Trade Fight Build Think....EXPLORE!

[Dreez]

X3:TC and Albion had pretty good explore imo, lots of hidden system through gates that weren't visible automatically.
Also lots of hidden derelicts.

Doesn't need to get any more explore than that.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

X2 the first game in the series that I played was the one I enjoyed the most for exploration, until Rebirth.

Why? Simple, the sectors were all new, the map layout, its size / extent were all unknowns.

X3 Reunion not so much. The map was essentially the same.
TC the terran sectors added some exploration and seeing solar system was quite fun. However the rest was much the same.
AP The map was very similar.

Rebirth. Well how space was represented was much better than previously. Gone were the "sky boxes" and space felt more "real." With all of the DLC there was a lot of territory to cover.

What I'm trying to get at is, hiding the gates behind large asteroids, moving them away from directly N/S/E/W doesn't really add to the exploration, not when you know most of the map layout off by heart.

To me exploration is really at its best when you set off into the unknown.
However as this is a game just being able to travel in one direction for hours
is not going to be enough. You could do this in Rebirth, just fly off in any direction and keep going. There has to be some point to exploration or nobody is going to do it.


There are so many possible random encounters that might occur out in the depths of space. As we fly further from a civilised area of space we should expect the unexpected.

[ezra-r]

X3:TC and Albion had pretty good explore imo, lots of hidden system through gates that weren't visible automatically.
Also lots of hidden derelicts.

Doesn't need to get any more explore than that.

with all my love, that's a fallacy, there is never too much exploring to do (it's the space! there is so much space, the space never ends!)

[ajime]

X2 the first game in the series that I played was the one I enjoyed the most for exploration, until Rebirth.

Why? Simple, the sectors were all new, the map layout, its size / extent were all unknowns.

X3 Reunion not so much. The map was essentially the same.
TC the terran sectors added some exploration and seeing solar system was quite fun. However the rest was much the same.
AP The map was very similar.

Rebirth. Well how space was represented was much better than previously. Gone were the "sky boxes" and space felt more "real." With all of the DLC there was a lot of territory to cover.

What I'm trying to get at is, hiding the gates behind large asteroids, moving them away from directly N/S/E/W doesn't really add to the exploration, not when you know most of the map layout off by heart.

To me exploration is really at its best when you set off into the unknown.
However as this is a game just being able to travel in one direction for hours
is not going to be enough. You could do this in Rebirth, just fly off in any direction and keep going. There has to be some point to exploration or nobody is going to do it.


There are so many possible random encounters that might occur out in the depths of space. As we fly further from a civilised area of space we should expect the unexpected.

Personally I like the predictable gate locations in TC simply because the are which helps ease with trade startups. even if they threw the gate way off the arc it's still a good exploration for me imo. Not that I didn't like Rebirth's zone exploration, its good too though rather tedious to start trading since i am fond of the logistics aspect in this game. Once i've set those up i can fly endless hours around maps and even with predictable N/E/S/W gate locations i tend to read up spoilers since i can't seem to find the bloody gate.

[DavidGW]

Like most things, it's all about variety.

In populated sectors, you might have jump gates that are logical, and easy to find, because it makes sense. They would probably have been moved by the inhabitants of the sector to improve ease of use. You might be looking for hidden ware caches like in XR, however perhaps with undercover pirates protecting them.

In regions that are new, which are unpopulated, you'll have stuff more like Toride in XR where you have to work to find the gates, and might find colonies of Xenon or Khaak, or other remnants of cool, unknown races/tech. (That random race in X2 that had the cloaked ship following you?)

I really hope ES are using XR as a solid base, and working up from that, instead of making everything from scratch. There is a lot of potential in XR, it just should have been used more logically in places, to keep a strong distinction and variation in more areas.

[Vandragorax]

I think all of you will be happy with exploration in X4.

