First you do the Flight School! X4 has some fancy movement controls that you'll at least want to know exist. Even if you've got a lot of experience in X3, it's worth doing the Flight School. If you want some more practice shooting things, you can do the Combat Scenario after Flight School.

Second, I should point out that the start you pick isn't a big deal. This is not like picking a class in a role playing game! You are just deciding what ship you start with, who likes/distrusts you, and possibly a short, initial mission or three.

Now let's get to your starting scenario. First, do you want to start out doing some fighting, or would you rather explore? Or maybe even do a little lightweight trading?

I want to fight! Maximum Pew!
OK, how much guidance do you want at the start?

• Nobody tells me what to do! (or you just haven't bought any DLC): you can start either as the Young Gun or the Dedicated Warrior. Pick whichever one has the ship you like most.
  
• Not much guidance, but a long term goal would be nice: either Split start. Spear of the Patriarch will give you a fighter to start out with while Fires of Defeat gives you a scout, but more races will let you land on their stations with the Fires of Defeat start. One faction of the humans will shoot on sight if you take the Spear start!
  
• This game is big, point me in a good direction for the opening hour: Terran Cadet will guide you through a military start. Stranded will aim you more toward learning the ways of a pirate.

So much space! I need to see it all!

• If you want to fly around and see what there is to see, Untested Explorer is for you. (Also, it doesn't require any DLC.)
  
• Project Genesis in the Cradle of Humanity DLC gives you more guidance to start with, then hands you a station! Well, OK, it actually hands you a big rock to which you can attach a station. It also hands you a second scout pretty quick. {If you've got the Kingdom End DLC, this start is one of the slowest to get the HQ! See the note in the Kingdom End section. Also, I got a small fighter instead of a second scout when I tried it with the Kingdom End DLC active.}
  
• If you have Kingdom End, the Emergence start is very similar to the Untested Explorer start, but you begin very close to the plot to unlock Boron space.

Make Money by Trading

• The Smuggler start in Tide of Avarice is the only one that starts you out in a trade ship. It's slow, it's small, but it has some decent cargo space.

How should I know!?
It's hard to tell how much fun you'll have in the various ways to play this game. Like I said earlier, though, it doesn't matter that much. I would say start with one of the exploration starts. It's good to have fewer enemies out of the gate.

There might be some things you are worried about but really don't matter in this game:

• What your character looks like. This game is almost all in first person. I outright forgot what I looked like until a cutscene played that got out of first person and I wondered what that one gal was doing just standing there! Gender does matter slightly: men will be called "sir" and women will be called "ma'm". (The Paranid is called "sir," but the gender is listed as "5th.")
  
• Character name. You can change that any time you like, as often as you like. Just press Shift-I and click the little crown in the upper left.
  
• Starting cash. Most starts begin with 5,000-10,000. Either way, it's nearly nothing in this game. For comparison's sake, the weak ship you'll get at the start of the game will be worth a few hundred thousand credits! (Note: as of 6.0, all the starts are open to all players. The ones that give you a lot of money to start with were originally meant for experienced players. I really don't recommend starting the game with one of those.)

• When you select a start in the main menu, it will show you the ship you'll be starting with in the tiny video window while the main character speaks. If you are worried about how your ship looks, keep an eye on the video. (Don't worry about the color - that's something you can change with Shift-I as well.)
  
• You can pick from several logos whenever you want. So, if you start as the Paranid, you can quickly switch the logo to something less human-centered! (It's right next to where you change your name.)
  
• Factions that don't like you can be made more friendly by doing missions for them (if they are willing to give you any) and shooting enemies near their stations. The Scale Plate Pact (SCA) is an exception: they will always slightly dislike you no matter what you do to/for them (unless you do something REALLY spectacular for them). Also, the Xenon and Kha'ak will always hate you.
  
• This game is nearly a sandbox-style game. You might get some guidance when you start out, but it won't be long before you won't have enough cash or a strong enough ship to continue. You'll need to look around and decide what to do at that point. That could be missions, mining, trading, picking up and selling the junk floating around after a big battle, finding and opening lockboxes, and so on. Or you can just find other plots to do: there are several open to brand new players!

That ends the quick start section. Now for the details...

The tutorials are set up as a pretty long series of lessons. You are most certainly not supposed to go through each one, one by one, before starting the game! That would take forever, plus you would be learning things that you won't use for quite a while. Better to learn those when it's time.

