Jumpdrives got me into X3, highways just dropped me off XR, and we're legion

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sd_jasper
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Post by sd_jasper » Fri, 1. Jun 18, 17:43

Sparky Sparkycorp wrote:
Falcrack wrote: There has to be an advantage to using highways over other forms of travel. Otherwise, there will be no reason to have them in the game at all.

Perhaps highways could have the advantage of being much faster than boosting for going between two points. Or it would use less fuel than boosting (maybe boosting would require e-cells). Boosting would have the advantage of versatility in terms of where you want to go.
I'm sure this will be the case (A-to-B faster by highway, but with players probably wanting to go from A-to-C via B) since this is the Rebirth approach (with, I believe, adjustments in X4 to be more HoL DLC-like and having less windy highways).
Don't forget "Travel Drive" which I believe is much faster than "boosting". When I first heard of that I started to think that (local) highways could be done away with. But then reflecting on it more, I realized that a lot of NPC traffic could result in high speed collisions. A system where ships are moving in the same direction in a somewhat controlled area (like a highway) is actually very useful to prevent that sort of thing.

The question does remain though... does the player need to use highways?

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Santi
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Post by Santi » Fri, 1. Jun 18, 17:48

@Falcrack

Yes, you will always have some methods of transport that are more efficient than others, but if Egosoft really implement what they said about highways, they will be present more in the core of the civilized Universe, but sparingly so on the outskirts of it.

So hopefully we have highly developed core sectors/zones/quadrants where travelling around can be achieved very quickly via highways, and distant sectors/zones/quadrants in deep space where you rely more on your ship components like boosters, SETA and ship speed.

Of course that is what will make sense to me regarding the issue.
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BugMeister
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Post by BugMeister » Sat, 2. Jun 18, 04:58

if the visual effect of travelling via one of the "tubes" could be over-ridden, so that the transition from departure to destination were less time-consuming, guess that'd be cool..
like switching off the warp-tunnel effect in X3 in the game-settings..

X4's game engine is a mystery to me, so I have no knowledge of the coding requirements and restrictions - let alone how it deals with system RAM, etc..

- could such a mod be constructed?
- the whole universe is running in BETA mode - we're working on it.. beep..!! :D :thumb_up:

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Post by Alan Phipps » Sat, 2. Jun 18, 13:15

@ BugMeister: Well there was this unintended 'bug' that was later fixed that cut out the in-zone travel between highways on long autopilot journeys. Not quite the same as what you wanted, but still travel-helpful - in some ways.
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sd_jasper
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Post by sd_jasper » Sat, 2. Jun 18, 13:43

BugMeister wrote:if the visual effect of travelling via one of the "tubes" could be over-ridden, so that the transition from departure to destination were less time-consuming, guess that'd be cool..
like switching off the warp-tunnel effect in X3 in the game-settings..

X4's game engine is a mystery to me, so I have no knowledge of the coding requirements and restrictions - let alone how it deals with system RAM, etc..

- could such a mod be constructed?
I'm not sure I follow. The visual appearance of the highway has noting to do with the speed at which you fly through it...

Are you talking about Super Highways? Because it seems these are already out of the game and replaced with Orbital Accelerators.

If you are talking about local highways, then the whole point of them is that you can enter and exit at whatever point you want. It makes no sense to shorten the time to the "destination" because only you know where you want to exit.

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Post by spankahontis » Sat, 2. Jun 18, 19:29

sd_jasper wrote:
BugMeister wrote:if the visual effect of travelling via one of the "tubes" could be over-ridden, so that the transition from departure to destination were less time-consuming, guess that'd be cool..
like switching off the warp-tunnel effect in X3 in the game-settings..

X4's game engine is a mystery to me, so I have no knowledge of the coding requirements and restrictions - let alone how it deals with system RAM, etc..

- could such a mod be constructed?
I'm not sure I follow. The visual appearance of the highway has noting to do with the speed at which you fly through it...

Are you talking about Super Highways? Because it seems these are already out of the game and replaced with Orbital Accelerators.

If you are talking about local highways, then the whole point of them is that you can enter and exit at whatever point you want. It makes no sense to shorten the time to the "destination" because only you know where you want to exit.

Isn't it the whole point of them to allow tiny vessels that are too small for Long Distance boosters to get around?
Those XS Ships that are stuck in traffic jams Etc.