From what I've heard & seen, the highways will be more like a fast travel from one side of a sector to the other, and we'll have to come off the highway and explore into "deep space" around it to be able to find everything going on in the sector. It won't be like in Rebirth where the highways literally lead to almost every single station 'group' in the area. This is a good compromise between X3 and Rebirth's mechanics and feels like a solid place to be

[Skeeter]

Nope, x rebirth was said i think to have things off the beaten path by as you say going in a highway and exiting halfway or something and finding something but nope, didnt happen. x4 will be no different, as usual x4 is a bit of a bump with stuff but generally if you take new map and ships and teleporter out its just rebirth basically. I dont personally see x4 as the big new game its claiming to be i.e proper x4.

[Alan Phipps]

To be fair to X Rebirth, the HoL DLC gave players the HoL system with the extensive Xenon hidden zones and defences that could only be found by exploring the twisting debris field. I quite liked exploring and following that trail with its hidden dangers and ambushes.

The other systems in that DLC had some things to find and strange field effects/minefield areas with concealed hostile and friendly zones and a few abandoned ships too.

[MegaJohnny]

The map design is as you describe it for the vanilla clusters, but the DLC clusters prove they can implement this idea. Even in Home of Light, the highway network doesn't cover all stations, and you can often see Gigurums turning off the highway to the neighbouring zone.

Also if you take that out you can still fly every ship and load them out how you like, build modular stations including player shipyards, have real carriers, and the universe still works on real ship- and station-building. That's a long, long way from XR.

[Skeeter]

I had bought HoL dlc but when i loaded the start for it i think it was a start, i just saw basically the same stuff as rest of rebirth i didnt see anything new. Bare in mind thats first impression of it as i didnt try it for very long probably 20 mins to see what HoL was like and as i said first impressions was just a system with highway and same old city station u see a clone of basically everywhere in rebirth. Perhaps HoL has more to offer but they should have made it so u see something new within first half hour of casually flying about there, i might have played it more there if it was any good. For me it was a waste of a fiver.

The teladi dlc tho at least had a gamestart which let u see a old style teladi trading station which was nice and also a kinda intro remake from xbtf iirc where u meet a teladi and have a chat saying ur new to the area or something to a teladi carrier iirc. It was frre dllc too, althought thats about all i experienced from that dlc as after 20 mins i went back to my main save and back to trying to get the plot done so i can finish the game as i hated being stuck in the skunk it was a boring ship.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Skeeter: Heh, so basically you disliked the lack of worthwhile exploring in XR, but mainly because you didn't explore enough to find any worth doing.

(Note: I'm laughing with you and not at you!)

Anyway, let's try to get back to discussing X4 gameplay aspects rather than just reminiscing about Rebirth.

[Skeeter]

All I was trying to say is I expected new stuff from dlc to jump out at me when I explored those areas, I figured half hour looking around would do it but it didn't, I was "hoping" it would make me go " aw cool" new stuff but I didn't. Ah well, probably still would have gave up on it anyhow. Bought the dlc tho so supported them.

Heard there were new weapons but don't think I saw a station sell anything new tho can't recall it's been so long since I played.

[MegaJohnny]

I think it doesn't help that, even with the view distance at the max setting, you won't notice anything in adjacent zones. In Cold Star there are flashing nav beacons to guide you to stations, but not always in HoL - and admittedly the Gigurums flying over are easy to miss. Obviously you want to feel like you found something yourself, but there should be breadcrumbs leading you to them as well.

[Sandalpocalypse]

Home of Light itself wasn't very exciting. It was more Toride and Cold Star that were interesting. HoL is a highly populated city sector and was never gonna be a place for exploration. The DLC talks about how you could try to break the Terracorp monopoly, but the way faction rep works and the nature of the XR economy made that kinda unengaging.

HoL was a showpiece for X4-style sector design though. Relatively simple highways, with a mix of stations clustered on the highway and others located far from it.

@Skeeter - I'm pretty sure there is a Toride Explorer gamestart that dumps you in Toride right away. It's a fun thing to do imo.

[ajime]

All I was trying to say is I expected new stuff from dlc to jump out at me when I explored those areas, I figured half hour looking around would do it but it didn't, I was "hoping" it would make me go " aw cool" new stuff but I didn't. Ah well, probably still would have gave up on it anyhow. Bought the dlc tho so supported them.

