Hints on building a mega station

[ICBM]

Hello all, First post here,

am new to X4, played it so far for 300 hours and lovin this game. i found out about the Station builder sim and wanna just fool around and thought of building a massive station with the goal to have it build Every ship(warf+shipyard) , basically making a self-sufficient Mega station (without PHQ). I made a warf and a ship yard but only with storage so far and just had traders fill them up.

Kinda want some general pointers in station needs, mostly to do with how many production modules I need to per type, for example how many Anti-matter production modules I need at minimum and how many storage units I may need. Also is there a way to tell how much population I need per module so ( for example 1 or 2 X size habitat for each module) so far I'm only starting and am planning to make 2 production modules per type. but am not sure what that means lol.

Would also love some pointers on population needs (water food, and medicne in general)

p.s. if this is the wrong forum to ask please direct me to the right one

Ty

[adeine]

Slightly out of date, but this is what you want.

Example of a station: calculated plan -> build

[alt3rn1ty]

Plus you can also right click on a station in your Property menu, choose "Logical Overview"
In that view if you expand any of the productions (while there is demand and all multiples of that particular module are in use) you will see current production and consumption. If you use a calculator you can divide the production by however many of that type of production module you have built and figure out how much adding just one more will increase the production. So for ex if you have 5 x meds production modules built, divide the current meds production total by 5.
If consumption is higher than production, you are on a slippery slope to losing all your workforce when supplies run out (the workforce slowly decreases). Increase production with more of that type of production module until you get higher than consumption. Always good to have a bit of excess production, if it gets too much your station manager will start selling off the excess.

For workforce, same again on the Logical Overview, expand the workforce and it tells you what your station max is aswell as the optimal amount. Small habitats house 250 bods, Medium house 500, Large house 1000, and if you have Timelines, completed it, and got rep up to 20+ with the Quettanauts, you can buy the Argon XL Spire habitat modules which house 2000 Argons. The only trouble with these is you have to also build the factions relative food and meds supply chain of modules. So in my case I loved the idea of having Borons as station workforce, but when I went with using XL Spires (5 XL Spires = 10 L Habitats in terms of work force so you need only half the amount of habitats == Better for game performance having less modules) .. I then had to change over to Argon food/meds chain.

Plus, on the subject of work force: If you later add a few more production modules, depending on the type of module added you will need more workforce to make the station more efficient, and then you have the knock on effect of needing more food and meds for the increased work force.
Some production modules dont need work force (like Boron Plankton production modules), but a lot of them do.
Once again Logical overiew is your friend

I never used the outdated calculator Adeine linked, always just used the Logical Overview to figure out everything my stations need.

Edit: One more tip - On the station build UI, find the Station Loadout (on the right of the screen), and change it to custom. Reason for this is by default after the station gets established, your station manager starts to kit out every turret on the station it can. For instance a storage module can have quite a few turrets. When a station has fully kitted out every module it can with turrets, if you are in sector when they start firing .. standby for a major game performance drop.
I didn't like the performance drop, or the fact that you can see your own stations weapons fire coming through other modules on your station which are built in front of the module which has turrets, bit of an immersion breaker for me.
So change the Station Loadout to Custom, now you place defence modules where you want them aesthetically/strategically.
Once placed, right click the defence module and choose edit, now you go into the sub build UI to edit the turrets you want to add to turret points just on that module. Then once edited, you can right click that defence module, copy it, and place multiples of the same wherever you want them (instead of placing multiple defence modules first, and then having to edit each individual one = PITA).

Edit2: Another tip performance related = Boron L Storage modules are ace. They have 6 connectors which I think is the most amount of connectors any storage modules have. Which means you dont need all the different types of connectors, and can cut down on the overall module count. If you dont like Boron style fair enough, and I sometimes use some Boron connectors just to get an aesthetically pleasing style of station on smaller stations where I can afford to be a bit more extravagent in its style and amount of modules used.