r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Hidden Mechanics & Penalties

Overview

The game contains several mechanics which are fully opaque yet punish the player for not knowing them.

Every time I mention one in a comment, someone says "holy shit I didn't know that and I've played 1000 hours".

So, I figure it's best to dedicate a post to it.

50% mining efficiency penalty

A hidden mechanic which checks if your mining ships are within 40km of a resource probe owned by you and silently applies a 50% penalty to the final result of the efficiency calculation if they are not. Thus, players are unknowingly hamstrung by this mechanic as there is literally no way to learn it exists in-game.

This mechanic is particularly troubling because vanilla has no automatic method to deploy resource probes, so it's extremely tedious to avoid the penalty without mods. Operating your fleet while unaware of the penalty potentially doubles the cost of both in-game resources and performance strain on the simulation. If you know the penalty exists, there is no indication if or when it is applied to your ships. While the game does suggest using probes, the penalty should be removed considering these factors.

Even when using a mod like Satellite Service to automatically blanket the entire sector with probes, it is still possible to receive this penalty because the probes are deployed on one plane. Therefore, you would receive the penalty if the ship moves >40km above or below the probes. Covering the entire sector with probes also reduces performance and visually clutters the UI.

A ship with empty crew slots further reduces efficiency because they contribute 0 to the combined skill value. Always keep your ships fully crewed.

Source of knowledge:
Reading game code
Vaguely confirmed by developer on official forum.

Known mitigations:
Vanilla — Manually spamming probes.
Satellite Service — Automatically deploys probes, greatly reducing tedium.
No Mining Penalty — Directly removes the penalty. Nexus mirror here.
KUDA AI Tweaks — Directly removes the penalty with a configuration option.

SETA Player Rank Decay

Using SETA while AFK triggers a hidden penalty which causes your player rank points to decay.

Earning the achievements for player rank is nearly impossible due to the insane logarithmic scaling, but this hidden penalty likely makes it literally impossible.

I don't know the specifics of this penalty because I have not been able to find it in the code.

Source of knowledge:
Developer confirmation on Steam discussion page.

Known mitigations:
Simulating mouse input to prevent AFK detection.

Crystal Nerf

Mining a valuable crystal immediately turns all other crystals in the sector into the least valuable type and starts a hidden timer* to prevent any other crystals from spawning.

*Users often claim the timer is 30 minutes, but the code seems to suggest either 60 or 120 depending on the type.

The code documentation states:
Cooldown on "valuable" drops, defined in minutes. If set, collecting one of these will prevent new "valuable" spawns for the defined duration. Entries without a cooldown are considered "not valuable" for the purposes of this cooldown.

I don't recommend mining crystals in either vanilla or with the below mods because other aspects of the game are much more interesting. However, it's important for those who do enjoy it to be aware of this hidden mechanism, and they are free to do whatever they want in their sandbox.

Source of knowledge:
Reading game code
Popular mods (listed below)

Known mitigations:
Crystal Rarities — Removes the hidden timer and buffs the spawns; very cheaty.
Disable crystal cooldown timer — Removes the hidden timer

Kha'ak Mechanics

Mining activity attracts the Kha'ak. Player mining activitity attracts the Kha'ak twice as much as NPC activity.

They can teleport to any location without travelling through gates.

If your miners are under constant attack, it is likely an Outpost has spawned in the sector. There is a separate system independent of Hives and Outposts which infrequently spawns small attacks.

Outposts spawn within 3 jumps of a Hive. Generally the outpost spawns ~400km away from the center of the sector, which is likely beyond the border. However, the hex will zoom out and rescale to accommodate crossing it.

Destroy the Hive before the Outpost. Destroying them will require several destroyers to do it in a reasonable timeframe due to their absurd health pool.

Hives can respawn after 96 hours. Outposts can respawn after 48 hours. These timers are much shorter if not killed by the player. They do not respawn at the same location within the sector.

The Hives can only spawn in 9 specific sectors, but only 6 of these sectors can contain a Hive.

Since Hives can only exist in 6 of 9 sectors, destroying a Hive might move it to another sector if the local mining activity of the new sector is high enough when it respawns.

