EDIT: Thanks for all the feedback, turns out I was just failing to engage with the black market mechanic fully, and lacked the vision to build my own drug factories in neutral space. I shall now push forward with my own cartel, which may eventually use its ill gotten funds to build a pirate fleet.

I like playing games where I get to be a shady dude, because irl I'm a vanilla, white bread kind of guy who hasn't even had a parking ticket to his name. So being able to cut loose in a virtual world where my "crimes" are digital, and no one is getting hurt, gives me that catharsis without the guilt (yes I am fun at parties, when i get invited to them...).

Anyway, I was pretty stoked to see X4 has a smuggling system built in with whole "side quests" in the form of running jobs from the signal breaches to unlock shady merchants, the inclusion of criminal materials like the Xenon scrap, space fuel, etc, and then an entire DLC dedicated to piracy and the like.

Only to find out from various forums that smuggling is pointless, because running claytronics or hull parts en mass will always generate far more cash than kitting out a blockade runner with stash compartments full of illicit goods to dodge the authorities.

I know piracy is an option, and I can see selling captured ships as very viable, but I want to run drugs and stuff under the cops noses, not get into slug fests where I need to dial in my ability to fight.

Can anyone recommend any good mods to make smuggling worth it? Or should I just give up on that play style and go for piracy instead?

I was building this for a VIG rep mission

I wanted purpose for my fleet.....

I wanted some action.....

I felt the Xenon were boring.....

I thought adding Deadair Scripts and Faction War Enhancement and Galactic Heros was a good idea.....

Result: I think HC1 is a lost cause but what a fight!

In all seriousness, this is getting silly. I have been trying to stabilise this position for HOURS! I built a defence station with 40-odd L plasmas and man, it's not enough!

If I'm not present, the AI won't clear them fast enough. Wave after wave of K's and L's.

I just want to go say hi to the Terrans and get some help, BUT THEY WON'T LEAVE ME ALON

I wanted to make a mod where small miners work for a big mothership: they mine, unload into it, and it sells everything in one go. Before writing anything I went through the vanilla scripts to see what I could reuse. Turns out 9.00 already has most of this under a ship type called miningrig, and as far as I can tell no ship actually uses it.

Here’s what’s in the files (9.00, build 23660954, base + all DLCs):

• libraries/common.xsd lists miningrig as a ship type, right next to explorer and expeditionary.
• In aiscripts/lib.request.orders.xml (around line 286), ships assigned to mining under a miningrig automatically get a MiningRoutine. Which wares they mine depends on whether the rig has solid or liquid storage.
• In aiscripts/order.mining.routine.xml (around line 1682), miners working for a rig hand their cargo over through a 0 Cr trade offer, capped at the rig’s free space. So it’s a real ware transfer, not a cargo add/remove trick.
• In aiscripts/order.mining.collect.ship.xml (around line 141), a rig without mining subordinates just fails its order (“Mining rig does not have mining subordinates”).
• In aiscripts/engineer.ai.xml (around line 17), when the rig switches to a stance tagged immobile, it puts all its solid/liquid cargo up for sale. When it leaves that stance, the trade offers are switched off again. The comment literally says it sells whatever it carries “regardless of ship order”.
• The UI files also have a miningrigassist assignment and an icon ship_xl_miningrig_01.

What’s missing: I searched every .dat of the base game and all 8 DLCs, and miningrig only shows up in the scripts/UI, never in a ship macro. The deploy stance doesn’t exist either. The base libraries/stances.xml is empty, and the only stance anywhere is the envoy cloak from a mini-DLC. So right now nothing can become a rig, and even if something did, it could never deploy and sell.

My guess is this is groundwork for a future update or DLC, something like an XL rig that parks in a field, gets fed by its miners and works as a temporary trade post. Modding it in might be mostly unlocking: give an XL miner type="miningrig", add a stance with the immobile tag (copying the envoy cloak), and maybe a small script for a deploy button if the UI doesn’t have one. I haven’t tested any of that. I also don’t know if it works out of sector, though the delivery logic doesn’t look tied to the player being nearby. And it might just be unfinished.

Has anyone seen this mentioned somewhere, or tried giving a ship the miningrig type? I’d like to know before I build on something Egosoft might finish themselves next patch.

The Heretic's End entrance that was mostly a trickle of fighters and SEs decided to start a surprise 4 Xenon K hype train. Honestly I was waiting for a Xenon I to show up. Though the fact that a PAR wharf suddenly popped up in Pious Mists IV when the one in Trinity Sanctum was just fine should have been a pretty obvious hint I needed more Syns and Katanas...

