X4: Foundations - General FAQ

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General FAQ

Some collected FAQs from the last few days:

Other X4: Foundations Guides:

Trading

Trading versus automatic trading?
Some players have noted that automatic trading for NPC ships who work for you is locked behind a relatively high skill of 3 stars for the pilot of that ship.

To train the captain you should first trade manually remotely with the ship by assigning trade orders from the map menu.

To do this, you can right click on wares in the map and select the ship you want to trade with, to buy and sell wares. This creates trade ORDERS which are always possible.

The difference for AUTOTRADING is that the captain does not make the decision about what to buy and where to buy. This skill requires a better captain with 3 stars!

Where is my cargo? What did I just pick up?
It is important to understand the difference between Inventory and cargo. Cargo is in your ship, while inventory is on you.

Inventory is listed with the SHIFT I menu under player information. It moves with you when you go (or later teleport!) from ship to ship.

Cargo is in your ships storage and can be seen in the ship info menu (Shift Enter for your current ship or INFO on map).

Most ships have CONTAINER class storage which are most tradeable goods. Mining ships can have liquid or solid storage.

Trading with ship storage items happens with the TRADE menu when docking, while trading with inventory happens with the trader on a platform.

What is container storage, what is build storage?
When you start building a station, the first thing added or created is a so called “Build storage”. This is basically a fragile tower of containers near your future station where transporters can deploy the resources needed for building. It grows over time when more resources are in stock for building (management happens over the build UI).

In contrast to this the operational station, has internal storage through its ware storage modules. This means an operating station can have two seperate sets of storage that also give seperate trade offers. You can tell the difference on the map through the little “build” icon.

If your station happens to have the same resources that your build storage needs, the transfer between the two can happen automatically (through XS ships). Normally ships with WARE EXCHANGE orders are needed for this.

How do I sell a ship?
Select your ship on the map and then right click any of your known wharfs (or shipyards for L and XL ships). Select “Sell ship” and confirm price and transaction. The ship will fly to the yard and be sold.

Missions and plot

How to I get more missions?
Flying by stations you sometimes see mission icons appear on the radar. Then open the mission interface (shift M) to see the actual offer.

The alternative are secret missions offered through signals revealed with the SCAN MODE (Shift 2). These missions often pay better.

Another alternative are subscriptions: These give you many missions in a row, with little stories around them. To get to that point you have to get good standings with a faction first and follow their invitation.

Is there a plot?
There is a main mission chain. It is not a huge plot, but it reveals a lot of key technologies and gives you a start into the subscrption missions (Jobs to do for the various factions).

How do I find this plot?
It’s one of the signal leak missions on stations. An imprisoned Boron might contact you and ask for help. Consider helping him. To find signal leaks use the SCAN MODE near stations.

Where are cutscenes?

The game has a set of cutscenes about the X universe history collected in the encyclopedia timeline. The articles are found throughout the universe and are also searched for by the plot main character.

Modes

What does long range scan mode do
Long range scan mode (shift 3) is only needed very infrequently to reveal objects in large distances. Send a pulse by holding down the secondary launch button (L by default) for 2 seconds (not longer not shorter) to get the best effect. Check then for the ring “echoes” and for questionmarks on your map! HINT: LRS can reveal mine clusters too,which can then be selected from the pilot’s radar screen (if neaby) or map by clicking on the cluster of ?s: useful for targeting mines near an abandoned ship

Building

How do I claim a plot?
The map has a special mode for plot management under this icon:

Here you can create new plots, pieces of space that you reserve for building your own stations. You can create a plot without paying anything, but this may be seen as an offence by the local owning faction as soon as you start building. For that the claiming comes with a price. This price (shown at the side of the menu before confirming the plot, depends on the location (remote areas are cheaper) and on the size.

How do I get blueprints?
Blueprints are often found when scanning data leaks on station modules. A leak would then always reveal the blueprint for that station module you find it at. You can also provoke data leaks (see Space suit EMP bomb).

Can I change a construction plan for a station?
f you change a station plan before it actually started construction, then you have no disadvantage. The menu will just re-calculate the total number of needed resources. If the station a module was already build and needs to be de-constructed again, part of the resources will be “recycled” but you will loose some resources and of course (construction-) time.

How does researching stations work?
One branch of research unlocks the ability to scan for new types of blueprints. Data leaks on stations can sometimes reveal blueprints which then are available for building new modules from the build UI. Research in this case unlocks more modules to be scanned.

Ship controls

When do ships ROLL when do they steer left / right?
You can choose what you prefer: Either you map always “left right” (aka yaw=primary steering) or always “roll” (=secondary steering) to your controller or mouse, OR you have a game option called “adaptive steering” which looks at the current ship maneuverability and maps whichever of these two axis is faster. That can however be a bit confusing when teleporting from the one type to the other, that’s why this option is turned off by default in input settings. (Mouse controls can only be changed between primary steering, which is default, OR adaptive steering).

