X4 - whispers....please please.

[delray]

Egosoft didn't really (ever) solve this whole balance thing between players who want to be industrialists and players who want to fly around and shoot at things without being bothered much about having to pay for that pleasure. That's why stock exchange and missions are such open exploits in terms of money revenue.

I feel like Egosoft fell down the same trap the Freelancer designers fell too. They wanted a game where you have a space ship, fly around and fire lasers at stuff. But somehow that felt bland, so to enrich it they added this economic part of gameplay to it, and then suddenly the bigger part of most dedicated players actually chose to focus on that part rather than the core design. The same way we'd be running around with diamonds in Freelancer rather than doing combat missions.

In that regard, this game feels hijacked by the economy players and everything Egosoft could do in the end was leaving those couple exploits for the very few players who play it without focusing on industry and trade.

As a hijacked game that changed direction quite ostensibly, a lot in the core design that was supposed to pretend to be a living economy suddenly was expected to be an actual living economy, and never really matched to that standard. I'll give you another example of, shipyards should be among biggest buyers in the game, consuming massive amounts of resources, but they always build ships out of thin air, you don't supply shipyards with anything, and NPC fleets just spawn out of nothing without even needing a shipyard to build them.

In a game built from ground up as a sandbox economy, shipyards would be at the very center of it, as your biggest customers.

So my hope is this, X4 will be a world, an economy first. It'll work as a simulation of a universe where things are built from materials created out of things that are being mined. Then we add a combat simulator to all that to entertain ourselves. But the core part and the key part of design must be that economic part. Cause that's what the community is like.

[Sirrobert]

In a game built from ground up as a sandbox economy, shipyards would be at the very center of it, as your biggest customers.

So my hope is this, X4 will be a world, an economy first. It'll work as a simulation of a universe where things are built from materials created out of things that are being mined. Then we add a combat simulator to all that to entertain ourselves. But the core part and the key part of design must be that economic part. Cause that's what the community is like.

Didn't they claim to have this in X:R?

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

In a game built from ground up as a sandbox economy, shipyards would be at the very center of it, as your biggest customers.

So my hope is this, X4 will be a world, an economy first. It'll work as a simulation of a universe where things are built from materials created out of things that are being mined. Then we add a combat simulator to all that to entertain ourselves. But the core part and the key part of design must be that economic part. Cause that's what the community is like.

Didn't they claim to have this in X:R?

That is how it works in X Rebirth.

The next part of the jigsaw that would be cool IMO for X4 would be constructed ships being used by NPC factions.

[Graaf]

In that regard, this game feels hijacked by the economy players and everything Egosoft could do in the end was leaving those couple exploits for the very few players who play it without focusing on industry and trade.

But in order to get that kind of offers you need to be in high standings with the race offering and you have to gain a high combat rank (which can't be done by trading). And to collect you actually have to complete the mission by making the killing blow.

So 1 of those "exploits" is just normal game progressing, with better payouts the longer you play.

That leaves the Stock Exchange as the only real exploit. And that exploit is one game aspect you willingly use. So I call BS on us traders "hijacking" your shooter game.

TRADE - FIGHT - BUILD - THINK. Excuse me when I use those you don't like to use.

[delray]

I didn't mean just combat missions. You could make 100 million with three non-combat missions if you tried. Imagine the size of complex that'd make the same amount of money in same timeframe. I consider it a conscious choice by Egosoft, to leave people who don't want to become industrial tycoons to still be able to field a carrier fleet for themselves.

Capping my Atmo Lifters, I made 500 million while repairing Terran rep between caps... Wouldn't even need to cap anything with that sort of stupid money from missions if they were available at shipyards.

Oh and I'm here for the economy play. Check my thread down below this one, before you spit yourself attacking me stupidly.

[Triaxx2]

I really disagree. For that same kind of money, with the same amount of manual work, you simply build missiles, load them into a TL, and then dock it at an equipment dock that doesn't sell them. They'll buy an infinite amount, so you just slowly sell them one set at a time, and gain huge quantities of cash. Without any of the intermediary rep repair, or replacing marines, or destroying ships you can't board because of defenses. Never mind selling Nividium.

