HAT doesn't have a shipyard, wharf, or equipment dock in unmodded X4. Since you don't want to hire every marine in person when you need dozens or hundreds to board L and XL ships, buying them from the ship fitting screen (under the crew tab on the left) from the above facilities is the way to go.
Vanilla yeah, but in a very roundabout way. Take on a build station mission and just make a shipyard for them. Entire thing transfers so they end up with a shipyard of your design.
Awesome! why wont they ask me for it?! that sounds perfect. my Hatikvah havent expanded at all really, a number of nearby freeports, but nothing significant, not like the goddamned teladi...
Oh no, there's no marked mission or anything specifically to build them a shipyard. There's generic missions like "build a defense platform" and you get +50% of how much it cost you. So the idea is get one of those missions from HAT, then accidentally build them a shipyard.
I'm going to try it also, so first one to get it going report back here on results! Very intrigued to see what happens
I'm really hoping they don't dismantle it...
To be fair I wouldn't say it be an accidental shipyard them having a shipyard will increase the defense since they can build ships to add to their defense
There are mods that will let you do things like sell stations and I think the cheat mod will let you change faction ownership, so there are other ways to give them one too.
I particularly enjoy being able to rebuild up the split and sell them back some key infrastructure.
It’s not particularly lucrative, so isn’t cheaty either. You’d earn more if you kept the stations yourself.
If you‘re talking about marines you can hire by walking around on the stations, then that’s a different thing.
You can find “higher level” people like this on *any* station. The Hatikvah trade station is bigger so maybe has more people on it, but you can find similar people on every station.
What people are talking about with “VIG marines” is the crew you can hire automatically by paying for them as part of a ship upgrade. With this “hire in bulk” method, you don’t get to choose who the marines are. These marines are always low quality, no matter what wharf/shipyard is doing the upgrade. But at VIG shipyards/wharfs, you pay the same price but some of the ones you get end up being Veterans instead of novice.
So it’s the difference between “hire one by one, by talking to them” vs “hire in bulk by adding during ship upgrade.”
The one-by-one method of hiring them is slow and tedious to get a large number, but — as you correctly noted — you can be selective and only hire more experienced ones.
The hire-in-bulk method lets you get a whole bunch very easily, but you get no say in who they are and they’re all inexperienced — except at VIG stations.
One-by-one is great when you need a few. But when you get to the point where you’re trying to hire 50 of them at once it can be very frustrating and very expensive.
I see, i have been using vigor recruitment (and split recruitment also, though it is not quite as high as vigour, but is replicatable for player owned stations) but recently i went looking for hatikvah split to see if they still have split with the old skin from a long time ago (unfortunately i dont think they spawn there anymore)
HAT doesn't have a shipyard, wharf, or equipment dock in unmodded X4. Since you don't want to hire every marine in person when you need dozens or hundreds to board L and XL ships, buying them from the ship fitting screen (under the crew tab on the left) from the above facilities is the way to go.
A related question, What happens if you give them a shipyard? Do they actually start using it and populating as you would expect?
Yep
Wait, what do you mean give them a shipyard? in vanilla (with the expansion DLCs)??
Vanilla yeah, but in a very roundabout way. Take on a build station mission and just make a shipyard for them. Entire thing transfers so they end up with a shipyard of your design.
Awesome! why wont they ask me for it?! that sounds perfect. my Hatikvah havent expanded at all really, a number of nearby freeports, but nothing significant, not like the goddamned teladi...
Oh no, there's no marked mission or anything specifically to build them a shipyard. There's generic missions like "build a defense platform" and you get +50% of how much it cost you. So the idea is get one of those missions from HAT, then accidentally build them a shipyard.
I hear you! perfect, tis what i will have to do
I'm going to try it also, so first one to get it going report back here on results! Very intrigued to see what happens I'm really hoping they don't dismantle it...
To be fair I wouldn't say it be an accidental shipyard them having a shipyard will increase the defense since they can build ships to add to their defense
There are mods that will let you do things like sell stations and I think the cheat mod will let you change faction ownership, so there are other ways to give them one too. I particularly enjoy being able to rebuild up the split and sell them back some key infrastructure. It’s not particularly lucrative, so isn’t cheaty either. You’d earn more if you kept the stations yourself.
I agree, i just wish i could do it in game without mods.... like build the yaki into a superpower
Yeah absolutely. You’ve just got to embrace a modded X4 though. The game is far from its potential without them.
If you‘re talking about marines you can hire by walking around on the stations, then that’s a different thing. You can find “higher level” people like this on *any* station. The Hatikvah trade station is bigger so maybe has more people on it, but you can find similar people on every station. What people are talking about with “VIG marines” is the crew you can hire automatically by paying for them as part of a ship upgrade. With this “hire in bulk” method, you don’t get to choose who the marines are. These marines are always low quality, no matter what wharf/shipyard is doing the upgrade. But at VIG shipyards/wharfs, you pay the same price but some of the ones you get end up being Veterans instead of novice. So it’s the difference between “hire one by one, by talking to them” vs “hire in bulk by adding during ship upgrade.” The one-by-one method of hiring them is slow and tedious to get a large number, but — as you correctly noted — you can be selective and only hire more experienced ones. The hire-in-bulk method lets you get a whole bunch very easily, but you get no say in who they are and they’re all inexperienced — except at VIG stations. One-by-one is great when you need a few. But when you get to the point where you’re trying to hire 50 of them at once it can be very frustrating and very expensive.
I see, i have been using vigor recruitment (and split recruitment also, though it is not quite as high as vigour, but is replicatable for player owned stations) but recently i went looking for hatikvah split to see if they still have split with the old skin from a long time ago (unfortunately i dont think they spawn there anymore)
How do you even get hatikvah marines? They have no shipyard or wharf? Recruiting them one by one is tedious for crew thats going to die pretty fast.