The basics are worth going through right away. You learn how to move around on foot, talk to people, fly a ship, dock a ship, shoot your guns/missiles, and pick up loot. You can get away without shooting anything for a long time, but you're going to need to know how to fly a ship right away. I would suggest doing as many of the basic tutorials as you can before even starting to play.

The intermediate and advanced tutorials are good to do after you've been playing for a few hours. Maybe quite a few hours for some of them.

When you finish playing the basic tutorials, the game may suggest playing Timelines. I'm dubious about that suggestion.

Timelines is a collection of short scenarios. Like the tutorials, they are done outside of the main gameplay. You're a different person (with a different save file) in Timelines. These scenarios are pretty good practice, but they ramp up in difficulty and, mostly, they just aren't why you bought the game in the first place. Pick a start and play the game! Come back to Timelines when you're looking for a change of pace.

(Yes, Timelines does award you with free ships. Sort of. It places the reward ships in sectors and tells you what sector they are in, but it doesn't tell you exactly where they are in the sector. Finding them isn't easy without looking up the locations in a guide, and the ships you get for the early scenarios aren't all that great anyway.)
 
Combat Scenario

The last tutorial on the list lets you take on something more challenging. If you care about combat, you'll want to do this fairly soon. Don't worry about getting blown up when playing this tutorial - they'll just give you another ship.

The Combat Scenario changes depending on what DLC you have. If you want to try the scenario as a Split pilot, for instance, you can use the main menu's "Extensions" option to turn off all the DLC except the Split DLC, restart the game, and then start the Combat Scenario. You'll be in a Split fighter attacking the Teladi!

The combat scenario is also good for shutting Jace Winger up about his flight school. Select that one (without starting it) and he won't say a word.

Additional Notes

Station building tutorial - When it asks you to pick a "pier," it's a little confusing because they just told you about docks and piers, but the only pier that's available is called "1 Dock," so you might think the pier is a dock! (If you hover over it, the full name is visible as "1 Dock Pier.") Also, the station pieces do not need to be connected! That makes placing that big solar panel a lot easier.

These starts drop you right into the game. Here's your small ship, here's your pittance of cash, here's another reminder to do the flight tutorial, now go play!

Unless otherwise noted, the Duke's Buccaneers don't like you (-15) and the Yaki really don't like you (-25). The Xenon and Kha'ak will always be at -30 and the Scale Plate Pact will always be at -5.

The Young Gun

You get a small, barely armed fighter and start off in Black Hole Sun (near the center of the map), starting as a male Argon.

The Dedicated Warrior

This is very similar to the Young Gun start, but you know about a few more sectors to start with. Also, you start as a Paranid (similar to the one on the left, but wearing different clothing).

The Untested Explorer

You get a small, barely armed scout ship that at least travels fairly quickly. The Terrans and Zyart don't like you much, but they don't like anybody much - and at least the Zyarts will let you explore their territory. You'll start as an Argon female.


There are also two starts that have to be unlocked, which you do by obtaining the player headquarters. I presume that means that you have to get access to the station and get Boso set up there, not just see it and maybe scan it a little. These starts essentially skip the opening hours of the game.

<<As of 6.0, these starts are no longer locked! New players can use them when starting out if they want. I wouldn't recommend it, though, as you'll be skipping over the guidance the game gives you. Still, these starts are nice for returning players and players that didn't back up their saves before switching computers.>>

The Accomplished Scientist
You start on your personal headquarters! Boso is already set up, so you're ready to do research. You've got a small fighter with some good weapons and engines. Several sectors are on the map and have a satellite near a gate. You've also got blueprints for energy cells and meat plants, plus 250,000 credits.

The Alliance of the Word is already at +10 relations with you. I don't normally list them because they are a very small faction that seems to like everyone but having +10 with them already means you can get access to their faction benefits.

The Unworthy Entrepreneur
You get a small station that produces sunrise oil and the blueprints needed to make it (but no more). You also get a medium sized trader and a scout. You'll want to find a source of water and energy cells to start building your product! Water might be a little tricky, the south-east part of the map is notoriously dry.


The Greatest Mind of Our Time
Little is known about this mysterious start, said to only appear at certain times, when the developers consider us worthy.

Scale Plate Pact is at -5, Xenon are at -30. Aliance of the Word, Antigone, Argons, Godrealm, Holy Order, Hatikvah, Ministry of Finance, and Teladi Company are all at 0. Everything else is unknown.

