X3 Falls short..

[Sirilius]

I have been playing X3 on and off since its release in the UK and it is a good game, so don’t get me wrong, but it could have been so much more. X3 just really feels the same as its previous, X2, just with a new shiny look and a few extras here and there.

The main problem which I have with X3/X2 is the lack of atmosphere. It doesn’t feel like a society, it doesn’t feel like space. Having random ships darting about, appearing and disappearing does not give any sense of an intricate system/society/trading network/etc.

The graphics of X3 are great, but it should not be the only contributing factor in creating a believable society. I am sure most people probably won’t mine having a slightly improved X2 graphics and thus focusing more on other factors of the game.

Space is supposed to be huge, which is why I do not understand why each sector is so tiny. Not only does each sector feel and look the same as any other sectors, but they are so small. There is just hardly any room for, say a fleet battle or something.

In my opinion, sectors should be much larger, whilst leaving the stations in the middle of the sectors. This would mean the gates would be much further away from the heart/middle of the sector with all the stations in it. This could mean that hostiles/enemies could slip their forces into a sector without being noticed straight away. Of course in core sectors (Argon Prime etc) there would be more patrols around the gates and the heart of the sector would stretch further towards the gate as there would be more stations.

It seems as if the whole X universe is revolved around the player, nothing else seems to happen if the player isn’t involved. Computer Stations and factories might be randomly destroyed by other computer ships but it would be hard to notice a disappearance of a couple of stations as everything looks the same.

I mean, where’s the trade wars between major corporations, where’s the rivalry between pirates clans (we all know pirates don’t live together in harmony... come on now), where’s the border disputes between the races, and where’s the news to tell us about these is!?! Why can’t the player sit back and enjoy the scenery of carnage and death for once without being the cause. I can walk down the street and witness drama between people but in the UNIVERSE everyone is so peaceful and is only out to get the player.

Those who have played EV Nova would understand, you could fly around and it won’t be hard to find a battle which doesn’t involves you. Not only should you be worried about being picked on by the AI, but you should also have to worry about being caught in a cross fire between two capital ships or something.

Following on from that, the capital ships of X3 are just not fearful enough. No-one in a single fighter or with a small squadron should feel they have a chance against a destroyer or carrier, no matter how good a pilot the player is. These ships are supposed to be the pride of their navies, not just another target to add to the list.

A military destroyer should be able to charge into a battle and dish out a world of pain, with devastating anti-capital weaponry and anti-fighter weaponry, not weapons any old coot, that just shot down a couple of pirate fighters, can buy from their local supermarket (equipment dock…)

Anyone can take down some hostiles in a sector and be proclaimed a great hero for that race. The way ranks are used in X3 is good but not good enough. Why would the military sell their best stuff to someone determine enough to shoot enough hostiles in that said race sectors? There should be missions to gain their trust along with having good rank/relations.

Anyways sorry about my rant, if you read the whole thing, then wow, because I didn’t… Well I’m gunna shoot some baddies with Cycrow’s mercenary guild!

[Fekin]

Not read all of your post yet, but saying sectors are small, they are rather large, it's just that the jump gates are all in a small'ish area, which should of been spaced out a lot more for my liking.

[JonR]

Not sure about the whole sector size issue, but I agree about the involvement. I want there to split families rivaling for position, pirates chasing me through space, Borons attacking split. etc etc I dont see this, other than xenon/khaak incursions there is nothein. and even these you only see if you happen to be in the right 1 of about 150? sectors

[Misinformed]

Not read all of your post yet, but saying sectors are small, they are rather large, it's just that the jump gates are all in a small'ish area, which should of been spaced out a lot more for my liking.

I think thats his point, the sector itself may not be small at all, but theres nothing to do in most of it, beyond the permiter the gates create. Its a huge failing.

A large part of the problem is that if you could travel around more in a sector (ie there be things further out to travel to) then SETA wouldnt really be adaquate, it would just take too long to get most things done. Which is why i want to finally see a jump to co-ordinates button in the jumpdrive. But its not going to happen, Egosoft have set up sectos this way and they arent going to change.

