Practical solutions to common problems in X4

Hi, hope these tips will save you some of the frustration the game caused to me. The tips here are not spoilers (or at leas they ar not meant ot be), they are ways I have learned to deal with game shortcomings. You can get inspired by them, I don't claim they are the best or optimal, I merely say they work for me.
Writing this guide is very time consuming and frankly quite exhausting as well, so consider it a work in progress (Somethig between alpha and beta in today's terms :) ). I hope to extend the sections when I'll have time. I am very well aware of the huge number of typos. I have opted to rather publish the knowledge, even with the form lacking, considering the value of the information having more weight than flawless presentation. If you are sensitive to typos, grammar or punctuation please leave and return later, when the guide is polished (if ever).

EDIT:
August 10th 2024: Added What kills you with AI in control
August 10th 2024: Added Corvettes vs Frigates vs Gunboats - the Difference
August 7th 2024: Added section on flight and some combat notes.

Natural enemies attacking your civilian ships

Although I have seen many claims that people use fast freighters / miners and don't have losses, in my own experience this is not true at all. The main reason is, that the game doesn't always notify you of the attack, and it it does it's way too late. The warning pops at 50% shields it seems and by that time you have a squad of let's say 6 Khaak on your ship. Defaut orders don't always work, the order to release laser and escape semi-works in about 5% of the instances. Forget about the lasers actually killing something. They are mostly a distraction. There is no command for auto releasing mines so it's useless lasers or nothing. Don't get me wrong, it MAY be possible for it to occasionally work, I am concerned about long term effect and not a lucky break. Also, there is a lot of hussle assosiciated with restocking the ship, especially when it's on repeat orders. All in all I found the whole order to be useless. You can try to teleport into the ship and fly through the jump gate if there is one nearby, but you need to be really close to a gate and the death timer on your ship is very short and merciless. What CAN you do then? Satellites and warnings (alarms)
In the beginning of the game when you have time to micro everyting it's worthwile to make an alarm when enemy enters your system(s). Here is a simple way to set up an alarm:
The same applies for big Xenon shpis (K and I):
Now, to be clear thre are ISSUES with warning in this game. First and foremost they are notoriously unreliable. I think they (mostly) work when you are in first person view, but if you are digging in any other menu, including map (as I do most of the time) the probablility of alarm actually sounding plummets to erratic 5-10%. However in the bginning you spend quite a lot of time flying around in your ship so it works better.
Bear in mind that you have to see the enemy in order for the alarm to trigger, so that means you have to use satellites for this to work. In the beginning satellites are expensive for you (I assume you a new player not a pro who knows how to get a million in the first hour of gameplay). You can cover most crucial areas such as an area your miners use to mine or usual incoming routes. Here you can see a system covered in small satellites:
Here is a version with advanced satellites:
You are looking at hundres of thosands of credits though. You can use small ones in critical spots and then cover the rest later on.
Be mindful, that the alarm can set off when your satellite reaches beyond the visible edge of the system. In that case you'll get the warning (maybe) and have to wait a little bit until the enemy flies into visible map. Big ships
So let's say your warning didn't trigger (which happens most of the time to me). You'll get another chance of warning (and this one sometimes works even when you are not in 1st eprson view, such as watching the map). Now as I wrote the warning is almost always "too little too late". I was going crazy trying to save, solve, preven all the accidents. Then I accepted the truth. This approach won't work unless you are extremely patient mico player willing to load a LOT. The game is either deliberately set up in a way for you to fail (which I suspect is the case) to make it more "interesting". Personally I hate it and I think this draws the game to ♥♥♥♥ gameplay experience level. Aaargh... The frustration is still there and alive... Anyway the only way to go is large ships. They have enough shields to ignore the small raids. The sooner you make the shift to large ships, the better. Yes, they are slower, but not THAT slow and they haul more cargo so it evens out.
Paired with this comes default order that worked the best. Dramatic pause... "Ignore attack" Yup, you heard me.
This is how you set it up globally:
This is how you set it up on per-ship level:
The reason is that running with large ships doesn't help. I even set it for my remaining small and remaining freighters, I just let them die. Make a replacement and let them go. Release them and with them your anger and frustration with this whole situation. I never lost a single freighter or miner since then.
What models to use is a personal preference choice. For miners I prefer Magnetars (ARG). Bulky as hell. Flying fortresses. For freighters I prefer Selene Vanguard (PAR). They have travel speed of 4458 m/s. That is decent. And they still offer a nice hauling capacity of 19.000, which is sufficient for most cases. I would also give a very good though about whether to use turrets on them at all. I lean towards not using turrets on them all. They can get you into a lot of trouble and usually don't do anything to the enemy.
With large freighters and miners, orders on ignore attack and alarms set up, you should be free of the unnecessary micro.
I also sort of presume you have good enough relationships with the sector owner so that the local forces will come to your help after some time and kill the pesky raiders. You can set up your patrol, but it's aslking for miracle.

