Ep5 When you hit the Mods a bit to hard : X4 Foundations

A modded out ship is crazy good. Flying in a vanilla ships just feels like weak sauce afterwards. I am pretty sure they should have patched turrets so they cannot accept some of the available mods. But am really glad they have not.
It will be back to more empire buildings soon enough, I just got to go shoot a few more ships. I will stop soon I swear.
The web site with the mods list.
www.qsna.eu/x4/modifications/
Save file share, should be a couple of targets nearby, have fun.
drive.google.com/file/d/1Y4Z0...
Included DLC
Split Vendetta
Cradle of Humanity
Tides of Avarice
Kingdoms end
Credits Song
Rise of the protectorate by Alexei Zakharov
/ francisjohn
Discord server : / discord
X4: Foundations is a huge space sandbox simulator that lives and breathes within your gaming system. Thousands of ships and stations trade, mine and produce, all realistically simulated. In this universe, you can grow from being the lone pilot of a fighter ship, to managing a vast empire, commanding your fleets and designing colossal space stations. Transition seamlessly from first-person action, boarding ships and visiting their bridges, to an expansive strategy and management simulation. Choose your own path at your own pace. The decisions are yours. Trade - Fight - Build - Think.

[@azurosforest2666]

Imaginate: Francis's crewmembers runing in panic while Francis driftin' and ramming ~50BILL cost XL ship at enemies with evil laught.

[@daznis]

Recently I watched ~10 asgards ram an I to death in my save. I have no clue why they did that. But it was fun watching it.

[@Genesis8934]

Francis: "I think I'm going to be ending the episode a little early today" Also Francis: 52 minutes of X4 pewpew gameplay

[@smartsmartie7142]

Yeah as Francis said it's pretty short

[@pillemcphilsen8529]

You can also park the terran gun boat "Jian" on your M-dock to have 6 additional flak turrets.

[@Yolo_Swagins]

they shoot while docked?

[@pillemcphilsen8529]

@@Yolo_Swagins Yes

[@loggerm9113]

Everyone: Carefuly aproaching a K till shootingrange; Francis: RAMING-SPEED!

[@feronanthus9756]

The Mk2 laser towers are deployed from the S ship docks (so they can only be carried by ships with an S dock). For spamming towers on a gate you want Mk1s (which deploy instantly out of the spacesuit dock on any ship)

[@martynsmythe-jones6901]

I'm loving this series. There's just one tiny complaint I have. Not enough of it! :) Thank you for months and years of good time.

[@tjep2670]

So at the 20ish minute mark you notice a weird ship thing, that is the construction storage for the station. Since it hasn't been finished you can hinder the construction of its weapons and other systems by destroying the cargo containers. I'm pretty sure you can actually pick up some of it as well.

[@danm468]

The Drifting is sooo much fun, but space cow? She looks amazing! Good lord the Daka on that Dragon!!

[@gogudelagaze1585]

The "weird thing" around 24 minutes in is the build storage. It's where haulers dock to unload stuff into the storage. It's also why transferring goods from the station to th storage is not "instant". Goods need to be ferried from the station's docking ports to this point. Oh boy, FJ brought a second destroyer for station busting.. He's going to find out the hard way just how awful the destroyer AI, and how deadly stations are xD

[@geekey265]

Oh something else to know, If you set turrets to attack all enemies they will be factored into it's ranging calculation. So if you have Flak Turrets set to shoot at all enemies, Plasma turrets Set to Shoot Capitals, and are targeting a station with Graviton weapons, then At minimum the ship you ordered to attack the station will try and move as close as possible to the target (or closer depending on seed variance) to ensure that the side with the highest dps of available weaponry is attacking the target. As a consequence, Your ordered ship will potentially fly itself into a bad situation. Additionally with large masses of Destroyers they can get into each others firing arcs and mess up their attack patterns, not a lot to do automatically to fix that, but you can queue up ships to attack from different positions, this also helps a lot with issues of wreckage obstruction as interestingly enough it's safer for ships to attack from above or below a Xenon Defense Station despite the graviton turrets having a better firing arc there. You can still try from the sides, but theres a chance that in order to fire on the next station module, they will fly into the kill zone of a Xenon Station. There can also be guild missions to destroy Xenon Defense Stations, good rewards out of those for ship skins, Exeptional weapon parts and cash money Destroyed ship modules have to respawn after a bit before they start getting repaired. Ships and ship parts will only repair up to a maximum % based on Crew skill. Empty Crew slots count as a 0 star crew member, You can get 100% at a 4 star Capitan and an average of 3.3 Star Crew~. But it's weighted more on the crew end if i recall correctly. Repair drones will speed up the repair process

[@neituil9030]

Dude, Your introduced me to this game and it suits me to the ground cheers. A tribesman.