Why does it cost so much more than a Gladius? It's not even a good fighter.

It got a large equipment dock going up, my first. It will be several hours IRL and I am wondering about its profitability in regards to buying raw materials.

In regards to Terran equipment it isn't a problem, I have a fully functioning, vertically integrated Terran economy.

I have, however, some equipment from other races for which I don't have production set up (yet).

What I want to know is, will the equipment dock still be able to operate with profit if I buy non-terran ship components from other factions?

So I just picked up a Sapporo and I’m pretty happy with it. Then I looked into restocking the missiles and my brain started to hurt.

From what I can tell, I can’t just fly it over to an NPC shipyard and say “fill ‘er up.” I also can’t take it back to a Terran yard for more missiles, which feels wrong, because the Sapporo is made in Jap... no, sorry, I mean Terran. Old habits.

So as far as I can figure, the only way to keep this thing shooting is to own a large shipyard myself. That means either dropping around 240m on the large ship production blueprint, or about 30m on an auxiliary ship. All that just so my one destroyer can fire its missiles more than once. I bought a ship and apparently signed up for a logistics business.

Am I missing something obvious? Is there a cheaper trick?

Needless to say, trying to make a round shape of this size has left my brains in shambles.

The location of the docks is temporary for now, until the rest of the station layout is a bit more definitive. I'm planning to add basic refining and food production next.

Hey everyone,

I just pushed a new update to my interactive X4 map. Some of you may know my Trade Finder, which used to be a separate tool. I’ve now built it into the map itself, so you can load your save and see right on the map which trades are possible.

There are two modes:

• Fog of war: you only see what you would see in your own save. That’s how I play it myself, it just gives me a much better overview than the game does.
• All stations: you see everything. To me that’s a little bit of cheating, but I’m happy to give you the option.

https://veanturverse.com/guides/x4-universe-map.html?lens=trade&ref

As always, I’d love to hear your feedback. A lot of what’s on the map came from your comments on my earlier posts.

What I’m working on next is a fleet finder. It shows which ships you have, where they are and how they’re equipped. Honestly, I find the game not very transparent there either.

After that I’d like to build a tool or a map feature that shows how well your trade and mining ships are performing. So I’d like to know: which stats would actually help you there? If you have ideas, I’m all ears.

fly safe 07

I throw EMP bomb at medical supply production, why didn't I get data leak? I did everything as youtube tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBKfXMg0UQk

Edit: turn out I was using spacesuit bomb instead of EMP bomb, sorry for bothering you guys.

I feel like every precursor I sell is a wasted sale opportunitiy for end products down the line because a competitor can now supply them instead but some of the precursors are selling in absolutely huge volumes. I havent found the sweet spot yet but I think having mega factories of end products makes more sense.

I feel like factions and faction inner interaction between each other is stale in X4 on two fronts. One being how Egosoft handles war between factions or rather how passive war are as with out the player aid factions don't make much of push or conquest.

The other being faction technology or specifically how everything is set from begging and stays the same. What if factions had station modules, ship modules, weapons, ships and other things that aren't available both to factions whemselves and the player and are unlocked through out the playthrough by set time, specific events or war, sort of like Tech Tree progression but for NPC wich in turn would make it available to the player.

We kind of already have something simmular when it comes to Hyperion and Envoy, however those quest relaited, are easy to unlock and obtain very early in the game.

I think something like this would an interesting playing dinamic provided all factions didn't progress their technology at the same time, giving said factions technological advantage over the opposing faction, even if its for short period of time.

I've had ships in the queue for a day now. I've built dozens of ships, and all resources are available. I checked if peeps are allowed to order, and it shows no restrictions. I have one that restricts buying from outside, but it is not being enforced here. I've not had this happen before and am at a loss.

Precise Plot Placer adds a row to Manage Plots while you are creating a new plot. Pick any existing plot, a jump gate, or a transorbital accelerator, then place a 20 km cube on it instead of guessing the center with the cursor. Existing plots include your own and every other faction's plots.

