Ep7 Defence platforms are beautifully Overpowered : X4 Foundations 

To address a few things. The reason the Argon parts and the Generic Sats Las Towers and Drones require Hull Parts & Claytronics is because in your settings you are running the default production method "Closed Loop" The 3 Production methods are Universal - Which Includes Argon, Paranid, Teladi, Split and Boron* production methods and thus the base material map Closed Loop - Just E Cells, Hull Parts and Claytronics which are harvested from Wrecks and recycled through Avarice. *(Avarice factions are Argon which is why the Argon parts can be built under this) Terran - Uses the Terran Parts instead. Key thing to note, If your default method is Terran, and you want to build a Commonwealth ship (Eg Paranid design &or weaponry) You will need the corresponding universal parts for it, but anything that the terran parts can fulfill will be used. Visa versa you cannot build Terran equipment with universal parts. This has the downside of needing to dedicate a % of inventory to Terran parts or Universal parts if you possess any blueprint from both faction types. Additionally you can select the prefered build method for a station The next bit is that Fabrication bays can do everything a Maintenence bay can do, in addition to build ships. However maintenance bays are cheaper to build and add on to the total amount of "Build Slots" the fabrication bay can use Therefore by having both a Fab and Maintence on the same station you actually just have 2 fab bays. You will also need to produce Build drones to get ships built faster, and hire for a "Ship Trader" position on that station. The skill of the ship trader doesn't matter i believe. Fourth thing. You will need habitation on your ship fabricator stations to add crew.

You can rotate build plots as long as there is nothing in it. Just right click and drag on the plot. Also, in the settings for the Plan Build screen, you can choose to "show environment", which will show you where the gates and other stuff are.

Saying that this game is not AAA quality is high praise this day and age, when major publishers keep releasing unfinished buggy trash "games" one after the other.

Yeah, I can see why having multiple factories might be wiser. I'm also seeing the mid-game goal (after starting your own factory and befriending all the factions). Hemming in the Xenon quickly becomes essential. Not provoking their sectors but turning Gates they emerge from into charnel houses.

Your x4 playlist has quickly become my favorite. Hope you see more of this type of gameplay

Really like new people doing X-Series content. I've loved these games for a long time.

Remember that gear icon in the top right of the station planning menu. Click it and there should be a toggle for outside views. Can help align the stations towards the gate better.

The first thing they see isn't going to be the platforms, it's the charred remains of their friends.

I wonder how profitable it could be to buy a tug boat and have scrap processing factories in the same sectors as your defense platforms. Turn xenon ship wrecks into hull parts and claytronics.

You should build salvage ops with all that wrecks

Been waiting for this 😊 love this game, and series

I don’t consider myself a player for visuals but Francis has totally sold me for this game. Those ships he’s walking under, man, they look amazing!

Yay !! random comment. FYI if you right mouse click you can rotate plots :D. You should try salvaging all the wrecks!

"We do want to keep the humans alive". Eeeeh. Frankly I think it's time we give the dinosaurs another go. 😆

23:55 Speaking of details, the planet's cloud cover also moves.

you can rotate plots with right click.....also if you max your teleportation research you can tp stations ( this might be tied to a mission)....or maybe its just the headquarters, either way very useful. also if you do all your research you can start terraforming. oh yea and they aren't "officially" defense platforms without administration modules .

This! OMG This! I have been looking all over online for how much Defense do you need in a Defense Station, how much is too much, how much is not enough and this, this is the first time I've found a definitive answer of "This will work" I plan on adding at least an administrative module to that as well to capture sectors if I happen to be the last defensive statoin left standing but Great Job!

A few things to note: this is the safest way to make money but you're going to want to do a few things before it really gets going. First, when you make a shipyard you want to make sure you're not making ships at any given shipyard for multiple factions which are at war with eachother. Basically you don't want their weapons going off on your door step in addition to any defenses your station may respond with in kind. The other thing to note is, you aren't going to make as much money this way as you would by simply selling the wares to their shipyards. If you look in the logical overview of your shipyard, there is a construction prices for other factions slider however I don't think it actually works the way it looks like it should work. I believe they nerfed it some time back because of how quickly players could amass obscene amounts of cash that way. I think despite that slider existing the prices factions pay are more or less fixed and it isn't exactly the best possible deal for you especially considering all the trade deals you can rack up with these factions that I don't think factor into the sale prices of ships. However, shipyards are an important thing for you, the player, to build however to expand your infrastructure and maintain your war profiteering stranglehold on the galaxy. AS FOR THE ADVANCED SATELLITES: You can build them with the method you saw in the NPC shipyards however you have to select the UNIVERSAL build method in the INFO tab of the shipyard from the map in order to do so. If you look up an "Advanced Satellite" in the encyclopedia you can see there is a dropdown for the different build methods and you'll get a list of the required materials for each. If you get into salvaging however, you'll probably want to switch back to the closed loop method as Hull Parts and Claytronics will cease to be scarce as your salvage operations scale.

