[Request/Suggestion] De-arcadifying an X3, sort of global convesrion

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.Nx
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[Request/Suggestion] De-arcadifying an X3, sort of global convesrion

Post by .Nx » Tue, 7. Mar 23, 16:55

Hey sup.

As Farnham's Legacy kinda closes a gestalt with X3 series, and I do the same with some of my activities, i must say some conclusions of how i see X3 perfectly complete and having an immersion (that was lost due to trends and design desicions i find weird) meant to be there in my opinion.

I consider X3 still the best X series game even with release of X4, for example, X3 is much more reasonable in station management and providing information overall. For me X4's UI/UX overall looks pretty much like if they left it as is from development phase where it was used for internal testing. In the same time, they throw ship equpment right in player's face like if it is some character invetory of paid items in some modern FPS shooter, removing treatment of equipment as wares what was one of the best aspects of X games... Not to mention obsession with NPC pilots instead of autopilot commands and oveall effort put into walkable stations when X is not about that at all.. but lets go back to X3, as for me X4 was not even engaging

This post is just a bit of rant that will let me be free from it as i am quite creative person and somehow naturally see what can be improved or reworked to some ideal. So please don't mind my just registered account and don't treat this post as something insisting or really requested. Although, if someone having a will to mod anything like that will see points and conception i suggest legit, it would be great and i can also participate as 3d modeller or consulting.
Also, please read full list of changes to get whole picture of idea before arguing with some specific ones. I admit that implementing all of that may actually be hard and time consuming, but complete look will worth it. Work implies around X-Tended level of effort.

Okay lets go.

=== STATION CHANGES ===

1. A little revamp of production chains
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mbrkAG ... AQJLe/view
Nothing extraordinary, just putting stuff that was not used anywhere like tubes warheads and all in use, adding some little ore refining that makes some alloys used as base material for tech stuff. It is kinda weird that for example it is literally said in tubes description that they are used in shield production while in game shields are made of ore being hit by hammer i suppose, so new chains do nothing special except fixing such things and just slightly extends it to be a little more reasonable. When i started playing X games, i used to take a physical notepad and calculate my stuff. This has very low sense now and it is needed to turn it back at least to some degree making stuff less flat and obvious.

2. Increase amount of equipment stations and eq docks can hold to be same as station cargo hold value visible to player owning same type of station. Bring max amount of equipment to some reasonable average based on occupied cargo space - i mean, dock can hold, dont remember exactly, 200+ IREs while only but like only 16 HEPTs while they occupy almost the same cargo space?
This allows reasonable amount of heavy equipment in stations and docks like having more than 2 qtys of some weapon available. Even lets say 16 for HEPT is too little if we speak of dock pretending to supply whole race's fleet in some area - like argon in some region has 100+ ships, but dock carries 16 items for what like, 2-4 ships at bare maximum?

3. Enable equipment manifacturing and availability if it is actually common for its race. Most typical example is argon not having 25mj shields in ware list but therefore stick with them while such shields being obviously most used shields ever. So they basically say that argon relies on their enemies split for most essenital shield... 2-3 "meduim shield" stuffs are nowhere near to be sufficient for whole area. So here we bring all shield factories to all races with possibly some rare exclusions.
P.S. I know that this is as it is in vanilla for a reasons, but they are not actual really. We do return living universe here and a feeling that made us being hooked by X games, and at this point first of all we need to build a world that has common sense that is not specifically built around and for player.

4. Attempt to put crystals as real resource to NPC solar power plants. Put some effort in attempt to create really working economics. Frankly, now it is broken anyways and many docks and stations have "0" of almost everything, so not a big deal (we'll fix it later in the post). Technically all we need is to make sure that of production of # crystals takes less cumulative energy than # crystals make it, isn't it? And balance the amount of utilization of stuff in universe and outcome of spare energy.

5. Create some civilian stations in edge sectors that are not much a factories but more like multi-purpose stations like trading ones but also having some equipment and upgrades, acting like some distant civilian all-round outposts.
Make not all stations to be a factories, there also shall be some.. just living general purpose stations, that may or may not have few civilian-made-like ships for sale and reduced production of some food, maybe some interesing bartering offers and stuff, you know, maybe giving some civilian missions that other stations won't. Make some rare wares produceable or tradeable mostly on those stations like luxury foodstuffs etc.

