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

[mikaelis]

I have spent 40 hours over past week playing 4.10. So far i am mostly doing just default storyline of young gun mostly to test how game changed. since 2.0 where i put most of my hours. Completely vanilla.

Things i noticed:

- Flying in formation now works !. In 1.0 and 2.0 basically you couldn't fly in formation at all. Either ships didn't know what to do or ai just couldn't keep up. Now not only AI knows how to follow you in non travel mode but they also know how to do it in travel mode as they properly fire up travel mode as you do. If ships are driven by captain instead of you ships also now use speed of slowest spacecraft to move which means group stays as groups instead of crapshot.
- Stable. No crashes nothing. Just 1 bug where i flew into asteroid. Automode also doesn't make anymore mistakes like it did before where it would often fly into asteroids on path.
- AI works great now. There used to be a lot of issues where AI would get stuck on doing tasks like trading infinitely sometimes breaking game etc. Nothing happening anymore like that. Everything works like in switz clock.
- Performance improved. 1.0 used to be terrible performance wise. It is still hog of a game for especially CPU but 4.0 has been great so far and i don't usually fall down below 60fps. In Argon Prime it used to be 30-40fps now butter smooth 60fps all times on same hardware.
- Police actual works now. There are two kinds of police in X4 sector one and local station one. It used to be that you could just dump illegal cargo wait for scan and just take it again but now they destroy your container with that cargo, meanwhile local police didn't work at all before or they would just randomly fly around you like you did something. Now they do in fact scan you from time to time and they have their own separate icon now.
- Reputation changes. Local/global is a thing now. Usually when you randomly hit station you would get minus from faction but now they first warn you and then you get local reputation hit instead of global. Global hit is only for killing stuff. Reputation also takes a while longer to max out. It used to be really simple thing but now it takes shitload of time to get to 30. First 10 is easy then next 10-20 is hard then last 20-30 is very hard.


Overall they did great job so far. Almost all problems are gone and this is imho proper 1.0 and good point for other folks to join in.

Perkel How does it control with mouse and keyboard? I don't have the means to try it with joystick right now, so I was wondering if it is viable that way. Have fond memories from X2 (albeit with joystick), so was thinking to try it soon.

 

[Perkel]

I think with 40 hours in game you are at a point where these problems would have started to show up in older versions. Do you notice some decrease in performance?

Nope, nothing so far. 4.0 really did improve performance.

Perkel How does it control with mouse and keyboard? I don't have the means to try it with joystick right now, so I was wondering if it is viable that way. Have fond memories from X2 (albeit with joystick), so was thinking to try it soon.

All X games are very ok with mouse. Either way most of the time you will be in autopilot mode and frankly speaking watching your minions fuck around is imho more fun than you destroying on your own stuff.

Personally i am using dual joysticks + m/k. It is also completely playable with pad as well as mentioned k/m.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

It would be interesting to know how the late game performance is now.

In the past it was reported that the performance especially in the late game suffered because the engine somehow couldn't handle it anymore.

I am considering buying the game but I am worried that I still will run into problems in the late game.

I think with 40 hours in game you are at a point where these problems would have started to show up in older versions.

Do you notice some decrease in performance?

Still performs bad the longer u run, also the AI at one point in play time just give up and have a AVC.

How does it control with mouse and keyboard? I don't have the means to try it with joystick right now, so I was wondering if it is viable that way. Have fond memories from X2 (albeit with joystick), so was thinking to try it soon.

U can play with mouse and keyboard on a somewhat "tank controls", but the game and his menus itself was made with controller intuition in mind.

 

[Alter Sack]

Well, seems I have to wait another year.

 

[Volrath]

Still no Boron?

 

[Perkel]

Still no Boron?

Nope. Probably next year.

That being said faction wise there are now more factions than in any other X game. Each main race actually has now more or less 2-3 sub factions often fighting each other. Previously X3 had those but those were more like lore hints than full factions. Here they are full factions now each with their own agenda and enemies. So Antigone Republic main enemy is actually Teladi trade company not Teladi main faction.

Frankly speaking X4 factions and their interactions are far more interesting than previous X games. Though i would love for X-Rebirth like treatment where there were factions within factions within factions. Trading companies etc each having their own agendas.

For example new DLC added actually 4 new factions. Terrans proper, Protectorate which is basically Terran security from out systems, pioners looking for new worlds to colonize which is connected to terraforming and yaki pirates making its comeback.

 

[Eli_Havelock]

Maybe Next Year is this game's tagline.