[H.F._Mudd]

This game has been mentioned a few times today already (by me and a few others).

I-war 2, I-war 2, I-war 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not only did I-war 2 have a fantastic flight/combat model. It also succeeded in making space feel BIG. The solar systems were so large you had to use a jumpdrive in-system or spend 30 minutes flying across it.

It also was very good at creating atmosphere. Each system seemed to have its own style and culture. If only it had the economics and open endedness of X3...

[Tezzet]

I love this game (and Ive been playing the version 1 because I havent been able to download the patch until now). Its almost the perfect Elite type game. Id love it to feel like I-War 2 but its closer than X2. At least the ships dont move like they are on rails; A huge turn off in X 2 after I-War 2. Id love it to have the full z-axis control like I-war (Im a big Babylon 5 fan and that really made the show for me). Talking of Babylon 5 Id love to have a complex political system so that you could bribe this official and put a bounty on another. Id love to be able to land on planets and walk around stations. I have no idea what the scripting engine is can do. Im a gamer not a scrpter so perhaps in the future peeps could come up with solutions to the above or they may be many generations of X away...Or not because they dont agree with me but thats the way it is untill I rule the world!

I cant program and so I have to take whats offered and these guys have delivered as far as Im concerned. Its taken about 20 years but Elite has been surpassed.

Ego Soft are to be congratulated because I will be enjoying this game for years not months. Well done Dudes

[Hppswzd]

I never had a problem with the idea of the game. And it is quite fun.

My only complaint is that half of it don't work.....And all of us that bought it, have to wait for who knows long for it all to be fixed and work right.

[soleseacher]

Thats simple look at the sticky at the top of the page Players guide.
You will find all the info you need in there.

[Alpha_Climatise]

X3 – Amazing Adventure or Frustrating Farce?

Firstly, this is a collection of my thoughts, and these thoughts are based solely on my personal experience in X3 and opinions thereof. This is not meant to be a definitive perspective on the game, simply a viewpoint that I hope help developers in the future.

I truly enjoy the X series, I honestly wouldn’t bother spending my time writing this if I didn’t think the series was worth the time and effort required to share my thoughts. The thoughts found here are only really meant for developers, and those people who are really keen and interested in others views. I also expect that a great many things I talk about have been covered in detail throughout the forum, though I think it important to say them anyway, for a couple of reasons. Firstly that I don’t know what has been said, I have limited time in my day and can’t spend it sifting through hundreds of posts on the X forums. Secondly I think it is always important to give the developers honest feedback when you can, not just complaints when things don’t work, but praise for good moves in sequels.



I got a hold of X3 at Christmas, which was a good time I felt since I’d have some holiday time in which I could dive right into the game, the previous installments were all time heavy games. This might have also been a plus in that the 1.3 patch had been released and solved a great many issues from what little of the forums I have had time to read. So my experience starts with a fresh install of the game and the 1.3 patch.

After setting the resolution and detail settings I jumped in the game and loaded into a training sim to make sure the frame rate was going to be playable. I felt it was getting about 25-30 frames an average with the settings on high and some filtering turned on. So I jumped out to the main menu and went to start a new game. I looked over the new starting options and thought they were cool, having the option to play a universe without the storyline was cool, you could get straight into trading without worrying about some plot event destroying your work (i.e. people building stations in presidents end in X2 and having them obliterated.) I was really excited to see what other great steps forward had been made.

But alas the excitement wasn’t to last long, the first thing to happen in my game was to have the com videos and speech skipping and stuttering and being all around unintelligible. So a couple of hours later after reading through forums and changing direct show merits I had things working again. I was really impressed with the size of the planets again, in X:BTF I can recall looking at gas giant planets spinning away while flying in SETA mode. X2 seemed to lack scale like that, the planets all seemed distant and a little lifeless, so I was really glad to see a bit of size and movement to the planets again.

