Trading Stations - How to Get Rich in X4 Foundations

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A station dedicated to produce profit.
Reddit post about trading stations: www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundation...

[@CaptainCollins]

And if you want to see more quick and easy guides, that's your playlist: bit.ly/x4guides Btw, check out some merch: bit.ly/CaptainCollinsMerch

[@Pawiie]

Even 2 years after you made these, I still go back to your videos on "How to.. X4" - Thank you!

[@CaptainCollins]

Thank you

[@kodiak_qp614]

These might be the best way to train your station Managers for your gigafactory's.

[@Townie9232]

Hey Cap! Thank you so much! I just finished watching all your X4 foundation videos in your "How to play X4" Playlist, And oh my lord! I really wish i discovered your channel last week when i first got the game! I've struggled so much in game before watching them. Thanks so much! Keep up the good work! +Sub

[@tanvaras9961]

With the new DLC coming Soon™ I was going to kick off a new clean vanilla game, and this is going to help a lot. Will try a Trade Station empire style game I think!

[@net2000man]

FINALLY!!! Thank You Captain Collins!! This is what we all needed!!!

[@TheMjollnir67]

What you could do additionally is having your own factories deliver the wares you want to sell to that station, that way the manager doesn't buy that much and you could leave the pricing on automatic...less manual tuning needed. Even easier to do with the station supply mule mod. Always assuming that you have stations that produce the wares of course...

[@Sir_Olf]

It would be the same as just merging the stations together plus saves you a manager.

[@TheMjollnir67]

@@Sir_Olf Somewhat diffcult to do, when your stations are spread across multiple systems...

[@JeronimusJack]

defeats the purpose, because you deliver from your own station to an other station that you own. and probably sell it there for a price that is lower than on the market, so that other traders would buy to profit from it. that profit is yours if just sell it yourself. trade station are there to buy off when the price is low and to sell a little higher. it's like scalping. so instead of producing yourself, you set up trade station to buy the markets product when the prices are low, and sell when your margin is met.

[@vertauris]

that looks great for a midgame money and will definetely help the local economy which sometimes struggle. Im at point where i have my own Wharf which is a money printer around 70m per ingame hour and thats just for S/M manufacturing. in addition all ships for my usage are "free" using just components which i make directly in wharf itself. its a huge investment to be self sufficient but pays off pretty fast even with just one faction blueprints bought

[@CaptainCollins]

yep, that's definitely true. Also: a really dense shipwharf is shared on the discord. These things are insane and at the moment I go with L/XL Shipyards, which is even more crazy when you build the ships and sell them after to factions manually ;)

[@GeorgeNoX]

i would love if we would get that big O icon like NPC factions get for player owned trade stations, same for Shipyards

[@shawnp6653]

Very interesting - thank you for sharing. I understand the concept, but it seems like it could pretty time intensive with adjusting the prices, especially with virtually no data to work from. Anyways, installed the Beta after watching some of your, and others, videos, so will give it a try soon.

[@MagnaSonic3000]

Wasn't there a little purchase history in X3? You could check if your ships ever landed you in the negative if they were something like a ST or UT.

[@artsoulkoloskov]

ok so i read i guide on this in steam and set up the station, made a medium storage, put down the prices with 20% step between buying and selling. Made 1 for terran space and 1 on my HQ with proper wares. And I messed up with it. I put way to many ware types on them, never adjusted prices and even though I had a very good manager and decent amount of traders, all of them were just idle almost all the time. As I was figuring out why I read a few things. 1) Game has an economy booster when you make a fresh start and later prices change significantly. So from what i read ppl were saying to build these stations after like 20+ h of game time. 2) The thing about ware types at start. They advice to make a few (like 3-4) higly priced wares like Claytronics q tubes, hull parts and whatever else is there and start with them, and to avoid food\med\intermidiate chain wares for some tme. 3)Building them as a terran start is kinda shit unless you make one exclusevly for terran wares. You start with -15 rep commonwealth as terran recrut start and nobody is trading with you. + you need a good settelite grid to get dem trade offers, again this is kinda pissing me off at the early game. Thats all that I can add to this guide. Would like to read more good stuff on this as i see alot of potential in trade stations. Maybe there are some mods out there that can make this work better?

