This overview was INCREDIBLY useful! THANK you for taking the time to "oversimplifying" this down to the core concepts. It all makes so much more sense to me now, and I feel like I can actually play around with my fleets and have an idea of what they're doing! 😄
I just picked up the game on sale a couple weeks ago. It's incredibly addictive, and the tutorials are pretty good, but there's a LOT to unpack that isn't covered. This helped a lot, thanks!
My new favorite use of mimic is for patrol fleets. Usually when a pirate attacks a trader, the patrolling fleet is in the other end of the sector. Having one small feet (usually a corvette and two fighters subordinates) and two similar ones with mimic makes them fly in different positions of the sector and when one pirate shows it's nose, there is a big chance one is close to get there and engage while the other two are in route to join. And if trade routes change, you just change the commander's orders
The thing I like about this video is that it isn't "this is the fleet composition. These are the orders you give them. That's the best way to do it." Instead, it gives us the tools to make our own decisions that match oir playstyles. In my current save, I'm playing as a Terran merchant who only uses Terran ships, so if a fleet comp calls for Paranid ships, I'd be outta luck.
Oh my god, i have 350h on X4 and i NEVER figured these out, thank you, Captain Snuggles, thank you for this video and an example you provided. You just made this fan of three eyed wierdos so happy.
Excellent video bro, great work! Especially the "choose your behavior depend on range and proactive/reactive-ness". Never learned that from other videos. And man, still doing X4 videos in 9/2024? Keep on keeping on!!
This video inspired me to setup small fleets to defend my station L miners. I'm setting up squads of one nemesis vanguard with, argon flak turrets and bolt repeaters for the main guns, set to intercept for the miner. The nemesii are followed by a pair of Theseus vanguard fighters, with one mass driver and two bolt repeaters each set to defend. Turns out mass drivers work great at the hands of the AI. My efficiency has gone up greatly as they take care of the Kha'ak before they can make my miners flee too far.
Snuggles using Terran ships for a video??? *Emperor Palpatine voice: Good... Gooood.... let the Xenon hate flow through you! :P Good video- I had to go looking around the forums to find out what the "fleet roles" actually meant.
One tip: Always start with dock, storage and pier. That way, if it's any M/L miner subordinates can start collecting while the station is being built (as long as you set buy orders)
Your videos are great good job 3 years too late for me but I'm still gonna watch him 3000 hours in so, Although that said I just learned how to use my Carrier properly what a difference now crank and carries out
I'm not like you, I don't steal ships, I only borrow them. Hence my fleets usually consist of whatever I've borrowed from the other factions. They're free to ask for their ships back at any point, but nobody ever has, so I guess they're ok with this?
I once jokingly asked them wether or not they would want to buy back the borrowed ships. . .and they actually gave me money for it! Guess I´m a professional comedian now.
Thank you. Till now I have kept to single L miners of each resource per sector. I know so little about sector resources per ship etc. I only know an undefended M miner is just a sitting duck. I shall go steal everyone else's M miners, corvettes, and fighters and add them to each of my L miners, mwahaha. Thank you.
Good luck! Fair warning, my little demonstration fleet doesn't work as well in big systems where the resources are more spread out. It's still decent, but one or two M miners will wander out of escort range pretty regularly.
For military ships you're going to be moving around, try to match all non docked ship's speeds. Your fleet will move in formation and they'll go at the speed of your slowest ship.
Did not know about the bombard mission. When bombarding large and XL ships do they take out the turrets and engines first? Is bombard a tool for capturing ships at all or just destroying them. What happened to the attack shields or engines command? I can't find them anymore.