In Freelancer Diamonds were the equivalent of Computer Components. Expensive, but a suckers game. Niobium was where it's at, like Nividium in X3.

I'm personally just hoping we can keep our animated video billboards without the awkward inter connection with Media Player.

[delray]

They should do the following regarding combat:

1. Give M2 guns huge range (outside scanner range, possibly make range as big as a sector), boost damage, heavily reduce rate of fire. You'd sit back and fire salvo after salvo - either blind or based on goggles or based on other ships scouting enemy position for you. Hoping to score a lucky hit. The way dreadnoughts and battleships fought.

2. Ships M6 and bigger should have the bulk of their bigger batteries of guns mounted top side rather than on their noses, while the rest of the ship would mostly use smaller short range guns to fend off smaller fighters and missiles (say IRE). In combat medium ships like M6 or M7 (or their formations) would circle one another in a wheel-barrel manner, try to stay at near their max gun range and just keep exchanging salvoes at that range. The way Age of Sail ships fought (in lines).

3. Bombers should be able to use boarding pods and carry a smaller detachment of marines in addition to heavier missiles. They should be to M1 what big guns are to M2, able to reach enemy capital ships while your own carrier does everything to stay as far away from him as it can.

4. Smaller fighters should function as scouts and mobile scanners, finding enemy position and generally not engaging in combat. NPC ships should know when to run away. Bigger fighters should mostly be used to chase those away rather than chase them down and destroy. This would make carrier combat more of a pushing contest, where two fleets of fighters would engage and withdraw back towards their carriers and the rest of the fleet for repairs and AA protection to rejuvenate shields. If you could maintain superiority near enemy carrier and deploy bombers to board or nuke it, you'd win the engagement.

5. Add dedicated repair and AWACS vessels to the game so fleets are a little more self-sufficient and mobile. Add medium sized commercial vessels with more cargo but few guns (T6, T7). Preferably remove Jump Drive from the game entirely.

6. Add far more no-man's land to the galaxy map. Make core industrial and agricultural centers of each race fairly safe from attack, while travelling between such centers is always a risk. When you enter actual no-man's land, travelling outside of line of sight of a capital ship without guns mounted or sufficient escort should always be a gamble and a risk. Players should have warehouses in core regions acting as agents for buying and selling, while a protected convoy system would maintain connections between those warehouses (Spanish treasure fleet style). Smaller shipping should focus on supplying those fleets before they depart and buying from them when they arrive. If you wanted to carry a load of Ore from one end of galaxy to another, you'd rather pay such a fleet to carry it for you, or at least pay to join them and fly with their protection.

[Rail_Balco]

Good pointy delray, you should post it into L3+ forums so devs will hear them and ideas will possibly make it into patch or a new game!

[RAVEN.myst]

1. Give M2 guns huge range (outside scanner range, possibly make range as big as a sector), boost damage, heavily reduce rate of fire. You'd sit back and fire salvo after salvo - either blind or based on goggles or based on other ships scouting enemy position for you. Hoping to score a lucky hit. The way dreadnoughts and battleships fought.

I really really like this idea - it's in line with how artillery functions in that other place I heard of, "real life" (whatever the hell that is) - spotters paint targets for tactical weapons. Perhaps not do this for all capitals, but rather for artillery specialists, or optional specialised artillery weapons mountable on suitably sized ships. I remember this being a factor in Dark Reign: The Future of War a very long time ago - both Freedom Guard's and Imperium's heavy artillery units (which were very vulnerable, but could be kept behind friendly lines) could shoot at anything that *could be seen* (can't remember whether blind bombardment was allowed, but I've seen that too, elsewhere.)

2. Ships M6 and bigger should have the bulk of their bigger batteries of guns mounted top side rather than on their noses, while the rest of the ship would mostly use smaller short range guns to fend off smaller fighters and missiles (say IRE). In combat medium ships like M6 or M7 (or their formations) would circle one another in a wheel-barrel manner, try to stay at near their max gun range and just keep exchanging salvoes at that range.