[@maxrander0101]

set up ships from your own non trading stations that are locked to other factions and have them fill the storage of the station then only set the buy price to less than any ai faction will seel to you for and the buy price an avg middle price also have you best manager transfer to that station i know this works because at one point before you could build proper trading stations i was raking in something like 1m every 6 hrs due to having the best sell price

[@kccn_live]

Great video, thanks. Also, devs promised new better tools for station statistics in 4.0 and CoH DLC .

[@CaptainCollins]

Yes, that will be interesting. Lately they did some things better (like Staff Management)

[@maxrander0101]

i have alway had 3 main stations doing trading with other factions based at the exit of entry points to the system they work well if they are set at each end of a sector and then one or 2 stations between them the 2 between them need to be set to produce the items you want to sell but not tradable to any one but your own trade ships then have those ships ferry the goods to the other 2 stations and only allow npc factions to buy from them have the stations buy price so low that they wont waste money using npc stations to get goods this forces them to use your own stations at first with this setup you will seem to lose money but only due to the cheap stuff your getting but by the time a full 6hr tick around you should be making about 500k per hr as you can undercut all other factions if this is done right from the start another way to make this even faster and make more money from the final trades is to have a sector you own as the main production hub using only xl transports to transfer good to the other stations i was making 900k per every 4 hrs using this setup and ended up being able to have over 1000 xl warships and massive fighter groups just from trading profit

[@vorname1485]

You can also "increase" trade stations reach (indirectly), using trade restrictions and making a "network" of multiple trade stations. However you must pay attention not to make a "circle" or your traders will move wares back and forth. You can place multiple buy or sell orders, one restricted to only others and one restricted to only you and give different prices. You can then bring distant goods into range by providing the goods exclusivlly to your stations only, or both to other faction at heigher price and to your own faction with lower price. Could either be eitself a regular trade station or a simply "arm" station that only buys certain goods and provide it to your other stations at same price as bought.

[@uncletrashero]

i discovered the same thing when i had a whole network of stations around the super highways, i found ships were just moving the cargo around constantly without making profit what i did to stop it was i used the blacklist to prevent traders from completing the loop (blocking the connection of the circle)

[@KaijuAKD]

Did one that only bought from my stations at max price. Most of the time it was used to connect my own stations that were 10 sectors away, but some times they made a.sell to npcs

[@tsvetomirivanov9762]

I have mega warf/shipyard and it makes billion in no time. And I'm building another one. Just for the record - 10 solar panels struggle to supply the station. All factions are building ships there and when they leave, immediately get in fighting, killing each other and building new ships and so on...

[@elementale]

Hi mate. May i know how to build such a station? May you explain also of you have some particualr settings like traders and so on?

[@tsvetomirivanov9762]

@@elementale Just keep building. Once you manage to build ship building modules, it becomes much easier. I have 2 S/M, 2 L and 1 XL on each station. You also need lots of storage from all kinds. And everything else from refined metals to weapon and missile in 10-20 modules to be able to keep up with the demand. Many miners - lots of them. Traders are not that necessary. Some 10-20 for construction storage, but if you don't care how much you will spend, the other factions will supply enough. The other major thing is that you need to have some conflict between other factions as they will need constant ship resupply.

[@conradolacerda]

You mention some "bad" decisions the manager AI makes while running the station, e.g. overbuying stuff. On this, I've found that by setting buy/sell amounts manually, I can somewhat override the manager and make the station do what I want. For instance, I guess we've all had to deal with a station's subordinate trade ships not buying materials for drones when the account is lower than the operating budget, but also will not sell anything to make that money. They get frozen "searching for trades". I've found that a neat solution for this problem is to manually set the sell amounts of goods to, say, 1, which will force the trade ships to sell the goods in question, and when the station has enough funds revert back to auto sell amount. In fact, I run my stations on manual buy/sell amounts almost all the time, only using auto for these specific tasks. Have you tried anything like this?

