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

[Perkel]

Well that's the end for my playthrough in new expansion. I got really fucking weird and rare bug where ships go into critical state where orders can't be fulfilled and you can't fire captains you can't even take pilot seat as they refuse claiming they are busy. Luck was bad and it happen when i made order for 3/4 of my fleet after toiling hours to build it.

Probably will restart after a month or two.

This time i noticed:

- xenon seem to be as aggressive as 1.0. They were detuned in later patches. Which makes sense. There are way more factions so Xenons can't take over as easily as before.
- pirates galore. Your traders need escort or thinking about whole system security. I build like 10 trading ships and 6 of them got shot down. Era of running uber cheap traders with no shields, no nothing seem to be gone. Escaping tends to work 50/50
- new missions are welcome change. They definitely bring something to do while early game.
- seems like creating fleet first before empire is the way to go. I usually first created 2-3 detachments with cerberus in their cores for early game patroling but now it seems like full sector security with cheap interceptors that hold off pirates makes sense.
- PHQ changed. Now it comes with boron quest line and starts after Boso-ta was rescued. No need to build docks either. Overall PHQ was always in pretty shitty sector and never liked it but now it sits in neutral sector ready for taking.
- Good way for early money is salvaging battlefield. Usually when you start Second Conflict 2 instantly goes into war mode and there are shitload of loot to scour. This time i got like 2-3 mil from it.
- They changed how police works, previously when you got scanned you could just drop illegal personal wares but now police will destroy that lockbox.
- Fleets finally fly in formations, which also includes you personally steering. They sometimes still have issues with gates and superhighways but it is like light years better than it used to be. You can now actually fly in formation of your choosing and ships do stick to it.
- research is as annoying as it always was. Either way most of research is mostly QOL and kind of cheating where you can make your lead ship better than others so never liked it.


With new playthrough I think I will focus on one sector like reach or other with high amount of resources and base to sell and form mining fleet with full security and work myself from that way. With full security I will expand with strong base instead of streeching far and wide.

 

[pickmeister]

Played this only for a few hours. Went with the Terran Cadet start as it seems to be the most recommended one, and I have 2 noob questions:

1) I was doing the main questline so no base building or fleet ordering yet. However, all I was doing was staring at the screen while my autopilot was flying to the location I was given by the quest giver, do some shooting once I pop up out of travel mode, then fly somewhere else, do some shooting again and so on. That's it. Is that what's the game is supposed to be or am I missing something?

2) The only other space game I ever played before was EVE Online so I have little to no experience with space sims. But I really liked the visual part of EVE overall - looking at my turrets shooting, drones being deployed and either repairing or harassing the enemy etc. But in X4 it feels like I'm just shooting at a dot about which the HUD is telling me is the enemy. No feedback outside of HUD. Is that how the game is supposed to be or am I missing something?
And is it the same once I'm gonna build an empire? Just ordering my little green dots to go and erase little red dots?

The lack of audiovisual feedback I'm used to in other games is really bugging me because this feels like I'm playing Microsoft Excel. Please tell me I'm missing something because the overall idea of this game seems awesome.

 

[cw8]

Played this only for a few hours. Went with the Terran Cadet start as it seems to be the most recommended one, and I have 2 noob questions:

1) I was doing the main questline so no base building or fleet ordering yet. However, all I was doing was staring at the screen while my autopilot was flying to the location I was given by the quest giver, do some shooting once I pop up out of travel mode, then fly somewhere else, do some shooting again and so on. That's it. Is that what's the game is supposed to be or am I missing something?

2) The only other space game I ever played before was EVE Online so I have little to no experience with space sims. But I really liked the visual part of EVE overall - looking at my turrets shooting, drones being deployed and either repairing or harassing the enemy etc. But in X4 it feels like I'm just shooting at a dot about which the HUD is telling me is the enemy. No feedback outside of HUD. Is that how the game is supposed to be or am I missing something?
And is it the same once I'm gonna build an empire? Just ordering my little green dots to go and erase little red dots?

