X4, wish list.

Incubi · Post by **Incubi** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 07:54

I think the other great X4 poll thread has gotten so big, that it has become difficult to read. There is a merit to limiting the amount of post in topics

of coarse if mods disagree, feel free to merge this in with that thread. Now with my reasons for a new thread out of the way.... os I did do a search on X4, and the serch engine would not work with that entry so sorry if I missed the perfect thread to place this in.

My biggest wish list consist of,

Modular ships, complete with tragetable sections and sub sections of ships. We have seen this in both Nexus and in Homeworld. I have no doubt that this easily fit in the Xverse.

Hireable pilots. This way we can have both computer and hired pilots. the advantage of hired pilots is having someone to talk too.. ( space is lonely as I said a lot

) a pilot that can take control of a ship you are in while you are doing other things... when in this mode that pilot would be more capable than a autopilot. This feature I think would be most usefull in capital ships if....
We where able to wander around in our ships and in stations. even though the game would have menus and more menus of menus to use without being in a specific room of a station or a ship.. it would be fun to still have usable control rooms inside ships and stations ( now I know I could have worded that much better )

So with that we have, hireable pilots with specific skills, like trading , pioting, gunnery... we seen it all before. mechwarrior had a great system for this.
Ships with more tactical battle as well still have the m3 dog fights we all love.
An intense immersiveness in teh game as we can not only wander iside ships and stations, but have gameplay useable rooms to access as well.

add a more complicated and challenging economy system , a better method of making complexes, and real explosions.
and many many many more ships to choose from.. I would be very happy.
None of the above would take away form what X is. I am positive that the recent unreal engine could make a game like this, so I have no doubt that Ego can make an engine or even tweak the current engine to allow for these things.
er did mention EXPLOSIONS, and control groups for easier ship management? oh and escape pods and shuttles heh. but that is getting nitty gritty.

Come to think of it, there are 3 X3 plot missions that would have benefited from modular ships, a few in game movies that could have been cutscenes instead with the ability to roam inside ships, as well as 3 plot scenes where the ability to roam inside would have been beneficial. So to me that alone answers the need for these imlpementuions in X4. And I think we are all a wee disatisfied with large ship exlposions. Or maybe that was just me.

n00bln · Post by **n00bln** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 08:27

I think my biggest pet peeve of all is setting up stations. Pain in the butt, and if you get it wrong, you have to reload, which takes probably 20 or so seconds. I've picked the wrong spot about 20 times in a row! Makes for a big headache.

Another nice thing would be a RTS style battleview. An overview of the battlefield and ability to control ships on the move. Kind of like starcraft or homeworld 2. This probably won't be possible for X4, but maybe X5, X6???

More options for the traders, a lot of the stuff that plugins and scripts already do. One main feature would be STAY OUT OF THE XENON/PIRATE SECTORS. I loose so many UTs this way, I don't even bother with UTs anymore.

Oh yes. When looking at which weapons can go on which weapon slots, that color thing is completely useless. I am partially colorblind and I can't tell the difference between most of them. What a pain.

Post by **CBJ** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 09:11

Once again: if you want your ideas to be seen by the developers then this is not the place to post them. There is a DevNet ideas forum specially for this purpose. It has very strict posting rules, but that's the only way that it is practical for people to actually read the vast number of ideas that such a large forum population generates.

Asmodesu · Post by **Asmodesu** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 09:20

n00bln wrote: More options for the traders, a lot of the stuff that plugins and scripts already do. One main feature would be STAY OUT OF THE XENON/PIRATE SECTORS. I loose so many UTs this way, I don't even bother with UTs anymore.

Seconded.

That's one of the more important things I would like to see.

My UT's keep trying to buy ore from Mi Ton's Refuge. And everyone can probably guess the results. (I allow Pirate Alley to stay populated to keep the pirate levels in check elsewhere.)

n00bln · Post by **n00bln** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 09:25

CBJ wrote:Once again: if you want your ideas to be seen by the developers then this is not the place to post them. There is a DevNet ideas forum specially for this purpose. It has very strict posting rules, but that's the only way that it is practical for people to actually read the vast number of ideas that such a large forum population generates.

I think most of us know this already. But for now we are just complaining. I think most of our concerns have already been met by others posting similar comments.

bass400 · Post by **bass400** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 09:31

Er, where's the DevNet? I've got a TS-load of ideas ....

Link please.

Cheers.

Post by **CBJ** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 09:40

Go to your [url=http://forum.egosoft.com/profile.php?mode=editprofile][b]Fo[/b]rum[b]Pr[/b]ofile[/url] and sign up for DevNet at the bottom, then go back to the main forum index and you'll see it further down the forum list.

Incubi · Post by **Incubi** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 10:00

I am pretty sure that there is nothing I said that is not allready there. And if not, someone with better writing skills than I is better off listing it

I was thinking more along the lines of general community discussion of it. Sure there is devnet, but at the same time, this is where the general voice is heard.

just looked, most of what I said is on the first 2 pages, and I am sure the rest is allready in there.

Post by **CBJ** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 10:12

Of course general discussion is fine here. It's just that people tend to forget that it is just discussion, and spend hours typing out their ideas in great detail hoping that a developer might see it, which they won't if it is posted here.

bass400 · Post by **bass400** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 10:16

Thanks mate, I'll check it out.

jeffrey1979 · Post by **jeffrey1979** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 11:16

I missed the greatest idea of all

, colonizing mission with the possibility to planetfall (more advanced then in elite * hmm, i am getting old

not many people remember elite and the seqeuls

*)

DDM_Reaper20 · Post by **DDM_Reaper20** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 11:22

A new engine? I'd prefer the tweaked X3 engine.

