Something I need to ventilate to the EGOSOFT team

[Nanook]

... Egosoft bundle thier Bugfix patches with thier content patches, which are like 4-6 months apart...

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Your broad generalization is inaccurate. I quote from the announcement of the 4.20 beta release:

"The focus of this update is on improvements and fixes, so we're not introducing any new features with this release."

There are plenty of examples of Egosoft releasing just bug fixes and hot fixes for all their games.

[Mr.Killer]

Oh I stopped playing after the Terran DLC came out cause I have a few bones to pick with Egosoft and how they manage patch releases. Egosoft bundle thier Bugfix patches with thier content patches, which are like 4-6 months apart. So a new DLC comes out and doesnt get fixed for 6 months. So theres a new DLC in Q1 2022.. (I MEAN Q3)... and that will come with some more game breaking bugs that wont get fixed till 2023. (Im looking at you Broken HQ Bug from v2.0.) So I pretty much gave up on playing X4 till years after it stopps getting content updates.

Well, I already had a bad feeling about this unguided assault on things we were used to, so, rotating objects the way it was is changed, and noone at EGOsoft (that's why the capitalizedEGO) thought it would be wise to alert and explain ingame these changes... Nothing changed as a matter of fact, it is still a beautiful game with much troubles that are not addressed neither solved, and because these problems are sometimes so hard to elaborate for us players, they stay there.
I am out again, all X-games

When you say "You have to tell me why you guys changed the way it was...", I assume you're not talking to me directly, since I'm only a player/volunteer moderator, not an Egosoft employee.

As for the rotate thing, I use a mouse, so my explanation is to click and drag on the map to change the orientation, then click and drag on the module to rotate it. It takes a light touch and some practice/patience/trial-and-error to figure it out. Once you do, the cursing should stop.

You guys, obviously EGOSOFT, but hey, they are not here all the time (assuming they even do once or twice) I did not mean you, but you already knew that. The mouse is what I use, in the past, present and future, but if rotating an object 9 months ago only could be rotate at the horizontal axis and now the same action it only rotates over another axis, that makes me curse, because a node with 4 attachable points for one of the tree extenders (God, i just forgot all them names) short medium and large, you know, to keep factories apart from another, when there are four attachables, and you place one without ever doing a thing with it, and the second I want to rotate it so that I can get it 90 degrees horizontally on the second point of attachment, and all it does is letting it rotate over the axis I DO NOT NEED! So in a nuttshell...... Bad programming from the marvelous guys at EGOSOFT.

[Nanook]

I really don't know what to say. I tried to explain how I get it to work, and I have no problem rotating any module into any position I need. It does take a bit of fiddling to figure out, but it really does work.

[Mr.Killer]

I really don't know what to say. I tried to explain how I get it to work, and I have no problem rotating any module into any position I need. It does take a bit of fiddling to figure out, but it really does work.

How nice to hear that you have figured it out, never the less, I can't get it to work as it did before.
Rotation is in so much different stages now, and I really don't get why EGOSOFT did this change (why try to improve something that works!)
I took a break from X4 and wanted to cool down for a while, but yesterday I started it up again, went to stationbuilding this time and found myself stuck in the same rotation problem.
If you put a smartphone on a table, try to move it or rotate it with just one finger, that plane of movement is what I need with support modules, instead it rotates like it floats in space. I can not get it right anymore. Why is there noone out there who has this same problem?
Is it in combination with holding a key pressed? a second or third mousebutton? anything? just to get these support modules, you know the ones that makes a space between two modules and are in three lenghts. I am not talking about all the other modules that are not rotatable but only on a horizontal level, like the smartphone idea with one finger. If you still can not understand what my problem is, take a four point extension module and place on all four ends an extension and see for yourself.
This I find remarkable too:https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence ... Management
It says Missing Information:
Mostly correct for 4.20 but the station building menu has since changed somewhat since 4.10.
So they admit something has changed, only no one knows how to deal with this, and seeing this is from EGOSOFT, the dumbasses who changed it, did not took the curtesy to give a full disclosure of the changes, so here I am, I can not do what I used to do with module extensions, can you????

[Rei Ayanami]

I took a break from X4 and wanted to cool down for a while, but yesterday I started it up again, went to stationbuilding this time and found myself stuck in the same rotation problem.
If you put a smartphone on a table, try to move it or rotate it with just one finger, that plane of movement is what I need with support modules, instead it rotates like it floats in space. I can not get it right anymore. Why is there noone out there who has this same problem?

