Shipyards and the new economy and no magic wares

[donzi]

My understanding of the new 'everything comes from somewhere' sort of system for X4 is obviously limited, but I would like to describe one of the hassles that are in XR in hopes that we're not gong to have the same behavior with NPC shipyards.

Sorry, as I am late to the XR discussions and admit I have not been able to digest all that has gone on already, feel free to inform me that my concerns are moot.

small & medium ships as production lines + capitol shipyard in 1 station

those s/m ships being built in this way can really chew up resources that the player is providing, expecting to help get a cap ship built of their own or free up a shipyard so they can start their own order.

It would seem that the new system would alter the present churning out NPC capitols of XR, somehow.. Perhaps only building replacements for lost ships and/or having a somewhat finite fleet size. No more cannon fodder, explorer ships just for the heck of it?

If so, it could be concluded that small ship creation via production lines would not be as thirsty for resources as it is in XR.

I know there are separate s/m and capitol shipyards already, this is mainly pertaining to the 'combo' shipyards.

automated NPC ship building, resource allocation etc

The exact methods of XR that determine where/how the inbound resources get applied I don't know, but this area I assume would be getting attention for X4.

About all I know (I think) with present shipyards is, we can somewhat prevent them from starting yet another arawn by plugging at the shipyard's cap ship seller, creating something of a delay in the automated churning out of NPC capitols with any available resources.

I realize there has to be a plan among all this to create cash sinks, and with all the new things I read about it sounds like there will be plenty of options to have realistic sinks that explain resource usage.

At the same time though, there hopefully will be a means for the player to reasonably predict that once they submit a ship order that their effort in helping hasten that production (eg: delivery of needed wares or eliminating options due to known wares/stock deficiencies) will be acknowledged by allocating player supplied ware to their job -- at least a major % of the player supplied wares.

I understand that we will be seeing a player shipyard again. That surly well be a late[r] game possibility.

With the addition of player potentially wanting to order all sorts of ships to fly themselves and the possibility of a greater variety and number of ships, I shudder to think that it will be carried out by the same or similar ways of XR.

[Zetoss]

Welcome to the party, unfortunately the cake expired long ago. Not gonna get into much detail because it would take forever to fill you in on everything you should be made aware of but the one thing above all others you really should know is that stations are made of modules, if you want to build your own ships you can build 10 stations with 10 ship construction modules each and mass produce a gigantic fleet by yourself.

Forget about comparing X4 with XR, you'll accomplish little more than get the wrong idea about a million things. Unless I have horribly misunderstood huge chunks of the information released to date the factions in X4 will behave much like AI players in a real time strategy game, they build stations and economy so they can produce fleets to defend themselves and attack hostile factions, this mega obviously means they won't only have a single shipyard sitting in some core sector slowly replenishing a couple of ships per hour.

[donzi]

Gotcha. Thanks.

So NPC shipyards are not for player use anymore?

The NPC faction wars sound cool, but if we have to deal with NPC shipyards for any ship building it sounds like there must be something already planned to at least allow the player to get something built within the high NPC demand for ships.

..I'll read some more. I read a lot already, knew about the modular station building and various other aspects like the NPC faction wars that are planned.

All sounds really interesting. With what sounds like a ton more AI going on I guess my first order of business really should be if I will even be able to play it on my computer.

[CBJ]

So NPC shipyards are not for player use anymore?

How did you come to that conclusion? And where would you buy ships if that were the case, up until you had the resources to build your own shipyard? No, you can still buy ships from NPC factions in X4, provided you keep friendly with them and they have the resources available.

[donzi]

I consider it a request for clarification of Zetoss's reply since it mentions NPC building lots of ships for their own needs at their shipyards and if player wants to build ships we can make ship construction modules..

Why would I need clarification? Because the reply was a fairly wide stroke and didn't clarify any of the points I brought up in the OP.

My original post and the second post (following the question you refer to) should convey that I expect to be able to use NPC shipyards, no?

What you have explained to me is pretty much what I was thinking when I wrote the original post and continued to suspect was the case thereafter.

Realistically my first post -is- the question(s) and the second much less so, more of an acknowledgement to a response I received. Like this.

[Falcrack]

So NPC shipyards are not for player use anymore?

How did you come to that conclusion? And where would you buy ships if that were the case, up until you had the resources to build your own shipyard? No, you can still buy ships from NPC factions in X4, provided you keep friendly with them and they have the resources available.

Could there be dealerships in the game, which are full of prebuilt ships that you can buy immediately? Shipyards will build ships to fill these dealerships, so that you don't have to wait forever to buy a popular model of ship as long as it is available? They would still have been produced using resources, but having dealerships like this would make it much more user friendly for the game start, provided you are on friendly terms with them.

Dealerships could also be a convenient location to sell unwanted ships for extra credits.

[donzi]

Capitol ship dealerships seem like a nice alternative to dealing direct with the manufacturer, which isn't very realistic for most products in the 'real' world.

..basically how the small and medium in XR typically are provided.

Maybe even player could build a dealership for selling ships to the NPC population. In XR small and medium ships seem to just be scrapped for parts at best. I haven't paid much attention to what happens to capitol ships when sold to a shipyard -- actually I have very rarely, if at all, sold a capitol ship.

It would make sense if ships were not created as disposable items quite so much, hence a more usable, practical second hand and/or B2B ship market.