The lack of audiovisual feedback I'm used to in other games is really bugging me because this feels like I'm playing Microsoft Excel. Please tell me I'm missing something because the overall idea of this game seems awesome.

You realise you can play in 3rd person view:


You can watch the beginners guide. It's a little dated but still pretty relevant.


If you can play Eve, you most certainly can play this. Funny because ppl compare Eve to Excel spreadsheets mostly.

 

[Perkel]

Played this only for a few hours. Went with the Terran Cadet start as it seems to be the most recommended one, and I have 2 noob questions:

1) I was doing the main questline so no base building or fleet ordering yet. However, all I was doing was staring at the screen while my autopilot was flying to the location I was given by the quest giver, do some shooting once I pop up out of travel mode, then fly somewhere else, do some shooting again and so on. That's it. Is that what's the game is supposed to be or am I missing something?

If you follow major quests then yes, more or less. Add to that some stuff like exploration, placing satelites, hauling small amount of cargo etc. Most of storyline missions are mostly for lore aka to get to know factions, their worldview etc. Game is 95% sandbox 5% story. Thanks to those story missions you kind of get who argons are, who terrans are, what they believe in who are their enemies etc.

Game is much more focused on empire building. So once you get some cash get second fighter to follow you and then pick your own goals, play pirate ? build mercenary group ? maybe start earning money via trade ? or maybe create factory ?

 

[Twiglard]

Every ship is simulated OOS, running their errands, mining, trading, patrolling sectors, etc. X3 gives you a pretty presentation but little what you do actually matters. Destroy an ostensibly important factory? Doesn't do anything. In X4 that causes a real shortage that can lower the combat power of a faction. Destroy a miner before it offloads minerals? That actually affects things in X4.

Can't the God Engine just create replacements out of thin air like X3?

If you start wrecking shit as your own faction, will they respond satisfactorily or do nothing like X3?

 

[Joggerino]

Every ship is simulated OOS, running their errands, mining, trading, patrolling sectors, etc. X3 gives you a pretty presentation but little what you do actually matters. Destroy an ostensibly important factory? Doesn't do anything. In X4 that causes a real shortage that can lower the combat power of a faction. Destroy a miner before it offloads minerals? That actually affects things in X4.

Can't the God Engine just create replacements out of thin air like X3?

If you start wrecking shit as your own faction, will they respond satisfactorily or do nothing like X3?

I'd rather not say anything definitively because I'm sure they CAN create replacements out of thin air but I don't know if they're doing that in any capacity right now. When I played the game, after 50 hours of gameplay or something like that, the economy of the universe would collapse. It happened because the resource sinkhole (and money printer) shipyard's storage would get full and a certain rare resource would be missing from its stocks and because of that all shipbuilding would stop. They resolved this years ago but I can't say if they didn't introduce more measures to prevent severe resource chain issues. Maybe Perkel knows?

 

[pickmeister]

You realise you can play in 3rd person view:

I do but I didn't find it very practical considering the ship HUD disappears. But I see that the targeting still works so I might try that at some point. The video showed much more interesting fight than what I had in the game but I'm guessing that's to be expected with beginner slow, clumsy ship.
Well, at least it's something

You can watch the beginners guide. It's a little dated but still pretty relevant.


If you can play Eve, you most certainly can play this. Funny because ppl compare Eve to Excel spreadsheets mostly.

That video didn't teach me anything in-game tutorial haven't already taught me or I already figured out by myself but I appreciate the effort. I wanted to go in this game blind so watching YT tutorials isn't very enticing.
I looked and there are already some new 6.0 tutorials on YT so in case I'd need it, I'll go and watch those.

