My Recommended Mods for X4: Foundations
It’s Steam Winder Sale 2022, and I suddenly see some people gaining interest in one of my favourite games: X4 Foundations. Many want tips and tricks, but some are interested in mods as well… and just happens that this game has a great modding community. Mods almost always have been one of pillars of the series, and X4 is no different - some mods are so good and so essential so I personally can’t imagine playing this game without them.
In this article I will showcase some of the mods I personally use and briefly explain what each mod does. Do note though that this list is definitely not conclusive - there are many other great mods for X4 out there, but I simply don’t use them. But the opposite also applies - just because a mod is listed below, no one says you have to use it. This list is meant to be just my personal recommendation, from which you can mix and match as you please.
I cannot guarantee any of the mod works for you or that it doesn’t conflict with other mods, as I don’t maintain any of these. However I do play with them, so I can confirm that they work for me.
In my playthrough, I configured FOCW in a way that Xenons went on a rampage, and now I have to save the galaxy for other factions. For me it’s all cool, but a warning is due!
DLCs
Wait wait, DLCs? Aren’t we supposed to talk about mods?
Well, yes. However if you think about it, DLCs kinda are like mods, and they contribute to the experience of the game, so I decided to still list them.
Most mods don’t require DLCs usually, but some (like VRO for example) do. Also in this game it’s usually worth to start fresh when you install a new DLC just so you don’t let a new faction fall behind - and this is even more true when your mods affect balance.
Which DLCs do I recommend? Before Timelines I used to say all of them. Now… it’s a bit more complicated (although I still personally would - and did - just pick all of them up).
But I’ll list them in order from most important to least important.
Cradle of Humanity
Adds entire Sol. That alone is huge. But Terrans and Seagaris Pioneers factions also have their own unique and sleek ships, their own campaigns, and even own economy. And to be honest… they’re OP (well, Terrans are). Simplified economy means it’s harder to cripple, and their ships are quite strong. But regardless of that, this DLC offers a lot of new stuff, and as such is really worth it - even if like myself, you largely focus on commonwealth economy instead of terran one cause you don’t want to make the logistical gameplay shallow for yourself.
Split Vendetta
Expands part of the map adding a fair amount of new sectors, primarily occupied by the race of Split. Split are focused on firepower, and gotta say, their ships look quite cool. And of course there are new campaign missions as well.
Tides of Avarice
Out of currently released DLCs, this one adds the least amount of new sectors and ships. What it makes up with however is the uniqueness - of the new sectors, as well as gameplay mechanics.
The new sectors look really really interesting, especially Windfall which admittedly looks like . But it’s mechanics where this DLC shines at: the tides that happen in Avarice system are a brand new mechanic that adds some time tension while you’re in the system. Combine this with completely new salvaging-based economy, which Avarice uses for everything, and you have a DLC worth getting in general. And as always, there are new campaigns in this one, too.
Kingdom End
One thing needs to be known about this DLC - Borons are back! Yes, fans of X series longed for Borons ever since X4 released (or perhaps even since X Rebirth). Egosoft had to think how to add them in carefully (yakno, Borons being aquatic creatures doesn’t mix all too well with ability to walk on your ship). But looks like they came up with a solution, and our pacifists are back in the series.
They have their own campaign, ships and sectors (obviously), but also own unique station modules that look really brilliant. And they kept the unique soundtrack of Kingdom End sector! <3
On the flip side… I had tough time picking where it should go on this list. While there’s new sectors, it feels that there are less of them than in Split Vendetta. The campaign is also short, and mechanically it’s less rich than Tides of Avarice. For these reasons I decided to, at least for now, list Borons after both of these DLCs. Sorry my aquatic fellas!
Timelines
The latest DLC we got, and probably the most controversial one.
The gist of this DLC is a separate mode which is quick mission based. Some of these missions feel nice, like something new - others are purely tedious. It’s also advertised as letting players replay old events from the series, but sadly I have to say, only some of these missions have events that are recognizable or were impactful in previous games. Most feel just… random.