Bombard is only for killing; you can't control what they target on the enemy ship. You'll need Attack wings to disable targets. Attack Surface Elements is a sub-menu in the standard right-click target menu, or you can check the "shoot to disable" box under the attack order in your lead ship's behavior tab.
i bingewatched/listened all your guides n stuff today in the gym. getting back into the game. last time i played was early 2023 some 350 hours. trying to get a split only game going. any tips? for split fleets and ships? i like support and subscribe to all the stuff you do so far :)
Under AI control, Split fighters are their strongest asset. Most people prefer the Chimera, but you can't really go wrong with any of them, except maybe the Asp Raider (too squishy). The AI is very bad at flying the Rattlesnake, and it's not very good with the Dragon either, but those are both great player ships, as is the Cobra. Also, their unique weapons are pretty great, which gives their fighters an extra boost. For most people, the Split end-game is a Raptor filled with a billion Chimeras. The Raptor is badass but is extremely slow to recover its fighters, so it does best with setups that keep the fighters launched most of the time, especially Position Defense. Before they have the funds for a Raptor, I think quite a few people use a Monitor as sort of a pseudo-carrier. Just as an example, you might have a Monitor with some Cobras on Intercept, with a couple of fighters escorting each Cobra, a dozen or so Chimeras on Bombard, and a couple of Tuatara couriers keeping the Monitor stocked with supplies.
Just started a terran play through. Rushed hatikva gate and just as i put down 100mk2 laser turrets 2k’s and an I come through that was a hour wasted😂😂😢
Follow is the fleet command I use most! But most of my fleets are built for War Missions asking me to deliver a fleet to a certain location. I don't do a whole lot of shooting. Most of my other fleets are just a captured pirate L ship escorting an L mining ship.
I just need to know how to get the destroyers in my fleet to NOT rush K’s and instead stay in range for main batteries and out of range of the K’s. Is that so f’ing hard? Apparently it is.
Not possible in 7.1 Hotfix 3, unfortunately. The initial clash is always a brawl due to the way approach vectors have changed for both destroyers and Xenon XL capitals. After the opening brawl, destroyers will reposition to their standard firing lines. Mobile destroyers are much more likely to survive to that point. If you brought Phoenixes and Rays, you're probably fine. If you brought Osakas and Syns, sorry for your loss. More on this in my next X4 video.
Well fleet composition also depends on which faction you use, are you a player that goes for the best ship at a task or do you prefer going for a specific faction? Do oyu prefer your fleets to be thematic or more lore oriented? Me, i want to have at least one fleet with all ships of one faction, usually Split, sometimes Terran or Argon. In my current playthrough i want to build at least one Teladi fleet, because i can.
With the standard patrol command, the escorts would likely end up too far from the miners to be useful. Defend Position would work, you'd just need to have the escorts in a separate fleet, and you'd need to periodically adjust their defense area to match the miners' movements. You can also manually set up a patrol with repeat orders. Plenty of ways to achieve the same thing; the setup I used was just an example.
Patrol command is useful when you have enough ships to cover the whole sector. From my experience it's a carrier + 20-30 (usually heavy) fighters. When given a patrol command, your fleet will patrol the whole sector area and engage all enemy targets in it. Patrol is great when you have enough forces to do a law enforcement in a whole sector, but it'll fail in case of limited numbers, seen in provided example
@@hlriiiviiiv sector patrol seems to be working better now. Instead of making one fleet with several ships, break it down in two or three smaller squadrons. Set one to patrol and the other two to mimic. The three of them will patrol in different areas and there is a bigger chance one in closer to the pirate to engage while the other two run to join. Be sure to pick and mod ships that end up with similar speeds. A fleet will always go as fast as it's slowest ship
From many of the video's i've watched now it would seem that mods fix a lot of the issues the game devs left in the game I guess I shouldin't be pursuing acheivements so much since the game itself is quit frustrating on how little money i seem to be getting and how i'm having issues gaining my first ship that i can survive some of the missions in a little annoying but I still have much to learn i'm sure once i understand the game more that this will go from a issue and frustration now to something I can easily overcome in the future and it will have little to no impact on the game beyond me wishing the game was slightly more difficult. I my only concern is if i use mods and learn the game with them to make things more streamlined and make more sense will it taint the base game for me.
I've been trying to get a scrap station to work, it's just not making anything. It's in a system the xenon are constantly attacking, importing energy cells from my other stations and i have 2 tugs that 99% of the time do nothing.
Make sure it's set to only buy raw materials from your own faction. Each scrap processor module can only accept one input at a time, and if you allow other races to deliver to it, that one slot will often get reserved by an NPC Manticore on the other side of the universe, blocking your production until it finally arrives and makes the delivery. I also like to use repeat orders for my tugs instead of assigning them to the station. Pick up scrap -> fly to a safe location -> deliver scrap.
