r/X4Foundations

So, I got a bone to pick with you guys here. As a long-time player of Elite Dangerous, EVE, and Star Citizen, joining the X4: Foundations subreddit has been genuinely disorienting. I came in fully prepared for the usual space sim community experience: constant doomposting, players angrily explaining why the latest update has ruined the game forever, and a general atmosphere of “I hate this game and have 4,000 hours played.” Instead, everyone here seems… pleasant? People are helpful. They answer questions without sarcasm. Players seem genuinely excited about updates instead of immediately declaring the death of the franchise. Even weirder, a lot of you seem to actually like the developers. Like... buy DLC to support the developers??? Where TF am I?? I mean, I did it, of course because the game is awesome, but still... I saw people discussing upcoming features and the comments were just things like: “Yeah, that sounds pretty cool.” What do you MEAN “pretty cool”??? Where is the rage? Where are the 700-comment arguments over minor UI changes? Where are the conspiracy theories about the devs secretly sabotaging the economy model? I honestly feel like I’ve accidentally wandered into an alternate universe where a space sim community has achieved emotional maturity, and I don’t know how to process it. Seriously, though been enjoying my time so far and the helpful people here.

Hello! I have just recently picked up the game, and been having tons of fun with it, but I am extremely confused by how strange the ai behaves in this game.

To put it short: I am trying to defend against Xenon in Hatikvah's Choice I, on default recommended start.

They have been harassing my traders and keep destroying them, so, I made a small fleet, consisting of a single destroyer, two frigates, and assigned each frigate 4 S sized ships, filling both them and the destroyer with defensive drones as well.

I have put them to defend the area just around the hyper-highway, and gave them destroyers subordinates orders to intercept, with the smaller ships set to attack with commanders (their frigates).

The way I expected them to work is:

The destroyer is defending a position around the hyper highway, specifically so that my traders would always be protected under it, the frigates are sent out to protect the destroyer, and the fighters assigned to the frigates are helping with that. The only way I found for the defense drones to work is setting them to escort, and as such, its the setting that I've set.

The way it actually went: The destroyer is spinning in place, often trying to target the xenon ships that fly into its defense radius, the frigates start chasing the enemies just fine, however their defense drones often do almost nothing, not even chasing their targets, just floating around. The fighters behave as expected, but they leave the frigate exposed, and, after experimenting with some of them staying on the "defense" setting, however those just fly off one by one for each individual xenon ship, get seriously beaten up, and never switch targets unless that ship dies, which leaves the frigates all the same exposed, forcing me to sometimes pull them away from the fight.

The issues arise when the amount of Xenon ships entering the area increases, the destroyer becomes a sitting duck, barely doing anything and being incapable of defending the frigates, because they fly off from the formation, and get assaulted by those Xenon ships.

The fighters chase a singular target, which is - arguably - fine, since they kill it faster and it is the expected behavior from me, but i still havent figured a way to leave some of them to consistently defend the frigates themselves.

And the defense drones... remain useless. Only cluttering the map screen..

My question to all of this:

Is my issue simply not having enough ships? Am I underestimating the amount of ships I need in order to both repel and defend the attacks?

Is there a way to make the frigates be more defended For example, make them stay near the destroyer, or, at least, make the defense drones more useful? Setting the drones to Defend quickly makes me hit the single-launchpad throughput issues..

Are there any fleet commands that allow the fighters to dynamically switch between attacking and defending?

Sorry if this is a long post, but I am struggling to find the correct answer to all of these questions so far, and I dont have the money in game to experiment as much as I'd like.

I've been eyeing it for quite a while but what exactly is the gameplay loop like? Is it like elite dangerous or stellaris? Or more like Starpoint gemini? I know you can steer a ship and build stations but what else is there? Can you take over star systems? Colonize planets? What's the best description of the game you can give?

New player here. I just started X4 and so far I’m mostly flying around, doing random missions, shooting stuff, and trying a bit of mining. I’ve played Elite Dangerous and EVE Online before, and I’m using a HOTAS X52 Pro here.

I honestly enjoy the basic space sim stuff like flying my own ship, moving cargo around, mining, maybe doing some manufacturing, or jumping into a combat ship to fight NPC pirates solo. Most guides I find seem to end up with fleets, hired pilots, stations and automation, though.

What kind of activities can I do long-term if I mostly want to fly my own ship? I’d also like to try solo mining in one of those L-class mining ships since they remind me a bit of the Orca from EVE Online. Is it actually viable to play X4 mostly as a solo pilot without missing out too much, or does the game eventually turn into empire management no matter what?

Hey, i want to start a sandbox young gun play. i am a new player and got all dlc but no timelines. i like to progress slow, so the free station and free ship hyperion is too easy for me.

But theres perhaps coming other content with it? which DLC should i disable for the most slow progressing ? also i like immersion and just not doing the DLC quest is not an option.

And can i disable then while i play an existing save (Beta 9)

Thanks!

I've been using an argon cross with plasma/flak as my default gate stopper.

With the new weapon ranges i'd think it would be less effecient as it no longer outranges gravitons.

My idea is to increase turret count and move to Par mass drivers + flak and M mass drivers mix.

Has anyone else made changes?

I got the game and all the dlcs super cheap on loaded and I'm just looking through the starts that are on offer

I saw part of a guide video that mentioned its difficult because there's not many allies for terra which at this point I'm unsure what that means

It says terran candidate is good for new players but maybe someone could advise me

I'm hoping someone can enlighten me as to what I am doing wrong. I've been using auxiliary ships for a while, and I typically have a transport assigned to pick up supplies for it. It's never worked correctly, so I will just manually give the transport instructions to go pick up supplies when needed. I haven't really cared about it, but I know it's supposed to work automatically and now I'm trying to figure out what setting I have wrong.

Here's how it is set up currently:

The auxiliary ship is empty of all supplies, and it is parked next to an allied solar station that has energy cells for sale. There is currently a frigate that needs missiles docked on the auxiliary ship, with the resupply request in place. I've assigned a boa transport to the auxiliary ship, to "trade for Commander". The pilot of both the auxiliary ship and the transport are at least two stars, which shouldn't matter because the solar station is right next to the auxiliary ship. The transport still "cannot find trades within the area". All ships in this scenario are set to "high" for "automatic resupply" in the individual behavior tab.

Is there some setting I'm supposed to be checking to make this work?

So, I was far negative with FRF, FAF, and ZYA. I scored on a diplomat and got FRF to -10. I've been parked by a station farming the insanely rare criminal ship. I had found maybe 3, meanwhile I had ZYA and FAF constantly harassing me. I pulled two carrier fleets in to deal with the flies and ended up with a rattlesnake and boarding a second, so it's been worth the effort.

Well, simultaneously the crisis was going on. The Xenon attacked the system I was in trying to farm the rep. By the end I was +19 with FRF. I can finally get a rep and some split ships!

*Originally was here trying to farm rep to simply dock at the slave ship for the quest.

I've held off buying it because of the horrid reviews. But it's on sale for $10 and the final dlc i need for the game. honestly I'm too not interested in it's campaign, only in all the extra ships, the new faction and the 7 extra sectors it adds. Main reason I'm thinking about it is so i can use the "Add more sectors" mod from thr workshop that adds 66 new sectors, but Timelines is required for it.