If you've done enough piracy and would like to start an honest trade, I got some detailed tutorials for that as well on this channel. The Basics of Trade: ruclips.net/video/NCUXBB7VAhc/видео.html Station Building: ruclips.net/video/nNH7OQof8Z4/видео.html Station Optimization: ruclips.net/video/KRTWW1YTgzE/видео.html
Halcylion thank for the great boarding tutorial! A quick note that will undoubtedly make every pirate's life easier when going after capitals, use EVA bombs, not the EMP ones, the actual kaboom ones. The neat feature of these bombs is that they can be triggered simultaneously if you attach more than one, so, park your ship in the target's sphere of influence so that you remain "attached to it", get out, walk in space, attach a single bomb on each dangerous component (Especially those tracking turrets), probably a few on the engines, then go back to your ship and trigger all bombs. Voila, target disabled. Each bomb is usually enough to take out a component on its own, so no more hiding behind walls trying to snipe a turret... Hope this helps! (Mind you these bombs don't come cheap, but they do help) Fly dangerous o/ Jinn
I've never been huge on boarding in X but the cargo / bailing mechanics you've got here are going to be invaluable. Thanks for putting in the work to get it all figured out!
I hope you come back to these videos Halcylion, it's how I found you and still rank as some of the best X4 in my opinion. You might pull some bannerlord fans into the X universe with your entertaining guides, which would be good. Your work is always highly entertaining & your scripts and delivery are gold.
Nice vid and everything well explained. Im 100 hrs thru my 1st playthru and still havent made a ship bail yet. But then I realised it was only the Xenon Ive been fighting against and they dont seem to bail like they did in X3? Decided to make a self sufficient s/m wharf for myself from the beginning as I always wanted to do that in X3 but couldnt. Damn, the amount of $$$ this wharf makes is unbelievable. I've struck gold on my first playthru!
I'm so glad that you mentioned that you can just keep getting standing back with people (relatively) easy. Which then snowballs hilariously with boarding, which it self can then be cheesed EVEN FURTHER BEYOND! I didn't know hull affected the fight AFTER breaching, that's good to know. But anyways, for the CHEESE! We'll work with a "HOP" target. 1.- Get a board-able ship (L/XL), doesn't matter how. You'll probably want it to have nothing but missile turrets, but no missiles (This also helps for regular boarding target picking, yous beat their ammo count and you won't have to destroy the turrets and save some standing, as they are now effectively useless, so you can board with VERY STRONG approach/stage 1 since there's no actual threat) to increase it's value, and only the captain. 2.- Take it to a quiet place, along with your boarding ship of course. 3.- DISABLE the engines, DO NOT DESTROY them. Once they hit something around 30% or less they will stop working, making it easier for repairs later, and sparing you even more standing loss since you didn't do "an unauthorized kill". (Also since you can't fix them yourself until they are repair enough to be target-able by repair drones) 4.- Remotely sell the ship to HOP. 5.- Commence the boarding as usual. 6.- Repair boarded ship 7.- Repeat steps 3 through 6.* As of right now, all marines get experience, even if it's against just the captain. Which makes this a nice and safe way to train marines. *KEEP IN MIND that this, for one reason or another, makes the landing get busted on your boarding training target and therefore UNABLE TO LAND ON IT. So you'll have either live with that or, like me, just keep it around for credit fraud lol. Of course, this also makes transferring your crew back and forth more of a pain since you'll need to dock them together (preferably at a shipyard) where you can give the credit fraud ship a new captain, and repeat the whole process. You could probably just have them board one another back and forth (haven't tried), but you'll be going through a previous marine each time so you'll eventually run out of marines/captains, which defeats half of the point of this. Unless you can just park them next to one another in boarding range and they are able to launch without a captain... but again, have not tried myself.
Not sure how viable piracy was when this vid was released, but right now building passive income through automining and station building makes you a billionaire in no time, crapping out destroyers and laughing maniacally as the universe burns in your wake (Boron pun not intended). Boarding is still fun though, good tips here.
Nowadays you can even capture an XL with your eclipse if you do the following things: (please note you need the craftable fourt engine/mode for this). First choose your target and proceed like in the video. If you use the eclipse or another heavy S-class, fly as near as possible to the hull of your target and destroy its defences,using the target itself as shield to attack it from the turrets blindspots. Then attack it until 50%hull and save it. Scan it if you havent and look to the numbers of the crew(morale and skills doesn't affect this methode significantly). After this, attack it until the number of crewmembers drop or you reach 15%. Most if the times(about 75%) the ship looses chunks of 3 crewmembers before reaching 15%. Let it repair itself back to 50% (4th engine/mode makes it faster) and repeat it. I managed to get an constructionship this way by luring it with a job out of its initial system and then attacking it.
The best use of the starter ship is to scan stations for blueprints, and going to hunt crystals in asteroid fields....the extra mobility and small size really help.
This is a great video! The only thing I would add to it is that if you have the money to spare, when you upgrade a ship, it gives you the option to hire crew. You can hire pilots, service crew, or marines. The cost is significantly higher than if you just wander around a station hiring anyone you see, however the average starting abilities of these crew members is also generally much higher than anyone you would randomly run into on a station. I haven't gauged the service crew or marines yet, but the pilots tend to start randomly with 1 to 3 stars as a general rating. The best I have started with so far was a pilot with 3 stars in general, and a 4 in morale! Even on a bad roll, it seems that the pilots are at least one star minimum, but it isn't hard to start with a 2 star pilot. If the same is even a little true about other crewmen/marines, then maybe you can start with 1 star marines. Even if their stats are bad, this is a fast (but pricey) way to fill up on marines.
From what I've noticed, the crewmen and marines you get from the wharf are just as incompetent as the ones you find on stations. The only reason they're 3 times as expensive is because you save some time.
Hey mate, it might not be your thing (been a pirate and all) but you do a really good job of explaining things. If you do get into the whole empire building side of the game, would love to see how that all works and get your ideas on that. Thanks man!
