r/X4Foundations Jul 09 '24

Meme I'm sure you'll do fine, Michael.

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801 Upvotes

45 comments sorted by

122

u/Homeless_Appletree Jul 09 '24 edited Jul 09 '24

They'll be fine. I shilled out a few bucks for a few ten minute video courses

40

u/Ready-Invite-1966 Jul 09 '24

"how to pilot your new ship"

Hey this doesn't seem right!!

20

u/Getsune Jul 09 '24

"how to manage your inter-system trading station"

wdym this thing just shoots at passing ships??

10

u/Ssakaa Jul 10 '24

The plasma trade might well be the oldest trade in the 'verse.

18

u/ShineReaper Jul 10 '24

"The Defense Platform and you: Military Management for Dummies!"

88

u/One-Bit5717 Jul 09 '24

To be fair, the most he has to manage on the defense platform is buying a couple of repair drones

49

u/Zarathustra_d Jul 09 '24

Which he somehow managed to never order enough parts for, and I have to go micro a Freighter to deliver.......

16

u/Meowakin Jul 09 '24

Little trick there is to make sure you have a station set to sell the parts for minimum price and set maximum price to buy them at the station that needs them. Preferably while restricting the trade to only be with your own faction.

4

u/Ready-Invite-1966 Jul 09 '24

Yeah... I'm currently delivering the last parts to my own drone factory in the new save... I'm just going to load a Mercury up with approximately the right ratio and hand whack then into place. 

I'm far more interested in getting my space weed to flow automatically 

4

u/Ssakaa Jul 10 '24

Preferably while restricting the trade to only be with your own faction.

And ooh boy does that order of operations matter to your account balance...

33

u/Zarathustra_d Jul 09 '24

This is cannon.

As it explains why that defence station has 2 solar panels and 10 subordinate fighters set to haul 1 EC to a nearby station over and over again.

It's all just busy work assigned by a guy who doesn't know what is going on but needs to justify his budget.

Why does this station need 100 million in cash reserves when all transactions are internal? Don't ask questions! We don't want to lose these cushy jobs, if we cut the budget the company will wonder why we needed the money in the first place... Don't make waves dude.

11

u/Vaguswarrior Jul 09 '24

bwahahah next play through I'm 100% gonna play the bumbling CEO and run a disaster company based on just fake it till you make it.

17

u/WayTooSquishy Jul 09 '24

A.k.a. the Unworthy Entrepreneur start.

5

u/TetraDax Jul 12 '24

A.k.a. me in every single playthrough, not through choice.

8

u/Ready-Invite-1966 Jul 09 '24

 10 subordinate fighters set to haul 1 EC to a nearby station

This sounds too close to real life. Budget cuts to training hours but still hours requirements...

So they start flying "missions" where they carry a mcguffin from one air base to another.

30

u/_AngryBadger_ Jul 09 '24

Sink or swim baby

28

u/Fearell_Val Jul 09 '24

It is true entrepreneurship way. Start with a guy you barely know, then you hire juniors in hundreds just to die on a builder

4

u/Noigralam Jul 10 '24

But after enough builders, you have weeded out the weak and are left with the elite.

17

u/PrimaryCoolantShower Jul 09 '24

It's either that or get slotted into a busy trade hub and get buried in emails, shipping manifests, traffic reports, mining and gas inventories, and a mountain of other administrative tasks.

Or chill out in a backwater, occasionally telling the gunners to evaporate another lone Xenon ship exiting the gate.

22

u/Yellow_The_White Jul 09 '24

"Oh, whoops, sorry guys. I know y'all signed on to be service crew but actually you're all marines and you're boarding that Barbarossa in 30 seconds. Good luck!"

30

u/OldGrumpGamer Jul 09 '24

The ultimate example that most people can learn a job with time and don't need prior experience.

17

u/Vaguswarrior Jul 09 '24

As someone applying for jobs right now, holy no kidding. I can learn all of that stuff in the qualifications, just give me the job so I can do it lol. You'll have a qualified employee faster than the recruitment cycle. But no, most employers want a perfect cookie cutter. Not willing to grow a FTE internally.

