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big nipples big life
May 12, 2014

I waiting to see what changes egosoft makes before I start filling the game with mods. I did start a new save for 1.3 though and it seems like that was a good choice, already seeing a lot more fighting going on that I wasn't seeing in my 1.0 save.

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Pathos
Sep 8, 2000

I’ve never played an X game before but I bought this because it looked so cool. I tried the tutorial and, uh, it was a bit buggy and seemed pretty thin. If I wanted to learn how to play this game what would be the best way to do that? I really want to figure this out but, man, it’s a bit daunting.

pixaal
Jan 8, 2004

All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.


Hav posted:

[MOD] Player Trade Buy Logbook Messages

Adds buy messages to the logbook; sale messages are included already.
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=404163

Everything else so far appears to be 'cheats', although there's a speed mod in there.

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=402382

I haven't installed it yet but am planning on giving Sector wide Satellites a go.

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/4

Sats are so cheap and it's a massive pain in the rear end to drop them off at each station. It already feels like a fun tax doing it, why not just do it once per sector. Their implementation of advanced sats is a bit crazy (you can see every station as well as get pricing from all known stations).

Pathos posted:

I’ve never played an X game before but I bought this because it looked so cool. I tried the tutorial and, uh, it was a bit buggy and seemed pretty thin. If I wanted to learn how to play this game what would be the best way to do that? I really want to figure this out but, man, it’s a bit daunting.

Go out and fly, look up commands in the bindings as needed. I made a list of every key on my stick and used that to lookup what button I needed to press until it was a natural press. It's going to be a few hours before you are comfortable and have everything mapped right. It will be frustrating because you know what you want to do, but not how to do it.

A good first thing to do is to make your way to the highway, you'll know it when you see it (massive flat blue line coming out of gates that goes in a loop) there are some that end in a dead end that are for getting from the main highway to outside systems. You want to hit the main loop. You then sit in the main loop going in a circle until a mission that sounds interesting shows up in your available mission menu. Try out all the different types, and as you hit something new press h to open the help / tutorial menu. Almost all of them assume you are already in a situation where you need to know this, so get into them from missions and work your way through what you find interesting. Be that combat, repair work, space trucking, or manufacturing.

If you are into a grand scale universe simulation it will be worth the effort. The devs also have a long history of supporting their games, and have been busy patching the worst issues with X4.

The tutorials are never that great in the X series. You are basically thrust into the universe and told find a path. The main story is generally pretty light in these games so you have to be able to make your own fun. In X3 I didn't even find the main story until 100 hours into it. I found the main plot thread in X4 in the first 20 minutes of actually playing, but that was several hours since I spent a long time messing with controls. I don't use keyboard / mouse so it takes much longer to adjust sensitivity dead zones and sensitivity curves. Keyboard and Mouse and perfectly fine for this game, you can decide later if you want a to buy some nice hardware.

big nipples big life
May 12, 2014

Just load up a scout ship with satellites and order it to drop them wherever you want them while you go do fun stuff.

FileNotFound
Jul 17, 2005


big nipples big life posted:

Just load up a scout ship with satellites and order it to drop them wherever you want them while you go do fun stuff.

It's still 'work'. In X3 you could assign a ship to build a sat network and it just did it.

So yeah I've used that mod for X4 and it has been great.

You still need to find all the stations, but once you do, they are updated with just 1 adv sat per sector.

Once they actually add automation for building those out I'll be happy to go back to stock.

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

big nipples big life posted:

I waiting to see what changes egosoft makes before I start filling the game with mods. I did start a new save for 1.3 though and it seems like that was a good choice, already seeing a lot more fighting going on that I wasn't seeing in my 1.0 save.

I'm trying to avoid the restarts because that burned me out on Rebirth; there's only so much boob window I can take.

I was just throwing that out there while I was looking at the modding tools. I'm expecting a bunch to make their way into the base.