Just to say, when you've done up to 80% damage, you can spam comms until he accepts to talk to you and ask him to surrender if he hadn't bailed reaching 10% hulls. It can work
Ah, the X games and their starter ships. Good times. I once started a game of X3 Terran Conflict and went to a station for a combat mission. Once the mission started a single Pirate M5 (scout) came soaring towards the station at over 500m/s, slammed in said station, which destroyed it. The station send me a message thanking me for my valiant effords and send me the money.
Rebirth was the best. Bounty on a big pirate, who got himself killed before I got to him. I didn't get paid, because I didn't deliver the killing blow.
well done mate! good vid. personally, with the small fighters, I don't even get a pilot for them. the bailed pilot usually destroys the subsystems before they eject so trying to sell them before the ship is a waste of time imo. I just repair it, then right click a wharf and sell to option it right away. sometimes I even cap it again right after selling it :D
Sometimes they can have deployables that can sell for more than the ship is worth with them in the cargo hold. I was about to sell a Plutus for 250k, but I first sold its gear and deployables, and got 400k from those + 200k from the plutus. I know it sounds silly, but that's the way it can be sometimes, you can pause at 25:37 and take a look at the price in the upper left corner.
I have seen some with lots of heavy missiles. in that case I would say you are right, it would be worth it to sell those first. anyway thanks for the good vid! edit: I was only referring to the small fighters. I always send the bog ships to the shipyard. more profitsssss :)
You dont need pilot for captured ship to sell him. just repair it and point him to shipyard and sell it remotly, pilot will be telepoty from shipyard to this ship. :)
I would stream tonight, but because of a blizzard raging outside, the power grid is a bit unstable and the stream could go offline 2 minutes after I start it. Guess I'll just do something else. :(
I hope Egosoft figure out a better way to be an opportunistic privateer than to hack a faction standing. I would like to understand the position of a faction that is under fire. And maybe I can pick up on the fact that they don't have access to a particular resource which is required for their war efforts. Then I will know which shipping lanes to look for large freighters. I don't like the "capture ship, then do symbolic gestures, then capture ship" because it feels like you're hacking an algorithm instead of enacting a part in a credible plot.
But Cerberus carries 15 people, 1 cap, 14 marines. At least my Cerberus. There can be some variations, for example the Minotaur vanguard carries 11 people, while the raider variant carries 16.
Scale Plate are not the only pirates. There are 2 others, 1 of which you can actually improve relations with and buy ships from. I'll tip my HAT to you though on a great video!
for attacking capital ships, you can find some in neighboring opposing factions sectors... ex: it is possible to find larger HOP ships in PAR sector Pious Mists II. doing so will minimize how many enemies you get AND build up relations with the opposing faction. (PAR in the previous example) It is not necessarily reliable, as I don't think it happens frequently, but when it does, go ahead and have some fun. I believe a log message will show up if a function is making such a move though. You can also find, scan and attack any SCA ships you find. no one will care for them and they tend to be alone, I stole 2 Pheonix and one Behemoth from them. :P A good area to find these guys is usually in the sectors around the player HQ, like nopileo's fortune and grand exchange. I've made most of my money pirating the pirates :P
got a quick question though, does the shield depletion technique work on cap ships as well? I've been losing lots of marines trying to board the behemot and pheonixes and I'd like to minimize that in the future also is there a way to train marines before sending them to the slaughterhouse?
I've been away from this game for too long to realize if something changed. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say things are pretty much the same, since revamping an already established mechanic isn't common practice in games.
How about buying repair drone for each ship then park the ship and let it work???? I don't know how much they cost and I do realize that one would be very slow. But might be a plan if you have the time and credits.
That can work, but for some reason, a man in his underwear with a repair laser can fix a capital ship faster than an entire army of specialized drones. And he can do it better.
I actually fixed my standings with them a couple of times after they turned red, but it was harder because I had no access to missions. I had to eliminate xenon and criminals in their systems to grind enough rep for them to turn blue.
I noticed that service crew will repair a heavily damaged ship far faster than a lightly damaged one. Taking down the last 5% in just a fighter against a destroyer can take forever because of this. On the flip side, repairing a ship from 90% takes forever and you should do it yourself.
Great video about the starter guide for Piracy, explains a lot of what to do. In the same vein as doing illegal things, how hard is it to set up an illegal drug business?
@@Halcylion So, technically, you could produce it legally in scalie territory, and then try smuggling it to a territory where it is illegal, and make more money off it?
Moving those marines one at a time is the worst part of boarding. I switched over to only capturing ships I want to keep so I won't have to move them. :/
1:07 to 1:30 answers both of those questions. But just in case my pronunciation is not clear enough, I will repeat what I've said in those 23 seconds: The ship is named "Eclipse Vanguard", and you acquire it by reaching reputation 10 with the Argon faction.
Nice stuff. I thought what if you hack security 1st on stations and then cargo? And also what if you board, sell the parts and if its a big ship like a constructor when you sell it, it will still be in space w\o the parts making it easier to board again? You are not alone with the whole HOP as potential "lend me some ships" ...they will be the first faction I'll try a sector take over..but I am far fro doing that at the mo. Anyway cool upload it seems that a HOP member disliked this upload looool.
I don't know about the security terminal, but you can definitely board a ship immediately after you sell it. But that feels too much like an exploit, and I've never tried that, so I can't 100% confirm that it works.
It took some time, but I did kill 5 HOP Destroyers while giving my new Nemesis a test drive. Even captured one. Also experimentally found a way to steal station modules schematics with 100% certainty.
@@aaronhall7272 Actually pretty simple, though no one made a manual for that. I tried testing my EMP suit bombs on a HOP station I just stripped of it's defenses. They have to do some shit, right? (Like those seminars, lol). So I got close to some module, shot an EMP (it stuck to the hull) and detonated it from a menu. 4 red hack nodes appeared, and after hacking all 4 I got the module schematics. Tried it 5 more times - got 5 new modules, including 3-E Dock, paranid Dome M and a few production modules. In all about 30mil worth. Sweet.
That said, stealing a module doesn't count as crime, but detonation itself triggers defense systems for a short while and hurts relations a bit. So I didn't test it on friendly stations yet. Also make sure there's no Def.Drones or patrol ships around, as they'll gladly one-tap you in your suit.
