Features from X3 you wish were in X4

[mr.WHO]

The mysteries of the jump gates were solved a long time ago. The Terrans and Paranids showed that they are capable of building them on their own if necessary. And yet we as players can't build them. Same story with Transorbital Accelerators, Highways and Super Highways. These new technologies can only be built by the NPC factions, and not by the players. And they all wouldn't be as OP as Jump beacons, even if players could build them. So no, if Jump beacons had to be added in X4 to complement the JD, then they shouldn't be buildable by the player if I am honest. No matter how 'smart' our cuddly Boron is.

That's actualy the part of X3:FL I'd like to see back in X4 - Exploration and finding out the jump spots to build Accellerators to undiscovered sectors.

Also, would be nice to have analog to Ufocussed JD sector - aka sector (or a few) that is randomly generated and possibly for player to research some kind of "Stabilisation" technology that allow you to keep the space that you found fitting for you.

[S!rAssassin]

JD to any gates - bad idea. Current X-universe is small, and travels do not takes much time. JD on S or M ships - bad idea too. They already have highways to speed travels.

JD on L and XL ships - excellent idea! X and XL ships have destroyable subsystems, enemy JD might be destroyed to prevent escape. But enemy similar might destroy your JD!
X and XL ships travel through gates very slow but might jump directly to target! But not to any gate, like previous X! It is OP! Trade by L freighters does not be so effective! But if freighter might jump to own jump beacon only, trade speed be moderate. Player might buy this beacons and place at profitable stations, but beacons must be expensive for balance reasons. Or player might bought much more expensive subscription for use friendly beacons at +30 relationship.
Also carriers would be useful to carry S/M ships to destination.

Enemy might create insurgent wave by sending some S and M fighters through gate for deploying their jump beacon and defending it while XL and L jump in to battle.

Some battle missions might be realize this scenario for xenon invasions.

[Mr.Freud]

asteroid mining stations

[Axeface]

However given that we have our smart pet Boron, it's not hard to imagine he could crack some jump beacons if we give him enough research materials.

The mysteries of the jump gates were solved a long time ago. The Terrans and Paranids showed that they are capable of building them on their own if necessary.

This could change/be retconned due to the gate shutdown. I saw rumours that the intended lore is that the gate network shutdown and the following reorganisation was due to something the inhabitants of the universe were doing? As if something is still controlling them and whoever/whatever that is has full control over whether the races can use the gates/jump technology at all. Jump drives stopped working because they could no longer link to the gates. If egosoft dont want jumping without gates they can do so.
I also think the idea of that is awesome.

Accelerators and highways yes (I happen to love these features, because they bring structure to a system. But for some reason a lot of people hate them...).

[Flippi]

That's actualy the part of X3:FL I'd like to see back in X4 - Exploration and finding out the jump spots to build Accellerators to undiscovered sectors.

I actually haven't played much FL to be honest. But I remember that feature to be more story driven. So you didn't really had a choice where to put it and what to connect with, I think. But anyway, I agree that it would be a cool feature.

Also, would be nice to have analog to Ufocussed JD sector - aka sector (or a few) that is randomly generated and possibly for player to research some kind of "Stabilisation" technology that allow you to keep the space that you found fitting for you.

That too would be cool. Maybe even tied to the currently more gimmicky anomalies?

This could change/be retconned due to the gate shutdown. I saw rumours that the intended lore is that the gate network shutdown and the following reorganisation was due to something the inhabitants of the universe were doing? As if something is still controlling them and whoever/whatever that is has full control over whether the races can use the gates/jump technology at all. Jump drives stopped working because they could no longer link to the gates. If egosoft dont want jumping without gates they can do so.

I haven't seen any rumours in that regard. Current lore has it, that the Old ones shut down the gate network due to the rampant Xenon spreading too quickly. It's supposed to slow them down. In older game material, the Xenon are also called 'borderline sentient'. So Egosoft could theoretically create sentient Xenon if they wanted to (?).

But with anything regarding these kind of lore bits, they might not be true. From what I read about the X novels, some state that the Solar system has the Quantum belt around the Oort Cloud, preventing any use of jump drives in and out of the Sol system. And we all know that TC and later games allowed players to use jump drives anyway.... So the lore as stated in novels or in background material might not be the same as you see it in the games.

Accelerators and highways yes (I happen to love these features, because they bring structure to a system. But for some reason a lot of people hate them...).