If you follow major quests then yes, more or less. Add to that some stuff like exploration, placing satelites, hauling small amount of cargo etc. Most of storyline missions are mostly for lore aka to get to know factions, their worldview etc. Game is 95% sandbox 5% story. Thanks to those story missions you kind of get who argons are, who terrans are, what they believe in who are their enemies etc.

Game is much more focused on empire building. So once you get some cash get second fighter to follow you and then pick your own goals, play pirate ? build mercenary group ? maybe start earning money via trade ? or maybe create factory ?

Ah so the storyline is supposed to be sort of a practical tutorial. Got it, thanks.
All the optional goals you listed sound great. I started playing Total War Warhammer 3 in the meantime but I'm looking forward to geting into X4 after that.
Thanks!

 

[deuxhero]

Every ship is simulated OOS, running their errands, mining, trading, patrolling sectors, etc. X3 gives you a pretty presentation but little what you do actually matters. Destroy an ostensibly important factory? Doesn't do anything. In X4 that causes a real shortage that can lower the combat power of a faction. Destroy a miner before it offloads minerals? That actually affects things in X4.

Can't the God Engine just create replacements out of thin air like X3?

If you start wrecking shit as your own faction, will they respond satisfactorily or do nothing like X3?

I'd rather not say anything definitively because I'm sure they CAN create replacements out of thin air but I don't know if they're doing that in any capacity right now. When I played the game, after 50 hours of gameplay or something like that, the economy of the universe would collapse. It happened because the resource sinkhole (and money printer) shipyard's storage would get full and a certain rare resource would be missing from its stocks and because of that all shipbuilding would stop. They resolved this years ago but I can't say if they didn't introduce more measures to prevent severe resource chain issues. Maybe Perkel knows?

Been playing 6.0. Only issue with shipbuilding 60+ hours in hull/turret parts are so in demand and needed for everything, they're expended faster than they can be built. I think the real solution would be to diversify the supply chain a bit so that large ships don't stop all small ship production.

 

[Crispy]

I'm surprised there's never been a thread here for this game before.

Released in 2018, it certainly slipped under my radar. While I've never been a *huge* fan of the X- games, they've always been enough of a "huge universe, sandbox, trade, mine, fight" distraction to have gotten at least some attention from me.

Well, for twenty bucks on Steam and apparently boasting a huge beta update that just dropped this week, I'm figuring, "Why not?" Downloading now.

I also always find it fascinating to take on a game that may have been released a number of years before that had a reputation of needing a monster rig to run well, and attacking it with an actual monster rig of a later gen. In a way it's good to have either forgetten about or just plain missed some releases, avoiding the all-too-common performance depression that can accompany a game at release.

Screenshots are, of course, nice:

We shall see!

 

[Crispy]

Okay, initial impressions:

- Funky game. Quite funky. First-person movement is nice (I think this was supposed to be a touted feature of X4? Did any of the previous titles have it?) but it's quirky, NPCs models look horrible, but who cares?

- Performance is not too bad, but I would imagine this game could be brutal on even a decent gaming rig. MSAA of almost any level can quickly cripple the framerate, but I've settled into a nice compromise of 2X and in space I seem to be maintaining my precious 120fps. Oddly, I can't get G-Sync to work, no matter what I've tried.

- The music sucks. I just turned it off.

Sort of fun so far. I'll keep going in the tutorial.

 

[Lyre Mors]

45 pages, Crisper.

Yes, I agree is belongs in this subforum. However, it's probably gotten more action due to being in General Gaming Discussion, sadly.

 

[Jacob]

X3 made me nearly fail college so I kinda hate this series

 

[Joggerino]

Cool to see you playing this Crispy.

 

[Modron]

Yes, I agree is belongs in this subforum. However, it's probably gotten more action due to being in General Gaming Discussion, sadly.

Probably was originally in Space, Strategy, and Simulation before that was unceremoniously gutted and most threads dumped in General Gaming. You'll find a lot of racing, space, and flight sims have floundered there buried a hundred pages deep in the forum. Some space sims were fished out and dumped in Space but most are just lost in the refuse.