@@Halcylion Good to know. The regular ones are cheaper. Yesterday I tried stealing the large construction dock from Argon Prime, but got a "Permanent subscription" instead. It appears possible to sabotage friendly stations without triggering drones. Station goes red on explosion but cools off in a few minutes if left alone.
Well, if you want to cheese your game, sure. I would call it 'training mode' as there is no danger at all. But when you have the hang of it, dont follow this guide to be a shady business man who keeps the relation with everyone "at least at neutral"... be a pirate. Hated by everyone, be shot at first sight and living a very dangerous but profitable life. Hide behind asteroids and wait for an oportunity to strike at an unsuspecting prey, strip them down of their weapons, make them plea for their life and steal their goods and tell everyone, if you survive, at your home station how the engineers peed themselfes. Stay crunchy.
I suppose we're 2 different types of pirates. I prefer the term ''privateer'' myself, and I only use piracy to get a small loan of a million credits so I can start up my trade empire... for which you need friendly relations.
@@Halcylion A privateer attacks ships and/or steals cargo from other nations while working for a specific other nation. That means also that at least one nation does not like you and will attack you on sight usually. Unless the relations between the nation you work with and the one you attack with is stable and/or friendly. Then you would be a classical pirate. Again: Its okay if you cheese games to have fun, especially when you have nearly no time to play with a challenge. Yet, try all that without cheesing and/or exploit the game mechanics. Challenge could be worth it a lot more than just getting your first million. Which takes usually just a few minutes anyway without mods. Stay crunchy.
@@fiesesalien Fair enough. On my second playthrough (where I focused more on trade) I ignored piracy altogether, attacking only SCA ships and taking their stuff for a quick buck. HOP space was too profitable to go to war with them. Also, perhaps I should "stay crunchy" and start doing some crunches for my abs. :D
@@Halcylion Ha ^^ righto. But, if I missed to say it: Never be discouraged doing something thats fun to you and hurting no one :) Lets enjoy x4 foundation and yes, stay crunchy hehe
I just want a good space sim like Tachyon The Fringe or Independence War 2. I don't want to build ships or build an empire. Can I do that in this game? Oh yeah.. and can I use a regular flight joystick like a Logitech Wingman Attack 3?
Elite Dangerous may suit you better if you don't like building stuff. The X series was always more focused on its trade system and empire building than flying around in an overpowered ship pew pewing. As for the second question, I think it has full joystick support.
@@Halcylion I want the trading in a game unlike the two I mentioned. Just not the empire building. Best space sim with an economy I ever played was Hard War. If you've never played it, your missing out. The game can be had for free. Just look up Capt Zedo Hard war. So I'm looking for a space sim with trading that is single player. Elite Dangerous won't do. Since there is so much hype that you can play like you want to in X4 I figured I could just ignore the stuff I didn't want to deal with but i'm double checking if I can really play like that because it's a huge download.
@@DivergentDroid Well, you don't HAVE to build anything, if you don't want to. You can simply purchase ships and get them to do automatic trading for you, or you can ignore that aspect altogether and do trade runs yourself, if that's what you want to do. Or maybe you want to be a pirate, in which case you can buy everything for cheap, build a stockpile in some freighters, cripple the entire economy of a faction, and sell them your stockpile for 500% price mark-up. You don't care about the money? Well, you can STEAL ships and build your fleet that way. There's a lot of options for you in X4, and the most overlooked option is simply ignoring every option you have.
@@Halcylion Hey I got the game. I may have to sub to you to watch some tutorials. The game tutorial Sucks. It keeps showing me a symbol for the keys I need but doesn't tell me what those keys actually are. I don't know what those symbols mean, they are not printed on my keyboard. The devs should have realized not everyone would know all those symbols.
The Xenon are a group of genocidal AIs hell bent on erasing all organic life from the universe. You cannot join the xenon, but you can advance their cause by murdering the entire system and then flying your own ship into a black hole...
Damn, how did you get the game to run like fluid? The animation and graphics look perfect. I am running a RTX2060 and still cant get it to run like that.
@@darkfalconsteele170 Luck, I guess. I didn't do anything special to make it run smoothly. Either luck, or some recent update must have made the game run poorly.
Eyy lads, I just released 2 trade guides for Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord. Click the links for profitsss: ruclips.net/video/JfuW7jXf1ww/видео.html ; ruclips.net/video/Scynk5sNm_w/видео.html
Do what you want, 'cause a pirate is free You are a pirate! Yar har, fiddle di dee Being a pirate is all right with me Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free You are a pirate! Yo Ho, ahoy and avast Being a pirate is really badass! Hang the black flag at the end of the mast! You are a pirate! You are a pirate! - Yay!
Go to the Void, hunt down crystals. Sell crystals and buy a plot in Argon Prime right next to the highway. Then, find more crystals. Sell crystals and start building a factory that will eventually produce ship components. The factory that I've made produces millions of credits every day. I also built another ship component factory in Nopileos' Fortune and it produces about two thirds the credits that the factory in Argon Prime does. But at least the property was free and you can put it close to the four available jump gates. I managed to acquire a little over 1.5 billion credits within 6 days. SETA is kinda required of course. In just under 8 hours with SETA on, my Argon Prime factory had about 550 million credits while the one in Nopileos' Fortune had roughly 350 million credits.
I don't know about stealing ships, reselling them to same faction, and rebuilding relations with the faction you are pirating ships from. It doesn't sound realistic. If I was playing as a pirate I would probably just let it drop to -10, steal the ships and sell them to a different faction.
It's not realistic, but it works. Anyway, in my second playthrough, I did almost no piracy and stayed on friendly terms with all the factions, to prevent them from attacking my ships and stations.
I feel like buying this game now... Okay, as soon as there is a good rebate on it. I love these kind of games, I just usually don't have much time to play a lot. But under promotion, I see myself enjoying this game from time to time. Also, I might just wait until mod support is available.
Yeah, I never say you can't. But if you want to maximize your profit by selling the modules, ammunition and deployables first, your ship has to physically travel to one of the 3 types of stations I've listed in order to be stripped of its modules. Then you sell it wherever, instantly. And I never said that you absolutely have to fly the ship there yourself.
