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As for "pure Terran loyalist" it depends on how you see the future of Terran Protectorate. If you want them to conquer whole universe then of course the more factions they are at war the better. You don't need to do much yourself, but earn money supplying them. TER will obtain more sectors on their own.
It is easy to make up some nonsense here, but main reason to kick a hot war is if you want more deaths.... so you can sell more ships from your shipyard. Basically one could try say "justice!" an "people have to know!" to sign with ARG/ANT but that will result in a lot of death an there will be zero benefit. So it is only worth if money is more important. Even for a loyalist a rational choice would be to just hide this all under a rug and aim at status quo. At least that's the way I see it. For example, because "desires of your superiors are not your concern if they do not benefit Terra". Mission control woman will be probably replace in a few years, an if they once again try something stupid, it will be no longer your character's problem.
Interesting. I know the Terrans are xenophobic isolationists but I had assumed that was purely due to the Xenon. I also surmised they were previously at war with the Argon but I had no idea they were at war with every other faction at one point or another. That aside, I'm actually not looking to expand the Protectorate itself. Though I might have to allow it at this point since the HOP are kicking ANT and ARG in the teeth right now and I'd rather those sectors be in Terran hands than HOP hands.
I might just do this, but I also want to leave reasons to come back and play under different conditions. I don't quite agree with the idea that the superiors in the Secret Service are megalomaniacs but it definitely can't be argued against that they're doing some CIA type crap. I get it, I can understand the why of what they do, but I don't like it. I don't like their methods.
Personally I was trying to maintain the Protectorate as it is with being isolationist and that it was my faction that represented their external interests, reclaiming/conquering sectors from pirates and Xenon. Your point about the death just to sell more ships is something that I wanted to avoid but as mentioned the economy in my current game has stagnated. So the more I think about it, the more I think I might need to kick off either the trade war or hot war, otherwise this is a dead playthrough. At least it seems that way. At least with the trade war I would be able to pivot my industry, it's just that it would cost so much more than I believe I have the money for right now. Money isn't the most important thing, but it is necessary to achieve my current goals for this playthrough, so the status quo route is off the table.
That's what I was doing before finally deciding to finish my backlog of missions and getting to Covert Operations. I have around 4-6 of each station production for Terran plus the graphene and hull parts to sell to BOR, ANT and ARG. Money was light coming in and I needed more patrol fleets for playing whack-a-mole with the Khaak and Scale Plate so I expanded into creating trade stations along the route from the Oort Cloud all the way to Heretic's End, and from there into my first wharf. The economy in this game seems to be built around station and ship building but I've read there's a cap on how many ships a faction can have at any given time. I am inclined to believe that since my wharf went from making 100m-150m per hour selling purely to TER and PIO, down to around 10m per hour. Barely any ships get produced now despite having enough resources to fill 2 Tokyo's with fighters. As for my trade stations, they seems to be slowly dropping off as well. So whatever I choose for Covert Operations will likely determine how much longer this playthrough will last.
Here's another question, what is the best price to set for ship sales? Cause everywhere I read keeps saying 150%, but those posts were years ago and I don't exactly trust that info is still true to this day.
Second question; Anyone have any idea how many destroyers it take to clear out Sanctuary of Darkness without casualties?
So, basically, you can:
* Send Xenon to Earth.
* Begin war with Protectorate an ANT/ARG.
* Begin war between Terrans and Paranid (Paranid plot)
None of them bring prosperity to the protectorate. Their "CIA stuff" is meddling, while you "sort of" can see what they're thinking their plan make TER any richer either. I mean, do you remember their glorious plan of undermining ANT by selling hull plates low? At this point I was wondering why all those people aren't fired.
Anyway, maybe things will change when egosoft unrolls their diplomacy update but this won't be happening soon. You also can earn money without relying on economy much, as long as you have a shipyard, but that's not a passive income. So you don't HAVE to start a war... though I recommend to keep Xenon alive, to keep life more interesting.
Thanks for the tips and advice. I ended up pulling the trigger on the war after having read on Reddit that if you finish Heart for Pirates (I chose to due to the involvement of a certain character) then the Terrans will send an intervention fleet to destroy the Yaki home base regardless of past choices. The war supposedly averts this from happening.