A new engine would -- very likely -- mean crappy performance and -- with bad luck -- a lot of things missing (remember X3: stations from all races looking exactly the same, with th exception of the trading stations . . .).

A new engine also means teething problems. Better to use a well-established one. Less performance problems, and that means the developers can focus on something far more important, IMO, than mere graphics: contents.

More missions, pirates that aren't simply hooligans flying through the sectors & shooting up ships without actually taking anything, interaction between the races, races that actually respond meaningfully to player actions etc.

I very much doubt Egosoft can create a new engine AND do significant improvements, so I'd choose the second door.

No offence intended, btw, I like X3.

Knight_Of_Ni · Post by **Knight_Of_Ni** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 11:46

CBJ wrote:Go to your ForumProfile and sign up for DevNet at the bottom, then go back to the main forum index and you'll see it further down the forum list.

Yeah thats all well and good but i don't just give out details that easily so i'm with these guys there is a good reason for posting here instead.
But anyway yeah i agree with view from above suggested ^^ (would really help general running of multiple ships) and also generally smarter ship AI's supported by good scripting.

Reaper is right as well its already a big drain on alot of computers, although sometimes it is worth it for the graphics.

But personally i think if they keep adding in sufficent gameplay that doesn't cover old ground but also improve on old ideas then i'll be happy. Maybe make it easier to load up TL with lots of stuff by making them able to use frieght beamers to beam stuff to and from stations...?

Anyway stuff to do.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 14:14

Knight_Of_Ni wrote: Yeah thats all well and good but i don't just give out details that easily so i'm with these guys there is a good reason for posting here instead.

Egosoft aren't in the habit of selling E-mail addresses or other information to other people--there are dozens of people already signed up with NDAs, and I'm sure if you ask any of them they'll tell you they haven't seen the black helicopters hovering over their houses just yet!

xTemon · Post by **xTemon** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 19:40

pjknibbs wrote:
Knight_Of_Ni wrote: Yeah thats all well and good but i don't just give out details that easily so i'm with these guys there is a good reason for posting here instead.
Egosoft aren't in the habit of selling E-mail addresses or other information to other people--there are dozens of people already signed up with NDAs, and I'm sure if you ask any of them they'll tell you they haven't seen the black helicopters hovering over their houses just yet!

Then you haven't seen the big black heicopter that does frequent flybyes over my place

Honestly, I don't think he's worried about Egosoft; it's those damn Men in Black

Seriously, there are more than just developers to worry about

Ok' maybe it's just all the people who like to break into systems and collect information for their own nefarious purposes; I think we all think about that from time to time. I console myself with knowing that the worst they could do to me is pay off my debts and improve my credit rating

Incubi · Post by **Incubi** » Fri, 16. Mar 07, 00:51

DDM_Reaper20 wrote:A new engine? I'd prefer the tweaked X3 engine.

A new engine would -- very likely -- mean crappy performance and -- with bad luck -- a lot of things missing (remember X3: stations from all races looking exactly the same, with th exception of the trading stations . . .).

A new engine also means teething problems. Better to use a well-established one. Less performance problems, and that means the developers can focus on something far more important, IMO, than mere graphics: contents.

More missions, pirates that aren't simply hooligans flying through the sectors & shooting up ships without actually taking anything, interaction between the races, races that actually respond meaningfully to player actions etc.

I very much doubt Egosoft can create a new engine AND do significant improvements, so I'd choose the second door.
No offence intended, btw, I like X3.

Honestly I think that even a tweaked engine would do what I suggest. But aso keep i mind, X4 will require a better computer than the present game requires. There is no going around that. I agree that performance is number 1, but at the same time, UI am not going to ask them to make sure I can have good performance on a 486 dx2 66. Personaly I think ego soft using the unreal engine ( if they can afford it ) may be a great idea. Since that engien can handle it and has good performance.
DO not confuse the unreal engine with the game unreal btw.. the unreal engine they use for unreal is designed for a multitude of game genres..

My only concern about them tweakng the current engine, is I do not think this current engine regardless of tweaks.. can handle the physics and explosions that my suggestions would require. but then I am not a designer(yet), I could be completely wrong.

hyena5 · Post by **hyena5** » Fri, 16. Mar 07, 23:00

I would not mind seeing some station aspects slowed down. The stations could be made modular and you could expand them instead of buying different sizes. You go buy a basic mining module, for example, and deploy it on selected asteroid. After a few hours of game time you get a message that the work is done and ready for the ore processing module. Which you buy and deploy. You could add crew modules to speed up production, docking bays, and new technology modules to improve resource use.
In all it might take you 2-3 days of game time to get that factory up to XL level and some items may need multiple trips or ships to build them, so you might have to protect your factory convoy.

And maybe slow down the commodity loading. Say 1min per 10000 units of small items up to 1min per 10 units of XL items. Instead of having them magically appear in your ships hold.

Tinkles Inc. · Post by **Tinkles Inc.** » Fri, 16. Mar 07, 23:06

I think I'd like a Shield/weapons bias. Something that would let me divert power to weapons from sheild recharge rate and vice versa.

SchuneiderMidas · Post by **SchuneiderMidas** » Sat, 17. Mar 07, 07:22

I wish for a more varian weapon and more beam like weapon

beam cannon that as range beyond normal weapon is also wished.

most off all, battle damage

K M A N · Post by **K M A N** » Sat, 17. Mar 07, 11:36

Ive not eve played X3 yet as its not arrived but i know that theres not to many pc's out there that can play X3 at highest, maybe they will by the time X4 is out, but my point is if not many PC can play it on highest then what are we goin to do when X4 comes out because thats gona be mad graphics...

And if they are going to mprove the graphics for X4, they might aswell make it in Direct X10.. That would look insanely good !. Especially with the Light Beam affects of DX10.