The pacifist option

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solarie99
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The pacifist option

Post by solarie99 » Sun, 18. Oct 20, 13:16

Hello there.

I wonder would i be possible for the dev to implement a way to make the game have a pacifist option at start for us that only want to make empire and not have to deal with the enemies "pirates/xenon/khaak and so on".

LameFox
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by LameFox » Sun, 18. Oct 20, 13:54

I wouldn't count on it. The game's economy without combat losses would probably become totally stagnant after a while, I don't think they'd officially encourage that. Unless you mean that only you are neutral to everyone, but then I doubt they would do that for lore reasons. You could look into mods or save editing, maybe there's a way to turn your rep neutral to everyone.
***modified***

pref
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by pref » Sun, 18. Oct 20, 16:14

You can play like that in a more limited space (ignore half the sectors or more).

If you concentrate on economy (station/ship build materials and ship construction) most factions will gain enough strength to take care of any harm.
HOP and MIN's core sectors are quite secure for example.

Without war economy will stagnate and you can't make much via trading - at least that was the case in 2.0, please let me know if this has changed.

Raevyan
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by Raevyan » Sun, 18. Oct 20, 17:39

Without war, the economy will stagnate when the factions hit their ship quota. The whole economy is based on ships getting destroyed. When you eliminate that, it will stagnate and grind to a halt. There is no civil consumption Of wares or spawning buyers that buy at player stations and then vanish.
The only way to keep the economy going without war is to constantly buy ships from NPCs and selling them at a loss to get rid of them. So if you order like 500 Rattlesnakes from a NPC shipyard it will take quite some time but since the NPC shipyards only have two L modules there is a cap on how strong the economy can be.

It’s much better for the economy to build shipyards in core sectors of a faction and only build ships for their enemies there. This will result in ships getting constantly destroyed and build. And you do not even have to fire a single bullet :)

taztaz502
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by taztaz502 » Sun, 18. Oct 20, 17:58

That's basically what the game is right now, you'll rarely lose ships to start with.

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Nort The Fragrent
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by Nort The Fragrent » Sun, 18. Oct 20, 20:15

I play a peaceful game, I run with no guns.
Just trade, explore, build stations, and have fleets of ships, wondering around.
Never have gone into battle.
It took a while for the game to settle down, the Xenon have vanished.
I get the odd ship that gets lost, sort of expect that from time to time.

ES are Gun crazy, the game is heavily weighted toward war, conflict, and destruction.
I can not get any advancement with some faction’s unless I kill stuff for them.
This is stupid.
There needs to be a way to get faction increase without having to fight.

My economy is slow, but still works, and I have Billions and thus can keep doing what I like. Thats flying around, taking in the sights, and enjoying a very peaceful universe.
Just what I want.

It would be nice to have better peaceful ways to progress, but ES are blinkered to this Gun slinging, killing. They think it’s what people want. There are lots who do not.

Promote peace not War.

xant
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by xant » Sun, 18. Oct 20, 20:33

Nort The Fragrent wrote:
Sun, 18. Oct 20, 20:15
the game is heavily weighted toward war, conflict, and destruction.
That is very true, here's what Bernd said to a non-war focused economy:

Our goal with X4 was to really simulate the ENTIRE economy up to the point where the goods end up being destroyed. Just creating luxury goods and then making them be consumed invisibly is not quite as nice. But I see where you are coming from and do not rule it out in some form for the future.

So yes, at some point we may see something other than the choice between war and stagnation. I certainly hope so.

jlehtone
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by jlehtone » Sun, 18. Oct 20, 22:08

xant wrote:
Sun, 18. Oct 20, 20:33
Bernd:
Just creating luxury goods and then making them be consumed invisibly is not quite as nice.
Fuel and Weed, with some Maja sprinkled on top? :pirat:


Define "level of pacifism".
* The one, who does not fire a gun personally?
* The one, whose company will not fire a gun?
* The one, who does not wan't anyone to fire a gun?

Ships are not the only sink for wares. Stations take some too, but there is obviously a limit on how much you can build.


Is it possible for dev to implement something? Most likely.

Can a modder create a more peaceful version of Galaxy? Most likely. In fact, modding self can be the first step.
It can also act as a test case on how war-bound the economy is.
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Raevyan
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by Raevyan » Sun, 18. Oct 20, 22:54

If you really want peace for everyone you could just edit your save game and edit faction relations to make everyone friends with everyone.

Rei Ayanami
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by Rei Ayanami » Sun, 18. Oct 20, 23:59

If you want to play as a pacifist I'd suggest playing the game with the goal to support the friendly factions economy : You build the backbone economy and provide the ressources for friendly factions shipyards while hoping that the friendly factions will use these ressources to deal with any enemy threats, such as the Xenon.

pref
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by pref » Mon, 19. Oct 20, 11:02

There is one really peaceful trade that you can do indefinitely, selling drugs in small volume to black marketeers.
You can actually take it to a level where regardless of your actions your reputation will be maxed towards your trade partner since trade runs can be so frequent - but ES has nerfed it significantly since 3.0 was released so you need a huge production capacity spread over several sectors to get close to the income provided by a wharf. Not that money is an issue anyway. They might have nerfed the total number of black marketeers as well, i cannot tell that without checking a fresh save.
Also if you do it wrong, and sell drugs in sectors owned by not drug friendly factions then it incurs an insane reputation loss (much stronger then destroying a flagship with escorts or a wharf/defence module) and will bring you to enemy status in very short time.
In my last save i was locked to +30 with all big factions, could trade with them continuously while killing their ships and taking over their sectors when i had to. So it protects the player from accidental conflicts induced by friendly fire and such.

