E7: Capital Warfare, Ship Mods & the Forges of Mars (plus recycling Xenon for profit) 

For anyone who is curiously looking for the fabled PPT, sorry, but that was in Episode 6. All I can offer you this time is capital ship battles, a network wide construction effort, a Battleship refit project and even more criminals with an overly trusting approach to recruitment. Hope you enjoy.

I appreciate that Perun, as an aussie, has understood that the commonwealth stands as one and therefore he has begun the british tradition of stealing shit and putting it in a museum. Hail the Museum of dead space AI, I hope the gift shop is awsome

You missed putting some turrets on the Erlking. Slot M1 and M4 can fit 3 turrets you only added 1 and slot M5 can fit 5 turrets. There is a slider when you are doing the fitting to set the number of turrets..

One of the true mysteries of Perun, official channel, studio quality mic, PPT section from last episode, studio quality mic, rest of the time xbox 360 mic from the mid 2000's. God I love this series

In case you don't know, the segaris Pioneers can sell you a special version of the scrap processing plant that outputs terran goods instead of hull parts and claytronics.

Jack put his cigarette down, looking away from the vista of Mars “I don’t understand why he’s so focused on the Split. They hardly matter over all.” Jack smiled and shook his head. “You never were in long distance shipping were you?” Alan went quiet then shook his head. Jack turned back round to look at the surface of Mars with a calculating eye. “He isn’t concerned about the Split. He’s concerned about Xenon containment via the high speed network. And he’s getting goodwill at an astonishing rate by doing so regardless of the national politics decided by distant worlds.” Jack Harper took a long drag of his cigarette and a sip of his bourbon. He let out a soft chuckle, distracted by memory “Reminds me of someone I knew a long time ago in another life. Let the boy cook. I promise the results will be interesting. So… how is the Pioneer project going Alan?…”

32:00 thx to sliders and the games UI, you forgot half your turrets. Remember to double check if you can add more turrets into a slot when you select a gun for it.

Something to consider for managing the Xenon threat while turning it to your economic advantage: While there's a major upfront cost, setting up major defense stations right on gates just outside of Xenon space absolutely bristling with plasma L turrets and beam M turrets can effectively hold off nearly all major Xenon incursions without compromising Xenon ability to bring resources into their sectors (their miners will frequently get in and out without the station engaging them). In effect, it converts the Xenon miners into hull parts and claytronics farmers for you and leaves you with the option of choosing when and where to unleash the Xenon. People don't like it when you take over a commonwealth sector but if the sector is cleaned up by the Xenon and then you clear the Xenon... well no one's left to complain now is there?

I would enjoy an flyby view of your stations

Forges of Mars... The children of the Omnissiah plays in the background.

Your editing and storytelling skills are excellent. X4 must be an incredibly difficult game to present in such a way thats engaging and interesting despite the complexity. Yet this episode and series just "flows" so well. Great showcase of both Capital combat and Burst Ray skills.

Fingers crossed the initial words were a ruse and there are some ppt slides incoming

Tips for new players (and Perun :)): - When you build a shipyard, make sure you also set its ship mark-up. I can't remember what it is set to by default, but you can increase your sell price for ships that you make for the factions to a maximum of 150% based on the material costs. Always max it out, the AI will keep buying if you have the blueprints for their ships. Maximise your profitsss. - The shenanigans with the fighter destroying the Xenon I modules aren't really necessary. I's are slow and even though the Syn is slow too, you should be able to manoeuvre to a nice angle and blow up the modules with your Syn. The Xenon I will try to turn towards you, but it can't do that at max speed (especially if you take out the engines first) so you can always maintain distance. - You can rearrange the order in which modules are built by disconnecting and reconnecting them from the station in build mode. Reconnected modules will move to the bottom of the build queue. - Do not sell consumables (satellites, mines, drones) to your own stations. As far as I know, you still do not get anything back from them. They just disappear. So always sell surplus consumables at a NPC wharf or shipyard to actually get profitsss.

5am sleepless nights rewarded again. Perun is teaching me the wrong lessons XD

Perun, I'm genuinely loving this series...I am so, so engaged with it and you're presenting everything in such an entertaining manner. It's like I'm watching along to one of my favorite TV series and just frothing for the next ep. Keep up the great work mate and I can't wait for the next one!! Excited to see the Erlking put into action!!

Only a paranoid Terran operative would come up with the idea of an armed lifeboat. :D

Man you dodging the Graviton fire at 11:30 made me clench just watching it lol. The Nodan's an alright choice for this job but fighters with higher weapon mounts are better for battleship defanging, since you can peek over parts of the ship's hull and fire from under the turret angle of depression. It's a lot safer. The Quasar is good for this, but since that fighter is held together with hopes and dreams it'll die to return fire very quickly.

Maybe an idea is to see a short PowerPoint of the results of what you have done?

