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Are terrans still supposed to be the bad guys in all this? edit: apparently all the plot is in some German language only novels?  An official forum thread that I found helpful: https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=182&t=438244&p=5049988&hilit=Torus+destruction#p5049988 Edit2: though he starts going off the rails a bit, it’s perfectly acceptable for the PC to be “deleted” from history in the next game. That means Dal Busta is the real protagonist, whatever outcome you decide on is clearly what he was manipulating you into the entire time. hobbesmaster fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 01:37
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They're a darker shade of grey in the writing with the xenophobia and disregard for national sovreignty, but it's hard to paint them as the "bad guys" since they've always weirdly been portrayed as a colonial power that doesn't want to establish colonies. It seems that the writers wanted them to be morally compromised with being hyper interventionist and also having the ultra-CIA manipulate things in the Commonwealth in order to pursue their own aims; the problem is their aims begin and end at "don't make the genocide robots" and the Terran Conflict's flashpoint is the Argon government responding to the statement of "don't make the genocide robots" by making ten million genocide robots. By the time of X4 at least, their entire reason for being seems to be the eradication of the Xenon from the gate network, in part because their ancestors were responsible for their creation, but they've never really been written has having any imperialist ambitions beyond that, and it feels like if the Xenon somehow all disappeared overnight, they'd be perfectly happy to stick to their own established systems or even just turn their own gates back off and leave the Commonwealth to its own devices. edit: it is, in hindsight, kind of astounding that after 50ish years of the Terran Conflict being ended by Ancient fiat, the first thing the Terrans do after getting looped back into the network isn't just scorched-earthing the Argons immediately. IIRC in one of those German-only books you mentioned, the Beryll terraformer fleet is like hours from reaching Earth when Elena Kho and a Paranid guy use a gate redirect trick to shunt them all into a black hole and sacrifice themselves in the process. 3 fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 01:45
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The outer solar system and aldrin are/were colonies I suppose? It’s not like there’s a rebel Terran faction or anything to indicate that things are bad like say with the split.
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Aug 10, 2023 01:55
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3 posted:edit: it is, in hindsight, kind of astounding that after 50ish years of the Terran Conflict being ended by Ancient fiat, the first thing the Terrans do after getting looped back into the network isn't just scorched-earthing the Argons immediately. The Terran plot could be: 1. Deploy satellite network in Hatikvah’s choice I 2. Deploy satellite network in Argon Prime 3. Deliver 50,000 m3 “popcorn” to Saturn Orbital Logistics Dock
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Aug 10, 2023 02:02
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I have no understanding at all how some plot lady I hung around with in one of the earlier X games and seemed alright ended up ULTRA TERRORIST MASS MURDERER but it certainly feels like something that would turn an already xenophobic people into genocidal revenge people against anyone and everyone else whether involved or not. My current game is going pretty good now, Xenon gobbled up the "north" part of the galaxy but are contained from going beyond Heretics End through my and Argon efforts and never got far in any other area. The Boron have done actually and entirely nothing but sit in their little corner. Certainly a nice place to make a 100% safe trade empire in that cheaps out on ship shielding and safety, but a bit sad really, I want to invite them for when I do my sorties into Xenon space, maybe encourage them to take a sector for themselves there.
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Aug 10, 2023 02:30
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I think I found a dupe. I was flying around Scale Plate Green I and found a lockbox. I destroyed 4/8 locks and I got a notification about an attack. I switched to Live Stream View to watch and a minute later I switched back to finish the lockbox. To my surprise there was now a new lockbox along with my original unfinished one. I was able to do this over and over to make more boxes. I wonder if this dupes anything else.
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Aug 13, 2023 20:31
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Is this with the stable or beta?
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Aug 13, 2023 21:45
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hobbesmaster posted:The Terran plot could be: Speaking of which, I parked my slowly building fleet on the gate to tharka’s ravine so trade could actually continue to hatikvah’s 3 which had far too high a percentage of important stuff for building up stations and the argon economy in general like claytronics and advanced electronics. I had a Tokyo filled with the PIO fighters 4 Osakas and Delilah’s Swansong. I did not have enough rep with anyone yet for L plasma turrets but hey Terran stuff is good on it’s own right? I was working on getting HOP up to -9 to start trading when my alert for XL xenon in Hatikvah went off. Except the message repeated several times and the audio alert was distorted. “That’s weird” I thought and looked over to see an I and 3 Ks.  Delilah’s Swansong lived up to her name 
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Aug 13, 2023 22:00
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A proper Xenon battlegroup is pretty scary. Their weakness is that if you can disable one of their engines, you can stay out of their range and whittle them down. Doesn't work when they can cover each other.
