As a bit of a lazy entrepreneur, I found the Terran economy to be the easiest to get into. It is very simplified, so you don't need a complicated set of factories, or one massive complex, to produce very profitable wares. And if you get started as a Terran, there are plenty of opportunities to make money with mining and trading. You have space to grow. As such, you can get started with station building relatively quickly, even if those stations are expensive. And, if you make use of your repeat orders to get the necessary energy cells from the orbit of Mercury, you can easily supply stations in Mars, Asteroid Belt and Saturn with everything to produce wares in high demand for the Protectorate's fleet building efforts. From there, you simply start growing your industrial base until buying blueprints to produce Terran ships is almost trivial. At that point, not only do you profit immensely, but you help the Terrans build intervention fleets as quickly as they are lost, turning the tide against the Xenon. They might even be in time to save Hatikvah's Choice!
That, and honestly I feel like you shouldn't be able to deploy anything with a living human being inside while in travel mode. A sort of safety-mechanism on the ship that just prevents you from sending out marines or undocking ships once the travel mode has been initialized would make perfect sense, to me
I have recently toyed with wrecking supplies at wharfs and shipyards by buying advanced sats & equipment low at one and selling high at another. It only works for a little while but it doubles as a way to stall production. Unfortunately this is only possible with neutral or positive factions and that limits it greatly, but its a way to stack 100 Million or so in an hour. After Scanning Arrays are depleted from Adv.Sats, Weapon Components tend to go, for weapons & mines. Then Drone Components for drones and towers, etc. If you already have production built to resupply these places, its an insidious loop. I'd patted myself on the back for not cheesing rep with single sales anymore, but here we are. Cheers all! o7
You can farm always, without loosing rep, SCA Phoenixes and Behemoths. In my instance they spawn one after another in boron sectors or close (Ocean of fantasy, Great reef, barren shores, watchful gaze, heretics end). For the moment I keep them because of Xenon/Khaak Crisis missions. SCA can be found in any other sectors but did not really bothered searching or moving my ships after them. You will need an S with Burst Rays and 2-3 M TS because those 2 don't hold much crew, I see somewhere between 14 and 24 total crew. Easy-peasy! Now I use 1xBarbarossa and 3xShih (w Burst Rays), is OP just for this job. But is a different approach to boarding. Erlking for me is just a very good trade ship :) Have fun.
Tip 1, if you mess up a boarding and have some pods trailing, just quickly catch up with the ship at the gate and ram it. Keep pushing it around, it wont go, pods will eventually catch up. But I avoid those situations by saving just before I board. Tip 2, Get to a neutral system like Napoleons Fortune, and farm those builders, 30m a pop. Tip 3, you dont need to fly by freighters or builders, you can pass by them slowly so pods make a better contact. Their guns are harmless to your ship, but bad for pods far away. Tip 4, you can shoot them to stop travel mode, but if you destroy a surface element its -1 rep. Keep guns disabled all other times.
First time I ever fly by boarded a ship it was a magnatar miner, I was in a Barbarossa and had two fighters in the hanger. When it sent up the distress beacon I just sent a fighter after it and got away scot free right in the middle of second contact flashpoint. I should have had arg patrols all over me but I guess they were too busy fighting hop.
*I never left enemy territory, hells even friendly territory, without trying my hand at capturing something.* Its one of the first things I learned how to do. lol edit: Nice changes actually, thanks for the info, have a great week.
Fun fact: You can make profit with a single energy cell production module and S container storage while placing it literally anywhere in the galaxy. Works 100% of times.
Fly by boarding made me regret one of my saves, I felt like I cheated myself out of a good game and restarted a new save. This was ages ago. I think the Barbarossa is a pretty good pirate ship, it carries less marines iirc but it's pretty quick, has pretty good turret placement and looks cool as hell.
@hlriiiviiiv also the SCA would never attack them unless a player was flying it so you wouldn't have to worry about piracy. Maybe they changed that in 7.x
if you require an L class freighter and you literally never want to think about it's safety, there is NO better alternative to Barbarossa. It is more than capable of ridding itself of ANY hostile fighter squad and is fast enough to outrun all Capitals. and it looks cool as hell :D
Yeah, Terran ships are insanely valuable. After recording this footage, I captured a Tokyo with about 30 fighters still on board, just to see if I could. 99mil value in 20 minutes. There just tend to be fewer Terran ships in neutral space compared to other races, and you have to be a bit more precise with your approach vectors since they carry lots of missiles and beams.
