Friendly suggestions for Next Egosoft era

[Lord Kellmar]

There is something that has been bothering me in the X games. Why do equiped weapons (and other stuff) still eat up the same cargo space ? Any cargo onboard is supposed to be compressed, no ? So anything "in use" should be uncompressed.


I remember the "Escape Velocity" serie, where the ships had 2 kinds of space. One for regular cargo, and one for the outfits, for weapons, missiles, etc.. that represents the amount of guns you could install. Figthers would have lots of outfit space (lots of guns under the wings) but nearly no real no room for cargo.
(The only drawback I found was that you couldn't carry extra outfits as trading goods.)


A mix of those 2 systems would be great (I haven't played many space sims, so maybe there is already a game with that kind of system)

[Nanook]

....
As for the system model, games like Vega Strike and Evochron Renegades are much more seamless than X when it comes to travelling around. In Vega Strike, if you see a planet on the other side of the system you want to get to, you target it, press the SPEC-drive hotkey and you accelerate to a multiple of the speed of light. Not disturbing the gameplay for a milisecond, you arrive 90 light-seconds closer to the planet. You could have left your PC on for a month (or however long) and flown there the old-fashioned way if you wanted.

The same is true for Evochron Renegades, you can fly everywhere using normal engines. But you will obviously want to use your jump drive, which teleports you to the destination coordinates instantly. If you travel to a new star system the wait is at most half a second to load in all the new stuff before you emerge.

I wish the next game (most likely another space free roaming type thing) would use this sort of very open universe model, or at least use Freelancer's. Freelancer had a good universe model, the only loading screen or noticeable seam in the game is travelling between systems using the jumpgates. It's proof you can put that in a retail game and be successful with it.

The funny thing is, Vega Strike is a free (possibly open source, I forgot) game and Evochron Renegades was programmed by one guy in Dark Basic. They're both so much more interesting in the technologies they use, I don't see why retail games never have them.

Maybe they don't want to risk spending time on money on something that won't guarantee more sales.

What you're failing to realize is that the X-Universe is much, MUCH larger than those universes you use as an example. The systems in the X-Universe can be next door, or they might be in a galaxy far, far away. And it wouldn't take just a year to fly there realtime, no matter the speed. It would take centuries, even millenia.

It seems everyone thinks space travel should be like either Star Trek or Star Wars. In fact, long distance space travel, if it ever comes about, will quite likely be more like the X-Universe, Stargate and I-War, or even EVE Online. Basically, small 'boxes' that contain humanity (or other races) connected by these jumpgates. "Seemless" high speed travel probably isn't in the cards, or the stars.

[Poobah]

Whenever I open my mouth I have to reword what I'm saying because I always put it confusingly. Oh well.

I'm not too bothered what should happen graphically when you shoot a shield, but I just think the hull should flash cyan for a moment or something. As long as it's different, and doesn't look exactly the same as if you were hitting the hull.

As for the system model, games like Vega Strike and Evochron Renegades are much more seamless than X when it comes to travelling around. In Vega Strike, if you see a planet on the other side of the system you want to get to, you target it, press the SPEC-drive hotkey and you accelerate to a multiple of the speed of light. Not disturbing the gameplay for a milisecond, you arrive 90 light-seconds closer to the planet. You could have left your PC on for a month (or however long) and flown there the old-fashioned way if you wanted.

The same is true for Evochron Renegades, you can fly everywhere using normal engines. But you will obviously want to use your jump drive, which teleports you to the destination coordinates instantly. If you travel to a new star system the wait is at most half a second to load in all the new stuff before you emerge.

I wish the next game (most likely another space free roaming type thing) would use this sort of very open universe model, or at least use Freelancer's. Freelancer had a good universe model, the only loading screen or noticeable seam in the game is travelling between systems using the jumpgates. It's proof you can put that in a retail game and be successful with it.

The funny thing is, Vega Strike is a free (possibly open source, I forgot) game and Evochron Renegades was programmed by one guy in Dark Basic. They're both so much more interesting in the technologies they use, I don't see why retail games never have them.

