This video was extremely helpful in understanding the underpinnings of the game's economy. All the other information I could find on it implies that "everything works perfectly normal until a massive Xenon attack destroys a sector."
What a brilliant idea of yours. This concept of selling defense stations to factions for sector conquest is nothing short of revolutionary! Imagine being able to strategically place a formidable defense station within a sector and then witnessing the faction you've sold it to embark on an exhilarating campaign to seize control of that very sector. The implications are mind-blowing! OMG I need this. :D. I love this idea so much. I hope EGOSOFT has something like that in their future updates.
All you need is love! No, I'm kidding, you need 1 ( maybe 2) Asgard with L plasma, M split flack and some upgrades on it (cowboy for turrets) + 1 M docked with 4-6 M flacks :)
You can just rush 2-3 defense stations ($6-7M/station + Blueprints) on Xen invasion gates with one M collecting drops. There are a lot of tutorials on how to build them. Places: Hatikvah`s choice 1, Ianamus Zura 4, Family Zhin and so on. Is much much more cheap than building fleets to defend. This will keep sectors clear of any Xen invasions, player pockets full and faction fleets sleeping. :) No one will invade others, just pirates here and there. Also you can make money fast by trading Adv Satellites 1M-1.5M per 100pcs, but you will need at least 4.5M to start this. For collecting drops I recommend fast fighters set to collect and flee.
That's what I'm currently doing in my playthrough. I also secured the Void with 2 defense stations, so that antigone, PIO and the Terrans don't get cut off from my economy.
how do you sell off the contraband stuff that drops? i know that in Hatikvah's Choice you can jump one sector over and hit up a neutral black market, but what about the other places?
@@williamryder781 you can mod one ship to make it unscanable, but usualy you can fast dock an sell. Also buying licences saves you some money in the long run.
In my game state the riptide rackers are supplying maybe 80 percent of all hull parts and claytronics production. With the teladi making about 10-15 percent. The economy is reliant on them.
yeah their production of claytronic and hull parts are perfectly set up to out scale everyone at the start of a game from second 1 and will likely last the entirety of a save
Yep, took over the vigor syndicate space too. My eco is based in windfall and avarice. Tempted to make hull parts and claytronics illegal and choke out the supply.
The Universal economy, I would say, is actually efficient. It lets you build ships for the half price in total raw resources compared to Terran economy. However, the Universal economy is also useless compared to Terran, because you have to build so many expensive factories to actually make a single ship yourself. For example, a modest claytronics fab of 4 claytronics and 6 chips will take almost 400k of raw resources total, taking up 4kk m3 space. You could build 2 maxed out Asgards for that. And this is just the claytronics, and not big. With Terran economy, on the other hand, you just break into a sector with resources, build a couple of stations and start pumping out miners, spreading like mold. So yes, I agree that the Universal economy is useless, but it is actually efficient. Eventually :)
16:00 -ish I don't think I've ever seen more than a single M, N, or T make it from Savage Spur to The Void. Like, I know they can if you use the Yaki [BAD END] to rearrange the neighborhood, but in general the Terrans have an Asgard w/ full support fleet sitting on the gate and also a few patrols of a Syn and 3 Osakas going between the gates. Meanwhile, there's absolutely nothing the ANT can do, or will even attempt, to stop the Xenon.
Thank you for taking the time to produce this, very useful for a newbie like myself, keeping it slow and easy helped me take it all in.. (well most of it! will make better notes next time)
this video is watchable and you have a smooth and silky voice. Ty for the indepth explanation. Could be a little shorter but was nice length for a dogwalk.
Man, that footage is buttery smooth... What hardware are you running? My i7 11800 laptop with RTX3070 doesn't play nearly this nice, and its leaps and bounds beyond X4's recommended specs.
Even better for the terran economy, they get their own scrap station that makes basic terran resources from scrap, making getsu fune into goldmine thanks to all the wrecks there!
