Comparing Ware Productions by Their Profit Margins \\ X4: Foundations

[@JazzySpaniard]

Playing X4 and watching videos on X4 like this one makes me wonder if I should have gone into business instead of majoring in Biology 😭

[@b0Stark]

Go far enough with biology, and you can *create* the Boron!

[@samaelsyfer]

​@@b0Starkthen do profitsss with them... 😂

[@StyxRiverGynoid]

@@b0Stark Organics are inferior. Biology is irrelevant. Mechanical and Electrical engineering are obviously the superior disciplines. Help spread Xenon superiority!

[@c3cvitaly]

DUDE! The analysis you did is amazing!

[@Ketraar]

KET Industries appreciates the effort put into showcasing any trade or profit related content. May profits be with you.

[@khugansixtyeight]

Thank you Immi, I always appreciate your analysis.

[@huffinLeeroy]

Build a salvage station in hat1, get a couple of manticores. Bam, free money from the constant carnage at the tharka gate

[@grillo_419]

Computronic substrate my beloved... Love it to death with the fact that you can run it without ordering a single ware, you can have miners produce all the materials it needs plus an M trader for the energy cells and voyla! Around 5M every 15 minutes 😊

[@davioliveira6479]

Great and informative content brother, keep it up!

[@yamamuro1744]

Absolute amazing info. Thx u mate!

[@icebundy5259]

The game even provides the blueprints for a solar plant from the start. The galaxy seems to be telling me to produce energy cells.

[@Kozak006]

Really well done.

[@guigolum]

payback period is what you should consider. payback = initial_cost / period_net_gain As you said, starting to invest in an item makes that item reduce in value so unless there is a dire demand like the patriarch, investment has a disminishing return and you should consider lower value of output.

[@BearMeOut]

I always need more energy cell Spam those solar panels every where! You can save a building to template, so you can clone it easier. Remember only 1 module can be built at a time, so you can build 4 panel at paralel by dividing the plot allotment. Make a satelite constellation not a gigantic superstructure that takes forever to build.

[@chenzhao8120]

Well, then you will be surprised by how lazy (broken) your trading ships (AI) are. They will spend half of the time sleeping when you expect them to ship products around to make your factories work.. Adding more ships will only add more sleeping time to them but the overall logistics performance is horrible. I had to manually set commands to traders every now and then when they 'think there is nothing to do' while one of my factory was running out of hull parts and buying at max price and have 50 million credits in it while another of my station in 60 km away piles hull parts up like mountains and selling at min price. Not to mention those annoying pirates coming out from nowhere in every few minutes trying to kill the m-size trading ships with 5 shots while you are focusing on another mission. L-size trading ships are jokes in many cases, unfortunately. All these weird/abnormal/buggy game designs make it a bad idea to have more factories when you could make them less. It creates a ton of long term troubles when you play a loooong game. X4 in general always have long games. I would say this is a very bad game designing (creates performance/lag troubles, limits the players from making good use of different locations etc) but that's how it is sadly.

[@jackyoung1208]

Just build a station in Mercury with like 5ish commonwealth solar panels and distribute from there. My early game station in Mercury has three commonwealth solar panels and generates ~200,000 cells/hr. Mercury has a 714% solar output multiplier. Terran solar panels suck. Don't use em. Worth shipping in the hull perts and claytronics to that corner of space.

[@kermitthefrog1176]

My first factory is always hull parts, claytronics, energy. With closed loop i can build stations for free. Also all of these wares are always in need. Another cheese i found is building a shipyard, allowing all factions to buy. The hostile ones will kill eachother and the wrecks get turned into hull/claytronics for me again. Basically they pay you to recycle them

[@theshi3152]

Sheesh i knew Claytronics was bad but gosh that's TERRIBLE

[@xzaratulx]

I only use it to cover my own needs. saves a lot if you build like crazy

[@aY227]

This is just silly how easy and OP terran eco is. Later in 7.0 commonwealth is always missing Advanced electronics, Weapon components and Smart chips - lets say we want 4M/h profit station that will produce those + needed stuff. Cost? Around 25M in production modules + like 7 medium miners to supply (not counting blueprints) And now xenophobes - 1 computronic substrate module will give us around 4.5M/h Cost - 2.2M + ~10 medium miners That's fine.