All the Ships you could buy below the Skunk were Light/Medium Fighters.
Be stupid to get rid of the Highways as everyone trying to get to work are not going to travel around in a Tank, they're buying those tiny economy cars.
So personally I'd rather the highways stayed for immersive purposes, even if we can't ride them, they're there to show Races that civilisation is established in that sector.

No Highways in the Border/Wild territories would be realistic, but in the core areas with large populations, there needs to be Subways, Trains etc. all forms of transportation for people living in space will need for travel to work/see a friend/holiday travel etc.
Ragna-Tech.. Forging a Better Tomorrow!

My most annoying Bugs list 6.0 Beta 4 + [All DLC]
--------------------------------
Nvidium Worshop Animation Enlarge Broken :(
Building Modules causes low frame rate :o
Massive Framerate drops freezing game! :doh:
Save Corrupted Fixed the Crash! :-D

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BugMeister
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Post by BugMeister » Sat, 2. Jun 18, 23:35

- aah, the immersive effect..
- I hadn't thought of that..

- I haven't really gone that deeply into the mission constructs with Reunion
- perhaps, having already had such an enduring experience in X3 has pre-conditioned me in some way..

- maybe I should re-install Reunion and explore the local environment a little more closely
- treat it as a completely new player would..??

PS :- BTW X3 really is a staggering achievement, nonetheless.. :D :thumb_up:
- the whole universe is running in BETA mode - we're working on it.. beep..!! :D :thumb_up:

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Post by blotunga » Wed, 6. Jun 18, 08:08

I think X3 with gates and jumpdrives to gates was awesome. Then came the accelerators (TC) and highways in AP. I usually avoided the sectors with those because it was took so long to go through them even with SETA.
In Rebirth I finished the main plot, but then I found no real motivation to continue wasting precious minutes just to get from A-B, especially if they were far apart. So I stopped and went back to playing X3.
Highways are terrible. The other "drives" etc. mentioned are also terrible because they just waste your time with "traveling". Ok, I have nothing against having to do short travel like it was in X3, but to travel 20 minutes just to buy something and then travel another 20 to the other end of the galaxy is just too tedious in my eyes. I don't have time for this, if I would, I'd go and play MMOs.

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Post by Falcrack » Wed, 6. Jun 18, 15:32

The three things I disliked about highways in Rebirth are:

1. The constant game of bumper cars, having to avoid rear-ending ships as I travel
2. The sudden appearance of ships inside the highway (fake traffic) when the player enters, which obviously were spawned in right at that moment for the sake of the player.
3. The unnecessary twisting and turning, instead of having relatively straight highways between two points

Address these two issues, and I am actually pretty fine with highways. Also, I disliked the highway music in Rebirth, but that is a minor point.

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Post by blotunga » Thu, 7. Jun 18, 14:20

Falcrack wrote:The three things I disliked about highways in Rebirth are:

1. The constant game of bumper cars, having to avoid rear-ending ships as I travel
2. The sudden appearance of ships inside the highway (fake traffic) when the player enters, which obviously were spawned in right at that moment for the sake of the player.
3. The unnecessary twisting and turning, instead of having relatively straight highways between two points

Address these two issues, and I am actually pretty fine with highways. Also, I disliked the highway music in Rebirth, but that is a minor point.
Imho the highways are artificial time wasters. I rather would spend that time to plan my next complex or shoot something.

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Post by MegaJohnny » Thu, 7. Jun 18, 15:11

Falcrack wrote:The three things I disliked about highways in Rebirth are:

1. The constant game of bumper cars, having to avoid rear-ending ships as I travel
2. The sudden appearance of ships inside the highway (fake traffic) when the player enters, which obviously were spawned in right at that moment for the sake of the player.
3. The unnecessary twisting and turning, instead of having relatively straight highways between two points

Address these two issues, and I am actually pretty fine with highways. Also, I disliked the highway music in Rebirth, but that is a minor point.
I totally agree, and I think all three points are down to highways originally being designed as a source of "minigame fun" while travelling. Obviously, nobody liked that, and I think in X4 the highways are more like a "terrain" feature that affects your travel planning.

I'm okay with masstraffic in highways as long as they keep well away from real ships. I actually think masstraffic is a nice eye candy feature that can make a zone feel lived-in - But being knocked out of highways was just too annoying.