They only look for supplies within a certain range, which is set by either their captain's skill or the aux ship captain's skill. I've heard some people say the former, some the latter. Haven't tested it myself.
@@liesdamnlies3372 If the pilot has less than one full star, I do believe they're restricted to the same sector the aux ship is in (not 100% positive). If they're not even finding trades within that sector, the required materials are available there, and you've told the aux ship to "Supply Fleet" and/or "Get Supplies", then I'm out of ideas.
No idea if this will get through, tubey is bad at this, but it is easily you refuse to let this post go up too, under dev pressure. Talk about Wingmen. This is a basic start of fleets: a few AI ships to protect you or attack with you so as to split up the dogpile on you. It gives you wingmen commands to deal with too, so those are a factor to consider. It can be a pity that you can't make a genuine convoy, though, and there's no non-intrusive way to go at the speed of the slowest member, so you will inevitably spread apart unless you have the EXACT SAME ship (so no engineering either). That gets you to a problem early on, too: the AI is not good, lets just put it at that. They go silly places because the script run is not looking holistically, it requires a non-fixated real human mind to look at the picture. Real humans still get target fixated, though. However, it is what you may start with a "fleet" for: just as bullet sponges as you do 90% of the actual work. Like Star Wars (original) X wing game. When it comes to fleet construction and balance, the problem is that the "right balance" depends on the task AND the fleet you have. Unless you Zerg Rush, because going 100 to 1 against the enemy will always win and win quickly enough that you probably won't lose anything. But it is hardly balance. A fleet based around an Asgard is differently balanced to a fleet based around a Phoenix or Zeus, and different again when based around a Raptor. If your M class military is based on Peregrines or Jians, what "works well" changes. And the AI doing a dumb thing will cause you many headaches, leading to many eschewing fleets until they can zerg rush at least 2 or 3 to 1, because the AI doing a silly means less when you are winning via overwhelming power. And all this changes based on bugfixes. I believe almost all, if not all, of the "turrets are more accurate" is purely the Xenon fire rate is higher, meaning more hits on target. Doesn't help non-Xenons, though. But if actual changes, such as "Bombard" or standing off to launch torpedoes at capital ships, happens, then what is "balanced" changes again, and what used to be your favourite fleet will stop working or work differently. There's a problem with balance here, too. It doesn't matter if it is close, because not being close means there is a best in class that is not the same race ship as a different ship best in class, which the player can take advantage of, fit Argon Pulse Turrets, Paranid Large Plasmas, Split Flak so that you get the best turn rate for pulse, longest range for plasmas and highest damage (but shorter range) from flaks, and then All-Round XL engines from Teladi, etc. all mixed up to get "best in class" hybrids. But no race ought to be miles ahead. The recent fix to increase Teladi M class freighter carry weight puts them in a close second place for that, rather than last that they used to have. But rather than be a close last place for small fighters, Argon small fighters occupy that space, and that leaves them overall badly placed, unable to carry much, slow to move, but also the results of building fighters is lackluster at best, terrible at worst. This means if you want a carrier group, you will likely go mostly Paranid but not their carrier. This is not good if the Paranid carrier is a bad carrier, but "acceptable" if overall it's decent to do pure-Paranid, but that is unacceptable if the pure Paranid is so clearly ahead of, say, pure Argon that you would never choose Argon for the poor fighters. These are things that designers at Egosoft have to worry about. What players of the game have to worry about is what they want to do with the fleet(s). Which may be easier if there is a clear winner than if it is a game of better-at-some-worse-at-others in each ship. If the Paranids are better militarily, then they ought to be poor civilians, because overall they are not in a superior position. The Teladi should be better civilians but poor military. The Argon should be "the baseline", average military, average traders. You then put the Split in that paradigm, but moulded to what "lore" you decide is required to follow, e.g. all their stuff, even the traders, are bristling with guns, making the traders expensive or small cargo (or just plain bad fighters) as a "balance", so a Player might start off in a Tuatara as it is able to fight and trade, but is not as good at the job as a specialist.