How to keep flying while map open ?
Game settings has option “maintain speed in menus” –> Use with care!

How to stop my ship from rolling ?
The game settings have a “autoroll” setting. Turn it off to stop your ship from roliing back to the plane of ecliptic.

How to control turrets?

M ships with turrets have a small panel with control modes at the top of your HUD.

Defend Ship: Returns fire on anything that attacks the ship.
Attack Enemies: Attack any hostiles.
Target Target: Will only attack the selected target if it is hostile.
Missile Defence: Will only try to intercept incoming missiles.
Break Asteroids: Supports mining solid materials.

Fleet control

How do I set up a fleet or squad ?
Click on the ship you want to be the follower to select it, then right click on the ship you want to be the leader and select from the context menu a role to assign it as (usually defend for a typical squad). You can also multiselect ships in the first step and all assign them in one go.

How/Where do I set the “Global” reactions for my ships?
Under player information menu (with your name) the global options are a black background of text.

It’s hard to find under all the other settings.

Illegal / Pirate Gameplay / Capturing

How do I claim a ship?
In a fight sometimes your opponents may all leave the ship. Usually this happens shortly before the ship would otherwise explode, or if the ship has no weapons & shields. Stop firing immediately and fly close to the ship. Exit your ship in the spacesuit and fly even closer. Somewhere on the ship you will find a data leak; scan mode <shift-2> will help. Fixing it will help you taking control of the ship’s security systems. You can now order it to open its dock and float in to pilot it yourself. Make sure you always have a spare pilot with you, so you do not have to leave the ship behind.

What is the difference between claiming and boarding?
Large capital ships (L and XL type) have so much crew, that simple claiming does not work anymore. Here you have to start a proper boarding operation to take them over. Boarding is initiated from the BOARDING menu, which is accessed from the right click menu BOARDING action. Your ship, or other ships in your squad, need to have MARINES. The more marines and the higher their skills, the better your chances through the three phases of boarding. To get a good idea of your chances you should SCAN a ship (scan interaction from right click menu from very near by). The three phases of boarding then take time and offer you to support the boarding effort. In phase 1 you can destroy turrets or engine and other surface elements of the target ship so that your boarding pods are not destroyed on approach. In phase two the HULL of the target must be below a threshold you set so the marines do not have to cut through the entire hull. In phase 3 the marines fight inside the target ship against the ships crew and marines. This is where the defending strength comes in.

Why are there many floating containers near a station?
Pirates often hack a station to steal is stored wares. You can see their ships (sometimes under cover of a different faction at first) near the station and observe them picking up the “loot”.

You can of course try to benefit from this or hack stations yourself with the right items.

How do I hack stations myself?
Exploring the universe, you may find parts which can be used to craft illegal hacking items:

If you have these items in your inventory, you can apply them to a security panel of a station. Panel are found in rooms like the engineering section. The hardest to hack security system is the “Turret Control Panel”, as it shuts down almost the entire defence systems of a station.  To hack it, you will need a Security Slicer.

Most other panel can be hacked with the Security Decryption System.

Deployables

How are Lasertower/Mining Probe/Nav Beacon/Satellite retrieved?
To collect a deployed lasertower, mining probe, navigational beacon or satellite, first fly within 400m of it, target it then use right click to disable/turn off, you can then fly into it to collect it.

Space suit

What if I get abducted by an NPC ship?
Well if your ship has a pilot you can ask him to pick you up.
Thats also why the game always suggests you get a pilot even for your very first ship. THAT and the fact that you may claim a ship in empty space. You can also leave the ship in a spacesuit and ask your other ships to pick you up there. You can of course unlock teleportation at which point this is very easy to solve.

How do I get EMP bombs?
Space Suit EMPs used on station modules cause a data leak which if scanned have a chance to give the player the blueprint for that module. You will need to craft them at a crafting bench once you have all the required components (the recipe is unlocked once you have at least one of those components)

Map

Why can sectors grow?
The map has a certain set size per hexagon at first. This is however NOT a set limit and does not mean that there is nothing beyond these limits. The map in fact starts zooming out “per hex” when you or other ships in your scan range leave the hex space of a system or sector.

Faction relations

Where do I get licenses?
First get a good standing of at least level 10 with at least one of the factions of the game. You can improve your standing with many ways: Playing missions, destroying smuggling drones, help the fight against a factions enemmies or just trade with them. Once you reach level 10 you may get an invitation mission to visit the faction administrator. Talk with him and accept the honour to be promoted. This alone already may unlock some licenses. Others can be bought once your reputation allows it.

What are licenses good for?
Lots of things. The purpose is mostly in the name: Some are for buying advanced military equipment, others reward you higher for police activities. They are in general a way to further improve your cooperation with a certain friendly faction.

X4: Foundations – General FAQ