GCU Grey Area wrote: ↑Sun, 9. Jun 24, 09:44
However as soon as I started expanding out into the rest of the map it's been exclusively Sturgeons. Currently have around 100 of them. Mostly find it's not essential to intervene militarily in response to pirate harassment. In almost all cases opening the map & giving the freighter a different route or new destination is sufficient - the pirates usually give plenty of warning of their intentions & they're flying comparatively slow & sluggish ships. Issues only arise if both ships start the encounter in immediate close proximity (e.g. my freighter has just flow through a gate straight into turret range of a pirate destroyer).
Definitely different play styles, I prefer not to reload in such circumstances. Can understand the attraction of Mirage given your 4 simultaneous pirate encounters. However that sort of thing simply never happens with a fleet of L freighters (not once in over 10k hours of X4). Indeed, don't recall even a single case of 2 of my L freighters being hassled by pirates simultaneously. Worst I have to deal with is more than one freighter being harassed by the same destroyer in the same location, one after another. Those are the sort of situations where I respond personally, usually with a frigate full of highly trained marines...
In my experience, most of my pirate harrassment SOS calls have occurred right at a gate, whether it be the entrance or the exit gates of a sector, where most ships are vulnerable since they have to cycle travel drives there. My preferred L-freighter is currently a Shuyaku, and I don't think they can outrun the Phoenix and Behemoths, though the Barbarossa probably can. I have also seen a time where an SCA Phoenix harrassed two freighters in a row, and I was already en route to deal with them anyway so I was like "Oh, okay, you're double dead now," and called in a second destroyer just to make an example of them. In any case, I think this probably highlights another gameplay difference of ours: If I remember correctly, your have a megastation with thousands of modules, no? I assume your hundreds of Sturgeons are all trading for it? My setup is with about 20 different smaller, focused production stations all feeding 6 trading hubs scattered around the galaxy, and my external trade happens from there. If I were to exclusively use L-freighters in this setup, I'd end up with Shuyakus ferrying 200 food constantly back and forth, so I make greater use of the M-traders (Boas) to move a large number of smaller hauls quickly, as well as to load-balance the trading stations around the superhighway ring rapidly.
Good Wizard wrote: ↑Sun, 9. Jun 24, 12:10
This is something many experienced and very experienced players completely overlook and even ignore: They know all the shortcuts and tricks and tell newer player things like in 30 minutes having mods like Mirage - which is an EXCEPTIONAL mod, and requires three stages of research:
You have to supply the nanotubes (simple mission) and then (sum of the next two stages):
Claytronics - 250
Graphene - 75
Refined Metals - 350
Teladanium - 100
Nividium - 50 (which in my latest game I could NOT buy anywhere for teleportation research, had to mine it myself)
Also - for the Nividium you need to build a solid storage on the PHQ, and a container storage for all the rest too. You have to buy it and bring it to your PHQ, because if you just order it, you will wait ages. And doing this with a Nodan - I would really like to watch this
Right, I did amend my post about these additional steps from a brand new start, as you noted.
That said, those really are still not particularly high hurdles to overcome. Flying into Second Contact initially to start collecting loot will already point the player toward the HAT quest in Hatikvah's Choice (and indeed, you will pass through there regardless to get to Heretic's End for the PHQ, and for the Xenon drops) which will give you a free Callisto almost immediately. It's frankly a terrible transport, but it is free and acquirable very early on, so you can begin using it to transport those few resources to your PHQ right away. The Nodan also has 700 cargo capacity, allowing you to also shuttle some yourself -- and escort the Callisto at the same time. That old Elite is still parked somewhere too, unless you sold it when upgrading to a real fighter, so you can also use it as another escort. If you advance the HAT quest a bit more, you'll happen upon the part of the quest where there is a docked SCA Pelican that basically stays docked there for the rest of the game, and can be captured at your leisure for your first L-freighter.
The next hurdle then is the 50 Nividium. You are correct that it isn't sold anywhere. On the other hand, a simple Mining ship runs less than half a million, which we should still have enough money to purchase one from that first ANT/HOP battle drops. Even if not, there is a free, capturable Drill Vanguard right next to Second Contact in The Void that you can simply bring back to Second Contact for some Nividium -- that sector has a decent amount initially, and pirates ignore miners. Between ANT, ARG, HOP and TER ships constantly transiting through there, Xenon ships beelining for the highway usually won't get to the miner either, so the only worry is KHK spawns, which shouldn't happen that early with just a single player-owned miner, but this is random so it's the one part you'll want to watch out for. Still, 50 Nividium is easily acquirable with one miner. Don't forget that the Elite also starts with 5 Resource Probes.
The next problem then, is storage. You could research the storage hacking and get an EMP bomb since there's a HAT Free Port right in Heretic's End, but that research costs more resources (Most of it is energy cells though, I think?) The ARG S Storage blueprint, meanwhile, runs less than 400k and can be purchased from Argon Prime immediately. Even PAR was willing to sell me all their storage blueprints at 0 reputation. 381k is easy enough, as we still have leftover (especially if we go with the free Drill in The Void.) After that, each research step is only 10 minutes, which is bearable.
