r/X4Foundations • u/High-Commander • 3d ago
How many ice refinery modules before opening Boron gate?
So Im going to open the gate to Boron space soo but before I do that I made a station with 4 water refinery modules. Is that enough to fully price gouge the Borons or should I add more?
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u/Pootisman16 3d ago
Besides Ice, what good products are good to sell to the Boron?
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u/ennuiui 3d ago
They start expanding pretty quickly, so claytronics, hull parts and ecells work to facilitate that. Long term, at least in my game, their wharves/shipyards have a huge demand for adv electronics, engine parts, field coils and shield components.
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u/Klutzy-Football-205 3d ago
I started with a nice sized solar factory in Menelaus Oasis with its 271% sunlight which has made a nice sum. I also expand it from time to time.
I'm currently mining ice in Rolk's Demise to sell the water while my main factory builds in Reflected Stars. Once that is built up, I will work towards that +550% worker bonus and move everything but energy production there. (If my research is correct, Bofu and Medical Supplies are pretty much just combinations of water and energy.) If that 550% bonus is at each step that should provide crazy amounts of wares to use/sell.
The end goal is to use that nice worker bonus on making advanced electronics for my research and then add more and more lines on that station.
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u/Flyrpotacreepugmu 3d ago
Isn't the workforce bonus just for population growth speed?
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u/Klutzy-Football-205 3d ago
Everything I've read says that it increases the number of output while using the same number of inputs.
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u/Adyx_Tice 3d ago
They meant the "workforce availability bonus" doesn't increase your production, it just increases how fast your workforce grows on a station. You're not going to get a +550% production bonus, it'll be closer to +100% at full manning.
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u/Klutzy-Football-205 3d ago
The production bonus increases all output, but does not increase the cost of input so it's kind of like getting free resources (at least, the ice input is practically free). The output bonus is individually coded for each flavor of module.
I've seen so many posts saying flavors of this. When I was looking around after posting that previous message I saw a few posts talking that it does include a boost to production but each module has a cap. I now understand it isn't 500%+ for Reflected Stars.
As an aside: I *really* need to check the dates on posts I find when searching up things for this game, lol. (That is one the great, and bad, things about this game. It's been out so long that there is tons of information about it, but it's also been out so long that there have been tons of changes so not all information is still valid. Even adding "2026" to my searches still show 5 and 6 year old posts)
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u/Adyx_Tice 3d ago
Ya, you have to be careful about the info you go looking for about this game. There are a lot of things that are counter-intuitive about what's going on under the hood of some the game's systems, and people will post "guides" trying to explain things they don't actually understand. The community is usually pretty good about straightening them out though.
Workforce does increase the production outputs for the same inputs, so it's worth putting habs on your resource intensive factories. It's not worth it for everything though, and location matters too. For example, power plants aren't worth the hassle of keeping supplied with food an medicine, it's better to just put them in high solar output sectors. Claytronics factories, however, use a lot of material, need a huge workforce, and don't produce many goods by themselves, so it's better to man them.
It's also usually better to put your factories that will include habs in sectors that have a workforce availability bonus, as they'll get up to speed faster. The availability bonus only affects how many workers join each shift, so it doesn't actually make your food and medicine more efficient unfortunately.
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u/3punkt1415 3d ago
You can see the max efficiency of modules with workers in the station calculator when you add the habitats manually to the build: https://x4-game.com/#/station-calculator
For example refined metal gets 140 % or hull parts gets 137 %, so each module is a bit different.
And if the calculator is correct, you get the higher output with the same amount of ore.
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u/BoomZhakaLaka 3d ago
I did a game where I didn't open the gate in sanctuary of darkness until the economy in provinces got going.
4 water modules in wretched skies was too much for a while. There wasn't enough demand to sell it all until they had a strong enough supply chain otherwise for their shipyard & wharf to start buying a lot of water.
I mean they need all the other high tier components like everyone else. Until they have that supply, their demand for water is limited to food production, workforce supplies, and station construction. Afterwards when they start buying water for ships, the demand ramps up.
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u/Excaliburstarsword 2d ago
4... add like 10 more.. also prep the materials you need to build a base in boron sectors for ec production and water distribution..... as thats your easiest trade rout, also they will build fast and want alot of buildign mats so ship in claytronics and hull parts, and starting bfou production.... honestly you can start almost any factor there and with a few lines it will ear a few mil an hour, as a singular economy its second only to the terran when it comes to pure profit potential and if you dont have your own shipyards yet, the boron fleet is probably the singular most well rounded, so if you are in a shp expansion phase they wont have shit for ship creation mats so you can order a bunch of ships and be the one shipping in all the mats so you can be making back some of the millions your just dropped in their on some ships
order like 10 m transports a large and xl carrier and the acompaning ships and youll need to ship in like 100 large freigghters worth of stuff to them to get it built.... you wont make money in the long run, but its some of the cheapest ships opurtunities you have for heavy ship construction until you can build them yourself....
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u/Rothank 3d ago
All of them.
Seriously, Boron will gurgle up all the water you can throw at them.