The statements at 8:50 and on are somewhat misleading. Depending on the faction and the RNG of the game start, factions can and will push out against the Xenon which is a reverse of what you're stating, they're also able to supply ships on demand, quite a few at that. More often than not, in my experience, the game just stalls out where no faction including the Xenon, do muc hof anything for a very very long time. The end-game becomes, in most-part a stale-mate, ending up peaceful and quiet. It's really up to the player to 'stir-the-pot' but if the game is left to its own devices, not much happens over the long term, but again it's all about the starting RNG. In my playthrough, I spont zero time in the void, which had no noticable effect on my playthrough, TER seemed to have dominated the entire area, so this 'pincer attach' your laying out never occurred, again, I attribute that to RNG../shrug
Started a new save in 7.0, my 5th one since 2018. Didn't start building production modules for 7 days of game time. Split was, predictably, struggling, but otherwise the other factions were doing fine. In fact, HOP had claimed all of Faulty Logic from the Xenon, ANT had claimed both Atiya's Misfortune sectors and the Teladi were taking over some FRF sectors that the Xenon had previously claimed. That's without any additional production from me, the player. After I had built a mostly self sufficient wharf, both Teladi and Terran were getting dangerously close to wiping out the Xenon by Hatikvah, so I dismantled a defence platform I had set up to try and save ZYA, and quickly did the Covert Ops to instigate a new Terran Conflict. Terrans must have lost at least 30 destroyers in Getsu Fune; most glorious battle I ever saw in an X game. So yes, the AI can absolutely survive without the player (all except the Split at least), but as with most things in X4, it likely comes down to RNG. Never had them be nearly this strong before.
@@Eshir92 Yep, all base map loads are the same at the start but a few numbers get tweaked on the Ai side it seems and that is where the great RnG comes into play, as there are that many combinations and even just who wins the early wars changes it down steam.
So, if i understood, if the player takes too long to integrate into the common wealth eco, takes the risk of beeing completly overwellmed by the xenon/khaa'k? Im new to the game, not so new to the series, ive started in x3:tc, but iven then, my biggest question was: If the AI is the main antagonist, if every one is trying to stop it, does that mean that its a race against the clock, and that beeing one hour to late can speel defeat to that playthrough? Im 14-16H deep into X4 so far, ive set up some basic but functional autominers plus autotraders (2 S autoM + 1 M autoM + 1 Gas and 1 M autotrader plus 1 S autotrader), and ive beeing treathing the game like Elite, doing missions to other factions, and slowly builing up capital to claim a sector? (another question i have...) and start building my little empire. Main goal, Conquer everything and try to stand as the only'iys faction in the galaxy. Its like folk's say: Dream big or go Home xD Well thats my internal strugle rn, thanks for the long but informative video, ive learn that my life has a lie ;P Sya
you don't have to worry too much about it. the ai factions do slow down to a crawl after their stock piles run dry. from there the xenon are mostly a logistics obstacle getting enough trade ships with resources to your stations depending on where you build even then its not to big of a problem either mostly it will be time consuming. if your quick at the very start of a save and rush enough to get a station built before the ai factions blow through their stockpiles you could have a very fast start to setting up a profitable economy. but if you miss that small window you can still progress so don't stress too much and don't be afraid to take it slow nothing will dramatically change for quite a long time
I don't don't go to kingdom end until mid game. Why you ask because I place "stock pile" in heretic end and all resorces are purring there? Stoping Xenons? Founding Kingdom End? Why I lose my profits...
I tried to make a station that had all the metals and some other stuff on it, but in the screen where you tell them to sell & buy the matrial, it wouldnt show all the menus i needed to make them buy and sell that material. So i had to split them into different stations. Do you have a guide on building and running a Mega Station? but also wouldnt that make getting the materials harder, cos some are gonna be so far away, and you only start with like a level 2 or 3 manager.