Maybe they don't want to risk spending time on money on something that won't guarantee more sales.

Turn the "Warptunnel" on in game options then you'll have no black screen in-between sectors but something pretty to look at. X3 is very graphics heavy and there is a lot to load, that's a fact. I googled the games you mentioned and neither are really graphically on the same level as X3, TBH some of the screenies I saw X:BTF could give them a run for their money.

And just to point out that if we were stuck at lightspeed without some kind of hyper-light transport we'd never be able to make it out of a single solar system and it's surrounding bodies. I think things are alright as they are, but do have a few ideas on this score. Personally I'd like to see more of what we saw in the Sol system - different planets with multiple sectors in orbit around them (Aldrin has shown us that it is impractical to have a single massive sector for an entire planet). Have planetry systems (or even just solar systems) linked via jumpgates or other hyper-light technology and in-system travel via trans-orbital accelerators. For instance.

[MegaJohnny]

What you're failing to realize is that the X-Universe is much, MUCH larger than those universes you use as an example. The systems in the X-Universe can be next door, or they might be in a galaxy far, far away. And it wouldn't take just a year to fly there realtime, no matter the speed. It would take centuries, even millenia.

It seems everyone thinks space travel should be like either Star Trek or Star Wars. In fact, long distance space travel, if it ever comes about, will quite likely be more like the X-Universe, Stargate and I-War, or even EVE Online. Basically, small 'boxes' that contain humanity (or other races) connected by these jumpgates. "Seemless" high speed travel probably isn't in the cards, or the stars.

In terms of gameplay it isn't. You can fly for as long as you like and you'll just end up getting far away from the little box of ships and stations that are in the sector. In Evochron if you just fly forever in the right direction you'll end up in another system. When you do go between systems in X you have to wait a couple of minutes for it to load all the new stuff.

Also why does it matter what space travel will probably end up like? Maybe you said that because I mentioned believability. Disregard that, I was going to make a believability post but it turned into a general list of ideas.

[Chris0132]

- louder gunshots and more different gunshot sounds, so that big guns can sound like big guns and not exactly like the poncy little fighter guns you were using 10 game-days ago.
- When the shields are up there should be a sphere (or squashed sphere) that should collide with the bullets rather than the ship hull. I don't like how shooting an energy field looks exactly the same as shooting a metal surface.
- This most likely won't happen. But I'd like a Freelancer-style system model rather than the one we have now which feels rather boxed in. Ideally it'd be something like Vega Strike or Evochron Renegades (vegastrike by the way simulates 3 systems realtime so don't say it's technically unfeasible to have this model) (and the whole IS-OOS system the X-series had is good, it should carry over into new games all the same).

#1: Some guns are too loud. I'm personally not a fan of excessively eardrum destroying sound effects and prefer more understated to overstated. In space, noone can hear you scream anyway

#2: I don't really like this. Not saying this just to be argumentative, but to show that there isn't a uniform desire for this.

#3: I don't understand what you're saying here, what do you mean? Could you offer some explanation please? I'd be interested to see what this means.

Chris : I don't have time to address all your points, but I'd definitely be against super-powerful stuff in any x-game. What's the point in having something big and powerful if there's something half the size and equally as powerful? If every race had a spitfyre/springblossom then all their other ships would become obsolete, especially because of the ease with which money can be made in X3:TC. Besides, if everyone got superships then they would cease to be superships and people would start crying out for even more overpowered ships...

They wouldn't make big ships obsolete, because I can still kill things in a boreas much faster than I can in a springy, the point is that I can, given time, kill just about anything in a springy, and it's a different style of fighting to a destroyer.

Destroyers are more powerful than bombers but bombers usually beat destroyers in the hands of a player.

They aren't supposed to be superpowered, they're supposed to be powerful and specialised. Capital ships would have the biggest firepower available because they're capital ships, and they would be very good at killing other capital ships as well as stations and OWPs, but similarly if you spend enough money on something corvette sized it should have the option of being able to fight a capital ship and win without taking half an hour due to sheer lack of firepower.

