[Station Building Guide] Megaplexes, SuperFactories and a lesson in traffic control

[Bardicheart]

In X3 one of the things many players enjoyed was building massive complex stations that included a fullproduction chain in a single station. It produced everything it needed and bought nothing. Designing them was part of the fun, whether you built them in big grid like blocks, spherical shapes or donaughts; how you built them was part of the fun.

In X4 we have a whole new station building option that allows us to again build huge stations including such megaplexes. There are more creative options for design and style as well as production options. But after playing the game for over 800 hours I had to ask the question, "should we?" Megaplexes may seem like a good idea at first, eliminate the need for freighters and thus cut down on some vulnerability, stream line production, should be a good thing, right? We'll maybe not.

What follows is a bit of an extreme example but it makes the point of showing not only just how much you'd have to pack into a single megaplex to support your own dream shipyard, as I did; but it shows the logistical problems you'll face in actually making it work.

So to begin with, lets start with my own big ship yard. I build a massive one with 2 XL yards, 10 L yards, and 4 S/M yards allowing me to build at once 2 XL ships, 10 L ships and up to 32 M ships at the same time. But as I found out keeping such a huge shipyard fully stocked takes a LOT of production. How much, well that's really what kicked this guide off. I'd taken over Nopelleos Fortune IV and made it my corporate HQ, building a big shipyard there. Initially I tried building a large megaplex to support it and found out the hard way it was not and could not be enough. Eventually I many smaller stations specializing in one or two products, but producing a lot of one thing which I call "Superfacs". If I'd put all the production modules in one mega plex, it would have looked something like this:

Advanced Electronics x5
Weapon Components x10
Turret Components x10
Shied Components x10
Field Coild x6
Missile Components x1
Drone Components x2
Claytronics x15
Smart Chip x40
Antimater Converters x6
Scanning Arrays x3
Quantum Tubes x20
Plasma Conductors x15
Microchips x35
Hull Parts x10
Engine Parts x12
Advanced Composites x4
Superfluids x10
Graphene x16
Antimatter Cells x4
Silicon Wafers x23
Refined Metals x10
Energy Cells x16
Food Rations x12
Argon Medical Supply x24
Wheat x4
Meat x4
Spices x4
Water x4
Argon L Habitats x64

Total workforce for peak production: 63,295

Total cost would be around 560 million to build this massive complex, just for the production modules. That's not including the cost of storage, connectors, docks and piers which would add at least another 50% to that cost.

I have built a station about 1/4th the size of the above proposed monster station, and I found it had a number of problems.

First was workforce. It takes a LONG time to grow a workforce of 15,000 (which is about what my largest megaplex needed) and even longer for one of over 60k. This is the first thing that makes such huge megaplexes impractical.

Second is the build time, building a single station means you have to wait for each of those modules to complete one at a time. The above station would literally take DAYS of continuous game place to construct.

Third is docking space. Small and medium docks aren't the problem, you can add 24 3M6S docks with no problem and no waiting. But docking piers ARE a problem, they take up a lot of space and in practice I found on such a large station adding more than four 3 dock E piers was problematic and 8 was about the limit and still have room for all the production modules (and designing it in the building planner was... challenging). But even with 4-8 E-piers giving me 12 to 24 docking points for L ships I found that sheer number of L miners such a station would need to provide the massive amounts of raw materials overwhelmed the docking facilities.

Fourth, even on a station 1/4th the size, just flying near it was enough to see a considerable drop in FPS and landing on it was worse. I have a gaming machine built for doing high end 3D renders... if my system is slowing down I can only imagine what's happening to the average system.

Those reasons forced me to reconsider my station building strategy and ultimately pushed me away from megaplexes into superfactories.

Instead of one massive station I switched to building "super factories" specializing in one or two products and with a total peak work force of 2000 or less. What this meant was that in the end the sector would still have a total population of nearly 64,000, but it would get there in a fraction of the time (about 1/32nd the time) since each station grew its own work force and only needed between 1,600 to 2,000 generally. At most, in just 200 shifts, not 6,330, I'd have my full work force (and by far the most populated sector in the game).

