Not another DLC without any highways

[grapedog]

Remove highways. Cap Travel Drive at something reasonable, such as 1000 m/s. People in a hurry can use SETA.

That's a hard pass, SETA is trash. It served a purpose in x3... but it's not needed now.

I'm having trouble thinking of a single space show or movie that doesn't use some sort of high speed tech to move around, and I can't... because space is large and mostly boring and mostly empty...

No one wants to watch Han Solo age 5000 years on his trip to Alderaan...

[jasonbarron]

Remove highways. Cap Travel Drive at something reasonable, such as 1000 m/s. People in a hurry can use SETA.

That's a hard pass, SETA is trash. It served a purpose in x3... but it's not needed now.

I'm having trouble thinking of a single space show or movie that doesn't use some sort of high speed tech to move around, and I can't... because space is large and mostly boring and mostly empty...

No one wants to watch Han Solo age 5000 years on his trip to Alderaan...

I'm sure there's some kind of middle ground

[iforgotmysocks]

The ring highway is a horrible idea. "Let's connect our systems directly with the core systems of our enemy, so the hostile fleets can attack us anywhere they like". I'd be ok with highways that connect the core systems of each faction separately, but connecting the entire ring??? Terrible idea for so many reasons.

[DaMuncha]

I hate having blue lines through my screenshots, and fake ways of speeding through sectors.

[Gween]

The highways are a terrible system. I understand why Ego put them in to appeal to the folks with short attention spans, but I think adding dlc without them is a big improvement to the universe.

highways were a questionable design choice in the maingame, but leaving them out "mid game" was a wrong choice. We now have small sectors which you can travel through on a highway in under 10 seconds (main game) and at the same time huge, partly empty DLC sectors with no highways (Sol sectors) and some terran ships even only fly around 1000m/s in Travel mode.

We now have highways where they don't make any sense and we lack highways in areas where they would make sense

Remove highways. Cap Travel Drive at something reasonable, such as 1000 m/s. People in a hurry can use SETA. Seriously. If X4 has one really serious flaw it's the fishbowl the TD and SH's turn it into. The answer is not more, it's less.

A Travel drive cap of ~1000m/s in X4 is the opposite of reasonable for multiple reasons lol. Lore wise it wouldn't make any sense and gameplay wise it'd make even less sense.

[Nanook]

@Axeface:

I have no problem with scifi concepts such as the ones you mention. There's a lot we don't know. However, we do have a grasp on how much mass and energy it would take to make a ribbon of mass/energy as long as is depicted in the game. And given the speeds of travel drive, no species in their right minds would expend that much effort for a relatively small gain.

And then, of course, there's the security issues. What civilization would let their enemies have a free pass to enter and leave, and likely invade, their territory like that? Given the animosity among the factions in the game, it's likely that if such a thing were built, it would've been destroyed shortly after the first invasion.

Those highways in the game, especially the ring highway, besides defying the laws of physics, also defy the laws of politics.

[Axeface]

Those highways in the game, especially the ring highway, besides defying the laws of physics, also defy the laws of politics.

I agree with this yeh, I think the highways should be controlled by the factions and they should react to whats happening. Like if there are a large amount of xenon using it they get temporarily shut down and the faction patrols are sent to deal with them. Imagine how cool it would be if sector-wide warnings got sent out, and traders (those that arnt crazy) all tried to dock and wait it out, would cause widespread disruption to trade, loads of depth. Yet another reason I'de love the BBS to return, because news of things like that happening could spread, would be nice.

And given the speeds of travel drive, no species in their right minds would expend that much effort for a relatively small gain.

True, its one of the reasons I want a rebirth-like system, where only capital ships and perhaps M's can travel drive Small ships could be like star citizen, much higher top normal cruise speed (maybe around 1500-2k), but over a specific speed (and slow, like 150-300m/s depending on ship) they cant maneuver hardly at all. And they would still have boost to reach their top speeds faster (that no longer uses shield energy).

[jasonbarron]

highways were a questionable design choice in the maingame, but leaving them out "mid game" was a wrong choice. We now have small sectors which you can travel through on a highway in under 10 seconds (main game) and at the same time huge, partly empty DLC sectors with no highways (Sol sectors) and some terran ships even only fly around 1000m/s in Travel mode.

We now have highways where they don't make any sense and we lack highways in areas where they would make sense

Remove highways. Cap Travel Drive at something reasonable, such as 1000 m/s. People in a hurry can use SETA. Seriously. If X4 has one really serious flaw it's the fishbowl the TD and SH's turn it into. The answer is not more, it's less.

A Travel drive cap of ~1000m/s in X4 is the opposite of reasonable for multiple reasons lol. Lore wise it wouldn't make any sense and gameplay wise it'd make even less sense.

What would those multiple reasons be? Also, my memory is a bit rusty, but I'm pretty sure our drives were tapping out well short of 1000 m/s for most ships in X3. Plus, no highways and a jump drive that required fuel to operate.

