[FEEDBACK] after 400 ours of play

[ncmohr]

Hi

After 400 hours of play here is a little status of different things.

Everything seems to work but there are little problems here and there. Let me list the stuff i found.

Economy grinds towards a halt even as we speak. Somethings just saturate the market too quick, if there was a reason for the demand in the first place then im sure the demand dont just go and die all of a sudden.

Speaking of demand, i have several big ships on order on 4 different shipyards but they simply have been standing as orders and not moving along, im sure that if a wharf had the orders then it surely would get the ressources needed. Might even be cool to see which resources so that you could deliver them for a super profit since they are so hard to get

Minor graphical glitches such as when i teleport to my eclipse then my pilot is invisible.

Sometimes my ships or the enemy (i cant see which) open fire at each other for no obvious reason. I have a 30 relation with argon but still sometimes my fighters and theirs fight each other for no obvious reason. Might be nice to be able to see what happens.

I have indestructable Xenon factories in one of the main sectors this makes it quite fun but also unrealistic

When building factories so many modules just doesnt fit with anything else. Could we get some more connectors or something on the modules. Also try and making a 50+ unit factory installation and ask the computer to set it up all nicely, wont happen

Auto traders, Auto explorers etc just dont work right. I would love to ask some fast units to auto explore in a fire and forget way, that would be the way you would do it in the real world. Right now too much micro managment, could be done more elegantly.

Ideas for improvement:

Get the economy flowing somehow.

I would really like to see some plots. This is the first X-game i played with such thin stories. You basically have a HQ plot which is done in like 10-15 minuttes. Not like the X games of old.

Bring back some of the old fun from the stations, like lottery tickets and stuff. It makes it fun to dock. Right now im just teleporting everywhere

Bring back the stock market. It was an extra way of earning cash and fun to do.

Towers and shields on a 50+ unit factory is nasty. Would be great if this could be done in a fast way. For instance with defaults.

Now for the praise.

I do love the game. I enjoy ventures even though i loose quite a few ships

The paint mods are quite nice, well done.

I see real oppotunities with the ventures looking forward to see what you have in store.

Sectores are quite nice. Graphics are nice. I even enjoy the more simple ships models but i do miss the Terran vessels.

I know there is a mountain of stuff you guys have to do yet, but you have regained my confidence so i am sure we will get there at some point.

Thanks for a great game looking forward to it being even more great

[Heskolt]

Sometimes my ships or the enemy (i cant see which) open fire at each other for no obvious reason. I have a 30 relation with argon but still sometimes my fighters and theirs fight each other for no obvious reason. Might be nice to be able to see what happens.

Usually this is friendly fire when you or the faction are engaged with X/K or pirates.

[ncmohr]

Well i think i might have seen an episode that caused this. I have a base in Nopileus. It has turned into my sector after i put in admin building there. There are som Scale plate green factories there. And some ships belonging to these factories. Some argon fighter showed up to kill some of them and in doing so they turned red for being agro towards them. My fighters patrolling the sector then jumped them. I am pretty sure to that is what happened. But i only saw it developing.

[sh1pman]

Yeah, your patrols respond to NPCs asking for help and attack their target. Happened to me as well, but it was my destroyer attacking another friendly destroyer

Also, destroyers are a joke. They’re not worth the metal they’re made of.

[Socratatus]

The game is good, but Ventures is a divisive mistake in my view. Getting skin mods if you only do that Online `feature` just isn`t on in my opinion. It should be available in Shipyards/wharfs to all who have the game and have no wish to do ventures.

[DeFragMe]

The game is good, but Ventures is a divisive mistake in my view. Getting skin mods if you only do that Online `feature` just isn`t on in my opinion. It should be available in Shipyards/wharfs to all who have the game and have no wish to do ventures.

well, they could always add the option for modified games to just buy the stuff ingame for Cr.. but we still have to wait what exactly they want to do, this is but a test so far afterall, nothing else. The work of aparently one man.

