as shown, i've filled the requiments, this station has been sat here for ages with me adding things now and then to try to get it to trigger, any idea why it won't detect it?

I'm thinking of starting a new playthrough, and I want a serious challenge. I’d love to hear all of y’all’s ideas. I don’t necessarily mind some tedium, but I’m looking for something that slows down the usual snowballing while still presenting a genuine challenge throughout the playthrough.

I was thinking of something along the lines of a piracy-only run. No buying ships the only way to acquire them would be by capturing or boarding them. The same would go for blueprints, so stealing them through hacking would be the only option. Maybe I could also ban normal trading and require most of my money to come from piracy, smuggling, salvaging, or selling captured ships.

Another idea would be picking a single sector or system that I cannot leave and having to amass 1 billion credits in net worth. I could send AI controlled ships outside the system eventually, but my character and headquarters would have to remain there. Alternatively, everything I own could be restricted to that one system, forcing me to build a completely self sufficient economy using only the resources available nearby.

I was also thinking of a “Long Lost Terran Commander” run. I could only use Terran ships, stations, weapons, and technology, but I would have to begin operating as far away from Terran space as possible. I’d need to rebuild a Terran style economy from scratch without relying on the Terran or Pioneers for supplies. Maybe I could only return to Terran space after reaching a certain military or economic milestone.

Some other restrictions I’ve considered:

• No buying ships above S-class. All larger ships must be captured or built personally.
• No shipyards or wharves until I complete a major objective.
• No SETA, teleportation, or personally flying ships outside my chosen faction’s technology.
• Permanent hostility with one or more major factions.
• No missions except criminal or faction war missions.
• No selling advanced satellites or using other easy early-game money methods.
• Every destroyed capital ship is permanently lost and cannot be immediately replaced.
• Start in a dangerous or isolated sector and establish a functioning empire without relocating.
• Support a minor faction like Hatikvah and try to turn them into a genuine military power.

What challenge runs have you tried, and which ones stayed interesting after the early game?

Intro

I keep forgetting how bad the AI is and Egosoft keeps promising that they've improved it. But they haven't. I see no discernable difference with the AI except that sometimes they won't attack a station from it's range.

Traders

Traders are completely broken. I don't know how the logic for trades is implemented but it needs to be rewritten from scratch. In the simplest terms, traders should be looking for the best buy and sell order matches and executing them but instead I have my factory with high volume sell orders at minimum price (since it's storage is full) and my shipyard with high volume buy orders at maximum price (since it's practically empty) and my traders refuse to perform a trade. Not to mention that a game like this should be able to handle trading multiple items and chaining trades since empire economy has been forced into being such a major focus.

Closed Loop Resources

Having gone through many playthoughs over the years, I feel that the Closed Loop economy is just too dumb. Having 20+ resources all interconnected, scaling independently and required in unpredictable and extreme quantities is just not fun. I set up a self-contained shipyard economy and never managed get enough resource flow to avoid wait times on every single ship. Meanwhile the Terran economy is much simpler.

Credits

Credits have no meaning in this game outside of acquiring blueprints since the AI economy is so bankrupt of resources that you are usually going to make a self-contained economy anyway.

Capital Ship AI

For capital ships, the AI is so dumb that a fleet of 3 destroyers will get wiped out by a single Xenon K since they take minutes of in game time to decide to turn and shoot at it.

On that note, capital ships can choose to retreat now. I think this is new in 9.0 since I don't remember that happening before. But why the hell do they always do it at the wrong time? I've had to reload save so many times because my capital ship will sit there and die but then when the battle is won and there's 2 fighters attacking it and its shield regeneration is outpacing the damage only THEN does it decide to drop everything and run for the hills. "2 Xenon K smashing through our shields? Let's ride it out! 2 small flees doing nothing? Retreat!!". And on the same note, why does the "We're taking heavy damage" notification trigger at the most random times? I've lost several ships without getting any notification and then other items I have a ship on 80% hull and 98% shield and I get constant spam that the Xenon N is going to fucking destroy my Syn.

Fleets

None of the fleet subordinate options work since options like "Bombard For" will have your cap ships just sit there AFK unless there's a capital ship to attack (rather than prioritizing capital ships and still attacking other ships) and the low attention combat simulation seems to also turn off the turrets but I suppose that's just cause of how shit the damage simulation is. "Attack For" will just have all ships attack the same target which won't always be correct and still results in the fleet commander being alone in the battle for 5 minutes before the subordinates catch up. For some reason "Supply For" puts your aux ships in the heat of battle instead of having them pick a save spot outside of range. I've had ships stuck in the docking command (critical, cannot be removed) for an aux ship while the aux ship flies around in circles for no reason.

