2) Old DW1 vets who are upset about a very specific change to one of the systems that they spent 1000+ hours with -- you won't even notice this unless you're in this camp
I suspect I am not, but what did they change?
I've heard complaints that they oversimplified the ship builder because of the change to ships having a real 3D model instead of being abstracted and 2D. All of the other stuff seemed more speculative, and were more "balance issue" type stuff that I think needs more evidence and time with the game to draw a conclusion on.
I opened up the ship editor in 2 and it's insane and has too many buttons for me to fully understand just yet. It seems fine to me, but I didn't spend dozens of hours in the ship builder of 1. I did it a bit, but not enough to know the ins and outs or anthing.
DW1 ships were just a bucket of a certain size so you could stick any components in it as long as you didn't go over the max size. DW2 ships have some of their components use defined slots, so you still have a max, its just that say one type of frigate might have 2 sensor slots, 5 weapon slots, 3 shield slots, 4 engine slots, plus 15 general slots where another type of frigate might have 1 sensor slot, 4 weapon slots, 2 shield slots, 5 engine slots, and 16 general slots. There's still plenty of flexibility in builds and usage depending on modules used, you just can't boat a dozen weapons on them anymore.
Yeah to reiterate a bit more clearly -- most of the complaints sounded horribly nitpickey to me, and like they wouldn't affect you unless you've spent hundreds of hours thinking about why the original system is the greatest thing ever. I don't have the depth of experience to confirm or deny, but it seemed largely to be extra grumpy nerds upset about minute changes.
In particular, the ship designer in 2 seems very in depth and my eyes glazed over the first time I cracked it open after hearing the complaints about it being "too simple".
2) Old DW1 vets who are upset about a very specific change to one of the systems that they spent 1000+ hours with -- you won't even notice this unless you're in this camp
I suspect I am not, but what did they change?
I've heard complaints that they oversimplified the ship builder because of the change to ships having a real 3D model instead of being abstracted and 2D. All of the other stuff seemed more speculative, and were more "balance issue" type stuff that I think needs more evidence and time with the game to draw a conclusion on.
I opened up the ship editor in 2 and it's insane and has too many buttons for me to fully understand just yet. It seems fine to me, but I didn't spend dozens of hours in the ship builder of 1. I did it a bit, but not enough to know the ins and outs or anthing.
I liked the efficiency of the original, an abstract concept of a hull into which your list of arbitrary compenents shall be presumed to fit, but the new one still looks fun enough.
But I could see having too many slightly different hull templates to choose from getting a bit daunting/annoying.
There's only 3-4 hull templates per size class and they differentiate themselves based on expected role well enough that you'll want to use them all.
You'll be fiddling with the ship designs far more often as you get component upgrades than you will because of the different hull templates. But your ships can just fly themselves back to a shipyard to upgrade to the latest design for that particular hull template.
You also create fleet templates that specify what hull templates they'll use and how many of each. They can keep themselves updated as the designs improve.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Picked that up for X4. I anticipate playing it for 30 minutes before giving up. Still, I do hope I can get into it, like, the idea of it is awesome.
I think it's the most approachable one yet. It has its issues, but it's pretty easy to get the game started making money for you.
X4 is definitely the most refined and stable of the bunch. Any bugs I've had recently have been due to various mods I run. The biggest hurdle to new players is getting a handle on the menus and inventory lists.
Cradle of Humanity DLC are good for the story line and because the Terrain economy is much simpler. 3 end products to build everything vs more than a dozen for the other races.
Tides of Avarice DLC game starts are good for the story lines but also for the fact it serves as a pretty decent tutorial for a bunch of gameplay mechanics, particularly around piracy.
The base game starts aren't very good at showing you how to play frankly. However, you can also do custom game starts that let you start in whatever sector you want with as much of the rest of the map revealed as you want, with as much money as you want, with whatever starting ship, stations, and fleets with custom loadouts you want, with whatever research and blueprints you want, and with the various storylines in whatever state you want. Basically you could start with an entire empire already built if you desire. Or to simply bypass certain things that take a lot of time to accomplish if you want to restart.
There's also a station builder with all modules already unlocked as one of the game starts you can use to play around and prebuild stations and save their designs for later use in your game.
