[REQUEST] XL sized station building modules to aid performance

[alt3rn1ty]

I dont know if Egosoft has time to do this now, but this request is to aid the games overall performance, it was mentioned in another topic so may have slipped your notice, and I put this in Technical support because it is to do with making the game better for us lesser mortals with laptops :

Personally I would very much appreciate XL sized modules.
My station builds are a balance between what is necessary to produce what I need, versus performance of the game.

If one XL Storage model would replace 4 x L Storage models, I would use just the 1 x XL.
Because :
a) Less meshes and textures to render.
b) Less anti-collision flight calculations for any ship landing or taking off from that station.
= (To my mind anyway) A better performing game.

Performance of the game is always foremost in my station building. Right now my PHQ is the worst offender, because I primarily use it for Terraforming. It has enough Medical and Nostrop Oil production to support 34000 population onboard in all of the large accommodation modules, and other production modules I remove/add as needed for Terraforming. XL versions of all these modules (Med/Nostrop/Accomodation/Graphene/Storage etcetera etcetera) I believe would drastically reduce the FPS hit my PHQ incurs on the sector its in. As a result of needing to expand the PHQ for Terraforming, I mostly have to stay away from my own PHQ.

I mean the alternative is build more stations dedicated to individual products, plus more ships to facillitate trading to support the PHQ = Less overall game performance.

So I for one would greatly appreciate XL versions of all modules, to make the few stations I have even less of an FPS hit, on a laptop trying to run this game as optimally as possible.

One thing I have noticed since getting Kingdom End dlc, the game in Boron sectors performs really well. Even landing at Boron Wharfs or Shipyards is a breath of fresh air compaired with the clunky landing at say any other factions enclosed Wharf.

I havent tried yet but I am keen to experiment with using all Boron Modules to build stations. Besides the performance aspect, they also look a hell of a lot better than the sort of Lego bricks of all other factions (except maybe Terrans, but landing at their Wharfs is just as bad as all others). I thought with how good they looked they were going to be bad for performance, but I have been pleasantly suprised. Maybe if Boron stations used more modules they too will impact performance .. I shall find out one of these days

Anyway thanks for considering if you do.

[Alan Phipps]

This is not actually a Tech Sp issue but a suggestion/request, and so I'll move it to the appropriate forum.

[EGO_Aut]

But XL makes all other obsolete I do not use/buy S,M storage and habitats, same would happen to L's.

Instead i would find it better, not to build megastructures.

[alt3rn1ty]

But XL makes all other obsolete I do not use/buy S,M storage and habitats, same would happen to L's.

Instead i would find it better, not to build megastructures.

Well, yes XL (just like L) would replace the need for lesser sizes, if you are at the stage in the game where you can afford the bigger sizes and need them for the output.
My objective is not to build megastructures, but being limited to L size necessitates more and more modules when you get to Terraforming stage (or more Stations to support it) .. as previously mentioned in the OP

[LandogarX4]

Yes please, just make it very expensive to not make the L modudles obsolete in the early game.

[GCU Grey Area]

Nah, if they're going to add new station modules would much rather they added faction specific variants of production modules. Some combinations just don't look good together, e.g. Refined Metals production on a Boron station - bright orange production module with flames shooting out of the roof doesn't remotely match the bioluminescent blue aesthetic of Boron stations (the flames don't make a lot of sense for an aquatic species either). Similarly, often had trouble getting things to look good on Split stations - Refined Metals look fine there, however Advanced Electronics, Antimatter Converter production, etc, just look awful.

[alt3rn1ty]

Yes please, just make it very expensive to not make the L modudles obsolete in the early game.

+1

[alt3rn1ty]

Nah, if they're going to add new station modules would much rather they added faction specific variants of production modules. Some combinations just don't look good together, e.g. Refined Metals production on a Boron station - bright orange production module with flames shooting out of the roof doesn't remotely match the bioluminescent blue aesthetic of Boron stations (the flames don't make a lot of sense for an aquatic species either). Similarly, often had trouble getting things to look good on Split stations - Refined Metals look fine there, however Advanced Electronics, Antimatter Converter production, etc, just look awful.

.. Or add faction specific design in XL size?.

If they would work on them, may aswell do faction versions too.

I'm kind of just hoping they will help with the performance aspect of this request really.

But the more opinions the better, one day I will have a machine that will handle the game beautifully anyway so its just a matter of patience for me really. More faction variants for everything would be very nice if Egosoft have time left for X4 to do that, they already addressed Paranid hair dryers, and now we have phallic builder vessels .. What next

[GCU Grey Area]

.. Or add faction specific design in XL size?.

