Post
by Chris0132 » Mon, 10. Aug 09, 22:33
I think in general X has a pretty good system going, you pick a ship, you fly around blowing enemies up, or trading, and there is a lot of exploration involved until you memorise the universe, basically there's a lot to do in the X universe, more than I think I've seen in many other games. However it suffers a bit on implementation.
It needs a better interface, it needs mouse control wherever possible on sector maps, it would benefit from a proper 3d sector-wide control system akin to the homeworld 2 RTS control, being able to order ships around on a full 3d plane with large scale control would be a great benefit, and could be used for building as well. More things need to be hotkeyable such as ship command sequences, but we need fewer hotkeys to memorise, so we need more things brought under one command, for example selecting a ship in the 3d command mode and right clicking a friendly ship would make them follow it AND protect it from enemies, because why would you want to follow something without protecting it. Ships should be given engagement rules like RTS units, with toggles between 'engage aggressively, chase enemies down' and 'chase enemies a bit to get them away but don't deviate from the flightplan too much' and 'ignore all attacks and keep going'. That sort of thing.
On the note of building, we need to be able to build complexes more easily, personally I'd have them be node based, you place a building in the 3d command view and select one of its nodes, then you can select another building to add onto that node, which would allow more nodes to be placed, a 3d snap-to placement grid to prevent collisions would be helpful as well. Placing stations should not involve selecting a station each time, or going through all the menus each time, going through all the menus in fact is something of a recurring issue in the interface.
Freighter commands could use an overhaul as well, for example we need something like the routing system in anno 1404, you set places to go and then you set things to do when there, so for example you might set your weed plex in nopileos memorial, your energy plex in akeelas beacon, and your HQ in avarice, the ship would then circle between the three locations in that order, but you then can tell it to do things at each place, for example 'nopileos memorial: pick up: 400: weed: drop off: 5000: ecells:' 'Akeelas beacon: pick up: 8000: ecells:' 'avarice: drop off: 2000: ecells: drop off: 200: weed:' and so on, you give specific pick up/drop off orders on a comprehensive screen which clearly shows the standing orders of the ship.
These are fairly specific examples, but it shows the general direction I'd like it to go, more customisability, more automation, but more control as well, and less actual effort involved in giving the orders, and much easier access to the information you need.
With combat, I'd say more interesting inter-ship matchups, like bombers for example, I like the idea of a small ship which can damage a big ship if piloted carefully, so what about giving big ships weak points which can be shot at by overgunned but specialised ships? What if bombers didn't fire using the command menu, what if they mounted rocket pods which fired like lasers but used mouse1 to fire? You do strafing runs on enemy ships with them, sort of like a cross between a missile frigate and an ammo based laser.
Similarly, the ability to have special powerful weapons which are hard to use, capital ships could have main guns, which fire at huge ranges for large amounts of damage but which usually need ammo, or drain loads of energy and have a long cooldown, corvettes could mount special anti-capital weapons in ones and twos in their main batteries but they have some limitation which prevents them from being used against other smaller ships, like maybe they can't be autoaimed or fired off-centre like the existing guns can be. You could mount these on OWPs as well to make them a real danger.
Basically I'd like it if big ships weren't just turret clusters which shoot millions of small weapons at things, or if small ships weren't always limited in their firepower against big ships. Taking on xenon Qs in a katana is fun, but very very time consuming and repetitive, make expensive upgrades for smaller ships to let them take on bigger ships in line with the extra expense. The expensive things should not simply be the big slow things which are not as interesting to fly as the small fast things, if cost = power then why can't things be small and powerful if they're expensive? Things like the springblossom and the spitfyre should be available from all races but be very expensive to compensate.
You can also have new ship types, like boarding ships which latch onto the hull and deploy marines, or ships which latch on and drain power from the engines and weapons, or corvettes which have no main guns but more turrets, or more mains but no turrets, that sort of thing. Miniature missile boats which have turreted missile launchers for anti-missile screens or small scale missile deployment. You could also add in a real customisation system for your ships, being able to boost the number of shield slots, engine power, weapon compatabiility, turret configuration, all sorts of things, really make your ship your own you know? More things to do and try and play with.