But it's good to see that Egosoft are recovering from their failed console bid of Rebirth. Slowly.

 

[mikaelis]

Another question:
What if I get the base game for now, and only buy DLCs later (if I am hooked)?

Would I miss a lot of mechanics beside more sectors and more factions?

If I get DLCs later can I continue my progress or do I need to start from scratch new game?

 

[Joggerino]

Another question:
What if I get the base game for now, and only buy DLCs later (if I am hooked)?

Would I miss a lot of mechanics beside more sectors and more factions?

If I get DLCs later can I continue my progress or do I need to start from scratch new game?

I highly doubt you can continue the campaign if you add the DLC midway through. Why not wait for the winter sale and buy everything together?

 

[Alter Sack]

You can either wait like Nigger ino suggested or buy a key from one of the usual resellers for half the price.

I recently bought Valkyria Chronicles 4 for under 5,- USD from a reseller.

 

[Jackson352]

Another question:
What if I get the base game for now, and only buy DLCs later (if I am hooked)?

Would I miss a lot of mechanics beside more sectors and more factions?

If I get DLCs later can I continue my progress or do I need to start from scratch new game?

I highly doubt you can continue the campaign if you add the DLC midway through. Why not wait for the winter sale and buy everything together?

You definitely can - I've had a save going since 1.0 and it seamlessly integrated the DLC once I bought them. I would still just do as suggested and get it all at once, tho.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

Another question:
What if I get the base game for now, and only buy DLCs later (if I am hooked)?

Would I miss a lot of mechanics beside more sectors and more factions?

If I get DLCs later can I continue my progress or do I need to start from scratch new game?

you kinda can, but is not suggested to do so because it will break the AI.

 

[Perkel]

Pimping up my HQ currently and doing some quests to build up station. I am making like 3 at once which cost me my whole 20mln. I should get return of about 30 so it is good. My HQ makes me about 1mln every 15 minutes which is nice.

Another question:
What if I get the base game for now, and only buy DLCs later (if I am hooked)?

Would I miss a lot of mechanics beside more sectors and more factions?

If I get DLCs later can I continue my progress or do I need to start from scratch new game?

This is not story game so in order to have full experience you have to get DLC otherwise your world will be about half the size + missing on ships + missing races. Like someone said just get some key for half the price.

Xenon were able to build two defense stations in Halkvah Choice I.

 

[Perkel]

Trying new custom game start that came with 4.10

Basically it detects your "unmodified" saves and gives you points for progress as well as tracks what you did. So when you pick custom start you can for example start with as much stuff as you had in other save.

On other hand thanks to this you can start as proper pirate when you change all factions relations to negative.

You can also export/import those starts.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Unfortunately no one has unmodified saves because for the first year you needed a lot of ai and economy fix mods just to play the damn thing.

 

[Perkel]

Unfortunately no one has unmodified saves because for the first year you needed a lot of ai and economy fix mods just to play the damn thing.

Not anymore. Playing completely vanilla and:

- factions do fight each other now
- Xenon actually can push but it requires some time for them to ramp up
- economy doesn't stall at all. Even Energy Cells are shuffled in economy without requiring player to restock npc stations to uninstall them which was the case as far as 2.0


Speaking of which i delved a bit into bailing/boarding and bluprint hunt since i am trying to play as proper pirate aka against everyone. Bailing is now much improved mechanic since days of X3 and previous patches where it was i think completely random.