I jumped headlong into the first few storyline missions, and really did enjoy the new ship physics. They don’t seem to be a massive change, but they give space fights a lot more life than the previous X games and collisions are a far rarer thing now. Shooting down dozens of pirates was great fun, it’s really a shame there aren’t more action missions like the first few, mowing down targets with a rear turret of a fast moving ship was loads of fun.

After doing these first few missions I thought I’d get into a little trading, just some basic energy trading which seems to be the starting point of any X game. I did the routine of buying low and selling high until I grabbed myself a freighter and then traded a bit more until I had a couple of million in cash. While doing this I think I found the first thing about X3 that really felt wrong, there are far too few stations. I can only assume that there are now fewer stations so the economy can be balanced more accurately. Whatever the reason, all I know is that instead of doing quick trade mission between stations in one sector, I had to move through many sectors to make a profit. I was really getting tired of long auto-pilot trips just to make money, I used to enjoy freight trading in X-X2, but the distances in X3 make trading all about long trips. I know long trips are a reality of trade in real life, but this is a game, I work during the day and get enough reality there, surely the key factor to a trading game is to make trading fun.

But I moved on from trading after making some money, I thought I might grab a new ship, something like a nova, a rear turret is always nice. This is when I noticed the race rank levels, and how certain levels are now required to purchase military grade equipment. I thought this was a great idea, because getting a race to just tolerate you and then buying capitol ship weapons from them did seem a little strange. So I forgot about the new ship for a while and just ran some more story line missions, which I thought might get my race ranks up a little as I destroy enemies in their sectors.

While doing these missions I noticed that you seldom get thanked for killing pirates and khaak in race sectors. This makes it hard to know if you are actually getting credit for the kills and moving up in standing with the races. I did seem to be gaining recognition after a time, so if it is simply a matter of not wanting to flood the coms with ‘the (whichever) empire wishes to thank you’ would it not be an idea to put some small visual acknowledgement that you have indeed been credited the kill and have got some points towards the next rank? After doing some of these missions I ended up flying to an argon sector with heavy pirate traffic, I then spent an hour or so destroying pirates to raise my rank. This seemed to be a real waste of time in the end, it took so long and I didn’t gain a single recognition level, only about half of one. I’m sure if I read through the forums there would be a dozen guides to quick rank gaining, but should a game require that? Should it be a prerequisite of a game be that you have hours on end each day that you can ferret through endless posts on a forum? I also really hate doing it, some of the hints you find while looking on forums can really ruin a game, they can verge on being exploits and probably not things you would have found without being told.

After a while I found that there were pirate fighters that I simply couldn’t take down fast enough with my current weapons. I did capture a Falcon from the pirates, so I thought I’d outfit it with some better weapons and do some ship capturing. But where are the weapons? The equipment dock almost never has the weapons you can use near the begging of the game, and there are no argon forges for those weapon types within the local area. Again you also hit trouble with the rank requirements, you need better weapons to kill the bigger enemies, but you can’t buy the weapons without the rank, but then you have trouble getting the rank without the bigger weapons, it gets to be a truly frustrating vicious cycle.

This got me thinking into the problem, I need rank but there is no clear way to work on it. No concrete direction to move in, nothing that gives you any clear indication that you are on the right track. There are often references in the game to the trade guilds, well why not make guilds a far more real thing? X is a roleplay game, so why not use elements of other roleplay games that have proven to be great content? There are BB mission to be found, and some of them have truly massive cash bonuses, I made 350,000 (I think at least) as a bonus for one mission a while ago. Why not decrease the cash bonus to more reasonable levels and create some trade guild missions? The same for fighters, you might have a police service or military service that you can run missions for. This not only gives you clear paths for gaining recognition with the races but also adds new reasons to play. If you finish the plot and have stations earning cash and you are simply waiting to get enough to buy a new station, what do you do? Having missions which can be accessed at anytime, instead of by chance on the BB, you give people a new way to spend time in X. BB missions would still be viable, they would be your big cash bonus missions, the rare ones that crop up for the lucky. But there really does need to be a clear way to make progress in race ranks beyond the current setup, I’ve played all the X games so far, if I feel a bit lost then can you imagine how a person new to the series must feel at times?