[@CaptainCollins]

Yep, but AI still does what it wants. I'm also not using trade stations at all anymore since the profit is mediocre

[@vorname1485]

8:55 you'v hit the nail. Its actually in the whole game, that you have no meaningful statistics, just the useless general ones (how many km traveled, how many cr traded...). Its a shame for a game that has/wants to have a strong economy feature. I don't quite get how egosoft thinks at times. They neither had it in X3, so its not like "they work on it". I had to use a mod that gave me statistic about my traders, miners, etc. They work so long on this genre and they could have fleshed it out on so many levels. They always suck on management & information level and did not learn how to solve certain problems over the years. Its because they constantly keep reworking and adding things which are less meaningful to an sandbox game and leave out things that would make the game shine... I don't get them and I'm there since XbtF...

[@christophmahler]

"They always suck on management & information level (...)" They are graphic engine programmers - therefore their 'games' look like designed by computer engineers with no expertise in _game design_ (e.g. user interfaces, 'game loops'). Fine artwork (3d models, ambient music) and worldbuilding (realistic storytelling, potential for economic and political modelling), though - in my opinion. It runs native on LINUX operating systems with VULKAN support as well...

[@TurKlack]

Here, have some Terraforming. WE DON'T WANT THAT!

[@christophmahler]

@@TurKlack "(...) have some Terraforming. - WE DON'T WANT THAT!" 'Vorn Ame' and 'Collins' are right - doing the macro-economic and station management interface _right_ will be a more substantial _'engineering'_ achievement for EGOSOFT than any other feature in 2021 (like terraforming that was derived from a _graphical_ feature of planet surface effects). *I'm sitting behind a computer in fullscreen mode - I don't want to **_take notes_** on sector economies* . Give me a _sortable statistics screen for sectors_ that will show - with obvious signal icons - which known station buys goods at an above average price and sells below that - without having me constantly flipping switches for the economic overlay of the _sluggish map_ (a transparent overlay to a 3d field of view, limited to display 5 goods - that doesn't act like an actual 'heads up display'). We will buy into the new models and features of future DLC's - but we won't stop pointing out _basic flaws_ until the franchise becopmes the internatopnal _gold standard_ of X-games...

[@uncletrashero]

to me the thing that made X3 so great was the stock market. and as far as i know they have decided to never implement it into x4 the stock market gave such a rich window into the events in the galaxy it was amazing. you would notice changes in the war fronts just from the changes in the economy. you could find the real high profit trade wares, you could see what different factions were failing to produce and fill their gaps, you could even go much farther and manipulate the stocks by first monopolizing a product, and then manually shutting down your factories to create product famine and push prices up, then turn your factories on with increased selling prices, while you sell stock holdings in your own company to buy holdings in companies that took big losses, then watch as the economy levels out again and those rival stocks go back up in price, you sell your shares and wax repeat lmao it was amazing. X4 without the stockmarket feels so empty. without that window into the economy as a whole i just constantly feel like a low tier trading company with no idea whats even happening in the galaxy. i feel disconnected from the factions and the current events. all i can really do is watch the map with billions of satelites everywhere and try to guess which forces are winning the battles :( feels bad man

[@dancosmon]

Amazing video! You got yourself a new subscriber!

[@CaptainCollins]

Thank you and welcome on board

[@christophmahler]

Finally an idea what to do with the player's 'headquarter' in 'Grand Exchange I' in order to train managers...

[@CaptainCollins]

Your own manager school, nice

[@christophmahler]

@@CaptainCollins "(...) manager school (...)" *'Boron Institute of Accounting'* ...