That said, I still kinda recommend playing it. Part of it cause I am a long-time series fan - but also cause completing the missions in Timelines does add stuff to open world. The additions maybe aren’t many or that significant, but completing the Timelines does add at least some sectors, ships, and other unique things.
But I also understand people who will skip this DLC altogether.
Essential Mods
Now with DLCs all explained, let’s finally get to the mods. I’ll start with the mods I personally consider essential. You’re free to decide if you need any of these or not - they’re essential to ME.
Variety and Rebalance Overhaul
If there’s a mod that I can’t imagine playing without, it’s VRO. The simplest way to explain what it does is already in the name, but this mod really does… a lot. All ships got rebalanced, all weapons and missiles got replaced, adds some new ships to fulfill role gaps, and increases speed limit as it’s created with NoSuperHighway mod in mind. It also makes the game harder, as a small fighter now stands little chance against corvette, yet alone a capital ship - but honestly, that’s how it should be in the first place. That said, obvious balance change warning here.
This mod has 2 quirks to be aware of: it requires DLCs, and it is not compatible with vanilla saves. You need to start a fresh game if you install it - but it’s worth it if you ask me.
Author: Shuulo
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Better Piracy
In X4, pirating small ships is a hit and miss. It’s pure RNG, and it’s fine if you don’t actually care about stealing ships - but if you want to make piracy one of your main focuses, it becomes an annoyance.
That’s where this mod comes in. It replaces the RNG small and medium ship piracy with something more predictable - the RNG is still there technically, but given time (and potentially shield on your ship in case you’re being attacked), you eventually will get the ship.
The mod is highly customizable - I personally made it more difficult than default to not make things too easy.
The mod also can affect boarding capital ships - however I don’t use that part of the mod, as it just makes boarding easier imo.
You might hear from people that this mod no longer works, however according to my testing, it’s only partially true.
There appear to be issues when you order NPC ships to do piracy - but the Harass option is still there when flying the ship yourself. I actually make extensive use of this feature and have a great success.
It’s been commented by iomatix that he’ll work on fixing the mod - but until then, it still works as a significant improvement to vanilla piracy.
Author: Alberto Rota
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Constant Corruption (TehGM’s Update)
Black Market works a strange way in X4 - you have to scan a signal leak on a station with black marketeer, do a specific mission for him, and only then you can sell illegal goods. However that part is rather fine.
What is a big problem is that, at least in my playthrough (not sure if it was cause of mods or game bug), they barely spawn in the galaxy. This made it really painful to get any proper illegal goods production running.
I also delved into game’s code and found that the black market guys don’t even spawn randomly - their spawn is determined when starting a new game. So if your save is unlucky, it’ll stay unlucky forever.
This mod exists to alter that. Constant Corruption makes it so over time more black marketeers spawn in the galaxy.
However I had mixed results with this mod - the way it’s designed, it’ll make whopping 40% of stations covered in black market guys in a timespan that is big on paper, but given nature of the game is actually relatively short.
Worse yet, trying to debug this mod, I found that it didn’t seem to work for me at all!
What I decided to do is take matters into my own hands. I altered the mod’s code - I fixed bugs and tampered it down slightly (only 12% of stations will have black markets). I also cleaned up the code so it’s easier to adjust the % and the speed of this mod (line 162 determines how often black market spawn will be attempted, lines 50 and 51 control max coverage and number of levels, and line 52 controls timeout between levels).
Author: Vectorial1024 (original mod) & TehGM (fix and rebalance update)
Links: Download TehGM’s Update | Original version on Nexus
Recycle Ships and Stations
As you can tell, I’m really going for piracy-oriented playthroughs. One of the challenges I set for myself was to never buy any ship, or any ship/station/module blueprint - I wanted everything do be procured by… my own means, to say so.