Am like 150 hours played into the game, 3billions~ worth in assets, same in my wallet, so many stations that it became tedious to manage them all...and yet I have NEVER EVER seen any crew member (should it be service or marines) leveling up higher than 1 star at any given skill ahah how the hell did you level your crew members xD?... Aside from comanders that you get when buying ships who from time to time can get good rolls on their skill sheet.
I didn't do anything special. I saw some of them just increased their skills, especially the captains of my ships. As for my marines, I noticed their boarding skill increases the more they survive confrontations. And the service crewmen were hired from capital ships before the 1.3 patch.
You can train service crew by attacking your own ships and then letting them repair the ship up. Pilots just gain levels from completing orders and combat (combat is much quicker) and marines improve from combat. Station managers...not sure about them. Also keep in mind that they only gain a star every 3 levels. there are 15 total levels. So they may be improving and you may not be noticing it because you don't see new stars. You can see you total personal and skill level in the empire overview window and you can see that over your whole empire your skills levels should be leveling a lot more than you realize.
Watching your guide made me finally understand why I could not get into X4 even though I tried many times. And believe me I really tried. I consider myself a space game fan, most of my steam games are either scifi or spacesim or 4x. I played a bunch of classic space games like Freespace, Freelancer, Elite,... so I'm not new to the genre, but I could not stomach X4. The game is made overly complicated with mundane tasks that was there just to fuck with the player and make things frustratingly harder to complete. The whole process of capture the ship are nothing but you sit in the cockpit and click through a bunch of menus before and after. Don't get me wrong you got a lot of knowledge of the game to be able to pull this off, and I respect that but what's the point of the whole simulation, ship models and whatnot if 80% of the game is sit in a chair and click through windows after windows? Elite Dangerous somewhat make this same mistake but atleast their ships are fun to fly, for X4 I can't really say the same. X4 try to be a alot of things but ultimately fail at every aspect. If I want space spreadsheet I'll play Eve, If I want to be space trucker there's Elite, if I want to be a combat pilot there's a whole bunch of other space games with far more superior fly model than X4. Hell even a 2D game like Star Sector is more enjoyable than this game
2 ads in the middle of a 30 minute video that I worked on for a week is greedy? Click any of laazrgaming's videos, pause it, look at the ads, and then return here and talk to me about greed.
@@Halcylion Don't worry mate, kids this days wants all for free and they don't appreciate the work that you and other content makers face and time involved making this videos. Thank you for your time making this tutorial and I can't wait for more stuff from you, cheers :)
@Dave Brace dude, happy with people working for free for you enough? Pull your head out of your "box" and dig around, there are ways not to see ads :P Jeeeez kids this days....
Compared to a game like Elite Dangerous, yes, they do indeed look simplistic, but keep in mind that the X series is less about the Flight Simulation, and more about the economy simulation, and the empire building aspect.
The algorithm works in mysterious ways. Also, the video isn't really outdated, I'm pretty sure the mechanics of piracy in X4 work the same way today as they did 5 years ago. :)
If you've done enough piracy and would like to start an honest trade, I got some detailed tutorials for that as well on this channel.
The Basics of Trade: ruclips.net/video/NCUXBB7VAhc/видео.html
Station Building: ruclips.net/video/nNH7OQof8Z4/видео.html
Station Optimization: ruclips.net/video/KRTWW1YTgzE/видео.html
This is the kind of detail in gaming that wished for, but never really expected to see outside of my dreams.
Halcylion thank for the great boarding tutorial! A quick note that will undoubtedly make every pirate's life easier when going after capitals, use EVA bombs, not the EMP ones, the actual kaboom ones.
The neat feature of these bombs is that they can be triggered simultaneously if you attach more than one, so, park your ship in the target's sphere of influence so that you remain "attached to it", get out, walk in space, attach a single bomb on each dangerous component (Especially those tracking turrets), probably a few on the engines, then go back to your ship and trigger all bombs. Voila, target disabled. Each bomb is usually enough to take out a component on its own, so no more hiding behind walls trying to snipe a turret...
Hope this helps! (Mind you these bombs don't come cheap, but they do help)
Fly dangerous o/
Jinn
I've never been huge on boarding in X but the cargo / bailing mechanics you've got here are going to be invaluable. Thanks for putting in the work to get it all figured out!
I hope you come back to these videos Halcylion, it's how I found you and still rank as some of the best X4 in my opinion. You might pull some bannerlord fans into the X universe with your entertaining guides, which would be good. Your work is always highly entertaining & your scripts and delivery are gold.
Nice vid and everything well explained. Im 100 hrs thru my 1st playthru and still havent made a ship bail yet. But then I realised it was only the Xenon Ive been fighting against and they dont seem to bail like they did in X3? Decided to make a self sufficient s/m wharf for myself from the beginning as I always wanted to do that in X3 but couldnt. Damn, the amount of $$$ this wharf makes is unbelievable. I've struck gold on my first playthru!
Well, the xenon are AI-ships, it makes sense they don't have a pilot cockpit. Also, well done on the wharf!
I'm so glad that you mentioned that you can just keep getting standing back with people (relatively) easy. Which then snowballs hilariously with boarding, which it self can then be cheesed EVEN FURTHER BEYOND! I didn't know hull affected the fight AFTER breaching, that's good to know.
But anyways, for the CHEESE! We'll work with a "HOP" target.
1.- Get a board-able ship (L/XL), doesn't matter how. You'll probably want it to have nothing but missile turrets, but no missiles (This also helps for regular boarding target picking, yous beat their ammo count and you won't have to destroy the turrets and save some standing, as they are now effectively useless, so you can board with VERY STRONG approach/stage 1 since there's no actual threat) to increase it's value, and only the captain.
2.- Take it to a quiet place, along with your boarding ship of course.
3.- DISABLE the engines, DO NOT DESTROY them. Once they hit something around 30% or less they will stop working, making it easier for repairs later, and sparing you even more standing loss since you didn't do "an unauthorized kill". (Also since you can't fix them yourself until they are repair enough to be target-able by repair drones)
4.- Remotely sell the ship to HOP.
