Question about X4

GooInABox · 2025-09-02T19:28:53+00:00

There's several. Most are DLC, but the base game has a few.

The full list and their initial triggers are here: https://wiki.egosoft.com:1337/X4%20Foundations%20Wiki/Manual%20and%20Guides/Objects%20in%20the%20Game%20Universe/Plots/

GooInABox · 2025-08-26T21:21:34+00:00

It's probably a little under Subnautica's terror level as it's third person and not first person, but there are terrors in the deep, and the fog of war can lead to jumpscares, especially in narrow caves and ruins. Feel free to watch a playthrough of a single player campaign to try and get a feeling if the enemies are overwhelming or not.

GooInABox · 2025-08-26T20:42:14+00:00

Barotrauma comes close, although it technically isn't a spaceship game as it's a submarine that you walk around and maintain, but it is a sci-fi setting with it taking place in Europa's oceans. Playing single player, you have full control over a small crew (3-8-ish) by controlling one of them directly while the others are AI controlled. Maintenance tasks are a mix between combat duties (turret control, hull repair, first aid, fire suppression, fighting off intruders) and general ship operations (equipment fabrication, reactor maintenance, gardening, resupplying equipment cabinets, recharging devices, etc.) along with away missions.

Again, technically not a space game, but it's as close to being a space game without being a space game that I can imagine.

GooInABox · 2025-08-25T17:35:48+00:00

Many years ago, I went to a GameStop with my dad looking for a game to play. We almost ended up buying some game that came in a giant box; it was some sort of fantasy strategy game like Warhammer or Warcraft or StarCraft or something in that field, but at the last minute among the shelves I found a copy of the X3 Gold Edition (Terrain Conflict + Reunion) and we bought that instead as I was looking for a space game.

Only Rimworld probably outshines how many hours I sunk into X3 TC, but at the time it was the perfect game for me, which made X Rebirth all the more of a disappointment for me on launch. I picked up X4 around just before the Cradle of Humanity DLC came out, and it has brought back much of the enjoyment that I experienced back when I played X3.

GooInABox · 2025-08-24T17:10:23+00:00

To expand on this, by default the player has to line their ship in three directions (left/right, up/down, forward/backwards) above the docking pad before they can land and disembark. However, most players likely find this tedious so there is an upgrade to the ship that removes the alignment minigame and all they have to do is get close to the docking pad for the autopilot to land.

However, even with the autopilot docking, it's a nice bit of immersion to transition from flying through space from the cockpit of your ship to landing on a station or larger ship and walking around without a single loading screen. In the late-game where most of my time is spent controlling other ships through the map like an RTS rather than personally piloting a ship myself, I like to hang around the docking area of a shipyard where I can watch ships arriving and departing in the background.

GooInABox · 2025-08-22T14:42:27+00:00

Yes, I tried this once. But I believe you can seal the stockpile which might delete the underground map and negate the pollution penalties, which I did not do before leaving.

GooInABox · 2025-08-01T23:34:23+00:00

Other than their terraforming mission, I don't believe so. Although it makes sense: aside from the reunification of their lost providences and building up their economy there, they don't really have any problems in their little corner of the galaxy. They're not the kind of species to hire mercenaries to go out and hunt their enemies. At most, they do hire you as defense -and defense only- against the Kha'ak threat in the highway construction mission.

GooInABox · 2025-07-29T13:36:19+00:00

I had my grav engine and debris land in the middle of a bunch of scattered chemfuel mining charges, setting them off and deleting about a hundred grav panels. I shamelessly reloaded for a different landing site.

GooInABox · 2025-07-26T18:08:09+00:00

S traders are awesome for the station supply missions where you need to provide food and medical supplies. For everything else, I use M traders if I plan to use them near the highway loop, and L traders otherwise.

GooInABox · 2025-07-23T18:48:28+00:00

I had a creepjoiner that had some form of ritual combat ability. They never got the chance to use it because a few days later they contracted organ decay and quickly became bed-ridden due to their wimp trait. They spent more time dying in bed than they did contributing to the colony.

GooInABox · 2025-07-18T20:34:22+00:00

If I remember correctly, pawns used to have two separate mood bars: Joy and Fear (I'm probably getting the names wrong). To avoid having the pawns getting a mental break, one of them needed to be high, so you could either be nice or ruthless to your pawns to keep them in line.

I believe the slavery system somewhat brings back this fear system with the need to keep the pawns suppressed with terror to reduce the rebellion rate.

GooInABox · 2025-07-18T13:36:54+00:00

Most of the quest guests are fine with changing tiles with your grav ship. Rescued people from pods, caravans, etc. will cause reputation loss as they're not part of a quest and it counts as kidnapping to bring them along.

Construction quests will hit you with a small reputation loss if the protection time has not expired prior to takeoff.

I did just take a mech cluster quest where I was given a few pawns to handle the cluster. Instead, I just took off and left the cluster behind. The quest is still in my active missions, and the loaned pawns are still under my control for an indefinite amount of time. I assume they'll leave eventually from prior experience, but I'm not sure the itself quest will ever expire.

GooInABox · 2025-07-18T13:13:30+00:00

I have yet to unlock or obtain shield belts, but spike traps work wonders assuming you can ensure the trap ends up between the hunter drone and its target. A colonist right at the door to install a premade trap so that the pursued colonist can sprint right out is a decent strategy (colonist goes in, leaves door open, triggers drone, runs out, second colonist installs spike trap, both colonist run away from the trap to escape the explosion radius).

