Very new player need help with ship to purchase or what to do.

[OMGWTFLMAO]

Hi all, I'm really liking this game so far but it's a overwhelming since there's a lot of stuff to learn and videos to watch and research. So far, I'm doing good for my start. I've been semi-following a youtube video guide by Francis John with my own modifications and thanks to his early starting tip, so far, I have been able to amass about 8 million with more possibly on the way as I see more freighters being destroyed as we speak.
His guide mentioned getting a pegasus as an early ship but since I have collected more than the recommended amount, I figured I would go with a ship higher than that like say a Katana or a Nemesis vanguard or maybe a much better one I'm not seeing yet? Also, am I able to purchase a Katana right away or do I need to increase some sort of reputation first?
I've been reading alot of other tips online that are plausible as to where I can best spend my money like getting the pegasus and then buying extra ships to mine or trade for an early passive income as a start.
But being very new to the game, I don't know which one would be better since i have not done trading or managing anything. I figured the best possible ship I could get with the money would let me fight enemies better and do quests.
But at the same time, having a passive income would be great for when the 2 warring factions run out of ship to battle each other and I'll be depending on that income.

I'm very new to the game and this is my first x4 game so I'm not sure of the intricacies of managing extra ships. Thank you in advance and have a nice day!

[conrado.lacerda]

Do you have any immediate goal in mind?

[OMGWTFLMAO]

I'm not sure yet since I'm very new. I was following a guide to help me ease in to the game and slowly learn the basic stuff first so I won't get overwhelmed. So far, it's working. I'm having fun scavenging at the moment, watching two factions duke it out and waiting for their ship to explode to see what they would drop but from the looks of it, I can't exactly keep doing it as a main source of income since they're bound to run out of ships eventually.

I guess my most immediate goal is to have a really good comfortable start so I'll have plenty of room to start learning the whole game comfortably and I guess either having the best possible accessible ship I could buy would help with that or having the best passive starting income as I explore and do stuff with a decent ship isn't bad as well.

[conrado.lacerda]

One thing I like to do around this point of the game is to assemble a squadron with some 3-4 decent fighters (Novas, Perseus, Asps...) and go hunting Khaak in miner protection missions. The pay is very good (specially with a police license) and you get to learn some combat and fleet management skills.

[OMGWTFLMAO]

That's my problem atm. I'm not too familiar with ships. The only reason I know of the Pegasus was because of the guide and Nemesis being mentioned on the comments and then it led to someone mentioning the Katana and then doing more research on those on what people say about them. Otherwise, I'm clueless when it comes to even what ships are decent and which ones are not for other purposes. I also have no idea where or how to get them or how much they would cost. And also, the best parts to equip them with. Haha talk about overwhelming.

[SirProsik]

Roguey's site: roguey.com.uk is great for information Spoilers abound :)
Another site linked here a few days ago:
https://www.qsna.eu/x4/ships

[conrado.lacerda]

Suggestion: actually playing the game; you know, flying around pushing buttons and seeing what they do.

[Sticky]

To get rep up quick get some small miners or medium miners at least. Find a sector that is buying Silicon or at least Ore and has Silicon and Ore asteroids in the same sector. Give the Miners the Default command to Mine in that sector for Silicon or Ore. Reputation is gained in many ways, doing missions is probably the quickest, but also trading is a good way to gain rep. The Small Miners will have more transactions quicker compared to Larger Miners and will gain rep quicker. i wouldn't buy more than 10 small miners, if you need to know more about setting Default Behavior just ask. Default Behavior is good to know for most ships, you can have a default behavior set and give a ship a command and when its done it will fall back to its default behavior.

The issue with Freighters is you might get harassed by pirates often wanting your cargo, Miners are safe from Pirate harassment.

You might also want a M class with 4 or more S class ships set as a Fleet set as Attack or Defend and watch how they interact.

Remember to Save Often i only use 2 slots for saves for a single game, and alternate them so you can go back to which save you desire if you need more time.

Global Orders is something that is important to setup if you have not already. This will decide how a ship interacts with Pirates and police. Or if a ship finds an Abandoned Ship i hope you set it to Mark and Let you know if they find one. The Message log can get long at times, What i do is search two things before i save and delete the msg log. I search for Dest, for Destroy, this will let me know if i lost a ship and want to load a save. I also search for Mark, This will show me where an Abandoned Ship is if your ships found one if you have it set correctly.

