Please provide global and ship setting to disallow boost in attack.

[Submarine]

Please provide global and ship setting to disallow boost in attack.

That's it.

I asked before and it hasnt happened yet, I hope its on the to do list.

For why, mid game I tend to play as a squad of ragtag heroes doing good deeds around the place bringing balance to the force, stopping Xenon incursions and catching pirates. As a small squad in a big universe every ship is precious and tactics count but X4 does not make that easy, when with a little effort it could. I suspect many players skip to the overwhelming force option because the interface is not set up right for squad play. Its not set up for overwhelming force either but the suboptimal defaults matter less when ships and pilots can be treated as disposable, though I never would.

Micromanaging battles is more than twice the burden it needs to be due to the simple erroneous presumption which the game makes when giving an attack order that I want my M class ships and even destroyers, to strip their shields by using boost to attack small Xenon fighters and Ps. Of course I dont. But the game constantly obliges me to untick the boost toggle PER ATTACK ORDER or see ships lose hull or even die due to excessive superfluous boosting.

So I have no choice but to micro, removing the allow boost toggle which is on by default on every new attack order whether given by me or autogenerated by an area effect order and its a PITA. It also sets you up to fail which is just stupid. It is a drag on the fun and it puts me off the game as I just get sick of it and go play other stuff which is less micro and has shorter load times.

Please fix. It needs a global setting as per other activity like what to do when attacked or searched, which needs to differentiate between attack vs escape (i.e. flee orders) and allow me to set up attack order defaults. It also needs for ships to have individual settings.

Its just a couple of radio buttons, the global and individual ship settings pages already exist.

Please! FTLOM

[As25]

+1 to this.

This affects M ships the most as they take FOREVER to recharge their shields. For reference Teladi MK2 Shields: 6746 MJ +39 MJ/s = 3 minutes to recharge. Paranid MK2 Shields: 5520 MJ +43 MJ/s = 2 minutes to recharge. This is way too long and then your ships decide to boost and kill half or more of their shields only to then turn around and joust against their enemies with a big chunk of their EHP missing. Boosting is also completly useless for L and XL ships.

In general the game needs many qol changes. There should be a dedicated thread to it and Egosoft should try to impliment as many of them as they can. One example: There is a global order for you to set when your ships get attacked. I would like to set up this to "flee" for my non-military ships, like miners or traders. But if I do that, then ALL of my ships would get that flee response. There should be an option for multiple kind of ships. So you could have your M miners set to flee but your L miners set to ignore, and of course this shouldn't affect your militaristics ships.

[Submarine]

They need to play their own game.

Factorio does not have any DLC and the gameplay is limited but spotless. They seem to have a very healthy player base.

Klei have made a big thing out of updates instead of DLC with Oxygen Not Included recently, facing up to the reality that milking the player base without honing the gameplay just turns people off.

Klei are not fools. If devs neglect core gameplay then gamers will neglect the game, its karma 101.

[Shepp]

I would like to add my own $0.02 and refine the suggestion a little. I would like to have a setting where we could restrict the amount of shield used in boost all the way to 0. This way I can keep my cap ships from boosting at all and restrict the others to not use all of their shields boosting to death.

[A5PECT]

I've been banging this drum since XR: designing boost to draw from shielding was a mistake. The player is human being that is capable of making judgement calls on whether or the benefits of boosting outweigh the cost in shields. The AI simply doesn't have the intelligence or awareness to do that with any reliable degree of success. As others have stated, the AI will frequently "boost itself to death" by burning shields for little to no tactical benefit.

Adding that level of functionality to it would likely tank game performance due to how much peocessing a single ship would have to do to achieve it, and how far battles can scale in number of combatants. Sincr a fix on the AI end is unfrasible, it has to be done through a mechanical change, e.g. by having boost using a dedicated fuel or overheat meter.

[Submarine]

I agree the AI is not competent to use use shield powered boost and a limit is a great idea for AI and player but I quite like the way it works as a player.