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Aug 13, 2023 22:23
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I’m learning that fleet AI is still just weird. Some things actually kinda work like carriers sortieing interceptors/bombers if you set things up just right, but I still haven’t figured out others. For example, destroyers in AI hands seem to have a tendency to just get themselves deleted. Looking into it, the main tip that seems to work is to make sure that shorter range turrets are set to attack fighters so the AI doesn’t try to bring them in range. However the existence of the main guns and how destroyers seem to want to stay aligned to the ecliptic (or whatever “level” is called) mean that a K that is above you will get a chance to deal a ton of damage. Are there any AI mods like there were with X3 or are there specific ships that work better in AI hands?
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Aug 14, 2023 20:26
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I did the basic engine mod quest in one game but restarted with a custom game and checked that mission off so I wouldn't have to do it again. I can't seem to find a way to mod my ships now. I can't mod the engines or any of the other systems. I've done the research but nothing shows up in the ship yard modding benches. Am I missing something obvious?
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Aug 15, 2023 15:53
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You need to dock at the right size. Wharf for small/medium and shipyard for L/XL
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Aug 15, 2023 15:59
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Also the wharf/shipyard you are at needs to be able to build the ship you are trying to modify. So if you've got a Nemesis Vanguard you need to be at the wharf for the Godrealm as opposed to the wharf for HOP or Argon. Once you have your own wharf/shipyard and all the blueprints you can mod any ship you like at your own station.
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Aug 28, 2023 14:24
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Haven't played this since launch, fired it on up. Why can't I find any place where it will buy products for more than they're being sold? The only time I've managed to find any ware profitable was buying maja dust and space fuel from a trading station (because they were selling cheaper than the production stations) and selling it to a pirate station. And even then that was at most a 5 credit difference between buy and sold. If feels like trader ships are meant to sell stuff you manufacture yourself
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Nov 20, 2023 07:21
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Leal posted:Haven't played this since launch, fired it on up. Why can't I find any place where it will buy products for more than they're being sold? The only time I've managed to find any ware profitable was buying maja dust and space fuel from a trading station (because they were selling cheaper than the production stations) and selling it to a pirate station. And even then that was at most a 5 credit difference between buy and sold. If feels like trader ships are meant to sell stuff you manufacture yourself Yeah. essentially a lot of the game is a slow burn, with a bunch of smaller plot things that act as kind of tutorials that set you up with a few bits and peices and let you CYOA. If you are going for risk/profit, steal a bunch of stuff, get some seed money, then steal a freighter, & fill that with drugs. then I dunno, but you might be able to just sell the entire freighter, drugs and all for that better price. or sneak around trying to avoid cops and selling it wherever you can get the best price. Its bee a while since I played, and they nerfed a bunch of the more rediculous piratey ways to make cash.
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Nov 20, 2023 07:51
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Graphene/quantum tubes/silicon wafers have a nice price delta and buyers are often close by. Those were a decent moneymaker for me while I was getting my own station built Independent traders aren’t going to get you rich though
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Nov 20, 2023 08:02
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There are modded trader routines that work a lot better than the vanilla ones but ultimately hauling stuff around is just there to get you your starter money so you can build your real operation up. Trying to trade as a player with your own ship is always going to be an exercise in frustration.
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Nov 20, 2023 12:52
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Part of the issue is that M freighters are toast if they run into hostiles, so they probably won't recoup their costs. By the time the player can afford L freighters, it makes more sense to put the money into miners. That said, I always keep 2 or 3 M traders on hand so I can source advanced electronics/shield components/etc ASAP for a station build, instead of waiting for the AI to deliver. Can always give them some repeat orders to make a little extra cash while I'm in transit or waiting for a fleet to assemble.
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Nov 20, 2023 13:13
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I believe mining ships are usually a better way to get startup capital than traders are. They're both pulling the things they're selling out of thing air to sell to the processing stations, and are usually doing so close to the processing stations so they're less likely to get attacked by pirates or something during transit.
