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If you ever feel like the combat is a bit dull I do recommend the VRO mod which radically changes the weapon and shield balance making them much more varied and also pushing the combat range out a fair bit, and adding a shitton of missiles too. It also, I think, makes the out of sector balance better because large guns on stations especially are really effective, a defence station is actually very formidable up to about 20km out. It does, unfortunately, require a new start to function properly however, so possibly well saved for a second playthrough. Also mods are a little bit bugged at the moment in highly inconsistent ways due to a problem introduced with how they load in 3.0+ If you're wanting sectors to sell nividium in you can, I think, set up a miner in any sector with a trading station (except the paranid cos they don't buy it) and they can mine nividium in the same sector. As you noted though the market floods very easily so I would spread them out as much as possible, likely no more than one to a sector, you get very good income from this though. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Apr 14, 2020 |
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Apr 14, 2020 11:28
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Oh, I gotta point out : the XR ship pack is in the list, but so far, I have not seen any of the ships in the wild, so it probably needs an update to play nice with the split. Also, Among the mods above, PaintjobsForSale trivialises making money in the game, you start out with (once you login to egosoft for ventures) 50 of the "foundations x" paintjobs, which can sell for up to 1.2 mil a pop, find a trade station with a few traders, (Teladi,) look through each of the traders for the best deal, (1.2 mil or so is the most), sell there, then, buy them at a different trader for less, 5-6000k rinse, repeat. As an addendum to Owlfanciers post, there's also a mod that periodically reduces the wares (like Nividium, for example) from tradestations, if they are over a certain amount. https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/167 Ok, last addendum. got X-Rebirth? https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/434?tab=description I lied, so I decided to redownload XR to try out the above X-Masher, will update with deets, also check out the egosoft discord, its chill. staberind fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Apr 14, 2020 |
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Apr 14, 2020 12:49
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Thanks both, I'll keep that in mind. VRO sounds interesting but as you suggested, I'll probably finish my first playthrough before I start messing with that. That ware reduction mod sounds pretty useful, and I'll probably include it if I don't think stuff's getting consumed fast enough. It is quite satisfying seeing my miners affect the price so much. Might get old when I'm saving for cap ships. I've moved my nividium miners to separate trade dock sectors and have them now happily mining and selling on full automation, so that was a handy tip!staberind posted:Ok, last addendum. got X-Rebirth? https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/434?tab=description I do have XR, so I'm interested to know how that one goes. Will also check out the discord.
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Apr 14, 2020 13:32
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 looks good, some XR ships on a new game (Dev) start
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Apr 14, 2020 15:21
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The Sul is so well suited as a light carrier for space games it is criminal that its not in x4.....SIIIIGH The XR mods tempt me, they really do.
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Apr 14, 2020 17:36
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I used the XR ships mod and a lot of the ships are pretty good, yeah. Not really sure why they weren't included to be honest, they're not perfect but I think the volume of content makes up for the quality. There is apparently a new rebirth mod that adds even more ships if you want to try it out instead: https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=424952 E: Ah that's the one staberind linked. The original rebirth ships mod also adds some actual useful stuff like megafreighters and really big miners. For when you need to restock a whole shipyard at once. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Apr 14, 2020 |
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Apr 14, 2020 20:59
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It's a really good question why they discarded so many ship assets for X4. How do these XR ships handle cockpits, eva, boarding/disembarking while docked, etc.? I have hunch it's because they wanted a consistent experience going full out with the cockpits and space legs. Though it's curious because even the cockpits are faked (as in not part of the external ship model) on many/all of the L and XL ships. A public post-mortem on X4's dev would be really interesting. They clearly made a lot of compromises on content, and I think it was in the interest of being able to achieve all of the major technology improvements that really separate the game from previous ones.
