Feature Request - Station Budgets

[Koshea]

Since it's a beta, and there's some people doing some coding. Any chance to get a pass done on station accounts?
Game came out in 2018 and since then we still can't set a budget for our station and have it transfer anything past that to our personal account, something we were able to do back before rebirth in the X3 days. I started playing X series then but this functionality was probably there going back as far as owning stations has been a thing.

Just one of those things I spend far too much brainpower trying to wrestle with in a playthrough as it's got the UI elements that make it look like it should be possible and yet it never seems to actually work.

[Y-llian]

You can though, I agree, it would be great if this can be clearer in the UI. At the moment, whatever budget you set (say 1M) will be regarded as the floor limit and anything roughly 3 x time over that value will be transferred to you at regular intervals. I use this a lot for trade stations and it works well. It's just not clear to users that this functionality exits, IMHO.

[CBJ]

As explained in the forum rules for that forum, the Public Beta Feedback forum is not for feature requests. Moved to the main forum.

[stooper88]

You can though, I agree, it would be great if this can be clearer in the UI. At the moment, whatever budget you set (say 1M) will be regarded as the floor limit and anything roughly 3 x time over that value will be transferred to you at regular intervals. I use this a lot for trade stations and it works well. It's just not clear to users that this functionality exits, IMHO.

I've observed such "automatic" transfers as well but was never sure what the actual threshold was or how the transfers were triggered. But perhaps you can help me better understand operating budgets overall. Because I can't see how automatically transferring surplus funds is the biggest issue anyone could be having. My stations are all plagued by enormously inflated budgets. I try to minimize them by keeping excess storage minimized. But I've never figured out how to use the allocation and buy offer options to avoid budget bloat. Is it even possible?

If I don't enable buy offers on resources, then my miners won't "sell" anything to my stations. Similarly, if I don't set the buy up to limit to the full storage allocation size, then my miners won't fill the available storage. So what is the purpose of these two separate settings? Or is this only really relevant for intermediate wares so that a portion of inventory can be filled through purchases while the full capacity can only be reached by the station production? Example, allocate 20k storage for graphene production of which 10k can be bought from sources external to the station but the remaining 10k must be produced.

Also, I'm confused by some of the default values. Regarding sell offers, I understand that "sell all but 1" essentially means sell everything. But what is the meaning of "buy up to 1" which is the default for created buy offers?

If anything, I wish there were a way to specify "internal trade only" so that the trade costs would be factored as zero when computing a station's operation budget. Yes, I'm aware that I can set a trade rule to limit trading to my own faction. But I specifically want the game to be aware that these trades should be treated as net-zero cost so that needless budget inflation can be avoided.

[azaghal]

You can though, I agree, it would be great if this can be clearer in the UI. At the moment, whatever budget you set (say 1M) will be regarded as the floor limit and anything roughly 3 x time over that value will be transferred to you at regular intervals. I use this a lot for trade stations and it works well. It's just not clear to users that this functionality exits, IMHO.

Wait, what? o.O When you are talking about budget - is this the "Station Account" value under "Logical Overview"? Does this mean that if the minimum recommended budget is 15M, but you set the Station Account value to 1M (with the implicit 3M upper limit you mentioned), the station will actually not wait to hit the 15M (plus some extra) before considering to move the funds back into player account?

Best regards,
Branko

[Koshea]

You can though, I agree, it would be great if this can be clearer in the UI. At the moment, whatever budget you set (say 1M) will be regarded as the floor limit and anything roughly 3 x time over that value will be transferred to you at regular intervals. I use this a lot for trade stations and it works well. It's just not clear to users that this functionality exits, IMHO.

That's not my experience, I set 1M budget on my station and constantly go grab money from them when I need to spend and they are usually over 10M and still going strong before I suck them dry and then have to retype in "1 0 0 0 0 0 0" and move on to the next one. I just want a budget feature that works, and not that works janky. Let me establish an ceiling limit, I don't care about setting a floor value, my upper limit setting should satisfy that just fine, if you go below the Upper limit keep your earnings till you hit the ceiling then auto transfer.

[stooper88]

... At the moment, whatever budget you set (say 1M) will be regarded as the floor limit and anything roughly 3 x time over that value will be transferred to you at regular intervals. I use this a lot for trade stations and it works well. It's just not clear to users that this functionality exits, IMHO.

