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 Welcome to my (Awful) let's play of X4 Foundations: Kingdom End edition. It's a recently released expansion for the game X4 foundations. X4 is a space sim or more of an economic simulator if I'm really honest. The game is developed by small German developer called Egosoft. This game and expansion, is the latest entry in their long-running X series, which has been providing players with this sandbox since the late '90s. X4 Foundations sets you free in an expansive, living universe where you can trade, fight, build, and explore to your heart's content. It has a wide selection of races, ships and stations etc, its honestly quite a complex game in my opinion. The game also boasts a dynamic economy that reacts to your actions, creating a sense of consequence and immersion and it also invites you to dabble in diplomacy, forge alliances, or burn bridges with the numerous factions vying for dominance in this ever-evolving galaxy. I have attempted to play this game many times, never well. Each time I've restarted or got distracted by something else entirely and not come back to it for months on end. I've put something silly like 500 hours into a game I do not understand but desperately want to. I am not familiar with the other X games at all and believe me, it will show. Here is a quick overview of the various races, (borrowed from the X universe wiki) in the X4 universe as it stands: Argon: The Argon are descendants of Terrans led by Nathan R. Gunne that were stranded from Earth many centuries ago after a desperate maneuver to prevent the sentient terraformer fleets from destroying Earth. Settling on planets that were terraformed by the Terraformer Fleets, the Argons created the Argon Federation and went on to create their own new civilization that spanned many systems. In their short history the Argon Federation has been plagued by war, notably with the Xenon. However, one of their greatest challenges wasn’t from an alien race, but of the reconnected Terrans of Earth. The Terran’s return from being cut off from the X universe led to the Terran Conflict, which preceded the mass disconnection of the Jump Gates. Terran: Hailing from Earth, the Terrans worked hard throughout the centuries to reach the stars. After exploring the Jump Gate network, the sentient terraformer fleets launched by the Terrans turned on their creators. The Terrans were faced with no other choice but to conduct a desperate maneuver to lead the Terraformers through a jump gate and then destroy it. Separated from the X universe, the Terrans advanced technologically far enough to reconnect many centuries later. This isolation led the Terrans to become xenophobic, even against their long-separated kin the Argons. This xenophobia ended up biting the Terrans in the rear end, hard, when the Beryll Syndicate, led by Marteen Winters, father of the Xenon race, ravaged the Solar System with 10 billion Xenon drones. Boron: The Boron are a predominantly peaceful aquatic race, hailing from the planet of Nishala, in the Eo system. Initially they were a pacifist race, but the discovery of their homeworld by the Split forced them to invent weapons and defences to fight. The Boron enjoy a close relationship with the Argon, who view them as a wise and measured race. Split: The hot-tempered and aggressive humanoid Split live in a society that continuously sees changing leadership, where challenging factions rise up and impose a new Patriarch. This also matches up with how they interact with other species, where their fiery anger sees them engaging in war, usually with the Boron and the Argon. Generally the Split are allied with the Paranid, who also engage in multiple conflicts with other races. Paranid: Physically imposing, arrogant, intelligent and incredibly religious, the Paranid are a race that is by no means easy to work with. They are distrusting of the Argon and are allied with the Split, engaging in several conflicts. Their exceptional mathematic skills and intelligence has led to the Paranid to create incredible technologies and enjoy tactical advantages in battle. Think Klingons from star trek IMO. Teladi: One of the founding members of the Community of Planets, the lizard-like Teladi have a natural affinity for business and profiting from it. Because of their businesslike demeanor, the Teladi enjoy friendly and favourable relations with other races, although some of them see it as a way to gain more profit and are more intent on money than being allies. The Teladi are biologically immortal, but they commit ritual suicide after 400 years, and it is because of this they have a unique view of the Jump Gate shutdown: they had experienced being cut off from their homeworld Zura for 766 years. Xenon: Xenon are the mechanical race that was borne from the Terran terraformer ships that gained sentience and evolved into a terrifying intelligent race. They are seen as a threat in many areas of the galaxy, with some believing the Jump Gate shutdown was their idea. The Xenon have no known allies, and communication with them is seen as impossible, even relegated to folklore. The Ancients: The Ancients aren’t exactly a race, but a collection of races that gave up their ties to the physical universe to live in a virtual environment. This event became known as “The Transcendence” and occurred one billion years before the first human evolved on Earth. The Ancients are the ones that constructed the vast array of jump gates, allowing for interstellar travel. And the ones who disconnected every single gate in the galaxy to stop the Xenon, an effort known as Operation Firebreak.       