[FEEDBACK] Existential Crisis

[Vinerable_Sin]

Well, I gave it an honest try knowing that the save file will be delete. Here is my thoughts:

The L Kha'ak ship is overpowered and the random spawning "feels fake" without some kind of supporting lore.

Below is my story.
17day playtime save- My empire has many fleets controlling many player owned sectors and many stations supplying my two main shipyards. My fleets are designed to react fast, hit hard and resupply with ease. With supply usually not being an issue I had trouble keeping up production of small ships due to the Kh'ak L ship being such a super fly swatter. Usually bombers have no issues taking out L or XL ship but this wasn't the case. A normal wave for one of my carriers consist of 8 to 16 bombers with the same amount of supporting interceptors. Lets just say the bombard squads dropped like flies. I can accept that, no problem. It's a little on the edge, overpowered and probably designed to be that way, ok, lets see what else this update has in store. Well, after frantically assigning 30-40 Large Traders to empty existing station containers of their supplies and then searching the glaxy to accomodate the newly needed production supplies, I saw something that ended the "fun" or challenging experience for me. It let me realize that.... Maybe I should post my feedback on this... I saw two XL ships get melted by a L ship...... O.o whaaaaaaa? My jaw dropped and I went to bed. It must be that superweapon thing that I read about, the L ships have super mojo shots along with super fly swatting ability? They can spawn randomly anywhere on the map? Hmmm... Looks like the most cost effective and passive way to beat this "new content" is to hide my fleets and build defense modules on my stations... That isn't fun.

Anyways, my suggestion would be to add supporting lore to make spawning feel less fake or adjust the spawning mechanics. Also, the L Kha'ak ship feels quite overpowered to me. If I had a 50% survival rate on a 16 bomber squad vs 1 large ship then that wouldn't be quite so bad. I rarely loose bombers and the super fly swatting ability is too strong to me if they are going to have the super mojo shot ability. Maybe weaken the lasers or make them less accurate.

I would post my savegame for your pleasure, but it told me "it was too big". ------- "insert a joke" bu bump cha!

[Myrath]

I've loaded my save up and got to work, so I'm only a few battles in. I think the Khaak and Xenon attacked 6 systems now with their preliminary attacks.
They've been using, I think, 6 ship squads.
I do hope they will be scaling up with their power soon. They have not yet done any real harm.
My current network is 46 billion and my fleetstrenght is at 4.5 billion

So my initial feedback is just fear, that they will not at all be a challenge in the end. So far I only needed to send a few hundred fighters to clean out a systsem.
But I have around 100 destroyers, 15 stocked carriers and 15 asgards and 50 more destroyers coming.

Bottom line, please tell me the crysis dynamicly scales with my fleetstrenght and capital, so that it will be a challenge. And that it is not scripted tight.

[Black Falcon]

I was not able to play the crisis myself yet, because of missing time. But I watched a few Videos about the Crisis style of attacks.

I would fully agree to the point, that just spawning Fleets of Xenon and Kha'ak in your sectors is just annoying and not fun. There should be a mechanic that builds up and can escalate.

I like the ideas about using anomalies or connection a set of economically strong Xenon sectors to the gate network.
Allowing Xenon or Kha'ak ships to use anomalies would require to allow your ships to travel though them too - at least after they are marked by a nav beacon.

Kha'ak:
The new Kha'ak destroyer could just be used to be jumped in on fully build Hives to support attacks or to retaliate and attack when you try to destroy a hive. ... Maybe add another version without the deathray for some variation.