[@a.retired.villain]

Cloudy with a chance of laser turrets.

[@forreal5331]

The Kodan Armada would be proud of you for saying "Ramming Speed". Now you just need to close your electronic visor and say "We die!"

[@jakotheshadows87]

I highly recommend revisiting your Odysseus. You fitted it mostly correctly, the one thing I would change is add the faster split engines onto it and then mod the hell out of the whole thing for speed. If you cap out the speed on an Oddy you can pretty much kite any Xenon ship in the game. Read that again: you can kill an infinite number of Xenon ships single-handedly with an Odysseus. They literally can't stop you because you're faster and have more firepower. The only Xenon ship that can maybe catch you in a properly tweaked Oddy sub-travel speeds is the T, and those are really not a threat since they don't build enough of them to actually be a threat. You can kite them around in their own territory for ages slaughtering them for hours, and then just circle back on your path of destruction to collect all the loot. Also those paranid plasma cannons you're running in your L slots are the best plasma turrets because of their range. Your plasma turrets can outrange Xenon graviton cannons (the heavy-hitters on those K's and I's). So all you have to do to kill one of those things in a destroyer is fit Paranid L Plasmas and stay at max Plasma range. If you mod the Oddy for speed, well, do the math. You can also kill an infinite number of Xenon K's and I's. For taking down stations you're definitely going to want more ships or it will take forever. Your best bet if you want to do it yourself is to build yourself an Asgard, but you've got a ways to go yet for that. I don't remember the ranges exactly off the top of my head, consult the in-game encyclopedia for that. Then you'll know at what distance to camp a K and laugh like a madman. The Odysseus is the ultimate player-controlled Xenon killing machine.

[@jihaadhaulkhory2556]

Ramming speed!!!! Now there is a fund addition to this game I would love to see. A huge blade at the prow of my Oddy. :-)

[@chriswoodend2036]

Recommend going all Argon turrets. They are the fastest rotation turrets and the base range/damage by type is flat regardless of race. It just means Argon turrets get on target and start shooting faster. Also, for clearing out Ks with a small ship: Split have a weapon called a thermal disintegrator (or something like that) that has shield bypass on it. Generally it's a terrible gun, but if you trim off the turrets on the bottom of a K, rather than having to grind down the shield, you can directly target the XL shield generators that it has and blow them, clearing their main shield in the process. MUCH faster than what you were doing.

[@geekey265]

Ah so key thing to note about Destroyers holding fighters, almost every L and XL ship has at least 40 small ship storage for legacy reasons, However if they're not carriers they'll deploy them extremely slowly. But as a side note Fighters equipped with anti cap weaponry However can perform very effectively against larger ships, as they'll almost exclusively target hard points first, like engines and turrets. Destroyers are somewhat limited to targeting the hull directly. But caaan be ordered to disable a ship.

[@Truemmerphantom]

And today we see Francis John going BRRR ^_^

[@Zopzodeman]

you can park a m -class gunship on top of the odyssee destroyer for more flak :P , for the dragon and othe m-class ships i recommend getting the Tau Accelerator , penetrates THROUGH the shield and has some corrosive effect going on after hitting...

[@mitechko]

Absolutely loving the series. One thing I would absolutely love to see you try is the Raptor carrier sold by Free Families faction. Its a decent enough carrier, but the one thing that it has is mind boggling 93 medium turrets. So I expect it to be a kind of a "fuck everything that comes in 3k range of me" type of deal. Like your "deploy a 100 laser turrets" tactic but with flak instead of weak lasers and without the tedious deployment and regathering. It is kinda sluggish, being an XL sheep, but it is not much worse than the unmodded destroyer you flew first and I guess you could mod it to move a bit better. Never tried it myself yet, still working out my economy to start flying with the big boys. In other notes, there is a key to disable auto targeting, ctrl-g by default I think

[@Oni1313]

@Francis John You can manually target your guns. All you need ist to make a key-binding in the options.