I also like them. They reminded me of Freelancer in a good way. But sadly, the first iterations of them in XR weren't that good, so many people grew to hate them. Also, we don't have much gameplay with them either. We can't disrupt them like the Freelancer type Trade lanes. So they're just there, I guess. Until Egosoft (or some really good modders) can make something more with them.

[Pesanur]

the Xenon are also called 'borderline sentient'. So Egosoft could theoretically create sentient Xenon if they wanted to (?).

Don't remember correctly, but, isn't in X3 TC a plot where we need to ask for aid to a fully sentient Terraformer mothership to help to stop another Terraformer mothership that have been infected with a virus by the same mad guy that also infected the mothership in Aldrin?

[Flippi]

Don't remember correctly, but, isn't in X3 TC a plot where we need to ask for aid to a fully sentient Terraformer mothership to help to stop another Terraformer mothership that have been infected with a virus by the same mad guy that also infected the mothership in Aldrin?

Yeah, I remember playing this plot once or twice. It's quite along time ago. It even was the CPU ship #efaa if I remember correctly. And the other CPU ship was called #cafe I think.

[Axeface]

This could change/be retconned due to the gate shutdown. I saw rumours that the intended lore is that the gate network shutdown and the following reorganisation was due to something the inhabitants of the universe were doing? As if something is still controlling them and whoever/whatever that is has full control over whether the races can use the gates/jump technology at all. Jump drives stopped working because they could no longer link to the gates. If egosoft dont want jumping without gates they can do so.

I haven't seen any rumours in that regard. Current lore has it, that the Old ones shut down the gate network due to the rampant Xenon spreading too quickly. It's supposed to slow them down. In older game material, the Xenon are also called 'borderline sentient'. So Egosoft could theoretically create sentient Xenon if they wanted to (?).

But with anything regarding these kind of lore bits, they might not be true. From what I read about the X novels, some state that the Solar system has the Quantum belt around the Oort Cloud, preventing any use of jump drives in and out of the Sol system. And we all know that TC and later games allowed players to use jump drives anyway.... So the lore as stated in novels or in background material might not be the same as you see it in the games.

Accelerators and highways yes (I happen to love these features, because they bring structure to a system. But for some reason a lot of people hate them...).

I also like them. They reminded me of Freelancer in a good way. But sadly, the first iterations of them in XR weren't that good, so many people grew to hate them. Also, we don't have much gameplay with them either. We can't disrupt them like the Freelancer type Trade lanes. So they're just there, I guess. Until Egosoft (or some really good modders) can make something more with them.

Sorry if it wasnt clear but I regard xenon as inhabitants of the gate network, so what you said about the xenon may very well be the rumour I heard. I think this is really interesting and the perfect thing for egosoft to build upon and make actual gameplay limitations with. Jumpdrives should not return imo, and this is the perfect lore reason for it.
Xenon could evolve more, we saw a change with branch 9. Im not so sure how cool it would be though. There is already so much about the current races that could be expanded before new changes are made, and entire MISSING races... just basic things fleshing out the current races for me would be far more impactful than making new xenon. For example their languages, why do they lip sync in english? Why do their ships have arabic numeral IDs and english writing all over them? Things like this are really important to me and no thought has been put into them.

As for highways and early versions of XR, I preferred the early versions of highways where you had multiple lanes... collisions in highways is something that absolutely destroys my immersion, I hate it. The lanes idea was sound, but general hatred of XR (due 99% IMO to it being broken, not because of design issues) lead to egosoft losing focus and confidence imo, and they ripped out good ideas in an attempt to fix things that wernt broken.

Lots of people hate highways. Me? I dont get it. I think the only way to make space interesting is with sector/system design based around highways and points of interest... the only way to give something structure, is to give it... structure. Theres no way to compromise. X4 has highways 'lite', a compromise. And by being 'lite' implementations they dont bring the huge benefits that systems designed around them do, like in Rebirth. Rebirths sector/system design is a masterpiece.

Just my opinion.

[Flippi]

Sorry if it wasnt clear but I regard xenon as inhabitants of the gate network

Meh, calling them inhabitants would be a stretch. They're really little more than a mechanical virus at the moment.

Jumpdrives should not return imo, and this is the perfect lore reason for it.

