X4: Foundations -Bofu Deez nuts you uncultured swine

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > X4: Foundations -Bofu Deez nuts you uncultured swine

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Anticheese posted:

So what's with the Vitruvian Man on all the spaceships? Is that the default player faction logo?

I want to say it was the default player logo back in X2, but fuuuuuck that was a long time ago, my CD long gone and the starforce copy protection wouldn't work in Windows 10 anyhow.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2018 12:31

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 00:02

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Hav posted:

If you get stuck/annoyed, I put some details earlier in the thread for cheating in huge amounts of cash.

At the moment my "cheat" is sitting in Cuspid Splint with a half decent marine officer and a full deck of boarders and just capping Syndicate Rahanas and Titurels.
I didn't have enough budget to buy Foundations, and I've been around long enough to wait until Egosoft have released a couple of major updates before getting too invested - And it turned out I had 8 hours clocked since Rebirth was released so I've put 50 plus hours into X-Rebirth since Foundations came out.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2018 05:47

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Shrimp or Shrimps posted:

The ego forums definitely have a large chud population, like for real don't look up the thread of the mod that removed all the black people from the game, it's basically just wall-to-wall #whitegenocide anxiety.

Like what the gently caress, they're in a universe with space aliens and they're still worried about skin colour? Chuds gonna chud.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2021 12:00

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

DJ Dizzy posted:

In the Yaki plotline for terrans, where the hell do I Find a connection to the Yaki? I'm at the big asteroid after blasting some customs officer out of the void.

There's an entrance so you can fly into the asteroid.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2021 08:04

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Woohoo, captured my first capital in Grand Exchange. There was a Teladi Plunderer Behemoth chilling by the gate near my PHQ, so I was not surprised that it turned out to be SCA upon scan ( with 21 crew no less ). I decided to sick my Syn onto it who was chilling in system with 100 bored marines but discovered quickly that it was never going to catch the prey. I teleported from my Gravimetric Owl ( I used to scan the ship ) to my Katana and disabled the engines and the target's one remaining turret and now have I a shiny new ship that can't yet limp to a shipyard for repairs. I had been keeping an eye out for SCA Minotaurs as I've managed to force 3 to bail ( I was going to use those as a cheap capping fleet ), but I'll happily take a capital as well.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2021 15:03

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

3 posted:

Though keep in mind, boarding an unclaimed ship with marines tends to blow up random bits and deal hull damage for some reason. Claiming it through a data link does not, but there is a bug in the game currently that randomly stops the leaks from showing up on unclaimed ships.

The suggested fix was to save and then reload your game, but I still had to resort to a single marine for my Syn.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2021 07:05

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Zereth posted:

Only Nemesis shows up in my encylopedia. What's wrong with the osprey?

The Nemesis is a Bugatti Veyron to the Osprey's Nissan Cube. The Nemesis is sleek, fast, deadly and liable to leave you upturned in a ditch because you believed that you were immortal, the Osprey can carry more stuff?. If you have Split Vendetta the Dragon is an even faster hit and run fighter, not very durable and rewards skilled piloting ( don't bounce off your victims ). The Osprey is in a different class of M fighters along with the Cerberus, Gorgon Cobra and Falx where you can dock your personal S Class fighter, the Nemesis is your personal fighter. If you have CoH the Falx stands out from it's class as a baby carrier because it has 4 front weapon hardpoints and dat rear end, but it's still slow and boxy, I prefer the Katana ( or Acura if you prefer :iiaca:

) as it slots into the combat corvette role along with the Nemesis and Dragon, excellent at catching, cleaning and gutting capital ships so your cheap troop transports can do their job.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2021 23:42

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Split ships are about boom and zoom, speed is life, hit them with high burst dps weapons then GTFO. Don't get stuck in a furball, don't get into turn fights and don't ram the wreckage of your victims as you'll get shredded. You need to have room to regen your shield, your guns to cool down and being able to pick your next target. The Split Tau Accelerator feeds into this, it's a better shard gun that the other factions get, shorter range but tighter grouping and higher damage ( everything I've read suggests that the Neutron Gatling is pants but they're guns that go brrrrrt ). I say all of this but I am a bad spaceship driver, and the Nemesis is a lot more forgiving, not as much forward facing firepower but it can tank a lot harder.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2021 10:10

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Sedisp posted:

Incidentally this is another reason why I say the Katana is just better than the Nemesis. It can do the split gimmick better than the Split.

The caveat here ( and I have been playing with my sweet freebie Katana that's all tricked out with mods ) is that the Katana weapon loadout selection leaves a bit to be desired. Proton Barrages are sweet guns but if you're going for rapid bursting down of opponents Split style, or sustained tearing off components off capitals an extra hardpoint or two would elevate it, but it is still an excellent Corvette, and the one I've spent the most time in.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2021 12:52

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Zereth posted:

Also I just checked, I had a ship dock at a wharf and tried to "redesign" it form right-click and couldn't select mods.

