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I've got a factory that's purely set up to turn the mining and gas resources into the various refined products and nothing else. I created a trade restriction that says my faction only and set every one of those inputs to use that rule. Station remains stocked, miners do fine, and I haven't incurred any expenses at that station since shortly after I made the changes (A few NPC traders were inbound at the time). Also helped to reduce the NPC miners in the vicinity.
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Apr 10, 2021 18:18
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Taerkar posted:I've got a factory that's purely set up to turn the mining and gas resources into the various refined products and nothing else. I created a trade restriction that says my faction only and set every one of those inputs to use that rule. Station remains stocked, miners do fine, and I haven't incurred any expenses at that station since shortly after I made the changes (A few NPC traders were inbound at the time). I’ve been considering the same. One or two stations per raw input of gas/mineral. No miners trying to do double duty.
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Apr 10, 2021 18:35
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According to Steam its been almost exactly a year since I last played this. Didn't get very far, think I finished the PHQ storyline. What are some recommended mods? I was thinking of picking up VRO, but is there anything else people would suggest to grab?
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Apr 11, 2021 00:37
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Give VRO a try and see if you like it because you have to use it from the start and I don't think you can remove it either. Maybe cheat some ships in or something to play around with the balance, it's up to you whether you like it. The Faction Enhancer set can significantly amp up the intensity of wars in the game too so I think they're good. Oh and X4 Fire and Smoke makes the ship explosions cooler.
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Apr 11, 2021 00:41
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This terraforming takes a long time. It really is a late game resource sink. If only there were a better way. Maybe we could automate it somehow. Maybe with robots. Yeah, that'd make this easier. Someone has definitely made this joke before
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Apr 11, 2021 00:42
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Oh boy, give it a go and I'm already running into the same stupid "no one at the trader's desk" problem I had a year ago. loving Egosoft, can't you fix your poo poo ever?
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Apr 11, 2021 07:51
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I want to say that I think major stations like trading stations, EQDs and shipyards have traders more regularly but I almost never use the trader for anything so I couldn't tell you for sure if there is a pattern.
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Apr 11, 2021 13:00
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Anyone have any tips on making money in the early mid-game? I've been working to embed myself into the Terran economy like a tapeworm, and expanding into Argon space with a graphene refinery. I tried to cap a builder ship but 3 Falxes and my Katana weren't able to out-tank its shields.
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Apr 11, 2021 16:05
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You might consider having one Ion Blaster as it does an absolute staggering amount of damage to shields. I like combining it with three or four thermal disintegrators, because they (at least partially) ignore shields. I do wish there were disruptor missiles, though. Capable of moving fast and tearing through shields, but useless on the actual hull. EDIT: I know someone mentioned this before - and they were right, now that I've had some time to think about it. I feel like if X4 had the weapon energy distribution system of prior X games, and actual missile pods that could be (re)loaded with a few missiles at a time but would take time in between that, you could make the combat feel even more stellar than it already does. It'd also be cool if they had a shield energy distribution system like in FreeSpace 2. BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Apr 11, 2021 |
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Apr 11, 2021 16:10
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OwlFancier posted:I want to say that I think major stations like trading stations, EQDs and shipyards have traders more regularly but I almost never use the trader for anything so I couldn't tell you for sure if there is a pattern. The thing is, I can apparently fix this by saving and reloading, in which case a trader NPC will be standing at the desk on reload. However, this game takes loving ages to do that and seems to lock up frequently if I try to load a quicksave while in game (instead of exiting to the main menu).
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Apr 11, 2021 16:39
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I’ve been having traders suddenly appear after I turn my back to the empty counter pretty frequently recently. Maybe they’re just loading very slowly?
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Apr 11, 2021 16:45
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chglcu posted:I’ve been having traders suddenly appear after I turn my back to the empty counter pretty frequently recently. Maybe they’re just loading very slowly? Yeah I think sometimes it takes quite a bit of time for the game to populate the NPCs as it should. I wish there were Terran-stylized versions of Commonwealth wares producers. I want to expand Shadowing Heavy Industries into Commonwealth space with a trademark Terran aesthetic! Not mix and match...