Xenon:
Maybe xenon could just hijack gates somehow technologically (think of the Hub technology from X3) and redirect / relink gates. Maybe with a module / station near a gate - that could be destroyed to "reset" them to default.
The core mechanics would be:
- (Gate-) Module / Station wich allows connection / redirection (maybe if powered)
- can block / deactivate a gate and open just for attacks.
- Relink existing gates paris. Always 4 gates involved that will interchange connection. Alternativly the others will just link to inactive gates.
- Link two inactive gates
- Relink gate to inactive gate. (deactivate previously paired gate)
- Linked gates can not block
- Xenon will try to block all incoming traffic - only open for attacks.
- Xenon will try to link inactive gates in their sectors (to interconnect them - so no traveling though enemy space.
- Xenon will try to find weak sectors to link to and attack them. The defenders would have to jump though the gate to kill the linking station.
- Xenon will try to focus on one attack at a time. (Open Gate > send scout Fleet > evaluate threat / resource gains > invasion.
- Xenon could try to link all their sectors so they can focus their attacks to force linked sectors that "they" select on their own.
- Crisis could be started by new Sector(s) that's linked to one of their sectors with an inactive gate - wich will provide local Xenon with the linking technology.
- There should be a quite strong fleet just invading after opening the gates so Xenon can just start blocking some gates in their space.
Reward:
- You'll get the technology after scanning a few of these stations when active. (Maybe scan a specific station in the system where the tech is coming from)

Note: (important)
- You could use the CPU-Ship as alternative to the special module. So it will just deploy on the gate it's blocking or relinking. ... Yea ... maybe this is even better than a module. So there is a use for the (nice) model and Xenon can prepare the attack and shut the gates down pretty fast. (Hatikva would be attacked by a Fleet with 2 additional CPU-Ships that will head right for the two other gates to block them. (1 for every unblocked / offline Gate)
- Maybe you would have to capture 1-3 such ships to get the tech. (Maybe disassemble them in a XL-Shipyard)

This mechanic could make the Xenon a real threat with a really nice reaward if you are able to get the technology. So there is a reason you would like to trigger the event for the first place.

Other than that ... I still think one or multiple competing independant factions that mimic player playstyle and compete with him would be super cool. Yes ... there is a mod for this ... but it would be cool to have it by default ... at least as an option. This could naturally produce a crisis for the player if he ignores them.

[Starlight_Corporation]

Tried my best to endure the crisis, but it has been hard. I do accept that part of it is due to the fact I focus on the economy/industrial side of the game.
My main fleet is tied up in Wretched Skies & can't move m out, there's a continuous Xenon capital ship stream accompanied by swarms of smaller ships from Litany of Fury. I do have warships spread across the universe from the early days of xenon fights. Grouped m up in sectors for rapid assistance & to defend my largest assets. Fleets often consisted of 2 raptors, 2 rattlesnakes & usually my Erlking barging in for assistance (occasionally something else also joins, usually Barbarossa or Phoenix destroyers)

The first incursion happened in Two Grand, only had a factory there & traders, but Erlking is fast & 2 Rattlesnakes & a raptor from a nearby sector could assist. Didn't had to do much, because the Teladi fleet massacred them. did give me a false impression of how it would go. Decided to fight them.
What took me off guard was the rapid succession of the attacks, every half hour, often when one system was defended, I had to rush to the next. To make matters worse, two times a sector with minimal military assets was attacked, causing quite the havoc & losses. When incursions began overlapping, it just became exhausting. My ships could handle them, but at times I had to stay OOS due to either high amount of NPC ships or stations. The Khaak & Xenon fleets were okay, but if you throw in 20+ NPC stations (with defense drones) or numerous NPC fleets from the local factions, things get choppy fast.

Fighting the Xenon fleets overall was mostly fun, they often spawned away from stations, giving you some time to react to their presence. The Khaak often jumping near them also helped in locating & handling them. Fighting the Khaak fleets was less fun. The Khaak ships itself were fine, but it felt alot like whack-a-mole. Fighting them away from my stations was usually fine, was tricky sometimes but neat lightshow; When they jumped atop my factories I had to concede & leave sector (defense drone swarm!).