The "Zerg rush" is a functional but outdated fleet doctrine. Modern fleets can punch well above their weight if set up correctly. As you said, the game has changed over the years, and there is a vocal group of players who have declined to change with it. My guides aren't for them, they're for people wanting to learn more about modern X4. Can you describe what you mean by "dev pressure"?
By that logic, nothing in X4 matters. Military decisions don't matter because you can bypass them with economy, and economic decisions don't matter because you can bypass them with cheese. If that's your mindset, why play at all? Serious question. I've seen several jaded old nihilists in my comments and I'm trying to understand how y'all think.
Yo, for context I mainly roleplay as terran loyalist so the ships and equipment reflect this choice. 1x Carrier (1) -> Fleet Commander -Tokyo 1x Auxiliary (1) -> Supply Fleet -Honshu 4x Destroyer Wing (8) -> Bombard / Point Defence (Mostly pulse loadouts for Osakas or lasers for Syns, albeit I mostly only use Osakas for this fleets role) -1x Osaka / Syn -> Wing Commander --1x Osaka / Syn -> Attack 12x Fighter / Heavy Fighter Squadron (36) -> Intercept / Point Defence (Assigend as 2 groups of 6 to separate groups under the carrier, I prefer the new Cutlass with electromagnetic guns but Takoba/Gladius are fine with the pulse mk2's for accuracy and range, if going for the latter I go for 18 of each in the two groups or just 36 Cutlasses) -1x Cutlass / Takoba / Gladius -> Sqn Commander --2x Cutlass / Takoba / Gladius -> Attack 2x Frigate Engineering Wing (6) -> Defend (Mine / Laser Tower deployment and pod rescue, as tanky as I can have them and with minimal crew so they can fit a lot of escape pods) -1x Falx - Wing Commander --2x Cutlass / Takoba / Gladius -> Defend Now for some explanation, the main role of this fleet is to gatecamp key areas that are under high Xenon pressure while suffering low attrition in return and I'm sure it works against most fleets in this scenario. Personally I play with the modded xenon to make them more dangerous and numerous so you can do with 2-3 destroyer wings if unmodded. The fleet doesn't do very well when attacking into xenon strongholds because of the high attrition on fighters, I prefer to use a different fleet consisting out 4-8 syn wings anchored on an Asgard if I have them available. For specific orders, I have both fighter squadrons and destroyer wings on point defence centered around the gate in question with the Carrier and Aux positioned further away, but within reach of the point defence bubbles. This gives 0 reaction time for hostiles jumping in and usually results in no casualties on my side, if out of system. This comp probably works with most races, although you'll probably want some bombard specific fighters that the terrans don't have access to. Hope it helps!
The real challenge is to make fleets that work both OOS and IS. Pack a fleet with heavy fighters with blast mortars and OOS will melt everything, DPS is all that natter. But if you pass close to it while they are in battle and and kiss your ships goodbye
![X4 Oversimplified: Minor Guide to the Major Factions [New & Improved!]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0RlN855SxeM/mqdefault.jpg)
My favourite fleet is two number 9s, a number 9 large, a number 6 with extra dip, a number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese, and a large soda
This overview was INCREDIBLY useful! THANK you for taking the time to "oversimplifying" this down to the core concepts. It all makes so much more sense to me now, and I feel like I can actually play around with my fleets and have an idea of what they're doing! 😄
I just picked up the game on sale a couple weeks ago. It's incredibly addictive, and the tutorials are pretty good, but there's a LOT to unpack that isn't covered. This helped a lot, thanks!
My new favorite use of mimic is for patrol fleets. Usually when a pirate attacks a trader, the patrolling fleet is in the other end of the sector. Having one small feet (usually a corvette and two fighters subordinates) and two similar ones with mimic makes them fly in different positions of the sector and when one pirate shows it's nose, there is a big chance one is close to get there and engage while the other two are in route to join. And if trade routes change, you just change the commander's orders
The thing I like about this video is that it isn't "this is the fleet composition. These are the orders you give them. That's the best way to do it."
