New Fleet Commands! Easy Explained - X4: Foundations Version 6.00 Beta

Position Defense, Physics Engine, Bombarding... we are going to talk about every aspect of the new beta!
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0:00 - Position Defense Command
4:08 - Jolt Physics
5:15 - Fleet Logos
6:10 - Bombard for commander
6:58 - Improved combat behavior
9:01 - Attack surface elements
10:38 - Interim overview
11:17 - Fleet coordination (5 Syns)
13:50 - More infos

[@Silencer0151]

This is honestly the one thing I've been waiting for. Late game fleet management before 6.00 always had me frustrated. Glad to see they've improved!!!!

[@Nephale]

And late game xenon and kha'ak threats for your fleet to take care off. Or late game buffs for other factions in general. The fleet improvements feel great but im running out of stuff to fight.

[@keanooi405]

@@Nephale I have the same feeling, I heard the VRO mod adds allot of challenge by adding new xenon ships, like xenon fighter bombers that can fire torpedos, xenon carriers, even bigger battle ships. So you're really pushed to create diverse fleet compositions, like ships to destroy fighter bombers, fighters to bomb large destroyers etc. Looks really cool, going to give it a shot :)

[@Gibsland]

@@keanooi405 VRO is fantastic, I consider it a critical must-have mod.

[@xXTre930Xx]

Yesss, literally why i quit my late game runs because it is impossible to micro everything single ship and you get tired of losing your most expensive ship because he decided to ram the gottamn station you sent him to attack...

[@TonyEvans96]

and then pair it with an Automatic Restock mod and carriers will automatically replace any ships lost under their control (not just fighters, and not just carriers. I turn it on for stations for any traders/miners that get destroyed so I don't have to micromanage or check up on subordinate numbers)

[@Erduk]

6.00 is a massive improvement. They're making X4 so good it is almost a whole new game from where it began...

[@ashaffold]

Well, it can be said about any X game, tbh. I remember X3 was barely playable till 2.0 update. Traditions!

[@XavierDarkhand]

I only just started X4 these last few weeks...first X game I've played. Having an absolute blast; never experienced the difficulties of the earlier patches lol

[@CaptainCollinsUncut]

For the early watchers: HD needed more time to encode, sorry, was too fast publishing

[@Mondfischli]

...the good morning fooled me 😆

[@CaptainCollins]

Hey, you watched this after midnight (if you watched it before commenting) :P

[@Paski303]

Seeing L ships able to actually blast a station together instead of busy lining up with each other on 1 single plane of elevation at snails pace , brings tears to the eye

[@mauriziocorradi1598]

At last! Fleets and formations acting as they are intended to!

[@tadge-rico2238]

Watching those Syn's 12:50 all attacking with proper coordination had me warm & fuzzy. No dancing to a space waltz or Captains being all Victorian polite, like, A: "Sorry old chap. Do go first." B: "What, what?! Heavens forbid my good fellow. After you!!" C: "Good evening Gentlemen. May I be so incredibly rude and ask to squeeze in?" A&B: "Be our guest" "With pleasure my good man!" D: "I say, what a rambunctious display. It looks delightfully fun. May I?" A/B/C: "Huzzah! Huzzah!! Huzzah!!!"

[@agnosticpanda6655]

This update is the single best update this game has ever seen. So much has massively improved. Even the autopilot seems to have greatly benefited from the physics update. The best thing is probably that it now loads around 10 times quicker (yes, literally).

[@Nephale]

Docking on some ships is very bugged on some ships currently. Hopefully they fix it until full release. I always have to teleport out of the sector for raptor docking.

[@Aeekto]

should have talked about another great feature of position defense..... you can make severall squads for position defense and let them defend different spots (last patch it was 8 squads max each carrier) and the best part about it is squads support other squads automaticly if the threat is bigger than a single squad could handle. I for example make squads of 1M4S and if one squad has to face 10S , minimum 2 others squads travel in for support if their position has no enemies while other squads still defend their positions.