I'd say frigates yes, corvettes perhaps no - the latter are an intermediate class somewhat analogous to torpedo and gun-boats. But it's rather a grey area - so a nice degree of diversity could be achieved by having exceptions to rules, in similar manner to how the Panther doesn't have a frontal array but "pretends" to be a larger vessel with turrets all round.

3. Bombers should be able to use boarding pods and carry a smaller detachment of marines in addition to heavier missiles. They should be to M1 what big guns are to M2, able to reach enemy capital ships while your own carrier does everything to stay as far away from him as it can.

An interesting notion, perhaps with a slight modification: don't make bombers (which are specialists, after all) capable of this, but make a similar variant that isn't good at or at all capable of damage-dealing but specialises in boarding ops, a sort of buccaneer cutter; this would be a scaled-down reflection of the OTAS M7Ms, one for inflicting hurt, the other for "arrests".

4. Smaller fighters should function as scouts and mobile scanners, finding enemy position and generally not engaging in combat. NPC ships should know when to run away. Bigger fighters should mostly be used to chase those away rather than chase them down and destroy. This would make carrier combat more of a pushing contest, where two fleets of fighters would engage and withdraw back towards their carriers and the rest of the fleet for repairs and AA protection to rejuvenate shields.

This sounds good to me. How about really pushing this idea: scouts could have some sort of stealth capability - either full-on cloaking but with short duration, or preferably merely carrying electronic warfare that disrupts targeting systems, making them harder to nail down, thus relying on fighter jocks to take them out through visual/manual aiming. Also, there could be specialised anti-disruption options that could be employed to try mitigate the scouts' jamming capabilities.

5. Add dedicated repair and AWACS vessels to the game so fleets are a little more self-sufficient and mobile.

AWACS: sorely missing, and would add a tactical/strategic layer. As for repairs: carriers really ought to have deck crew that could patch up fighters - the extent could be limited, and/or restricted time-wise - perhaps only light repairs can be done while in combat, with more extensive ones requiring time, peace and quiet, and materials (so carriers would need to be supplied with metal, spare parts, etc.)

6. Add far more no-man's land to the galaxy map. Make core industrial and agricultural centers of each race fairly safe from attack, while travelling between such centers is always a risk. When you enter actual no-man's land, travelling outside of line of sight of a capital ship without guns mounted or sufficient escort should always be a gamble and a risk. Players should have warehouses in core regions acting as agents for buying and selling, while a protected convoy system would maintain connections between those warehouses (Spanish treasure fleet style). Smaller shipping should focus on supplying those fleets before they depart and buying from them when they arrive. If you wanted to carry a load of Ore from one end of galaxy to another, you'd rather pay such a fleet to carry it for you, or at least pay to join them and fly with their protection.

Hell, yeah! Logistics warfare is a key element that should have impact - thus also, NPC convoys should be run in a similar fashion, and taking one out should have a significant effect on that faction's economy or war effort. Here would also be scope for more vessel specialisation: think World War II trans-Atlantic convoys - submarines got deployed to take out oil tankers and other supplies, as well as convoys carrying tanks, planes or other weapons - so the response was to escort the freighters with destroyers and frigates that specialised in detecting U-boats (sonar) and destroying them (depth charges), so U-boats adapted tactics, and sometimes (near coastlines) planes would be deployed to strafe or bomb the support vessels, so the convoys would have to carry AA guns and aircraft carriers, the latter of which were in turn prime targets for the U-boats, closing the rock-paper-scissors (or gun-knife-kevlar, if you prefer ) circle.

Sound notions I think, delray.

[Rail_Balco]

They should do the following regarding combat:

1. Give M2 guns huge range (outside scanner range, possibly make range as big as a sector), boost damage, heavily reduce rate of fire. You'd sit back and fire salvo after salvo - either blind or based on goggles or based on other ships scouting enemy position for you. Hoping to score a lucky hit. The way dreadnoughts and battleships fought.