[Gween]

What would those multiple reasons be? Also, my memory is a bit rusty, but I'm pretty sure our drives were tapping out well short of 1000 m/s for most ships in X3. Plus, no highways and a jump drive that required fuel to operate.

Gameplay reasons are obvious:
1 - It slows down gameplay for... no reason at all. It doesn't add anything to it, nor does it remove anything. It'd just make everything artificially slower. Especially in the already very slow early game.
2 - A game that constantly "forces" you to fly from one end of the universe to another (for example from sol sectors to Trinity Sanctum) to buy a single blueprint or a police license or something similar, shouldn't force you through unneccessarily long travel times too
3 - unforseen events like pirate attacks or sudden khaak spawns on your traders/miners/etc. will just become frustrating because you'd have no chance at all to react to them (especially in early game)

Lore reasons are also obvious, especially when we look at the terrans.
1 - Space is big, but sectors aren't. If the average max speed of ships would be 1000m/s, races wouldn't have sectors with 200+km gate distances anymore, because it'd be inefficient and frankly dumb. Therefore, Egosoft would have to rework the whole map for a 1000m/s travel drive standard to make sense. Which would lead back to the gameplay reasons: Slower average travelspeed -> slower sectors (to fit lore and logic) -> it cancels itself out because it'd be just a big downscale and doesn't change anything.
2 - X3 ships didn't use travel drives. There wasn't even a need for it because the sectors were much "smaller" (shorter gate distances)
(3 - Even with our current real world technology, 1000m/s is VERY SLOW for a rocket. (hell, an SR71 can travel at that speed and that's just a plane) It'd be hard to explain for egosoft how advanced spaceships from advanced civilisations are slower than human rockets during the 21st century.) [I will put this one in brackets, because comparing real life physics and technology to game phyics and technology would be an endless discussion]

[Nanook]

...
2 - A game that constantly "forces" you to fly from one end of the universe to another (for example from sol sectors to Trinity Sanctum) to buy a single blueprint or a police license or something similar, shouldn't force you through unneccessarily long travel times too...

You seem to be forgetting the game-changing mechanic of Teleportation. Once you have that, as long as you position ships wherever you need to go, travel of any sort becomes trivial. So again, no need for both travel drive and highways. So, ditch the highways. I did in my games and I've never had a problem getting anywhere, and neither have my AI-piloted ships.

That said, I'm quite happy with the current travel drive speeds. I certainly wouldn't want them slowed down to 1000 max. That would mean most ships would go much slower, or all ships would be able to max out at that speed. How would a 'fast' fighter ever catch a 'slow' freighter if everybody went the same speed? Imagine a police car chasing a bad guy on the highway who couldn't exceed the posted speed limit. Riiiigghtt.

[Matthew94]

...
2 - A game that constantly "forces" you to fly from one end of the universe to another (for example from sol sectors to Trinity Sanctum) to buy a single blueprint or a police license or something similar, shouldn't force you through unneccessarily long travel times too...

You seem to be forgetting the game-changing mechanic of Teleportation. Once you have that, as long as you position ships wherever you need to go, travel of any sort becomes trivial. So again, no need for both travel drive and highways.

Awful; 100% no. What a terrible idea for gameplay. Just make it an RTS at that point and abandon any pretence that the player is part of the universe.

That's like bringing the jump drive back but in the most awkward form possible.

[Gween]

...
2 - A game that constantly "forces" you to fly from one end of the universe to another (for example from sol sectors to Trinity Sanctum) to buy a single blueprint or a police license or something similar, shouldn't force you through unneccessarily long travel times too...

You seem to be forgetting the game-changing mechanic of Teleportation. Once you have that, as long as you position ships wherever you need to go, travel of any sort becomes trivial. So again, no need for both travel drive and highways. So, ditch the highways. I did in my games and I've never had a problem getting anywhere, and neither have my AI-piloted ships.

That said, I'm quite happy with the current travel drive speeds. I certainly wouldn't want them slowed down to 1000 max. That would mean most ships would go much slower, or all ships would be able to max out at that speed. How would a 'fast' fighter ever catch a 'slow' freighter if everybody went the same speed? Imagine a police car chasing a bad guy on the highway who couldn't exceed the posted speed limit. Riiiigghtt.

Oh, ditching highways isn't a problem (though they'd have to be removed completely, not just not adding new ones), My point went more against a ~1000m/s travelspeed restriction. And yeeeees, I know that teleporting is a thing (if you wanna be bothered to send a ship to every location that might be somewhat important for you)

[jasonbarron]

Welp, looks like a bunch of disagreement and that's fine, everyone has their own taste. I don't like COD paced gameplay but perhaps I'm in a minority.

I'm just happy to see that Ego isn't adding the highways to the DLC

[snwboardn21]

What would be cool is having the ability to build your own highways.