[@godoffirenmahlazor]

wow! massive improvements! this changes so much and adds that pay off youd really want for carriers and battleships

[@TotalyRandomUsername]

Absolutly. I allways had my fully staffed carriers and then did not use them agains big tagets because my fighters would just blow up in their turret range. Now carriers make way more sense.

[@sarahnachtrose]

Nice video, thanks for that ❣ But a note: It's nice that the big ships are now in a closer formation, but as cool as it looks, the ships are getting a lot of friendly fire (13:11)

[@alexandreutiyama547]

Really what I wanted in this game! I really like to roleplay the megacorp using overhelming cheap fighters swarms to solve my problems, although I like the rts aspect I really couldn't be in system since fighters usually suicide themselves into capital ships in rendered combat.

[@Nephale]

I use fighter swarms vs capitals like Is and Ks and the only thing killing them are sometimes the explosions. Thats why i stopped using pulsars. They are so squishy.

[@sirstikay69]

Carrier position defense is something I'm so unbelievably hyped for and I didn't even realize I wanted it

[@hymenfiesta]

Thank god, new Fleet commands are what I have been waiting on.

[@-drey]

If you're attacking a larger xenon station the ships tend to fly over the station to reach modules on the other side. (And get shot down in the process)

[@guigolum]

yeah, this, so much. Sometimes they fly into the station.

[@ThySovereignLP]

Really want smaller carriers too. Like a destroyer sized one that holds 1/3 of the volume of a XL one. And maybe even a medium one. The biggest difference of this game compared to X3 is that the ships does not use energy cells to move around. Making you not really need carriers in the same spirit as in that game. But hell, id take 4 tugs carrying 4-6 fighters each to none at all just to help with fleet mobility. The only real use of an auxiliary ship in this game is for missiles and maybe repair drones But the things i LOVE about scifi shows/games is: Carriers, Shields, Drones. Really really love sheild effects

[@Nephale]

An L boron carrier was already datamined. Does not mean it will make it into the release but it could. M carriers exist 😅 Called frigates. Falx for example.

[@ragnos28]

@@Nephale What you are describing was supose to be the Zeus E, a carrier of destroyer size, with reduced fighter capacity and more turrets. Instead we got a carrier that is LARGER that the standard Zeus, but has 16 fighters capacity...🤐

[@dusk1947]

This subject is likely the stand out feature of 6.0. Thank you for the overview. The Carrier behavior and the improved coordination on station attacks looks fantastic.

[@shiijin]

All these changes are really good. One thing i would love to see come back is the missile barrage. When sent, a volley of 150 was a slide show sometimes. The results were worth it.

[@gamingtonight1526]

This is fantastic. But I always want more mission/stories. I hope this for Stellaris and No Man's Sky too! As to getting repaired when damaged, you could copy older RTSs, where you could tell units to retreat when 20, 40 or 60% damaged. Some later on had special repair machines.

[@omni_0101]

If you like those games I highly recommend Distant Worlds 2 as well.

[@XxKidnoffxX]

@@omni_0101 Dw2 is my favorite 4X of all time. I really love it

[@kokiklv]

improvements to carriers are going to be huge for SW Interworlds. Love it!

[@CaptainCollins]

Tie Fighters all the way!!!

[@kokiklv]

@@CaptainCollins I'll pretend you didn't write this... :)

[@CaptainCollins]

ChatGPT at work... 😂

[@Oriaks]

@@CaptainCollins You, of course, meant PIE fighters?

[@trlavalley9909]

I love this my last playthrough some 18months ago, I took out Tharka's Cascade, which was just a Xenon Hive. That operation was just a mess of microing. I really had to babysit my destroyers to get them where they were needed and keep them from rushing in and hugging the Xenon stations, still lost one that way. These commands would have made that enterprise so mush easier and I expect a good bit more enjoyable.

