Things that we want and don't want from X3 in X4

[DaMuncha]

What i dont want... well that old toaster AI

Howdie Doodlydo. Toasie's the name, toastings the game. So does anybody want any toast?

[DaMuncha]

I feature I loved in X3 was "Fun". Sadly it was removed from XR probably due to time constraints, but I'm hoping they put "Fun" back in X4 too.

[RAVEN.myst]

What i dont want... well that old toaster AI

Howdie Doodlydo. Toasie's the name, toastings the game. So does anybody want any toast?

No. No crumpets, no waffles, no flapjacks... and no smegging toast!
(Sadly not verbatim, my memory's not what-... erm, what was I saying?)

[Nikola515]

4) Reputation. XR reputations was pretty much for discounts while X3 was much more advanced and realistic. I hope they bring it back.

I don't know about XR reputations. I find it not enough advanced and realistic in X3. I would expect an improvement here, not a regression. And this has been discussed in other threads and/or questions to Egosoft (about effect of capturing a capital ship, for example).

The mechanics of X Rebirth's faction reputation system are pretty good (info on consequences is here). There's the permanent, steady increases and decreases, and a system for temporary changes (a bit like of a sector goes red in X3, but time-related rather than apology/police ship destruction/pirate bribe), and they modify mission availability (IIRC). Factions that turn hostile will initially only target our combat ships unless we make them really hate us. It also gates off various licences for trading with illegal wares, and modifies the price of wares.

So from a trade perspective it feels improved over X3 to me. But on the other hand, XR faction reputation has no links to what ships or equipment can be purchased - if you can afford it, you can own it. For me, that is a shame as that represented quite a nice sense of progression in X3. It's in this area I hope to see further changes compared to XR.

I must agree that reputation system is better in XR only when it comes to trading aspects. If we want to be bounty hunter,explorer or even pirate that reputation wont have much effect. Missions don't get harder with higher reputation and rewards are the same(unless it was changed after 3.0).... In X3 we had to have good reputations in order to buy weapons or ships and we had to watch who are we going to piss off . It was somewhat harder to gain reputation than in XR (just my opinion).
But honestly I think reputation should be much harder to obtain and easy to lose.... For example they should add stealth mechanic where we can get away with crime if we don't get caught. Like taking out com relay on ship before boarding it in empty zone. Or why should HoA report PMC that I'm boarding their ship when they are at war

[Kitty]

In X3 we had to have good reputations in order to buy weapons or ships and we had to watch who are we going to piss off . It was somewhat harder to gain reputation than in XR (just my opinion).
But honestly I think reputation should be much harder to obtain and easy to lose.... For example they should add stealth mechanic where we can get away with crime if we don't get caught. Like taking out com relay on ship before boarding it in empty zone. Or why should HoA report PMC that I'm boarding their ship when they are at war

This is an important point. Earning reputation is one of the big points in the X2/X3 games, and I expect it to continues. When I wrote that it could be better, I meant "easyer to loose, espetially when boarding/stealing/pirating ships". Restrinctions to weapon buying is perfectly justified.

One thing may have to be a side effect: self defense should be taken into account. If you are attacked by a Boron in Argon space and are in good relationships with Argons, you should loose less reputation (Borons should loose some...).
One thing should be studied too as a consequence: how to mask your IDs when attacking somebody ? This is also linked to reputations, isn't it ?

Just dreaming.

[Vandragorax]

What i dont want... well that old toaster AI

Howdie Doodlydo. Toasie's the name, toastings the game. So does anybody want any toast?

No. No crumpets, no waffles, no flapjacks... and no smegging toast!
(Sadly not verbatim, my memory's not what-... erm, what was I saying?)

We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns and definitely no smegging flapjacks.

... Aah, so you're a waffle man.

xDDDD

[DaMuncha]

Well we certainly dont want waffle AI. Just got the first free M5 ship last night in the Terran Conflict plot and sent it on its way to go dock at another station, banging into everything along the way.

