Why we are frustrated with X4

[Katorone]

Plus having to allocate a turret to just Missile defence. I would much prefer that turrets target missiles as a priority when they get within turret range, then switch back to defending against nearest enemy.

Isn't the "attack fighters" setting supposed to do just that?

[Good Wizard]

The problem for me with X4 is twofold:

1) The game has glaring illogical things, and while some of them are entirely understandable and for the convenience of the player, they still distract and reduce the immersion. For example:
- Teleporting is really nice. There is a thread here discussing it already, so only: Why can only the player teleport? (It seems so, but Egosoft keeps quiet about it). While the player can at the beginning only teleport to their assets, they can teleport to assets of a Faction where they have very good reputation - so obviously the Faction has some control about it? Personnel moved to another location (station or ship) arrives nearly immediately, do they teleport or not? And yes, teleporting around the ENTIRE Galaxy is a bit strong. It is nice to hop fast into the center of developing things, but it is sort of a Pandoras Box - and now it is open, many will not accept nerfing it...
- Why does the player receive a reward if they destroy an enemy ship near a station (or in the sector with Police License), but expensive player assets which do exactly the same receive no acknowledgement? If I order a ship to destroy for example Khaak near a station, nothing happens. Why? (I understand, that this is necessary for balance and game mechanics, but it is really illogical. There should be better ways overall). I would propose a (maybe smaller) reputation increase at least, but no money in such a case.
- Why can only the player him/herself scan, and my Scouts, in a specific Scout-Ship cannot do this?
- There are millions of sentient people around in many sector - where is the passenger traffic? Why - with the exception of the small beginner missions - can neither player nor factions build passenger ships?
- Why is the players 'faction' (or whatever this is) the only faction? Should there be some competition?

2) The other problems are things which are reported/discussed often here on the forums or elsewhere, but never addressed:
- The player station (PHQ): Just now I had started a nice game (Custom, but without any research), so at some point I repeated the first mission from Boso Ta. The resulting player station this time sits so close to asteroids, that it is nearly unusable. Nobody wants to fly a slalom while landing. May be it fixes itself later, but now, while building the first dock it is just no fun. They want to teach the player how to build stations, is it impossible to find a clean place?? I do this every time when I build a station, despite it being hard with the 'build interface'. If you can call it that...
- Asteroids and stations built so silly, that you cannot use a gate without flying into something. This is really aggravating! Huge rocks exactly on top of highways, while there is no collision, it is just distracting. Is it really that hard to just delete these things (and try to keep some distance in the case of stations), when setting up the world at the start?
- Piracy: Despite having an extra DLC with piracy, still only the player can scan, and pirates activate the 'masking' in plain sight of stations, police, whatever, and it works. So while the Tides DLC has some nice ideas, it did absolutely nothing for piracy, it still has glaring logic problems.
- Still a mod is needed to be informed in a acceptable way about losses. Why? Look at the mod, is it that hard to implement it??

The points above are not the only things, just what comes to mind immediately. There are a lot of things which just needs polishing, because they are really good ideas, but just do not work right, in terms of the games world.
Also - and this is probably a personal problem - I really like the game at the start. You can fly your ship, do things, and so on. But as soon as you have several ships and stations (and the PHQ) the game becomes complex and hard to manage, and it starts to annoy me, because I cannot automatize things the way I want them, I need to use the built in mechanisms which are very far from perfect. This leads to permanent micro management. Or one accepts the things as they are, but this is hard for me. If a station sends the mining ship 4 sectors away, it may be fine for several places where the station might be, but in other cases you need to fiddle around with block lists to avoid your mining ships being in transit most of the time, instead of mining. And this grates more and more until I give up and -maybe- start a new game. I still like the freedom and the scope of the game, the economy and the factions, and so on, but the interface should be much better and it should be possible to configure much more. I can live with a default, which I do not like, if I can change it.

I am waiting for the next release, and yes I will buy the DLC, it is not that expensive. But I do hope that there will be more fixes and improvements. (I have the game from GOG and do not use GOG Galaxy, so I cannot try out the Beta, but this does not matter, since I do not have the time to really test it).

[Sturmer]

- Copy paste stats on medium turrets

definitely agree on that. Plus lacking ingame wiki/codex that doesn't explain why pick one weapon over another.