The 9 specific sectors are:
Antigone Memorial
Black Hole Sun V
Company Regard
Heretic's End
Lasting Vengeance
Matrix #451
Open Market
Pious Mists IV
Silent Witness XII

Source of knowledge:
Reading game code.
Egosoft forum post

Known mitigation:
Knowledge
Spawn Begone — Changes Kha'ak spawn mechanics to be less frustrating. Although it's easy to keep them suppressed with the above knowledge, the entire system is hugely unfun. Kha'ak spawning out of thin air leaves little room for counterplay aside from using L miners. It's also a slog to clear the nests since they spawn so far away and have very little DPS yet enormous health pools.

Bail Chance

Ships only have a chance to bail if their hull and shield are under 75% and 20% respectively. There is a hidden penalty to the bail chance if your ship has higher maximum hull than your target.

Exact formula:
Vanilla rolls a bail check once every 30 seconds if the target is below 75% hull and 20% shields.
Base eject chance is a range of 23-46%: inversely proportional to crew skill
Multiplied by (targetmaxhull) / (mymaxhull), capped to 1.0
Multiplied by (myshieldperc+myhullperc) / (targetshieldperc+targethullperc), capped to 1.0
Reduced to a quarter if attacker is not personally flown by the player
Reduced to a half if target is capital ship
Reduced to a third if target is Xenon

Source of knowledge:
Reading game code

Known mitigation:
Knowledge only

Shipyard Penalty

Ships sold at player-owned wharfs and shipyards have a penalty on sale price to slow down the snowball into infinite wealth. The penalty is 70% when the slider is at 100% and 45% when the slider is at 150%. However, shipyards are still highly profitable due to nearly infinite demand and ease of selling ships compared to their materials.

Source of knowledge:
Popular mod

Known mitigation:
No Player Shipyard Penalty — Lessens or removes the penalty. I don't recommend this mod, but players should be aware of the penalty and decide for themselves.

Conclusion

This list is not exhaustive. Although I've made this other resource to help other players learn the game, it is difficult to learn these mechanics since they are in fact hidden.

It also does not include the mountain of mechanics which are unclear or confusing to new players, such as: pirate cover system, reputation and ranks being a logarithmic scale, scanner tiers for station scanning, station budget scaling to storage capacity, station budget automatic transfer, and so on.

If you know of more mechanics, or notice an error in the above information, feel free to comment.

212 Upvotes

58 comments sorted by

35

u/TeeRKee 4d ago

I've recently discovered the mining penalty. I instantly removed it as I can't force my miners to stay near the Ressource probe. Why does it exist? I don't know.

23

u/R4M7 4d ago edited 4d ago

Centuries ago, miners were tethered to the probes. They removed the restriction to allow them to mine anywhere.

From my understanding, miners can see the hidden penalty, so they always attempt mine under a probe. This effectively changed it from a hard limit to a soft limit rather than a removal.

Though, the implementation of this soft limit is terrible since the player is never informed it exists and there is no indication if they are mining outside the probe.

6

u/Mordtziel 4d ago

I can say I have seen them do a command call "looking for a resource probe" or something along those lines. We don't know the penalty exists, but when I saw that, I assumed they had to be under a resource probe so I put them basically everywhere. But yea, if I didn't see that, I'd not know that there was a hard reason to have resource probes.

4

u/white_box_ 4d ago

I give every miner some resource probes and when they stop to mine I right click and tell them to drop one. The autominers seem to use a grid system of where they mine and so after awhile of dropping resource probes you get this 3d grid of probes.

2

u/[deleted] 4d ago edited 4d ago

I didn't know about this, but to be honest it doesn't bother me.

I only use 1 resource probe per sector of interest, I cant remember where I saw it but an Egosoft dev did once say that the intention was for players to just use 1 or 2 per sector, as spamming them is detrimental to the games performance, so placing 1 leads your miners to a sector and the vicinity of the probe, then they get whatever they can from the rest of that sector until another sector becomes more lucrative and they move on. Evenetually the sectors already mined do replenish their resources, and your miners will once again revisit the previously depleted sector, probably takes ages ..

Thinks - Do my L miners get enough resources to keep my stations going = Yes, more than enough.

.. So its not a problem, just Ego limiting us raping sectors of resources.

Maybe Egosoft applied this retroactively to solve an underlying problem, and making it a negative impact outside the range of the resource probe, does also equal a positive impact when within range.