[@keanooi405]

Awesome video, 6.00 is looking good! Would love to see more videos testing the fleet behavior with even bigger fleets against more targets, really test the fleet AI at it's limits 😄

[@VaImorian]

Guess its time to dust off the empire, Xenon must be getting bored without me

[@Mondfischli]

... you still have Xenon? Call the exterminator 😆

[@VaImorian]

@@Mondfischli Have to keep the universe interesting somehow haha

[@vaydendar]

Congratz on 15k subs and thanks for this super easy to understand tutorial.

[@gwevans358]

The improved jolt physics still need some work in my opinion - at least with Boron fleets. I have a Shark as fleet commander, with 3 Rays and 3 Guppies as escort ships, and every now and then I'll see either 2 Rays, or 2 Guppies, or 1 Ray and 1 Guppy all tangled up together, cart wheeling across the sector in some sort of aquatic mating dance while doing maneuvers. The only way I've found to untangle them is to teleport into one of the ships and takeover - full throttling and turning left and right until they separate.

[@whismerhillgaming]

man, such improvements ! didn't expect such massive changes post 5.10 !

[@IanS158]

Thanks for explaining some of this stuff. I didn't quite understand what some of that mean. Firing up X4 now to go play around!

[@CaptainCollins]

Most welcome!

[@Jenny-eg3uh]

@Captain Collins That thumbnail is gold

[@CaptainCollins]

Thank you!!! Trying a new visual style :)

[@CONTROLE-FISCAL]

The situation corresponds totally to the addition of the update. And so it's easy to understand what they did. Thank you .

[@shadowhenge7118]

Id like to see a fleet formation designer where you can build 3d fleet formations. Carriers, auxiliary ships, destroyers, positional escort groups, all laid out in 3d space.

[@-drey]

OMG i was waiting for this video! Thank you!!

[@trashblob]

Top! Exactly what I needed!

[@greyraven666]

Gonna enjoy these changes in the Star Wars: Interworlds mod. Currently have a small fleet of 2 Nebulon frigates and a Imperial light cruiser aimed at clearing out Yuuzong Vong (Kha'ak) stations. Hopefully they will now stick together and not get shot up by fighters.

[@TimoMimo1994]

Omg!!! For me as a kind of roleplay-player this gonna be such a great improvement! Even if it's not working 100% at the start, this the reason to start a few new gamestarts. Sorry I am excited as hell :D

[@marct.8087]

Late game fleet management and the frustration to precisely is what killed my last playthrough. Glad to see they are addressing these issues.

[@ImmaBitKiller]

Love the videos, this game is so awesome. Thanks Captain!

[@jimrford]

So glad to see fleets getting some love.

[@davidasteed]

nice work, great info. some really tasty changes. I hope that the generic "defend" with a formation will also benefit from the "attack in formation" improvements

[@mumufti]

Thanks for the great content and especially this video. The issue with killing xenon stations and destroyers went closer and closer was so annoying and made me almost mad. I am really glad, thex fixed it.

[@CaptainCollins]

Thank you for your continuous support!

[@machinech183]

This all looks awesome. Going to have to reinstall and start another play-through.

[@BasstedPlay]

I ordered 5 syns to fly to the point, so they turned on the cruise drive, then one stopped on the way, and the rest crashed into it at speed and began to spin like a bundle, they could not recover for a long time, after which they flew again, but without the cruise drive. There is an improvement, but it also played a cruel joke)

[@Raymus42]

I remember how disappointing it was to see capital ships trying to attack Xenon stations. They'd just fly away from the station before they were even in range to attack it, and then keep flying around it until eventually a Xenon destroyer showed up and picked them off one by one. I wouldn't even mind if they'd spread around the station to attack it from multiple angles, as it could probably be more efficient in some situations. I think such a behaviour would also be more realistic. They would just have to be able to notice incoming threats and defend each other, when a defending destroyer shows up.

[@trlavalley9909]

12:26 To me that would be a Bombardment command, Ordering your Guys to stand off and attack whatever from max range. I think that would be more inline with the English usage of the word, so maybe there is a glitch in translation.

[@sulljoh1]

Amazing new stuff. The team seems to be working hard

[@raphaelmorin6027]

Thanks for the highlight on this. I hadn't realized what the physics engine had really changed. I remember beeing frustrated with carrier fights. I'll probably give another go soon.

