There are several story missions that involve the player HQ, but don’t actually involve improvements or development of the HQ itself. They’e often considered Main story continuations, but are better thought of as preludes to opening up additional Terraforming options as player activities you can pursue.
Pioneers Ship
Dr Feynman will arrive in a Terran freighter, and ask you for help.
You need to perform various tasks for him, which are easy and don’t really need description (get some Antimatter Cells and deliver them, stage 3 ships at specified locations and do a Long Range scan, make a couple visits to your HQ).
These are just busywork for the most part, and once you complete them Dr Feynman will ask you to come have a conversation with him. As his ship is leaving the system, you get drawn into a long conversation and force-volunteers you for a new project, helping a “freelancer” he’s hired to help complete some tasks.
Second Assistant
You’ll need to fly to The Void.
You will need several nav beacons later, so make side trip now to get 5 if you don’t have them.
You’re headed for The Void to help out a mysterious “colleague” of some sort. Have a brief meeting with the freelancer, then head to the target area in the “hazardous region” asteroid bands.
This mission is incredibly annoying and frustrating, since it does a bad job explaining what exactly you’re supposed to do.
Save when you get to the Hazardous area, so you can muck about and figure things out and then reset and start over if needed.
This will be much easier if you have a damage reduction ship mod installed on your ship, preferably the highest level (100% damage reduction). If not, that’s ok, but you’ll need to be much more careful.
Goal
You’re supposed to find several navigation beacons, which you can do with your ship’s long range scanners. They show in your HUD as the purple expanding-ring indicators.
You’ll also see several ‘?’ markers on your map and HUD, which clusters of mines and laser towers. There’s a target beacon in each cluster.
Non-threatening?
You’re supposed to approach and “appear non-threatening.” If you’re “threatening” the laser towers and mines will turn hostile when you approach (not on the first beacon but for all the ones after that).
The game doesn’t give you any guidance that this “non-threatening” bit is actually important, or how to do it.
The key is to set your ship so that you have a gun set selected that contains NO guns. (So when you fire, no guns fire because none are active.)
If the mines and laser towers turn active, you have no choice but to destroy them, and then approach the beacon.
Beacons
You need to find several of the nav beacons, which means locating one with long range scan, and then flying close. Use repeated scans to keep moving to the right position. When you get within about 3-5 km, the beacon will resolve to a beacon object you can select in your map. Keep flying until you get within about 500 m, your ship will show “receiving beacon data” and the beacon will turn green on your map. Wait about 10-15 seconds for beacon data to finish.
Once you find several of the beacons, your “partner” will tell you that you now have the frequency data you need, and that you need to push a nav beacon of your own into a target area to be able to communicate with your stranded colleague. Wit for his speech finish, and your mission guidance will change to show the target area.
This is where it’s especially useful to have a ship with either big shields or a damage-reduction mod so you can simply fly into the hazard asteroids and drop a beacon easily. If not, you’ll have to do the “build up some speed and deploy an object, then stop and let it drift with that momentum” trick to “push” the beacon into the hazards.
Here again the “what am I supposed to do?” issue comes up. You need to wait after deploying the beacon for further directions. Your beacon will be suffering damage, and it’s possible you’ll need to deploy another beacon before getting the message.
This is all badly explained and unclear in-game.
When your mission guidance changes to “Dock at Geometric Owl” you’ve succeeded.
Geometric Owl
The Owl is a Yaki fighter outside the hazard area, which you can board by leaving your ship in your space suit and flying over.
You’ll need to request docking, and you’ll be told “hull damaged.” You have to use your spacesuit repair laser on it (which the mission guidance doesn’t tell you; it just still says the goal is to “Dock at: Geometric Owl.” Do some repairs on the ship to get the hull to 100%, then you can request docking and get inside and take control.
Dock and take control of the Owl. It’s now permanently yours, but you’ll not be able to assign it a pilot until you complete more of the story line.
Don’t forget to re-activate weapons on your ship if you set them to “non threatening” for the mission!
Terran Pests
So, you’re headed for a chunk of the destroyed Torus Aeternal (from an earlier X game). The Geometric Owl is the only ship you can use to get this next part of the expedition done. Which… makes it annoying , because without a pilot the Owl is dead in space if you teleport out to do something else for a while.
You can, however, land the Owl and get some equipment upgrades If you like.
Save before you get your cover ID.
You’re about to get a ship “cover” that will make it difficult to interrupt the coming sequence to go do something else and then pick this up again.
To get your forged ID for entry in to restricted Terran space, fly to the indicated station and use your ship’s scan mode to scan the indicated signal leak. The mission requires you to do this even if you have a reputation with TER that would just let you fly openly to Earth sector.
Which, again… really annoying. It forces your ship to be Terran, which if you’re hostile to them means your allies will now maybe see you as an enemy and try to kill you.
Plus, you’re a member of TER faction so your own ships and stations will refuse to talk to you!
You’re essentially cut off from your own stations/ships as long as the cover is active!
If you leave the ship it will revert to neutral, but as soon as you re-board it will immediately resume the TER cover identity again.