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Apr 14, 2020 21:22
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It's... odd. The cockpits are not modeled externally, as far as I can tell the internal cockpit space is its own little universe, this is actually visible with some of the X4 designs too yes, such as the teladi capital ships where the cockpit is inside the hole in the middle. It's not physically there on the external model but that's where it is when you're standing in it. But other ships have an actual cockpit modeled on the exterior and I... think they're actually in the same world space too, as in you can see people in them from the outside. Clearly this is so for the ones where you literally walk in and out of it onto the docking pad. But as said this is true for even some of the X4 craft and is particularly noticeable for the resupply ships they added in a patch, no modeled cockpit or bridge, they just reuse one from another ship, and it works fine except for you not being able to see it from the outside. Honestly the whole way X4 handles its world spaces would be fascinating to know because you can literally teleport anywhere in the entire universe near instantly aside from a little visual pop in, and that itself is an incredible technical achievement even disregarding the transitions of scale. Everything feels like it's happening in one single continuous world space except for the odd thing that means it... clearly isn't except you have no idea how else it could work because you can see into the larger world space perfectly. Even poo poo like, if you open your property menu and select an object, it gives you a tiny picture in picture of any ship or station you select, except it shows them in the sector they're in, including any other elements in that sector like the background or them taking off from/docking at any stations there. Just casually simulating an entire sector to make a PiP window work perfectly while still simulating the one you're in. I have no idea how this technology works at all. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Apr 14, 2020 |
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Apr 14, 2020 21:45
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If this is basically gonna be the equivalent of X3 Reunion than the equivalent of X3 Terran Conflict/Albion Prelude in a few years should be interesting to see.
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Apr 14, 2020 22:14
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There are some tricks going on that I haven't figured out either. They have at least one serious magician working on that engine. The sheer amount of agents being simulated is also absolutely nuts.
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Apr 14, 2020 22:25
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I am glad they prioritized development the way they did because the spectacle of it all is quite a step beyond any other open world space game I know of. It also really lets you take in the scale of things. Standing on one of the 6Sx3M docking pads (the ones that are a fully open platform) and realizing that just the small horizontal connector module it's linked to looks by itself larger than any man made object on earth is nothing short of amazing.
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Apr 14, 2020 22:36
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I do really wish they had more walkable platforms, not too many but just something that gave you more reason to get that sense of scale. Again egosoft where is my office module I can put on my megabase so I can lord over all I survey.
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Apr 14, 2020 23:40
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What am I doing wrong with my Resupply Nomad? I've set it's role to Fleet Supply for my fleet of 20 Elite Vanguards and 2 Destroyers and I've told it to Gather Supplies but it just follows the fleet leader around. I've assigned it traders to help it get the wares but because the Nomad doesn't think it needs wares the traders don't do anything. When I dock a ship to resupply it, it says it requires such and such ware and I confirm the buy order but still the Nomad does nothing to actually get that ware. I'm super confused.
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Apr 15, 2020 00:20
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OwlFancier posted:I do really wish they had more walkable platforms, not too many but just something that gave you more reason to get that sense of scale. Again egosoft where is my office module I can put on my megabase so I can lord over all I survey. Over the weekend my initial foray into station building spiraled immediately into hours spent designing literal prestige projects that would make Dubai's civic planners blush. The Split's 3-way cross module is absolutely wonderful for creating all kinds of interesting station geometry (less so for packing production modules together as efficiently as possible). Tying back to the previous topic, it appears that windowed station offices are also simulated the same way that L and XL ship cockpits are. I wanted to go spying on Boso Ta to see what he's really up to while I'm not around, but alas.
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Apr 15, 2020 01:07
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timn posted:Over the weekend my initial foray into station building spiraled immediately into hours spent designing literal prestige projects that would make Dubai's civic planners blush. The Split's 3-way cross module is absolutely wonderful for creating all kinds of interesting station geometry (less so for packing production modules together as efficiently as possible). Yeah offices aren't modeled on the exterior, they're also their own little pocket dimension. If you've not noticed already you can hold shift to rotate in increments which is useful combined with the angled connectors. And yeah I really like how the station building just encourages you to put stuff in fun patterns. Even grid stations tend to look interesting cos they tend to make little clusters of modules together.