if its not showing all the menus in the logistics screen that means that either the storage is not built (if you have production set up to make the metal ) or you have the storage but no production built to make the metals. so if you trying to import what you need you have to add the import you want manually the button on the bottom left side of the screen. stations are tricky to wrap you head around at the start. you need the right storage for what your importing and they have to be fully built. ore storage for the raw ore. liquid for the gases. and container for everything else. then if your not producing any product just importing you have to set up the menus manually. only if your station is producing will the menus be semi automatically set up
i know this is the 3rd video in the playthrough but this should help sorry my mic is a little quiet on these early videos ua-cam.com/video/0FZVCXOXLpg/v-deo.htmlsi=vL5fapuRrtoVrCo6&t=1923
general advice is don't build a megastation, because you can only build one module at a time and it takes forever. if you build several small stations in parallel it's faster and more flexible
@@RoamingAdhocrat Yes and no... if you are doing mega stations, make a builder and get more drones, and most people need a better layout for the ship dock as too many in a close area slows progress down. Have big docks at the edge of your build area so it is unobstructed/on the side of the gate not at the back so they have to fly around the maze. That said 7.0 patch Ai has better pathfinding/obstacle avoidance, eg fleets can get closer together without bouncing around trying to get more space.
Ahh I see. My idea was to create trade stations that look for bargains and to try and defend the xenon borders with the profits. This was a mistake because the AI won't create any bargains since they cannot keep them selves afloat and the xenon are only breaking through those borders because there are no AI ships to fight them due to a lack of funding. I cannot play the middle man. I have to be a big producer. If I do a good enough job then the AI fleets will get their shit together. Maybe I'm what's simple because this game is complicated af to me.
The game isn't too complicated. It does take a while to wrap your head around it but once you understand the basics its not to hard to break it in your favor
no the ai has unlimited credits as far as i can tell. the bottle neck is the quantity of products needed the manufacturing and the transportation of said products
That is not how the tide works. Automated AI ships knows not to go in, only player manually controlled ships can go into the tide while it's active. They will even leave the sectors to avoid the tide, so M ships work just fine.
i got tired of my m ships going in and dieing ( then haveing to replace them ) while exporting so i upgraded to L size ships and that did the trick for me
At the rate, one of mine would empty in less than a few minutes. Megas sharing resources doesn't mean you need to skimp on storage and stockpiles. 1 save got so big I had frame rate issues on my old Pc any time I was in that sector, galactic hub, loads of things crammed into places with some slight clipping any denser could have turned into a black hole.
La traducción es manejada por youtube directamente su inteligencia artificial. He puesto las opciones en el video para traducir los subtítulos de cada video en el canal tan pronto como los subo, es parte del proceso de subir un video. No hablo ni leo español. Este comentario fue traducido a través de Google.
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This video was extremely helpful in understanding the underpinnings of the game's economy. All the other information I could find on it implies that "everything works perfectly normal until a massive Xenon attack destroys a sector."
i'm glad it was helpful
"A 10 minute video should cover it"
proceeds to make a longer than 10 minute video hahahaha
Is it a series when it is one video?
I've watched the entire video, and I liked it. It provided a substantial amount of knowledge that I could compare with my own findings. Thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
What a brilliant idea of yours. This concept of selling defense stations to factions for sector conquest is nothing short of revolutionary! Imagine being able to strategically place a formidable defense station within a sector and then witnessing the faction you've sold it to embark on an exhilarating campaign to seize control of that very sector. The implications are mind-blowing! OMG I need this. :D. I love this idea so much. I hope EGOSOFT has something like that in their future updates.
Especially when you throw in a bunch of wharfs, shipyards and repair-facilities....(after money lost its meaning).
I can't get enough advanced materials to save the universe!!!!
All you need is love! No, I'm kidding, you need 1 ( maybe 2) Asgard with L plasma, M split flack and some upgrades on it (cowboy for turrets) + 1 M docked with 4-6 M flacks :)
And i can't get enough universe to make advanced materials!
Trade?
You can just rush 2-3 defense stations ($6-7M/station + Blueprints) on Xen invasion gates with one M collecting drops. There are a lot of tutorials on how to build them. Places: Hatikvah`s choice 1, Ianamus Zura 4, Family Zhin and so on. Is much much more cheap than building fleets to defend. This will keep sectors clear of any Xen invasions, player pockets full and faction fleets sleeping. :) No one will invade others, just pirates here and there. Also you can make money fast by trading Adv Satellites 1M-1.5M per 100pcs, but you will need at least 4.5M to start this. For collecting drops I recommend fast fighters set to collect and flee.
yes this is a good solution too!