This is a cool series! Hope you create a big fleet soon!

I sadly also noticed the Laser Towers are a great tool but limited in their capacity as soon as L and XL ships come into play. Had a lovely line of over 200 Laser Tower Mk2 set up in The Void´s southern Jump Gate. An I thought they make some nice practice shooting. So, i build a HUGE Defense Station, with multiple rows of Split Defensive Wall modules. Took forever to build. And ultimately was complete and utter overkill, but it made for a great learning experience.

I love the defense platform ❤. Excellent use of materials to satisfy a nagging need

That standard dock glitch trick is neat, im gonna use that to watch my Hat defense platform thanks lol

I've installed the More Xenon AI Jobs mod with the Xenon Hell mod on top. I can't say I regretted it! The base game was just so damn chill, that it was boring to just slay the next fleet of stock xenon garbage coming out of the factories, but with the Xenon being a galactic threat, that swallow up system after system as time goes on... Exciting shit. Most of the times, when I played X games, I used save-scumming as soon as I lost something I spent hours to get, but when I put myself in a universe, where the AI factions are struggling to keep the Xenon at bay, and I have to fix their shitty economy, so that they can keep up with the ramping threat, while simultaneously building defense stations and having a friggin' reason to buy carriers, other than the "Ohhh, I have a big ship with lots of small ships inside!" reasons, is what gave the game a new kind of spice. I sent my behemoth around, because I needed to clear out destroyer-class pirates, that were creaming my supply-chain. If I hadn't, more losses, mean less defense against the Xenon. I stationed a Colossus at a prominent Xenon gate and had position defense with two fleets to keep them at bay, while I hastily built a station to guard against massive invasion fleets in the mid-game and lost half my fleet while doing so. I had to supply the front, sending the fleet to several different faction's stations, because the resources were thinning out, and that was just the impetus to start building a huge factory to supply the shipyards, wharfs and equipment docks, so the sector, that was being invaded didn't fall to the machines. Before, it was a space-sandbox in the garden of eden. It took the Xenon about 100 ingame hours to try to expand into commonwealth territory and it failed almost always. With these mods, you can bet your ass, that if you don't start to rush towards building defenses, you are going to lose key sectors and you're going to be screwed beyond belief. After the Xenon are swarming around an AI trading station and the faction just can't expend a damn scout to help... You'll know why the teladi general at the beginning of X - Beyond the Frontier said, that if you see a xenon, you'd already be dead. Especially with double the damage and hp, than vanilla. See a few xenon? think it'll be a cool and easy fight? Not without a fleet it won't... and you'll be easily focused down, if you aren't careful. I can only recommend to all seasoned players. If you find the regular grind boring, give those two mods a whirl! New game, start hustling and watch in horror as those capital letters start to mean something else than "oh, easy kill!"

14:55 You could just use the "Preset for all station modules" option.

Dear god Francis made a plasms space crucifix.

Now that you have those defense platforms that kill Xenon trying to enter through the systems, you might as well take advantage of all the scrap that they leave behind. I'm sure you could flood the Hull Parts market with cheap Hull Parts made out of the remains of the Xenon.

you should assign a fighter to your defence station, and tell it to collect drops and dock with the behaviour bit. then you can keep popping by to collect all the wares from all the stuff it killed.

FJ will hereafter be known as the Emperor John. Since he already has Destroyers I am looking forward to the Death Star!

Remember that the economy in X4 is geared towards buidling ships and weapons , so dont place the defenses to close to the gate to let some xenon escape and kill the races ships , which you can help build back up . War is good for business :D

Build plots can be moved or rotated! They have to be empty, though.

Defense Platfrom: T-Pose (To assert your dominance)

Apparently there is an overhaul mod for this that makes the whole thing star wars, which would be interesting to see

Everyone thinks they have a lot of money until they go to start buying blueprints.

Great

Anyone else shout “Suppressing Fire” with Cyril’s voice in their head?