[magictrip]

Ok, let me try to give you some feedback on your problems:

Economy grinds towards a halt even as we speak. Somethings just saturate the market too quick, if there was a reason for the demand in the first place then im sure the demand dont just go and die all of a sudden.

This may be a punctual issue, I got rid of Xenon (which supposedly would diminish the number of fights and halt the economy) and the market was going as if nothing happened. HOP was still fighting everyone and after I did a massive Smart Chips factory all the Wharfs were producing with not big issue.

Speaking of demand, i have several big ships on order on 4 different shipyards but they simply have been standing as orders and not moving along, im sure that if a wharf had the orders then it surely would get the ressources needed. Might even be cool to see which resources so that you could deliver them for a super profit since they are so hard to get

You can see the resources that are missing, just try to build another ship and they will appear as yellow on the bottom right part of your screen, near the button to confirm the purchase.

Sometimes my ships or the enemy (i cant see which) open fire at each other for no obvious reason. I have a 30 relation with argon but still sometimes my fighters and theirs fight each other for no obvious reason. Might be nice to be able to see what happens.

Already explained in another post before this.

I have indestructable Xenon factories in one of the main sectors this makes it quite fun but also unrealistic

There's no indestructible Xenon structures in the game, all of them can be destroyed and the only issue are for the Rock stations where you need to be in sector for them to be blown up. But they do need a lot of time and power to go down (my fighting force was 32 destroyers).

When building factories so many modules just doesnt fit with anything else. Could we get some more connectors or something on the modules. Also try and making a 50+ unit factory installation and ask the computer to set it up all nicely, wont happen

I never had any problem and if you get the pieces from different factions you may be even able to do what you want. The 3D builder is not ideal and very weird sometimes but it works. I never used the automatic feature so I cannot say anything about it.

Auto traders, Auto explorers etc just dont work right. I would love to ask some fast units to auto explore in a fire and forget way, that would be the way you would do it in the real world. Right now too much micro managment, could be done more elegantly.

Auto Miners are broken but that is because they are too efficient and ignore the game mechanics. So, I hope they will get fixed eventually but it does not affect your gameplay.
Auto Traders works partly fine, the way to avoid problems is:
1) Auto Trade only wares that you do not produce
2) Assign the traders to stations for wares that you produce
3) Try to avoid factories which sell multiple wares as the manager may get confused (there's a bug here where sometimes items won't sell and they will get stuck in the cargo).
4) Use mostly Small and Medium traders for Auto Trade as Auto Trade is not getting the best deal overall, they are just looking for any profit (there is another post saying that the script is backwards, meaning that they are getting the worst deal instead of the best one).
Auto Explore: It is broken, the option is to do manual exploring but even that is not great because sometimes your ship will pass near a station and not discover it. Maybe because they are out of the plane, but who knows.

Get the economy flowing somehow.

The economy is flowing but we need more money sinks and some tweaks in some production nodes (aka Smart Chips). They are just too slow right now.

Towers and shields on a 50+ unit factory is nasty. Would be great if this could be done in a fast way. For instance with defaults.

You can do that, just do one and copy and paste it. It's pretty handy. What I usually do is to have a "default" building with the storages I like to use, docks, etc fully outfitted saved as a preset and I use that as a base for my base building. After that instead of dragging and dropping new pieces I just copy and paste and move them around. That way you keep the shield/turret config you did in the first one.

The biggest issue to me right now is the lack of information. I guess that is a common issue in X games but Egosoft REALLY need to hire someone to generate a documentation for their games. The Encyclopedia is a joke and the Manual is pretty incomplete and useless for the most part, it tells the superficial stuff but stops there, no details, no deep information, etc. That makes people a lot more anxious and worried.

Also, although I do think the moderators do a good job here, but the lack of official feedback on their own forums is pretty weird. Alongside the documentation guy they should hire someone with development knowledge to answer the most common questions in a more reliable and promptly way. That will do wonders for the game receptivity overall.

