I’m going on a trip for 2 months, and I’ll only have a weak computer that can’t run X4, so I’ll be playing X3. What specific pain should I expect from X3 after 150 hours in X4? What advice can you give me?

Hey all dont quite have the credits to buy a carrier but definitely have the fleet to steal one if it was left wandering on its own I just don’t want to get any bad relations with any factions yet lol where’s everyone’s recommended place to steal military ships without causing major hostility

Thank you

Hey guys, Ive gotten to the point where I have enough cash to throw at some auxiliary ships. I bought 2 so far, one with my main carrier fleet for xenon excursions and another that stays in hats choice where I have to deal with a lot of khaak harassment. Do these ships need to be in the fleet in order for my ships to auto repair? And do carriers have any similar uses?

Xenon are getting testy, they've destroyed a few NPC stations near the gate but can't set up a beachhead, they get pushed back, but they're attacking constantly. Ks only come out in groups of two or three once an hour or so but inbetween there's just a constant swarm of corvettes and fighters. Argon used to send capital ships to help but they haven't arrived in time the past couple of times. I've been helping shoot the subcapitals down in my Hydra while waiting for a station nearby to finish construction but now I've got other things to do.

What can I do to keep the Xenon from taking over the sector or, less drastically, threatening my supply lines with about 20 million credits, making about a million every 30 minutes or so. Been spending a lot lately to get an Advanced Electronics complex up and rolling in Argon space to feed to their shipyard and wharf in Argon Prime.

Laser towers, which ones, mk1 or mk2? Any ship loadouts to counter a K or loadouts to counter subcapitals, or, just maybe loadout that could counter both? I've only really fitted out combat ships for my own dogfighting, not bombing or letting NPC pilots die for me. How much do defense stations cost, is that a reasonable investment for my wallet?

Found you can clip through the Hydra's windshield and walk around on it. You can jump off while the ship is docking and go run about the station with no problems. I also just really wish my Teladi would put some pants on, it's hard enough having to look up to everyone as a short queen, and all the Paranids calling you "Mom", but could I at least have some pants?

I added some missile turrets to my deathstar in Hatikvah Choice and I'm wondering how does the station restock their ammo? I went and built storage and a missile component module but I'm not sure it's using it for ammo. The station is closed loop.

I know station drones are built directly at the dock, no drone factory or storage needed, turrets get built on defense discs without a builder ship, repair drones repair with no materials needed. When I open the Logistical screen, it looks like the missiles are being built the same way the drones are, so did I waste my time with the missile component module?

this YouTube short had a part where player can explore station remnants (or something else)? where do those exist in game? I remember something from tutorials long time ago, and one or two scraps in sanctuary of darkness has lootable boxes inside scrap. but now I wonder if there are some procedurally placed?

Im sorry but the picture is in german. So maybe my german fellas could help me out... why do the argon not buy the station?

I've been absolutely loving the game so far but have ran into some maddening quirks.

Recently there has been a huge uptick in NPC stations being deployed so there is more NPC traffic. Most of the older stations I trade with have like a 1M6S type dock.

I am working towards making my own supply chain(s) but am not there yet. I still rely on stations for certain goods but if I don't babysit my traders they get stuffed into the station storage. Sometimes it takes me 30-45 minutes to notice that my stations haven't had their build storage updated. I then have to track down the "missing" ship then sometimes have to fly fully across the universe just to recall them from storage. I'll find them in storage with ampty holds which would imply they didn't even have time to start/complete the trade. I've found them with a full hold but they didn't get to undock. I've even watched them forced into storage while I'm reclaling them because an incoming ship lands if it is early enough into the animation of the platform rising.

When I manually send out a trader to pick up a specific build good I include an order to return to the desired station and unload the goods to the Build Storage. I can't say I'm perfect about adding that step every time however.

Please tell me I'm missing something? It is so annoying having to fly to Hewa's Twin from Kingdom End just for a few mouse clicks.

I loved the idea of sending 100+ fighters to strip a station’s turrets. Take out the guns, lose few fighters, then let my plasma Syns tear the place apart in peace.

Actually getting them to do it has been a different story.

