XLOG: A Vision for 7.00

[Gregory]

Join Egosoft Managing Director Bernd Lehahn as he shares our early ideas and plans for the next big update to X4: Foundations. We also take this opportunity to express our gratitude for your support during the launch of X4: Kingdom End and the major 6.00 Update earlier this year. Stay tuned for more exciting developments in the X4 universe!

>> XLOG A Vision for 7.00 (YouTube)

[Starlight_Corporation]

Curious what the plans are. Got a lot of trouble hearing stuff tho (not the vlog fault! Mine! I got hearing issues), so can't make out much of what is being said. Hope someone can give a short summary of what is being said/planned?

[Fulgrymm]

Curious what the plans are. Got a lot of trouble hearing stuff tho (not the vlog fault! Mine! I got hearing issues), so can't make out much of what is being said. Hope someone can give a short summary of what is being said/planned?

The two biggest things are an endgame challenge that reminds me of crises from Stellaris, and the other is greatly improved playability in third person mode.

[CBJ]

Curious what the plans are. Got a lot of trouble hearing stuff tho (not the vlog fault! Mine! I got hearing issues), so can't make out much of what is being said. Hope someone can give a short summary of what is being said/planned?

You can enable subtitles.

[Starlight_Corporation]

Curious what the plans are. Got a lot of trouble hearing stuff tho (not the vlog fault! Mine! I got hearing issues), so can't make out much of what is being said. Hope someone can give a short summary of what is being said/planned?

The two biggest things are an endgame challenge that reminds me of crises from Stellaris, and the other is greatly improved playability in third person mode.

You can enable subtitles.

Haha, thanks for this obvious option that I missed. Turned it on & was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the subtitles; kudo's to whoever did them! Glad to know there's still new things coming for X4 beyond the venture system. Curious what the endgame thingie will be. So far been poking war between factions in my current game & has been much more fun then my usual pacifist playthroughs in previous playthroughs.

[Gregory]

Haha, thanks for this obvious option that I missed. Turned it on & was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the subtitles; kudo's to whoever did them!

Mainly automatically generated by YouTube, I just clean them up a little bit to get rid of the biggest mistakes it generates. Glad it helps

[adeine]

I think I speak for a lot of the 'advanced players' as you put it when I say this: Please reconsider your plans for the existential crisis in 7.0.

Taking on an existing faction is already something you can do, and not exactly a challenge. Neither is it particularly fun - if you spent your game being an ally of a faction there's probably a reason for it, and if you were hostile to it it's already probably quite diminished by the late game.

It is undoubtedly more work, but if you want this to be an exciting new feature for the late game and present an actual challenge for the kind of economy you can sustain at that point, it really needs to add something to the game in a meaningful way. The obvious contender is fleshing out the Xenon arsenal and fleet and having it centre around either a Xenon invasion or reconnection of a dangerous part of the gate network (you could even style it lore-wise as running into the original X1-X3 Xenon branch for added nostalgia, adding them as a 'faction' of their own, so to speak).

People will understand if it takes longer to deliver if the end result is good. If a worthwhile implementation is out of scope budget wise, consider selling it as a DLC.

[Starlight_Corporation]

Haha, thanks for this obvious option that I missed. Turned it on & was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the subtitles; kudo's to whoever did them!

Mainly automatically generated by YouTube, I just clean them up a little bit to get rid of the biggest mistakes it generates. Glad it helps

It is greatly appreciated; alot of automated subtitles are extremely bad & can be hard to understand at times. Glad you took the time & effort to clean it up!

[mr.WHO]

Taking on an existing faction is already something you can do, and not exactly a challenge. Neither is it particularly fun - if you spent your game being an ally of a faction there's probably a reason for it, and if you were hostile to it it's already probably quite diminished by the late game.

It is undoubtedly more work, but if you want this to be an exciting new feature for the late game and present an actual challenge for the kind of economy you can sustain at that point, it really needs to add something to the game in a meaningful way. The obvious contender is fleshing out the Xenon arsenal and fleet and having it centre around either a Xenon invasion or reconnection of a dangerous part of the gate network (you could even style it lore-wise as running into the original X1-X3 Xenon branch for added nostalgia, adding them as a 'faction' of their own, so to speak).

People will understand if it takes longer to deliver if the end result is good. If a worthwhile implementation is out of scope budget wise, consider selling it as a DLC.

I fully agree with this - I tried taking on entire galaxy at once and it wasn't hard - it was tedious and boring.

Without completely reshaping miltiary jobs, NPC faction fleet logic and outposts/bases (e.g. some bases have little to none weapons and some have like 100+ plasma cannons) this will be very dissapointing.
Having proper endgame crisis with extended Xenons would be much much more interesting (maybe return to PURE CLASSIC of X-BTF Xenon mothership?).