The game allows to hack station modules, unfortunately currently there’s no way to reverse engineer ships and ship modules - you have to buy blueprints off factions, which is what I didn’t want to do.
This is where this mod comes in. It allows you to reverse engineer any ship on your wharfs and shipyards for a chance to get blueprint of the ship itself and any module it has fitted. In addition, it adds a station module that allows you to do this even before you have your own shipyard (I admit I bought this blueprint, as no faction builds it so this was the only way to get it).
Small note: internal shield generators from VRO mod have super low chance to get with this mod, so I won’t blame you if you just buy blueprints for these.
Author: iforgotmysocks
Links: Nexus
Disable Encounters
A mod smaller than previous ones, but still important for immersion imo.
In X4, game can spawn random ships around you no matter where you are, just to provide you some content. I, and seemingly many others, find it pretty immersion breaking.
All this mod does is disable that. One downside is that patrol side-missions can look bugged as no new ships will spawn, but that’s minor sacrifice for a greater immersion imo.
Author: MegaJohnny
Links: Nexus
Mules, Supply and Warehouses Extended
Economy and trading in X4 play a huge role, and you’ll definitely want a fleet of transport ships transporting goods between your stations - be it for sale or further production.
The game itself has support for station traders, but they’re… limited, and admittedly wonky.
Mules mod adds a new set of highly customizable orders for trade ships. This makes it much easier to set up automated logistics without even assigning a ship to a station (although ofc you can do that too)!
Author: MoistDreams & doctorhay53
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Hazard Rework
Hazard sectors in X4 are… interesting. I understand what they were going for, and I like that idea.
The problem is the execution - while it works great when you’re flying your own ship, hazard is just a serial killer for AI ships that just fly into hazard zones, get stuck and die. This becomes especially apparent with one certain sector in Boron DLC.
This mod addresses that by making Hazard regions not affect ship hull. Shields still get damaged, but at least stupid AI doesn’t die all the time.
Author: draeath
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Legacy Music
Now a mod that doesn’t even change gameplay at all, but because of my nostalgia, it’s my personal must-have.
This mod expands in-game soundtrack by adding a lot of songs from previous X games. I personally use Extended (Lite) version, but you of course can pick whichever you want.
Author: Winghelm
Links: Nexus
Reaction Force
Vanilla patrol commands for your combat ships are quite lacking, to the point they’re nearly useless. This mod adds a new set of highly customizable commands that allow patrolling ships actually respond to distress signals set by your and friendly ships. Definitely must-have if you want to own sectors and have some enemies in-game.
The mod was originaly created by Shibdib, but it was later picked up by I.C.E.
Author: I.C.E.
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Multi Scrap Processor Station Fix
A mod fixing issue where salvaging station with multiple processor modules doesn’t use more than 1-2 modules at once.
Of course, Tides of Avarice DLC is required.
Author: Tizuby
Links: Nexus
Friendly Fire Tweaks
A mod changing NPCs’ retaliation logic slightly so they won’t retaliate so often when we shot them cause they decided to fly directly into our bullets.
Author: kuertee
Links: Nexus
KUDA AI Tweaks
Combines Kuertee’s Attack AI Tweaks mod and DeadAIR’s AI Tweaks mod. Together these mods tweak how combat AI works, making it at least a little less stupid - for example, ships will now fall back when their shields are down.
Author: kuertee & DeadAir
Links: Nexus
SirNukes Mod Support APIs
Just a library mod - mod that other mods require to use.
Author: SirNukes
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
UI Extensions and HUD
Much like SirNukes Mod Support APIs.
Author: kuertee
Links: Nexus
Balance-heavy Mods
Mods that still are highly recommended by me, but can change balance - which can make game much harder. It should be okay still, and they’re all really worth installing, but caution is definitely advised.
Technically VRO probably belongs in this category too, but I decided to put it in essential mods - it’s just too good to pass on, even though it does affect balance a fair bit.
Foundation of Conquest and War
Probably the most customizable mod on this list. Just after installing, it changes pretty much nothing. But then you can customize the amount of combat ships each faction will aim to produce.