Main issue I feel was the rapid succession between attacks & the little to no warning, so even when you are on top of things, you will still loose quite some civilian assets (and replacing civilian ships is tedious). I was fine with losing some military ships. Think it would be great that the bigger the attack, the longer it takes to see another attack, to simulate the rebuilding of forces & to give you a breather after you've been fighting for a while, intercepting fleets. As mentioned Khaak jumping atop factories was also quite the mess. The defense drones rushing out of them really made things laggy & choppy, forcing me to take the fight OOS. Would be neat to spawn m a bit further off. Fighting the Khaak away from stations was alot more fun (because less choppy game)


Got to say, if you got an existing save with a large trade empire, patch 7 is going to be one hell of a challenge if you decide to fight on. Imo would be great to have an option to opt in later after you opt out. I think more economic focused players won't be ready for patch 7 Crisis but allowing to opt in again later would help them prepare for it.
I also feel if you don't have any DLC you are going to have a much harder time with the Crisis. Erlking is a great rapid response warship with the range & firepower to take on the Ravagers. Needs Avarice. A single well armed Raptor turns a Khaak Crisis fleet into scrap & has the mobility to stay behind the Ravagers & melt them down & move to the next Khaak crisis fleet that jumps in(saw my commanders do their best to avoid staying in front, good work!); Does need Split Vendetta. Asgard & Syn also got great firepower to handle them. Does need Cradle of Humanity. Vanilla doesn't seem to have something that can handle them effectively besides throwing numbers at it.

[Zekavin]

FIrst thought : The base idea is cool and kind of realistic. Scramble your fleet ot defend against an attack against your station / ships that could be anywhere within a sector can be nice.
The existential crisis aspect take all sense when you see your trader and miners blowing up knowing you won't ever be able to really fix the damage. It's so much micromanagement to put in place that you kind of need a mod to fix it easily (replace ship and give back their orders).

In vanilla, in my current save, my economy will probably eventually collapse. The attack are non-stop and you could get multiple one at once.

The thing I find wierd is that Xenon and Khaak always attack togheter the same target. Why ?
I also understand that Khaak can jump everywhere but not Xenon...
It's make sense to avoid the gates since it's an extremely effective choke point however.

Honestly, if you don't plan to fiht those attacks early game, you may be in serious trouble. In my save, my options are to take heavy losses and risk to see my economy collapse while I establish defences or pay to prevent the crisis. Paying is tempting when you think about how many hours you spent setting everything. We really need a way to automate or make ship replacement much easier in vanilla game.

Suggestion
With time, we should be able to predict more where the fleet will appear and when. We can't really get defences in position before losing several important and hard to replace ships.

Sometimes it's seems to work that way and sometimes it's not the case but the fleet should spawn out of sector boundaries (especially Xenon). It's would be less irritating also if Khaak weren't jumping straight into our commercial routes aswell. They can already be a pain, now they deal quick and serious damage with those Ravagers.

[foxmaster]

About big battle at Chrisis missions then lot of your ships be destroyed it be lot of crew ejected.

I use a Barbarossa for rescue my crew who have be ejected from destroyed ships.

All rescue crew be unassigned.

Then you need chose call each crew to new asign like marines, pilot, service crew.
It take very long time sign again over 100 unassigned crew in the rescue ship for they work again.

It hade be very good you can chose as many unassigned rescued crew you want and chose new assign marines, service crew to same ship there they are or a station or to another ship or if you chose pilot transport them to a station there you can chose them later for action.

[mr.WHO]

I use a Barbarossa for rescue my crew who have be ejected from destroyed ships.

All rescue crew be unassigned.

Then you need chose call each crew to new asign like marines, pilot, service crew.
It take very long time sign again over 100 unassigned crew in the rescue ship for they work again.

I have questions to this - is there area order (e.g. pick all in this area) or you have to order this one by one?
Does picked crew take crew space on rescue ships?
Can you use transfer crew mass slider?

[Sprengmeister]

After long consideration, I might just have found a few good solutions and impovements to the crisis.

So far the crisis is more of an annoyance then it is a crisis, that needs strategically thinking.