Pathos posted:

I’ve never played an X game before but I bought this because it looked so cool. I tried the tutorial and, uh, it was a bit buggy and seemed pretty thin. If I wanted to learn how to play this game what would be the best way to do that? I really want to figure this out but, man, it’s a bit daunting.

Welcome to the support group.

couple of things first; I hope you like menus, because there are a lot.

Your ship has a few modes off the shift-1/2/3 keys.

1 is 'travel', which gives you a slowly increasing speed boost which is useful for long distances.
2 is 'scan mode'. We're going to deal with that in a second.
3 is 'long range scan', where you send out a ping and look for hidden goodies.

Right now, you're sat in a sector that you don't know about, so you're going to have to fill out the map a little. Easiest way to do that is fly around a bit. To start with, you need to unlock the station; the reason for this is that it offers missions, and they're pretty much a decent way to make money.

Undock, and you should be in a hanger area. Look around for the opening, and head out. Now you want to shift to 'scan' mode (shift-2, purple windscreen). Fly _close_ to station parts and they color in according to their purpose; it's not entirely important, but useful for spotting the bits you haven't scanned. Now if you hear a loud 'staticy' noise, stop and take a look around. If you can see a small red ball, or a big 'spark', head towards them.

The sparks are transmissions. Go right inside, and you'll get a transmission. Hit 'F' to find out what they want. Most of the time these are wetwork missions or stuff that is vaguely criminal, but one is also storyline. You'll know it when you get it.

The balls are offers or blueprints; they're mostly passive bonuses to trades. Once you've unlocked stations (I think) then you'll get more missions from them over time.

You don't have to do the entire station, I usually do as much as bores me. Once you're done, you can look around for other stations - they appear in space before you clear the fog of war. Head to one and you'll see your map clearing up. Hit 'm' for the map.

You'll want to get a good idea of the stations in the system, mainly to know what opportunities are available. Use shipping to find those stations in the middle of buttfuckingegypt; it'll usually tell you what it's trading by the type of ship.

Now, once you've uncovered stations, that's all well and good, but you'll have to fly within comm range to get price updates. This is where satellites come in. You buy these from shipyards and equipment yards, and the basics aren't that expensive, and have a range of 50km. Advanceds are 75km, but they're pricey. They're also _re-placeable_, but I tend to treat them as disposable. They provide a realtime update of the area under the satellite, which also includes prices, and this is useful to future traders that you might build.

To start with, prioritise your satellites to equipment docks, shipyards and various _gates_. Mainly because the huge builder ships hang out around gates waiting for Johns.

Once you've gotten a good idea of your first sector, you can start doing the same with some of the others. I generally do missions and explore, building a satellite network locally to make sure I can see the local economy. After that, it's going to be identifying the gaps in the markets by looking for things like energy and food sources at the bottom end.

Darkhold
Feb 19, 2011

No Heart❤️
No Soul👻
No Service🙅

FileNotFound posted:

It's still 'work'. In X3 you could assign a ship to build a sat network and it just did it.
Pretty sure sat network was a mod that was put in one of their QoL patches later.

Tried the sector sat mod. If you put in crazy big numbers all sorts of fun things happen in your game like chatting to people causes the screen to whip about wildly and flying causes your ship to constantly rock back and forth.

The values the mod has it on works fine though.

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin
I'm thinking of a steam guide that summarizes the different tutorials.
There's good information in there, but they can be buggy and a pain to do.

My guide would just explain it all in brief.

Would that be interesting to anyone?

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

big nipples big life posted:

Just load up a scout ship with satellites and order it to drop them wherever you want them while you go do fun stuff.

That is the fun stuff for me.

Note; satellites decelerate to 0 from your current speed, so at 3000m/s dropping the satellite around 12km off the highway drops it neatly between both lanes. I really want to see if I can mod a satellite drop marker into the HUD.

Pathos
Sep 8, 2000

Wow, thanks guys. This is actually super useful and sounds really compelling. I’ll give it a try!

big nipples big life
May 12, 2014

I got a mission last night to do a "deep scan on a business competitior's station" and it turned out to be a Xenon defense platform. Flying slowly around one of those in scan mode seems like a poor idea.

