Finished with Northriver, Vigor still hates me

[The Big Brzezinski]

I finally finished the Northriver epilogue. In my first attempt weeks ago, I found the Eye and, went my own way, and took an Astrid. Then I found out I had to destroy an entire station. Threw my entire battle fleet against a brick wall trying to do so. Advice came from the forum to use my HQ teleport on it. So I started stockpiling materials and smashed one station with another. Then I went and paid the bill at the satellite, and the quest went away. Not really how I was hoping things would pan out, but at least now there's normalcy again.

Except, no. My reputation with the Vigor Syndicate is still at -18 resulting from resisting their piracy efforts. No sweat. They're still handing out missions in Windfall. Basic grunt work, satellite maintenance and mine removal. I did about a dozen of them. No change. Still -18. The rep increase notifications from completing the missions are lies. I've already had to reload once after an altercation bumped it below -20 and they started massacring my fleets and traders.

I used my HQ to do the assassination. Now it's stuck in Windfall. My plan was to make nice with Vigor afterwards to get them off my back. Instead, I can't get supplies in to move it again because any freighter I send is swarmed and robbed. If I fight back, my rep will drop below -20 and they'll declare general war on me anyway. This is inevitably what will happen. I cannot seem to improve my Vigor reputation by any means. Nor can I fight the swarms of fighters and merchant destroyers that poor into existence from every jump gate to replace any losses. I still have the save I took before making a decision and triggering the end of the plot, but it's not helpful. There' i nothing else to go back and do differently. Pretty sure my HQ is softlocked now. I hope I don't end up need it for anything important, like terraforming or hosting plot NPCs like Boso and Dal.

I have no idea what the Vigor Syndicate was meant to be, but what they are is broken. The Syndicate apparently doesn't follow the same rules as the other factions in the universe. They are not a functional part of X4. They're the malignant tumor that killed the rest of the game I was hoping to play. They chase down and kill my fastest freighters. They swarm with fighters and kill the ships I send to clear the skies. They infinitely conjure junk fighters and destroyer and thumb their nose at the Living Eeconomy, the central mechanic of this entire franchise. I once went to remove two Barbarossas from Silent Witness with a torpedo Katana. Once they were gone, I checked the map and saw five Barbarossas coming after me.

I can't beat them. I can't join them. I can't run. I can't hide. I don't know what I could have done differently. I don't know what to do next. If I'm missing something I was supposed to do other than the listed objectives to finish the plot, I'd love to hear it.

[DanKara]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

Except, no. My reputation with the Vigor Syndicate is still at -18 resulting from resisting their piracy efforts.

I think you already know, what you should do, aren't you?
For the time being you should comply with their piracy instead of fighting them. Resisting them eats up the small RepGains you get from missions. Keep on with your 'basic grunt work'. If possible avoid trading ('illegals') in Windfall/Avarice until +20.
VIG follows the same gameplay rules as the rest - only their set of illegals differs.

Either play by their rules - until you are +20 with them Or eradicate them completely.

[The Big Brzezinski]

It's not going up. It's only going down. I can't ally with them. I tried this while the mission was still active as well. It's not like with Duke's Buccaneers, which is now just stuck and ignores when I kill Xenon and Kha'ak with ten kilometers of their factories. It's like all my VIG rep rewards are being multiplied by zero. Maybe it's bugged, maybe it's intended. Either way the Vigor Syndicate are determined to progressively more hostile until they eventually shut me down completely out of every sector they occupy, which covers well over half my stations around and within the Loop.

I don't understand the mindset behind this expansion. None of it makes any sense. Your opponents are pirates that pull fresh ships from thin space. Your reward is an hourly mission for free money. The new geography is hostile to all economic activity. The old geography is now blighted with swarms of infinitely respawning junk fighters and destroyers. Even the Xenon are bound by material restrictions and can be stymied to a degree by denying them resources, but the new faction basically ignores material constraints as well as territory ownership. They're as much card-carrying pirates as the Scale Plate Pact and Fallen Families, yet the other factions do nothing to resist them. The Argon, Teladi and Trinity must be too busy to care about a foreign military force occupying their territory and abusing their citizens.

Nothing about the Tides of Avarice expansion I've come across in my time with it has been anything but tedious and stressful. It has been nothing but a white elephant. It not only is it not fun, it kills the fun that previously existed. I enjoyed the PvEvE conflict grounded realistically in the economy. It's mechanic that few enough other games have used that I can count them on one hand. Then ToA came in and said no more of that, the economy is for suckers, trading is for nerds, all your base are belong to us, you have no chance to survive make your time, git gud scrub. Thus far I've been routing my trade ships around danger and supporting them with QRF corvette and destroyer squads. Have I been doing this wrong? Was I supposed to just tell everybody to comply with all pirate demands and eat the losses instead? What do I even need a fleet for then? How is that fun? I was about to start building Asgards and take on the Xenon in force, but now my whole economy is doomed because I had the temerity to not let pirates have their way with me. I've never done any terraforming. Now with my HQ trapped in Windfall and my income streams soon to be destroyed, I guess I never will.

The Tides of Avarice expansion destroyed my save. It is broken and unplayable, either because of bugs or fundamentally flawed design. I can picture neither a way of continuing my old save or starting a new one with X4 in this state.

[DanKara]

I understand and feel your frustation ... but your rant is showing me, that EGOSOFT succeded in creating a 'real' antagonist faction, that is not RepLocked liked SCA & BUC and has a functioning economy (unlike FAF) at the same time. As far as I understand it, VIGOR is some kind of organized crime or Mafia.