There's some decent beginner guides in this playlist here:
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Man, dying in combat in X4 is really brutal because saving takes forever and autosaves are really spread out even at their most common interval. So even if I wanted to quicksave more often it's discouraged because it takes like 5+ seconds to actually save.
Also, whoever set up this control scheme must have more than 2 arms, because having the "enter menu" key and "full stop" key on the right side of the keyboard is kind of baffling.
Man, dying in combat in X4 is really brutal because saving takes forever and autosaves are really spread out even at their most common interval. So even if I wanted to quicksave more often it's discouraged because it takes like 5+ seconds to actually save.
Also, whoever set up this control scheme must have more than 2 arms, because having the "enter menu" key and "full stop" key on the right side of the keyboard is kind of baffling.
The size of the save files are rather ridiculous.
I'd immediately switch "full stop" from Backspace to something like Alt. But I think the most important key to rebind for quick access is "Pause". Let's you deal with all the menus, lists, fleet commands, and context actions without getting yourself killed.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Yea, swapped those over. Also, the loading in this game is absolutely absurd. Like, I have it on an nVME and had time to get up, go to the restroom, get a drink from the kitchen, and it was just finishing loading when I got back.
The save file contains, more or less, the entire state of the galaxy, the number and location of stations. The number and location of ships including approximate locations within the sectors. The things they're doing, where they're going etc. Its a pretty large amount of information.
If switched to uncompressed, I think my save files are currently around 700 MB. But it's got to record every object in the universe, what those objects/items/modules connect to or contain, what their orders/current actions are, etc, all the way down. So also not that surprising it'd be that big.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Welp, decided to pick up a side mission to make some money so I could buy a miner to automate making some money. Ended up picking up a mission to deploy some satellites. So far I've had to jump across like 10 sectors to get there. I was kind of hoping it'd be closer to where I picked up the mission. Also realized I didn't have enough satellites when I got there and had to jump back like 3 sectors to a station that I could buy them from.
I tried X4 once. The tutorial that I went through insisted I use the numpad for some ship function in order to progress. I have a TKL keyboard. Those ship functions apparently could not be rebound to different keys.
Yeah. I assume the tutorial would want me to go through the basics needed to play the game. If I can't access the functions then... Refunded and that was that.
I tried X4 once. The tutorial that I went through insisted I use the numpad for some ship function in order to progress. I have a TKL keyboard. Those ship functions apparently could not be rebound to different keys.
Yeah. I assume the tutorial would want me to go through the basics needed to play the game. If I can't access the functions then... Refunded and that was that.
I think numpad is used for looking around the cockpit and then + and - are used for zooming in and out when using 3rd person/floating cams?
Might push myself to try it again tomorrow, but I ended up getting jumped by a ship while going from point a to b and dying and then realized how much I'd have to redo and rage quit. Seems like the way to play X4 is to make sure you're never in a situation where you might run into combat or else you're looking at 2 minutes of loading and then up to 20 minutes from the last autosave to wherever you were before.
The worst part about X combat is that there’s no real sense of feedback.
Getting hit by enemy fire just results in your shield bar sliding down slowly (or quickly). There’s no … getting rocked by explosions or … getting bounced around or cockpit cracks or whatever.
Way to easy to go from fine to dead without realizing anything is happening.
The worst part about X combat is that there’s no real sense of feedback.
Getting hit by enemy fire just results in your shield bar sliding down slowly (or quickly). There’s no … getting rocked by explosions or … getting bounced around or cockpit cracks or whatever.
Way to easy to go from fine to dead without realizing anything is happening.
Yeah, and the flight model just feels like you're ice-skating. There's no satisfying sense of movement the way you get with either more arcadey style Wing Commander space sims or more properly Newtonian sims like Independence War. It exists in this strange sort of in-between that makes the combat much less satisfying than it could be if they went more extreme in one direction or the other.
X has the problem of initially presenting itself like a typical space shooter where you assume you should be able to heroically take on waves of enemies yourself. But for the most part, outside of 1 on 1 encounters or maybe up to 1 on 3, the concentrated fire from multiple enemies are just going to melt your ship in seconds. And your main method of avoiding fire, boosting, drains your shields extremely quickly and doesn't work at all if your shields are down. So if you are too slow at deciding to temporarily retreat to recharge shields, you're often doomed to die. Made worse if you also aren't using combat engines with their zero spool-up time for travel mode as another means of escape.