I ended up capturing a ship that had Alpha HEPT’s in the cargo hold, so I played through the storyline and enjoyed it for the most part, though the mission were a little vague and confusing at times. Maybe a quest log here could be another idea, sorted into active quests with the goals listed, and inactive quests with their outcomes.

By the time I ended the game I had two stations I had purchased and the bonus one you get in the storyline. Which felt a bit odd in itself, when I finished X2 I had over a dozen stations and a Split Dragon. All the changes in the game have been really good ideas, though I think in execution they could have been tweaked a little better. X3 on the whole takes longer to play and is more complicated in ways. I’m not sure what the demographic is exactly, but how many hours can people spend trying to work out the game and build a reasonable empire? What would have taken me a day to achieve in X2 seems like it would take a week in X3. I’m all for making the games longer, but is the best way to go about this to make everything in the game take longer? I’m not having as much fun in X3 as I did in X2, and games are meant to be all about fun.

Most of my previous thoughts were as I encountered them in the game, I’ll list a few more thoughts and ideas below here but I’ll try to keep them short and to the point, the background info isn’t really required for everything.


Codecs – A codec for X that is independent of windows seems to be the next critical step for the X series. I really don’t think ES can continue using direct show without being able to force the use of the correct direct show filter. All the coders work on making a stable engine will go straight down the drain if the user has one codec out of place. I have seen it said that ES can’t be responsible for users codecs and that’s is their issues. That is true, but it is also unreasonable to expect the average person to be able to manage filters like you imply, most people don’t even know what a codec is. I personally only formatted my PC a short while ago, and then only installed programs I would need for work, doing only this I still had to adjust the DS merits. You can’t expect people to dedicate their PC’s to running only X, having a codec indepandant of windows seems to be the best solution. You can control things far better and reduce the amount of problems with your software in the long run.

Economy – I can recall reading a ad for X3 saying something along the lines of ‘based on real economic models’, the problem I see with that is that I don’t see any place in the world that has trade like X. How can you use a real economic model for a system that is not a real trade system? If you make the economics too complicated you force players to either research this model or just plain guess at what’s going on. Fewer stations and more tied in sectors I don’t think is the answer, trading in a ship takes infinitely longer than it used to and station placement can almost seem like a shot in the dark at times. I have placed a station of a type that is not within two jumps of any other of that type, it is in a sector where it’s product is needed by four stations, and it never has ships dock at it. Even having a freighter go out and sell at the best price it seldom makes much money. I honestly don’t care if the economy is accurate, I only care about having fun while I play. I used to really enjoy taking over entire sectors, I had two sectors in X2 that where full of only stations I owned (I removed the pirates bases.) It was great fun to setup huge arrays of stations like that, working out their production cycles, how many of each station I would need, where I could sell the top teir of products, and so on. Everything in X3 happens at such a crawl I’m not sure how long it will take to do that in this game.

Ranks – As I pointed out earlier I think some system of missions is needed so you can have a clear path of advancement. People don’t have to use it, they can do things the traditional way, but hours of blowing up pirate ship after pirate ship is not my idea of a good time.

Khaak – They have always been annoying, and I actually thought their weapons would be changed in this installment. A collimated beam like they use would take immense energy to track with their movements. Most of the energy of the weapon would be spent keeping it parallel, not in actually doing damage to other craft. Fighting them is also painful, if you get a group of them that scatters before you can dispatch of enough of them then you are done for. You can’t dodge their fire not matter how much rolling and strafing you do, you can’t fire missles as they explode as soon as you do and simply damage your ship instead. Many of the scouts move too fast for heavy weapons fire to hit them, so they buzz around you and slowly take you apart. I don’t see the point to creating an enemy and weapons that are only annoying and no fun to fight, games are all about fun. I’m all for hard enemies, if I get out maneuvered and blow to pieces then that cool, but to be taken apart by tiny ships that cannot miss and track with your every movement is crazy, where is the fun in that? There weapons would be better as a sort of flame thrower effect, as they turn their ships the beam takes time to line up with you again. This would mean that if you fly in straight lines or turn at the same rate too long you would be an easy target. Evasive combat is something that should be encouraged, not made useless by enemy weapons that defy avoidance.