So on the other side of the coin we got the AI pathing from XR, which plots its traveling in curves, so if the XL ship had to turn a sharper corner, lets say into a repair dock, it would instead fly around it in circles unable to turn sharp enough t oget into the dock, and then the smaller craft would still smash into things if it cant make a curve around a object.

So while the flight pathing in XR was a improvement, it still failed to get to its destination

[Santi]

Far as I know they pivot around. So sharp corner===>stop===>pivot around, job jobbed. They get into the Shipyards cranes with no issues and that is way tighter than any docking point in X3.

It does has it drawbacks because sometimes as ship is so close to a station it may clip into it, also engines cause heat damage, so it is known for some modules to get destroyed when a ship had to manoeuvre a bit to get into a tight space.

[RAVEN.myst]

What i dont want... well that old toaster AI

Howdie Doodlydo. Toasie's the name, toastings the game. So does anybody want any toast?

No. No crumpets, no waffles, no flapjacks... and no smegging toast!
(Sadly not verbatim, my memory's not what-... erm, what was I saying?)

We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns and definitely no smegging flapjacks.

... Aah, so you're a waffle man.

xDDDD

Bravo! (Sadly, I see no 'applaud' emoticon among the available options...)
Hmm, actually I've been wondering what to rewatch once I finish my (almost completed) rerun of Fringe - here's a definite candidate, thank you both!

[RAVEN.myst]

This is an important point. Earning reputation is one of the big points in the X2/X3 games, and I expect it to continues. When I wrote that it could be better, I meant "easyer to loose, espetially when boarding/stealing/pirating ships". Restrinctions to weapon buying is perfectly justified.

One thing may have to be a side effect: self defense should be taken into account. If you are attacked by a Boron in Argon space and are in good relationships with Argons, you should loose less reputation (Borons should loose some...).
One thing should be studied too as a consequence: how to mask your IDs when attacking somebody ? This is also linked to reputations, isn't it ?

Just dreaming.

I'm dreaming the same dreams, then: easier to lose rep than to gain it; allowances for mitigating circumstances (eg. self-defense) which requires fancier detection and parsing of events by the AI; keep tech tiered with security restrictions; make identity a more manipulable factor that can be spoofed or altered (as an illegal action with possible repercussions if detected) for nefarious purposes (and make it difficult and/or expensive to accomplish.) I would *really* like it if it were possible (with the wrong connections and relations) to be able to scrub one's identity to reset relations to neutral (or even buy priority access from an identity thief/forger on rare occasions, perhaps linked to more scripted stuff such as campaign or plot missions, or other rare scripted opportunities) but it would need to be handled more elegantly than the "hack station FoF missions" of previous games - and for NPC villains to be able to do the same, thus potentially getting the drop on the player or on worthwhile NPC targets by not appearing hostile until the first shots start flying. It would certainly get players paying more attention to the behaviour of other ships...

[Crimsonraziel]

If you are attacked by a Boron in Argon space

Egosoft saw this coming and removed borons from the game as a precautionary measure, so they would not rampage in argon space!

[Kitty]

If you are attacked by a Boron in Argon space

Egosoft saw this coming and removed borons from the game as a precautionary measure, so they would not rampage in argon space!

but



Please bring borons back !

[Nikola515]

This is an important point. Earning reputation is one of the big points in the X2/X3 games, and I expect it to continues. When I wrote that it could be better, I meant "easyer to loose, espetially when boarding/stealing/pirating ships". Restrinctions to weapon buying is perfectly justified.

One thing may have to be a side effect: self defense should be taken into account. If you are attacked by a Boron in Argon space and are in good relationships with Argons, you should loose less reputation (Borons should loose some...).
One thing should be studied too as a consequence: how to mask your IDs when attacking somebody ? This is also linked to reputations, isn't it ?

Just dreaming.