Think that might over-complicate it. Would ideally want faction specific modules to be a direct replacement for the ones currently in use on NPC stations. If they had a significantly greater production capacity than the modules they're replacing it might mess with the economy.

[alt3rn1ty]

.. Or add faction specific design in XL size?.

Think that might over-complicate it. Would ideally want faction specific modules to be a direct replacement for the ones currently in use on NPC stations. If they had a significantly greater production capacity than the modules they're replacing it might mess with the economy.

Yes, I think your request needs a new topic targetting aesthetics rather than this topic targetting performance for laptops.

[Zloth2]

I like the idea.

I really don't see this as any sort of balance issue. If you decide on "XL" meaning 5x, then a XL Field Coil module would require 5 times the parts to make, take 5 times longer to build, take in 5 times the raw materials, and produce 5 times the number of field coils - exactly as if the player had built 5 Field Coil modules. There may be some trickiness with how many connections can be made to an XL module, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same number could be used as with the smaller module. You might even make the blueprint come in automatically with the normal sized blueprint.

The only benefits to the player are better framerates (I hope) and a little less hassle in placing pieces.

[THE_TrashMan]

Just use the mod that increases storage capacity for all storage modules.

[jojorne]

One feature XR has is that you can upgrade the modules 3 times.
But the system is very different than X4.

[Halpog]

But XL makes all other obsolete I do not use/buy S,M storage and habitats, same would happen to L's.

Instead i would find it better, not to build megastructures.

thats exactly the point...
80% of all people who play have more than 5 modules of a production fab on there complex ...
u cant mass produce ships with 1 hull factory or 1 weapon factory...

but we dont need XL modules with a set stats like 10x all produ ced wares or ressources...
what we need is to be able to adjust HOW much a module is producing based on the workforce.
on this way we can use 1 production module and lets say let 10000 people work there. so they produce more wares as if there are 100 ppl working there ...
for example :
lets say a hull factory produces 100 hull parts with 200 workers.
we can adjust the price to buy and sell and so on. so why not adjust the workforce ?
we can drag a slider to a maximum of 10k ppl and the hull factory produces 3000k hull parts ( just as example )
on this way we need only bigger living quarters for each faction.
on this way we fix 2 things in 1 run ....we fix the fact that to many production modules are dropping the game performance to hell ...
and we fix the fact that the workforce,living room quarters needed workforce stuff is totaly unbalanced, because we wont need anymore 100 living quarters or more to get the propper workforce for a station

[Ketraar]

on this way we can use 1 production module and lets say let 10000 people work there. so they produce more wares as if there are 100 ppl working there ...

While this is not a ridiculous idea, there is a small note to make. Not requiring to build more modules means you are saving quite a lot of time and also resources (credits). Sure you would need more habitation and food but that would have to be balanced to fit. Now you just moved the problem from needing many Hullparts modules to require many Habitation modules. Unless you now also can "slide" how much workforce Habitation can produce, which makes my brain hurt on the full circle, but would end up the case where you just only ever need one module for each and my builder heart is saddened by that thought.

IN X3FL we added upgrade kits to stations, where instead of adding more stations to complexes you could invest in these upgrade kits which essentially would be akin to buy the stations but then it would just alter the production stats. This allows for the investment to stay the same but cut down on station amounts. To not just make it a credits thing Cycrow also added some sort of progress bar that needs to be filled for that station to unlock the ability upgrade, which made it feel interesting.

Personally I was never a fan of self-sustaining complexes and always thought its less interesting if stuff is concentrated in one place, having XL production would reinforce that even more, which is what makes me hesitant to like this approach.

MFG

Ketraar

[Raevyan]

Personally I was never a fan of self-sustaining complexes and always thought its less interesting if stuff is concentrated in one place, having XL production would reinforce that even more, which is what makes me hesitant to like this approach.

MFG

Ketraar

The problem is, that trade ai scripts are so bad that spreading out production to individual products. I‘ve done this multiple times by now and almost all ships fly around transporting 100 energy cells instead of selling full load.

[Ketraar]

The problem is, that trade ai scripts are so bad that spreading out production to individual products. I‘ve done this multiple times by now and almost all ships fly around transporting 100 energy cells instead of selling full load.

This is a myth though. Trade AI is not perfect but its pretty good and works if you work with it instead of against it. I just made a video showing one way to do wares distribution across the map with just subordinates -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ3YWJJI5kU

This was just a fun thing to do based on a "gimmick" approach from X3 (which was much more complicated to achieve without scripts such as CLS from Lucike).

I get that there is not much incentive to spread production, my point was that adding XL production reduces that incentive evem more (if that is even possible).

MFG

Ketraar

[Halpog]

on this way we can use 1 production module and lets say let 10000 people work there. so they produce more wares as if there are 100 ppl working there ...