Mouse – The mouse control in this X game is better, but still almost not worth looking at. I think Freelancer had the perfect mouse setup for space combat, it would also blend in perfectly with your new menu system. You can currently switch between mouse moment and mouse hud control, wouldn’t it be easy enough to change the mouse control to that like Freelancer used? It would really help those people who don’t have flight sticks, as the keyboard is just no good for combat.

New Menu System – I’m not sure that the new menu is any great leap forward like it was promised to be. It’s a little prettier to look at than the last one, but no easier to use. I still use shortcut keys far more often than playing with the menu, so it doesn’t really do anything for me. Some of the Menu choices also seem to go against logic a little, a truly great menu system should flow, regardless of how it looks. One example is why are the best buy and best sell locators in the nav sub menu? They are a trade thing, granted you can hit the t key while highlighting the station you want to buy from and then fly there, but beyond that what does trade data have to do with navigation? The new menu isn’t any easier, it’s just different, it still requires practice and time to get familiar with where all the options are, which is exactly how it was in X2.

Ship Capturing – Why exactly are you forced to get out of your ship to capture another? I mean I really think the claim element is great. How often in X2 would you take on a group of say four ships and capture the very first one you target, then to have the other three enemies blow it up on you. Claiming ship is a great way to do it, you can choose when and even if you want the ship they leave. But why do you need to get out to claim it? I mean what can your space suit do that your ship can’t? You never get in the other ship so you don’t reprogram it from the inside, you also don’t get close enough to touch the ship, so you don’t take over from some external panel. So unless there is a real reason to get out of your ship to capture, why do it? The only reason I can see would be that you force people to wait until there is no combat going on, since they would die within seconds being in a space suit in combat. But really, only silly people would claim a ship while combat is still going on, as the ship would be targeted as being weak and destroyed before you could do anything with it.

HQ – I haven’t seen the option to build a Headquarters anywhere in X3. This was something talked about for the discontinued expansion to X2. I really thought that what this could mean would be possibly taking over a pirate sector, completely filling it with your stations, put some capital ship defense in there, setup a HQ, and you might actually have the sector detail show that it is now controlled buy your company. That would be really quite cool, something to aim towards when you have a great deal of money and property already, another reason to keep playing. Seems a bit sad if you can’t do that, it always sounded like a cool idea. Something like your HQ in the old classic Transport Tycoon, something that grew as you did and was something to behold when you hit the top level possible. I really saw something like this for X3, maybe not growing on it’s own like TT did, but something you could attach other station to as time went on.



Well that is all I have to share for the moment, it’s time for food here and then time to get some more work done. I hope some of my thoughts help, and I hope I’m not just rehashing things you have heard too much over time.

You guys keep making them, and I’ll keep playing them


X Fan
Alpha_Climatise

[Tenlar Scarflame]

It would make me a happy camper if the gates were, say, four or five times further apart than they currently are. Same with stations. Of course, scanner range would have to be increased somewhat, perhaps in a way that stations/roids/gates could be detected at a much larger distance than ships. THAT would make space feel big to me.

[pointone]

I don't know where you're coming from with the small universe idea. If anything, some systems seem far too large to me. Flying for 10 minutes with SETA on 10x to get across a system is NOT my idea of fun. I find the game just plain frustrating some times. If the systems / universe were to be made any larger, a new way of travelling long distances would be needed... something like the Trade Lanes in Freelancer, for example, or auto pilot in Privateer.

However, I do agree the universe could be more interactive. More comm chatter would've been a big help... as well as some expansion for messing with race relations. However, I don't feel that the universe revolves around the player too much at all. I see other ships fighting, other stations being attacked, etc. Egosoft didn't do too bad a job in this respect: I've played some REALLY player-centred games.

