Instead of reading this guide, I recommend reading the guides made by Roguey on his website:
https://roguey.co.uk/x3fl/help/guides/plot/
https://roguey.co.uk/x3fl/help/guides/terran-plot/

This guide is most likely very outdated since I haven't actually played the game or updated it since release

This is my little guide for the main plots of X3:FL, I will try to update it as I explore more into the game but for now this is all that I know.
If I make any mistakes then please point them out in the comments since I'm most likely going to miss a few things that are pretty important.

After choosing a character (I would recommend the Argon Official due to the speed of the starter ship) you will be dropped into the middle of a sector with an inactive jump gate and a trans-orbital accelerator.

After moving closer to the accelerator you will be contacted by a Boron in the same position as you, the ship will then fly off through the accelerator and dock at a nearby station.

Next to the accelerator will also be a large wreck surrounded by a bunch of crates. One of these crates will contain a triplex scanner, which are very expensive and will be quite useful later on.


One thing to note is that you will start off with 10 salvage insurance, once these have been used up you will only be able to save while docked at a station. You will be able to obtain more of these after completing the plot but for now this is all you will have, if you want to save them then make sure you dock every time you want to save.

By now, your objective marker will have changed to guide you to a Boron named 'Hola Ni'.

On your way there, you will come across a strange station called 'Spacelab Headquarters'. This station will not allow you to dock as there is no-one on board, but remember where it is as it will be important later.



When you arrive at the Boron's research station, they will be confused and speak as if they were expecting someone else. After speaking for a bit you decide that you should help the Boron to re-activate the headquarters, and will also receive a message from them explaining the situation of the sector.



Fly on back to the void epsilon and head to the headquarters you went by earlier and follow the markers, you will need to get within 70 meters to start scanning each one. A timer will also start, but it should be no problem unless you are activating SETA through the mission.

Once the points have been scanned the station will be transferred to you. This station acts the same way as the headquarters from the previous games in that it can reverse engineer, recycle and produce stations. The only difference is that you now have the ability to do these things with stations and upgrade the speed, rudder and cargo of the ships docked there.

After reporting back to Hola Ni, you will be asked to begin the search for the gate back home yourself, but are given new tools to help you called the 'Low Frequency Locator' and the 'Interplanetary Drive System'.

The Low Frequency Locator will help you to find special locations called 'Hyper speed Access Points'
These locations allow you to travel to possibly unknown areas of space with your Interplanetary Drive System. Not only that, but the Locator can also help you to find loot like ships, crates, special materials and discoveries.

Head to the sector north of The Void Delta and you will be able to find yourself a Dolphin with it.
It works like this:

If your ship has detected something nearby, your HUD will light up with the things in the screenshot below.


The small arrow will show you the direction you need to head in to find the item, and the bars at the bottom will show you the distance.

When you are looking directly at the item, these two brackets will surround your crosshair.


After arriving at the object, your ship computer will turn off the locator and automatically target the object you have found.


There are many many more things for you to find in the nearby sectors with this, but I will leave that to you :).

If you can't or don't want to look for the Access point yourself, you will find it in
The Void Gamma.

After finding it, you will need to obtain 3 relay beacons to activate it. Usually, you would have to make them, but conveniently you will start with 3 of them on your HQ so go ahead and grab them then come back to the access point.

You will need to drop these 3 beacons in the pattern of a triangle around the access point, luckily these are all marked by the game by default and as long as you place each beacon within 1km it should be fine. If you happen to miss you can just pick the beacon back up and move in a bit closer to the marked position.

In order to activate the access point you will have to get within 3km and then enter the context menu and click 'Activate'

After initiating the Interplanetary Drive you will find yourself in an almost empty sector with a pirate base, some asteroids and best of all your first active jump gate!



Not even 3 seconds after going through the gate, you will be contacted and threatened by the Paranid sector security. Although it may be tempting to go forward and keep exploring, I don't recommend it at all since it can mess up your Paranid rep and ruin your docking rights. This can cause serious problems later on in the plot, but luckily this will be fixed in the upcoming patch.

Being locked out of the Paranid systems, you decide to head back to Hola Ni for advice.

When you reach Hola Ni they tell you that they have someone who might be able to help you: a Paranid named Krimanckolanks, you will find him in The Void Beta.