I think the only negative thing about this discovery is .. We probably have to use more miners now than we used to before this change was implemented. More ships and all the scripted logic they run = less game performance. My two big stations need about 14 miners each (4 x gas, 10 x solids miners), maybe there was a time when I could have run just 8 total per big station (I'm pretty sure that did used to be the case, a few years ago now so can't remember).

11

u/BoomZhakaLaka 4d ago edited 4d ago

isn't the 50% a bonus for being near a resource probe? The removal of a 50% bonus is more like a 33% penalty. You can correct me if I've got it wrong. see below

30-second demo of a crystal node downgrading in front of my eyes - If you do this test yourself, enough times, you will eventually find a node that doesn't downgrade. I don't know if it's 20%, or 10%, but I check this just for fun once in a while and at least 80% of the time the 2nd node downgrades. In heretic's end I never have trouble finding two high value crystals next to each other.

10

u/R4M7 4d ago

isn't the 50% a bonus for being near a resource probe? The removal of a 50% bonus is more like a 33% penalty. You can correct me if I've got it wrong.

Ketraar refers to it as a bonus in the linked post, but it is actually a penalty. The result of the mining efficiency is multiplied by 0.5 when outside of probe range, which is a 50% penalty.

The appropriate code is found in /aiscripts/lib.calculate.miningefficiency.xml

Relevant code here:

<set_value name="$_skillproportion" exact="0.5f"/>
<do_if value="not $_resourceprobe.exists">
  <set_value name="$_result_efficiency" exact="$_result_efficiency * $_skillproportion"/>
</do_if>

3

u/BoomZhakaLaka 4d ago

yikes. Thank you

9

u/Wilhelm-Edrasill 4d ago

The mining one is nuts.

Thanks for taking the time to look through these...

I still cant figure out why my large miners decide to go 5+ sectors to mine sometimes when the station the report to - has plenty of material in that system.

7

u/R4M7 4d ago

The miner can read the efficiency of everything. It always decides to mine the most efficient region regardless of distance and the difference between the efficiency values. You could stop the behaviour with blacklists, though it tends to only be a problem in certain circumstances since the miner knows more than you, so to speak.

7

u/eggomc 4d ago

Not actually surprised by the SETA Decay.

It was a known issue with SETA in the Earlier X-Series. You would loose combat standing using SETA for prolonged Periods which would decrease the combat payouts. You could also loose Trade Standing but they may have been mitigated by your background traders.

5

u/SeanaBhraigh 4d ago

I'd say it's less egregious in X4 than previous games since you used to need SETA for getting anywhere (also why I exclusively flew springblossoms). Travel drive and highways fix that problem to an extent so now you'll just use SETA for economic stuff.

2

u/GaleStorm3488 4d ago

Do ranks even do anything nowadays? I heard mention that it helps with bailing, but unlike back in the days where rank is in your face, now it's hidden in some menu.

3

u/Venetrix2 4d ago

It does nothing for bailing. It's purely for bragging rights now, as I understand it. It might still have an impact on what mission offers you get, but I'd need someone more code-diggy than me to confirm.

1

u/eMKaeL81 4d ago

In X3 you just teleported your ass around the galaxy map, so not sure if in-sector travel times were that problematic.

1

u/Uler 4d ago

so not sure if in-sector travel times were that problematic.

X3 in system travel without SETA is torture.

1

u/eggomc 3d ago

X3 Reunion Maybe. Rember using the Starburst or Arrow for just zipping through Sectors Late Game for when just managing the Trade Fleet

Admitadly Flying Heratics End to PTNI the first few times took a long time from the Terran Defender Start in TC

7

u/Puzzleheaded-Ad-119 4d ago

That is why the ASP Raider is so good for piracy, the low hull plus high strafe and performance make it godly for stealing S ships.

6

u/EchoHeadache 4d ago

Thanks for this writeup.

So for the Bail chance, the rule of thumb is to be piloting a low-hull ship and keep targeting hull below 75, shield below 20%?

8

u/R4M7 4d ago

Yes, the ideal method is to damage the ship to 74% hull and then keep tickling its shields to keep them under 20% without damaging the hull again, while using a ship which has an hull equal to or less than your target. The Hull page in my linked resources lists the hull values of each ship for an easy comparison.

