What next? X4 ideas

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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boringborons
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Post by boringborons » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 16:57

How about making X3 into a strategy game, maybe a mod.

Bit like C&C but space style, similar to Starwars: Empires at war
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scaco
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Post by scaco » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 18:12

Why obstinately keeping a perfectly good group of people away from the countryside plowing fields.

Who says that everybody gotta work in services. Agriculture is a perfectly good and honourable occupation with plenty of government and EU subsidies to make it economically attractive.

I know, I know you worried about the bugs, You cannot ignore them like you can do in software but hey.... thats life!!!

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Post by grumman » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 18:39

On the non-gate travel: I think it would be relatively easy to try out with the galaxy editor, by making a few sectors with some of the gates greatly separated. Just give each of the two 'subsectors' two jumpgates, and have them in close vicinity to two different planets in the system. It would be interesting to see how it works out.
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Post by FellFromLog » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 19:23

I'd like to see them get rid of the lowest tier of food factories. Cattle ranches, flower farms etc. should, in my opinion, be merged into the next highest level, ie. Argon Food production complex (which in the fiction could contain ranches, abattoirs, processing plants etc) that requires only energy and produces Argon cuisine. This would simplify factory chaining and complex building as well as streamlining the bottom end of the economy. Maybe to compensate they could have food as a standard resource for all factories like e-cells are.

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Post by Xsysstar » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 19:49

What I would like to see are huge sectors with "torrents" or a new kind of jumpgate.

- Torrents: you enter a "time torrent" (space/time continuum-disturbance) and works a bit like SETA, but much faster (100x, 500x). While you're in this torrent you will not see the stations and ships around you (to save processor time); "excuse": you travel too quickly to notice those stations.
(Could be called (Time, Space) Torrents, (Time, Space) Streams, as well)

- Jumpgates: same idea: you fly through a jumpgate and you enter super speed (again: you don't see the stations and ships around you). You travel to the next jumpgate and go on so until the last jumpgate has been reached or when you leave the stream (by pressing backspace or J). You could choose whatever jumpgate you wish to enter, really. These jumpgates are mere "sliproads" which make you enter the stream than a starting- and endingpoint of a course.

This means: larger sectors, but still short flying time. A "plot event" could be an unknown enemy (like our friends, the Kha'ak) whose ships can create these "streams" themselves, making the jumpgates obsolete (,therefore distroying them and crippling the galaxy's economy).

This is almost exactly the same as in Microsoft's Freelancer (I find the plot of this game more appealing as well than X3's or X2's really).

But this all is just an idea.

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Post by ezza84 » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 20:59

-Ship battles need more tactis. In nexus jupiter incident you can pin point specific locatins on a ship to target.

-shield effects need to be improved- a sphere around the ship and when energy weapons or missiles or ships hit shields the illuminate in that area just like in space films like andromada and star trek.

-ships need to be bigger but not necessarily slower(come on 49m/s)
these are elite ships with big, big engines they should not crawl around on their belly. These are big ships not something an m3 can fly the length of in the space of a 2 seconds probably less.

- space needs to be bigger in a lot of ways i miss i-was 2 and in freelancer you could be stoped when using jump gates.

-get rid of jump gates if need be start a new universe, gates limit the size of ships in this game.

-stations should be huge. i mean huge. When i was flying a mammoth it was bigger than the split trading dock, or it look like it

More Battles- in fact turn the battles into rome total war but with battle ships. more space more enemies who ACTUALLY have a purpose in life apart from so you can jump into their sector and pick a fight with them cause you feel like it- the Xenon come to mind here qiute quickly... i wonder why :)

-We want a proper universe or galaxy where you do not have to use jump gates, where you are truly free to roam. use a star trek sort of jumpdrive to explore the galaxy in fact, this is the 21st centuary make some real changes to computer games. Make people stop refering back to "the good old days of Elite" make those days today and with sutiable enhancements that show that games have actually come a long way gameplay wise

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BigBANGtheory
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Post by BigBANGtheory » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 21:40

Single player game needs to be perfected in X3 first, all of these are applicable to X3 as improvements......