6. Add some xenon production and logistics environment in their sectors. After all, they need to gather resources and build weapons for fleet somehow not just wander around. Make their sectors bigger and strategically built not just 1 station in empty space. Implies few factories models, few TS/drone models, some defence systems models. Their sectors shall look epic and their respawn shall be reasoned. Remodel xenon shipyard. Make their new custom production lines actually working like commonwealth ones just with bigger stations and less nodes. Enable some way of production of khaak and xenon-specific weapons.

=== SECTOR SPACE CHANGES ===

Rescale some sectors to have more free space with strategic elements rather than just small boxes randomly packed with stations. It is important to give some free space between gates for some sectors for better space perception and a room for new and player stations, other elements an overall aesthetics. A bit weird example, but if you have played Freelancer game - something a bit like that. To put some stuff for exploration.
Tweak old and place new stations to fit new eco chains and intended space atmosphere.

=== ECONOMICS CHANGES ===

1. According to stations changes p.3, revise economics to enable stable production and availability of race-specific weapons, shields and missiles needed for supporting/keeping active certain amount of fleet power per race in some region just with some missings. Therefore, ensure stable partial existence of wares on trading stations, docks and outposts. Not all of them should constantly be, but there should be certain degree of an action of buying and supplying them by NPC ships. Not scripted out of nowhere, but actual due to ecosystem natural performance.

3. On trading stations, enable selling (accepting by station) of wares (food and stuff, not equipment) that does not initially set to be there for player, exactly like guns and shields on equipment docks that are not meant to be there. Do not hide sold weapons or wares of foreign origin on stations, like guns or as said above, wares on trading stations. Remove reputation requirements for foreign wares and equipment if possible.

4. As game implies free traders of some race by lore and some features like bartering, not only station-bound NPC transporters that all look official shall exist, create some amount of trader ships that simulate player's universal trader habit and few of them to make more copmlex routes to carry more than one type of ware per run, simulate upgrade habit for such ships, ensure their variety of ship types, quality of equipment, "hired" escort and else. With some chance, for some time, leave them on stations for bartering (+p.5). Reduce amount of bartering traders on stations or limit bartering to trading stations, outposts and that new type of civilian stations.

5. Restore management command software from X3TC/X3AP bonus pack, as an alternative to 'station manager'. Remove hiring pilots from it. Its just an alternative to keep 'mechanical' way of things for those who love it. I mean, this is scifi, and if we already have some autopiloted cars, why can't we have autopilot there?

=== GAMEPLAY CHANGES ===

?. Idk, it may be cool to make a completely new galaxy map of sectors like in x-tended. Not sure about that. I equally like something in that and something i don't.

1. Making real use of new sector finding feautre and removing all fake-discovery, add more unknown sectors to the center and other parts of the map with randomly generated HSAPs by script to enable unique map in each game. If possible, also vary such sectors' interior and capabilities by ingame generation, as far as i remember, it is completely possible in builtin editor therefore can be used. Include all fake-discroverable unconnected sectors from addon instead a few random ones of them. Maybe add few (either of them or new) as already discovered but not very populated.

2. Disable all vanilla spawn and respawn scripts, they are utterly ruining all immersion. Reconstruct some of them with implementation of simulation of real shipbuliding and equipping. No ship or thing created out of nowhere. If it does, it must have real-looking elaboration.

3. Enable sector takeover of some sectors that meet specific conditions (not all sectors, major races cannot be defeated entirely) and by accomplishing certain requirements. Implement contested status and reasonable takeback attempts not just spamming ships out of nowhere, presumably generate amount and relative strenght of attempts based on sector value for 'lore-wise' strategig meaningness, trade routes and asteroid/planet resources.

4. Remove or limit explorers guild as feature. I think that it is made with quite a low effort.. like it instantly transfers a rewards to you, or even creating whole asteroids out of nowhere. Keep diary and related quest, keep kogarasu maru from both sides and other quests that do not imply explorers guild. If any and they are worthy, revise quests that imply it to replace it with somethnig else. If you disagree to remove guild entirely, fix points reward delivery from instant to simulated, but reasonability of this feature at all is highly controversial imo.
Remove "discovery" wares, add actual discoveries listed at Wares changes paragraph. Remove discovery points or hide them making it some pure technical value for some possible scripted occasions or contacts.

6. Add LFL as typical equipment on equipment docks, bind it to ship as regular equipment not 'player inventory'. Something like SETA.
6a(?). Increase complexity of LFL usage, add some combination with sattelites and advanced sattelites for valuable discoveries.