Instead, it gives us the tools to make our own decisions that match oir playstyles. In my current save, I'm playing as a Terran merchant who only uses Terran ships, so if a fleet comp calls for Paranid ships, I'd be outta luck.
Oh my god, i have 350h on X4 and i NEVER figured these out, thank you, Captain Snuggles, thank you for this video and an example you provided. You just made this fan of three eyed wierdos so happy.
Excellent video bro, great work! Especially the "choose your behavior depend on range and proactive/reactive-ness". Never learned that from other videos.
And man, still doing X4 videos in 9/2024? Keep on keeping on!!
finally fleet videos, very nice
Wohoo, a new Video from Snuggles?
Drop everything and watch...
That’s “Captain” Snuggles to you space marine
@@hlriiiviiiv We don't mention ranks whithin the Commandos soldier!
This video inspired me to setup small fleets to defend my station L miners. I'm setting up squads of one nemesis vanguard with, argon flak turrets and bolt repeaters for the main guns, set to intercept for the miner. The nemesii are followed by a pair of Theseus vanguard fighters, with one mass driver and two bolt repeaters each set to defend. Turns out mass drivers work great at the hands of the AI.
My efficiency has gone up greatly as they take care of the Kha'ak before they can make my miners flee too far.
Snuggles using Terran ships for a video??? *Emperor Palpatine voice: Good... Gooood.... let the Xenon hate flow through you! :P
Good video- I had to go looking around the forums to find out what the "fleet roles" actually meant.
Great video!
Please consider doing a stations construction episode in the future 🙏
I'm considering it. There are a lot of really good station guides out there already, but maybe there's room for an oversimplified one as well.
One tip: Always start with dock, storage and pier. That way, if it's any M/L miner subordinates can start collecting while the station is being built (as long as you set buy orders)
Thanks for the vid dude. That'll help new players a lot :)
My fav fleet is 10 Elite Vanguards.
Gamebreakingly OP
One could say it's elite
How do the Xenon contend with you? Truly menacing fleet composition!
@@Smooshmouf they just say "K" and tap out
Great video, thanks! 😃
Your videos are great good job 3 years too late for me but I'm still gonna watch him 3000 hours in so, Although that said I just learned how to use my Carrier properly what a difference now crank and carries out
Love your content, thank you.
Excellent Video Mate!!!
I'm not like you, I don't steal ships, I only borrow them. Hence my fleets usually consist of whatever I've borrowed from the other factions. They're free to ask for their ships back at any point, but nobody ever has, so I guess they're ok with this?
I once jokingly asked them wether or not they would want to buy back the borrowed ships. . .and they actually gave me money for it! Guess I´m a professional comedian now.
Thank you. Till now I have kept to single L miners of each resource per sector. I know so little about sector resources per ship etc. I only know an undefended M miner is just a sitting duck. I shall go steal everyone else's M miners, corvettes, and fighters and add them to each of my L miners, mwahaha. Thank you.
Good luck! Fair warning, my little demonstration fleet doesn't work as well in big systems where the resources are more spread out. It's still decent, but one or two M miners will wander out of escort range pretty regularly.
@@CptSnuggles07 thank you! Well noted.
Aye the vid I needed
For military ships you're going to be moving around, try to match all non docked ship's speeds. Your fleet will move in formation and they'll go at the speed of your slowest ship.
Ah, bombard. People forget that before shore bombardment became a thing, there was ship-to-ship bombardment!
Did not know about the bombard mission. When bombarding large and XL ships do they take out the turrets and engines first? Is bombard a tool for capturing ships at all or just destroying them. What happened to the attack shields or engines command? I can't find them anymore.
Bombard is only for killing; you can't control what they target on the enemy ship. You'll need Attack wings to disable targets. Attack Surface Elements is a sub-menu in the standard right-click target menu, or you can check the "shoot to disable" box under the attack order in your lead ship's behavior tab.
i bingewatched/listened all your guides n stuff today in the gym. getting back into the game. last time i played was early 2023 some 350 hours. trying to get a split only game going. any tips? for split fleets and ships?
i like support and subscribe to all the stuff you do so far :)
Under AI control, Split fighters are their strongest asset. Most people prefer the Chimera, but you can't really go wrong with any of them, except maybe the Asp Raider (too squishy). The AI is very bad at flying the Rattlesnake, and it's not very good with the Dragon either, but those are both great player ships, as is the Cobra. Also, their unique weapons are pretty great, which gives their fighters an extra boost.
