The economic simulation in X4 works pretty good in a "macro" sense.
That means, single traders are dumb af and incapable of finding good deals - but a whole universe full of them still manages to work quite well.
If you build a station that needs certain wares, then some trader somewhere will sooner or later see that your station needs those wares and sell them to you at a profit.
If you want to cripple an enemy, you can indeed go behind enemy lines, and sabotage their production and you will soon see the results.
It is indeed fun to watch your empire grow. I was so proud when my burger factory was finally online and raking in (fairly little, but I just wanted a meat factory lol ) profit.
Even if years after release it is still absolutely incredibly how dumb AI traders, miners, etc. are.
If you are bothered by people "working" for you being practically braindead, you'll have to micromanage every single ship - I'll leave it up to everyone to decide if that is fun for them
But whoever told you that combat in X4 is fun is just blatantly lying or talking only about small or medium vehicles.
Especially compared to the smoothness that is combat in ED.
What it does better than ED is scope:
Battles in ED are fairly small, X4 can get you much closer to that Starlancer/Freelancer feeling of being inside large battles with various sizes of ships at once (and dozens or hundreds of them at once, too, though that WILL lag a bit).
The feeling of being in a large space battle is fairly cool. For one time, until all the below stuff happens...
Space is also a lot "smaller" in X4 than in ED, which certainly helps with that.
But there are so many problems with combat in X4.
And the worst thing is that all of them are so... dumb, and would be so easy to fix. But they just won't fix their damn game.
Two years after release (and not early access release, FULL release) there are still so many things wrong that it becomes close to impossible to derive any enjoyment from the experience.
Just have this small list (which is not nearly everything I COULD list):
- All turrets except laser beams suck against small or medium craft. They just cannot hit anything, it's ridiculous. And yes, that includes turrets ON small or medium craft.
- Turrets set to "attack my target" will really only attack your target, they won't even fire at others if they cannot see your target - making the entire mode pretty useless.
- Pilot AI is braindead, let me give an example:
Larger craft - besides obv. carrying bigger guns - also serve as carriers for small ships. "Cool!", you might think. Well - uhh... Every single pilot in X4 has a death wish. They will not attempt to escape if badly damaged. They will not attempt to return to your ship when damaged. They fight until the bitter end, because... ??????
Oh, and even small ships outfitted with just medium quality equipment cost millions. Let's say you do a mission to destroy a station with your big ship and 40 small ships. The mission would rack in a lot, say 26 million. You do the mission, but due to the absolutely incapable AI, half of your ships got wrecked. That's a loss of at least 20 million and you earn just 6. You can earn more with a good trade run - and also won't have to wait for aeons until you have replaced your lost ships (ship production takes a looong time if you order many at once). - Your small ships will not stay inside your big one to come out in case of danger and then dock again after combat. There are some super awkward workarounds for this involving lots of manual commands. Yay.
Of course, defence drones (which basically do the exact same job as small ships, but are weaker) can do exactly that without any problem so why small ships with human pilots can not... ?????? - This is what broke the camel's back for me and caused me to uninstall the game and probably never look at it again:
It is impossible to fight with allies.
Let's say an allies trade station is attacked by a common enemy. You want to help them, both to maintain stability in a sector and to rake in some cash (you get some nice cash for helping others, especially with a mod).
As soon as two attacks in "close" succession hit an allied vehicle or structure by accident (unavoidable as soon as projectiles start flying), all allies in the vicinity will turn hostile towards you. In theory, you could still leave and come back and they will relax, but...
As soon as the ally turns hostile, your turrets and small wing ships will start targeting them on purpose (of course, because they are hostile now). Now you actually kill your allies ships and that leads to permanent reputation loss.
Within minutes of trying to help an ally, you have accidentally declared war on them.
For some godforsaken reason, the developers have failed to put a simple friendly fire check logic into the game.
Stuff that every tester will notice by doing anything a single time.
Stuff that would take a few days to fix at max.
And yet, that's the state of the game. They know about all of it as many people are constantly reporting it, and they just won't fix it. There is no hope that it will ever not be a crappy bugfest.
Stay far away from X4 if you want to do anything except use it as a trading simulation game where you can fly around with a ship.
You can also decide to only ever fly around in S or M sized ships and do small missions - but why would you? That's something ED is just straight better at.
In theory, X4 should be better than ED. For sure.
In practice, that will never happen.
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