[Tin Pony]

The in-game Encyclopedia (top row of tabs in Map View, looks like a book) has info on ships you've encountered, with new ones added as you play.

The Pegasus is a small class ship with a single weapon, but can be fast depending on the engines you put on it.

The Nemesis is a medium class ship with 5 weapons, but will be slow, more like a tank.

You might want to try getting some pilots to abandon their damaged ships so you can recover and repair/sell them.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3037833076

[Gamejunky05]

Explore the sectors fly around the main highway ring and set up some advanced sats on few shipyards to help with later on if you plan to trade with factions.You can buy from equipment docks ans s/m shipyards. It will be easier to navigate and fly around the areas. Save often when you buy a ship, find stuff or stations. So that you dont lose all your hard work.

[Gibbo]

I normally get a Katana first. I'd prefer a Nemesis, but getting rep up with the HOP takes a while unless you focus just on that so I normally end up with a Katana as my first miners start in Segaris and Gaian Prophecy. These are fairly safe to begin with and once I've got miners in there I go exploring. Well the next thing I do is raise my rep with HOP so I can get miners in their sectors as well. They have some ships I like to use. Their M miners are decent. Yeah once that is done ride the highway to unlock all those sectors and start looking for sectors to put miners in. The shipyard in Eighteen Billion sells the sentinal version of the crane. A fully kitted out one is over 20 million, but I spend about 6 million. I only have top spec ships if I build them myself. They survive just fine. Probably get it even cheaper than 6 million?

It can take quite a while before you can afford your first M class and honestly I would focus on those 6 million Cranes than an M class which is roughly the same price. Once you have several of them then you can stop worrying about your income as it will only ever increase once you have Cranes in the ore fields.

[Greldinart]

best ship wanted:
corvet: katana (6m or free with terran plot), fit a split engine^^
destroyer: odyssey (10m or free at a fix location in SOP space), and dock a jian or gorgona on his deck. personally i prefer the boron ray if you got dlc
freighter: free in piracy :d but go to MIN shiyard at 18billion, for 4m, you got 50k cargo of pure profit. if you set a satellite network, with 50k cargo you can except 500k profit per haul

[ParabolaWaVe]

Don't worry about the ships... since you can hire staff to fly them, you really can't go wrong with your choice. There isn't a wrong and a right way to play the game, just have fun and in a future replay, you can do things differently.

[Chris]

So a beginner tip that you should know: while you *can* fly around any of your ships in X4, you don't *have to*. Make sure that every ship has an assigned Captain: they'll follow your orders & move the ship where/how you want, but will happily step back if you want to take the controls directly.

Ship size:

S ships are the small scout/fighter/heavy fighter ships. These are fast and nimble, but don't offer much in the way of shields or "punch" on their weapons.
M ships are the corvette/frigate/gunship sized ships. "Frigates" have an S-sized docking bay & can hold 1 docked ship.
L sized ships are the Destroyer/Light-carrier sized ships. These can only dock at stations that have a Pier docking port which is most but not all stations. Most of these will have an S-sized docking bay & some have an M-sized bay.
XL sized ships: These are the massive battleships, super-carriers, resupply ships, or station-construction ships.

L & XL ships require Marines to board them if you want to capture them, but S & M ships you can capture just by frightening the crew in to bailing out.

Early game stuff

Take your starter ship, dock at an Equipment Station or Wharf, select the "resupply" option & add a few deployable satellites to your ship. Then fly around to clear up the Fog of War on the map, which will help you to see available missions on the map (left side sub-menu). Find some missions for repairing satellites or deploying new ones, or even playing taxi & helping someone catch up to a departed ship. This will get you some initial credits.

Use those credits to put some weapons on your ship, maybe increase your shields or engine. Then fly to either the PAR sectors or PIO (from the Terran DLC) sectors. Look for corvettes labeled "bounty hunter". While those ships are technically aligned with a faction, you can attack them without consequence.
Blast their shield down & then damage their hull below 75%. Keep the shield below 20%-25% & the hull below 70%-75% but concentrate on just trying to fly behind them/under them in a way that avoids getting shot by their turrets. Every 10 seconds or so plink their shield with a single shot of your weapon as a warning that they should abandon their ship. Eventually crew will start to bail out (1-4 crew members, not more often than every 30 seconds). When there's nobody left then the ship is abandoned & you can claim it yourself! Fly near it with your spacesuit, turn on your scanner & look for a glowing red dot. Repair that & the ship is yours! Use your repair laser to fix it up (or just pay money at a wharf) and now you've got a new corvette ready to be your player ship (or to serve in your growing fleet).