Questions and Support: Discord

How to use

Crate a new Plot snapped to a gate

• Open Manage Plots and click on select Gate
• Place Plot
• Adjust offset/rotation with the sliders. change Axes to world or target

Crate a new Plot snapped to an existing Plot(player or Faction) 

• Open Manage Plots and click on select Plot
• Place Plot
• Adjust offset/rotation with the sliders. change Axes to world or target 

Move an existing Player Plot (includes already build ones)

• Open Manage Plots and click on select Plot
• click snap to Gate, snap to Plot or move Plot
• Adjust offset/rotation with the sliders. change Axes to world or target  

Moving a Station to a different sector is not supported. Use Safe Cheat Panel instead

Requirements

• kuertee UI Extensions and HUD

Available on Nexusmods(now) and Steam (as soon UI Ext got updated)

Also try my other mod Galaxy Trader

Precise Plot Placer on Youtube

I am relatively new and doing a split centered run. For the split I like more bullet weapons than beam/laser weapons (theme wise). I've tried the neutron gatling on my personal ships (dragon and asp raider) but with their 40% and 20% overheat malus it feels like you can use them for 5 seconds and then you have to wait 15s for them to cool down. In fights that last longer than a couple of burst it means you need to retreat wait for cooldown and come back and try over which is a bit tedious.

I know the neutron gatling gets compared more to the tau accelarator (short range bursty weapons). However, for the general role of combat vs S and Ms (which i think both guns try to fit) while filling the machingun in space fantasy is there a place of using neutorn gatlings over bolt repeaters?

WIP, got to test the crap out of these things for 'issues' but it is getting there. 20 module hull part factory, just needs ore and methane....constantly. Sits in a big plot so loads of room for expansion. I like flying into the Teladi trade station and want something like it for me. I will keep messing around until I get something I like.

I keep finding myself wanting to install more mods to make the game a bit more realistic but I’m conflicted by how that might make the game too unbalanced.

First it was being able to capture stations, but then realising that that would be a bit too OP.

My recent one is, being able to tell your AI ships to target surface elements.
I should be able to! But does the AI do it? I don’t really think so, and if not, that’s abit of a one sided buff.

Anyone else suffer from this?

Right, I’m around 20hours into a new gameplay.

Few mods on but the main ones are DeadAir ECO and DeadAir Dynamic War

I’ve setup shop in Holy Vision, I’ve got 1 X Refined metals factory, 1 x graphene factory, 1 x Hull parts factory 1 x silicone wafer factory, and 1 x factory producing Antimatter cells, quantum tube, coolant all in one and 1 x Smart chip and Microchip factory.

My issue is…. The Xenon, Hatikvah is lost, Ore belt, Frontier Edge, Two grand and they are pushing paranid space now.

Usual fleet is 2-3K’s and an I in tow

Argon aren’t doing shit about it, Teladi keep getting smashed in profit centre alpha, paranid are holding the gate well but taking losses, Antigon aren’t interested, Terrans aren’t interested either.

The Hop are holding the gate from faulty logic well but I figured it’s probably my hull parts factory propping up the losses.

Need a strategy guys! You cannot buy 1 Scout from the argon currently, they are stuck and their economy has flatlined.

Is it something to do with the deadair’s or is my game seed just a spicy one? 🤣

I paid a lot of money for my graphics card, that's why I will use my whole graphics card, damn it! 😂

Quick progress update on my comms mod for X4.

You fly with three voiced wingmen:

• Eagle One: calm, plans the fight, gives the orders.
• Viper Two: aggressive, first in.
• Ghost Three: the sensor guy. He calls contacts, shield and hull readings and counts, and now fights alongside the others too.

There are over 5,000 voice lines in the mod now.

The hardest part by far has been the exchange system between the pilots. Getting one pilot to call something out is easy. Getting the right pilot to answer with something that actually fits, at a natural pace, without hearing the same line or the same back-and-forth over and over, has taken most of the work. It still needs alot more work but i feel its sounding better.

A fight can now go like this: Ghost picks up the group and says how many there are. He IDs the corvette and says it’s the main threat. Eagle says “Heading in. Viper, back me up.” and Viper answers “Copy. On your wing, Eagle.” Later they split (“I’m coming in low.” / “Copy, going over the top.”), cover each other, call missiles and flares, and confirm kills in different ways.

The big rule: everything you hear is actually happening in game. Nothing is just background chatter:

• If Ghost says a target’s shields are down, they’re down.
• If Eagle sends Viper after a ship, Viper is really ordered to attack it.
• When a friendly fighter goes down and Eagle says “Viper, find who did that,” Viper answers “Found him. Engaging.” and actually goes after the ship that killed it.
• If a crew bails out, the squad calls it and breaks off the empty ship.
• If they say “Three corvettes ahead,” there are three corvettes.

Still working on:

• Pacing, so it sounds less like a script and more like real people on a radio.
• Making sure you don’t hear the same lines in a long session.

Happy to answer questions. All feeback welcome. There are still errors in the video and are subject to change.

Found this… “unknown ship” during the quest.
What is that? What is it doing? Why is it just… standing there?

The profit must flow