Going through some negative feedback while planning the next 4.0 update

[dtpsprt]

I actually consider Nividium mining an even bigger exploit

I like setting up and fine tuning my trade network. Especially with the 4.0 repeat buy/sell loop feature. Requires only 1* pilots, btw. Fire and forget automated money makers are not for me.

Everyone (emphasis on everyone because it includes me too) has his/her own preferences and playstyle and that is a fact. My "problem" is the lack of choice that was abundant in the previous X games and cannot for the life of me see why it is taken back in X4, along with the aesthetic side of it (which is again personal preferences)

[Gavrushka]

Although I'm very supportive of Egosoft, I've always had a grumble at 'lessons unlearned.' - There were a whole bunch of positive aspects to previous games, including Rebirth, but it seems many of those features never made it into X4. Likewise, I wonder why.

Would it be so hard to create a bulletin board populated with missions that showed in surrounding sectors where there was satellite coverage? Other snippets of 'news' could appear on it, such as generated articles about lost stations and who destroyed them or of new stations and trade opportunities.

What ever happened to buying second hand ships? - I loved that in X3, and built loads of equipment docs and Trading stations to house them all. Back in X2, wasn't there gunnery crews you could hire or am I inventing that? I hope little matters that perhaps won't cost a squillion man-hours to implement will come to the fore after the next DLC drops and is stabilised.

What about the advertising gubbins on stations? Crazy little thing, but it just removed a layer of sterility. Rebirth was the most vibrant of all Egosoft's space sim games (not calling it an X game so as to avoid the pugilists! LOL) - Is X4 really less pretty because of Vulcan or was it artistic intent?

Damn, I'm rambling again...

[dtpsprt]

Damn, I'm rambling again...

Of course you are... NOT!!! Just wait and see in V4.00 a new Message Tab that the only thing it shows (characterised Important of all things) is the time a faction called you for promotion ceremony and the time you attended it!!!!
Who needs info on his/hers destroyed ships/stations for example?

[GCU Grey Area]

Pausing while you can still issue orders way too much of an exploit.... Especially pausing and being able to save and the game returns paused... what's to stop the player of saving 3-4 scenarios for a battle and see which one works loading the pre-made ones?

Thought your contention was that pausing while issuing trade orders was the big exploit. Still don't see it, but seems you've moved on from that. As for the above scenario, surely it's the save scumming which is a far bigger exploit? Even then it's entirely up to each player what they use the save system for. Personally prefer to live with consequences, but don't hold it against people if they want to save before every fight, boarding operation, etc, then reload & try again if they don't like the results. It's entirely up to them, presumably they enjoy playing the game that way. Pausing before doing that doesn't seem like it would make any meaningful difference.

Use of the map, per se, you are partly right. The problem (my problem if you like) is that this hideous (aesthetically speaking) all blocking screen has to come up for everything...

It's a bloody complex game. Not sure that having separate UI for every single aspect of it would be all that beneficial. Suspect it might well confuse more people than putting everything on the map. Could also potentially be far more complex to program, absorbing an unnecessary amount of dev time (though can't be certain on that last bit, last programming I did was back in the 80's & computers were somewhat different back then).

Should I continue with the non existent search features? Why can't I see only the Hull Part factories for example? There should be a search facility that you should be able to put (example) Hull Parts and get a list of the Hull Parts Factories that have already been revealed on the map...

"Hull Parts" is an awkward search term. Game defaults to thinking you want to add Hull Parts to the list of wares in your trade filter. Suggest you use just "Hull" instead if you want to locate hull part factories.

...instead of this mess of a map that you also (again time consuming) have to "scale" it to show only one sector and search the factory list moving to the next and so on!!!

Never had an issue with the map showing different info depending on level of zoom. Think it would be unmanageable if it showed every single station in the universe when it's zoomed out to it's maximum extent. I'm fine with it only showing major stations (shipyards, etc) at that level & progressively adding in more info as the map is zoomed in.

Why I have to find something outside of a "properties info box" to be able to pick it?

Unsure what you mean by this, care to elaborate?