And when starting out, since you don't have the headquarters yet and it's research, you also don't have access to all the ship mods for increased shields, firepower, speed, etc that can greatly benefit you in combat.
For combat missions in X you really want to be flying with multiple wingmen, and up to entire fleets, just to split their fire to take some of that heat off of you to be consistently successful. This applies to traders/miners too. They benefit from escorts to fend off pirates long enough to escape.
I'd also recommend using a medium corvette as your personal ship for bouncing around the universe. You'll survive better against the occasion pirate or xenon raider when not explicitly out looking for a fight. And if you aren't looking for a fight, you can just travel mode past most enemies without a care. But if you are looking for a fight, best advice is to bring help.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Progressed a bit. Bought a mining ship to make me some money while I did other stuff, which led to another miner ship and now I'm at 4 miner ships making me (increasingly less per haul) money. Bumped me up to like 18 mil. Decided to finally upgrade my light ship to a corvette, too, so I can actually survive a bit. Also picked up a mission to build a space station, but I gotta figure out how to get the blueprints to build the actual factory part of it they want. And also how to get a builder ship to actually build it.
Progressed a bit. Bought a mining ship to make me some money while I did other stuff, which led to another miner ship and now I'm at 4 miner ships making me (increasingly less per haul) money. Bumped me up to like 18 mil. Decided to finally upgrade my light ship to a corvette, too, so I can actually survive a bit. Also picked up a mission to build a space station, but I gotta figure out how to get the blueprints to build the actual factory part of it they want. And also how to get a builder ship to actually build it.
While you can purchase/build your own builder ships, you can also just hire any non-hostile builder ships you can see on the map. If you deploy satellites around the sectors, particularly near gates, you'll be able to see all ships within range of the satellite (or any in range of your own ships and stations). So in the station construction screen, you just click the Hire Builder button and pick one on the map or in the list on the left (it will be pre-filtered to only show Builder ships, but only in the map area you are currently looking at. Zoom out or pan to find ships in other areas of the map.), right click the ship and Hire. It'll fly to your plot and start building.
Satellites are also important to place near stations, not just to see ships, but to give you live updates on it's buy/sell orders for trading. At least until you get high rep with a faction and can purchase their trade subscription to see trades at all their stations.
To just purchase factory modules, ship, weapon/ship components, etc blueprints, ask an NPC for where to find their Faction Representative. The faction rep sells blueprints, but specific to their race and faction. Eg, the Argon rep won't have Teladi blueprints. And what they'll sell you depends on your reputation with that faction. Faction reps also do your faction rank promotions and sell licenses.
For station blueprints, except the ship building modules, you can also steal them to save lots of money over purchasing. But this first requires you have the player headquarters and complete research into module hacking. You then use EMP bombs with your spacesuit on the module you want to create signal leaks to get them. Here's a bit of a walkthrough on that: https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=407377
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Left the game running while I was at work today to build up some passive income. The big purchase on here from yesterday was for a builder and the big spike in profit is the quest reward for finishing that station. The buy orders for it took forever to fill, I think in the future I'll have to buy some freighters and actually buy the stuff myself to bring over.
Also been working on building some rep. Kinda worried that if I continue the Terran cadet MSQ that I'll end up tanking all the rep I've built.
Goal for tonight is to find that data leak mission so I can get a PHQ going.
Yea so... hiring a builder costs 50k and it will stay until the station is built.. You could have blanketed the sector with satellites for that price.
The good news is that you can load builders up with marines and then like... Go steal ships. But that is a bit cheesy.