- X4 should definately introduce a 'multiplayer option' even if the game is designed predominantly to be single player.
- More variety in ship classes like the addition of Frigates & Battlecrusiers.
- Stations should have defence options.
- Clear goals for gameplay like domination of a proportion of the galaxy.
- Interface for controlling a large fleet (like Homeworld2).
- Ability to land on planets and moons.
- New stella objects e.g. Red Giants, White Dwarfs, Neutron Stars....Black holes, comets, meteorites, star clusters.
- Gameplay should involve more strategy and tactical elements than it currently does.
- Hyper-space/jump graphics need to be worked on, look at examples from StarWars, Babylon5 etc... as well as other space games. The gates are nice but the transition between them sucks. Perhaps if the camera goes into 3rd person view before and after going through the gate with some crossover FVM graphics for the jump.
- Jumpgates should occur less frequently in my opinion and be used only to cover large distances, ships should have the ability to jump to adjacent sectors under their own power. Likewise there should be a counter measure to prevent ships from jumping within a certain range.

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sai-ku
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X3 looking forward to X4.

Post by sai-ku » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 22:13

Now I'm being constructive so can the replies also be the same?

The X games and X3 do a lot of things right, the ground work is laid for something quite spectacular but it is never quite realised. Each game falls far too close to the last, so I thought I should give my opinion on what's wrong and how it could be fixed. The first is the interface, which has been greatly improved but still lacks finesse, it may be fortuitus going to an outside design firm to design a truly excellent interface as this is the players only window into the game, if there are problems players get it shoved right in their faces. The original Privateer had some extremely useful Unique HUD windows, let me give you some example updated and customised to X3. I target an Argon Buster, in the Monitor (currently just showing me a nice but utterly useless cam view of the target ship), I see a plan view of the ship, with locational shield and damage status, weapon load-out, generator output and speed are plainly visible. I am provided with almost all the useful info that I need in a single window. Currently this info is located all over the place, some of it nested deep within the menu system which I'm not going to wade through while in the thick of combat. The same goes with trading, the info I require from a station is its stock. If I deep scan then sure give me all the yummy options like cargo, landed ships etc., but I don't need them slowing me down getting to the info I need all the time.

So:
- Well designed interface that groups similar tasks/info in one quick menu.
- Declutter, give me what I need, and more only when I ask.
- Unique HUD modes for specific tasks (trading, combat etc.).

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The second is aimlessness, the X games have a lot of middle but it doesn't go anywhere, you can't go above your station, Once you're CEO of your big company that's as far as you can go, you never make it to self sufficiency, you're stuck in a never ending cycle of buy and build. There is no cost of doing business, no maintenance, no wages (ok, few plug-ins and add-in's have it), but most importantly no way forward. Give me a reason for building all this stuff, let me go off into distant unknown space and build my own empire!

Complexes came very close, the best would be modular station designs, where you start with a landing and cargobay and add on components that do particular things (of course you'd keep the prefabs too), which you can design and then add on at a later date.

The economy is very simplistic, stations with more than one product was a big step forward and just look at how much more realistic the economy is but this whole energy requirement remains a problem. Alongside no costs, you never really feel part of the economy, Ok so your factories produce is selling lower than you'd like, no problem, just leave it be and maybe one day prices will rise high enough for you to sell your goods. Without costs a whole section of the complexity of the game is simply bypassed, the cost of factories are still too low, so I set up one, run it into the ground and set up another, an infinitum. Soon I have an empire of 43 factories and am hero of the universe. Owning a factory should be rewarding in both the challenge it presents and the money I gain from owning it but at the moment there's no challenge, its wash and go. The notoriety stuff is great but without factions it seems a little hollow. This is a whole part of the game that needs working on.

Currently the economy is a pyramid, so lets keep with that but with a few real world ideas thrown in there:

Agriculture (The core industry, everyone needs food)
Collection (ships that go out, collects a raw material and returns to a central point)
Refining (turns that raw material into resources)
Manufacturing (turns resources into equipment and products like say farming equipment),
High-tech Manufacturing (turning products into high-tech products)
Shipbuilding (turns the whole range of products into ships!)
Support (internal hangers for repair and storage of ships, trading upgrades, entertainment modules, habitation upgrades for more workers)

So:
- Ditch the shampoo factory economy give me economic challenge!
- Shipyards that require stuff to build ships.
- Modularised factories that can be made to serve almost any purpose.
- Give us a reason for all this building! What am I doing it for? Give me an endgame!
- Give the player the ability to become self sufficient. A player shipyard.
- Connect the dots you've already laid in X3! It's all there in the code now give it!
- Economic strategy, like in that interview.