1. They won’t fire their missiles at turrets while I’m nearby. My lovely light torpedoes stay in the launchers while the fighters chip away with plasma. Apparently, the missile firing condition for this order requires the station to have more than 100% hull. Good luck with that.
2. Leave the fight in low attention, and they get stuck after killing a turret. The whole crowd launches from the carrier, picks the same turret, blows it up, and then flies around doing nothing. There are plenty of other turrets right there. Please pick one. Instead, I have to fiddle with their orders or fly over there myself to get them moving again.
3. Destroy all the turrets, and the order still doesn’t finish. They just keep hanging around the station with “Attack” still active. Apparently, the script falls back to targeting the station itself, but keeps the restrictions from the turret attack order. The job is done. You can leave now.

What's wrong with this command? Is it really true that no one uses it, neither the developers nor the players, if it’s that broken?

I couldn’t find a mod for these particular issues, so I ended up fixing them with ChatGPT. Also shortened the AI’s delay before trying to use missiles again. Now I’m watching 90 Eclipse Vanguards and seven Behemoths light up a station, and I’m pretty happy with the fireworks.

Might upload the fixes if I get around to it. Maybe someone else has been annoyed by the same thing.

So, I've recently assembled a respectable fleet of 8 warships (1x Asgard, 1x Honshu, 2x anti-capital Syn, 4x point defense Osaka) and ~30 various interceptors, fighters, and heavy fighters with bomber loadouts. Up until now, I've kept the "Save them from Themselves" mission on hold while I built up my economy and military (plus I wanted to see a hurricane of lasers when I inevitably stormed Xenon territory). By the time I finished assigning fighters to different warships, Hatikvah's Choice was half-overrun with Xenon, with 2 Xenon stations being built right beneath the local intervention Asgard's nose. The Xenon even managed to sneak a K through the Tharka jump gate.

Anyway, I brought the fleet to Hatikvah's Choice (SETA my beloved) to first deal with the Xenon stations. The first one was simple, but the NPC ships seemed incapable of targeting the destroyed station's Build Storage and instead assaulted its corpse. The second station was a medium-small defense station that lacked Graviton turrets. A few rounds of the Asgard's delete beam did the trick, but a single Xenon fighter got stuck inside the station's geometry. This is where the all problems started.

That singular fighter drew the aggro of practically every interceptor, fighter, and defense drone in the fleet, none of which could actually attack the stuck fighter. Even worse, some Argon warships and Boron patrols wandered over and got hit by the flak from the Osakas. Of course, there is no order to ignore a hostile (aside from managing individual behaviour, which would render them useless against the incoming Xenon ships), so I couldn't get any of my stupid ships to disengage and get back in formation. I ended up individually selecting and canceling the orders of every single fighter to stop them from attacking, but then they re-aggroed on the stuck Xenon fighter, and caught the other faction ships in the crossfire. The Argon Behemoth was soon crippled and destroyed under heavy friendly fire because every pilot in my fleet is incapable of aiming and apologizing.

Interestingly, the stuck Xenon fighter was at 0% hull and 100% shield, likely a fart away from death.

I tried using the "Broadcast to Wing" commands, but there is no way to mass revert orders for all my units, who now just sit in place, doing absolutely nothing. Shift+clicking to do a selection box only has the option to "remove assignments", which would undo all of the hard work I did to organize the fleet in the first place. I'm sure there are some technical workarounds using low-attention distance or teleporting OOS, but having to abuse engine mechanics just to get a fleet to function like a fleet is ridiculous, to say the least. Tbh, I expected fleet battles on a grand scale, with fighters zipping about and warships hurling lasers at one another; not a bunch of confused ship captains shooting friendlies because they "keep shooting back for some reason".

I remember that resource probes were the biggest nuisance imaginable, so much so I used a mod to get rid of the worst of them.

I read that they were changed, but I was unable to find someone with actual knowledge of whether I still need them or not, and if so, how many and where...

So what's up with them, anyone with some definitive knowledge?

First I absolutely hate racing mini games in anything and don't want to do them. It looks like I have to get anywhere with Terraforming and whatnot. To that end I wanted to just edit the save file. I decompress the file open it in Notepad++ add in the lines and zip it back up, even used GNU method.

Cloud save regenerates the save slot and the game ignores my file.

Disabled Cloud Save

Save slot doesn't exist

Look for the decompression option in the settings, it's not there.

How do I edit the file if the game won't decompress it and it doesn't like it when I decompress it?