[@neocorricon]

Drag mod - Because there is sooo much drag in the vacuum of space.... (*rolls eyes*)

[@wolfen210959]

I guess they changed the ship design in X4, 'cos in X3 anything that was a "Raider variant" had very good speed but was subpar on everything else. In fact I'm fairly sure that the Dragon Raider in X3 only had half the shield strength of a normal variant and could only mount 2 front weapons, instead of the usual 4. Ah, the memories come flooding back. :)

[@gogudelagaze1585]

Also, a really fun thing to do is to slap some flak cannons on a terran Jian corvette and leave it parked ona destroyer. All turrets are on top, and will shoot at nearby fighters. If FJ was so excited about an Odysseus, I can't help but wonder how he'll feel about an Asgard xD

[@thezanzibarbarian5729]

Did you ever watch TopGear when Clarkson, Hammond and May were presenting it? There was an episode when they were scooting about a field using hovercraft. Clarkson said, regarding the hovercrafts turning ability _"If you can see a tree, you're going to hit it. If you can't see a tree, then you're going to hit that one too."_ This video reminded me of that TG programme 8-))... EDIT When it comes to destroying a factory, I always take out that repair facility you pointed out @23:40. Once that's dealt with, then the factory you're attacking cannot repair itself.

[@tobycat5799]

Love this game! Almost as much as i love watching francis sinking 40 million into something he tests ramming speed with before shooting lol

[@mickles1975]

The check engine light. LOL

[@shadamethyst1258]

== GALAXY NEWS == Pilot drives in at 4km/s to save a station, rams into a pirate destroy and proceeds to fight it. "Fools, I'll tell you", said the pilot. The station was lost, despite the reckless piloting to arrive in time.

[@jh5kl]

😂

[@katdoral5277]

lol, you definately splatted that asteroid

[@Melganor]

Nice! Thank you for the mods list!

[@chrisxd146]

Ship mods are such a blast to use, but definitely feel like an afterthought given just how strong some of the bonuses are. You can get a Katana (Terran corvette) up to 1.5 km/s cruise speed, and 10 km/s travel speed.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

I assume the mods were to make players feel like their ships are more kick ass. I mean I know I love tricking out my destroyer to be a monster.

[@Ripped4Surf]

great presentation - entertaining and enlightening. thanks!

[@sunstormer5064]

Francis that weird thing/structure you saw is in fact a Factions AI resource dump (each faction does this) it acquires massive amounts of resources in a stockpile (which cant be normally targeted) but it's a dump for making/upgrading stations usually (you can shoot them manually and steal the resources. But Xenon don't use normal resources to build with so what you'll will most likely find will be large amounts of basic materials). Great series btw, I'm enjoying every bit of your run through so far, have fun! Don't forget to mix and match your ships parts, each faction excels in different fields.

[@lcmattern]

For destroyers i really like the athsetic of the split, gets 4main guns snd 4 large turrets that can shoot the ssme target.

[@jh5kl]

split are one of my very favorite sci fi civilizations of all the sci fi franchises I know

[@sangarios]

look at terran and split destroyers. some amazing ships there.

[@Smo1k]

"Fireworks? What fireworks..? We only use gunfetti in this show." 😉

[@gcl2783]

Opening the video asserting you're taking "the reasonable" approach nearly had me spitting out my coffee

[@ts_vexx6883]

Fantastic and so satisfying. +1 for FJ

[@titaniumweasel467]

you created an A-10 Warthog in game ^_^ awesome!

[@lyssalud6781]

Googling a Reddit post is the only way to get information via Google nowadays. SEO clogging the system imo

[@danielduncan6806]

You could, alternatively, keep around a special ship of your own, for your own turret deployments. I mean, you can dock several ships, right? A medium at least(I think)? Get one of your own, trick it out, and call it the captains yacht. And keep it docked on your battleship.

[@leonasmith6180]

A cow is more than smart enough, NOT to allow YOU to steer it. Leona

[@williamlai29]

12:20 me like: what are you driving? a truck?

[@artemisfowl7191]

It's not 40 destroyers or 40 fighters, it's 40 destroyers *with* 1600 fighters

[@muneebmirza347]

Oooooh I was waiting for this episode

[@TheLamvir]

Just passing.. *points the guns

[@DrProfessorRobot]

There *is* one down-side to the Polisher mod: It makes your ship take longer to slow down when you're coming out of Travel speed. So you have to start braking way sooner, and it makes it harder to catch a fleeing enemy when you keep overshooting them

[@iaries]

exterior view of the flak guns looks like babylon 5 point defense grid :)

[@Rhondaandjames]

The Regular Bolters are better than the Split version for player ships. they do less damage per hit but far fewer of them miss. the Split Bolter just sprays bullets all over the sky. The split bolters are better out of sector (when you aren't in the sector and are just giving orders) because they game assumes all the shots hit when you aren't in sector.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

I am seriously considering switching to weapons with less DPS but better accuracy and projectile speed. So many shots miss that potential DPS numbers seem irrevelant.