Fly to the Torus fragment
From here, things are relatively straight forward. Fly to Earth, moving fast and staying away from Terran military ships. If they detect you, just keep running and try to get to the next accelerator out of the sector. You’ll get “signature mask failing” messages, which you can largely ignore if you just keep flying fast. Get through each sector fast, detouring around large groups of Terran warships if you like. Moving fast is more important than not being detected.
If you need to, you can fly the ship to safe remote space, and exit in your space suit. The cover de-activates, and you can talk to your ships and stations again.
Eventually you’ll either reach the Torus Aeternal sector or get destroyed trying (reload and try again).
Now the really annoying part of this story line starts.
Torus Aeternal
Your goal here is to get deep into the torus segment and get some data.
Fly close to the “station” and the Owl will map out four possible entries. Fly to each until you find one that’s blocked open. Us your spacesuit to fly through and inside.
Switches inside the torus are operated with your spacesuit repair laser and blaster. The Torus is big, and switches can be difficult to find in the entry segment. Look for one with a green indicator (meaning you have to damage it with your blaster to turn it red). Flip that “switch” and you can teleport back to the owl to bring it inside.
When you fly the Owl in, the doors will close and a protective plate will close over the switch. The Owl is now stuck inside. Great.
For the rest of this mission, you are at a “safe” spot to leave the Geometric Owl. You can now safely exit the ship and teleport away to deal with other events in your empire, and teleport back to the Owl later. The ship will be safe, and the mission will wait.
Blast/airlock doors
From here, the sequence is:
- Fly as far as you can, your ship will say “Awaiting breech”
- Get out in your space suit
- Find a side tunnel (which sometimes you need to open with a switch)
- Fly through the tunnel into the next section
- Find a switch to activate to open the obstruction (usually next to the tunnel exit) – note that you have to get much closer to “repair” red switches than you do to “shoot” green switches!
- (you may have to transit a couple of tunnels)
- Teleport back to the owl when it says “awaiting pilot”
- Repeat
It gets tedious, but as long as you avoid the hazardous gas it’s pretty straightforward (once you find the tunnel at each stage, and the switch at the other side).
Running into the tunnel walls can get you “stuck” in X4’s collision physics, which makes the whole thing even more tedious and annoying. Fly carefully.
Your guide will constantly scream “Oh, you’re in a hazardous area! Get out!” Ignore the hysterical fool and just concentrate on finding and flying to the next switch. He’s an annoying, whining, unhelpful drama queen.
Flip the switch and you can immediately teleport out back to the Owl.
If you try to move to an area where he stops his hysterics, you can’t reach the switch.
Keep going until you reach a big interchange room with tracks running along the “floor” and “ceiling”.
Roundhouse room
Here it’s very unclear what you’re supposed to do.
Exit your ship in space suit. Find the horizontal “bar” with the blue label lights. Fly around to the back of it, and you’ll find four switches.
Save now, before you start interacting with the switches.
If you start interacting with the switch, you’ll notice (behind them) that the tracks will shift and doors will open and close. You’re given no guidance as to what to do, but the answer is:
Set all switches to red.
You can proceed through (another) “fly through the side tunnel to open blast doors” obstacle.
Defenses
You’ll reach a point where the tunnel sloped down. Here, on left and right, there are turret defenses. Edge your ship carefully to expose and destroy them one at a time, keeping your shields recharged.
Again, this is tedious but not dangerous if you’re careful about not exposing the Owl to multiple turrets. You likely want save, just in case something goes badly.
Switch Room
Save now. Do not start interacting with anything here until you have a secure save. No kidding. Save now.
You’ll be told this is where you need to interact with “the archive” (the whole point of this mission) and that you need to release switches to get access.
This is the infamous “X4 Switch Puzzle”. It’s awful. It’s tedious. It’s frustrating. It’s pointless.
[Editorial comment: Someone at Egosoft should be fired for putting this in the game.]
You’ll need to exit your spacesuit and interact with the switches using your spacesuit repair/weapon tools.
The switches are linked to each other, so flipping switch X may also flip the state of switches Y and Z.
You can play with the switches and figure out what-affects-what, then plan out a sequence that will get them all to On (difficult, since they’ll all be changing state as you play with them to try to learn what they do).
If you want a solution (hint: you do), then starting from the state where you first entered the room (you made a save, right?), the sequence to get past this is to operate the switches in this order:
3 – 6 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 3 – 8
Note that switch 2 is initially covered and you can’t interact with it. Move to it anyway and the station security system will do a “reboot” that will open the cover over it.
You’ll be told 8-of-8 are open, and the Owl will begin downloading data.
Teleport back to the owl, wait for some fireworks, and fly out through the opening that will be created (straight ahead from your entry point).
Conclusion
Dr. Feynman will contact you, and you’ll be given guidance to dock with the Oberth again.
Dock and talk to the good doctor.
The “companion” AI in the owl will be removed. You can now set a pilot for the ship, like any other ship.
Mission done.
Boso will eventually contact you about terraforming projects (once you’ve researched high-mass teleportation to be able to relocate your HQ to systems with terraforming projects).