I think that now is a good time to bring up the Explorers Guild. Over time, by discovering new ships, stations, materials and scanning certain asteroids you will gather 'Discovery Points'. These can be turned in to the Explorers Guild for credits, blueprints, discoveries or items.

You can view your discovery points balance by opening the personal menu and holding your mouse over 'My Pilot Status', it will be shown beneath your credit account balance.

In order to locate an Explorers Guild Representative, you will need to regularly check on notable stations like equipment docks, shipyards, trading stations and military outposts (like the one that Hola Ni is currently based at).

If he is on the station you will find him at the bottom of the comms list as shown below.

Select 'I would like to turn in my discovery points' and you will get a menu like this.


Everything sold is randomised, although the top row will always involve credits.
Early on I definitely recommend using your discovery points to buy credits, they go for about 100k per 20k discovery points and this can help you out a ton with some of the upcoming sections.

Later on you should save your points for special ship blueprints which you can use at your HQ.

After contacting Krimanckolanks, he will tell you that he will tell you that he is in the void to search for something and he isn't going to leave without it.

Head back to Hola Ni again and you will be told that they think that what the Paranid is looking for is an artefact located in one of the asteroids in The Void Zeta.

You will now need to scan asteroids until you find the artefact, in my game the asteroid containing it was the most southward one, but it may be completely random.

After scanning the correct asteroid, a mine will blow it to pieces and leave the artefact in a crate right in the centre, grab it and bring it back to Hola Ni at the research outpost.

Hola Ni will tell you that The Void is currently having a shortage of Bofu, and asks you to help out by building a Bofu Chemical lab. A blueprint will also be provided.

Most of the resources needed to build the station will already be on the HQ but you will need to provide 200 thousand credits and some energy cells in order to start construction.

To see the exact requirements, select your HQ and go to 'Adjust station Parameters' and you should see a section called adjust production queue, after clicking that you will be able to hover your mouse over the factory and view the resources that are needed on the right side of your screen.

How you make these credits is completely up to you, but I can give a few recommendations.

If you haven't got it already, the Demeter which can be claimed in The Void Epsilon after finding it with the Low Frequency Locator will be very useful for this section.

1. You can turn your discovery points in to a representative of the explorers guild as shown earlier. The Demeter will come with the 'Explorer Command Software' installed, meaning that you can actually send your ship off to scan asteroids and farm discovery points for you through the navigation menu in the command console. Holy Vision zeta is a great sector for this.

2. You can use the ships that can be found in the different sectors of the void to trade for the money.
Some good options are:
Silicon Wafers, Void zeta -> Void gamma
Energy cells, Void beta -> Void epsilon + Void theta
BoFu, Void theta -> Void gamma

3. You can try and hunt down some good missions. Some of the missions with the credit marker (shown below) can offer credits in the 6 digits for work that takes usually under 3 minutes, the ones you want are the military transports and the courier missions.
Make sure that you grab the cargo life support system off of the Demeter if you want to do military transport missions.

4. The Demeter can also spawn with a random amount of weapons which you can sell for a very large amount of money, (between 200k to 1 million it seems) so selling these alone will get you enough money to build the station.

After gathering the required funds you can transfer them through the 'Adjust station parameters' menu.

You can grab the energy cells from The Void beta using one of your freighters, and once it has returned you can transfer them using the same menu.

Once you have gathered everything, head back to the blueprints selection and click on the factory and construction will begin. You can see progress through the info panel.

Another thing that Hola Ni will have mentioned is the fact that you will need to locate a TL in order to deploy the station.

In my game the TL was in The Void theta, if it's not there for you then you can look for a station with the blue book marker to ask for directions.
If you look to your right after entering the sector through the accelerator you will see, in the distance, a Split elephant.


The split, a once honoured fighter pilot, offers to let you use his elephant in exchange for a scorpion.

You will find that the scorpion blueprint has been mysteriously added to your headquarters, it's really cheap so just go ahead and build one and tell it to fly to the same sector as the elephant. Shortly after you will be asked through a message: 'Is this for split?'. When you click yes the ship will transfer over to him and you will be able to give the captain of the elephant directions.

