Please describe your "gameplay loop"

[FoolishOwl]

I would like to hear from people who enjoy X4 what it's like to play the game.

I see X4 and its expansions are on sale. I'm partial to space games -- I've played a lot of Space Engineers, No Man's Sky, and Elite: Dangerous, and years ago I played a lot of EVE Online. I particularly liked the model of exploration in Elite, and the experience of designing and building things in Space Engineers and No Man's Sky.

The trailers feature a lot of small ships flying through enormous space stations. A lot of the discussion I read here describes an arc of building up and managing fleets and infrastructure.

How much is there between those two things? Is there much exploration, or more accurately, what does exploration mean in X4?

What's your typical hour of play like?

[¥aeko]

Originally posted by FoolishOwl:

What's your typical hour of play like?

Idk, depends on what I am doing.

At the beginning of the game there is a lot of flying around, collecting stuff, doing a few small missions, the Boron story, the HQ stuff - figuring out where the "usual suspects" of stations are, like the big refinery from the teladi etc. getting a first overview on "where the profits are", at least in the current state of the universe.

Buying a new ship, equipping things etc. and farming reputation.

Then, the obvious "kicking the xenon out of hatikvahs choice"... because I would regret not doing that later.

Checking what the ARG vs. PAR war is doing, and maybe doing the pirate story a bit.

And then, building the first station (right now, its a warter factory for the borons).

In the middle of the game: by that point I usually use a destroyer to do things, do more missions, have set up some miners, build more stations, take a look after the xenon and their "usual invasions" by then - and especially the Split.

At this point, I tend to spend quite a bit of time on the map too, because stuff needs to be organized.

More reputation farming, unlocking the "good stuff" to put on my ships etc.

I also tend to do the story questslines then, at least the terrans, and whatever I can find that might be of interest.

In an advanced savegame: I can do whatever I want, no one can stop me anymore - but usually I dont start nonsense-wars for no good reason, so I pile ships on ships until the game becomes unplayable -> new savegame.

===========
But thats the thing with the game: If you want, you can go and do piracy etc. or start some wars - so your gameplay might look very different from what I usually see.

[Wraith]

Early Game: Money making and Reputation farming as well as exploring to find stations
There so much way to make money in this game.
1: pirating
2: mining (doesn't look very profitable but once you start raining in spacefly eggs it pretty great)
3: trading
4: missions
5: scavenging

there more but that that main way I do it for early game

Mid Game: getting automation working and progressing stuff that make life easier for earning passive money

once you got the money then it all about setting up your first passive money maker from traders, mining station, etc to expanding your station to produce better wares

Before long you got a business going and then that business turn into an empire slowly.

I also start doing story quests around this time to affect the universe as I like with the one available (like helping the split by separating them into two faction so one isn't focus on defending both side)

Late Game: an entire empire that run itself and then I either for fun declare war on another faction that can actually hurt your fleet or rinse and repeat by starting over.

Exploration is limited in this game as there only so much in a sector and how far the AI is willing to put the stations from the core of the sector but each station you find can help your knowledge of the current economy (it random due to seeds)

So it an important factor to get the overall situation of the game and what ware is missing and a good opportunity to put your foot in the door for profit

[chronobomb]

I love the different game play loops:
1. Be a pilot, doing jobs getting paid, upgrading your ship and exploring space. Occasionally helping out your fellow pilots who get in trouble or maybe causing trouble and taking their cargo or ship for yourself. The whole time you can participate in wars, protect sectors from invasions, or just chilling off in your own corner.

2. Be a entrepreneur. Making deals, building stations, setting up trade routes and protecting them from pirates and aliens. Maybe you occasionally practice a little espionage and piracy against your competitors to keep money pouring in to your wallet.

3. Be an admiral. Building massive fleets with hundreds of fighters, supported by carriers, battleships, destroyers, frigates, and corvettes. Sending your ships to participate in wars, stomp alien invasions, or help support rebellions. Jump into any cockpit from the might battleship broadside, overseeing the launch operations of a supercarrier, or just hopping in a fighter to take a few guys out personally.

4. Be a statesman. Maybe you would like to play politics. Start or stop wars, cause rebellions, ferret out secrets the aliens are trying to hide and using it against them or for them. Tired of empires failing to police against pirates or stop invasions, take them out, turn their sectors into your own sectors.