For most people, the Split end-game is a Raptor filled with a billion Chimeras. The Raptor is badass but is extremely slow to recover its fighters, so it does best with setups that keep the fighters launched most of the time, especially Position Defense. Before they have the funds for a Raptor, I think quite a few people use a Monitor as sort of a pseudo-carrier. Just as an example, you might have a Monitor with some Cobras on Intercept, with a couple of fighters escorting each Cobra, a dozen or so Chimeras on Bombard, and a couple of Tuatara couriers keeping the Monitor stocked with supplies.
Thanks, guy. :)
👍
Just started a terran play through. Rushed hatikva gate and just as i put down 100mk2 laser turrets 2k’s and an I come through that was a hour wasted😂😂😢
I wish they would fix that bug where you click a formation and nothing happens....gotta click twice!
Follow is the fleet command I use most! But most of my fleets are built for War Missions asking me to deliver a fleet to a certain location. I don't do a whole lot of shooting. Most of my other fleets are just a captured pirate L ship escorting an L mining ship.
I just need to know how to get the destroyers in my fleet to NOT rush K’s and instead stay in range for main batteries and out of range of the K’s. Is that so f’ing hard? Apparently it is.
Not possible in 7.1 Hotfix 3, unfortunately. The initial clash is always a brawl due to the way approach vectors have changed for both destroyers and Xenon XL capitals. After the opening brawl, destroyers will reposition to their standard firing lines. Mobile destroyers are much more likely to survive to that point. If you brought Phoenixes and Rays, you're probably fine. If you brought Osakas and Syns, sorry for your loss. More on this in my next X4 video.
Well fleet composition also depends on which faction you use, are you a player that goes for the best ship at a task or do you prefer going for a specific faction?
Do oyu prefer your fleets to be thematic or more lore oriented? Me, i want to have at least one fleet with all ships of one faction, usually Split, sometimes Terran or Argon.
In my current playthrough i want to build at least one Teladi fleet, because i can.
What about patrol centered in the auto mine circumference? Would that cover both the large and the medium miners?
WTB defend position for all fleets
With the standard patrol command, the escorts would likely end up too far from the miners to be useful. Defend Position would work, you'd just need to have the escorts in a separate fleet, and you'd need to periodically adjust their defense area to match the miners' movements. You can also manually set up a patrol with repeat orders. Plenty of ways to achieve the same thing; the setup I used was just an example.
Patrol command is useful when you have enough ships to cover the whole sector. From my experience it's a carrier + 20-30 (usually heavy) fighters. When given a patrol command, your fleet will patrol the whole sector area and engage all enemy targets in it. Patrol is great when you have enough forces to do a law enforcement in a whole sector, but it'll fail in case of limited numbers, seen in provided example
@@hlriiiviiiv sector patrol seems to be working better now. Instead of making one fleet with several ships, break it down in two or three smaller squadrons. Set one to patrol and the other two to mimic. The three of them will patrol in different areas and there is a bigger chance one in closer to the pirate to engage while the other two run to join. Be sure to pick and mod ships that end up with similar speeds. A fleet will always go as fast as it's slowest ship
From many of the video's i've watched now it would seem that mods fix a lot of the issues the game devs left in the game I guess I shouldin't be pursuing acheivements so much since the game itself is quit frustrating on how little money i seem to be getting and how i'm having issues gaining my first ship that i can survive some of the missions in a little annoying but I still have much to learn i'm sure once i understand the game more that this will go from a issue and frustration now to something I can easily overcome in the future and it will have little to no impact on the game beyond me wishing the game was slightly more difficult. I my only concern is if i use mods and learn the game with them to make things more streamlined and make more sense will it taint the base game for me.
I've been trying to get a scrap station to work, it's just not making anything.
It's in a system the xenon are constantly attacking, importing energy cells from my other stations and i have 2 tugs that 99% of the time do nothing.