It seems that conventional wisdom is right: It really IS impossible for players to play a space game and not engage in some kind of narcotics trade. Starsector, Elite, take your pick really. I'm only glad organs harvesting does not appear to be in the game XD

Loving the series so far! You're smashing out the content. I've just laid down my boron water plant and have just hit saturation for my first two computronic fabs. It would be nice if you could allow a station to use resources from its own storage for the build storage. It could use cargo drones to ferry goods into the build storage. Manually setting an upper limit for station managers would be lovely too. Bit of a pain having to withdraw cash all the time.

Btw you might be aware of this but X4 allows you to set alerts based on certain conditions. You can for example set an alarm tone to play whenever an XL class Xenon ship enters specific sectors. That way you can go gallivanting around the network without having to worry about missing a Xenon incursion.

It's kinda funny to imaigine Peruns character as some CEO who just decides to help small time pirates, smugglers, traders and patrols just because he's bored and is waiting for his capital ship to finish being modified. Literally not even in it for the money.

53:40 that is the ideal form of meeting

35:52 I appreciate the docking marshaler just standing in the vacuum of space without any kind of suit or helmet. That's dedication.

some of the best gaming content on youtube

From 30:40 onwards, when putting the medium turrets on, you only add one of the 3 max available. Will see if you catch it later.

Perun! At 30:46, when you're refitting the Erlking turret you are missing out! You have only one turret and there are 3 mounts for them! You can drag out the blue bar above the turret selection to add more! Same goes for main shields, you can put more on!

Man, this game has way more complexity than I imagined. But in a good way.

Love the X4 vids. Very invested in the roleplaying story you have going on which doesn't focus on narrative as much as other series I've seen.

this keeps getting better, & taking down that Xenon "I" gave me battle of Jupiter vibes

When you're trying to snipe components on the Xenon capital ships, if you hit Y it will zoom in.

Those wrongly angled solar panels on your scrap facility, fix it! 😅 And also the Teuta can produce scrap cubes out of the scrap that is in the system shows by the resource probes. Once cube is 1000 Scrap. And bonus is, crew in the Teuta levels up super fast, so i switch them out with L miner crews once in a while, so a new miner has a super well trained crew from the start, and the new guys go on the Teuta. Works also with builders.

Oh no, 30:39 you could have added more turrets to the Erlking by dragging right on those medium turrets.

Funny to see the different approach. I build a shipyard and sell any ship the Split could wish for and they hold all their sectors on their own. At peak they bought ships worth 200 million per hour. And they even captured some Argon sectors and working on two Xenon sectors. Really proud on my Splits.

I love that the Erlking's acceleration is something like 35x the Earth's gravity. Anyone aboard it will be a a fine paste at full burn. Whee!

When fitting the Erlking medium turrets @~30m, you forgot to increase the number of installed turrets for each slot from 1 to 5. That means you can get even more DPS out of it!

Really liked the economic update, especially the point about how everything you are doing is really having a beneficial effect on the Terran Fleet!

I haven't played X4 for quite some time now, but when I did, I often found myself just standing on the flight deck of my station/mother's hip and admiring the view as (smaller) ships were coming in on their final approach to land. So, if you haven't docked your Jian "turret module" to the Erlking yet, there's a potentially cinematic scene for your next episode! 👍 (edit: quick grammar correction. I'm keeping the bad autocorrection, though, cuz dat one's funny)

Remember to paint the Erlking red it will go fasta!!

I think PIO sells a recycler blueprint that converts scrap into terran materials btw :)

Perun, remember you can use Y to zoom in, it's super easy to snipe the K's turrets with the swansong main guns before it gets into range. that is also how I easily take out Xenon Is with the swansong too. just engage it at a good angle, take out the engines and the guns, and then it's sitting duck.

Absolutely loving this series so far! This is a game I didn't even know existed and is perfectly hitting the Freelancer/Star Citizen shaped hole in my heart. Please keep it going!

Wonderful playlist so far, i was disapointed we didnt get to see the introductions with the Royal Steward and the Queen of the boron, but managed to find other playthroughs where those were included. Still, they felt like such important milestones i was suprised you didnt include them. Loved the slide tho, that was such a funny thing. Looking forward to more! PS: Also anything Boron is appreciated, those little rascals are just the best thing ever. Must protect

Nwabudike Morgan would be right proud of the business empire you've built up.

That battle ship combat looks awesome!

15:45 privately owned recreational battleships for home defense, as the founders intended

Only bad part about this episode is it's over and now I have to wait for another.

These last two episodes came in just in time as I am sitting at home sick with covid. Also as a German the prospective flagship being called "Erlking" pleases me greatly.

I must say that watching this playthrough has convinced me to get X4 as of yesterday, and it has been an absolute blast. I will be getting the DLCs as I am paid over the next few months

What!? No slides? Jesus. ;)

just FYI: you dont actually need protectyon shields to make stations survive the tide. the tide doesnt destroy modules outright and as long as the station has repair drones, repairs are fast enough that the station will be back at full health by the next tide.

Just found about you, I'm hooked to this series. Keep it up!

