It could not have happened at a worse time. Times in this universe seem to be quite brutal when you don’t want it. All I wanted to do was continue building. Now I got to worry about losing my biggest investment made yet.

Things were going decently fine for a while. A lot of my operations were starting to move away from the starting area I was in and into Second Contract II. I guess with a name like that I should have expected what was about to come.

I had been building up my mining fleet. They were mostly focused on ore as that had the biggest demand in the area. While I could have also mined ice that seems rather lackluster. Besides I was starting to think long-term about what I needed to build an actual empire.

Empires need ore to build a lot of things. The plan was to start quite humble. I would be building my first space station that perhaps focused on the lowest of low manufactory materials Energy Cells. From there I was hoping to expand my operations at the station.

It all starts with defining the size you want to build a station in with a plot. the bigger it is the higher the license permitting fee is to the local government. Since a station is quite an expensive endeavor I elected to set up quite a small space which ended up being 4 x 4 x4 in size. Even that alone would cost me almost 300k credits.

This thing was about to burn a giant hole in my pockets and melt straight through the floor of my ship. I would also discover not to make much money at all for the cost. It was at least a starting block for my empire. At least that is what I kept telling myself.

The next part ended up being a lot more annoying than I was expecting. Mostly because the movement and position system within the station build sucks. I would often have to sit there and fiddle around with things with them not wanting to connect even though it’s clear they should.

I was also needing to build in quite a small space. I’m rather glad for my first station I ended up picking such a small plot size. I could later expand on it if I wanted. I would just need to repay a license permitting feed in full it seemed.

The first order of business was setting up a docking area. Stations have a lot of blueprints you can either buy which costs a lot or acquire by other means. I only had the basics to work with. At the start, things were more than enough.

I did mess around a bit trying to see what all I could even get to fit into the small plot area I paid for. While this massive 3-Dock E would be nice it is also for large ships which I don’t own at this moment anyways.

I would go on to select the smaller 1M6S basic. That means 1 medium and 6 small ships could be stations at any one time. For my small fleet, this would be more than enough for now. I could always add in more of these basic docking areas if needed.

Next up would be setting up some storage areas to hold basic goods. While there are a few different kinds of storage containers depending on what you needed to store. For now, I just had a basic Argon S storage. It would be enough for my starting needs.

Next up was to place down some Energy cells that look like solar panels that would collect the energy I needed and produce. The system I’m building the station in has 100% light from the sun. While a lot of the systems near me have similar stats. It was at least important to make sure before even going down this path. I’d hate to build in a dark system.

The entire process of trying to get things to line up and to connect for most of this build took a while. I also was not happy with how it looked. Thankfully there is a button you can press that auto moves what you have placed down to fit into an auto-layout of sorts.

The downside to having it position things for you comes into play once you have everything built. If you want to just add a single piece and have it auto-make a setup for it. It will want to redo everything. Costs a fortune and wastes a lot of money from the looks of it.

From here on out I’ll have to manually add anything I need. One thing I failed to take into consideration on my first station build was expandability. This would later end up coming back to bite me. Sure I used cheaper parts for now. I however would have preferred to have more connectivity options on the original structure.

Once I was ready to build I needed to go out and find a builder and hire them to manage the work site. It would build the station over some time. Along with doing things like using the budget, I gave to the station to buy the needed parts.

Sadly it does not spend the money you can afford to put into the station smartly. You might end up with all the money you put in if you don’t have enough for the estate into just a single component. Leaving the station stuck till you get more money to put in.

This first build would end up costing me around 2 million credits. I was quite short on that. Thankfully I had a small mining fleet that was bringing me in a little at a time.

There were just one of many issues with my plan overall. There was a massive incursion going on between the locals and an invading force. I guess I missed the memo and the system-wide murdering going on while I was messing around with the station building window.

I also realized that some of my mining ships had been blown up. Not a good time when you are trying to build a two million credit space station. That space station was also rather unprotected and I would assume an easy target if someone wanted to knock it over.

I moved in what combat fleet I had to try and safeguard the station and what was left remaining of my mining fleet. This project of mine would end up taking a lot longer than expected. While I was half tempted to rebuild my mining fleet first. I did not want to leave this station half unbuilt.

I was also really hoping this station would start to generate some income for me once it was up and running. There was even a final added cost of having to go out and find a manager to run that station. As if I had not spent enough already.

After what seemed like an eternity my station was up and running. Where it sat producing energy cells stocking piling them with no customers in sight. I even tried to lower the price with no luck.

Final Thoughts

I’ll need to wait around for there to be further demand for the price I’m asking on energy cells. I don’t see this station making back the money I spent on it. In the future, I’ll need them anyway for further space stations and production lines. This end up being a lot costlier and more annoying than I was expecting. At least the space station remained intact for now. That war could not have broken out at a worse time.

At the very least this station looks cool and it’s mine. I love the backdrop of a planet along with so many effects going on. I’ve sat here for hours sometimes with it running in the background just for the effect of the view.

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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about X4 Foundation.

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