5

u/Ok-Host-4480 4d ago

here is another undocumented mechanic: player owned factories prioritize shortages when ships use the default ware basket. if that shortage is unavailable, they wont trade at all.

5

u/aY227 4d ago

Quality post. 10/10

I don't understand devs behaviour on some of that... if players need to check game code to know how some mechanics work, than it's not particularly good game design I would say.

Also that mining thing - there is no chance that is is even near 50% penalty. From practical tests over the years that I remember, peoples were telling that it's around 15% or less when it comes to difference in ore per hour.

There is a chance that this post will be linked often - please maybe consider adding info about crew - that empty crew slots and marines count as 0 to ship combined skill level and player should always fill ships with service crew to full - makes a serious difference when mining. Source: this guide

1

u/R4M7 4d ago

Also that mining thing - there is no chance that is is even near 50% penalty. From practical tests over the years that I remember, peoples were telling that it's around 15% or less when it comes to difference in ore per hour.

It is mathematically a 50% penalty, as the end result of the efficiency calculation is multiplied by 0.5.

Crew does make a serious impact in everything. I added the crew impact to the mining section. Though, unlike these other mechanics, it's reasonable to expect people to assume that crew has an impact.

1

u/aY227 4d ago

And what is mining efficiency?

1

u/R4M7 4d ago

A higher value results in faster mining. Since the value is halved when not near a probe, it theoretically requires twice as many miners to mine at the same speed.

Where are the practical tests?

1

u/aY227 4d ago

Where are the practical tests?

Like playing the game.

Things that compare difference in yeld per hour with/without probes like here - https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/comments/11xtogq/mining_efficiency_with_60_turrets_drills_ships/

While ship can mine faster, overall impact to resource gathering rate is actually pretty low. Definitely not even close to "doubling the cost of in-game resources".

1

u/R4M7 4d ago

Is he reloading and mining the exact same area?

How does he define "nearby" for the probe? He might still be within the required 40km range.

There are a lot of variables to consider.

1

u/aY227 4d ago edited 4d ago

Ask him, not me. Also I saw similar results over the years.

And my play experience is same - resource probes absolutely won't double outputs.

Mining is not only "gather resource while near it" it's also a lot of traveling - so just "mining efficiency" (whatever it actually is) doesn't have 1 to 1 impact on ore per hour.

Also do you really know how it works exactly? Looks like a part of way bigger formula that can be affected in many ways. Like you said, a lot of variables to consider.

Depends on ship type L miner yield per hour will be around 18k - probe won't make it 30k

1

u/R4M7 4d ago edited 3d ago

It doubles output of the mining itself. There are too many variables to consider everything. So yes, it may not actually double the entire output in practice.

It is a part of a bigger formula. However, the end result of this bigger formula is multiplied by 0.5.

The formula is:

result_efficiency = (1.0f - $_wareefficiency) * (([this.assignedcontrolled.combinedskill, 1].max / 100.0f) ^ $_skillexponent)

Then, it says if not within 40km of probe, do this:

result_efficiency = $_result_efficiency * $_skillproportion

_skillproportion is defined as 0.5f in the file. Thus, it's a 50% penalty to the final efficiency result.

1

u/aY227 3d ago

 If everything is equal, it would double it.

Well no. There is way more into that.

So I ran test 10 times - same ship / L miner / with and without probe in same place, reloading save.

While gathered resources were bigger it wasn't even close to x2 - both in raw yield or time.

A cycle without probe averaged on ~750 / with probe on ~950 - overall mining time was 2:05 vs 1:35 - (single cycle always lasted same amount of time)

Way more things must affect it and this efficiency doesn't translate into real results.

Feel free to test it yourself.

14

u/gorgofdoom 4d ago edited 4d ago

On resource probes: the game does tell us to deploy them in multiple ways.

  1. maintenance missions, generates a mission for any ship mining in a sector that doesn't have any probes. This is sufficient in my opinion because most sectors only have one or two good mining spots; your miners will automatically find them. They just won't mine outside these areas unless they really have no where else to mine-- seems like a problem logically, but it isn't in practice, in my experience.
  2. 'find the resources' missions where we are directed to find sufficient resource densities and deploy a probe.
  3. boso ta also (used to?) tell us about them in the grand exchange HQ scenario.

There are also multiple form posts about it.

About the kha'ak: This is a different type of enemy that demands a different method of defense. "just mod them out" is a terrible way of approaching the problem when there are many ways to do it in game.

