X4 Foundations: Building Your First Station Guide

[@ZlothZloth]

Good video! Some notes: The pre-sets didn't get covered. Those are a quick way to set up turrets on a station part (defense modules, production modules, and storage modules get them). If you request a high setting, the part will be bristling with expensive turrets and shields. If you notice some turrets not get populated, that's because the game believes that turret won't be able to shoot very well because it's close to some other station part(s). Doing a dock (not a pier!) first is a very good idea because that's where all the "station stuff" goes. The manager's office, the security terminals, the bar, even the science room in the HQ are all located in that first dock. Once the dock is built, you can assign a manager to the station. Then you can hand a lot of money to the manager and the manager can buy the parts to finish building the station! If you plan on supplying all the parts yourself and you don't care about what the station builds while it is building, then do the dock whenever you like. If you don't care much how your station looks, you can use the randomizer to design the station quickly. Just put the production modules, docks, storage, and defenses anywhere - even floating in space. Don't bother with the little connector parts. Then click the dice button at the top. After a brief pause, the game will put them all together as a station. It will even add those fiddly connection parts as needed. (Don't expect it to stick to one race's connectors, though.) I think Terran energy panels are changing their costs in 4.1, too. Oh, and that (very excellent) station building web page has an especially handy feature called autofill. Try this: for the first module, add two claytronics modules. Now click the autofill. Poof! All the production modules needed to support your two claytronics modules are added in! It assumes 0 work force but it's hugely handy.

[@sokar_rostau]

Are you using a mod? It's been a year since I last played and I vaguely remember a dice button but I simply cannot find it. No dice.

[@trlavalley9909]

@@sokar_rostau Had a devil of a time finding it myself. So for anyone reading this that can't find it either. Click on the Gear in the upper right; one of the options that will open up is a "Shuffle Button" (v5.0) and that will randomize your build. It's quite useful I think.

[@moisesmartinrijo4024]

​@@trlavalley9909I love you comrade. Just 3 weeks playing and reading lots of comments on KZbin and Reddit about that buttons but no one say where they be. Very thanks O7

[@trlavalley9909]

@@moisesmartinrijo4024 Glad it helped.

[@kazwright1233]

Ok, I have watched this once. I expect I will revisit this an embarrassingly amount of times in the future. Thank you very much for sharing your time and knowledge.

[@shadk2559]

its 3 years old, but it helps me in setting up my stuff... thank you very much mate

[@josephmcgee9118]

I have hundreds of hours in this game and had no idea you could right click a sector to buy in / sell in... mind blown.

[@marshall453]

400 hours in and I to just found this out

[@ivantorrent495]

Same here!! Man, i spend so much time giving new orders to my traders... Damn!

[@flipdart]

oh god, I'm over a thousand... why, why do they not tell us these things? this game has so many little rules in it I just don't know.

[@WiseOwl_1408]

​@@flipdart options we call them.

[@gbreuil1]

800hours and didn't know...well im fighting a bit too much i guess

[@teddp]

Wow just wow man you talk very nicely and rather slowly and yet you packed so much information per second that I had to re-watch the video in total and in parts at least 20 times and I'ml sure I still didn't get everything. Great video great information, perfect, thank you.

[@loopuleasa]

that trade explanation at min 11:00 onwards is phenomenal

[@RevengA4]

Even me as a veteran since X2 you can teach a lot of stuff in your videos in a very understandable way. Thank you very much for providing us all those information. Best guides for X4 on YT!

[@firecopscott]

I know I'm necroing this, but I wanted to pop in and let you know that I not only enjoy your content, but I truly appreciate your deliberate delivery. Well done!

[@StraightcheD]

Thanks, you're good at this. Articulate and on point, easy to listen to.

[@bilibistrox]

My head hurts, my eyes cry, my brain has lag😢. I need full academy courses to just understand the very basics. These also proves me that i am not the inteligent veteran gamer i considered myselfe to be, before i installed X4. Ty for the tutorial !

[@joshuarcherry]

I'm a couple years late to the party but I just got X4 and this is still useful and relevant. Thanks!