[ncmohr]

Thanks a bunch for your extensive answer

I will go and check out some of the fixes you gave me.

[birdtable]

The game is good, but Ventures is a divisive mistake in my view. Getting skin mods if you only do that Online `feature` just isn`t on in my opinion. It should be available in Shipyards/wharfs to all who have the game and have no wish to do ventures.

Should replace "who have the game" with "who bought the game as a single player experience" ..... As this is what was sold and advertised.
I have no issue with ventures, in fact CO-OP is a very good idea but not at a loss of rewards for the non venturing single player.

[reanor]

....
Also, although I do think the moderators do a good job here, but the lack of official feedback on their own forums is pretty weird. Alongside the documentation guy they should hire someone with development knowledge to answer the most common questions in a more reliable and promptly way. That will do wonders for the game receptivity overall.

I wonder if they comment more on German forums. They are German team after all, so there may be a language barrier... Any Germans here who frequent German forum and see more feedback from the dev team there?

[drhay53]

My guess is that each save is initialized with a certain amount of demand that is unrelated to any actual usage of resources that may show up. So when you say "...if there was a reason for the demand in the first place then im sure the demand dont just go and die all of a sudden" I would say that's exactly what's happening; stations are filling up their desired inventory but there is no further demand for the goods because they're not actually being consumed.

"...Might even be cool to see which resources so that you could deliver them for a super profit since they are so hard to get"
When you go to build a ship, you can see the missing parts in the lower right of the build screen. You can open up the wharf, bring up a basic version of the ship that's stuck, and see what the station needs. IMO the shipyards do not offer enough incentive for ships stuck in the queue. They need to offer a huge profit for parts for a ship that is completely stuck. Or build/assign their own traders for stuck parts.

[Botschafter Von Den Glück]

I would love to ask some fast units to auto explore in a fire and forget way,...

I have seen something (also not in line, but fun):

Once I had my Oddysseus fly in travel speed (5000+ m/s), and wanted to guard a gate to the enemy faction in war with some turrets.
So I placed those while in high speed. Guess what happened?
Well They went on flying... and flying... through the sector, ... reaching the outer stations... and flying... changing the direction after some 500 kilometres, flying in a circle around the sector, scattering more and more (it was like 5 or 4 turrets in the beginning, but I lost radar after a while; still, they give me radar spots on the map view...

and they keep scattering, flying into the borders of the map, zooming them finally completely out... (!) in all directions...

and sometimes, no Idea why, they change the direction and keep exploring up huge areas of the sector, of course... empty areas...

Here:


See Anspruch des Pontifex: All those stripes were done from those TURRETS! TURRETS! TO explore!

well, not the way you started, but I wanted to give a notion of this! Amazing!

[reanor]

I didn't know turrets had engines and exploration software on them, must be something new...

[magictrip]

My guess is that each save is initialized with a certain amount of demand that is unrelated to any actual usage of resources that may show up. So when you say "...if there was a reason for the demand in the first place then im sure the demand dont just go and die all of a sudden" I would say that's exactly what's happening; stations are filling up their desired inventory but there is no further demand for the goods because they're not actually being consumed.

On the top of the save file there's a seed entry like this: seed="2766458448"

This usually means that they are generating something "random" based on that seed. I would guess that is used to define which stations are around and the initial status of the economy.

[drhay53]

My guess is that each save is initialized with a certain amount of demand that is unrelated to any actual usage of resources that may show up. So when you say "...if there was a reason for the demand in the first place then im sure the demand dont just go and die all of a sudden" I would say that's exactly what's happening; stations are filling up their desired inventory but there is no further demand for the goods because they're not actually being consumed.

On the top of the save file there's a seed entry like this: seed="2766458448"

This usually means that they are generating something "random" based on that seed. I would guess that is used to define which stations are around and the initial status of the economy.