The configuration is done via XML file, which might be scary for less tech-savvy folks, but don’t worry - all you have is to change some values to your liking. Each faction can be altered separately, so you can effectively decide on the balance of power in your playthrough.
This mod requires a few notes though:
- it allows for a lot of customizability, but you should read all comments and think carefully when setting it up. In my playthrough I boosted Xenons so much so they steamrolled through galaxy, causing a ton of chaos - and I didn’t even boost them all the way, and other factions were boosted too!
- factions will produce more ships depending on your settings, which naturally affects CPU demand.
- changing values during existing save won’t merely cause ships to spawn/despawn. This mod merely changes target quotas, so ships still need time to be produced/destroyed.
Author: BlackRain
Links: Egosoft Forum
Reactive Factions Retribution
In X4, you can befriend almost anyone - so what if Paranids and Argons are enemies, you can just be friends with them all. This has numerous issues - it’s immersion breaking, but also many players will avoid wars, which will lead to their game stagnating and becoming boring - and they’ll end up blaming the game itself!
Reactive Factions mod changes it’s so that depending on the size of player empire, it becomes increasingly hard and eventually impossible to befriend everyone - supporting one faction will anger their enemies. This makes player going into wars inevitable, making the game much more interesting and fun!
Reactive Factions was originally developed by Shuulo. Reactive Factions Retribution is a continued and improved version of the mod that also adds an useful in-game menu to customize the mod to your liking.
Author: iomatix
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Landlord
A small mod that adds maintenance cost of stations in form of a tax paid to the owner of the sector (if we don’t own the sector, that is). It also works both ways though - if NPC faction builds a station in a sector owned by us, we’ll get their tax money!
Author: Shibdib
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Getting Paid
Another small mod, in a way similar to Landlord - adds maintenance cost to stations, but ships as well, in form of salaries that are automatically paid to the crews and workers.
Can be customized through XML file.
Author: iforgotmysocks
Links: Nexus
Smaller Mods
Finally, mods that are smaller, or I consider less essential. That said, I still use every single of the mods listed, and definitely still recommend them all.
External App
This mod, combined with 2 executables you need to launch, starts a local web server and opens a fancy nearly real-time dashboard website. You can use it for tracking log messages, highlight log messages based on key words, track missions, research, money, reputation and more.
If you only have one screen it’s probably pointless, but if you play on a multi-monitor setup it’s insanely helpful. All information it provides can be accessed in-game, but having it open on second screen without having to go through in-game menus is a huge QoL feature.
Author: Mycu
Links: Nexus
Head Hunter
So, reports are that Better Kill Credit mod no longer works. Head Hunter comes in with the rescue - now all kills can reward a small reward. But the reward is small as that’s not the meat of what this mod offers.
The mod also adds accumulating bounties on ships. As ships kill other ships, they accumulate bounty over bounty and can easily be wanted for millions of credits over time. Kill them and you get the payout. It can feel a bit OP, but it’s all customizable - I set the bounty amount to 50%, and I think it’s great.
Your own ships can also be hunted by other bounty hunters. These bounty hunters actually look for you instead of just spawning. Once they find you, you either fight or comm them to pay off your bounty 10x its value.
Unfortunately I ended up disabling this particular feature. It worked great in the beginning - being hunted for my crimes against HOP and others felt immersive and added an interesting layer to the game. The problems started when I started using fleets for wars - it’d be fine if only enemy bounty hunters tried to kill your assets, but why do Argons etc hunt my ships for killing HOP assets?
But overall, this mod is fine addition, and is pretty customizable. Also offers a nice in-map view and bounty search tab, making it quite seamless to use.