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Apr 11, 2021 17:31
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Man, I just don't know if I have the patience for the X series anymore... Do the Untested Explorer Start, manage to get the Player HQ materialized and set up the build order on the first basic dock. Go off to collect some money, throw out a mining ship and a scout to do some sector exploring (thanks mod). LOTS of fumbling with clunky UI (apparently for some reason icons for showing missions available at stations and such are turned off by default, WTF!?) They find a few lockboxes so I go out to collect them. One is spinning really badly so I decide not to risk shooting with my Discoverer's guns and instead hop into my spacesuit, start carefully lazering the locks off. All of a sudden a Xenon M comes out of nowhere and starts putting shots into my Discoverer. The NPC Captain (transferred from the ship I exploded to materialize the Player HQ) panics and rockets off in my ship before I can get back aboard. I get to watch her flail around in a panic as the M chews her apart and destroys MY ship. Last save was almost an hour ago. Right after popping out the Player HQ...
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Apr 11, 2021 20:06
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There's something perversely charming about the many ways in which the game will carelessly gently caress you over if you're not very careful. The game isn't even meant to be particularly punishing. The open world simulation + the jank just perfectly synergize to create those emergent situations that completely dick you over in the most incidental way.
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Apr 11, 2021 21:33
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Yeah, I like that part of the charm too, but it can be INCREDIBLY frustrating. Also vastly entertaining to read about, when it's not you it happens to.
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Apr 11, 2021 21:49
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The worst of the jank is concentrated in those first 20-30 hours too. Once you have a rudimentary fleet and your teleport up to 3-5 jumps, getting surprised by a random pain in the khaak is a small inconvenience as you teleport into your corvette and come for revenge.
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Apr 11, 2021 22:16
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I keep the cheat script installed for just those moments where I get boned by the game and haven't saved in a long time. I still like to experience it happening but ain't no way I'm going backward an hour. I also have a teleport on death mod in case I get one shot or something and haven't saved in ages. Don't mind going back 20 min or so but I've done way too much micromanaging in thr space of an hour and no way I'm doing that. To anybody getting into X4 or back into it, the pause button is your friend. I've noticed something really weird happening with my mining trade stations. Every now and then I have to remove and reinstate every buy order in the logical overview or my miners just sit around calculating parameters and searching for resources. I can't figure out what's causing it and it's happening under different circumstances in 3 mining trade stations I've set up in the belt, oort, and Gaia. Maybe this wasn't a good idea lol.
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Apr 12, 2021 00:48
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I also have npc traders not showing up every once in a while. It's actually a bug that prevents ALL npcs on that station from loading, except for the manager i think. I suppose it's because the game didn't catch that you've docked, so all the randomly generated npcs don't generate or something. The quickest way to fix is actually to just visit another station. You could also go back to the previous station and check if things loaded correctly this time. If not, just leave and come back again. Honestly, it's not really a big deal later in the game. Traders are just a small part of the game.
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Apr 12, 2021 00:48
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I also personally find that a lot of the jank is concentrated in things that are already kind of boring to do, so I don't do them anyway and thus don't experience the jank. For lockboxes I tell other ships to collect them, for missions I only really do "kill x number of xenon/khaak/criminals" because those are either passive or easy. For money I mostly shoot stuff and scavenge battle sites and build up a mining fleet or a station. There are a lot of things you can do in the game that I think are mostly there for people who really like roleplaying or something, because there are distinct disparities between how fiddly a thing is and how much reward you get.
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Apr 12, 2021 01:02
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Well then someone tell me how to get started cause I'm struggling to scrape up some starting cash. Is crystal mining pretty much it? I can't find many missions and the ones I do are poo poo like prospecting missions where I couldn't find the density they wanted at all, or scan a ship for energy cells where scanning ships just seemed to get station security after me (I guess I need a police license or something). Right now I'm just trying to gather up the few hundred thousand needed to hire someone to build the drat landing pad on the player HQ Between the even clunkier interface, stuff that X3 had that seems to be missing (no "hop into spacesuit" hotkey, really?!), and other annoyances, I keep running into. I'm drat near about to shove this thing back into a dusty corner of my game library. Honestly part of me wonders if my memories of X3 are holding me back cause I keep trying to do things the way I did in X3 or making comparisons that turn out extremely wrong/different.