[@mofoq]

BRRRRRRR....literally a warthog....in space 🤣

[@MisterZealot]

38:49 this is just silly 😂😂 I love it.

[@grandfremdling3841]

Nice video

[@MelfiortheOne]

Katana is still my favorite corvette, fantastic acceleration, great normal and travel speeds. And the guns you can put on it! Meson flow guns melt even destroyers in seconds (athough each costs like 9kk :D)! The downside is their cooling, after firing you are basically gunless for a minute, unless you have other installed :)

[@lithuanian_guy]

@FrancisJohnYT Slow deploying laser turrets are actually Mk2 - you cant even buy those with S ship :)

[@lukasbig08]

Only laser turrt mk1 is deployed instantly, mk2 can by unly bought and deploy by ships that's can dock S ships and deploy mk2 turrets same way as S ships. To kill K destroyer with M ship You can play around with enemy ship modules. Destroying shield module is faster then chewing thru hull shielding.

[@Bandit2033]

Park a ship on that ship's landing pad for extra dakka

[@bloodfith1]

Francis, the Terrans have amazing travel/balanced drives that have far quicker startup times (at the cost of some speed, but who cares when you can take startup time from minutes to seconds)

[@kurotsune77]

I love/hate how he's all about using combat thrusters, while using them like all-round ones XD like it's fun to watch him struggle with them, but the inefficiency of it irks me at the same time

[@galsherp6173]

could you make a video about all those important keybinds? I mean is it normal that it doesnt select the next enemy after oyu killed one? Or am i doing something wrong...?

[@ilyazzar]

is that last ship can be stationed on your destroyer type ships? cause if that is so.... i mean.... lead poisoning to EVERYONE!

[@ShadowWolfTJC]

For taking down Xenon capital ships, such as their K and I class ships, using only a single S-size or M-size ship, I'd have recommended maybe swapping out a couple of those Neutron Gatling Guns with a couple Thermal Disintegrators, which could partially bypass enemy shields (making the Xenon capital ships' insane shield regeneration irrelevant) whilst still being fairly good at taking out enemy fighters. Speaking of taking out enemy fighters, perhaps the recently-introduced Borons could provide your ships with some weapons that could slow down enemy ships, making them easier for your ships' other weapons to destroy them? In addition to Ion-based weapons, which are good against shields but ineffective against hulls, I believe the Borons also have Phase weapons that do the opposite, in that they'd be ineffective against shields, but quite strong against hulls, which I believe would be worth looking into once you're ready to start amassing a space armada to take on the Xenon menace..

[@TheByQQ]

Shield bypass is good, but a better thing is just aiming at the shield generators. You don't have to worry about outgunning the shields when there's no shields

[@ShadowWolfTJC]

@@TheByQQ Problem is, would the AI even be smart enough to know to target the enemy's shield generators?

[@TheByQQ]

@@ShadowWolfTJC Literally yes. Especially when you tell the AI to attack the shield generators.

[@Tieberious]

I like how you drive :P

[@brianhauptman]

That's a lot of flaming rain.

[@tikey258]

A drag mod. In space. Seems reasonable :D

[@angrypidgeon1714]

Since reload time is a positive number, I think green +reload time is bad

[@Giirag]

The distance from you to the station doesn't really effect how much damage you do. You'd be better firing at max weapon range, your flak does nothing to the station.

[@spyke1890]

After an extensive search, I have determined that the hair dryer manufacturer FHI Heat will branch out into spacecraft in the future. Should I buy some stock now i wonder? @FJ: Do you have a spreadsheet on mods made yet?

[@loggerm9113]

Finally he found the meat of the game^^

[@jayclaymore01]

Maximum Dakka!

[@angelicgamer7753]

Hey Francis idk if you know this but there is this new thing in multiplayer rimworld called "Power wars" I think you will have some fun playing with other players instead of the AI. I think you should at least try it out, who knows it might even be the next rimworld playlist

[@Swordphobic]

Uh... quick question to either Francis or someone who's playing this game, are missiles a viable weapon to deal with small, medium, large and capital targets?

