New X game wishlist!! write here features you need in next X game

[RAVEN.myst]

That's what I would like to see. Enough options to be able to flex the creative muscle, and come up with interesting combination and tactics.

+1 (uncharacteristically succinct of me - trying something new )

AI would have a problem countering this, so I would also add cloud support for this. Successful fleet configurations would be automatically uploaded, and downloaded to all clients, and the AI could build those ships. So you would be playing against other player designs, which would make for a radically more challenging game, and always changing.

Good point, and intriguing solution. I recall similar approaches being used in a couple of games some time ago (I think one was one of the Tekkens, Mirror's Edge can save races online, and some other game, I forget what, referred to a similar technique as "shadow multiplayer" or some such - again, not live MP but vs a saved profile, basically.) I really like this - throw in a little heuristics and the battle AI could become a force to be reckoned with, in an "intelligent" sense, rather than by cheating in any of the numerous ways that game AIs are made "harder" (yes, I'm looking at you, Sins of a Solar Empire! Well, not ONLY you - in particular, many strategy games like to resource-cheat to achieve "harder AI"...)

[EDIT: Sigh... nope, must be hidden in CAT files, or something...])

EGO just published their Cat extracting Tool for everyone today, so its not a hindrance anymore... if it ever was, i think the format of them was one of the first things figured out and extracted by the community. the format is also pretty simple, you just have to look in a cat and dat belonging together to understand it.. (ok, not the ones where the first file is binary goo, but any other will do)

Ah, thanks for the heads-up - I'll go take a look. Of course, removing/replacing specific tracks will involve than just looking inside those CATs, but I suspect that will be covered in that tool.

[UniTrader]

you can replace entire files by packing them in a subst_01.cat/dat (similiar to how its done in X3, same path in cat/dat as vanilla file) and put it inside your mod. or you can change the existing xml files with pach xmls which describe the changes done to them. these can either lie as plain file in the mod or be packed in a ext_01.cat/dat

[capitalduty]

1. different types of ships should have their uses throughout the entire game.(currently in the late game players seldom keep their M5,M4,M3)

As I know, in X3 you start with usually an M4 or M5, then slowly you amass your credits to change the ship to M3, M3+, M6, M7 then M2 etc, in the late game it can happen that in your fleet there're only M2, M7 and M7Ms, fighters are seldom used because they can be destroyed in a battle quite easily. (whereas capital ships can emergency jump and get unscathed in most situations) Now a true fleet should not be like this, so my suggestion is that maybe fighters should be more cost efficient. With the same amount of credits, a group of fighters should defeat an M7 easily, since fighters have the con of suffering losses after each battle, M7 has the pro to jump out and preserve itself. This way players may involve fighters in their fleets.

Exactly! In X3 fighters were somehow useful, but logistic nightmare.
In X-Rebirth they are whole package (you buy fighter and not the equipment), but their price and more importantly lack of boosters and real carriers limit their use.

Until 4.0 the lack of mass command also kept them from use.

The last thing that make fighters crap is that they fall like flies to anything that has Plasma/JET. Fulmekron and Olmekron (they have in addition to JET also mass HIT/MA and hailstorms turrets) can deal with hundred of fighters alone.


To make fighters useful in X4 we need following things:
- fighters and drones must be cheaper (they are expendable and tend to die in mass)
- proper carriers need to be implemented.
- more anti-capship fighters need to be added and proper bomber script (lob missiles at maximum range and stay away from the target)

That way it would be like that:
Bombers can torp capships to death from distance - in order to protect capship you need to deploy fighter cover that will make short work of enemy bombers. TO have fighter cover to your capships the proper carriers need to me implemented that can ferry and repair fighters.

I totally agree with you, your ideas have more depth than mine!

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

The hacking of stations should have more guidance.

So you land on a station and select one of the following from the hacking menu

1) Hack Station to reduce production

2) Hack Station to eject wares from storage

3) Hack Station to lower shields

4) Hack Station to disable weapons systems

Some of these may have sub-options to specify which parts of the station will be effected.

Once selected the player is guided to the parts of the station were they can collect any required tools, parts, crafting bits and pieces. Having assembled the hacking widget they are then guided to the appropriate terminal to hack. Players with higher hacking skills should be able to hack the system for longer than inexperienced hackers.

So the more you hack the long the hack is successful for.

Stealing:

Always a staple of siome RPGs make taking items from some boxes stealing and have the guards attack you if you do steal. Or have you locked up, until you pay the fine.

[RAVEN.myst]

Stealing:

Always a staple of siome RPGs make taking items from some boxes stealing and have the guards attack you if you do steal. Or have you locked up, until you pay the fine.

