Drug plex adventures

[grapedog]

S sized ships also benefit from never having to wait for docking space. Ive seen plenty of times an M freighter have to wait to dock. Waiting to dock is less time delivering, and more time to get scanned by police.

I strictly use S ships for my drug smuggling and if they have to ditch cargo, they're not ditching much becuse their hold size is only about half of a Boa. Magpie sentinels have around 3600 cargo storage, which is quite respectable, and perfect for drug smuggling.

[pref]

I can't reproduce 25% of cost per hour as earnings either. In my universe P/E for a self sufficient drug station (incl ships to operate it) is somewhere between 6:1 and 8:1 (per hour).
of the game, though.

Are you calculating with BM prices and nonstop runs for the full product volume? I think if i had spaceweed only it would further reduce ROI below 4h as that produces the highest value/hour.
Maja dust and fuel was a mistake though, even with the BM discounts it's not really worth the time - because of this i only make 45m/h with the 30x all setup. Weed only with enough BMS would get lower then 4h probably since less then half of my original production was for weed.

For reference most BMs buy spaceweed above 400cr, without other discount unlocks (but i have seen ~600cr price earlier in the game). The range is 280 - 460cr with my current set of BMs. I never sell to anything else but BMs.
I don't know how BM discounts are calculated, but it seems to me they are fixed (not checked strictly yet though) so a bit of reload bitching might be worth it when delivering the opening quests so you only get 150%+ BMs.

I hope i'll have time to build a weed only plex later on somewhere in TEL space - think that could be the best business in the game since each BM gives the same discount for all the wares and weed has by far highest price / hour (even more so if considering volume but that is irrelevant due to how BMs work).
Weed is at 220,000/h on average price, fuel has 120,000 only.

But you can start this one 15min Into new game with 6-8 traders (the trade station, not the wharf).

That trade station will allow you to build a full SY much later then the drug plex imo. Even if you build the wharf later you won't have much resources to build ships from. AI industry is slow and vulnerable. And ROI on support plex without the wharf is pathetic in comparison - especially considering how low the demand is for some of the tech wares. While you don't even have production on the trading station.
BMs are an infinite sink without downtime, no other ware has such a market. You can sell weed for 450+ while 166cr is the avg price. And again demand seems infinite so far from any practical POV.
No trade station can compete with that.
Once you pull up a weed plex from 2-300M (~500M assuming you have all resources available so there is only the build time) you will have enough income to start to build the self sufficient SY, with the build times and downtime due to initial NPC economy lacking production it will cover the costs easily.

Then the other thing is that NPC ship building is hectic. There is an initial rush at game start, but after a while it slows when you fill all the available jobs.
So my SY (full set of wharves and repair docks, always full stock unless i use up hull parts for another complex - enough to feed an all friendly universe even on a ship building spree) often only makes about 125m/hour now with RHA and FAF as an enemy.
If you make a long term average, and factor in race relations with a healthy NPC economy it can easily happen that you never reach the hourly income of a 1bill spaceweed plex.
Even during most optimal times i don't think my SY made more then 6-800m / hour. And station cost must be well over 1bill (just a part of it for personal usage without storage was 560m but i dont have data on the supply plex that enabled it to serve all factions nonstop).

S sized ships also benefit from never having to wait for docking space. Ive seen plenty of times an M freighter have to wait to dock. Waiting to dock is less time delivering, and more time to get scanned by police.

I strictly use S ships for my drug smuggling and if they have to ditch cargo, they're not ditching much becuse their hold size is only about half of a Boa. Magpie sentinels have around 3600 cargo storage, which is quite respectable, and perfect for drug smuggling.

Magpies have bit low travel speed, cargo is 3100/2600 which is below the amount station trader AI is willing to load up at a time. Insta docking can be a huge advantage with a big drug plex though, much less BMs are needed like that probably.
Police is a non-issue IF those stupid captains obeyed the setting. Which is not the case, in Grand Exchange they always escape police, but in Pious Mists they drop their cargo instead. And when i didn't have Pious Mists in there none of the traders were willing to go beyond Grand Exchange I. Traders act really weird in cases..

[Raevyan]

Well i kinda don't wanna argue but seeing those threads that say make x money in y mostly are off the charts.

