X4 station planner: how many modules for N hull parts an hour

Data basis: module cycle data read from Roguey’s X4 ware database, checked 2026-08-17. Cycle times and batch sizes below are quoted from a source and linked at the bottom. Anything I could not confirm against a source is marked unverified rather than rounded into a number that looks confident.

The most common answer to “how do I plan a station?” in this community is use an external calculator — which is a strange thing for a community to say about a game with a build editor in it, and it is exactly the right answer. The question has no fixed reply. “How many modules do I need?” depends on the final ware, the target rate, how many intermediate tiers you intend to make yourself versus buy, and whether you round module counts up or down. That is a recursion with an unbounded input space, which is why no guide, wiki page, or summary can hold the answer. It can only hold the method and the coefficients.

So here is both: the coefficients, precomputed, so that your target rate becomes one multiplication. If you’re not sure a bigger station is even the right move — if you have the credits and the sectors and no clear next target for either — that’s a different problem, and the late-game stuck-progression guide sorts that out before you spend a build budget on a station you don’t need yet.

The measured cycle data

Everything downstream comes from four rows. Cycle time and batch size are the source figures; the per-hour column is arithmetic on them.

The energy row is not an omission I can fix. Energy cell output scales with the sector’s solar intensity, so there is no single correct number — a module in a bright sector and the same module in a dim one are different machines. Community posts quote figures around 500 EC/hour as a working baseline, but that is a forum estimate, not a confirmed value, and it is why the energy line below stays in cells-per-hour rather than resolving to a module count. Read your own figure off the module’s entry in the build plan, which shows production per hour, and divide.

The coefficients

Divide every input rate by the module’s own output rate and you get how much of each upstream ware one unit of the finished product costs per hour. These are the numbers that make the recursion collapse.

The gap between the two columns is the whole point. Buying refined metals off the market, your station draws 0.27 energy cells per hull part per hour. Making refined metals yourself, the same hull part pulls five times the energy — because refined metals is the energy-hungry tier, at 90 cells per 150-second cycle. Vertical integration does not just add modules, it moves where your bottleneck lives, and people who add a refined-metals module to a working station and watch the whole thing stall have usually met exactly this.

To size any target: multiply your target hull parts per hour by the right column. 5,000 hull parts/hour needs 6,798 energy cells/hour, 12,987 ore/hour and 2,268 methane/hour, and 5,000 ÷ 1,176 = 4.25 hull parts modules.

Module counts, and why rounding is the real decision

Module counts come out fractional and you cannot build 0.45 of anything. The ratios:

Graphene dividing exactly into nine is a genuinely useful accident: one graphene module produces 1,440/hour and nine hull-parts modules consume exactly 1,440/hour. That makes 9 : 5 : 1 the smallest station layout with no starved tier, and it is the shape I would build to.

A worked 9:5:1 station, at base rates:

Note which line is largest. The station is nominally a hull-parts factory and it is functionally an ore-hauling operation: 28,800 ore an hour is the number that decides whether it runs, and it is a mining and logistics problem rather than a station-design one. If that throughput is the part you have not solved, the logistics setup decision matrix is the right place to start, because the answer there changes with your capital and your sector security rather than being universal.

Storage: size per ware, not per station

The trap that inflates a station’s cost is building one giant storage tier because storage looks harmless. It is not harmless — it is bought with the same construction budget as the modules, and an oversized store does nothing that a right-sized one does not, because the manager’s buy orders fill to capacity.

Size each ware to hours of consumption, using the rates above, and the answers come out very different per ware. For the 9:5:1 station, four hours of buffer means:

Refined metals and graphene are the rows people over-build. They are made in the same station and consumed minutes later, so buffering them for hours is storing your own output next to the machine that made it. Buffer purchased wares deeply and internal wares shallowly — that single rule is most of the saving.

I could not confirm the container capacity of each storage module size from a source, so the table above deliberately gives you volumes rather than a module count. Read the capacity off the storage module in your own build plan and divide.