2. Ships M6 and bigger should have the bulk of their bigger batteries of guns mounted top side rather than on their noses, while the rest of the ship would mostly use smaller short range guns to fend off smaller fighters and missiles (say IRE). In combat medium ships like M6 or M7 (or their formations) would circle one another in a wheel-barrel manner, try to stay at near their max gun range and just keep exchanging salvoes at that range. The way Age of Sail ships fought (in lines).

3. Bombers should be able to use boarding pods and carry a smaller detachment of marines in addition to heavier missiles. They should be to M1 what big guns are to M2, able to reach enemy capital ships while your own carrier does everything to stay as far away from him as it can.

4. Smaller fighters should function as scouts and mobile scanners, finding enemy position and generally not engaging in combat. NPC ships should know when to run away. Bigger fighters should mostly be used to chase those away rather than chase them down and destroy. This would make carrier combat more of a pushing contest, where two fleets of fighters would engage and withdraw back towards their carriers and the rest of the fleet for repairs and AA protection to rejuvenate shields. If you could maintain superiority near enemy carrier and deploy bombers to board or nuke it, you'd win the engagement.

5. Add dedicated repair and AWACS vessels to the game so fleets are a little more self-sufficient and mobile. Add medium sized commercial vessels with more cargo but few guns (T6, T7). Preferably remove Jump Drive from the game entirely.

6. Add far more no-man's land to the galaxy map. Make core industrial and agricultural centers of each race fairly safe from attack, while travelling between such centers is always a risk. When you enter actual no-man's land, travelling outside of line of sight of a capital ship without guns mounted or sufficient escort should always be a gamble and a risk. Players should have warehouses in core regions acting as agents for buying and selling, while a protected convoy system would maintain connections between those warehouses (Spanish treasure fleet style). Smaller shipping should focus on supplying those fleets before they depart and buying from them when they arrive. If you wanted to carry a load of Ore from one end of galaxy to another, you'd rather pay such a fleet to carry it for you, or at least pay to join them and fly with their protection.

Linked this to L3 forums, hope devs will see it.

[Baddieus]

I always thought it would be cool that if your wings or fighter drones were appropriately faster & more maneuverable than the ship you are piloting, then they should be able to link up with your ships controls and remain exactly on your wing, matching speed, turn for turn & firing when you fire. How cool would it look to have your M3 going into battle with 4 M5's or drones in lock-sync on the upper left/right & lower left/right (literal X-Formation) around you.

[Triaxx2]

Perhaps a job for individual racial M0's? Boron get a long recharging Ion Impulse device. A single shot that at a determined distance, detonates and instantly strips all shields and weapon energy from any ships in it's reach. Then either fresh fast fighters swoop in to take advantage, or it turns into a race to get weapons and shields online. Teladi get a super size Gauss Cannon, capable of obliterating anything it hits in a single shot but it's got only one round before you have to rebuild it at a shipyard. Argon get a souped up Cluster Flak Array, that shreds fighters but ends up all but useless vs. capitals. The Paranid get the Eyes of Xa'ar, which is a three-angled super charged PSG, but while it's incredibly strong, it's both useless against fighters, and very short ranged. But any capital in range goes up in smoke. The Split get Rhonkar's Hammer, a pulsating beam weapon that can sweep as the ship moves, but shut's down shielding while it's recharging. Terran's get the Torus of Light. A scaled down version of the Torus around earth, it has to have it's target in the center, but then it uses giant PBG's to obliterate whatever is in side. Fighters, Capitals, Stations. Pirates get the Ambusher. A ship with out shields, or the ability to move at more than 1 m/s, but that has p2p jump capabilities. Instead of firing a weapon, it launches whatever M6 is docked with it, into the fray at any point in the sector.

I'd say add something like a M6M, but with a hotkeyable ability to launch a dumb-fire barrage out of side mounted tubes. Exactly the kind of situation the Tornado is perfect for.

Leave Bombers alone, but add Boarders, which act as giant, reusable (assuming success) boarding pods. They can get through shields at twice the strength pods need to be, but don't get the hull piercing bonus. Success means the ship survives, failure mean's it's destruction.