5. Be a crime boss: Be a scourge to shipping fencing your stolen goods, setting up black markets and drug runners across known space. Set up protection rackets so station will only survive if they buy your precious protectyon at exorbitant prices. Choose who lives and who dies. (They removed slavery in X4 so you can;t be completely despicable.) Feel free to build casinos all through known space.

6. Be a scientist. Help explore the edges of science, terraform planets, explore rare anomalies, find the secret of the ancient, missing races locked behind broken gates, explore the past and create the future. Use advanced teleportation to flit about known space or move entire stations with catastrophic consequences. Make ships that can handle whole fleets without breaking a sweat. There is no limit for an inquisitive mind.

7. Spend thousands of hours playing X4 then start installing mods. Fly Star Destroyers, X-wings, support the rebellion or maintain order as the empire. There are so many mods for X4!

[Tin Pony]

Originally posted by FoolishOwl (he/they):

What's your typical hour of play like?

In any given hour of play I might be spamming a faction for reputation and police licenses, hand-picking marines and crew members, cruising for opportunities to add ships to my fleet, or scanning stations to develop the black market in a new neighborhood.

Then, there's ship repairs and refits, building stations to supply locally created demands, raiding the competition, and defending developed trade routes. And of course, advancing Research of teleportation and ship modifications by improving the Player Headquarters.

It's not all fast and furious hands-on flying or fighting. Most of my time is spent in map view directing squads/fleets while being chauffeured by a favorite pilot on a favorite ship. But in a good session, I might spend a few hours lurking around a large conflict creating abandoned ships, and another hour recovering those ships.

Even though I increase reputation with them, I don't care to take political sides among the factions, preferring instead to just be an opportunist.

[hurepoix]

Find money to buy my first miner ship. Mining nividium. Ignore boring missions and insip plot/story. Buy more miner, mining nividium.
Build my first station mining silicium. Stop mining nividium affect miners to the station. Buy a handfull of freighter, usually hermes vanguard from ALI. Build a second station mining ore.
Buy some cheap gun boats to teladi against kha ak harrassing my miners (not neccessary if you play terran or segaris which are kha ak free).
Replace medium miner by large ones who dont care about kha ak.
Station Diversification if you wish it.
Go visit my family 3 days letting the game run alone ; it dont need you.
Come back to discover you have trillions of money and max reputation with everyone, at least those you didnt started with negative feeling.
Build a military-industrial complex, if it wasnt started earlier. Build a fleet of several hundreds of odyseus A. I prefer to not have more than 800 or 900 to avoid lags.

Discover that beeing the richest and more powerful potentat of the univers have no importance. Other factions have no reactions. It is a bit like if you have no real existance.

Surround the four major stations of SOP with hundreds of destroyers, spread the remnant in sectors controlled by SOP.
Discover that despite having 3 eyes paranids see nothing, and dont suspect anything.

At split Vendata 5 to 7 days were neccessary to destroy all civilisations, and be the lone survivor except pirats who spawn for tin air ... and of course kha ak since egosoft is unable to remove bugs from its own universe.
It took around 10 days at V6.00

[jojorne]

Originally posted by ¥aeko:

In an advanced savegame: I can do whatever I want, no one can stop me anymore - but usually I dont start nonsense-wars for no good reason, so I pile ships on ships until the game becomes unplayable -> new savegame.

This is what makes the end game boring. The factions have no means to detect player progress and act accordingly. Feel threatened by the player's all mighty power. I like how Stellaris does things but I was never able to win a single game there. If just a fraction of Stellaris politics was added to X4:Foundations, the end game would be amazing and fun!

[atrox]

My X4 gameplay loop:

1. Usuall I install the the game to see how it has improved.

2. Then I pick one of the easier starts, like Boron or Terran. Then get a few miner ships, one for every resource availble, while I start to explore surrounding sectors.

3. Then adding in a few trade ships for trading in the vincinty and get some small battle ships to actually do something fun.

4. Then I start to fight with the horrible UI, watch my idiot AI ships in a mixture of pain/laughter/sadness while trying to keep them in formation.

5. I rage quit repeatedly after losing my combat ships against a single Xenon N.

6. After watching my traders fleeing *towards* the threat - and recognizing that I can't prevent this braindead behaviour - I stop playing it for a few days.