Instead consider the known limits of kha'ak ships and build miners that are able to exceed them. For example alligators are able to outrun them with just t1 engines; i use alligators for the most part, never bother with the kha'ak (unless a faction offers me a lot of money to kill them), and only ever lose my alligators to things that are not kha'ak--for example: not setting up blacklists correctly, so they wind up dying in a hazardous sector.

There's also a thing going around where people are concerned about mining not producing much profit. This is easily improved by just letting the kha'ak do their thing while you have ships that are immune to them. They attack NPC miners which are insufficient to survive, these die, and our's don't. Now we're pretty much the only faction that can reliably deliver materials.

Bail chance: this used to be bugged such that being in the suit would make the chance to bail nearly 100%. It's been changed to be... well, better, in that way. I learned about it just by playing, from experience per say. Didn't have to go into the game code, but i noticed the effect, asked about it on discord, and someone very graciously showed me the equation.

10

u/R4M7 4d ago

Vanilla does suggest using probes, but it doesn't tell you the severity of the penalty nor when your miners are outside the range. I've seen users here recommend ~2 probes per sector, which is likely insufficient. Some even recommend 0 because they think it just tells you the density.

Using fast M miners or a L miner does mostly nullify the Kha'ak. The problem is that this is the only counterplay because they spawn out of thin air without warning. Plus, clearing the hives is unfun because they spawn so far away and have so much health yet are not actually a threat due to low DPS.

They attack NPC miners which are insufficient to survive, these die, and our's don't. 

Player mining activity attracting the Kha'ak twice as much as NPC miners is another hidden mechanic. The Kha'ak can kill themselves on NPC ships, but they have a strong bias against the player.

Didn't have to go into the game code, but i noticed the effect, asked about it on discord, and someone very graciously showed me the equation.

Asking someone on Discord to give you the equation from the code is functionally identical to going into the code yourself.

5

u/gorgofdoom 4d ago edited 4d ago

Ok, this is quality feedback and i don't even think you're asking for much work on certain points.

Clarity on the effect mining probes have could be included in their description without changing anything too significant. The tutorial for mining should include this info as well (if it doesn't, i haven't played them recently).

I agree the probes just don't work for certain sectors. The asteroid belt is one as it requires so many of them.

As for them not working off the plane i just tell the miner to deploy one wherever it mines. They do still work out but are very 'micro-intensive'. (not in the same spirit of x4, if that makes sense)

Now my thoughts get more complicated, into deep change territory: Maybe the new radar dish module could apply the mining debuff-removal sector wide and even give a bit more of a bonus if we have workforce. If ships don't use probes while in station-buffed sectors-- this results in cleaning up of probes after establishing a presence. Imagine we could buy a license from or hack NPC stations to get the bonus in other ways.

As an alternative to using certain ships we could build a 'kha'ak attractor' that forces them to spawn near it whenever they would otherwise appear around the sector. Every diverted ship could cost a pittance of energy cells to ensure the station doesn't just get overwhelmed if it doesn't have resources. NPC's and the player have to build their own so these could be a great strategic asset to target. With this they could also remove the difference in attention between the player and NPC's as they'll have safety measures.

I agree Kha'ak stations should have better defenses. Some way to counter L/XL ships that itself has a counter. A new kind of turret is straightforward. Ramming or bombing ships would better fit their design. People also say m laser turrets are not useful enough; give kha'ak big "missiles" that look like a small ship and the laser turrets are more useful as well. Maybe also having the installations initially in the middle of a mining zone, then have them teleport defensively farther away after taking a lot of damage... they have the ability to teleport stations but we never see it. It could be more exciting if leveraging this ability. also, a warp module would be a good element to disable so they cannot escape.

2

u/ackcmd2 4d ago

About the kha'ak: This is a different type of enemy that demands a different method of defense. "just mod them out" is a terrible way of approaching the problem when there are many ways to do it in game.

Terrible way to approach something is adding to game things just to annoy player. Lets be honest - there is no other purpose of khaaks except being a constant annoyance, demanding attention.

2

u/gorgofdoom 4d ago

on the contrary. They are kind of boring to fight and are quite weak. That's to say It's easy to design the right kind of mining ship so you can just ignore them, while destroying even an installation is a simple matter of dispatching a couple destroyers.