[@sunstormer5064]

I haven't played around with Missiles in a long time, but last I knew they work amazingly well vs small to medium ships, but terrible vs large to capital class variants. However Torpedoes vs stations hull works extremely well, though you have to be mindful of two factors, Torpedoes have splash damage so you need to use them at a good distance (your fleet AI doesn't handle this well) the other factor is they are expensive to buy from most factions, or even make your own for that matter.

[@Killzad]

They work but they are highly specialized if used by the player, AI don't have much problem using them out of sector. There was occasions my ship was faster than the missile and resulted me crashing on it. Other time one of my wingmen behind me decided to fire torpedo in-between me and four other fighters and blow us all up. If you personally going to use them, this types work well; Interceptor-missile can also be used as an replacement for if you don;t like to use flares yourself just put one turrent on the backside or below your ship it doesn't need clearance to fire and set to missile defense and interceptor missiles will get them every time. Specially good if you go at war against the Terrans. For bigger targets swarm missiles if we are talking about moving targets, and torpedo's for disabled targets or bases. For general use on S/M ship by player Smart-missiles. Light missiles fast reload, Heavy missiles long reload you mite want to tweek your ship turrents with mods like projectile speed and reload time to make it feel the way you like.

[@showjaymayhem]

44:30 Mouse Middle click shoot where you want.

[@williamlai29]

31:09 put a thousand laser turrets next time lol.

[@aagwfan]

I wonder how big he will go to make his station the a ship yard too.

[@sim.frischh9781]

L and XL ships will go faster with mods, but they will by NO MEANS go anywhere FAST in the first place. More a "less slow"... If "fast" is what you want, you need S and M ships. Pegasus is the fastest Scout, sold by your friendly Paranid Warft together with a sermon or two. For M ships, the Katana of the Terrans is THE fastest ship of its class currently in game and mass producable, otherwise you can get one even faster by completing the Avarice arc. A solid way to kill Ks: use an expendable fighter, load it up with mines, use Travel drive to get right underneath it, best into that curl the Xenon ships tend to form, hit the Pause key and unload all the mines right into the ship´s belly before hitting Pause again and immediately boosting out of there, if your ship gets blown up, no issue, you SHOULD get ejected and survive, so keep either another ship close OR research Teleportation.

[@chriswoodend2036]

FYI: Fastest possible ship is an Alligator (Gas) for scouting but isn't a "scout" ship. Still works though and it's pretty cheap.

[@sim.frischh9781]

@@chriswoodend2036 Holy shit! I never flew the Alligator myself except for the Miner version for one mission. But that wasn´t modded, i usually don´t mod my miners... might just be worth it though...

[@chriswoodend2036]

@@sim.frischh9781 I did a quick build and an Alligator (Gas) with Split Mk 4 Combat engines and a very good roll on the basic level drag mod and forward thrust mod on it got it to a cruising speed of 1701 m/s. Big advantage of the Alligator line of miners is the base speed (especially with combat engines) is so high that they can operate nearly anywhere without risk, since they can easily flee everything.

[@Killzad]

I thot S class was the Moreya the fastest.

[@sim.frischh9781]

@@Killzad Pretty much, but unless you get through the Yaki plot you cannot buy it, only capture it IF it is part of a Raiding Party. Though the Moreya is more of a heavy fighter, not a Scout and i wrote Scout specifically. Key here is the ease of availability and affordability, you can get the Pegasus pretty much as soon as you enter Paranid territory.

[@playa124us]

at @39:09 i think the video would have been better if you'd turned up the sound effects, cant really hear the shooting and the explosions. :(

[@jeb8401]

That Dragon ship reminds of the scene in Hunter Killer with the missiles and the CWIS: (@ 0:16 kzbin.info/www/bejne/gpa8qolopaeWabM)

[@macmaac7148]

Yo pal, 23 Mio? There is a free one in a xenon sector...

[@jsaurman]

Grammar Nazi says: "Bit too hard" not "Bit to hard".

[@miccrhaafetl5101]

bar code reader

[@kjhgdsaf1]

Obligatory Comment

[@pieterdejong345]

first

[@jamesburtle3681]

Congrats

[@ShadowWolfTJC]

As fun as those Split ships and tech may be, I'd probably want to acquire their blueprints, along with other factions' blueprints (whether through purchasing their licenses or stealing them with the help of EMP bombs), so that your own megabase could perhaps produce all those ships that you liked, but with the kind of tech that you'd have wanted to put into those ships anyways (such as, say, Split Chimeras with Teladi Shields and Paranid Blast Mortars for example).

[@JoshSweetvale]

Having a fleet with not just the best hull for each ship size and roll, but the best possible components from every species... Sounds fun.