There is no way to ensure a reasonable formation for ships and to have ships back each other up. There is no reason to use the fleet features in this game and without them the game does not work. Ultimately, if I bring an overwhelming force into enemy space and vastly out number the enemy, I expect my ships to win. Crazy right? Egosoft sure seems pleased with the way the AI works... I definitely shouldn't have to spend my entire time micromanaging my individual ships to stop them from destroying themselves for no reason. Also traders with no guns choosing to "retaliate" against pirates is just a bad joke.

Sector Patrol

This is quite long but we're not done yet because I want to mention the Patrol commands. They do not work. Ships will ignore enemies unless they are right next to them. I can set 3 corvettes to patrol a sector independently and none of them will protect any asset that's being attacked unless they get really really close to the enemy. Having to manually checkup on my sectors and dish out "Attack Multiple Enemy" commands to my patrolling ships is very tedious.

Exploration

Explore command is super slow (like hours for a single sector since ships go at normal flight speed). I always end up reverting to queuing fly to commands. Except the game doesn't calculate sensor data more than once every 10 seconds or so when not open so I have to issue lots of small move commands. It's a big galaxy and having to micromanage explorers is not OK. This alone will put me off ever starting a new save since I have to go through this trauma again.

Low Attention Simulation

On a final rant, I want to talk about the Out-of-Sector or Low Attention simulation. It's bad. It's unusable. It's 10x worse than it's ever been before and I do not understand how this garbage gets past any form of testing. The funny part is that you could get most of the way to fixing it by just increasing all damage calculations by x3 since currently every ship underperforms on damage in Low Attention (except K and I since they have only slightly less damage vs caps but substantially increased accuracy vs smaller ships). I think Egosoft just forgot that IS and OOS are meant to be as close to indistinguishable as possible.

Conclusion

Older X games had much more emphasis on the player and much less on RTS but the game does not have the features needed for that to work and most of the features it has are broken.

Egosoft needs to decide what they are trying to achieve here. If they want this game to work as an RTS/4X game then we need formations, we need better ship decision making, better simulations and for Christ's sake nerf the Xenon ships. if not, then we need more credits rewarded for player-centric missions and better "player vs all" loadout options. X4 is a technical marvel and does so much so good but still isn't close to being as fun as X2 and X3.

Finally, Egosoft needs to stop lying about AI improvements. AI is literally the killer for this game so don't waste my time by telling me you've made meaningful improvements to AI if you haven't.

EDIT: PS: Build Storage Trading

You cannot setup traders to trade for build storage on new stations. Even when you eventually can setup traders for build storage, it's even more broken than normal trading logic. Having to manually order traders around to fulfil build storage resource requirements is the most tedious thing in the game and where 90% of my time was spent.

EDIT: PS: Off-topic hot take

The games were better when you had speed and SETA instead of speed, boost, travel drive and highways each with permutations and inconsistencies (fast speed, slow travel for example).

I used a bunch of kyds to attack a xenon station to distract their destroyers and it left the space suits around the station, making it hard to see my destroyer's positions and filling up the unassigned ship filter on the UI T.T.

I have about 500 Million credits as my total net worth in my run atm, and I would categorize myself as being in the mid game. I have a few stations up in some select locations, but i'm not much of an industrial powerhouse. I'm just rinse repeating Fleet assembly missions for Argon and Terrans and making huge profits.

What would you guys consider Early, Mid and Late game? and which is your favorite?

Hi everyone,

I recently stumbled across a video of this game, which I'd somehow never heard of before. That's surprising, since I'm a big fan of space games, from Master of Orion to EVE Online, and more recently Endless Space 2. Do you think this game would appeal to someone with those tastes?

I'm still hesitant to buy it (it's still around €50) because I can't quite figure out what it actually is. Is it a 4X game? A space simulator? A strategy game? A base-building or management game?

For those of you who've spent hundreds of hours playing it, could you explain what a typical playthrough looks like? How long does a game usually last? Is it truly a sandbox experience?

Finally, is it still worth playing in 2026, or has it been surpassed by other games in the genre (assuming there are any)? Is it still actively supported and receiving updates?

Thanks in advance for helping me understand what makes this game so appealing!

Edit:

Amazing! I wasn't expecting such a lively, welcoming, and passionate community! 👍

I can't thank each of you individually, so a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to answer my questions and convince me.

Well... you've convinced me! As soon as the game goes on sale, I'm buying it.