Both Split starts begin just as a battle is ending. Both also give you a long term mission that gives you an achievement if you complete them.

Spear of the Patriarch

You start out in a fighter just as some Free Family ships are getting themselves blown up. Your mission will be to take 11th Hour and Guiding Star sectors (both parts) for the Zyarth. You can capture them for yourself or just arrange for the Zyarth to take them. Either way, that's going to take quite a long time.

Your little fighter isn't bad for a starting ship, but the Zyarth are very unpopular. In fact, the Argon are outright enemies at the start (-21) and will shoot at your combat ships! Surprisingly, the Free Families that you were just helping shoot are at -5 relations, which means you can make amends easily!

Fires of Defeat

The Zyarth just blew up your ship, so you're stuck in space with just your space suit! You should be able to find a little scout before you suffocate. Your long-term mission will be to exact revenge by destroying the fleet that just blew up your ship.

The Terran starts both have some tiny missions at the start that segue into larger missions. They're a nice way to ease you into the X universe. If you would rather have mommy just drop you in the sandbox then go back inside, you can do the base game starts.

Terran Cadet

You get a nice little fighter and quickly get a little mission to check out an old wreck, which leads to a fight. Pretty soon, you'll be defending a station from Xenon attack, which is the start of a large plot in the game. Otherwise, it's similar to the Young Gun start - except more factions don't like you initially. Even the Ministry doesn't like you! Only the usual factions will actually shoot you on sight, but you'll have a lot of work to do if you want to be everyone's friend.

Project Genesis

This one starts you out in a scout and has you do some satellite work and a little <ahem> extra-legal trading. (Hint: you could find some of what is requested floating in space if Xenon try attacking a station!) This quickly turns into a bigger story: namely acquiring the player headquarters! It starts out differently than the way other starts get the HQ, which will cause you to miss a few achievements, but gives more detail on what was happening. (If you really want those achievements, it only takes an hour or so to get the HQ with another start once you know what you're doing.)

You'll find yourself with a scout and a small fighter (or possibly another scout) pretty quickly in this start, but your first ship will end up in a sector halfway across the map. You'll need to hire a pilot and send him/her/whatever-you-call-Paranid to your ship to control it remotely.

Unlike many starts, the HQ will be placed in Grand Exchange, even if you have the Kingdom End DLC enabled (see below).

Both Avarice starts let you pick your gender.

Smuggler's Paradise - you start out with a little courier transport ship as part of a syndicate. It ain't fast and it ain't big, but it will get you trading right away.

Stranded - you start out in a small fighter. Well, actually you start in a jail cell, but that doesn't last long. One particularly nice thing about this fighter is that it already has a Mk2 docking computer installed. Just crash into the intended docking bay and let the computer do the landing!

NOTE: If you have the Kingdom End DLC, the "headquarters plot" will no longer be accessible under most starts. Instead, the HQ will simply appear when you go to a certain sector. You won't even have to build a dock for it. The "Project Genesis" and "Accomplished Scientist" starts still have the HQ in the original sector, and "Project Genesis" has the last two thirds of the HQ plot as well.

Emergence - this start is a hybrid between Untested Explorer and Accomplished Scientist. Your ship and starting cash are weak, like the Untested Explorer, but you also get the Player HQ handed to you on a silver platter. It sounds a little rough for brand new players, but it might work out. It will be a good one for returning players and players that like to explore but can't stand being called "mam."

Queen's Herald - play as a Boron (male or female) with a fairly strong (if under gunned) gunship and quite a bit of money. The whole plot covering the opening of the gate to the Boron home sector is already done when you start this mission, so I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner. Like 'Accomplished Scientist,' I think this start is more for returning players.


(For most factions, meeting the Queendom of the Boron requires doing some work for them, so your faction level will likely get to 9 or 10 before they can really become interesting in your game.)

These allow you to create your own start! You can pick your starting ship and its exact loadout, what sectors you know about, what sector you start in, what faction relations you have, or even give yourself a station! The budgeted start puts a cap on what you can get depending on how far you got in your previous game (you can look on Egosoft's wiki[wiki.egosoft.com] for exactly how you advance the budget). The creative start lets you use whatever you want, but your game will be marked as "modified" so you won't be able to use the multiplayer functionality if/when that shows up.