[@IAmFirstborne]

I have been playing this game for quite a while now... yet I no matter how much time has passed, I am still learning new things. I learned quite a bit from this video alone, but the comments below also taught me a few things. This game is deep.

[@howarc13]

I have well into the 1k hours in this game (which would be like ~500 hours actually playing) but I'm still here watching this video because your cadence and voice is so relaxing XD

[@SayLess_Gaming]

As a recent returning player, I've always struggled abit with micro management of own trade stations and this was extremely useful 👍 thanks!

[@TwstedTV]

OMG Sooo useful.... Best video ever. Very well spoken, Articulate and to the point, easy to listen to as well. Been looking for this for a while now. thanks :)

[@JulianAdolph]

best guide for beginners on stations I have found so far. Really good video. Thank you!

[@reljamrkic2663]

Actually there are two workarounds for 2 types of mineral and/or gas refineries. You basically explained them at the end of your video. First one is "repeat orders" option which you will need to set up for every individual miner and not assign them to the station rather to force them to sell to that station. With repeat orders you can even have miners mine in one sector and sell in a different sector constantly regardless of the captain's piloting rank or you can have a convoy constantly delivering medical supplies from a station in one sector to a station in a different sector. "Repeat orders" is also an efficient way to force your miners to mine in The Void, just make sure to have them dock before you need to go into that sector since hazard areas do not damage your ships only OOS. I still use this method to supply my "The Void" Computronic Subtrate factory with raw materials. The second option is to build a Trade Hub and have all miners sell to a trade hub then traders assigned to that trade hub will distribute the wares to your stations which need the resources, just need to limit the trade to yourself only and adjust buy/sell prices. Second option will allow yourself to make refineries and production stations with no need to assign miners to those stations, just traders. Trade Hub is just a couple of docks, 2 piers and tons of storage containers. If you have a 5 star manager, assigned traders to your Trade Hub will supply all your stations with production resources no matter where those stations are.

[@OOZ662]

One point on the "never have more than one kind of refinery" rule; I solved the issue by building "ore depots." Two of them, built right next to the megafactory, they only have solid/liquid storage (and a single small container for drone parts) and trade only one mineral and one gas each and sell only to my faction. The bulk of the miners are assigned to these depots so they only focus on one item to gather, then there are miners (without lasers equipped and max cargo drones) set to either trade for the depot, repeat orders to run between the depot and the factory, or setup as a Mule via the mod, depending on your preference. Though after setting up this scheme I discovered that it seems like gas miners are a bit less braindead so they work _okay_ assigned to the factory, but the mineral miners do _much_ better with this depot setup. For Commonwealth stations you can bump these depots to Refined Metals and Silicon Wafer factories to make things more efficient (since you can then move the results via bulk cargo trader instead of miner) but the Terrans are stuck with raw materials. Now if only there were an easy way to automate "sell only to my station until the storage exceeds X amount then trade to anybody..."

[@showjaymayhem]

I haven't noticed this problem until I build Wharf... :( So I did this too. Now it's version 6.0 and problem still exist.

[@johnterpack3940]

The intricacy of this game blows my mind. This is what I thought I was getting when I bought Elite:Dangerous. So much to learn. Tried doing the tutorials the other day and had a glitch. Stooopid ship got stuck in undock mode, wouldn't let me control the speed. Didn't figure out the problem til after I left the game. Need to get my joystick set up so I can get started. Hard to do that when your ship is flying itself backwards.

[@JKNinja]

Elite Dangerous I will admit does have better flight controls with a stick/throttle, and is amazing in VR. But I left that game shortly before Odyssey was released. Haven't got the desire to go back

[@bogdanstanciulescu3475]

from the bottom of my heart, thank you, for the orientation tips on the station building, i had almost given up on stations because how weird the controls are

[@rpscorp9457]

Its the worst part of the game for complex stations...the UI is just..so so bad.

[@XxKidnoffxX]

The logical overview of stations give you what it need yes. But you can also right click in a sector and open the encyclopedia, there is a graphic with everything that sector is producing/selling

[@showjaymayhem]

cool

[@grahamhill676]

Cheers pal. Im starting to make good money with a couple mining fleets so when I've got a lot saved I was thinking of starting an empire. No doubt will come back to this in a few days!