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

Darkhold posted:

Pretty sure sat network was a mod that was put in one of their QoL patches later.

There was an LU explorer option that would autodrop satellites as it explored the universe; I'm expecting that and a better set of traders to get modded in at some point.

It's a bit manual at the moment.

pixaal posted:

Sats are so cheap and it's a massive pain in the rear end to drop them off at each station. It already feels like a fun tax doing it, why not just do it once per sector. Their implementation of advanced sats is a bit crazy (you can see every station as well as get pricing from all known stations).

That makes them a little less ridiculously priced, but I hadn't noticed that they did prices on all the stations.

big nipples big life posted:

I got a mission last night to do a "deep scan on a business competitior's station" and it turned out to be a Xenon defense platform. Flying slowly around one of those in scan mode seems like a poor idea.

Some Han Solo you are.

Pathos posted:

Wow, thanks guys. This is actually super useful and sounds really compelling. I’ll give it a try!

Couple of words of note: You currently hear radio chatter from everyone around you, which also includes the police saying poo poo about contraband. They're not actually talking to you. If you hear 'stop thief', or 'stop them', one of the innocent bumper car civilian ships turns red and _slowly_ fucks off. You can target and plink these with impunity, but don't hit the station or someone else. That gets you a standing increase and a small reward for ruthlessly gunning down someone.

Note there is no reward for stopping firing, other than feeling good about yourself. Remember, you are the good guy. </specops>

Strafe during combat. I usually find that changing strafe direction every couple of seconds means they miss, but the AI has been a little on the weak side. Don't get mobbed, though.

Afterburner drains shields - blue bar in the middle.

If you do gently caress someone off, RUN. Standing decreases are usually temporary unless you escalate, and you don't want to be pissing off the Argon federation too early.

Hav fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Dec 7, 2018

pixaal
Jan 8, 2004

All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.


Dr. Arbitrary posted:

I'm thinking of a steam guide that summarizes the different tutorials.
There's good information in there, but they can be buggy and a pain to do.

My guide would just explain it all in brief.

Would that be interesting to anyone?

I'd do a read over of a guide I feel I'm missing stuff personally and I'd rather known now than in 30 hours when I stumble upon it. I'm sure it would be great in the OP as well since new players will want a simple "here is how to do the basic things in the game" guide.

Hav posted:

That makes them a little less ridiculously priced, but I hadn't noticed that they did prices on all the stations.

Sorry, the mod I linked makes regular sats give all stations prices, and advanced sats automatically discover stations in the entire sector and update prices. I think you misread what I was saying. Advanced Sats in vanilla aren't very useful.

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

pixaal posted:

Sorry, the mod I linked makes regular sats give all stations prices, and advanced sats automatically discover stations in the entire sector and update prices. I think you misread what I was saying. Advanced Sats in vanilla aren't very useful.

Aight, concur. The price for the 75km satellite isn't worth until you're into 2chainz money.

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer

Hav posted:

Couple of words of note: You currently hear radio chatter from everyone around you, which also includes the police saying poo poo about contraband. They're not actually talking to you. If you hear 'stop thief', or 'stop them', one of the innocent bumper car civilian ships turns red and _slowly_ fucks off. You can target and plink these with impunity, but don't hit the station or someone else. That gets you a standing increase and a small reward for ruthlessly gunning down someone.

It's pretty funny to cruise into a station and a random ship turns red and you quickly murder them all well continuing to land like nothing ever happened.

Occasionally they drop decent loot to sell as well.

FileNotFound
Jul 17, 2005


Popete posted:

Occasionally they drop decent loot to sell as well.

They also beg you to stop killing them - but do not drop loot or anything if you stop shooting. So I keep killing them while they beg for mercy which ultimately is highly satisfying.

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer

FileNotFound posted:

They also beg you to stop killing them - but do not drop loot or anything if you stop shooting. So I keep killing them while they beg for mercy which ultimately is highly satisfying.