I can't reproduce 25% of cost per hour as earnings either. In my universe P/E for a self sufficient drug station (incl ships to operate it) is somewhere between 6:1 and 8:1 (per hour).
of the game, though.

For reference most BMs buy spaceweed above 400cr, without other discount unlocks (but i have seen ~600cr price earlier in the game). The range is 280 - 460cr with my current set of BMs. I never sell to anything else but BMs.
I don't know how BM discounts are calculated, but it seems to me they are fixed (not checked strictly yet though) so a bit of reload bitching might be worth it when delivering the opening quests so you only get 150%+ BMs.

I've added 20 more BM's to my map and most prices are <300cr. Out of those 20 there was only one that was above 400cr (405cr) and about 10 at 3xx cr. Not everyone is willing to exploit/has enough patience for saving/reloading. Which will also make the comparison even worse because you forced a higher price than the average player would have. You also have to account for the items the BM missions ask for. A new player will not have easy access to those security decryption modules/spacefly caviar/unstable crystals. Gathering those also takes time, which ofc you can do while building.

That trade station will allow you to build a full SY much later then the drug plex imo. Even if you build the wharf later you won't have much resources to build ships from. AI industry is slow and vulnerable. And ROI on support plex without the wharf is pathetic in comparison - especially considering how low the demand is for some of the tech wares. While you don't even have production on the trading station.
BMs are an infinite sink without downtime, no other ware has such a market. You can sell weed for 450+ while 166cr is the avg price. And again demand seems infinite so far from any practical POV.
No trade station can compete with that.
Once you pull up a weed plex from 2-300M (~500M assuming you have all resources available so there is only the build time) you will have enough income to start to build the self sufficient SY, with the build times and downtime due to initial NPC economy lacking production it will cover the costs easily.

First i've never said that my Trade Station example would make more money. I just said, that it makes some money and you have to build those parts anyway for the wharf. Second, you're, again, calculating your Spaceweed sells with 450+ cr which is not realistic for everyone (see my above, out of 20 i only got 1 that even sells above 400cr). Third, you're comparing a now ~500M weed plex against a 150m bare minimum wharf. You also don't care about resource availability to build your 300M weed plex. As you already said, the NPC economy is lacking crucial resources like Hull Parts/Claytronics which you need for building.
Also the whole purpose of a trade station is to buy low and sell high, no production intended. That's free profit for almost zero infrastructure (~1m, you don't even need ships for it to work).

Then the other thing is that NPC ship building is hectic. There is an initial rush at game start, but after a while it slows when you fill all the available jobs.
So my SY (full set of wharves and repair docks, always full stock unless i use up hull parts for another complex - enough to feed an all friendly universe even on a ship building spree) often only makes about 125m/hour now with RHA and FAF as an enemy.
If you make a long term average, and factor in race relations with a healthy NPC economy it can easily happen that you never reach the hourly income of a 1bill spaceweed plex.
Even during most optimal times i don't think my SY made more then 6-800m / hour. And station cost must be well over 1bill (just a part of it for personal usage without storage was 560m but i dont have data on the supply plex that enabled it to serve all factions nonstop).

I never said that my bare minimum wharf nor a fully support self sustaining wharf would make more money. I've said that the wharf will benefit you more in the long run. What do you get out of your weed plex? 1b per hour? How many modules do you need to get those values? How long does it even take to build until you reach that 1b/h? Where is that time in your calculation? Where is the time to even find those BM's in the first place? How long you reloaded to get all of them to buy for 400+cr? What can you actually do with your 1b/h? Well you can build a massive self sustaining wharf/shipyard with it, which will probably take ages because the economy is lacking resources for building. You can't even order massive amounts of ships from NPC's with your 1b/h because again, economy is lacking resources. A wharf and it's supporting infrastructure, even if not 100% self sustaining to nonstop build for x factions will make you more money than you can spend anyway. It'll also enable you to build stations with turrets (because you got the infrastructure in place). You are able to build ships with the equipment you want when you need them. You stimulate the economy because NPC's fight each other which will keep them ordering more ships (well, more or less, at least HOP is trying to take over the universe in my game).

