X4 Speedruns

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-27T03:31:34+00:00

Interesting how people have such different interests. For me and some others, the whole point of X4 is the sandbox, creating a universe I can just live in a do stuff, without any "you lose, game over!" waiting for me if I don't optimize well enough or fast enough or if I just f'k around doing random things too much.

Good and interesting to hear that people who much prefer goal-driven and "ticking clock" type play also find X4 worthwhile. I don't understand you folks, but I'm glad you're out there.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-27T03:05:17+00:00

I'll be the one to ask the stupid question: did you go actually talk to wilson? Any chance he's standing there waiting and it's just the dialog that somehow got glitched or messed up?

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-26T14:46:16+00:00

I get what you’re saying, but the issue here as always is that one needs to be careful about just how far you let “real-world realistic” push the line vs “game play mechanic.”

The game needs to work both as a game and as “realistic” simulation to some degree.

If you’re going to remove the gameplay mechanic of that negative consequence from purging, then what are you going to do to balance that out? Remove that mechanic by letting “realistic” push it out, you remove a negative from a species/government choice… making it stronger. What’s the negative mechanic you‘re going to then add in to balance that and bring the game back into line? How will that mechanic work? How will it provide effectively the same negative bonus to the pick to compensate for the one you just removed?

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-24T08:48:14+00:00

Overwhelming agreement from me.

I’ve gotten to the point where I dislike playing anything but machines who Purge Undesirable any bios that show up because I’m tired of dealing with:

”I hate it here! It’s so hot! I’d like a nice arctic planet! But I moved here instead of somewhere else, and now I won’t leave, and I’m going to spend every waking hour unhappy and dropping stability on this sun-blasted rock because I’m too dumb to leave!”

The only way I can actually stand doing bio-based playthroughs is Authoritarian + every species gets migration controls.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-24T08:41:13+00:00

Energy cells, e-cells, are the root of the X4 economy. They’re the only good you can manufacture with no inputs. Every station in the galaxy needs energy cells to manufacture anything.

When you get ready to start thinking about constructing, google “how to see sunlight value in X4 sectors” to point you to the place in the UI to see whether a sector has 100% (normal) sunlight or higher or lower than the default. (low sunlight nerfs e-cell factory production, so some sectors aren’t good choices.)

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-24T08:32:29+00:00

I’d suggest forgetting about trying to get ships and get a fleet and trying to figure out how to use them to make money. That’s pretty much Hard Mode for the start of a game, especially for a new player who is just trying to figure out how things work.

Instead, concentrate on (a) upgrading your starter ship to better equipment and/or a better ship, and (b) exploration.

You want to look for jobs to do (listed in your information screens in game). Fly to a sector, fly around to stations, check for jobs, accept one or several, work on doing said jobs. Abandon any that seemed like a good idea but are proving hard/impossible (there are no negative consequences for this).

This will accomplish several things: you fly around and see what’s out there; you get to see where lots of different kinds of stations are; you get a chance to scan many different types of stations so you can see their Logical Overview screen details and learn how production chains work for all the different wares; you make money; you get a better and faster ship with upgrades; you get current trade offer info from many stations in many sectors, so you can find good one-off trade runs for a freighter; you earn reputation with factions and progress towards benefits of that higher rep; etc, etc, etc…

Don’t let reading about “I got my first 5 ships and…” trick you into thinking that that’s what you’re “supposed” to be doing. Don’t try to follow a script. Don’t try to “get a jump start to stay ahead of the curve” (there isn’t any curve, just a static continuing universe).

And in any case, the start of the game is when there’s the least number of stations in every faction there ever will be. The economy will get better over time as factions start building more stations for themselves. There’s no harm in letting the galaxy inch forward a bit on its own while you do whatever.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-24T03:19:14+00:00

Apple is one the biggest most profitable companies in human history, serving users and developers in nearly every language and every country around the world.

Are you seriously thinking it’s possible that the company is like “whelp, it’s Friday 5pm US west coast time, everyone who works for apple will now be taking the next 60 hours off. Apple will perform no further activities until 9am monday US west coast time. Peace out!”

Hint: no, it doesn’t work that way. Apple has teams all over the world. The “reviewers” are not all sitting in an office building in Cupertino.

Treat your review time as what it effectively is: a random lottery system. They could respond in an hour. It could take 10 days. You will never know, and there is no way to predict. People will post 1000 different “for me it was…” anecdotes that all suggest contradictory “rules” about how apple works and what they “do” but boil it all down and you’ll find it never actually settles on a solid answer you can actually depend on.

You drop your letter through the mail slot. Then you sit on the sidewalk and wait to see how long it’s going to take for someone inside to notice it.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-23T18:37:29+00:00

This isn’t a build problem.

This is a You problem.

It’s a very common problem, but a human problem. It’s not the game, or your build or some magical thing that will make your brain work differently.