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Nov 20, 2023 20:09
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Zereth posted:I believe mining ships are usually a better way to get startup capital than traders are. They're both pulling the things they're selling out of thing air to sell to the processing stations, and are usually doing so close to the processing stations so they're less likely to get attacked by pirates or something during transit. Yep, I found the same thing. It's important to note though, that you should simply get the AI to mine and then leave them to it. Mining for players is a horrendously boring experience - and also inefficient compared to getting the AI to do it, on top of that. So early on in my games I tend to be an adventuring combat pilot, with a small fleet of mining vessels making me real money, while I have fun tackling missions and shooting the xenon for a few creds here and there.
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Nov 21, 2023 00:09
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Picked the Teladi start where you get a trader and a station, that the profit margins are so small if you aren't making stuff yourself is certainly a choice they made. I wish I scrapped the station, sold the materials and then sold the trader to buy a bunch of mining ships at the start.
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Nov 21, 2023 06:40
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Leal posted:Picked the Teladi start where you get a trader and a station, that the profit margins are so small if you aren't making stuff yourself is certainly a choice they made. I wish I scrapped the station, sold the materials and then sold the trader to buy a bunch of mining ships at the start. Eh, it depends. I've never used that start, so I don't know what station they give you. But generally if you have a refinery that's being fed by your own miners, you can end up getting quite a profitable operation running. Then you can gradually expand it to have additional refinery modules and then refined goods modules (using the "free" materials your refinery makes with your miners' help) and soon enough you're rolling in money!
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Nov 21, 2023 06:44
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Major Isoor posted:Eh, it depends. I've never used that start, so I don't know what station they give you. But generally if you have a refinery that's being fed by your own miners, you can end up getting quite a profitable operation running. Then you can gradually expand it to have additional refinery modules and then refined goods modules (using the "free" materials your refinery makes with your miners' help) and soon enough you're rolling in money! It's a single flower farm. The most useful part of that start from what I remember is just that you get a free station plot.
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Nov 21, 2023 07:00
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q_k posted:It's a single flower farm. The most useful part of that start from what I remember is just that you get a free station plot. Oh.  Yeah that's fair - I'd be replacing that with a silicon refinery, depending on its location
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Nov 21, 2023 07:02
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Trading can be profitable but the fact that its a realtime economy instead of an approximated simulation like X3 means the market is in the dumps for the first 200-300 hours of a game unless you prop it up. It will fix itself eventually but theres no good deals to be had almost anywhere for pure trading.
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Nov 21, 2023 07:06
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Major Isoor posted:Oh. Scratch that, the most useful part of that start is you are in a sector the xenon like to gently caress up so you can hoover that battlefield for a quick start. It's heras twin 2 or something, one of the original NE Teladi sectors.
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Nov 21, 2023 07:07
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Zereth posted:I believe mining ships are usually a better way to get startup capital than traders are. They're both pulling the things they're selling out of thing air to sell to the processing stations, and are usually doing so close to the processing stations so they're less likely to get attacked by pirates or something during transit. Important to note that pirates won’t attack miners. Ever. Probably because they can’t do anything with the cargo. That’s what the Khaak are for. Another important note: L miners are essentially immune to the Khaak. It’s not impossible for them to kill one, but I think in hundreds of hours I’ve only ever lost one L miner to a unicorn event where 3-4 spawns somehow converged on one miner. I reached a point where I now ignore the Khaak completely. I don’t even bother shooting their hives unless I’m bored.
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Nov 21, 2023 07:21
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What I've done with the sunflower factory is throw a liquid and solid storage container on it and using it as a drop off point for large miners, then medium miners sell everything. Think I'll scrap this game though, the steam sale should be starting soon and hopefully all the DLC will be on sale.
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Nov 21, 2023 10:24
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Ohhhh, yeah, if you can get 'em all cheap, grab them, although their attempt at a piracy driven dlc was kinda bizzarro. the split and terran dlc's get you more ship choices, and hey, fish people. E: while you can totally fly around Yarring, the general thrust of the game is slowly building a trade empire, being "poor" most of the game because you are always putting whatever money you get onto your "corp". Eof the 2nd : Mining does make you more startup bux, but little fleets (say 5 at a pop each) of traders gets you "better" captains and standings, although you can make them eat books and they get stars. staberind fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Nov 21, 2023 |
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Nov 21, 2023 10:42
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q_k posted:It's a single flower farm. The most useful part of that start from what I remember is just that you get a free station plot. Nostrop oil is weirdly profitable. I forget what other wares apart from flowers are needed for it though
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Nov 21, 2023 11:55
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You can make almost any station profitable by putting solar panels on it, as it is a flat reduction to production costs for any ware and you can sell the excess
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Nov 21, 2023 12:03
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Ice Fist posted:Another important note: L miners are essentially immune to the Khaak. It’s not impossible for them to kill one, but I think in hundreds of hours I’ve only ever lost one L miner to a unicorn event where 3-4 spawns somehow converged on one miner. I reached a point where I now ignore the Khaak completely. I don’t even bother shooting their hives unless I’m bored. Don't the Khaak absolutely kill L efficiency though? They wont ever get up to travel speeds if they're constantly being shot at.