There are a lot of other things I would really like to see improved, hopefully within the next few patches. First and foremost would have the be the nebulae. Not really a gameplay problem at all, but something that annoys me to no end (I guess I'm weird like that...) Why can I see planets and stars, but not a freaking asteroid 5 clicks in front of me? How can I see a planet through an asteroid just because this asteroid is hidden behind some dense gasses? The nebulae just don't make sense.

Also in the graphical department (although probably no way of fixing this) is the system starfield backgrounds. Sure, they look fine from afar, but zooming in at all with Video Enhancement Goggles shows a very pixelated background image. On the same page as stars, the suns don't look to great in the game. Can't put my finger on exactly why, but they just don't seem up to snuff with the rest of the graphics.

The new computer voice needs fixing. Enough said.

A nice addition I would really like is to be able to see the statistics of the ship or equipment you're about to buy in a Shipyard or Equipment Dock. The description provided by the computer doesn't help at all, so I have to go around hunting to find the statistics of ships to decide what to buy.

I'm guessing the BBS system is getting updated since there's a thread dedicated to it, and I'm very glad. There were just too few BBS missions... not only in variety but availability. This will make the game a lot more entertaining, I think.

I would like to see a button for targeting the nearest missile / next missile type of thing. Too often I hear "incoming missile," and either have to scroll through all the targets as fast as I can, or keep hitting "target nearest enemy" every half second.

Finally, there are still a lot of performance issues and bugs in general. These are what is truly keeping the game from being all that it could be. Before working on any new features at all, please get the game FIXED. I've had my fair share of freezes (and I must say, nothing is worse than losing two million credits from a freeze in the early stages of the game... I get ticked just thinking about it), and annoying bugs such as the slide show that is Savage Spur.

At the risk of sounding too negative, I just want to say I thoroughly enjoy the game. I'm only trying to help by posting some constructive criticism and ideas.

I have faith in Egosoft! You've made a hell of a game, but it could be downright bitchin' with a bit more work.

* Sorry for hijacking your thread! Got a bit carried away, I suppose.

[Cucumber King]

You have made some really good points back there.

Sad thing this is dropping down the pages without replies, because it's a very long text. I took my time to read it ( well, most of it ) and I have to agree with you on many points. You basically told everyone's first experiences with X3 - first you see the graphics and everything, then you see the gamplay...

I dissagree with you on the mouse thing. If you have a bad framerate the mouse is useless, it feels like the mouse is drifting over the screen.

Secondly, the menus maybe unfriendly for newbies, but once you get into it, it gets pretty easy and you can reach everything very fast. I think it's not a bad thing that you have Esc to get to a menu, enter and enter... It's just a matter of getting used to it. I like the strafe drive control, it's very easy now, just pressing a,s,d and w.

I think it depends on the way you play how you end the plot. I mean, you ended up with 2 factories. But since you can also lean back from the plot and build your empire you can also end up with 200 factories if you won't. That's one thing that makes space sims like X and Freelancer interesting.

I personally finished X2 with only 4 stations and a Nova!



And in X3 I haven't played the plot, to avoid frustration.

[Deleted User]

Amazing Adventure or Frustrating Farce?

I'd be 25% left and 75% right.

Egosoft really inhibits newcomers to their game, yet to survive they need newcomers.

This from awhile back:

What I have read on the forum in the last month and a half, saddens me.

I feel no sympathy for Egosoft. If Mr B. Lehahn can run a company like he does and makes the decisions he does....


RIP Egosoft

[soleseacher]

Finally, there are still a lot of performance issues and bugs in general. These are what is truly keeping the game from being all that it could be. Before working on any new features at all, please get the game FIXED. I've had my fair share of freezes (and I must say, nothing is worse than losing two million credits from a freeze in the early stages of the game... I get ticked just thinking about it), and annoying bugs such as the slide show that is Savage Spur.