Comm the captain and ask him to move to your shipyard aka the HQ.

When he arrives, the first thing you must do is dock at a station and save. This is because if the elephant is too close to the station when he tries to place it, the elephant will somehow find its way inside of the HQ and get blown up, meaning no more station building for a very long time.

Once you have saved and the elephant is docked, you can open the station parameters menu and transfer the station over to the ship. If you are docked then it will try and transfer it into your ship, so make sure you undock if you are.

Tell the captain of the elephant to follow you and once he has moved a safe distance away from the HQ you can contact him again and ask him to drop his freight. You can drop it anywhere you want, unlike the missions from previous games it doesn't really matter where you put it.



When you have finished building your station, Hola Ni will tell you that they are ready to give the artefact to Krimanckolanks, so go on over to The Void beta and speak to him.

This section can be done at the same time as the next one

Once you have delivered the artefact, he will accept it and offer to work for you as an agent in return.

Agents can earn influence, and then go on to use the influence for a variety of tasks, mainly to do with reputation.

In order to access the diplomatic menu you can go to the personal section on the top left, then click 'Diplomacy'. Select your agent and tell him to gather influence, press enter, then select the Paranid trading dock in Holy Vision delta.

Agents will come with only a limited amount of tasks, this agent will come with 8 and 3 of them are needed to gather influence for the first mission. The influence gathered from the first trip can be used to increase your reputation with the Paranid, hack a station belonging to them, or increase notoriety gains with them.

Remember that each mission you send them on will take time depending on the amount of tasks you assigned them to do at the location, and the distance (I believe?).

Make sure that once the influence has been gathered, you choose to use it to increase your reputation with the Paranid.

After delivering the artefact to Krimanckolanks, you can head back to Hola Ni and speak to them.

You will be told that a Trans-Orbital Accelerator needs to be built to connect The Void alpha to The Void gamma, but in order to do this you will need to collect some materials. Luckily Hola Ni has actually decided to pay you for this one, so that's nice.

You will need:

2,850 Energy cells, can be bought from The Void beta, and delta.
350 Ore, can be bought from The Void zeta.
250 Bofu, can be made at your factory, or bought from The Void Theta, and delta.

You must be in the ship holding the resources when it docks at the research centre. Once everything has been delivered, you can go to meet Hola Ni at the location of the accelerator.

This section is optional

By this point you may be looking to try and make some money out of that BoFu Lab you built earlier, if you decide to set up this station with a station manager it should be able to make you money with little to no input from the player.

First, you will want to assign some freighters to the station by setting their homebase to the BoFu lab in the command console of the ships, I'm using 2 right now but 1 might do just fine. A ship will need to have both Trade Command Software MK1 and Navigation Command Software MK1 in order to work with a station manager.

Next you will want to give your station some money, 150k to 200k should be fine to start it off.

Finally you will want to enable the station manager by going to the command console of the station, clicking on an empty slot, then picking the station manager.

The station manager will automatically give orders to all ships assigned to the station. It will supply the station with whatever it needs, and it will sell whatever the station has to nearby npc stations.

If you want to make adjustments to the station manager, or just keep the BoFu that you have built up, you can use another empty command slot to add the station manager restrictions, and modify the settings from there.

Note - When selling goods, the station manager will take a small cut of the money. If you wan't to avoid this you can either sell the goods yourself, or tell the ship to keep reselling on its own through the command console.

After building the accelerator and getting enough rep with the Paranid for docking rights, Hola Ni will give you a message asking you to enter their space and try to contact a Paranid official.

While you could go for it now, I would highly recommend upgrading your ship as the next part contains some combat. The scorpion (which you can easily build at the HQ) is perfect for this! You can upgrade the speed and cargo at the HQ, fit it out with some particle accelerator cannons from the research station, give it some shields from your discoverer and it should be perfect for the next part. Don't worry about losing any hull as this game has SETA built in to the space suit (thank you developers) meaning that you can repair stuff really quick if you need to.

If you can't afford the scorpion then its fine because you can just try and snipe off some smaller ships instead, anyway...

You will need to dock at the trading station in Holy Vision delta, and speak to Jako Brano. He will tell you that he is Idmanckardet's deputy and that he is handling his contacts while he is away.

