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Part of the biggest lessons to learn you seem to be most of the way to... Pick your fights carefully... Even in a bucket you can win some surprising fights, but you'll also lose some surprising fights too... But whilst you're learning how flight works in the game? Yeah, fight carefully. (Also, use your strafe controls to avoid 70%-95% of incoming fire)
Exploring shows you where the opportunities are. The game has a LARGE economy with lots of holes in it, if you have a trade ship, these are holes you can fill... There are also lots of missions you -can- do in a bucket... "Repair satellites" will get you an easy few thousand credits... Deploying laser towers, destroying minefields... All very easy to do in a mediochre ship.
If you know where to look, there are also a few free ships just waiting to be found, which make the early game -so- much faster.
Early trading really needs a bigger ship than the ones you will start with (Although there's one teladi start where you begin with a trade ship... "The Unworthy Entrepeneur" My choice for the 'best' of the standard starts)
As for the 'fun' part? It depends on what you classify as fun?
If you want to go shooting stuff and making money? Fly around Argon territory and look for HOP and ZYA trade ships and learn to steal them... This will help you practice combat skills, and as long as you don't kill anyone, no one will really care. The Argon are at war with both HOP and ZYA so they won't send the police after you. If you don't kill the ships, the HOP and ZYA government won't complain either... So tear out the shields, and just slowly reduce the hull until they bail out or it looks like they'd rather die.
Relatively easy early game combat, and free, damaged ships... Sometimes with some bonus cargo too. Deploy those ships as an early trade fleet, sell them for start up funds, or whatever :) ... If you have the Terran DLC, moving on to freelance trade ships in Pioneer space is stupidly good money, and not much harder.
Data vaults can give some early funds too if you can find 'em (there are maps out there on the web) ... and once you get a little cash in, if you need some help in combat but can't afford wingmen? Laser towers... Cheap, reusable, very effective in large numbers.
Don't worry, it's a tough game, persist, you can get there.
Until you can upgrade your ship with better weapons/shields/thrusters, I suggest you stick to easy missions such as "destroy criminal traffic", "repair satellite/station" and such.
Missions are give by stations, and so getting offers is dependent on exploration. A good tip for the early game is to go for a few laps around the highway ring and pause the game every once in a while to see the offers nearby.
But there are other things you can do to earn Cr's, such as mining crystals on asteroids and selling them to station traders, or collecting loot on war zones (e.g. near Xenon gates such as the one on Hatikvah's Choice I).
Good luck!
The story in the base game starts in the Hatikva sector. They had gotten mixed up with the Scale Plate Pact (Teladi pirates) for a while, and now want to end things with them and go their straight. They need your help to do some of the legwork.
Of course, that means you have to explore until you get near enough to the Hatikva sector that you receive an automated email (practically spam, if it weren’t for the fact that you probably haven’t gotten any others). That email tells you to go see someone on their Trade station. You can find Hatikva by riding the highway loop, so that’s easy enough.
The DLC all add additional starting scenarios that add more things to do. For example, with the Cradle of Humanity DLC you could start as a Cadet in the Terran Navy, flying a fighter on patrol in the Asteroid Belt. But you still have to make your way to Hatikva to access most of the story.
The Split Vendetta DLC is interesting because it gives you two starts, one for both sides of the civil war amongst the Split families. But in both cases you’ll find that you need to do the Hatikva missions before you have everything you need to finish the Split plot.
> [T]he only missions i could find were way above what i can do, i wont go fight 5 things in a bucket...
It is good that you are looking for missions that you can actually do; the game does not hesitate to throw out missions that are just impossible for you at the beginning of the game.
But there are lots of easy missions too. Look for missions where someone needs a ride to somewhere else. This will usually be someone who overslept and missed their ride to work. You usually don’t have to take them far and it’s easy money. But you do need to leave a crew slot on your ship empty, otherwise you won’t have room for the passenger. If you hunt for data leaks you can find a criminal version of this mission. It’s basically the same thing but this time the guy needs to get away from the station for unspecified reasons. The police probably won’t notice.
There are also missions to deliver cargo. These are easy once you get ahold of a freighter. Just order your freighter captain to buy whatever cargo the mission wants and to sell it wherever the mission says to, usually a particular sector.
Satellite Repair missions are another easy one. Just fly up to the satellite, stop, jump out in your suit, and use your repair beam to bring the satellite back to 100% health. While you’re out there, make sure your own ship is in top condition too.
Destroy Mines and Rescue a Ship are both fun, but generally kill new players the first time. Your autopilot doesn’t know much about mines and will fly you right into the minefield, with predictable results. Drop out ~10km early and approach slowly. You won’t be able to target the mines, but you can zoom in with Y and hit them easily.
There are several dozen other missions you can find, so I won’t try to explain them all. These are generally the easiest, and the ones I look for first when I start a game. Of course, once I have my first mining ship working for me and bringing in the bacon I more or less stop bothering with most missions. After that the best type of mission to find is the one that asks you to build and deliver a fleet of ships, and the one that ask you to build a station with particular modules on it. Those can be worth millions, and they can really strengthen the faction they’re for against their enemies.