[@borisbojic]

Perfect! And finally some example production factories! 🙌👌

[@smoerble3970]

Late joined the game. Figured out half of the stuff myself, but your video showed a lot things i missed. Many thanks, great job!

[@harryhoudini1134]

Thank you for you job man, you are really saving much of our time that we would normally spend on thinking how things works. Love ya! ❤

[@martinwakelin5654]

This. Is. Amazing. All the help ive ever been looking for. Thank you!

[@Meta_Mage]

Good information. I would also advise to make a test between low star and 5 star captains for mining ships. It makes the biggest difference in my experience, even for L ships.

[@KedrynPrime]

10 seconds in and you've already murdered me with the turtle.

[@hyperkaioken4982]

thank you for taking the time to do this

[@sincaid4]

Wow... What a very concise and informative video. Thanks so much for this.

[@tomwithuhn9472]

Thanks!

[@GameDeveloperTraining]

I liked the bit where you talked about a self sustaining Hull parts station and how great it is and didn't actually show what parts it needs :)

[@ComradeMarcus]

I must say thank you for your amazing videos!

[@Toxicman3329]

This is a very helpful video. Thank you.

[@JKNinja]

Glad it was helpful!

[@warmachine5835]

I've been binging videos and that station calculator is mental and exactly what I've been searching for. Holy smokes. Also the notion about doing repeat trades to whole sectors is mindblowing.

[@ericanker9049]

o7 Cmdr. Love your stuff! A bit advanced for me now, but its easy to see the possibilities this game offers. I would love iti f you made some videos for absolute beginners. I know that there are some out there, but with the quality I see you provide in your videos I would prefer yours if you did some. I sort of give up when the Kak attack me when I want to build a station in the beginning. If I could get past that.... any suggestions? Please let me know. And keep it up! O7, greetings from Norway

[@JKNinja]

I would be happy to do an absolute beginners guide! I added an email contact to my channel page, if you could send me a detailed list on what you would like me to cover I'll see what I can do!! As for the Kha'ak, at the beginning your stations should be able to survive long enough for the police to arrive until you can get some turrets built. Give your miners combat drives and have their behavior set to "flee when attacked". You are trying to buy enough time for the sector police to show up but unfortunately medium miners are very vulnerable and you will still lose some. Once you have the credits replace any losses with large miners as the Kha'ak will be unable to break those shields. Hope that helps get you started! I have a Kha'ak script in the works, I'll try to get it out as soon as I can 👍

[@nip3004]

The cost of the input martial is just as important as the end product. If it takes you 100 credits of imput to make 105 credits of output you may be better off just increasing your mining fleet and selling the raw ore than building a station to refine to a better item.

[@lishiping84]

Check the shipyard and wharf for market information. This is a great idea. Never thought that before.

[@bjornhellgate3985]

I have found that trade for works decently enough that you dont have to set up repeat orders, though you can also use the station mule mod if you really want to do the repeat orders trick

[@redwing731]

I don't have the exact formula for the "automatic credit transfer to wallet"... but what I figured out so far, it depends on the amount of credits what you put in the station account. You put in 0 Credits to the station account - no automatic transfer to the wallet at all You put in 2M Credits to the station account - round about 2M automatic transfer to the wallet, when the station account reaches 3 times of your invest (in this case 6M) You put in 50M Credits to the station account - it would be round about 50M when the station account reaches round about 150M, and so on. There must be a time-factor to calculate the automation, because of the non-accurate credits that are transfered to the wallet or left at the station account... but it works as a "rule of thumb"

[@DrHappybone]

Thanks for the video, dude! I really appreciate you :)

[@303zStudio]

as a beginner this is hard, i love it

[@any1alive]

im still new to x4F and had issues witthe starter quest (i didnt have money to finish the asteroid station dock..... and there wasnt a builder ship inthe sector so it didnt work) buuut this does give em a good guide to go on andi want to build one of them jump gate station things XD destroy all who oppose, as tbh, if the jumpgfates were real every civilisation would have one of them, and build space stations around them

[@michaelparker6907]

This is THE video!