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Post by spankahontis » Thu, 14. Jun 18, 13:34

Falcrack wrote:The three things I disliked about highways in Rebirth are:

1. The constant game of bumper cars, having to avoid rear-ending ships as I travel
2. The sudden appearance of ships inside the highway (fake traffic) when the player enters, which obviously were spawned in right at that moment for the sake of the player.
3. The unnecessary twisting and turning, instead of having relatively straight highways between two points

Address these two issues, and I am actually pretty fine with highways. Also, I disliked the highway music in Rebirth, but that is a minor point.

Totally agree, I want every small vehicle to have originated from a factory somewhere and bought by an NPC to go to work.
Spawning Vehicles goes against that and the Bumper Cars game is annoying; it's not needed.

I'd like to be able to build my own Highway into a section a space that I can call my own, making them bendy wavy probably would break that.
Ragna-Tech.. Forging a Better Tomorrow!

My most annoying Bugs list 6.0 Beta 4 + [All DLC]
--------------------------------
Nvidium Worshop Animation Enlarge Broken :(
Building Modules causes low frame rate :o
Massive Framerate drops freezing game! :doh:
Save Corrupted Fixed the Crash! :-D

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Post by Uncle Benis » Fri, 15. Jun 18, 11:27

CBJ wrote:
Falcrack wrote:I've never bought the argument that if the AI had access to the player trading scripts, and jumpdrives, that trade would be eliminated. It would certainly be more competitive, and profit margins would be more thin, but it would still exist, both for players and NPCs.
It's not an "argument", it's based on empirical evidence. Way back, I think it was during the development of X3R, we tried putting independent traders into the game running the universe trader scripts. We were somewhat surprised to find that it only took a handful of these to completely wipe out almost all trade opportunities for the player.
Litcube, a modder, made that a CORE FEATURE of gameplay by introducing an active competitor that is playing by 90% the same rules the player does.
The actual developers then go on and throw the baby out with the bathwater, and instead of trying trying to build a new game around what people love about the games, which has worked very well X2 through X3AP, build a game around actively avoiding what people love about the games. Surely you guys must realize this 4 years down the line.

What you guys did with XR was the equivalent of taking a Stalker game, removing the Zone, removing anomalies and artifacts, and instead of Chernobyl it now takes place in Detroit, and tells the story of a young black teenager in the 90s on his rocky way out of gang violence in order to become a policeman.

Right now it is apparent X4 will take place closer to Detroit than Home of Opportunity.

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Post by Fleabum » Fri, 15. Jun 18, 22:51

MegaJohnny wrote:I actually think masstraffic is a nice eye candy feature that can make a zone feel lived-in
So many seem to forget this is space. The actual chances of randomly encountering another ship in outer space, when your ship is about 20 meters is next to none existent. Imagine the small distance (in space terms) between the Earth and Moon, that is about 384,400,000 million meters.

The only place you would routinely see other traffic is next to a station or planet, not in the transit areas of space, that's why the whole idea of 'highways' is utter carp.

Just give me bloody jumpdrives, nav beacons, and jump blockers. :D

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Post by MegaJohnny » Sat, 16. Jun 18, 03:51

Fleabum wrote:So many seem to forget this is space. The actual chances of randomly encountering another ship in outer space, when your ship is about 20 meters is next to none existent. Imagine the small distance (in space terms) between the Earth and Moon, that is about 384,400,000 million meters.

The only place you would routinely see other traffic is next to a station or planet, not in the transit areas of space, that's why the whole idea of 'highways' is utter carp.

Just give me bloody jumpdrives, nav beacons, and jump blockers. :D

Regards
Flea
I think everyone's aware of how sparse space is in real life. X just doesn't care to implement it in a realistic way, as (say) Elite Dangerous does.

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Post by AdrianB1 » Sat, 16. Jun 18, 13:29

After reading a lot of this discussion am I crazy if I don't want jump drives and I don't want teleportation and I definitely don't want highways?

I started with X2, moved to all the X3 variants and skipped X:R for good reasons, highways being one. For me, highways are definitely a deal breaker. If the choice is to have nothing, so be it: it's a big universe, let it be big. It makes it more challenging to play knowing that you need to carefully expand and protect your space without any sort of insta-travel.A very fast scout is enough to chart the universe in person, while my other ships are factories are controlled from a distance.

The only teleportation I see fit is the X3 short distance one where you can move people, goods and equipment between ships that are next to each other without an animation of docking it together, especially for ships that cannot dock to each other. Even for that transfer I would set a time to complete, like 10-30 seconds when the ships need to be in range, so there will be no crazy reality-avoiding maneuvers. (btw, one such reality-avoiding fun-spoiler is instantly changing guns on ships).