BAILING

- Bailing ship is only for S and M sized ships. Boarding is for L and XL ships.
- Right now once ship goes down to below 75% and you attack ship hull crew rolls check against their morale and ship starts "leaking" crew with lowest morale first.
- Once ship has like 3-2 people in it game then rolls against captain morale if he will bail with rest of the crew or not.
- Those checks starts to happen below 75% hull and they are faster the lower hull is. At 75% i think it is once every 30 seconds.
- Apparently there is mechanic where the bigger your ship is the harder it is to force someone to bail. Meaning that once you get destroyer it will be very hard to bail targets. From what i read the thinking is that the bigger player ship the slower it is thus captains want to just run while they won't be able to outrun dedicated scout ship. So if you fly scout ship it is best for forcing people to bail but naturally it is very hard to survive.
- Pilot moral matters A LOT. Bailing 1-2 star pilot is very easy and doesn't take much time. Bailing 5 morale pilot is almost impossible. So when you pick your target you have to ensure that pilot is weak otherwise you can spend hours trying to take over ship and captain just won't bail. You can check stats of crew with police scanner installed on your ship and SCAN command when you are near ship.
- Ships that are attacked aren't stupid and they will try to find a way to loose you. They will naturally try to run away but more importantly they will try to dock somewhere if they are close or go to nearest combat ships from same faction.
- If ship bails and you won't kill escape pods you won't lose global reputation with faction as this will count as stealing instead of murder.
- "Surrender !" in com options very often doesn't work but it does have chance to force extra check on crew and used properly with enough spam it can lead to bailing out 100% hull ship. It basically does extra check against harder stat than just normal bailing. It has unknown cooldown and pilot who fights with you instead of running won't talk with you. Only running away or doing something else will talk. Sometimes pilots just won't talk at all.
- You can't destroy subcomponents like engines of S/M ship or its weapons or shields. They are destroyed when hull goes down randomly.
- When you claim ship, there are 2 ways to do it. Personally and via Marines. Personally requires you to hack into ship computer via finding signal on ship in scan mode. Marines just blast ship with explosive and get it. Ship looses a lot of hull with marines and 0 with personal claim. So you can for example get nice 75% hull ship with full equipment but marines can get it to say 20% and lose most of equipment. This is not as important for someone who want to just sell trophy but for actual pirate without access to Wharf of Shipyard to install equipment it is very important to not lose equipment.
- Sometimes combination of high morale and luck means you won't be able to bail ship no matter what you do and pilot will go down with ship rather than handing it to you.
- This method actually works on L and XL ships. They won't lose pilot but crew will start to bail which is great way to acquire L/XL ships early with minimal amount of marines.


As you can see bailing actually is whole system integrated into game and there is actual skill involved into bailing ships to be something else than just random chance. Moreover as ship hull goes down it has chance to destroy onboard equipment and with something like less than 25% hull for sure ship will get a lot of its equipment destroyed. So if you are skillful about trying to bail ship you can get almost pristine ship with full equipment instead of wreckage with almost no equipment.

I tested it yesterday and i was able to successfully get 2 M sized transporters and 1 S sized ship in a bout hour. Doesn't sound like much but for Pirate without access to Wharf or Shipyard it means a lot.

BOARDING

- Marines are used for boarding.
- Once you have marines on board you have option now on any clicked ship to "board" which throws you into boarding UI.
- Ships you selected before clicking board will be on this screen so you can combine few ships marines for bigger boarding. Ships in fleet instead will follow what lead does and marines total will be combined into one number instead of each ship having its own.
- You can only send maximum amount of marines equal to crew space on targeted ship. If ship has max 200 crew then max 200 marines can be sent.
- You select amount of marines you want to use
- You give what ships in group should do to boarded ship and you have several options like attack turrets, disable engines and so on.
- Boarding is divided into 3 parts. Aproach, Breaching, Takeover/Fight
- In Aproch you choose when Boarding Pods will launch from ships. If you choose "strong" they will launch after very small amount of turrets were destroyed if you choose very weak, they will wait for most of defences to be down.
- In Breaching you decide when they will start to breach after board. This decides hull life. So Strong means something like 75% while weak something like 25%. Higher hull numbers means it will take a lot longer to breach and you can even lose marines due to internal lockdowns and internal defense systems.
- Last one is entirely automatic which chance gives to you based on crew skill and amount of marines that survived to this part. Once fight starts both you and enemy ship will lose crew/marines, fight continues until either your marines or ship crew is wiped out.
- After winning ship, you can change marines into engineers and start repairing ship because most of the time it will have its engines down and can't run if sector security will show up. So Boarding as well as engineering not just boarding is skills to have on people for boarding.

BLUEPRINT STEALING

- Unfortunately it requires Player HQ as its research.
- After research you can find randomly radio leaks on stations and get blueprints
- Proper way to do it is to make EMP bombs and use space suit to force those leaks on specific part you want to have blueprint off which causes 4 leaks to show up with high chance of blueprint and naturally high chance of getting shot since you will become local enemy.
- It can be used on all ships as well and equipment. This is the only way to steal blueprints of those.
- It doesn't work on your own ships. So in order to have ship blueprint you have to either way find ship and play tango with it while it tries to kill you or find abandoned ship and try to get those blueprints from that.
- It doesn't work apparently on shipyard modules which sucks.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Finally got my Terran rep high enough to build an Assguard.

That thing is a barrel of laughs, both in game melting everything in one shot. apart from a Xenon I which takes a few seconds, but also the immense butthurt on forums about MUH OP (despite the fact that this isn't even a multiplayer game).

It's pretty useless OOS though, this is a flying railgun you want to pilot yourself.