I think it is pragmatic from a beta testing and development perspective to accept the shield-boost design decision as a fait accomplis. Its asking too much to suggest this be changed now.

And I quite like it, as it makes sense to me intuitively that the shield is like a big capacitor and the trade off creates interesting situations and tactics.

If one accepts shield boost as a feature, then the main problem is AI killing the ships it governs and while I dont care if they are Xenons so much, I do care when it is my own ships and their valued crews and pilots. Its very annoying, causes reloads and these take > 2mins each and scraps the intervening gameplay each time which breaks up the flow of play and makes the game feel like a chore.

Since it can easily be fixed by disallowing boost in the attack order, setting boost as permitted by default seems to be the first thing to correct and that should be a player set default, to offer a choice. If the devs then want to work on the AI that would be fine but just lift the aggravating micro burden on me and mine first please.

[sh1pman]

Klei have made a big thing out of updates instead of DLC with Oxygen Not Included recently, facing up to the reality that milking the player base without honing the gameplay just turns people off.

Klei are not fools. If devs neglect core gameplay then gamers will neglect the game, its karma 101.

Well, Spaced Out! is pretty huge and game-changing compared to regular updates, so it makes sense that it’s a separate DLC. I wouldn’t mind if they made more DLCs that introduce new mechanics and overhaul existing gameplay.

X4 DLCs however… feel like content packs without major changes to the original formula.

[Smart_Bomb]

Rather than making a complex script to disallow or make situational boosting to AI... why not simply:

Change the boosting system to not draw from shields and have its own dedicated system for boosting like it does in ALL other games?

Could setup a new boost modules on all ships S/M sized ships that can be enhanced with ship modifications as well as each race having their own variety from faster boost speeds for split or longer duration of boost for teladi, where as argon and paranid is balanced but lean one way.

L/XL ships don't have boost, but instead a different module to get into emergency travel mode when they need to get distance in a fight or about to be destroyed, after a short warm-up, it gets you into travel mode even under fire, but it only lasts for 10 seconds and disables travel mode for 1 minute. (this can also be used to ram a ship or station causing damage to both especially if unshielded)

[Submarine]

Klei have made a big thing out of updates instead of DLC with Oxygen Not Included recently, facing up to the reality that milking the player base without honing the gameplay just turns people off.

Klei are not fools. If devs neglect core gameplay then gamers will neglect the game, its karma 101.

Well, Spaced Out! is pretty huge and game-changing compared to regular updates, so it makes sense that it’s a separate DLC. I wouldn’t mind if they made more DLCs that introduce new mechanics and overhaul existing gameplay.

X4 DLCs however… feel like content packs without major changes to the original formula.

Well what Klei are doing is the cosmetic skins route they used in Dont Starve Together, which is comparable to Elite Dangerous skins in that they are non essential, do not give advantages and can be earned in game but also can be purchased. This allows players to give them money if they feel appreciative and with the right community attitude it seems to be worth doing.

Strikes me that egosoft could consider trying that form of revenue, as skins are a thing you can earn from missions and ventures in X4, so they are well positioned to try it if they can organise a shop system to add them to your game.

ONI is a single player game like X4 so its more about personal satisfaction with ornamenting ones game items and not directly about social preening but on that score sharing screenshots, videos and live streaming can create a sense of an audience.

Then it is in egosoft's interests to make the player community feel appreciative and fix all the stuff that needs fixing !

[S!rAssassin]

S/M ships can boost quickly almost to their travel speed, but L/XL have boost speed greatly lower - around 150% cruise speed. This is not as should be. Boost for L/XL - suicide.
Need to be fixed.

[Falcrack]

I think boost energy needs to be decoupled from shields, with a relatively long recharge. AI cannot effectively or intelligently use boost, and tying it to shields just causes AI suicide.

There is STILL the bug where AI ships with boarding commands will boost away all their shields an route to the target from a long way away, despite me long ago bringing up the issue before and providing a save demonstrating the issue.