[@hiigara1]

There are very few ppl I find make decent videos on this game you have yourself a sub :)

[@joeyeve2643]

Lot of peeps telling me you can make a lot of money this way early game, but problem is what you built requires blueprints you DO NOT have in the early game. I've not even started my research yet and have nothing but the default Blueprints, so best I could do is maybe a cheapo-trading station limited to very tiny amounts. Anyway, seems "early game" means something different to people. Anyway, this is an excellent video. Very informative.

[@CaptainCollins]

My best trading station has just two s-class container storages. You have that early on. Then you need the basic docking station and =boom= you got a trading station

[@joeyeve2643]

@@CaptainCollins So I don't need any blueprints that I don't start with already? So what items do you find best to trade at a station like that? Do you assign trader ships or just put out buy and sell orders? Sorry for 50 questions :( Thank you for the vids. This game is a labor of love and hate and you move the bar. I so much want to love this game, but egosoft seems to have tried hard to make it nearly unplayable for many people who don't mind a struggle as long as it doesn't force them into an institution.

[@CaptainCollins]

@@joeyeve2643 no problem :) try to get high prized wares, like claytronics or hull parts, which are constantly needed. If you're near a shipyard, take shield and weapon components in consideration. You have to try a little 👍

[@harag9]

Thanks for the vid. You said no production modules, is that still the case now, 2 years later? Sounds like it was a bug back then.

[@Koshea69]

I can't get my trade station to make money, they buy stuff, they sell stuff I make a little profit but this thing really hasn't done much for me in the grand scheme of things. I put a 1m6s dock on it just to get it up and running and thought I might need to add a new dock on it but 1m has been plenty for the traffic this thing gets. Maybe I need to thin the margins down and focus on volume moved, maybe I need different wares, maybe I need more storage to make the stock more enticing, not sure but it's barely a trickle compared to a couple traders that are far cheaper. If you could show your process for figuring out what to sell, how much to buy and sell it for that would make for a great episode. No one on KZbin really get's into how they determine wares to get into and priceing.

[@uncletrashero]

to me the thing that made X3 so great was the stock market. and as far as i know they have decided to never implement it into x4 the stock market gave such a rich window into the events in the galaxy it was amazing. you would notice changes in the war fronts just from the changes in the economy. you could find the real high profit trade wares, you could see what different factions were failing to produce and fill their gaps, you could even go much farther and manipulate the stocks by first monopolizing a product, and then manually shutting down your factories to create product famine and push prices up, then turn your factories on with increased selling prices, while you sell stock holdings in your own company to buy holdings in companies that took big losses, then watch as the economy levels out again and those rival stocks go back up in price, you sell your shares and wax repeat lmao it was amazing. X4 without the stockmarket feels so empty. without that window into the economy as a whole i just constantly feel like a low tier trading company with no idea whats even happening in the galaxy. i feel disconnected from the factions and the current events. all i can really do is watch the map with billions of satelites everywhere and try to guess which forces are winning the battles :( feels bad man

[@dawidknaz5855]

I wish there was such a feature in X4 (stock market).

[@uncletrashero]

@@dawidknaz5855 its really a very important feature that makes X3 feel much more alive than x4

[@kevinmalisek9353]

Stock Market was the sole thing that killed X3 for everyone.. people suddenly stopped building stations and went with stock trading for massive profits with next to no effort.. By removing this "feature" from X4 they made the game a massive favor

[@uncletrashero]

@@kevinmalisek9353 thats weird i feel exactly the opposite. x4 feels naked without stocks. theres nothing to look at that can let you gauge how well a civ is doing economically in any way. its desperately unrealistic. even if they added a stock market that you couldnt participate in, just watch, that would improve the feel of x4 1000 fold imho. it is interesting to hear though, definitely expresses the old adage "one mans trash another mans treasure" very well

[@kevinmalisek9353]

@@uncletrashero if you wish to gauge how well the civ is doing just scan their stations and see shortages.. or fly to hatikvah/zhin/holy and see how well they repel xenon.. maybe your hatikvah is gone for good.. maybe your entire argon race is completely wiped out.. the tools are there you're just blaming the game for you not being able to recognize them.. X4's economy is actually significantly more lively and dynamic than any unmodded X3.. I believe you thinking it feels naked without the stock market is simply because you depended on it so much.. which would prove my point.. it doesn't make sense to be able to produce insane amounts of credits out of thin air.. the X universe is much better without it

[@Hokum80]

So docks and storage? Do you put any admin/hab facilities on them?