There are also missions to deliver cargo. These are easy once you get ahold of a freighter. Just order your freighter captain to buy whatever cargo the mission wants and to sell it wherever the mission says to, usually a particular sector.
Satellite Repair missions are another easy one. Just fly up to the satellite, stop, jump out in your suit, and use your repair beam to bring the satellite back to 100% health. While you’re out there, make sure your own ship is in top condition too.
Destroy Mines and Rescue a Ship are both fun, but generally kill new players the first time. Your autopilot doesn’t know much about mines and will fly you right into the minefield, with predictable results. Drop out ~10km early and approach slowly. You won’t be able to target the mines, but you can zoom in with Y and hit them easily.
not gonna lie, that sounds tedious , when the main draw of the game (for me from ads and youtube) is "own 500 ships, build stations, do economy"
kinda feels like grind to actually play the "real" game.
Get your HQ up and running for research and look into hacking blueprints and at least some basic teleportation. That'll help reduce your startup costs for building factories, where the real money of the game lies.
In the meantime, stealing ships was about the fastest road to riches I was able to find, but you have to be a confident combat pilot to do that, and have an awareness of how the game political landscape works. The short version, find ships flying in sectors belonging to a faction that hates them, steal, but don't kill those ships... Sell for profitsss, or keep them as the first building blocks in your own fleet.
If you want a big starting injection of cash, there's abandoned ships out there, including one capital ship... I prefer to keep these, but you can totally sell them.
Of course, finding and extracting them safely can be an issue... The cap ship was abandoned for a reason.
Also, building a scrap business near conflict zones nets you big bucks, and you can easily jump start this venue by playing the scavenger card I mentioned above.
Also don't neglect your home base questlines, they provide huge upgrades, and also allows you to learn of a way to steal tech, this way you can save hundreds of millions credits from having to pay for schematics (i.e. living modules, production modules...)
what home base?
One of the early missions will be to scan an information leak on a space station, which should kick off communication with a character by the name of "Boso Ta"... The mission very quickly gets you a HQ base, where you can do research and stuff after building it up a bit.
Depending on which start you've used, you might be able to shortcut by just flying to Heretic's End. (Take the north west gate from Hatikvah's choice (sky blue sector on the map on the main highway loop) and fly straight ahead through the next sector)
Edit: "The young gun" and Terran starts have a more elaborate opening quest line, Young gun winds up with a HQ in grand exchange. Whereas the Terrans still wind up in heretic's End, but aren't so easy to skip.
If you only own the base game, the following stories and activities await you:
Story missions:
-Gaining the Player Headquarters (scan a signal broadcast on a random station to start it).
-Hatikvah Trade Revolution (be in close proximity to sector Hatikvah's Choice I to start it, mission has to be activated in the Mission Manager).
-Paranid Civil War (consult with a person called Dal Busta once you did the previous two story mission chains).
Regular missions: a large number of various mission offers await you on the space stations. To locate them, open the map and navigate to stations that have a yellow icon around them. Press the right mouse button on these icons to learn about the offer.
Guild missions: various guilds may be interested in you joining their ranks once you reached a certain positive standing with their mother faction. You will get their offer automatically by doing the promotion ceremonies at various faction representatives.
Mad people missions: you can find various people around the universe who will task you with various gathering missions.
Regular activities, such as:
-Piloting: In X4: Foundations, you can fly almost every ship in the game. This includes at least a detailed cockpit/bridge, and a good looking outer model per ship. Be it a Small fighter, a Medium asteroid miner, a Large freighter, or an Extra-Large, super-laser equipped Battleship, you can personally fly all of them.
-Trading: Trade in an ever-evolving, real-time simulated economy. Trade offers are dictated by supply and demand, and the main driving force behind the economy is war.
-Exploring: The universe of X4 is big. Exploring the various sectors not only expand your map - finding stations, various points of interests, data vaults, random loot stashes, high yield resource fields, secret wormhole locations, abandoned ships, (etc.) all play a role in you experiencing the game fully. And you also get to see awesome looking sectors. :D
-Mining: Mining is a crucial part of the economy for mined resources are the founding elements of the economy - without mining the economy would simply collapse on a galactic level. That being said, if you do decide to mine personally or by commanding a mining fleet, the impact you can have on the economy is not insignificant. Mine all the rocks and sell it to the closest station for scraps or depleet all the nebulae of a faction and sell it to an opposing force - the choice is yours.
-Salvaging: With the advent of the 5.00 update, salvaging is now a possibility in X4: Foundations. All you need is a tug ship and wait for a battle to ensue. Once the dust have settled, you can come out from the shadows and play the vulture game - look for the wrecks with the highest yield and tow them to the nearest scrap recycling facility. While looking for scraps, you can also collect the various items and wares dropped by the fallen ships. A fine-looking bartender with big lobes once also told me of rule of acquisition #34: War is good for business.