Kha'ak: These enemies for all intents and purposes spawn on your freighter. Yes, there is the warning, but later in the game, unless you are currently not personally flying in 1st person mode, the way you learn about their attack is by getting the "warning" when their shields are at 50%. So the game basicly just tells you that your smaller-than-large ship will die in a few seconds.

Xenon: Easiest to deal with. In terms of predictability. You'll learn their invasion routes. Make arrangements accordingly. Having lot of your ships in a sector with usual invasion gate is obviously a risk. If you set up camp elsewhere, the chances are you'll get harrased only by a lone ship, not a full raider group.

Piracy: Okay, this is a tricky one. There are some mechanics that the game uses to trick you into wars with other factions with this. The main problem here is that the pirate flips the side mid-fight, BUT REMAINS HOSTILE. This is the major reason why not use turrets or satellites on your civilian ships!!!!!! I can't stress this enough! The whole concept here is utterly borken. And I suspect it's by desing!
Typical scenarios: They attack you, turn red. You use turrets. They suddenly flip their allegiance, but stay hostile. You continue using your turrets. But this time it's considered an attack on the faction they flipped to and you aggro local patrol/police. Let's say the ship continues firing turrets defensively, but since locals are attacking you now, you lose more reputation, more enemies aggro and it spirals into the whole sector being on on you. Satellites on either side make this MUCH, MUCH worse. If you use satellite, the pirate flips, the satellite keeps attacking. Aggro. He drops a satellite, flips. His satellite attacks you, your turrets attack the satellite. Aggro.
Just don't use the satellites. Or even better, not even turrets. Again, they seldom kill anything and it's just not worth it. You are probably counting onlocal forces to kill the raid for you ayway so why not hold on a little bit longet without a right of all ouot war because of broken game mechanic.
The pirate should have a cooldown to the flip after not attacking or getting attacked and it should also include the satellites. Alas, it does not and we need to deal with the situation as it is.
On the other hand, destroyer pirates are a godsend if you have a good M ship and some marines.

With small ships you can either go outside of your ship in spacesuit, set the mode to Shift-2, fly to the red data leak and after it's descrypted (just hover inside the red ball of the leak in scan mode and it will automatically decrypt) the hatch opens. Then press Shift-D, or use the right button on the ship to enable docking. Once the green navigation lights show, fly to the hatch they point at.

Another method is sending a marine to capture the ship. This is the only method how to claim an abandoned larger ship. You need to have a ship with at least one marine selected, then right-click the abandoned ship and choose "Claim" from the menu. Beware, that the marine launches whenever you give it orders, even along way far frrom the target. So make sure you first fly as close as possible to the abandoned ship and only after that you use the Claim.

I'll assume you want to board let's say a pirate destroyer. Here is how it works:
Get a decent (medium) ship. You need to withstand some turret fire, you need to dish out enough damage to get at least through the small shields on subsystems. Don't worry too much about the big shields for now, but know that if you are able to get through the main shields and do damage on the hull it helps. At least it speeds things up quite a bit.
Second thing you want is a ship with marines on it. I don't recommend using a military ship. Get a freighter for example, rename it Troop / Marine Transport so that you don't forget. Renaming is a suggestion, ofc it's not needed for the boarding to work.

