Self Sufficient Wharf, step by step

How to build a mega wharf

If you play x4 and watch videos about it online then you might have heard talk of players building a self sufficient mega station. As a new player you might find yourself inspired and want to try to do this. But there are seemingly so many moving parts in this game and so many details to be aware of that you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to get started. There is where hopefully this guide can help. It will still take a lot of time and you will have to solve problems along the way that you won’t be expecting but you can do it. Also, this guide assume you don’t have DLC installed. If you do, adjust accordingly.

Believe it or not but X4 isn’t as complex as it can lead you to believe. Building a self sufficient station is not only possible in general, it is totally possible for every player. You can do it. There is a lot of room for creativity and it is likely that most players that have already build a self sufficient station did a lot of trial and error being creative along the way. In this guide you will see step by step what needs to be done to pull this off in round about the correct order.

First off, we will break our goal down into steps and stages. Breaking apart a bit project like this into smaller parts will help us stay on track to know what is important for right now and help us to see progress.

Before we start with stage one we need to tackle stage ZERO. What do you need to do before you even begin to think about building a self sufficient wharf?

Security: Are the Xenon taking over? Are the Argon and Antigone going to die or are they supplied well enough to stay alive? Realize that gathering the resources you need to do things like research or building your own stations will set back the other factions. Money is not the real currency in this game. Resources are the real currency. If you have a faction you like and another you don’t, then a way to make the one you like stronger than the one you don’t is to pull resources away from the one you don’t like and offer them to the one you do like.

Example: Buy goods and mine resources in HOP space and then bring them over to the Argon so the Argon can make a bunch of ships to wipe the HOP out.

Anyway, back to our self sufficient wharf. Before starting to build the station get a mining fleet going to supply the other factions with the resources they need to stay strong. For every miner you have helping you build your station have at least one or two mining and selling to the factions so they will keep pirates, Xenon, and space bugs off of your back.

Next, realize just how big and how small this task really is. In order to pull this off you will need to get blueprints for 25 production modules, one dock, one pier, one container storage, one liquid storage, and one solid storage. You may need to build more than one of a thing to make things balance out.

Stage one. The basics

1-1 Docks

We need to build a station and that means having a place for ships to land. We will need both a dock and a pier. In the future you will need multiple but for now, just one of each. Without these nothing gets on or off of the station. When we request to build a station the build storage already has a dock and pier for getting materials but we need our own for the station because we will eventually want to supply the build storage all of our own homemade materials. That has to be done via ship from station pier to build storage pier.

1 – 2 Storage

We need storage. There are three kinds of storage; container, solid, and liquid. We need all three so go ahead and get the blueprints, put them onto the station and get it built.

Tip for poor players: Start by just building container storage and then build your solid and liquid storage after you have energy cells up and running.

Tip for rich players who started the game with 800 million; buy your own builder ship and customize it to be able to build faster than the AI build ships.

Stage 2 Hull Parts

2-1 Energy: Build an Energy Cell production. Once completed it will supply the energy cells needed to build all future modules. Do not export any energy cells yet. You want to send them all over to build storage. Set a ship to constantly go back and forth doing that.

2-2 Refined Metals: Build an Ore refinery that makes Refined Metals. Keep metals at the station for now or just don’t turn production on yet.

DO NOT buy ore from the other factions. Buy your own miner and set it to bring you ore for free. This tip also applies to every other productions that have a raw resource as an input. If you find that you don’t have enough ore coming in, get another miner.

At this time you do not have a habitat. If you buy ore and turn it into refined metals without a workforce to make you efficient then you will lose money. If you get ore for free then it doesn’t matter if you are efficient or not. Sure, later we want to be efficient but right now we just want to exist as opposed to not existing.

For the beginning stage here we need no money going out. Do not buy ore.

2-3 Graphene: Build graphene production and get a miner bringing you methane.

See, this is why we needed all three kinds of storage. The energy cells go in container, the ore goes in solid, and the methane goes in liquid. Once we start producing all the products will also go in container so you need more of that kind of storage than the other two.

Now, if you are a rich player and don’t mind just spending the money you can speed up this process by building additional energy cell productions. You will need to send some energy cells to build storage but you also need some for your metal and graphene production plants. You will eventually have to build more energy cell production plants but the question is to build them now or wait for your single production to make enough for everyone.

2-4 Hull Parts: This is what we have been building towards. Build a hull parts production plant. This takes in your refined metals, graphene, and more energy cells in order to make hull parts. If you notice, every station module we have built so far has required energy cells, hull parts, and claytonics. We can’t make claytonics yet but now that we are making hull parts the only thing we need to buy anymore is claytonics.

Stage 3 Claytonics

3-1 Wafers: Build a silicon wafer production plant AND a microchip production plant. You need both so you might as well build both. Silicon from a miner goes in and from this we make silicon wafers. We take the silicon wafers and turn them into mirochips. It’s an extra step to get what we need compared to hull parts but it can’t be helped.

For rich players, maybe you also want to build a smartchip factory at the same time. We will be wanting to keep all of our microchips for ourselves at this point but we can start exporting smartchips right now and finally start to see a return on our investment. Or you can wait until we get claytonics fully up and running.