Missiles are my biggest gripe. Loved them in X3AP, but completely avoid using them in X4. In X3AP they had a good range of uses and worked well, even just the visual wow of how they launched and homed in on targets made me a happy boy ( easily pleased ), and being able to assign a monitor which tracked the missile view as it flew.

X4 lost a LOT of features over X3 series, good features that were helpful and we loved them. I loved making money through the stockmarket, for example. Honestly, sometimes X4 feels like it was purpose made for console players, thus simplified and lacking more complex stuff. It was the same problem with Arma3 vs Arma 2 (different dev ofc).

Just remember how long it took to actually get profit/expenses logs for ships and stations...

To make an effective unavoidable 3 dimensionally placed mine field

Was thinking on that just a few days ago. They should really make an order for AI so that we could order them to lay a pre-setup minefield in locations instead of having to baby them to drop each and every mine or lasertower. Or a logic/hotkey that would do the same for when we are in control. And definitely a hotkey for dropping consumables like satellites and towers so we don't have to go into Enter menu and thus lose control over ship and situation and even get killed.

is?
- There are millions of sentient people around in many sector - where is the passenger traffic?

I fondly remember X3 and it's passenger missions. But especially Lucikes scripts where you could set up cruise ships and buses to train your crew and make money.

[alt3rn1ty]

Plus having to allocate a turret to just Missile defence. I would much prefer that turrets target missiles as a priority when they get within turret range, then switch back to defending against nearest enemy.

Isn't the "attack fighters" setting supposed to do just that?

I dont know, I can't find any documentation on it https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence ... Engagement:
I presume all it does is attack fighters, as opposed to the other command attack capital ships. And attack all enemies includes both capitals and fighters. Defend sounds like it would be the one to include any hostile, but the wiki says that command excludes missiles, so it sounds to me like Missile defence is the only one that will fend off missiles.

[Katorone]

so it sounds to me like Missile defence is the only one that will fend off missiles.

You're probably right. I wish I remembered where I hear/read about it.

[magitsu]

X4 lost a LOT of features over X3 series, good features that were helpful and we loved them. I loved making money through the stockmarket, for example. Honestly, sometimes X4 feels like it was purpose made for console players, thus simplified and lacking more complex stuff. It was the same problem with Arma3 vs Arma 2 (different dev ofc).

Stock market = superficial minigame, not truly gripping mechanism. We are likely better without it if there wasn't any idea how to turn it into a truly meaningful mechanism. It's somewhat rare to see game developers kill their darlings (in X mini games like XR's talking to npcs for discounts) beyond what's needed to get the game to ship. Bringing stock market back would move the game slightly towards Tycoon type of games, when many are vocally wanting more space fighting.

X Rebirth was the "console X"
Arma 2 was more superficial than A3 (at least after Zeus), but A2 spawning Day Z was historical modding achievement

X4 is slightly too player-centric, but having storylines and accommodating slower playstyles leads to that. But mods can be more dynamic.

[Sturmer]

Arma 2 was more superficial than A3 (at least after Zeus),

Yeah no. I will laugh at anyone telling me that the A3, where if you suddenly stood up and started walking slowly under fire just because you got shot in the legs while crawling (while in A2 and OpF you would realitically respond to injuries), the lack of an actual health system, lack of campaign for years, lacking simple stuff mods had introduced years ago, etc.; was better than A2. A2 also had far better ACE, overhauls, ACRE, etc. IIRC, some of the files during development actually made it clear it was originally meant as a console game. Compared to A2 it was dumbed down and simplified.

And the AI, bad in A2 at times, in A3 was just atrocious. In A2 they would shoot you through bushes and and tree-tops, but in A3 they would try to shoot you through solid obstacles like walls and ground, like hackers in War Thunder. The AI were so idiotic they took minutes to board a freaking helicopter. The Operation Flashpoint from 2001 ironically is the best of the series in many respects, especially AI.

I bought every single game by Bohemia since OpF came out, but A3 made me swear to NEVER buy anything from them again, it was such a mess for a long time.

but A2 spawning Day Z was historical modding achievement

Day Z destroyed the community. The influx of script kiddies spilling over into other modes rather than just DayZ was the community jumping the shark. Before that the online community was small, but enjoyable and relaxed. That changed with DayZ. The first time I ever saw a blatant cheater in a game it was in DayZ. And, sign of the times, he was a mod. It went downhill after DayZ. Maybe Gamespy dying was an act of mercy.