My whole point in that thread was not to say a drug plex is less profitable than a bare basics wharf for 150m/full self sustaining wharf/shipyard. I just wanted to say that, the calculations in the opening posts and the following were well off because a lot of things like build time, lack of resources, optimal sell prices are not realistic and sometimes even assumed as a non factor. Some new players might come across that thread and think: Oh well i just build a weed plex that will net me 1b/h. What they will then soon realize is that it takes a) a lot of time to actually build such a big station b) it takes time and effort to get BM's c) their profit margin probably won't be like your 400+cr ones d) they have way more money than one could possibly spend, but they are still not able to build stations/buy ships as they want because of the economy.

[zakaluka]

Are you calculating with BM prices and nonstop runs for the full product volume? I think if i had spaceweed only it would further reduce ROI below 4h as that produces the highest value/hour.
Maja dust and fuel was a mistake though, even with the BM discounts it's not really worth the time - because of this i only make 45m/h with the 30x all setup. Weed only with enough BMS would get lower then 4h probably since less then half of my original production was for weed.

With actual black market prices and nonstop runs - yes.
Now I tried calculating what it would be with spaceweed only, and, always take a model from a calculator with a grain of salt right? But this mirrors my experience in game.
The X4-game calculator can't set markups above 100%, so set a 0% markup and we will correct the numbers in excel.

http://www.x4-game.com/#/station-calcu ... 1,count:2
I don't actually plan on having 12 spaceweeds for one station, it's just a breakpoint where different production amounts line up very close to perfectly. I also wouldn't do spaceweed only, then I'd need a lot more black markets. Highest value for time is producing all 3.

Then here is the spreadsheet taking those numbers and boosting them up to high markups

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10rYS4l ... sp=sharing
You need a 233% markup, i.e. all your black markets buying at 333% of the base price, to reach 4:1. Not realistic as you have mentioned.
Let's pick some more realistic number, like if on average your black markets had around a 100% markup (i.e. double the base price). In this case, P:E is 6.5:1.

That's more in line with my experience in game.

[zakaluka]

I want it to be clear that I do consider building a drug complex more profitable than T1&T2 factories. Just, I don't think it's actually a 4 hour return on investment. For more people more like 8 hours. T1/T2 factories on the other hand, almost universally 12-16 hours.

Finally, mining stations get you something like 3:1 even when prices are VERY suppressed because you've saturated the markets for refined goods. As grapedog points out above, you can only go so far with refineries. But you should really keep building your refinery until you bottleneck everything, and *then* look for other options.

[pref]

Oh well i just build a weed plex that will net me 1b/h. What they will then soon realize is that it takes

We are talking about a plex currently that makes 30-60m/h as far as i know. Not as a substitute for SY but a relatively quick and easy way to get to the SY. The 1 bill construction cost station was just an example that can easily pay more cash then a SY under circumstances. Haven't tried it so that's just a guess. Which is relevant if rep is an issue.

My calculations are based off of ingame stats and the station calculator @ http://x4-game.com/#/station-calculator.
And again the way i calculate ROI is a good measure not a promise on what will happen in game. Actually ROI will be less than that due to the complex starting trade after the first dock and couple prod modules are built.

a) a lot of time to actually build such a big station
Any big station takes a lot of time, but a 2-500M build cost one that i mentioned is not too big.

b) it takes time and effort to get BM's
Yes, a couple 10 mins. They just need to wait a couple hours between or however much time missions need to timeout

c) their profit margin probably won't be like your 400+cr ones
yes it will be - i made no attempt to reroll discounts

d) they have way more money than one could possibly spend, but they are still not able to build stations/buy ships as they want because of the economy.
yes and this plex is a quick way to be able to start all that. Probably quicker then if you start building support fabs right away as that way your income will allow for a smaller expansion.

[pref]

You need a 233% markup, i.e. all your black markets buying at 333% of the base price, to reach 4:1. Not realistic as you have mentioned.

You way overestimate ship costs imo, a boa will load up 1250 (so 3750m3) weed per run, and will sell all that in 3 or 4 trades. So your example plex needs bit less then 18 boa runs per hour. That is exactly one boa if you can manage a run around 3 mins. But lets make it 3 so there is plenty buffer. And a single BM might be enough? I have seen my ship dock to a BM and redock the same place instantly selling the same drug.

Probably Magpies will be better though with bigger plexes due to quicker docking times. So you should calculate with those for your plex.