@@CptSnuggles07 One problem with that is that you have to manually assign a pilot to each of the Tokyo fighters, and if you want to scrap equipment as well... It takes ages. Still it's great if you need money in a pinch.
@@CzarnyBonek I thought so too, but I was actually able to sell them all without assigning pilots. Either my save is buggy or they've changed that in 7.1.
I think the primary issue isn't that it doesn't make sense, because if you can do that, it makes perfect sense It's that the game's setting hasn't accounted for it, ships don't have countermeasures that would no doubt crop up. For example, a cost-efficient way to deal with this sort of stuff would be to strap claymores pointing outwards to the hull. It won't look nice, but if you just arm them when drop pods show up on the radar, you're gonna be overall alright. That's a very low-tech solution, and undoubtably something that would be folded into the overall cost of building these enormous ships until a better solution came around. After all, if you're spending 20-25 million credits on a ship, what's another 1m in claymores to stop the first random motherfucker with a box of psychopath marines from stealing it out in the middle of nowhere?
Funny what you said about the Terran economy. Just set up a small micro-lattice factory and the terrans buy all you can make. I have one with 35 ML production (it started as 1 ML Production and has grown) and its always out of stock when I need some. Its constantly spewing money into my account and I don't have to do anything. You can er...help yourself...to mining ships to supply it. IDK how anyone with 2000 hours couldn't make money at it...its so easy it feels like cheating. Must have spent 1900 hours in the office with SETA running methinks.
I agree, Terran eco is easy. Also computronic substrate is cash-cow. Build a mining and production in Asteroid Belt and Solar in Venus. You simply can't fail.
@@xizzard I like Uranus for full stack production facilities... easy mining on the whole range, and easy enough to ferry ECs from Mercury to a trade station in Uranus with a couple Okinawas on repeat trade. Most importantly... I can blacklist the Asteroid Belt for sector activities, and let the Kha'ak settle in and incentivize the Terrans to buy from me...
I have 580 hours and I know that Terran economy is OP. I have a save I've been playing on and off since Cradle of Humanity released. Whoever this 2000 hour guy is needs to sit down.
I've spent 3000 hours in the main menu, so I have the authority to inform everyone that L Bolt turrets and M Plasma turrets are the true meta. (Edit: I am being facetious. I agree with op, but I just wanted to poke fun that hours in game doesn't equate to expertise.)
@@theunkownbanana1823 The original comment actually has credibility. Terran economy is OP and the video creator actually touches on this. Commit uninstall your brain's system32.
Why did I think you need to take the shields down? Was that an X3 thing? I usually only board the SCA pirate destroyers, otherwise it felt a little cheese
Never used flyby boarding. I board most large ships with 1 marine using a Moreya and Terran tier 2 Lasers. 4 guns makes it easier but I have done it with 2&3 guns. You just have to pick your target, low crew and 1 to 2 tier 1 or 2 large shields and 1 tier 1 XL shields are manageable using a Moreya. I have captured large ships with a Kukri and Theseus but it is a bit harder. Most targets are targets of opportunity because I'm a pirate after all. Different ships have differing tactics and blind spots where you can sit and not get hit by weaponry. Know your prey! Moreya's are easy to pick up in the first couple hours of the game. I have farmed up to 15 Moreya's and 5 Kuraokami in Segaris sectors early game. I boarded a CUB split tiger Battleship in Brennan's Triumph using a Moreya and 1 marine about a week ago. Why it was there I don't know? Target of opportunity! It had low crew and only 1 x XL tier 1 shield. Bailed it's 5 escorts and captured the Tiger. It was too easy. It takes a while to get the shields and hull down and all the crew to bail just leaving the captain. I did not even have to take out the engines or any guns. I just sat at the back of the ship out of gun sight as it flew around in circles trying to attack me. It took about an hour or so. I boarded a SCA Behemouth with the free starter Persues that you get in Silent Witness XII as it came with a shield penetrating weapon and a plasma cannon. I thought the weapons were a bit useless for the ship but proved myself wrong. All done within an hour of starting the game. I mainly capture Terran ships in Segaris systems or Antigony Memorial as they don't care if you attack them. If you fly way out you get miners large and small and you can get their shields down and bailed well before they can get to a gate. Heretics end is also a great place as it is neutral. I have never gone after the Erlking so there is a 1 marine challenge capture for me! I love the challenge of the game. I never buy a ship that's just boring and I love the challenge of capturing ships with smallest ship and weaponry. I used to bail all my small and medium ships using an Argon Discoverer. Hit hard run faster before your shield dies.
