Station workers pointless?

[Charles]

I have a computronic substrate factory with 40 production modules. I really want to put some workers on it but it seems pointless. I would need 120 L terran habitats to make it work at 100%. I cant think of any reason to ever do that. I was wandering if anybody else could.

[blackphoenixx]

If you had built the habitats before you wouldn't have needed 40 computronic substrate modules to reach the same production since habitats are cheaper and food + medicine consumes way less resources than substrate.
Obviously you then would have also needed less miners mining ore, silicon and hydrogen, which would be a pretty substantial number for a CS station that large.

It's also worth noting that computronic substrate is one of the worst modules for workforce since it both requires a lot and gives a relatively small 10% benefit from full workforce (which is presumably because workforce is so much cheaper).

Other modules not only need much less workforce, they also get 30 or 40 or even 70% increase to their production, every step of the production process for wares with multiple intermediates.

And unlike Terrans who need methane for their MRE's the other factions only need ice, which is abundant, doesn't trigger Khaak and isn't used for anything else.
And their habitats are usually bigger so you need less of them too.

Take Hull Parts for example - with workforce your refined metal production produces 43% more (without costing more ore or ecells, only stuff made from ice), so you can sustain more hull parts modules on less RM modules and less ore input.
Your Graphene production also produces 46% more, same thing.
And finally your hull parts production gets another 37% increase on its production.
And all three together need only a single ARG L habitat to get to full workforce.

And as for supplying them the workforce complex which produces food and medical supplies in my newish save currently supplies 35 argon L habitats.
It is kept fed with ice by a single M miner.

Coming back to your CS station, if you build habitats for all of them (i'd use Argon ones since they're cheaper, bigger and easier to supply) you'd get a 10% increase or the equivalent of 4 more CS modules, supplied by 2-3 M miners.
You can't even sustain 1 CS module on 3 M miners, let alone four. That's why workforce is worth it.

[Charles]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

If you had built the habitats before you wouldn't have needed 40 computronic substrate modules to reach the same production since habitats are cheaper and food + medicine consumes way less resources than substrate.
Obviously you then would have also needed less miners mining ore, silicon and hydrogen, which would be a pretty substantial number for a CS station that large.

It's also worth noting that computronic substrate is one of the worst modules for workforce since it both requires a lot and gives a relatively small 10% benefit from full workforce (which is presumably because workforce is so much cheaper).

Other modules not only need much less workforce, they also get 30 or 40 or even 70% increase to their production, every step of the production process for wares with multiple intermediates.

And unlike Terrans who need methane for their MRE's the other factions only need ice, which is abundant, doesn't trigger Khaak and isn't used for anything else.
And their habitats are usually bigger so you need less of them too.

Take Hull Parts for example - with workforce your refined metal production produces 43% more (without costing more ore or ecells, only stuff made from ice), so you can sustain more hull parts modules on less RM modules and less ore input.
Your Graphene production also produces 46% more, same thing.
And finally your hull parts production gets another 37% increase on its production.
And all three together need only a single ARG L habitat to get to full workforce.

And as for supplying them the workforce complex which produces food and medical supplies in my newish save currently supplies 35 argon L habitats.
It is kept fed with ice by a single M miner.

That was a good answer, thank you. The production bonuses on some modules seems really good, way better than I remember! The funny thing is that It started with having habitats on it. After the first factory expansion I ripped them off because I noticed that it actually costs more for the habitats than the production module. It also takes about 6x longer to build all three of them.

I also located my factory at Saturn 1 for easy distribution and access to resources. With that in mind by the time the habitats are built, and populated, the new modules will have long since been working. I can steal or build enough miners to feed them before the habs are providing a full bonus. With all of that it just makes me question if it would have any benefit to justify it.

It could be different with other faction habs, they are probably better. I did the terran start so I have been focusing mostly on their stuff this time around. Perhaps Raw resources will become a concern and I will need habitats, but the ratio really seems a bit silly. In the short term the production module+ miners would cost a bit more but be up sooner. They would probably provide more value than the ships cost before the habs are built and populated. In the long term they would beat the habs as one of them is smaller than 3 large habitats. I could build more of them quicker than I could if I assisted them with habitats. Anyways that has been my thought process on it, I feel like I have to be missing something, that's why I am asking.

[blackphoenixx]

Yeah, saving resources is the main reason to build them. It's not really necessary in TER space and generally not that useful for terrans, especially if you use terran habitats.

It's quite a bit more effective on commonwealth stations for stuff like boosting microchip or quantum tube fabs so you need less of them, less of the intermediate resources they need, less of the modules that produce those and so on.

Getting full workforce bonus every step of the production process just works a lot better when there's more than one step to benefit from it :P

[Charles]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Yeah, saving resources is the main reason to build them. It's not really necessary in TER space and generally not that useful for terrans, especially if you use terran habitats.

It's quite a bit more effective on commonwealth stations for stuff like boosting microchip or quantum tube fabs so you need less of them, less of the intermediate resources they need, less of the modules that produce those and so on.

Getting full workforce bonus every step of the production process just works a lot better when there's more than one step to benefit from it :P

Ahh, that makes it click a lot better! I had forgotten just how many steps there are in production for commonwealth goods. The last time I really got into a game of x4 was around launch. I guess there is not really much to improve on when 99% of the production is shoveling as much ore into a factory as you can muster. I kinda like it tho, It forces me into using Terran ships cause that's what I can produce/buy the best. On a related note, what habitats tend to be the best?

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Charles:

On a related note, what habitats tend to be the best?

Argon, Teladi and Split have the same sizes of habitats. Paranid habitats have different capacities (333/666/999 instead of 250/500/1000), which might be good or bad depending on the station.
They all require only ice as a raw resource.