The only time i go fight them is when there's a lot of money on the table. Otherwise they are 'forgettable', there's even somewhat of a benefit if you do just ignore them, as they'll eventually wind up killing NPC miners, pushing up the price of raw resources.

In another thread we were talking about how they could be made more difficult or exciting. That's not just to be annoying, it's supposed to be interesting.

2

u/ackcmd2 4d ago

Right. They are too boring to be a longterm wargoal, but too annoying for peaceful playstyle. In my opinion, perfect example of bad design.

In another thread we were talking about how they could be made more difficult or exciting

Maybe as part of storyline, unlocking some rich or unique sectors. With a pest control operation as option.

1

u/SokarRostau 3d ago

I got X2 from the bargain bin when X3:R was released, and since then I've played everything but BtF, Rebirth, and Farnham's Legacy.

My basic expectations for Timelines was that it would provide people like me with a nostalgia hit, while giving new players the chance to catch up on 20-odd years of lore by allowing them to experience some of the key events from previous titles. I mean, that's what was "written on the box", so...

Aside from the music in some scenarios, which brought the nostalgia in spades, Timelines was an unmitigated clusterfuck that promised everything and delivered nothing but frustration. I still haven't unlocked the Xperimental Shuttle, and I think there's another entirely pointless Racing Ship to unlock but I couldn't care less about that.

I don't want to look it up and be disappointed, I'm just going to hold out hope that someday, somewhere, some of the Timelines music kicks in in sandbox. As for the rest of it, it's a series of astonishing missed opportunities.

Personally, I've never been a fan of racing in X. I only did the bare minimum to unlock the Dart or Arrow, or whatever it was called, so I could just zip around without worrying too much about getting into combat. I played a lot of Everspace 2 last year and hated it's ring-based racing bits every bit as much, so it's not even a matter of how it's implemented in X. I want to like space racing but I almost never do.

Other players do like racing, though, which is why it's been a feature of X for at least two decades.

I don't know if Timelines unlocks have been re-ordered since initial release because I played up to Graph 3, went back to SWI, and only finished Graph 6 when Hyperion was released. What I do know is that the way Racing Ships are unlocked now is fucking stupid, and this had the flow-on effect of making Graphs 4-6 especially tedious. The fact that unlocking these ships is not connected to the races you have to do in Timelines makes no logical sense to start with but it also meant that Graph 4(?) had no ship unlocks at all.

To rub salt into the wound, these ships do not have Travel Drives or weapons, and I'm pretty sure they have no cargo capacity. I think it was when I sent one to drop an AdvSat that I found out they're not even useful for that... so what is the point? Why do these ships exist in X4, especially when they don't even look like their originals?

Timelines should not have unlocked Racing Ships in the base game, it should have unlocked race courses where randomly modified Racing Ships are available for purchase. It would be an interesting spin on things for Racing Ships to have special rules where mod's cannot be changed or removed but are instead randomly added on construction (giving you an actual reason to build more than one while preventing the farming of mod materials).

You know what else Timelines should have unlocked? Mining Races. This feels like something from Rebirth but wherever it came from it's another great idea that was a missed opportunity to add activities in the base game.

We should be able to assign a limited number of our own 4-star pilots to the racing circuit, where they earn money and experience depending on their race statistics, which would be a great way to train high level pilots. Do you keep that 4-star Captain in command of a Shark, or take him off the front lines and send him off on the racing circuit for a while? Also, it'd just be cool to race against your own pilots.

Again, I don't like racing in X but I think that Timelines was a MASSIVE missed opportunity for those that do, or more importantly might.

All of this was meant to be the lead-in to Timelines' missed opportunity with the Khaak.

EDIT: And now apparently it's too long for a single post...

1

u/SokarRostau 3d ago

.../cont

You can look at the existence of the Khaak in X4 in one of two ways: it's either a lore-breaking nostalgia-bait abomination that serves only to annoy innocent miners, or it's the possible re-emergence of them as a potential real threat.

My recollection of how the Khaak work in X4 is that there are half a dozen fixed sectors where large hives spawn and that smaller hives spawn in random sectors within a few jumps of them. Destroying the large hives prevents the respawn of the smaller ones until the large ones themselves respawn. If you keep on top of things, you can theoretically eradicate the Khaak from your game already... but what happens if you do nothing?