Yep, you've got to do it at the Ship Dealer once docked at the wharf. There's a workbench in the Ship Dealer's shop you can interact with like the crafting table and it opens up that redesign interface except now instead of changing paintmods you can apply ship mods.

I recommend the weight reduction hull mod as it improves handling and speed and more shields is always a safe bet. I've mucked about with the differing engine mods but haven't decided which one I like most, and I haven't had enough weapon mods to go mess about with those options. I don't like the randomness of the mod process and after playing with it a bit I just went ahead and installed this mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2397287740

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Mar 30, 2021

# ¿ Mar 30, 2021 05:21

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

BlankSystemDaemon posted:

Oops, I didn't realize I was this behind on the thread..

There seems to be a quest-line where you get to build Yaki into terran space, and possibly help them take over the universe.
At least that's what I'm hoping happens, as I'm playing it right now.

I get an immense pleasure out of zooming around in the Yaki Kuraokami, which is essentially just a Paranid Nemesis Sentinel, but faster and with better maneuvering.

Yaki outcomes as I understand it.
1) You tell Terran Command they're a threat and They'll send in a fleet into Savage Spur and nuke the Yaki and you get a free Destroyer
2) You tell Terran Command they're unorganised They won't send in a fleet to nuke the Yaki and you still get a free Destroyer

If you take option 1 that's it for the Yaki. If you take option 2 then we have a couple more outcomes.

A) You trigger the Xenon Amp by laying beacons to Earth and causes the Xenon to focus on a war with the Terrans, Yaki stay stuck in their symbiotic relationship with the Xenon and your former Terran wingmate ( if you took the Cadet start ) will go hostile and try to warn Earth, and if he succeeds the Terrans will go Hostile on you as well

B) You destroy the Xenon Amp, you'll have some hardliner Yaki go hostile while you're doing it and you'll also be fending off Xenon ships as well ( your free Destroyer really helps here by the way ), but once it's destroyed you should go back to being positive with the Yaki and you'll gain Haille(sp?) and his Yaki corvette as well. You'll then get a message from Busta who suggests that if you clean out the Xenon sectors ( Savage Spur, Tharka's Cascade and Matrix79B ) the Yaki will become a fully fledged faction.

Option A sounds really bad at first but the Xenon invasion is reportedly pretty weak sauce, if you destroy Haille before he narks on you you won't lose Terran faction standing and Terrans at war means more opportunity for your Industry to take over , Option B will require a decent fleet I thought I would give it a try with my Syn, a bunch of Pheonix's looted from SCA and the abandoned Odysseus and I couldn't even dent a Xenon SPP while OOS and I don't know what Yaki as a fully fledged faction actually entails.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 02:12

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

ughhhh posted:

Something's gone wrong in my game just as I'm about to stepup production into higher tier products. I can't find silicon anywhere. All my stations have no silicon and there doesn't seem to be any stations selling silicon based wares. Anyone have a location with high silicon deposits I can try to mine? I even have probes in grand exchange showing large silicon concentrations, but my stations is always empty.

Are you running your own silicon miners? If you are and you have them assigned to mine for your stations but they're not doing it, try unassigning your miners from their respective stations , choose the Repeat Action default behavior, right click on your silicon rich asteroid belt and tell your miner to mine silicon there, then right click on your silicon processing station and tell it to transfer there. Your miner should just then just repeat those commands until you tell them otherwise.

[edit] Also make sure you aren't selling the silicon as you're having delivered to your stations - go into the Logical Overview and make sure there isn't a sell offer on your silicon because it may be that the ai are camping your stations and snaffling it up before you can process it.

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Mar 31, 2021

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 06:01

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

madfury posted:

I have done the eco part of X4 to death. I'd like to get into boarding proper. I have the setup but now I have trouble finding targets. I read that SCA rep is locked at -5 and Bernd said there are 20 SCA capitals in the universe at all times so they seem a good target for practise. I cant find any of them. Where the fudge should I be looking at? I created a global notification if SCA L and XL ships are detected and I hear the notification sound, but I cant find any indication WHERE they are. What am I missing here?