He asks you to help him to deal with the pirate problem that they have been dealing with, and that moves us to the next section.

Jako Brano needs you to destroy a few pirates, by that he means 5. They should be pretty common in the area, but I have had a lot more luck in the sector 'Holy Vision gamma' than anywhere else.

For now be sure to avoid the M3 ships as they can probably kill you with just their back turret, but M5s and M4s should be pretty easy to kill. You can grab some 5MJ shields from the Paranid equipment dock if they are in stock.

If you are struggling with finding the pirates, it may be that you aren't checking the blue name ships for the pirate tag.

Once you have killed 5 pirates you can report back to Jako Brano and he will, for some reason, decide to give you a Nemesis corvette, so go ahead and talk to the Teladi on the military base to claim it.

Your next mission is to destroy the pirate base. Follow the guidance marker to get to it, and start holding CTRL + J!



After doing a decent amount of damage to the shields you will be contacted by one of the pirates: Ramanckatsalss

He will turn off your weapon systems and when you comm him, he will explain that the Paranid aren't actually the Paranid, or at least they aren't members of the Godrealm, but instead are the henchmen of the duke.

To prove it he tells you to ask around for Idmanckardet's location, and that all you will get back are excuses. Visit the locations messaged to you and then read the next message from Ramanckatsalss.

Ramanckatsalss wants you to visit the Duke's henchmen... at the Xenon Hub!



The hub's gates have been put in between Holy Vision epsilon and The Void alpha, dock there and you will find Hola Ni. They will act like they have never seen you before, but shortly after will send you a message telling you that they have been captured.

Seconds later you will get another message but this time it's from Jako Brano, and he knows that you have been in the hub. Head back and meet him in the sector where you found the pirate base.

When you contact him, he will tell you that explosions were reported in the sector and that the pirate base is gone, and you are able to tell him that you had just destroyed the base and the threat has been dealt with.

Now Ramanckatsalss wants to talk, he tells you that the pirate base was moved to another location, and that Idmanckardet may be on a convoy flying through the void towards an unknown destination.

Now, I'm not sure if this is a bug, but for some reason every time I do this mission the convoy spawns underneath my ship, but just take out the escorts, talk to the convoy, and that will be mission complete. It will tell you to escort the ship but it doesn't seem to get targeted so you can just leave it and turn on SETA if you want. The next mission will be to meet him at your HQ, so you can fly ahead and get a head start for that if you want to get straight to the next part.

Idmanckardet will tell you that he was able to seal the gates, but only for a short amount of time, and that Hola Ni was being used as a replacement to unseal the gates.

You will find that he has left for you a Hermes Hauler on board your HQ, this ship comes with software called 'Turbo Booster MK1'. You can transfer this onto your current ship and boost at the cost of energy cells or shield.

You must now, once again travel across all of those sectors you just came through to get back to Ramanckatsalss.

If you are getting sick of all of this travelling, you can transfer the jumpdrive off of the nemesis you got for free, or buy one from the Boron research station.

Before you speak to Ramanckatsalss, make sure that you are in a ship with at least an M cargo bay, the Advanced Discoverer or the Nemesis will both work fine. This is because once you have finished speaking to him, he will attempt to transfer the cargo bay hacker to your ship, but if your ship is of S cargo bay or lower, he will not be able to transfer it. This results in the plot being impossible as you don't have a cargo bay hacker, meaning you are not able to steal the rifles. This will be fixed in an upcoming patch though, so it won't be a problem for long.

Ramanckatsalss wants you to steal 21 Disintegrator Rifles from the Duke's ships. They won't be marked as the Duke's though, they will just have normal names like any other ship, but with 'Weapons transporter' in the name.

The best way to know if a ship is owned by the Duke is by checking if the ship is displayed above the stations on the sector map, as shown below:


To use the Cargo Bay Hacker you will need to first bind it in the controls.
Open the menu on the bottom left of your screen, with the tick, go to controls, go to game, and right at the bottom you should see 'Cargo Bay Hacker'. I binded mine to a button on my numpad since they aren't used for anything else, if you know of a better key then you can just use that instead.

You will also have to make sure that you have both a transporter device (you start with one in the discoverer) and a freight scanner (you can buy one of these at the Paranid equipment dock in Holy VIsion zeta).

