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Also start slow. I've dropped X4 once because decided to go through whole tutorial, and at the end forgot how to just fly and dock, lol. Like, you don't need a lot of things related to big ships, managing ships if you have only one vessel.
I find even the tutorials fail to really tell me how to do these things.
like explore.. How? For what? Is there more than just a crystal on a rock to discover? Tutorial doesnt' tell me this. The tutorial spawned me at a station, told me how to scan and fix it.. and that was it.. How do I even do long range scanning? What is it? It doesn't seem to do anything.
How do I do those stories or find them for factions? What am I looking for? A specific icon on the map? Basic stuff, the devs and tutorials just utterly fail to tell you.
Ironically I understand how to do the big end game stuff like command AI ships, and run an empire with a station because the tutorial actually semi sorta did that well. The rest of it is just like... "Let me tell you how to fish. First you need worms... good luck!" and that's literally it.. lol
i won't deny that... but the mission designers try to do their best...
anyway.. your LRS (long range scanner) is used in some missions.. like when you have to locate lost lockboxes, when you have to locate stations that are unknown to you.. when you have to find warp anomalies etc.
its nothing the tutorial tells you... the tutorial map is just too small for that.
general advise just regarding the LRS... fly into some direction for 'round 150km, charge a LRS and check if it picked up something.. if there is a ping (a literal ping and circular marker in your view) or a question mark on your map.. you should investigate what it is.
to use the LRS you go into the LRS Hud mode and hold your secondary fire key to charge it up... usually the same key you would use for missiles (default is R i think), than release it at its peak.
I'd list a few but I'm sure a few other will list some for you. Even early vids that were in early versions of the game will have enough detail to help you get ideas of what to try. If you find what they show on screen is out of date you can ask for specific advice in here or find more up to date vids.
lol, no, youtube got rid of the downvote count to help filter ♥♥♥♥ videos. It is worthless now.
And it is a lazy designer habit. Customers should not have to rely on 3rd party youtube videos to figure out a confusing sandbox with an empty start.
I did the explorer discoverer whatever it was called start and i'm still wondering when I will start seeing a story arc after two days of playing. I'm starting to think there isn't one and all I got was a fast ship.
scan leaks... fly around... scan more leaks...
you are supposed to be curious early on... stumble over stuff that is maybe usefull... or leads directly into a story.
one of the fundamental pillars of X was always the THINK aspect.. THINK what you can do.. or what your tools could be used for... be curious what happens when you do certain things with this or that HUD active.
have i mentioned the scannable leaks?
That said, the reward is immense if you break through the initial learning curve. As some have mentioned the two last DLC have Starts that give you a storyline that orients you to the game - this is what Egosoft should have done with vanilla instead of just dumping you in space with a half assed tutorial (btw, the tutorial now, as crappy as it is, is DRAMATICALLY better than it was on launch). Honestly Egosoft could be a much greater success if they nailed their onboarding.
All that said, for the OP, check out Captain Collins's videos. Some things that if they told you at the start would dramatically help you:
1) SHIFT-1 / 2 / 3 are your flight modes. Shift 1 gets you around, Shift 2 is for close range scanning, stations and other ships, Shift 3 is for long range scanning hold down R for a half second then release it - do it in all 4 directions.
2) Fly near stations and then go into your Missions tab. Hit M for map then on the left one of the tabs is available Missions, take the easy / trivial ones.
3) Go near fights between other factions and pick up their drops - best early money making in the game.
4) Scan Stations with Shift-2. Fly around close to them - when you hear a weird noise fly really close to it to get other missions (and to start one of the main storylines - the Boron Scientist).
5) Mining is the easiest start. Once you get ~$250K you can buy a basic mining ship. Just put it in a sector with a lot of red, then click Info then Behaviors then AutoMine. Pick Ore / Silicon / NVidium. Make sure you discover / expose all the stations in that sector - best to even put satellites next to them to see their buy orders.
Good luck, come back and ask lots of questions. Note that the Egosoft forums are infinitely better than the constant rage-fest of the Steam kiddies.
Tutorials are just to tell you the ~very~ basic things you can do in the game. They won't "teach" how to find your place in the universe.