Wait, what? o.O When you are talking about budget - is this the "Station Account" value under "Logical Overview"? Does this mean that if the minimum recommended budget is 15M, but you set the Station Account value to 1M (with the implicit 3M upper limit you mentioned), the station will actually not wait to hit the 15M (plus some extra) before considering to move the funds back into player account?
Best regards,
Branko

I didn't really understand the explanation either. The logical overview UI doesn't provide a means to set an actual budget, it just lets you add or remove funds. Normally a "budget" would be a specified and fixed amount, not something that changes as funds are consumed through purchases or replenished through sales. So this explanation wasn't very clear to me. Perhaps the formula actually refers to the minimum recommended budget, which is relatively static with respect to the station configuration (but isn't something controlled by the player).

Anyhow, I make it a habit to use the "accept all estimates" button to "rebalance" all the station and construction accounts and the player account. However, I have noticed stations automatically transfer funds to the player account if I don't do so for a sufficiently long period. I just never knew what the trigger was and/or how to leverage it.

That's not my experience, I set 1M budget on my station and constantly go grab money from them when I need to spend and they are usually over 10M and still going strong before I suck them dry and then have to retype in "1 0 0 0 0 0 0" and move on to the next one. I just want a budget feature that works, and not that works janky. Let me establish an ceiling limit, I don't care about setting a floor value, my upper limit setting should satisfy that just fine, if you go below the Upper limit keep your earnings till you hit the ceiling then auto transfer.

There is a youtube video by JK Ninja demonstrating this automatic funds transfer. But I think it has a prerequisite that your station's level of funds must exceed the computed "minimum recommended budget" and by a significantly large margin:



Possibly, if you are restricting your station's account to 1M while the recommended budget is over 10M, then that would preclude any automatic funds transfer from executing, as the station manager is trying to avoid "starving" the station. They only share when they think they have "plentiful" funds.

Regardless, I have to reiterate that all of this is moot to me because my stations are always demanding ridiculous amounts of money. I always have more funds tied up in my stations than in my own account as I'm loathe to ignore the station manager upkeep demands for fear of reported consequences.

If you decide NOT to give the station it's recommended budget, this is what usually happens.

As soon as one (or maybe a few if you're lucky) trade for a ware gets reserved, the station shuts off buying that ware behind the scenes until that trade completes. Even if the ship bringing the ware is yours.

This tends to lead users to think that something is broken. They say things like "station <A> needs <X> and has plenty of money, and station <B> has plenty of supply, but this ship is doing <something else> instead!"

As a maintainer of mules and warehouses extended for the last couple of years, the most common problem that I've seen with trading is this issue, where a station manager quietly refuses to make an offer for a trade behind the scenes (regardless of what the UI says).

[Falcrack]

I just want a way to manually set a station maximum, where excess would go back into the player account, and set a station minimum, where money from player account will go into the station account. I don't want to guess what that amount is, I want to set it explicitly. X4 tries to make too many assumptions about what they player wants, instead of giving us the freedom to set what we want as an option, and this is a good example of that.

[Y-llian]

Hello folks,

Sorry if my note wasn't clear. Admittedly, I did it just before bed so I could've been clearer - my intention was just to let folks know that there is some sort of automatic transfer system in place - it's just that folks may not know about it... So, to clarify... I generally set up trade stations as mining hubs where my mining ships both mine and sell raw materials to NPC customers... In this getup, I know that I won't be buying anything from NPC suppliers (only my miners will supply that hub and only my miners will collect to sell)... I have no production cost at all.

The order setup should look something like this:

Buy order:
Methane - Set to minimum price
Helium - Set to minimum price
(I have a trade rule that restricts NPC miners from selling to me)

Sale order:
Methane - set whatever the highest price is within 5 sector (or within manager skill range)
Helium - same as above.

Interestingly, the trade station will still give me a recommended budget of say 5M because the budget calculation assumes, I'll be importing the raw materials. I tend to ignore this completely... and usually give the hub just 1M credits of cash. In turn, my mining-traders will start to sell the raw materials as they arrive and usually once the station has built up around 3M, anything over is sent to me automatically every 15 to 30 mins, dependent on how quickly the traders are mining raw materials to sell. The thing to note here, is that I transferred less cash than the recommended budget and the automated payments still work.

So, the way I see the automated system as working is, whatever money you transfer to your station becomes the floor limit i.e. the baseline value from which the automated payment system will function... Once you've accumulated around 3x of that transfer value, then the automated payments will start to kick in.

In theory then, if you have a fully self-reliant production station where you make the raw materials and you sell to NPC factions i.e. you're not importing goods anywhere... You should be able to ignore the recommended budget though I will need to test this to make 100% sure... But if you think about it, this is no different to my trade station setup - you're just using different wares.


Ok, now what if you import stuff from NPC factions? This is where things get tricky... If you import stuff, you need to make sure you have enough surplus cash available in the production station to allow your traders to a) fill up a decent portion of the storage allocation for the production wares initially and then b) to keep them stocked. So my rule of thumb is to use the recommend budget x 2.