Buy/Sell orders are pretty consistent but this depends on where the station is and whether or not there are a lot of goods available. You can also assign a trader to "trade for build storage" in order to get around this. Buut this has other downsides, namely that this can stall if you don't have good vision. I think orders are updated every few minutes so if you haven't visited a station in an hour or so the game more or less "forgets" what it does and what its selling for. A satellite that has it in range fixes this permanently as does a trade subscription with the faction in question (trade subscriptions are better and maybe cheaper in the long run but not available easily and a large up front cost)
So each trade ship, when it figures what its doing, is going to make a profit calculation for how to trade. This calculation is pretty simple. It sees how long it would take to complete a trade and divides the profit. It will go 4 times as far to deliver at 40/unit than at 10/unit. But this means that for goods that have very high base sell prices it can be very hard to find some goods. If you demand weapon components at maximum price (yielding 20 profit/good) and someone 1/4th the distance demands weapon components at almost max price then more or less that station is going to buy all the weapon components it can handle.
The good news is that you can load builders up with marines and then like... Go steal ships. But that is a bit cheesy.
Yeah but if you're geared to steal ships, you could have just stolen the builder!
I think I tried to use one for boarding once, but it was just too slughish. Worked much better as a troop tender to resupply the assault ships and crew the new ones; but definitely wasn't best in class there either.
Buffalo were great, but I'm looking forward to the new stuff designed specifically with piracy in mind.
1) capture a builder
2) capture another builder
3) remove all turrets from both builders. Full one builder with marines
4) set up a station close to a wharf. This can be minimum size to conserve costs. Set a build but don’t give it any money to acquire materials.
5) sell the builder that doesn’t have any marines to the wharf
6) hire the builder that no longer has defenses at your “station”
7) capture the builder with your other builder.
8) transfer marines back and sell the builder back to the wharf
9) hire the builder again…
Man, Nividium is impossible to find anywhere I have coverage. Might need to find a blueprint for it and start figuring out how to set up a station to produce it. Also really hard to find Secure Containers.
Man, Nividium is impossible to find anywhere I have coverage. Might need to find a blueprint for it and start figuring out how to set up a station to produce it. Also really hard to find Secure Containers.
Nividium is a mining resource. Its available in small quantites a lot of places and is only good for specific quests/research and selling to the AI. The AI does not even use it, (just destroys it into nothing). Secure containers are also not produced goods but rather spawn from destroyed ships and lockboxes(which can be very dangerous)
I cannot, for the life of me, deal with that Y-Wing training mission. I have been stuck for weeks now, going through the first two missions and dying to the patrol boats in the 3 segment
Man, Nividium is impossible to find anywhere I have coverage. Might need to find a blueprint for it and start figuring out how to set up a station to produce it. Also really hard to find Secure Containers.
Nividium is a mining resource. Its available in small quantites a lot of places and is only good for specific quests/research and selling to the AI. The AI does not even use it, (just destroys it into nothing). Secure containers are also not produced goods but rather spawn from destroyed ships and lockboxes(which can be very dangerous)
Alrighty, bought a large miner and set it to work mining all the Nividium in Second Contact II Flashpoint to bring back to storage in my PHQ, which should probably cover everything I need for the forseeable future. Tried doing some EMP bombs, but didn't get any blueprints. Got the permanent trade subscription thing twice (which I had already purchased) and then a reveal of a trade station somewhere. Also some contracts became available. Kind of annoying considering how obnoxious it is to get the stuff together to make an EMP bomb.
OK so... Large miners are great, especially in the new patch that makes them not suck...
But Nividium is... well its a low quantity thing. A single load in a large miner will give you all the nividium you will need for the game. But also it will take a large miner a long time to acquire a lot of nividium, its going to be acquiring it like... 30 units at a time before flying somewhere else to try and find more. A large miner is far better off filling up with ore or silicon and making sure that NPC refineries are running at full bore. Hopefully that miner fills up fast and then you can put them to better use.
I generally buy a small miner and have the mine nividium for profit until i need it and then have them mine for me. This can be a bit annoying because nividium isn't available close to the place where you actually want it but its not a huge inconvenience. And nividium is the only small miner i ever mine.
In order to get blueprints from an EMP bomb you need to have researched the proper thing. There may be a bug in that one of the research is swapped (i think its habs and docks, which is good because habs are far more expensive than most docks). If you have the proper research you will get a blueprint 100% of the time you EMP a module that you can acquire them that way(you cannot get shipyards/wharfs/repair bays that way)
OK so... Large miners are great, especially in the new patch that makes them not suck...