If you board the Erlking while OOS it wont aggro anything. It has such crap turrets that it should only shoot down a pod or two. I used two freighters but one probably would have gotten it done. I didn't even get the dialogue for capturing it until hours later.
Yes, that would be an excellent target, as long as TER and ARG/ANT aren't at war with each other. Split ships in Paranid space, and vice versa, are good as well. Generally look for factions that list each other as enemies in their encyclopedia entries but aren't actively shooting one another.
Segaris doesnt care if you board their ships, and i assume its the same for any faction that doesnt enforce law in their sectors like the free families also probably wouldnt care you boarded them but their ships dont sell as well as terran ships, so why bother unless you are looking to get some split ships, but boarding is such an op game loop, buy 1.5mil worth vigor marines cap a segaris kyoto and sell it for 25-35mill, the roi is absurd.
I honestly think that the entire boarding mechanic is just way too simplistic. Given how much complexity there is in commanding your AI pilots in general, I feel it should have some gameplay added to it. As it stands it is just a waiting game with a numbers comparison at the end. If the most optimal strategy in your game is lame, then it’s a lame game. I personally love the ‘better piracy’ mod, allowing you to engage with your target before the boarding. If I were to try and reimagine this feature, I would probably give marines more complex behaviour and more missions than just ‘capture a ship’ - imagine if you could send marines to sabotage ships internal systems or steal their cargo or on-board fighters or ‘kidnap personnel’. Put the brigs on those capital ships to actual good use. Even a simple ‘retreat back to pods’ button to abandon the operation would be a huge improvement.
Hi Captain, I would love to see a video about the best MODs for X4. Since I am a little disappointed with Timelines, MODs might spice up my gameplay a bit. But I don't know much about them. Thank you!
Love the boarding Hate how cheese it is I'm only boarding when I'm completely disabling target in proper fight, and if it won't survive in process, oh well too bad Otherwise it's just exploiting Have 3 billion networth and spent millions on blueprints just to star getting millions per hour, and whole industry to make asgards or whatever, or simply take right away And making industry literally takes dozens of hours, and there is no way to make it faster
VIG has a chance to produce Veteran marines. Park a high-capacity ship at their shipyard and fill it with marines. Some will be Veterans. "Sell" all the Recruits back to the shipyard, then buy new marines to replace them. Some of those new marines will be Veterans. Repeat. After a few repetitions, you'll have a high percentage of Veterans, ready to transfer to your active piracy vessel.
@@Bazookabunz Upgrade/repair the ship at the shipyard. In the upgrade screen, under the crew tab, slide the Recruit section down to zero, click the trash can icon above the sliders, and then complete the order as normal.
@ so you’re not really getting your money back so much as trashing them and trying again? Thank you so much for your help? What’s a good ratio for rookies to vets?
@Bazookabunz You do get your money back. The UI is just a bit weird. You generally want as many vets as possible on your active piracy ship, so it's really just a matter of making sure you have enough available on your "farming" ship to replace boarding parties as you send them out.
What do you mean by farming veterans? Im not experienced in boarding, as it seemed almost impossible with even with enemy marines outnumbered 2:1 i would loose most of my marines who would barely get any experience.
Dock a high crew capacity ship at the VIG warf. fill it with marines. some will be veterans because the vig have a higher chance of veterans. Transfer the vet's to your pirating ship and sell the recruits back to the vig. then repeat the process till your pirate ship is filled with 100% veterans.
I hate it, and feel dirty every time i did it. But hey i was young and needed the money😅 Me voting for war, everytime i try to capture a military ship.....