I generally focus on trying to cap in Grand Exchange because that's where I stick stuff I'm not doing anything with ( and that's generally where they're messing about with my Traders - I still haven't gone deep into the economy side of things ). The problem with global notifications is that a lot of the time SCA ships are masquerading as another faction, so your satellite will ignore an SCA ship masquerading as a TEL or PAR vessel ( you can still tell because it'll be named as a Pillager or Plunderer, but once I tried capping a Pillager Minotaur that remained as belonging to the Paranid even after a number of scan attempts - I am running the Ship Variation Expansion and Minor Factions Extended mods and that may be messing with things). With your global notification though, make sure you have the write to logbook checkbox ticked, you can then refer to your logbook and there with be an arrow you can click on that'll move your map focus to the alert. I basically scan through the ship lists for Grand Exchange and Hewas Twin systems ( I keep satellites on the gates - And Hewas Twin The Cove is where the faction head of the SCA resides land there and chat to the faction leader if you want the join SCA cheevo ) looking out for said Pillagers and Plunderers, and I'll assign a fast scout to follow until further notice. At this point the scout vessel will follow the target ship forever unless it gets destroyed ( even if it loses LOS in another Sector or if it reflags it's allegiance ) and I'll round up the boys to proceed to cap. I've had no success capping OOS so I recommend a tough and shooty corvette as your personal ride ( Nemesis and Katana immediately spring to mind ) to disable and defang your target and you can use anything as your troop transports ( the most guys you can launch on a boarding party is 41 so if you only have newbs I suggest you have a full complement ). SCA ships tend to have a tiny complement of Marines so they should be easy to overcome, I haven't hit a FAF ship yet but apparently they're very hard ( they carry a decent complement of experienced marines ), and the ships are often poorly equipped so not as good a return on investment ( unless you're just after free Rattlesnakes then by all means board away ).

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Mar 31, 2021

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 10:36

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Zereth posted:

How do you transport the 30 monkeys with guns, though?

Before I started on SCA Capitals, I cut my teeth on SCA Gunboats. Causing S & M class ships to bail is a bit of a crapshoot and my method doesn't net you a Gunboat every time, some captains just won't bail, and sometimes you'll get a nasty surprise like a Gunboat with multiple tracking turret launchers and you forgot to restock your flares. Have yourself a hardy yet nimble S-Class ship, have your self a weapon set up that you're comfortable with, at least one service crewmember, and have a cargo hold full of the more valuable trade wares. I don't necessarily recommend an M Class Fighter. The baby carriers are going to struggle to keep up with a pirate with max engines and the corvettes are simply too killy, and we aren't trying to kill. Fly around Grand Exchange, the pirates will probably spot you before you spot them, they'll have scanned your ship and asked you to hand over the goods, you refuse and they'll immediately register as SCA. Again we're looking for Pillager & Plunderer boats, but a cargohold full of precious booty seems to draw em out faster than just relying on a satellite net. Engage your target! I use my Kukri with Mk2 Proton Barrages, but if you have a preferred S Class fighter with decent survivability and weapons loadout you'll do fine. Strip their shields quickly and start then working on their hull, at this point you want to do em slowly. Sit in their weapon dead zones and slowly chip away at their armour after around the 50% hull. At this point it's maths and random chance, a low morale pilot will bail with a higher chance, with less hull damage than a high morale pilot who will simply go down with their ship - I believe the bail check happens every 30 seconds so doing too much damage too quickly means that you might roll once to see if they bail before blowing em up. Eventually you're either going to force them to bail or you blow em up. You've got yourself a badly damaged Minotaur, or maybe some just mod parts and majaglit for your troubles. If it's an empty ship, check the area for hostiles ( because getting stuck in a fight while on a broken ship is a bad time and a quick trip to the game over screen, and I've missed an M more than once ). EVA over, find the little beacon near the airlock, hit that with your repair laser and claim the ship. Repair at your discretion and send over a crew member and command that ship to the nearest wharf.
So why did I explain all this? Because you take these stolen Minotaurs, sell the weapons, stick on a shield and fill it with marines and you now have a troop transport to assist you in stealing SCA Capitals. Or you fill em up full of Flak turrets and set them to defend area in your asteroid belt of choice to deal with Kha'ak interlopers ( actually use plasma if you're always OOS because maths). Or you strip them and sell them for a couple of mil. Dealers choice.

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Mar 31, 2021

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 22:12

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Shrimp or Shrimps posted:

So will I find out what happened to my wing man in the Terran cadet plot? I seem to have progressed to project genesis now.

Yes, if you complete the PHQ and Hatikvah questlines you have an offer from Terran command to look further into the pirate threat.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2021 03:56

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

ughhhh posted:

Just found out your stations can be hacked. Was wondering why there were all these wares floating around my station (it was large quantities of goods, too much for a single M trader to carry). They were not from ships that got shot down, and I looked into my station supply and turns out I was loosing supply. In the property tab it shows up with orange letters saying hacked and there was a disguised pirate ship loitering around my station.

You know what to do.

Zereth posted:

... do NPCs ever mine nividium to sell you, or if I want that for research do I need to get it myself? (or, well, order a ship I own to do it.)