Steps in order:

1. Scan the ship
Sounds silly, but you probably arrived to the pirate ship AFTER it flipped it's identity so opening your fire immediately will be considered an attack on local faction. To avoid this you need to scan the ship first to reveal its identity. First, you need to fly within 2 kilometers before you can activate the scan. Second, you need to be in scan mode. The purple one activated by Shift-2 by default. Thirs you need to activate the scan either by Shift-F or using the right click and choosin the Scan option. That will activate something that looks liek a web on HUD. You need to keep pointing the web for several seconds straight on the ship to get a full scan. Ships often try to escape the scan so it may be tricky. I highly recommend saving the game before the attempt. You know you have succeeded when you see the true identity in the info screen when targeting the ship. Example: It will, let's say show SCA (pirates) instead of ARG (local force).

2. Disable the ship
Now you need to disable the ship. You don't want it flying away or shooting down your marines. This is why it's good to have an M ship, because you can stick to the surface, hiding in a blid spot and shooting it's surface elements one after another. The best way is to destroy engines first. You can easily pause the game, select the enemy ship and cycle through the subsystems until you find the engines. Or you can click directly on them. After the engine subsystem is selected you shoot it, until it explodes. Rinse and repeat for all engines. The best way is to fly in from the back of the ship until you stick to it, find a blind spot, where no turret can reach you. Ideally you can shoot on engines from there uninterrupted. Alternatively you can kill a small turret firing at you from there. You need to find a place where no turret can reach you can you can regenerate your shields and cool down your weapons. I recommend dealing with engines first until you find/make a blind spot. Turrets are next. You don't need to shoot down shields. I think if you shoot them down and the ship will be getting hull damage enemy crew will slowly escape the ship, but I don't know the exact mechanics. It's good to leave at least one big shield up in case some random freighter starts shooting at your prey. Anyway, after the engines are down and turrets destroyed, it's time for:

3. Boarding
The same as with claiming applies, the marines start when you press the Board command so if you press it while the ship is on route, they jump out right away and you'll have to wait for a painstakingly long period of time. First park the ship VERY close, then press Boarding. Select your ship, right click the enemy ship and press Board. You will be rpesented with following screen:
In the Select marines to board with section drag until you have assigned max number allowed. Usually this is around 48. You can see the actual max number in the third stage info.
Now, under the Stage I and Stage II there is a selection. If you celared the turrets it should be as on the screenshot. low risk, Enemy combat effectiveness Very Weak. If you see anything else, you probably missed a turret and should destroy it before you start boarding. Stage 2 is trickiest.
What is happening you are stting how long is the crew going to take to get inside the ship. If the ship has full hull and they need to cut through it all, it will take a LONG time. As in an hour real time ballpark. I usually damage the hull to 40% before baoring and set it the rule in Stage 2 to Medium, which equals 50% hull, so I have some tolerance for natural ship hull regeneration.
Stage 1 should be fast. After your marines get to the enemy ship they should start Stage 2 in a matter of minutes. If your marines take a long time and won't start Stage 2, the are most likely stuck. Just teleport to another system, let them attach and port back in. If you did everything as described, set it to medium and lowered the hull youself, Stage 2 should be done within 5-10 minutes. Now, if you don't see enemy numbers and strength, you haven't fully scanned the enemy ♥♥♥♥. Just rescan it. Enable the purple Shift-2 mode, and scan again with Shift-F. Stage 3 is just a show with sound comments and you can want the progress of the boarding. Your number and/or strength against theirs. I recommebd saving the game at elas before phase 3. It may happen that you lose it. But if you brought full stack of marines, even the 0 stars should capture it. If it was close and you lost, you can reaload and try again. Of if you want to RP and bought enough marines for second assault, you can go over the whole boarding again. This time it should be easier as the enemy crew doesn't respawn and you probably killed some already. Expect losses though.