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The third is uniformity the gate network is a crutch, like jump drives, the player is kept in check, held back. This is of course due to the fact that opening the universe, in a sense drawing the distance would require years of extra programing.

A procedurally generated universe is the future of space games, Egosoft might now know it yet but it is. Luck would have it that much of space is empty and you need only draw what needs to be drawn, this is shown to great advantage in all X games. It would allow highly detailed full solar systems to exist throughout our very own X universe, it throws back the boundaries. It also fills in the space in between effectively allowing players to jump into open space. Now to build such an engine is a lot of work, not only to program but also to fill, you'd require a lot of extra graphical objects especially textures.

One thing that bugs me is the loss of a lot of the uniqueness between the races, all the stations all exactly alike, I rove space thinking "This could be Argon Prime". Show us that we're in alien/other peoples space. On the plus pirates have improved, although there's not really an underground society, you can't run guns or food or almost anything to the pirates as they don't need them, and even if you could there's no one who'd stop you if the goods aren't illegal.

I used to see a lot of asking for planet landings, this could be provided via a re-entry mini-game and/or cutscene, which will satisfy most. Of course once there you run into problems, do you allow players to build on planets? How do you handle planets? which are massive economies in themselves. There are a lot of questions as to what to do once there, I hope that some answers can be found so that planets could be included.

- Procedurally generated space, the first company to do this is going to make a ton of money.
- Return to unique races (mostly factories, I'm ok with the ships and cockpit) of earlier games.
- Move towards finding a way to include the economies of planets.

[edit for spelling so shoot me already!]

Oh and while I remember remove the energy cell requirement for Jumpdrive, connect it to the generator as to how far you can go (with the promised generator upgrades this would become natural) and have it take time to recharge.
Last edited by sai-ku on Sat, 19. Nov 05, 22:36, edited 2 times in total.
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bendyspex
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Post by bendyspex » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 22:15

I like all the ideas here, but the most important thing for me is the immersion. Currently, I see ships flying around, but very little life actually happens. There should be missions that are messaged to you while flying, and you should have the A.I. building stations and attacking races they don't like.
Also, landing on planets would be cool, but that would be a very big job for egosoft. I wouldn't mind having just a city and a bit of countryside for each planet (or maybe not countryside if the planet is different). This could be like the main spaceport for each planet.
Hopefully egosoft will take into account what is being said here, and maybe introduce some parts of it in a patch. That would be good.

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Post by bendyspex » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 22:22

Great ideas. I would like it even better if there were very large parts of space, maybe 20-25, and each of these would be the equivalent to about 40 sectors. You could jump around within them, and they would be whole solar systems. The gates would connect the larger areas, and there would be more than one gate between two areas.
I also like the idea of planetary landings. Maybe go to a designated checkpoint, have a cutscene of your ship flying into the atmosphere then have an area of planet that you can fly around on. It could be like a space port, with other ships flying around, and maybe a couple of capital ships docked. That would be really cool.

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Post by suicidalfoetus » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 22:32

I agree that the other ships travel around, and yet do little else.

In X-tension freigters would call you up asking for defense from a Xenon attack and in some sectors you would come through a gate and get challenged to a race to the systems trading dock.

Lets have some communication from the other ships, rather than you being the only one requesting help, let other ships call for help or even stations.

As it is the first you are aware of a ship or station in trouble are the sounds of battle. Surely a request could come in from a ship or staion and your target switch to the ship in question.
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Domination
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Post by Domination » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 22:34

I would like to see Typed discriptions of items and be able to find the description of those items w/o having to be at stations, and also i would like a trading system sort of similar to eve where i could choose the ITEM i wish to sell or buy, and a list of all the STATIONS buying/ selling that item as well as the QUANTITIES OF THOSE ITEMS cuz right now its such a bummer buying too much of one thing and then not being able to sell the rest wtf!

