X4 - ten questions for developers

[mr.WHO]

Lately linolafett is suprisingly talkative, so I decided to press my luck with some questions about X4.

While I do know that some of them will be the usual "can't say much too early, work in progress", still I have some hopes for throwing us some bare bones

1) Will X4 include proper carriers (or even Carrier scripts and GUI) to ferry fighters around?

2) Will drone ship logic be reballanced/tweaked? Currently drone ship launch small wave of drones, wait when they are destroyed and then launch another. I know this was probably limited to avoid performance issues, but still the end result had bad after taste.

3) Will station destruction logic be adapted - in XR you couldn't completely destroy station and in OOS they were repaired right away. That made station destruction not worth the effort.

4) Will you equalize the repair times between IS and OOS - I mean what is the point of bothering with engineer skills or shipyards if you just go OOS and wait minute or two for the repairs.

5) You ocasionally mentioned that you plan to adjust the universe and universe travel (something with highways tweaks I presume) - can you share some details?

6) Will we finally be able to buy, build and operate Shipyard? Not the PHQ, but the shipyards like NPC shipyards.

7) Will X4 continue story/region of X-Rebirth? I mean every single chapter of XR campaign is ending with cliffhanger - Albion still under PMC control, DeVries still one big junkyard, Xenons in Maelstorm still threat to OL. Story wise this is most frustrating cliffhanger combo in my gaming memory.

8 ) Will any missing race from X3 return (I don't ask which one, simply yes or no)?

9) Are there any plans to replace "spawn out of thin air" system for NPC and hostiles (like pirate/Xenons) with something more physical that player can impact?
(e.g. Xenons mine minerals to build ship for their patrols and invasions - if player hunt down't miners Xenon will stop building ship or build only small bunch that could recover then when player will be busy somewhere else).

10) Will you improve generic mission variety and review their logic?
By variety I don't mean the number or types of the mission, but more of existing mission variants.
For example station attack mission:
- (bad logic) mission spawn buch of fighters attacking station, but these fighters have absolutely no chance to even scratch the paint on the station.
- (good logic) fighters target something small like storage module or turret, something that this small bunch has chance to destroy and player has to actually protect that. Alternatively for higher dfficulties spawn bunch of bombers or even capship that do have chance to destroy or badly dammage the entire station.
- (bad variety) same bunch on fighters spawned every mission
- (good variety) variety and combination of enemies, fighter-bomber mix where bombers attack the station and fighters escort them against your attacks, frigates, destroyer or even fully loaded carriers with escorts making attack on station.

I can probably make 50 more questions, but I think these 10 are my personal top list that I'd love to see some answers.

[Rail_Balco]

Keep watxhing lino's signature, everything is there

[linolafett]

All answers have to be taken with a grain of salt, please.
I am trying to say something, without saying something wrong. I though can absolutely not guarantee that any answers stay like this til release. Somethimes features just dont make the cut.

Expect artist answers. I can not say anything about AI and stuff, as i have very little knowlege about it.

1) Will X4 include proper carriers (or even Carrier scripts and GUI) to ferry fighters around?

Cautios yes.
Capitalships will have docks at which small/medium ships can dock at.

2) Will drone ship logic be reballanced/tweaked?

Drone gameplay has changed a bit. Cant say much as stuff may change at will.

3) Will station destruction logic be adapted

Stations (aside of special landmarks) will be destructible and will not reappear after leaving the zone.

4) Will you equalize the repair times between IS and OOS

Tech stuff, no idea.

5) You ocasionally mentioned that you plan to adjust the universe and universe travel (something with highways tweaks I presume) - can you share some details?

The highways will be mostly in straight lines or single radius curves.
Not all zones will have highways and you will be able to boost over longer distances.
Its following the steps we did in the HOL DLC.

6) Will we finally be able to buy, build and operate Shipyard?

Yes. Thats the plan.

7) Will X4 continue story/region of X-Rebirth?

No/No.

8 ) Will any missing race from X3 return (I don't ask which one, simply yes or no)?

Yes.
In XR we had a full argon and teladi set with ships/stations and chars.
In X4 a full new set is being added.

9) Are there any plans to replace "spawn out of thin air" system for NPC and hostiles (like pirate/Xenons) with something more physical that player can impact?

The plan is to use shipyards to create the ships. The xenon will try to use an own shipyard to spawn the ships by consuming own ressources.

If the plan works out, i dont know. Havent seen any data about that.

10) Will you improve generic mission variety and review their logic?

No idea. Cant answer.

[Xenon_Slayer]

I'll try and cover a few of the questions Lino couldn't answer. But yes, vague is the word of the day

3) Will station destruction logic be adapted - in XR you couldn't completely destroy station and in OOS they were repaired right away. That made station destruction not worth the effort.

As Lino said, yes, they will be destructible. New stations will be built, but not carbon-copies of the stations which were lost (as it was in X3).

4) Will you equalize the repair times between IS and OOS

We do strive to keep IS and OOS calcuations as close as they can be (usually limited by performance). We have made some changes which should have repairs of sub-components closer than they were in XR.

9) Are there any plans to replace "spawn out of thin air" system for NPC and hostiles (like pirate/Xenons) with something more physical that player can impact?

For the majority of ships, yes. We do want the ships to come from a source such as a shipyard. Some missions may be a special case, but far less than before.

