X4: Foundations - Mount and Blade with space-ships. Now with significant Beta update

[Jinn]

Lol i bought myself a miner ship changing from my first ship and by mistake i got on some dude ship and he just flown away. I got ejected myself middle of flight out in nowhere then call my first ship (since it is faster) to me. Turns out that he wouldn't just come closer than 1km away. So i had to fly to it with measly 3-4m/s for few minutes.

So I take it you've been trying out Split. What do you think so far? How are things like the expanded map, combat, collision?

 

[Perkel]

So I take it you've been trying out Split. What do you think so far? How are things like the expanded map, combat, collision?

Not much to say, just started it, played it for like 30-40 minutes and went to bed.
edit: I see that most of mods aren't working with 3.0 so i need to wait for bare minimum of them to play it seriously.

 

[Jinn]

Ah. Looking forward to reading your thoughts on it! God I hope they fixed this game.

 

[Morkar Left]

So I take it you've been trying out Split. What do you think so far? How are things like the expanded map, combat, collision?

Not much to say, just started it, played it for like 30-40 minutes and went to bed.
edit: I see that most of mods aren't working with 3.0 so i need to wait for bare minimum of them to play it seriously.

I have the problem that mods don't seem to work properly with Win 8.1/Win 7 in general. Best way - or probably only way now - seems to have at least Win 10 and the game on steam at best. Really frustrating...

 

[Jinn]

Well, I did a full sector map comparison between original X4 and X4 Split Vendetta, and it looks like there are 78 total sectors in Split, as opposed to the 48 total sectors at X4's launch.

Still not anywhere near the ~230 sectors in X3, but still a definite improvement.

 

[Perkel]

Version 3.10 Release (394044) - 2020-04-07

• Added mission to expand HQ if selected research requires excessive resources.
• Removed Dal Busta dialog option after Split story is completed.
• Changed New Game menu to show tutorials at top.
• Improved balance and pricing of recruitable personnel on station docks.
• Improved performance for games where player owns very large number of ships and stations.
• Improved colour differentiation between racial Construction Vessel ships.
• Improved storage capacity of Split mining ships.
• Improved mastering of legacy music tracks.
• Fixed certain hazardous regions giving massive numbers of crystal drops.
• Fixed wrong faction sometimes being blamed when ships or stations are destroyed.
• Fixed mining drones not launching to collect broken-down asteroids they had earlier marked for collection but didn't collect due to cancellation.
• Fixed cases of defence drones docking before all are launched sometimes preventing any further defence drones from being launched.
• Fixed male Split characters sometimes having female voices with Split Vendetta installed.
• Fixed HQ laboratory being removed when reconfiguring station.
• Fixed AI ships attacking indestructible objects indefinitely.
• Fixed player account balance potentially going below zero.
• Fixed being completely unable to manually dock Drill without docking software.
• Fixed hatch on Gorgon closing too soon when leaving in spacesuit.
• Fixed high loadout presets not favouring Docking Computer Mk2 if compatible.
• Fixed Elephant sometimes being equipped with Spacesuit Scanner.
• Fixed Raptor not being able to mount large missile turrets.
• Fixed build times for station modules taking much longer than they should.
• Fixed spacesuit oxygen replenishing after saving and loading.
• Fixed certain drops being repelled by container magnet.
• Fixed lasertowers deployed by player in Hatikvah mission not changing owner
• Fixed wrong player-owned ship sometimes being destroyed during HQ story.
• Fixed invulnerable ship during Split plot.
• Fixed Dal Busta not offering Split story at HQ after player rejects story offer until save and reload.
• Fixed Dal Busta not offering Paranid/Split storyline when starting from Accomplished Scientist gamestart.
• Fixed Dal Busta calling to talk about multiple plot opportunities at same time.
• Fixed signal leaks not being generated in Accomplished Scientist gamestart
• Fixed Paranid plot mission Prophetic Mission stalling because of missing dock.
• Fixed Paranid plot getting stuck at Remain Vigilant objective.
• Fixed excessive delay between HQ plot related signal leaks if one was previously missed.
• Fixed missing equipment for multiple factions when starting Paranid plot with older saves.
• Fixed Paranid plot battle taking place in wrong sector under rare circumstances.
• Fixed excessive ware amounts required for final stage of Paranid plot.
• Fixed Fires of Defeat gamestart long-term mission getting stuck because of captured ships.
• Fixed Hatikvah story getting stuck in rare situations during bomb-placing mission.
• Fixed various missions being offered by incorrect faction.
• Fixed player ship not coming to stop during certain cutscenes.
• Fixed missions offered by NPCs on dock areas incorrectly appearing in Mission Offers menu.
• Fixed mismatched ships and loadouts when editing shopping list entries in Ship Configuration menu.
• Fixed missile turret capacities not being included in loadout information.
• Fixed lasertower engines and weapons being shown in Encyclopedia.
• Fixed missing images for some objects in Encyclopedia.
• Fixed missing option to delete incompatible saves in Load Game.
• Fixed missing Dock Interactions menu in certain situations.
• Fixed missing mouse picking on map after closing Mission Briefing in certain situations.
• Fixed missing tabs in Property Owned menu in certain situations.
• Fixed rectangular target elements being displayed in first person in certain situations.
• Fixed further cases of NPCs not being targetable on platforms.
• Fixed menu crash in Info menu in certain situations.
• Fixed long but rare freeze on Map.
• Fixed several cases of Split storage modules appearing offset in station build menu.
• Fixed lower front windscreen not being transparent when looking from outside on Kestrel.
• Fixed turret group assignment and position of some turrets on Rattlesnake, Monitor and Odysseus.
• Fixed paint mods on Raptor not being aligned correctly.
• Fixed Split flak turrets not using correct barrel geometry.
• Fixed weapon positions on Mamba.
• Fixed player logo not being properly visible on Monitor.
• Fixed some missing voice recordings in German, French and Russian localisations.
• Fixed engine sound problems under specific circumstances.
• Fixed suspense music playing while on station.
• Fixed graphical artefacts for AMD Navi GPUs (5600/5700).
• Fixed rare problem with platform guidance causing performance to drop.
• Fixed several causes of crashes.

