Where are the Combat Missions with actual combat?

[Aphofis]

As a long-standing fan of the X - Series I struggle a bit to keep playing X4. 

The Main reason is that there isn't much in terms of actual Combat missions, especially compared to X3 and even more so in what I would call "midgame". The game period where you start to build up your first shipyard but arnt ready to go to war yet.  The period where you start building a bunch of stations all over the place. At this stage, you might own a Destroyer and a few S and M combat ships, but can't afford to lose too many of them. 

So all the combat missions that actually involve combat:
- Destroy Station
- Destroy a fleet
- kill Surface element of a station (most likely a xenon station in xenon space)

Arnt really yet doable. (Yes you can cheese them I know but I want Combat were I shoot stuff that also shoots back )

There are of course, a few other Combat missions:
- Patrol Sector
- Patrol Stations
- clear mines 
- Kill illegal station traffic

Sadly, Patrol Sector does not spawn any enemies, so you sit mostly around and wait for 20 min. And I wouldn't call killing mines or Station Traffic combat.

The only combat mission that actually delivers attainable combat in early to mid game is "Escort Mining ships". 

But you outscale them pretty fast once you get a M combat ship. In X3 we always had an appropriately scaled combat mission with the old "Defend Sector/Station" mission, where a few M3 and later even Destroyers would Jump into the Sector upon accepting the mission. I understand that Egosoft doesn't want to spawn them to not disrupt the simulated Economy but surely fun is more important than always having everything perfectly simulated. 

This leads me often to just sitting in space and staring at the map and once the S/M Warf is completed, I just stop playing since there isn't much exciting to do while waiting for your Empire to slowly get built.

In the Early Titles I always could contribute a bit of money and have fun with combat missions while this was going on - but this is very much missing in X4. 

I tryed to elivate this with mods with kuertees Emergent Missions for instance but even that just creates more Patrol missions which have the same Problem as vanilla Patroll missions.

Any Advice on what could help with this sitioation? Any Mod Recommandations ?


Ideally I would love it if Egosoft would take a deeper look into the Combat missions - I was kind of hopeful that they would do so as part of the Flight Model update but it doesnt look like they are interested in that aspect of their game. 

[chew-ie]

Unfortunately there are no "real" combat missions. The big hope was that the Xenon crisis will bring a large combat campaign - but it ended to be an uninspired spawn fest in X³ style. So no authentic battle scenarios, just some overwhelming forces being spawned and waiting for the player to destroy them [or else they obliterate the sector because the were cheated in place and thus never had to deal with defense platforms or other security forces along the gates].

The best you can do in that regard to get lengthy combat is to either defend factions at Xenon gates or doing a crusade through the central Xenon cluster [to reach the Yaki]. This is quite a nice campaign with lots of fun for a mid- to endgame fleet. Sadly this a) requires the terran DLC, b) prolly means the end of the Xenon (as all the other Xenons usually are wiped out by the factions) and it is a one-time thing. Afterwards your universe is pretty dead - if you don't stirr up wars between the civilized factions that is. (personally I see no motivation in this as I want to see them live in harmony)

Honestly, since the botched Xenon crisis I gave up all hope of X4 getting any meaningful / authentic combat scenarios.

[vvvvvvvv]

There are several more.

"Destroy xenon fleet" (very hard to do)
"Destroy ships from <factionname>"
I think there's also variation of "Destroy ship last seen at location".
"Kill <Npc Name>"
"Board ship".

So. "Xenon fleet" mission is part of xenon warguilds.
Destroy ships from faction is GENERIC mission.
Kill NPC is criminal.
Board ship spawns in multiple different places, including pirate guilds.

I recommend to join SCA guild if you want more action. Every mission chain of theirs involves "double crossing fool".

[Aphofis]

Yes its a real shame - from the original Idea of "Think" "Trade" "Build" "Fight" they did a really really good job with "Trade" and "Build" but "Think" and "Fight" kind of were forgotten about.

And yes, I know about the other missions as well - but they all have roughly the same Problem.

"Destroy Xenon fleet" - is as you said not realy viable early- mid game
"Destroy ships <insert shipname>" - this one just anoying if they would just spawn 5 Xenon M or something it would be great but you have to run around and hunt for them.... - if they would be atleast be marked

"Kill <Npc Name>" is probably the second best one after the mining escords - can be a bit fun had a destroy as target once which was neat, but hey are kriminal missions and pretty rare

"Board ship" - is technically a combat mission but not in the I shoot and do cool space combat kind of way

Gonna give the the SCA a shot but surly there is some kind of mod or something out there that introduces more combat missions isnt their?

[xavii]

Good and varied combat missions is what I miss the most in X4.

With every major update I had hope, that they will introduce a system similar to x3, or something even better.

While I really like X4 in many aspects, I always played x3 for the combat and in X4 this is lacking. In X3 I could assamble fleets or I could fly my favourite m6 ship and always find challanging and suitable combat missions. The missions were tied to your rank an the missions could sometimes be really challanging.

