Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

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Exidrial
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Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by Exidrial » Wed, 12. Apr 23, 22:33

So,

I got stuck on this mission way too long.
The part where the mission wants you to place down beacons to map out a safe path is very counterintuitively designed.

When you place a beacon, the mission updates and a yellow objective circle spawns around the beacon.

What the game wants you to do is place the beacons in such a way that each beacon is inside the yellow zone of another.
The yellow circle means "This beacon has not been connected yet".

The mission is super confusing if you don't know that. I thought I'd have to place the beacons in such a way that the yellow circles overlap.
This caused further confusion when I thought I was done and seemingly random beacons didn't have the yellow circle anymore. I thought the mission had bugged out and didn't register those beacons anymore.

The mission should be designed in such a way that this misunderstanding doesn't happen. At the very least, the game should be making it very clear to you what the yellow circle actually means in the context of this mission.

Brian Barnes
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by Brian Barnes » Thu, 13. Apr 23, 00:29

Ok, this is in the running for the most maddening mission ever. Any chance you have a map of the route through this nighmare?

Imperial Good
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by Imperial Good » Thu, 13. Apr 23, 03:19

The following is a possible solution to navigating Sanctuary of Darkness and placing the beacons.
Spoiler
Show
SoD Beacon Map.jpg
There might be an alternative path arcing around the west but that may run too close to a KHK hive for acceptable beacon placement. The shown route is generally what ships can be observed to follow and is proved working.

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surferx
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by surferx » Fri, 14. Apr 23, 16:04

Imperial Good wrote:
Thu, 13. Apr 23, 03:19
The following is a possible solution to navigating Sanctuary of Darkness and placing the beacons.
Spoiler
Show
SoD Beacon Map.jpg
There might be an alternative path arcing around the west but that may run too close to a KHK hive for acceptable beacon placement. The shown route is generally what ships can be observed to follow and is proved working.
Spoiler
Show
There is an alternate path, & it gets close enough to the hive to trigger a proximity warning. The one going +Z and then -X is best.
If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.

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alt3rn1ty
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by alt3rn1ty » Fri, 14. Apr 23, 16:55

.. And dont use an NPC Pilot for the ship dropping the beacons, I had found the route already then used my 5 star pilot to go place the beacons (on the map right click drop beacon repeatedly on the path), after the second one instead of flying directly to the next drop waypoint she started making a bee line straight into the horrible stuff.

Where the hell she was going and why defies logic, but I managed to grab controls and get back into safe space with only 10% hull left. Decided to drive it myself after that loonatic moment.

I think there is something up with Pilot AI in this sector, so have blacklisted it globally.

----------------

Back on topic : I didn't have a problem with the markers, before placing the beacons I was already thinking how do we know how far to place them apart on the route, then the first marker came up with its circumference lines and I dropped the next within its area of coverage and it worked. I can see though how if you have a couple dropped too far apart, then you would think maybe they need to overlap (like you would placing satellites).
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Raptor34
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by Raptor34 » Fri, 14. Apr 23, 17:19

alt3rn1ty wrote:
Fri, 14. Apr 23, 16:55
.. And dont use an NPC Pilot for the ship dropping the beacons, I had found the route already then used my 5 star pilot to go place the beacons (on the map right click drop beacon repeatedly on the path), after the second one instead of flying directly to the next drop waypoint she started making a bee line straight into the horrible stuff.

Where the hell she was going and why defies logic, but I managed to grab controls and get back into safe space with only 10% hull left. Decided to drive it myself after that loonatic moment.
I'll second this. I wanted to be lazy and they went and drop the beacons somewhere off in deep space. Maybe it'll work better OOS, but definitely don't do it IS. Even with a Tenacity 100% hazard mod it still goes dumb instead of just doing what I want.
It's not even hard to do it manually anyway, the map linked above tells you what you need. Use the manual guidance on the map to roughly mark where you want beacons to go.

