Building your starter station.

[MegaKootz]

So I am building my starter station, I have a builder assigned, I have over a million credits assigned to the station and over a million assigned to the building.. It does not need that much mind you but this game is so irritating that I farmed that much and it it in there JUST TO MAKE SURE..

So I have my constructor like I said, I have my person assigned to my station, And I have all the parts I need to finish building my station EXCEPT FOR ENERGY CELLS!!!!!

No biggie I thought, they will just auto grab the energy cells and ship them back to my station like they did with all the other stuff right? WRONG!!!!! five hours later and I am still waiting for that supposed buy order my station placed for energy cells to go through..

So I decided to do it myself.. I go farm up a few million more by farming crystals off rocks and boom, I am now building my transport ship so that I can assign someone to transport the energy cells myself.

but wait, in this overly convoluted game NOTHING IS THAT EASY.. the shipyard where I build this 1 transport ship aparently cannot handle the immense volume of ONE MEDIUM SHIP!!! hahahahahahahahah.. and now I am stuck in an infinite waiting loop waiting for my transport ship...

So I am caught in an infinite wait loop cause the station building my transport does not have enough hull parts, and I am stuck in an infinite loop because the npcs cannot seem to get energy cells back to complete MY STARTER MISSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH..

This game is so unfun it almost hurts.. You seriously have to be sick in the head to enjoy this..

[Belteguesian]

To begin with... do you have on your map any Energy stations? Otherwise it is moot. Even if you have the transport where are you going to send it?

To second it... What are your main goals from this game? What were you hoping for when you bought it? Concentrate on these.

Personally I love exploration and space combat (the little that this game has) and don't go into station building until usually some good 5-7 hours into the game... I also love doing plots (not the ones that just ask for 22,222 Advanced Electronics or 500,000,000 credits donations)...

Third, but just as serious, when you ordered the transport the shipyard gave you warning that it is going to take a looooooong time to finish it by puting "-.-" in the estimated time.

This is a sign that the shipyard is missing something(s) to finish the job. If you click on the crosses before the ship components you can see which are missing and decide accordingly: wait, do not place order and find another shipyard that can deliver or provide the shipyard yourself with what it needs and make some money doing it...

[blackphoenixx]

You could have just used whatever ships you already had to transport the ecells instead of going to all the trouble.
It's not like non-transport ships don't have cargo bays and ecells don't exactly take up a lot of space.

Same for the shipyard - if they lack hull parts you can just order whatever ship you already have to deliver some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hull parts so your ship gets build and even earn some money doing it.

For huge orders you can just use repeat orders and leave them to it instead of clicking yourself through 50 manual trades.
Much more reliable than using autotrade and it only needs 1 star pilots instead of 3 stars.

[lefty1117]

I think one thing they should ahve done is to make the time acceleration feature "SETA" built into the game and not some device you have to acquire. Sometimes the supply and demand is a bit off and the economy has to work through some things. Often just waiting for time to pass is a legitimate path to take.

[Adonia50]

I would recommend only doing closed loop stations, even for your first. Hull parts is currently the best. Build them in order with the sub-parts being build first (energy first, graphine, then refined metals.

By the time you start producing hull parts, you'll already be selling overflow of those parts.

I'd also say if you are worried about a few million, you might be building your factory too early. I'd invest early money on miners, put them in secure high volume systems, and let them generate a steady flow of funds... work on a station when you have 20mil or so (easily achievable when you get a good handle on the game)

Also search on the internet for the x4 station calculator - it will be a huge help to you.


By the way, once you build a hull parts station, focus on a Claytronics closed loop station... Once that is done, you can now build stations for free, as you are producing all of the required resources yourself.

[lefty1117]

If you do the Terran start or if you pick up the Terran Covert mission line you'll be put on a path to eventually build a hull parts station as part of the mission chain. Once you've done what they need for their own purposes you can then make some minor pricing tweaks to maximize profit on that station without additional construction.

[Zloth]

If the station can't find energy cells to build with, how is it going to find energy cells to manufacture whatever it's making? I hope it's making some of it's own. Or maybe this is just the HQ building that first dock?

[Hondo]

This sums up the Xperience...

[Pandorian]

Originally posted by lefty1117:

I think one thing they should ahve done is to make the time acceleration feature "SETA" built into the game and not some device you have to acquire. Sometimes the supply and demand is a bit off and the economy has to work through some things. Often just waiting for time to pass is a legitimate path to take.

Going to have to disagree on this one. Due to the nature of the economy sitting in SETA for extended periods of time while the rest of the galaxy runs with subpar economies just leads to more people complaining about ZYA being useless and XEN being unstoppable.

If the game gives you SETA right off the bat more people are just going to sit and wait for stuff to get done instead of taking steps to make sure it gets done. Meanwhile economies are going to grind to a halt, frontlines are going to collapse, and people are going to have even harder time building ships at NPC shipyards/wharfs.

[blackphoenixx]

Yeah SETA is a trap option that should be used sparingly or ideally not at all. Because it will screw with your universe if you overuse it.

Turning on SETA and leaving your computer to run on its own for a few hours also kinda defeats the point of playing a game.

Not to mention it's only in the game for legacy reasons. Pretty sure Egosoft has outright stated that they don't really like the feature, so they don't want to encourage its use.
It certainly isn't needed anymore.

[Bozz 💀]

Well that's the part where the game want's you to actually use your brain and think.
Because instead of ordering a ship in a random wharf it would have been better to see if the station has enough ressources to build the ship (it's displayed before you purchase the ship)
If the station doesn't have enough ressources and you don't want to wait, you can actually go to another wharf and order a ship there, chances are, not all wharfs in the galaxy will be out of ressources.

Best place to buy traders and even fighters is the Alliance of the World wharf, they always have full stock in all ressources.

[Bozz 💀]

Another tip !
If you can't get what you want.
Buy the ship with minimal equipments no weapon or anything.
Then go equip it in an equipment dock, those are usually very well supplied.

[bolero3232]

MegaKootz,
yeah you probably want to get those hull parts yourself. If you haven't found a supplier yet, you need to explore more.
Where is your station? Is it in range of any suppliers? Your manager probably isn't very good yet.
You can take the cash out of the station since it's not doing anything with it.

[lefty1117]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Yeah SETA is a trap option that should be used sparingly or ideally not at all. Because it will screw with your universe if you overuse it.

Turning on SETA and leaving your computer to run on its own for a few hours also kinda defeats the point of playing a game.

Not to mention it's only in the game for legacy reasons. Pretty sure Egosoft has outright stated that they don't really like the feature, so they don't want to encourage its use.
It certainly isn't needed anymore.

Good feedback from you and Pandorian. I've only just gotten the damn feature and have started using it, so I probably have not seen yet what you're talking about (universe becoming static). Good call out, will watch out for that.