I don't have a shipyard, just a wharf, but you did mention something that made me face palm with the realization as to what may have borked my economy. The Xenon. As my faction grew in strength I eventually built massive fortresses at the jump gates into Tharka's and Savage in order to protect the trade routes. Too bad private security contracts aren't really a thing in X, I should be getting paid for that. Anyways, with the Xenon now throwing themselves at what amounts to an unbreakable bulwark, the TER, ANT and ARG haven't needed to really defend against anything and therefore have had no need for new ships.
Well what's done is done and for the rest of this playthrough I'll just have to live with hating myself.
Indeed there is! I recently had the same decision and chose "hot war" =:)
My lore-friendly justification being that I'm the real Terrans, the other Terrans are impostors living in what need to be my systems, and since they're in my way then they've got it coming.
Meanwhile I'll wait until they're weakened and then dump a whole load of Xenon on them from the Yaki questline (Push The Button).
Don't hate yourself. Let the Terrans hate you. And since there won't be any left soon, then there won't be any left to hate you; problem solved :p
Besides, it's probably Dal's fault. Most things are.
Lmao Yeah had a similar thought. Gonna have to head cannon that my Raibu does terrible things for what he believes are the right reasons. Went from being a noble hero of the Protectorate and mankind to being a war criminal/galactic villain responsible for the loss of countless lives. On the road to empire, even though that wasn't my intended goal.
Well of course we are joking here, but your general point does raise some interesting issues.
My first time with X4, a couple of years ago, I went for the Terran Cadet start. Obviously as a good Terran loyalist I was looking out for my faction, and choosing the best storyline outcomes for my faction. Immersion, right? And I genuinely was loyal. I felt like I was part of something bigger than just myself. I wanted to do well, and I wanted my faction to do well.
Except this is not how X4 works. You could consider it a fundamental design flaw.
The economy in X4 appears to thrive on destruction and conflict: wars. Hence the numerous threads on how to maximise conflict.
Yet at the same time (RPG issues aside), there is no dynamic system for handling war.
Ideally wars would dynamically start (and eventually be resolved) for plausible reasons. For example, if one faction was encroaching on another faction's desired territory, or for trade imbalances, or perceived military threats, etc.
Moreover, ideally allies would be dragged into these wars, including potentially yourself, complicating the situation in unpredictable ways. So the player would always be somewhat apprehensive that things could kick off, and consequently be monitoring the situation, looking for potential threats and trying to get ahead of them if possible.
Consider this scenario. You are officially allied to Faction A. Faction B initiates a war vs faction A. You are given the option to support Faction A in the war against Faction B, which you reluctantly decline on the grounds that your personal assets are vulnerable to Faction B, and likely to be obliterated. Unimpressed, Faction A rescinds your alliance. Then Faction B, with whom you're already friendly, offers an alliance on condition that you participate in their conflict vs Faction A.
What do you do? Support Faction A? Stay the hell out of it? Take advantage of Faction B's offer, perhaps to try and wangle territory from Faction A? Wait to see who comes out on top, and then make your own independent move? Some players would find such events genuinely interesting.
Sadly, none of this is the case in X4.
As an empire building sim X4 is pretty cool. It's complex and you have a lot of options and versatility.
But the glaring omission is that what happens after you've built your empire has more or less been completely overlooked.
Of course you can use the storyline outcomes to generate wars. Set TER vs ANT/ARG/BOR, unify PAR and HOP into TRI and set them against everyone, unify ZYA and FAF so they can hold their own.
Which is what we do.
Except these are limited and predictable options. Necessarily starting the same wars over and over is going to become repetitive. Eventually some players will tire of it.
The root of this problem is that X4 is a game where a thriving economy depends on war, yet the game can't handle dynamic wars. It's a fundamental oversight on a basic game design level.
If this were solved then you'd be able to RP a Terran without having to sell out your own side (simply to make the game work), because trouble would probably find TER regardless.
And X4's long-term conflict dynamics would be more unpredictable and therefore more exciting and engaging.
And the basic game loop would mean that the economies worked under most circumstances.
From a purely mechanical perspective, better to junk the lore completely, and have 8 empires (or whatever), between which wars can start/end dynamically to keep things interesting (let alone working).