Not that I'm aware of - Because Nvidium isn't a ware used in any form of production I don't beleive there are NPC miners for it. Put a Solid S container on your PHQ and send a miner out for Nvidium - you only need 50 Nvidium for a couple of the researches and then like 2000 for the Universe wide teleportation.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2021 05:33

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Sky Shadowing posted:

I've installed two mods for Crystals, one that reverts their spawning to near release, and one that makes asteroids with crystals on them glow rather obviously.

Just the glow mod made it obvious that there are a lot more crystals than you think. Just nearly all of them are cheap purple ones.

I can endure the grind but I don't got all day anymore.

Oh I'm using the glow mod that follows RPG rules, white for cheap, followed by green then blue the purple then finally gold for the high value crystals. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2069554360 Works fine in commonwealth space, I don't spend much time in Terran space and it hasn't been updated for the CoH sectors.

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Apr 1, 2021

# ¿ Apr 1, 2021 14:41

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

GuardianOfAsgaard posted:

I've got Kha'ak constantly harassing my miners in Eighteen Billion right now. Like every few minutes a big group of like 5 Queens Guard with fighter support just appears and start causing trouble, and since the 'patrol sector' order seems to do nothing I have to just be constantly manually dealing with them. Any was to stop them? Is there a station nearby that they're coming from that I can destroy?

I don't use the Patrol behaviour, I use Protect Area and park a couple M Fighters in the belts where there's mining ( I only have the PHQ and a combination Ore & Silicon refinery in Pious Mists IV right next to the belt and have a line of 3 corvettes on picket duty and it works fine ). The Protect Area behaviour only covers a 40km bubble so if your miners are spread out you'll need more pickets. The other known fix is to use L Miners, Kha'ak fighters struggle to scratch L Shields.
The understanding is that Kha'ak Installations could be up to 3 sectors away - Kha'ak Installations are massive and you'll eyeball them faster than an ai explorer will run into one, so you'll be flying recon on this one - I have destroyed exactly 1 Installation, took my Syn armed with Argon Plasma L Turrets aaaaaaaages and I had lucked out as there was a patrol Odysseus who got to the installation before me and who was getting swarmed by the Kha'ak fighters while I only had to contend with a couple station guns.

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Apr 1, 2021

# ¿ Apr 1, 2021 22:08

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Ice Fist posted:

Okay, so I'm thinking about adding in the suggested training mods, but I wanted my plan checked out here. I started as a Terran Cadet and I took the story mission to the point where the guy who hangs with you gets kidnapped or whatever and now I have free reign. I did some missions for some cash, enough to ditch the starting kukri for a max travel drive exploration/shuttle rapier, and a mineral bolo.

I noticed that the Terrans started out with a crap load of factories that require silicon but almost nobody was delivering any to the factories. I was going to set up some miners to go out and mine silicon and make some easy passive income off the sales, but since the devs think that checking for available silicon buyers even 1 jump away is too advanced for the average human being - locking it behind hours and hours of effort, that plan got shot down pretty hard to start - there's only one silicon buyer in the asteroid belt itself and the AI is filling it up nicely so just leaving the miners to sector mine it isn't going to get me anywhere. Once I realized I wasn't going to immediately be able to have auto mining work the way I wanted I've been doing some easy mining in the asteroid belt and running it to plants in Mars, Venus and Jupiter. It's easy, low effort 120k per full load assuming silicon is selling for 150 per m3.

My plan would now be to automate this so I'm not doing this personally, have a nice stream of passive mining income supplemented by missions, and I can go and fund my eventual combat katana plus some early stations. Am I on the right track here? Should I just say gently caress it right now and add in the mods to make training easier? Or should I save up, buy the katana I want, do the story and wait for the game to open up a bit more. I see you guys discussing how X4 opens up the empire building a bit easier and want to make sure I'm not making life too hard for myself.

The solution is Repeat Orders behaviour. Repeat Orders allows you to set up a chain of commands, add some conditions and then loops them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhn_COZESQI
It's a little more work but once you've set up your desired loop you can walk away until you're ready to reassign commands or your pilots have levelled up some. Wanna have a group of ships doing the same thing? Setup one ship, then have the remainder Mimic Commander.

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Apr 3, 2021

# ¿ Apr 3, 2021 21:29

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Ass_Burgerer posted:

Also, holy poo poo, in slowly realizing how easy it is to pirate. Capturing huge freighters left and right in neutral space from basically everybody. As long as you can still dock with a faction, you might as well be their abusive husband.