But Nividium is... well its a low quantity thing. A single load in a large miner will give you all the nividium you will need for the game. But also it will take a large miner a long time to acquire a lot of nividium, its going to be acquiring it like... 30 units at a time before flying somewhere else to try and find more. A large miner is far better off filling up with ore or silicon and making sure that NPC refineries are running at full bore. Hopefully that miner fills up fast and then you can put them to better use.
I generally buy a small miner and have the mine nividium for profit until i need it and then have them mine for me. This can be a bit annoying because nividium isn't available close to the place where you actually want it but its not a huge inconvenience. And nividium is the only small miner i ever mine.
In order to get blueprints from an EMP bomb you need to have researched the proper thing. There may be a bug in that one of the research is swapped (i think its habs and docks, which is good because habs are far more expensive than most docks). If you have the proper research you will get a blueprint 100% of the time you EMP a module that you can acquire them that way(you cannot get shipyards/wharfs/repair bays that way)
I researched all of them, though. And wasn't trying on shipyards/wharfs/repair bays. Ah well.
OK so... Large miners are great, especially in the new patch that makes them not suck...
But Nividium is... well its a low quantity thing. A single load in a large miner will give you all the nividium you will need for the game. But also it will take a large miner a long time to acquire a lot of nividium, its going to be acquiring it like... 30 units at a time before flying somewhere else to try and find more. A large miner is far better off filling up with ore or silicon and making sure that NPC refineries are running at full bore. Hopefully that miner fills up fast and then you can put them to better use.
I generally buy a small miner and have the mine nividium for profit until i need it and then have them mine for me. This can be a bit annoying because nividium isn't available close to the place where you actually want it but its not a huge inconvenience. And nividium is the only small miner i ever mine.
In order to get blueprints from an EMP bomb you need to have researched the proper thing. There may be a bug in that one of the research is swapped (i think its habs and docks, which is good because habs are far more expensive than most docks). If you have the proper research you will get a blueprint 100% of the time you EMP a module that you can acquire them that way(you cannot get shipyards/wharfs/repair bays that way)
I researched all of them, though. And wasn't trying on shipyards/wharfs/repair bays. Ah well.
I wonder if it's possible one of the leaks was clipped inside the geometry so you didn't see it?
There should be four leaks per EMP and if you’ve got em all researched the only thing preventing you from getting it would be already having the blueprint
There should be four leaks per EMP and if you’ve got em all researched the only thing preventing you from getting it would be already having the blueprint
The in-game encyclopedia (the book icon on the top menu) will list all the blueprints you currently know.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Posts
Yeah to reiterate a bit more clearly -- most of the complaints sounded horribly nitpickey to me, and like they wouldn't affect you unless you've spent hundreds of hours thinking about why the original system is the greatest thing ever. I don't have the depth of experience to confirm or deny, but it seemed largely to be extra grumpy nerds upset about minute changes.
In particular, the ship designer in 2 seems very in depth and my eyes glazed over the first time I cracked it open after hearing the complaints about it being "too simple".
Oh, indeed
DW
DW2
I could not have been more wrong about not being in the affected camp.
I liked the efficiency of the original, an abstract concept of a hull into which your list of arbitrary compenents shall be presumed to fit, but the new one still looks fun enough.
But I could see having too many slightly different hull templates to choose from getting a bit daunting/annoying.
You'll be fiddling with the ship designs far more often as you get component upgrades than you will because of the different hull templates. But your ships can just fly themselves back to a shipyard to upgrade to the latest design for that particular hull template.
You also create fleet templates that specify what hull templates they'll use and how many of each. They can keep themselves updated as the designs improve.
Automation has worked perfectly fine.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Print all the ships!
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
Backlog Challenge List
Picked that up for X4. I anticipate playing it for 30 minutes before giving up. Still, I do hope I can get into it, like, the idea of it is awesome.
I think it's the most approachable one yet. It has its issues, but it's pretty easy to get the game started making money for you.
X4 is definitely the most refined and stable of the bunch. Any bugs I've had recently have been due to various mods I run. The biggest hurdle to new players is getting a handle on the menus and inventory lists.
Cradle of Humanity DLC are good for the story line and because the Terrain economy is much simpler. 3 end products to build everything vs more than a dozen for the other races.