[@sulljoh1]

I'll give it a try! Time to entice some avarice 🤑

[@alexmannen1991]

i wish it said the avarage bu and sell price in 3 range sectors so u knew where to avarage it for undercutting others

[@sophiajayprice5107]

Thank you great tips

[@TormodSteinsholt]

Is that still the case with X4? That production module will bug out the trading aspect of the station?

[@tehf00n]

"I called it little Amsterdam because it's a port. Also I'm selling spaceweed around the back if you want a shmoke and a pancake". ;)

[@TheEarthDiver]

Will Station trading also increase reputation with the trader's faction? Usually by the time when i get to station building, i will have so many autominers and traders that i have no clue wether my stations contribute to reputation.

[@edwardecl]

What would the manager be providing for an energy cell production module to bug out 🤔.

[@Bigyin1963]

Hi Captain Colins, If you were setting up your first station and it being a trading station. What would the best wares be to start with? many thanks

[@CaptainCollins]

Something that is in high demand like Hull Parts or Shield Components. Cheers!

[@MrKilitar]

I can't get the factory set up to sell surplus Energy Cells, which are an intermediate product. Even my trader working for build storage is not loading them.

[@storytsunami]

At around 3:19: I'm sorry for the dumb question, but when you mention "Necessary for the sector that you're in or Necessary for the stations that you're around" do you mean the wares you select would be the ones that the other stations are trying to BUY or the wares they're trying to SELL? I've been trying this out in my game and I've met with limited success, but I still don't think I quite understand. And I'm guessing the prices you set would have to be based on supply and demand of course.

[@CaptainCollins]

Yes, necessary in the meaning of "being traded around you". It doesn't make sense to trade Teladianium in Argon Prime for example.

[@storytsunami]

@@CaptainCollins I understand that, but what I mean is goods used by that particular station. For example, say I have a trade post next to a station that produces smart chips. Smart chips require Silicon Wafers. Would I set my trading post to trade the Smart Chips? Or the Silicon Wafers?

[@EO-McLoud]

@@storytsunami Find out where in the chain you want to focus.

[@umahorseman]

Idk if it mentioned. But do I need to assign a trade ship to the station? I'm still new to the game and I only invested 2 mil atm to my trading station, and Noone seems to buy things from it, so I assigned one of my M trader and now, the only profit from it is only from my trade ship that goes here and there selling graphene and only graphene :/ As of writing this comment. The station has only been operating for 3 hours

[@RayHorn5128088056]

You mentioned a self-sufficient wharf build config file I was trying to find at your Discord site but was unable to do so. Please share.

[@Baarmb]

Hey Cap can you provide the Link for the Shipyard I can`t find it Thanks

[@infinitesentient3545]

If I remember correctly, didn't it take them a really long time beyond X3AP to get everything working right(better)? I guess it'll take them that long to make it the jewel that turned into.....eventually, lol.. We know they can do it....how long? Who knows, lol!

[@uncletrashero]

to me the thing that made X3 so great was the stock market. and as far as i know they have decided to never implement it into x4 the stock market gave such a rich window into the events in the galaxy it was amazing. you would notice changes in the war fronts just from the changes in the economy. you could find the real high profit trade wares, you could see what different factions were failing to produce and fill their gaps, you could even go much farther and manipulate the stocks by first monopolizing a product, and then manually shutting down your factories to create product famine and push prices up, then turn your factories on with increased selling prices, while you sell stock holdings in your own company to buy holdings in companies that took big losses, then watch as the economy levels out again and those rival stocks go back up in price, you sell your shares and wax repeat lmao it was amazing. X4 without the stockmarket feels so empty. without that window into the economy as a whole i just constantly feel like a low tier trading company with no idea whats even happening in the galaxy. i feel disconnected from the factions and the current events. all i can really do is watch the map with billions of satelites everywhere and try to guess which forces are winning the battles :( feels bad man

[@PaperDogTube]

How can I get the correct Iconfor my trading station? Looks like an ordinary factory icon right now.