(Almost) last but not least the fact that there is no way to either put numeric values or move things on the (wrongly named by international convention) y axis (which should be z and used to be z since the time of Descartes)... Nooooo I have to slant the whole bloody thing, drag up or down then rotate 360 degrees to make sure that it has not moved sideways...

Unsure why they used that set of axes, but makes no practical difference to me. As for being to rotate the map in all three axes, bloody love it myself. Find it far more useful than just having the top down & side view we had in X3.

have not even mentioned having to have my pilot fly and me on the map searching for lockboxes because he will only tell me of the 4+ lock ones, while it is the 2 lock that "hide" the goodies...

Well, frankly it's up to you if that's how you want to spend your time. Personally I very rarely bother with lockboxes after the first couple of days of a new game. Even then the only ones I'm really interested in are the ones containing the ingredients for "Fine Meals" (needed for some chain missions). However they're exceptionally easy to find if you take the appropriate lockbox contents retrieval mission (then abort as soon as you've got the stuff) - mission guidance shows approx location, then it's just a quick LRS ping to locate the boxes.

[Raevyan]

I still would like to se the trade computer from Rebirth. That was one of the best things Rebirth had in my opinion. The map is really limiting not being able to se more than one offer of a given ware without zooming in and out on and moving around the map. Framerates on the map are also pretty bad in the later stages of the game.

The trade computer list was really great. You instantly saw the best offer and how far away it was from selected ship. You saw the discount % of the offers and you saw all offers from stations with trade updates. On top of that, the whole list was searchable, filterable, sortable. Ofc the ship selection for the trade was a mess which should be improved and not be a list that you have to go through one by one to get to the right ship.

[jlehtone]

What ever happened to buying second hand ships? - I loved that in X3, and built loads of equipment docs and Trading stations to house them all. Back in X2, wasn't there gunnery crews you could hire or am I inventing that? I hope little matters that perhaps won't cost a squillion man-hours to implement will come to the fore after the next DLC drops and is stabilised.

Second hand ships did spawn as "missions". With X4 "everything is built" (except SCA/Kha'ak) mentality, when would NPC offer to sell their ship? When damaged? (They do close down Factories, so the "I don't need this" logic exists for stations.)

Gunnery Crew (and AEGIS) was a player written script for X2 that was included into X2 Bonuspack. It did add turret/ship commands, just like other ship upgrades. The special flavour was that the upgrade were a ware called "crew" that had to be chased from random Tour Busses.

One primary feature of GC was that it did swap turret guns to match the distance and state of the target. The X3s had that feature builtin in NPC ships. There is no "swap guns in space" in X4. The only "spiritual successor" in X4 is that inactive turrets have "pull in" animation.

X3AP had multiple "primitive" turret commands. Furthermore, player could define three custom turret commands that had a prioritized stack of primitives. X4 lacks those. How was XR?

[Roeleveld]

What ever happened to buying second hand ships? - I loved that in X3, and built loads of equipment docs and Trading stations to house them all. Back in X2, wasn't there gunnery crews you could hire or am I inventing that? I hope little matters that perhaps won't cost a squillion man-hours to implement will come to the fore after the next DLC drops and is stabilised.

Second hand ships did spawn as "missions". With X4 "everything is built" (except SCA/Kha'ak) mentality, when would NPC offer to sell their ship? When damaged? (They do close down Factories, so the "I don't need this" logic exists for stations.)

Gunnery Crew (and AEGIS) was a player written script for X2 that was included into X2 Bonuspack. It did add turret/ship commands, just like other ship upgrades. The special flavour was that the upgrade were a ware called "crew" that had to be chased from random Tour Busses.

I would love to see Gunnery Crew (Marines) being used to make the turrets better and faster. (Destroying a turret would than also "kill" the assigned marine)

One primary feature of GC was that it did swap turret guns to match the distance and state of the target. The X3s had that feature builtin in NPC ships. There is no "swap guns in space" in X4. The only "spiritual successor" in X4 is that inactive turrets have "pull in" animation.