[Alan Phipps]

Back onto thread topic please. Discussion of games other than X4 belongs in Off Topic or the appropriate X game forum.

[zakaluka]

Personally I think the game has improved so much in so many ways since release. I don't even have frustration with issues that remain at this point. If I encounter bugs I do what I can to document them, and then find some other thing to do in my game.

[Submarine]

I have had enough of the unfinished bare bones interface and stopped playing last year.

If one day my ships are able to remember their boost permission setting I will try again and not before. That is the most egregious symptom of X4s problems to me.

The first thing you do apart from mine crystals (spawning of which is a travesty in the way they all turn purple when you find a high tier) is gather a few ships and captains as an escort or odd job or satellite laying fleet. This is what the game sets you up for. But managing said fleet is a nightmare, having to pause and click every single attack order to disallow boost, having to reorder order queues one click at a time instead of go to top or go to bottom widgits, is just hanging players out to dry.

The last straw was torpedos not even working OOS. At that point there is nothing more to be said, it is not ready to play. I am not going to play it.

I am also not buying the Boron DLC as there is no point if I am not playing and it is something of a protest if I am honest.

Considered a Steam review but can't honestly recommend X4 when I have decided not to play because it is too frustrating, so am not writing one unless egosoft sort the game out.

I dont know what the fate of X4 will be, if it will ever be properly done.

With X2 I came late to it and egosoft had done a lot of work on ironing out wrinkles so it played reasonably well. I got the feeling it was a small team who could afford to invest time in the game and take pride in it. Now I am not so sure, I feel like they are under funding pressure and are once again cutting development of important aspects of the game like they cut cockpits and transitions from X3.

Development of X4 seems to be falling over itself to produce the DLCs but neglecting the interfaces and tools which hold them together.

I cannot tell if that is trustworthy laying of foundation which will be finished later or untrustworthy erecting of a facade which will just be left as it is and players swinging in the wind blowing the tumbleweed. So I am not paying more money until I see signs the job is going to be done properly. If it is not and egosoft are burning bridges as they execute on their retirement plans then I will just have to accept that all good things must come to an end.

[Meme Turtle]

I am frustrated with X4 because after all the years in development it still feels like a foundation for a great game rather than a finished product. Many game mechanics and game elements seem as if they were added as an experiment and left in an unfinished state just to annoy the player. For example:

• Ship explosion damage. I cannot recall anyone asking for this feature and its primary purpose is to aggravate the player by having him lose half the attacking fighter force.
  Or
• NPC level system. I understand the idea of the progression system for crew but the implementation is just bizarre: obscure and random delays in AI scripts instead of simple stat boosts. As well as blocking access to important scripts(like auto-trading) and allowing to train and assign crew one at a time cause you cannot have enough micromanagement.
  Or
• Ship/station interiors. Any immersion/wow factor those bring is neglected within 15 minutes of walking around and realizing there is simply nothing to do and severe fps drops act as deterrent from docking at a station ever again.
  Or
• Fully simulated economy. I swear it's only purpose is for Bernd to boast at venues how X4 has fully simulated economy and nothing is cheated and spawned out of thing air(except pirates/khaak but that's ok I guess) and players need "future" hardware just to run the game. I, for one, don't care if the world is fully simulated to the last atom or exists in a bubble as long as the results are the same. However, I do care that my game runs at double digit fps at all times.
  Or
• Fleets. There are different roles and you can experiment with different ship compositions except none of this matters and the most efficient way to wage combat is the death ball. Formations don't work/matter, carriers don't resupply, only universal resupply method works(and I haven't seen any fixes in patch notes), carriers on their own serve no purpose(so Egosoft decided to add special command just for them), no automation for handling/counting loses, constant docking/undocking/waiting for subordinates, etc.
  Or
• Terraforming. Which serves no other purpose than a literal, mindless resource sink and Egosoft would spend time doing anything but improve the actual late game.
  Or
• A myriad of other small and big things from mining crystals, mining nvidium to building stations and managing the empire.