[@v44n7]

amazing video! one question, how you you got that camera view on 13:00? i can't find a good way to look at my ships from a distance, not as cool and simple as that

[@thyratr0n]

Thanx for very suitable video! You're always at the head of X4 infos :)

[@TheTaxxor]

The improved carrier and fleet coordination is the best thing that happened to the game in a long time. I almost never used NPC carriers because the last time I did an attack command with a fully loaded Raptor, it just flew right into the station and was quickly destroyed together with 50 ships left on board. Same thing with destroyers, those 5 Syn would do that kind of range attack for like 10 seconds before doing some weird maneuvers where it seems like they want to get in position on the other side of the station and just take the shortest path to do so, meaning a straight line through the enemy station and then getting destroyed. One thing that I still desperately want to be adressed though is friendly fire because that is still the most common reason for reputation and even fleet loss. It just needs one destroyer attacking a small xenon ship and a friendly station inbetween them. Once the station took a few hits and is now seen as an enemy, the destroyer will automatically attack the station too and within one minute you'd have the whole sector against you. And it's such an easy fix in my estimation, you'd just have to factor in if that station that got hit was actually the target of the destroyer.

[@davehedgehog1047]

Wow.... Very impressive!

[@Niiiiikoooful]

This changes are honestly amazing, I love how you can actually see the improvement on behaviour and performance

[@SPACE_GEKKO]

Looks like Carriers will finally have a purpose. No more Suizide attacs of Capaital Ships against Stations would make me really happy!

[@aseroxd]

This is the kind of gameplay I actually enjoy, but I hated to have to micromanage it. Glad to see it's getting some love.

[@pjsonpiano]

Man the fleet stuff looks so nice. I haven't played X4 in a bit but I think I need to get back into now I won't be nervous about having a fleet which is usually my issue is I don't want to deal with the whole logistics of micromanaging my fleets lol I do agree with some other comments and other videos though which I do want to see improved missions and story stuff.

[@siratthebox]

They need to improve turrets now, because the amount of friendly fire can be a problem, especially if there are another faction's ships around

[@CaptainCollins]

They did the other approach, friendly fire is not being punished that hard anymore. And on top, you can't destroy your own ships.

[@NightWoLFGames]

thx man

[@guillaumefavier9640]

wow, finally, we have a good fleet command upgrade... I mean, this is something very important. This is soo welcome! Awesome, very good work Egosoft! Now we need ennemies to fight with.😁

[@alexandern.4683]

Das sieht alles ganz gut aus mit dem neuen Flug und dem neuem Kampf verhalten. Aber eine wichtige Frage habe ich da doch: was ist mit befreundeten Beschuss? Es ist ja bisher so das die KI in deine Schüsse, die von deiner Flotte kommt, reinfliegt und dann die sehr schnelle selbst den krieg erklärt obwohl ihr grade einen gemeinsamen Feind bekämpft. Wenn das weiterhin so ist, bringen die neuen Befehle leider wenig posetives. Nebenbei, danke für das tolle Video. Englische Version für unsere internationalen Zuschauer folgt. This all looks quite good with the new flight and the new combat behavior. But I have an important question: what about friendly fire? It is so far so that the AI flies into your shots, which comes from your fleet, and then the very fast itself declares war although you just fight a common enemy. If this continues to be the case, the new commands unfortunately bring little positive. By the way, thanks for the great video.

[@Mrsoldier847]

Fleet control, especially among carriers, is significant. I like making Carrier groups to patrol areas, like Hatickvas Choice to combat Xenon raids and patrols. My biggest frustration would be the Carriers deciding to Yolo themselves, with their fighter wings on board, into Xenon I's and destroyers, and blow up. Another thing I hope they fix is singular L class ships deciding they want to point blank a station by themselves.

[@leight9503]

OMG its finally possible yo just click "kill it" on the xenon station! You know, without loosing a fleet. 4 years - finally here :)

[@CaptainCollins]

Mostly... don't expect miracles, but I have seen maneuvering around a station outside of turret range :O

[@neurosis404]

Finally! Always loved the carriers, and now we almost have CODEA in vanilla X4

[@CaptainCollins]

what does that mean?

