Things that didn't worked in XR, but should be fixed for "XR2" (the next game)

[pref]

I also miss economic aspect having any effect on the gameplay.
Would be nice if our production could be useful to upgrade military/trade fleets, the skunk, would allow easier boarding or exploration etc..

Or having a more sophisticated larger scale AI and more dynamic game world that responds to player actions, and makes our trade/military assets useful.
For this a prerequisite would be fleet management that allows coordinated command execution and more precise commands.

And please a bit less non-functional detail in return for more effective gameplay and/or performance. For ex watching 3 trades is enough for most seeing those drones transfer the wares between ships and stations imo. After 5 its just an annoying time loss. Bug prone too - and brings nothing to the gameplay apart from eyecandy. Drone count could still affect trade speed even if its not fully simulated.
Or having to watch that chat between employees, and even loosing info and possibility for interaction on the skunk's display.
Station walking comes to mind as well here.

[BigBANGtheory]

Besides the fleet management issue (which I'm pleased to see you've covered) I think one of the other critically important area's is what happens and the late game. I'm all in favour of building up your assets and economy from humble beginings I do feel however the gameplay "falls off a cliff edge" once you have massed some tangible wealth and power. I'd like to see the game step up to bigger goals in terms of strategy, economics and politics as the game progresses.

Would rather like a ludicrously big construction project, of at least same order of magnitude as the TC Hub plot, to give me a practical reason for building lots of factories, aside from merely accruing vast wealth. Would be even better in XR where, using the same visuals as station building, you'd be able to see it under construction (rather than just monitoring the numbers to keep track of how the Hub plot was progressing).

Sure that makes sense but then what do you do after your big construction project? Is it a target for factions impacted by its trade or consumption of resources, is its economic output being channeled into military and therefore a threat. Do you use the money to support governments that have their own agenda, is there a faction trying to build a complex bigger than yours that threatens your own wealth and position, do you want to try and bankrupt someone or intimidate them? That kind of thing... Combat is the obvious scenario but if you're clever it doesn't have to be that way.

To my mind that is the sort of gameplay the player should be rewarded by based on their efforts, action and level of aggression during their build and expansion phase. For example if you generated a lot of wealth through foul means then it stands to reason you could have a lot of enermies alternatively if you supported certain NPCs and factions then you could have friends and influence e.g. Teladi military ships defending and patrolling your space against agressors because you are making them money or have helped them out of a situation. The universe suddenly sparks into AI life where events dictate consequence.

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

I also miss economic aspect having any effect on the gameplay.

Uhm, no. Managed to influence the economy of XR several times. They just don't put "oh look you influenced the economy" in front of your face, so you can't see it that easily, but XR's economy is so much easier to influence, and there are much more tools to do so, than in previous games.

[mr.WHO]

1) One dock for stations, with a real docking procedure, basically fly in, clamp, force field, giant plastic sucker, secures your ship and you are facing an elevator or little train that will take to the desire section of the station. The current sprawling mass of docks is a bit overkill.

IMO with overall X-games logic I think the more docks is better. Otherwhise you risk large queues - see the cell recharge stations - tons of freighters waiting hours for refuel.

2) Flyable ships, from scout, to fighters, to merchants, to frigate, to minicarrier (1 to 3 ships being able to dock), that will open the gameplay hugely, and while I know the devs are on it, please go large on this. And the top end should have jump drives, and they should be very expensive.

We must be resonable here. While fighters can be done by one generic cokpit and no interior the bigger ships would require more interiors and more cokpits. Although I think they already have good temlate for cokpits (a few of them already avaliable to Skunk, you can split them between new ships with an option to swich them like now in XR), the interiors would be much more problematic. Also the biggert the ship, the bigger the interior needs to be.
That's why I choose only fighters and corvettes as flyable as I think this is resonable enough. Also if we would have something like Hyperion M6+ then we could also have a small fighter doc on board and a few decks fit into one ship (something like end game player ship, when he start with smallest M6 like Skunk and slowly switch to bigger and more powerful).

3) Trade UI showing both buy/sell prices in the same screen, keep the sliders but add the option of using numerals, and when buying, get rid of pre selecting the maximum cargo capacity, it just confuses people.

That's actually greate idea - simple but efective.

5) Stations, I like it a lot, but for the stations that produce several wares, the ability to decide witch wares it produces is sorely missing, so is switching off production lines. This one is tricky because is related to prices, but some kind of control on how much resources the station will stockpile will help a lot for those in a tight budget.

Another good idea - I hate that plot drone factory choose what to build at random intervals.

