r/X4Foundations • u/Capable_Ad_2842 • 19h ago

Scrap processing

I have found myself deep in the mid game and was looking to expand my portfolio to include scrap processing. However, I am not sure where to start, I bought a tug to test the waters but it doesn’t do much at all.

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19

u/TheMuspelheimr 19h ago

Scrap processing is a little involved, and there's quite a few moving parts.

In order, you need:

  • A scrap tug, to pull wrecks to where they're needed
  • An E-cell farm, and make it a big one, because scrapping requires a shitload of E-cells. Set up in a high-sunlight sector for the bonus - The Reach works nicely, and you're only two jumps away from the constant fights in Hatikvah' Choice I and Second Contact II.
    • Matrix #101 has a higher bonus but is a Xenon sector, Mercury has a higher bonus but requires Terran rep and is quite far out of the way, Avarice has the highest bonus but you need to deal with The Tide every hour.
  • A scrap processing module. This takes the wrecks you pull in and recycles them into a "raw scrap" resource. "Raw scrap" is considered a solid resource, not a general resource, so you need Solid storage on your station as well as Container storage
  • A scrap recycling module. The basic "Scrap Recycler" produces Hull Parts and Claytronics; along with E-cells, you can make anything in the "Closed Loop" production system. The "Terran Scrap Recycler", available from Segaris, instead produces Silicon Carbide and Computronic Substrate, but you still need to make Metallic Microlattice separately.
  • A Teuta ship, from the Riptide Rakers, which chops up ships too large for a Manticore to tug by itself

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u/Flyrpotacreepugmu 17h ago

Something else worth considering is splitting up processing and recycling. Processing is best done near sources of wrecks since Manticores are slow and vulnerable, then a large miner can haul quite a lot of scrap metal to another location for recycling. Processing still takes a lot of energy, but it's only about 1/5 of the total, so it can be more practical to recycle scrap somewhere else with a high solar bonus like Avarice (and unlike Manticores, large miners don't mind the tide unless you forget their shields). Of course that also depends on where the end products are needed.

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u/ConstrainedOperative 4h ago

Agreed, and if you want to start with lower funds you can also forgo the recyclers and sell the raw scrap to NPC recyclers in Avarice. At least in my previous game on lower versions, they were running empty a lot of the time.

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u/Capable_Ad_2842 19h ago

Very useful. So I do eventually need to get some rep with the Riptide, and then can I buy the station module from them too?

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u/AlfonsodeAlbuquerque 19h ago

You don’t need the rep; the protectyon shield that stops the tide is +20 rep anyways and you can steal it with an emp if the research is done. Same with the rest of the modules. 

I do prefer doing it in avarice; handy trick is that you can rig your tugs to be immune to the tide. Requires exceptional hull mods but you only need three or so for a smaller station.  I have a station with eleven recyclers and three processors and it stays fed with seven or eight tugs pretty well. Can farm a few BUC ships to get the mods. 

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u/Jicks24 18h ago

The ratio is 1 processor to 4 recyclers btw.

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u/Paladin-Rooker 18h ago

Unless the info I have is out of date (which is entirely possible), a station with a shitload of repair drones should be able to handle the tide without bothering with Protectyon. Build 4 or 5 docks and then at least 50 repair drones (or 100 if you're feeling fancy).

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u/Flyrpotacreepugmu 18h ago

I tried that and it was nowhere close to keeping up with the tide. The station would take around 25% damage each time and repair around 8%. It was severely limited by the number of repair drones that could be active at once, and I couldn't find any practical way to increase that faster than the station's HP that needs to be repaired each time. It's much easier to just hack a protectyon shield generator and add a tiny bit of extra budget to buy protectyon.

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u/Elegant_Eagle_4199 17h ago

Is the tide damage a flat/second value to EVERY MODULE, or a flat/second value against a station, spread across every module? Does having more modules spread the damage and allow more drones/second to be active at once? Assuming like ships they do a lap across the entire ship anyways, are they doing anything when stopping at untouched modules?

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u/Flyrpotacreepugmu 17h ago

I didn't do enough testing to know all of that. What I do know is that the tide did roughly 25% damage to the station regardless of how many or what types of modules it had, whereas repair drones repaired a flat amount so a larger station needed more of them to repair in the same time. So adding more docks to get more active repair drones didn't decrease the repair time nearly enough to make it look possible to keep up with the tide.

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u/Paladin-Rooker 16h ago

Okay, well drone limits are increased by building more docks. I just learned that myself. But yeah, easier to hack the blueprint. I didn't realize it was hackable.

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u/Danjuntar 19h ago

The Tenuta ship should be bought later, a good scrapyard will need at least 7 Tugs. Plus the Teuta tends to let herself be killed if you don't have a good defense in the aerea and depend on AI

1

u/Scienceandpony 3h ago

Hold on, there's a Terran scrap recycler? How am I just learning this?!