u/Teriyaki_Freak

I’d like to start integrating some launchers onto my ships for a more combined arms feel that doesn’t just rely on plasma spam. The problem of course is that missiles are expendable, I don’t have the money for a supply ship yet, and not every engagement needs your forces to go full send with your inventory. Is there some kind of setting or mod out there that can toggle AI missile usage?

(A similar space-sim game that allows this that comes to mind is Endless Sky. It’s free-to-play btw if anybody wants to give it a try and very much appeals to similar game loops if you enjoy X4.)

The only sort of work around I’ve thought of is running missiles on turret slots since I can enable/disable these turrets as needed, but a few ships I’d prefer those turret slots be for pulse lasers to handle small fighters.

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As an aside: How exactly do resupply settings work? Will your ships go to the nearest station/warf/shipyard and restock after an engagement? Only when one of these is in the same sector? Or only when there’s a ship you already own that has the capacity for resupply?

Are Terran ships and equipment worth the extra creds compared to their counterparts in other factions?

I’m on my first play-through (about 60 hours in at this point) and chose the Terran Cadet start due to it being recommended for beginners. I know the community already designates Terran starts as easy-mode due to their simplified production chain and generally safe sectors. That said, I’ve noticed that their equipment is significantly more expensive than other faction equivalents.

For example, I can get 5 decently equipped (mK 2) Pulsars for the cost of 2-3 Kalises/Takobas or 1.5 Gladiuses.

I know the argument could go that the more you spend, the more likely you won’t have to replace in the future, but the difference in stats and the ability to field more of the alternatives just makes the increased cost seem not worth it.

Their schtick reminds of how Dwarves work in the Total War - Warhammer Series. Slow and expensive units that can get overwhelmed due to their lower fielded units.

So I know by now if I want a sector fully explored in a decent time I have to manually create “fly to and wait” commands for a ship rather than relying on the “explore sector command” due to the latter’s pattern of randomly expanding from the center, leading to very long explore times.

I want to start setting up dedicated scouts to renew trade info across various sectors but I’d rather not go through the process of creating detailed routes for each scout. I know repeat orders exist but if i ever need to recall a ship for repairs or inventory deposit, I’d have to make the route all over again. I don’t have the money for each sector to get a scout and multiple guides say to avoid using too many satellites due to their tendency to decrease performance as the game progresses.

When I first used the “revisit station” command queued up across multiple sectors for a scout, I played for maybe an hour and checked on their progress to see that they were still at the first sector. It looked like it was following the logic of the explore command rather than going directly to each station and then moving on to the next queued sector. I can think of a few explanations for this but I wanted to query the community in case my intuition is wrong.

1.) The scout first fully explores the sector before proceeding to target visit each station.
2.) The stations queued for revisit were already updated, so the scout defaulted to patrol logic.
3.) The “revisit stations” is a looped/endless command that does progress to the next order until manually directed.

The key question I would like answered is: Can I rely on repeat orders to “revisit stations to keep the trade info for multiple sectors up to date?

Side note:
I know based on map geometry that dividing scouts based on faction might not be optimal for path/travel time, but it would allow me to know quickly which scout I have to replace in the event one gets destroyed.

Side questions:

Can 1 scout per faction travel fast enough to cover all stations before the trade info expires?

If not, what factions would need multiple scouts? Which nearby factions could maybe share a single scout?

I keep seeing old posts, videos, and guides talking about how stations struggle to maintain multiple types of the different resource categories (i.e. auto-mine orders focusing a single specific resource vs multiple when required for a certain production). Is this still the case and I should just make multiple stations tailored to specific resources or is it now safe to build all-in-one stations?

What I mean by this is: Are there any mods that make the different factions more dynamic in terms of war fronts? I’m on my first play through with probably 50ish hours and I’ve noticed a couple of incursions from the Xenon into Hatikvah’s Choice but after destroying an Argon factory or two they fizzle out. This is probably the only real “war” I’ve observed beyond seeing another Argon destroyer just get obliterated when going into Holy Order space. Starting out I like having a stable universe to get myself oriented but it’d be neat to have the borders become a bit more erratic outside of my own direct intervention. Even just feeding the economy of the faction I favor to put the scales in their favor of a more dynamic universe would be interesting to explore.

A few posts I’ve read say the game caps the militaries/economies of the various factions and I’m wondering how true that is and if there were something to “un-cap” it.