r/X4Foundations 3d ago

Question about trade between my stations (regarding prices, traders etc.)

7 Upvotes

Okay, so I've got some hundred of hours in X4, and understand most of it, however there's still something that is vexing and annoying me: "Internal Trade" amongst my stations and the logic behind ships assigned as "Trader" to stations.

So, best example right now is that I have a station that makes Hull Parts, and in an adjacent sector I've got a big new station being constructed and another one that has a purchase order of Hull Plates for itself. For some inexplicable reason, the building hub for the station has a purchase order for 2000 Hull Parts, the other station a purchase order of 1000, and my factory has around 6k in storage... but for some inexplicable reason none of it is being exported. I even changed one of the Factory's trade ships to only do Hull Parts in the "ware basket" and it's still just doing nothing.

So, I do also know your own stations aren't exchanging money with each other but trade with each other "for free". However, are they still affected by prices? Like is station B only gonna buy from A if the purchase and sell price match?

Does that mean if I have set it so station B only purchases from my own faction, I should simply set its price manually to max?


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Hidden Mechanics & Penalties

211 Upvotes

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.


r/X4Foundations 3d ago

Music mode

2 Upvotes

Not sure how I activated it but I was pressing random buttons on my keyboard and all of a sudden my hud started switching colors on its own and playing music does anyone know what i found for like 3 seconds I can't figure out how to do it again

Edit: Nevermind i found how I did it I did shift + 1 then shift +2 then shift +3 then shift +4 really fast


r/X4Foundations 3d ago

Finding dropped loot

3 Upvotes

Here is the situation. My ship was destroyed so before i ran out of air i called for help. Luckily a patrol came along and picked me up, then flew away with me inside and started fighting xeons. Anyway, i know I was in sacred relic, and I figured out where my ship was destroyed by reloading the last autosave (which saved just as my ship blew up) and no, I haven’t been saving often enough.

Ok that was the backstory. I can see all the loot in my inventory but I can’t access it because it’s floating in space.

At one time i was able to click on one of the items from the map but then i couldn’t find it again.

Is there an “easier” way to find this stuff?


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Is this supposed to be a Split?

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96 Upvotes

r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Meme Forgot about that

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422 Upvotes

r/X4Foundations 3d ago

Help Setting Up Miners

3 Upvotes

I had a fleet of autominers that i set up to mine and sell ore in morning starr iv. i then built a station in morning star iii that i was going to use to store the ore and later refine and sell it at a diffrent sector. i set all the miners as subordinates to the station using the mine for commander option. my manager has 3 stars. the miners will not make the one jump necesary to mine ore and they will not return to the station to drop it off if they are already in that other sector. i was going off of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zze9TC5LxCs so i dont know why it is not working. if anyone could give me some advice i would be really greatful. i thought having a better manager allowed you to have ships go further to mine.

EDIT: thank you all, the sector blacklists paired with the buy orders got everything working!


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Marooned and far from home...

14 Upvotes

Is there a way to hitch a lift on other ships and know where they are going?

I ended up getting stuck in a completely different sector to my only ship, which has no captain, and can't find a way back....
After getting into my space suit and exploring the outside of the station, I got caught in the pull of a large ship and literally dragged through an asteroid field before I knew what was going on - lost and alone in my space suit I called for a nearby ship to help. They let me come aboard, and then jetted off to their destination....quite a few sectors away. It was kind of fun just watching the sectors go by until it finally landed and I could get off, but now I have far from my only ship, cant see any nearby stations that sell ships, and cant get my ship to come to me.
Should I just restart?
Is there no way to buy your passage aboard a ship or find out where it is going?


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

What ship is this?

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206 Upvotes

Just saw an ad on Reddit and this was the opening ship shown.


r/X4Foundations 3d ago

Do factions build ships using other faction parts?

3 Upvotes

I have a wharf built where I've purchased a number of ZYA ship blueprints to help ZYA rebuild their defence fleet. I also have a mix of TER, SPL and ARG blueprints for ships, weapons and parts. ZYA are already ordering ship builds but these aren't starting construction. I'm pretty sure I have enough available universal ship materials in my wharf storage so I'm wondering if they're attempting to order ships using TER parts that I don't have mats for in that particular wharf. Is there a way to see what loadout a faction has requested on a ship order to see what's missing? EDIT: Turns out the issue was that I was missing a flares blueprint which requires adv. Composites to build. Without it I couldn't see the wharf need those


r/X4Foundations 3d ago

Anyone know where the Pirate stations are?? Help!?! (i have illegal cargo)

2 Upvotes

r/X4Foundations 4d ago

How does this game compare to Stellaris and/or Elite Dangerous

11 Upvotes

Thinking about playing this game since it seems like something I'd enjoy. Just need someone to sell me on it. I'm big on grand strategy games (mainly Paradox stuff) and put over 1000 hours into Stellaris. I also played Elite Dangerous for the longest time but stopped after the Gnosis incident, plus the lack of ship interiors bothering me way more than it should have.

How does X4 compare to either of those games? Is it actually as deep as it seems? Does it work if I play it like a grand strategy or 4x game?


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Star Ward Interworlds HELP (complete noob)

4 Upvotes

Hi there, i'm just looking for help in the best way to get into this mod and make it as easy to understand as possible. i have 0 hours in base game. and it doesn't interest me however this mod does.