5.- Commence the boarding as usual.
6.- Repair boarded ship
7.- Repeat steps 3 through 6.*
As of right now, all marines get experience, even if it's against just the captain. Which makes this a nice and safe way to train marines.
*KEEP IN MIND that this, for one reason or another, makes the landing get busted on your boarding training target and therefore UNABLE TO LAND ON IT. So you'll have either live with that or, like me, just keep it around for credit fraud lol. Of course, this also makes transferring your crew back and forth more of a pain since you'll need to dock them together (preferably at a shipyard) where you can give the credit fraud ship a new captain, and repeat the whole process. You could probably just have them board one another back and forth (haven't tried), but you'll be going through a previous marine each time so you'll eventually run out of marines/captains, which defeats half of the point of this. Unless you can just park them next to one another in boarding range and they are able to launch without a captain... but again, have not tried myself.
Not sure how viable piracy was when this vid was released, but right now building passive income through automining and station building makes you a billionaire in no time, crapping out destroyers and laughing maniacally as the universe burns in your wake (Boron pun not intended). Boarding is still fun though, good tips here.
Finally, somebody actually explaining something, instead of just playing, and doing it nicely!
this game needs a mission editor DESPERATELY!
Nowadays you can even capture an XL with your eclipse if you do the following things: (please note you need the craftable fourt engine/mode for this).
First choose your target and proceed like in the video. If you use the eclipse or another heavy S-class, fly as near as possible to the hull of your target and destroy its defences,using the target itself as shield to attack it from the turrets blindspots. Then attack it until 50%hull and save it.
Scan it if you havent and look to the numbers of the crew(morale and skills doesn't affect this methode significantly).
After this, attack it until the number of crewmembers drop or you reach 15%. Most if the times(about 75%) the ship looses chunks of 3 crewmembers before reaching 15%. Let it repair itself back to 50% (4th engine/mode makes it faster) and repeat it.
I managed to get an constructionship this way by luring it with a job out of its initial system and then attacking it.
The best use of the starter ship is to scan stations for blueprints, and going to hunt crystals in asteroid fields....the extra mobility and small size really help.
This is a great video! The only thing I would add to it is that if you have the money to spare, when you upgrade a ship, it gives you the option to hire crew. You can hire pilots, service crew, or marines. The cost is significantly higher than if you just wander around a station hiring anyone you see, however the average starting abilities of these crew members is also generally much higher than anyone you would randomly run into on a station. I haven't gauged the service crew or marines yet, but the pilots tend to start randomly with 1 to 3 stars as a general rating. The best I have started with so far was a pilot with 3 stars in general, and a 4 in morale! Even on a bad roll, it seems that the pilots are at least one star minimum, but it isn't hard to start with a 2 star pilot. If the same is even a little true about other crewmen/marines, then maybe you can start with 1 star marines. Even if their stats are bad, this is a fast (but pricey) way to fill up on marines.
From what I've noticed, the crewmen and marines you get from the wharf are just as incompetent as the ones you find on stations. The only reason they're 3 times as expensive is because you save some time.
Great video...LOVE your dry, dead pan humor. Totally hilarious.
Again WELL DONE!
Hey mate, it might not be your thing (been a pirate and all) but you do a really good job of explaining things. If you do get into the whole empire building side of the game, would love to see how that all works and get your ideas on that. Thanks man!
Its a good idea to have a Captain in your own ship. You can always tell him to fly somewhere if u leave your ship and retake control later on
you made me watch the whole video...well that mean u are good well done that was a very nice video
good job man, a lot of work editing and doing it nice. great stuff too.
Great guide and your voice is quite soothing.
You can hire crew in the upgrade ship on a warf no need to run around a station
its cheaper to hire from the station
SpacePirate101 hiring crew from stations is something for the start. If you do things right you’ll be rich enough to hire from wharf.
Good job. Very comprehensive guide
You should totally do more guides. they are really helpful
I thank you, kind sir! I will definitely make more of these, but I'll keep them shorter.
Amazing video - thanks for putting the effort into sharing this info! :)
At the end there you noted you can hack open the storage on stations. You can also hack the defense systems to help you escape.
Just to say, when you've done up to 80% damage, you can spam comms until he accepts to talk to you and ask him to surrender if he hadn't bailed reaching 10% hulls. It can work
Very informative and fun to watch Thanks Halcylion.
Thank you very much for your video. I have been waiting for it since you announced it was coming.
I'm hoping it will be as helpful as you were expecting. :)
Ah, the X games and their starter ships. Good times.
I once started a game of X3 Terran Conflict and went to a station for a combat mission.
Once the mission started a single Pirate M5 (scout) came soaring towards the station at over 500m/s, slammed in said station, which destroyed it.
The station send me a message thanking me for my valiant effords and send me the money.
Rebirth was the best. Bounty on a big pirate, who got himself killed before I got to him. I didn't get paid, because I didn't deliver the killing blow.
@@Halcylion I skipped Rebirth, but such funny things happen in many games XD
Well, funny in hindsight at least ;)
well done mate! good vid. personally, with the small fighters, I don't even get a pilot for them. the bailed pilot usually destroys the subsystems before they eject so trying to sell them before the ship is a waste of time imo. I just repair it, then right click a wharf and sell to option it right away. sometimes I even cap it again right after selling it :D
Sometimes they can have deployables that can sell for more than the ship is worth with them in the cargo hold. I was about to sell a Plutus for 250k, but I first sold its gear and deployables, and got 400k from those + 200k from the plutus. I know it sounds silly, but that's the way it can be sometimes, you can pause at 25:37 and take a look at the price in the upper left corner.
I have seen some with lots of heavy missiles. in that case I would say you are right, it would be worth it to sell those first. anyway thanks for the good vid! edit: I was only referring to the small fighters. I always send the bog ships to the shipyard. more profitsssss :)
When you mentioned Thanos I thought you were going to say, "kill half of the engineers"
Too bad you can't board the ship and fight it's crew yourself.