But i was talking about station costs exclusively both for SY support and drug plex as that is the only fixed cost and an easy measure. How you have to set up trade network is situational so that won't give an objective value.

The profit i write however is not an estimation, but what i see on the ingame graph for my plexes.
So that plex costs about 100m i had initially, and brought in around 30m/h. Thats rather 120m in 4 hours so i think i have included plenty buffer for ship costs.

Your plex needs a bit over 410cr as average price which seems to be easily achievable. Traders will go for the best deals so i don't really see them trading with the BMs that buy below 400cr.
BM downtime lasts until a trader picks a deal and delivers it so income is really sensitive to roundtrip time.

[zakaluka]

Are you modding? My traders generally do one sale per purchase.

There are exceptions but even when they do a 2nd sale it's not a full sale, like they didn't load their cargo full to go make 2 planned sales.

In addition, that takes ships from about a 5th of the cost to about a 10th of the cost. Not really substantial.

[pref]

Are you modding? My traders generally do one sale per purchase.

There are exceptions but even when they do a 2nd sale it's not a full sale, like they didn't load their cargo full to go make 2 planned sales.

In addition, that takes ships from about a 5th of the cost to about a 10th of the cost. Not really substantial.

No mods. It was a pleasant surprise to me too having several sales for one go, maybe trader AI treats drug offers differently or simply it's because of the small volume and many offers.

~100m complex, ~30m/hour income. That's not a calculation, but in game stat (as precise as i can read from that chart). Plenty buffer for ships as i said.
And 2 boas vs 14 boas is a substantial difference - 2m vs 12m, no clue why you want to spend 30% of station cost on ships as it's totally unnecessary. Also if you care about fleet costs use magpies. They can load nearly the same volume as the 1250 max needed.

[Raevyan]

So I've got a question to the drug experts here. I've set up a small spaceweed station (only 12 spaceweed modules, not yet finished, i don't need the money). I've also set up ~20 Black Markets in Grand Exchange. Initially i assigned 5 S couriers to the station to sell the goods. After some fiddling with trade rules, i figured it out so that they would only trade Spaceweed.

My observation were the following: The S Traders were picking up Spaceweed and selling them to two Black Markets in Grand Exchange 1. One of them was buying for 280 and one for 300 credits. So two of them were pickung up spaceweed and selling them, the other one would do nothing. As soon as one sold spaceweed another trader got orders to sell to that station that just refreshed its offer. Basically what i am seeing now is, that my 1 seller (reduced it because it was just an initial build up) is only selling to the one in Grand Exchange I, which is not even the best trade. When i had more traders, they totally ignored all the other Black Markets.

For me, your margins to sell for 450+ cr is way off what i am seeing right now in my game. Any idea why that happens? I'm not interested in making more money but i would like to see them sell to more than 2 Black Markets, at least to sell for the best price and not for the worst possible.

[pref]

I've also set up ~20 Black Markets in Grand Exchange. Initially i assigned 5 S couriers to the station to sell the goods. After some fiddling with trade rules, i figured it out so that they would only trade Spaceweed.

My observation were the following: The S Traders were picking up Spaceweed and selling them to two Black Markets in Grand Exchange 1

I think there is a bug with trader pathing - my traders were only trading in GE I with a blacklist allowing only the GE and nopileos sectors. I had 15 BMs in GE III but none of them went there.
When i restricted all trade activities to GE III they stopped so hard that i had to reassign them to the station after allowing GE I in the blacklist again.

Then i removed Pious Mists from the trade activities and travel blacklists and suddenly they started to trade in GE III as well. Might be a coincidence, but when i blacklisted Pious Mists again some of the traders went defunct like before. Posted my observations along with a save in tech support, maybe ES will look into that.

Also they drop their cargo in Pious Mists all the time even though they are set to escape. While in GE cluster they properly escape and don't drop anything ever.

For me, your margins to sell for 450+ cr is way off what i am seeing right now in my game. Any idea why that happens? I'm not interested in making more money but i would like to see them sell to more than 2 Black Markets, at least to sell for the best price and not for the worst possible.