Ok can understand your frustation anyway here is a little utility program I found that might help you with your FPS's I use it and it has improved the frame rates no end.
The program is freeware and gives you the option to shut down all none essential background applications and allocate more memory to the game before starting up X3. The program is very simple to use all you do is set up a profile for your game which will list all programs running and gives a small memo on what it is and if its safe to stop or not.
Then redirect you X3 shortcut icon to your profile and thats it every none esentitial program will be closed before X3 is launched.
The programs called FSAuto Start and can be found here.
http://saltydogfly2.avsim.net/fsautostart
If your running on XP then you will be supprised just how many none essential programs you have running in the background.
Hope tis helps you

[dawdler]

This game has been mentioned a few times today already (by me and a few others).

I-war 2, I-war 2, I-war 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not only did I-war 2 have a fantastic flight/combat model. It also succeeded in making space feel BIG. The solar systems were so large you had to use a jumpdrive in-system or spend 30 minutes flying across it.

It also was very good at creating atmosphere. Each system seemed to have its own style and culture. If only it had the economics and open endedness of X3...

A smaller example even though its thrashed on these forums for being "arcadish" is Freelancer.

Despite having simplistic sectors, they felt *ALOT* bigger and more realistic due to the fact they where logically designed: A central sun, planets and various debris fields and gas clouds.

In X3 is just a tiny box level with a pretty backdrop. Nothing feels real.

I'd like to see something in between Freelancer and Iwar2. Not too big sectors (Iwar2 was really HUGE) but without the dull warp lanes or whatever they called them in Freelancer and of course dynamic planets that rotate slowly around the sun.

Basicly, I'd like to see the universe based on realistic planetary sectors. Odd, isnt it?

[biGGGs]

I think you have a number of points, especially about how everything seems to revolve around you, the player.
e.g. 3 pirate falcons flying through a sector, closer to them is a TS carrying microchips. I know this, I scanned the thing a few minutes ago. I'm sitting in my L, doing nothing, no freight on board, surely no target for pirates with a collective brain cell. The pirates go around the TS to get to me.
???

It's not like I don't see other things being attacked, but anything hostile will go out of it's way to attack you, above other targets.

And your point about the sector sizes is, for me, a small part of a bigger issue. The whole game needs to be upscaled, including the speeds of all the different ships. Just as an example, if the ships were put in an atmosphere only M5s would be able to break mach 1, and probably still not since they're not supposed to fly against air resistance. There's something wrong with that.

There are other things that bug me, like how a Split ship can fly through Boron sectors completely unnoticed, and the nebulae definately need work.

[H.F._Mudd]

I'd like to see something in between Freelancer and Iwar2. Not too big sectors (Iwar2 was really HUGE) but without the dull warp lanes or whatever they called them in Freelancer and of course dynamic planets that rotate slowly around the sun.

Basicly, I'd like to see the universe based on realistic planetary sectors. Odd, isnt it?

What you have to remember about I-war 2 is the solar systems weren't really sectors. The 'sectors' were all pretty much situated around planets and moons and the I-war 2 Universe was SO HUGE it would take months and months to explore them all. I think Fire Frost alone had something like 300 dockable stations!
Just a hint if you ever still play I-war 2: Don't let the auto Pilot plot your course across a solar system. If you plot your own course and fly LDS manually, (dangerous but fun) you'll get there much faster.

Back to X3. In X3's tiny sectors I get the feeling I'm in a ship with very primitive propulsion, one that really shouldn't be able to travel between star systems...

One last thing I-war 2 did that (for me) really added to the emersiveness of the game: All ships and stations had REAL NAMES! This is one simple thing X3 could do to help its personality a lot.

Okay, I'm done gushing about I-war 2 (gotta stop before I dig it out and start playing it again.)

[cswiger]

I agree with HF Mudd and dawdler almost entirely. :-)

I very much liked the design of some systems in FreeLancer where you'd have a molten lava asteroid field in close to the star, and water ice or methane fields farther out from the star.

("ME-thane! Who the heck calls it ME-thane? It's METH-ane! If this is the greatest scientific mind the Confederation has to offer, we're all in BIG trouble.")