X3AP had multiple "primitive" turret commands. Furthermore, player could define three custom turret commands that had a prioritized stack of primitives. X4 lacks those. How was XR?

One thing I miss in X4, with regards to swapping out components, is the ability to buy/produce multiple weapons and swap them out without having to find a station that actually sells them. This way I could load up a transporter with a whole set of weapons and have them installed to ships in a servicedock. (This would still take time and cost money, if not done on a player-owned station)

[Gavrushka]

What ever happened to buying second hand ships? - I loved that in X3, and built loads of equipment docs and Trading stations to house them all. Back in X2, wasn't there gunnery crews you could hire or am I inventing that? I hope little matters that perhaps won't cost a squillion man-hours to implement will come to the fore after the next DLC drops and is stabilised.

Second hand ships did spawn as "missions". With X4 "everything is built" (except SCA/Kha'ak) mentality, when would NPC offer to sell their ship? When damaged? (They do close down Factories, so the "I don't need this" logic exists for stations.)

Gunnery Crew (and AEGIS) was a player written script for X2 that was included into X2 Bonuspack. It did add turret/ship commands, just like other ship upgrades. The special flavour was that the upgrade were a ware called "crew" that had to be chased from random Tour Busses.

One primary feature of GC was that it did swap turret guns to match the distance and state of the target. The X3s had that feature builtin in NPC ships. There is no "swap guns in space" in X4. The only "spiritual successor" in X4 is that inactive turrets have "pull in" animation.

X3AP had multiple "primitive" turret commands. Furthermore, player could define three custom turret commands that had a prioritized stack of primitives. X4 lacks those. How was XR?

I think the second hand ship missions were immersivity, just another thing to do. - It'd certainly need tweaking for X4, and could be you pay double the list price when a player doesn't have the rep to buy one from the faction. - They could also be SCA boarded ships, with new hacked ID, and I'm sure there are a dozen other plausible cases, including closing down sales as you mentioned.

Personal combat in XR was only from the one flyable ship, but I remember I loved it. - I don't remember very much about the game other than feeling pulled within a story, deeply immersed, but then there were frequent jarring issues that dragged you out of the tale.

As I've said many times, I feel like X4 failed to incorporate many of the winning formula elements from other games. I don't play X4 for extended periods as I did all previous X games, and although I do enjoy playing it very much, there's not the 'just one more mission, one more trade run' feel I had with its predecessors.

[jlehtone]

move things on the (wrongly named by international convention) y axis (which should be z and used to be z since the time of Descartes)

2D graphics has horizontal X and vertical Y. 3D adds Z as "depth".
Therefore, you in a ship facing "North", see "up" as Y, "right" as X, and "forward" as Z.
This is naturally contradictory to the convention of Terran maps, where you look "down" from "above", and designate Y as "North" and X as "East".

The last twist is that the game takes the reference frame of the ship that faces "North", shows map from "above" by default, but designates "North" as +Z.
What twist? The resulting coordinate system is left-handed.

[dtpsprt]

2D graphics has horizontal X and vertical Y. 3D adds Z as "depth".
Therefore, you in a ship facing "North", see "up" as Y, "right" as X, and "forward" as Z.
This is naturally contradictory to the convention of Terran maps, where you look "down" from "above", and designate Y as "North" and X as "East".

The last twist is that the game takes the reference frame of the ship that faces "North", shows map from "above" by default, but designates "North" as +Z.
What twist? The resulting coordinate system is left-handed.

See... even if I hate anything Terran (the way it was implemented in X games), I believe that the majority of the customer base (emphasis on customer here) are Terrans even if I like to name myself Belteguesian (From Beltegeuse) at times. For this I believe that Terran rules should apply (even if "flawed") to be more comprehensive.