I think they just go for the low offers because trader AI is handicapped a bit and can't get to GEIII. What's your average BM price across the 20?
I just started a larger scale test in profit center alpha, and i got a 472, a 450 and a 420 and a 330 in first 4 attempt. There are 26 stations in that single sector, hopefully trader AI will not mess up if no gate passage is involved.
But just the 7 BMs in GEI kept the 9x 16x 20x complex low on wares all the time.

Another thing is that sometimes you get a BM from HAT - with whom you can have high rep. Think that could also influence the discount.
I will try hacking the trade terminal on one of the BM stations and see if that affects prices as well. Want to figure out how i got it up till 600cr once.

[Raevyan]

I think there is a bug with trader pathing - my traders were only trading in GE I with a blacklist allowing only the GE and nopileos sectors. I had 15 BMs in GE III but none of them went there.
When i restricted all trade activities to GE III they stopped so hard that i had to reassign them to the station after allowing GE I in the blacklist again.

I‘m not using any Blacklists to block sectors other than one that blocks Xenon/Khaak Sectors and the Hewa Twin ones for civilian ships.

Most of my BM‘s are below 300cr. I will try and add some more BM‘s to get a HAT one. Wanna have that 30 rep on all factions for OCD^^

[pref]

Most of my BM‘s are below 300cr.

There must be something else too that affects BM prices then. I think i had 2 below 300 from the 25 i opened in TEL space. My rep is 30 with TEL and most of the BMs are from SCA. The last 4 offers i mentioned are all from SCA guys.

What's your rep with the station owner? Maybe that gives us the huge difference?
Don't know what else can affect trade mission rewards.. hope not trade rank. I'd be really curious what's causing such a big difference.
I also have SCA generic licenses and became a member or something alike i think at game start.

To me it seems now that the 470+ prices i got were due to some discount i got while unlocking BMs - i scanned all the signals in case there is a max limit per station.
The 472cr one at least dropped to 456 since then.
Tried the trade terminals too, but they only gave minor (called medium but it's only about 10%) discount.

Regarding ships not trading in GE III - since i removed Pious Mists again from allowed sectors they refused to go to GEIII.
And now i individually assigned the same blacklist to each ship the manager had (overriding commander settings with the same list) about 10 of them immediately went to GEIII again.

Btw i also got a MIN BM now, initial price was 474 (probably 450 without discount - i think there is a max commission limit of 185-190%. Hacking trade terminal does not bring any bonus above the ~475cr.
I only have 22 rep for MIN, maybe it will increase with rep later on.

[pref]

I don't really get pricing for black marketeers..
I opened 11 in Profit Center, 1 sells for 380, another for 420 and the rest is all at +450cr. Even on MIN stations i got 450+ price and i only have 21 rep with them.

How come @rene got 200-300 offers only?

[pref]

I went a bit further, partially because i was curious how trader AI worked under heavy load and larger territory, and also to increase trade rank a bit.
Built a 208x weed plex in Profit Center Alpha, took over 2 argon sectors to get rid of the police and unlocked BMs in 8 surrounding sectors - just one pass on each sector but i got enough dealers like that to sell more then i produce.

Station cost was around 650m, the income is bit more then 50m per 20 mins so the 1:4 ratio seems close even when much more time is spent on travel.
Building 1 plex per sector would be more effective, build quicker and would be easier to configure.
There is no way to limit trading activities of subordinates to a single sector, they will always trade with everyone in their home sector unfortunately meaning they will randomly fly between allowed sectors and waste a lot of time.
For the plex here this means that with a global blacklist allowing all 8 sectors the max allowed 225 ships were not enough to overcome production rate. With current settings allowing 2 sectors (home and the target sector) for each ship i still need above hundred.
So the best is to build a plex for each sector separately and assign as many ships as there are BMs plus a bit more to defeat the timer when they idle searching for trades. This way BM downtime due to trader travel time is much lower so production can be higher.

Regarding capacity of a black marketeer: I have 57 BMs unlocked in this area that drain the 208x weed plex, but my ships spend half their time travelling. Since traders only upload wares with a sales reservation, every time their cargo is emptied they will keep the BM occupied until they travel across several sectors and back. And since they will always trade in home sector regardless of blacklist settings they constantly fly between these 2 sectors.
Possibly a single BM could take care of a 6-7x drug plex or even higher if trade is limited to a single sector.