I prefer to slam into the target, this discombobulates the AI, launch pods, let the enemy ship shoot my ship instead until pods are docked….its a bit more piratey…. I actually prefer military ships, they don’t call for help and typically have fewer marines than the Barbarossa You only lose a bit of rep so just spend some time now and then improving it
Some Players dont get the Idea behind Sandbox games and I dont mean this as an offense of sorts but just the way it is. Sandbox Games arent supposed to be balanced or fair or have strict rules all the time. Sandbox means, YOU, the Player, decide your own Experience, in fact, make your own game. Lets take X4 as an example. The game basically offers you a "cheat code" as a starting option, where you can set missions to accomplished, give yourself more money, more ships and even fully built Stations. You could pretty much start the game as "finished" if you wanted to. But that is not the point and not the goal of this game. The best way to play this game is by making your own Story (especially if you dont like the ones that are offered to you). Since this is a single player experience, the only person you are "cheating out of fun" with exploits or other kinds of "tricks", is yourself. The way I play X4 is first make a character and build a story around it, then I set out a goal for this Character. The rules set for the Character are determined by how "serious" I want to play. If I want a roleplaying experience, I might even go so far not to use "legal" options in the game like teleportation. Of course there are times where I want to play a more "fun" game with less rules, in such cases I might use such "loopholes" like fly by boarding. I am even using an ingame Cheat that pretty much allows me to do what I want, like switching ownership of Stations, Ships or spawning Entities etc. and it does not really affect my Experience since I use that only in certain playthroughs but never in my serious "roleplaying" ones. Bottom Line, a Sandbox Experience is highly dependent on the Player and not everybody likes it or even wants it. Some Players prefer the more "strict" approach where there is a more constraint world with rules and stories put in place by the Developer. Neither is wrong and both can be enjoyable but as a Player you should know which you prefer to avoid frustration.
I just discovered the X universe a few months ago and have about 225 hrs in the game so far. I haven't fly-by boarded a single ship yet despite being tempted. Especially since most of my attempts at piracy have resulted in me accidentally destroying the target ship. I do want to give it a try at some point but it looks kinda boring. It's been more fun for me to grind things out so far
I agree with everything you said. I cannot add much, but when I start the game I do almost the exact same. Get Odysseus -> buy Shudyku (sp?) -> Get Erlking -> get Asgard (only one pass required, all you need is 30% or more vets) And I agree its such cheese! I do want it removed as it makes the game so easy yet I cannot stop doing it!! Help!
I know you say it's "boring" for fly boarding, but it's super realistic. Boarding actions would be fast and close to maximize the survivability of personnel. Naval history even shows that captains would start harassing and trying to cripple the target, get in close and board with marines. I don't see it as "immersion breaking" other than having to pause without having a key binding for initiating the boarding action ( in new to the game so I'm not sure if there is an option to key bind boarding). Also...I just picked up the game and only have about 130hrs so far and the Terran economy is crazy money once you get it started and being only 3 products, it's relatively cheaper in investment and super simple and highly lucrative. Certainly, the factories are expensive up front, but needing only about 5 compared to almost 20 is cheaper in the long run...
As a bit of a lazy entrepreneur, I found the Terran economy to be the easiest to get into. It is very simplified, so you don't need a complicated set of factories, or one massive complex, to produce very profitable wares. And if you get started as a Terran, there are plenty of opportunities to make money with mining and trading. You have space to grow. As such, you can get started with station building relatively quickly, even if those stations are expensive. And, if you make use of your repeat orders to get the necessary energy cells from the orbit of Mercury, you can easily supply stations in Mars, Asteroid Belt and Saturn with everything to produce wares in high demand for the Protectorate's fleet building efforts. From there, you simply start growing your industrial base until buying blueprints to produce Terran ships is almost trivial.
At that point, not only do you profit immensely, but you help the Terrans build intervention fleets as quickly as they are lost, turning the tide against the Xenon. They might even be in time to save Hatikvah's Choice!
Honestly, you shouldn't be able to board unless the shields are down, imo but it's whatever. I just roleplay with my own set of rules
If I remember correctly, that’s how it worked in previous x games. Keeping shields down was vital to boarding.
That would be a nice way to do it I think.
That, and honestly I feel like you shouldn't be able to deploy anything with a living human being inside while in travel mode.
A sort of safety-mechanism on the ship that just prevents you from sending out marines or undocking ships once the travel mode has been initialized would make perfect sense, to me
I have recently toyed with wrecking supplies at wharfs and shipyards by buying advanced sats & equipment low at one and selling high at another.