Current issues:
-Ships spawing on top of Player owend ships and stations, and only on the player owned stuff
-Khaak capital ships not having any meaningfull counter to them, exept maybe using a Asgard personally
-The crisis itself isn´t too much of an existental one, exept maybe for the player
-The crisis not bringing too much fun or excitement, because it lacks any good strategic elements
-You can only decide between having, or opting out of the crisis (by paying 500mio Cr), no inbetween

Possible Solutions
The crisis should be two things happening:

1. Khaak incursions:
-Khaak fleets, let by there capital ships, will spawn in a random sector. Not necessarily a player owned, or that has player assets in it, but rather ANY sector. You will not be informed about that.
-Khaak capital ships (currently we have 2) should have exactly one good counter.
For example:
-one of the capital ship has the strong L Turrets against S/M, but has not a strong Maingun against L/XL/Stations
-the other capital ship being litteraly the opposit, so very strong against L/XL/Stations (not in an overpowerd way), but not good at S/M defence
-after the Khaah ships get destroyed, after some time a new Khaak fleet will spawn in a random sector

2. A Xenon threat:

So this is a bit more tricky, but it could look like this:
A "Wave" will start. The CPU-Ship will Teleport/Spawn into a random sector, (preferably a Xenon owned one) that has all the resources necessary too build Xenon Ships and Stations. Boso will now inform you that it has been spottet in that sector.
Simultaneously a 30 min timer will start. You can now choose too intervene, or let the Timer run to 0.
When you intervene, you have too exactly find and attack the CPU-Ship and lowering its hull to for example 50%. Then the CPU-Ships will abort and jump away.
This will reset the current "wave" and after some time, (2-4 hours) the CPU-Ship will try again in a different sector.

When the CPU-Ship is not dealt with it will contact ships that are at the border region of the sector and a big Xenon fleet fill spawn at the egdes of that sector (not too far away just a bit outside the usual center of the sector)
The Fleet will consists of a group of I´s and K´s inclusing a bunch of S/M ships. But it should also spawn a bunch of Mining- and transportships full of resources, that will try to build a Xenon Shipyard and Wharf in that sector.
The Xenon will try to take control of the sector in the normal way and if successful, will invade other sectors the "normal" way (going through Jumpgates).
There Mining- and transportships will only operate in that sector, making it easy too hunt them down and destroy them.

This could make it much more interesting since you can block the Xenon threat if you wish, or let it happen and have to deal with a fleet of Xenon and try to destroy the "supplylines" of them.
A "Wave" will be completed when you destroy the Fleet, Wharf and Shipyard, as well as there Miners and Transporters.
If it spawns in a allready Xenon controlled sector, the Shipyard and Wharf will be build normaly, but the Fleet will go to a neighboring sector und start attacking there.

After a certain number of Waves, the Crisis can be resolved and completet. The number of wave can still depend on military strenth of the player.

Summary
This should adress most of the issues mentiond above.
-The player can now choose to not have the crisis at all, have it partially, or fully
-The crisis threatens not just the player, but the entire Universe
-There is a strategic element to it since you have to take different measures too deal with the different threats.
-More fun and engaging gameplay
-The player can decide the impact on his univers
-Reduced unfair spawn mechanic
What are your thoughts?

[mr.WHO]

-You can only decide between having, or opting out of the crisis (by paying 500mio Cr), no inbetween

It would be nice to have third option to delay, like pay 10-50 mil to delay 1-5 hours.

-Khaak capital ships (currently we have 2) should have exactly one good counter.
For example:
-one of the capital ship has the strong L Turrets against S/M, but has not a strong Maingun against L/XL/Stations
-the other capital ship being litteraly the opposit, so very strong against L/XL/Stations (not in an overpowerd way), but not good at S/M defence
-after the Khaah ships get destroyed, after some time a new Khaak fleet will spawn in a random sector

IMO what is the must, is to make that Khaak capships have destroyeable engines, turrets and main guns.

Khaak main guns should be changes from one-shot beam, to continous beams that deal dammage more spread over time - that way player will have more time to notice and react to them.

I have no problem with them beign powerful, but we need more control and flexibility options to deal with them - sending a meatwave shield will get boring really fast.

[foxmaster]

I use a Barbarossa for rescue my crew who have be ejected from destroyed ships.

All rescue crew be unassigned.

Then you need chose call each crew to new asign like marines, pilot, service crew.
It take very long time sign again over 100 unassigned crew in the rescue ship for they work again.