I see it differently. Jump drives should return. Maybe not now, as we don't really need them. But with the ever increasing universe, they become inevitable at some point. And with the way sectors are set up in X4, they'd have less impact on the game as in X3. Unless of course the people advocating for player owned/produced jump beacons get their way of course. Then it'll be a mess. Jump drives, the way they worked in the past games before the beacons were added, were much less problematic in terms of balance than many seem to think.

As for highways and early versions of XR, I preferred the early versions of highways where you had multiple lanes... collisions in highways is something that absolutely destroys my immersion, I hate it. The lanes idea was sound, but general hatred of XR (due 99% IMO to it being broken, not because of design issues) lead to egosoft losing focus and confidence imo, and they ripped out good ideas in an attempt to fix things that wernt broken.

I'm not sure which highway version I liked more. But the multi lane version from 1.0 wasn't that great either. Too much gimmicky minigame for my taste. Especially with the spawned civilian ships inside of them, which you had to evade.

Lots of people hate highways. Me? I dont get it. I think the only way to make space interesting is with sector/system design based around highways and points of interest... the only way to give something structure, is to give it... structure. Theres no way to compromise. X4 has highways 'lite', a compromise. And by being 'lite' implementations they dont bring the huge benefits that systems designed around them do, like in Rebirth. Rebirths sector/system design is a masterpiece.

There's also the fact that the first four star systems in XR were kinda badly designed. The highways were a bit too much of a rollercoaster, and there was not much to discover far off the trade lanes. Also, the transition between zones (not the sectors!) was quite visible and buggy in earlier versions. And don't get me started on the general layout.

Overall, I think X4's map design is better thought out than XR's. Even though you still don't find a lot of interesting stuff far off the sector center. But I also have to say I only got the first XR DLC. Never bothered getting the second one. I don't buy DLC's when the basic game isn't my taste.

[alessandrofavero]

I see it differently. Jump drives should return. Maybe not now, as we don't really need them. But with the ever increasing universe, they become inevitable at some point. And with the way sectors are set up in X4, they'd have less impact on the game as in X3. Unless of course the people advocating for player owned/produced jump beacons get their way of course. Then it'll be a mess. Jump drives, the way they worked in the past games before the beacons were added, were much less problematic in terms of balance than many seem to think.

Sorry for my bad English (translated with google)
I don't think we should reintroduce Jumpdrive ... (and, in my opinion, they never will) because it distorts the meaning they wanted to give to the new game ....
With X3 you had your own ship (I used the Phanter as soon as I could get my hands on it) and you practically never got off that, jumping to any part of the universe ...
the game instead now leads you to have fleets in key points and it is you (person) who jump from one fleet to another ...

[Flippi]

I don't think we should reintroduce Jumpdrive ... (and, in my opinion, they never will) because it distorts the meaning they wanted to give to the new game ....
With X3 you had your own ship (I used the Phanter as soon as I could get my hands on it) and you practically never got off that, jumping to any part of the universe ...
the game instead now leads you to have fleets in key points and it is you (person) who jump from one fleet to another ...

The transporter device we have works well with the current universe size. Because it isn't that large in terms of travel time. But that will most likely change with every DLC and new game in the future. The universe will get bigger, and at some point, you need a Jump drive to reduce travel time back to more reasonable times. And you need it to skip over certain dangerous systems unless you want players to suffer from more frustration. X3 was notorious with that, especially the AP war Sectors.

Additionally, the jump drive isn't just some random device from the old games. It is THE device that started the entire series. It's a plot point really. So not having it even mentioned is something quite odd.

[|K.O.S.H.]

Scripteditor

bod files

Controlling turrets by yourself

[adeine]

- Boron

- Factions, stores and stations feeling less like spreadsheets (by having better UI, voiced descriptions, and more personalised greetings/etc.)

- In-game station planning tools similar to the commercial agent menu

- X3 style keyboard shortcuts and navigation for everything

- Ability to have turret priorities and specialised settings a la MARS

- Boron

- Destructible subsystems for small/medium ships (at the very least, the player ship) with gameplay consequences

- In addition, less baked in functionality for ships and more upgradeable software that aren't an 'always check this option at checkout' like currently

- Ship reactors with a given MW capacity and output to be able to have more varied ship roles

- To add to the previous point, highly ship and and faction specific loadout options, instead of all S/M/L ships offering essentially the same except for number of hardpoints

- An interesting early game (ship/software upgrade stage -> trading/multi-ship stage -> empire building stage) as opposed to skipping everything but empire building. Now that there are custom/advanced gamestarts there really isn't much of an excuse not to have any

- Having more than one cargo type in practice

- XRM style bounty system tied into something like LIFE mod's NPC levelling feature with emergent "missions"

- Better collision handling with audible gameplay feedback that doesn't get stuck in geometry and working collision damage

- Boron

[alessandrofavero]

. The universe will get bigger, and at some point, you need a Jump drive to reduce travel time back to more reasonable times.

