I've put a lot of hours into X3, vanilla and various overhaul mods, And one of my favourite things about it is the sense of awe you get when managing big ships like M2's. The sheer scale and droning low-frequency hum as they meander about with a foreboding presence.

Just something about it that tickles my fancy. A similar feeling to pulling up to the event horizon.. All that energy, firepower and shielding potential, And an arsenal that would light up the sky in many different directions.

Was curious if it's possible to own or pilot such monstrosities in this game?

You can eventually own almost any ship in the game - the exception being that only a limited selection of Xenon ships can be captured. Among the ownable ships, most can be bought outright (your money supply and relevant faction reputation permitting), but some have other restrictions - the Terran Asgard (part of Cradle of Humanity) can only be acquired through capturing one flying around the universe, or buying the blueprint and building it in your own shipyard. Others, such as the Erkling (from Tides of Avarice), and all the Timelines shipsare unique - you can only have one of them at a time.

As for flying a ship, if you own it, you can fly it.

Thanks for the info on that. Would you say the big ships in this game offer the same feeling they did in X3? Like the same feeling of scale and combat potential?

Also, if you wouldn't mind, do the big ships work correctly when controlled by AI? - That is one issue I had in X3. M2's would not obey orders when in the same sector as the player.

And are there any good mods similar to LU for this game? The biggest problem I had in X3 is that there was no pressure on the player which made it feel more like a theme park. The player given a near infinite window to develop their standing and holdings with only the slightest interjection from rebel factions. It made everything feel inconsequential. Core balancing that made it impossible to fail, And with long stretches of nothing in between.

I would say capital ship combat is rather different then X2 or 3 - there, firepower was based on turrets. In X4, capitals are based largely around their forward-firing main battery guns.

As for capital ship[s under AI control, it's been middling at best. It's traditionally been pretty bad, but 7.1 had a number of improvements, to the point they were somewhat not terrible. 7.5 then broke things again, but 7.6 has reportedly been heavily foused on fixing capital AI.

No idea what LU is, but the X4 universe is at least somewhat dynamic. Sectors can very much change hands dynamically, and Hatikvah's Choice 1 is a sector fairly notorious for falling to the Xenon and letting them spill out into the core of what is normally fairly safe space. Secondly, the story chains (which are short and self-contained) can potentially make factions declare war on each other. Although generally sectors won't change hands unless the player is feeding large amounts of resources to their shipyard or is selling ships through their own shipyard.

Appreciate the insight. That is very bizarre to hear that capitals (the least agile ship class) would have forward-focused guns as opposed to uniform artillery like in X3. I hope I am wrong to infer that capitals are unrealistically agile in this game.

Yeah that unfortunately seems par for the course for Egosoft not being able to create AI with basic pathfinding or semi-functional combat logistics. I pray to the stars that it has evolved slightly beyond AI simply smooshing themselves into enemy forces or performing a 200-point turn to navigate around a single object.


Sorry, by LU I was referring to Litcube's Universe, one of the more popular overhauls for X3. Despite an abundance of QOL improvements it still wasn't able to reconcile the two most severe shortcomings in the base game- braindead AI and the feeling of dead space. One key feature was to have the campaign progress on a timeline, which is more accurately thought of as doom-clock marking an extinction-level-event for the known universe. You are given a set window of time to prepare for the incoming invasion. The invasion force later revealed to be an extremely advanced species of AI that act more like a virus.

It is all good and well until you realize there is a great deal of nothing happening up to that point. The allotted window for preparation being far too lax to be of any real significance in relation to overall pacing. Existing factions still feel like inanimate filler, pathfinding and logistics still a broken mess, And Xenon representing little more than a spacefly on your windshield in terms of intermediate threats.

When you do finally get to the invasion, it feels more like a battle against lag and dumb AI logistics. Your ships and theirs knowing little better than to simply collide with each other. You suffer their stupidity while fighting with systems that fail to work intuitively or not at all.

One thing I was hoping to get out of this game was actual adversity and not just the illusion of it.

The primary way X4 capital ships fail is that they don't really attempt to maintain range. This works well enough for the Xenon K and I ships, which *are* turret based, but are short ranged. Meanwhile, other capitals with long range but lower damage turrets get torn to shreds as they struggle to bring their main battery to bear. As such, fighter swarms have been generally considered much more effective at killing stuff, being able to accomplish much more at a significantly lower cost.

Some other stuff to note is that the Xenon are supposed to get more active once the player reaches a certain net worth -I'd heard 500m thrown around, but I'd never played any one game long enough to get to that point. I'm also not sure if it's a one time or constant thing.

It's also worth noting that depending on the randomness of where things spawn in a new game can result in the Xenon being more threatening in a particular area then they otherwise might be.

Another later-game thing to note is that as you clear the Xenon from around the universe, their remaining enclaves become more dangerous. The factions have what I'll call a population cap (similar to RTS games like Starcraft), which normally keeps things from getting too laggy, but does keep things relatively sparse as a consequence. For the Xenon getting cleared from the universe, this means their popcap gets concentrated into fewer areas. As a final note on things, war is good for business because ship production is the resource sink in X4 - if a faction isn't losing ships, they stop buying new ships, their shipyards fill up on resources, and demand stops.

And of course, there are mods that can make the Xenon much more aggressive then they are in vanilla.

First 100 hours when starting new game Xenon takes little bit easier. This means yes you'll see K but not so often I.
After that point Xenon starts coming out from their sectors with big fleets that can include 1*I + 3*K + plenty of PE, some B and lots of M & N. At the same time they also start expand more in those areas where they have enough resources and bigger fleets. This can continue longer period depending how player reacts and how much support local factions so they can fight against Xenon ships and destroy stations while they are under construction.

When talking about XL category battleships like Asgard it's slow to rotate but have very powerful primary main battery. It also have 2 smaller main batteries to support + plenty of L-size turrets and some M-size turrets.
1 of killer ships with turrets is Split carrier called Raptor. Near 100 turrets makes it moving fortress. Only issue with Split ships is their limited shields and weaker hull. Those are compensated with agile handling.

L-size ships are more agile and they rely to main batteries. There's exceptions of course like Xenon H which does not have any main battery but 2*L turrets and bunch of M-size turrets. Ship is fast and agile but like Split case it's biggest issue is limited shield capacity.

Egosoft released Hyperion pack DLC which will bring exploration ship from past to X4. I don't own that DLC but what been reading people like from that ship a lot.