X4 - Now with more flyable ships

That should have been a leak. You have to get REAL close, like shove your camera into it kind of close. You should see a message saying something like “Decrypting data stream” in the notification window in the bottom left. Honestly, I found hunting down leaks to be a little too time consuming for what they offer so I downloaded the Signal Leak Hunter mod. It will give you a quest marker to a leak once you get close it it which made it less tedious for me.

In terms of miners, I would suggest any of the M-sized mineral miners to start off with.

Question about mods–is there any reason not to get them? Cheevos?

Will they affect an already-started game? (probably depends on the mod)

Is there one that reduces the cost of the hub quest by a factor of 10? … oops, sorry, flashback from X3TC.

Correct, depends on the mod. Most can be enabled during a save but the big overhaul ones like VRO are exceptions.

I’m not sure about achievements but I know that modded games can’t do Ventures which I already ignore anyway. Basically, if you’re logged in you can send AI ships to venture into someone else’s game and sometimes they come back with resources that can be used for cosmetics or something like that? Not something I’ve ever cared about, and I believe there’s even a mod to do those “offline” as well and be simulated instead of being sent into other people’s games.

There are mods regarding the PHQ but thankfully the base version isn’t anywhere near as onerous as the Hub was. Getting to the last tiers of research took a little effort but it didn’t feel too bad to me.

Thanks again!

I actually kind of like the idea of Ventures. I really liked the idea back in Shogun 2 when you could sign up to be dropped in to other people’s single player games in place of the normal battle AI, and I’m sad that more games don’t try to do something similar. Though I understand the game design challenges. Like if I send a freighter into your game, how the heck are you going to notice it out of all the other stuff in the galaxy unless they put a big glowing pink circle around it?

I actually did the full hub quest in X3TC, so I have the bragging rights there, but damn if I didn’t regret it after.

I do think that sorta-multiplayer. Last I looked at them back in the original release they just added cosmetics or something and I just don’t care about those but I looked it up now and apparently you can get exceptional mod components as well, which is kinda nice. I might have to play around with them a bit in my next playthrough.

I never finished The Hub in X3TC but I had a friend who did. You guys are masochists. :)

Thanks both! 30% is good for me but GOG is not a platform I start up often. Would probably want it on Steam and will hold out for the sale. It’s not like my backlog is getting any smaller!

Backlog is always a valid excuse. (What a time we live in…)

OTOH I prefer to do GOG when I can. But individual tastes may vary!

I got a little scout and picked up three antimatter cells so I guess I’m ready for the next part of the main quest. I feel bad for the pilot I hired to fly it, as I have a feeling he’s not going to make it out of this.

I picked up a miner as well and I got it to (automatically) fill up with silicon, which was cool. But then I had to manually tell it to sell at the silicon refinery. I suppose there’s probably a way to do it automatically, so I’ll figure that out. Also, is it worth filling it up with crew? The crew are pretty cheap to hire, but do I have to pay salaries? (It’s not listed anywhere AFAICT.)

I also found a freighter called “Visitor 92” just sitting around doing nothing. I wonder what that’s about.

For your miner, there will be a Behavior panel you can open up (it’s one of the tabs along with the Info panel and that sort of thing). In there you can change its default behavior to Sector Automine and tell it what resource to mine. It will then automatically mine and sell resources, assuming there is a station that buys it in range. As the pilot of the ship gets better, you get access to Expert and Advanced automine functions which allows them to operate in a much larger area.

Crew shouldn’t be terribly important for a mining ship. Service crew help repair hull damage over time while marines are for boarding. They also defend against boarders technically, but the AI won’t try to board your ships.

Thanks! For the crew it said something like “makes all operations more efficient” but (1) I could be misremembering, or (2) I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the tooltips were inaccurate.

I had the same questions when I started playing so I googled it, which is where I found this dev response:

Service crew skill is used in a number of places for generic skill checks (chance to do an advanced thing) and to decide reaction/wait times. For example, turrets will become aware of new enemies more quickly with higher service crew skill. In such cases, the skill used is always the “combined skill” displayed on the ship information tab which encapsulates both the number of crew and their average ratings.

No way!! Really? I had no idea and never saw any such info online. That’s great to know, thanks!

Doing a NO-VRO playthrough and I find the turrets are terrible. Any sugguestions of a decent loadout for an M6 Frigate. I just tried an all “chain gun” setup and 3 M’s and P melted me without breaking a sweat.

Unless you’re planning on attacking capital ships, flak turrets are generally the best. Some M combat ships are better than others for “normal” direct combat - Paranid and Split ships have the most/best guns.

So I’ve pretty much got my feet under me, I think. (Though I only just learned that you could press T to target an object you have selected on the map.) I have a silicon miner in Argon Prime and another in Grand Exchange 1 (though I should see what’s going on there because I recently caught them up in Grand Exchange 3 for some reason).

I upgraded to a Nova from the original Elite for a little more oomph. Now that I have 10 rep with the Argon (and the Antigone Republic) I’m considering going up again to an Eclipse or a Pulsar (if I can find one). Or maybe I should go up to a corvette or frigate? What do you all use for your personal ships?

My original Elite I just sent out exploring Argon Prime. It, uh, took a long time for what should have really only been like 10 minutes of cruising to the various corners of the hex. What’s up with that?

3.20 is out, apparently!

That’s because “Sector automine” is actually “Cluster automine” and all the Grand Exchange sectors are in a cluster. It’s a weird distinction that varies between useful and annoying depending on what you’re doing. Bottom line is that your ship is probably fine.

I use a Pulsar when I want to do missions or fight small engagements and a Nemesis (Paranid ship) when I expect to engage multiple opposing corvettes or to bomb a capital ship.

The explore AI is excessively complete and will uncover every single map hex in the sphere. It will also check a certain amount on the Y-axis (up/down) even though the NPCs almost never build stations in that direction. If you want it done quick, either give it manual move orders or do it yourself via the long range scanner. However, every new station the pilot discovers gives valuable piloting XP, so putting a few fighters on explore and forgetting about them for a while is a way to get at least a few decent pilots in the early game you can later assign to trade ships.

Just a heads up, the game is 30% off on Steam again.

I just now read a very detailed review about the AI in the game and immediately NOPED right out of there. I just can’t take any more full-on jank in my life right now.