How do you build your empire?

[rcummons]

I am about 350 hours into a fresh young gun start. am i building an empire slowly. i currently have about 40 stations and a wharf. Some ship parts seem to be seriously hard to keep up with. I build stations with six production modules for each the ship parts. each station produces everything to make those six modules work. If i need more of an Item i build another six module station for it. so far I have had to build four stations or 24 modules producing weapon components, and i am still constantly out of them. Do you guys build massive stations for each part you need? or dozens of smaller ones? just curious how most folks do it. btw a six module station for food is waaaaaay overkill...

[Gibbo]

I only build shipyards and a few claytronics where it suits me.

I have 4 massive shipyards that make me billions and still have a fleet of miners, but they are just for show now. I have enough fleets to blot out the sun.

Shipyards are where you join the big league. I put seta on and in 5 minutes I have 100,000,000 profit from each one. But be warned. being a billionaire makes you crazy!

[Kalisa]

I tend to have 1-2 large stations (probably about 1/3 the size of what people on here consider a mega shipyard) as my main hubs, and then a bunch of smaller stations for different needs, usually around 15-20 stations as i dont like to do too many and often deconstruct if no longer in much use. and then the HQ which i have for massive storage and terraforming.

I often use the station calculator to quickly figure what i need usually, very handy tool
http://www.x4-game.com/#/station-calculator

My HQ in my current game is about 90k workforce but thats all for terraforming, my shipyard hubs are around 30k workforce each, and my smaller stations usually are around 4-8k workforce. but i tend not to like to go huge empires, and run things more from the side.

[Gregorovitch]

I usually build one station for each end product ware. My shipyard produces nothing except ships. I then expand them as required to ramp up production. I use the station calculator to figure out the ratios for all all the intermediate modules. I usually make the initial build flat, all on one level, so when I want to double up I can just use the mass copy command to create a second tier, then a third etc. Pretty quick and easy usually.

[rcummons]

I Like the Flat Layer concept i may haveta steal that. just copy another layer to double production. My current Wharf only has Hull Part and weapon part production on it. everything else is in those six module stations.

[Kalisa]

this is also why l loved the closed loop system, allows me to need far less manufacturing of most things, if i still want to build non argon ships i do still need components like engine or weapon parts, but overall it just helps me really cut down on what i need, and salvage is very easy to mass produce hull parts and claytronics with.

[Wraith]

I stay small multiple stations compare to a few big station
It helps with lag and give way more life to the sectors

Most stations have about 2 or 3 production modules with stations being assigned a set amount of storage for goods (about 1 hour worth of production time) to keep price healthy (massive storage cause headaches because of the way ware prices are calculated and can cause an endless loop of searching for trades)

My shipyard/hq is storage galore it will buy from most station keeping the sector from stocking up fully and is teleported regularly to other faction space to sell them loads of ship before teleporting back

[Despiser]

Wow, some people are ultra organized. I have one station with a billion modules. Perhaps it's time to build stations instead of relying on large freighters to keep cash inflow. I have been focusing on missions to build rep but it's getting kind of tedious. Just one question: Did you move your HQ before base building under the terraform missions?

[Kalisa]

i'm always expanding my HQ for the missions, i had it built up reasonably before i teleported the first time but im always tweaking it as needed, sometimes even temporarly build stuff just for a specific terraforming goal then remove that after. (graphene im looking at you)

[Wraith]

Small station have some massive perks.

You can get them up and running really fast if you know what essential to build first and build them simultaneously
(hello pirated builders )

I tend to teleport the HQ to a sector later but focus on building the essential right away

I also put the HQ in a section of the sector that doesn't attract a lot of traffic
This help not accidentally killing anyone lol

Money has never been an issue early game for me as I do alot of things that quickly earn money like pirating, scavenging, data vault, and trading with commission and discount.

Some mission as well but that RNG on if worth doing

[Kalisa]

for my HQ early game before i start teleporting it, i usually focus on getting it self sufficient for its own teleportation, keeping enough of each resource for 2 full teleports, thats the first production chain i get on it, and then usually just lots of excess storage to function as an overflow warehouse and production chains for terraforming missions.

My HQ does serve as a shipyard in a sense as well but its not its main focus, since its stockpiling most resources anyway I do have it set up to be able to build ships if needed but its certainly not my main wharf or shipyard. I also never let other factions build from the HQ shipyard, i'll build specific shipyards and wharfs for factions i want to support to better control how much im actually supplying and choosing exactly where i want those fleets to spawn.

[Wraith]

Originally posted by Kalisa:

for my HQ early game before i start teleporting it, i usually focus on getting it self sufficient for its own teleportation, keeping enough of each resource for 2 full teleports, thats the first production chain i get on it, and then usually just lots of excess storage to function as an overflow warehouse and production chains for terraforming missions.

I just have it has a big warehouse/shipyard with no production

Much easier when a production module doesn't make it impossible to remove goods and reallocate storage

God I remember all the Ice I had to haul for Ocean of Fantasy Terraforming...

[Kalisa]

Originally posted by Wraith:

Originally posted by Kalisa:

for my HQ early game before i start teleporting it, i usually focus on getting it self sufficient for its own teleportation, keeping enough of each resource for 2 full teleports, thats the first production chain i get on it, and then usually just lots of excess storage to function as an overflow warehouse and production chains for terraforming missions.

I just have it has a big warehouse/shipyard with no production

Much easier when a production module doesn't make it impossible to remove goods and reallocate storage

I do enjoy when its just a pure storage center which is what i have for it early game till i unlock the last high mass teleport, since i do allot of pirating its nice to have a place i can drop off loads of resources. My HQ doesnt supply to any factions but my own though unless im manually opening it up for a time for a specific factions shortages (water and electronics for boron for example well i was doing their terraforming mission)

[Lazarus Long]

The logical overview for my HQ: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3003441032

Sorry for the small font, I had to set the UI scale to.6 to get it all on one screen.

Because I am teraforming I am not using a lot of the ship mats now, but it's usually enough to keep up even after L ship production. As long as only sell to one faction at a time.

[rcummons]

So basically from all of this, I gather i need a ton more production. My 40 stations have roughly enough production to keep my single wharf comfortably supplied, for instance i just outfitted a carrier with 75 Fighters which basically depleted my wharf of supplies and i have to wait several hours to build it back up.

[ArcticISAF]

I don’t know the scale of your stockpile, but one thing that is good to keep in mind is the cost of certain items. These can be quite extreme (e.g split combat engines Mk4) and will absorb a massive amount of goods compared to even a mk3 version. Same with certain high end weapons that may be lucrative to sell to the NPCs, but it may be better to just have 20 ships outfitted decently vs 3 or 4 of the best. Just something I made the mistake of when building a bunch of ships, assumed as easy as outfitting my personal ship but there went the stockpile.