3-2 Quantum Tubes: We need to build a Superfluid Coolant plant. This takes in Helium and turns it into Superfluid Coolant. We can then take that superfluid coolant and turn it into Quantum Tubes with a Quantum Tube factory. Again, it is an extra step from raw resource to the product we need.

3-4 Antimatter: We need to build an Antimatter Cell factory. This takes in Hydrogen from a miner and turns it into Antimatter cells. No extra step here.

Notice that at this point we are mining all five of the useful resources of the universe. Ore, Silicon, Hydrogen, Methane, and Helium. Do not bother with Ice or Nivi.. whatever.

3-5 Claytonics: Finally, we can build a claytonics factory. This will take our antimatter cells, quantum tubes, and microchips and turn them into claytonics.

After this point we can build station modules for free. The only limit is time. The time can be sped up by having more energy production and more miners bringing in more resources. If you need more hull parts then double up on that. If you need more claytonics then double up on that. Find the balance that you like. Make sure you have a ship bringing hull parts, claytonics, and energy cells to your build storage constantly.

So now, if you haven’t already done so, build more energy cell production. Also, build smartchip production and sell the chips. We are an exporter now.

Please don’t mix these up. Microchips stay at our factory and we used them. Smartchips get sold. Or you can use the smartchips to make drones but after that just sell them.

Stage four: The circle

Everything we have build up to this point has been to get us to the point where we can build station modules for free. Now we want to complete our production factories and produce everything. However, some production modules will not be useful right now and others will. Let’s take a look. If we try to make drone components we will discover that we are not producing the prerequisites yet. Let’s hold off on that. Let’s build something that can immediately start producing from the materials we already make.

We were able to jump into making smartchips because smartchips and microchips have the same recipe. It is interesting to notice that Plasma Conductors and Quantum Tubes also have the same recipe. In addition Hull Parts and Advanced composites have the same recipe. This means that we can build factories for Plasma conductors and Advanced Composites right away and they will start producing as soon as they finish. Also, we are making Quantum Tubes and Microchips so if we build an Advanced Electronics factory, it will start producing and we can export them.

Other things we could build right away are Engine Parts and Scanning Arrays but I would hold off on those for just a second.

For some reason the mid level materials and the higher level materials go in a circles for most of them. If you put Hull Parts and Plasma Conductors together you can make Weapon components. If you put Plasma Conductors and Quantum Tubes together, you can make both Shield components and Field Coils because they have the same recipe. If you put Quantum Tubes and Microchip together you can make Advanced Electronics as stated above. If you put Microchips and Advanced Composites together you can make Antimatter Converters. If you put Advanced Composites together with Hull Parts you can make Missile Components.

Hull Parts + Plasma Conductors = Weapon Components
Plasma Components + Quantum Tubes = A: Shield Components & B: Field Coils
Quantum Tubes + Microchips = Advanced Electronics
Microchips + Advanced Composites = Antimatter Converters
Advanced Composites + Hull Parts = Missile Components

So it goes in a little circle. Advanced Electronics, Antimatter Converters, Missile Components, Weapon Components, Shield Components, and Field Coils are all end of line materials. We aren’t going to be using these to make anything else right now so you might as well export them all.

Stage Five: the last little bits

Above I said I would hold off on Engine parts and Scanning arrays. Well, now that we have completed the circle we are ready to build these. Build scanning arrays first because you will need these for what comes next. After scanning arrays build engine parts. You can now build Turret components and Drone components. These are the last products you can make. Congratulations, you have 25 production modules on your station.

Stage Six: Making money

Even if you started the game with 800 million, the next part is going to hurt. A lot. You have to buy the wharf blueprints and the shipyard blueprints. Feel free to enjoy the game while you save up. Oh, and you need ship and equipment blueprints or your wharf and shipyard are meaningless. You can’t EMP any of this so you just have to save up by exporting as much as you can.

Also, Pirates will hear about you making massive amounts of stuff and try to come and steal from you. Since all of this is free now it could be you don’t care but if you hate thieves as much as me then you’re going to want to invest in pest control. And by that I mean a fleet of fighters, some M gunboats, a destroyer, and a bunch of defense modules with flak turrets. Go into global orders and set the fire authorization for the pirate factions to ruthless.

Stage Seven: Full Self Sufficiency.

You have wharf bp, shipyard bp, ship bp, and equipment bp. Now you can build the wharf and shipyard. Stop exporting and use your manufactured goods to build ships and become a billionaire. You did it.

Questions I have not answered:

“Where to build the self sufficient wharf?” I don’t know. The obvious answer seems to be close to resources but maybe you want to challenge yourself and build one where all the resources are far away. For myself, I want to make the Argon and Antigone strong so they will hold back the Xenon for me until I’m ready. You can put it near the highway and then any resources that are close to the highway are ok. How easy or difficult do you want to make this?

“How many exactly of each production do I need?” I don’t know. Your game will work slightly different because of the RNG.

“What about habitats?” What about them? If you want workers to boost efficiency then fine but you don’t require them to produce. Once you are producing for free, it hardly matters. One thing to keep in mind is that workers need food and medical supplies. Everyone uses the same medical but each group needs different food which you will have to supply.