Hull Parts Monopoly?

[MechaTC]

Of course, no one ever done that, I'm pretty sure of it. And yet, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the matter

What would happen if a player destroys every single hull part factory in the known Galaxy, but has his own up and running? I mean if devs are honest with us and in X4 economy nothing comes out of someone's buttcheeks... We potentially have a monopoly at our hands! :D

[Andro]

you will be an enemy to all npc factions who had a hullparts factory....

[JPS]

Originally posted by Andro:

you will be hostile to all npc factions who had a hullparts factory....

only for a time, i took a sector of the Teladi and it cost me 1 reputation from 28 to 27 so no problem with destroying these stations and get the monopoly, until any npc build a new one.
And thats the point for me u can't prevent them to build new one so u have to check from time to time if there are new ones.

[MechaTC]

Originally posted by JPS:

Originally posted by Andro:

you will be hostile to all npc factions who had a hullparts factory....

only for a time, i took a sector of the Teladi and it cost me 1 reputation from 28 to 27 so no problem with destroying these stations and get the monopoly, until any npc build a new one.
And thats the point for me u can't prevent them to build new one so u have to check from time to time if there are new ones.

Will you through? Once again, hull parts factory requires hull parts to build, and apparently, resources don't just pop in and out of existence. That what's interested me in the first place
A funny rumor I heard is the fact Xenon buildings are sponcored by other factions' NPC's.

[JPS]

yeah i know they need hull parts to build hull parts factory but u can't restrict the buyer what he would build with ur hull parts. So unless u check if there are new hull parts factories u won't keep ur monopoly. Or u don't sell ur hull parts but whats the matter of the monopoly then.

[Xenomorph]

You cant possibly expect to have an absolute, constant hull part monopoly over all factions without having to babysit all their new stations and go blow them up, and having your own absolutely insane infrastructure, or even screw up the whole economy. You can, however, go hack and slow down production on their factories. Over and over.
or
You can have (most of) THE monopoly without having to blow up anything. Just buy everything the NPC manufacture, and use it on shipyards or sell high. It's a silly amount of micromanaging, and it stops being a game.

That goes for every other station/ship building essentials.

Just having a single wharf+shipyard is a silly amount of money flooding in, if you manage to keep it stocked at all times.
No need to monopolize anything.

[Knightframe]

There is a easier way that worked in x-3.

Simply park a large ship near hull production and buyout everything.

Then set your only factory to max hull price. Npcs will be forced to buy from you.

I do this right now with microchips.

[OZZO]

NPC can build new stations. Hopefully the devs had an algorithm that if too many are destroyed new will spawn.

[MechaTC]

Originally posted by OZZO:

NPC can build new stations. Hopefully the devs had an algorithm that if too many are destroyed new will spawn.

I assume they can. And I assume they still need all the same resources player needs. And if the latter is true, then they will have no way getting hull parts if every single factory is destroyed

That at least is what I think... My PC don't have enough money nor manpower to make something massive like destroying every single hull part factory in the known universe...

Also I agree about destroyed stations. Teladi Representative Station in my game was split in half by Xenons for F's sake...

[cwsumner]

This has been done in earlier games and should be do-able here. You can also hack their production computers or blockade their factory with mines or lasertowers. Or you can buy up all their raw materials.

But I think it should get you an equivalent reaction from the NPCs. I don't think it does right now.

[JPS]

Originally posted by MechaTC:

Originally posted by OZZO:

NPC can build new stations. Hopefully the devs had an algorithm that if too many are destroyed new will spawn.

I assume they can. And I assume they still need all the same resources player needs. And if the latter is true, then they will have no way getting hull parts if every single factory is destroyed

That at least is what I think... My PC don't have enough money nor manpower to make something massive like destroying every single hull part factory in the known universe...

Also I agree about destroyed stations. Teladi Representative Station in my game was split in half by Xenons for F's sake...

I don´t get the point if u destroy every singel factory an there are no more hullparts and u with ur monopoly won't sell them?
If u sell them they can build a new factory and u have to observe the hole map to keep ur monopoly.
If u don´t sell them the game will die.

