Cant buy ships

[TheRockinTux]

So this game seems to be unplayable for me. Ive visited all the warfs i can to try and find one that can build ships and they all are missing things required to complete the order or whatever.
How has anyone managed to get to the point of buying new ships and such? did i just start playing the game after a bad patch or what?

[CrazyUncleSteve]

It's been like that since Day 1. While the economy has improved some, it's not up to the NPC to hand everything over to you like an entitled snowflake. You can always (A) buy and transport the needed materials to the warf in question or (B) produce the needed materials and sell them to said warf.

[ites]

hi,

i started with some missions until i was able to afford my first miner. it took a while until it was built, indeed.
by now i'm running one m class freighter as well, manually most of the time, which helps speeding up the building process of new ships.
the ressources needed are shown while configuring your new build; the logistical overview will give you an idea of whats needed at the wharf; hull- and engine parts mostly.
it is a bit tedious but works.

[Robbo (AR)]

Originally posted by BuckStrider:

It's been like that since Day 1. While the economy has improved some, it's not up to the NPC to hand everything over to you like an entitled snowflake. You can always (A) buy and transport the needed materials to the warf in question or (B) produce the needed materials and sell them to said warf.

Some of us are not snowflakes , we just want the working game we paid for.

It's a bug as shown by the devs reply in this thread:

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=415183&sid=72c563df2d262234af00c56b6430ba3f

It MAY be resolved in the next patch but as the devs seem to lack basic communication skills , we can't be sure of anything really.

[FilthyVon]

It is always like that when you start the game as all the factions put in orders for ships. It does get better as you go on and things settle down, it can also get worse.

Just do some missions to start with, get your rep up, save up enough to get a freighter, it’s a slow process but once you get going it’s easier. Once the initial orders subside then buy a ship, you can always make decent money selling the bits to shipyards, even from the same sector.

[Dimreaver]

I eventually found a warf that could make me a ship. It was missing engine parts....but...for some reason it still managed to make my first small ship.

I probably visited about 6 Warfs before it just put in the order and figured i'd come back later. To my surprise the ship started building a few minutes after i put in the order while i was still on the station. I think i just got lucky.

So i did a few missions and fighting Xenon and selling hardware till i had 2 mill credits. This was 30 hours in. I found that the Argon Warf wasn't missing anything and i put in an order for a transport ship. Immediately the station now needed 100+ engine parts. I canceled the order, station now ready ready to build with no missing parts. I redid my order, station was again missing 100+ engine parts. I just left it and probably 10 minutes later it started building the darn thing.

Now that i have my transporter, i request ship builds at most Warfs, and then transport the parts over that are missing.
....also..I have to tell it to "proceed with orders" on the ship and station menus otherwise it still never builds my ships even with the parts being there.

[Browser_ice]

When you place your building order, just before the actual comiting of it (you included your build order in your building queue), it tells you right there if it sees a problem with any missing parts. If there are no issues, it will just display OK. There is even a + sign left of your build order in case you want to make additional copies of your order (just click it until you have the total amount you want).

For someone who already has a trade ship, in this case he would take note of the missing parts and go buy them to sell it back to this shipyard/warf.

For someone who does not already have a trading ship (meaning your first building request is for a miner or a non trading ship), then either you wait it out or try to capture a trading ship to then do what I said earlier.

I found the trick is go get a trading ship as soon as the game starts. Even if its a small ship, at lest you can still go buy the pieces. It will be slow but still faster then wait it out.

[ites]

Originally posted by ThCapCrunch:

Originally posted by ites:

hi,

i started with some missions until i was able to afford my first miner. it took a while until it was built, indeed.
by now i'm running one m class freighter as well, manually most of the time, which helps speeding up the building process of new ships.
the ressources needed are shown while configuring your new build; the logistical overview will give you an idea of whats needed at the wharf; hull- and engine parts mostly.
it is a bit tedious but works.

so basically to get ur first miner did u just take ur starter ship back and forth untill u satified the resources in the shipyard to complete the order? and then after that u used the miner for the other ships basically?