Yeah it sounds like a random number generator, which is what I figured. That pretty much guarantees that the game will start with "false" demand for goods that is not dependent on the actual steady-state economy. Basically station managers will try to fill their desired quotas until their storage gets filled up as much as they "want", then after that, the "real" economy kicks in.

[grbaker]

Not quite 400 hours and loving the game. Thank you Egosoft.

Love Lock boxes, the size of the sectors and component stations building.

A few suggestions...

- Factions only weapons or mods (or both) - something each race/faction or pirate syndicate sell.
- Pirate Syndicate vs Pirate Syndicate missions or series of missions.... I haven't found anything like that yet.
- Smuggling missions - example Space Fuel from the Argon to a Paranid station where it is illegal.
- Weapon drops by defeated enemies... only ever get the odd missile.
- Weapon building stations... I miss these from X3 and I think Pirates would want to trade in these wares.
- X3 have a huge amount of weapon variety for your XL ships. X4 seems to have too few. Destroyers and Carriers need better close defences (or maybe better drone settings). Even the poor Xenon K's are getting their butts kicked by a hand full of fighters.
- Khaak clusters in X2/X3 use to give me the jeebees and I would burst them with care... current Khaak are wimps and not very aggressive.

So looking forward to DLCs and future patches.

[ezra-r]

Not quite 400 hours and loving the game. Thank you Egosoft.

Love Lock boxes, the size of the sectors and component stations building.

A few suggestions...

- Factions only weapons or mods (or both) - something each race/faction or pirate syndicate sell.
- Pirate Syndicate vs Pirate Syndicate missions or series of missions.... I haven't found anything like that yet.
- Smuggling missions - example Space Fuel from the Argon to a Paranid station where it is illegal.
- Weapon drops by defeated enemies... only ever get the odd missile.
- Weapon building stations... I miss these from X3 and I think Pirates would want to trade in these wares.
- X3 have a huge amount of weapon variety for your XL ships. X4 seems to have too few. Destroyers and Carriers need better close defences (or maybe better drone settings). Even the poor Xenon K's are getting their butts kicked by a hand full of fighters.
- Khaak clusters in X2/X3 use to give me the jeebees and I would burst them with care... current Khaak are wimps and not very aggressive.
....

Some pretty good ideas here

* Faction weapon mods, I have requested this a few times before, it would give more choice. I, though, think this is partially done in some other way, with modifications, not a faction stuff, but allows you to customize your setup with a wide variety of options.

* Weapon Drops. I loved this feature in X3:XX versions, I usually visited Xenon sectors looking for other factions fighting with them and send my trade ships to loot, it involved some risky but some times profitable and exciting experience. When I was advance I would send my own capital ships to lay waste to Xenon sectors for this same reason. It would help finishing the outfit of my capitals.

* specific Pirate weapons for capitals with unique features, that would be cool.

[surferx]

Hi

After 400 hours of play here is a little status of different things.

Everything seems to work but there are little problems here and there. Let me list the stuff i found.

Economy grinds towards a halt even as we speak. Somethings just saturate the market too quick, if there was a reason for the demand in the first place then im sure the demand dont just go and die all of a sudden.

Yeh, it must be all the player rewards!

[RainerPrem]

I wonder if they comment more on German forums. They are German team after all, so there may be a language barrier... Any Germans here who frequent German forum and see more feedback from the dev team there?

No, they don't. I've seen more developer comments in the English forum than in the German one. Most comments anyway appear in the Beta-Forum.

And it seems that really the only substantial information comes from videos (which are English-only BTW).

[RainerPrem]

* Weapon Drops. I loved this feature in X3:XX versions, I usually visited Xenon sectors looking for other factions fighting with them and send my trade ships to loot, it involved some risky but some times profitable and exciting experience. When I was advance I would send my own capital ships to lay waste to Xenon sectors for this same reason. It would help finishing the outfit of my capitals.

Considering the fact that weapons do NOT exist apart from ships or stations, this sounds rather impossible to work into the game. The paradigm has changed.