires, as you are charging the empires 150% of the cost of the resources and in turn buying from them for far less.

[Falcrack]

Those crappy mk1 and mk2 shields and engines? Yeah you have get those too.

When building your own fleet of ships, don't discount those crappy MK1 and MK2 items. They cost a lot, lot less than the MK3 versions, and MK3 only gives a marginal increase in ability, so you may be able to afford to build a very large fleet using the lesser versions.

Once you have your own wharf/shipyard, credits are no longer a concern. Hundreds of millions pouring in an hour. Its actually more profitable to buy your own ships from the empires still while leaving your wharf/shipyards to only sell to the empires, as you are charging the empires 150% of the cost of the resources and in turn buying from them for far less.

Yeah, but I am preparing to declare war on said factions, so every ship I sell them becomes ships I may have to fight in the future.