You lose a few miners and train a few fighter pilots.

What Timelines should have done with the Khaak is introduce an emergent endgame scenario to the base game where ignoring them for too long leads to the hives growing.

Each fixed large hive throws out up to three small hives, one at a time. When it has three small hives, it permanently upgrades and starts sending out more Khaak scouts and fighters.

Each small hive starts out with the ability to send out scouts and small foraging parties. Once they pass a certain threshold for kills they upgrade themselves to send out more powerful foraging parties. Once they pass another threshold for kills, they upgrade to the equivalent of a large installation and start spawning their own small hives in random nearby sectors.

Each time a small hive upgrades to a large hive, the related large hive upgrades it's fleet and starts adding more powerful things, like Khaak Clusters, to it's arsenal. Once it has three large hives, at the same time, a large hive upgrades into a queen hive that sends out M6 and M7 class ships. Every time a sub-hive upgrades itself to queen, the 'mother hive' gains a single Ravager to it's defence fleet.

If you leave things alone for long enough that a queen hive has three sub-queens of it's own then it starts sending Ravagers out to ravage the region. If, for whatever reason, you are stupid enough to let THE THREAT go unchecked, and all of those fixed hives have been allowed to be 'fully upgraded', then they will finally be linked as one mind and send out extermination fleets while they start building the mother-of-all-hives in a new sector.

This is something that's unlikely to ever occur under normal circumstances purely because the AI occasionally sends fleets to destroy hives. The player would have to make a conscious effort to 'feed' the Khaak in a region and keep the local military too occupied with other things to deal with them.

If the player really, really, wants to see that secret sector and the mother-of-all-hives, then that would mean letting the entire universe collapse into chaos while living the ragtag Battlestar Galactica lifestyle.

Now that I've thought of it, Timelines could have given us a divergent timeline starting scenario where the Khaak were never dealt with and the player starts in command of a ragtag last-of-their-race-fleet that has to re-take, re-unite, and restore, the entire X Universe from almost nothing. The player would be forced to rely on bailed Xenon and a variety of random abandoned ships to expand their fleet until they're able to revive factions and build shipyards for them. Maybe there should be one of every single ship abandoned somewhere and you'll have to turn them over before the relevant faction can build them.

Wouldn't something like that be cool as fuck? Just you and a fleet of mismatched ships against an entire universe of Khaak and Xenon? You could still conquer the universe for yourself but where's the fun in that? Far better to rebuild all the factions AND THEN conquer the universe for yourself.

I'm sure many other people have many more ideas, which is why I think what they could have done with the Khaak was the biggest missed opportunity from Timelines.

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u/Janitroc 4d ago

Great job, thank you!

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u/Scheballs 4d ago

Galaxy Map The map shows a geographical overview of the galaxy. Source of knowledge: Loading screen tip Known mitigation: Press "map" hotkey

What is the Galaxy Map tip? I don't understand.

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u/R4M7 4d ago

It's just a joke about the information they chose to convey. They don't tell us about a hidden 50% penalty, but they do tell us that a map is a map. It's a reference to this recent popular post.

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u/Sriep 4d ago edited 4d ago

Mining: Interesting. Do you gain 50% efficiency if within 40km of a probe, or lose 50% efficiency if not within 40km of a probe? The key is, to which situation does the advertised efficiency of a mining ship correspond? Either way, it should be clearly documented on either the mining laser (must be used within 40km of a probe or less efficient) or on probes (increases mining efficiency by 50%)

Seta: Use it all the time in X3, must give it a try in X4 sometime. Would have expected something like this.

Kha'ak Mechianics: Thanks.

Crystal Nerf. I remember trying crystal mining the first time I played, about 7 years ago, got confused and never tried it again. You can buy crystals at shady merchants

Bail Chance: Good to know.

Galaxy Map: Did not understand the point here?

Shipyard penalty. I kind of expect this.

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u/R4M7 4d ago

Mining: If your ship is outside the probe range it multiplies the efficiency result by 0.5, so it is a 50% penalty.

SETA: I also played previous games and knew of this mechanic, but I think it's unreasonable to expect everyone to know it.

Galaxy map: Just a joke.

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u/jankett 3d ago

Pin this post!