But the worst and the most frustrating aspect of the game though is Egosoft not understanding how they want the game to be played and having a consistent vision across all game stages. Things that work at the beginning, on a small scale don't always translate well into the late game. Managing a handful of ships isn't the same as managing a vast empire and has different requirements for UI, scripts, and performance. I hope for X5 Egosoft performs a major revision of all gameplay elements and combines them into a coherent vision rather than the ad hoc mess of ideas that is now.

[Sturmer]

If one day my ships are able to remember their boost permission setting I will try again and not before.
click every single attack order to disallow boost, having to reorder order queues one click at a time instead of go to top or go to bottom widgits,

Yeah, I absolutely despise this boosting BS as well. So many times my ships got destroyed because Ego somehow thinks it logical that the pilot would keep the ship endlessly boosting and DRAINING SHIELDS STUPIDLY IN COMBAT!!! Instead of turning and fighting. Why do enemy AI actually fight, while our AI are braindead morons at 5 stars and do nothing but boost? I swear older games had far better combat AI than this newest game.

There SHOULDN'T be any boosting in the code for AI combat at all. Period. Ego needs to remove it and never allow it to return again. Much less have it as a freaking DEFAULT setting. I mean, WTF EGO?!

[Mightysword]

I know one of the main thing that contribute to my frustration with X4: the spacesuit exists.

[Alan Phipps]

Feel free to EVA/eject without it. (just kidding)

[chew-ie]

I'm not frustrated with X4

[Socratatus]

Its simply that the game is so awesome, unique and good that we want more of it in all forms.
It might look like frustration on the forum, however behind it is an immense amount of good that the X games gives us.
The frustration mostly comes from not getting enough of it/that we want more of it.

My frustration primarily comes from the 'human' NPC side which started so well but kinda stagnated.

I would like a npc system like in Watchdogs Legion. It's anot a great game, but it has an excellent NPC system where any npc can be recruited and they come in all shapes and forms and can even be customised.

[Submarine]

Its simply that the game is so awesome, unique and good that we want more of it in all forms.
It might look like frustration on the forum, however behind it is an immense amount of good that the X games gives us.
The frustration mostly comes from not getting enough of it/that we want more of it.

My frustration primarily comes from the 'human' NPC side which started so well but kinda stagnated.

I would like a npc system like in Watchdogs Legion. It's anot a great game, but it has an excellent NPC system where any npc can be recruited and they come in all shapes and forms and can even be customised.

This is a beautiful thing, to have eye contact with your staff and conceive of them as individuals. OK its fantasy roleplay but nevertheIess that is what games are and the graphics and mechanics shape the fantasy, like the words in a book, your imagination does the rest. I think that was a very nice feature of X4.

That is precisely why having precious people driving your fighters boosting by default, draining their own shields to zero and getting themselves killed and having no practical way to instruct them to avoid this, is not OK. Its deeply frustrating if you are trying to build a sense of humanity, for want of a better word, in the game then you have to see it through and respect the duty of care it creates. These are not pixels of drones, they are representations of employees.

If you have ever employed someone else you will understand the power that engenders creates a duty of care, both legally and morally. And legally because morally. Which reduces the megalomanic sense of omnipotence to obedience to the law and ultimately to becoming the servant and carer of those who you employ, to the best of your ability

What is it about egosofts employment terms and conditions which make them treat employees as cannon fodder and represent employment as a licence to waste lives?

That aint right. We need to be able to set defaults for boost behaviour appropriate to the ship our employees are piloting as an extension of this aesthetic of the employer-employee relationship and also to protect our own expensive property which we have entrusted to their care... it may sound nuts but it nuts not to be able to do this for the want of a scrap of code. I can't tell you how frustrating that is when you are playing with these contrary aesthetics clashing and exposing the flaws in the game.

What kind of template for their own future are egosoft making by representing the treatment of employees in this way?

is bad karma ppl

[jlehtone]

Its simply that the game is so awesome, unique and good that we want more of it in all forms.
It might look like frustration on the forum, however behind it is an immense amount of good that the X games gives us.
The frustration mostly comes from not getting enough of it/that we want more of it.

Yes, posts on the forum are more frustrating than the game ...

[Katorone]

What is it about egosofts employment terms and conditions which make them treat employees as cannon fodder and represent employment as a licence to waste lives?
-------8<-------
What kind of template for their own future are egosoft making by representing the treatment of employees in this way?