[@storytsunami]

Another question as well. When do these stations actually produce profit for you? I understand you give credits to this trade station, but if I'm understanding it correctly, any profit you get will go into that stations account instead of your personal account.

[@CaptainCollins]

That's right, but you can always take out money from the station account. So it is profit, but not directly into your player account.

[@conradolacerda]

When you transfer some money to the station account and it starts generating revenue, the station will keep some multiple of the initial amount and then automatically transfer any excess credits to your account. For a trading station such as this, with no operating budget, I think it will keep 2x the initial money. For instance, in a production station which has an operating budget, I set the initial funds at $1 (plus some materials to get things going); the station will then fill its coffers until it reaches the expected budget and after that it will automatically transfer any surplus income to my account. Try it out!

[@storytsunami]

@@conradolacerda I think I do remember seeing that happen to me once or twice. Thank you.

[@Dnicerocks]

What is the name of the music track playing in the background?

[@glenblanton250]

Where do I find bases already configured?

[@lagrangewei]

I wonder if you can build a gas and ore trading station.

[@icenote1591]

Hey cpt collins is that blueprint for a self sufficient warf still available?

[@CaptainCollins]

Yeah, somewhere on Discord in "x4-construction-plans-only"

[@WaricAnderson]

Hello, That is awesome ! A new type of station that I have to build ! Thks captain _Waric

[@CaptainCollins]

[@danielelkin995]

This is a great idea.

[@CaptainCollins]

No, YOU are a great idea! 🤪

[@sensen9900]

Found your Channel right now xD Since you seem really knowledgeable about the Game, could ou make a Full Guid on Hacking and Hacking Devicces? I for my part find them useless most of the Time and i cant find a good Guide with Advices and Values and such.... How do you make money? how long does it take? what happens while u use the several Hacking Items, where exactly can u sell them and under which conditions, what Equipment u need beside the Hacking Device(for example which Ships with wich Cargo laod) and so on.....To me the "Rep Los" you get isnt worth anything and the money you could make isnt that super high that it would be good aswell but i might doing things wrong but i never find a good Explanation with examples to comparison.

[@CaptainCollins]

I have a video about blueprint hacking, it's the "save 1 billion credits" video. For storage hacking: no idea, would be the same procedure :) Take a look and report back in Spaceman

[@sensen9900]

@@CaptainCollins Did checked it out, but here you use the EMP not the Hacking Devices like "Data Slicer" and such(i believe its name in english is ^^). You can Hack Stations to Stop Production, let them throw out there Cargo, give you Reduced Prices and such things.... but i have absolutly no Idea how to capitalize on them and if there even is any kind of effectiv way, also i dont know how to and where to sell these Hacking Items.... So unfortunatly your Video didnt answer my questions. But it was rather Interesting none or less.

[@Ronin.97]

That all in one wharf is pretty bad. Only 30 production modules to support a wharf will lead to massive production chain issues and you'll still have to import the majority of your goods so whats the point? Large stations like that are generally really laggy too. ideally you should want like 10-20 production of each ship components (hull parts, engine parts etc) and to support those youll need even more of the intermediate and refined goods for a wharf. Doing this in individual stations is the only way a swell because of the amount of space needed. Currently ive done it with about 22 stations and im producing more than any other faction. If you want to do station building just use the X4 station calculator.

[@olegpetrov1308]

How to start thinking like a Teladi in 14 minutes

[@simonbrett40]

Hi cap Colin’s what happens if there are no more asteroids left to mine in the x universe. Have you broke the game or what?