[@neurosis404]

@@CaptainCollins CODEA was a huge script for X3. The main function was better fleet and carrier handling and behavior

[@Eikioma]

The X serie was a reference since a while, but with 6.0 it really put this game as a reference in the domaine. And I will finaly try the carrier gameplay now :)

[@ShadowWalker2006]

very welcome changes and additions to the game. Can't wait till I have the time to test them all

[@andreamassi1130]

Thanks for this very useful video

[@Scheldon]

All that looks great hope they will improve even more. Captain did you try to add L and XL ship to the carrier fleet to check how they will behave during the attacks on the stations or big ships? Can you show how coordinating attack works with 6.0? Thx for showing to us all that and for tests 🏆

[@CaptainCollins]

I can do that during a stream, if you remind me :)

[@annenoam5392]

So many good improvements, very happy about that :) I do however, as i noticed at the end of this, wish they will fix the shooting of own ships.. I can understand that a fast fighter could take some FF if it flew into a shot from a larger ship in ones fleet.. but having L/XL ships trying to shoot through another ship in the fleet is a little weird to me :) maybe 1 shot could be a thing, but not several in a rough.. should not take crew (or AI) several seconds to understand they are barraging a friendly ship :D

[@Resistjk]

I m so anxious to jump into my game with 1k+ ship carrier fleet to see a position defense :D. That is the real test of performance improvements.

[@Nephale]

I've one with "just" 300 ships and fought a 100+ ship xenon fleet in sector with playable fps. 1000 might be a stretch but there are definitely huge improvements. Also better oos performance.

[@HoneyBadgerVideos]

can't wait till the update in entirely ready!

[@4LXK]

after 5 years i finally started to play x4 for this update. Can't wait.

[@MrNubeGuy]

I'd like a command/behavior to make L and XL ships attack at specific ranges. Also a command/behavior to retreat at x amount of damage.

[@Ekstrax]

Man i can't wait for this to release

[@Hangman1]

First proper update from so many years

[@FireFlyinWonderland]

very well explained!

[@martialdoctor3482]

This is looking really nice! Do the AI controlled units now stick together in formations too? That was the one thing that I really didn't like in the old versions; they would always split up and were easy targets.

[@breakermike6887]

OMG im so excited, I thought they gave up and this is my favorite game but I couldn't get my capital fleets to work and my game would slow down at mid/late, Found my self always starting over just to play it. Now im pumped all my problems look to be solved, I hope the miners are fixed too.

[@Arefear]

I tried a 5 ship fleet of Osaka's they sat close to each other but constantly swivel about as they were to close and often only one or two of them fired at the base

[@_Jay_Maker_]

That physics engine change is actually awesome.

[@thezanzibarbarian5729]

I'm just back into X4 after an 18 month hiatus. I've got a carrier. It's got "S" class fighters on board, but even when they've been in a fight and I click on the carrier to recall subordinates, the "S" fighters just hang about and follow. The only way I can get them to land on the carrier is to highlight them in the menu and then tell them to dock from the carriers menu. I've not really noticed ships avoiding each other so next time I'm on, I'll look. However. I think most of my pilots have something wrong with them. The times I've had to intervene to get one unstuck from a station seems to be a lot more than it used to. The only thing missing from the game now are the larger Kha'ak ships from X2 and X3. Carriers and destroyers. It'd be good to see those back with the snazzy new modern graphics we get now.

[@Norbert_Sattler]

I wonder if the improved collissions will work out of the box for all mod-added ships or if the modders will need to make adjustments. I can think of a couple of ships that have troubles with fitting through jumpgates with the old/current system that would fit fine with accurate collissions.

[@ZlothZloth]

Since I played X4 with the logo for Doom's UAC on my ships, I've been taking screenshots of other logos in games thinking they would be good for my next playthrough. Now I find that I can use more than one! I wonder if, instead of fleets, I could assign a logo to a station and all the ships working for it?