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Apr 15, 2020 01:10
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So, are water refineries generally worth the hassle? Since I'm currently planning my future drug lab, and THIS is what I've got so far. I've excluded the water refineries so far (I'll need like, 1.2 refineries' worth of water), but I'm still tossing up whether I should simply have trade ships buy water, or have them buy ice to then turn into water (assuming I can buy ice) OR get mining ships and have them mine ice for me. I'm kinda tempted to just go for the easier option (buy water), at least at the start, but eh, I'm not sure. Also, aside from that, are there any other changes you'd recommend? (Or perhaps some other factor/requirement that I'm not accounting for) I'll be building this in my own sector once I can get an admin module. I'll have to set up an admin+defence station right near the jump gate first, but hopefully that won't be TOO costly. EDIT: Updated station link with new modules, as per the below Major Isoor fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Apr 15, 2020 |
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Apr 15, 2020 02:02
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If you add a water refinery and tick "miners provide basic resources" you gain like 450k income. Which is not necessarily representative but like, it's still gonna cut nearly all of your expenses out. So, yeah? I'd add one. You don't need to add two even if you're consuming more than the production of one, you can produce most of it in house and then set the thing up so that it buys in water below a certain storage level. Ice is generally plentiful in most zones with rocks in them and you'll only need maybe one miner to keep a water refinery going. And that's literally saving you from having to buy any of that water it would produce, which for a food/organics complex is going to be the primary component of most of the production runs. One refinery and one miner, really simple addition to make you almost self sufficient. As a rule you always want to produce things from as raw materials as possible because each production step adds value to the product. For a space capitalism simulator, labour theory of value is probably the best way to actually think about production in X4  Each production step literally pumps value into your wares, either by making more of them or by making them more expensive per unit. And if you provide all the material costs yourself then you get to keep 100% of the profits (because you also don't pay your workers so profit and surplus are the same thing) You could slap that thing in Grand Exchange if you want as I don't think any drugs are illegal for the teladi and that puts you in contact with the paranid, the argon, and the teldai to sell drugs to. Oh also you'll want to put defence platforms on all your stations too. The main threats you'll encounter unless you're at war with someone or near a xenon sector will actually be pirates and small raiding groups which for various reasons aren't stopped by gates. I think the game spawns small khaak/xenon raider groups out in the edges of sectors to represent the fact that those factions don't really work like normal ones, the khaak can literally teleport and the xenon are sort of just everywhere in the universe and can happily drive between stars the long way if they have to. They're not a big threat but some guns on your station are appropriate to fend them off. Pirates on the other hand don't advertise that they're pirates and your stations won't shoot at them unless they attack first or you run a police force, in either case they won't be stopped at the gate, they'll only be uncovered when they're in your sector for a while or blowing up your production stations. A gatewatch station is a good idea but only to deter conventional hostile factions, not things you'll generally fight in the early game. A better early investment for your own sector would be either a load of guns on your first station or a fleet to patrol it. You really need an actual police force if you want your own sector cos otherwise the pirates will loot your stations, so you want fighters and stuff to scan traffic and some firepower to enforce it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Apr 15, 2020 |
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Apr 15, 2020 02:11
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Hmm, OK then yeah that's fair enough, I'll add in a water refinery and some turrets - I'd forgotten about the need for defences... Also, I forgot to ask earlier - what kind of storage should I be adding to the station? Will I need a mixture of solid, liquid and container storage, or just container storage? EDIT: Sorry for all the questions, but just to check - are habitat modules actually required, for stations? Since I recall reading that someone here mentioned that having them increases your productivity...so does that mean they're non-essential, and I can cut costs by not having any habitat modules (and the other modules that go with it, to keep people fed) on the station? At least until I get some decent money, anyway. Since I'm thinking of building a budget hull plate factory (as OwlFancier mentioned in the past) in one of the race's space, simply so that I can earn some cash before investing in my own sector+defences. Since if habitats etc aren't needed, a $11mil hull plate factory* in Grand Exchange or Eighteen Billion (or anywhere central) is way more appealing right now, compared to the financial headache I'd have trying to jump straight into having my own sector and massive drug factory... *Excluding defence costs. I'll need to work out what I can spend Major Isoor fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Apr 15, 2020 |
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Apr 15, 2020 03:01
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Unless they changed it recently, habitats are not required. They're nice though as they increase the efficiency of your factories, getting you more profit from the same amount of raw materials. As to storages, ice and all the other ores are solid, the gases are liquid, but water is container. If you are refining ice you will need solid storage, the factory can't refine straight out of ship holds.
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Apr 15, 2020 05:48
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Domattee posted:Unless they changed it recently, habitats are not required. They're nice though as they increase the efficiency of your factories, getting you more profit from the same amount of raw materials. As to storages, ice and all the other ores are solid, the gases are liquid, but water is container. If you are refining ice you will need solid storage, the factory can't refine straight out of ship holds. Alright then, cool - I'll definitely have to revisit the idea of implementing habitats later on then, since that does sound worthwhile. I like how water is stored in container storage though, rather than in a tank. I guess it must be stored in boxes full of one-litre bottles! 