I like this. It always bothers me that there are apparently valuable goods just left lying around, and even if you help yourself in full view of witnesses, no-one bats an eyelid. So, I would certainly like to see boxes in view of NPCs to perhaps be owned by them, with repercussions for trespassing. Boxes in plain sight but without nearby NPCs, in my opinion, ought to very very seldom hold anything of even slight value (let's not forget that we pilots tend to deal in higher amounts of credits - to station and planet dwellers, even single credits are money, if we go by the price of rations and such.) "Hidden" containers (in air ducts and such) could perhaps be left as-is, I suppose. Alternatively, some boxes (guarded, ungarded, hidden or not) could require a hack or something to open them (although, tbh, I am hesitant to add MORE purposes for that annoying click-the-squiggle "minigame".)

[Santi]

Posting about stealing made me think again about the Jail section in Stations, I mean, it is a proper jail, with cells, guards, guard bunker and dining room. I do not think that you go to so much effort to just create a prop for stations and do not have any gameplay elements related to it.

[Nanook]

... I do not think that you go to so much effort to just create a prop for stations and do not have any gameplay elements related to it.

Apparently "someone" does.

On the other hand, there may have been big plans to do a lot more with the station interiors but there just wasn't enough time available after having to deal with so many bugs/issues. Or maybe Egosoft expected there to be a much more vibrant and active modding community that would take advantage of the many possibilities that were created in the game, i.e., the jails, the crates and cases, the various unused terminals, gaming and otherwise, all scattered about the interiors.

[RAVEN.myst]

Posting about stealing made me think again about the Jail section in Stations, I mean, it is a proper jail, with cells, guards, guard bunker and dining room. I do not think that you go to so much effort to just create a prop for stations and do not have any gameplay elements related to it.

Nah, those aren't actual jails, they're penitentiary-themed cafeterias

[Santi]

Posting about stealing made me think again about the Jail section in Stations, I mean, it is a proper jail, with cells, guards, guard bunker and dining room. I do not think that you go to so much effort to just create a prop for stations and do not have any gameplay elements related to it.

Nah, those aren't actual jails, they're penitentiary-themed cafeterias

The ones where instead of writing your name in the cup, they tattoo you name using Roman type in your forearm?

Anyway you can do some sick parkour jumps in them.

[RAVEN.myst]

Posting about stealing made me think again about the Jail section in Stations, I mean, it is a proper jail, with cells, guards, guard bunker and dining room. I do not think that you go to so much effort to just create a prop for stations and do not have any gameplay elements related to it.

Nah, those aren't actual jails, they're penitentiary-themed cafeterias

The ones where instead of writing your name in the cup, they tattoo you name using Roman type in your forearm?

"I'll have a super-max espresso, please. Put it on my tab."
(Coincidentally, I'm currently watching Starhunter, and the episode on right now involves a prison break...)

Anyway you can do some sick parkour jumps in them.

Hahahah! Hmmm, that may be a good way to avoid growing old navigating those gated stairwells...

[Santi]

Hahahah! Hmmm, that may be a good way to avoid growing old navigating those gated stairwells...

Like the ones going down to the night club I presume. Took me a few tries to reach the walk away in the night club. Never tough that you will get some platform jumping gameplay in a X game.

[RAVEN.myst]

Never tough that you will get some platform jumping gameplay in a X game.

In my first couple of games, and sometimes in the early game of new playthroughs, or simply if I'm bored and waiting for the capital ship I'm on to get to where it's going, I play Prince of Persia or Mario or Montezuma's Revenge or whatever on the various crates and other objects on the ship's landing pad. Also, getting up on that "hut"'s roof sometimes gets a better view

[mr.WHO]

What I would love for X4 is to have some kind of very large uncharted/uncolonized area where is no highways, no jump beacons, Xenon/Khaak/Pirates here and there and a lot of treasures to dig up.

Something like 3-4 times the size of Torride system, but it would be the chain of several such systems.
To go to the very end of the chain player would have to make a large expedition with fleet & supplies maybe even set-up the supply outpost.

Additionaly it would be even better if such space would be randomly generated (e.g. diffrent space every time player start new gameplay).

That way we would be real explorers witout the posibility to go to internet for mmap that reveal all the stuff and even when we reveal it all, the next game will be a mystery/discovery again.


Now in both Torride and Maelstorm you don't feel that you are far away due to the fact that with JD you are always one jump away from civilization.

They would need to ballance the JD to work like capship JD - you can't jump to any point in universe, but to the gate in the system you are. Then you fly through the gate and use JD again to fly to the next one.

[Ormac]

One of the more tedious things I've found with XR is the Miners always needing to remain in squad to mine. Particularly the Harvesters since their hold is so small.

The always flying towards me when I might just want them to stay near to where they are and mine there again

I understand you can only compress liquid so much but 8,000 product units compared with 15,000 is kind of crazy.

Well I finally added the YAT mod and Love the Home Zoning that is applyed to miners.

