For a game that seems to take a long time to play. It is interesting just how quickly a situation can unfold. Setting you back many days of progress by a misstep. Leaving you wondering how you will end up recovering to a point of doing more than just trying to survive.
The rewards themselves were not so many credits as I was hoping but things like models and software. At this stage of the game, I did not care so much for them. I needed credits and anything I would get I was looking to pawn quite quickly.
Some of these missions simply required you to buy a platform and deploy them in a rather safe space. They seemed quite straightforward. That did not last too long as I was going through the motions of finishing one of these types of missions.
They ended up wanting me to deploy a defense platform in a system I had yet to be in. It turns out a bad choice on my part in taking such a mission. The area was a defensive stronghold and my ship popped like a balloon from the defense fleet that was camping at the gate in that system.
It happened so quickly I did not even get a screenshot of the altercation. Thankfully I did not lose too much progress and started from a point that might have been only ten minutes of a setback as I was the caption of that ship and no rescue would be able to get me out of that situation. Needless to say, I quickly lost interest in all these run-around missions and other activities for things I don’t care too much for at this time.
Thankfully by then, things had somewhat stabilized for the time being in The Reach. The faction I have high standing with had come back in with reinforcements for the time being and the invading raids seemed to have disappointed.
My new station was being built in the last post finally came online. It would serve as a reprocessing ore station where I would be giving a large amount of what was left of my mining fleet to drop off.
I also explored even further in the system and discovered a couple of other stations that had high demand and paid a decent price for raw ores. Many of my mining ships had already taken notice and were constantly offloading their mining spoils for some decent profits.
Over time I build up my mining fleet to quite a substantial level. It was perhaps greed in endlessly wanting to pump out even more mining ships thinking that the locals that owned the system would keep things relativity safe enough for me. I was quite wrong in that assumption.
One impact buying so many mining ships had on the local economies within several systems was the lack of components needed to go into building ships in general. Every time I would order even more ships the list of things not being in stock would increase and the amount of time for those orders to get refilled would get even longer.
I am rather impressed with the impact I was able to have on the local economy. More importantly my lack of support to the level I wish I could be doing. While I did buy a couple of transportation ships and started to ship ores to stations that were producing some of the components that I was always having to wait on to get my next batch of ships.
It became quite clear at some point farming resources and selling them credits. Then using those credits to buy the ships I wanted was not going to cut it. I’ll have to build more stations at some point and do a much deeper dive into station manufacturing.
From my lack of experience with the game there looks to be quite the massive and complex ecosystem of creating what is needed for ships and all the parts they make up. You need quite extensive logistics to carry out such a feat.
Between my defense fleet that I set up to guard a certain area and the locals guarding the system, we seemed to be keeping the invading parties at bay quite well.
During one of my explorations, I discovered the enemy had a station in the system. Not knowing how powerful a station was I decided to take one of my newly minted fleets and head over to test the waters. They were quickly annihilated. Then spewing out of the station a wave of enemies who seemed to be out for retribution.
It seemed the enemy had been waiting for me to test them. I was not expecting to hit a trap let alone lose a small fleet so quickly. I was mostly doing what I did as an information-gathering tactic if nothing else. At most I was hoping if I could remove it my issues in the system would clear as well.
Thankfully I had bolstered my defense fleets somewhat as I noticed things were getting more deadly over time in the system. I was however not expecting it to be this bad and so quickly.
That only lasted for so long. Over time I started to take some losses. Losing one or two defense ships was not so big of a deal. It was the fact I could not replace them fast enough. Even when I had the credits stations I was buying the ships at simply lacked the materials to fill my request in a meaningful amount of time.
A place I once considered to be a miner's paradise is now a war-torn battlefield. I am almost considering taking what is remaining of my fleets and evacuating them to another area. While there is no place that is as ore rich as this one. If you don’t have a mining fleet you can’t mine either.
It also seems the enemy in their haste to take me out here has somewhat relaxed their assault on other areas I had left hoping to find a safer place. Perhaps spreading out what remains of my response might be my best chance at survival for the time being.
The biggest issue remains though and that is the station I had built in The Reach. It is my biggest asset by cost. It would be quite time-consuming to be able to replace. On top of that my side appears to have lost some critical manufacturing stations and is having some massive supply chain holdups. I’m not even sure what kind of timeframe it would be to try and rebuild a station elsewhere.
I’ll have to re-evaluate my approach to this game. It seems quite unforgiving unless I’m missing something which I’m sure I am missing a lot of things. It’s like I have fallen behind and I’m not sure if I can ever get caught back up.
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about X4 Foundation.
Originally posted on Enjar Games. Hive blog powered by ENGRAVE.