Make sure it's set to only buy raw materials from your own faction. Each scrap processor module can only accept one input at a time, and if you allow other races to deliver to it, that one slot will often get reserved by an NPC Manticore on the other side of the universe, blocking your production until it finally arrives and makes the delivery. I also like to use repeat orders for my tugs instead of assigning them to the station. Pick up scrap -> fly to a safe location -> deliver scrap.
imm bussing
Captain Snuggles seems counterintuitive. I have not changed my Captain default. How about that? Captain Default.
Man I just wanna know why my freighters set to trade for (my auxiliary ship) commander just sit around complaining there’s nothing to do. :(
They only look for supplies within a certain range, which is set by either their captain's skill or the aux ship captain's skill. I've heard some people say the former, some the latter. Haven't tested it myself.
@@CptSnuggles07 Well that range must be smaller than a sector. O.o
@@liesdamnlies3372 If the pilot has less than one full star, I do believe they're restricted to the same sector the aux ship is in (not 100% positive). If they're not even finding trades within that sector, the required materials are available there, and you've told the aux ship to "Supply Fleet" and/or "Get Supplies", then I'm out of ideas.
What mods if any do you use?
None. This kind of guide wouldn't mean much if my game were modded. Even when just playing for fun, I haven't felt the need for mods in several years.
My favourite fleet is me
i though bombard was too attack stations since forever ty
No idea if this will get through, tubey is bad at this, but it is easily you refuse to let this post go up too, under dev pressure.
Talk about Wingmen. This is a basic start of fleets: a few AI ships to protect you or attack with you so as to split up the dogpile on you. It gives you wingmen commands to deal with too, so those are a factor to consider. It can be a pity that you can't make a genuine convoy, though, and there's no non-intrusive way to go at the speed of the slowest member, so you will inevitably spread apart unless you have the EXACT SAME ship (so no engineering either).
That gets you to a problem early on, too: the AI is not good, lets just put it at that. They go silly places because the script run is not looking holistically, it requires a non-fixated real human mind to look at the picture. Real humans still get target fixated, though.
However, it is what you may start with a "fleet" for: just as bullet sponges as you do 90% of the actual work. Like Star Wars (original) X wing game.
When it comes to fleet construction and balance, the problem is that the "right balance" depends on the task AND the fleet you have. Unless you Zerg Rush, because going 100 to 1 against the enemy will always win and win quickly enough that you probably won't lose anything. But it is hardly balance. A fleet based around an Asgard is differently balanced to a fleet based around a Phoenix or Zeus, and different again when based around a Raptor. If your M class military is based on Peregrines or Jians, what "works well" changes. And the AI doing a dumb thing will cause you many headaches, leading to many eschewing fleets until they can zerg rush at least 2 or 3 to 1, because the AI doing a silly means less when you are winning via overwhelming power.
And all this changes based on bugfixes. I believe almost all, if not all, of the "turrets are more accurate" is purely the Xenon fire rate is higher, meaning more hits on target. Doesn't help non-Xenons, though. But if actual changes, such as "Bombard" or standing off to launch torpedoes at capital ships, happens, then what is "balanced" changes again, and what used to be your favourite fleet will stop working or work differently.
There's a problem with balance here, too. It doesn't matter if it is close, because not being close means there is a best in class that is not the same race ship as a different ship best in class, which the player can take advantage of, fit Argon Pulse Turrets, Paranid Large Plasmas, Split Flak so that you get the best turn rate for pulse, longest range for plasmas and highest damage (but shorter range) from flaks, and then All-Round XL engines from Teladi, etc. all mixed up to get "best in class" hybrids. But no race ought to be miles ahead.
The recent fix to increase Teladi M class freighter carry weight puts them in a close second place for that, rather than last that they used to have. But rather than be a close last place for small fighters, Argon small fighters occupy that space, and that leaves them overall badly placed, unable to carry much, slow to move, but also the results of building fighters is lackluster at best, terrible at worst.
This means if you want a carrier group, you will likely go mostly Paranid but not their carrier. This is not good if the Paranid carrier is a bad carrier, but "acceptable" if overall it's decent to do pure-Paranid, but that is unacceptable if the pure Paranid is so clearly ahead of, say, pure Argon that you would never choose Argon for the poor fighters.