I would like to see Egosoft add that to the home zoning in next game. I'm quite happy to tell the capitan where to offload the wares then if the ship will return to the zone and restart mining.

-- Ormac

[Nanook]

One of the more tedious things I've found with XR is the Miners always needing to remain in squad to mine. ...

?? Mine don't. And no, I'm not using YAT. Also, not sure what you mean by "home zoning".

[RAVEN.myst]

Neither do mine (well, unless using the Skunk's mining laser and then getting the miner to collect, of course - kinda unavoidable by definition, there ^^) As for the "home zoning", sounds to me like whatever mod offers that allows a mining zone to be designated, to which the miners will return once they have sold/offloaded. This is something I have long wished was available (in vanilla) for station-bound miners, as it would avoid... well, it's an issue that was recently discussed in the beta feedback forum (two issues under discussion there, in fact, and BOTH would be solved by the ability to specify where the mining ship works...) Too bad that I really don't see this happening in XR (in fact, an unrelated comment from a dev, in another beta thread, strongly hints to me that 4.1 will prove to be the final update... Sad if true.)

I think I better go to sleep - I suspect I'm losing coherence

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Yeah, in YAT we can designate a Home Zone to player-owned free miners and free traders. For the traders it specifies where they will begin to trade. For miners, it specifies where they will return to mine after selling materials. In both cases, upon arrival in the home, they obey their range setting (zone/sector/system/galaxy). Yorrick done good

[Thufar]

I haven't read all 19 pages in this thread, so I don't know if this is already suggested. I'd like to see a button on the architect's building stations screen that moves all sliders to max., with one click.

Regards,
Thu

[RAVEN.myst]

What I would love for X4 is to have some kind of very large uncharted/uncolonized area where is no highways, no jump beacons, Xenon/Khaak/Pirates here and there and a lot of treasures to dig up.

Something like 3-4 times the size of Torride system, but it would be the chain of several such systems.
To go to the very end of the chain player would have to make a large expedition with fleet & supplies maybe even set-up the supply outpost.

Additionaly it would be even better if such space would be randomly generated (e.g. diffrent space every time player start new gameplay).

That way we would be real explorers witout the posibility to go to internet for mmap that reveal all the stuff and even when we reveal it all, the next game will be a mystery/discovery again.

I like this idea, very much, in fact (though I think I'd probably want this "uncharted vastness" to be even larger - quite a lot so, in fact.) People occasionally bring up the notion of procedurally generated game content, and while I think this would generally lead to bland, generic content, I think that such a "peripheral" area specifically intended for exploration and created once at the start of a new game, could be a perfect niche application. It could have a certain relatively constant(ish - to make it a little less predictable) set of features/points of interest/Easter Eggs/etc but arranged differently every time. Perhaps there could be a couple of limited-use jump beacons here and there, unique in that they only work partially - available only some of the time, or only after they have been "rebuilt", and perhaps limited in range.

I particularly like the notion of "supplying the outpost" - in fact, why not take it a step farther: be the FOUNDER of a new settlement. At present, one can build one's stations more or less anywhere(ish), but somehow it feels hollow - even though the stations then generate their mass-traffic, it never feels like bringing civilization to the heathen. I think that for starters, NPC station-building needs to happen to make it feel more alive, and no, not the GoD-based strobing of stations as previously, but proper supply-and-demand-based extension of AI-owned assets. Here perhaps could see the return of the contracted station-build missions, where the player is hired to build a station FOR a NPC entity, handing over ownership. But also, the AI would need to initiate its own build projects, which the player could help along with materials (I always very much enjoyed helping those DeVries stations get off the ground, and found it disappointing that the task is so limited in scope and extent.)

[mr.WHO]

I'd also love if they further optimize some stuff that cause FPS drops like mass traffic, dust clouds and combat - why every single X-game has to be a slide-show when more than two big ships and a bunch of fighters shoot at eachother in the zone you're present?

- Tiny stuff like replacing WW2 multi-gun fighters with modern one gun Fighters (some of X-Rebirth fighters are already single-gun). That way CPU wouldn't have to calculate and dispay FX from 8 guns, but rather 1. That way larger number of fighters would not murder FPS rate.

X-Rebirth has cool looking fighter battles, but between fighters beign pathetic weak and FPS murder the "cool factor" dissapear.



- less dense asteroid fields - they not only looks strance, but also kill FPS and their greatest sin is the pathfinding nightmare - sometimes even fighters have problems because the asteroid fields are too dense.


- dust clouds/nebulas - these things need serious optimization, I have a big FPS drop every time I'm turning toward these clouds - The ancient Freelancer and Freespace 2 had better looking nebulas that had almost no FPS impact.



I know the game itself is already busy calculating the whole economy and OOS combat already - that is why we need to squeeze every bit of optimization.