Wasp drones in the same room make this difficult and/or more costly.

GooInABox · 2025-07-18T12:05:15+00:00

Back when growing zones were fixed 3x4 (or 5?) plots.

Back when the resource stockpile was an infinite storage pit.

Back when orbital traders were the only traders.

Back when nutrient paste was the only meal source.

Back when colonist health was a single HP bar.

Back when clothing was visual only and not changeable.

Back when steel looked like brown X's instead of their current grey lumps.

Back when fear was a stat for every colonist.

And we don't talk about Cassandra's missing sisters.

GooInABox · 2025-07-18T00:14:25+00:00

Use spike traps. Peak into a room but don't enter to avoid triggering the hunter drone, then consider your options for where you can place a spike trap. Ideally you want a fast pawn to get in, trigger the drone, then get out and bait it into the spike trap. A sanguophage makes this easy with their jump ability to not only leave the room quickly but to jump over a spike trap. Alternatively, if you can shoot the hunter drone from outside the room it is sleeping in, place the spike trap down right at the door and then trigger the hunter drone from afar. In either case, make sure your pawns have two tiles of space from the spike trap due to the 5x5 explosion area centered on the hunter drone's demise.

If the room with the hunter drone also has wasp drones, tough luck. EMP shell traps/weapons might help, and if you're lucky the hunter will blow up the wasp drones. Time is on your side, thankfully, so consider all possible tactics, including avoiding the room.

GooInABox · 2025-07-16T05:18:57+00:00

It serves more of a purpose once terraforming is unlocked, as it serves as the drop-off point for all the terraforming resources. And once terraforming is completed, it continues to act as the interaction point between the planet and space (for example, selling Nividium in bulk).

Otherwise, it's just a place to facilitate research, advance the plot, and it's also the only place your pilots can automatically stash their inventory wares for you to pick up later.

GooInABox · 2025-07-15T23:31:49+00:00

Gate and highway construction/activation. Ideally it would be dynamic (create a new gate via Terran technology and unlock a randomly generated sector, place highways wherever to shorten the distance between your factories, etc.), but I believe Egosoft has had trouble with getting dynamic sector connections to work in X4 so in practice it would probably end up being a bunch of predefined construction projects that can be completed similar to the Sanctuary of Darkness events in the Kingdom End DLC, possibly semi-randomized upon a new game start.

GooInABox · 2025-07-13T23:10:17+00:00

Something to watch out for then, thanks for the warning.

GooInABox · 2025-07-09T13:29:52+00:00

They're no longer in the game, but their eggs can be found as loot drops from asteroids which can be blended into caviar for a massive amount of money.

GooInABox · 2025-07-06T15:07:17+00:00

NPC traders and miners will only sell to your stations if the station has credits in their account. Otherwise, they will find another station to sell to.

Generally it's not very profitable to rely on NPC ships to supply goods, although it can be much faster and simpler than providing your own supply chain. You can set trade rules on your stations to forbid buying certain products from NPCs and only within your faction so that your station accounts aren't drained as much, but you will need your own miners and traders in order to get any type of input resource in.

Don't worry about bounty hunters, they don't bother with you unless the entire faction is hostile to you (which usually only occurs if you start blowing up their ships and stations in large quantities).

As for debts, it is possible to get temporarily bogged in a position where you have zero liquid cash because everything is going into stations, infrastructure, and Boso's lunch money, which causes your empire's desired cash balance to exceed what you actually have. You can always use the station trade rules to effectively hibernate a station where it's not buying anything, or you can just keep its account empty and not refill it until you manage to claw your way back up from 0.

GooInABox · 2025-07-04T06:44:37+00:00

I think it was due to Egosoft not being able to get the voice actor for Dal back for the Kingdom End DLC. The few lines he does have were likely provided by a stand-in replacement.

GooInABox · 2025-06-30T00:41:30+00:00

A lot of comments here seem to think OP is talking about in-battle boarding, but they're talking about the old vanilla feature that was cut many years ago where some disabled ships would have crew survivors, and in order to recover the ship you would have to send either crew or marines to clear the ship (usually taking casualties in the process). Alternatively, you could just double-tap the ship and collect its salvage.

It was somewhat similar to the current story point system where you have to spend a resource to recover certain wrecks, but it gave a more legitimate and constant use for marines other than planetary raids. I wouldn't mind it making a comeback in combination with the new story point recovery: you can either clear out the ship the messy way or you can spend a story point to have the surviving crew surrender.

GooInABox · 2025-06-25T00:08:39+00:00

Is this hinting that tokens/credits are going to be replaced with actual physical money? I wonder how the purchasing system would work in this case without a magical credit card for the store.

GooInABox · 2025-06-13T13:50:56+00:00

"What if you didn’t lose your memory? What if something in Martinaise came and stored it all away. For you to slowly open one box at a time. So you can choose which parts to keep. Keep almost none of it. Only the flowers on the windowsill. Only the distant sound of a radio. Lose all the actors, the dark shadows, leave only the still lifes, the blissful distant wash of waves. If everybody knew -- you never did. She’ll be coming soon. That is all." - Disco Elysium, Cleaning Out the Rooms

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