These are things that designers at Egosoft have to worry about.
What players of the game have to worry about is what they want to do with the fleet(s). Which may be easier if there is a clear winner than if it is a game of better-at-some-worse-at-others in each ship.
If the Paranids are better militarily, then they ought to be poor civilians, because overall they are not in a superior position. The Teladi should be better civilians but poor military. The Argon should be "the baseline", average military, average traders. You then put the Split in that paradigm, but moulded to what "lore" you decide is required to follow, e.g. all their stuff, even the traders, are bristling with guns, making the traders expensive or small cargo (or just plain bad fighters) as a "balance", so a Player might start off in a Tuatara as it is able to fight and trade, but is not as good at the job as a specialist.
The "Zerg rush" is a functional but outdated fleet doctrine. Modern fleets can punch well above their weight if set up correctly. As you said, the game has changed over the years, and there is a vocal group of players who have declined to change with it. My guides aren't for them, they're for people wanting to learn more about modern X4.
Can you describe what you mean by "dev pressure"?
Hahaha.
No. The key to fleet fundamentals is: do you have money yes/no?
Money matters. Your choices do not.
Xd
By that logic, nothing in X4 matters. Military decisions don't matter because you can bypass them with economy, and economic decisions don't matter because you can bypass them with cheese. If that's your mindset, why play at all? Serious question. I've seen several jaded old nihilists in my comments and I'm trying to understand how y'all think.
1:55
Sooo….
Hey Vets! New player here! Could you do me a solid and share your fleet compositions below this comment?
Y'all better behave yourselves! State the purpose of the composition, the group assignments, and any non-standard ship loadouts.
Yo, for context I mainly roleplay as terran loyalist so the ships and equipment reflect this choice.
1x Carrier (1) -> Fleet Commander
-Tokyo
1x Auxiliary (1) -> Supply Fleet
-Honshu
4x Destroyer Wing (8) -> Bombard / Point Defence (Mostly pulse loadouts for Osakas or lasers for Syns, albeit I mostly only use Osakas for this fleets role)
-1x Osaka / Syn -> Wing Commander
--1x Osaka / Syn -> Attack
12x Fighter / Heavy Fighter Squadron (36) -> Intercept / Point Defence (Assigend as 2 groups of 6 to separate groups under the carrier, I prefer the new Cutlass with electromagnetic guns but Takoba/Gladius are fine with the pulse mk2's for accuracy and range, if going for the latter I go for 18 of each in the two groups or just 36 Cutlasses)
-1x Cutlass / Takoba / Gladius -> Sqn Commander
--2x Cutlass / Takoba / Gladius -> Attack
2x Frigate Engineering Wing (6) -> Defend (Mine / Laser Tower deployment and pod rescue, as tanky as I can have them and with minimal crew so they can fit a lot of escape pods)
-1x Falx - Wing Commander
--2x Cutlass / Takoba / Gladius -> Defend
Now for some explanation, the main role of this fleet is to gatecamp key areas that are under high Xenon pressure while suffering low attrition in return and I'm sure it works against most fleets in this scenario. Personally I play with the modded xenon to make them more dangerous and numerous so you can do with 2-3 destroyer wings if unmodded. The fleet doesn't do very well when attacking into xenon strongholds because of the high attrition on fighters, I prefer to use a different fleet consisting out 4-8 syn wings anchored on an Asgard if I have them available.
For specific orders, I have both fighter squadrons and destroyer wings on point defence centered around the gate in question with the Carrier and Aux positioned further away, but within reach of the point defence bubbles. This gives 0 reaction time for hostiles jumping in and usually results in no casualties on my side, if out of system.
This comp probably works with most races, although you'll probably want some bombard specific fighters that the terrans don't have access to. Hope it helps!
@@bladefox-ik5iy to make JK Ninja proud, 1000000000000 elite vanguards, equipped with pulse beams
The real challenge is to make fleets that work both OOS and IS. Pack a fleet with heavy fighters with blast mortars and OOS will melt everything, DPS is all that natter. But if you pass close to it while they are in battle and and kiss your ships goodbye