Was +19 with TEL, captured one of their builder-ships. Now +17. Lol

Ok that's evil enough I should try it, I mean I've been plucking SCA ships outta space because they keep harrying my traders in Grand Exchange. Fair does, they cost me a couple hundred k credits in wares for my Teleportation research, I will take up to 13mil in stripping down their destroyers and another 3 mil for the hull - I'm also slowly accruing a collection of destroyers so I can purge the Yaki sectors of Xenon. I might only be a scrub industrialist with only 3 stations, and have just started to rationalise my fleet of 30 M Class autominers to a much smaller fleet of L Class station miners but I have a growing Destroyer fleet.

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Apr 8, 2021

# ¿ Apr 8, 2021 06:10

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

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

# ¿ Apr 12, 2021 03:45

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Zereth posted:

Any good mods which put the venture rewards into normal gameplay?

Having never taken part of ventures I have no idea what rewards are out there - I was under the impression you could get ship skins that way so I downloaded a mod off steam last night that adds all available skins ( faction skins and ones available as mission rewards ) as default options ( I also have one that adds new ones as a vendor ware so I have skins galore ).

Dragon chat.

The Dragon is a hell of a sweet looking Corvette and it's firepower is fantastic, but when I'm after a boat for capping SCA destroyers I need a boat that can take a few hits from missiles and L turrets, and Nemesis and Katana fits that role better. Modded with tier 3 mass and engine mods the Nemesis is a very nimble and capable fighter that's comparable to the Dragon but I can also put more Terran mk3 shields on it.

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Apr 13, 2021

# ¿ Apr 13, 2021 03:34

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Xan posted:

Anyone use normal trade ships to carry marines? I've been thinking of using Baldrics because they are a lot cheaper...

I was using Boas because they're hella fast and can carry 20 troops, fit them with Plasma turrets to assist with tougher targets - you need to watch them because they'll bounce off your intended, stripping their meagre shields and making them vulnerable to return fire from laser towers and turrets coming back online.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2021 04:57

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Over 50 hours into my current game and I've set up my industrial base in Family Zhin. I'm running mostly single output stations, A large Ore refinery, smaller Graphene refinery, Antimatter Cell factory, multiple Hull parts factories and now an Engine parts factory about to come online. Everything has a couple of Boas assigned as station traders, Energy cell production only on the primary refineries and everything is ticking along nicely. Zyarth Patriarchy were being absolutely bodied by Xenon pushing from Tharka's Cascade below and Rhy's Defiance above and Family Zhin seems to have everything in reasonable abundance ( including K's ). The Patriarchy lost everything in the sector except for their last Defense Platform that eats K's, V's and R's for breakfast but they can't seem to catch a break otherwise, they have no Equipment Docks period ( every time they try to rebuild one, it get's blown up ), Argon are starting to settle in Zyarth's Dominion X and I haven't seen any military ships for a while. Initially I saw some very nasty Xenon Fleets coming through ( only to splash against the Defense Platform ) but now I'm just getting the periodic K and frequent waves of M,N & Ps - also the Xenon keep on starting to build stations in system, to only have them blown up by my Destroyers and they'll plop another one or two somewhere else in system. I could be a little more proactive in defending baby Zyarth Stations but at the moment I'm pretty much focused on trying to not lose anything to Xenon Incursions. The plan is to have weapon & shield parts manufacturing happening before moving into something like Claytronics. Zyarth have a lot of Claytronics factories online so I'm thinking I should stick with spaceship wares instead.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 04:14

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

I believe the Terran response is Install Asguard Problem Solved. If you're playing modified there's a Workshop mod that makes it buyable, otherwise you gotta steal an Intervention one or buy a blueprint and roll your own.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2021 15:29

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Things to do to get you started.

Do the Haktiva questline. It'll earn you a courier ship, has a low bar to entry, pays out at least 400k for one of the missions and is fairly low risk, and you'll need to do it to unlock later quests. Do the PHQ questline, similar low bar to entry, will earn you an M class fighter that can dock S class ships ( it's very easy to miss, and if you've already done the PHQ quest, try to remember where Boso had you wait before escorting a freighter while he was fleeing his captors, the claimable ship will still be there ), is pretty low risk and opens up research. Also mandatory if you want to access later story line stuff. Do missions and raise faction standings. The ones that ask you to eliminate criminal traffic around stations don't pay great but will help you rapidly gain standings with factions you can't trade with at the start. Sector Patrols can be pretty easy, get you a marginally better reward when combined with the criminal traffic missions, and if you have a decent fighter you can make mad cash and faction standings combining sector patrols with miner escort missions ( as long as your ship is fast enough to keep up with the local faction's mining ships and you're comfortable with dealing with a few Kha'ak fighters ). Always pick up the kill any Xenon and Kha'ak missions - even if you're only killing Ms and Protectors, the payout is reasonable, you aren't tied to a specific sector and you can stack up as many of these missions as you can find for even more money. Look for the claimable ships - there's only a handful and none of them are standouts as keepers, but the Perseus in Silent Witness XII is stupid fast and the Odysseus in Faulty Logic VII is hard to get to, not really worth keeping, but you can sell it to any friendly Shipyard without even stepping on board or transferring crew and earn yourself just under 9mil credits. If you've done the Hatikva and PHQ questlines, and have Split Vendetta, start the Split questline at least as far as it gets you a claimable Cobra, it's a decent M class fighter, and unlike the Osprey you might have picked up from the PHQ questline is a keeper until you've got yourself a Katana/Nemesis/Dragon.

