[Guide] X4 Closed Loop Shipyard building

[apricotslice]

I just watched it build a Flagship Raptor.

And for only part of that time was the rest of the bays idle.

I've seen Split build a Flagship (at their SY). Next I saw it in Argon sector, dying to fighters and corvettes. It had (had) at most two Chimeras as "fleet" and its turrets were far from complete.

In other words, if you feed only Hull parts and/or can't push out dozens of small fish at the same time, then those big shiny things are but suicidal coffins. Then again, your goal is to maximize sales at expense of the gullible customers?

I played around with a Xenon I. On paper, it was impressive. In reality, it moved like an apartment building, and although it was well gunned, it apparently couldn't bring them to bear properly. It took out a K in a 1 to 1, but at the cost of 50% hull, after I put Teladi shielding on it as well, so the shields were 750. All in all, a really badly designed ship.

The Raptor I think is the same. It looks impressive, but is severely under shielded like all the Split ships, and can be taken relatively easily.

And my guess is the one you saw was a low preset version, so only 35 mill to build. And that would be a deathtrap.

I'm not sure I understand carriers in the game at the moment. A destroyer is a fraction of the cost, much better protected, and can carry a reasonable strike force of fighters. What do you want a carrier for? The support carriers on the other hand I understand, but I'm not sure I'd take one of those into a battle zone. I'd keep it in the rear, and send its squadrons back to it for resupply.

[dtpsprt]

I'm not sure I understand carriers in the game at the moment. A destroyer is a fraction of the cost, much better protected, and can carry a reasonable strike force of fighters. What do you want a carrier for? The support carriers on the other hand I understand, but I'm not sure I'd take one of those into a battle zone. I'd keep it in the rear, and send its squadrons back to it for resupply.

In any military book the carrier is an all powerful ship BUT it projects it's power through it's planes (S ships in our case). Unfortunately the AI in X4 is still in it's "infancy" (we all hope against hope that it will "grow up" in time).
Then comes the carrier's captain (go find a capable one the way the skill levelling system is) aka admiral of the Fleet and then we have the player that must understand that he has put a lot of money in something that can be a superweapon but it is also fragile...

[jlehtone]

Raptor can launch 21 fighters simultaneously. Rattlesnake only 1.

Intercept wing of a Carrier does act OOS; the "Admiral" will send them to targets. Does any other leader ship do that?
Carrier does "keep the sky clear of gnats" while Destroyers bombard a station. You don't want fighters near a hostile station.

This thread is about building a Shipyard. You have stated that it is very profitable. You can easily afford/build Carriers. Price is not an issue.

[dtpsprt]

Raptor can launch 21 fighters simultaneously. Rattlesnake only 1.

Intercept wing of a Carrier does act OOS; the "Admiral" will send them to targets. Does any other leader ship do that?
Carrier does "keep the sky clear of gnats" while Destroyers bombard a station. You don't want fighters near a hostile station.

This thread is about building a Shipyard. You have stated that it is very profitable. You can easily afford/build Carriers. Price is not an issue.

To begin with any leader ship will do that with it's intercept squadron(s).
The worst part of everything you have put it yourself: "everything works fine OOS". Then I find my self asking: If everything (or almost everything) must be done OOS, what's the use of all these fancy graphics?
No, I don't want fighters near a hostile station, until the Destroyers have picked it's turrets off. Then I want to send some 10-20 bomber to finish the bloody thing before I die of old age.

And yes, you are more than right here: the thread is about building a Shipyard. Whether it's profitable or not is a totally different issue for another thread. It's Just that @apricotslice is "new" to the game (X4 actually) and get "fascinated (to put the mildest description) at it's mechanics...

[exogenesis]

Was wondering if apricotslice wanted to consider certain 'conditional' effects on designing/building a self-sufficient ship yard :

1. Blueprints : Having 'all' blueprints will include Mk4 engines & thrusters
This makes a really huge difference to what is needed to 'continuously build ships',
or rather the rate a which they can be built, & the needed mix of production modules,
due to the exorbitant resources required for Mk4 (vs Mk3, which are not that different performance-wise).
Personally I have forgone Mk4 blueprints, in order to make 'enough' ships (for demand of all NPC factions).

2. Consumables : Certain types of (NPC) ship have more 'consumables' when ordered (e.g. flares/satellites etc).
These require more of the 'secondary' production modules (e.g. scanning arrays, advanced composites)
than when ships are ordered without these consumable items.
i.e. the mix of ship-type & consumable-load-out that is currently in demand affects things quite a lot. Leads into point 3.

3. Demand for fighter ships : When e.g. NPC demand is low (&/or they've got their own shipyards),
then the requirement is significantly different than when demand is high (need big battle ships &/or lots of fighters),
since these require more (than proportional) amount of turrets/weapons/hull parts than traders/miners
e.g. a tick-over 'stable' galaxy needs a completely different SY production mix than a war-ravaged (Xenon) galaxy.

4. Having more than one shipyard : when all NPCs can buy at a single shipyard, enemy factions can destroy a significant proportion of
each others ships, just after they are produced, just outside the shipyard.
e.g. I currently have two running shipyards (after the plot 'peace breaks out'), one SY is for all except CUB, the other for all except RHA,
otherwise they both keep building e.g. flagship Raptors, which quickly get blown away by their enemy destroyers, which are 'kindly' patrolling my SY sectors.