The idea of random station denizens being accused of crimes by police without trial and then getting blasted to pieces in mere seconds by a random passer by is kind of a grim dark space future.

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

Popete posted:

The idea of random station denizens being accused of crimes by police without trial and then getting blasted to pieces in mere seconds by a random passer by is kind of a grim dark space future.

Given the prices of the ships and some roughly fictional calculations, it seems to be 1%ers doing the executing too.

FileNotFound
Jul 17, 2005


Hav posted:

Given the prices of the ships and some roughly fictional calculations, it seems to be 1%ers doing the executing too.

I hired a guy, told him to buy antimatter cells, then blew them up. Nobody cared.

Future is fine.

Slickdrac
Oct 5, 2007

Not allowed to have nice things
Trade ships are where the freaks go to gather

Bonus: Yvona Fisty hasn't been purged as a name and has returned!

pixaal
Jan 8, 2004

All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.


Slickdrac posted:

Bonus: Yvona Fisty hasn't been purged as a name and has returned!

That sounds like a Bond girl's name, so cringe, so perfect.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe
Re: satellite chat: would the “trade subscription” license negate the need to place satellites? It costs 16 mil and you have to buy one for every faction so it’s not cheap, but I’m assuming that owning one gives you trade updates on all of that faction’s stations, forever, so you don’t really have to blanket the universe in satellites. Just plop then down next to key stations or in areas where you can get 2-3 in range at a time and fill in the rest with a trade subscription later.

DogonCrook
Apr 24, 2016

I think my 20 years as hurricane chaser might be a little relevant ive been through more hurricanws than moat shiitty newscasters
I have a khaak station in the ANL sector. Been mining the anl sector so with this update all my minors would get obliterated when the khaak comes alive ive been pounding them back but theres gonna be khaak everywhere my anl miners stand no chance. Goty cause i didnt make a word of that up lol.

pixaal
Jan 8, 2004

All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.


The Cheshire Cat posted:

Re: satellite chat: would the “trade subscription” license negate the need to place satellites? It costs 16 mil and you have to buy one for every faction so it’s not cheap, but I’m assuming that owning one gives you trade updates on all of that faction’s stations, forever, so you don’t really have to blanket the universe in satellites. Just plop then down next to key stations or in areas where you can get 2-3 in range at a time and fill in the rest with a trade subscription later.

Has anyone actually bought this yet? The price goes up as your rep goes up, so I don't think it's pricing data. I have a feeling it's some kind of mission or supply contract.

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

DogonCrook posted:

I have a khaak station in the ANL sector. Been mining the anl sector so with this update all my minors would get obliterated when the khaak comes alive ive been pounding them back but theres gonna be khaak everywhere my anl miners stand no chance. Goty cause i didnt make a word of that up lol.

Khaak in the ANL?

Best place to pound Khaak, in a pinch.

i am 12.

pixaal posted:

Has anyone actually bought this yet? The price goes up as your rep goes up, so I don't think it's pricing data. I have a feeling it's some kind of mission or supply contract.

It's supposed to be a price update from all the factions stations. Price going up might be a bug.

Slickdrac
Oct 5, 2007

Not allowed to have nice things
^^X4: Foundations: Yvona Fisty and a good Khaak pounding

I did. It does keep the prices updated at all times for the faction you buy it for.

Of course, you have to buy it for EVERY faction to keep all stations up to date, and it will NOT discover stations, you still have to do that part. So you know, if spending the nearly 100 mil to get the coverage seems worth it, go for it. For that price it really should automatically populate new stations for that race.

Interestingly, since putting 1.3 beta patch on, I've had 75 new stations built in the last 5 hours.

xanif
Nov 3, 2010

Beer: Who was your first kill, not counting old men?
Eonwe: One of the outlaws in the Brotherhood.
Seraph84: I was there that day. You were only a squire, sixteen years old.
Eonwe: You killed Friendly Tumour with a counter-post. Best move I ever saw.
Oven Wrangler

quote:

Improved accuracy of turrets and gimballed weapons.