Your miner may need helping out, if he's only pulling 10k every 20 minutes he's probably trying to service a refinery with a low buy order and he'll never make you rich ( I just realised you might be using an S class miner, upgrade it to an M class as soon as you can ). Mining ore gets you less money per trip than silicon but you could be doing multiple trips in the time you do a single silicon run. With low skill pilots I tended to manually manage which station they sold at, and if you can skill them up a bit with seminars, use Repeat Orders to automate the process. Make sure you're using resource probes, and don't forget if you're having a hard time in a sector finding decent yields, deactivate and scoop up your probes so you can use them elsewhere.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2021 17:32

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

RBA Starblade posted:

I'd be down to but I want to do this Covert Op mission first lmao

e: Oh never mind I shot one guy and it solved the problem

12 million bucks is a nice chunk of cash for that and ended trade between Argon and Antigone (or so Dal says)

I can now buy wharfs and suicide bomb with the HQ too lmao

e: Lol the Hull Parts factory the game wanted you to build can't actually sell hull parts cheaper than the AI is so they aren't selling. So much for undermining

When I did the factory mission I actually started by putting in a big ol Ore refinery in The Reach and Graphene plant in Argon Prime. Once I had those up an running I misunderstood that I had to put the Hull Parts factory in a specific location so I ended up with 2 factories grinding out Hull Parts. I only ran the mission station at discount pricing until I got the mission complete notification ( pretty much straight after I manually lowered the pricing ) and put it back up. If you have yourself a couple of traders running out of the stations they'll quite happily find plenty of buyers within a couple of jumps and make a tidy income. It's a good little set up an industrial hub opportunity, and once it's done you can forget it. I'm thinking this time around I'm going to select the start a war between Terran and Argon/Antigone option - The Terrane are otherwise to pacifistic and I want to really supercharge my growing Industrial hub in Mars.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2021 23:49

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

I'm about ready to pull the pin on my current playthrough ( around 72 hour game ). Have a neat little industry going on in Terran Space, I've established a foothold in Savage Spur II, I've gotten my head around using mining fleets and mining stations to keep my Computonic Substrate factories from falling over, it's all looking peachy for me but the AI seems content doing nothing but building stations. Terrans aren't spamming but everyone else is. I had triggered the Argon/Terran war in the hopes that it might spice things up, but aside from killing the Antigone Trade Station in The Void no space is trading hands. Instead most sectors have 2 or 3 dozen stations ( which I could probably make a killing supplying, but I don't want to babysit that many miners ) and my game performance when staring at the map is woeful. The one difference I can pin on it is that I've been completely ignoring interacting with the other faction economies ( I've not gone the spitting out miners route to raise standings with everyone that I've done with previous plays ), outside of the Hull Parts factory in Argon Prime and selling energy cells out of the PHQ in Grand Exchange. I'm not at the stage that I can start building Shipyards and clearing out the cobwebs myself ( and given the number of stations I'd have to chew through to make a dent, I'm not interested ), and the biggest threat to the gate network is the recurring FAF Rattlesnakes terrorising Teladi stations in Profit Centre Alpha.

# ¿ May 3, 2021 14:05

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

SectorSatellites is great, just grab it off Nexus rather than Steam Workshop, the Nexus version is newer, the steam version is a re upload by someone else ( not the author ) of an older version.

# ¿ May 3, 2021 22:11

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Zereth posted:

... Oh, huh. I'll have to do that, I have the workshop version.

The updated version on Nexus includes Resource Survey Probes that'll deploy multiple resource probes to highlight the resource hotspots in a given sector.

# ¿ May 3, 2021 23:30

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Shrimp or Shrimps posted:

I'm at a similar point in my playthrough where I helped the Terran take savage spur 2 but they aren't really pushing into the void and I've got station spam all over the commonwealth.

Gonna see if building a few defense stations and then selling them to the Terran (using the recycle ships and stations mod) will help to jolt them forward as they'll send in fleets to defend the stations (presumably).