As I said there should be disadvantages to the powerful weapons, they should be near useless against anything smaller than a frigate, because they are so hard to hit with, but against big ships they would be effective enough to make say a wing of corvettes able to take on a few capital ships without losses, but in turn the corvettes should cost as much as a big well equipped capital ship. Converesly however, a big well equipped capital ship would be able to take on fighters more easily.

It's down to personal preference, sometimes I want to pilot a capital ship, someitmes a corvette, sometimes a little fighter, but in X3TC in order to accomplish anything I need to use a destroyer all the time because otherwise I can't kill the twenty million capital ships that spawn in later on. The only way to kill a bigger ship is to get a bigger ship of your own, or to wait half an hour which isn't practical in a big fight.

People would still buy capital ships if they wanted to fly a capital ship, but they would also buy corvettes and tune them up if they wanted to try blowing up a capital ship with a smaller ship, or maybe a fighter and really beef out the speed so that it can dodge things and then shell out cash on special anti-captial consumables which require great finesse to use.

Basically I see captial ships as being like boss battles, they would be powerful, but they have to have weak points and you can exploit them to kill them if you tool up enough first, but you don't need to always use another boss to kill the first one. However you could use a boss ship to do some damage of your own, or you might choose to do it in a smaller ship, the point is it's up to you, that's what X is about, being able to do things as you want.

[Nanook]

What you're failing to realize is that the X-Universe is much, MUCH larger than those universes you use as an example. The systems in the X-Universe can be next door, or they might be in a galaxy far, far away. And it wouldn't take just a year to fly there realtime, no matter the speed. It would take centuries, even millenia.

It seems everyone thinks space travel should be like either Star Trek or Star Wars. In fact, long distance space travel, if it ever comes about, will quite likely be more like the X-Universe, Stargate and I-War, or even EVE Online. Basically, small 'boxes' that contain humanity (or other races) connected by these jumpgates. "Seemless" high speed travel probably isn't in the cards, or the stars.

In terms of gameplay it isn't. You can fly for as long as you like and you'll just end up getting far away from the little box of ships and stations that are in the sector. In Evochron if you just fly forever in the right direction you'll end up in another system. When you do go between systems in X you have to wait a couple of minutes for it to load all the new stuff......

And just how much 'gameplay' is there in "just fly(ing) forever"? Seems rather pointless to me. IMO, there's a whole lot more gameplay involved in the so-called 'small' sectors of the X-Universe, where something is always happening that the player can be part of, rather than just flying off into the distance for no real purpose.

[The_Lost_Marauder]

I've thought about this topic for a while before posting my replies here... it's not easy to find things which have to be improved or even remade from scratch...

1) what I missed in X³TC was a "strong" main character. In X² and X³R you were Julian Brennan, who eventually became a hero (and thus famous) while in X³TC you-re an anonymus player, no matter if you're an Argon, a Boron a Terran or anyone else.
It was quite a shame: also, there were no "famous NPC" like Ban Danna or Saya (at least I didn't meet any of them).
The next chapter of X universe should feature IMHO an important pg, maybe the son of Julian and Miria (LOL)...

2) In X³Reunion there was nothing like a training for anything but fighting. Ok, if you wanna kick Xenon and Pirates you'll be fine, otherwise it's all useless. My father, who is not so young and needs a discrete bunch of time before learning basic controls, has not even started the game since he's not confident with controls: if he had the PC telling him what to do (and what to press) everytime at least during the beginning he will be surely happy!
What I'm suggesting is a more user-friendly game beginning, where not only you receive messages "do this, do that".

3) X³Reunion on my PC runs smoothly 99% of times (just once it lagged a lot because I was kicking with my Sohen Scylla 3 Xenon J at the same time, all firing their PPCg against me), but with X³TC the story was completely different, and I couldn't attend a "Final Fury" mission because there were too many enemies that my pc almost got blocked. Even if using a script which removed explosions and other eye-candy effects which are useless for gameplay.
Allow people to set more graphic details while ingame: and if the default settings are fine that menu won't be used, but it's still good knowing it's still there.