At least with Space Sims you can probably get a staff member to move them to Space for better visibility if you bring such threads to their attention. Other sims that aren't managerial in nature are shit out of luck.

 

[Crispy]

Apologies then for the new thread, but I think I'll leave this one here as a fresh look at it unless someone objects.

 

[Crispy]

I figured out how to get G-Sync working in the game and holy shitmonkeys does it make a huge difference.

So smooth...

 

[Crispy]

I changed my mind, went ahead and merged the threads and moved here into Space Games.

 

[Ironmonk]

I changed my mind, went ahead and merged the threads and moved here into Space Games.

To give better visibility for this kind of game, I suggest to change this Subforum to "Piloting Games" (or something like that) to include all kinds of simulators: Space, Racing, Flight Sims, etc.

Each type on its own isn't enough to have decent activity, but together it might be.

While disperse inside General Gaming most of these games end up unseen.

 

[Perkel]

Someone made proper no travel/boost mod.

This along with no superhighways.

So kind of like X3 as no travel/boost mod gives SETA from start.

 

[Crispy]

So with that combination the only way to overcome Newtonian travel mode is with SETA? That seems dumb because isn't SETA just compressing time for the player's convenience' sake?

It oddly seems more "realistic" to me to have things like limited boost mode and travel mode, the latter of which is some sort of advanced engine space-folding technique as opposed to "faking" it with SETA.

Am I missing something here?

 

[Perkel]

So with that combination the only way to overcome Newtonian travel mode is with SETA? That seems dumb because isn't SETA just compressing time for the player's convenience' sake?

It oddly seems more "realistic" to me to have things like limited boost mode and travel mode, the latter of which is some sort of advanced engine space-folding technique as opposed to "faking" it with SETA.

Am I missing something here?

This is how you played in X3. You always used SETA to get from A to B.
Downside is like you said you always pretty much have to use it and this is why they designed X4 without it.

But upside is that all problems with AI are mostly gone. You see travel mode and boost cause a lot of pain when it comes to AI because pathfinding on it's own is already hard problem so you create separate mode which further complicates stuff.

So stuff like chasing someone is almost impossible, formations tend to fuck up when travel mode is used, ships have to turn off travel mode mostly when they need to go through gate etc etc etc. With that gone everything just works. Formations works flawlessly, there are no problems with ships taking X times longer because travel mode shenanigans etc.

Also SETA is in X4 but for some dumb reason they force you to use crafting and make it...

 

[anvi]

I bet Speed Hack works well.

 

[Zarniwoop]

So with that combination the only way to overcome Newtonian travel mode is with SETA? That seems dumb because isn't SETA just compressing time for the player's convenience' sake?

It oddly seems more "realistic" to me to have things like limited boost mode and travel mode, the latter of which is some sort of advanced engine space-folding technique as opposed to "faking" it with SETA.

Am I missing something here?

You're missing jump drives, which every game before had and only massive dorks that started the series with Stillbirth like to bitch about. In fact the entire series starts with a jump drive test that shoots you from Earth into this strange region known as the X Universe.

All this highway faggotry was introduced with Stillbirth, the equivalent of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel of the X series.

Travel drive isn't some space folding technology (that would be jump drives). It's just Scotty giving her more power.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah just basic stuff like trying to pirate ships is kind of cancer with travel mode everywhere. And superhighway makes the geography of the map weird, where stations close to the highway are logistically speaking closer to the other side of the galaxy than to stations on the other side of the system.

IMO boost is fine though. It costs you and its convenient/useful in return.

 

[Crispy]

Okay so the tutorials really suck and some of them can't be completed, but I've got the gist of the basics I think.

The internet strongly recommends starting a new game as Terran Cadet, so I guess I'll give that a shot in order to keep learning.

Any tips are welcome.