M5's already do that, or should if you're using them correctly. Or make them appear to be a large group of heavier fighters. Carriers get three repair options: Landed fighters can be repaired to 80% over time, consuming Teladianium Plating and Computer Components. Carriers can dock at Capital Drydocks, which will slowly and at the cost of components repair the carrier itself it's taken damage, as well as providing the ability to full repair fighters docked aboard. Or parking at a full shipyard, where the cost of credits will see the entire ship fully armed and operational, with an additional ask box of 'Repair all docked ships?'

M5 Raider variants? Repair ships should only function on lower tier ships, fighters and M6/8's. Anything bigger needs the Drydock. I like the idea of medium size cargo ships, though the T7 is basically a TL in size and function. Instead, TF's. Trader - Fast. Ships with much reduced cargo capacity, but very very fast. No turrets, but good shielding. It's meant to run away, not try and engage things. Jumpdrive should either be restricted to Military Vessels and TL (Because they take forever to get anywhere), or require some space in the cargo hold, so you have the choice of taking more materials for sale, or using the Jumpdrive and having a much better chance of survival.

Perhaps a gunboat class? Something Civilian in styling, but hiding large guns, like the old Merchant Marine's. Hide your deck guns as a cargo container, and when the enemy swoops in, they get a nasty surprise. Possibly a mine layer. Something that looks like a Tanker Variant, but actually disgorges a minefield. Being chased by a Pirate Destroyer, your Minelayer drops back and ejects a minefield. Ships cheap, mines more expensive, but worth the investment to take out capitals. Or used in a more normal role, seeding gates to prevent aggression from enemy forces.

[Nanook]

They should do the following regarding combat:

1. Give M2 guns huge range (outside scanner range, possibly make range as big as a sector), boost damage, heavily reduce rate of fire. You'd sit back and fire salvo after salvo - either blind or based on goggles or based on other ships scouting enemy position for you. Hoping to score a lucky hit. The way dreadnoughts and battleships fought.

2. Ships M6 and bigger should have the bulk of their bigger batteries of guns mounted top side rather than on their noses, while the rest of the ship would mostly use smaller short range guns to fend off smaller fighters and missiles (say IRE). In combat medium ships like M6 or M7 (or their formations) would circle one another in a wheel-barrel manner, try to stay at near their max gun range and just keep exchanging salvoes at that range. The way Age of Sail ships fought (in lines).

3. Bombers should be able to use boarding pods and carry a smaller detachment of marines in addition to heavier missiles. They should be to M1 what big guns are to M2, able to reach enemy capital ships while your own carrier does everything to stay as far away from him as it can.

4. Smaller fighters should function as scouts and mobile scanners, finding enemy position and generally not engaging in combat. NPC ships should know when to run away. Bigger fighters should mostly be used to chase those away rather than chase them down and destroy. This would make carrier combat more of a pushing contest, where two fleets of fighters would engage and withdraw back towards their carriers and the rest of the fleet for repairs and AA protection to rejuvenate shields. If you could maintain superiority near enemy carrier and deploy bombers to board or nuke it, you'd win the engagement.

5. Add dedicated repair and AWACS vessels to the game so fleets are a little more self-sufficient and mobile. Add medium sized commercial vessels with more cargo but few guns (T6, T7). Preferably remove Jump Drive from the game entirely.

6. Add far more no-man's land to the galaxy map. Make core industrial and agricultural centers of each race fairly safe from attack, while travelling between such centers is always a risk. When you enter actual no-man's land, travelling outside of line of sight of a capital ship without guns mounted or sufficient escort should always be a gamble and a risk. Players should have warehouses in core regions acting as agents for buying and selling, while a protected convoy system would maintain connections between those warehouses (Spanish treasure fleet style). Smaller shipping should focus on supplying those fleets before they depart and buying from them when they arrive. If you wanted to carry a load of Ore from one end of galaxy to another, you'd rather pay such a fleet to carry it for you, or at least pay to join them and fly with their protection.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with most of this. It's contrary to what I perceive as Egosoft's vision for their games. The above would in effect turn the X games into wargames, where the emphasis is on fighting. Egosoft makes space trading games, where the emphasis was, and still is, on trading fleets, while letting the player own combat ships for the main purpose of protecting trading assets. IMO, they should spend a lot more time fixing the trading aspects of their game design, and less on making the player a more powerful military force. Just my opinion, for what it's worth.

