Need ideas please (vanilla - no mods)

[Zoe & Kids]

Hi guys,

I am just shy of 20 hours in, terran cadet and have 2 fleets ran by 2 Asgards and I have laid claim to Frontier Edge having kicked the Xenon out and destroying their wharf, Solar PP and defence station.

I have a large defence station covering the Xenon entrance, guarded by an Asgard and I can start building stations but truth be told, I am a little bored so I am wanting ideas to spice things up a little please?

The Asgards have pretty much made my empire invulnerable. One alone took out an I and 3 Ks. It takes me 20 mins to earn 40-70 mil so I just don't see the point currently in building stations or trading more than I already am.

Will starting the story line make things a little more difficult?

Any ideas are appreciated :)

[Kalisa]

Different plots open up options to change the political landscape of the other factions, also you can just declare war on a main faction if you want, they will handle killing capital ships usually far better then xenon will (as xenon dont have fighter bombers or missles to target subsystems like main factions do) but the asgard will always be able to delete capital ships very easily, x4 is a sandbox and how you play really has a major impact on how things develop.
I personally tend to avoid using the asgard now because of its power, though an asgard will still get shreded flying into Vig space alone pretty quickly. (For science make a save, declare war on Vigor Syndicate, and try attacking them with your asgard, see the difference between xenon and other faction fighters :P )
But Terran in general is very easy mode for the player once you are developed with them, they are the easiest faction to get money with, and have the best anti capital ships when flown by the player, that with a simplified economy makes it pretty easy for the player to steamroll very early if thats what they want to do.

In general the storylines can make things more difficult if you say want to make stronger factions to fight against, but depends on the playstyle your going for. (also surprised you got an asgard 20 hours in, thats a 1bill+ investment typically and usually marks endgame war capabiltiies) in my current run im about 90 hours in, have a networth of probably 300 mill right now so very far off anything like that, for me I tend to go allot slower and rp allot though, but it all depends on how you play and your goals.

[Bozz 💀]

militarily, without using mods, there is no challenge my friend specially if you using one asgard, with two it's even less challenging.
If you want at least a little bit of challenge don't use the asgard main gun... It's just so OP thez game has no point when you have one..

[Kalisa]

agreed, also making around 200 mill an hour? you are at the stage i was at at about 350-400 hours on my last main terran campaign.

My last game i did as terran (which may give u some ideas) was I was there to encourage terran Protecterate, so I took storylines to cause them to go to go to war with ant and argon, then did other plots for other factions to also go to war then I played support for the terran as they claimed more space, my success was seeing them dominate the others and thats where i got enjoyment that game. if you spend some time setting up other factions you can have some pretty crazy wars. also if you limit yourself rp wise perhaps to only using terran tech, so no plasmas or flak and see how well you do against developed united factions that you compleated plots for.

[Zoe & Kids]

Great comprehensive reply, thank you.

I think a restart may help under young gun, blank canvas so to speak as my game has plateau'd unfortunately.

I had an Asgard + 2 Syn's 9 hours in (see below) - I hope they look at capturing ships and evolve it as its game breaking at the moment IMO

Capturing ships in its current format, entirely negates the need to trade and build from the ground up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L9wWG3L-ts

[Kalisa]

you can also do a custom budgeted start if you want when doing a new game and customize abit what you start with if you want alittle more then young gun provides (like starting with PHQ and choosing its location, or choosing your starting ship, can even start in a space suit)
but ya the capture mechanic is fine in allot of ways but when you can use it to steal such powerful warships so early it really is very powerful, personally think they need like 100+ 4 star and above marines on capital ships like asgard or raptor. not like there wouldnt be some of the best military protection on a faction capital ship like that, also a much better response force when engaging such ships.

[Bozz 💀]

Originally posted by Paladin '83:

Great comprehensive reply, thank you.

I think a restart may help under young gun, blank canvas so to speak as my game has plateau'd unfortunately.

I had an Asgard + 2 Syn's 9 hours in (see below) - I hope they look at capturing ships and evolve it as its game breaking at the moment IMO

Capturing ships in its current format, entirely negates the need to trade and build from the ground up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L9wWG3L-ts

Boarding been broken for a while but devs don't seem to be willing to fix it... the mechanique in it self is not broken but how NPCs react to it is completelly broken.

I mean you would think the Asgard being what it is, it should at least have a lot of ELITE marines on board to protect it from flyby boarding xD

That's why you have to play with a set of rules in order to not exploit the game, I mean you can make 40-50 million credits very fast like in a few hours just by selling advanced sats
then buy a shuyaku and from then you can just board anything with minimal reputation loss and make billions of credits...

Try avoiding this kind of exploit and the game becomes a lot better and enjoyable in my opinion

[Zoe & Kids]

Originally posted by Bozz 💀:

militarily, without using mods, there is no challenge my friend specially if you using one asgard, with two it's even less challenging.
If you want at least a little bit of challenge don't use the asgard main gun... It's just so OP thez game has no point when you have one..

Yeah that beam thing is just silly. I am new to X4F so I was alway un-nerved when I saw a K. Now, seeing multiples doesn't even faze me and thats unfortunate given the game is built around the threat of Xenon and Khark. As much as I like the Asgard, I hope they nerf it as it simply is god mode, which if I wanted, I'd use cheats / mods :)

Originally posted by Kalisa:

agreed, also making around 200 mill an hour? you are at the stage i was at at about 350-400 hours on my last main terran campaign.

My last game i did as terran (which may give u some ideas) was I was there to encourage terran Protecterate, so I took storylines to cause them to go to go to war with ant and argon, then did other plots for other factions to also go to war then I played support for the terran as they claimed more space, my success was seeing them dominate the others and thats where i got enjoyment that game. if you spend some time setting up other factions you can have some pretty crazy wars. also if you limit yourself rp wise perhaps to only using terran tech, so no plasmas or flak and see how well you do against developed united factions that you compleated plots for.