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Post by Uncle Benis » Sat, 16. Jun 18, 15:37

The thing with jumpdrives is that their actual impact on gameplay is misunderstood, you have to literally think with portals in an environment where every player has access to them. That also bring with it the challenge of balancing a non-conventional playing field. Theres also the tinny tiny minutia of X2 til X3AP being essentially first person tycoon macromanagement RTS games that you can engage in combat yourself in and definitely NOT primarily action games.

XR was then designed as primarily and EXCLUSIVELY an action game, a sub-par one at that because it was bogged down by tacked on "Im an X game I swear" elements, and outside of combat it felt more like a freemium pay-to-not-wait game, except you dont even have the option to pay.

The trick with jump drive based movement is to embrace the non-linearity and go nuts, but I guess we get highways forever instead.

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Post by AdrianB1 » Sat, 16. Jun 18, 17:10

In my mind X4 can be the evolution to X3 that X3 was to X2. It is enough for me if it builds on the X3 good points and fixes the weak ones:
+ open, vast universe; keep it
+ very nice graphics even for these day
+ good enough economy game play; improve if possible, after a while some plants disappeared and it become messy
+ nice diversity and balance of ships until Springblossom made everything else irrelevant
+ nice capital ships until it became too easy to create an insane player fleet of super-M2's
- old engine that does not scale with multi-core CPU's
- factory complexes that are a nightmare to deploy and performance-breakers
- player-owned M1, M2's. There should be a few, race-owned and only in capital sectors, not more. It's like a today's corporation building aircraft carriers and sail the Mediterranean with it
- M7M's
- carrier wings. They are a great idea, but a poor implementation, the AI was not able to keep them alive in scenarios where they should never die.
- post-campaign playability. There is only so much you can do in a sandbox, I spent hundreds of hours in the games but at some point there was nothing interesting to do anymore. We need some long term objectives, so the sensation of "game over, this is just post end credits gameplay" will go away.
- cannot change the Universe balance, like get into an alliance with one race and conquer the universe, take over sector ownership, have the factories in it surrender and give control to the player or the allied race. In fewer words, the ability to change the universe ownership.
- annoying GOD engine that randomly destructs capital objects that define the universe and not even offer the missions to reconstruct it in the same place.
- too many pointless construct factory missions for others, crowding the place and creating the need to randomly destruct others
- instant factory deployment. It should take at least 5 in-game minutes to deploy & assemble one and same to load one in a TL.
- a purpose for TM's
- a better purpose for TP's
- swarm missiles (flail, etc)
- infinite fuel & energy missiles. Real missiles get at full speed in the seconds after launch and the engine stops, they can turn but losing energy, so avoiding it will not make it come back and back and back ...

Sorry for the rant, too many memories, too much time playing X.

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Post by ZaphodBeeblebrox » Mon, 18. Jun 18, 10:30

And Uncle Benis said
XR was then designed as primarily and EXCLUSIVELY an action game
I beg to differ, given the number of hours I spent rebuilding the economy in Devries and also the amount of manual trading that I did directly contradicts such an idea.
it was bogged down by tacked on "Im an X game I swear" elements
I have to disagree with this as well. There was nothing "tacked" on about the trading, station / empire building elements of the game. Some things I admit were repetitive, but from what I can see regarding X4 those lessons have been learned
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Post by Uncle Benis » Mon, 18. Jun 18, 15:34

ZaphodBeeblebrox wrote:the number of hours
Case in point.
ZaphodBeeblebrox wrote:the amount of manual trading
Case in point.
ZaphodBeeblebrox wrote:There was nothing "tacked" on about the trading, station / empire building elements of the game.
Trading and empire building were clearly last on the list of things on the list to be considered when designing the game. The pew pew action part of it is done really well, but the trading and empire building appears to be an afterthought. The design philosophy screams of "linear, story based pew pew simulator that the devs at some point remembered which game series it belongs to". And Im not talking about how detailed the individual systems of trading, fighting and building are, they are very detailed and very well thought out. Im talking about how insultingly bad they work together in the foundational framework of XR, its gameplay loop. Its almost as if trading and station building dont belong into the base XR gameplay loop, and were crammed in at some later point after the framework of player interaction with the game was finalized.

Its almost as if the game was originally developed as an action console spinoff but was later rewritten to include traditional X elements. I wonder if controller optimization with no joystick support to speak of, lack of autopilot, and no SETA or JD aka optimization for open world gameplay at release have something to do with the impression I got from the game.

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