Games are not reality. Equating a game system with how a real life company supposedly treats their employees is a step too far.

That is precisely why having precious people driving your fighters boosting by default, draining their own shields to zero and getting themselves killed and having no practical way to instruct them to avoid this, is not OK

If you've ever employed someone, you'll know that you can't micromanage their actions. You'll get them to do their job on most days, but you can't control how they do it.
The case of pilots boosting isn't an NPC issue, it's an AI issue. But, if you're set on roleplaying NPC behavior, you can put the blame on bad practices that's become a superstition amongst pilots. Without empirical evidence to the contrary they just believe that boosting improves their survival chances.

[Sturmer]

The case of pilots boosting isn't an NPC issue, it's an AI issue. But, if you're set on roleplaying NPC behavior, you can put the blame on bad practices that's become a superstition amongst pilots. Without empirical evidence to the contrary they just believe that boosting improves their survival chances.

It's not an AI issue, it's bad coding issue and bad logics/decision behind it. The AI didn't just appear out of nowhere, it was coded by someone. And to be coded there was a decision made to write it that way. And whoever decided it should be like that made a bad decision. And that decision should be revoked. Boosting as default is clearly one of the worst AI decisions and a ridiculously bad combat tactic. More than that, it's a dangerous tactic.

I disagree with your last post, that's just speculation taken out of thin air unless you can provide an official statement by Egosoft saying that.

Anyone thinking on it logically and anyone who played the game even for a few minutes will know that boosting is the best way to get killed and not win.

Enemies boost as well, they can operate travel drives and adjust to your speed and shoot at you at the same time (all things that you can't do); but they're behind you while you're trying to boost away while draining your shields and guess what? While they're chasing you they're still shooting at you. They can safely drain shields because no-one is shooting at them.

That is a mistake that only the most green noobs to this game do and they don't do it for long, most learn quickly not to do it. Those who don't either stop playing or avoid combat like the plague. But it's basically what your AI does even at the highest level of experience because Egosoft have them do this due to bad decision-making.

FOR FIVE YEARS, despite all the negative feedback, they still haven't changed this. This most foundational aspect of game.

So, you have several factors:
- AI is draining shields by boosting which in itself does nothing to get it out of danger because enemies can boost too and are even faster
- in this way it can't use it's weapons against the enemy, not even turrets, so it's basically combat-ineffective
- the enemy is boosting after your AI, shooting at it
- AI is being hit, which drains AI's shields even more
- shields are being drained both by boosting and by enemy fire
- shields go down at at least double the rate (and at an even higher rate if there are more than 1 enemy) and then eventually there are no shields anymore and only hull left to take punishment
- end result: AI dead and ship lost due to flawed decision-making that led to bad AI coding

Flying and combat are the most basic aspects of the game, it's like Sector 0 on a computer. And if that basis, the literal foundation of the game is flawed, then the house is not strong either.

I once admired Egosoft, they made great games that they cared about. Sure, not a single of their games came out in a great working order, it usually took a few months to fix bugs, etc. (there was an old saying for X players: buy the game, but wait 6 months to play it), BUT at least they cared to fix those problems. But with X4 they haven't cared to fix the most basic AI issues in 5 years since early access. Instead they keep releasing new DLC and features, stuff that few actually care about. How many people actually do terraforming? It's a business model that I recognize from Gaijin, which made me abandon their game.

Right now combat has no finess or tactics and is compressed down into: give your AI a ship with most shields and most guns because it's too dumb to do anything else and then in combat go through your entire fleet and disable boosting. At this point carriers are actually pointless and a hindrance if you care about losses and losing valuable leveled-up AI (though I wonder whether those stars matter, cause the fighter AI at 5 stars flies as stupidly as at 1 star), the only ships that matter are destroyers and battleships.

I have to join others in wondering whether AI in X4 (boosting, fleet behaviour, bombarding, wings, etc.) will ever get fixed at all. Even worse, will this philosophy be transferred into X5 that we know is coming?

Also, leveling up AI SHOULD be faster in combat than by having them trade or mine (this is how it is in real life), but in X4 it's just the opposite.


And my final question to Egosoft: IS IT REALLY SO HARD to make the "do not boost" option turned on as default?????