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alt3rn1ty
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by alt3rn1ty » Fri, 14. Apr 23, 17:30

Yep when I did it I went by the spoken advice of the Boron, to stick close to asteroids, so basicly just following the map red background and stay in the middle of the path did the trick for me, Imperial Goods spoiler is pretty much the same route I took.
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SivarTechie
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by SivarTechie » Fri, 14. Apr 23, 23:16

I had a problem with using autopilot in this area. Just tried taking me way up above everything, for no discernible reason.

waadaa85
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by waadaa85 » Sat, 15. Apr 23, 01:38

Well... With an ominous name like "Sanctuary of Darkness", I evidently went into SOD with an Asgard with a full wing of Osakas, and found the inactive jump gate.

Although,I didn't get (Yet ?) the part of the plot asking to deploy nav beacons. or is it because I wasn't able to get close enough from the jump gate nacelle to decipher its contents ? Or worst ?... a bug ?

Right now, I'm refraining myself not to follow too quickly the yellow brick road paving the plot. As I'm currently building a "containment measure" in the form of a volko's great ball of fire viewtopic.php?f=195&t=444414&p=5099968& ... e#p5099968 on Great Reef's side of the jump gate leading to SOD. Pretty effective in denying entry of a sector to any xenon ships. While Ill gather my forces to eradicate them (once more)

It seems quite obvious the minute you decipher/activate the jump gate, xenon would awake and come down hard on your forces :-p

@SivarTechie: Yes I experienced that effect too while in autopilot, my ship went high above the horizontal plane... Dont know why. Is it a bug, or intended?
Last edited by waadaa85 on Sat, 15. Apr 23, 16:21, edited 1 time in total.
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Radamanthe Nemes
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by Radamanthe Nemes » Sat, 15. Apr 23, 08:42

waadaa85 wrote:
Sat, 15. Apr 23, 01:38
Yes I experienced that effect too while in autopilot, my ship went high above the horizontal plane... Dont know why. Is it a bug, or intended?
It has been reported many times already since release, with saves. I can't tell about autopilot, but remote ships don't respect waypoints at all, going into random directions instead of following them scrupulously, and dying in hazards which constitute the vast majority of the sector. This is especially true on the north thin safe path and it's a challenge just to make a ship go safely from one gate to the other with orders, to the point that it's less time consuming to do it manually by going there personally and flying yourself.

As of NPC factions, it seems they're immunized to hazards so they have no real problem crossing the sector, even when they (often) just obviously fly straight into hazard areas.

I did not see any word about it from devs yet, and well, it's week-end now... anyway, they'll have to deal with it soon or later as it currently makes this sector a prime candidate for sector travel blacklisting.

Loltak
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by Loltak » Sat, 15. Apr 23, 11:59

Radamanthe Nemes wrote:
Sat, 15. Apr 23, 08:42
waadaa85 wrote:
Sat, 15. Apr 23, 01:38
Yes I experienced that effect too while in autopilot, my ship went high above the horizontal plane... Dont know why. Is it a bug, or intended?
It has been reported many times already since release, with saves. I can't tell about autopilot, but remote ships don't respect waypoints at all, going into random directions instead of following them scrupulously, and dying in hazards which constitute the vast majority of the sector. This is especially true on the north thin safe path and it's a challenge just to make a ship go safely from one gate to the other with orders, to the point that it's less time consuming to do it manually by going there personally and flying yourself.

As of NPC factions, it seems they're immunized to hazards so they have no real problem crossing the sector, even when they (often) just obviously fly straight into hazard areas.

I did not see any word about it from devs yet, and well, it's week-end now... anyway, they'll have to deal with it soon or later as it currently makes this sector a prime candidate for sector travel blacklisting.
I should have read more carefully read the latest post :D; lost half of my ships before realize it due this behavior. Guess I will do it myself but yeah it's annoying
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dcarver
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Re: Kingdom End - Blazing the Trail mission design unintuitive

Post by dcarver » Thu, 11. May 23, 17:20

Make sure the NAV's are at most 50km of each other.

If they are highlighted yellow, they are not connected and likely to far away from the next one. I deployed 6 and finished the mission.

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