so then, X4

[Guest]

So we had X-btf. i it was an amazing new game with impressive AL an AI technology. then there was X2. this was a new X era, with more interactive gameplay, new toys and better graphics. then came X3 and TC, with the immensely real graphics, amazing new script commands objects and concepts that would have made someone streight from the 20th century pass out.

So....... what will X4 be like?

why dont we all come up with some creative ideas about what egosoft may dream up for the next 'big leap'.

i quite like the idea of black holes that can suck you in and spit you out somewhere else (ripping you apart if your ships to small or badly shielded. or how about realistically damaged ships, like in the game dead space or left 4 dead 2 if an object gets hit (mainly you) a small mark is left by just couloring over the original graphic. another cool thing would be attackable ship hardpoints, like being able to destroy another ships engines, realy slowing it down, or blowing up an enemy ships guns. at shipyards, aside from repairing hulls, there could be other options for turrets, etc.

so come on what are everyone elses ideas. and dont limit yourself to normal stuff or rope yourself in with the old but the game engine would overload from that. todays avarage computers could never take storing the status of over 10,000 different ships hardpoints and do all the other X stuff without melting but at the same time yesterdays computers wouldnt be able to do what is done in X3. hey how about realisticaly animated space monsters like dead space's hive mind?

oh and sorry if i left out any other X games from the intro.

[Nanook]

[Knowltey]

Modular ship designing sounds like it would be cool.

[Guest]

jeeze way to kill imagination, its just meant for fun and general intrest of what other people would like to see. just hypothetical.

besides hitchhikers guide was meant to be a trilogy, and metal gear solid and i dont even know how many of those there are now.

and whats TNBT tm

[Palladin888]

I want to see them do a planet side extension and use the same machanics the current game uses.

[Guest]

oh so thats hat it means. i better just become a millionare and buy them then

[Nyax]

TNBT= The Next Big Thing.

This seems like a good time for me to go through how i always thought ship purchasing and equiping should have been done. Right now it's a bind. Frustrating slow tedium, and the S M L system where the M and L versions spend most of their time out of stock is a lunatic idea.

So here's how i think it SHOULD work-

When trading with a shipyard you select the make and model of the ship you want., and then you can select what equipment you wish to kit it out with. THis is NOT dependant on the contents of the local equipment dock, you have free range of all the commonly available upgrades, shields, weapons and missiles available throughout the X-verse, so you can custom build your ship EXACTLY as you want it. Also only those shields/ weapons/ upgrades compatible with the ship you're buying are displayed to stop you accidently buying something the ship can't mount.

Shields and weapons when bought like this are sold at MAXIMUM price, and any upgrades/ shields weapons etc you select to equip that are not generally available from the current race have an additional surcharge added to them and there's a delay until your ship(s) are ready for you since the shipyard will have to place an order for the equipment you've requested.
Finally once you've created a configuration, you have the option to save it for future use.

What all this means is that in the early stages of the game it's still MUCH cheaper and more affordable to buy a basic ship and then send it round the galaxy slowly upgrading it, however later on in the game when you're stupidly rich and money is no object you can easily purchase new ships kitted out exactly how you want them without have to waste hours sending them from station to station to be fitted with the upgrades and equipment you want, or having to spend dozens of hours building vast factory complexes so that you'll have enough 25MJ shields to go around.

Related to this it should also be possible to place bulk orders for equipment (at say a trading post) e.g place an order for 30 PPCs, or 40 1 GJ shields. Again this should cost you, but it provides an alternate 'none economy wrecking' way of aquiring large volumes of things without having to spend vast amounts of time supplying AI factories or building vast complexes yourself.
You can still do that if you want, but if constructing vast complexes give you no joy then this would be a welcome addition.

[El General]

I think that purchasing ships your way is less realistic however. Whatever the money you have, if the local dock don't have the weapon you want, it's normal you can't buy it.

And buying weapons and shields this way create a infinite supply of weapons, since they aren't taken from a factory. Then weapon factories become totally useless if you have enough money...

[Nyax]

[kurush]

[Nyax]

It's reliable. It sort of snuck out half by accident in an interview in one of the editions of the x-universe news.

[foszae]

I'm certainly interested in what TNBT turns out to be. As practically a spacer by birth (Asteroids was one of the coolest games of my youth), i dip in to a lot of space-genre games. So let me point out a couple other games that they could borrow ideas from or compete with to produce an even better game.

Sins of a Solar Empire: a mostly RTS space combat game. No first-person viewpoint and lower-res ships, but an amazingly fluid game in terms of space combat. Bringing a fleet of over a hundred ships to a system is barely laggy, and has the ability to zoom out to a tactical level or closely follow an individual fighter. If there is something Egosoft could steal, it would be how well the massive fleet battles work in this game.

Mass Effect: sure, its an RPG about character interaction, but the first one in the series also included the ability to explore planets. It was a clunky system but you could drop your buggy planetside and drive around the environment. Its a wish that i've heard repeated often enough and though i don't endorse the idea necessarily, i'll admit that if it were a workable option, i'd probably enjoy it.

Mass Effect 2: the most notable addition to the game was that it made exploration of planets a high-level orbital scan instead of driving around. But, it did make for an interesting dynamic because it provided a number of uninhabited systems to explore, and an opportunity to just enter the orbit of a planet to read some very decent science about the compositions of gas giants. One thing that X3 doesn't really have is any sense of space beyond the gates. No obscure planets further away to travel to, no way to set up a robotic ice farm on the poles of a moon orbiting a planet.

hmm, this is getting long, i'm going to break off and continue this post later

[Yorkie_GBR]

Not going to happen, from all reports to date irrc XT:TC was the last.

[palm911]

until they change their mind. or decide to make that tittle into the X universe. you never know. only egosoft and GOD knows

i would love to hear some news, before 2010 ends

[Nanook]