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Apr 15, 2020 06:19
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Yeah that threw me too but stuff you dig straight out of asteroids is solid, stuff you extract out of gas clouds is liquid, and everything else is container. Regardless of whether the actual stuff is solid liquid or gas. Basically it exists because the way they stop you mining with normal ships is to make it require a special cargo type. Rather than the X3 version where all wares had specific sizes and you couldn't carry large stuff in a fighter. Your biggest outlay for building stations initially is gonna be getting the module blueprints which are pretty expensive to buy, unless you can get them from scanning. Also habitats require 20 rep to buy so you're likely not getting those til late. Your best bet for a starter station IMO is definitely to bolt some metal refineries onto your HQ or similarly drop a station somewhere with rocks and just start refining ore, you can sell the refined metal until you can afford to process it further. Also of note is you can recycle station modules to get all the parts back, so you don't lose any money if you want to reconfigure your station, you can just dismantle all the bits you don't want to use and then use the same parts to build different modules, all it costs you is time for the builder to do it. So don't feel like you need to plan stuff out super well. I don't know specifically how profitable drugs are cos I never tried them, I always went straight into actual industrial production that gets consumed by shipyards but if they turn out to not be ideal you can just take them to pieces and make different modules instead. Or even dismantle the whole station if you want and ship the parts to a different one. Also I didn't know habitats actually increased the number of goods you got per-input, if so that's incredibly valuable because that's a multiplicative effect at each level of production.So like, the first step adds extra 25%, but the next step adds 25% to the existing extra 25% so it's an extra 50%-ish total. I thought they just made modules work faster. But yeah that hull part complex you linked could support an extra hull part module and would nearly double its output if it were fully staffed, for the same inputs. Habitats are way more useful than I initially thought. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Apr 15, 2020 |
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Apr 15, 2020 08:01
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OwlFancier posted:Oh also you'll want to put defence platforms on all your stations too. I noticed you can put M guns and shields on most modules (at least production). It probably doesn't work too well in sector if you stack them for maximum space efficiency (obstructed arcs) but OOS that could end up being a lot of guns. Isn't this enough against the odd pirate ?
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Apr 15, 2020 08:21
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Krogort posted:I noticed you can put M guns and shields on most modules (at least production). Yes you can put guns on your production modules and that's a good idea if you don't mind paying for them. The main issue is that medium guns have comparatively short range, which means a large ship can simply sit outside of their range and shoot up your station. You don't need a lot of them but I find it's a good idea to put a few dedicated defence sections around your factory just to maximise the distance around the station that you can cover. You don't even need to connect them to the station, modules work fine if they're not connected to anything, the connections are just for looks. So a few disc defence platforms floating in space at the maximum extents of your plot, with a couple of large guns on them will help keep pirates well away. This also maximises coverage in sector too.
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Apr 15, 2020 08:26
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Crafting EMP bombs is pretty easy. Bato's guide for blueprints:
I'm pretty disappointed though because I wanted to nick the ship construction and maintenance modules, but the game won't let me.
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Apr 15, 2020 08:27
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By the way, when I planned to smash the patriarchy, I didn't imagine it would become so literal. (I still want their ships though)
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Apr 15, 2020 08:50
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There's a mod that lets you reverse engineer ships for blueprints at a relevant module. Which seems like it would be useful for people you plan to start fights with. https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=415487
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Apr 15, 2020 08:58
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I restarted due to bugs and I'm slowly going back through the story missions. I was sure of something before but now I'm struggling with something. Is Dal Busta the stupidest man in the universe or am I for doing what he asks? Every step of the way this master analyst is 'woah I'm surprised this obvious trap is a trap!' 'wait this shady person that acts weird has an ulterior motive?' First playthrough I was sure it was him that was the dumbest but this time since I keep doing as he asks...... I mean goddamn man. I feel like such an idiot for listening to you at any point. I broke into your space station expecting to find a secret government installation. I was going to sweet talk some officials That's your plan huh? Well I guess it's the nearest airlock for you. Darkhold fucked around with this message at 11:28 on Apr 15, 2020 |
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Apr 15, 2020 11:18
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Dal Busta is shady as hell and I've long suspected he's obfuscating stupidity. I haven't played though all his plots but if he isn't a Terran agent or a Xenon replicant I'll be very disappointed.