[@Streifer]

one question... where's the station builder? do i need the ship? or its a menu? claiming plot is also too short...... max size??? nvm, im gonna look for other guides

[@nip3004]

For substrates another way around it is to use repeat orders rather than assigning miners to the stations manager.

[@silverlightsun]

(for Terran player) I found out that S Couriers, "Frog" are very good! They move fast, and they carry much more than any other S class Transporter (4000 units). The M class Transporter is much slower and only transports 12,000 units.

[@JKNinja]

Terrans definitely when the route of slow speed but lots of cargo capacity.

[@SolantisA]

Can I have a video link to that deathtrap at 4:12 ?

[@getfridayai]

so, I was turning the station I get from Boso Ta into an All-in station: trading, producing resources, storage. Now after watching this video this seems like not a wise idea, what should I do with that station?

[@N8teyrve]

How do you build the first storyline station? I’m up to the part where you have to restore drones but my trader just sits there and the station just keeps demanding money no matter how much I put in and it just sits there. So now I can’t make enough money to finish the first storyline station. This game is so frustrating

[@Draidis]

I can import plans but I can't use them. Whenever I try to load a plan I always get the "construction plan is missing hq research module" message. What is this? How do I fix it?

[@cyberman2294]

The stations transfer their credits if it exceeds the formula [money you set*2*1,5], example you set the money to 100.000 it will pay out to you if it reaches 300.000 and will keep 200.000. Edit: This only Works if you set it directly in the station overview NOT in the account managment, useing the account managment voids the transferlimit and you need to set it again

[@frno0601]

I really like these videos

[@makroshlyta]

I notice new stations have a better chance to sell Argnu Beef and Mixed Fruits, also. Just dock and check the Trader once!

[@JKNinja]

I don't normally make Fine Meals, but I'll be sure to take a look!

[@AuxxiliaryATC]

video was amazing, doing an update for 6.0? 😁

[@zenbereznicki4180]

Great vid, thanks

[@Tpachal]

I miss your X4 content. Hope you are doing well.

[@JKNinja]

Sorry but I had to get a second job to make ends meet, much like a lot of people during these hard times. If I am ever able to get my finances in better shape I would love to come back but unfortunately making these videos takes up too much time

[@Tpachal]

@@JKNinja Hey, no need to be sorry. I hope at the very least you are enjoying x4 still. Kingdom End has got me all sorts of excited.

[@mikem-gb3pj]

I got 2 out of 3 materials delivered to me but i canott get the silicone carbide delievered i waited hours still nothing

[@timelessninja]

I wanna get this game, but damn does it seem like the learning curve is massive.

[@jasonscarborough94]

0:27 you wouldn't happen to have a guide for that would you?

[@psvialli]

Just starting to build a small station , how can I get it to gather the materials I need to build it ? , or do I have to do that all manually ?

[@JKNinja]

You can assign a ship to the station under build storage and it will gather any materials within range that the station needs. Make sure to allocate funds to the station manager so credits are available for those purchases

[@hyperkaioken4982]

hey if possible (im new) and i have this quest chain that i'm stuck on. The boron in the fish tank tells me a worker is concerned about something and that it calls for a meeting then my quest log just says "Talk to" I did some looking into it and some people suggested having a habitat first (which i have) and still nothing. so i'm lost

[@JKNinja]

Go to your logs and tell me the name of the mission you are stuck on

[@hyperkaioken4982]

Thank you! sure thing, It's called "Worker welfare" basically i click on the research for the gambling den and bosa ta says something about a meeting but nothing else happens then my log just says "talk to"

[@JKNinja]

@@hyperkaioken4982 That mission was broken for awhile. Egosoft made a hotfix on 3/22 to fix it but its still kind of buggy. A lot of people are having the same problem, you can read more on it here: forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=446279. Have you tried to do the mission again recently? If its still broken you may have to submit a bug report

[@hyperkaioken4982]

@@JKNinja ah damn that sucks! I was hoping that I was just being a noob and was doing something wrong. But yes i replicating the steps i saw on utube videos but sadly nothing triggered it not sure what i should do or if i can just ignore it? but what will i miss

[@JKNinja]

@@hyperkaioken4982 the gambling den only increases workforce growth, so not having it won't break your game. Egosoft has released 3 hotfixes since the expansion release so hopefully it will be fixed for everyone soon

[@sim.frischh9781]

Do you know whether the supplying one material but not the other is still an issue or has EgoSoft taken care as of now?