[@CptSnuggles07]

Counterpoint: TER markets get saturated much faster because they're cowards who keep 95% of their military safe in their little corner of the universe, meaning they lose very few ships, meaning they buy fewer shipbuilding materials. The Commonwealth, on the other hand, is actually fighting on the front lines and therefore ends up buying way more materials than TER does. Classic economics, low volume + high margins vs. high volume + low margins. Plus, most games have an easy mode, whether they openly advertise it or not. TER being X4's easy mode isn't necessarily bad game design, although I do think Egosoft took it a little too far.

[@aY227]

@@CptSnuggles07 TER gets saturated? Like when? They send massive fleets all around map. Also are easiest one to drain for "assemble fleet" missions for other factions. Oh, and yes about that easy mode - interesting that's a paid DLC isn't it? :)

[@CptSnuggles07]

@@aY227 In my longest-running empire, I used to just have one medium sized factory complex in Saturn, plus a trading station in Getsu Fune, and although both made good profits they never sold out of anything. The Intervention Corps fleets just weren't active enough to increase Terran shipbuilding demand. But that was a long time ago. In that save, I conquered Earth back in 5.0 and just kept the Terrans as pets after that, and I don't interact with them much in my newer saves, so I really don't have very recent knowledge of their economy.

[@arzeder01]

Hello, when I enter the game, my camera automatically rotates around itself. How can I fix this error? I don't even know how to search the internet. Can you help me?

[@immi9748]

Hi, is it a third or first person camera problem, and does it accure in the Beta or live Version?

[@arzeder01]

@@immi9748 Thank you very much for your reply, it worked fine when I ran it as administrator.👍

[@jimrford]

Thumb's up for the time invested to this...restart incoming.

[@Anomyos]

Medical supplies also have unlimited demand after doing some terraforming projects, but that is a really late game.

[@moonraven8394]

I always had a hunch that energy cells are vetter then their reputation (far to many say they are not worth it).

[@immi9748]

I think the problem with them lies in the logistics😅

[@ImperadorLucius]

you can't lose with energy. Is low income, but is constant, don't need initial money other them to build the station, everyone buys and use it. Don't need input.

[@Urruchi1]

I guess Volume is considered if you have performed a real run test “per hour” as I understand from your video. Otherwise the analysis but be wrong, if only average and difference prices were considered. Computronic substrate for example has very high volume. I’m not criticising, just pointing a potential flaw. good job

[@trxstr88]

this was it from my site ist das deutsches englisch was ich je gehört habe :D

[@hlriiiviiiv]

I’m the x4 Walter white, monopolies of a superior stimulant product.

[@prastagus3]

all 3 ship material fabs from Terran and Commonwealth generates massive profitssssss

[@Thwowspieler]

Also erstmal, sehr cool analysiert und wirklich gut erklärt. Aber... ich kann verstehen, dass du deine Videos auf Englisch machst, um mehr Leute zu erreichen. Doch selbst mir als Deutscher, bluten die Ohren bei der Aussprache ^^

[@jackyoung1208]

Question: Why do you assume the player is ALWAYS buying the input materials from a NPC? Particularly for refined goods, this drastically skews the profitability when even trading basic refined goods should be 100% profit.

[@StyxRiverGynoid]

At a guess, it's because he's looking at it from scratch, with a player only having that one item to look at, rather than looking into a nested production chain. It might even be more useful this way, because then you can evaluate if it's cheaper _right now_ to pay for a new production source, or buying from local NPCs.

[@TheBenjaminArgo]

Have you considered including "miners supply basic resources" in your calculations? I usually ban my stations from purchasing any material I can buy myself, so even when I'm selling Silicon Wafers at the lowest value, I'm making a profit. But I rarely sell them as I funnel them entirely into other products. I also recommend a revisit of "profitability" with the concept of "ship building" as a measure of economic stability/health. A lot of wharfs/shipyards are short on key products early/mid game. Creating facilities to supply these products means factions can create more ships, leading to a more secure universe (and more conflict between factions at war). I placed a hull parts factory, entirely self-supplying, at Eighteen Billion. It's centrally located between the MIN, VIG, and TEL shipyards/wharfs. I've managed to raise my standing with all those factions pretty steadily and improve their ability to create ships.

[@3komma141592653]

I will always overproduce.

[@miravlix]

If I try to sell you 100 empty holes and you don't buy them, those empty holes is worth nothing... If no one is buying Smart Chips, smart chips is not worth money. So the only thing worth money is the one thing that your part of the universe is short. Without an universal demand, you can't say that there is a high profit on empty holes, when everyone is buying filled holes that day.

[@nilsbernhard8681]

First