Say faction A needs to build a miner but doesn't have the resources but does have the cash and player has an extra one, it would be win-win if they just bought it and put it into service immediatly.

..but who knows, maybe that is already planned to some extent since the player is going to be able to build ships, seems like we would also be able to provide an allied faction with ships they need if their shipyard has been attacked/damaged, etc.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Ships sold in XR are not recycled into wares but it is a nice idea because it could help alleviate some of the were shortage issues. Although where there is a lots of player-triggered spawning (e.g. fight missions), it risks trivialising were shortages so is probably tricky to balance.

[Zetoss]

I'm just gonna clear up a few things here before all these ideas get out of hand, not saying the ideas are bad but they are built on a lack of information.

¤ Having prebuilt ships would be interesting and convenient.
The main problem is that ships are NOT a single preset layout of always the exact same weapons and shields like in XR. You can probably make numerous configurations and keeping dozens of capital ships in stock "just in case someone finds a version they like" isn't anywhere remotely realistic in a world where you can get any ship custom built in a matter of minutes anyway. Small ships that only have very few basic variants are just about the only ones that can realistically be kept in stock, and probably will.

¤ The economy is immensely unlikely to be anywhere near as fragile as it was in XR.
Stations are dynamically built by AI and will react to shortages of specific wares by increasing the number of relevant production modules to get things back on track. The devs want every ship to be built by actual wares so the total universe production will need to be absolutely enormous and it literally Can't be fragile or the game would become an absolute disaster.

¤ Taking missions doesn't magically create angry fleets, no more messing up a faction by accepting their missions too often. As far as it's possible the missions will be created depending on what's happening in the universe, I'm sure there will be situations where the devs will be forced to bend the truth a little but generally speaking if a Xenon fleet invades (and you get a mission to deal with them) it's because the Xenon actually built that fleet over a period of time and then sent it to attack without caring if you took the job or not.

¤ Every significant faction is likely to have many shipyards spitting out ships to replenish losses, otherwise that faction would easily be wiped out. Even if all the shipyards are destroyed at the same time they will likely be rebuilt very quickly, if I'm not mistaken there are many construction ships that roam freely and when a station wants to expand/repair a module that ship is paid to do the job and once the job is done the ship leaves to look for new clients.

Signing off due to lack of interest, if anything I said was incorrect moderators may feel free to correct my post to avoid it causing confusion.

[spankahontis]

I can imagine the problems.

Factions keep building and building and building Ships until Space is swamped by thousands of ships that will slow down your PC's performance.
I noticed that problem after 100 hours of playing the CWIR Mod, where there was 100's of Sul's/Taranis ships flying around PMC's Shipyard in Shady Vault.
With no Factions to go to War with, Factions will just build constantly without some sort of Limit Cap put in place.

Rebirth just built them and they would jump into that abyss of nothing in order to keep the X Economy going and maintain PC performance?

So how would Egosoft deal with this? Do they have any plans on how to maintain a flowing economy, plenty of ships as a result while making sure performance isn't badly effected by over production?

[A5PECT]

The devs said the AI can expand. They never said it can expand infinitely.

There was a cap on the number of NPC ships the universe spawned in BTF, X2, and X3 to maintain stability (outside of modding). It isn't hard to imagine that X4's faction AI has a bit of code in it that says "once you've built this much stuff, stop building new things" to prevent the game's engine and the player's hardware from being overloaded.

Direct conflicts between factions were hinted at, so war could be a ship/station sink to keep the number of entities in the universe down, and keep the economy flowing.

[Falcrack]

¤ Having prebuilt ships would be interesting and convenient.
The main problem is that ships are NOT a single preset layout of always the exact same weapons and shields like in XR. You can probably make numerous configurations and keeping dozens of capital ships in stock "just in case someone finds a version they like" isn't anywhere remotely realistic in a world where you can get any ship custom built in a matter of minutes anyway. Small ships that only have very few basic variants are just about the only ones that can realistically be kept in stock, and probably will.

As far as prebuilt ships goes, my idea was to have prebuilt ships available, with nothing installed, but with weapons and shield available for purchase and installation at the same location.

The ships, weapons, and shields would have been built beforehand using resources generated though industry/mining, but brought otgether in a convenient location so you can buy on or two if you need to in a pinch. Larger empire builders may need to consider a custom order at a shipyard, or owning their own shipyard, to fulfill larger or more custom orders.

[Général Grievous]

Ships sold in XR are not recycled into wares but it is a nice idea because it could help alleviate some of the were shortage issues. Although where there is a lots of player-triggered spawning (e.g. fight missions), it risks trivialising were shortages so is probably tricky to balance.

A nice idea would be to add recyling ships, that will be able to recycle wkreckage from previous battle. It should help to save some FPS, and create a new small economy.
We could think that pirates are expert in recycling and create a black market of recycled componments...

Well, that's just an idea!

[spankahontis]

Ships sold in XR are not recycled into wares but it is a nice idea because it could help alleviate some of the were shortage issues. Although where there is a lots of player-triggered spawning (e.g. fight missions), it risks trivialising were shortages so is probably tricky to balance.

A nice idea would be to add recyling ships, that will be able to recycle wkreckage from previous battle. It should help to save some FPS, and create a new small economy.
We could think that pirates are expert in recycling and create a black market of recycled componments...

Well, that's just an idea!

That would be awesome, a Junk Dealer that actually has a ship that goes out, equipped with a mining laser salvaging wreckage and sells it on at Stations.