[@CaptainCollins]

I believe that this could be possible now, if the devs hear about it. Would you mind to write a short topic in the Egosoft forum to pitch that?

[@AR-GuidesAndMore]

Oh thats amazing, this s what X4 needed. It would still be great to be able to set fighters to ignore ships larger than M class, but this is allready a leap forward, that i will take a look as soon as the new DLC drops.

[@Kalknight382]

Nice changes. I really like.

[@TroaBarton]

Is the docking and undocking of ships particularly on a carrier faster and less derpy?

[@michaelbayliss4018]

I cannot wait for my next play through

[@Ashmodai]

this looks fantastic.

[@eko1127]

Wow this does bring tears. took 3 X games to get to this achievement in the AI.

[@mps_gaming1898]

this is amazing improvement, earlyer you hade do this manualy send fighters to repair save so much works or set position on ships so they dont be hit by station

[@ragnos28]

I've performed a series of tests of the bombard role. The ships (destroyers) don't engage the L/LX threat until the leader or one of the ship is taking fire, they will take no action prior. Not a usefull feature tbh.

[@Nephale]

That sounds like a bug because it works fine with s/m ships for me. They immediately fly towards xl/l ships in radar range. have not tested it with l ships on that role yet.

[@ragnos28]

@@Nephale I've also tested with my S bomber wing, selected launched, and they seat neatly on the Colossus, untill it came under fire from a xenon I.

[@Eluisao23]

Hey cap! do we know if we need to play a new game for all the changes to get noticed? or we can still load an old save?

[@abranubes9571]

Do we know if the improved behavior of fighters and carriers is affected by the pilot level ? or will this only ever be flat stats increase for turning / speed etc ?

[@sakinomura9482]

Do you have a guide for loadouts for ships?

[@TotalyRandomUsername]

I get the feeling the tweaked a bit the S+M against L and XL ships. In the older version i could fly a rattlesnake into a cloud of xenon, not worrying about anything, but now i suddenly take damage.

[@ronlg2]

Holy Sh.. Vision! They did it!!!

[@BrumEldar]

Very good video, now still left more carrier commands like put fighters in patrol/escort and scout

[@fuerstdeswahnsinns]

i wonder if the asgards will now use their death star laser more primarily and not rush to their death from station defense.

[@BL4ckViP3R]

Idk why, but my fighters assigned to a carrier do not repair themselves (or maybe so late they never get a chance while fighting Xenon K ships), so what I usually do (in order not to lose them) is to micro manage every. single. ship. that is in a bigger fight. Is there a way to do this better or do I have to accept that in every fight with a Xenon K destroyer I'm gonna loose a couple of ships?

[@RahzZalinto]

Very cool

[@daweiisgood2392]

Oh man, this is great improvements! Yah, big battles are a bit clunky and get a bit messy. This update will ease that a good portion it seems. Looking forward to 6.0!

[@CaptainCollins]

AND it will make battles look even better since the ships are sticking closer together. Big fights will feel like a battlefield now.

[@Dodger535]

Close positions using Asgards means they can hit each other with their main "rays". Happens from time to time ! Also, is there a video about how to properly make trade flees (if there is even a point) ? Thank you for your content !

[@guigolum]

I would like that vid on trade fleet. Mimic does not work on manually set up trade orders, so no idea how to make ti work.

[@kuhndj67]

So in the past when I tried to defend a xenon sector gate I had problems with craft accidentally flying through the gate and getting spanked in the other sector... even when I set that sector as forbidden. Generally it would happen when they were chasing a xenon ship returning home. Hopefully they fixed that.

[@alansouthwell2899]

Played X3 Reunion & X3 Terran Conflict. Stopped playing X4 Foundations about 12 months ago when I realised that station and fleet building/owning were an essential part of the games storyline.

[@arminstaudt-photography]

I have always collisions with my L-Fleet - if I'm the captain. And when they collide my FPS drops to 3 and you can't steer the ship anymore - really frustrating