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Apr 12, 2021 01:19
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Grabbing the hidden destroyer for an easy 9 mil, looting battlezones, then crystals
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Apr 12, 2021 01:27
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Doing missions to earn about 500,000 to get a sector miner and having it mine for you is what got me started. Seemed pretty easy. I think you can get by with like, 300,000 bare minimum
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Apr 12, 2021 01:32
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My getting started currently involves spending roughly an hour gathering crystals ( I use the Crystal Rarites mod ) and grinding some standings ( missions and shooting criminal scum ) so I can dock at Commonwealth stations, until I've got enough for a couple of low spec miners. I'm also searching for sectors that have a reasonable ore (or better silicon ) yield and some refinery stations - preferably in Paranid & Argon sectors because I also want to raise my standings with both so I can eventually buy and fit a decent Nemesis. Silicon may be slower post CoH but a full haul will fund a brand new Drill. Once you have some miners online, you can leave them to do their thing while you do the the Terran/Hatikva/PHQ/Yaki plots, funnelling your funds into more miners. I try to have at least 4 operating in each faction space, less for funds but again for gaining standings. By this time I should have either a Katana or Nemesis and I'll start capping SCA destroyers to fund my first stations. And this is normally as far as I'll get as I'll decide that "ugh I wish I didn't put a station there" or now I have too many miners, or I don't like how the Universe is progressing and I'll start over. The Kha'ak changes don't seem to bother me, I find it's a handy job for an otherwise unemployed M class fighter or Syn to go Protect Position in an asteroid belt rather than Patrol.
ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Apr 12, 2021 |
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Apr 12, 2021 03:45
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Well then someone tell me how to get started cause I'm struggling to scrape up some starting cash. Is crystal mining pretty much it? I can't find many missions and the ones I do are poo poo like prospecting missions Never do prospecting missions. At the start I do a few Help me get off this station missions, which you get from the sparkling anomalies on stations (not the red blob type). Of regular missions, destroying mines is easy money, and repair satellites missions aren't too bad - there is the whole spacesuit palaver, which I agree is ridiculous and annoying, but there is at least a good bug that often makes repairing one satellite repair them all. I see other people recommend grabbing the free destroyer, but I got blasted to smithereens when I tried that in my starting ship. And it does feel like cheating. Once I had passive income from miners, so it was just the same as waiting a few hours, I felt better about it.
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Apr 12, 2021 06:58
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If you can find multiple repair sattelite missions at once they often seem to target the same satellites too.
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Apr 12, 2021 07:03
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If I could start all over again in my game with my lessons learned I would probably do the following (keeping in mind that this game I’m basically playing a Terran purist for no other reason than I want to) 1) Do missions until you can afford a minimum fit bolo with mining drill and mining lasers. 2) Mine silicon. The terrans have a seemingly bottomless need for silicon. It’s also plentiful in the asteroid belt and Oort Cloud. Starting off I’d probably do it myself although it’s tedious just because I can do it 50 times faster than an NPC can, but there’s no reason you can’t immediately setup a repeat orders miner if you want and continue to do missions or something fun. Mining manually in this game is not at all fun but again, you can mine much faster than the AI for some decent money 3) Use initial money gained to buy more miners and automating them. Build up a decent fleet. Stick to mining silicon. 4) Buy a katana. Use it to advance plot and get access to the HQ and initial research options. Also go get your SETA mode at this point. 5) Use research options to get the ability to steal blueprints. 6) steal blueprints for micro lattice and silicon carbide modules. 7) build a modest silicon carbide and microlattice factory. Transfer all miners to it, buy more miners to fully meet demand. 8) expand silicon carbide production and continue to buy miners to meet the increased demand. Silicon demand at a silicon carbide plant is outrageous so you’ll need a ton of miners working the factory. NPCs will trip over themselves to buy silicon carbide in Terran space. You’re basically printing money now. 9) whatever you want. You’ve got a great income base now.
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Apr 12, 2021 07:08
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I'd put 'farm SCA capitals' somehwere near 'aquire Katana/Nemesis/Dragon'. Just install satellites near certain gates (can get the names once I am home) and just bounce between 3 locations capping destroyers. 8-12mil a pop.