4. Aftermath
After you win, the ship is yours. I recommend the following: Send your marines back to your troops ship. Replace captain immediately as it's a marine and not a pilot, or wait, get a pilot elsewhere and replace him later. In any case, getting a full service crew is a HIGHLY recommended next step. I also recommned NOT repairing the ship. It will slowly repair itself to the max allowed by service crew, but even with new recruits it's 85% ma xwhich is decent. You save money and the crew get trainign this way so repairing it is actually counterproductive. Get something like 2 repair drones to speed things up. Howerver DO get missing engines, shield turrets etc. It's a visi to the spaceyard as usual, just don't repair the ship.

When I first encouontered racing (and dogfighting in combat to a lesser degree) in this game, I had trouble controlling the ship. I was used to the Elite Dangrous style, where you should fly with gradual changes in speed, with a point of best turning.

Ship in X4 behaves differently. I fouond out that using the gradual change gave me poor results. This was extremely noticable in racing challenges in Timelines. Then I saw a comment suggesting to ditch the gradual change and rebind for full speed / full backwards. And it worked!

The ship becomes MUCH more controllable with bursts of speed and especially of the boost. It's extremely noticable in spacesuit!!! If you try to do it the soft way, you'll probably have hard time. But if you just smash the boost button, you'll notice that the ship abandons ALL the other previous vectors and flies forward.

My thory is that there is a capped max velocity for the sum of speed vectors and if you prolong one vector, others will reduce to accomodate for the max.

The effect is that if you fly let's say down, then rotate and boost forward, very soon you'll be flying forward exclusively.

This is not how I was used to it when I was flying in ED for example (I was one of the freaks who flew Flight Assist OFF all the time). You had tockle all axes separatly, so in this scenario you would have been flying max speed down-forward. But not in X4. It might be the that the assist does the correction for you, however it's MUCH, MUCH more noticable tehn if you would fly down, rotate, strafe up and go forward. When you do it manually, you just won't get the same result.

I am beaing the dead horse by now, but again, rebind the velocity up and down to max forward and max backwards and use boost for harder velocity changes and you'll be amazed.

As in probably all games, there are different turning rates for lateral (strafe left-right), verical (strafe up-down), and most importantly yaw (turn left-right), roll (rotate ship left or fight while flying the same direction) and pitch (up-down). What is usually the best way to turn after the enemy is to roll so that an imaginary vertical line in the middle of your screen, going from top center to bottom center, aligns with enemy flight vector (or your intended flight path, for example in races) and then pitch up until you catch up with him. You can combine the pitch and roll, the point here is that it's faster than turning to the side for example. You should check the ship characteristics though. It might be different for some ships and / or the difference might be negligable, especially for huge ships. The things I wrote usually apply for fighters.

I noticed that when using a boost in combat the ship becomes uncontrollable in other directions for some time. So if you have trouble in combat and feel the ship is behaving way differently that you would have expected and it might be this. Just plan your actions in a way that boost equals ships is an uncontrollable brick for a brief while.

I will just mention that this game features Flight assist off mode as well. Not gonna go into details. It's the mode you get when you use spacesuit. Just use boost and full stop and you'll be fine, if you are struggling here.

As a general tip in fights: I found that combat in this game boils down to range sniping and jousting. The reason is that the enemy I end up fighing against most are Xenon. And they have two characteristics (that make them also such a formidable enemy they are). Their ships are extremely manouverable with ridiculous turn and strafe rates. I have seen cases when the enemy Xenon M was strafing upwards and rotating around the ship faster then the ship could pitch (which is really bad). So outmaneuvering them and getting on their tail / blind spot is sometimes borderline impossible (talking about Ss and Ms here, K and I are an entirely different story.) Their projectiles are extremely fast or they use instant lasers. Then I barrel roll towards them I am able to fool the inital projectiles from maybe 8 kilometers away, but ater that they just hit me, because they are way too fast. So what you want to do is shorten the period, when they can shoot on you and you can't reach them yet (boost in), then you want to unload as much firepower as you can and move away before they can catch you (boost out). As boost costat shield, especially if you are not running the combat version, I tend to swap the initial boost it with travel mode. It's tricky to disengage in time, but it can be done.
Just yesterday I did this to strip a destroyer off his surface turrets without sticking on him. Flew with travel drive in, flew close by his ship, unloaded on ♥♥♥♥ turret while rotating, turned the travel drive back on. Rinse and repeat. When I didn't mess up on my own he wasn't able to touch me.