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

Thus far I've been routing my trade ships around danger and supporting them with QRF corvette and destroyer squads. Have I been doing this wrong? Was I supposed to just tell everybody to comply with all pirate demands and eat the losses instead? What do I even need a fleet for then? How is that fun?

Seriously, what would you have done if ANT would have taken an interest in your trade ships? Would you have responded by force? Or cleaned out the stuff ANT deemed 'illegal' from those ships. I think you sit now in a grave, you digged up yourself...

I am in an old save too and yes, I was harassed by VIG Barbarossas outside of Windfall/Avarice too (also lost some ships to them). But luckily, I was to curios about the new sectors and visited them early on, did some missions for VIG and soon VIG stopped harassing my traders on the outside (not sure if that happened at 0 or +10) and stopped being offended by me trading in 'illegals' at +20.

If you can still do missions for VIG, you can still recover. Is the profit loss from complying with their piracy (for a short time) realy that hurting? Compared to making yourself another mortal enemy who can and will disrupt your trades much more in the long run?
(Im still debating this myself, as destroying VIG would push my fightrank hopefully near Xtreme. Tried the same with the Curbs from the Split-plot, but those never recovered after the initial onslaught. My XEN are on the verge of extinction due to TER Interventioncorps. So whom to fight?)

Sorry for that wall of text...

[The Big Brzezinski]

The VIG aren't an antagonist faction. They're an antagonist dungeon master's pet NPC who wears an Amulet of Immunity to Every Skill, Spell, and Strategy You've Used in the Campaign Thus Far, and wields a +20 Purple Glowing Scythe of Rolls Don't Matter Because I'm Just Gonna Make Up Reasons Why Your Successes Are Actually Failures. The only way to win is to grab a box of pizza for yourself, pour a jug of Mountain Dew over the DM's head, and stop talking to them anymore.

The VIG and I are not peer opponents. They can do whatever they want to me without consequence. I cannot do anything to them without dying. I was defeated as soon as I bought the DLC. It just took me this long to realize it.

I tried grinding missions. It's not working. My Vigor Syndicate reputation is bugged or locked or something, and refuses to go above -18. I'm doing exactly what I did to get the Zyarth and Free Families to talk to me. Even made friends with the SPP way back in the day this way. I spent 1.5 billion credits in cash, many more in construction and other supplies, and fought a major fleet action to end the Paranid civil war. I'm very willing to put in the work, if the work was accomplishing anything.

[SirProsik]

Farnhams Legend revenge in X4 hmm? I am stuck as you are with this VIG faction but at -20 before I even try to destroy the station in question. When I try to attack the station my ships just get whacked by the infinite number of fighters swarming them.

Reloading just does not work for that game anymore, No access to Asgard's due to increase in prices of blueprints in a recent update. Tried with a single Asgard and it got swarmed. Put a couple of L destroyers with Flac around the Asgard and still no joy.

I guess the only real solution is to wipe them out?!?

[The Big Brzezinski]

Something finally shook the Vigor rep loose. It might have been when I found that other Northriver guy and blew up his ship, but I don't really know. Maybe he has some sort of script attached to him that is the real end of the plot. His escape pod was invulnerable, I was sad to discover. The Vigor Syndicate also seem to have pulled all their ships back. I don't see them anywhere along the loop anymore. Negative sixteen and rising, finally.

While Vigor is still a threat, they might have a weakness. Vigor depends on energy cells from highly productive solar power plants in Avarice to fuel its closed loop scrap recycling and ship building in the much dimmer Windfall sectors. These solar power plants in turn rely on protectyon to avoid the destructive effects of the tide, or at least they're supposed to. With Northriver out of business, the player is the only source. So while I am going to grind my reputation up doing missions, I'm not going to be selling any protectyon unless I find Vigor has chilled out. If they keep up with their piratical ways unchecked, both Avarice and Windfall are going to learn a few little bits of Dune trivia, namely the Golden Path and hydraulic despotism. The spice will not flow.

On the other hand, if it turns out the Avarice NPC stations don't actually require protectyon bought from the player to stay alive, then I'll know that the whole protectyon racket is just a free money tap, which is something I don't want or need and can simply ignore.

[Bradylama]

Hello OP, I've been working on that station mission for two days straight and as you can probably tell the suggestion to teleport your HQ on top of the spot is not working out so great. I tried all sorts of suggestions from around the internet and none of them have panned out well. When you destroy the station some Vigor fighters remain in the red, I suppose from already taking damage, and destroying them will put you back in negative reputation with Vigor Syndicate anyway.

So how I overcame this problem was by using a single Syn. I put on missile turrets to shoot down incoming torpedoes without potentially damaging any of the fighters and destroyed the station. That did the trick. Simple & straightforward. I'd already paid off the VIG so my reputation went right back to 0 from -20.

[SirProsik]

Station trick worked for me but I had to reload a few times and make sure I was not 'hitting' anything else.

[trooperrob]

I did it by fighting, several times, The trick is to have fast capital ships there.
once the station is destroyed, tell all your ships to flee and disable the turrets.
If you are at risk of losing a capital, try bringing another capital into range to split enemy fire and distract them.
avoid shooting anything once the station is down, but if you do need to, just have another capital shoot to attract fighters, then stop firing.

[The Big Brzezinski]

I eventually managed to grind up to max level reputation with the Syndicate andbought all their blueprints for my shipyard. Then I put them under embargo. My ships pass safely through their sectors now, but we don't do business with them.

I never did get into the condensate racket. Don't need a free money tap. I made one of my own already.

Next project is to rehabilitate the Hewa's Twin cluster. It's overrun with pirates and wide open to Xenon. None of the stations are armed. I aim to supply them with all the parts they need to finally defend themselves. I expect it'll be a very profitable venture. I do enjoy doing well by doing good.