[@CaptainCollins]

They will replenish, but it can take some time. Maybe a mod can help there to speed the process up. I believe you're not the only one having this issue ;)

[@MaxPSVR]

How come energy cells isn't in select trade wares. I can see them in your vid but not in my game. Which is a problem as I'm running out of space

[@CaptainCollins]

Maybe you have a solar power plant on your station? If the ware is not the trade wares it means, it's somewhere else in your logical overview.

[@MaxPSVR]

Captain Collins yea that's right. I'm slowly learning this and a lot of it is confusing. Last time I played an X game was when X:beyond the frontier came out. Loved everything about it but could never play any of the newer games because my computer wasn't up to it. Now it can I've been trying to get back into one of my oldest and fave game.

[@CaptainCollins]

@@MaxPSVR No better time to do so :) If you like to have a HUGE knowledge base of awesome people, jump into discord :) You get feedback there really fast

[@peterburgess7314]

I spent an age reconfigering a trading station, every time it lost money. eventualy it became an empty shell, lost money, no products listed, it self dormented. Trading stations are not worth the expence of building them !

[@kwkcardinal]

This was my experience as well. I can see how it should work, but the micromanagement is crazy, and just not worth the effort.

[@GrimmSpector]

Wish there was better price guidelines available, as I'm having trouble making money on this.

[@HalkerVeil]

Isn't there an easier way to do this now? I could be wrong but I thought there was a fix to this that made it simple but I can't recall what it was.

[@longjohnstpj]

I've been having problems with trading, I have mining ships going. They are mining silicon but despite exploring around the highway, I haven't found even 1 place that buys silicon. Waste of money, big sad.

[@Sardit]

actually the sale quantities and prices are all listed under your wallet, and the graph gives you a timestamp to use to find that data. It is there, but could be accessible easier, On the other hand that is what allows players to shine in the economy aspect v players that are more interested in say piracy. I know how to get the data and tweak my station better then someone that didn't take as much of an in-depth approach. Just as you know better how many elite marines it takes to take out a ship to board and all I know is that i need a Syn with as much marines to cram in there as I can.

[@CaptainCollins]

The graph details were an upgrade that happened after this video. Now it's easier to see how to make it operate better :)

[@X4dus]

The same walkthrough still valid nowadays? I'm playing Kingdom End ;)

[@TurKlack]

First I have to get enough income..I really struggle with the damn leveling. I can't just put a captain into the cockpit believing he's going to level up at a belieavable pace, after all entering another Sector on their own shouldn't require a visit to a high level academy.

[@CaptainCollins]

Try to not rely on higher pilots as level 2. If you accepted that fact (or installed a mod, that changes this) you will have a better experience ;)

[@TurKlack]

@@CaptainCollins At the moment I try my best to train my Pilots in combat, which, apparently, is the most effective way to level them. Actually. I truly wish for an academy, or hell, Register your Company and high level Workforce comes to you. But I guess Egosoft is to busy adding yet another Terraforming level DLC next time around... *sigh* Truly X4 could easily compete with the likes of Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous. But to do that, Egosoft has to finally look the other way. and fix and improve on what is already in the game.

[@spiritwolf9194]

@@TurKlack X4 could surpass both .. but would need a bigger budget and more developers as well. :)

[@captainLoknar]

About trade statistics. I made a complicated project in C# based on this one: forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=411091 and in the log I can analyse what's happening. A report on trading station quantities and performance is possible but I need help to understand what is required. Building the project is complicated and only advanced devs can contribute to the core app, basic devs will be able to create reports.

[@gawni1612]

Does this still work?

[@Nothxalias]

The music is not loud enough, i still can barely make out some voice in there.

[@captainLoknar]

I want to be rich but I spend all my time and 100M trying to protect Argon and Teladi from Xenon. Xenon always manages to magically destroy my defense station when I am busy elsewhere.

[@trlavalley9909]

Yeah I've only started recently with this game, no where near 100M, but our NPC "Allies" are so freaking helpless. That seriously needs to be addressed.