I do really like most of point 6, though.

[delray]

One thing that surely must change is that ships shouldn't be allowed to exist essentially for free. They should wear and tear, have maintenance and crew costs, they should require periodic visits to a shipyard for routine checks and fixes.

This way every ship you own would be required to actually earn a living for itself. None (or very few) assets could just sit around and do nothing. Buying an M2, you'd need to find a patrol job for it or a sector that would pay you for defending it with that M2.

This way our fleets would become proper enterprises.

[khjim]

Combat needs to be very good, but there's also a good number of space combat sims out there. There are very few that have done a good job on the economy.

Here's what I'd like to see myself (the order is not a rank):

1. No "walking around stations" or boring, repetitive "getting in your spaceship" and the other cockpit sequences. This is one of my main beefs with XR. It just eats up valuable gaming time for precious little benefit and implementing it means other features aren't implemented.
1a. Fly any ship you want. Without having the silly cockpit of the skunk in the way, this should be a piece of cake.
2. In all X games I've played, flight feels just too smooth. It's probably just some tweaks to the physics model to not make accelerations quite so linear. There should be just a little more curve representing engine fire up and shut down or something like that. It shouldn't be extreme, just enough to make the ship feel like it has more mass.
3. Some level of conquering sectors, both for the player and NPC Factions. This could be wiping out all stations and building your own, simply owning a clear majority of stations, or declaring a "take over sector" event that then sees the owning faction spawn rapid response.
4. More improvements to the economic model. One frustrating thing in AP (I got X3 late, so have only played AP) is the way it destroys advanced stations that are placed at the start that aren't being used. My understanding is this is the economic engine removing unprofitable stations, but it needs more patience or at least a more stable starting economy.
5. Better parts availability for early ships! 25MJ shields are just too much of a pain to find for example. When you do find them, the station is inevitably out of stock.
6. OOS combat obviously needs improvement.
7. A "Safe scripts" ability to string together commands so players who don't want to mod the game can still create a list of commands for their NPC ships to execute.
8. Improve the UI. Particularly: an ability to have list windows (such as for property) open as part of my normal screen and let me move them around.
9. In terms of visual style, XR felt too crowded. I felt more like I was in a city than in space.
10. Maybe some sort of role for planets, at least in trade.
11. Easier station positioning than X3, but not the "block" positioning of XR. Mostly, once I place a first station, I'd like to just add to it, not have to get involved in positioning the second one or getting tubes from the CCKs ruining the view. I'm thinking this means each station should just have 2-6 connection points and when you add a new station unit, you just pick the connection point to add it to.
12. Better management of intermediate products for complexes. Particularly, separate buy and sell prices.
13. Shipyards really should either buy goods directly on station or at least run a commercial agent fleet.
14. Multiple midsize story arcs each being optional rather than a single "Save the universe" campaign arc.
15. Maybe some sort of deal making with NPC companies. This could be tied to the stock market too.
16. I like the stock market idea, but it's way too simple. By telling you exactly the minimum and the maximum prices, it's just too easy to trade on volatility. We may as well just start off like SimCity used to start off by having some game setup parameters that define how much money you start with (this is sort of implemented in X3:AP with the different starts, but could be expanded).
17. Don't be tempted by the calls to add multiplayer. Multiplayer takes over single player games and is no good for those of us who can't be sure of how much time they have in a gaming session. Multiplayer is also a comparatively expensive feature to implement when you consider cheating protections, network reliability, etc. I'd be fine with an invite only multiplayer, but it can't come at the expense of several other features.
18. Focus on good usability in general.
19. Also focus on providing detail without making the game a grinding for resources game. Make it so I can choose to spend 10 hours building a multipart station. Do not require me to spend 10 hours busting rocks to get my first docking port. It's a game, it should be fun and not work.

edit: 20: Also more and clearer message/transaction logs, especially for how you're spending and making money. Even if this was limited to the last 5-10 hours, it would be great.