Even taking into consideration the "common" perception that left handed people are smarter (in scientific fact they can only have faster reflexes on occasion) they still are a bit below 30% of the population... [evil grin]So... yes... that is a twist... [/evil grin]

[Tempest]

Thank you for your transparency and casual address Bernd,

i see you are doing small bits of " damage control/aftersales support" @ the steam-review section, unfortunatly most reviewers remain silent and w/o any feedback or simple response back.

not saying any platform should get some sort of special treatment, but people around here are atleast engaged and somewhat more involved. (talking about the 500+ post members for instance)



i'll try to squeeze a bit more hours out of CP2077 while waiting for COH, but it's honestly not worth a 2nd playtrough... itching to take the brand new 5800x for a spin in X4. (the performance thread we have on here looks promising)

[Tempest]

Personally for 5.0, I'd love to adress NPC uniforms to include dress code (e.g. ship captain use this uniform), faction colors and faction emblem. I think currently only player space suit do this

Edit: Especially with Terran DLC, it will be more and more hard to distinguish human faction NPC without proper uniforms.

been thinkin about, and wanting the same aswell. it seems simple enough *cough*. most uniforms are already there.

- e.g. Marines stood on the bridge in actual armor, looking like an actual "Marine"
- as you mentioned, something worthy of a captain
- shipwide-dresscode for crew, maybe something separate for service crew, could apply to ones stations aswell.

no more casual friday gear!, clothing not "optional" for Teladi! lol

[dtpsprt]

Personally for 5.0, I'd love to adress NPC uniforms to include dress code (e.g. ship captain use this uniform), faction colors and faction emblem. I think currently only player space suit do this

Edit: Especially with Terran DLC, it will be more and more hard to distinguish human faction NPC without proper uniforms.

been thinkin about, and wanting the same aswell. it seems simple enough *cough*. most uniforms are already there.

- e.g. Marines stood on the bridge in actual armor, looking like an actual "Marine"
- as you mentioned, something worthy of a captain
- shipwide-dresscode for crew, maybe something separate for service crew, could apply to ones stations aswell.

no more casual friday gear!, clothing not "optional" for Teladi! lol

Even though I agree I'd prefer something done for the Argon faces, they are simply unacceptable, dress code should come after that. In the dress code a good addition would be for the female Argons not to be dressed like nuns on duty!!!

[Roeleveld]

Personally for 5.0, I'd love to adress NPC uniforms to include dress code (e.g. ship captain use this uniform), faction colors and faction emblem. I think currently only player space suit do this

Edit: Especially with Terran DLC, it will be more and more hard to distinguish human faction NPC without proper uniforms.

been thinkin about, and wanting the same aswell. it seems simple enough *cough*. most uniforms are already there.

- e.g. Marines stood on the bridge in actual armor, looking like an actual "Marine"
- as you mentioned, something worthy of a captain
- shipwide-dresscode for crew, maybe something separate for service crew, could apply to ones stations aswell.

no more casual friday gear!, clothing not "optional" for Teladi! lol

Even though I agree I'd prefer something done for the Argon faces, they are simply unacceptable, dress code should come after that. In the dress code a good addition would be for the female Argons not to be dressed like nuns on duty!!!

For the dresscode, having the faction-logo displayed on the breast-pocket and back of the top would be nice.
And also on the helmet (if they wear one)

[Falcrack]

I still would like to se the trade computer from Rebirth. That was one of the best things Rebirth had in my opinion. The map is really limiting not being able to se more than one offer of a given ware without zooming in and out on and moving around the map. Framerates on the map are also pretty bad in the later stages of the game.

The trade computer list was really great. You instantly saw the best offer and how far away it was from selected ship. You saw the discount % of the offers and you saw all offers from stations with trade updates. On top of that, the whole list was searchable, filterable, sortable. Ofc the ship selection for the trade was a mess which should be improved and not be a list that you have to go through one by one to get to the right ship.

Agreed, the trade computer in Rebirth was one of the things really Rebirth did right, and I would love to see it make a return.

[warjager]

The more i read people experience, and the more i think that, the most serious flaw of the game, is at the core and basic of the universe economy..... the raw material! Basic material are everywhere and infinite!! no need to find some and no fear of lacking of. Faction dont have to fight for a resourcefull patch to play strategicly, and winning the upper hand in a war.. and so are the player! If ressource where random at game start and finite, there be a real deal with who can win and where to attack. Resource can ben finite yes... but can respawn at random outside the known bubble after X time, or something like that, and ence could be a reason for exploration too.