@@Eshir92 for me is best until now (+1100h) for vanila game. Playing with mods is a different story with too many variables. Have fun.
That's what I'm currently doing in my playthrough. I also secured the Void with 2 defense stations, so that antigone, PIO and the Terrans don't get cut off from my economy.
how do you sell off the contraband stuff that drops? i know that in Hatikvah's Choice you can jump one sector over and hit up a neutral black market, but what about the other places?
@@williamryder781 you can mod one ship to make it unscanable, but usualy you can fast dock an sell. Also buying licences saves you some money in the long run.
In my game state the riptide rackers are supplying maybe 80 percent of all hull parts and claytronics production. With the teladi making about 10-15 percent. The economy is reliant on them.
yeah their production of claytronic and hull parts are perfectly set up to out scale everyone at the start of a game from second 1 and will likely last the entirety of a save
Yep, took over the vigor syndicate space too. My eco is based in windfall and avarice. Tempted to make hull parts and claytronics illegal and choke out the supply.
It's a bit crazy how important the riptide rackers are to the galaxy at large.
This was some valuable information. Thank you.
The Universal economy, I would say, is actually efficient. It lets you build ships for the half price in total raw resources compared to Terran economy.
However, the Universal economy is also useless compared to Terran, because you have to build so many expensive factories to actually make a single ship yourself.
For example, a modest claytronics fab of 4 claytronics and 6 chips will take almost 400k of raw resources total, taking up 4kk m3 space.
You could build 2 maxed out Asgards for that. And this is just the claytronics, and not big.
With Terran economy, on the other hand, you just break into a sector with resources, build a couple of stations and start pumping out miners, spreading like mold.
So yes, I agree that the Universal economy is useless, but it is actually efficient. Eventually :)
heres hoping the next update or two will improve the game
16:00 -ish I don't think I've ever seen more than a single M, N, or T make it from Savage Spur to The Void. Like, I know they can if you use the Yaki [BAD END] to rearrange the neighborhood, but in general the Terrans have an Asgard w/ full support fleet sitting on the gate and also a few patrols of a Syn and 3 Osakas going between the gates. Meanwhile, there's absolutely nothing the ANT can do, or will even attempt, to stop the Xenon.
Thank you for taking the time to produce this, very useful for a newbie like myself, keeping it slow and easy helped me take it all in.. (well most of it! will make better notes next time)
Glad it was helpful!
this video is watchable and you have a smooth and silky voice. Ty for the indepth explanation. Could be a little shorter but was nice length for a dogwalk.
Thank you
Man, that footage is buttery smooth... What hardware are you running? My i7 11800 laptop with RTX3070 doesn't play nearly this nice, and its leaps and bounds beyond X4's recommended specs.
hmm this must of been the good days of my gpu/cpu now my pc is artifacting all over
Even better for the terran economy, they get their own scrap station that makes basic terran resources from scrap, making getsu fune into goldmine thanks to all the wrecks there!
yeah the scrap is pretty strong as well just gotta keep in mind the amount of energy cells to get scrap going is quite a bit
@@Eshir92 thankfully the terrans also get mercury which has great energy generation. I usually have a few L traders going back and forth to getsu fune
The statements at 8:50 and on are somewhat misleading. Depending on the faction and the RNG of the game start, factions can and will push out against the Xenon which is a reverse of what you're stating, they're also able to supply ships on demand, quite a few at that. More often than not, in my experience, the game just stalls out where no faction including the Xenon, do muc hof anything for a very very long time. The end-game becomes, in most-part a stale-mate, ending up peaceful and quiet. It's really up to the player to 'stir-the-pot' but if the game is left to its own devices, not much happens over the long term, but again it's all about the starting RNG. In my playthrough, I spont zero time in the void, which had no noticable effect on my playthrough, TER seemed to have dominated the entire area, so this 'pincer attach' your laying out never occurred, again, I attribute that to RNG../shrug
one things for sure the npc economy could use some help. guess thats what the player is for
Thanks for this. Lots of useful info here!