 

[Volrath]

So I bought this during the weekend.

Doesn't seem to be shit.

 

[moleman]

Holly feck, it takes forever to SAVE the game.

 

[Perkel]

Stopped playing Starsector. Will be also playing it now. In vanilla form to see how game changed. Maybe some campaign and stuff to see if this is worth anything.

Holly feck, it takes forever to SAVE the game.

Weird. It takes like a second or two for me. Do you have expansive empire or something ?

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Any decent reviews I can watch or read for this?

 

[Zarniwoop]

Stopped playing Starsector. Will be also playing it now. In vanilla form to see how game changed. Maybe some campaign and stuff to see if this is worth anything.



Weird. It takes like a second or two for me. Do you have expansive empire or something ?

It takes forever to save a game since it came out. 30-60 seconds. Pach 11ty made no difference in that area.

Complaining about this is like complaining about ME3's ending.

Yeah. It's fucking shit. What's your REAL problem with the game?

 

[Perkel]

Any decent reviews I can watch or read for this?

Aside from release ones none. Game at release was very rough with huge bugs.

 

[Perkel]

for newbs playing X4. Don't make map fool you. Map in X4 is created in "expanding way". Which means that the borders of sectors are not actually borders and there is stuff past it. Once you go outside of border, scale of sector map will change.

Here is good example of that:

 

[razvedchiki]

Perkel how x4 compares to x3 xtended?

 

[Zarniwoop]

It's about 1/10th of the size, a quarter of the content but with 10 times better interface.

And pretty graphixx.

 

[Morkar Left]

It's about 1/10th of the size, a quarter of the content but with 10 times better interface.

And pretty graphixx.

You have a lot more things you can do. The universe is smaller or seems smaller because it has less setors and their are less ship models. Otherwise gameplay has a lot more to offer. A lot of old mods (or its ideas) got impleented in X4. It's sometimes badly or crudely balanced and still needs tweaking but otherwise very cool game. But I think mods are essential to get the full potential out of it.

 

[razvedchiki]

which mods are recommended?

 

[Zarniwoop]

It's about 1/10th of the size, a quarter of the content but with 10 times better interface.

And pretty graphixx.

You have a lot more things you can do. The universe is smaller or seems smaller because it has less setors and their are less ship models. Otherwise gameplay has a lot more to offer. A lot of old mods (or its ideas) got impleented in X4. It's sometimes badly or crudely balanced and still needs tweaking but otherwise very cool game. But I think mods are essential to get the full potential out of it.