You are rotating around the axis your camera is facing. So if you want to rotate a module like as if it was on a table, do this:

1. rotate camera so you look straight "down", aka now the axis around which you rotate is now the up-down axis, aka you rotate the module as if it was on a table
2. select module you want to rotate
2. hold right mouse button and rotate it

It is a but awkward that the rotation axis is tied to the camera orientation. Personally I'd rather have a rotation gizmo like all 3d modelling applications have, such as this, where we can rotate a module regardless of our camera orientation, but considering we were not able to rotate modules at all around the other two axis before I'd gladly take the current solution until an improvement can be made.

[jlehtone]

There are basically two approaches to rotation.

One is that we have fixed axes (of rotation) and angles around those axes. The order of rotation operations is fixed.
Usually there are max three angles and we need to store only the angles for object, because axes are known implicitly.
X4 modules had previously only one angle. X2/X3 stations had two angles.
There are, however, more than one way to select the axes. They could be in "world frame of reference", or "object's reference".
Furthermore, some angle combinations have "gimbal lock", where there are three angles, but just two can reach the same total rotation.

The other way is to have one arbitrary axis and angle. More rotations can be appended, but they simply update the axis and angle.
Such rotation can be "free", not bound to "X-axis" or "Y-axis". The math operations are a bit different. (Been there, done that, got it wrong many times.)

If you have only one fixed axis to rotate about, then one angle is awesome. If you do use free rotation, then you need four floats (three for axis, and one for angle).

[Mr.Killer]

I took a break from X4 and wanted to cool down for a while, but yesterday I started it up again, went to stationbuilding this time and found myself stuck in the same rotation problem.
If you put a smartphone on a table, try to move it or rotate it with just one finger, that plane of movement is what I need with support modules, instead it rotates like it floats in space. I can not get it right anymore. Why is there noone out there who has this same problem?

You are rotating around the axis your camera is facing. So if you want to rotate a module like as if it was on a table, do this:

1. rotate camera so you look straight "down", aka now the axis around which you rotate is now the up-down axis, aka you rotate the module as if it was on a table
2. select module you want to rotate
2. hold right mouse button and rotate it

It is a but awkward that the rotation axis is tied to the camera orientation. Personally I'd rather have a rotation gizmo like all 3d modelling applications have, such as this, where we can rotate a module regardless of our camera orientation, but considering we were not able to rotate modules at all around the other two axis before I'd gladly take the current solution until an improvement can be made.

I am so glad you made a good point here(the image you provided talks so much sense while we struggle and struggle...), I have been breaking my brains how to tell and explain this here, but you totally understand. Now it is up to EGOSOFT to implement a better rotation system for items in stationbuilding that is really needed.

[Zalzany]

I took a break from X4 and wanted to cool down for a while, but yesterday I started it up again, went to stationbuilding this time and found myself stuck in the same rotation problem.
If you put a smartphone on a table, try to move it or rotate it with just one finger, that plane of movement is what I need with support modules, instead it rotates like it floats in space. I can not get it right anymore. Why is there noone out there who has this same problem?

You are rotating around the axis your camera is facing. So if you want to rotate a module like as if it was on a table, do this:

1. rotate camera so you look straight "down", aka now the axis around which you rotate is now the up-down axis, aka you rotate the module as if it was on a table
2. select module you want to rotate
2. hold right mouse button and rotate it

It is a but awkward that the rotation axis is tied to the camera orientation. Personally I'd rather have a rotation gizmo like all 3d modelling applications have, such as this, where we can rotate a module regardless of our camera orientation, but considering we were not able to rotate modules at all around the other two axis before I'd gladly take the current solution until an improvement can be made.

I am so glad you made a good point here(the image you provided talks so much sense while we struggle and struggle...), I have been breaking my brains how to tell and explain this here, but you totally understand. Now it is up to EGOSOFT to implement a better rotation system for items in stationbuilding that is really needed.

It works fine I don't think you have full grasp on english its ok, but your rotate based on camera angle. Its annoying it could be a million times better yes, I don't get why I can't just alt right click to fip them upside dow, and right click to spin them but they did this way. Once you get use to it it works fine, just annoying still. But Egosoft is not the kind of company to fix whats not broken saddly, I love the game but yes I do wish many many days Electronic Arts or Parodox would challange X for this rather unique tiny genre that is pretty much this game and what Starpoint Gemini Warlords lol.

[Mr.Killer]

Well, they managed because of this 'not broken part' of the game to stop me from playing it. That is what happened. And if they throw this on the "Deutsche Gründlichkeit!" they need a dictionary, asap!

I am out! Not gonna deal with this shi...