My pleasure!
I don't even play x4 and I liked your video! It's in the someday pile :)
Thank you. Heres Hopeing The next few updates and the following DLC's will be great so i can keep playing and making videos
Interesting video. Thanks!
My pleasure!
Started a new save in 7.0, my 5th one since 2018. Didn't start building production modules for 7 days of game time. Split was, predictably, struggling, but otherwise the other factions were doing fine. In fact, HOP had claimed all of Faulty Logic from the Xenon, ANT had claimed both Atiya's Misfortune sectors and the Teladi were taking over some FRF sectors that the Xenon had previously claimed.
That's without any additional production from me, the player. After I had built a mostly self sufficient wharf, both Teladi and Terran were getting dangerously close to wiping out the Xenon by Hatikvah, so I dismantled a defence platform I had set up to try and save ZYA, and quickly did the Covert Ops to instigate a new Terran Conflict. Terrans must have lost at least 30 destroyers in Getsu Fune; most glorious battle I ever saw in an X game.
So yes, the AI can absolutely survive without the player (all except the Split at least), but as with most things in X4, it likely comes down to RNG. Never had them be nearly this strong before.
Yep it can be kinda swingy per save. And with 7.0 the ai economy was changed i believe to be slightly better but ill have to test it out more
@@Eshir92 Yep, all base map loads are the same at the start but a few numbers get tweaked on the Ai side it seems and that is where the great RnG comes into play, as there are that many combinations and even just who wins the early wars changes it down steam.
her hair looks like the ship in the thumbnail XD
A ton of good info! Thanks for the vid :)
Glad it was helpful!
So, if i understood, if the player takes too long to integrate into the common wealth eco, takes the risk of beeing completly overwellmed by the xenon/khaa'k?
Im new to the game, not so new to the series, ive started in x3:tc, but iven then, my biggest question was: If the AI is the main antagonist, if every one is trying to stop it, does that mean that its a race against the clock, and that beeing one hour to late can speel defeat to that playthrough?
Im 14-16H deep into X4 so far, ive set up some basic but functional autominers plus autotraders (2 S autoM + 1 M autoM + 1 Gas and 1 M autotrader plus 1 S autotrader), and ive beeing treathing the game like Elite, doing missions to other factions, and slowly builing up capital to claim a sector? (another question i have...) and start building my little empire.
Main goal, Conquer everything and try to stand as the only'iys faction in the galaxy.
Its like folk's say: Dream big or go Home xD
Well thats my internal strugle rn, thanks for the long but informative video, ive learn that my life has a lie ;P
Sya
you don't have to worry too much about it. the ai factions do slow down to a crawl after their stock piles run dry. from there the xenon are mostly a logistics obstacle getting enough trade ships with resources to your stations depending on where you build even then its not to big of a problem either mostly it will be time consuming.
if your quick at the very start of a save and rush enough to get a station built before the ai factions blow through their stockpiles you could have a very fast start to setting up a profitable economy. but if you miss that small window you can still progress so don't stress too much and don't be afraid to take it slow nothing will dramatically change for quite a long time
I don't don't go to kingdom end until mid game. Why you ask because I place "stock pile" in heretic end and all resorces are purring there? Stoping Xenons? Founding Kingdom End? Why I lose my profits...
Spoken like a true Teladi.
I wonder if the reasons stated here are the reasons why I have better luck with the Terran economy. Their economy is only running on three parts!
Turns out keeping it simple is quite effective!