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Apr 12, 2021 07:54
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madfury posted:I'd put 'farm SCA capitals' somehwere near 'aquire Katana/Nemesis/Dragon'. Just install satellites near certain gates (can get the names once I am home) and just bounce between 3 locations capping destroyers. 8-12mil a pop. Nop's Fortune (both) / Heretic's End / Hewas Tin IV (the final one in the chain)? Those are realiable SCA spawns for me but not sure if that differs game to game. RE early game grind, I did the repair satellite / destroy mines / deploy satellite / taxi grind for quite a while before building up a fleet of sector miners in the Asteroid Belt (called "Beltalowda Mining Company" lol) and then my first station which was a power plant in mercury (steady income, nothing amazing in my save). I did speed up my early game progression with the mods "Better Kill Credit" and "Better Piracy". The former does what it says on the tin and is useful for helping out in Xenon invasions; getting the lucky shot on a K is a sizable chunk of change. The latter introduces a "harrass" command that allows you to whittle down and bully S/M ships with a chance that your intimidation will be successful and they'll bail. I lowered the chance on mine from default as it was a tad high for my liking, but it allowed me to cap some traders / miners that I could sell or put to use in a way I would have in X3 with their vanilla bail logic, which if you're an X3 vet you might appreciate. I do realize saying "mod your game" as a response to "help how do I x" is generally not a helpful response and that modding locks you out of ventures which you might be interested in. At over 600 hours in this game, I can't fathom going back to unmodded, however. There are just too many QoL / curve-fixing (both early game and late game, for example the paying salary to your employees mod which I edited to make fairly substantial so as to act as a decent credit sink) / variety-introducing mods out there to pass up. Shrimp or Shrimps fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Apr 12, 2021 |
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Apr 12, 2021 08:01
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Shrimp or Shrimps posted:Nop's Fortune (both) / Heretic's End / Hewas Tin IV (the final one in the chain)? Those are realiable SCA spawns for me but not sure if that differs game to game. Thanks, these were indeed the gate points I had in mind. I was wondering about mods myself. I have now run into severely frustrating aspects of the game. Two major one being f(l)eet battles and second being megacomplex management. First one I have vented about already but the second issue is that if you have more than one of same type raw material input in a complex (lets say Ore and Silicon or Methane and Helium) then assigned station miners only mine one of the respective raw resource. So I have storage full of ore but 0 silicone. You can somewhat mitigate it by setting storage levels so ore storage gets 'full' sooner, but that also doesnt give perfect results. Could use mining-feeder stations but I really dont want to jump through so many hoops everytime some aspect of the game is broken. So, my question is - and keep in mind I have 0 experience with mods for X4 - can you safely remove mods when vanilla status becomes important again for whatever reason? I mean saves with mods will break when you remove the mods?
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Apr 12, 2021 09:26
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madfury posted:So I have storage full of ore but 0 silicon This seems to be an issue introduced with 4.0. I've gotten around this with dedicated mining trade stations (which also acts as a supercharged autominer in early game due to manager's 5-jump radius). Though I'm not having no issues with it; sometimes my miners will just stop doing anything and I have to refresh all the buy orders. madfury posted:So, my question is - and keep in mind I have 0 experience with mods for X4 - can you safely remove mods when vanilla status becomes important again for whatever reason? I mean saves with mods will break when you remove the mods? Some mods cannot be removed, without breaking the save (as in, literally can't be loaded), and some can be removed safely and you can continue playing your game save. However, I'm almost sure your save state will remain with a ***modified*** tag forever which locks you out of ventures. So if that's a feature you want, you can't ever mod that save. Of course you could remove mods and start a brand new save.
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Apr 12, 2021 09:40
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While I do like the idea of asymmetrical multiplayer the ventures of old were a waste of time. I am highly doubtful Egosoft will be able to iterate venture feature into something exciting. I think I'll fork one of my saves and test out some mods. Any generic QoL recommendations? Im not looking for weapon or ship overhauls, just mods that make the game work as intended.
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Apr 12, 2021 09:49
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Any good mods which put the venture rewards into normal gameplay?