The vast majority of this time is spent waiting on the PHQ, but that's because I was specifically gunning for it. Biggest issue for me was waiting for some random TEL Tern take over 47 minutes to bring some Hull Parts to my PHQ, and I likely could've done it myself far faster instead of waiting. Newer players might reasonably not experience pirate harrassment enough until after they've established a basic PHQ, in which case all of this groundwork is already done for them, and does not need to be repeated or factored in. I suppose it is possible that a player somehow buys a fleet of Tradeships before they've even set up their PHQ, but then that just provides additional incentive to get the PHQ set up, because your early-game anti-pirate countermeasures are to escort them yourself, spend more resources buying fleets of ships to escort for you, mod them to be able to outrun or camouflage through them which requires the PHQ, or simply don't use the things they just spent a whole lot of money on and use military ships that often have far less cargo capacity (which, you can't even buy Frigates and Corvettes until you hit +10 with someone. This is trivial with a few Criminal Traffic missions, but still.) If you say that those modest research requirements are expensive, then shifting to all L-freighters as GCU does would be nearly impossible for them. Ultimately, of all those options, modding is the cheapest IMO, and can still be done
relatively quickly, even if my initial estimate of 10-30 minutes was too quick for a no-PHQ start.
jlehtone wrote: ↑Sun, 9. Jun 24, 14:19
AFAIK, the "twist" is Kingdom End DLC. If you do have it (enabled), then PHQ is practically there, while without the DLC there is the "original drill". The Terran start has always been its own thing and is not affected by the KE DLC.
Thanks, that might explain it. I do have the four currently available DLC, but this is the first time I've tried Young Gun. As to the other comment: I don't want to lose any of
my own ships, but I do want to keep all the Pirates alive so they can destroy all the
other ships to keep the economy churning. That and war. War everywhere. Sounds like the Terran Cadet one I experienced is the "original" PHQ quest then, minus the signal leak scanning step, I think.
Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑Sun, 9. Jun 24, 16:23
I've tried X4 about 6 times now, and each time, I try to establish an early trading network and it never works out. IMO, there needs to be a lot more security in the major traffic areas and it needs to actually respond. A casual small pirate should never be able to just appear in Argon prime and take out a simple trader without getting toasted first by the local police. I think players that use early game traders count on this protection, but it's only an illusion. The idea that Pirates can just pop up pretty much anywhere through 'magic' and start attacking stuff is a level of um-realism that makes me continue to want to play X3.
I agree that SCA spawning everywhere is pretty BS, but how early and how many tradeships are you fielding when this problem arises? With only one or two I don't see too much issue with them being harrassed often enough, and is few enough that you can personally respond. If you start expanding further, is this done before the PHQ gets set up with the basics for those initial researches?
As mentioned, though, TER space is super safe for early traders, assuming the player has CoH available. Only problem for most starts is probably having to shoot enough criminals to unlock the ability to dock on their stations. I don't know if the Solborn Militia quest triggers that early, but if it does, all those Xenon swarming that outpost should give a good chunk of reputation as well. The main issue with early trading is lack of 3-star autotraders, but even local autotrading is fine at the beginning. There's also repeat-orders trading (you can select a specific ware to buy and sell in two specific sectors instead of just specific stations,) and this just requires a 1-star pilot.
Good Wizard wrote: ↑Sun, 9. Jun 24, 19:59
The 'new' PHQ mission with Kingdoms End - I just tried it once. As soon as you enter a certain sector you hear Boso Ta talking, as he is 'teleporting' the PHQ into the sector. It is just there, afterwards. Compared to the nice start mission without the DLC this is just lame, IMHO. But AFAIK you still need to build a dock for the PHQ. And my point was: Even if you spare around 1-2 hours of game play until the PHQ appears you still need money and time to build the dock, then - to start research - you need to build storage and probably E-cell-production. This alone takes a while, because the new sector is not very central and it will take a long time to even find a builder and have the materials delivered. The building alone will take around 30-40 minutes to finish, the materials also will take a while.
Speaking at least as of v6.20, which is what I ran for my test last night, you no longer need to actually build the dock -- one is already built and attached to the PHQ when it teleports into Heretic's End, allowing you to land and talk to Boso who transfers control to you immediately. I was also surprised because I remember having to build one during the Terran Cadet version of this. Additionally, it seems you are now automatically provided the blueprints for the dock, the E-pier, S container storage, and even the Energy Cell production, although building this is not necessary to get the research done. The only thing you need to do to get the PHQ running from Young Gun (with KE DLC, anyway) is to immediately land, talk to Boso, then go buy the S-Solid storage blueprint and queue up 1-2 S-containers and a single S-solid storage at the PHQ, then run the resources over. The cost of 2-3 storages isn't too high, and each takes about 4 and a half minutes to build, I think. At least the S-solid one does.
Again, if a player already has their PHQ set up with even just these two storages, the vast majority of the "wait time" is already through, and provides a permanent way of handling pirates.