It only works for a little while but it doubles as a way to stall production. Unfortunately this is only possible with neutral or positive factions and that limits it greatly, but its a way to stack 100 Million or so in an hour.
After Scanning Arrays are depleted from Adv.Sats, Weapon Components tend to go, for weapons & mines. Then Drone Components for drones and towers, etc.
If you already have production built to resupply these places, its an insidious loop. I'd patted myself on the back for not cheesing rep with single sales anymore, but here we are.
Cheers all! o7
stole the asgard from the moon using this strat. absolutely incredible.
You can farm always, without loosing rep, SCA Phoenixes and Behemoths. In my instance they spawn one after another in boron sectors or close (Ocean of fantasy, Great reef, barren shores, watchful gaze, heretics end). For the moment I keep them because of Xenon/Khaak Crisis missions. SCA can be found in any other sectors but did not really bothered searching or moving my ships after them. You will need an S with Burst Rays and 2-3 M TS because those 2 don't hold much crew, I see somewhere between 14 and 24 total crew. Easy-peasy! Now I use 1xBarbarossa and 3xShih (w Burst Rays), is OP just for this job. But is a different approach to boarding. Erlking for me is just a very good trade ship :) Have fun.
Tip 1, if you mess up a boarding and have some pods trailing, just quickly catch up with the ship at the gate and ram it. Keep pushing it around, it wont go, pods will eventually catch up. But I avoid those situations by saving just before I board.
Tip 2, Get to a neutral system like Napoleons Fortune, and farm those builders, 30m a pop.
Tip 3, you dont need to fly by freighters or builders, you can pass by them slowly so pods make a better contact. Their guns are harmless to your ship, but bad for pods far away.
Tip 4, you can shoot them to stop travel mode, but if you destroy a surface element its -1 rep. Keep guns disabled all other times.
First time I ever fly by boarded a ship it was a magnatar miner, I was in a Barbarossa and had two fighters in the hanger. When it sent up the distress beacon I just sent a fighter after it and got away scot free right in the middle of second contact flashpoint. I should have had arg patrols all over me but I guess they were too busy fighting hop.
*I never left enemy territory, hells even friendly territory, without trying my hand at capturing something.*
Its one of the first things I learned how to do. lol
edit: Nice changes actually, thanks for the info, have a great week.
Fun fact: You can make profit with a single energy cell production module and S container storage while placing it literally anywhere in the galaxy. Works 100% of times.
Fly by boarding made me regret one of my saves, I felt like I cheated myself out of a good game and restarted a new save. This was ages ago. I think the Barbarossa is a pretty good pirate ship, it carries less marines iirc but it's pretty quick, has pretty good turret placement and looks cool as hell.
It's a little over half of a shuyaku vanguard, 125 vs 224. Great for things that don't need huge amounts of marines.
And in true pirate fashion, the boarding ship is also a subpar freighter but with about 5k travel speed
@hlriiiviiiv also the SCA would never attack them unless a player was flying it so you wouldn't have to worry about piracy. Maybe they changed that in 7.x
That reminds me, I have been meaning to test using a shuyaku with vigor marines to counter board any annoying sca destroyers that mess with it.
if you require an L class freighter and you literally never want to think about it's safety, there is NO better alternative to Barbarossa. It is more than capable of ridding itself of ANY hostile fighter squad and is fast enough to outrun all Capitals. and it looks cool as hell :D
1:Steal ship from Terran.
2:Terran build new ships.
3:Steal ship again.
4:Sell both ships to terran.
4:repeat to lv marine
5:Board asgard
6: you win 🥇
Yeah, Terran ships are insanely valuable. After recording this footage, I captured a Tokyo with about 30 fighters still on board, just to see if I could. 99mil value in 20 minutes. There just tend to be fewer Terran ships in neutral space compared to other races, and you have to be a bit more precise with your approach vectors since they carry lots of missiles and beams.
@@CptSnuggles07 i just tried this with a tokio, awesome X-D
@@CptSnuggles07 One problem with that is that you have to manually assign a pilot to each of the Tokyo fighters, and if you want to scrap equipment as well... It takes ages. Still it's great if you need money in a pinch.
@@CzarnyBonek I thought so too, but I was actually able to sell them all without assigning pilots. Either my save is buggy or they've changed that in 7.1.