I recently built a large scrap processing hub where I import some energy cells and the recommended budget for that station is 9M. Following my rule-of-two I transferred 18M to the station... So, as far as the automated payment system is concerned anything over 18M should be considered in the transfer value calculation. Sure enough, as soon as my scrap hub had around 54M credits (3 x what I transferred) the automated payments started... Here's a simple example.


Production station recommends 1M. I transfer 2M to that station (rule-of-two)

Anything under 1M - no automated payments (and you get the 'short on funds' message)
Anything between 1M and 6M - no automated payments (think of this as your operating cash flow)
Anything over 6M - automated payments. (surplus cash)

Hope that helps a bit?

--------
That said, I too would like players to be fully in control of setting our budgets.... I'd prefer something like this:

Station gives recommended budget - but you are not forced to adhere to it - it's just there as a guide for players. Players then set the following:

Minimum budget: xxx (Anything below this value is when players will get the 'short on funds' message)
Maximum cash: xxx (Anything over this value will be sent to the player automatically.)

Best
Y.


P.S. I also agree, that even with the existing automated transfer mechanic, we have far too much cash sloshing around as operating capital which could be put to better use elsewhere... e.g our war armadas...

[stooper88]

I just want a way to manually set a station maximum, where excess would go back into the player account, and set a station minimum, where money from player account will go into the station account. I don't want to guess what that amount is, I want to set it explicitly. X4 tries to make too many assumptions about what they player wants, instead of giving us the freedom to set what we want as an option, and this is a good example of that.

That said, I too would like players to be fully in control of setting our budgets.... I'd prefer something like this:

Station gives recommended budget - but you are not forced to adhere to it - it's just there as a guide for players. Players then set the following:

Minimum budget: xxx (Anything below this value is when players will get the 'short on funds' message)
Maximum cash: xxx (Anything over this value will be sent to the player automatically.)

P.S. I also agree, that even with the existing automated transfer mechanic, we have far too much cash sloshing around as operating capital which could be put to better use elsewhere... e.g our war armadas...

On this, I think we are all in unanimous agreement. Allowing the player to explicitly assign minimum and maximum fund levels would be a vast improvement. Presently, all stations are obscenely too greedy and demand absurdly too much in their station accounts. Whereas I used to take liberty with ignoring the "transfer credits" upkeep missions, I recently observed side effects from doing so. Maybe this was unrelated, but dozens of trader subordinates for a station suddenly went comatose when their station was left below the minimum recommended budget. The station still had sufficient funds to run for days but was just below the inflated recommended budget. This caused a dramatic adverse impact on my supply chain, so now I feel coerced to submit to all station budget demands. It would be great for this to go away.

Station account is asking for astronomically high budget

If you decide NOT to give the station it's recommended budget, this is what usually happens.

As soon as one (or maybe a few if you're lucky) trade for a ware gets reserved, the station shuts off buying that ware behind the scenes until that trade completes. Even if the ship bringing the ware is yours.

This tends to lead users to think that something is broken. They say things like "station <A> needs <X> and has plenty of money, and station <B> has plenty of supply, but this ship is doing <something else> instead!"

As a maintainer of mules and warehouses extended for the last couple of years, the most common problem that I've seen with trading is this issue, where a station manager quietly refuses to make an offer for a trade behind the scenes (regardless of what the UI says).
...
You either have to give them the astronomical amount they ask for, or limit the amount of available storage so that the amount is smaller. If you don't do that, they'll limit their purchases of any single item, so much so that they may run out.

Limiting the available storage is one workaround but it's so tedious to have to constantly tweak the allocated amounts so that there's enough room for additional inventory, but not "too much" room...

[lanzz]

I would also love to see some improvement in this area. For example, my shipyard station has an estimated budget of over 200,000,000cr — and that's a station that never buys anything, period. All required resources are provided by my own ships, from my own factories. I basically have 200 million credits locked up in an account that nobody ever touches. The only workarounds I see is to either always remember to zero-out the transfer for that specific station when using "Accept all estimates", or to completely give up on using "Accept all estimates" and switch to manual management of all of my stations' budgets. This is clearly not optimal.

I assume it is difficult to infer if given trade rules will result in zero spend, so the budget calculation always assumes money will be paid for resources. Even so, I would love to have a per-station budget slider, that allows me to limit the actual budget to a percentage of the estimation, e.g. if the slider is at zero, then the budget will be zero, consequences be damned (i.e. station can't buy anything); if the slider is at 100%, then the budget is the full estimated budget the existing logic calculates (i.e. 200+ million for my shipyard). That way it will still be able to dynamically adjust for small changes in the estimation, while giving me control over the weight of that estimation in practice.