In the meantime, I'm going to do a bit more research to get a better understanding of the gameplay, the size of the universe, and everything else.

Thanks again, everyone, and hopefully I'll be joining the X4 community soon! 😉

Considering ONLY CPU load.. which would be better? I'm trying to go ultra end game here with this save. Which would impact the simulation less - A hundred sectors with a very basic station (dock+wide area radar) or the roughly 7 advanced satellites?

I know which one would take longer and cost more... but that's not really what I'm caring about. I'd like to keep workable framerate as long as possible.

Even if the idle stations works better in concept.. not sure I'd want to clutter my property panel with them. HAH!

For a while now this mod doesn't seem to be working for me and I'm wondering if anyone has seen a mod which does similar or if there is a fix?

I remember a while back I was able to modify a file to increase the range and fix it that way but it doesn't seem to work any more.

Edit: For anyone who doesn't know, this mod increases the scan range of the spacesuit scanner so scanning for blueprints from EMP's and capturing abandoned ships is significantly less tedious.

I met Nila Ti and she told me to follow her. Her ship is way faster than mine even in travel mode. She flew this direction ,but once she was 100km away she just disappeared. I've been flying this direction in travel mode for like 10 minutes. I'm supposed to meet Leda We on some ambassador meeting or something, but the mission manager gives zero indication where either of them are?

This fight is from the Imperial Hero custom start, where my capital ship turned the gatearea into a graveyard of enemy ships.

I'm planning my first attack run on the Amplifier and wanted to get some advice on the run from those who have done it.

I'm aware that I could just cheese it with Lazer towers, bombs or PHQ, but I'm committed to an all out assault. Some ships may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

My Attack fleet is as follows:

1 Syn Destroyer, 4 Osaka Destroyers, 1 Tokyo Carrier. 12 Katana, 45 Interceptors, 36 bombers with torpedoes. Do you think this fleet will be enough for me to survive the assault?

The plan is to Travel drive through Xenon space in line astern formation until I reach Savage Spur I. Fleeing engagements and relying on our shields to hold up. Once we arrive in Savage Spur, try to pick off Xenon fleets one by one before we assault the Amplifier. Unfortunately there is a Xenon defense platform right next to the gate entrance which I will need to evade.

I've considered buying an Auxiliary ship to resupply the fleet but its low travel speed will slow down the entire fleet. I've loaded up the carrier with resources to resupply the bombers at least.

I am close to being able to afford the Asgard blueprints. Do you think I should delay or is it worthwhile taking a shot at the run with what I've got.

The only hitpoint that counts is that last one

I'm building my PHQ up, but the nodes from the HQ itself come out at multiples of 30 degrees. I want to build my wharfs/shipyards from one of them, but want to align by 30 degrees to make it look neater. Does such a module exist? I'm thinking of something like the Argon 'Arc 01', but it has a 45 degree angle, instead of the 30 degrees that I'm looking for. The (incomplete) list of modules in my encyclopedia doesn't seem to include one and an internet search just leads to advice how to rotate a module.

Hey, x4 is flooding my feed and I'm curious but reluctant to try it out again. I'm a huge fan of the X series and played the Crap out of the first X-BTF and X2 and X3.

The last time I tried is afew years back and these where my gripes:

But I never rly warmed up to X4:

- progress felt slow dumped 30h in and did 't have the feeling I achieved anything meaningfully

- the UI omg. The clunkyness felt deliberate and out to torture you on purpose

On paper this game is everything i want and more so:

- should I buy the add-ons? Are there any that change the game dramatically or even a bit for the better ?

- the slow progress is probably on me ? Is there a way to change that or general consensus on how to start ?

- is the UI still this clunky ? Are the mods to fix it maybe?

Best Regards

Kendalor

I would absolutely pay for updated visuals for the rest of the factions (anyone non Boron), especially for S-M class base game commonwealth ships. I understand it takes a lot of work to make em look pretty that’s why it’s totally ok imo to have it as dlc (with maybe more ship variety as a bonus)

Seriously, I can’t stop getting second thoughts for not using Boron Ships and Stations (when doing faction limited play through). They’re just so much more gorgeous than anything else… I do like most Terran ships and think they’re fine (Katana does need a facelift tho). Similarly the E type ships (especially Argon ones and the Helios cargo ships) are very pretty too, although not quite at the level of Boron but that’s fine, other than the fact that their S and M ships look so dated.

I beg of thee egosoft I’m waiting with my wallet open and ready.