[@JKNinja]

Egosoft fixed it, patch 4.20 I think. It's not perfect in the beginning but once the storage starts to fill your miners/transporters will switch to supply what materials are low

[@sim.frischh9781]

@@JKNinja Thanks!

[@AliYonca]

greate video. Thanks.

[@jeremymorton6819]

Hey brother, can you make a video on Construction Ships? I'm pretty sure they are the same between races, but something strange happened when I requested rental ships to build my Energy Cell Factories. I didn't catch any factional/racial differences specifically, but I wonder a few things based on the varying time to build once the resources were acquired. Does faction/race play a difference in construction time? Does one faction default to different numbers of service crew or construction drones or does it randomly vary? Do the different factions build their own factional modules faster than if they build a different factions modules? How beneficial would it be to have your own construction vessel/fleet instead of renting? Keep it up! I love you videos! Cheers!

[@JKNinja]

take at look at kzbin.info/www/bejne/d2S8mniahZqeacU. Around 3:30 I discuss construction ships/build times

[@pedrozorus_rex8745]

Hey, on my game i've explored around 900km of the 18 Billions map, i have only 155000 methane ... not 4.3 millions like you, everyone say go there and do drop a probe, but i've covered the whole map in probe and there is not much methane... do you know why? same thing about Trinity sanctum 7 , there suposed to have some methane in there, but i have only 15000, and i'm arround 1000km of map

[@JKNinja]

it is showing the current levels of methane, you and the other factions may be overmining the sector. Check out kzbin.info/www/bejne/iIfZe5R8qNmelaM. The Void has the most methane outside of Xenon sectors

[@trlavalley9909]

06:14 Ball Park How much would that trading station cost?

[@JKNinja]

a small single production facility like that normally runs 5-7 million

[@trlavalley9909]

@@JKNinja Cool TYVM for taking the time.

[@trlavalley9909]

When I try to plan a station it only allows me to use modules I have blueprints for, which I think is utter nonsense, has this changed since you made this video; or am I just accessing the builder the wrong way.

[@JKNinja]

Go to New Game -> Station Builder at the bottom. There you have access to all blueprints and can save the construction plan to use in your current playthrough

[@trlavalley9909]

@@JKNinja TY all this has been hugely helpful.

[@playerone2424]

So where do I access the station builder?

[@Paltse]

Main menu outside of any particular game.

[@Sengyizhe]

As a new player this video is extremely overwhelming. I just have the starting station and I really haven't felt a need to touch the station . Also those blueprints are hella expensive and I dont want to just mine Crystal's for hours

[@rpscorp9457]

the game may not be for you then lol. Trust me when i say that this is as simple as its ever going to get, and you will need massive amounts of credits or time to have a good gameplay experience. Wait till you see a complex station system, ha! Crystals are the fastest way to build creds at the start of the game until you can get a station that makes a little $ up and running...then you can invest in traders for enough passive income to get to the next level

[@jimloontiens9275]

nice video, but i'm looking for a pricetag, do i need 2 mil. 3 mil , 15 mil ?

[@JKNinja]

Your first station is the most expensive as you'll need to buy the blueprints. The smallest, most basic station will cost 5-10 million split between blueprints and wares. But you dont need all the credits up front, you pay for the building materials as you have spare credits to allocate

[@jimloontiens9275]

@@JKNinja thank you , i've been looking for a decent guideline in how to build, what to build, where to build (new to this game )

[@Selvalis]

very helpful

[@PainfullySubjective]

so good

[@Ekstrax]

Very useful thx

[@Horkruxx]

Nice!