Build cost

Construction resources per module, from the same database:

Summed for the 9:5:1 layout (excluding energy modules, whose count you resolve from your own sector’s output figure):

• 7,677 Advanced Composites
• 11,052 Plasma Conductors
• 12,635 Energy Cells
• 779 Hull Parts
• 208 Claytronics

The asymmetry is worth reading. The nine hull-parts modules carry essentially the entire build bill; the six feeder modules together cost 208 claytronics and 779 hull parts, which is noise next to 11,052 plasma conductors. Feeder modules are cheap. Starving your expensive tier to save on cheap ones is the worst trade in station building, and it is the reason the 9:5 rounding beats 2:1 despite one extra refined-metals module: you pay 36 claytronics to recover 5.7% of the output of nine very expensive modules.

Workforce, and what I will not assert

Workforce raises production above base rate, and that is where confirmable data stops. Forum discussion puts the maximum bonus at roughly 20%, other community sources say up to 25%, and the same threads note it varies with welfare modules and sector population. I could not confirm any of those against official documentation, so the number is unverified and every figure in this article is quoted at base rate, no workforce bonus.

Habitation capacity has the same problem: commonly repeated figures are 250 for small and 500 for medium, with large quoted variously as 1,000 or 1,500, and Paranid habitats reported as a different series entirely. Two community sources disagreeing about the large module is exactly the situation where a guide should say so rather than pick one.

Practically, this is fine — it errs the safe direction. Plan the chain at base rate and any workforce bonus arrives as headroom rather than as a deficit. A station sized on an assumed 25% bonus that turns out to be 20% is a station that starves; a station sized on 0% simply runs a little rich. If a station of yours is already built and producing less than these figures predict with feeders full, that is a different failure — an assignment or order problem rather than a sizing one, and the same class of fault that leaves salvage tugs sitting idle is usually where it hides.

Using this for a ware that is not hull parts

The method does not care about hull parts. For any product:

1. Read cycle time, batch size, and inputs-per-cycle from the encyclopedia entry. Convert to per hour: batch × (3600 ÷ cycle seconds).
2. Divide each input rate by the output rate. That is your direct coefficient.
3. For each input you intend to produce yourself, repeat steps 1–2 on it and substitute its coefficients in. Energy cells appear at nearly every tier, so add rather than replace them.
4. Divide your target rate by the module’s hourly output for module counts, then find the integer ratio that leaves feeders at or slightly above demand.
5. Size storage on purchased wares only.

Step 3 is where the input space becomes infinite — every “make it or buy it” choice at every tier doubles the number of possible stations — and it is why this is a procedure rather than a lookup table.

Sources

• Roguey’s X4 site, Hull Parts (ware) — 900-second cycle, 294 per cycle, inputs 80 Energy Cells / 40 Graphene / 280 Refined Metals
• Roguey’s X4 site, Refined Metals (ware) — 150-second cycle, 88 per cycle, inputs 90 Energy Cells / 240 Ore
• Roguey’s X4 site, Graphene (ware) — 240-second cycle, 96 per cycle, inputs 80 Energy Cells / 320 Methane
• Roguey’s X4 site, Hull Parts Production module — build time 14 min 22 s, 853 Advanced Composites / 1,357 Energy Cells / 1,228 Plasma Conductors
• Roguey’s X4 site, Refined Metal Production module — build time 8 min 34 s, 36 Claytronics / 73 Energy Cells / 135 Hull Parts
• Roguey’s X4 site, Graphene Production module — build time 8 min 2 s, 28 Claytronics / 57 Energy Cells / 104 Hull Parts
• Roguey’s X4 site, Energy Cell Production module — build time 12 min 36 s, 260 Claytronics / 520 Energy Cells / 951 Hull Parts
• Steam Community, “Station workforce” discussion — community estimate of roughly 20% maximum workforce bonus, small habitation module quoted at 250 capacity; explicitly advises planning at base rate
• X4: Foundations Wiki, Energy Cell Production — energy cell module output depends on sector solar intensity and requires no input ware

Related

• Everything else we have on X4: Foundations
• Sizing a fleet against a Xenon station