6) Ship "group" weapon loadout, the ability to form groups, with your choice of weapons will be great, as you can select the group appropriate to the task at hand instead of unnecessary cycling through weapons and missiles.

I'd be careful here. Grouping and weapon swap means that we would get back to X3 style click fest when equipping player property ships.
While it's ok for player personal ship I do like that currently in XR fighters and warships have pre-defined equipment. I don't have to bother with supplies for them.

IMO I'd like first to have option for player ship to equip more weapons of the same type (like dual Particle Reapeters), so if Skunk has 4 weapon slot I could either choose 4 diffrent weaponst or 4 same weapons if I want.

[pref]

Uhm, no. Managed to influence the economy of XR several times. They just don't put "oh look you influenced the economy" in front of your face, so you can't see it that easily, but XR's economy is so much easier to influence, and there are much more tools to do so, than in previous games.

It wasn't about that, but your economic achievements having some effect on how the game plays. Read the next sentence as well in the post

Of course XR economy is easier to influence short term, as its on a much smaller scale. Issues with a single fab can have serious effects on the supply chain.
Though on longer term its next to impossible to influence as NPC stations are there forever - useless stations wont be removed, nor useful ones built based on demand. And any wrecked one will auto heal quickly, without any resource requirement.

[BigBANGtheory]

Another feature that didn't work so well imho is Egosoft didn't appear to use a proper focus group to help sculpt the product. Now it might well be there wasn't time or budget for that type of luxery so I'm not trying to poke at the development process of the past here rather state that for the next major product release they might want to reconsider that. Even if the focus group is there to look at descriptions of scope, gameplay and presentation it doesn't have to be the game itself if they feel the need to protect their IP.

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

It wasn't about that, but your economic achievements having some effect on how the game plays. Read the next sentence as well in the post

Of course XR economy is easier to influence short term, as its on a much smaller scale. Issues with a single fab can have serious effects on the supply chain.
Though on longer term its next to impossible to influence as NPC stations are there forever - useless stations wont be removed, nor useful ones built based on demand. And any wrecked one will auto heal quickly, without any resource requirement.

Possible, sorry if that's the case, English ain't the native language here and posting from a phone has some disadvantages.

I wouldn't say that Rebirth's economy is "easy to influence in short term but impossible in long term".
I'd say that Rebirth's economy is "easy to influence in short and medium term, but hard to influence in long-term".
Because I understand discounts, hacking and stealing as a short-term, but economical tools and destructive tools as medium-term.
For long-term, I'd still say that there is a way to influence the economy. Massive station heists can cause big problems and destabilise the economy system. Combined with constant hacking of freighters, you can knock-them-off for quite long time.
Of course, they will recover - and I think that this is a good thing, they would chase after that in real economy too.

Complete destruction of stations, I think that it would be a fine addition, but nothing critical. If they added this, Iam okay - if not, I don't complain.
Same goes for usage of resources for NPC station repairs.

But then again, my point of view on the economy and influence is the point of view of a trader/builder/pirate - destruction is not what I go for, I need my clients.

[MegaJohnny]

Destroying station modules does knock production offline and wipe out stored goods, right? I'd say that's good at least as a partial substitute to blowing up stations.

Although it would be very cool to see stations being built and rebuilt as you fly around.

[A5PECT]

As wonky as it was at times, I do miss GoD. It's important to remember dynamic NPC station construction/destruction didn't enter the original trilogy until a few games/expansions into the series (I forget if it was added in X2 or X3R.) Egosoft devs obviously went back to basics with XR, trying to ensure that the most fundamental economic elements of an entirely new game engine would work in a static environment before expanding it into a dynamic one.

[Nanook]

You could always destrroy NPC stations, but it wasn't until Reunion that they were rebuilt by the GoD engine, which sometimes used player build missions. Past games were much more dynamic that way.

[Tolmos]

The lack of dockable fighters on a carrier pretty much broke X-Rebirth for me and is why I never really put any time into the game. Whenever I play X3, I move as quickly as I can towards owning a carrier of my own, no matter how small. Carrier captain is my favorite role in this series; I grew up on Babylon 5 and whenever I thought "man, I want a sci-fi game!", it always revolved around having my own carrier. Sometimes I'll fly out in a fighter to help in a battle, but at the end of the day I dock all my fighters on 1 ship and off we go.

I didn't have that option in this game. "Drones" were the best I could do. Meh.

[mr.WHO]

The problem with the docked fighters in XR is the fact that Egosoft tried to implement that, but then, for unknown reason decided not to. They left the code and working docking/lauch bays on Aran. Some modders found it and reactivated via mod and added them to Sul carriers.