Teladi and Split have 1 less intermediary needed than Argon and Paranids so they're slightly more efficient on logistics but it's a pretty small difference in practice.

On the other hand Argon uses wheat & spice, Split and Teladi use spice and Paranids use spice & maja snails, which you will generally overproduce and can also use for spacefuel, spaceweed or maja dust production, so if you want to go into the drug business there's some synergy to be had by choosing the right habitats.
Argon is best for that since you can just slap a Spacefuel module or two onto your workforce complex and call it done (it already produces water and wheat, usually in excess), the others also need other intermediates.

[Charles]

Perfect! Thanks for the information, looks like I have some argon hab modules to emp!

[mmmcheesywaffles]

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Originally posted by Charles:

On a related note, what habitats tend to be the best?

Argon, Teladi and Split have the same sizes of habitats. Paranid habitats have different capacities (333/666/999 instead of 250/500/1000), which might be good or bad depending on the station.
They all require only ice as a raw resource.

Teladi and Split have 1 less intermediary needed than Argon and Paranids so they're slightly more efficient on logistics but it's a pretty small difference in practice.

On the other hand Argon uses wheat & spice, Split and Teladi use spice and Paranids use spice & maja snails, which you will generally overproduce and can also use for spacefuel, spaceweed or maja dust production, so if you want to go into the drug business there's some synergy to be had by choosing the right habitats.
Argon is best for that since you can just slap a Spacefuel module or two onto your workforce complex and call it done (it already produces water and wheat, usually in excess), the others also need other intermediates.

I'm one of those people who only does the maths instinctively. Have you considered putting your detailed content into a Guide? Threads like this only last as long as they are kept alive, whereas a Guide will always stay available AND you can update if and when any of the details need updated.

With a Guide you could add downloadable stencils to help those of us who really struggle at creating efficient stations. Too much of my building relies upon advice from friends or pure guesswork.

Ideally I could go to your Guide and see suggested builds and costs. I could then use a stencil to make a start then add the suggested ships [miners etc] to make the station work.

This would be like a child colouring in a book with ready made pictures. So easy, yet so much fun.... where a blank paper and crayons would have intimidated us.

[blackphoenixx]

Writing a half-decent guide is a ton of work unfortunately. I may get around to it some time, but it's unlikely to be any time soon.

And it's not like i do the math myself, that's what the station calculator is for:
http://www.x4-game.com/#/station-calculator

Just add the modules you want, throw on habitats and fiddle with the numbers until it produces enough of everything needed to supply itself.

[Wraith]

Hopefully that isn’t 40 computronic substrates on one station

That in itself is just asking for workforce because of the ungodly amount of resources it need to even work 100 percent effectiveness anyway

[Wolfsblut]

i tried station workers out for quite some hours. my conclusion?

1 Station each type= almost no benefit
10 or highter of each type = good - great benefit as the 104-108% of the production will okay and the consum of the workser will be far less.

but in my eyes, check out till you have recommended works for your station, but i really do fell it only benefits from really big complexes with more than just a simple 1x typ

[trooperrob]

From a spot look, I thought it would make sense to add habitats after about 6 or so production modules were added. Does that make sense?

[blackphoenixx]

It depends on the station, but workforce is nearly always worth it even from the first module. Let's take hull parts as an example.

Your first self-contained hull part station has 1 module each of hull parts, ecells, refined metal and graphene. You want to expand so you add a second hull part module.
Adding a 2nd hull part module requires more refined metal than a single RM module can provide.

You can now add that refined metal module (costs ~200k and ~6k ore per hour after that) and get the output needed to fuel your two hull parts modules and some extra RM to sell or stockpile for future expansion.

Or you can add an L habitat (costs ~600k and less than 1k ice/hour after that) which will not only increase the RM production enough to supply both modules, but also increase the output of hull parts by 36% from 2352 hull parts/hour to 3193 hull parts/hour (or in other words almost a third hull parts modules worth, which would cost over a million and consume more RM, graphene and ecells) while also raising your production of graphene and ecells for selling or further expansion.

[Charles]

I was doing some more digging and found out why I was getting the feeling they are so awful. It's mostly a Terran specific problem. The Terran habs cost more and take effectively 4x longer to build when considering amount needed and actual build time. This gets compounded by a pathetic worker bonus on some of their modules , and is further compounded by a high need for worker count.

All of that means that it feels like you aren't supposed to even use them large scale. If you wanted slightly more production you would be better off building a new module. Likewise its more cost effective many times to build a new module. That means the only time it really is viable is when you cant be bothered putting more mining ships into a station, or you are depleting the available resources. Its kinda like a giant resource sink once you are happy with the size of the factory.

The one thing the Terrans do have going for them is hull points. Their module has around 2.5 more hull points than an argon large hab. I am still figuring a lot of this stuff out, but figured I would share what I am noticing.

[blackphoenixx]

Originally posted by Charles:

I was doing some more digging and found out why I was getting the feeling they are so awful. It's mostly a Terran specific problem. The Terran habs cost more and take effectively 4x longer to build when considering amount needed and actual build time. This gets compounded by a pathetic worker bonus on some of their modules , and is further compounded by a high need for worker count.

Everything terran is more expensive, not just habitats.

On the worker bonus though keep in mind that most terran production modules consume huge quantities of resources while workforce consumes very little, so the high amount of workers needed and relatively low bonus is pretty balanced.

It's still efficient to use workforce for them, just don't use terran habitats unless you like the look.

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by Charles:

I would need 120 L terran habitats to make it work at 100%. I cant think of any reason to ever do that. I was wandering if anybody else could.

Maybe it's just the wording, however, without any workers your productions work at 100%. Adding workers increases production beyond 100%.