7. Remove that freaking xenon hub. Noone will provide such tech to a random space vagabond, let alone just ignore it hanging in the space while everyone can dock and claim it...

8. Restore availability of old HQs. Commonwealth or Terran depending of chosen start, not both at the same time. Ceate new quest for them and TOA blueprint that does not imply explorers guild. Make sure that this quest is actually interesting and hard. If pirates can build their TOAs, there can be some ideas, but core perspective is that not easy and does not imply random borons who share top end technologies with random people. Keep spacelab as some wharf with reduced storage and all, though make some alternative harder quest for it

9. Review a workflow of cargo bay hacker to prevent save/load exploit and make it a bit realistic overall. Add time factor based on weight of an item. Reroll chances per every tick (instead of single time on start) including ware worth and player ship's meeting of certain requierments in computation. Or, if that wont work, just at least reroll changes on approach and then after each steal. To not to make result same but to make save-load impractical and annoying.

10. Very important. One of the core ideas is prolonging early game as it was in earlier X games when you actually used to trade manually, revive that sort of roleplay and extend it with various occasions and adjustments.
Make sure that every little player step is actually valuable to him, return focus to process of achievement of stuff and reward rather than just farming more stuff. Please rever to Missions changes paragraph here as amount of missions and their spawn habit must be completely reworked.

No more blatanlty free valuable stuff. Every thing like finding 23% damaged empty TP should give a decent joy at early to mid game.

11. Revise some reputation requrements for equipment and ship purchases. Scale down speed/amount of reputation gained by actions that affect it. Revise gains to be bit more sensible, like killing xenon in teladi sector should not affect lets say terran reputation in any meaningful way on short scale because, realistically, killing xenons is more of a need rather than a way to gain some value in the eyes of teladi. Maybe disable some actions adding reputation after achieving some level of that reputation.

12. Simulate pirates demanding cargo from traders instead of just killing them. Including player when he passes close to them.

13. Basically now end point of the game is get M7m with huge missile complex and have casual fun wiping everything till it stupidly respawns again. We need to avoid this entirely. This is broken and just meh. Game is not about that.

14. Make factions build new TOAs cometitively not premade and maybe some missions against that. I mean, now you cannot build TOA to the sector that is supposed to be taken later by other faction and that is frustrating.

=== NPC BEHAVOIR ===

1. Disable all existing NPC entity spawns out of nowhere. Simulate NPC creation on shipyards that require actual equipment from equipment docks to be installed. Include habit and workarounds if no and/or not all equipment available at nearest dock.

2. Allow and implement slight or solid underequipment of NPC ships, counter "add default items to ship" effect, especially pirates, also border distant sector patrols and as the results of p.1.
Most ships can have lack or simplier shields and weapons installed with some sensibility based on specific ship role. For example, most valuable race assets like M7s/M2s/M8s/etc are less affected by that while pirate ones can use just what they can find and can have lesser guns. Police ships can have weaker guns and shields but equipped more like straight standart. Etc.

2a. Sometimes make NPCs buying stuff to upgrade selves and overall simulate NPC self-development.

3. Simulate NPC habit of buying special devices if ship role implies any. Better simulate ship roles, for example mining opertaions and other. Given new sector space interiors positioning, that should be cool like miners travel somewhere to mine, etc.

4. Adjust rapid response ships habit. I am not particularly sure how they work but make sure there is no spawn of them from nowhere as it is said in p.1, make sure they only use available jump energy, resupply it, and stuff.
Revive pirate attacks of early X games, create police counterplay. Do not call capital ships for small reasons.

5. Prevent NPC traders from suiciding into xenon sectors with random rare exclusions that match specific requirements and with a chance. Such exclusions also have a chance to offer a mission to protect them during the flight across xenon sector. This script also applies to new freelancer ships if xenon sector is theoretically in their way of current command. Variate and rescale it for pirate and faction sectors and take faction/relation system into consideration.
Simulate actual reasonable habit to avoid dangerous regions while leaving space for those who will to take the risk having fast ship.

6. Add new ships that do not belong to any specific race (although vary by commonwealth/terran/outlaw) that wander doing some random business. Just like 'civilian ship' but not factioned and not a dots.
Add dialogues for player communication with them. They can provide useful info like trading routes, existence of some interesing equipment or position of some valuable good, or involve player into something. Can give some rare missions, regular tasks or cooperation offers. Do not trigger mission icon if player is farther than random value between 2 and 6 km in heavily populated sectors and 4 to 20 in less populated ones, to simulate their thinking about contacting you.
Trade routes search mechanics for such NPCs themselves and possible telling to player.