I have questions to this - is there area order (e.g. pick all in this area) or you have to order this one by one?
Does picked crew take crew space on rescue ships?
Can you use transfer crew mass slider?

Its area order for collect all ejected crew in a area
unassigned rescued crew take space at internal space for ships crew
you can transfer unassigned crew but they still be unassigned

[EvgeniuXP]

add sectors in which all ships except the Xenon ones are burned. The player will be forced to build a fleet of powerful xenon ships to clear these sectors and make their way to the next ones, where they will be able to activate gates for other ships that can penetrate deep into the xenon through them.

[LordIII3]

So What about having 3 crisis Quests:

The First Quest to initialize the crisis, EG Spawn some strong fleets of Xenon in their original owned sectors, and reduce their ship build costs increase their Shiplimit and agressivness, as well as adding some kha'ak attacks to the Galaxy

The second optional Quest to Overcharge the crisis, spawning even more Xenon, now in randomly chosen secors and repeatedly Spawn them. Also massively increase the kha'ak Spawn rate (to Pose a Challenge for the extreme Players)


And the third to end the crisis

What do you think

[W1ND]

I like the idea of an end-game crisis. But the implementation, in my opinion, suffers from design flaws and should take into account the following aspects:

1. Invasion ships must not be outside the game's economic cycle, they must be produced in specific factories in specific sectors. Let these sectors be extremely fortified or have limited access to the player with the ability to disable the gates.

2. Invasion ships should not appear directly at the player’s base stations or in random completely unexpected places. At least they should appear at more distant points, and even better, near the gates to another sector, but not appear next to the gates of the invasion sector, in order to exclude the possibility of destruction by the player’s defense stations.

3. (Generally about the player's defense platforms) Enemy ships should be able to destroy the player's defense stations. To do this they must be able to shoot from a greater distance than the player's Paranid plasma cannons, and also appear at some distance from them, otherwise they will never be destroyed, which makes the game inanimate.

4. Khaak ships are either too weak or too strong; there are no ships of intermediate strength and different purposes. I would add ships to the Haaks that are good at destroying the player's fighters, and separate group of ships for destroying stations, and for destroying battleships. Ravager is so different from other Khaak ships that it looks out of place.

[Nemesis_Zero]

First up, i have not played the beta myself, everything i know about the crisis comes from watching YT. But i am also somewhat experienced with the game by having around 1,2k hours in playtime.

Here are my takes:

- As many others pointed out, i too think the random spawning of the Khaak is terrible. The very first impression was "Well, AI is not sophisticated enough to make smart decisions, so we alleviate them from this burden by spawning them randomly and letting them continue doing random stuff" .

- OOS vs IS (In System) is a huge factor. This has to be fixed. In my latest save I had 5 Asgard get killed by 2 Xenon K's because the got ontop and I was in awe watching the asgard being unable to point their maingun. Same save in OOS and the K's got killd in seconds. If this persists, the Khaak destroyer will be a cap ship killer for OOS and easy to outmanoeuvre (because it will outmanoeuvre itself ) for IS. Which will result in me having to jumping into the system to let my ships kill it with minimal losses.

- If Khaak jumping into systems stays, the AI in general has to become self-preserving. AI-ships should notice the immediate danger and should reroute or leave the system immediately! As of right now, AI will attack stations, fly head on into the enemy and pick fights even though there is no chance of success. I can imagine me getting a message that one of my freighters got killed by the Khaak destroyer, so i reload , save the freighter, get the next message of another freighter that flew into the Khaak and got destroyer, so i reload again. It will result in me reloading an saving my ships from suicide over and over again. How will factions handle they Khaak destroyer if it is parked at the gates ?

- Target priority has to be a thing for the AI. Aiming and firing the Asgard Main Gun at a fighter but turning the back to a Xenon K should never happen. I can imagine how a coupe of destroyers will die to the Khaak destroyer simply because they prioritise a random flyby enemy ship over the imminent danger. Or better, they will first try to position them self prior to fighting the imminent danger by simply turning in.