4) The first person view while on board of any ships should be changed: I have a lot of troubles when moving my M2 because it appears that there is a lot of space between and object/ship ƒ while it is not: more than once I literally kicked some ships like TS, M6 or smaller ones which of course blew up at once.

5) In X³TC some Terran Stations were way TOO BIG for their purposes! I understand that sometimes "bigger is better", but IMO that is exagerated...

6) I've tried to destroy gates in X³R but I never succeded, probably because they're intended not to be destroyable. Not very happy about that but still fine. And if we could "disable" them? Kinda like using a huge-disruptor missile which removes the energy of the gate, making it out of order for sometime. So if you still want to enter the sector you'll have to use a Jumprdrive, and if you have not, forget about. Of course gates return to work after that time...

7) I'm fine with the game being single player only. Unless changing the whole game concept (something like a MMOG where every server is a space sector), but you would require some hell of server to host dozens of players. So just better remain with the game as it is.

8] Someone before my post was talking about Transorbital Accelerator, which are a very interesting idea for future X games IMO.
Words like "Argon Prime", "Ringo Moon", "The Wall" should be connected with T.A. instead of gates, because these sectors are close each other. On the contrary, sectors like "Cloudbase Southwest" and "Emperor Mines" should be connected via gate because the sectors are in different galaxies.
In this way you can expand the space 10x and also you can place this accesses not onle N-S-W-E, but also Up and Down (see pic below) because space is real 3D.

[ external image ]

9) Someonelse was talking about X-Wing Alliance energy system, which you use to control power of shields, lasers and engines.
In that game there were 4 levels of each indicator: by increasing 2 levels the shield generator (bringing it to max recharge rate) you cut top speed by half (see pic below for further references, and remember that scheme #1 is the default one):

[ external image ]

Now, that system IMO was not so good because at 0% lasers your weapons quickly discharged (but you could fire with them until they depleted), same thing for shields. Of course it didn't happen with engines, but a 0% Engine made you flying VERY slow...
What I'm suggesting is shown on pic below:

[ external image ]

The main difference is that you always have a recharge rate for both shields and lasers, but it is much much slower than normal value.
So, in the end, there is always an indicator which can't be removed.
UNLESS you remove weapons and shields from your ship, in that case you can use the normally-protected amount of energy for extra boost (like: ZOMG I have the entire Xenon Fleet all around me and the gate is 100km far away!!!).

10) WAR!!! The X-universe, if it wasn't for Xenon and Kha'ak, it's a peaceful place. Boring. At least for those who would keep shooting when everything is smaller than stardust.
I'd love to see a war scenario where you're a pilot of your race army and have to win the war against enemy races which can be any of the existing ones!
Like Argon + Boron VS Paranid + Split and Teladi neutrals (so they make more Profitsss!). You'll have assault missions as well as defensive ones; you may attempt to destroy enemy supply convoys as well as some central stations or warehouses. In the end you could attempt a mission which, if you succede, brings your race to victory (like eliminating Priest Xaar or Argon Senator) or even capturing enemy HQ so they no longer have a own prime. You could also have missions which lead enemy allies to leave the conflict making things easier for you.
You could also have to secretly hire pirates to damage your enemies without being accused...
There are almost unlimited chances...

11) Finally, a small suggestion: in X³R when pressing "R" you can see your properties. Satellites are considered ships and if you, willingly or not, actived Cycrow script "Reveal all sectors and place 6 Adv. Satellites" you'll have hundres of those things and it will be a pain searching for you *real* ships if you don't remember the sector where they currently are.
Is it possible to differenziate these two categories???
Or at least, if your ship has a nave which doesn't start with "advanced" make it selectable via alphabet way.


OT: why do I have a European keyboard but the site types as if I'm using an American keyboard??? I always confuse symbols since they're placed differently! O_o

[pjknibbs]

8] Someone before my post was talking about Transorbital Accelerator, which are a very interesting idea for future X games IMO.
Words like "Argon Prime", "Ringo Moon", "The Wall" should be connected with T.A. instead of gates, because these sectors are close each other. On the contrary, sectors like "Cloudbase Southwest" and "Emperor Mines" should be connected via gate because the sectors are in different galaxies.