You are a true pirate ma dude ...... im subed to your faction
You dont need pilot for captured ship to sell him. just repair it and point him to shipyard and sell it remotly, pilot will be telepoty from shipyard to this ship. :)
I would stream tonight, but because of a blizzard raging outside, the power grid is a bit unstable and the stream could go offline 2 minutes after I start it. Guess I'll just do something else. :(
what else is there to do than pour hundreds of hours into X4?
I hope Egosoft figure out a better way to be an opportunistic privateer than to hack a faction standing. I would like to understand the position of a faction that is under fire. And maybe I can pick up on the fact that they don't have access to a particular resource which is required for their war efforts. Then I will know which shipping lanes to look for large freighters.
I don't like the "capture ship, then do symbolic gestures, then capture ship" because it feels like you're hacking an algorithm instead of enacting a part in a credible plot.
Nice tip about the Magpie, but I prefer the Osprey to the Cerberus. It carries 15 marines to the Cerberus 11. Too bad its one fugly ship.
But Cerberus carries 15 people, 1 cap, 14 marines. At least my Cerberus. There can be some variations, for example the Minotaur vanguard carries 11 people, while the raider variant carries 16.
Thank you for your great guide video!
Scale Plate are not the only pirates. There are 2 others, 1 of which you can actually improve relations with and buy ships from. I'll tip my HAT to you though on a great video!
HAT aren't pirates! They're my bestest friends!
Time to try it out!
for attacking capital ships, you can find some in neighboring opposing factions sectors... ex: it is possible to find larger HOP ships in PAR sector Pious Mists II. doing so will minimize how many enemies you get AND build up relations with the opposing faction. (PAR in the previous example) It is not necessarily reliable, as I don't think it happens frequently, but when it does, go ahead and have some fun. I believe a log message will show up if a function is making such a move though.
You can also find, scan and attack any SCA ships you find. no one will care for them and they tend to be alone, I stole 2 Pheonix and one Behemoth from them. :P A good area to find these guys is usually in the sectors around the player HQ, like nopileo's fortune and grand exchange. I've made most of my money pirating the pirates :P
got a quick question though, does the shield depletion technique work on cap ships as well? I've been losing lots of marines trying to board the behemot and pheonixes and I'd like to minimize that in the future
also is there a way to train marines before sending them to the slaughterhouse?
Also, hatikvah free league also have free market/black market. Not only SCA
If you go to a non claimed sector like Nopileus Fortune you can pick off mining ships and freighters without the police interfering
Perfect guide .... subed to your faction
Nice job. Super video. Is it still up to date? Something changed?
I've been away from this game for too long to realize if something changed. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say things are pretty much the same, since revamping an already established mechanic isn't common practice in games.
How about buying repair drone for each ship then park the ship and let it work???? I don't know how much they cost and I do realize that one would be very slow. But might be a plan if you have the time and credits.
That can work, but for some reason, a man in his underwear with a repair laser can fix a capital ship faster than an entire army of specialized drones. And he can do it better.
Can you do a video on getting started in x4?
Ive never played and I dont want to start on one of the older games.
X3 is still good though very similar since x4 is back to classic x3
super good video
Danke!
Great guide, thanks for sharing!
7:36 if you get out of your ship and use the suit's scanner, you have a higher chance to unlock the blueprint.
I like your guides.
When you say "they permanently turn hostile" you mean forever? you can never fix relation with them?
I actually fixed my standings with them a couple of times after they turned red, but it was harder because I had no access to missions. I had to eliminate xenon and criminals in their systems to grind enough rep for them to turn blue.
@@Halcylion I see. Yes, it's reasonable this way.
@@Halcylion Is there a reason to not just leave them an enemy?
How were you getting MK3 items so "early" in the game? I'm rep 20+ with some and only get a few MK3's.
nice video. and i put somthing heavy on the space bar too when reparing :))
I noticed that service crew will repair a heavily damaged ship far faster than a lightly damaged one. Taking down the last 5% in just a fighter against a destroyer can take forever because of this. On the flip side, repairing a ship from 90% takes forever and you should do it yourself.
Great video about the starter guide for Piracy, explains a lot of what to do. In the same vein as doing illegal things, how hard is it to set up an illegal drug business?
It depends where you put your stations. Spaceweed for example is legal in scalie territory.
@@Halcylion So, technically, you could produce it legally in scalie territory, and then try smuggling it to a territory where it is illegal, and make more money off it?
Moving those marines one at a time is the worst part of boarding. I switched over to only capturing ships I want to keep so I won't have to move them. :/
Excuse me sir, but what is the name of that ship you're flying at the start and how do I acquire one?
1:07 to 1:30 answers both of those questions. But just in case my pronunciation is not clear enough, I will repeat what I've said in those 23 seconds: The ship is named "Eclipse Vanguard", and you acquire it by reaching reputation 10 with the Argon faction.
@@Halcylion Tyvm
Nice stuff. I thought what if you hack security 1st on stations and then cargo? And also what if you board, sell the parts and if its a big ship like a constructor when you sell it, it will still be in space w\o the parts making it easier to board again? You are not alone with the whole HOP as potential "lend me some ships" ...they will be the first faction I'll try a sector take over..but I am far fro doing that at the mo. Anyway cool upload it seems that a HOP member disliked this upload looool.
I don't know about the security terminal, but you can definitely board a ship immediately after you sell it. But that feels too much like an exploit, and I've never tried that, so I can't 100% confirm that it works.
It took some time, but I did kill 5 HOP Destroyers while giving my new Nemesis a test drive. Even captured one. Also experimentally found a way to steal station modules schematics with 100% certainty.
Do tell
@@aaronhall7272 Actually pretty simple, though no one made a manual for that. I tried testing my EMP suit bombs on a HOP station I just stripped of it's defenses. They have to do some shit, right? (Like those seminars, lol).
So I got close to some module, shot an EMP (it stuck to the hull) and detonated it from a menu. 4 red hack nodes appeared, and after hacking all 4 I got the module schematics. Tried it 5 more times - got 5 new modules, including 3-E Dock, paranid Dome M and a few production modules. In all about 30mil worth. Sweet.
That said, stealing a module doesn't count as crime, but detonation itself triggers defense systems for a short while and hurts relations a bit. So I didn't test it on friendly stations yet. Also make sure there's no Def.Drones or patrol ships around, as they'll gladly one-tap you in your suit.
