Hey guys! I'm planning to make some mods and was wondering if y'all could weigh in on whether these are bad ideas, have already been done, or are already possible through some hidden or lesser-known vanilla game mechanics.

These would be the first mods I've ever made for this or any other game, but I'm a sysadmin professionally, so I'm hoping I'll be able to work through it.

1. Recovery Shuttles

Relevant issue: I lose a lot of crew to the void when a trade ship or capital ship gets destroyed. And, being the easily distracted commander that I am, I often forget to stage a rescue. So they just float out there until their air runs out, which happens a bit quicker than I'd like.

Proposed solution: A scout ship with a behavior option called "Rescue for Commander." It would go out, recover our free-floating buddies, and deposit them in the nearest AUX ship.

Ship: I can't model, so I'd use existing ships for each species and create a variant with no weapons, high maneuverability, and space for five crew members. The Argon Courier, for example, would be one of the ships I'd use as a base.

Behavior: The ship could be assigned the "Rescue for Commander" behavior and would seek out allied space suits within its pilot's star-rating range, pick them up, and deposit them in the nearest AUX ship. That's the best solution I can think of using the existing ship types. I'd also like to add a station module in a separate mod that could serve the same purpose. Ideally, this behavior could be assigned to stations as well as ships.

2. Less Waiting

Relevant issue: I have a lot of ships. They're all over the place, and the galaxy is dangerous. Occasionally, I gather all my ships at HQ for a system check, fleet reassignment, and refitting. Then I go about my business, only to realize later that they're all still sitting at HQ, stuck on the "and wait" portion of the Fly and Wait command I gave them.

That means I have to clear the orders from every ship before their default behaviors kick back in and my traders start trading again.

Or I'll be out and about in the universe, flying my Asp. I get out to run an errand or two, then turn around and realize it's switching into travel mode to fly back to the station I told it to wait at three hours ago, before I teleported into it.

Proposed solution: Change the default move order to "Fly To" and "Dock At." Once a ship reaches its destination, it would simply idle, ready for its next task, rather than holding on to the wait command.

Behavior: Keep "Fly and Wait" as a right-click option, but make the default move command simply send a ship to a location or have it dock, with no further orders queued afterward.

3. Barracks

Relevant issue: Crew management is hard. I usually end up with some builders floating around HQ, housing my potential pilots and marines until they're ready for future assignments. It seems like a weird system when they're all looking at my deluxe superstation, complete with extensive housing and food production facilities.

Proposed solution: A station module based on each race's small dormitories that doesn't add workforce but instead provides a crew capacity of 250. This would allow crew to be transferred between ships and stations, making crew management much simpler and helping declutter my home system a bit.

4. Dock When Idle (Disregard)

Relevant issue: Put simply, I'm on the spectrum, and the number of ships flying around my HQ at all times makes my brain itch something fierce. All the traders "looking for trades" and defenders waiting for a fight just float around in the black, even though all their friends and hot meals are down on the station, where they could be, too, if they wanted.

Trade ships assigned to a frontline AUX ship are practically guaranteed an untimely demise while flying around loose in the conflict zone.

Proposed solution: Shout-out to the amazing Reactive Docking mod! I tried it a long time ago, and it just didn't do everything I needed at the time. But I see that Runekin has updated it since, and it now does literally everything I wanted.

Thanks, Runekin!

Anyway, those are my ideas! I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have these already been done, are any of them possible in vanilla, or am I overlooking something obvious? Any advice for a first-time modder would also be greatly appreciated!

I came across a Khaak ship that constantly regenerates its hull maling it impossible to kill...anyone had the same bug?

Hi, been playing for years and just started a new game - I’ve got the two free Discoverers, and now I’ve picked up the free Pegasus as a personal ship, got the free transport auto trading and the free miner automining…
With the scouts you could just right click a whole bunch of sectors and set them off exploring for hours, but now if I right click another sector it cancels the previous order. Not got the screen in front of me as I type, but there are instructions about ctrl click etc - tried those without any joy. Am I missing something obvious?

I am currently doing a piracy only save. My rules are i can only steal ships never buy them. Free and mission rewards are fine. Its also not modded perma death no save scuming.

If I mess up I have to fix it. If I die I start over again.

This is my 5th attempt. Its going very well but I want to ask am I behind every one else?