Er, sorry, but how do you know that Argon Prime and The Wall are close to each other? They have a gate connecting them, but they're certainly not in the same solar system (which is the only place TOAs would be useful) and they might even be on opposite sides of the galaxy from each other!

[Gavrushka]

What you're failing to realize is that the X-Universe is much, MUCH larger than those universes you use as an example. The systems in the X-Universe can be next door, or they might be in a galaxy far, far away. And it wouldn't take just a year to fly there realtime, no matter the speed. It would take centuries, even millenia.

It seems everyone thinks space travel should be like either Star Trek or Star Wars. In fact, long distance space travel, if it ever comes about, will quite likely be more like the X-Universe, Stargate and I-War, or even EVE Online. Basically, small 'boxes' that contain humanity (or other races) connected by these jumpgates. "Seemless" high speed travel probably isn't in the cards, or the stars.

In a Kestrel going flat out (605m/s) to travel from one cosmic neighbour to the next (say 12 light years - next door in cosmic terms) it would take just under 6 million years....

........The worst thing is a Kestrel doesn't even have a toilet...

[Poobah]

8] Someone before my post was talking about Transorbital Accelerator, which are a very interesting idea for future X games IMO.
Words like "Argon Prime", "Ringo Moon", "The Wall" should be connected with T.A. instead of gates, because these sectors are close each other. On the contrary, sectors like "Cloudbase Southwest" and "Emperor Mines" should be connected via gate because the sectors are in different galaxies.

Er, sorry, but how do you know that Argon Prime and The Wall are close to each other? They have a gate connecting them, but they're certainly not in the same solar system (which is the only place TOAs would be useful) and they might even be on opposite sides of the galaxy from each other!

Exactly.

My point was that you could have say "Argon Prime 1/2/3/4 (or North/east/south/west)" linked by TOA with all those being sectors in orbit around AP, without having the "Aldrin issue" just like you have multiple sectors around Jupiter and Saturn, for instance. You'd need Jump Gates to link different solar systems, of course, but the universe would feel a lot larger with more TOA's and less Jump Gates. Jumping long distances would only be possible in big ships with big cargo holds, and refuelling would need serious consideration before you set off. And of course with TOAs there would be a concept of 'deep space' again, and some places genuinely would be far away or only accessible by routes which lead through dangerous or uncharted solar systems....

[Bishop149]

Only one request from me;

Make sure the game is in a fit state to be released.

Whilst Egosoft are VERY good when it comes to supplying patches and additional content I reckon about 50% of the content in most of the patches really shouldn't have been an issue if the games had been tested properly before release.

Some of the bugs in X-games are so glaring that I find it impossible to believe they weren't spotted pre-release. I think there was an attitude of, "We must hit our release date, we'll fix it after the event"

X3:R 1.0 was the worst example of this, does anyone remember that monstrosity? With the HUD that dropped FPS to single figures no matter how powerful your system. . . . . . .

It remains the one and only game that when I went to get it the staff in the shop actually tried to prevent me purchasing because: "95% of customers return it within 24hrs". It was probably only my pre existing knowledge of how good egosoft are with patches that prevented me doing the same!

[Poobah]

Agreed.

Tell your publishers to go take a long walk off of a short cliff if they try and force a release date.

Release the game fully working and well tested and you'll generate much better publicity and reviews. Reviews tend to get written off of the back of the initial release of the game, not 6 months later once you guys have put in all your work and gotten it fixed up, so you don't get the credit for that

Releasing early / "on time" but not actually working/done does nothing but cost you sales and garner bad publicity, alas.

[random50]

I've had and will have a huge amount of enjoyment out of the X-series, but I have to say there's very little in it I think they've got particularly close to right.

My vote would be to increase the moddability, if they continue to work on the X-series at all. The community has consistently shown itself able to produce much better results than Egosoft's own programmers (not necessarily a criticism...for every great script and mod that comes out, there are probably half a dozen that do a similar thing badly, and I expect dozens more that never even get released)

[pjknibbs]

Agreed.

