The Erlking's Data vaults really should be fixed.

[aocaok20]

First of all, I need to tell you that I absolutely LOVE this game.
I've played almost 500 hours in just one month since buying the game and all its DLCs (sure, some of that might be SETA idle time... but the point is, X4: Foundations is truly an amazing game).
However, the one thing that drives me crazy is how finding The Erlking's Data vaults makes absolutely no sense.

First, the data vault spawn mechanism is completely random within six specific sectors. There's no logic, no clues, and no information to narrow down the search.
After this completely unpredictable generation, there are no hints or side quests. You can only rely on endless manual exploration and pray you won't miss discovering it due to visual and mental fatigue.

Worst of all, even after I covered all areas with more than 200 Advanced Satellites, only four data vaults appeared. I'll never find the last one. The single incomplete field that cannot be finished makes me want to uninstall this game constantly.

Even if you search for alternative solutions from other players, most suggest modifying the code to make the data vaults appear directly. Why are we forced to "modify the game" to "make the game playable"? This is an extremely terrible phenomenon.
Also, as a developer, you can't tell me "because this is a super powerful warship, so it's worth spending countless hours collecting items that you don't know where to find. This is the surprise we left for players." This is quite irresponsible.

I want to complete the game normally and continue earning Steam achievements.
But this generation mechanism with no limits, clues, or hints forces players to "intervene with game data."
You can't tell me "it still has limitations, it will only generate in six areas each reaching nearly a thousand kilometers in three dimensions." Are you serious?

Fix it! Make it logical, with clues and traces to follow! Perhaps making them appear only within 50 kilometers of jump gates would be a good idea? Or let them be obtained one by one through missions.

Such an amazing game shouldn't be ruined by a senseless "surprise"!

[Dunkler Messias]

Yep. There is a thread about this in the Egosoft forum which has almost 300 posts and over over 130,000 views. https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=445929

But even with the discussions, mods and even a batch script (?) to find the data vaults, nothing has changed, sadly. :(

[Zloth]

Two HUNDRED adv-satellites!? Is that an exaggeration?

I wonder if the new station radar will help this. You can build one of those on a very small plot all by itself. If you don't see anything, unbuild it and rebuild it somewhere else.

[RaptorSolutions]

You can earn steam achievements even if modified anyway.
But imo the biggest problem with this "quest" is you cannot really automate it, you kinda have to keep an eye on the map because apparently when data vaults go out of sensor range your pilots get amnesia.

[Bazooka]

Originally posted by Zloth:

Two HUNDRED adv-satellites!? Is that an exaggeration?

Yes.

Place them on the outer edge of the sector. So they are placed so that you can see your entire sector and search "data"
There are problems with the last one and it is almost always located on the outer edge.

[Ram]

Originally posted by Zloth:

Two HUNDRED adv-satellites!? Is that an exaggeration?

An advanced satellite reveals a spherical area which has a 75km radius. A sphere with a radius of 75km has a volume of 1,767,145m³.

The Pirate Data Vaults can spawn at a random location within a 500 × 500 × 500km cube, which is 125,000,000km³ of empty space. Though, they usually spawn near the edge.

The problem is that scouting it with ships is fruitless because the vault location is not saved after discovering it, so you can't see it after it leaves radar range of your ships. You'd need to be directly watching the entire scouting process.

[Xautos]

easy way around the issue. find a mod on the workshop that reveals the location of the vaults on the map download and enable it, then play the game and go into avarice and syndicate sectors, note them down. after this, exit to the menu, do not save the game, disable the modifications, exit the game and delete the mod from the folders if need be, head back into the game and then follow the directions you noted down in each sector.

if you do it right the game save will not be modified at all and you found the vaults, the next problem is building your own shipyard to upload the plans into and building the upgrades into the ship.

[flywlyx]

Originally posted by Xautos:

easy way around the issue. find a mod on the workshop that reveals the location of the vaults on the map download and enable it, then play the game and go into avarice and syndicate sectors, note them down. after this, exit to the menu, do not save the game, disable the modifications, exit the game and delete the mod from the folders if need be, head back into the game and then follow the directions you noted down in each sector.

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=182&t=445929&p=5116566#p5116566

There is a batch script to scan the save and reveal the locations. Much easier and also doesn't flag the save file.

[Ram]

What is the point of avoiding marking the save as modified? It doesn't do anything except disable Ventures, which currently don't exist, and is not on the recently released roadmap.

[det2048]

I always use the batch script to find them. Even with the coordinates in hand I struggle to find them as they can be deep up or down in the y axis. It is my most hated thing to do in x series.
However the spirit of the problem is they wanted the erlking blueprints to be hard to get. Which I appreciate so it feels like an accomplishment. I cannot think of a harder method than random hidden vaults. Call me masochistic, but maybe it should stay as is.

[blackphoenixx]

The reason people complain about those vaults is that they're lazy - and in the process of trying to automate it make finding the vaults way harder than it needs to be.

You can spot the vaults from 100km away when you're flying yourself. Or flying along and looking around you with outside view (F2).
Doesn't take long to search a sector like that when you just have to fly a couple parallel lines ~200km apart.

I usually find 2-3 of them just while doing stuff in Avarice. You just have to pay attention.

Originally posted by Ram:

The Pirate Data Vaults can spawn at a random location within a 500 × 500 × 500km cube, which is 125,000,000km³ of empty space. Though, they usually spawn near the edge.

They were hotfixed to only spawn within radar range of the ecliptic plane like 2 days after ToA dropped. And to not spawn too far out from the sector center. At worst they spawn slightly outside the sector borders now.

So you don't need to fill even a fraction of that volume with sats because the vaults can't spawn in most of it.

[Doom]

Originally posted by Zloth:

Two HUNDRED adv-satellites!? Is that an exaggeration?

This is from back when I hunted for erlking valuts.
https://ibb.co/3YP6Lp2

One of the vaults ended up in a gap between satellites. Additionally ships occasionally play football with satellites which doesn't help.

Thought 877 on the bottom of the screen is total number of satellites in the galaxy and not in avarice.

[Pathogenic]

If you are on the beta, just build a wide area sensor array in each sector, it can help uncover those pesky data vaults without too much work.

[Zloth]

Originally posted by Pathogenic:

If you are on the beta, just build a wide area sensor array in each sector, it can help uncover those pesky data vaults without too much work.

And, if you don't find them all, you can tear it down and build up another in a different position. You could even use the same materials if you want.

[Doom]

Originally posted by Pathogenic:

If you are on the beta, just build a wide area sensor array in each sector, it can help uncover those pesky data vaults without too much work.

Which reminds me. Those who have Timelines and cleared it, could also use Sapporo. 80km range. It is possible to install a mod on top, to get it to about 90km.

[aFF3_M!T_WaFF3]

ahm - if you REALLY want to look for the Erlking-Vaults it takes like 2min editing your savefile...
otherwise -> you know in what sectors they spawn -> send 20 ships there and lay sats