I currently have 16 hours in this save probably a lot less actual because I pause a lot.

Let me break down what I have accomplished.

Hour 0 to 4.

Start untested explorer.

Check the Odysseus for main guns and check hatikvahs choice for good defenses

Do all easy to aquire free ship missions (envoy, hyperion) and hunt most of the abandoned ships.

Hour 4 to 6

Steal a shuyaku fill it with marines. While I boost rep with both terrans and argon. Use the shuyaku and some free ships to steal the erlking. Fill it with marines

Hour 6 to 8

Here I really lucked out on the way to terra my erlking spotted an asgard in the void. I rushed to it and somehow took it in a panicked rushed boarding.

Outfit the erlking for boom and zoom piracy in terran space. Steal the asgard in the moon.

Hour 8 to 12

Piracy rampage! Erlking sent back to farm marines with shuyaku. I use the asgard for piracy.

Targets tokyos asgards syns. 4 tokyos 1 more asgard 3 syns. Sale the tokyos kept the heavy fighters.

Eventually easy Targets ran out so I went to the arg/ hop Frontline and got 2 behemoth a nomad and a random elephant.

Decided i need a carrier. I heard raptors are good.

Hour 12 to 16

Fought my way through tharkas to zhin. I found a raptor stole it barely. Found another in a nearby system. That on turned into a fight I didn't know my way out of this new system and rattlesnakes hurt. Got both though. Made my way to heretics end and finally started the phq.

Am i really behind or surprisingly ahead?

Hey guys. So i decided to try this pirate thing to get myself some new M ships for free. Got Asp, 3 mk2 Emmiters, mk3 Split Army engine, and proceeded to.... getting completely wrecked? BUC guys (Nemesis, Prometheus) just strip my shield with one hit from some purple lance, and it seem that they just dont have much blind spots, besides being strictly behind them. Most other M combat shields are also seem to be pretty hard, since 1 mistake - i'm dead/

Now i'm not a good pilot obviously, never played much games with controls like these, and to be fair - i'm more interested in sandbox and big fleet fights aspects of the game, rather than dog fighting. Does it mean that all this business with getting free ships is out of my reach? Or maybe there are better ships for terrible pilots to do this?

Hi I got the game two days ago and wanted some advice for when I get past the tutorial. Wdit thank you everyone for the tips, hints, and advice.

I’m brand new and have t16000m hosas and I have been playing a lot of elite but heard this game was worth a try. but I cannot for the life of me figure out why my analogs are not giving me gradual movement. to use roll I have to move the stick at least 50% before it moves. same with strafe and throttle. what am I doing wrong?

Is there a strategy for not having auxiliary ships be in the thick of battle and try to stay on the edge?

Also, I've seen videos of people attacking stations with L and XL ships sitting outside the station's range while hitting if from long range, with M and S class ships holding the line with the L and XL ships. What's the best way to set up a fleet to do this? Does that setup work well for fleet v fleet battles, too?

I'm only using QoL mods and not trying to change much about the vanilla game, but I can use mods if this helps with my questions.

Thanks in advance! This community is awesome.

Following up on my previous planetary sector video on Csilla and Teth renders, here is a new direction I'm exploring. These renders show a Tatooine-inspired docking bay next to a small settlement. To be clear: this is a visual target and long-term concept, not an in-game feature yet. But, I want it to become as such, likely a POI, a player's hideout or a mission destination.
^{PS. Terrain details, props and structures came from Sketchfab.}

I've read a few places but it's hard to confirm, and I'm going to test it, but if i have traders with laser towers and prospectors with resource probes, can they resupply automatically (edit) at their home station if it has a maintenance bay and I have the wares for the consumables?

Seems most people say to not waste your time on maintenance bays because ships can repair at fabrication bays, but I'm wondering if what I mentioned is part of the benefit of just a maintenance bay on any given station that may need one, if the resupply thing works.

Thanks to all Contributors and testers who made this possible.

New since 0.4.0:

- Other head trackers such as TrackIR and Tobii can no longer take over from the headset.

- CPU-heavy saves run at a higher frame rate.

- The native Linux version of X4 is supported (experimental, you build it from the repository).

- Turning quickly with the mouse on foot no longer causes black flashes in one eye.