 

[Perkel]

New Expansion announced. No borons ?

• Third expansion for X4: Foundations to be released in Q1 2022
• Extraordinary new ships, new economy and gameplay elements will surprise X4 players
• Captivating new stories will challenge the perception of social order and justice in the X universe
• Extensive free 5.00 update to feature a series of new capital ships, numerous new interiors, and AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution (FSR)

Meet new factions and experience their stories
Encountering and interacting with previously unknown, lawless pirate and scavenger factions, will challenge your perception of social order and justice in the X universe. In new sectors and dangerous regions, you will not only discover new ships and stations, but also encounter stellar phenomena that will significantly influence your plans and actions. What is it all about, and who are the mysterious manipulators that have learned to master a rare and vital resource? Your journey will lead you towards the answers. Set out and discover a new chapter of X4: Foundations.


Let new ships terrify and enchant you at the same time
Roam through the Windfall and Avarice systems, and discover numerous new ships from the pirate and scavenger factions of X4: Tides of Avarice. Among other new ships, you can look forward to the following highlights:

• The Erlking, a terrifying pirate battleship with an experimental and unusual energy source, has been developed over many years by the Riptide Rakers, at great cost to their resources and lives, in a desperate attempt to take advantage of stellar phenomena in the Avarice system. In X4: Tides of Avarice, you will find out more about these curious events, while you upgrade the Erlking using research and resources acquired during your adventure.
• The Astrid, an incredibly lavish and luxurious yacht, projects wealth and importance. Owned by the CEO of the Northriver Company, Brantlee Northriver, it is rumoured to be the fastest ship in the galaxy. With its sleek design, the Astrid is a ship unlike anything you've ever come across in the X universe. What mysteries might it hold?
  
  

Salvage shipwrecks to recycle resources
Have you ever come across a shipwreck and wished you could use it in a profitable way? In the Avarice system, the Riptide Rakers, a loosely organised group of scavengers and traders, have developed the means to salvage wrecks and use them in production. Either tow the wreck with one of the new tug ships, or dismantle the wreck right where you found it using a new deconstruction ship. Once you've reached a station equipped with a recycling module, watch your scrap metal turn into building resources.

X4: Foundations 5.00 Update
X4: Tides of Avarice is released at the same time as the extensive, free 5.00 update for X4: Foundations, which expands and improves the base game in several ways. The 5.00 update introduces a series of new capital ships. These ships have been re-imagined, and a new fleet of improved models will now be on sale in various shipyards. Several factions in the game will gradually start using these new and improved ships. The 5.00 update will also bring AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution (FSR) to X4: Foundations, using a collection of cutting-edge upscaling technologies to boost performance.

 

[Joggerino]

• Extraordinary new ships, new economy and gameplay elements will surprise X4 players

• Captivating new stories will challenge the perception of social order and justice in the X universe

• Extensive free 5.00 update to feature a series of new capital ships, numerous new interiors, and AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution (FSR)

 

[anvi]

Does the late game still run at 1fps for people? I really want this game but I am waiting for more updates to tip the scales. Could really use a 3070 too -.-

 

[Blaine]

A decade is just barely long enough to smooth over the performance issues of an EGOSOFT game—primarily because computing power (chiefly CPU, but GPU as well) will have increased so substantially that the performance issues are overcome by sheer brute force.

They will never, ever be fixed because EGOSOFT did something to the game code. That's 100% guaranteed, I'd actually stake my life on it.

 

[Zarniwoop]

A decade is just barely long enough to smooth over the performance issues of an EGOSOFT game—primarily because computing power (chiefly CPU, but GPU as well) will have increased so substantially that the performance issues are overcome by sheer brute force.

They will never, ever be fixed because EGOSOFT did something to the game code. That's 100% guaranteed, I'd actually stake my life on it.

It's the German way of doing things. If you build it, they will come.

Crysis was never optimised either - they just waited about a decade for hardware to catch up. (Still waiting for consoles, any day now)

 

[Blake00]

No borons ?

First thing I thought too...

 

[Zarniwoop]

No borons ?

First thing I thought too...

Hey maybe after another 7 expansions the game will have as much content as X3 vanilla had at launch.

Then another 10 or so to get to X3:AP

 

[Perkel]

Well this one from forums talk seems to be piracy rework and general improvement of game. All paranid ships will get rework so they no longer look like shit. Apparently few other ships will get that too. Salvaging is new mechanic where you can salvage stuff from battlefield and those wrecks in some sectors like those in Argon Prime.