While this is not a ridiculous idea, there is a small note to make. Not requiring to build more modules means you are saving quite a lot of time and also resources (credits). Sure you would need more habitation and food but that would have to be balanced to fit. Now you just moved the problem from needing many Hullparts modules to require many Habitation modules. Unless you now also can "slide" how much workforce Habitation can produce, which makes my brain hurt on the full circle, but would end up the case where you just only ever need one module for each and my builder heart is saddened by that thought.

IN X3FL we added upgrade kits to stations, where instead of adding more stations to complexes you could invest in these upgrade kits which essentially would be akin to buy the stations but then it would just alter the production stats. This allows for the investment to stay the same but cut down on station amounts. To not just make it a credits thing Cycrow also added some sort of progress bar that needs to be filled for that station to unlock the ability upgrade, which made it feel interesting.

Personally I was never a fan of self-sustaining complexes and always thought its less interesting if stuff is concentrated in one place, having XL production would reinforce that even more, which is what makes me hesitant to like this approach.

MFG

Ketraar

While this is not a ridiculous idea ahah thnx for that lol

the many hull part modules was just an example.the ammount of habbitat modules we need for a station is always higher to get the best workforce out of it.
no matter what kind of complex we build. we mostly end up by needed more than 20 of them.....
that alone already is a mess to be honest .1000 for an L sizte is to less already there should be 5k or 8k at least

ok lets say we have 1 habbitation module L size .. atm it can fit 1000 ppl ... now lets say we get a slider that can raise the ammount of ppl to lets say 5k or 10k ..
the slider could also be "dynamic" depanding of the ammount of station we build in a complex.. lets say we have 20 station modules. including energycells. and habitation modules.
on this way we could say we have 1 station that produce all. wares has an XL , L ,sm ship production.
so we get a max ammount of ppl in 1 habitation module like 5k or 8k ....if we have less station modules it dropps, and if we have more modules it raises

ok here is a better example : https://ibb.co/5WMd6T7
here u can see we have over 70 station modules to support 15 modules in a self sufficient station.
the biggest ammount is the habbitats and the medical ones ....
so for the dynamic slider :
we have 7 medical supply modules. lets say we build 1 module. and get a slider for the 7x ammount of workforce so they would produce 7x the ammount ( because of 7 modules )
ofc they would need 7x the ammount of ressources, but the cicle time, and hours overall time would be the same.the end output would be just 7x because we "shrinked" 7 modules into 1 ....
for 2 modules of a kind we get a 2x slider, for 3 a 3x slider ...and so on...
as for habbitats. the whole thing can be solved by just adjusting the space to lets say 5k or 7k

as for the cost u mentioned. when we build a complex in the builder mode.. there could be an option lets say via marking and rightklicking the same modules. to put them together into 1 module. that cost a fee that is close to the ammount as if we would build 7 modules.as morwe modules as higher the cost.

as for the progress bar u mentioned here :
IN X3FL we added upgrade kits to stations, where instead of adding more stations to complexes you could invest in these upgrade kits which essentially would be akin to buy the stations but then it would just alter the production stats. This allows for the investment to stay the same but cut down on station amounts. To not just make it a credits thing Cycrow also added some sort of progress bar that needs to be filled for that station to unlock the ability upgrade, which made it feel interesting.

this could be working as well if the "upgrades" affect the production ammount, on this way there could be one module that produce 3x or 4x more than a normal "untrained" module. ( ofc alsways included the x.. of ressources it needs than )

all this is not to ruin a builders heart, but it is to avoid the performance problem in a sectors with hugh stations. AND there is one more point. not all people have a good PC with good hardware. some might just have a minimum on hardware and can run the game for example only if he turns off everything .... such ppl would not dare to build a bigger complex because the game would crash already in the builder after 20 modules ..
so on this way even this ppl could enjoy a bigger complex and the effects of it. if they have each module just 1x..

[alt3rn1ty]

~ all this is not to ruin a builders heart, but it is to avoid the performance problem in a sectors with hugh stations. AND there is one more point. not all people have a good PC with good hardware. some might just have a minimum on hardware and can run the game for example only if he turns off everything .... such ppl would not dare to build a bigger complex because the game would crash already in the builder after 20 modules ..
so on this way even this ppl could enjoy a bigger complex and the effects of it. if they have each module just 1x..

This .

[Ketraar]

I'm aware of the intent (its in the title ), but the gameplay consequences are just as real and need considering no?

ok lets say we have 1 habbitation module L size .. atm it can fit 1000 ppl ...

This is a good point, maybe we should have a rethink on the balance of this.

MFG

Ketraar