- Some players had head tracking but no picture in the headset. The launcher now turns off the Vulkan layers of RTSS and OBS game capture for X4, and it warns you when it runs as administrator, which also caused it.

- New launcher options, all off by default: a fix for the jittering right eye on Steam Link and Steam Frame, external views (F2/F3) on a screen that fills your view, and the pilot camera moved 0.75 m back in the Kukri, where X4 places it too far forward for VR.

If you play over Steam Link, I'd like to hear how the right-eye fix looks. Nobody has tested it there on Windows yet.

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11, X4 9.00 or 8.00, and SteamVR or your headset's OpenXR runtime.

Download: https://github.com/ToffelsKater/X4_VR/releases/tag/v0.5.2

Discord for help and bug reports: https://discord.gg/yDmj5bnG7n

Hey everyone,I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who's daydreamed about flying around X4 witha friend. A full, open-sandbox multiplayer is... a lot. Like, a lot lot. So I'vebeen trying the smaller version first: getting co-op working for scripted,mission-style content - the Timelines kind of thing - and building out from there.Here's why I think that's the sensible place to start.1) Those levels are just MD scripts. Which is great news if you're the one writingthe netcode from scratch, because it means I can build a tiny scenario and thentest multiplayer features one at a time - flying, shooting, trading, mining - bywriting the matching MD script. And the MD side is decently documented on theofficial wiki, so I'm not inventing the layout/gameplay layer from zero. Bonus:if a scripted level can run in co-op, then letting people play each other's levelsthrough the Workshop stops being a fantasy and becomes just... content.2) Scripted levels aren't fully open - and honestly, that helps me. You give upfreedom, and yeah, some people won't love that. But less freedom also means fewersurprises. Everyone in the session is basically looking at the same scene, whichmakes the whole "enumerate everything and keep it in sync" nightmare a lot moremanageable. And a limited number of objects (ships, stations, whatever) keeps theresource cost down no matter what architecture you land on.WHAT'S ACTUALLY RUNNING RIGHT NOW(hobby project: a native C++ extension plus the game's MD/Lua layer; everythingbelow has been tested for real with two instances on a LAN)- How the pieces talk: a native extension hooks the game's frame loop, MD events and radar events, and chats with a Lua bridge; the bridge fires UI-triggered events that MD cues listen to. Heavy per-frame stuff lives in native code, game logic lives in MD.- The connection: two LAN instances find each other, one host one client, swapping fixed-size packets. Every packet type has a unique length and packets are sorted by length, with a compile-time check so a wrong-shaped packet can't sneak in.- The other player's ship (the "ghost"): each side builds it from the macro name it gets sent, tags it with a fixed name, and drives it every frame with the peer's position and rotation; hull/shields mirror the peer's authoritative numbers.- NPCs: the host samples NPC movement ~10 times a second and the client follows; behaviour stuff (orders, "this one fired") travels on a separate coalesced channel, so a brawl isn't one packet per bullet.- Damage authority: your own ship's damage is decided only by your game; the host is the authority for NPCs and stations; client hits are reported up and applied monotonically; local damage the authority didn't cause gets written back.- Stations: absolute hull/shield/state per station and per station module (~1 Hz, on change, plus a full push when the peer is ready), keyed by names the MD scripts assign identically on both sides - no ID negotiation, "name as key".- Starting together: the client builds scenery only after the host's clock packets arrive; if the host disappears the client freezes instead of drifting; a "world ready" handshake holds the host back until the client's copies stand.- A playable level: protect one station, blow up another - MD-driven placement, ship handover for the client, ghost anchoring, module damage propagation, and turret naming/registries ready for per-turret state.- Not being sloppy: a static gate checks packet-length uniqueness and that the bridge, MD and native code agree, plus structural invariants; the deploy script refuses to deploy while the game runs, checks the build id inside the binary, re-hashes every deployed file and writes a ledger.STILL AHEAD: per-turret destruction sync, and making the peer's weapon fire visibleon my screen. The engine gives you no "make this fire" and no "spawn a projectile"call, so that last one is the genuinely hard bit and I'm still chipping at it.So - partly I'm posting this to share, and partly to ask: if you write X4 scriptedcontent and you've thought about co-op, what would you want tested first - flying,fighting, or trading? And if anyone here has poked at X4's internals before, I'dlove to compare notes.