Tides of Avarice DLC game starts are good for the story lines but also for the fact it serves as a pretty decent tutorial for a bunch of gameplay mechanics, particularly around piracy.
The base game starts aren't very good at showing you how to play frankly. However, you can also do custom game starts that let you start in whatever sector you want with as much of the rest of the map revealed as you want, with as much money as you want, with whatever starting ship, stations, and fleets with custom loadouts you want, with whatever research and blueprints you want, and with the various storylines in whatever state you want. Basically you could start with an entire empire already built if you desire. Or to simply bypass certain things that take a lot of time to accomplish if you want to restart.
There's also a station builder with all modules already unlocked as one of the game starts you can use to play around and prebuild stations and save their designs for later use in your game.
There's some decent beginner guides in this playlist here:
Also, whoever set up this control scheme must have more than 2 arms, because having the "enter menu" key and "full stop" key on the right side of the keyboard is kind of baffling.
The size of the save files are rather ridiculous.
I'd immediately switch "full stop" from Backspace to something like Alt. But I think the most important key to rebind for quick access is "Pause". Let's you deal with all the menus, lists, fleet commands, and context actions without getting yourself killed.
Yeah. I assume the tutorial would want me to go through the basics needed to play the game. If I can't access the functions then... Refunded and that was that.
I think numpad is used for looking around the cockpit and then + and - are used for zooming in and out when using 3rd person/floating cams?
Might push myself to try it again tomorrow, but I ended up getting jumped by a ship while going from point a to b and dying and then realized how much I'd have to redo and rage quit. Seems like the way to play X4 is to make sure you're never in a situation where you might run into combat or else you're looking at 2 minutes of loading and then up to 20 minutes from the last autosave to wherever you were before.
Getting hit by enemy fire just results in your shield bar sliding down slowly (or quickly). There’s no … getting rocked by explosions or … getting bounced around or cockpit cracks or whatever.
Way to easy to go from fine to dead without realizing anything is happening.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Yeah, and the flight model just feels like you're ice-skating. There's no satisfying sense of movement the way you get with either more arcadey style Wing Commander space sims or more properly Newtonian sims like Independence War. It exists in this strange sort of in-between that makes the combat much less satisfying than it could be if they went more extreme in one direction or the other.
And when starting out, since you don't have the headquarters yet and it's research, you also don't have access to all the ship mods for increased shields, firepower, speed, etc that can greatly benefit you in combat.
For combat missions in X you really want to be flying with multiple wingmen, and up to entire fleets, just to split their fire to take some of that heat off of you to be consistently successful. This applies to traders/miners too. They benefit from escorts to fend off pirates long enough to escape.
I'd also recommend using a medium corvette as your personal ship for bouncing around the universe. You'll survive better against the occasion pirate or xenon raider when not explicitly out looking for a fight. And if you aren't looking for a fight, you can just travel mode past most enemies without a care. But if you are looking for a fight, best advice is to bring help.
While you can purchase/build your own builder ships, you can also just hire any non-hostile builder ships you can see on the map. If you deploy satellites around the sectors, particularly near gates, you'll be able to see all ships within range of the satellite (or any in range of your own ships and stations). So in the station construction screen, you just click the Hire Builder button and pick one on the map or in the list on the left (it will be pre-filtered to only show Builder ships, but only in the map area you are currently looking at. Zoom out or pan to find ships in other areas of the map.), right click the ship and Hire. It'll fly to your plot and start building.
Satellites are also important to place near stations, not just to see ships, but to give you live updates on it's buy/sell orders for trading. At least until you get high rep with a faction and can purchase their trade subscription to see trades at all their stations.
To just purchase factory modules, ship, weapon/ship components, etc blueprints, ask an NPC for where to find their Faction Representative. The faction rep sells blueprints, but specific to their race and faction. Eg, the Argon rep won't have Teladi blueprints. And what they'll sell you depends on your reputation with that faction. Faction reps also do your faction rank promotions and sell licenses.
For station blueprints, except the ship building modules, you can also steal them to save lots of money over purchasing. But this first requires you have the player headquarters and complete research into module hacking. You then use EMP bombs with your spacesuit on the module you want to create signal leaks to get them. Here's a bit of a walkthrough on that: https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=407377
Also been working on building some rep. Kinda worried that if I continue the Terran cadet MSQ that I'll end up tanking all the rep I've built.