Can anyone comment if this means that turrets actually work now?

Slickdrac
Oct 5, 2007

Not allowed to have nice things

xanif posted:

Can anyone comment if this means that turrets actually work now?

It seems very nicely balanced now, feels like X3 Vanilla with tracking. Seen some people whining because they got too used to not having to try and evade shots, but things feel a lot more normal with combat.

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer

pixaal posted:

Has anyone actually bought this yet? The price goes up as your rep goes up, so I don't think it's pricing data. I have a feeling it's some kind of mission or supply contract.

Maybe as they build more stations the price increases?

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer
Do you need to restart your game to get the changes in 1.3? Such as station building by the AI and such.

Slickdrac
Oct 5, 2007

Not allowed to have nice things

Popete posted:

Maybe as they build more stations the price increases?

Seemed to be race specific, the main ones were 12 mil, the offshoots were 10.

Popete posted:

Do you need to restart your game to get the changes in 1.3? Such as station building by the AI and such.

Need to, no. Definitely gave an effect on my 20 hour game pretty clearly. Might be more interesting world going on if running from the start. IMO, I'd say just keep going until the patch wave starts to die off before restarting unless something mandates a restart.

pixaal
Jan 8, 2004

All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.


Popete posted:

Maybe as they build more stations the price increases?

It starts at around 50k, it's really cheap and would actually be a fair price if that's what it does. That or it was a bug that it was that cheap. It went up after I accepted a rank increase. Like I went into the menu saw the price said oh nothing interesting, grabbed my rank then checked the menu to see if anything interesting was added and the price had gone up.

sandoz
Jan 29, 2009


ugh if there was just a way to queue up dropping satellites

Slickdrac
Oct 5, 2007

Not allowed to have nice things

sandoz posted:

ugh if there was just a way to queue up dropping satellites

You can. Hire a pilot to do it, you can just load them up, then just keep right clicking all over the map where you want them dropped.

Anyone found any other unlockable starts besides the trader one?

Squiggle
Sep 29, 2002

I don't think she likes the special sauce, Rick.


sandoz posted:

ugh if there was just a way to queue up dropping satellites

AFAIK orders to units are queued up instead of replacing - this is how I had a ship I was in dock at the same station three times in a row as I tried to ride it to another system for my immersion. I had to go into the ship's Details and delete the "Dock and wait" jobs from its queue before it would "Go to system."

So just right click er'where, drop satellite, repeat until you're done, and watch it start to roll around.

Squiggle fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Dec 7, 2018

sandoz
Jan 29, 2009


ok welp I've been doing THAT wrong, thanks

now if only auto-explore actually worked,

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer
Orders do stack. At least when giving the AI pilots waypoints to fly too. I wonder if you can pre-queue orders to drop satellites though.

Squiggle
Sep 29, 2002

I don't think she likes the special sauce, Rick.


Popete posted:

I wonder if you can pre-queue orders to drop satellites though.

Absolutely can. Sent him off to drop 3 satellites across three Grand Exchange sectors. Off he goes!



Edit: 1.31 just went to beta:

quote:

• Fixed HQ mission stalling if the escorted ship is unable to dock at its destination.
• Fixed HQ mission stalling if player flew through the anomaly too fast.
• Fixed duplicate and missing weapon entries in the HUD if multiple groups have been setup.
• Fixed ship upgrade builds not starting in certain situations.
• Fixed another cause of rare crashes.

Squiggle fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Dec 7, 2018

mp5
Jan 1, 2005

Stroke of luck!

Current goal is to find a suitable sector with Ice in it so I can set up a station and start mining Ice to Water to Spacefuel. This will hopefully cut out the middleman for all these trade runs I've been queueing up as long as I put it in space where Spacefuel is legal.

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Squiggle
Sep 29, 2002

I don't think she likes the special sauce, Rick.


I miss the old Cerberus. It looked awesome, like a Rebel Alliance frigate. The new one is a lumpy turd.

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