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Apr 15, 2020 11:37
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I haven't played much of the plots but I was assuming he was some dumb moron who blagged his way into the post and is also blagging you to do all the work for him.
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Apr 15, 2020 11:38
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There are too many weird coincidences with that guy. I'm not buying the doofus act. 
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Apr 15, 2020 11:45
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What I've gathered is that XR ships are a lot less optimized than X4 ships. They were designed for fights between 2-5 capital ships at a time, whereas an X4 NPC fleet battle could involve 20 capital ships and a bunch of s/m to boot. Presumably, if they were going to make new assets anyway, they decided to make all-new ones instead of remakes. I'm not actually a fan of the vertical integration/mega complex method of station building. I find the game a lot more interesting when interacting with the NPC economy, rather than just using it as a source of credits for end products. My first station in 3.0 was a 4x Hull Parts factory that I put in a sector with operating Ore Refineries, including one I built for a build mission. I buy my refined metals from Antigone, who in turn consume more and more Ore which my mining ships helpfully supply to them  The difference in profits isn't that much compared to vertically integrating, since I'm also gaining the profits from the ore sales. (I would need the mining ships anyway, of course.) This also saves me the outlay on blueprints and additional modules, as well as spending a lot less time actually building the station.
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Apr 15, 2020 13:46
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Has anyone figured out a solution to the problem of stations not supplying their build storage from their own regular storage, even if they have build storage traders assigned? My best workaround so far is to keep a Shuyaku parked nearby and manually ordering it to transfer a bunch of stuff over every time I add new modules to the build plan. If there was a way to get the station to do this automatically that would make the early bootstrapping process for a mega complex so much less annoying to manage.
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Apr 15, 2020 15:58
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New beta patch: Version 3.10 HF1 Beta 1 (394155) - 2020-04-15 Fixed savegames stuck during bomb section of Hatikvah plot. Fixed Dal Busta not being in correct story location in certain savegames based on Accomplished Scientist gamestart. Fixed missing NPC in Premium Nividium mission. Fixed Split Plot not progressing during Suspicious Split transport mission when destination is destroyed. Fixed excessive wares required for final stage of Split plot. Fixed By Invitation Only mission getting stuck in certain cases. Fixed Paranid plot missions Supreme Interior Design and A Fearsome Flagship getting stuck under certain circumstances. Fixed Hall of Justice station not repairing damaged modules. Fixed fog of war not being uncovered reliably. Fixed Explore order not working correctly. Fixed non-working interactions in first person. Fixed stuck map panning in certain situations. Fixed third party mods combined with Split Vendetta resulting in ever-growing savegames with increasing numbers of stations. Fixed several causes of crashes.
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Apr 15, 2020 19:02
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Figures that I've got a whole bunch of crafting materials EXCEPT Argon Beef.
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Apr 15, 2020 19:09
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timn posted:Has anyone figured out a solution to the problem of stations not supplying their build storage from their own regular storage, even if they have build storage traders assigned? My best workaround so far is to keep a Shuyaku parked nearby and manually ordering it to transfer a bunch of stuff over every time I add new modules to the build plan. Yeah this is really annoying to me too, I wish they would just automatically transfer crap to build storage if they have it in their inventory. I literally do it the same way, largest cargo ship I can, manual transfer.
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Apr 15, 2020 21:46
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This mod has options for automatically supplying build storage, if you're ok with the modified tag: https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/416 I haven't tested that aspect of it, but the rest of the mod seems to work reasonably well.
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Apr 15, 2020 22:01
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I should try that out sometime, I think last I looked it seemed complicated to set up and I was never any good with the X3 AI scripts.
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Apr 15, 2020 22:16
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Just recently discovered that you can see what the pilots of your other ships have picked up for collecting.
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Apr 15, 2020 22:19
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OwlFancier posted:I should try that out sometime, I think last I looked it seemed complicated to set up and I was never any good with the X3 AI scripts. It's not much more complicated than setting up normal default behaviors. A few more tick boxes, but not too bad.
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Apr 15, 2020 22:22
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I've decided to get back into this game and haven't really played except for ~50 hours around release. I'm giving up around 30mil or so credits and I got that capital ship that was sleeping in a xenon sector, but that's just about all. No infrastructure or massive trader fleet. I'm going to start fresh and have about half a dozen new starts to choose from. Any opinion on them?
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Apr 15, 2020 22:57
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