Heard there were new weapons but don't think I saw a station sell anything new tho can't recall it's been so long since I played.

I was pleasantly surprised recently to find heavy laser and that missile which drops you from boosting which i can't remember the name from those systems. I wasn't actively looking for it though. Time to lightsaber some reivers and blockade some boosting tradeships in AL.

[Vandragorax]

I think it doesn't help that, even with the view distance at the max setting, you won't notice anything in adjacent zones. In Cold Star there are flashing nav beacons to guide you to stations, but not always in HoL - and admittedly the Gigurums flying over are easy to miss. Obviously you want to feel like you found something yourself, but there should be breadcrumbs leading you to them as well.

Surely this is what the long range scanner is for?

The pings are the breadcrumbs But apparently lots of people found this system too childish and hand-holding and would rather see visual indicators of where interesting stuff might be, so they can be intrigued to fly over to whatever it is and take a look.

I'm down with that, like seeing a huge energy storm in the background and going towards it to see what is there, or a moon that looks close enough to fly at and investigate.

The problem with this though is that it could be difficult to show to the player which features can be flown to/interacted with and which are simply background skybox type things. I think the scan ping system does a good job of showing us where there 'might' be something interesting.

Maybe the next logical step is to combine the two: you see something interesting in the background, then perform a 'ping' and after pin-pointing something of interest, we can perform a deep scan which takes some time aiming at the target direction but would come back with some actual information about the object, like some description of a nebula cloud, or a large asteroid, the site of a previous battle with salvagable wreckage, or something mysterious out there. Thus prompting us to go take a closer look.

[Skeeter]

For me I would love to see say visual things to explore. Say in a sector there's a nebula, you go in explore it and could find a old X 2 ship with say a crate next to it or if possible a scan ship feature and you have a chance of finding in it some old tech like maybe a gamma ire laser which u can equip and it fires just like they used to, same FX and audio etc.

Maybe in a asteroid field u can find a old working relic ship, maybe one my favs from X tension a pirate Bayamon I think it was, it had a cool cockpit and shape iirc.

Little prizes for exploring.

Maybe a hidden boron outpost near some planets atmosphere that's hidden behind something and inside sells a few old boron ships. Borons not there but ship still had a few docked ships for sale in it for example so no boron NPC's to worry about but let's x4 players have some ships that they crave.

[Silla]

id like to add diplomacy

[LittleBird]

For me I would love to see say visual things to explore. Say in a sector there's a nebula, you go in explore it and could find a old X 2 ship with say a crate next to it or if possible a scan ship feature and you have a chance of finding in it some old tech like maybe a gamma ire laser which u can equip and it fires just like they used to, same FX and audio etc.

Maybe in a asteroid field u can find a old working relic ship, maybe one my favs from X tension a pirate Bayamon I think it was, it had a cool cockpit and shape iirc.

Keep in mind that with X-Rebirth Egosoft managed to increase the size of... everything. That includes nebulas, asteroid fields etc. There is absolutely no way to "find" something in space that scale by just looking for some visuals.
The increased scale makes designing exploration much more difficult.
I like your examples but how can it realised?

[Skeeter]

Perhaps rumors that NPC's talk about could start the exploration. So you were given either cords to start with or a area to investigate to start you off. Then using sensors and visual cues like sensors beep faster as you close in on a unknown signal and the visuals could be a huge asteroid bigger than the rest, so as ur getting nearer ur thinking hmm my that's a oddly oversized roof over in that direction and my sensors seem to indicate something maybe over there in that general direction. Etc etc.

Or by pot luck you can just explore and be lucky finding something, random drops of derelicts here there and everywhere, they give a radiation signal. If u have god sensors and are within 30km u can detect the signal and try zeroing in on them.

Or by missions with subplots. Let's say you escort a convoy of refugees from a to b to c. During the mission you fly through a uncharted region of space, you fight off few pirates and after u detect a faint radio transmission and you can either investigate and maybe discover something cool but fail the mission if you leave the convoy for too long or ignore it and finish ur mission and miss ur chance of discovery.

Few examples.

A good adventure starts with a good clue. Imo.