Heck I had to clear out Savage Spur II on my own ( 2 Syn's and an Asguard - I had the buyable Syn & Asguard mod going ), and I was hoping I could make bank on a passive income from my defense fleet killing P's and the occaisional K coming in from Savage Spur I ( also running the Better Kill Credit mod ), but nobody else moved in so I was like fine, I'll start my second computative substrate / microlattice / silicate facories here because Savage Spur II is plenty resource rich ( moreso than Asteroid Belt ). The station spamming was reported early on so I'm hoping it'll get fixed by the next update, or when they release 4.10 ( I can't say I'm interested in the Ventures side of the update, there's too many good QoL mods that I'm not willing to part with ). In the mean time I'm thinking a Split start would be fun, I do enjoy the early game but it doesn't take too long until you're in a hotted up M fighter thinking you're king poo poo and ready to become a captain of industry - you gotta do something with all those credits burning a hole in your pocket amirite.

# ¿ May 4, 2021 10:58

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

I'll put hand up and say that while I have the 1 star Autotrader mod installed, I never use Auto traders. I transition from running sector autominers ( using repeat orders if the resources and refineries are in different sectors ) to my own refineries and warehouses, and I let my station managers deal with the trading.

# ¿ May 6, 2021 08:29

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

frogge posted:

Just realized that my entire fleet of ships was running with 1 or 2 crew tops. As soon as I started recruiting for 'em all everything started running smoother. Mining ships and trade ships are turning out a profit way faster.

If you're cool with mods I use Faster Crew Levelling to speed things along.

# ¿ May 12, 2021 04:14

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Ice Fist posted:

Finally kicked off this TER vs ANT/ARG war to spice up the universe. Getsu Fune and the Void are now super hot. Piles of TER destroyers, previously unused and sitting idle in Savage Spur gatecamping the Xenon now lie dead near ANT defense stations. TER are dropping stations of their own in the Void. Suddenly the Terrans need ships and I'm happy to supply them!

*Cackles maniacally*

I realize I'm a bad guy here since I'm basically Moriarty from Game of Shadows, kicking off a war so I can supply the war with weapons, but does it make a difference if I did it only because I was depressingly bored with how quiet the universe has been? The Xenon have been a complete nonfactor and have lost sectors to the Terrans, Teladi, and Paranid. Beyond that, nothing of note has been occurring. Nobody has made any headway in the faction wars. I think I saw one station get taken out in the Paranid Civil War.

It's nice to see *something* going on. You're welcome universe. Now to finish uniting these Paranid and see if they apply any pressure to the ANT/ARG.

Basically if you peace out with everybody the universe just stagnates. Ultimately the only thing the driving the Economy is the destruction of ships, and if all of the AI factions are holding hands singing Kumbaya like it's a world without lawyers there's nothing left for them to do after the Xenon are pacified. Terraforming exists as a resource drain for you but there's no such thing for the AI. War is hell, but peace is worse. Unless you decide to wardec everyone and conquer the gate network all for yourself like some spaceborn Alexander, but we know how that ends too.

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 14:38 on May 13, 2021

# ¿ May 13, 2021 14:33

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Travic posted:

Is there any way to start a war between the Terrans and the Paranid? I really don't want to start one with ANT/ARG. I'm trying to protect them and I'm pretty sure the Terrans would roll over them.

If you complete the Paranid Questline I believe you can have them wardec anyone, and so far when I've triggered the Terran vs ANT/Arg war it's quickly hit stalemate -Don't be afraid of war, it's good for business.

# ¿ May 17, 2021 15:45

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

FrickenMoron posted:

Is there any ship thats really good for taking out xenon stations solo? I tried the Syn you get from the Terran storyline with plasma turrets and that works, but once the angry bees wake up I get swarmed really badly and cant do much about it. I miss X3 flak turrets... I have the XR ship modpack installed if any of those are especially good at it.

The Asgard would be the right ship for the job, the XL Laser is probably your highest DPS single weapon for killing a station ( you also get two main batteries ). Unmodded your only options for acquiring one is to either board one, or buy the blueprint from the Terran rep and build one yourself. There's a Workshop/Nexus mod that makes them buyable. The XL weapon is still reasonably short ranged ( around 8km from memory ) and the Asgard will still benefit from some anti fighter protection - when I was running the buyable Asgard mod I also took two Syn's as escort ( to be honest Osaka's would have been better as they have more M turrets ) to clear Savage Spur II. It's still a bit of a slog taking down a station ( the XL beam has a fairly hefty cooldown between shots ) but you're less likely to lose your escorts, and if you equip them with L Plasma turrets they'll make a meaningful contribution along with their main batteries. You'll only want a couple of them because too many gets into herding cat territory.

