Supply Chain - never thought about this until now!

[Captain Canard]

I've been playing this game for a long time, and I'm well aware of how supply and demand affect prices of commodities in X4, but I never applied this to ships. Does the price of a specific ship vary over time based on the supply of the components to the wharf / shipyard? I'm guessing it must, but not being in the trade menus, I don't see it so obviously. I'd have to write down prices on a notepad and track them over time to see it for myself.

The reason I even thought about this is I was considering building a very simple wharf that relies 100% on the supply of parts from other factions, and I wondered if that would allow me to build ships cheaper than buying from an NPC wharf. This in turn made me think about how those supplies could be gotten for cheap if I "shopped around". Which of course made me wonder about the markup on ships sold by NPCs.

Any comments?

ps - if not obvious, I don't usually play the game as an empire builder, but rather an ally to an existing faction, so I've never had need of my own wharf before.

[Wraith]

Pretty sure ship selling does vary in price

You can try to sell to each wharf and see different value

I’m not sure about ship buying though

[Konril]

If you buy one at a time instead of a large batch, the price will visibly go up after each order. So supply and demand does appear to have a visible effect here. Selling price seems to be the same as buying price for ship equipment. The price to buy crew from a wharf, shipyard, or equipment dock is affected by supply and demand in the same way. A NPC wharf or shipyard also has a significant markup compared to equipment dock prices. That makes it possible to make a profit from equipping expensive stuff at an equipment dock and then selling it back to a wharf. I haven't really tested what affects the selling price of ships themselves. However I do know that the selling price will vary depending on which wharf or shipyard you sell to, and that selling the ship whole does not give you money for any equipment the ship has attached. So sell off the ship's equipment before selling the ship to get the best money. Or when building your own to sell, just build a minimum preset.

[Pathogenic]

Ship prices are directly related to the price the shipyard is willing to pay for wares, which is directly related to the stock levels of each ware. It is one reason why satellite trading works, because equipment docks typically have full amounts of wares (hence low prices), so you can buy satellites for cheap there and then sell them at higher prices to shipyards which are typically very low on wares due to bottlenecks of advanced electronics or scanning arrays.

[Random Dude]

As far as I can tell the ship selling prices depend on the faction's building supplies. Checking the prices is actually a great way to get a quick overview of how a faction's economy is doing overall. Hence why the longer the game goes on the more Free Families will pay premium for any ship they can get their hands on. After all their economy tends to be the most lopsided most of the time. Tons of food production with little to no mining activity leading to a severe under supply in pretty much everything the economy actually needs to operate (6.x) Next in line are the Split and then usually the Boron.

In the 7.0 Beta the Split seem to be a tad more balanced at least as far as I can tell from my games, so sale prices have mostly remained somewhat similar so far.

[Gibbo]

Yes it does. The shipyard in Eighteen billion sells Cranes ranging from 4 to 8 million. I haven't looked to see why, but I'm guessing it's because it's related to wares.

To get that price on the Crane use mk2 thrusters. Otherwise the price is double and a Crane does not need mk3 thrusters.

[Captain Canard]

I'm glad it works this way, it makes sense. That inspires me to build my own wharf, because I assume I can source the parts myself for less than the total value of a ship bought from an NPC wharf. That and it would be fun running my own "dealership".

BTW - I have noticed that different wharfs and shipyards charge radically different prices for modules. For example, Teladi shields are way cheaper than Terrain shields, and better too! I always thought that was hard-coded based on the species, but I wonder if supply chain also has something to do with it. This reminds me, another advantage of my own wharf (and maybe shipyard someday) is I could build my ships as hybrids from scratch, rather than flying them all over the galaxy to get the best modules from different factions.