All wharfs are missing engine parts - unable to build ships

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

I am new to the game. I managed to gather enough credits to build some new ships. However every wharf in the game seems to engine parts missing. Every ships I have tried to build across different wharfs are all stuck in production with around 2.5 minutes remaining for the past 3-4 hours. I have been exploring the galaxy to look for some place that sells engine parts, have not found a single one.

What am I supposed to do here? Is this a bug? If it is by design, I got to say it feels pretty broken. I would expect the NPC traders to fill such shortages. Did the game somehow miss spawning engine part factories?

[ScandyNav]

I have been exploring the galaxy to look for some place that sells engine parts, have not found a single one.

That's how the game works right now. Some thinks that this forces player to deliver missing resources and by this giving a directions. Some thinks that this is poor dynamic economy logic.
Try to use map filters. There is trade goods filter.

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

It is poor and nonsensical. It does not work at all. It is game breaking as far as my current campaign is concerned.
I have been trying filtering after exploring every new sector. No stations are selling engine parts.
There does not seem to be any "trade routes overlay" map option as well (like in Elite Dangerous) that helps in finding common trade routes. There is no way to ask the NPC traders for engine part factory locations as well, as one would expect in a game like this.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

These ware shortages tend to even out over time after game creation. I'm pretty confident there will be some stations with Engine Parts modules but they may be hard to find.

If you find some Engine Parts I would suggest trying to find a station that doesn't have ships above yours in the construction queue to try and avoid 'only' helping to build an NPC their ship.

[XTC0R]

You should be able to find NPC stations using the filter.
The economy has some issues currently. Engine parts is one of these.
There is an update scheduled, 2.6 Beta, for next week. Main focus for this patch is the economy. You have to opt in for Betas.

[Gregorovitch]

There are three levels of dealing with this problem:

1. Manually trade for engine parts, i.e. start shipping them to the warf of your choice until they have enough to build your ships. If you haven't got a freighter yet you need to get one built. Start with a small one to minimise the number of parts required. You can probably run the required engine parts in dribs and drabs with your starter ship if necessary. Then you can use that to get a bigger freighter built and so ship a lot more engine parts.

2. Set up one or more dedicated autotraders. You fly the freighter to the sector where the warf is located first - this is it's "anchor" point. You then select engine parts as the single ware to trade and set the "No gates to sell" parameter to 0 (this will force the trader to only sell at the warf and shipyard (if present) located in the sector in question). Then set the "gates to buy" parameter to the number required to reach the nearest engine parts factory. If you get three or four auto-traders doing this they will make a fair bit of money as well as delivering enough missing parts to unblock pretty much all delays to your ship orders. Typically about 40k Cr per load profit IIRC.

3. Build a station to make engine parts, This is by far the best and most profitable way to resolve it. Obviously costs a lot of money to build - you'll need a bout 30m Cr to get all the blue prints, miners, traders etc as well as build the station. But it solves the problem permanently.

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

Thank you for your responses.

I have tried to build ships at every wharfs I could find. All have engine parts missing.

It has been 4 hours. None of the productions have moved at all. It does not seem the game is evening things out at all.

How can I transport engine parts if there is no place to buy engine parts?! After 4 hours exploring the galaxy for engine parts sellers, it just seems like a waste of time.

This is the most basic thing a player can expect to do in open world space sim like this - buy a new ship. It is an utter failure of game design and development if such a thing is next to impossible.

[SPiDER]

Ali Wharf in Trinity Sanctum VII in every game I and many others on here have played has enough parts to build M class ships...they have no Faction requirements so dont get endless faction ship build requests.

Locate their Wharf and you should be good to start your game...just remember X4 isnt a 40 hour playthrough...in the V2.5 game ANT and ARG economy will be the first to really get going.Teladi next even though Half the military is on vacation.
HOP took longer but did eventually become self sustaining
PAR because the military is completely Compromised at the start of the Game needed Player intervention against pirate infestation then they became able to limp along with very limited sector defense's

Once you have become familiar with the game mechanic's and how things work it becomes very very easy to start from scratch again and quickly build up to empire building.

The learning curve is very very steep though.




Edit i....Im sure I remember a post from before that said there are at least 6 engine part factories in the game at any time.

[Gregorovitch]

It has been 4 hours.

4 hours is nothing in this game. Things happen over long time periods.

How can I transport engine parts if there is no place to buy engine parts?!

The will almost 100% certainly be several engine part factories in your game. Since launch I have never seen a report that there are none at all. Plenty of reports from folk in your situation, but never that there are no engine part factories (or any other type of factory) in the game at all. It is very likely that you simply haven't found them yet.