Also, each station builds independently, so I could have multiple stations going up at once and that cut down on the total build time significantly. I was surprised at just how fast I actually got the whole project built (it took me just a week of game play to build the whole thing). It also allowed me manage the project in stages, including the cost and the demand I was putting on material supply to construct all those stations (claytronics became a serious choke point in my massive build project).

So, instead of the super megaplex, I had things like a Refined Metals Superfac, that had 2 L Hab modules, 2 L storage modules, 1 E pier, 4 3M6S docks, and 10 Refined Metal production modules. The 10 L mining ships supplying it rarely had to wait to dock and the 10 M freighters stayed constantly busy with no waiting either (plus all the other faction M and S ships going in and out).

My Smart chip superfac has the same docks as above (1 E pier and 4 3M6S docks) 2 L Habs and for production 2 silicon wafer modules and 40 smart chip modules. Since it mainly only has that one product, its freighter fleet seems to have no problem moving shipments where they are needed.

For microchips I did a total of seven stations, each with 5 microchip, 3 silicon wafer modules, and again 2 L Hab, 1 E pier, and 4 3M6S docks.

My engine parts superfac, 12 engine part modules, and the same base 2 L hab, 1 E pier, and 4 3M6S docks.

In fact I built just that basic dock and hab plan first and saved it, then used it to build everything else off of. That save me time and helped make my planning uniform. Each station plot was the same, 7 km wide, 10 km long and 5 km high. With that basic dock and hab plan at the front it was easy to fit the rest into the space.

I started by converting my original megaplex into just producing food and energy, so all of that was concentrated in on large complex (it already had a large work force from my previous attempt so why let that go to waste). Even still I ended up cutting the original size of it in half and gaining back some FPS when flying near it. It also solved the docking problem with the large miners since it only needed 8 L miners to keep it supplied in ice and there were 6 docking points.

From there I built the refined metals next, hull parts, and some microchips. After that I just kept adding stations one at a time until I'd built up the sector. In the end I had that full list of production modules split between more than 30 stations.

The last stations were the claytronics, which have a large work force requirment. Even at just 3 production modules per station my work force for each was still 2,430. But I was willing to accept that since I had 5 such stations for a total 15 modules which meant afterwards I'd always have all the claytronics I needed for whatever future building projects I might want to do. And when I wasn't building my massive production capability could support all the station building the other factions might want to do.

So those are my experiences and lessons learned. I'm not saying its the only way to do things, just things to consider and some suggestions on how I solved some of the problems.

Good luck out there!

[- Z -]

I got your point but the transfer between stations will make hundreds of ships and thousands of drones ... decreasing your performances again ...
I have a massive shipyard and it just works perfect ... but I build it over the time of my progression in the game so the time was not an issue. The workforce is slow true but it’s not necessary for the it to be functional and over the time my efficiency is increasing ...

I guess it’s a choice of what you prefer.
All in one and slowly build.
All scattered and need heavy logistic between them but much faster squired ?
Performance will be both reduced.

[eMYNOCK]

@Bardicheart

i have to admit.. it was a pleasure to read how you experienced and learned your way to station construction.

it is intresting that some of us megaplex constructors slowly shift into building whole ecosystems separated into different stations and production branches.


honestly.. i made not so well experiences with mega shipyards... and especially with combined S/M L/XL Shipyards... (they always ran out of resources).

Today i maintain 3 modified Teladi Wharfes in Heretics End, Morning Star and Faulty Logic I.. as well as a standard Teladi Shipyard in Morning Star and a modified Argon Shipyard in Faulty Logic and i have not experienced any kind of shortage since i stepped away from combined Ship Productions.

I also maintain several independent Economies in and around the named Systems... only exception is Heretics End were my one and only ACME Stations and my inofficial HQ are.


@Zorg
i am sorry to disappoint you... but performance wise the multiple Stations solution has no significant impact in relation to really big stations...

it is true that the multiple stations gameplay will require far more ships to maintain them.. but you will never see them all at once.

and what you can't see will not be calculeted as it would be in high attention...

there is no doubt that you have made your own experiences... wich i respect as valid... but it is really, really hard to compare the results unless one makes the effort to build both.. megaplexes and entire eco systems during the same playthrough.