7. Do not destroy any containers by timeout but:
- simulate freelances and pirates attempting to pick up containers that are valuable for them
- simulate militaries attmepting to destroy containers that shouldn't get into enemies hands

=== EQUIPMENT CHANGES ===

1. Restore Mk1/Mk2 and maybe some Mk3 variations for IRE, PAC, HEPT and some others.

2. Maybe add shield variations:
Within certain MW power range - may be not a classical shield, but a shield with higher capacity and less recharge rate and a vise-versa version.

3. Visual FX of weapons. It is kinda pain in the ass i know, but it is very weak now. Freelancer a 2003 game has much better weapon vfx.. well even X-tension has better weapon vfx in some ways than X3 frankly. I do graphics and can try to draw them, but i do not know how exactly they are made in X and its particle engine.

4. Revise some weapons. Also adjust few weapon habits and projectile visual effects to reflect their names, to simulate some level of scifi correctness and actually diversify some principles to make weapons more unique. Cuz like 65% of weapons now are just same stuff over and over with only difference in parameters. Technically this is fine, but not with the names they have. Like for example make railgun projs bigger, much faster and with some little explosion effect of armor penetration. Add some dispersion somewhere.. Phase repeater is garbage, PBE is overpowered, you know.

5. Revise ship parameters and weapon compatibility to make as many ships equally decent as possible so player's mental and self-imagined rp is a preference rather than straight up practical advantage, also mentioned in Ship changes paragraph.

6. As far as i've noticed, some weapons with fast refire rate have accuracy issues to the level where you miss 98% of projectiles with Mk2 fight software on...

7. According to ship changes p.2, delete M7M missiles.

=== SHIP CHANGES ===

1. And only 1 that includes them all.
Work on ships attractiveness for player. Fix every class to avoid obvious choices. Get rid of ships where some are clearly better - like arcinonyx, hyperion and kogarasu maru. Not delete ofc, but make other M6+s and partially M6s to be more like them too, with pods and all.

2. Delete M7M as a class. It is utterly broken and is a critical point devaluative of the game in general. Not to mention NPC's M7Ms are also broken. This thing is like a god mode and cheat after using which for some time game becomes uninstalled.

3a(?). Add some civilian ships with new custom models like garage-made style, that are not 100% (though may be partially) faction-stylized.

3b(?). Some existing ships' models are made with a bit of low effort basically slapping parts of another ones. If we'll find some 3d modellers, we'd try to fix this or make some new.

4. Fix freaking repair drones and give repair lasers to some playable ships. I have absolutely no clue why devs were afraid of this. Now you can have either spacesuit or half broken drones with carrier, but nothing in between. Having something in between is obligatory in this mod conception.

5. My personal some more specific ideas about xenon ships as i am sort of fan of them:

Given the idea that xenons sort of evolve and adapt overtime, make ~3 generations of their ships. Generation is not stated anywhere, its just a mental reference and reflected only in model style
Add older xenon ships an ability to carry prototype and other older terran weapons, remove newer commonwealth weapons, add newer commonwealth weapons to newer xenon ships and remove older terran weapons. LIke lets say,
gen1 can have older terran weapons and prototypes an has very limited amount of commonwealth weapons only like IRE, PAC, HEPT, PPC
gen2 has little terran weapons and have basic + very few selected newer commonwealth weapons; most of xenon are gen2 as they are now
gen3 has gen2 + xenon-specific weapons like PBE + prototypes of X4 stuff
Every class has ships from all of them, except maybe LX/PX has no gen1 because happened after it. J/K/I gen3 is extremely rare, like 65% capitals still old and undefeated g1s and are replaced by newer ones during the process of the game when old ones are killed, these new are like prototypes of X4 capitals. Some gen3-only Mk2's of N/M/L/LX/P/PX.

By the way, anyone knows where this ship is from? Google says it is from XR, but i've checked all the databases and haven't found it. Was it from beta but removed at release?
https://imgur.com/JSiXmGz

=== HQ CHANGES ===

1. According to Station changes scheme, replace resources needed for terran ships from commonwealth ones to terran ones, for example teladianium to hull plating alongside with new alloys. Adjust exotic ships resources and cost based on their origin, like adding hull plating requirement to xenon gen1-gen2 ships.