Once everything is ready, approach one of the ships and try to get within 300 meters, then you can press shift + f to match the speed of the target. Press the key you have binded to the hacker and they will start being moved into your cargo bay.

After taking a few from each ship, you will be detected and they will turn red one by one. You should be able to get all 21 just from the first 3 ships that are sent out but if you are unlucky then more should spawn soon after the first group arrive at the hub.

Once you have got the rifles, you will need to deliver them back to Ramanckatsalss back in Holy Vision delta. He tells you that now is the time to take over the gate hub.

Now, you must fly ALL THE WAY back to the void epsilon and talk to Idmanckardet again. Make sure that you have your Nemesis ready with a jumpdrive and energy cells on hand as there is going to be a big fight soon and you might need to jump out to regenerate shields if it gets tough.

He will tell you that he wants to link the gates to the core Paranid sectors and have them protect the hub from the Duke's henchmen, and that he doesn't trust Ramanckatsalss or you with the hub at all. He still agrees to follow the plan though.

The best strategy for this is to turn on your Auto aim and hold control to fire while keeping the front of your ship facing the hit marker. This will make the weapons turn inwards to shoot the ship instead of just firing past them. Almost all of these ships are equipped with remote guided warheads, which do significant damage to even a corvette, so if you do find you are getting hit by a lot of them be sure to jump out and back in to get your shield back.

After clearing out the horde of enemies you will be able to comm Hola Ni and they will give you the options:

1. Link the hub to Pirate territory
2. Link the hub to Boron territory
3. Link the hub to Paranid territory
4. Link the hub to Duke territory

No matter which one you pick, the whole universe will still be accessible, it only affects how close you and your HQ are to each of these factions.

Shortly after making the choice, Hub ownership will be transferred over to you, and you can claim the sector through the context menu (Sector control->Claim sector).

This map on Roguey's website may be of help to you from here on out:
https://roguey.co.uk/x3fl/universe/

The sandbox in this game comes with a number of different new features. I will try to list and explain them as I find them here:

Upgrading Stations

Stations can now be upgraded after a certain amount of cycles. Once the amount has been reached, you can order the corresponding upgrade kit from an NPC faction and use it to upgrade the factory to the next size.
I don't think that one single faction sells all sizes of upgrade kits, so you may have to do a bit of searching. I can tell you that the S kit can be bought from the argon shipyard in argon prime though.

Station Managers

It is now easier than in any previous X3 game to set up a trading empire. You can set up a station, add a manager and give it a freighter, and it's already good to go.
I have a section about these further back in the guide.

Sector Ownership

If you have built a trading station in an unclaimed sector, you will now be able to claim it through the context menu and you will be added as the official owner on the map! I'm not sure what effect this has on the other factions yet though.

Dynamic Relations

You can no longer be friends with everyone (sadly D:) as there is a new relation system where if you make good friends with a faction, the enemy of that faction will start to trust you a bit less and lower your notoriety with them, for example: If you make friends with the Paranid, you will lose rep with the Argon.

In order to have access to this plot, you need to have first completed the main plot.

To start this plot, you will need to find and buy the 'Special Discovery' from the Explorers Guild Representative for 250,000 Discovery Points. The only requirement that I know of for this to appear is that you must have completed the introduction plot and gained ownership of the Xenon Hub, but it still seems to be quite rare so you might have to check quite a few of the guild shops to find one.

If you aren't getting much luck with finding the quest, or even finding guild reps at all, a good place to search is in the sector 'Getsu Fune'. If you don't know where this is, you can find it in the top right corner of this[roguey.co.uk] map. This sector is great because there are 6 different equipment docks in one small space for you to check between to try to find a guild rep.

After the purchase, you will receive a message from 'Delilah Shiratori' asking you to help her out with an anomaly that she has found. She is located in one of the sector around Brennan's Triumph (it will be specified in the message she sent).

She will tell you that an unusual amount of activity has been going on around the borders of Brennan's Triumph and asks you to investigate, follow her guidance, and you will be asked to follow a Terran Baldric that is suspiciously flying around the edge of the sector. When it notices you it will quickly jump out, and you will need to use your Low Frequency Locator to track where it went.