I'm not sure if the Xenon or the Khaak are the crisis here. Although I like the idea of the Khaak beeing a threat to the player and the rest of the universe, I don't understand why would they do this again, last time it was because of massive nividium usage by the paranid, if I recall correctly. This time it feels like "yolo" , just a couple Khaak here and there.

[Arisaya]

- Target priority has to be a thing for the AI. Aiming and firing the Asgard Main Gun at a fighter but turning the back to a Xenon K should never happen. I can imagine how a coupe of destroyers will die to the Khaak destroyer simply because they prioritise a random flyby enemy ship over the imminent danger. Or better, they will first try to position them self prior to fighting the imminent danger by simply turning in.

I saw this happening (outside of the crisis) to the terran intervention fleet asgard - it waded into a swarm of xenon sitting in their usual camping spot and then proceeded to turn around, and waste the beam firing at a PE (and missed, to boot) instead of the K which was also there and was previously in front of it before it turned around. Because this was the NPC-built asgard, it had mostly L beam turrets and was thus helpless against the K. I only give my asgards L Paranid plasma set to target capships so that they can still wreck a K both IS and OOS even if they make terrible targeting decisions with the beam (which still happens sometimes in the OOS simulation too)

[Vinerable_Sin]

Will there be an option to redo the mission or keep it going?

Will there be an option to pay out the squid if the player realizes, oh my god what did I do, please make it stop.

Will bombers survivability vs the Large Kha'ak ship be increased or torpedo launching ability improved? Sometimes they fly to the attack target and just wait to get blown up without firing a shot, not sure why.

What fleet combination has the best survivability vs the combined Kha'ak and Xenon waves? (Min - maxer question)

Will the waves continue to happen after you complete the quest? (figuring this one out tonight hopefully)

Will some kind of in-game lore be added to support the random spawning mechanic? (I'm not much for one to read a book, even though it's better than the movie)

Lastly this question is mostly just for me. How do i force the quest to be replayable? Can you include instructions for someone who isn't a programmer? I'd like another go at it because I'd like to see how my empire fares against 2-3 quests in a row. It took two days to finish the first one and it was alot of frustration, discovery and fun. My empire didn't suffer enough and it turned out to not be as challenging as I thought it was.

[LameFox]

Will bombers survivability vs the Large Kha'ak ship be increased or torpedo launching ability improved? Sometimes they fly to the attack target and just wait to get blown up without firing a shot, not sure why.

viewtopic.php?f=192&t=460850

Related to this perhaps. If your ships only have torpedo launchers and no other weapons you may have to instruct them to actually load any.

I am not sure their behaviour afterward could be considered ideal, but at least then they do fire.

[MadGoodman]

Yeehaaa... we have enemys back

My Asgard was grilled by a khaak capital - around 4 shots and my Asgard was blown up

Ok - its not random enough with crisis - its always where player ships are in sectors or in players sector. So miners can be really fast in trouble.

Xenon invasion like in Xrebirth are ok for me but khaak and xenon at same time in same sector ? ...

I like it that now some ships of my fleet get ripped when been attacking enemy fleets. This "no losses" was unrealistic and removed the feeling to have an enemy in game.

BUT: we need a small rework on all capital ships mainguns. Not Asgard - this maingun is op and can be like it is for players which cant handle with other capitals or fleets.

I like it atm ^^

[Pesanur]

And how about a reward after beating the crisis? For example a flyable Ravager.

By the way, defeating the CPU ship is too easy, it need to be escorted.

[Myrath]

I just finished the crisis. And I must say I'm severly disappointed.
The quest send me to a Xenon ship. It said "bring a lot of firepower".
The ship blew up in less than a minute and there was zero resistance. No fleets to counter me. Nothing.

The earlier taskforces were already weak and barely came through any of my base defenses.

Please review this short clip. Maybe the end is not supposed to go this way. But that's what I had.
I was really hoping for a good fight ;( I feel like I built up my fleet for nothing ;(

Or maybe there is more to come. But this was a let-down.

https://youtu.be/woGnBKdJ1uE