Tell your publishers to go take a long walk off of a short cliff if they try and force a release date.

At which point they sue you for breach of contract and the game never gets released at all...

[Poobah]

Agreed.

Tell your publishers to go take a long walk off of a short cliff if they try and force a release date.

At which point they sue you for breach of contract and the game never gets released at all...

I'm sorry man, but there are plenty of game developers willing to push back a game's release date in order to ship a working product. As I said shipping a less than satisfactory game results in bad press, bad reviews and lesser sales than shipping late but in full working order.

If Ego are trapped in a horribly restrictive contract with Deepsilver and they are entirely uncooperative then it's time to renegotiate or hire some very expensive lawyers.

[djrygar]

New mission spawning system is something that makes me cry.
Lets take a look at 'defend station' mission. PLayer accepts mission, and immediately bunch of pirates spawn at nearest gate. How immersion-killing design!!!!! If I dont accept mission - no pirates at all, sorry, but this absulutely destroys feeling that the universe around lives. And it would be actually the same amount of work to do it right - pirate assault spawns somewhere, and after that factory shouts for help. If player is not willing to participate, pirates wil attack station anyway (and steal its resources/products)
Same thing with patrol and invasion missions - not taking mission means nothing will happen.
Convoys - pure nonsense, istead of just use jumpdrive and go straight to destination, they wander around, with pirates spawng out of thin air (how they do that - even military cant jump enywhere they want - yet pathetic pirate in weakest ship has this 'super duper jumpdrive').
This is BAD, rushed gamedesign.

New reputation system - you start new game, kill ONE ship, and you are already hero - what sense of accoplishment can give you something like this?

fixing this system and adding something like 'Race invasions' mod, along with some simple changes (changing energy cost of jumping to be dependent of size of ship, so its impossible to jump arond whole map like crazy, as this kills the feeling of giant universe - gates are meant for energyfree travelling), externalize point and money earning system from main engine so it can be tweaked, randomize ateroid's yeld so each game will be different, and give races finite resources/money, and put race management logic out of main engine. And you have GREAT STRATEGY GAME, you can sell as X4, not just space shooter as it is now (be serious, out of this 'trade fight, build think' tagline only fighting is true - theres nothing to think about in this game - you just need to buy biger guns and more ships to survive, building means create system-choking complex hub, trading is pure nonsense when your competitors on the 'market' have unlimited resources, traders spawn just to buy your wares etc, nothing realistic about that)

and within 2-3 months this shooter could be turned into wonderful, unique strategy game, with first person aspect (you could even drop this plotine efforts, as they are just awful and obsolete)

[Chris0132]

Agreed.

Tell your publishers to go take a long walk off of a short cliff if they try and force a release date.

At which point they sue you for breach of contract and the game never gets released at all...

I'm sorry man, but there are plenty of game developers willing to push back a game's release date in order to ship a working product. As I said shipping a less than satisfactory game results in bad press, bad reviews and lesser sales than shipping late but in full working order.

If Ego are trapped in a horribly restrictive contract with Deepsilver and they are entirely uncooperative then it's time to renegotiate or hire some very expensive lawyers.

The publishers are the ones paying for the game.

If the developers don't deliver what they are paid to deliver when they are paid to deliver it, the publisher is perfectly within their right to rip them a new one for it.

If the date changes then it's not because the developers said 'WE ARE DOING OUR OWN THING GO AWAY PUBLISHERS!' it's because the publishers think that they will get more money out of letting it take longer, it's the publisher's decision.

Games are a business, if you don't make money from them they are pointless.

A publisher can make money by just hyping something up and getting lots of first day sales, especially if it has a big name franchise behind it, whether or not the game is good is irrelevant, why do you think all those horrible movie games keep getting made?

Bad reviews mean nothing if the game gets good first day sales, if you sold half a million copies on the first day at full price, who cares if everyone hates it? A late release date means the advertising hypemobile runs out of fuel and fewer people buy it on the first day at full price, it means the game costs a lot more to make as well because the developers need money for all those extra days of work, so worse initial sales and more cost means less profit for a late release.