Sectors are big. You do not see all the stations until you have explored them (radar range limitation). Do you understand how the long range scanner works? You want to use that to find all the stations in the sector you want to make your initial home base so-to-speak, typically a sector with a shipyard and warf such as Argon Prime, and all the sectors connected to it. Continue doing that until you find a suitable engine parts factory.

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

It has been 4 hours.

4 hours is nothing in this game. Things happen over long time periods.

How can I transport engine parts if there is no place to buy engine parts?!

The will almost 100% certainly be several engine part factories in your game. Since launch I have never seen a report that there are none at all. Plenty of reports from folk in your situation, but never that there are no engine part factories (or any other type of factory) in the game at all. It is very likely that you simply haven't found them yet.

Sectors are big. You do not see all the stations until you have explored them (radar range limitation). Do you understand how the long range scanner works? You want to use that to find all the stations in the sector you want to make your initial home base so-to-speak, typically a sector with a shipyard and warf such as Argon Prime, and all the sectors connected to it. Continue doing that until you find a suitable engine parts factory.

I am not trying to build a battleship or space station or a fleet or conquer sectors. Just trying to buy a small sized ship. Pretty reasonable to expect to not to have go through a hellscape of tedium and timewaste in an open-world singleplayer game to do something as basic as that. It is like an RPG making you wait for 10 hours before you can buy your first set of armor. If it is by design, it is pretty terrible design. It now makes sense why this game's steam rating keeps dropping despite it doing so many things right over its competitors. It is like a delicious pie, but you have to bite through a thick layer of excrement to get to it.

[Gregorovitch]

You're not the first person to feel that way about it.

What you don't realise yet, simply because you haven't played long enough to know, is that there is another side to this. The fact that the warfs and yards are almost always short of one part or another means that your traders will always have good trade deals available making you piles of cash, and then your stations making these parts will always be able to sell thousands of them making you mountains of cash.

Obviously, if there were dozens of engine part factories and hull part factories and smart chip factories etc flooding the market everywhere from the get go then the early mid-game onward would be a nightmare grind since making money would be very difficult.

The other thing to be aware of is that usually the Argon Prime warf is supplied well enough to build as many miners, traders and scouts as you are likely to be able to afford early game. If it isn't in your game that is unlucky (it can happen because the distribution of factories at game set up is somewhat randomised so each new game is somewhat different). But more correctly you are actually lucky since there is in fact a colossal demand sitting there ready for you make massive profits satisfying off the bat.

You have the option to restart to get an Argon warf that can make ships from the get go. Or you can do as I suggested above and go find an engine parts factory and get some traders built. You'll find it's not as difficult or time consuming as you might think now. You will also find you can make a fortune out of a situation like this with a bit of thought and perseverance. Up to you.

[mr.WHO]

Current X4 economy bottleneck is engine parts - this can be great opportunity for veteran players, but also source of frustration for the new players.

Many people might not know this, but X4 economy is war economy (everyopen fighting HOP and Xenons) - shortages are to be expected!
Personally I build one or several engine part factories and smart chips fab as soon as posible. Then go into station construction materials (because I hate waiting for AI to deliver the material).
With these covered you will be able to build whatever you want, or at least suppy the shipyards of your liking to build anything without delay.

[atavistuk]

In the Economy of X4, there are no problems, only opportunities and the various ways you can get them.

If building the ships is a problem... why not steal them? Grab a few Marines and start picking on Holy Order of the Pontifex S and M class freighters? Stay out of HOP space though, no-one else will care since everyone is at war with them. Just another idea to add to the pile.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

In the Economy of X4, there are no problems, only opportunities and the various ways you can get them.

If building the ships is a problem... why not steal them? Grab a few Marines and start picking on Holy Order of the Pontifex S and M class freighters? Stay out of HOP space though, no-one else will care since everyone is at war with them. Just another idea to add to the pile.

Whilst these are legitimate options, I think the underlying question is, "Is it fun to spend several hours, with potentially millions of credits, meandering around the galaxy trying to find that first suit of armour or sword?"?

For some it will be, for others (especially those why have not had a long game of X4 before) it could be a terrible grind with no clear propect of completion. For example, even the RPG early-game staple of killing rats normally has a clear target and a general area to look in to find the poor blighters.

[Karmaticdamage]

ALI wharf, it doesn't build for the other factions. Buy your first M trade ships here, use them to supply other wharfs with engine parts. Their are things you can do in the early game to get the credits for this such as data vaults and selling abandoned ships like the ody in faulty logic. I usually buy a small convoy of several hermes vanguards in the early game and use them to supply other wharfs with engine parts when I want to buy something. You can also buy ships with minimal engine and thrusters, then fly them to equipment docks to upgrade to better engines. Perhaps the equipment docks should share resources with shipyards and wharfs as they did in X3, as they have plenty of building materials.

[ScarletEmerald]

This is a familiar issue

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