[Bardicheart]

Performance wise, if you spread those superfactories out within the sector it'll avoid the FPS problem even with all the ships (at least on my system, curious how well it works for someone with an average system). But you raise a good point, if you build multiple stations and crowd them all together then yes, it'll be as much a performance hit as one megaplex. Trick is to spread them out so the game doesn't have to render as much.

And there's no way I can see to get around the docking problem, and if you don't solve that then your whole production model slows down because its not getting enough resources fast enough. Let me put this in perspective:

The above monster station would consume per hour:
48,000 m^3 helium
38,400 m^3 hydrogen
72,000 m^3 methane
38,400 m^3 ice
57,600 m^3 ore
110,400 m^3 silicon

A total of 364,800 m^3 of raw materials that has to come in every hour at minimum or production slows.

A Magnetar Vanguard mineral miner has a cargo bay of 20,000 m^3 space, let's call that the average. You would need 19 such ships (mix of mineral and gas miners) making a delivery each hour just to keep up with demand. Now multiply that by the additional miners you'll need depending on local resource concentrations or how far they have to travel to find what you need (because few sectors have all the resources in one spot) and you can probably double or triple that number of ships assigned to the megaplex. That may not sound like much, but when you figure in all the L freighters other factions will use to drop by your station and pick up just 200 m^3 of something (which is absurd but that's another issue), you'll find that even with 12 docking points (4 E piers) they fill up and stay full with ships constantly waiting. That is also partly because L ships have slow docking times, slow load/unload times (a L ship will generally take 2-3 times as long to unload the same amount of cargo as a M or S freighter, which is also nuts) and then the slower time to undock and maneuver away... it can REALLY gum things up. And that's when the lesson in traffic control starts to sink in.

Meanwhile, your M freighters are zipping in and out of your multiple 3M6S docks with no wait time at all, quicker landings and take off and quicker load/unload times.

I also found that the logistics was simpler for with the 30 superfactories instead of one megaplex. I gave each one an average of 10 M Hermes freighters, a few of them I gave 20 and a few stations with bulky goods also got some L freighters subordinate. So in total I'd added just over 300 freighters. But since each station actually manages them, all I had to do was keep up with occasional replacements when one of them went someplace it really shouldn't have (there's always that one guy, ya know). Other than that, it was basically "assign and forget".

Since each station is more focused in what it produces and sells, the station manager seemed to do a better job of handling trades. I think that's probably because of how the game works, when assigning trade missions it looks for the most profitable trade in whatever its trading in. If you have a megaplex that produces everything it focuses on the highest value goods, which means critical items like smart chips may not get traded or not traded as much. On the other hand, one superfac with 40 smart chip plants, 2 silicon wafers and 2 L habs (workforce 1,900) seems to work just dandy at keeping nearby shipyards supplied with all the smartchips they need. Also, if you have a L freighter at a megaplex and it gets sent out on an energy cell trade, it may leave with only 10 energy cells which is a lil annoying and inefficient. On the other hand split of your hull parts as a separate superfactory (10 hull parts, 2 L hab, 2 L container storage, plus docks) and that same L freighter will most often be put to better use carrying larger cargoes of hull parts.

You can also use this to tell some of those supporting stations to only trade with your stations, but leave other things open to trade with all factions. For example, my Refined Metals superfac only trades with my stations since I know my stations will consume most of what it produces. But my weapons components superfac is open to trade with anyone (that way when I'm not building lots of ships, which is most of the time, all that production can be sold for profits (about 1.1M cr per hour from just that one station). If I was going to assign fighter escorts, this lets me focus on those trading outside the sector. I have freighters from my water refinery that like to go to HAT stations in pirate infested sectors, so I gave it L freighters with fighter escorts (and in one case 2 destroyers + a squadron of fighters just for giggles)... and the pirates hate me even more. ;-)

Lastly, if you've got that volume of production you should have that many freighters either way just so they're actually making all the trades they could be. A megaplex may streamline things some, but for anything approaching the scale of what I eventually did in Nopeleos Fortune, you need a LOT of freighters (plus patrol ships, I've got 10 patrol groups consisting of 8 Nemesis corvettes each based out of 4 defense stations to make sure the area is well secured against the occasional suicidal pirate). So again, spreading things out tends to help on the FPS because then your computer has to render less ships at any given time as well. An don't forget that the more docks for S/M ships you have, the more NPCs it has to render too. With just 4 3M6S docks my system doesn't have any issues, with 24 it dips a bit.