I think the solution is to have more fleets, not the JD, imho ...

1) more varied controls for the turrets
2) Specific TLs for each breed
3) Possibility of having the projects without buying them (stealing them ?, reverse engineering? ...)
4) Boron
5) BorON
6) BOROOOONNNN

[Axeface]

Oh, of course Boron.

Boron.

[Flippi]

I think the solution is to have more fleets, not the JD, imho ...

Depending on how big X4 gets, that might not be feasible. X3 was rather big at the end, so more fleets probably wouldn't solve much.

But anyway, what feature we really need back, is CODEA or something along those lines. I know, it's not vanilla, and X4 did improve carriers. But the difference between a fighter squadron that actually fights together and carrier that can do things like sending patrols and escorts automatically is much dfiferent from the current carrier gameplay.

Also, maybe the Tractor beam could make a return. In case a freshly acquired ship got shot up and needed some tugging.

Also also, Borons.

[Axeface]

Did I say we need the Boron?

[Diroc]

1 ) I'd like to see a return of the Unfocused Jumpdrive. (At least for fighters)
Dump the ship out at random anomalies (functionality similar to entering one now). 80+% shield cost maybe. Enough remaining for a boost and some slight protection if you are dropped into a hostile environment.
Research mission after entering an anomaly?

2 ) Personal sector (Terraforming mission)
Additional hostile sectors not connected to the main system. UFJD only access with anomaly (exit only) and UFJD option.
Terraforming mission to reconnect the sector (or chain of sectors) inactive gate to an inactive in-game gate after discovery of an inactive gate in the remote system.
A big fight for control of the sector with the Xenon (optionally from multiple sectors with productive shipyards if you can pull in docked Cap ships with HQ) or a dozen K's and an I for a single sector. (Plus fighters) if you have to clear the sector with just a fighter prior to being able to teleport in your HQ.
Return of the "Personal Sector idea from X3" via control of access through the new gate. Personal faction only. Gates only temporarily active when your ships use them or alternatively, with a UI that allows you to select which factions and ship classes can use it.
A default rename of the sector based on gamestart player character name. <Name>'s Jewel, <Name>'s Conquest, <Name>'s Victory or something similar by default would be nice.

3 ) Boron
Requirements:
An expansion likely.

4 ) System Override Software
Would be nice to be able to hack ship data leaks while piloting a ship, Maybe increase range a bit to get the data leaks buried in a station (Yes, they still exist despite being much more rare)

5 ) Cargo Bay Shielding (Reduce the chance of a successful scan)

6 ) Marine Training Barracks
Perhaps a Military Training ship with increased skill gain on the crew would be easiest implementation.
Active defense drone cloud while training pilots perhaps?
Active repair drones based on Service crew enrolled.
Regular launching boarding pods. (Self targeted) based on marines enrolled.

7 ) PSG (Phased Shockwave Generator) type Anti-fighter turrets. Good range but Inverse square damage based on range would be nice particularly for anti-missile.

8 ) Monitor window Top right similar to X3. (Perhaps with limited in system high attention focus around the selected item.)

9 ) Video Enhancement Goggles.

10 ) BoFu (Boso Ta has been complaining about the Chelt and Maja Snail diet as of late.)

Some of these would be easy to implement. Some not so much. Most, I believe are doable.
X4 is not X3 though I do miss some of the features and challenges.

[Ormac]

Map Information Services just to sell information on sectors (unexplored with connections or mapped with the important stations [Shipyard/Wharf/EQ Dock/Trade Station])
Target Monitor

[rubahax4]

Manually controlling the turret would be fun.
Dynamic diplomacy will add interest.
Aggressive Xenon will transform X4 from construction sim to space action thriller.
Realistic early game, where you can't find a team without a reputation, where they don't give the headquarters as a gift.
Construction of mining stations on large asteroids.
Rocket mechanics.