Crystal colors have unique blink sequences

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bignick217
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Crystal colors have unique blink sequences

Post by bignick217 » Tue, 10. Sep 19, 17:55

I was doing some crystal mining the other day, and I was starting to notice that each crystal color type blinked with different patterns. I wasn't sure, but I was finding purple more often on sites that blinked once, blues on 2 blinks and yellows on 3. After doing some digging, I found another guy who had found the same thing and basically described it the same way I was seeing it. But even when I tried to keep using it to find the better crystals, I was finding that I was getting tricked far too often and expecting one color but finding another. It was almost as if the patterns were randomizing. So I decided to sit down and take the time to find out exactly what each crystal is doing. What I found is that each color, does in fact blink in a unique way, but it's actually a "sequence" of different blink patterns. I thought I could use this to more quickly and more efficiently mine crystals for more credits, but as it turned out, the sequences are so long that you often miss considerable chunks of the sequence when the asteroids rotate the crystal out of view. I ended up finding that these sequences were so OTT and convoluted that it was just quicker to ignore them and mine anything and everything you spot. Especially since all of the colors apart from Blue, share parts of their sequence with all the other color's sequences. Such as, every color except for Blue has a part of it's sequence that is just 1 blink. So you could be missing a lot higher value crystals simply because you a single blink and assumed it was purple. But since these sequences don't seem to be documented anywhere else, I'll post them them here for everyone. Feel free to confirm the sequences and if someone is so inclined, feel free to add these sequences to the X4 Foundations Wiki/Manual.

Legend

"->" = any gap longer than 3 seconds
"Normal" = indicates a game gap of about 1 second between blinks
"Slow" = indicates a gap of about 2 seconds between blinks
"vSlow" = indicates a gap of just under 3 seconds. Long enough to make you think twice, but not long enough to be considered a separate part of the sequence.
"Double" = indicates a double blink, where there's virtually no time in between blinks but is clearly more than just one blink.
"+" = indicates a "Normal" delay between double blink and another blink.

Note: You can tell the end of a sequence in game by it's longest gap of no blinks.


Sequences: (Each sequence has 3 stages, except for white which has 4)

Purple = 1 -> 1 -> Double+1 -> 1

Blue = 2 Slow -> 2 Normal -> 1+Double

Yellow = 1 -> 1 -> 1+Double+1

Orange = 1 -> 2 vSlow -> 2 Normal+Double

White = Double -> 2 Normal -> 1 -> 2 Normal

Hope this helps, or at the very least people find it interesting.

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MarvinTheMartian
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Re: Crystal colors have unique blink sequences

Post by MarvinTheMartian » Thu, 3. Oct 19, 05:19

Nice research, thanks! But as you say, not much practical use ;)

The technique I use is to target an asteroid that blinks and then use the remote view (F3 twice) and look around it with the num pad, do that for all in your cockpit view and then, if you still haven't found something worth moving for, you can zoom out from an asteroid and look for another blink and click that asteroid and repeat (F3 twice). This way you can scan across 100s of kms that you can't see from the cockpit - without moving.

Anyone looked at influences on crystal yield? I've tried beam/pulse weapons; shooting continuously, shooting in pulses and mixtures thereof. Generally, I haven't seen a difference.
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Imperial Good
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Re: Crystal colors have unique blink sequences

Post by Imperial Good » Fri, 4. Oct 19, 04:54

MarvinTheMartian wrote:
Thu, 3. Oct 19, 05:19
Anyone looked at influences on crystal yield? I've tried beam/pulse weapons; shooting continuously, shooting in pulses and mixtures thereof. Generally, I haven't seen a difference.
From what I can tell looking at the data the yield is random within a range specified by the game data. No data is declared which would indicate that yields change based on weapon or how an attack occurs.

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