@@ЯБезымянный-о5ф I did the same, but with actual bombs, not EMP. It worked well.
@@Halcylion Good to know. The regular ones are cheaper. Yesterday I tried stealing the large construction dock from Argon Prime, but got a "Permanent subscription" instead. It appears possible to sabotage friendly stations without triggering drones. Station goes red on explosion but cools off in a few minutes if left alone.
just fyi, you can load up your ship with crew and or marines at a warf, no need to run around stations and hunt down individuals.
Yeah, you can do that, but I'm having more fun seeing the applicants up-close.
Well, if you want to cheese your game, sure. I would call it 'training mode' as there is no danger at all. But when you have the hang of it, dont follow this guide to be a shady business man who keeps the relation with everyone "at least at neutral"... be a pirate. Hated by everyone, be shot at first sight and living a very dangerous but profitable life.
Hide behind asteroids and wait for an oportunity to strike at an unsuspecting prey, strip them down of their weapons, make them plea for their life and steal their goods and tell everyone, if you survive, at your home station how the engineers peed themselfes.
Stay crunchy.
I suppose we're 2 different types of pirates. I prefer the term ''privateer'' myself, and I only use piracy to get a small loan of a million credits so I can start up my trade empire... for which you need friendly relations.
@@Halcylion A privateer attacks ships and/or steals cargo from other nations while working for a specific other nation. That means also that at least one nation does not like you and will attack you on sight usually.
Unless the relations between the nation you work with and the one you attack with is stable and/or friendly. Then you would be a classical pirate.
Again: Its okay if you cheese games to have fun, especially when you have nearly no time to play with a challenge.
Yet, try all that without cheesing and/or exploit the game mechanics. Challenge could be worth it a lot more than just getting your first million.
Which takes usually just a few minutes anyway without mods.
Stay crunchy.
@@fiesesalien Fair enough. On my second playthrough (where I focused more on trade) I ignored piracy altogether, attacking only SCA ships and taking their stuff for a quick buck. HOP space was too profitable to go to war with them.
Also, perhaps I should "stay crunchy" and start doing some crunches for my abs. :D
@@Halcylion Ha ^^ righto. But, if I missed to say it: Never be discouraged doing something thats fun to you and hurting no one :)
Lets enjoy x4 foundation and yes, stay crunchy hehe
@@Halcylion "stay crunchy" is an incredible song by Ronald Jenkees
Highly reccomended!
God dang it so much information, and I play paradox games xd
Can I keep and use the ships I steal ?
of course.
You dont even have to dock at the shipyard to sell ships without captain. just mark them on the map, rightclick on the shipyard and sell.
I just want a good space sim like Tachyon The Fringe or Independence War 2. I don't want to build ships or build an empire. Can I do that in this game? Oh yeah.. and can I use a regular flight joystick like a Logitech Wingman Attack 3?
Elite Dangerous may suit you better if you don't like building stuff. The X series was always more focused on its trade system and empire building than flying around in an overpowered ship pew pewing.
As for the second question, I think it has full joystick support.
@@Halcylion I want the trading in a game unlike the two I mentioned. Just not the empire building. Best space sim with an economy I ever played was Hard War. If you've never played it, your missing out. The game can be had for free. Just look up Capt Zedo Hard war. So I'm looking for a space sim with trading that is single player. Elite Dangerous won't do. Since there is so much hype that you can play like you want to in X4 I figured I could just ignore the stuff I didn't want to deal with but i'm double checking if I can really play like that because it's a huge download.
@@DivergentDroid Well, you don't HAVE to build anything, if you don't want to. You can simply purchase ships and get them to do automatic trading for you, or you can ignore that aspect altogether and do trade runs yourself, if that's what you want to do. Or maybe you want to be a pirate, in which case you can buy everything for cheap, build a stockpile in some freighters, cripple the entire economy of a faction, and sell them your stockpile for 500% price mark-up.
You don't care about the money? Well, you can STEAL ships and build your fleet that way.
There's a lot of options for you in X4, and the most overlooked option is simply ignoring every option you have.
@@Halcylion I see.. cool. Then it looks like it's worth trying out. Thanks.
@@Halcylion Hey I got the game. I may have to sub to you to watch some tutorials. The game tutorial Sucks. It keeps showing me a symbol for the keys I need but doesn't tell me what those keys actually are. I don't know what those symbols mean, they are not printed on my keyboard. The devs should have realized not everyone would know all those symbols.
how do you switch weapons?
You have a weapon group if you hit enter and select ship. Tick the boxes that you want on 1 would be the first column
1:46 can i join xenon this way?
The Xenon are a group of genocidal AIs hell bent on erasing all organic life from the universe. You cannot join the xenon, but you can advance their cause by murdering the entire system and then flying your own ship into a black hole...
@@Halcylion guess i'm down with that
whats your system specs?
GPU: GeForce GTX 970
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Damn, how did you get the game to run like fluid? The animation and graphics look perfect. I am running a RTX2060 and still cant get it to run like that.
@@darkfalconsteele170 Luck, I guess. I didn't do anything special to make it run smoothly. Either luck, or some recent update must have made the game run poorly.
Game looks cool
Wonder why it's has low reviews
Dude I took captured osprey n gorgon in the starter ship. N took down L n XL ships.
Eyy lads, I just released 2 trade guides for Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord. Click the links for profitsss: ruclips.net/video/JfuW7jXf1ww/видео.html ; ruclips.net/video/Scynk5sNm_w/видео.html
just do a repair/refit process and fill up on crew members instantly. You don't need to run around.
good guide!!
Do what you want, 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
Yar har, fiddle di dee
Being a pirate is all right with me
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
Yo Ho, ahoy and avast
Being a pirate is really badass!
Hang the black flag at the end of the mast!
You are a pirate!
You are a pirate! - Yay!
I have to sell the captured ships, because they are not working turrets
Hooly order and Paranids are actually my favourite factions. Beatufull and powerfull ships. But Argon have better weaponry.