SPG Warlords did something similar what you are talking about. For example if we attack Boron their and Argon reputation will go down sense they are ally. Argon reputation will not drop as much though but you will also gain Pirate,Split and Paranid reputation.

Self defense is somewhat hard to balance and it would probably do more damage if our ships start firing back at ally ships. I think they should have better way of preventing ally ships from attacking you on first place. LU did pretty good job with ally ships where they will not attacking unless target/lock station/ship and attack it. All though it is easy to take advantage of that but in my opinion it is single player game and if someone does exploits it will effect their experience and not my

Pirating should be more rewarding but it shouldn't be harder to do it. For example boarding ships shouldn't be hard like in X3 but selling pirated wares or ships should be. So we would need to get fake ID that costs money or scrap it for parts. Something like what we have in real world today.... If you steal car and don't get caught nobody will know who did it Sell car to someone that can change its ID or just take it for parts and sell parts.

[CorruptUser]

What I want:
1) Game to run smoothly on an above average computer
2) Ability to turn off more power intensive features if they cause problems regardless *cough*damned-XR-Fog*cough*
3) Missions with multiple solutions. XR gave us the opportunity to take a bribe in exchange for not killing a target, could expand on this.
4) More fleshed out missions. If we are going to walk around stations, give us missions actually involving this beyond "go to point x, go to point y"
5) An actual reason to have a giant fleet, late game, if we choose
6) Simple description of weapons and ships in the name. Very easy to do, e.g., "M3 Nova" instead of "Nova", or "Swarm: Wasp Missile".

What I don't want:
1) Pirates, Xenon, Khaak, etc, spawning out of thin space; everything should have to be built somewhere. Pirate ships being built, cheaply, at less reputable border stations. Or, perhaps, faction ships just "rebel" randomly.
2) That stupid talking (and hacking) minigame from XR
3) Spacesuits with holes for cleavage

[lostProfitssssArrgh]

3) Spacesuits with holes for cleavage

Nice one!
-lpa

[RAVEN.myst]

What I want:
1) Game to run smoothly on an above average computer
2) Ability to turn off more power intensive features if they cause problems regardless *cough*damned-XR-Fog*cough*
3) Missions with multiple solutions. XR gave us the opportunity to take a bribe in exchange for not killing a target, could expand on this.
...
5) An actual reason to have a giant fleet, late game, if we choose
...
What I don't want:
1) Pirates, Xenon, Khaak, etc, spawning out of thin space; everything should have to be built somewhere. Pirate ships being built, cheaply, at less reputable border stations. Or, perhaps, faction ships just "rebel" randomly.
2) That stupid talking (and hacking) minigame from XR
3) Spacesuits with holes for cleavage

WANT
1) +1
2) +1 (at least!)
3) +1
5) +many!

DON'T WANT
1) +1 (and I like the "going bad" idea)
2) +1
3) LOL!

[MrFiction]

After playing Rebirth for 40+ hours, the thing that annoys me the most is the step back in universe "technology" from X3. In X3 you could use satellites to monitor remote prices, setup sector traders, CLS using the bonus pack, etc.

That's all gone in X Rebirth, we now have to talk to people on stations giving us price updates. The manual trade management also becomes tedious after a while, although the money machines in X3 (MK3) were a bit too easy.

[DaMuncha]

What I want is better looking holo dancers.

[Crimsonraziel]

What I don't want:
[...]
3) Spacesuits with holes for cleavage

Indeed. Space-bikinis are the superior choice.

[RAVEN.myst]

That's all gone in X Rebirth, we now have to talk to people on stations giving us price updates. The manual trade management also becomes tedious after a while, although the money machines in X3 (MK3) were a bit too easy.

Well, for what it's worth, apparently as of 4.21 one will be able to acquire trade agents by doing some wet-work, instead of through "talking" - that'll be a relief...

Oh, and if you thought making money in X3 was too easy (through whatever mechanism), you ain't seen nothin' yet! In Rebirth making money is EVEN easier (unfortunately, in my opinion.)