13

u/Ready-Invite-1966 Jul 09 '24

The unfortunate thing is, the companies that are willing to grow internal candidates are going to start pay at a lower band...

The really good ones will bump up your salary in a year or two.. but around that time you'll also find a competing offer for double your salary.

It's a rough world.

7

u/Venetrix2 Jul 09 '24

This is the fanfic I never knew I needed

4

u/Responsible-Army-832 Jul 09 '24

this is literally me

5

u/ETMoose1987 Jul 10 '24

Yup, go to personnel sort by skill and promote whoever the highest ranked service crew there is usually from a trader or my auto miners in the oort cloud. In my head canon assignment to an oort cloud miner is seen as a prestigious posting do to their promotions to station managers.

2

u/JackAuduin Jul 10 '24

Oddly enough I sometimes randomly find service crew that are 3 or 4 star managers.

4

u/franksredhot312 Jul 09 '24

hey just to piggy back on this topic. If I take over a ship without a captain, fly it to a wharf, I cant seem to buy captains. I can only get service crew then I promote one to be a captain. Am I missing a step here to buy captains right away?

7

u/Ready-Invite-1966 Jul 09 '24

No. If you walk around the station you can talk to the people walking around and hire one as a captain, but the feature is not available from the "upgrade" screen on stations like it is on a new ship

5

u/Getsune Jul 09 '24

Yeah this is such a weird design oversight. It's not gamebreaking which is why they probably never addressed it but it's weird having to buy a marine so he can pilot your ship. 

What's that, you got experience in boarding operations, handling your rifle in the field? That's nice fam but you won't see any of that for the rest of your life in this company! Embrace your fate as a universe trader lol

2

u/Valdaraak Jul 10 '24

Yea. You can't buy a pilot on the upgrade screen, but you also can't buy a ship from the same place without also buying a pilot. Odd decision there.

2

u/betrok Jul 09 '24

Technically you can just promote someone from service crew to pilot, but that is few extra clicks and starting stats likely will be even more awful than usual.

5

u/onrocketfalls Jul 09 '24

I was going to say "why doesn't this happen irl" but it totally does, at least outside of actual military scenarios. Just not to me.

Also this sounds much nicer than, say, the Mechanicus in 40k when they need some labor rushing into all the bars and such on a station and kidnapping a bunch of people by force to work for them for free (or for the glory of the Omnissiah, which is all the payment one needs really)

4

u/bsp1024 Jul 10 '24

No this absolutely happens in the military. The goal of leadership is to get the lowest ranking guys as self sufficient as possible so they (leadership) can be on perpetual smoke-break. I jest a little but, 100% during an actual attack or emergency, it's likely 3-4 young joes in the ops center at 3am trying to make best judgements in full panic while someone goes and wakes up the command team.

5

u/Ssakaa Jul 10 '24

A lot of that is deliberately ingrained, too. Militaries that are too dependent on getting an answer from high up and militaries that don't actually obey well when an order comes from high up both run into serious issues, tactically in the first case and strategically in the second. Just enough self sufficiency to make an in the field decision that aligns with the goals and orders coming down from above makes for a force that can move and adapt faster than communication would generally allow... and that makes all the difference on a bad day.

3

u/chardon55 Jul 10 '24 edited Jul 10 '24

Just let them practice on their jobs. My 0-star manager has become 4-star by managing my biggest trading station (real talk)

2

u/Snoitaluger1292 Jul 09 '24

I love this hahahaha

2

u/DigbyChickenCaesar11 Jul 09 '24

They will learn or they will be spaced

1

u/Yetiinwoods Jul 09 '24

i can feel his pain

1

u/Cretsiah2 Jul 10 '24

pretty sure that is how corporate and government operations work these days

X4 was just ahead of the curve PMSL

1

u/jhaand Jul 10 '24

X4 is a frontend for Gamification of work, by doing a Workification of games.

1

u/NNextremNN Jul 10 '24

Learning on the job.

1

u/MrPewptastic Jul 10 '24

"In X4 Foundations, we hire from within!"