Goal for tonight is to find that data leak mission so I can get a PHQ going.
The good news is that you can load builders up with marines and then like... Go steal ships. But that is a bit cheesy.
Buy/Sell orders are pretty consistent but this depends on where the station is and whether or not there are a lot of goods available. You can also assign a trader to "trade for build storage" in order to get around this. Buut this has other downsides, namely that this can stall if you don't have good vision. I think orders are updated every few minutes so if you haven't visited a station in an hour or so the game more or less "forgets" what it does and what its selling for. A satellite that has it in range fixes this permanently as does a trade subscription with the faction in question (trade subscriptions are better and maybe cheaper in the long run but not available easily and a large up front cost)
So each trade ship, when it figures what its doing, is going to make a profit calculation for how to trade. This calculation is pretty simple. It sees how long it would take to complete a trade and divides the profit. It will go 4 times as far to deliver at 40/unit than at 10/unit. But this means that for goods that have very high base sell prices it can be very hard to find some goods. If you demand weapon components at maximum price (yielding 20 profit/good) and someone 1/4th the distance demands weapon components at almost max price then more or less that station is going to buy all the weapon components it can handle.
Yeah but if you're geared to steal ships, you could have just stolen the builder!
I think I tried to use one for boarding once, but it was just too slughish. Worked much better as a troop tender to resupply the assault ships and crew the new ones; but definitely wasn't best in class there either.
Buffalo were great, but I'm looking forward to the new stuff designed specifically with piracy in mind.
https://roguey.co.uk/x4/ships/compare/AOAU
That Barbarosa. Bigger, faster, more pointy bits (literal and figurative), what's not to like?
1) capture a builder
2) capture another builder
3) remove all turrets from both builders. Full one builder with marines
4) set up a station close to a wharf. This can be minimum size to conserve costs. Set a build but don’t give it any money to acquire materials.
5) sell the builder that doesn’t have any marines to the wharf
6) hire the builder that no longer has defenses at your “station”
7) capture the builder with your other builder.
8) transfer marines back and sell the builder back to the wharf
9) hire the builder again…
Well, only if you’re looking to pay MSRP.
Nividium is a mining resource. Its available in small quantites a lot of places and is only good for specific quests/research and selling to the AI. The AI does not even use it, (just destroys it into nothing). Secure containers are also not produced goods but rather spawn from destroyed ships and lockboxes(which can be very dangerous)
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Alrighty, bought a large miner and set it to work mining all the Nividium in Second Contact II Flashpoint to bring back to storage in my PHQ, which should probably cover everything I need for the forseeable future. Tried doing some EMP bombs, but didn't get any blueprints. Got the permanent trade subscription thing twice (which I had already purchased) and then a reveal of a trade station somewhere. Also some contracts became available. Kind of annoying considering how obnoxious it is to get the stuff together to make an EMP bomb.
But Nividium is... well its a low quantity thing. A single load in a large miner will give you all the nividium you will need for the game. But also it will take a large miner a long time to acquire a lot of nividium, its going to be acquiring it like... 30 units at a time before flying somewhere else to try and find more. A large miner is far better off filling up with ore or silicon and making sure that NPC refineries are running at full bore. Hopefully that miner fills up fast and then you can put them to better use.
I generally buy a small miner and have the mine nividium for profit until i need it and then have them mine for me. This can be a bit annoying because nividium isn't available close to the place where you actually want it but its not a huge inconvenience. And nividium is the only small miner i ever mine.
In order to get blueprints from an EMP bomb you need to have researched the proper thing. There may be a bug in that one of the research is swapped (i think its habs and docks, which is good because habs are far more expensive than most docks). If you have the proper research you will get a blueprint 100% of the time you EMP a module that you can acquire them that way(you cannot get shipyards/wharfs/repair bays that way)
I researched all of them, though. And wasn't trying on shipyards/wharfs/repair bays. Ah well.
I wonder if it's possible one of the leaks was clipped inside the geometry so you didn't see it?
What modules were you trying?
The in-game encyclopedia (the book icon on the top menu) will list all the blueprints you currently know.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534