If you wipe everyone, can you still make a profit?

[X-SR71]

I'm wondering, theoretically of course, if you wipe everyone else, could you still make any money?

I mean, I understand you could be self-sufficient and have no need for money in a perfect utopia, but in that case I believe you'd need a big bank account in the first place so that you could still give money to your stations (especially newly built ones) for them to trade with others in your little galactic empire. In the grand scheme of things, money would go back and forth between them and you'd net 0 profit yourself.

Would having no other factions present a problem? Could you reach a point in your xenophobic trigger-happy spree of wiping everyone else out that you could dead-lock yourself into having no money and getting stuck?

[Wraith]

Having no faction at all?
Yah no way to get big money

The only way you can get money is to sell inventory item like space fly egg through traders at your stations

You would deadlock yourself on other money making though

[mmmcheesywaffles]

The game economy is driven by the faction demands for resources. So imho you would not have any customers.

Not having tested I can only guess that selling to your own stations would eventually dry up as without external customers your economy would eventually stagnate.

However, I may be wrong ;P

[Lich Lord]

Originally posted by mmmcheesywaffles:

The game economy is driven by the faction demands for resources. So imho you would not have any customers.

Not having tested I can only guess that selling to your own stations would eventually dry up as without external customers your economy would eventually stagnate.

However, I may be wrong ;P

It's not wrong, you would have to continually inject your economy with crystals and eggs income ect. Production and ore gathering would not be for profit anymore.

[X-SR71]

Hmm I see. I guess it makes sense since it's a trading-oriented game.

You start alone and slowly grow yourself a business, then a gigantic corporation, then start a military buildup and are in place to threaten even governments.. You know, like real corporations are bound to do in the future.

Still, I'd have liked to be able to go for total galactic domination, but I see how lack of trading with other factions could become a major obstacle to my imperial plan due to the game's design.

[mmmcheesywaffles]

Domination can be in many forms. Like the real world you can't cause stagnation in other peoples economy unless you are willing to risk the same in your own.

Eg some nations are more in debt to other nations. It is in neither nations interest to cause too many problems as if nation A [the debtor] cannot pay the interest then nation B [the lender] will possibly risk nation A defaulting on the loan or forcing a rescheduling that reduces what they will pay.

It is usually preferable to keep other economies growing so they can service their debts.

Likewise Nation A will not want to dishonour the debt as in the future that nation may want to borrow again. Who would lend to someone who takes your money and runs?

Reputation wise I found that allowing a few less advantageous deals helped me gain rep and get more ... better offers from the Station Traders. My rep went up fast too.

[Daddy Shark]

Originally posted by X-SR71:

Hmm I see. I guess it makes sense since it's a trading-oriented game.

You start alone and slowly grow yourself a business, then a gigantic corporation, then start a military buildup and are in place to threaten even governments.. You know, like real corporations are bound to do in the future.

Still, I'd have liked to be able to go for total galactic domination, but I see how lack of trading with other factions could become a major obstacle to my imperial plan due to the game's design.

After a certain point credits are completely useless anyways. Once you have full asteroid-to-ship production up and running for yourself credits have zero value.

[Meme Turtle]

If you are only trading within your own faction you don't need money. I don't know if managers still need funds to trade with player only factories but universal traders definitely don't. You can use those to distribute wares without the need for any funds.

As for getting money you have two options not involving trade without other factions: personal inventory and terraforming: selling medical supplies and gambling(aka banking).

Sadly, Egosoft hasn't implemented all features of your average X4 empire management game like upkeep and taxes so you can't generate any funds from population. There are mods though..

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Meme Turtle:

If you are only trading within your own faction you don't need money. I don't know if managers still need funds to trade with player only factories but universal traders definitely don't. You can use those to distribute wares without the need for any funds.

That's being changed in the beta, FYI. Internal trades cost money there too.

[lnomsim]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Originally posted by Meme Turtle:

If you are only trading within your own faction you don't need money. I don't know if managers still need funds to trade with player only factories but universal traders definitely don't. You can use those to distribute wares without the need for any funds.

That's being changed in the beta, FYI. Internal trades cost money there too.

I always had assumed it worked like that in the base game from the start, when I found out it wasn't the case, it kind of made sense.

But knowing that now, we will have to pay is being back to making 0 sense.

It's like asking service A to pay service B to move goods around in the same company.
In truth, you'll probably be paying someone to move goods between services, but I doubt it will be their main and only job, hence, the cost will actually be indirect, and only to the pro-rata of their salary and frequency to moving goods.

Now, moving goods from factory A to factory B actually cost money, because you will either need to pay a third party transport company or have your own fleet with your own drivers. A fleet that will cost money to buy and maintain, and drivers that will get a salary. (and of course, third parties will have a moving fee)

But in X, there are no salaries or maintenance costs, so... we are paying our station, so they can pay our ships, so they can give us the money back... What's the point?

I actually use mods like getting paid, pay your taxes and landlord, so here that kind of makes sense, but we still have money moving in a closed circuit in the base game.

Worse, only the player is limited by their funds, since AI doesn't use money, which, once again, makes sense, since neither the Ka'hak or Xenon use any money either.

Money is only a time-sink for the player.

And I'd like to add something to the people saying that when you have your production chain from asteroid to ship you don't need money anymore.

Actually, you'll stop needing money when you'll be able to build your stations for free and have bought all the factions blueprints, and those aren't cheap.

If you're considering that your income is above any cost you may have to face (like buying a plot or blueprints), then you don't understand how money works.

The game really needs more depth in how money is used, like gate tolls, docking fees, ship maintenance, salaries, rent, etc...

[blackphoenixx]

It's actually a welcome change for me because it makes a hybrid economy between the NPCs and yourself much easier to set up when your intermediate stations actually get paid for their products even if they deliver to a station owned by you.

With the current state of no internal payments you basically have to produce everything yourself if you don't sell the end product or your stations will constantly run out of money when they buy part of their resources from NPCs.

Sure, you'll probably have to change some settings if you're playing an old save but that aside it makes very little difference for all-internal trades - you had to put money in your station accounts before, now it's actually doing something instead of just sitting there - so the change is pretty much all upside as far as i can see.

[lnomsim]

That won't change your problem, now you'll have to pay for NPC suppliers, but also yours.
So, yes, you'll get money from your stations you are supplying, but that's money you could have given to your supplying station directly.

In the end, you'll have as much money in circulation as before, but with more steps.
The problem though is that now when you'll lose a supplying ship, you will lose the ship, the cargo, the crew, AND money.

[blackphoenixx]

The point is that my stations can keep their budget up on their own so i don't have to constantly refill them.

And yes, losing a trader hurts a little more now but it's hardly crippling. I think the benefits outweigh that cost.

[redeyedraven]

Originally posted by CMDR Kel'Draga:

It's not wrong, you would have to continually inject your economy with crystals and eggs income ect. Production and ore gathering would not be for profit anymore.

But you'd have all resources in the universe for yourself so you can just produce everything, so you don't really have much use for credits anymore in the first place.