Love the game except for the diplomacy

[Midnightknight]

What I really don't understand is what does the dynamic relation system bring to the table?

Not being able to befriend every race? Launch AP, pick an Argon start and don't neutral your relation with the Paranid, done.

Being capped at +8 instead of +10 relation? What do I miss? Not being able to buy an M2? If only there is another way to get capital ships in the game, huh.

Large fleet battle? Forced to face an entire race? If only there's some sort of race war going on in AP, right?

Bulldozing a sector and claim it as your own? Sorry can't do that in FL either.


In the end, what we really get from the system are these: 1) crazy rep swing from mission & 2) friend/foe flipping out at any moment's notice.

The former takes away the availability of missions. Don't bother comming the stations if you are in a sector owned by a race you don't to befriend. Don't do ANY mission if your rep with the races can't take a major blow. They swing between -2 to +2 crazy fast.

The latter adds a huge amount of micromanagement. The X engine is not built for players to switch back n forth from being friendly and foe. We need to replace destroyed satellite, calling every military ships to calm down, hacking hostile stations, replacing destroyed stations. And what do we get from flipping between races? See above.

Above all, there is never a moment I go focus on other stuff without worrying about the system. I cannot do mission without worrying about their potential rep hits, cannot attack the Xenon without looking at where I'm at, cannot build a complex without committing to befriend the sector owner forever from now on, cannot send ships to explore the universe in case they wander into Corp territories. Even worse, there is nothing interesting to be gained from fight a race except maybe selling their capitals, and if the player is into that, they can, you know, just start attacking a race! Duh.


The gameplay the team envisioned: today friend, tomorrow enemy, learn to adapt quickly in this everchanging universe!

Our actual gameplay: **** my discoverer wandered into the wrong sector, 18 satellite destroyed, Split going from +5 to -2 in one mission, 4 out of the 5 corps hate me, red ships and combat music 99% of the time.


Again, if I want be an Argon/Boron fan boy and "YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BEFRIEND EVERYONE" I would have gone to AP and set the Paranid and Split to foe. Done. And about 30 hours in I'll flip the friend/foe settings, there, dynamic. What the system brings to the table is instability, hustle and micromanagement for the player and is a poor attempt to imitate Civ/Stellaris with X's engine.

In fact, the dynamic relation system almost reminds me of Mount & Blade warband, where kingdoms declare war at you completely randomly and 30% of the map will be hostile at any given time.

However, that is fine because:

1) the goal of M&B is to conquer everyone
2) playing as a trader you are completely unaffected
3) there is no leftover problems to fix after a kingdom turns neutral
4) you don't need anything from any of the kingdoms
5) you decide when this is going to affect you
6) you don't have 800 small properties scattered around the map that will become a target of attack

I could go on, but this is now a dynamic system is fun and funny at times if put into a proper engine.

I can't agree better than that. I was going to post why i'm going to quite playing X3:FL cause yeah it finally got my nerves, and all the people always telling you "Nah it's easy do that and it's fine" apparently never really play the game cause their solution never works.
The game was never designed for this and forcing it at all cost brings nothing good.

War Between Argon/Boron and Paranids/Splits -> Get around the universe and see those military Raptors flying around Titans without attacking each other, ok that's war. But see in Teladi, neutral space how the same Titan wil destroy any Paranid of Split trader. LOL yeah war.

Use agent to negate rep drop -> Alright this works till you hit the red with anybody, cause when it happens things become completely out of control, they turn red and even when you go back to green, you have to com' every of their ships to turn green again or they will attack your belongings and doing this makes your ships fight back and possibly kill them and send you back in red. So cool. It's not like there is a global behavior to set who is enemy or not. But every of your ship don't give a s**t about it. And then you have this strange thing, when an OTAS red ship is attacked by one of your tower in teladi space and for an unknown reason a response Osprey jumps in, RED and your towers attacks it. You notice all went again uncontrollable when you good old friends at +8 rep announce you you just lost a rep level you spend hours and hours to farm.

Don't do missions anymore, seriously, except missions for agents, you can't do any mission at all. You want the agent to help you farm your rep and negate the hit you will take doing the said mission to remain friend with everyone, cause you don't want to be red, see above. So you skip 3/4 of the missions and in the last 1/4 you need to check they are given by the right race! Cause even if you are in a Teledi space, pirates can give you missions that will anger the Teladis! You are a traitor for doing missions, but he is not a traitor for offering them and is allowed to stay on the station.

Forget about economy -> The economy is completely dead. Those relations + Xenon spam completely destroys it. Most traders do not makes it to destination, so they buy wares, are killed with them, so it's lost. Most factory are stopped and except if the player comes to feed them to life, they are simply useless. So you need to build everything on your own or almost, a TOA is really expensive and needs tons of resources from every race, special mention for those microships devs want's absolutely you get insane amounts and are built so slowly that the whole universe would need years to be able to get enough for a single TOA! I built one to try to speed up the process, upgraded to XL, but i consume all the e-cells and all the silicon of the region to feed the complex and even like this it's slow as hell. Mobile mining is bugged like hell, so no big help either. And i still haven't even tried to give the terrans the chips they asked AHAHAH

It's nearly impossible to understand -> Who is enemy of whom? Seriously, ok for the 5 main races it's pretty simple, doing things for Argons/Borons have negative effect on Split/Paranid and vice versa. But the hell with Goners, Corps, Pirates, Terrans? Seriously it's unbearable. I was friendly with splits and Paranids but Strong Arms was hostile, da f ..? Sometimes i help NMMC and i see my pirate rep going up? Aren't the traders and pirates mortal enemies? Why the f are terrans enemies of everyone? in AP they were hostiles only with Argons and Borons if i remember well! Ah but that leads to the next point i guess.

Sides aren't balanced at all -> I really think the devs don't like terrans and enjoys playing Borons/Argons allies, cause life is so much easier siding with borons and nearly impossible for terrans and Yakis. First the only resource you can't get as Boron ally is majaglit and rastar oil. Majaglit is only used for advanced satellites and you can buy some from teladis. So to be able to have all resources you simply needs to steal a rastar oil refinery and voila. If you are not friend with Argon/Boron, you can't have access to 200mj shield factory, no rimes, no space fuel, and forget almost all their ships. Cause Splits/Paranids special ships can be caped in space, forget about it for most Otas, atreus, or even argon ships. Too bad. I won't talk about the fact if you anger the borons too fast, goodbye PHQ, as if the games do all it's best to tell you "You have only one way to go". Also so many corps allied with Argons ... And Jonferco not even really a corp ..?