MUCH (oh gawd so much) fewer sectors, yeah they are bigger but they have so many fewer stations in them. More empty space does not equal more content. Number of sectors = much smaller. Stations in each sector = much smaller.

Ships per race = vastly smaller
ACTUAL FUCKING RACES = less. Even with the expansion, they just added the Split. The Borons are still inexplicably missing. Also the Kahaaaak seem to have disappeared in the last update?
Variation between the races = almost non existent.
Jumpdrives = Gone. You have Stillbirth style """"Highways"""

You have nothing more you can do. apart from the interface being better/more user friendly. The fleet mechanics are a nice touch (in theory, because it doesn't fucking work)

 

[Perkel]

So i spend like 4-5 hours playing X4 with expansion. I am yet to see any split sector as i mostly do stuff in Argon sectors but:

- game is almost bug free. So far i didn't notice any bugs, weird landings and other stuff that was common with release version and even later with few patches. I think i only saw once two ships crashing but other than that nothing.
- they increased variety of missions in early game. It is still not that much but it feels better to do other stuff than destroy mines.
- you can definitely see war happening now. Almost instantly Argons were fighting with Paranids.
- they improved a bit performance but still is rocky boat that seems to work excellent in few moments and then hit 20fps for next 2 minutes. Overall i am locked 60fps most of the time but near stations and asteroid fields i have 40-50fps depending on a sector.

Perkel how x4 compares to x3 xtended?

X4 vanilla is better now than vanilla X3 but still few levels below X3 Xtended or Litecube. At least from what i have previously played pre expansion but after patches.

Vanilla X3 is not really good game. Most of people forget that for an example until Litecube came most of ships in fleet just crashed into each other and your fleet would destroy itself. Litecube guys wrote amazing AI scripts and fixed that. Moreover you can use such script on Xtended and play Xtended with this amazing fix. Autotrading and other stuff is abhorent in vanilla X3.

which mods are recommended?

Imho DeadAirGate Overhaul is currently the best and most comprehensive. Details in spoiler. But i didn't test it with Split expansion and don't know if it works ok. After i will have my time with vanilla i will probably switch to DeadAirGate.

Spoiler

DeadAirGate Overhaul
Adds 105 new sectors

• Major factions are split into 7 core systems and multiple border systems
• Minor factions are split into 4 core systems
• Adds neutral sector(s) between major factions
• Removes all highways and super highways
• Replaces all gates and provides increased connections between systems
• Improves universe spawning for a war heavy games
• Adjusts amount of stations
• Adjusts critical stations to spawn in faction's core systems
• Improves NPC jobs for a war heavy gamestart
• Adjusts ship limits for galaxy and sector (more ships, larger fleets, stronger economy)
• Adds critical economy jobs that will always rebuild if lost
• AI ships use faction paint mods
• Improves L/XL travel scripts
• Increases trade allotted relative price for AI jobs (more goods moved)
• Changes autotrader skill requirement to level 1 and adjusts jump ranges
• Reorganizes AI ware baskets
• Improves drone loadout of AI ships
• HAT/ALI/SCA/MIN have complete economy
• Removes spawning of ships except khaak
• Factions will build an additional tradestation for intermediate good if economy is strong
• Factions will police their own space
• HAT/ALI/SCA/MIN have their own space and faction logic

Works best with mod: Faction Fix Pack by Mysterial

MUCH (oh gawd so much) fewer sectors, yeah they are bigger but they have so many fewer stations in them. More empty space does not equal more content. Number of sectors = much smaller. Stations in each sector = much smaller.

It is true that there are less sectors but that thing about stations isn't really true. X3 stations were basically one of stations which meant that each of them produced only one thing. Only player could create complexes with complex kit but that was basically "hack". X4 uses Rebirth station model where each station has some strong focus on something but they are effectively multiple stations in one and in X4 they are highly customizable.

Ships is where it hurts the most. For some reason they completely ignored Rebirth ships despite the fact that those ships were best part of Rebirth. People already modded them in into X4 but still begs to question why they didn't port them.

Highway stuff is remnant of Rebirth and it is not Rebirth style "everywhere with highways" but i agree they should be removed. Most of mods remove them.

As for jumpdrives i completely disagree. Jumpdrives are effectively cheat to get around defenses and with them you can't effectively create any defensive position or measures as you can just jump with whole fleet at moment notice anywhere you like including core sector like Argon Prime without going through border sectors and being intercepted. It worked in X3 because AI didn't use at all jumpdrives for military which naturally made no sense.