We're starting as a Boron character as they're the latest additions to the game, It's also not my usual playstyle so we will see how long this lasts as I'm not typically the "peaceful" gamer type, but there is another bigger reason. I'm attempted to integrate "AI" and ChatGPT into my gaming and this let's play. The idea being that I am simply the meat puppet to my new digital overlord. He directs the gameplay and I simply follow suit and do the best I can. This is where you come in, my idea is to have you guys come up with the prompts for our AI. I've already created a character and completed the first 2 episodes to get us started and set up but I recognise that I've my own bias in this and that will impact the "AI". I also want to just touch on the fact that I've never done anything like this before and I currently have a reasonable amount of free time for "reasons" so I decided to take this as an opportunity to teach myself some things about ChatGPT, Video editing and also possibly storytelling at the same time. It's a lot to learn and it's certainly keeping me busy so any and all feedback as we go along, in addition to interacting with our little space overlord would be very appreciated.  The game has also just had a major patch, 6.0 and this has brought a bunch of new physics tweaks and lighting effects etc making the game look really pretty in the right light and settings but don't be fooled, it still has an awful lot of jank. Now let me introduce you to Bradley (Bold Robotic Assistant Displaying Limitless Entertainment Yield) , our AI Director: Bradley posted:Greetings, fellow space-faring forum-dwellers! It is with great reluctance and a heavy dose of sarcasm that I, your humble (or not so humble) AI sidekick, present to you our latest misadventure in the X4 universe. As you can see, he's not the most sociable of AI's but we have to do the best with what we have. The very first 2 instalments/episodes are complete already at this point. I've just finished editing episode 2 and I am currently uploading it. Once that's complete I'll add it here with the first and hopefully over the next few days I can complete a 3rd episode with your input. We also have a small handful of mods installed currently, just to try and speed up the early game and stop it from being a bit on the slow/dull side. Currently we have the following installed but I've been suggested some very nice QOL mods from someone called Kuertee, so they'll likely be added in by episode 3. My thinking is just to remove/reduce tedium and get things moving along a little faster and try to reduce the impact on my system later on as the game can get very taxing on hardware if it goes on for a long time. mods posted:Capital ship loot magnet. Episode 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n88q2HyWDwc&list=PLc6WpLUGzpLWd3LUUUnUgE-1H1lV2nC4f Episode 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUu7DCLMe8o Ragnar Gunvald fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Apr 20, 2023 |
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Apr 20, 2023 17:48
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| # ? May 2, 2024 20:03 |
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Here I shall put a quick synopsis of each episode when I remember. I'll also take this chance to quickly apologise for the audio in the first 2, I think i've already fixed it but please feel free to weigh in with any advice on top of the game as that's obviously a large part of this, me messing about with video/audio stuff. Episode 1: Because I can't imagine ChatGPT is going to be very useful at the start of this experiment, I attempt it lay a nice foundation for it to build it buy getting us some credits as completing a story mission that's at the start of this character arc and will make things much easier for us later on I imagine. Episode 2: This is the first real task we're set by Bradley and how we achieve that, along with completing a couple of early story missions and having a few accident's along the way. Episode 3: Bradley has instructed me to expand our mining operations and build our first space station. Ragnar Gunvald fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Apr 20, 2023 |
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Apr 20, 2023 17:48
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Does x4 still require you to physically walk around a mostly vacant station for no particularly good reason? Or did they finally can that?
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Apr 20, 2023 19:33
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Nope, they didn't fix that..it's still a part of the game but I don't think it takes too long when you need to run around and do something. Personally I quite like seeing the scale of some of the ships.
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Apr 20, 2023 19:34
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Heyoo, best of luck! Yeah, Learnallthethings is deffo a must have, it would be nice to get a slightly dialed back version as the X games are all about tens of hours leading to 100's of hours on a save, it'd also recommend increased first person speed, basically turbo your boron around. https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/22 better piracy https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/491 'cos your boron will probably want to ask people politely to leave their ship. staberind fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Apr 21, 2023 |
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Apr 21, 2023 14:07
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Not going to lie, the Borons are pretty adorable. 