# ¿ May 24, 2021 11:54

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Captain Collins on Youtube does quite a few X4 videos to cover a lot of the core concepts. Here's an older one that's pre Cradle of Humanity DLC that helped me get started ( and if you don't have CoH is still relevant ).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCXy9gQGp1Y
I'm a serial game restarter and generally lose interest in a game when you get to the point that you're building up to become your own serious faction, and what I don't recommend is trying to rush into the plot missions as soon as they are presented to you - almost all of them require a bit of time pottering about building your wallet, having a much better equipped ship than what you've started with and positive faction standings with most the other factions you encounter beforehand. The Cradle of Humanity Terran Cadet start is probably the most generous in setting you on your way, with fairly quick access to a decent Corvette ( Katana ) and then Destroyer ( Syn ) - but there will be some really tough fights if you haven't taken a breather between plot missions to gain standings, build your war chest and invest in some upgrades. There are a few of the plotlines that are designed to get you into building stations and industry but you'll need to have a bit of capital before you can actually get into them. Every one has their own method of getting the ball rolling and invariably for me it means finding systems that fairly rich in crystals until I have several million credits, while also grinding standings with most factions by shooting criminals at stations so I can dock, then use AI miners to further build up standing so I can eventually buy and equip a Corvette ( but if you're doing the Terran Cadet Start you can have one given to you as dilemma I prefer the Katana over the prototype Yaki fighter you can choose to keep instead ). A lot of X grognards are anti making it too easy to get started with Crystal mining, preferring the slower grinding by mining and running easier transport missions but I can't get into the whole space rock sucker / trucker gameplay as it's just too tedious for me. Getting your own AI mining fleet does give a reasonable passive income early on but the newer Khaak mechanics make it a bit more risky than it used to be.

On the topic of crystal mining being boring, it is going to depend on your luck in ferreting out the higher value ones and ignoring lower value ones, and I will put my hand up and say I do use the Crystal Rarities mod to improve my chances of success, but if you want to run an unmodded game then it's going to be a lot grindier and a lot less interesting.

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Dec 23, 2021

# ¿ Dec 23, 2021 12:55

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

FrickenMoron posted:

War loot is so much quicker and easier money than crystals will ever be but it requires more confidence in what you're doing because youll pick up items in areas where lots of people/ships get shot to pieces. I personally cant stand crystals cause its squinting really hard at stuff and my eyes are bad.

A slightly less cheaty but easier on the eyes mod to the rescue!
To be honest I'd be fine with just this mod just because of the crystal colour coding and glow, but to hell with respawn timers imo.

But you are right in that you can make mad bank with some of the higher value drops from looting a battlefield.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2021 13:06

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

I'm of the opinion a free Katana is more useful to me over an S class fighter, I mean I'll eventually trade up to a Dragon or Nemesis because I think they look even sweeter ( and more fun to fly ), but a Katana is a brokenly good Corvette ( especially after you invest in a few mods ), and by the time the Katana comes up I'm looking to upgrade from my starter Kukri and I don't like the aesthetics of the Moreya. Also, when I drop the Katana as my personal battlewagon I'll still have a use for it intercepting Khaak in asteroid belts until I've upgraded to L miners.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2022 05:49

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 00:02

ZombyDog: Jul 11, 2001; Ere to fix yer gubbinz

Major Isoor posted:

Hmm, OK then. So I guess really, the main benefit of giving the fighter to TER is I get some extra cash, in the form of a Katana. I mean hell, does it at least have a cool paint job?
I think I'll I'll probably hang onto the fighter, even if it's kinda weird looking. Since I already have a (not quite as good) Katana and money's easy enough to come by, compared to exotic ships. Are any of the other Yaki M ships good as a personal ship? If not, I'm considering just getting a split Dragon, or whatever it's called. In my original X4 save, I found that that thing armed with two split space shotguns is fantastic!

The Kuraokami ( Yaki M ) is a much faster Nemesis Vanguard with slightly poorer agility but double the cargo capacity and Yaki greebles all over it. A Dragon still beats it for speed and the 6th weapon hardpoint, but the Nemesis and Kuraokami has the better endurance for a prolonged fight with the additional shield hardpoint ( consider not only that extra shield itself but the effect of a second shield mod ). The Dragon excels at high speed, high burst damage jousting but definitely cops it hard when you're trying to soften a cap ship for boarding, so your mileage depends on your preferred combat role.

staberind posted:

30 is max you can get.

in a recent start i accepted an 11 million payout mission,( to board some ship) which bumped me to over 10 standings with hatikva from 0.

and yeah, someone said before about the best time to play x4 being just before an update, originally i thought "? huh?" but now i am looking for updated api's so i can keep mods working in 5.
ugh.

I've managed to luck out, but almost all of the mods I'm running worked with 5.0 out of the box

ZombyDog fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Mar 21, 2022

# ¿ Mar 21, 2022 12:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > X4: Foundations -Bofu Deez nuts you uncultured swine

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