The worst problem with it is that unlocking the black marketeers is an extremely boring activity, takes way too long so does not feel like playing a game.
Also in order to trade with factions with strict policing rules you have to take over their sectors while keeping all their stations, or make a less strict faction like split or teladi own the sector(s) in question. Also you have to protect stations with black marketeers from opposing factions (towards station owner) because black marketeers do not respawn nor are created after game start and might only move to another station if current is destroyed under specific circumstances. This part is nice though, requires some more delicate precision strikes without endless destruction but still far from any serious tactics or planning ahead.
Also it will not help economy at all, so will not make ships and equipment more available for player.

zazie
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by zazie » Mon, 19. Oct 20, 16:20

Nort The Fragrent wrote:
Sun, 18. Oct 20, 20:15
I can not get any advancement with some faction’s unless I kill stuff for them.
I don't agree. Traditionally (talking about X3, X3R, X3TC, RB and X4 - all Vanilla) I play the pacifist way. So one of my first concerns is to become friends of the Pirates.

Of course, you cannot be friend with Xenon and/or Kha'ak - but with everybody else.

In X4 you mustn't fight back if you choose placement of your factories wisely. Doing missions for Pirate factions will stop attacks on your freighters, stacking such type of missions can 'relieve' you for several IG-days.
With 3.0 the new FAF-faction has introduced a new threat - annoying in my perspective. But if you set FAF to "friend" for all of your ships and don't equip your freighters with weapons, your losses will be limited. In my experience, FAF are a nuisance in late(r) game meaning that a lost freighter won't harm you on financial terms.

On the other hand - and as it is outrageingly difficult to get decent pilots - losing freighters to FAF might become a serious challenge for your pacifist mind :mrgreen: Not only a joke ...

jlehtone
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by jlehtone » Mon, 19. Oct 20, 16:40

zazie wrote:
Mon, 19. Oct 20, 16:20
Doing missions for Pirate factions will stop attacks on your freighters, stacking such type of missions can 'relieve' you for several IG-days.

But if you set FAF to "friend" for all of your ships and don't equip your freighters with weapons, your losses will be limited.
I thought that SCA has fixed reputation in X4. If reputation does not dictate their actions, then what does? Is there some hidden variable?

I also thought that you can't set friend/foe for your assets. Was it CBJ that wrote that the "flexible" FF settings in X2/X3 were such a huge source of confusion that it was changed/removed for X4?
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pref
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by pref » Mon, 19. Oct 20, 16:43

zazie wrote:
Mon, 19. Oct 20, 16:20
Doing missions for Pirate factions will stop attacks on your freighters, stacking such type of missions can 'relieve' you for several IG-days.
This is just a legend ime. Random + wishful thinking.

zazie
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by zazie » Mon, 19. Oct 20, 16:50

No, it's not. You must take those missions that give "unsanctionned trade runs" as a reward. Test it: If you have successfully done one of those missions on hard you can pilot a freighter yourself under the nose and eyes of those Marauders.

jlehtone
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by jlehtone » Mon, 19. Oct 20, 17:05

:gruebel: An inventory item that Pirates consume instead of attacking?


OT: I was trailing a FAF Rattlesnake. (Painting it as red target for the sector security.) Alas, there was no sector security.
Since I had scanned the ship, I saw its current command. It was targeting bypassing traffic ("Attacking xxx"), but
did not chase far (and there was no SCA-style "You have good cargo" radio chatter).

The interesting part was that it did target Miners too.
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pref
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by pref » Mon, 19. Oct 20, 17:21

FAF has a chance to get a kill order instead of the usual pirate harassment.

zazie
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by zazie » Tue, 20. Oct 20, 10:06

@jlehtone: Nur sure if I understand what you mean. The reward is NOT an inventory item. It changes the behavior of Pirate ships. How long is depending on the 'difficulty' of the mission.
In addition I have the impression that the radius of pirate's changed behavior is larger when doing hard or impossible missions.

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Nort The Fragrent
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by Nort The Fragrent » Wed, 21. Oct 20, 03:06

Having an economy dependent on wars is rather simple, an easy thorn to promote regeneration from destruction.
Yet the recent Covid outbreak has shown the other alternative to economic upheaval.
As so many are now not traveling they are spending up large at home, and the shops can not cope with demand !
The other forms of destruction are Natural events, be they weather, Tectonic, celestial.
There are many ways to deplete stock, elevate demand, with unforeseen natural events perpetrating constant imbalance.
So a peaceful universe can be as dynamic for the economy as a waring one.

Using war to prod the economy is the easy option, but not the only option available.
The game just needs some economic tweaks, and a peaceful game can be as dynamic as a waring one!

pref
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Re: The pacifist option

Post by pref » Wed, 21. Oct 20, 14:13

Nort The Fragrent wrote:
Wed, 21. Oct 20, 03:06
Using war to prod the economy is the easy option, but not the only option available.
The game just needs some economic tweaks, and a peaceful game can be as dynamic as a waring one!
Feels weird that
- food is not consumed without the workforce bonus
- ship/station materials are not in constant demand, even without forced ship/station repairs (that could get annoying quick imo for non eco oriented playstyles) there should be some consumption representing amortisation
- drugs are the only wares that player can base production on reliably, all other markets can be saturated rather quickly to an extent that player cannot get an acceptable income from it

Secondary resources in X3 were a nice way of dealing with this imo. Even if they do not increase production they would allow the economy to roll regardless of ship and station quotas.

Generally pretending that self sufficient economy can be simulated on such a small scale game performance allows for was a bad idea.

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