Rep loss is unavoidable and extremely harsh compared to killing stations or ships - just by trading with 3-4 argon stations like this i dropped to 26 from 30 in about an hour. There is a rng roll for getting caught when offloading wares at the station which will cause a skill and cargo drop, and make you loose rep regardless of ship settings. So this whole thing only works in teladi/split/ownerless/player sectors.

Cargo utilisation is a bit weird - sometimes ships load full cargo, sometimes half, sometimes only load up wares for a single trade. Would be nice to know what affects this.

Regarding BM unlocks: in my experience all stations should spawn 2-4 mission signals a few secs after getting within 10-20km of the station. Just look at it from afar for 5-10 secs, the blue flashes should be apperent from 10km distance.
If you see no sparkles then forget the whole thing and do something else, come back later when mission generator has woken up.
If you find those 2-4 signals and none gives the BM unlock mission then forget the station as it won't have a BM most likely. In Hatikvah's III all 14 stations had a BM, but most often only half will have one.
Also i never found a BM on plexes i built for NPC missions.

To sum it up, as an early game cash cow first
- find a sector with plenty stations, and without angry police,
- unlock a few black marketeers
- spend a couple 10 mill for the self sufficient plex (plan for +5x per BM),
- 1 ship per BM plus a little extra for trade search timer, Magpies and Boas seem to work well but any ship should do it that has a few k cargo,
- disable any other trade options: limit all other wares and all other sectors, so all your ships will be used on black marketeers.

In my experience prices for weed are most often ~450cr, sometimes ~410 and rarely below 400. Other players had a very different price range of 200-300cr.
I have no clue how that can happen, and if you are getting such a low price range then forget the whole thing as it's not worth it on any level to waste money on this. Go for high demand high tech wares to pave the way for your SY.

Some pics:

[Ezarkal]

Well, you definitively inspired me.
I've recently started a new game and I'm in the process of turning the PHQ into a drug complex. Spent my evening finding BM dealers. (I got about 10 so far)
Grand Exchange and it's vicinity looks like a gold mine for that market.

Like every good drug lords out there, I'll use that dirty money to fund my war(s) at the other end of the galaxy, in the split sectors.
After all, I got some "honor" to "regain".


I'd like it if there were more ways to set up BM dealers, though.
As an occasional reward from the SCA faction mission board maybe? Definitively as a reward from those "sabotage" missions you find around stations.

[pref]

Yeah, getting BMs is pretty boring especially if one is too stubborn to move on if there is no success in few attempts.

Also with this setup you can do anything you want rep wise - i think i could kill all tel stations without a BM and still be friends with the lizards due to the insane rep from the drug trades

Just got to Magnate when finishing the trade configurations. Curious how much time i need for next rank like this.

Spent my evening finding BM dealers. (I got about 10 so far)

What BM prices did you get? That 2-300Cr weed price for some posters here sounded weird seeing prices in my game. I got 175% and 150% commissions most of the time on the drug dealer.

[Raevyan]

I don't really get pricing for black marketeers..
I opened 11 in Profit Center, 1 sells for 380, another for 420 and the rest is all at +450cr. Even on MIN stations i got 450+ price and i only have 21 rep with them.

How come @rene got 200-300 offers only?

My TEL rep is at 30 I also did scan data leaks on stations when I accidentally found them and unlock discounts. Did not seem to bring up the prices.

[pref]

My TEL rep is at 30 I also did scan data leaks on stations when I accidentally found them and unlock discounts. Did not seem to bring up the prices.

Guess you are vanilla..?

Maybe it's because my game wasn't started on 3.2 and earlier BM prices were higher?
That would be sad, this is the only trade that can get close to ship building profits, but with a 50% commission it's not worth the hassle imo. Also it requires some planning and a somewhat more complex setup - and if average discount is the same as for any ware after a trade terminal hack or couple data leak scans, paired with the low quantity of the orders there is hardly any compensation for the extra effort.
Okay it's an infinite sink, but demand for ship building materials is practically infinite at early/mid game as well.
Later on drug business might be a hobby experiment like for me but has no real use apart from trade rank boost (if dealing with extreme volumes).

[Ezarkal]

What BM prices did you get? That 2-300Cr weed price for some posters here sounded weird seeing prices in my game. I got 175% and 150% commissions most of the time on the drug dealer.

Weed sells between 250 and 400 so far.