@@CptSnuggles07 yeah you don't actually need a pilot to sell a ship
Stole my 4th asgard yesterday, its working just fine for me, all you need is an erlking and some decent marines
It's a great space sim. Always on the hard drive..
What's funny about it though... is that fly by boarding would be a tactic used in space to claim ships....
I think the primary issue isn't that it doesn't make sense, because if you can do that, it makes perfect sense
It's that the game's setting hasn't accounted for it, ships don't have countermeasures that would no doubt crop up.
For example, a cost-efficient way to deal with this sort of stuff would be to strap claymores pointing outwards to the hull. It won't look nice, but if you just arm them when drop pods show up on the radar, you're gonna be overall alright. That's a very low-tech solution, and undoubtably something that would be folded into the overall cost of building these enormous ships until a better solution came around.
After all, if you're spending 20-25 million credits on a ship, what's another 1m in claymores to stop the first random motherfucker with a box of psychopath marines from stealing it out in the middle of nowhere?
Funny what you said about the Terran economy. Just set up a small micro-lattice factory and the terrans buy all you can make. I have one with 35 ML production (it started as 1 ML Production and has grown) and its always out of stock when I need some. Its constantly spewing money into my account and I don't have to do anything. You can er...help yourself...to mining ships to supply it. IDK how anyone with 2000 hours couldn't make money at it...its so easy it feels like cheating. Must have spent 1900 hours in the office with SETA running methinks.
I agree, Terran eco is easy. Also computronic substrate is cash-cow. Build a mining and production in Asteroid Belt and Solar in Venus. You simply can't fail.
@@xizzard I like Uranus for full stack production facilities... easy mining on the whole range, and easy enough to ferry ECs from Mercury to a trade station in Uranus with a couple Okinawas on repeat trade. Most importantly... I can blacklist the Asteroid Belt for sector activities, and let the Kha'ak settle in and incentivize the Terrans to buy from me...
I have 580 hours and I know that Terran economy is OP. I have a save I've been playing on and off since Cradle of Humanity released. Whoever this 2000 hour guy is needs to sit down.
I've spent 3000 hours in the main menu, so I have the authority to inform everyone that L Bolt turrets and M Plasma turrets are the true meta.
(Edit: I am being facetious. I agree with op, but I just wanted to poke fun that hours in game doesn't equate to expertise.)
@@theunkownbanana1823 Karma police, arrest this man.
@@theunkownbanana1823 The original comment actually has credibility. Terran economy is OP and the video creator actually touches on this. Commit uninstall your brain's system32.
@@theunkownbanana1823 Do you ever think before opening your mouth? Terran economy is op. Sit down.
@@theunkownbanana1823 Did you just blow in from stupid town
Why did I think you need to take the shields down? Was that an X3 thing?
I usually only board the SCA pirate destroyers, otherwise it felt a little cheese
Yep, that was an X3 thing. I liked that better, personally.
Never used flyby boarding.
I board most large ships with 1 marine using a Moreya and Terran tier 2 Lasers. 4 guns makes it easier but I have done it with 2&3 guns.
You just have to pick your target, low crew and 1 to 2 tier 1 or 2 large shields and 1 tier 1 XL shields are manageable using a Moreya.
I have captured large ships with a Kukri and Theseus but it is a bit harder. Most targets are targets of opportunity because I'm a pirate after all.
Different ships have differing tactics and blind spots where you can sit and not get hit by weaponry. Know your prey!
Moreya's are easy to pick up in the first couple hours of the game. I have farmed up to 15 Moreya's and 5 Kuraokami in Segaris sectors early game.
I boarded a CUB split tiger Battleship in Brennan's Triumph using a Moreya and 1 marine about a week ago. Why it was there I don't know? Target of opportunity! It had low crew and only 1 x XL tier 1 shield. Bailed it's 5 escorts and captured the Tiger. It was too easy. It takes a while to get the shields and hull down and all the crew to bail just leaving the captain. I did not even have to take out the engines or any guns. I just sat at the back of the ship out of gun sight as it flew around in circles trying to attack me. It took about an hour or so.
I boarded a SCA Behemouth with the free starter Persues that you get in Silent Witness XII as it came with a shield penetrating weapon and a plasma cannon. I thought the weapons were a bit useless for the ship but proved myself wrong. All done within an hour of starting the game.