contains some spoiler

no. patience game. i used the time to explore and check whether something is moving at all.
what i've seen so far (no mods yet and a safegame from before the last patch):
even if there are no ships in queue there still seem to be reasons for a wharf to consume parts. drone production maybe? it also seems to cache parts for your order from time to time - so it starts building (lets say 500 engine parts needed) before the logistical overview shows a stock of 500 parts. it may have been coincidental deliveries as well. the gui is still a bit.. clunky, gently put.
if you place an order, freighters start moving, though. if building parts for your headquarters, it will show that there are freighters incomming - and when. although the "when" is comparable to a windows95 progress bar. the wharfs could use that feature as well..

it is a bit like in rl and the older x-games, when firing up your first complexes (disregarding rebirth); thus i don't find it that brutal:
you want to get sweets done, do it your self.
a hand full of freighters filled with energy cells on stand by were never wrong. and it took some time to get there.

[Hakgova]

Originally posted by ThCapCrunch:

So this game seems to be unplayable for me. Ive visited all the warfs i can to try and find one that can build ships and they all are missing things required to complete the order or whatever.
How has anyone managed to get to the point of buying new ships and such? did i just start playing the game after a bad patch or what?

I just started supplying them myself concentrated on one faction only. I was able to purchase and build miners and a couple of transports this way. Made a lot of credits in the process. Be aware, each faction starts gearing up and building ships for impending wars with other factions, pirates, Xenon and what not. That is what puts the strain on the supply chain to the shipyards and wharfs. The AI DOES supply them but not in great quantities so the process is extremely slow. Plus, they are also supplying other supplies to other stations so the transport and mining fleets they do own at the beginning are strained to keep up. That is actually a good thing as it makes the economy very dynamic and allows the player to take advantage of it or ignore it as they wish.

The more recent patches have actually increased AI providing supplies faster. Just not at a breakneck speed. I suggest that you either do your best to help the supply chain OR go do missions, explore, pirate or whatever until you can get in the queue to get more ships.

My question back to you is: How long have you been playing the game so far with this current save AND what sorts of things have you been doing?

[reanor]

Originally posted by ThCapCrunch:

Originally posted by BuckStrider:

It's been like that since Day 1. While the economy has improved some, it's not up to the NPC to hand everything over to you like an entitled snowflake. You can always (A) buy and transport the needed materials to the warf in question or (B) produce the needed materials and sell them to said warf.

right.... ya so that doesnt make me an "entitled snowflake" lol. the games economy simply is made poorly. when the game is supposed to have a working economy the player shouldnt have to personally supply a shipyard so its able to produce. thats just basic dude. and with the starter ship im not sure thats possibles anyways but its definitely not worth it either way

X4 doesn't have precoded economy, well it does in certain way. But all the factions are out of many required parts in the beginning of your fresh game start. You are empty, and majority of the factions are as well, except the Argon, they always have mats. Factions, with your help, will need to grow and build their fleets, stations, wage wars against each other, etc. They will need to mine their resources, build ships, etc. It's up to you to chose which faction to help, but they are kind of vulnerable in the beginning. Also, vanilla won't be in a good shape until prolly V4. So if you want a fun game, played modded, with Faction Fix Mod at least.

[Nuee]

I recommend
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1668473070

"Shipyards/Wharfs will commandeer freighters to supply them with critically required resources (significantly increases ship build rate)"

I waited for hours for a mercury to be built... installed this bam it was there within 30 minutes.

I don't really consider a mod that actually makes the game work to be cheating.

[Chaos12Legion]

I can only say that I ordered 2 ships in my first game at launch of the game itself they never finished so instead I went to another system and bought a ship I had money for. While I never ever saw the two ships I had bought ever completed 10 hours after I ordered them in real world time I got the other one quickly. I used my other ship to complete the main quest so I only had one and I did not use that to transport stuff to the warf and maybe getting them complete. Essentially production had stalled completely.

However a tip if you like is if you complete the main quest, maybe a mod can unlock it aswell theres a nice economic starting game unlocked for it if you press new game that gives you some money a ship and a cargo ship I think to start off with.