Capturing Auxiliary's which takes around 20 mils yields, when stripped, 40-60 mil but factor in ambient trade while doing so.

I really hope the capturing is evolved to be more complex as its part of the game I'd really like to play beyond the comm dialogues. It also needs, IMO, addressing that you can snatch ships from factions without standing loss or you can literally just bank roll, as I did and now regret.

I have autism so things need to be kept challenging and I think I shot myself in the foot going for a min-max game by looks of it.

[Kalisa]

also fighting xenon with terran capital ships like the asgard, the xenon just dont have any counter to it, like i mentioned before, the asgard has its weaknesses but its towards other major factions that are more fighter heavy and can use missles, if you had did storylines and setup before you got your asgards and decided to fight these other factions with it i think you would have at least got some of your challange there, but that would have required more prep on your part.

I also need to have some kind of challange in the game, but i control that by setting rules for myself to follow to make more of a challange where it still feels justified, but i also like to modify my games allot, usually custom tweaks to fit within the narratives i like to play.

[Zoe & Kids]

Originally posted by Kalisa:

also fighting xenon with terran capital ships like the asgard, the xenon just dont have any counter to it, like i mentioned before, the asgard has its weaknesses but its towards other major factions that are more fighter heavy and can use missles, if you had did storylines and setup before you got your asgards and decided to fight these other factions with it i think you would have at least got some of your challange there, but that would have required more prep on your part.

I also need to have some kind of challange in the game, but i control that by setting rules for myself to follow to make more of a challange where it still feels justified, but i also like to modify my games allot, usually custom tweaks to fit within the narratives i like to play.

I tried mods, I really liked fire and smoke and VRO as they both improved the feel of the game but my autism struck and the "modified" tag got to me too much. It just looked like cheat mode to me. Sounds weird I know but its just the way my mind works unfortunately.

I am def' going to restart I think under Young Gun. Thanks all, appreciate it.

[Kalisa]

I can understand with the "modified" tag, personally hate how they have it so upfront, its like a brain itch for me, it can be good to easily see it when you want to avoid it, but when you just normally like to modiify your game and the giant mark is there always it does feel bad, i honestly just wish there was an option to hide that tag, i know my games mofiied i dont need to be reminded of it always >.<

Also glad i could help in some way, goodluck on next run, hopefully its a long run :D

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Paladin '83:

Any ideas are appreciated :)

Hmm...
How about securing all Xenon gates, everywhere ;)
In fact, how about controlling all space ;)
It's quite old (haven't played in a while) but I'll show you mine if you show me yours ;)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1825830150
Maybe this will inspire you.

[Bozz 💀]

Originally posted by Paladin '83:

Originally posted by Kalisa:

also fighting xenon with terran capital ships like the asgard, the xenon just dont have any counter to it, like i mentioned before, the asgard has its weaknesses but its towards other major factions that are more fighter heavy and can use missles, if you had did storylines and setup before you got your asgards and decided to fight these other factions with it i think you would have at least got some of your challange there, but that would have required more prep on your part.

I also need to have some kind of challange in the game, but i control that by setting rules for myself to follow to make more of a challange where it still feels justified, but i also like to modify my games allot, usually custom tweaks to fit within the narratives i like to play.

I tried mods, I really liked fire and smoke and VRO as they both improved the feel of the game but my autism struck and the "modified" tag got to me too much. It just looked like cheat mode to me. Sounds weird I know but its just the way my mind works unfortunately.

I am def' going to restart I think under Young Gun. Thanks all, appreciate it.

To me vanilla feels like cheating, when I played vanilla I used to restart every 50 hours because I felt like I was cheating or exploiting something, VRO is harder in my opinion and better for the AI (long range works better for AI)
I also use FOCW and larger fleets, now even after 150 hours in the same game I can't go into ennemy territory without risking heavy loses.

[Oddible]

Welcome to X4! You have just encountered the REAL challenge with the game. It was never the Xenon, it was boredom. I play long and slow now, I don't use gimmicks and exploits and those win buttons that Egosoft added to the game cuz of all the whining (like the Asgard). Now I role play for story.

The Xenon have been nerfed to complete ridiculousness. I can get an alert that a Behemoth of mine is being attacked by a K and is out of shield. I teleport to it, kill the K, then teleport out. It's absurd. The Xenon used to be somewhat of a challenge. Egosoft's solution to people complaining about how hard the game is was to make it easy and give them OP tools rather than to design better onboarding that teaches people how to play.

Options for you... A check out the Reactive Factions and Faction Enhancer mods.

[Wraith]

Here a fun one you can do Vanilla.
Slowly take out Xenon sectors but leave them the good sector with plenty of resource that they use to build.

The Xenon will slowly rebuild in the existing sectors and their fleet capacity will not decrease either.

If you reduce them enough and then let them recover their lost assets they can easily be centralized enough to swarm very heavily with an ungodly amount of capital ships as well as fighters.

All their miners will no longer need to fly out of Xenon space to reinforce weakening sectors and all their assets will be relocated to a few sector and they can suddenly pump out ships like it no tomorrow.

Think of VIG but Xenon edition

[Zoe & Kids]

@Bozz I am really interested in VRO and if theres a general consensus it improves and makes the game harder, all the better. What's "FOCW" please?

@Oddible Thanks for the reply, I am new so I can't say what they were like pre the changes you mention but your comment suggests I'd of found it more of a challenge some time ago.

@Wraith Thats a great idea, thank you. I wondered why Xenon sent out pointless ships to the slaughter.