[@captainLoknar]

@@trlavalley9909 turns out after a fresh start in which I knew where the Xenon come from, and getting better at building stations - I manage to build crazy defenses which work well especially when player is off map. The Xenon AI, I am not sure if it's from it's awesome programming or luck - seems to detect your defense bases that would pose a problem to their raids - rather quickly but not so quick as to be unbeatable - and once they realize it's a strong base, they throw A LOT of capital ships trying to destroy it! It's like it knows it's in trouble if it lets you do that. But it's not throwing ALL it's assets or it would be unbeatable (especially since they can teleport if they're in the fog of war). You will have to rush to defend your base once in a while to disable a K that is expertly sniping your base construction. Once you overcome their 1x I's with 3 Ks invasion force 2 or 3 times.. you won. A lot of crazy battles to come to fight them on their turf but they are contained. Only thing that can happen to "ruin" the game would be crazy faction unbalance but hey - what a nice problem to have. What a crazy and unique game! Which I had time to play more

[@trlavalley9909]

@@captainLoknar Look up the FOCW mod, it allows you put the economy of individual factions on a war footing, and I believe also pit factions against one an other. I just got it to buff the Argon a little, but you can set it for real chaos.

[@conradolacerda]

This video should be called "how to speculate in X4 and get filthy rich!". :-P

[@CaptainCollins]

New in 5.00: crypto mining stations 😂😂

[@conradolacerda]

@@CaptainCollins Notice how the game doesn't tell what "credits" actually are. We can tell it's not fiat since there's no central bank and it's used among various political factions. Could very well be a form of crypto currency!!

[@CaptainCollins]

@@conradolacerda in the end it's like every currency: artificial 🤷‍♂️

[@conradolacerda]

@@CaptainCollins Is that a bad thing in your opinion?

[@CaptainCollins]

@@conradolacerda can't answer that with a simple text.

[@Falk4711]

Waiting for terraforming 😲

[@CaptainCollins]

Waiting for economy statistics :D

[@liammorris1018]

Why? the dev's themselves have no idea why they're adding terraforming other than the fact they can change shaders to make planets look different LOL

[@Falk4711]

@@CaptainCollins 👍😅

[@Falk4711]

@@liammorris1018 they add terraforming, because they can. Its just a game, but a very beautiful one from 20 programmers. They did more than anyone exspected.

[@liammorris1018]

@@Falk4711 My point exactly, just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should. They made a GREAT foundation and i was full of hope but now they seem to be just doing things because they can without thinking about why. I for one would much rather them polish the core features of the game that are broken and have been broken since launch rather than just doing things for no reason.

[@frozenfire3628]

nobody seems to be buying my wares, one ship now and then

[@Drefar]

I Made a station with Everything but no shipyard.

[@CaptainCollins]

Good welcome on board!

[@Micropoint.]

*X4 an amazing spae game with an amazing trashass and in unintuitive UI.*

[@petrmatousek7422]

you speak senssssssss you make profitsssssssssss

[@ArthurOseven]

Still works in 2024

[@Figgy_23]

Yea, I'm just not sure it's worth the investment.

[@Gakusangi]

I think maybe you very much over-simplified this. You can't just drop a station with a dock, a pier and some storage, then set your buy and sell prices. Even if you look at what stations NEED in that sector, you're not guaranteed to get a profit out of it if no-one comes by your station, not to mention the immense budget required to even run a station like that. Sure with over 100mil credits, it's probably nothing to drove like nearly 30mil on a station to get it started, but when that's all you've got you're not gonna get much of a return on that very fast.

[@FlorestanTrement]

"down below" ? "down", like, in case people would have thought you meant "up below"? Why?

[@christianriddler5063]

The music ruins everything.

[@paulvermette4291]

musics too loud m8 its hard to listen to u

[@CaptainCollins]

Old video, unexperienced captain ;)

[@poguri27]

I don't know if you're still making videos but please stop putting music in the background of informational videos. There's a good reason that most creators don't do that for this kind of video.