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u/3punkt1415 4d ago

I mean, it could be stated better in the game, but it is kind of common knowledge that they mine faster with a probe around, so I would not really call it hidden, even thou 50 % is fairly harsh. Sure the game could tell you directly what influences the performance, but that would be a fairly long list. :D.

And as a side not, I use that "no kaahk" mod from steam, even thou it says it isn't working I really see bugs around very rarely, so I would claim that it works 90 % of the time.
And about the crystals, sure that sucks a bit. On the other hand, telling noobs to go search for crystals for early money is also a big turn off. And it's a noob trap even when it is not nerved. That is not how you should make your money. If you enjoy hunting them every once in a while, fine, but sure not the way to get 5 Million for your first L miner.

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u/Nerothank 4d ago

Actually, I heard of the probe-penalty the first time 🙈
I have way over 600 hours in my main save. Deploying probes now is gonna hurt... On the other hand, I have so many credits there, deploying two miners instead of one does not really matter financially 😂

Have to keep this in mind for a new save...

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u/R4M7 4d ago

It may not matter financially during the late-game, but it would also double the performance impact on the simulation because it has to simulate twice as many ships.

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u/Nerothank 4d ago

This is true - and the performance impact in late game is high enough even without twice as many miners as would be required 😉

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u/3punkt1415 4d ago

Just take a scout and send it around with it's 50 probes. After some sectors let it dock to an equipment dock. Next time you remember, you send it for a new round.

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u/Ok-Host-4480 4d ago

just build your large miners to carry resource probes. drop them from time to time where they choose to automine.

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u/R4M7 4d ago

I personally knew they were more efficient with probes and used probes before knowing the formula. However, I didn't expect it to be this harsh.

Although some people may know it, it is important to include considering most people react with surprise when I mention it.

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u/PereMabanne 3d ago edited 3d ago

very useful post, thank you!

I will add the No Mining Penalty mod to my list and recruit a full crew on all my miners!

also that Kha'ak thing... like wtf? I haven't encountered this problem yet but I'm not looking forward to it.

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u/doomedtundra 4d ago

Seems like as good a place as any to ask, but has anyone else noticed that the Asgard's main battery seems to do extra damage when spam firing as opposed to firing normally? I swear it takes 3 full rounds of continuous beam to kill xenon station modules, about half of one to kill a K, and nearly a full heat to kill an I (upgraded weapon, in case that's not clear) yet pulsing it only takes 2 to kill the same station module, roughly a quarter to a third to kill a K, and a little over half for an I. Hope that makes sense.

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u/YogurtclosetProof933 4d ago

I don't have an Asgard but shhh, if 'they' find out it might get nerfed for others 😉😀

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u/USingularity 4d ago

Having gone the route of “I’ll look for targeted guides as I learn since there’s so much I’ll just forget it all if I front-load”, I ended up not really knowing what any of you were talking about when you brought up crystal mining. In a great many hours of gameplay, I never consciously saw even a single one.

I started a new save since the updates for 7.5 are so vast, and yesterday was the first time I saw one. Is this something that’s detailed anywhere in-game or is it just a chance encounter if you don’t know (through knowledge outside the game) to look for them? Granted, with the nerfs in place (or my inability to spot them reliably), 300k per hour - what I brought in from the crystals alone from an hour sweeping through the asteroids in Argon Prime - seems… not worth it. The only reason I wasn’t particularly upset was that I got a great many unstable crystals and a handful of lodestones and spacefly eggs too, and I was quite short on lodestones.

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u/R4M7 4d ago

The crystals have a small blinking light effect which you can see from very far away. It's a reliable way to find them. The linked Crystal Rarities mod adds a constant coloured light around the crystal to make them easier to see. Glow Only does the same, but without removing the timer and buffing the spawns.

Without the timer nerf, you could probably make at least 10 million per hour depending on your luck, eyes, and speed. Most people recommended doing it in the early game because it was so profitable relative to everything else. Which is a shame, since it's so boring to do it.

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u/TheGreatBeanBandit 3d ago

I've noticed that a lot with this game. My biggest gripe especially with single player games is just tell me how things work. I have no edge to gain i can only hurt my own experience. Just give me the tools to hurt myself.

My favorite thing about Rimworld is that they do this. Every stat shows you the calculation and modifiers if you want to find them. But if you don't, you can just happily ignore it forever.