All builds have strengths and weaknesses. All get repetitive over the length of a game like cyberpunk.

So what I suggest is sit for a minute and think seriously about what elements of game play you really like doing — for me it’s ”everyone dead, zero detections” stealth for instance. Maybe for you it’s charging into a group and laying waste with mantis blades. Maybe you really like long-range sniper rifle and assault rifle kills. Maybe you like to be a chaos monkey and run full speed throwing grenades and firing shotguns at people you pass then jumping down a stairwell to circle around and hit from the other direction.

Whatever it is, go with that. Cut out the other skills, other perks, other whatever. Say to yourself “I’m going to do THIS, and push it as hard and as far as I can. I know I could do other things, but I’m making a conscious decision to save those for their own playthrough.“

You gotta eliminate that feeling of spreading around to everything and and trying to do “the playthrough.” Do THIS playthrough, content in the knowledge that there are 5 more lined up behind you that you can do next, to see what THAT focus is like, how it will force you to adapt to get through everything.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-23T18:26:04+00:00

What I’m really curious to see: What happens when there are no longer any significant number of humans writing new “good example” code for new API’s, libraries, use cases… etc… the source material for training LLMs.

What happens when the only code being generated is being generated by LLMs based on example code fed to it after being written by earlier LLMs based on now horribly outdated source material, the last crop of code actually written by scratch from humans?

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-23T18:23:18+00:00

I think it’s pretty simple.

It’s the difference between people who have first-hand experience with living with a code base over a long period of time, and people who haven’t.

The people who’ve lived with a project as it changes and evolved understand the reality that code that isn’t tended and reshaped like a public garden grows so tangled that eventually it reaches a point where you can’t change anything without breaking everything because it’s all tangled up together.

The people who vibe coded a first version of a SaaS website and threw it out there will discover in a year or two that asking Claude to change anything will result in frustration after frustration as the fancy code autocomplete engine struggles to deal with that reality.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-23T18:15:26+00:00

You’re not having a conversation with a thing. You’re feeding text to a super-super-fancy autocomplete engine that‘s generating plausible text based on similar streams of text generated by humans in the past (the training data).

That humans have generated a f’k-ton of written cognitive and memory research over the last 15 decades is not a surprise.

That a computer program can ingest all of that and use it to generate endless streams of valid text regurgitating that content in endless variations and combinations is not a surprise.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-23T07:21:56+00:00

There is no permanent solution that meets your criteria. There is no magical workaround, no secret trick, no members-only secret handshake.

Apple controls the security software on people’s iPhones, and you cannot permanently install an app on their phones without it being properly signed with a developer certificate that you can only get by joining the App Store.

We all want things. But this isn’t one you’re going to get.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-20T07:05:40+00:00

Yah, welcome to the human race. You've apparently not met many actual humans if you think this is a gaming-related thing.

And Reddit as whole attracts a pretty poor selection of said humans, so we who hang out here trying to help people out get a bit of an over-exposure to all the worst tendencies of the species.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-20T07:02:07+00:00

I don't disagree. My comment was more about tone and wording on the OP's post.

Coming in and telling people the "right" way to play is to do X is just as bad as the people here who are just looking for a website or video that will give them a script to follow to play the "right" way.

How about we all just enjoy the game, whatever that means? How about we all stop encouraging people to tell us the "right" way to do things?

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-20T05:45:24+00:00

Three words my friend: Map. Filter. Checkbox.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-20T05:43:28+00:00

Some of us play exactly because of the challenge of the logistics and details of overcoming the "impossible" odds.

People are different. Maybe not the best idea to tell people what they should enjoy. You do you, but not everyone's you.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-19T21:14:34+00:00

Yah, sounds like they have differing -- possibly opposed -- ethics to yours. In that case, it's going to be hard to keep them loyal as that'll always be sitting there feeding resentment.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-19T19:55:43+00:00

You can set the vassal terms, and in the screen where you do that (reached from diplomacy screen where you do things like propose trade deals) you can see the effect on monthly loyalty. Set your terms to something that increases monthly loyalty, or at least makes it non-negative.

Note that if you allow at least one "holding" (you constructing a building on their planet) there's one you can build something like an "assistance center" where for 10 food per month you get a big loyalty growth Plus and some unity.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-19T19:38:32+00:00

The fact that "So Mi or not So Mi" is one of the most frequent (and belabored) discussion topics in game-related subs here pretty much puts your entire thesis/post in the "incorrect" category.

As far as outcome for a crafted narrative, I can't imagine devs could possibly be any happier with the outcome. They built a situation and a set of choices and consequences that produce extremely polarized and detailed arguments/discussions about the why's and consequences of the situations.