-Fighting: While fighting is a crucial part of the X4 universe, it is not something you necessarily have to partake in. For instance, you can follow an entirely pacifist playstyle if you're prepared for some compromises, eg, letting your wingmen or pilot fight for you. But if you do decide to fight, a good number of fighter ships, battleships, weapons, shields, whatnot are available for your arsenal. You can gather your own fleet and take over the universe, or you can fly solo and just bust the incoming foes one by one. It's really up to you what you make of it in this regard.
-Building: Whatever you see in the universe can be built from the ground-up (although, there's no ground in space). Space station building begins on the drawing table, where you snap together the acquired blueprints that you either purchased from the various faction representatives, or simply hacked a few stations and got lucky with some blueprints. After you're happy with the result in the station designer, you can hire a construction vessel and let it build your stations module by module. Again, the resources used for building stations by you and NPC factions alike are gathered by traders in real time, so it may take time have an entire station finished - especially if there's a resource shortage in the local clusters. The same is true for spacecrafts - they also have to be built by the shipyards using resources gathered from factories by independent traders. So if you do want to buy a ship, keep in mind that resource shortages might prevent you from getting your shiny new ship right away.
-Customizing: Your ships and stations not only have to be built, but can be customized, too! Be it engines, weapons, turrets, shields, manouvering thrusters, crew, various software upgrades, further modifications - these can all be added or upgraded with faction specific components.
-Researching: Upon aquiring the Player Headquarters, you unlock the ability to research things, such as teleportation, various module hacking, ship modifications, and depending on what expansions you own, one-of-a-kind ships are available to be researched in case you were to accidentally lose them.
-Terraforming: A late game activity, terraforming selected planets might give you unexpected benefits. Yes, the planets will look different, too.
-Existential Crisis: another late activity, the big bad have lurked in the shadows for so long. You might need a LOT of military assets, and an experiment to go wrong in order to experience this.
These are just points that were on top of my head. There's a lot to X4: Foundations than meets the eyes. However, this game does require some patience, especially in the early stages for a new player. I'd suggest you do the tutorials, start either the PHQ or Hatikvah storylines and try to expand from there.
Well, you gotta earn cash somehow. The first thing you should spend your cash on is a mining ship. Set that thing up to mine Ore or Silicon in a sector with some resources and a refinery (one that buys Ore or Silicon, obviously) and you have gotten the snowball started.
If you’re looking for a less grindy source of cash, you should keep your eye out for missions to construct defense stations. They can earn you 16–22 million credits all in one go, but may require a few million in construction costs, not to mention the cost of the blueprints. Obviously that makes them more of a second step than a first step.
But if this is what X4 is to you, I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that you can use the creative game start to give yourself all the riches and rep in the world, right from the start, so you can buy your 500 ships the second you are "born" into the universe.
But if piloting you can use this time to get used to using your travel drive, evading Xenon perhaps. If using an NPC pilot in first playthrough I would advise using them passively, evade and run away where possible... In many introductory hours you'll probably get blown away so just quicksave every so often with F5 key (and I typically land at a station every hour or so for a full main menu save).
As you get in proximity of stations in the sectors you'll be offered missions that you can find via the mission panel, you will hear a digital blip as you're flying to let you know there is one, and little icons on the map. I'm sure you know this, I'm just re-iterating the point that these are fine money makers in early game. An hour session and you could be in the region of a mil. There are plenty with the "Very Easy" or "Easy" label.
(It hasn't happened lately but in my first hours playing I did some "Easy" missions, satellite repairs not far from a battle, so first worrying about bucket ship, then feeling fragile out in spacesuit, fixing satellite as ship fire is going on around and beams and bolts flying past... fumbling and tumbling around like a Sandra Bullock in Gravity. Sometimes it is just "those few moments" that stand out rather than non-stop all the time action and adventure. I've only recently bought Avarice DLC and now satellite repairs WITH a ticking clock exploding star as the backdrop also creates some tense situations.
And again, after 600 hours I have just found out you can repair your ship from your spacesuit, I did this for the first time the other day during a rescue effort of my crew who got ejected from a destroyed ship, and had I not done a spacewalk and made that repair mid-rescue I would not have survived it. Again, just little things, that I do, that the game does, combined - creates some epic moments, which bring the "life" and "fun" for me.)
From there you can check your reputation/relationship with other factions levels, and that data can be a bit of a spur to what you do and where you go next. For me I embraced being an Argon so I wanted to increase my standing with them, this including some of their station missions, doing some trades with them. Raising reputation gives you access to more ships. Finding the leaders of each faction can also be an exploration mini-game in itself.
There's a simple mission at the trading station in Hatikvahs Choice with Reen Omara who will give you a free ship, a little trader that you could put to work whilst you do your own thing in your own ship. As others have explained, this will open you up to pushing the trading boundaries and mining. I cannot speak to mining, I opted for trade the first time round and am saving a mining empire for the future. This is an instance of me picking/determining my own fun that I'm going to have with it knowing that X4 facilities it through its systems and galaxy. You WILL need to set your own goals at some point, the earlier the better really. Best of luck with it and have fun!