Say Francis: Any thoughts about building a line of defense platforms along the path between the jump gates that lead into Hatikvah's Choice I and Family Zhin within Xenon-infested Tharka's Cascade XV, to act as a fortified road connecting those 2 sectors together? I'd imagine these defense platforms would feature the usual Plasma Cannons and Flak Turrets facing outwards, but could be given Beam Emitters (both Large and Medium) facing inwards towards the trade corridor for dealing with any Xenon that make it through the outward-facing defenses with less risk of inflicting collateral damage to any non-Xenon passing through. I've heard that ships within Tharka's Cascade XV will have their shields drained continuously, but would not suffer from hull damage, so perhaps any ships sent to supply construction materials to such a project within the sector would've needed to be of the larger variety, since their shields at least regenerate without delay, whereas small and medium ships are never given the opportunity for their shields to regenerate.

those defence platforms would be a lot less OP if NPC capital ships would go through jumpgates with their travel drives on. you'd zip past a defence platform at 2,500m/s in a stock destroyer, then turn around and snipe those turrets at your leisure. but the NPC destroyers just sit at the worst optimal range and get pummelled

Don't you just hate it when you defense platform scares the piss out of you.

Aaaaaaand we’re back!

Use all argon components then select close sytem...it then only takes 3 components to make them. That option is in one of the dlcs

This episode begins with quintessential Francis John: An quick flyby of the factory-building factory. But in a game of this size, having one is pretty much having none... I'm guessing a F^2 in every 5-to-7 sectors will be the Golden Age of the Empire 🙂

Defense platforms are nice if you don't have a hell seed of Xenon that prevent any of them from ever being completed, where one of the primary factions is essentially wiped out on the first day, and we're not talking Zyarth, we're talking Argon.

You can rotate the plot boxes :) and the KHK keep coming back after a few days, no matter if you destroy a hive or not.

8:58 I did this in hatikvah's faith to protect from K and I but Next time I saw a K coming from Another gate.

FJ Create a holy nation with his defense cross

Can't wait to see you squash some Xenon with a fully flakked out Raptor (or whatever the Split carrier is called)

The defence station looks like the original original Christian cross, a T. The modern one is actually pagan and is not meant to kill people. So the station literally crucifies your enemies.

Francis... fully crafted components are worth WAY more than the materials. Should craft them all up if you're going to sell them off.

You can sell Decryptors and other shady stuff in bars. You need special mission from data leak to get into criminal deals and get access to bar.

It’s sooooo much easier to build Terran ships, you need only 3 types of material, and one is energy cells ;)

So does anyone else wonder what the "Full Stupid" option at 14:23 entails?

30:30 That looks so much like Boba Fett's Slave I lol

Hey Francis I have a game suggestion for you: Cult of the Lamb. I think you would like it

so if the player doesnt keep interviening all the factions will get wiped out be the xenon? also after you are done with this game, you should do the interworlds starwars maod

Can you have a small bug killer fleet that patrols your factory system?

Why not put a container storage on the defence platform and use it as a trade station?

Any reason why a defence platform wouldn't be attacking enemies? i have a 3 star manager on mine with 112m beam turrets and 60 L beam turrets and its not shooting the K destroyer currently attack it. The K Destroyer is right above it, all the weapons are armed and set to attack all enemies and the station is fully constructed. I don't know what to think

dmn that xenon fortress is bad ass, need a mini station there with a salvage modile one, can anyone actually tell me how they work,. all i know is they work by getting scraps

I've got mine placed at about the same distance and angle that you do. I've assigned an aggressive fire order for xenon to the station. It fires. And misses. I'm pretty sure my manager is cross-eyed. Thousands of plasma bullets flying and xenon are just racing past my wall of death. I have no idea what I've done wrong but it hasn't done well. Do I need the laser towers also? I thought those were just for protecting your construction ship but maybe they slow the xenon down and then the plasma turrets actually hit something?

Is there a reason you don't build Defensive Platforms to stop infestations?

I have rep +25 with terrans and their black market still refuses to buy my slicers :(( I really don’t know how high it should be

lol "interface units not worth selling" while sitting on almost 7 mil worth of them....

I think it's better to put the resources money and time.. into making fleets... Or building more stations.🤔.. But to each his own ✌️ 😁 plus if you have the infrastructure to build fleets... The enemy should get nowhere near your stations... Because you would have fleece protecting the gates the station... Plus ships patrolling the sector... Then expand from there...Well that is my strategy anyway..🧐

Hey I got a question dot-dot-dot dot surprised?😊 Would not the Terran defense platform B the definition of closed loop? Because they only need three station to actually produce anything?

Not really wise to build a massive factory... For two reasons.... One... you'll have more chance of lagging... And two.... The whole thing about putting all your eggs in one basket so to speak ✌️😁