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Apr 12, 2021 09:56
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madfury posted:I'd put 'farm SCA capitals' somehwere near 'aquire Katana/Nemesis/Dragon'. Just install satellites near certain gates (can get the names once I am home) and just bounce between 3 locations capping destroyers. 8-12mil a pop. I need to figure this out. Gotta make learning to cap SCA and FAF destroyers a priority. I know the steps but the one time I tried to cap a FAF rattlesnake I got owned real hard. Didn’t even get to the boarding part, I’d just get shot up.
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Apr 12, 2021 20:03
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Ice Fist posted:I need to figure this out. Gotta make learning to cap SCA and FAF destroyers a priority. I know the steps but the one time I tried to cap a FAF rattlesnake I got owned real hard. Didn’t even get to the boarding part, I’d just get shot up. Rattlesnakes hit hard and are usually full of marines. So you would need a Raptor or another Rattlesnake to cap one comfortably. Stick to Phoenixes and Behemoths. Kill engines first. Then hull to <80% and turrents from boarding side. Board, wait, transfer marines back, sell. If you dont have a destroyer or carrier of your own, then use corvette and 2 marine transports (about 40 marines are a safe number). Keep the first destoyer you cap, stick proper engines and pulse turrets on it, set all turrets to "Attack my target", set "Disarm turrets" shortcut and fill it with marines. Next target just use main guns to kill engines from behind, target turret surface elements and keep turning your turrets on and off. Use main guns to kill shields and hull and use turrets to defang. At least thats how I do it 
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Apr 12, 2021 21:27
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What dictates how much damage weapons do? Why can my Katana sometime solo 20 N with shields maybe hitting 90% and other times 1 just wipes its shields and 2/3rds of its health in one salvo? e: I got the second Moreya, so now beyond delivering fleets for the Split and Paranid, I have to find the Yaki Home Sector and hack some Antigone thing. 
RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Apr 12, 2021 |
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Apr 12, 2021 21:35
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Some autominer questions: Do they work better if I deploy resource probes? I set out some probes in areas and found a few spots supposedly rich in Silicon but my miners wandered off to areas of the sector without probes instead... they also seem to sometimes struggle with finding stuff. Is OOS automining better? I had several of them deployed mining Silicon in Grand Exchange I where the Player HQ is (and I've been loitering occasionally). They also seem to struggle in certain areas with finding places to sell, a lot of the ore refineries in the systems I put them in either have no buy orders or very small ones (less than a third of an M's cargo worth). I guess they're just overstocked? Whats a good S class to invest in for some early combat/mission stuff, and what kind of guns should I be using?
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Apr 13, 2021 01:11
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Some autominer questions: According to the devs placing probes help miners priorities high yield locations, but that doesn't necessarily mean its where the probe is. Also crew experience (both pilot and crew) affect mining yeilds and speed. Whats going on is kind of a mystery. Its best to leave them mining OOS. I have noticed that the whole buying and selling kind of happens in chunks. Usually i will have 15 to 20mins where nothing happens and then a whole slew of sell/buy orders happens, then another pause, so dont worry about ai usage, they chew through ore and silicone. Fyi, i find gas to be more consistent and profitable atm. For a good S class as a player ship, you should look at some of the heavy fighters. I really like the chimera(ZYA?), gladius(TER) and pulsar vanguard(ANT). Each of them requires 10 faction standing i think. All of them are kind of slow but have huge weapon loadouts and good sheilds. Small ships dont really have much in the way for ship loadouts unless you are specializing in things so i usually go all bolters with 1 smart missle launcher or torp launcher.
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Apr 13, 2021 02:10
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Good ol' Chimera. Loved that thing in X3, but I guess its not really the same anymore is it? I mean this is kinda cool  But drat if I don't miss this Star Fox game looking motherfucker.  [edit] Do the free families not have the Chimera? Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 02:23
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They have something else but the same chasis with less guns i think? I dont remember which factions have which ships tbh. Personally i wouldn't put money towards a S ship until later when you have more money and access to mods/components which really make them worthwhile. The plots if you have started it gives you some really good M ships early which work better off the shelf (Cobra, Dragon, Katana etc). Also, if you dont know yet, the in-game encyclopedia has ship comparison tool and lists all ships/components you have access to with full 3d model.
ughhhh fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 02:39
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Yeah that cobra is like... why would I ever use a fighter over this?
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Apr 13, 2021 02:56
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