5. other stuff I can't think of right now...

[apricotslice]

I've not seen a Mk4 anything. No idea how you even get them, and the cheat menu mod doesn't provide them.

Consumables are a major issue, and I've covered that.

Demand hasn't been an issue. I'm currently running at 120% of NPC price to try and slow the demand down, and it hasn't made a difference. And freighters and miners seem to be in just as big a demand as fighters.

War outside the shipyard, in fact war inside the SM bays, seems to be a fact of life. Unless you change the faction settings to favour one side of the various wars. But where's the profitzzz in that?

I will be trying a second shipyard as soon as I stop building this one. More to see if the blueprint actually works before I make it available for people to use. But also to see what happens. But since my first one is in Split space, and the next one will be in Paranid space, I'd say there likely won't be any downside to having 2. But that's why I'm going to test it.

Demand wise, it might be interesting to see what happens if I do set the factions to just a few of them and see what gets built. At the moment, all of the factions are building, and it seems totally random as to which one gets a slot and when.

The interesting thing I'm observing here is that the game shipyards are totally dependent on the economy, and the closed loop shipyard is totally dependent on its own supply. So if you get the closed loop to a point where the delays are minimal, you can build a lot faster than the game shipyards can.

In fact I noticed this when trying to compare prices and loadouts. Several times looking at L and XL ships my shipyard was building, but on faction shipyards, there was often the notation that hull parts or something was missing and there would be a long delay in building.

I've got the delays down to minutes now, and still tweaking.

[dtpsprt]

I've not seen a Mk4 anything. No idea how you even get them, and the cheat menu mod doesn't provide them.

...............

Demand hasn't been an issue. I'm currently running at 120% of NPC price to try and slow the demand down, and it hasn't made a difference. And freighters and miners seem to be in just as big a demand as fighters.

The MK4 is the Split Combat M MK4 Engine and is available only by ZYA (the FRF does not have it).

As for demand and trying to "calm" things down by raising prices don't forget that the factions have infinite money. It won't work. My best guess is that the factions are "engineered" to give orders to the player's shipyard regardless anything else.

[apricotslice]

The MK4 is the Split Combat M MK4 Engine and is available only by ZYA (the FRF does not have it).

Noted, and upgrades in progress.

Update: Still adding things to the guide. But the build is almost done now. Just waiting on what the final modules figures are.

[apricotslice]

The guide is now posted in the OP.

[EGO_Aut]

The guide is now posted in the OP.

Closed loops are bad for global trade.
Business can be done with over production and the NPC factories are happy to get some.
A shipyard makes so much profit, it is more pleasant and clearer to have fewer miners and traders.
In the beginning, it costs a bit to fill the warehouse, but later you can easily put it back in again.

You can stop selling wares, if you plan to build a huge fleet to buffer up a large amount of wares if necessary.

[apricotslice]

Closed loops are bad for global trade.

Not really.

I spent in excess of 100 million on Claytronics and Hull Parts alone, spread across 3 game days. It kept that part of the economy ticking over, because it takes a lot of other products to make what they need, and more to make what they need. I was ranging 10 sectors away to collect what I needed, because the local sectors couldn't keep up.

I also had autotraders out there trading everything, keeping the economy ticking over.

During the time it took me to build the core station, the Xenon completely trashed 6 sectors and were well into the seventh when I finally noticed, and with money to spare, I bought enough destroyers to roll them back and keep them there. (Didn't have an L Fabricator at that point.) The Zyarth actually owe me for saving them. (They only have 4 sectors left now.)

So 'global trade' was going to hell anyway, until I stopped it. I now have the Xenon successfully corralled. And all those ships were bought, not self-built.

There is nothing wrong with the economy in my game. The only thing I'm selling is ships, and there is an endless demand for them by the warring factions.

The impact on the economy just isn't there.

[Wultan]

When I build a ship yard, I do that with the bootstrapping method.

Start with:
- 1x Docking for S/M ships
- 1x Docking for L ships
- 2-3x large container storage
- 1x S/M build module
- Add manager to wharf and let him learn some seminars to get some stars
- Add ~10x M trade ships
- Add 5 Mio Cr to wharf

Cost: 15 Mio for build modules, 5 Mio for trade ships, 5 Mio initial money = 25 Mio Credits.
After that, your wharf is earning money.

In the early days, you may have to let your ships buy goods by hand if your manager does not yet have the range. You do not need to take the ships away from the manager for this.

Then you can add more production modules. E.g. 2-3 nanotronic factories. And hull parts.
Then build that factories where you have the most demand for (E.g. weapon parts, electronic parts).
Then build modules for intermediate products (E.g. antimatter cells, micro chips)
Then build modules for basic products (E.g. graphen, silicon wafer, metal)
Now, at the latest, you no longer need instructions.

[exogenesis]

At the end of the guide,
I think there's missing 'Water Production' in the "The Shipyard contains:" production module list ?

[apricotslice]

At the end of the guide,
I think there's missing 'Water Production' in the "The Shipyard contains:" production module list ?

Good catch.