You explore to - find your place / the things you do in the X universe. Be it a sector you like for it's looks and thus call it "home" (and build a cozy station with some docks for your personal ships) or conflicted area with lot's of opportunities for salvage, or good trading spots or an important place of your favourite race or ...
The X series isn't very "gamey" and in fact avoids the "established ways" as part of the game design in order to deliver a believable universe. The missions / "plots" are integrated into your gamestart and / or the universe itself. You'll usually get a basic mini story from your game start and the Split, Terran or the latest DLCs bring the "big" story plots. Then there are plots in the basegame related to the factions - which become available once you get a certain standing. Then there are the big endgame goals called terraforming - which can be considered story plots as they have backgroundstories and some cutscenes. But they are mostly about the economic part of the game (you have to have a pretty decent infrastructure and a lot of credits to start them)
It's really all about discovering it for yourself and get an "natural progression" around YOUR way of playing in your sandbox.
I'm playing the game since release, might have 1000s of hours (again ...) in this latest iteration of the X series and have barely scratched the plots. I guess I have experienced half of them. It's just too much to do :D
Yep, and that's the game. Have fun :)
On a serious note - check your player information screen - there is a log and news system. The news system should give you a hint about the first "mission". Without spoiling too much, following that hint that is the basic thing for most of the plots. And the reward is .. nice.
One last thing - not sure if anybody told you - but did you check for scannable leaks at stations?
That's all fine and dandy, now that I know that.
But you can't expect people to go into your game knowing that's how you're supposed to play, and knowing what to do, and where to go, especially when your game is so unique as it is. Which should be a huge selling point, but then there is literally zero direction in the game in terms of where to go or what to do. And I don't mean hand holding either, or big map markers, or quest markers (I hate those). But direction in terms of what there even is.. What I am even looking for, etc.
In games like Skyrim, Fallouts, and other open world games, you go to towns, explore caves, buildings, etc.
You don't really do the same thing in this game. You can dock at ports, and stuff, but there's no real indication of what the game even has available unless you spend 10 hours reading through every manual, guide, and do your redundant tutorials 3 times. Example is the beginner tutorials that give you your own little simulated area to follow the NPC around and his instructions, actually gives you some info the tutorial in the encyclopedia tutorials don't, and they give some info the NPC guy never covers.. Meaning I have to do both tutorials on the same thing to get all the info. Then I have to read the manual, AND the guide to get the rest of the info that other stuff didn't cover...
it's extremely redundant, all for basic knowledge the player needs to even know what is available. Scanning signals is fun for a few hours, but it gets old..
It could be easy to simply have a starter "Mission" in your logbook that directs you to just 1 of the most basic factions starter quest, that alone would be huge, it shows the player how to find them, where they are usually located, it can mention that you can find more like this with other factions at certain points, and its starter practice for moving through the area, using the guide, map, and guidance, and everything.. All for the price of 1 start mission to a low level faction or basic quest/mission.
Could even have intro missions which are skippable in factions, or area's, that basically do what the tutorials show, but teaches you more of what you can find, or discover, through actual missions in the game, with again the above suggestion of pointing the player in that direction with a logbook mission to get them started.
It's actually extremely simple to give the player a tiny nudge in the direction, with a few stepping stone missions to show what the game has to offer, instead of some half baked tutorials that barely cover anything.
got a game called "guess the number i'm thinking of". Its between 0 and 9.
Its fun...trust me...just THINK.
Do one of the TERRAN or ToA starts to get the tutorial introduction as part of your onboarding. The Terran are better.
So what Idea do you love about x4? Then explore that idea?
Just pick something and work towards it. Do you want to build a sprawling station? How about capture some ship you've seen? Maybe get really good at space combat? Create a massive mining fleet. Or maybe a massive trading fleet? Or a huge military fleet? Or maybe do it all?
There is one simple problem you're having. You can't decide on what you want to do. So what happens is, you stumble around hoping something guides you to that decision. Sooner or later you're going to have to decide on something you want to accomplish, if not, you interest will fade and x4 will be collecting dust like previous x games for you.