[RAVEN.myst]

One thing that surely must change is that ships shouldn't be allowed to exist essentially for free. They should wear and tear, have maintenance and crew costs, they should require periodic visits to a shipyard for routine checks and fixes.

I totally agree! I have long thought, for example, that passage through a jumpgate must be a highly stressful event, and that it should be causing hull microfractures and the like. Hell, the X3TC campaign even makes a reference to that, right after the jump to the beacon in Aldrin (presumably on the assumption that an almost untethered jump like that is more taxing than a standard gate jump). This should incur small gradual damage to the hull; the potential then appears here to penalise damaged hulls jumping - it's RISKY. If you have cracks in your hull when you jump through the continuum, something might fall off!

Not just jumping, either. Regular wear and tear from usage (engine components break and need replacing over time - anyone who has ever owned a car knows this!) Components wear out or get accidentally damaged. Back to the exterior: docking and undocking, even clean and without mishap, is going to take its toll over time. Etc. Etc. Etc.....

Something I would REALLY like to see is gradual progressive cosmetic degradation: over time, regardless of the state of repair, a ship will show signs of its age. Consider an oceangoing vessel - eventually you start seeing staining/discoloration at the waterline, and a general drabness may manifest (in cargo vessels - liners tend to invest heavily in repainting etc.) It would add a lot of character for traces of past battles to remain. Replacement hull panels may then end up slightly cleaner/shinier-looking - and the overall effect would be to make the vessel look more real.

[Timsup2nothin]

Even more than an operational cost for ships...factories. I build this massive space edifice. I completely bork up providing it with supplies and it ends up flashing yellow because it isn't operating. Oh well. <shrug> I'll get that sorted out later. It's not like there are workers sitting around getting paid, or equipment burning gas just idling, or any problem, really.

[delray]

I add cheap "yellow" fabs to everything I build just to hide that factory from property menu.

UI surely must change too, with better presentation and filtering. Just accept this is going to be a PC game played with a keyboard and stop pretending it'll ever succeed on consoles. And design UI accordingly.

[Triaxx2]

That can be quite the onerous drain. You can see a bit of why it's problematic with CLS, but that's relatively manageable. On the other hand, if you're running CODEA, with it's need to pay all your pilots, and crew? Yeah, that becomes a massive sink.

If it goes in, it should be an option. Fallout New Vegas had Hardcore Mode, but it was something you could flip on/off at will. Doing that would give a bit more customization without the need for someone to mod it out. (Even if all it does is set the 'daily' cost to 0 without changing anything else.)

Counter proposal: Docking fees. Fighters, sitting in dock, are basically charged rent. Downside, you can't just park your fighters in some random Free Argon Trading Station. Upside, it counts for NPC's who will pay you to park in your stations if they are waiting for cargo.

[RainerPrem]

One thing that surely must change is that ships shouldn't be allowed to exist essentially for free. They should wear and tear, have maintenance and crew costs, they should require periodic visits to a shipyard for routine checks and fixes.

I totally agree! I have long thought, for example, that passage through a jumpgate must be a highly stressful event, and that it should be causing hull microfractures and the like. Hell, the X3TC campaign even makes a reference to that, right after the jump to the beacon in Aldrin (presumably on the assumption that an almost untethered jump like that is more taxing than a standard gate jump). This should incur small gradual damage to the hull; the potential then appears here to penalise damaged hulls jumping - it's RISKY. If you have cracks in your hull when you jump through the continuum, something might fall off!
...

Hi,

while that sounds appealing for the "hard-core" players, which more or less dominate this forum, it will be much less appealing to the casual player. So introduce something like this only in a "very hard" option sounds like a better way.

That said, the most difficult thing for Egosoft is to appeal to the early critics, which they didn't manage with XR. Because those people set the mood for a game.

cu
Rainer