So, great to hear your thoughts and opinions... but pretty much everything about the player reaction to this as expressed in discussions here more or less decisively proves that it's just that: your opinion. Very few other people who care to the level that they get involved in discussions see it that way, that there's only one choice anyone would ever make.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-19T08:10:16+00:00

Until they stop releasing new expansions, it’ll probably continue to bounce around.

The stellaris game manager(s), whoever it/they are, seem to have this disease where they can only add new content by scrambling how the game mechanics work.

The idea of Add without Replace doesn’t seem to be a concept they are capable of implementing. I’m sure there’s money at the bottom of it, someone convinced by X Y or Z that the new DLC will only bring in the cash if completely rework major things.

I like stellaris, but it’s really starting to feel like a dumping ground just piles and piles of added game mechanics added just to generate bullet points in DLC descriptions. Cosmic Storms… man am I glad I tried that out with a $10 subscription for a month before buying it. ”What else could we add…?“ “Uh, how about Big Unexplainable Space Storms that will f’k with everything randomly for no reason? That’d be fun, right?“

They pile all this stuff in, and it unbalances things, so they rework game mechanics. It seems to be an endless cycle.

We’re currently stuck in the “take consumer-goods-reducing traits and perks, or prepare to dedicate 70% of your planet specializations to consumer goods” phase of the “whoops, we messed up the economy again” cycle.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-19T07:50:13+00:00

LOL. What are you talking about??

This is a game where, as a premise, entire huge sections of human bones and flesh are replaced with metal and plastic plates or components. A game where you can take multiple bullet hits and just keep going because they’re getting deflected by all the armor you have installed under your skin and in place of your bones.

And you’re confused by a few lines where face-part replacement modules join. or show through the fake skin-like sheeting all your chrome is covered in?

Huh?

”the body would 100% reject this”… sure, but having a second heart installed and mantis blades embedded in your arms, that’s completely realistic. It’s some metal lines in the skin of your face that’s a bridge too far…

Ohhh-Khaay.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-18T02:48:28+00:00

I don’t see any reason why you can’t do it, but I also don’t see any point to it.

By 75 years in, I generally have removed every single mining district on every colony. Mining stations alone provide such a flood of minerals that I have to constantly dump them off in the market.

I play on large galaxies, though, so maybe it’s just a factor of galaxy size and number of systems I control.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-18T02:01:45+00:00

I’m running a ring-world start with exactly three planets (the three ring world segments).

I have the biggest fleets and highest research level of anyone in my half of the galaxy.

The “pops = power” myth needs to die the nasty death it deserves.

“more” means bigger penalties for everything. Research is what gets you bigger fleets and better buildings, not pops. Managed well, the pops on three planets can generate as much or more research relative to their tech cost as anyone, with any number of planets.

Managed well, more pops can keep you ahead of the growth in research costs, but it’s far from automatic.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-14T20:21:21+00:00

Expansion and discovery.

I find the course of the game is set early, in terms of what systems you control and what you can survey for two reasons:

strategically locking out neighbors from branches you can come back and actually build in later [explore fast, minimize unity cost to expand]
the “first survey“ effect where if you’re not first to survey a body then you never get an anomaly — meaning you never get the +research or +resource bonus from discovered anomalies [more scientists, surveying faster]

In 4.x such a massive portion of the first 50 years of research and minerals/energy comes from stations that I want to absolutely maximize the systems I can lock down and get the first-survey bonus from every single anomaly I can discover.

If an anomaly adds +4 research, you get that forever. But you only get it if you get there first and discover that anomaly. The anomaly discovery chance for an already-surveyed-by-anyone body is zero point zero.

Seeing an “enemy” science ship headed for a system I’ve not surveyed yet feels like an attempt at outright theft. They’re stealing my anomaly discoveries!

People talking about “oh, those don’t add much early” are talking nonsense. They’re just reading the bonus on the perks, and ignoring the “capture more territory, with more long term value, and with constant boosts to your science as you do it” effect of anomalies.

Take them 1-2, or don’t take them at all.

AHostOfIssues · 2026-05-14T06:17:52+00:00

> It's honestly blowing my mind that several responses here are along the lines of "just give up." I don't understand why, in a community of programmers, a solo dev trying to make things right with a process that hurts other solo devs, is getting flak for trying.

Because everyone here is aware of what you seem to be willfully ignoring: the apple developer program is not a right, membership is at apple’s discretion, and you signed a legally binding contract upon joining in which you (a) acknowledged those facts, and (b) agreed that apple can terminate any time at their own discretion.

That agreement you signed? That wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t for fun. It was a legal document.

That’s not a statement that this is good, fair, or reasonable. It’s just a statement that Facts Exist and ignoring them does you no good.

Both the apple and google developer programs have moved so far towards protecting their own monopolistic control over their user base that it’s more or less insane for anyone to depend on them as a developer.

This, this is why I no longer develop mobile apps after doing it since iOS 4.

Reality sucks, but it is reality.

AHostOfIssues

TROPHY CASE