I tried to make a station that had all the metals and some other stuff on it, but in the screen where you tell them to sell & buy the matrial, it wouldnt show all the menus i needed to make them buy and sell that material. So i had to split them into different stations. Do you have a guide on building and running a Mega Station? but also wouldnt that make getting the materials harder, cos some are gonna be so far away, and you only start with like a level 2 or 3 manager.
if its not showing all the menus in the logistics screen that means that either the storage is not built (if you have production set up to make the metal ) or you have the storage but no production built to make the metals. so if you trying to import what you need you have to add the import you want manually the button on the bottom left side of the screen. stations are tricky to wrap you head around at the start. you need the right storage for what your importing and they have to be fully built. ore storage for the raw ore. liquid for the gases. and container for everything else. then if your not producing any product just importing you have to set up the menus manually. only if your station is producing will the menus be semi automatically set up
i know this is the 3rd video in the playthrough but this should help sorry my mic is a little quiet on these early videos ua-cam.com/video/0FZVCXOXLpg/v-deo.htmlsi=vL5fapuRrtoVrCo6&t=1923
general advice is don't build a megastation, because you can only build one module at a time and it takes forever. if you build several small stations in parallel it's faster and more flexible
@@RoamingAdhocrat Yes and no... if you are doing mega stations, make a builder and get more drones, and most people need a better layout for the ship dock as too many in a close area slows progress down.
Have big docks at the edge of your build area so it is unobstructed/on the side of the gate not at the back so they have to fly around the maze. That said 7.0 patch Ai has better pathfinding/obstacle avoidance, eg fleets can get closer together without bouncing around trying to get more space.
Pretty much confirms what I have discovered myself. The game is made to be as player friendly as possible. And I hate it.
yeah i get that feeling. its a little too accessible and does not force the player into action to save things like factions
Ahh I see. My idea was to create trade stations that look for bargains and to try and defend the xenon borders with the profits. This was a mistake because the AI won't create any bargains since they cannot keep them selves afloat and the xenon are only breaking through those borders because there are no AI ships to fight them due to a lack of funding.
I cannot play the middle man. I have to be a big producer. If I do a good enough job then the AI fleets will get their shit together.
Maybe I'm what's simple because this game is complicated af to me.
The game isn't too complicated. It does take a while to wrap your head around it but once you understand the basics its not to hard to break it in your favor
turn mods off on
make a folder in the mod dir
drag all mods into folder restart/start the game
reverse to turn on.
Lazy is lazy, copy/paste the install folder and have 2 .exe's.
Are credits limited for the factions as well?
no the ai has unlimited credits as far as i can tell. the bottle neck is the quantity of products needed the manufacturing and the transportation of said products
Any mods you would recommend to improve the ai economy?
I've heard that the deadair mods are good, but if you improve their situation too much will they buy from your faction?
@@Eshir92 that's where a few hundred spaceship bombs come in handy.
Nice
Thanks
That is not how the tide works.
Automated AI ships knows not to go in, only player manually controlled ships can go into the tide while it's active. They will even leave the sectors to avoid the tide, so M ships work just fine.
i got tired of my m ships going in and dieing ( then haveing to replace them ) while exporting so i upgraded to L size ships and that did the trick for me
There are some bugs around the behaviours and many ships will pop.
1 or 2 L sotrages for a mega factory... hahahaha xD sure
Haha yeah. If you seen my unmooded game PHQ its more like over 50
At the rate, one of mine would empty in less than a few minutes.
Megas sharing resources doesn't mean you need to skimp on storage and stockpiles.
1 save got so big I had frame rate issues on my old Pc any time I was in that sector, galactic hub, loads of things crammed into places with some slight clipping any denser could have turned into a black hole.
This video needs editing
Yeah I might eventually
Zzzzz... video starts at 12:15... end at 41:07
Yep
logest 10 min video ever, couldnt warch 5 min.
rip
This is unwatchable. Get to the point. More structure. Less dithering and "uuuuh"s.
i'll keep that in mind
i dont like your voice, maybe dont put the mico a cm of your lips but the explaining is good.
i'll keep that in mind
thanks for this Man!!
hola loco podrias poner la traduccion? gracias
La traducción es manejada por youtube directamente su inteligencia artificial. He puesto las opciones en el video para traducir los subtítulos de cada video en el canal tan pronto como los subo, es parte del proceso de subir un video. No hablo ni leo español. Este comentario fue traducido a través de Google.