[chew-ie]

I think I speak for a lot of the 'advanced players' as you put it when I say this: Please reconsider your plans for the existential crisis in 7.0.

Taking on an existing faction is already something you can do, and not exactly a challenge. Neither is it particularly fun - if you spent your game being an ally of a faction there's probably a reason for it, and if you were hostile to it it's already probably quite diminished by the late game.

It is undoubtedly more work, but if you want this to be an exciting new feature for the late game and present an actual challenge for the kind of economy you can sustain at that point, it really needs to add something to the game in a meaningful way. The obvious contender is fleshing out the Xenon arsenal and fleet and having it centre around either a Xenon invasion or reconnection of a dangerous part of the gate network (you could even style it lore-wise as running into the original X1-X3 Xenon branch for added nostalgia, adding them as a 'faction' of their own, so to speak).

People will understand if it takes longer to deliver if the end result is good. If a worthwhile implementation is out of scope budget wise, consider selling it as a DLC.

I second this - I deliberately never went to war with any of the main factions. Please provide an alternative existential crisis against Xenon / Kha'ak or an [un]known [Pirate] faction. Trantor on a universe scale would be perfect.

[mr.WHO]

My guess would be, that something like this would be acceptable:

7.0 vanilla - crisis with Argon, Teladi, Paranid, SCA
Owning the existing DLCs - crisis with DLC factions
New DLC - Xenon/Khaak crisis

[CBJ]

I'm not sure how people have got it into their heads that the Xenon and Kha'ak are not counted as "major factions", and therefore possible candidates for the "existential crisis". The point is simply that options for such an event shouldn't be limited to only those "obvious" enemies.

[Repli]

Hey,
i really like the comparison to stellaris endgame crisises. They are dangers from the outside of the known universe. Inactive jump gates could lead, as already mentioned, to those new dangers, if activation of these gates is triggered. I do not really like the idea either, that "normal" NPC factions going crazy if some event is triggered, because no faction (maybe HOP) is motivated to rule or destroy the universe... But fleshed out Xenon, Kha'ak or other "villain factions" could be an option. Or a Split sub-fraction which is pissed of?
Like in stellaris, these crisis have to be scalable to the player and the status of the universe. It does not necessarily mean scalable by numbers, but by power (hitpoints, weapon strength, shield strength...). It think it is boring too, to just throw 100 Xenon I at the universe if the player (or the whole universe) has for example 100 L or XL-ships. I would really apreciate the "Think" part here, were you have to form alliances and maybe give orders to NPC-factions. In Stellaris you can gather own fleets and let them lead NPC ships. With this you can compete those very strong crisis forces with combined strength. And the plan to improve the "third person" playability seems to be very connected and much needed to deal with these crisis *dreams-of-homeworld-style playability*
And it would be really helpful, if selled ships to NPC will be used instead of recycled

Looking forward to the ideas and plans of EGOSOFT

[mr.WHO]

BTW, we already have a rudimentary endgame crisis:
- Unite Paranid into Trinity
- Make Dal Busta push Trinity declare war against entire galaxy

Could be fun if not that TRI is broken in my game, that they don't build main stations (like SY, Wharf, ED).
I've reported it over a year ago and it's still broken in 6.0:
viewtopic.php?t=445210

[adeine]

I'm not sure where people have got it into their heads that the Xenon and Kha'ak are not counted as "major factions", and therefore possible candidates for the "existential crisis". The point is simply that options for such an event shouldn't be limited to only those "obvious" enemies.

Quoting the official announcement video:

We've thought about something like that for quite a while. What this essentially will be is an opt-in challenge for the player where you can potentially take on an entire faction as a very advanced player. Essentially there will probably be multiple candidates for which faction this is, this isn't finally decided yet how this will trigger and what mechanisms the player can potentially use to circumvent it. It's very clear that it will be opt-in, so the player will have the choice to avoid the conflict if he decides against it. But he can basically see it also as a challenge and actually deal with a whole war against one of the major factions of the X Universe and that way have an end game scenario, after you've achieved everything else there is to achieve, with a large economy building your own ships, having a shipyard and so on. That's something for the really advanced players that I think quite a few people are looking forward to. This is not for everybody, but I think for quite a good fraction of our fans.

You're always at war with the 'entire faction' of the Xenon and Kha'ak (and so is every other faction), so the phrasing heavily implies declaring war against other existing factions. This is the only information we have to base our assumptions and feedback on.