One thing about capital ships is that if you destroy it's large or XL shield generators, they will keep the shield but they can't regenerate it. Small and medium shield generators don't contribute to the shield of the hull of a capital ship, only it's turrets and engines.

I would never have guessed that you need a ship to come in for a station to move goods between its own storages.

Loving this play-through. I don’t know where you find the time or mental space for all this so I’ll just say thanks Perun. Don’t burn out (even Queenslanders or New South Welshmen are worth keeping around sometimes)…

48:40 Not any slave trader! It's a tax avoiding slave trader! This naturally makes the situation the best possible choice.

Space cia agent, gets into the drug business. Sounds about right.

If you do end up getting an Asgard I hope you name it something like "Kiwiland's Revenge" or something along those lines

One thing you can do to help deal with the I and K a bit is hit Y to toggle the different levels of zoom, from there it's easy to select the various modules instead of using the keybind to select them that I know I always forget. Since your main guns will use their gimble to target them, you can very easily remove all their turrets or engines while you outrange them, no need to swap to a fighter.

Simply amazing work :)

Ah another awesome X4 episode. Loving the adventure so far. I though I hope you show the fights a little more in details in future.

“Der ErlKönig” is a German poem from the romantic era, though I'm not really sure how it relates to this ship.

Great as always

Doom Shrimps are no joke.

"I'm going to leave that in and not edit it out because it's funny." I tell you I ugly laughed right before you said that and it just kept going after you said it.

Makes my day every time you upload!

25:02 is how you get everyone to wave at the cameras.

Never played X4, but if i'm reading a wiki article right "I" is the biggest and the baddest battleship Xenon can throw at you and Perun just taken it out with a fighter and old-ass terran destroyer.

What was the logic behind supplying microlattice to ter/pio instead of other wares? You explained that selling them other wares would eventually empower their shipbuilding too much. Wouldn't microlattice serve to strongly empower them too? Asking because i want to better understand the strategies behind balancing profit from selling high-demand wares vs. giving either allies or future enemies an injection of something that may eventually end up being exactly the boost they needed to become independent. The dynamics behind the player's long-term impact on others' economies are super interesting to me.

great episode again, cant wait for the next one!

For finding earlkin bps. I recommend placing satelies everywhere in those sectors. Making it a lot easier to find them

When doing capital ship fights i suggest to use the zoom-in fonction to be able to target sub-components for main batteries. It’s quite effective.

15:45 Good guy Prigozhin

Love this! Keep em coming!

Also Perun, why don't you have a loot ship flying around in places like Hatikva's Choice? Like, places where battles often take place. That way you can easily get the material for those mods.

I did enjoy the planning and powerpoint last episode.

An easy and relatively cheap way to help the Split is dropping a hundred laser towers at each of their main gates bordering xenon systems, and even connecting gates. The K's seem to skip by them and the laser towers are taking down lots of fighters, miners and power distributors. It helps to keep a destroyer around to jump into to fight the K's where laser towers cannot stop them, but I can't always be there if they ever decide to smash them. Incidentally, laser towers seems to be the answer to all problems related to needing a lot of firepower and/or decoys right away. Devs dropped the ball on usefulness of mines and possibly missiles/torpedos too, at least as far as ease of use goes.

Will the ai buy ships from your shipyards?

1:55 One is none, two is one and so on.

Glad I'm Norwegian and can watch these after work 😊

oh yeah, capital ship to capital ship combat 😎

Perfect companion listening to play Endless Sky / Elite to.

OK. Another one - here we go!

I wonder if using those captured Xenon ships could work for some shady false flag missions. Seems like the kind of thing your buddy Dal would be all over.

While defense drones aren't great, they're a cheap and easy way to get some sort of early station defense when you're building up production modules to make starting money and can't really afford to put turrets on everything, especially like in my current run where various ship parts are in chronically short supply everywhere.

17:28 kill the machine, save the metal.

Since you've shown us you can change the paint scheme on ships; I really think you should set an iconic livery for your PMC's ships and stations. It would certainly fit the RP theme.

I hear giving the Erlking a red paint mod gives it a +300m/s boost.

Does the Xenon have builder ships?

The voice acting and dialogue writing in this game are fucking horrendous. Looks like a blast though, loving this series.

9:20 I love this. Yet again, the big tank capital gets caught out away from its infantry support and gets picked off bit by bit by the enemy. Edit: also teleporting out of empty space and coming back with a capital is cheating lmao

Erlking turrets, you didn't add max on all places

Excellent timing i just finished episode 6

Love the X4 content

I wish there were more heavy industry playthroughs on yt :(

You only need the XL matinance bay to refit the Erlking, RIP credits. Enjoying the series. Very cool lore about the Xenon still making cockpits from old code. I wondered, who's bailing. FYI, simple cross defense platforms can hold gates cheap and efficient. Just have to secure the area till its operational.

You're really embracing the John Company spirit I see.

love your vids, regardless of topic or channel

16:12 Me too man, me too.

Love it!