As for drones, if you mean cargo drones:
A) I build 5 per pier dock point so most of those stations have just 15 (x about 30 stations or 450 cargo drones total in the sector)
B) I don't use that many L freighters, I could write a whole other article on why but... they're generally a waste. M freighters will move more cargo, faster for the same cost. That's why my stations only had 1 E pier but had 4 3M6S docks, lots of M freighters and still no waiting.

But like I said, its not necessarily the only way to do things. Just some things I learned from having tried doing megaplexes and running into various problems with that approach. For me at least, I found going with superfactories worked better, was easier to scale up.

Food for thought.

[FilthyVon]

I have seen stations that are close enough transferring between themselves using cargo drones, this would negate the need for transfer ships.
I have tried both specialist stations and one mega station, the mega station once built is easier in terms of logistics

[eMYNOCK]

Originally posted by dantaylor999:

I have seen stations that are close enough transferring between themselves using cargo drones, this would negate the need for transfer ships.

that only works if they are really close together.. around 10 or 30 km.

Originally posted by dantaylor999:

I have tried both specialist stations and one mega station, the mega station once built is easier in terms of logistics

true thing... but whats better? lower FPS for the price of lesser logistics or average FPS and something to look at like a Sector that is as busy as an Ant Farm?

[Bardicheart]

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

@Bardicheart

i have to admit.. it was a pleasure to read how you experienced and learned your way to station construction.

Thanks :-) Its been an interesting journey down the rabbit hole, figured I'd share some of what I'd learned along the way. Might help someone else.

honestly.. i made not so well experiences with mega shipyards... and especially with combined S/M L/XL Shipyards... (they always ran out of resources).

Today i maintain 3 modified Teladi Wharfes in Heretics End, Morning Star and Faulty Logic I.. as well as a standard Teladi Shipyard in Morning Star and a modified Argon Shipyard in Faulty Logic and i have not experienced any kind of shortage since i stepped away from combined Ship Productions.

I've done things a little differently, but essentially the same core problem of shortages was what prompted me to concentrate so much in one sector. For me it just wasn't the shortage at my shipyard, it was also the shortage of turret components, claytronics, and hull parts whenever I wanted to build new stations (whether for myself or for a build mission, and I love doing those build missions). Claytronics seemed to be the worst, plus expensive. That got me to looking at building my own production of it. I tried building one massive claytronics megaplex, which I did but it was expensive and its basically automated since it needs a workforce of over 13,000 and it'll take a long time of game play for that to fill up. The work force issue was one of the things that really pushed me away from megaplexes into superfactories built around a workforce of 2,000 or less.

So while I do have one large combined shipyard/wharf, it also has that massive amount of production keeping it stocked (plus I restrict it from other factions being able to use it most of the time). I haven't built other shipyards for myself, instead I built them for other factions as part of build missions. That in turn seems to have prompted the game to offer still more build missions to meet the new demand it created and the whole thing has boosted the overall economy. Plus I've made a few billion selling too those stations :-D

[Bardicheart]

Originally posted by dantaylor999:

I have seen stations that are close enough transferring between themselves using cargo drones, this would negate the need for transfer ships.
I have tried both specialist stations and one mega station, the mega station once built is easier in terms of logistics

Q: What exactly do you see as the problem in logistics? Define that.

[DEATHLORD]

My complex is much bigger and it functions just fine. To keep up with the supply of resources I only use M miners because of there speed. I have at the moment 127 miners doing the work load and 50 transports selling for the station. The M miners have the speed and can use the highways where the Large miners can not. In the supply of stations speed is more important than cargo hold size. My station plot is 20x20x20 Last count I had nearly 300 production modules and my raw material storage is always between 95%-100%.