Author: Chillmatica
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Emergent Missions
Adds dynamic escort, patrol, search and destroy, and some other mission types, all based on what actually is happening in your area. Patrol missions actually have a fleet commander that assigns targets for you, bounty kill missions are targetting ships that actually annoyed the faction that gives the quest. Reward is based on your performance instead of being static - kill more/do more damage, get higher payment. You can also assign your ships to do some of these for you - you simply have to pick up the reward once they’re done.
My 7.0 playthrough is more mercenary-themed than pirate-themed, and these fit great - I assign a fleet to patrol missions while going to head hunt myself. You can customize how high the rewards are, and the required reputation to receive the mission offers.
Author: kuertee
Links: Nexus
Jobs Shuffle
Allows AI with certain jobs to fly to sectors other than DLC they were added in. This makes DLCs integrate with each other better, and also helps if you add custom sectors to the game.
Author: Treybor
Links: Steam Workshop
More AI Economy Ships
Adds more civilian jobs to AI ships, allowing S ships perform M/L jobs, M/L ships perform S jobs, and removes some other wierd and artificial restrictions on AI that didn’t make much sense (or outright broke them).
Author: Treybor
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
X4 Fire and Smoke
Purely graphical mod, making explosions more flashy. Isn’t realistic by any means, but looks super cool!
Author: KungFury
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
ApologizeForAttack
In X3, there was an option to comm a hostile ship and apologize for attacking them. Assuming we didn’t do too much damage and they weren’t enemy faction, they’d accept it being an accidental friendly fire and move on.
This mod re-adds this functionality to X4.
Author: iforgotmysocks
Links: Nexus
Better Scan Colors
Adjusts the color shading that appears on station modules while in scan mode.
Note: I personally use older version that also came in “Light” version. I don’t think it’s distributed like that anymore, though.
Author: FlynTie
Links: Nexus
Event Driven News
Regularly shows us messages/notifications with news based on actual events happening in the game’s universe. This functions in 2 ways: adds immersion, and notifies player about what is happening.
Author: mr_jonesandme
Links: Nexus
Fighter Repairs
Allows commander ship (like carrier) with repair drones to slowly repair small and medium ships docked and escorting it.
Author: iforgotmysocks
Links: Nexus
More Default Paint
Allows many more paintjobs to be set as the default one for ships in our empire.
Author: SkeletalFish
Links: Steam Workshop
Paintjobs Galore!
Adds more paintjobs that we can use on our ships.
Author: Axeface
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
More Default Paint - Paintjobs Galore!
Compatibility mod for More Default Paint and Paintjobs Galore! - specifically, allows for the new paintjobs to be selected as default.
Author: SkeletalFish
Links: Steam Workshop
Paintjobs for Sale
Allows to buy all of the paintjobs in-game from traders on station docks without having to unlock them through war missions or ventures. Works with paintjobs added by mods.
Author: Treacherous Tyrant
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
More NPC
Spawns more people walking on stations.
Author: Shamon
Links: Nexus
More Ship Rooms
Capital ships have more interior rooms to walk in. Purely immersion/visual change.
Author: Derinzed
Links: Nexus
New Visual Effect for Anomalies (ToA)
Changes the look of anomalies to a much nicer one. This version uses some effects added with Tides of Avarice DLC.
Tides of Avarice DLC is required for this version, but non-DLC version also exists.
Author: WhoKnows
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
No Claim Damage
Removes the damage to the ship dealt when you claim a ship that crew bailed out of. Especially useful for piracy playthroughs.
Author: kettu55
Links: Nexus
Sane Office Ambience
The ambient sounds in the Player Headquarters can definitely be annoying, especially if you idle a long time in your office. This simple mod removes these annoyances, making your stay in PHQ much more comfy.
Author: draeath
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Custom Tabs
Allows you to get 3 more tabs on map and pick what goes into them. This makes browsing your large empire much better.
Author: Mycu
Links: Nexus
Go Fix Your Face
A simple mod that adds a right click option for ships to go repair themselves at the closest station/ship they can, instead of having to manually order them to go there.