10) Will you improve generic mission variety and review their logic?

There should be more happening in the universe which can than trigger missions based on those events. There will still be generic missions which may 'fabricate' the scenario as it was in previous games, but we do of course want these to have as little fakery as possible.

[linolafett]

The calm before the storm...

[Ezarkal]

Thank you, to both of you!

[UnknownObject]

Thank you, to both of you! (x2). Very glad to read that.
It's still too early to share a screenshot of a new stuff? Or even a fragment of a screenshot?

[Meme Turtle]

I have a couple of extra questions on station destruction:

1) Will station construction be realistic this time? By that I mean that for a new station to be constructed AI will have to construct CV first, move it to the build spot and then build station from materials.
Or stations will be spawned out of thin air by a reincarnation of the G.O.D. script from X3?

2) If stations can be destroyed would it be possible for the player to completely wipe out a faction by destroying all of their assets?

In other words how many ideas from CWIR are you going to integrate into X4 and how hyped should I become?

[Xenon_Slayer]

1) Will station construction be realistic this time? By that I mean that for a new station to be constructed AI will have to construct CV first, move it to the build spot and then build station from materials.
Or stations will be spawned out of thin air by a reincarnation of the G.O.D. script from X3?

Just as it is with ships, stations will also have a full process to be built, resources and all. The process is somewhat different to XR but not spawning like X3 God.

2) If stations can be destroyed would it be possible for the player to completely wipe out a faction by destroying all of their assets?

Well, the player (and others) can of course decimate property from another faction. Whether a faction at rock-bottom can find a way to begin again is a big question I won't address now. Faction wipe-out's are common in 4X games such as Stellaris, which have things such as victory conditions and an actual end. X games are an open-ended sandbox with much longer gametimes.

[linolafett]

It's still too early to share a screenshot of a new stuff? Or even a fragment of a screenshot?

Too early. Too much will change, so a sceenshot wont be comparable to the version, which will be released.

[Lord Crc]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond, highly appreciated!!

Really hoping station managers get a crash course on station management. Having to babysit a couple of dozen managers is not that fun.

Also hoping for more realistic ship physics. The lack of proper momentum especially is really jarring.

[mr.WHO]

Many thanks to Egosoft for answering all my questions!

Even if the answers are limiter with details I'm very pleased with the direction of which X4 is heading.

I love that the highways will be straight line or single radius curve. The "spagetti monster" highways gives me nausea, but HOL DLC highways are pleasure to use.


As I mentioned in first post, I'll stop with the questions so others could also have their share, but I'm very intrigued about the answer about not continuing the XR story/region.

Is XR story will be considered like it never hapened of just discontinued (it hapened but is not relevant to X4)?

[carran]

Thanks for taking the time to reply - and reading between the lines, the feature list is being refined though it seems delivery is still a way off

I'd rather wait and have something playable from day one than have an unplayable early release - so from my perspective, take your time

[sd_jasper]

Wow! Fantastic guys!

This sounds amazing. I hope that adding in a new race won't mean leaving out those loveable lizards.

I was surprised that y'all aren't going to reuse the existing areas and just add to them, but if highways are going to change that might be more work than just adding new stuff.

[CommanderTM]

Wow, so many answers, thank you devs!

I have a question too... Well, maybe its more of a request but have you any plans for showing some player stats in a "always on screen" way. I mean, it could be a button you can toggle. It could show (somewhere at the top of the screen) some important stuff like your credit balance and net worth and last message or stuff like that.

[Nikola515]

Will there be any old ships designs in X4 ? Something like X3 ATF, Teladi and Xenon capital ship designs.....

[Skeeter]

I hope x4 might go back to single stations and try to be race uniue like say the variance of the trading stations of x2. Internal docking like in x btf or x2 maybe coming back? Can we have the teladi sound and look like on the monitors like those from xbtf specifically the first meeting of one at the start as they were cool back then and the latest ones are no where near as cool sounding.

Also cargo extensions, old fashioned seta would be good. Bring back the old nav maps and gates, didnt like the new traveling and map system used in rebirth.

Biggest thing for me is plot tho. Please avoid spending loads of time on detailed real working stations with start and finish processes, plot should have best slice of the cah budget then art assets/sounds then functionality i.e simplify stations like the old games and bring back old gameplay. Actually how about a xbtf remaster then x2 remaster in 1 game lol.

From a moaner of modern x games except the first few which i thought were the best x games. lol

[mr.WHO]

8 ) Will any missing race from X3 return (I don't ask which one, simply yes or no)?

Yes.
In XR we had a full argon and teladi set with ships/stations and chars.
In X4 a full new set is being added.

Hmm. In XR We have full Argon and Teladi set as well as partial Terran and Split sets.

This means only Paranid and Boron are on the table (As much as I'd love to see Solar System and normal Terrans again).

Between these two Boron are much more technically demanding due to their diffren physiology that would make Boron station interiors and NPCs more complex. Unless Boron station interiors would only include non-aquatic species sections and Boron NPC in non-boron station would be in some kind of "walking dry-suit".

Therefore I think Paranid is more safe option and maybe Borons as DLC.

[Commander_K]

Actually we have to Argon sets: Albion and Omicron Lyrae.

[Artean]

Thanks for the answers! No doubt, the direction of X4 seems VERY promising.