Doing that should teach you the basics of missions & combat, which'll form a "foundation" for everything else!

[OMGWTFLMAO]

Hi all, thanks for all the wonderful tips. I was able to figure out what my first goal for now.
For now, I think I plan on being a space pirate. I found this video on Youtube about free Katanas from Freelancers in Pio Space. The video was about a year old so I don't know if this is still viable or been patched?

My plan is to set up a fleet of Katanas from Freelancers, maybe 5 or so and start doing this to earn more money by selling the extra ones. I don't know how viable this is. So far I have 10million to spend on either fully kiting out a Katana or two to do space pirating or fully kite out 3 Nemesis vanguards to do this. Which is more viable?

I'm just not sure how good the AI pilots will be in terms of helping me. I was reading more on this topic and I read that it's not possible to set up a player lead squadron? As in the other ships will not keep in formation if the player is the one piloting the lead ship?

Also, in terms of choosing weapons and turrets and engines etc, very early this game, are there simple recommendations that I should always go for like which Turrets or weapons or combat engines I should always pick for my ship and my crew's ships? I know some of the parts and weapons/turrets are not available yet this early in the game but I was wondering if there's a consensus on which are the best to go for at this time that will easily deal with most enemy ships. Like specific types of weapons and turrets and engines.

Also, I plan on really taking my time on this and just focusing on being a pirate for a long while to amass funds with selling ships and parts and then eventually slow start building a massive fleet of mining/trade ships for passive income. Will this punish me in the long run if I idle too long? Like will the xenon eventually start to take over the whole space if I don't start building my own fleet right away or is the AI good enough to prevent this from happening while I goof around and learn more about the game?

[OMGWTFLMAO]

Originally posted by Chris:

So a beginner tip that you should know: while you *can* fly around any of your ships in X4, you don't *have to*. Make sure that every ship has an assigned Captain: they'll follow your orders & move the ship where/how you want, but will happily step back if you want to take the controls directly.

Ship size:

S ships are the small scout/fighter/heavy fighter ships. These are fast and nimble, but don't offer much in the way of shields or "punch" on their weapons.
M ships are the corvette/frigate/gunship sized ships. "Frigates" have an S-sized docking bay & can hold 1 docked ship.
L sized ships are the Destroyer/Light-carrier sized ships. These can only dock at stations that have a Pier docking port which is most but not all stations. Most of these will have an S-sized docking bay & some have an M-sized bay.
XL sized ships: These are the massive battleships, super-carriers, resupply ships, or station-construction ships.

L & XL ships require Marines to board them if you want to capture them, but S & M ships you can capture just by frightening the crew in to bailing out.

Early game stuff

Take your starter ship, dock at an Equipment Station or Wharf, select the "resupply" option & add a few deployable satellites to your ship. Then fly around to clear up the Fog of War on the map, which will help you to see available missions on the map (left side sub-menu). Find some missions for repairing satellites or deploying new ones, or even playing taxi & helping someone catch up to a departed ship. This will get you some initial credits.

Use those credits to put some weapons on your ship, maybe increase your shields or engine. Then fly to either the PAR sectors or PIO (from the Terran DLC) sectors. Look for corvettes labeled "bounty hunter". While those ships are technically aligned with a faction, you can attack them without consequence.
Blast their shield down & then damage their hull below 75%. Keep the shield below 20%-25% & the hull below 70%-75% but concentrate on just trying to fly behind them/under them in a way that avoids getting shot by their turrets. Every 10 seconds or so plink their shield with a single shot of your weapon as a warning that they should abandon their ship. Eventually crew will start to bail out (1-4 crew members, not more often than every 30 seconds). When there's nobody left then the ship is abandoned & you can claim it yourself! Fly near it with your spacesuit, turn on your scanner & look for a glowing red dot. Repair that & the ship is yours! Use your repair laser to fix it up (or just pay money at a wharf) and now you've got a new corvette ready to be your player ship (or to serve in your growing fleet).


Doing that should teach you the basics of missions & combat, which'll form a "foundation" for everything else!

I just fully read this and saw that it was exactly what I was planning on doing. Thank you!