Author: Chillmatica
Links Steam Workshop | Nexus
Roaming Fleet
Adds a command for fleet commander to go roam to some sector, kill the baddies, loot and come back.
Author: Chillmatica
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Obsolete Mods
There are some mods that I used, think are great, and would still use if… they didn’t get either massively outdated or their functionality didn’t get added to the game by Egosoft.
They’re still worth considering if for some reason you play older version, they get updated, or you prefer them as alternative to what Egosoft added.
NoSuperHighway
Why Obsolete: You can now opt in to disable highway generation by starting a custom game. It also bugs out one non-essential quest in Boron storyline, at least in my experience.
Still use if: You play older version that has no custom start option, want to remove the highways on the existing save, or you hate that this start option doesn’t hide the highway “gates”.
A mod with admittedly misleading name, as it doesn’t remove super highways (they’re used to get from sector to sector, similarly to jump gates), but a ring highway around the core sectors of the galaxy.
But why it’s so important? IMO the highway doesn’t belong in space. It looks out of place, and also makes the playable universe feel smaller. With this mod installed, the space in X4 feels more like… ykno, space.
And as mentioned above, VRO mod is designed with this mod in mind as well.
Author: stupidprocess
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Starbright
Why Obsolete: This functionality has been added to the game in version 7.0.
Still use if: You play game versions before 7.0, or want to play with the alternative sunlight amounts set by the mod.
Sectors in X4 vanilla as well as Split Vendetta all had solar cells production set to 100% - no matter how exposed to sunlight the sector is. This was changed in later DLCs - new sectors now have different solar cell production values - some sectors have efficiency above 100%, some below 100%. This is pretty great, as it adds variety to the in-game sectors.
Unfortunately Egosoft decided to keep all pre-CoH sectors to 100% until update 7.0. Luckily, modding community came to the rescue - Starbright mod changes solar production efficiency of all pre-CoH sectors in game depending on how the sector looks like etc!
Author: Allectus
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Better Kill Credit
Why Obsolete: I’ve heard a number of mentions of this mod not working anymore for a long long time now. It also does conflict with some other mods that affect kill credits.
Still use if: It works for you. I admit I haven’t tested if it still works.
In vanilla X4 we get a “thank you” payment for killing pirates and other enemies next to NPC stations only if we personally killed them.
This mod changes it so that kills made by other ships in player faction also count.
Author: Mysterial
Links: Steam Workshop
Tugs Better Flee
One of small fix-mods from Phipsz. In vanilla X4, tug ships will cling onto the wreck they’re hauling even when under attack. This mod fixes that problem.
Of course, Tides of Avarice DLC is required.
Author: Phipsz
Links: Nexus
Teuta Salvage Workaround
Another small fix from Phipsz. In vanilla X4, Teuta has a bug that sometimes it won’t keep salvaging if player is not in the sector. This mod fixes it.
Of course, Tides of Avarice DLC is required.
Author: Phipsz
Links: Nexus
Civilian Fleets
Why Obsolete: Vectorial1024 said this mod is now discontinued as 7.0 update improved mimic behaviour for the ships.
Still use if: Playing before 7.0 release.
Allows you to create a fleet of civilian ships, similarly how vanilla game allows creating fleets of combat ships. Great for management when your empire grows and you have a ton of logistics going all over the place.
Author: Vectorial1024
Links: Steam Workshop | Nexus
Summary
X4 Foundations is a great, if flawed, spacesim game. In my opinion - once you look past some of its shortcomings in some areas, it easily trumps competition like Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen and others - it allows much more gameplay flexibility, and has much much more content than its competitors.
Mods for this game help fix/alter some of the shortcomings X4 has. I definitely recommend modding the game as it greatly improves the experience - just be careful not to throw balance out the airlock - unless that’s exactly what you want!
And by all means - do explore Steam Workshop and Nexus Mods for more. My list is just the mods that I personally use and recommend - but X series always had a really strong modding community, so there’s definitely much more to discover - and if I start using more mods, I’ll keep this post updated!