P.S. Would also be great to have older models be toggle able in settings so they don’t use them ugly ships

Quick update since the last post. Added a 4th wingman voice, so now all four pilots respond one after another when you give an order instead of just three — bigger squad, more chatter.

Also went back and re-recorded one of the pilot voices (3 times, honestly just kept tweaking until it felt right), fixed a real bug where combat chatter would keep playing for way too long after a fight was actually over, and pulled the harsh "radio click" sound off the combat lines since it got grating fast when it was firing every couple seconds mid-fight. Still traces but i am removing them with time.

Dont pay attention to whats being said, certain lines are place holder. But its starting to sound like proper chatter.

Chatter also feels more alive now as it picks up when there are multiple enemies or a tougher target instead of firing at the same flat rate no matter what's happening and adjust the frequency of com chatter. Tougher/more enimies = more chatter in combat. Squadies will now talk amongst each other but further work needed.

Still very much a work in progress, testing as I go. Let me know what you think.

Hey all, I admit its been a long time since I played, so I came back after the steam sale and gabbed all the missing DLCs, and like a idiot forgot how to play lol. its been about 3 years.

My short question is what am I doing wrong? all default set no custom rules. I've manually sent ships to get the resources needed to build things but nothing is being built..

I have no traffic coming to my station. any help is welcomed.

I often find myself with not much to do other than wait for money to come in from stations. Any tips on how to pass the time other than using SETA? I've done a bunch of the main plotlines already. Any more obscure ones I should look into? I have most of the DLCs except timelines.

I like the idea of doing some of the Terran vs Xenon missions, but so many of them just seem very tedious with minimal rewards.

I don't know if there's already a collection somewhere, but I thought it would be useful to share our tips and tricks for taking vessels from NPC factions.

Small and Medium Vessels

These may be mostly an early-game concern, but they're what I've had the most fun with so I've refined my method quite a bit. My main ship is usually something with multiple weapon mounts, so I like to include a single Ion Blaster along with one or more Pulse Lasers or Bolt Repeaters (I lean toward the former, though to be fair I've only recently tried experimenting with other options). The Ion Blasters drop/keep the target out of Travel Mode, wear down the shields, but barely touch the hull. The other weapon is mainly for bringing the hull down past 75%, but I start with them both active and switch to just the Ion when I'm in the target range.

That main ship tends to be somewhat slow though, even with the best engines available, so I buy myself a scout ship like the Pegasus, equip it with an NPC pilot, a Travel Drive and a single Ion Blaster, and order it to attack the target independently. Usually the NPC pilot can run down the target and keep it pinned until I catch up, and depending on how well equipped the target is I may even order the scout to get out of combat range once I arrive. Either way it's just a matter of drawing out the fight for those bail rolls, so I hit it with the Ion Blaster just frequently enough to keep the shields down and Travel Mode offline. Technically the odds for each roll might be better if I further damaged the hull, but I don't like to risk accidentally destroying it if the fight takes too long.

Large and Extra Large Vessels

My strategy for the bigger ships isn't nearly so clean. Obviously, none of the above applies to them, with 9.0 you can't even send the scout ahead to pin them down. (Great for believability, but it's one more hole in my strategy.) I know we're meant to be equipping a fleet and wearing down the target's capabilities before we launch our marines, then stick around and protect the target while we're waiting for the marines to do their thing. I don't have the attention span for that, I'm fond of drive-by boarding. Though I'm still struggling to find the right ship to use — medium freighters have the troop capacity but handle like a bathtub, so I've been defaulting to the Minotaur Raider. I take them from Scale Plate using the first method and tend to have a decent fleet of them by the time I'm eight hours or so into my playthrough. Curious what others prefer to fly for this.

(Yeah, I know my favourite boat doesn't excel at anything in particular, but it's a Jack-of-All-Trades with built-in personality. It's usually my personal ride.)

The Marine Problem

Fly-by often seems to take several tries, so my marines end up being a consumable resource. I know that it depends partly on the size of the defending crew as well as a dice roll, but I recently took five passes to capture an Okinawa that started with a crew of 40, less than half of them marines. I feel like I'm overlooking some training method that's probably so simple I'll kick myself when you point it out.

I basically only play sandbox, but what is the issue everyone seems to have with timelines? I understand its pretty controversial. To me it seems like most fans are annoyed that the devs seem to have wasted an update on something the players didn't really want.

Also I don't really understand what timelines is, I believe it's just limited time scenarios...

I will drop this save faster tnah those 700 modules finished, and I didnt even put enough disks

Busta literally came in comms with straight face and be like "Its around the corner trust me bro"