In X4 I dont´t even find the combat missions, and when I find them they are to easy and boring.

I `d like to fight the xenon, the natural antagonsit of all races in the x universe, but I didn´t have a chance to. The xenon mostly vanished from my game without my intervention, pirates a harmless. And there is no reason to fight the different sentient races of the x universe, they are all likable and you lose access to their tech if you you start a bigger conflict.

The base for fun combat is there. The different weapons, all those combat capable ships. But theres no reason to go to war. Xenon become extinct to soon, or they are already an endangered species when you have build your first little fleet.

I have no hope that (more) opportunities for a fun and varied combat will be implemented in x4. But one can dream. Maybe in X5 this aspect and comabt will be more elaborate and fun.

[Raptor34]

And there is no reason to fight the different sentient races of the x universe, they are all likable and you lose access to their tech if you you start a bigger conflict.

The base for fun combat is there. The different weapons, all those combat capable ships. But theres no reason to go to war. Xenon become extinct to soon, or they are already an endangered species when you have build your first little fleet.

I have no hope that (more) opportunities for a fun and varied combat will be implemented in x4. But one can dream. Maybe in X5 this aspect and comabt will be more elaborate and fun.

Diplomacy could help with that tbh.
Something like negotiating a fleet exercise agreement, then later on you can ask them to prepare a fleet for you to fight on demand. One at a time and depending on their industrial strength because these would be new build ships.
Just make them uncapturable and put them under Faction A or something so it doesn't affect everything else when fighting.

I imagine you'll have some control over what you can fight. Like a carrier group, destroyer group, missile group, and you can have faction specific ones too like all split TDs.
And if you collect all the factions, it unlocks a mixed tech super group.

[vvvvvvvv]

"Destroy ships <insert shipname>" - this one just anoying if they would just spawn 5 Xenon M or something it would be great but you have to run around and hunt for them.... - if they would be atleast be marked

That sort of goes against idea of the game being a simulation. Though then again we have few factions which just materialize.

Right, there's one more:
"Destroy Khaak hive". Happens situationally, usually in antigone sector.

Which reminds me.

Ter vs Xen war guild and Zya vs Arg war guild also occasionally offers kill/board missions, like SCA. Terrans hunt down AI sympathizers, and Zya acts against escaped slaves/etc.

Combat seems to be much more common in Plot missions. Terran plot involves plenty of shooting. Borons have "High Road". Try those out. Even though they aren't repeatable. And then there's Timelines scenarios, if that's your cup of tea...

[jlehtone]

Yes its a real shame - from the original Idea of "Think" "Trade" "Build" "Fight" they did a really really good job with "Trade" and "Build" but "Think" and "Fight" kind of were forgotten about.

Yes and no. IMHO, the Trade is too casual in X4; not entertaining because it does not require much Think. The Think has always been less visible, because it affects everything.

[GCU Grey Area]

While I really like X4 in many aspects, I always played x3 for the combat and in X4 this is lacking.

Entirely the other way round for me.

Never really bothered all that much with the combat in X3, aside from the occasional assassination, xenon invasion, etc to bring in the credits while I got my stations going. Mostly focused on Trade & Build. Found the Fight aspect much less appealing because it was quite obvious that everything I did was fundamentally irrelevant - no matter how much damage I did to a faction it would just respawn replacements for every ship or station I destroyed. That made the whole process distinctly unsatisfying, which was why I focused most of my time on other elements of the game.

In contrast in X4 for the first time I can participate in a proper war. One in which losses matter, territory can change sides (this map shows what HOP have been doing in my current game) & if I choose my allies carefully I can perform missions for them which make a meaningful difference to their success in the war. Been playing these game for quite a long time (since X2) & as far as I'm concerned X4 is the one which does the Fight part best.

[chew-ie]

Good point @GCU, almost forgot about the purpose effect. It's the reason why I built defense forces as main goal in new game starts. Otherwise some factions will get into trouble and in turn are not able to provide their services and wares to me.

[adeine]

The only part of the traditional X game formula that X4 excels at is Build, in my opinion.

Trade is largely irrelevant as it's not super lucrative - you can do nividium/silicon mining straight away which is a million times better than automated traders (which you can't access until late game anyway due to skill requirements). Trading in a personal ship isn't even implemented properly. It only matters in terms of building supply chains for yourself or other factions, i.e. as part of the Build aspect of the game.

Fight is a little soured by the fact that there aren't any interesting missions early on and by the time you have built up fleets (which the game does very well compared to earlier entries in the series) there isn't much to do with them as Xenon are likely already extinct or almost so. As far as other factions go, VIG used to be a fun fight but quite short lived.

Think has always been a little nebulous as a concept, so hard for me to say how X4 fares. It feels like there's less complexity than in X3, but that is comparing vanilla X4 to heavily modded X3 so perhaps not a fair comparison.