I've had this game sitting in my library for years. I know it's regarded as one of the really good space games but I've never figured out what you're actually supposed to do or how to advance the gameplay.
I know how to get in my ship, fly my ship and shoot in the general direction of things but that's it. I've played the combat tutorial and have a customized keyboard control layout that I'm happy with.
Last time I gave it a try, it went like this. First, I landed on a space station and then walked all around looking for anything to do. I talked to an npc and found a store selling basic items like medkits and whatnot costing hundreds to thousands of credits. I didn't want to grind for pocket change trading medkits so I continued my search for anything else to do. After more searching, I found a second npc in an office that let me look at security camera footage but that's all I found.
So maybe all the stuff happens in space. So I got in my ship and flew around for a while. The travel mechanics make no sense. Switch to travel mode to go faster, I get it but theres additional mechanics involved. Why can I only go 287m/s in travel mode sometimes? Why does it randomly accelerate to several km/s sometimes and other times the ship accelerates slower than slow? So I look for salvage to steal. Nothing. Eventually I see a bunch of ships fighting so I go over there hoping for anything to happen at all. Boost stops working for some reason so it takes forever and then I get obliterated before getting a chance to shoot at anything.
What am I missing?
I played and enjoyed X3.
X4 added the "walking around space stations" thing, which feels kind of pointless to me. I haven't played that game much. But as to the series in general:
So, the X series is really more of a space megacorp simulation. Like, you can individually dogfight, but it's not really a Privateer. You can own huge ships, build up a network of space stations and a substantial fleet. A lot of the aim is getting access to parts to building and optimizing ships for combat, trading, scouting, etc. You can set up automated fleets of trading ships, set up defenses in a sector to protect your industrial concerns. Build battleship-like gun ships, build carriers and the ships to put in them, stick flak guns to deal with pesky fighters that can maneuver around slow-moving heavy rounds from your big ship guns, etc.
It's got a steep learning curve, and the early game in X3 wasn't very forgiving. The series does not do hand-holding.
In general, the early game (well, in X3, could be that X4 differs) is about getting the economy going with your individual actions. Once you can build up enough credits, you can start building out space stations and can set up supply chains; that provides a flow of income to support your fleet activities.
kagis
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2239846532
IIRC, finding a particularly good trade route was better in X3 at the beginning, so maybe that differs.
Most of the story surrounds combat.
You can definitely run into forces that greatly outclass you.
Unless things have changed significantly since X3, there are a series of ship classes. These mostly play differently. There are scouts that are useful for exploring but will lose to just about anything in combat. But they're by far the best for exploring, because they can outrun dangers. I generally wasn't into anything beyond combat up until I got a high-end heavy fighter, as ships below that were, IMHO, just too fragile, not very forgiving of mistakes.
In combat, strafing is really important, because weapons take a while to get where you are, and if you've shifted your position by strafing, you won't be there. The AI will aim assuming that you are continuing on your current course; using stating to switch around your vertical and horizontal movement will make stuff fired at you tens to miss.
There are ways to take down much larger ships using blind spots, where weapon arcs don't cover.