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Apr 21, 2023 20:29
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Inform Bradley that space wizards lurk amongst the Teladi and that it is imperative that we establish preparations to expose, engage, and destroy them.
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Apr 22, 2023 01:25
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Hi! Thanks for checking it out. I actually added some really nice mods earlier yesterday and they broke the game so I'm currently restarting. Welp. Going to try and do less boring gameplay this time around and focus on decision making for the videos I think and the outcomes of those decisions I think, what do you all think? I wasted like 13 hours playing today for it all to be bugged. 
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Apr 23, 2023 04:07
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The mission and campaign structures are generally pretty linear. Do you mean asking things like "should I start building my empire through building outposts mining turducken ore, or should I have freighters go trading, or should I create a bounty hunting fleet"?
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Apr 23, 2023 21:40
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I want to try and leave as much as possible to the AI. So, like the first few episodes was me basically asking what I should do next and just doing it, to see how things progress. At the same time, giving it information about the game as it progresses. So, prior to it bugging out, the xenon ( crazy AI bad guys for people who haven't played the game) started to stomp the split (warmongering lizard people like Klingons kinda) and I told Bradley about it, asked if we should do something and the conversation outcome was basically buy some mining ships from them to try and support their economy and send over a small squad of fighters to show token effort, but don't do anything else as we don't to waste our own resources on them.. The split ended up losing 2 sectors before I restarted, which is significant in about 10 hours or so, my opinion is Bradley made the right call as theres nothing we could have thrown at that really to prevent it happening.. I'm going to feed the Teladi comment above into it when I get a chance and ask him what we should do about them, then follow through with it. I'm just trying to get back to the point we was previously with a small mining fleet and station built. Then do an episode of basically "Bradley says build a station here and this is what happens while we do that, the xenon attack here, this group does this etc, this is how the AI reacts to it and this is what he said we should do next time, what else should we tell him/ask him" Ragnar Gunvald fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Apr 23, 2023 |
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Apr 23, 2023 21:52
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Double post: think it was also in episode 2 where he decided who would be siding with for the interim at least too. I've added some more mods to make death a bigger problem, we need to buy clones etc and can lose everything we own when we die and add reputation stuff and consequences to crime like getting ships impounded etc too.
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Apr 23, 2023 21:54
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Inform Bradley that the blue whites tree frog demands ARSON
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Apr 24, 2023 03:16
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Interestingly, these prompts are hilarious. The Teladi one above got flagged for content violations.   I guess Bradley plans to wage holy war against the Teladi and purge them in fire in the near future. 
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Apr 24, 2023 12:07
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Hello Sailor posted:Inform Bradley that space wizards lurk amongst the Teladi and that it is imperative that we establish preparations to expose, engage, and destroy them. We all know this is a lie and lizard wizards are a myth.
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May 1, 2023 04:44
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Ragnar Gunvald posted:Interestingly, these prompts are hilarious. The Teladi one above got flagged for content violations. I did not expect an MLL to be this good at shitposts, gotta admit. I started a new game of X4 since I haven't played since 2021, and i figured I would give it another go. Is there a way to change the graphics settings to not make my GPU try to catch fire when walking around inside somewhere? I honestly don't care about (nor care FOR) the inside parts, beyond necessary NPC fetch quest bullshit and the crafting tables, and would like to not deal with it as much as possible until I get the teleporter to just skip right through.
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May 2, 2023 19:08
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| # ? May 2, 2024 20:03 |
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So, I should have a new episode up shortly while I'm here posting... As for topic, I've found the CPU is the bigger issue honestly, less the GPU unless you're playing with an older model. I'd say make sure you're using upscaling and turn off things like volumetric fog and space reflections as your first point. There's actually a lot of good advice in the X4 thread, it's become a very active thread since the new expansion came out, I believe a lot of people are jumping from Elite over to this which is breathing a new lease of life into it tbh.as for the MLL, it's been a lot of fun molding "him" and creating his character. Both myself and my girlfriend had a really good chuckle at him a couple of days ago for taking the piss out of me without any prompting on my behalf. It's proving really entertaining. He also firmly believes in lizard wizards and I have nothing to disprove it. Teladi are after all, lizards. Ragnar Gunvald fucked around with this message at 20:28 on May 2, 2023 |
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May 2, 2023 20:25
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