At the very least, each sector in X3 ought to have something about the type of star that's nearby, and have that star provide the ambient background lighting appropriate to it's size and color. You could then tie that with the ambient lighting value already recorded in the sector database, and have that affect the efficiency of Solar Power Plants.

Given how long it takes to fly through sectors, we can't really increase the size of sectors without making it take far too long in realtime to get from place to place (even using SETA). However, if we could simply spread the asteroids out-- or even just spread the mini-asteroids added with 1.3 farther out so we don't change the position of anything which could have a mine on it.

We didn't need a huge number of mini-roids added between the gates, but having them around the borders of the sector farther out from the center and where the big minable ones are, would work great. That would make sectors less crowded and have a better "feel" because you'd still have some objects outside the main area between the gates. It would obviously help out frame-rates in Ore Belt and so forth to have fewer objects on screen at one time.

[H.F._Mudd]

We didn't need a huge number of mini-roids added between the gates, but having them around the borders of the sector farther out from the center and where the big minable ones are, would work great. That would make sectors less crowded and have a better "feel" because you'd still have some objects outside the main area between the gates. It would obviously help out frame-rates in Ore Belt and so forth to have fewer objects on screen at one time.

That's a great idea! The mini-roids make the small sectors feel even smaller and more claustrophobic than they already were...

[Alpha_Climatise]

I never really expected to get a lot of replies Cucumber King, as you said it was very long and takes time to read, though that being said it’s only about half as long as the original I wrote. I removed a good deal of things that either didn’t really need to be said or had better homes in say tech support forums. I had sections on the use of unnecessarily complex graphics where simple clever graphics would do, which would help the frame rate, but frame rate seems to have been covered extensively already. I also commented on things like the PSG slide show problem, but that’s really a tech issue.

My thoughts on the mouse were really saying that the current method for mouse flight is near useless. If you were to use a mouse in combat you would, a lot of the time, have to push the mouse as far as you can and then lift it, put in down close to you again, and then continue to push it further. I simply found, as many of my other space loving gamer friends, that the Freelancer mouse method was the best I ever worked with. If there is a better system that would work in X then I’d go with that, but the current system leaves those without a flight stick in a very hard place. Though I do see what your saying, the game does have on the whole a fairly touch and go frame rate, so a Freelancer style system could cause some serious control lag issues.

The menu thing for me was that it was no vast improvement, it seemed like most of the new menu additions were simply logical next steps that you would expect in a sequel. The new menu layout along the bottom of the screen was said to reduce screen clutter, but after you make any selection on this menu you end up with a big nav screen or trade screen almost blocking your view anyway, so it doesn’t really save space. It is also contrary to the rest of the menu system, the rest of the menu navigation in up and down, the title menu, trade menus, nav menus, command menus, and the only menu that moves left to right is the main in game one along the bottom. I just feel it is confusing along with the sometimes illogical placement of sub menus. I use shortcut keys for, I’d guess, about 70% of menu navigation. I was more comfortable with shortcuts long before I started to get used to the sideways menu.

And I’d have to agree with you too Tony Deep, the game can’t be simply made for the die hard fans that will stick with the series until the bitter end. X3 seems to be the most complicated in the series so far and there is still no in game tutorial. If you are someone like me that works a lot and doesn’t want to spend hours sifting through thousands, and that’s not an exaggeration, of posts on a forum for help then you’re almost out of luck. When I get home and want to have a bit of fun, I want to jump right into my game and have a couple of hours of empire building or dog fighting, I don’t want to spend two hours researching why my station makes no money and what the best secrets are for becoming a billionaire. New players are really going to be turned off by the complexity with so little help offered, not to mention the codec issue that seems to have a great many people in fits. Some for the first time are hearing the word codec, and all they know is it’s stopping them playing a game they paid good money for. Problems like this and the ‘dropped in the deep end’ effect of the game really seems to be a turn off to new comers.

Thanks for your opinions guys, and credit to you for reading my cruelly long rant.