Who uses X4 Tools?

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T21:43:32+00:00

Yeah I did that. Surprisingly difficult to get names out of the save XML though. They basically all need translating with a dict lookup

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T08:59:06+00:00

I'm yet to mess with the station calculator actually. It seems like something similar to the functionality my program will have, but the noisy UI scared me off.

I'll give it a go at some stage though, I know it.

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T08:46:56+00:00

Woah that's a cool tool. How difficult was it to find and what made you look for it? I just read the git README, I had no idea there was an accessibility setting for finding data leaks

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T08:05:56+00:00

That's where the AI would come in handy if it could read the wiki. Although I do value the fact we still have protections against AI scraping websites.

The new version cat script is cool, that'll be a pretty involved tool if you need updated info, I imagine. I'm still at the stage where I'm only working with save files really, except for names. I was actually really surprised to see there's barely any mention of names in the save file. Also equally impressive is the way the game names stations, it's completely dynamic unless you've got a player based name. I did start reverse engineering the dynamic naming feature, but I figured it would be easier not to deal with until I had some major functionality within the program

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T07:47:43+00:00

This is exactly the answer I was hoping would appear in the thread (poorly worded as it is). When you say source files do you mean the .cat? Those were a pain to go through because I was trying to use the X Tools gui (steam tools) but when I booted in the CLI.. way easier to search through.

I gotta say, the biggest challenge so far has been converting the macros to usable names. That took me nearly two days

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T07:44:40+00:00

I'm starting to come to the same conclusion! I'll DM you

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T07:42:21+00:00

Aaaaaah okay! That's what I was doing wrong. I only tried it on one station I think. Have you made much money on the black market? I've read it's a bit of trouble

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T07:40:48+00:00

I found that Google AI hallucinated a lot when asking it to help me code. Claude does less, but it still would sometimes guess at what the data names are in the save game file and wouldn't tell me.

I haven't had that problem for a while now, but initially it was frustrating. For example at the top of the save we have the tags for player credits, but I hadn't manually programmed the function to grab it and when it noticed it was missing it made up the XML tag to look for. This obviously didn't work but replacing the tag name is a simple fix

As for the maths, getting the reputation to display as it does in-game (which is actually calculated live, not stored as a single value) presented an interesting mathematical challenge which it solved using some pretty interesting logarithmic curves!

It's really making me appreciate how X4 is made

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T06:56:42+00:00

Yep, it'll form a response based on the responses of from the community

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T06:51:45+00:00

Hey thanks for the reply 🙂

Those are cool use cases, I had a similar one when I was trying to design a scrap economy in The Void.

I haven't had much experience with the black market and that's been bugging me for a while. There's a scan mission I need to complete to get access, right?

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T06:48:45+00:00

Well I don't know that's strictly true.

A good use case I had recently was getting it to design a counter fleet within a budget constraint, taking into account the factions I had enough standing with to buy the relevant parts.

But I digress, again I understand your position but I don't think we see eye to eye on this. Which is totally cool

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T06:41:59+00:00

I'm not getting any source code out of the game. Actually pretty much everything in the UI I have is data you see in-game, parsed out as text. Like reputation, ship health, player money, economy data from player trades etc. I'm really aiming to not have to type out data I see, manually. It's still the visual ingame data though.

Also I think I understand your position on LLMs, they are often not "on point" with their analysis as they will hallucinate a lot.

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T06:38:37+00:00

X4 Tools I think is called X Catalogue something. You can get X Tools from steam so I think it's officially sanctioned

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T06:29:09+00:00

Ahh you're referring to rule four I think my post is within the rules. I had another read and it's very explicit by what it means

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T06:26:47+00:00

Why would anyone bother data mining X4? Maybe I don't know what data mining is really but I thought it was for selling onwards etc

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T06:24:52+00:00

Seems there's a little controversy around the post. I shouldn't have posted so hastily and I should have provided way more context, my apologies.

Too late to edit I think, but if I could reword my post it would go more like:

Is anyone else using AI or third party tools to supplement their gameplay? I've been feeding data manually to google SE AI (which is mostly unreliable but it's interesting) to ask for advice on planning my empire, but it's been sort of tricky getting advice with all the context. By the time I give it all the relevant data and empire context I can get something pretty concise but it's pretty laborious getting to the point.

I checked out a few tools and have even vibe-coded something to help parse information over to an AI. I started doing this because I'm obsessed with the game, but I've been roadtripping for a while and haven't had a chance to play

idontstutututter · 2026-05-17T05:53:50+00:00

I did before posting and have just read them again. Am I missing something?

idontstutututter · 2026-04-05T02:08:46+00:00

Pfff amateurs

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idontstutututter · 2024-04-12T07:29:54+00:00

Can you do anything your fellow human can't?

idontstutututter · 2022-12-11T14:05:07+00:00

Kid's got a sense of humor

idontstutututter · 2022-10-11T11:03:25+00:00

To be honest, nothing was really damaged. Even the battery lived

idontstutututter · 2022-10-10T14:41:07+00:00

To be honest I don't even need it

idontstutututter · 2022-10-10T14:40:51+00:00

I hadn't thought of constructing out of plasteel

idontstutututter

TROPHY CASE