 

[Perkel]

Got myself Mercury transporter and Eclipse. So i own 3 ships and about 1,3mln in bank. Mostly spending time setting up satelite network and exploring space. Mostly covered whole argon space in sattelites. My trader thanks to it makes decent 70-100k per run. My starting Elite is defending my trader on his runs.

 

[Morkar Left]

The mods that got me interested and I'm testing so far for compatibility:

XR Ship Pack
VRO Variety and Rebalance Overhaul - not sure, have some technical issues with it, I guess will try later again
Expanded Sectors x2
Getting Paid
Professional Crew
Apologize for Attack - maybe, maybe not
Urgent Messsages
Encounters
Faction/War Economy Enhancer v4.5 - has issues atm, will try later again
DeadAirDynamicWars - till Faction/War Economy Enhancer works properly for me
Learning all the things
MIS - Ship Degradation - could have issues with 3.0 because of repair drones
Pirate Life - only Transponder Cloaking Device as standalone (look under comments/posts)
Landlord - taxes in occupied sectors and station maintenance, new today but seems got cancelled already (Diva modder?). Had not even time to test it, yet. A shame...

A word of using mods:
1. Put everything under the extensions folder in the game root directory, not under documents. Documents folder is obsolete. It could be necessary to pack it with the XRCatTool as a .cat file. Not the whole mod folder of a mod but only the folder with the files, not the content.xml. I think the .cat-files have to be numbered in the order the mods are depended on each (implementation). Maybe renaming the mod folders with zz_ etc. may work, too.
2. If you are using a different language than English it could be necessary to write additional lines into the content.xml in the particular mod folder:

Spoiler

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<content id="One_system_one_music_plus" name="One system one music plus" description="All old X3-sectors playing original X3-music, adds X1-4 music to new sectors, every sector have only one music or a single aesthetic playlist" author="Trajan von Olb" version="050" date="2018-12-26" save="0">
<text language="7" name="One system one music plus" description="All old X3-sectors playing original X3-music, adds X1-4 music to new sectors, every sector have only one music or a single aesthetic playlist" author="Trajan von Olb" />
<text language="33" name="One system one music plus" description="All old X3-sectors playing original X3-music, adds X1-4 music to new sectors, every sector have only one music or a single aesthetic playlist" author="Trajan von Olb" />
<text language="34" name="One system one music plus" description="All old X3-sectors playing original X3-music, adds X1-4 music to new sectors, every sector have only one music or a single aesthetic playlist" author="Trajan von Olb" />
<text language="39" name="One system one music plus" description="All old X3-sectors playing original X3-music, adds X1-4 music to new sectors, every sector have only one music or a single aesthetic playlist" author="Trajan von Olb" />
<text language="44" name="One system one music plus" description="All old X3-sectors playing original X3-music, adds X1-4 music to new sectors, every sector have only one music or a single aesthetic playlist" author="Trajan von Olb" />
<text language="49" name="One system one music plus" description="Alle alten X3-Sektoren haben ihre X3-Musik, neue Sektoren haben je nach Cluster oder Stimmung passende Musik aus x1-x4" author="Trajan von Olb" />
<text language="86" name="One system one music plus" description="All old X3-sectors playing original X3-music, adds X1-4 music to new sectors, every sector have only one music or a single aesthetic playlist" author="Trajan von Olb" />
<text language="88" name="One system one music plus" description="All old X3-sectors playing original X3-music, adds X1-4 music to new sectors, every sector have only one music or a single aesthetic playlist" author="Trajan von Olb" />
</content>

 

[Tweed]

How the fuck do you make money in this game? I built a miner and it was pulling in like 14k creds every leap year, completely non profitable. Also, how do you train a crew member past two stars? Do you train a crew member past two stars?

I'm ready to run home to X2.

 

[moleman]

How the fuck do you make money in this game? I built a miner and it was pulling in like 14k creds every leap year, completely non profitable. Also, how do you train a crew member past two stars? Do you train a crew member past two stars?

I'm ready to run home to X2.

I found it easy to make money. I have one silicium miner (argon s mining ship) which does 30 000 per run and an ore miner (argon m mining ship) which does 50 000 per run. Both have "mine resources" as standard behaviour and are mining in argon prime.
I have satellites set up near stations which buy silicium and ore.