I mainly capture Terran ships in Segaris systems or Antigony Memorial as they don't care if you attack them.
If you fly way out you get miners large and small and you can get their shields down and bailed well before they can get to a gate. Heretics end is also a great place as it is neutral.
I have never gone after the Erlking so there is a 1 marine challenge capture for me! I love the challenge of the game.
I never buy a ship that's just boring and I love the challenge of capturing ships with smallest ship and weaponry. I used to bail all my small and medium ships using an Argon Discoverer. Hit hard run faster before your shield dies.
If you board the Erlking while OOS it wont aggro anything. It has such crap turrets that it should only shoot down a pod or two. I used two freighters but one probably would have gotten it done. I didn't even get the dialogue for capturing it until hours later.
Separate from my other comment, what are some good targets?
For example, would a good target be a Terran in an ARG/ANT be a good target?
Yes, that would be an excellent target, as long as TER and ARG/ANT aren't at war with each other. Split ships in Paranid space, and vice versa, are good as well. Generally look for factions that list each other as enemies in their encyclopedia entries but aren't actively shooting one another.
Need to try this on the xenon H
Segaris doesnt care if you board their ships, and i assume its the same for any faction that doesnt enforce law in their sectors like the free families also probably wouldnt care you boarded them but their ships dont sell as well as terran ships, so why bother unless you are looking to get some split ships, but boarding is such an op game loop, buy 1.5mil worth vigor marines cap a segaris kyoto and sell it for 25-35mill, the roi is absurd.
they should increase the way s to sabotage ships to disable them
Well said. All of it.
I honestly think that the entire boarding mechanic is just way too simplistic. Given how much complexity there is in commanding your AI pilots in general, I feel it should have some gameplay added to it. As it stands it is just a waiting game with a numbers comparison at the end.
If the most optimal strategy in your game is lame, then it’s a lame game.
I personally love the ‘better piracy’ mod, allowing you to engage with your target before the boarding.
If I were to try and reimagine this feature, I would probably give marines more complex behaviour and more missions than just ‘capture a ship’ - imagine if you could send marines to sabotage ships internal systems or steal their cargo or on-board fighters or ‘kidnap personnel’. Put the brigs on those capital ships to actual good use.
Even a simple ‘retreat back to pods’ button to abandon the operation would be a huge improvement.
this maybe effective but ye... calling it "cheese" would be understating it lol
What ship do you use in this?
Hi Captain, I would love to see a video about the best MODs for X4. Since I am a little disappointed with Timelines, MODs might spice up my gameplay a bit. But I don't know much about them. Thank you!
Love the boarding
Hate how cheese it is
I'm only boarding when I'm completely disabling target in proper fight, and if it won't survive in process, oh well too bad
Otherwise it's just exploiting
Have 3 billion networth and spent millions on blueprints just to star getting millions per hour, and whole industry to make asgards or whatever, or simply take right away
And making industry literally takes dozens of hours, and there is no way to make it faster
How do you farm Veteran Marines? It's something I've never figured out. That's why I usually avoid Piracy, since my Marines are zero Star.
VIG has a chance to produce Veteran marines. Park a high-capacity ship at their shipyard and fill it with marines. Some will be Veterans. "Sell" all the Recruits back to the shipyard, then buy new marines to replace them. Some of those new marines will be Veterans. Repeat. After a few repetitions, you'll have a high percentage of Veterans, ready to transfer to your active piracy vessel.
@@CptSnuggles07 silly question, how to you sell them back? all i see is firing them?
@@Bazookabunz Upgrade/repair the ship at the shipyard. In the upgrade screen, under the crew tab, slide the Recruit section down to zero, click the trash can icon above the sliders, and then complete the order as normal.
@ so you’re not really getting your money back so much as trashing them and trying again? Thank you so much for your help? What’s a good ratio for rookies to vets?
@Bazookabunz You do get your money back. The UI is just a bit weird. You generally want as many vets as possible on your active piracy ship, so it's really just a matter of making sure you have enough available on your "farming" ship to replace boarding parties as you send them out.
What do you mean by farming veterans? Im not experienced in boarding, as it seemed almost impossible with even with enemy marines outnumbered 2:1 i would loose most of my marines who would barely get any experience.