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Nov 21, 2023 12:25
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Ideally someone kills them but yes, it will slow things down. Also if theres nobody else in the sector you absolutely will lose L ships to them as well.
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Nov 21, 2023 14:40
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There we go, the bundle with all 4 DLCs is just shy of 30 bucks 
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Nov 21, 2023 19:09
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Thats P. gude. you will notice, after getting them all installed, that you have a whole bunch more gamestarts, although, continuing with your present game is fine, a couple make a bit more sense, the pirate one for instance is a bit more plot driven for a little bit, most of the rest depend on standings, I think all starts allow you to do the Hatikva plots though, going all the way through that unlocks furthur stuff later on. and a man with large shoes.
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Nov 21, 2023 19:21
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sloppy portmanteau posted:Don't the Khaak absolutely kill L efficiency though? They wont ever get up to travel speeds if they're constantly being shot at. In my experience it's a blip. Something you might be concerned about early game, but as you get more miners, one of them getting its shields scratched isn't really worth reacting to. As I can afford it I will set up a small group of M3s to patrol these sectors and if I notice a miner getting hit I'll manually sick them on them. Frankly, the whole system sucks. Both AI pirating and Khaak raids are imo hyper underbaked and they ultimately become irrelevant as player strength grows. Hence, I'd rather just let the Khaak shoot one of my L miners and ignore it and I'd rather just lose the occasional M transport that gets caught then to stop whatever I'm doing and manually tell my patrols to shoot them. Additionally, the game makes it really hard, difficult - especially as the player gains more and more ships - to implement any kind of active defensive measures. I'd be neat if I could assign escorts to my traders, but lol at doing that when I have hundreds of them. I'd be somewhat neat if you could do a convoy system. Even something as simple as "hey, you ships respond to distress calls of miners/traders" would be neat, but that's basically impossible in vanilla. Unless I've missed something huge, my own defensive ships can only ever attack things in their own radar range. Meanwhile the AI is happy to sic every police ship in the sector from any distance if someone calls the cops. Also the AI cops are super dumb anyways. SCA destroyers and corvettes will explode transports as the police are shooting them, activate their camo and the police will be like "sorry sir, you're clearly not a pirate" and gently caress off back to whatever it is they were doing. It's infuriating/hilarious to watch. I'm sure some of this can be fixed with mods, but in vanilla at least it's a crapshoot. I'd rather not interact with it and deal with the occasional lost ship especially once I reach the point where I have basically infinite wealth.
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Nov 21, 2023 22:01
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Anybody tried X4 on the Deck? Just took the plunge on the Oled. I enjoy flying the ships on a game pad but obviously the management and map panels are built for mouse control. I wonder how the Deck mouse thingies perform.
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Nov 21, 2023 22:27
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Mokotow posted:Anybody tried X4 on the Deck? Just took the plunge on the Oled. I enjoy flying the ships on a game pad but obviously the management and map panels are built for mouse control. I wonder how the Deck mouse thingies perform. I'd think the UI would be the problem more than the controls; piloting would be fine and management would be handled by the track pads but I don't know if you could read any of it lol
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Nov 21, 2023 22:36
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x4 can be neatly described as underbaked, but weirdly compelling for hours on end tbh once you get your footing I would recommend doing the star wars mod. It has its own issues and also vividly changes the game to SW conceits, like hyperspace and fixed forward weapons, but a bunch of factions being at forever war with each other and having constant moba-rear end fleet battles down map lanes with their local economy keeping them afloat is more compelling and gameplay focused then "oh, the x are around. and you can storyline some wars to make more money, I guess"
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Nov 22, 2023 04:33
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the star wars mod is cool and good, but it also leans into some of x4's worst tendencies in an effort to be a 4x. Piracy is virtually nonexistent. Most factions have enormous, safe and boring home areas in order to fuel their capability to keep throwing $80 million+ cr capital ships into the meatgrinders. Sectors with resources tend to have unlimited quantities of them - an autominer's paradise. etc. et. al.
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Nov 22, 2023 06:30
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