So, what are everyone's favorite mods then, if any?
I'll figure I should start first so I'll list the three that I refuse to play without.
More Ship Rooms - https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/609
This is just pure immersion, and it's amazing It gives all capital ships explorable interiors by mapping various in-game interior spaces into your L and XL class vessels. I literally can't play without this. Having a captain's quarters on your Raptor is a total game-changer.
Fire and Smoke - https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/433
More immersion. The vanilla explosions are somewhat (massively) lacking, which is strange considering that the previous title (the one we don't talk about), running on the same engine had fantastic explosions... This mod fixes it by (iirc) porting the explosion code from the previous title to the current one, or the code was already there anyway and they just switched it back on, can't remember which. Either way though, I've never noticed any issues with it hitting my CPU/GPU at all and it completely changes the feel of combat in the best way possible. Standing on the bridge of a capital ship and watching fire billowing out of the remains of turrets, smashing the engines of other capital class vessels, and watching them stream fire and smoke out into space... It's amazing and works flawlessly.
Faster Crew Levelling - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2050537227
Whoever the hell decided to wall off the AI in this game behind the goddamn crew levelling mechanic, whilst also making it basically impossible for the said crew to ever actually level up has a special place in hell imho. This mod fixes it. I looked at a few mods to address this bullshit, but most of them just remove crew levelling by making everyone five-star or whatever. I actually like the mechanic itself, but see no point in it taking 3000+ hours of in-game time to get your first 3-star pilot, because just no. This mod allows you to still have the mechanic in play, so personnel management is still a thing but brings down the training time to far more sane levels so that you actually can grow your workforce's skillset over time. Great mod. Considerably un-fucks a lot of the AI problems too since your entire company isn't filled with unskilled morons at all times.
Anyone else have any favorites that they can't do without?
Yeahhh, I gave up on mimic commander and wings for non-combat ships completely, it's an absolute nightmare! And they didn't even think of folders or groups so my fleet window is just a flat list of miners, transports, traders, scouts sorted alphabetically! I really expected more from german engineering and like half a dozen games in the franchise, instead even the basics are a struggle :P
I really love Egosoft's games.
Like, not sarcastically at all, I've been playing them since XBTF back in 2000/2001 (I skipped X2 because I didn't have a PC at the time, and Rebirth because... well...). But if there has been one phrase that has always sprung to mind in every iteration of this series when using the UI it would be "Built by engineers, for engineers".
And as messed up as the X4 UI can sometimes be, it's by far their best shot so far.