Dock a high crew capacity ship at the VIG warf. fill it with marines. some will be veterans because the vig have a higher chance of veterans. Transfer the vet's to your pirating ship and sell the recruits back to the vig. then repeat the process till your pirate ship is filled with 100% veterans.
@@PietroBoggio Woah i gotta try this! Thank you!
I hate it, and feel dirty every time i did it. But hey i was young and needed the money😅 Me voting for war, everytime i try to capture a military ship.....
I would have liked the Venture thingy if we had a chance to be pirates and capture their trade ships.
Would be cool to see, pirate factions gain rep - exclusively from doing pirate activities. Not trade or "crime spam"
In X3 you had to keep the target's shields down and I think even the hull had to be under a certain percentage? This still feels a little too cheesy.
I don't know what that guy who commented is talking about. Computronic Substrate is my money printer.
Homeboy probably had one courier ship piloted by a 0.25 star pilot running auto trade for 2000 hours SETA and called it an economy.
I prefer to slam into the target, this discombobulates the AI, launch pods, let the enemy ship shoot my ship instead until pods are docked….its a bit more piratey….
I actually prefer military ships, they don’t call for help and typically have fewer marines than the Barbarossa
You only lose a bit of rep so just spend some time now and then improving it
Some Players dont get the Idea behind Sandbox games and I dont mean this as an offense of sorts but just the way it is.
Sandbox Games arent supposed to be balanced or fair or have strict rules all the time. Sandbox means, YOU, the Player, decide your own Experience, in fact, make your own game.
Lets take X4 as an example. The game basically offers you a "cheat code" as a starting option, where you can set missions to accomplished, give yourself more money, more ships and even fully built Stations. You could pretty much start the game as "finished" if you wanted to. But that is not the point and not the goal of this game. The best way to play this game is by making your own Story (especially if you dont like the ones that are offered to you).
Since this is a single player experience, the only person you are "cheating out of fun" with exploits or other kinds of "tricks", is yourself.
The way I play X4 is first make a character and build a story around it, then I set out a goal for this Character. The rules set for the Character are determined by how "serious" I want to play. If I want a roleplaying experience, I might even go so far not to use "legal" options in the game like teleportation. Of course there are times where I want to play a more "fun" game with less rules, in such cases I might use such "loopholes" like fly by boarding. I am even using an ingame Cheat that pretty much allows me to do what I want, like switching ownership of Stations, Ships or spawning Entities etc. and it does not really affect my Experience since I use that only in certain playthroughs but never in my serious "roleplaying" ones.
Bottom Line, a Sandbox Experience is highly dependent on the Player and not everybody likes it or even wants it. Some Players prefer the more "strict" approach where there is a more constraint world with rules and stories put in place by the Developer. Neither is wrong and both can be enjoyable but as a Player you should know which you prefer to avoid frustration.
I just discovered the X universe a few months ago and have about 225 hrs in the game so far. I haven't fly-by boarded a single ship yet despite being tempted. Especially since most of my attempts at piracy have resulted in me accidentally destroying the target ship. I do want to give it a try at some point but it looks kinda boring. It's been more fun for me to grind things out so far
I agree with everything you said. I cannot add much, but when I start the game I do almost the exact same. Get Odysseus -> buy Shudyku (sp?) -> Get Erlking -> get Asgard (only one pass required, all you need is 30% or more vets)
And I agree its such cheese! I do want it removed as it makes the game so easy yet I cannot stop doing it!! Help!
Well that just ruins the game...
I know you say it's "boring" for fly boarding, but it's super realistic. Boarding actions would be fast and close to maximize the survivability of personnel. Naval history even shows that captains would start harassing and trying to cripple the target, get in close and board with marines. I don't see it as "immersion breaking" other than having to pause without having a key binding for initiating the boarding action ( in new to the game so I'm not sure if there is an option to key bind boarding).
Also...I just picked up the game and only have about 130hrs so far and the Terran economy is crazy money once you get it started and being only 3 products, it's relatively cheaper in investment and super simple and highly lucrative. Certainly, the factories are expensive up front, but needing only about 5 compared to almost 20 is cheaper in the long run...
3:52
How do you pause the game like this without pulling up the whole pause menu?
Pause/Break button on the keyboard.