 

[Tweed]

I finally figured it out and I'm making 30 off one miner and 112 off the other since I got an M size. There still has to be some better ways of getting cash.

 

[Perkel]

Some tips:


- i would not try mods right now. From what i have tested almost none of them are prepared for Split expansion content. Play vanilla.
- if you are in station and want to do something there use elevators. Never walk anywhere. Walking only makes sense when you hunt for experienced crew member. Elevators take you anywhere on station in second or two.
- try to scan stations with scan mode and search for radio/data "leaks". You should find lone Boron which will start main quest that will lead to you obtaining homebase and before you say "wtf homebase from start !" it is completely bare and has nothing on it. You even have to build dock to just land there. That homebase isn't that much different from any other custom made station in game.
- once you get your homebase you will be able to unlock ability to mod your ships, like hull strenght, weapon range etc. also handy teleporter to switch ships on the fly instead of waiting for dock or EVA switch.
- to build anything you have to start build plan from your station there you will have lego to play with. Some tips, parts attach only when they are properly rotated, you will have indication of attachement possibility when green line apears and part of station corresponding will light up. To rotate parts you have to first place them, click on them and then with RMB you can rotate parts. One you set up your lego, you have to give station cash for build materials and hire constructor. Constructor ships are those huge bahemoths that fly around with "construction" in name
- Automated Trading with your ships is available when crewmember has 3 stars in pilot
- Automated mining can be done with crewmember without even single star but advanced more efficient mining requires 3 and more stars in pilot
- Training is done in two ways. Either by seminars, you can buy books or receive them as quest rewards and seminars take time. The second way is just waiting as your crew members do imporve their skills. Alternatively you can find and hire crew members with skills but mind that very experienced crewmember that has a lot of starts costs arm and leg. I saw one station manager available to hire for 70 million... because he had 4 stars in management and 4 in pilot and 2 stars in other skills.
- You can drop illegal cargo and later after scan pick it up. Moreover near stations usually a lot of such illegal cargo can be acquired as police often scans various ships.
- To sell illegal goods you either need to have positive relationship with one of pirate factions or find black marketer in one of stations. Finding black marketeer is hard though as i requires you to scan station in search for radio leak that will give you mission to deliver illegal goods somewhere. It is far easier to make friends with one of pirate factions.
- If you are using Elite from young gun start you should quickly change it to anything other than this piece of crap. For some reasons Egosoft switched Elite with Discoverer. Now discoverer is much bulkier and has two weapon mounts while elite is like old discoverer but even worse because only one weapon mount.

Also use show faction colors in filter menu. Your blue red will be gone but you will quickly get used to just see which faction is enemy or ally and see by color if something is a problem or not. This only affect topmap so your inship map will still show in red enemies so no issues.

How the fuck do you make money in this game? I built a miner and it was pulling in like 14k creds every leap year, completely non profitable. Also, how do you train a crew member past two stars? Do you train a crew member past two stars?

I'm ready to run home to X2.

Early in game best way to make money are missions. If you have miners you can find missions which give you tasks like using resource probe, mine some ice/ore etc and get back to station for 200-500k.
Aside from that there are plenty of missions to make your first million.

If you don't want to do missions you can try to find minerals which can easily net you nice 200-500-1000k depending on luck. You find minerls in asteroid fields. Make sure you see a lot of asteroids in your field of view and you are quite close to them and stand completely still and watch asteroids you should see some spots on them flashing for split second and they repeat it every second or two. This is where those minerals are. In core regions there are rather rare but you can still find them.

Mining generally is not that profitable as initial game start has a lot of base production of ore etc. It is later that AI builds a lot of factories and ore, silicon etc are in demand. Imho from my playtrough in those 2 days, silicon wafers, graphene are the most effective to trade with M sized ships. I am yet to have capital ship trader so all those hulls, arrays are not good to trade as you can only take 100 or so on M ship.

You can always pirate. Pick up one of factions and raid their traders. Pick up first police scanner from equipment/wharf/shipyard to know if attacking someone is worth it.

I finally figured it out and I'm making 30 off one miner and 112 off the other since I got an M size. There still has to be some better ways of getting cash.

M sized miners are pretty weak and kind of poor station manager last resort to start some production. For efficient money making in mining you need huge ships that can take huge load per run.