As as side note, you definitely can 1v1 S and M ships, given you have decent turn rates, I was more in a 1 vs group mindset when I wrote the above description.

If you are wondering what are the general differences between Corvette, Frigate and Gunboat it is this:

Corvette has lot of forward facing cannons (not turrets, but actual main ship guns). Its a direct firepower. You could say that they are limited in support and dont have turrets, but frankly, turrets suck on purpose in this game and support is nice, but in limited numbers. I find the corvettes the most useful, especially when deployed in larger numbers. It is direct firepower. We are talking something like 4-6 main guns and 2 turrets.

Frigate is the support vessel. You can park small ship here, had nice carrying capacity etc. Generally you get 2 weapons, 4 turrets.

Gunboat is supposed to be anti-small craft. The problem here is that turrets really suck in this game and its on purpose. Another problem is turret configuration. If you go with Defense, it wont do that much damage to nearby vessels because it will focus on a single or few enemies - depending who hit it... If you set it to attack fighters first, it will aggro a lot of enemies and doesnt have the tankingess to withstand the heat. In larger encounters anyway. You could try to set the turrets to attack current target, but then, a (nimble) crovette would be maybe better at that job... I would say they have a niche use, but they are fundimentally flawed as the role they are supposed to fulfill is gimped by bad turrets and lack of tankiness. We are talking about generally few guns such as 2 and lot ot turrets 4-8.

I mosty use the corvettes to fight S and M ships. They are durable, hit hard and if you euqip them with weapons with fast projectiles, tehy will clear out the enemy Ss and Ms in no time.

When it comes to letting the AI control the fights for you, one thing is certain, your shipp will blow up. At some popint you will probably get tired of fighting every small battle by yourself and you will want / need to hand over the AI control of your assets. Things will go horribly wrong. The truth is the Ai is not capable of running combat competently and this sacetion is thus geared more towards the damage control and "what the hell happened" explanations.

Collisions
This is a major part of the reason why your ships, S and M ships in particular, die in high attention combat. You might have noticed that Xenon can dogfight quite well. Fly towards your ship, unload weapons, turn around and get away to recuperate shield. They even use wolf tactics as one ship baits your ship and others shoot in your back while you chase him. Well, this is not gonna happen for your ships. There is a different AI set for your ships. Your ships very often just fly in facetanking turrets and then smash into the station / enemy destroyer, with a favorite spot being somewhere near a turret nest. If they by some miracle survive (maybe turrets are busy shooting other ships) your hero refuses to acknowledge the fact that there is a huge unmovable mass ahead and keeps pushing on. So he stays practically motionless next to enemy turrets. You can imagine how that goes... This get worse the more the structure being attacked is more complex and irregular. The takeway is that your ships will die because of this.
The same problem can occur with capital ships when they are attacking lets say a K and they try to maneuver around it utterly disregarding each other.
I believe in the future gaming companies will adapt simple neural networks for this, but that time has not come yet.
Collisions are not an issue when out of sector. I found it very helpful to teleport out if there is a tangled collision mess for some reason. Ships blocking each other fron docking, destroyers blocking each other etc.

Orders not updating
Orders are often not updating, at least not soon enough. This gets worse as you nest the hierarchy.
Examples where you can see this:
Fighters chasing (baiting) enemy into doom despite the fighter having strict orders to defend a specific area.
Assigned escorts not giving a ♥♥♥♥ about escorted vessel. First they fly to the predetermined poin in the sector and only after that they update.
A fighter just hanging out in the middle of a vicious fighter furball, doing nothing. Usually dying soon thereafter. The fighter is probably nested. It seems that subordinates are given a low(er) priority when deciding / updating actions. If you have the fighter in a squad try dismissing the squad and see for yourself that they react much better. This creates a problem as you would want make squads because of concentration fire on few enemies or interceptors protecting a bomber. Judging from what I see enemy doing, Ai is organizing fighters or raids in squadrons as well. If you are having huge trouble with your ships idling, try simplifying your command structure.