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sai-ku
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Post by sai-ku » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 22:39

Domination wrote:I would like to see Typed discriptions of items and be able to find the description of those items w/o having to be at stations, and also i would like a trading system sort of similar to eve where i could choose the ITEM i wish to sell or buy, and a list of all the STATIONS buying/ selling that item as well as the QUANTITIES OF THOSE ITEMS cuz right now its such a bummer buying too much of one thing and then not being able to sell the rest wtf!
Well that could be a neat update to the best buy/selling price locator which is a bit useless right now.
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Post by Yellowjack » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 23:06

Yes, X games are, I think, unique because there is no end game or closure. I suppose the end of the plot could be considered an end game but the plots have been so short that this would draw great and valid criticism. Further to that, it appears that all plot lines are of a fighting nature there has never been as far as I know a plot line for traders. So for those that prefer to trade their way to fame and fortune the current plots are, to some extent, meaningless and off the users chosen path.

It is often said that it is the journey that counts and I agree that the enjoyment is in the journey. But a journey without a destination is no longer a journey and is surely a different matter.

It seems that end games wouldn't be hard to define and and option could be chosen by users at the start of the game rather like many RTS games. For example, it could be made that one of the bad guys would cease to spawn and eliminating them all from the Universe brings an end to that game. For a trader it could be eliminating one of the competitive nations etc. Such an approach could still allow the current game to exist as an option. I think that the inclusion of several end game options would give players a reason to restart from scratch with a different end game option and enhance the replay value of the game considerably.

It would be nice to get some sort of reward for a players achievement after playing a game for several hundred hours. It would be interesting to hear from X2 players as to why they stopped playing I am sure that in many cases it would be sheer boredom brought on by a case of "There is nothing of interest left to do".
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sai-ku
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Post by sai-ku » Sat, 19. Nov 05, 23:14

I just want more journey, somewhere I'm headed, I've already wiped out the universe in XBFF, XT and X2, soon will have done the same in X3.

But what next?

I'm a few weeks away from there being nothing left to do.

If I could go build a real empire or colonise a planet or somthing then I'd have something to do!

I need something to spend my easilly earned Trillions on or atleast something to slow me from getting there so fast.
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Post by Mild_and_Creamy » Sun, 20. Nov 05, 10:21

well there are some great ideas here. all of which I think hit in the same general direction.

as general ideas I think they need to look ot other games like: homeworld, other space sims, mechwarrior, Stratagy games and take the ideas and interfaces from there.

the thing that X i think needs to look at is the fact that governments will sell you capital ships. they don't do that now so why are they willing to do it in the future?

you should have to design and make your own capital ships. You Should have to employ scientists to research new technology and create the factories to make what you need.

and then if you get too big governments should become hostile to you.

I've never really been into the trading thing as I didn't see a point other than getting money to buy nore stuff. It might be an idea that you are the leader of a fraction (or something) and you have to establish an empire and explore (this though may be taking the game in a different direction)

Landing on planets is a fine idea but I don't think it would add anything to the game. also I think that some ships would not be able to land on planets (for obvious reasons). what I would suggest is:

space elevators (read red, green and blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson i think). simply put it's an astaroid is put into orbit and a cable ties it to the planet, with things going up and down the cable.

anyway this is all rather random and ill thought out.

sorry for the spelling mistakes (i am sure there are some)

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Post by HellToupee » Sun, 20. Nov 05, 10:26

who needs elevators when they got transporter devices :)

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Post by Mild_and_Creamy » Sun, 20. Nov 05, 10:31

HellToupee wrote:who needs elevators when they got transporter devices :)
damn good point.

get rid of transporters. they should try something gritty like the new battelstar galactica (now that's some good sci-fi)

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Post by shireknight » Sun, 20. Nov 05, 15:35

I havn't read barely any posts in the thread but the one on the top of this page gave me thoughts on what I would like to see.

A true Empire building game, where you find an empty system and found your own Empire.

At first you start as a trader much like now and you have to make enough money to afford your own Player HQ and that acts as your Empire base for R&D where you design your own ships and your own economy. You have to design factories and decide what they will buy and sell based on the products other races make and your own unique goods that other races might be interested in as well.

you slowly grow in size by trading with other races until they start to show some concern as to how powerfull you are becoming and then maybe some hostility begins to break out in remote systems and things start to become worse & worse etc.

This game will need diplomacy too to keep everyone happy with each other via trade agreements and non-agression pacts etc.

That's a basic outline but I think it's a good start for Egosoft to expand on :)
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sai-ku
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Post by sai-ku » Sun, 20. Nov 05, 15:39

Let me pointout the crux of my original post as it seems to have been lost.


- Procedurally generated space, the first company to do this is going to make a ton of money.
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