[@michaelmacdonell4834]

I also need a calculator to hand! I'm good at arithmetic. I'm good at laying out stations. Trying to find all the bits AND add up workers is....uergh

[@Youshisu]

so how big grid I need to buy? :D

[@JKNinja]

you can always resize it at any time, so as small as you can get away with

[@Nzchimeran]

Wow , very complicated. I'm sticking to piracy

[@Josivis]

I setup 1 miner for Mining nvidium for research

[@Fenristripplex]

Is this the best X game?

[@NerdLFG]

This is SO not your first station lol. Gotta unlock/aquire station modules first, but this is still good info.

[@siryoga384]

i have tried to scan some Habitat modules because they are so expensive. But all I got was some trading subscription. Is it a Bug?

[@HonViddaj1]

I've watched a few of your tutorials and sometimes you frustrate me a little because you'll show something and not explain it like at 9:47 you state trading stations sometimes do wonky things like this..show a pop up box and then no explanation what you mean?? I'm completely brand new player so even your comment at 8:10 meant nothing to me (troll joke???)..no explanation but expected the viewer to get understand the 'joke'?? A lot of great information but some real gems are missed because you assume the viewer knows more than they actually do! I might be in the minority being a completely new player but please make tutorials realising people like myself need as much explained as possible. Maybe your tutorials are geared towards players who already have a few hundred hours under their belt??

[@jimmydilweed9806]

Worst Design flaw ever in an X game: Not having some pre-designed factories to use. I'm there to enjoy a space game, not to be a construction engineer. The game forces you to go through a laborious and tedious process using a designer that sucks for any station you want to build. At the very LEASE, you should be able to save your designs somewhere as a sharable resource so you don't have to repeat this horrible process every time you start a new game, or even better save them as individual files so you can share them with others. It also seems brutally expensive and laborious to obtain even the most basic blueprints. It just sucked the life out of me, ruining the entire experience. Maybe they will wake up and smell my pain?

[@JKNinja]

You can design stations the the Station Build Simulator under new game and save those as presets

[@rpscorp9457]

Bro, obtaining blueprints isnt that hard, once you have some basic game knowledge under your belt. Build a basic station like how dude suggests, then while its building and make you some credits, start going out and scanning different stations from all the races. Once you have a good set of stuff to use, you can then fill in any gaps by making traders trade with factions you want high rep with and then buying your missing blueprints directly. Considering how much a well built and positioned station can make you, you should have to work a bit for it.

[@RaifalM3n]

Go back to Xrebirth.

[@WiseOwl_1408]

Your mom is a station

[@res2590]

There is a neat way to go around the mining / manager issue if you have several solid or gas in the station. You build a mining hub with a dock and a solid and a liquid storage (or one type storage if you want). Assigned miner to mine only one Solid and one gas (eg. Ore and Helium). They now focus. To trade the goods you assign a gas and solid miner to the Factory or mining station as a trader to collect the materials from the hub. Got it from here: www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/comments/mood81/path_to_profit_how_to_setup_gathering_processing/?

[@JKNinja]

I was debating on whether to include that method in this video as I wanted to focus on single station setups. I did include the Mercury-Trading station pair, but only because without that it becomes a much bigger hassle to move energy cells around and sunlight mechanics are important to be aware of. In the end I decided to make a separate short video just for solid trade stations to supply Computronic Substrates and will have that released soon!

[@makroshlyta]

Mining hubs are really great on advanced games. The extra cost with miners ships just trading totally worth. I use them as trading posts, to spread hard to find wares and defense stations also.

[@res2590]

@@JKNinja nice :)

[@michaelsmart1577]

@@JKNinja I know its a bit late but wouldn't building solar in the PIO space be better long term than transporting it all the way from Mercury or does the amount you gain up there just outweigh the decreased travel time for energy cells? I ask this as I've noticed Segaris has 187% sunlight

[@JKNinja]

@Michael Smart Building solar panels in Segaris can definitely work. The Mercury to Jupiter setup is popular because of the huge bonus you get from solar panels in Mercury and that Jupiter is centrally located no more than 5 jumps from every sector in the solar system. Its a way to reuse assets to reduce the amount of buildings that you need as eventually almost everyone ends up building a trade station in Jupiter

[@kanavkohli794]

Lool starts by saying station builder, as if we know where that is xD already lost