7. When deciding if this mess of a game is worth playing, I usually deinstall and wait another 6 months.

8. Back to 1.

[chronobomb]

Originally posted by atrox:

My X4 gameplay loop:
4. Then I start to fight with the horrible UI, watch my idiot AI ships in a mixture of pain/laughter/sadness while trying to keep them in formation.

Formation movement has gotten a lot better. IF you want to maintain formation during battle, you have to issue move orders between attacks. Otherwise they will arrive in formation then break up to attack the target. My biggest complaint is that your units always want to go to the same plane as the enemy instead of taking higher or lower positions. They will reform into formation if you issue a move order.

Originally posted by atrox:

My X4 gameplay loop:
5. I rage quit repeatedly after losing my combat ships against a single Xenon N.

Speed is king and Xenon N's have it. If you are fat and slow like many Terran ships then you need cover or light missiles to keep the N distracted from shooting at you. N's move at 600 so you need a missile fast enough to threaten them. I prefer the light swarm missile. [/quote]

Originally posted by atrox:

6. After watching my traders fleeing *towards* the threat - and recognizing that I can't prevent this braindead behaviour - I stop playing it for a few days.

This is preventable. The AI will always flee toward the closest gate. which may lead to a xenon sectors. Easiest way to prevent this is to blacklist them from border sectors until you have sufficient patrols to protect your traders.

The AI has several issues but Egosoft is slowly improving it. Maybe update 7 will solve your issues.

[Meme Turtle]

Typical loop looks something like:
Get excited about new DLC->install/update all the mods->have fun early to mid game->get frustrated by AI/UI/etc in late game->uninstall and sh1tpost on forums

As of late I've optimised the loop to instantly transition from the first to the last stage. Save a lot of time..

[atrox]

Originally posted by chronobomb:

This is preventable.

Simply not true. You can't prevent fleeing behaviour.

Originally posted by Meme Turtle:

Typical loop looks something like:
Get excited about new DLC->install/update all the mods->have fun early to mid game->get frustrated by AI/UI/etc in late game->uninstall and sh1tpost on forums

As of late I've optimised the loop to instantly transition from the first to the last stage. Save a lot of time..

This.

[chronobomb]

Originally posted by atrox:

Originally posted by chronobomb:

This is preventable.

Simply not true. You can't prevent fleeing behaviour.This.

You can. I gave one way to help.

You could set them to ignore too if you want and they won't flee at all. You could set them to fight. Or you can send them places where they won't flee into more danger. Lot's of options.

[Veeshan]

For me it's 90% browsing the map and checking prices and supplies. Continuous avalanche of mouse clicking so I can rarely play. But monitoring the local and not so local economic state is of course generally considered the point and I quite enjoy it.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

selling free Odysseys -> boarding -> "Macrosoft" foundation -> printing money -> rest is just a matter of proper setup.

[EvilVictor]

Originally posted by FoolishOwl (he/they):

I would like to hear from people who enjoy X4 what it's like to play the game.

I'd describe the game as somewhat more like EVE and Elite Dangerous than Space Engineers.

For me personally, I don't much like the "empire building" side of it. So my typical game starts as getting a ship with more than one gun and then taking the ships that I want from the NPCs from that point on (well, more like taking anything I can get my hands on and selling 99% of them). I normally have one, maybe two factions that don't absolutely hate me. I seldom fly the bigger ships personally but I do enjoy having at least one to use as a sort of mobile base.

One thing this game does far better than any other out there is convey a true sense of scale. When you're standing outside your little S class ship it looks pretty big, then you fly that over and dock it on an M class ships that looks huge in comparison. But then you dock that on an XL ship that is many magnitudes larger. It's just really well done in that aspect, everything feels like the right size unlike many other space games. Except the goofy highways, they break the otherwise awesome sense of scale by making the "universe" feel small so I always disable them.

Anyway, I usually have more money than I know what to do with and no desire to blow-up or build stations after about a month so I put the game down for a while and then come back after a little while and do it all over again. I probably ignore about half of what you can do in the game and still enjoy it as a good way to kill a few hours after work.

[=STP= Isegrim]

I dont have a ...loop i Play differently every time to learn more how to do stuff and about possibilitys the Game does offer.