Creative starts are great for games that you don't intend to continue. For instance, you might have made a great looking station... or at least you think it's great looking. Is it? Well, you can save the build plan then do a creative start where you begin with the station already built and see just what it looks like! Or maybe you just want to see a station you've already got sitting in Litany of Fury or Matrix 79B. Make a racetrack station out of Terran hoops and quantum tube fabs, and race ships through it. (Too easy? Try turning on Newtonian flight!) Or maybe you want to try a ship loadout against a Xenon station? Easy enough with a creative start.

The budgeted starts are not just a matter of money. Along the bottom, you'll see money, personnel, knowledge, and relations. Your crew choices add to your personnel count, knowing about what's out in the galaxy without exploring costs knowledge points, and getting good relations with normally nasty factions cost you relations points. Going over on any of them will block the 'start game' button. (Story states and research don't seem to cost anything. They're just listed for convenience.)

The interface is mostly straightforward, but it can get a little bit tricky when it comes to placing things.

• When you click on the map, your starting ship will be moved to that location... most of the time.
  
• There are a bunch of standard stations, but any station you have exported (from inside a normal start or the station building start) can be loaded.
  
• If you are editing a station, there's a drop down list to select the sector it's in. You can place it more precisely by putting your cursor in the box to enter the station's name, then clicking the map with your mouse. (I haven't found a way to rotate the station or move it above/below the plane.)
  
• The same goes for ships?
  
• When you first look at the plot options, you'll only find the HQ option enabled, even if you've finished several plots. To enable them, you have to select the option to finish the HQ plot. If you haven't got Dal, you can't start several plots!
  
• Similarly, if you haven't got Boso, you can't have any research done.
  
• If you've got the headquarters, you can move it just like any other station! Feel free to drop it in the Oort Cloud or even a Xenon sector.
  
• If you've built a station based on the HQ, you can select that to be your headquarters.
  
• If you put a station with an administrative center into an unclaimed sector, you'll own the sector at the start of the game. You might be able to sneak a sector by being the second claimant, too. For instance, if you put an admin center in Second Contact 2, then the Paranid blow up the Ant's admin center, I expect you'll become the owner. I've never tried it, though.
  
• The caviar exploit still seems to work for getting money cheaply. If you want, you can spend your money allowance on spacefly eggs. When you start the game, immediately take the eggs to a crafting table, make a lot of caviar out of them, and sell them off. You can get up to 10,000 eggs, giving you well over 400,000,000 credits! I suspect the exploit will be plugged at some point, though - perhaps when the multiplayer system shows up again.

Before you start your game, I strongly suggest you export your start for safe keeping. There always seems to be something you forgot to set up. Having your start saved makes it easy to import, tweak, and start again.

You'll appear next to a console. Click it, and you'll be on the map window looking at a station plot. Edit the plot to your heart's content. You've got every station module in the game. If you zoom out the map view, you'll also see a headquarters station that you can edit, too!

Having every possible module is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, there's no limit to your creativity. On the other hand, if you are trying to design a station for your main game, there's a real good chance you'll pick some module that you don't own yet. If you do, your main game will block you from loading the station plan and tell you what you're missing. Honestly, though, I think it's easier just to make the plan in your main game - you can do it while in the pause menu.

If you are making a station for a budgeted start, you'll need to pay for every blueprint you use as well as the parts for the module. Try to keep the variety to a minimum! Also, if you're trying to set up a station with a Paranid administration center, be careful which one you pick. There's a normal one plus another that's used in the Paranid's plot. The latter costs FAR more than the former, even though it looks exactly the same.

Remember that custom starts require you to export your plan. Simply saving it to your drop-down list isn't enough.

This assumes you've gotten fairly far into the game - far enough that you've gotten the headquarters and gotten fairly rich as well. I'm assuming a budgeted start, here, so modified games don't count. (You can always do a creative game start instead of budgeted.)
https://youtu.be/w3W-AwCXFcs
1. Start the game and select the Station Designer start. Click the console table in front of you but, instead of clicking the continue button, pan back and select the HQ plot instead. (00:45)

2. Customize the station the way you want it. Try to keep the number of blueprints you use to a minimum as you'll have to pay for every one of them! Unless you've gotten very far into the game, don't expect to be able to make an HQ that can build Advanced Electronics from silicon, methane, and helium. If you haven't gotten all that far into the game, you can create a trade station from a docking bay and a container storage module.