[Thomas2052]

As someone who likes the immersion of first person view, the third person stuff is not very interesting, although I guess there must be a part of the player base who are calling for it, and perhaps it will make for some nice cinematic views.

The 'crisis' sounds interesting - it would be good to be the defender rather than the aggressor - perhaps they make a beeline for your HQ or something.

The danger I see here is the limitation of the economy dictating the strength of a faction - in order for the threat to be, well, a threat, it needs to be decoupled from this mechanism.

It's also why I rarely go to war with any of the existing factions (xenon included) - one good kicking puts them out of action for hours as their economy struggles to replenish, especially if you hit stations and supply ships.

Random anomalies or gate connections to generated sectors would be cool - I've always thought the 'explore' part was the weakest if the X series' claim to be a 4x game. Make the connection time limited and stuff it with enemies that can invade. Maybe stick some nice rewards in the middle - although cannot think what a player at end game needs - maybe claimable venture ships?

I wonder what the third thing will be...

[Falcrack]

I like how Bernd mentioned the potential of X4 as a 4X game, and have a few thoughts on this.

I've said it before, but the reason the end game for X4 is too easy is because there are no mechanisms in the game to limit player growth. If there were something along the lines of ship/station maintenance fees and/or crew wages, which would prevent the player from the exponential growth, then taking on factions would be a more substantial challenge. Every 4X game has some factor to limit player expansion, both for performance and gameplay reasons, and I would like X4 to have some similar player limits. Perhaps the player piloted ship would be exempt from maintenance costs, and the basic player HQ.

Also, from a 4X perspective, 4X games work best IMO when the player and AI both play using the same set of rules. AI factions getting unlimited funds while the player does not causes X4 to fall short of the kind of 4X game I enjoy. It makes the game less dynamic when a faction does not have to operate with financial constraints. It also makes it so that any time a faction sells wares to another faction, that it is a 100% loss for the seller and 100% gain for the buyer, since credits to NPCs are meaningless. It's like paying someone air for the items they are selling you. If NPC factions did not have unlimited money, then receiving money for wares sold to others factions would suddenly become more meaningful and beneficial for the selling faction.

Finally, sector ownership benefits, or lack thereof, cause X4 to fall short in the 4X regard. If the player or NPC faction received money from owning sectors, perhaps through a tax on the local planetary population, it would make the game more dynamic in terms of the economy. It would be necessary as well if maintenance fees or wages were introduced. It also would be very much in the spirit of other 4X games. There may need to be some delay between taking over a sector and receiving the first tax income to avoid cheesing the system.

[Thomas2052]

I've said it before, but the reason the end game for X4 is too easy is because there are no mechanisms in the game to limit player growth. If there were something along the lines of ship/station maintenance fees and/or crew wages, which would prevent the player from the exponential growth, then taking on factions would be a more substantial challenge. Every 4X game has some factor to limit player expansion, both for performance and gameplay reasons, and I would like X4 to have some similar player limits.

What were the mechanisms in the other X games? I've played X2 and X3 but never made it very far in empire building.

[Falcrack]

I've said it before, but the reason the end game for X4 is too easy is because there are no mechanisms in the game to limit player growth. If there were something along the lines of ship/station maintenance fees and/or crew wages, which would prevent the player from the exponential growth, then taking on factions would be a more substantial challenge. Every 4X game has some factor to limit player expansion, both for performance and gameplay reasons, and I would like X4 to have some similar player limits.

What were the mechanisms in the other X games? I've played X2 and X3 but never made it very far in empire building.

There never have been any limits on player expansion in the other X games along the lines of running costs. Any ship or station you own has never needed any sort of recurring costs (unless you count workforce food and medicine requirements, but workforce is optional for stations to operate, which is a mistake IMO). No unit caps either, just continuous expansion until your computer dies from CPU overload or you get tired of continuing your save game.

If every ship and station module in the game (including defence modules) required work force to function and prevent decay in hp over time, and if you had to pay wages over time to your work force for them to stick around, that would be acceptable to me in terms of maintenance fees.

[jlehtone]

I'm not sure how people have got it into their heads that the Xenon and Kha'ak are not counted as "major factions", and therefore possible candidates for the "existential crisis". The point is simply that options for such an event shouldn't be limited to only those "obvious" enemies.

While that is true, it does not really take "advanced player" to wipe all factions green as is. No matter which faction gets the "honor", they would need a boost that the current economy cannot explain (even if they are not ashes yet).

I deliberately never went to war with any of the main factions. Please provide an alternative existential crisis against Xenon / Kha'ak or an [un]known [Pirate] faction. Trantor on a universe scale would be perfect.

Wouldn't one of your current allies as your nemesis be a refreshing step outside of your comfort zone?