I'd really like to know the logic behind this - lazyness, lack of time (then why they didn't implemented this for later pathes), other problems?

[Xan0010]

Im a huge fan of the previous X games and want to share my opinion about the next X in comparison with the OP:

1. Fighter rebalance / 2. Combat drone rebalance
Carriers are missed badly. The drones currently all look the same and cannot be modified as fighters (M5) could in previous X games

3. Station invulnerability
For the plot I think the stations should be invulnerable. Also currently the AI (pirate swarms / Titurels) is so strong, they destroy the stations turrets and after that the modules. Not nice since the player starts out with no cash and cannot simply afford capital station defense ships. But for the economy to not collapse the player has to build many stations right after the game starts.

4. Player HQ
Should be a long term goal for a new game. Right now the X-Rebirth has more dire problems. And many of them.

5. Player station population
Needed and should be easy to implement.

6. More docks for shipyards
I'd rather have fewer capital ships needed for (player) stations and automatic ship buying / employee hire done by the stations manager.

7. Frigates
Also a long term goal, but needed nonetheless.

8. Missiles balance
I don't use them and cannot comment

9. Xenon / Pirate economy
I would say no to Xenon but yes to pirate economy like it somehow was in the Yaki space. But sadly another long term goal.

10. More jump beacons
Yes for more general jump beacons (more than one per sector) and also yes for hidden jump beacons. Easy to implement.

11. DeVries Rebuild
Yes, there should be an 'Over'-Manager that looks over the economy and its stations as they are all Canteran.

12. Freighter escape
Freighter captain should hire escorts automatically. The money comes from the station manager that the freighter is assigned. If escort is down (emergency) the freighter should jump out and get new escorts.

13. Flyable player ships
The skunk is not the ship we want to fly. There is a shiny little gem of game availiable at most shops called DarkStar One. In this game the player can also fly only one ship. But with roleplaying choices this ship can have: up to 6 different main cannons (skunk has one), up to 5 different turrets (skunk has zero). Also the exterior changes as the game progresses (ship gets bigger and looks more powerful). It would be fitting if when only one ship is flyable only, that this ship can be heavily modified. Sadly even a basic fighter (M5) in the previous X games allowed for more customization. Why not make a unique Xenon Vessel that the player receives relatively shortly after the game starts which allows for intense modifications. Like the 'Lost Lar' Gamestart in previous X games the player could involuntary jump right into an old Xenon station and escape with this ship. And please make a female protagonist. Every single X game had a male one (?) for the story.

14. Out of system (OOS) Calculation
Many of my freighters died because of that (and because they don't jump away themselfes). No problem with that but replacing them is a pain. This should be done automatically by the stations manager. This is actually the reason I don't play X-Rebirth anymore. Way to comfortless.

15. Fleet management / 16. Squad GUI
Should be done by a 'General' NPC that you can hire and that manages your fleet much like a manager manages a station. Commands should go directly towards your General.

17. Sucellus (Insanely Huge Cannon) ships not aligning
Balancing is generally done before releasing a game sadly unlike with X Rebirth. Yes there should be a different behaviour if there are ships with special features.

18. Carrier Logic
Ahh... my sweet, sweet Raptor. The 'General' NPC but also the captain of any carrier should buy, outfit, launch strategially (Skill) and replace fighters according to a default or player given behaviour.

19. Old ships
First of all bring back the Boron and Paranids. Then redo the Split as they look horribly in comparison with the previous games. And of cource we all want the old ships back that we loved for years. And by old ships I mean the 'Real' Teladi and Terran ships, missing Argon ships as well as all the Boron, Split and Paranid ships. Yes, even the small / super- freighters.

20 Bigger universe
Even if building such a insanely huge universe would be a pain, sadly systems like Argon Prime, Kingdoms End and Seize Well are missing badly. Just my personal opinion as I grew accustomed to them by the years.

[mr.WHO]

Oh I forgot one more thing - the XR boarding is quite OK, but I'd like to have an ability to "store" my highly trained marines on my other ships/stations when I hit the 50 elite marines limit.

It would be even nicer to have a marine frigate that store more than 50 marine and could dock to the (disabled) target and make the boarding. If stations would be destroyable then it would even be nice to have ability to capture stations with marines.

[mr.WHO]

Second thing that came to my mind it that like in X3:R in XR we are put in pre defined character who has more or less only one story path to follow (or none in free play).

I wish that XR2 was more like X3:TC where you had multiple possible campaigns avaliable and free hand in picking them or not. Moreover more mini-campaigns could come up with forhter pathes/DLC like for TC.