[The_Lost_Marauder]

8] Someone before my post was talking about Transorbital Accelerator, which are a very interesting idea for future X games IMO.
Words like "Argon Prime", "Ringo Moon", "The Wall" should be connected with T.A. instead of gates, because these sectors are close each other. On the contrary, sectors like "Cloudbase Southwest" and "Emperor Mines" should be connected via gate because the sectors are in different galaxies.

Er, sorry, but how do you know that Argon Prime and The Wall are close to each other? They have a gate connecting them, but they're certainly not in the same solar system (which is the only place TOAs would be useful) and they might even be on opposite sides of the galaxy from each other!

fair question, and fair answer (with a question before): would you place your stronghold too far away from your homeland risking that if gate is destroyed you have no longer a direct access?
I've never thought that sectors like the Argon ones could be placed in different galaxies, but it is more reasonable to believe that places like Omicron Lyrae, Aladna's Hill and Getsu Fune are placed in a totally different place and so you need a gate.
Also, wouldn't you like being able to follow special routes like a gate in Argon Prime which brings you directly to Omicron Lyrae? You would have then a more tridimensional space, because you don't just follow normal NSEW routes.

[Poobah]

The publishers are the ones paying for the game.

If the developers don't deliver what they are paid to deliver when they are paid to deliver it, the publisher is perfectly within their right to rip them a new one for it.

If the date changes then it's not because the developers said 'WE ARE DOING OUR OWN THING GO AWAY PUBLISHERS!' it's because the publishers think that they will get more money out of letting it take longer, it's the publisher's decision.

Games are a business, if you don't make money from them they are pointless.

A publisher can make money by just hyping something up and getting lots of first day sales, especially if it has a big name franchise behind it, whether or not the game is good is irrelevant, why do you think all those horrible movie games keep getting made?

Bad reviews mean nothing if the game gets good first day sales, if you sold half a million copies on the first day at full price, who cares if everyone hates it? A late release date means the advertising hypemobile runs out of fuel and fewer people buy it on the first day at full price, it means the game costs a lot more to make as well because the developers need money for all those extra days of work, so worse initial sales and more cost means less profit for a late release.

Tell that to more or less every major developer in the industry? Or at least everyone capable of good day 1 launches. Blizzard, Bethesda, Valve... all notorious for late releases and all well respected for delivering quality products when the time is right.

People might have rushed out and bought X3:R on day 1, sure. But those same people based on their 1.0 experiences with X3:R DID NOT rush out and buy X3:TC, I tell you that. That's costing sales right there. Let's not forget those people who took the game back to the shop and obtained a refund. Are major outlets going to bulk buy games that walk out of the shop on day one and then walk back in on day two? There's no use shipping on time if no one will touch your product.

You might get away with releasing one game or two on time but unplayable but once your notorious trait is releasing on time but broken, rather than late but pristine games you loose your credibility and your day 1 sales. Credibility equals profitability

Long term profitability isn't necessarily assured through making multiple good short-term decisions, in fact usually not. Allow me to gesture meaningfully towards the banking sector.

Consider also that Ego isn't in the habit of simultaneous world-wide launches. If a game gets totally panned in Europe on patch 1.0, when it reaches America a few months later, sales will suffer, regardless of whether or not whatever issues plagued 1.0 were fixed.

Finally, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that Egosoft's employees who worked on all the patches to fix Reunion, for instance, weren't working for free out of the goodness of their hearts... Regardless of whether you fix the issues before or after launch they still need fixing and the people doing that fixing still need paying.

[pjknibbs]

Tell that to more or less every major developer in the industry? Or at least everyone capable of good day 1 launches. Blizzard, Bethesda, Valve... all notorious for late releases and all well respected for delivering quality products when the time is right.

Bethesda, Blizzard and Valve are not only HUGE compared to Egosoft, but they are also publishers in their own right as well as developers, so they can afford to put games back because they're the ones publishing them! Furthermore, they all work in areas where games can sell well into the millions, whereas space sim games are unfortunately a very small niche which is never going to match Diablo, Starcraft, Fallout 3 or Half-Life 2 for sales.