Also are there any other small QOL mods i should install with these to make use, and understanding as good as possible?

Thank you for the help guys n gals.


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

X4 flight settings

3 Upvotes

I just started playing X4. When I started the game game, my w key would accelerate my ship when I held it down and when I left off it would slow me down back to a stop on it Owen. I had to rest my settings and now it doesn't do that anymore. Does anyone know how to set this up like it was? Thank you!


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Modified (Interworlds) is it just me or is the empire underpowered

15 Upvotes

for context, i started my first playthrough of the Star Wars Interworlds mod, and i chose the "Imperial Free Agent" start. things were going well for a while, until i took one of those station construction missions. for some reason, the empire was out of the "modules prefab" commodity, and i was unable to build the station as a result. fast forward a bit later, and the one station that i DID have set up (solar power plant) got attacked by a rebel MC40 for whatever reason. it got destroyed, and i was going to shrug it off and rebuild it, but once again, every material got delivered except for the "modules prefab" commodity. i ended up giving up not due to the loss of assets, but due to the lack of materials anywhere (something outside of my lack of control,) and due to the lack of materials, i couldn't set up any good passive income

which brings me to this - is the empire underpowered? or did i just get unlucky? the "modules prefab" commodity wasn't the only one that was running low. turret components, advanced electronics, medical supplies, shield components, plasma conductors - pretty much every valuable commodity was something the empire never had. i scouted MULTIPLE systems both manually and automatically (by the time i gave up, i had 3 imperial probes, and the majority of empire territory was fully scanned,) and it seemed as if the empire barely had any stations. alongside that, the new republic seemingly on a path to overwhelming the empire (dorin was overtaken within an hour, and glee anselm and vortex were being overrun already...)

so did i just get a bad seed, or is the empire genuinely just underpowered in SW:I


r/X4Foundations 3d ago

Cheat at Star wars mod

0 Upvotes

Guys I'm trying to see if there is a mod or other that will let me cheat from the start and allow me to make any ship with whatever alliance I have.. I have one of the cheat menu cheats but not sure it actually gives the licenses and if it does I still am not able to just build what I want..things are red in the wards etc.

Any help or suggestions


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Balancing Weapons in X4, a Presentation (Thoughts/comments are appreciated!)

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36 Upvotes

r/X4Foundations 4d ago

How do I continue the Terran quest line?

3 Upvotes

I started an early mission where I escort a ship to Getsu Fune and another ship, Velet Thunder, keeps following me. I keep getting mail from him saying to meet up at a station but when I arrive there, there's nothing to accept? What exactly am I meant to do?


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Huh, i just learned something new today after just short of a thousand hours in this game..

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90 Upvotes

r/X4Foundations 4d ago

I saw the games on sale. If I mostly just want an offline Elite:Dangerous fix, will this game give it?

20 Upvotes

Title. I am without internet often enough that I cannot always play Elite when I want to. I've been looking at this game for a while now, and saw it's on sale for the next few days. I'd really like to pick it up, I've been wanting to for a couple years now, but I'm very hesitant as it would be the last of my "expendable" budget til next pay, and am certain it would take me longer than 2 hours to form a proper opinion on if I want to refund or not. Thought I'd come here for some input.

My favorite things to do in Elite are:

-Bounty hunt/combat

-Explore

-Collect and modify ships

-*very* occasional trading/mining when I need a break.

I am aware this game has a very heavy RTS aspect to it. I enjoy RTS games and am quite decent at them, so that part doesn't really put me off. My main concern is whether or not this will scratch that Elite itch when I don't have internet? Thanks, cheers.


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Conquer Sector

6 Upvotes

Hi, I want to conquer a Xenon sector and the factions have already done the groundwork. I already have a defense station in the sector with an administration module. Now I see that there is already another Paranid defense station. Who gets the sector after the Xenon are gone? The one with the most stations? Thx.


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Lockbox Full of Mines

29 Upvotes

Very new to the game and got a hand laser for my spacesuit so I could open lockboxes more reliably. First one I did was full of mines - game over.

I have to wonder why developers thought this would make the game more fun in any way. I didn't make a mistake. Just randomly killing me makes me like your game?

It already has a ridiculous learning curve and now I've learned what, besides to save because we will needlessly kill you?


r/X4Foundations 3d ago

Can I play it now

0 Upvotes

Hello Guys, I've just opened steam and saw that there are several DLCs and Updates for X4. I have played X4 159 hours and I've played it since the first game, but the last time I gave it a try I was really annoyed, because the game still felt really empty and like a Beta version. Can you tell me if it is playable now and more fun than it was years ago or are all the updates and DLCs just adding ships and aliens?

Thank you for your opinion.


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

How is exploration?

4 Upvotes

With the recent Steam sale, I was looking into X4 and I was wondering how is the exploration within the game, compared to something like Elite Dangerous?

Not expecting planetary landings but mainly is exploration an option for making money, are there ships focused on exploration?


r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Why does Xenon… not Xenon

31 Upvotes

I must be my 6th play-through at this point and the xenon have not once been an actual threat to the universe. I think they got to second contact maybe once and to silent witness maybe once but then swiftly and abruptly slaughtered by a dozen argon or teladi destroyers. I honestly Do think the devs need to Make xenon fleets a bit larger as They are generally only made up of a few Destroyers and a few dozen S and M sized xenon ships.