LeighT i love my odysseus
@@illusiveman1613 oh yes, i loved that thip at X3. I don't have it yet in X4, more focused on station building so far :)
Wow thanks
Now this is the definition of "Overly edited game tutorial"!
Go to the Void, hunt down crystals. Sell crystals and buy a plot in Argon Prime right next to the highway. Then, find more crystals. Sell crystals and start building a factory that will eventually produce ship components. The factory that I've made produces millions of credits every day. I also built another ship component factory in Nopileos' Fortune and it produces about two thirds the credits that the factory in Argon Prime does. But at least the property was free and you can put it close to the four available jump gates. I managed to acquire a little over 1.5 billion credits within 6 days. SETA is kinda required of course. In just under 8 hours with SETA on, my Argon Prime factory had about 550 million credits while the one in Nopileos' Fortune had roughly 350 million credits.
A video about capturing and boarding in which he doesn’t capture and board.
I don't know about stealing ships, reselling them to same faction, and rebuilding relations with the faction you are pirating ships from. It doesn't sound realistic. If I was playing as a pirate I would probably just let it drop to -10, steal the ships and sell them to a different faction.
It's not realistic, but it works. Anyway, in my second playthrough, I did almost no piracy and stayed on friendly terms with all the factions, to prevent them from attacking my ships and stations.
I feel like buying this game now... Okay, as soon as there is a good rebate on it. I love these kind of games, I just usually don't have much time to play a lot. But under promotion, I see myself enjoying this game from time to time. Also, I might just wait until mod support is available.
this looks like some dark arts type stuff, be wary ya'll.
what happens when people talk bad things?
Can't really control what people say on the internet, so the best thing is either to ignore them or come up with a witty reply.
you can freaking sell ships from a distance you dont even have to be in the same system.
Yeah, I never say you can't. But if you want to maximize your profit by selling the modules, ammunition and deployables first, your ship has to physically travel to one of the 3 types of stations I've listed in order to be stripped of its modules. Then you sell it wherever, instantly. And I never said that you absolutely have to fly the ship there yourself.
SCA have ships. They are neutral for everyone.
Am like 150 hours played into the game, 3billions~ worth in assets, same in my wallet, so many stations that it became tedious to manage them all...and yet I have NEVER EVER seen any crew member (should it be service or marines) leveling up higher than 1 star at any given skill ahah how the hell did you level your crew members xD?... Aside from comanders that you get when buying ships who from time to time can get good rolls on their skill sheet.
I didn't do anything special. I saw some of them just increased their skills, especially the captains of my ships. As for my marines, I noticed their boarding skill increases the more they survive confrontations. And the service crewmen were hired from capital ships before the 1.3 patch.
Halcylion oooh I see. I read about hiring crew from allied cap ships flying around hehe, good times but gone =p.
@@jakewilferd6093 Yeah hehe. Was a bot the same 'mess' in Rebirth for instance.
You can train service crew by attacking your own ships and then letting them repair the ship up. Pilots just gain levels from completing orders and combat (combat is much quicker) and marines improve from combat. Station managers...not sure about them. Also keep in mind that they only gain a star every 3 levels. there are 15 total levels. So they may be improving and you may not be noticing it because you don't see new stars. You can see you total personal and skill level in the empire overview window and you can see that over your whole empire your skills levels should be leveling a lot more than you realize.
@@dennislp3 i like that ahah, sooo x logic :p
Watching your guide made me finally understand why I could not get into X4 even though I tried many times. And believe me I really tried. I consider myself a space game fan, most of my steam games are either scifi or spacesim or 4x. I played a bunch of classic space games like Freespace, Freelancer, Elite,... so I'm not new to the genre, but I could not stomach X4. The game is made overly complicated with mundane tasks that was there just to fuck with the player and make things frustratingly harder to complete. The whole process of capture the ship are nothing but you sit in the cockpit and click through a bunch of menus before and after. Don't get me wrong you got a lot of knowledge of the game to be able to pull this off, and I respect that but what's the point of the whole simulation, ship models and whatnot if 80% of the game is sit in a chair and click through windows after windows? Elite Dangerous somewhat make this same mistake but atleast their ships are fun to fly, for X4 I can't really say the same. X4 try to be a alot of things but ultimately fail at every aspect. If I want space spreadsheet I'll play Eve, If I want to be space trucker there's Elite, if I want to be a combat pilot there's a whole bunch of other space games with far more superior fly model than X4. Hell even a 2D game like Star Sector is more enjoyable than this game
I'm glad this guide helped you with something at least. :)
When you say 4x games, do you mean something like Endless Space 2?
@@Halcylion yeah, kindof, although I never played ES2 myself. I played Stellaris, sin of the solar empire and the original Master of Orion
When does this add finnish i hate add's
*_Somalia wants to: know your location_*
Wow boarding really sucks
Hey. was going to sub but yr just too greedy with the ads mate. 1 at the beginning = I'm cool with. Several throughout 1 video? come now?
2 ads in the middle of a 30 minute video that I worked on for a week is greedy? Click any of laazrgaming's videos, pause it, look at the ads, and then return here and talk to me about greed.
@@Halcylion Don't worry mate, kids this days wants all for free and they don't appreciate the work that you and other content makers face and time involved making this videos. Thank you for your time making this tutorial and I can't wait for more stuff from you, cheers :)
@Dave Brace dude, happy with people working for free for you enough? Pull your head out of your "box" and dig around, there are ways not to see ads :P Jeeeez kids this days....
flight mechanics look so poopie
Compared to a game like Elite Dangerous, yes, they do indeed look simplistic, but keep in mind that the X series is less about the Flight Simulation, and more about the economy simulation, and the empire building aspect.
game needs an overhaul to make it worth playing.
This game is full of bugs... so many time wasted on bugs... good i did not pay for this...
>5 years ago
ze fuk utube recommend me outdated videyos blyat ffs suka
The algorithm works in mysterious ways. Also, the video isn't really outdated, I'm pretty sure the mechanics of piracy in X4 work the same way today as they did 5 years ago. :)
@@Halcylion ackshully ye, the ai still suck deep. devs of dis game are gad demn degenerados.
*How to Somalia - starter guide*
kek