Your AI does not target nearest station part
This is for destroyer fleets.
AI is not targeting the nearest station part as you probably would (provided you dont have a special priority for some reason). Quite often a ship decides to go for a base part on the other side of the station and parading in front of all the turrets along the way. Again, the more complex the station, the higher chance of this happening. A simple "boomerang" Xanon station can be relatively safely attacked from the inner side. Especially in oos combat. Defense platform usually work out if you attack from the right direction and you dont have short range destroyer such as Rattlesnake. See the screenshot for relatively safe angle (for oos). Attacking one of the wings practically guarantees a destroyer picking up a component on the other side of the station as its next target.
AI simply cant take into consideration the station and its defenses as a whole. It just picks up a part, and then do its stuff ignoring the rest of the station.
I consider solar power stations high risk because of this. Wharves are even worse and shipyards are a given you will lose a significant portion of your fleet - if not all of it - they need to be babysitted. What you can do it position your fleet and give everybody a hold order. They will nuke whatever is in their range. Still, expect a lot of micro and things often go wrong even then.
The biggest problem is that once the graviton turrets start shooting at your ship, it is as good as dead. With very slow turning rate, slow speed and station incredible burst damage, you cant get out in time. I have seen it once, perhaps twice, not more. So every single mistake - to matter how small will cost you a ship. Possible solution is to strip the turrets off, especially the graviton ones, first.

Being in fleet will give you different results than attacking a target separately.
Coordinate attack is a great way to attack simple stations. Ships get in formation and dont wander off. At least initially.

Show research, console, mod screen, how to see what is modded and with what.

M raiders with M squad.
Zap S with effective turrets. Discussion on turrets. M turrets only beams recommened against Xenon. Turrets firrerence when used en masse and wehn used in small numbers.
Beware of enemies targeting your engines. Barrel roll to avoid it.

Mainly about setting quantiny in filters.

Go through them and explain every setting with how they affect the game.

Defaults suck. Explain why. Recommend more functional setup.

In system for turrets zapping M ships, OOS for L+ and base combat.

How to get blueprint, with screenshots.
How to get and use EMP.
Risks involved in triggering EMP.
Reminder to set travel rule restriction after aggroing police.
Suitable targets, suitable EMP position, check for police before you trigger EMP. Gatting out, leaving satellites to monitor aggro.

Crew transfer between ships, including captain replace / exchange. Probably include video.
Personnel screen in the personal menu.

Go work somewhere else vs crew transfer. Cover all posibilities. Assigning unassigned personnel.
Picking up survivalists - remind to assign them!

Projectile speed is the single most important factor. When using a LOT of turrets flaks sort of work as well. Enemy density matters a lot so turret saturation should match enemy's. Otherwise no kills. Lasers funtion as deterrent, importance of L beam turrets, especially on destroyer only group. Using in system for better results.
OOS can bear other types of turrets as well, but ineffective against certain types of ships.

Do not nest. Brain-dead(er) own ships.
Enemy baits and probably cehats as well.
How to deal with lazy / stuck pilots.
Auxiliary ship parking bug.
Beware of drones in a different system.
Recalling subordinates.
Changing setting for group restes orders such as change equipment!!!
How to siege - slingshot protection. OOS combat is a huge advantage.
Enemy (especially P for example) dogfights. You don't. Enemy is faster and more maneuvrable than your AI pilots are. You need numbers advantage. The power of beam repellent.

Shorts that didn't fit elsewhere.

Don't use marines on civil ships.

Attack, vs defence vs intercept, vs mimic, va protect position, vs carrier position command.

With no production rules, stations sell low yield wares, usually in small quantities and block traders.
How to set up a self-sufficient station and how to use rules to make it do what you want. What does workforce do.