So the issue you have (how to justify doing something that goes against the grain in order to make the game work better), is part of a bigger and more fundamental issue.
Ok, what can we do about this? Are there any solutions?
I'm not nearly so cynical as some, and wouldn't rule out Egosoft addressing this at some point. Obviously they had to introduce the necessary factions via DLC, which they've now done. You can't address faction conflict dynamics without first having the basic elements in play.
And I'm not suggesting Egosoft are/were particularly focused on this.
As an observer it seems to me that their focus might have been somewhat sketchy, considering the Timelines experiment. It certainly doesn't appear as if they have a "Great, now we've added all the factions let's get conflict dynamics working properly" agenda.
Far from it.
Nonetheless, given Egosoft are looking to introduce new DLC, and given conflict dynamics is an issue, if only for the economics, then Egosoft might address this eventually. It would be a healthy and constructive thing to do, if handled appropriately.
In fact the next DLC regarding "diplomacy" could potentially address this issue, although don't get your hopes up. The roadmap states "Diplomacy: new diplomatic options, diplomatic events, NPC agents."
This doesn't convey to me that they understand the conflict dynamics issue, or consider it a priority at least, especially considering I recall having similar issues in X3 that were never resolved. On the other hand, it doesn't rule it out either.
Which leads me on to the next thing...
Mods may help address this issue. I used mods in X3 to deal with this, and they worked reasonably well.
There is one I've got my eye on for X4 called DeadAir Dynamic Wars. I've not tried it yet (still hacking through storylines), but if/when the time comes I'll likely apply this to a custom game and see how things pan out.
I'm not expecting miracles.
I'm also curious as to how the guy went about making the mod. Is he handling the bulk of this by manipulating relative faction reps? If so then theoretically it might be possible to develop some pretty sophisticated mechanics to handle dynamic faction conflict.
But yeah, this subject, which you inadvertently touched on, is the single most interesting thing there is about X4 for me personally :)
You pretty much just voiced what I've been feeling about X4 over the course of my few weeks playing my first X-Universe game. There needs to be dynamic diplomacy. X4 actually needs quite a few things but it would seem a lot of mods solve these issues. My only problem with using mods is how they disable achievements. Really wish Egosoft would just do what many other developers do and officially incorporate those mods.
I also have some minor nitpicky issues like where is the fusion power? Why aren't there any ships of the line? Why do capital ships have static forward mounted batteries when they have the maneuvering capabilities of a turtle? Why don't capitals have built-in AA and point defense? How is it that the Terrans don't have access to flak? Why do all the ships per class and race have the same internal design outside of the cockpit? Where do the other crew go in a S class ship when there only seems to be room for the pilot? Why are we using living pilots in fighter craft and bombers instead of drones? Why can't missile turrets lock-on at the range of their loaded missiles? There's more I could mention but again, these are just nitpicks and I could just use mods to fix a lot of this. The game as it is, is still incredibly enjoyable.
Mods do not disable achievements. Egosoft is not bethesda.
It would be outdated. Ships fly using antimatter cells.
Because of AI uprising, aka Xenon. People still fear AGI. Actually at the time the game takes place Terrans hunt down and murder people involved in AGI research and "AGI sympathizers" (those missions show up in Terran vs Xenon war missions). So the best you have is defense drones.
Please read Mowglia's post. I was agreeing with his assessment.
This is good to know, thank you. Though note that it, at least seems to be, common practice to do that. Bethesda aren't the only ones that do this. Just look at Larian with BG3. I've also seen past posts on reddit claiming this to be the case with X and I didn't bother to look further into it. My bad.
This doesn't seem to be the case given solar power is still used in archaic fashion. If we were talking about dyson swarms/spheres then it wouldn't be a nitpick for me. Unless I am just misunderstanding something.
Drones are not AI. Look no further than modern day drones. Human pilot, but far from danger.
Fusion is old technology, but the direct information regarding that is given in Rebirth, previous game. See description here:
https://roguey.co.uk/xrebirth/ships/lepton/
(opinion) Regarding dyson swarms as far as I can tell this civilization has not reached that level. It is 800 years from now, they have some interesting stuff like computronics and claytronics or quantum tubes, but basically it looks like they were floundering about due to many wars and gate shutdown so any further tech advances were repeatedly disrupted.