3. Export the station. Give it a name you'll recognize. (10:18)

4. Exit the game to the main menu and start again, this time picking budgeted start.

5. Pick your player model, name, starting balance, a starting inventory, and so on. Changing these affects your "Money" budget in the lower left. (11:06)

6. Set up your starting ship. (11:58) Again, this comes out of your money budget... mostly. At 12:45, I go set up the crew for the ship. That exacts a cost of personnel.

7. Next I move my starting ship by selecting the Universe editor, zooming/panning the map on the right, then simply clicking where I want the ship to go. (13:04) It's also possible to pick the sector by name from the dropdown list for the starting sector. Note that the original starting sector of Argon Prime is still known because I didn't bother to remove it.

8. Next I add a few sectors to my list of known sectors. I set them so I know what stations are in all of them and add satellites to one of them. The satellites add almost a million to my money budget! Having both satellites and knowledge of all stations is likely a waste of knowledge points, but I suppose some stations way above/below the plane could get missed by the satellites.

9. At 14:07, I start working on the factions. I make it so everybody is moderately nice to me, though the Buckaneers aren't listed for some reason. I also add some extra faction points to the Ministry and the Alliance of the Word because those are such a bother to advance. I turn on knowledge of a few factions, which I expect is another waste of good knowledge points (if you haven't even seen a ship from a faction, why gain knowledge of them?).

10. Now it's time to place the custom HQ. Go to the Property section, add a station, look in the drop down list, and - disabled entries for my custom HQs! Why? Because I haven't done anything with the Story section yet, so I don't have an HQ to customize!

11. OK, over to the Story section, add the headquarters. For this game, it doesn't matter if Dal is there or not.

12. Now (15:07) I select Property again and you can see that I have the HQ already added. (It's going to cost me 325,454 credits, too.) Select the drop down for station options. This time, only the HQ options appear, and they are all enabled. I select the expensive one I exported back in step 3.

13. Next, I go in and give the HQ a name. Before letting my cursor out of the name box, I go to the right and place it where I want in the sector.

14. Now I give the manager some quick skills so somebody can run the station and add a subordinate M trader.

15. I check things over to make sure I have cash (I really hate it when I forget to give myself cash - though it might be fun to see how long it takes to get a big station working when you've got no cash to feed it).

16. I did forget something! Research. At 18:48, I set some of those.

17. At 19:25 I export my save. You really want to do that, in case you mess something up!

18. Finally, I start the game! At 21:00 I pop out of the pilot's seat and promote somebody to captain of the ship. I've never found a way to assign a good captain to the player starting ship directly, but you could add a cheap ship with a great pilot and transfer the pilot to your ship.

19. I set the logo (you folks know about custom logos, right?), have the captain dock the ship, and get out to go talk to the manager. Except I recorded this with the Beta for version 6.0 and slammed into the elevator bug. Had I managed to get to the manager, I would have found that I had given her the engineering skill instead of management! It's always something. Exit game, give the manager some management skill, start again.

Custom starts are designed to be shared, so I'll go ahead and share some! Here's how:

1. Click the link. You'll be shown some XML code.
2. There should be a download button in the upper right area to download the file.
3. Save the file to your customgamestart folder, which is right next to your save game folder. For Steam users, that will be Egosoft\X4\(some number)\customgamestart in your Documents area.
4. Start the game and pick budgeted start. Import the file.
5. Mess with the settings a little because, well, you're a PC gamer, so of course you will. Be sure to re-export the custom start to another name.
6. Start the game, and off you go! There won't be a nice, little speech at the start, I'm afraid.

Minor Miner
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nFXMPRJG0s2gEvJaM2NTQvt0YaNF5gNj/view


No DLC or prior experience required for this start. For whatever reason, Egosoft doesn't give you a chance to start the game in a mining ship. You can use this start to do so. By default, you'll be a Teladi with some Paranid buddies doing a little mining in the "south" part of the universe map. You'll have a small mining ship (a courier mineral miner) and 8,000 credits. You've also got a few satellites and resource probes to help you along.


Lost Fish
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TnPnUU23Zb4uB_LfYKAFK41kzF8kE5Ea/view

This one requires the Kingdom End DLC, but not any of the others. It fits within the budget of a new player, too. You'll start as a lost Boron clear out in the south-east corner of the universe. On the plus side, your ship is very fast and will be even faster once you upgrade the engines. Unfortunately, Boron ships require Boron upgrades, and you don't know where the other Boron live! I marked the sector you need to get to on your map, but you'll have to find your way to it yourself. (Or look it up in another guide. ;)