Because of this, player can no longer be an all mighty god that print money, cause if your ennemy have the ressource, even with billion, no ressource=no power! All this should also come with a dynamic faction relation. Help a faction, and there ennemy will be pissed at you. The game as it is now as no concequence for any action you take (unless you directly attack a faction). The bigger you are, the more you should be taken seriously by all the faction.

that was my 2cents

[dtpsprt]

The more i read people experience, and the more i think that, the most serious flaw of the game, is at the core and basic of the universe economy..... the raw material! Basic material are everywhere and infinite!! no need to find some and no fear of lacking of. Faction dont have to fight for a resourcefull patch to play strategicly, and winning the upper hand in a war.. and so are the player! If ressource where random at game start and finite, there be a real deal with who can win and where to attack. Resource can ben finite yes... but can respawn at random outside the known bubble after X time, or something like that, and ence could be a reason for exploration too.

Because of this, player can no longer be an all mighty god that print money, cause if your ennemy have the ressource, even with billion, no ressource=no power! All this should also come with a dynamic faction relation. Help a faction, and there ennemy will be pissed at you. The game as it is now as no concequence for any action you take (unless you directly attack a faction). The bigger you are, the more you should be taken seriously by all the faction.

that was my 2cents

+1 to that

[Gavrushka]

Although I agree with the boundless resource issue, I think we all appreciate it's a discussion that isn't going to lead to changing the gas/ore infinite availability throughout the galaxy, and changing its distribution would be a massive irritation for current players.

...But here's the thing. - In any war situation, the first thing the enemy tries to do is cut your supply chains. -Now if that were to happen in game, it may be, at the very least, a nuisance for the player. - Imagine a dozen enemy scout ships filled with mines emptying their content around resource probes or simply targeting resource probes or even mining drones. - Enemy fleet raids against outlying mining operations when they're poorly defended, followed by a quick withdrawal before the player can react...

And I too did love the trade system in Rebirth, where a purchase and sale were married into one interaction. - With the functionality of the current UI, imagine the degree of flexibility which could be incorporated into enhancing the trading function. And didn't ships need antimatter cells for moving at speed or am I just imagining that? If not, why in the name of god was it removed from X4?

[aurelcourt]

The more i read people experience, and the more i think that, the most serious flaw of the game, is at the core and basic of the universe economy..... the raw material! Basic material are everywhere and infinite!! [...]

+1 to the general idea yes !

Maybe not a "most serious flaw", but definitely something worth a thought, and with a lot of cool side effects :

- prospector ships
- buying prospecting maps to AI
- actually defending a good mining spot (or hiring private escort if you play more on the tycoon style)
- having to escort material convoys because they'd be a really critical resource, and probably be far away from the main high-tier factories / Shipyards
- having XL ore/gas transporters (because you won't build a whole factory chain on the spot if the resource is finite
- relocating the mining base after a while

- ... and many more that'd bring a lot of immersion to the game too

[jlehtone]

Basic material are everywhere and infinite!! no need to find some and no fear of lacking of. Faction dont have to fight for a resourcefull patch to play strategicly, and winning the upper hand in a war.. and so are the player!

...But here's the thing. - In any war situation, the first thing the enemy tries to do is cut your supply chains. -Now if that were to happen in game, it may be, at the very least, a nuisance for the player.

ZYA does suffer from resource shortage. "Their resources" are either in enemy space or far from Wharfs and "behind enemy", and their logistics does not blacklist the suicidal routes. The enemy (#79B and #598) does cut the supply line quite predictably.

But ZYA is only an exception. The Xenon do not act "intentionally". Cutting the ZYA supply is a mere side-effect of normal Xenon activity. Although, I'd guess that the result is intentional by the devs.

Therefore, I would focus on the AI logic. It does not matter much that resources are infinite, if your enemies do actively block your access to them. The current AI can't nor does it protect its own access.