[DrSuperEvil]

I agree that currently the construction rate is a bottleneck making multiple smaller factories more efficient at least until multiple construction vessels can be assigned to one project. Cargo drones are quite effective at transferring wares between adjacent player owned complexes if you build enough. For L docking I prefer single dock piers since those can have production modules between them. With a 20x20x20 plot you can get 64 single piers in. For mining if the ship has to go between sectors M ships are more effective and as you stated M docking is never a limiting factor so it is possible to have 3 miners per production module. Your calculations however greatly underestimate the number of production modules needed for build modules to operate at full efficiency. A single L build module needs 7 weapon components, 17 advanced electronics, 10 antimatter converters, 16 engine parts and 35 hull parts modules so no wonder you ran dry. A single S/M build module needs over 300 hull parts modules and 427 weapon components modules! In general only build at max 5 L build modules and one S/M at most since the universe cannot take many more.

[FilthyVon]

Originally posted by Bardicheart:

Originally posted by dantaylor999:

I have seen stations that are close enough transferring between themselves using cargo drones, this would negate the need for transfer ships.
I have tried both specialist stations and one mega station, the mega station once built is easier in terms of logistics

Q: What exactly do you see as the problem in logistics? Define that.

If you have a separate shipyard then you have to transfer all the materials from your different production stations to the shipyard. I have two separate games running, one where I have a mega station and one with multiple. I struggle to keep up with demand for ships in my multiple station game, and I spend the vast majority of my time creating trade orders for my fleet of traders. In my mega station game I can spend my time fighting, I enjoy both though.
Once they make a repeating trade run function it will be fine.

[DrSuperGood]

Be aware that mega complexes are not really that good of an idea from an efficiency point of view. It is in theory much better to use many smaller factories and try to keep them within the same zone.

This is because one can only build 1 module per station at any time. Hence having 7 stations allows one to set up the entire production chain 7 times faster than 1 station. It also provides 7 times the population growth to keep efficiency levels higher.

To put it in perspective the topic creators complex would take ~7 game days to build. It also clearly will be still bottlenecked as it only has 1 missile component production. On the other hand if one splits it into 7 stations it will take just 1 game day. The other 6 saved game days could be used to make the facility bigger so there are no bottlenecks.

Originally posted by dantaylor999:

If you have a separate shipyard then you have to transfer all the materials from your different production stations to the shipyard. I have two separate games running, one where I have a mega station and one with multiple. I struggle to keep up with demand for ships in my multiple station game, and I spend the vast majority of my time creating trade orders for my fleet of traders. In my mega station game I can spend my time fighting, I enjoy both though.
Once they make a repeating trade run function it will be fine.

That is due to bugged logic with station traders. They appear to get confused as to why they are working for and so go off buying nonsense wares they cannot sell when they regain their senses.

In theory all one should do is give the stations enough trade subordinates, restrict trade, make sure the buying station is a higher price than the selling station and as long as they are within 5 sectors of each other the subordinates will automatically shuttle the goods between them very efficiently.

[7au7vydas]

@Bardicheart

I kinda want to replicate your station... The idea of the whole sector wide factory placement - basically your own faction "city" for lack of better word, is really cool. So I have already made the actually station plans, cost calculations and such. And I just wanted to ask you, what sector did you put you factories?

Originally posted by Bardicheart:

I'd taken over Nopelleos Fortune IV and made it my corporate HQ, building a big shipyard there.

Because there is no Nopeleos fortune IV... Only Nopeleos Fortune VI ( which doesn't have resources) and Nopeleos Fortune II (which is huge and has resources, but seems to be further away from the highway).

Also, the full cost of your "complex" is no where near 600Mil, if you buy all the ships, stations and such, the cost easily surpasses 1 Billion :D

[Huib Bloodstone]

Nice post, learned something here!

[Mr.Killer]

Yet I build a small shipyard and added a large one to it. At first I could not get the L,XL part connected to the small one, tried numerous things until I clicked the dice.... It shuffled all around and I said 'OK!' So there I saw it brake down under my feet, destroying ships that were waiting on a upgrade (should not be) and the manager was still there.
When It was finished I appointed 1 member as a ship dealer, but all I could buy was S and L ships.... So, what went wrong?

[Elraviel]

I have a question for the use of the smaller (but many) SuperFactories
How do you move the goods between them ?