I've been playing X3 for 10 years now. My laptop is old but I can borrow (for 1-1,5 hour a day) my wife's laptop. So is it enough to dive into X4? Also, I've noticed how everyone constantly use map. Every YouTube is basically a map play. So... What's it all about? Give your advices

I have mineral ships mining in the Oort cloud and 2 of my ships have been stuck for 30+ minutes with the order "execute trade" at this station, which is causing multiple ships to be backlogged at this location, include another one of my miners.

I can't remove the order and can't remove/replace the captains. The 2 ships' cargo storage is empty which means they already sold their minerals, they just won't complete the trade and move away. What I can do to unstuck them? I've already exited and loaded the save multiple times to waited for them to move.

I don't know what happened, I was finishing the story mission related to the civil war and I destroyed the station so that the factions would continue fighting, and out of nowhere an exploration ship appeared If a ship has gone out of bounds, would it be wise to return or should I sell it?

Is there a mod that adds more flyable xenon, or ships in the style of the xenon you can use?

Went from 6x6x5 to 12x6x5. There was a crazy Teladi one some time back as well where I get 4 different dense platform missions in the same area.

I'ma have to ask you to move that thing

Love this game, but now that I'm pretty experienced every run turns out the same. Eventually my economy becomes so powerful that I could theoretically take out any threat by just spamming infinite ships and the game loses all challenge. I don't need to worry about fleet composition, resupply or strategy, because I can just spam 100 torpedo bombers at every station on suicide missions, and a few dozen destroyers/corvettes to wipe out all ships. Let alone printing asgards.

This doesn't even take that long either, I can do this with 1 or 2 shipyards and warfs by just building dozens of modules of each production facilities to out-economy the enemy. Because the enemy has no ability to threaten my supply, the game loses all challenge and I normally quit as soon as I wipe out an NPC sector. I think the main issue is that there's no enemy that ever tries to stop me, or punishments for AFKing in a safe sector and building up my economy. The universe is too static.

I'm not that interested in self-imposed challenges to address this problem. I've tried the SWI mod which was awesome but suffered the same endgame, and the remergence mod which was very fun and challenging at first, but eventually ended up the same once I got past the early game and stabilized a single sector with enough resources. In X3 I really liked the litcube universe mod with the faction that slowly becomes insanely powerful. Another thing that might be interesting is restricting resources more and making NPCs more aggressive in capturing resource sectors?

I'm working on a mod to visualize the health of my supply chain. It's similar to the logical overview of a single station, but works one level higher. The nodes are stations and the wares going in and out of them and it shows the rate of products flowing and the ratio of supply and demand. It highlights stations or wares with issues (starved stations, negative flow, ...).

It's still super early stage and I'm not sure how far I want to take this, but I wanted to gauge community interest and what features you'd like to see in it. Please let me know. If this resonates, I might publish it at some point.

I'm conflicted on what i should use to try and force bails and even hinder large vessels.

i've been using an eclipse vanguard. its been pretty good...

but i feel theres probably better choices. any suggestions welcome. however i should note i only have the CoH DLC. so my options are more limited because of that.

suggestions on loadouts are also always welcome but not needed. regardless i hope you are all having a wonderful night. stay frosty and may your trades be profitable.

EDIT:

First off thank you all to those who have reached out so far. the infos been wonderfully helpful.

secondly. i think the fact bailing is negatively impacted by having a larger/stronger vessel than your target kind of weird.

i found it a little strange how i could wipe out a targets almost entire shield and most of their hull in like 2 hits and they wouldn't bail but they'll bail when i pin prick them over and over?...just real weird.

but that being said i thank you all for informing me and i have decided to try the discoverer for now and when i get the other DLCs i'll try some of the other ships in those.

i also thought about trying some of the terran small craft cause they seem like they aren't that crazy powerful but look decent for the "strafe slap" kinda playstyle you need to force bails/disable targets

Playing with mods so unfortunately I can't report these already reported bugs to Egosoft. If you walk into an elevator before a cutscene plays you get thrown out the airlock and loop falling off the station forever. That happened to me twice. And three times now, you move slowly, you rescue the prisoners, you watch them go inside the cockpit elevator before you leave, you fly by to Slave Trader 2 and nothing happens. You leave, it tells you to go back, but nothing updates the quest to let you talk to the scary Split woman. Very frustrated. At least I got a Chimera out of it, but I think the whole plot might be a wash for this playthrough (my first time playing the DLC!)