[MechaTC]

Originally posted by JPS:

Originally posted by MechaTC:

I assume they can. And I assume they still need all the same resources player needs. And if the latter is true, then they will have no way getting hull parts if every single factory is destroyed

That at least is what I think... My PC don't have enough money nor manpower to make something massive like destroying every single hull part factory in the known universe...

Also I agree about destroyed stations. Teladi Representative Station in my game was split in half by Xenons for F's sake...

I don´t get the point if u destroy every singel factory an there are no more hullparts and u with ur monopoly won't sell them?
If u sell them they can build a new factory and u have to observe the hole map to keep ur monopoly.
If u don´t sell them the game will die.

That's the gist of it, yes :D

Egosoft describes X4's world as something advanced and live. With the economy where nothing comes out of nowhere, where even selled ships are made of resources, which have to come from somewhere

It's only natural to expect some cruel jackass (ahem, me) to try to test this... "Live economy". A little tensile test to see what it takes to completely break it, if you can call it that way. Because one thing every real-ish economy has - it's the possibility of everything coming down the toilet :D

[ralfaltmann]

Originally posted by MechaTC:

Egosoft describes X4's world as something advanced and live. With the economy where nothing comes out of nowhere, where even selled ships are made of resources, which have to come from somewhere

It's only natural to expect some cruel jackass (ahem, me) to try to test this... "Live economy". A little tensile test to see what it takes to completely break it, if you can call it that way. Because one thing every real-ish economy has - it's the possibility of everything coming down the toilet :D

No need to test how it can be broken... since the whole economy relies on ships as the top-most "part", the economy stalls when no ships are needed. This is the case when there's no war between factions, and it seems that war is primarily triggered by the player. So, no trigger - no (real) profit.

Any other non-directly ship related goods like food or medical supplies don't provide a good profit margin, since they're usually part of the NPC production chain.
If a faction looses ships during fights, it seems that the A.I. tries to fill up the fleet as quick as possible, therefore it will also buy ships from the player, which in turn results in good profits.

At least for my game this seems to be the case, but I've to admit that I'm playing on this savegame since v1.0, I've never started a new one when player wharfs came out. After downloading v2.0, there was a period where Xenon ships "invaded" almost each border sector, but this is not the case anymore, and I don't have sector patrols or similar in those sectors. So maybe my economy and/or war A.I. is simply broken - or I'm interpreting things wrong :)

Regards

[DrSuperEvil]

NPCs would rebuild hull part factories and considering each L build module needs 35 hull part modules to operate at full efficiency are you saying you will build more than 490 hull part modules?

[JPS]

Originally posted by MechaTC:

Originally posted by JPS:

I don´t get the point if u destroy every singel factory an there are no more hullparts and u with ur monopoly won't sell them?
If u sell them they can build a new factory and u have to observe the hole map to keep ur monopoly.
If u don´t sell them the game will die.

That's the gist of it, yes :D

Egosoft describes X4's world as something advanced and live. With the economy where nothing comes out of nowhere, where even selled ships are made of resources, which have to come from somewhere

It's only natural to expect some cruel jackass (ahem, me) to try to test this... "Live economy". A little tensile test to see what it takes to completely break it, if you can call it that way. Because one thing every real-ish economy has - it's the possibility of everything coming down the toilet :D

ok then i think u could do it. I think the game proof this with the whole shipyard mess thing. In the beginning when u start a game some kind of factories are very limeted e.g. engineparts. In my current save I startet to explore every sector and on the whole map I discovered 3 engineparts factories there could be some more but not much. So the shortage of engineparts is no miracle. Beside the fact NPC factories always small ones with 2-3 production moduls.

[cwsumner]

Most games are made kind of "bulletproof", like a toy made for pre-schoolers. A real economy is somewhat self-healing, but really rather fragile. This is how the X-Universe games are made, dynamic but fragile.

Doing things to the game to see if the economy fails, is like hitting a glass jar with a hammer to see if it breaks. Sort of a known result... (But it's single-player, so it's ok.)

The real fun is in trying to keep it together. 8-)