2. Rebalance time needed for production of ships and stations to look more natural as effort required, not linear scaling of base price. Adjust base price by the way in general. 4 hours for freaking huge equipment dock and 2.5 hours for little m3+ ship in the same reality, really? Maybe lower values of all m3+ ships as they seem too overpriced being not very different compared to m3.
Rebalance producton requirements both resources and time based on actual natural complexity and size/materials rather than linear scaling of base price. For example transorbital accelerator needs much less resources but more time, and much less ore than computer components because surface area is not that big.
Add and adjust some exotic requirements (check out Wares changes) based on product's functionality not dev-assumed 'rarity'.

3. Enable player to keep default 'human' way of things with use of pilots and station managers offered by default, or choose 'automatic' one that implies credits-less production and autopilot ship commands for station supply management.
Probably like that:

Automatic production lines upgrade I
Remove credits requirements of blueprints production, compensating it with additional cost of blueprint in resources needed for automatic equipment to function.
Additional cost is not a straight percentage of blueprint basic cost but it is taken for a set of resources that should be realistic for it and applies to some of them to a certain degree.

Automatic production lines upgrade II
Removes credit requirements for upgrade equipment, replacing it with realistic cost in resources that implies basic cost of thing plus resources needed for "installation job".

AI management system
Replace station manager with trading software commands from X3AP bonus pack. AIMS adds AIMS Control Software upgrade for sell at HQ that being installed to ship enables same exact commands from bonus pack software upgrades yet removes requirement of levelling pilots and do not affect pilots at all.

=== WARES CHANGES ===

Alongside with adding new wares mentioned in other paragraphs, only standalone change is revising exotic wares system.

Change spawn habit for quantum processors and focus crystals, remove premade amount, add few secret ways of acquiring them like bartering, debris and more, some respawning with time maybe at the same debris but with random unclear time. Add few more of such resources, not just QPs and FCs - i cant imagine on the fly, but something like Adaptive cores, Submaterial prisms, particle distortion elements, unknown devices or whatever. Add more use cases for all these resources including original.
It will remove all bizarre limitations of productable stuff while keeping it challenging. Also remove some weird cases like that prototype terran weapons use focus crystals but non-prototype don't. Prototype here by nature implies more complex way of acquiring a blueprint not that. Though, there is no problem if some ceratin weapon uses some rare resource.

=== MISSIONS CHANGES, tough one ===

1. Radically decrease amount of missions. They now act as instigating factors for farming and stopping actually enjoying a game as it was with X3 Reunion and before.

2. Change spawn habit. Do not spawn stuff for the mission, instead make search for applicable circumstances or create such circumstances inbefore.

3. Review mission rewards. They are too low at start, too big in late, and too much dependent of trading/fighting rank. Make rank a requirement for some specific missions but radically lower reward dependence of it.

4. Remove or rework convoy / heavy load transporters defence misson, it feels completely fake and ships do not even transport anything. And its barely completable because enemies just suicide into the traders.

5. It is possible to invent new types of missions and make them more engaging. Some may be mini-quests. Add more activities with flying ships and other space objects rather than stations.
Dunno, lets for a brief example say some special delivery mission for a larger distance, find a need for such mission like station lacking high-value resource or dock requires equipment from distant sector, covert supply of special wares or equipment parts, maybe require cargo bay shielding, with or without attacks under certain circumstances.
Or attack missions from parties but not that random go kill obviously specifically spawned dude but real contracts that target weakening enemies ecenomy. Balance target values based on consistency of competing those missions and reputation, maybe add some contract or agent status.
Closer to average level, make some of such missions requiring other player ships to participate in them, not by term but by complexity, also specify solo missions that should be done without noise or attacks.
Make player not also earn money with it but decide if it is useful for him in long term to do these contracts.
Make some mission types that are more like plots.
Add unique race appreciation bonuses if rep is high and a level in such missions is high.

6. Add mission cancellation penalty depending on what player gathered in this mission, for example wares from delivery and all.

7. Show mission icons only in comm range, or, if possible, in radar range of player property in current sector.

=== ENVIRONMENT AND OTHER SMALL CHANGES ===

1. Given new sector appearance, think of some new interactablae space objects, and overall improve exploration part of the game in some way. Idk, some pirate camps or treasuries in the asteroid holes for example lol.

1. Implement some cockpits mod if possible, but not low effort ones. Thankfully many ships share visuals of pilot cabins.

2. Work on boardcomputer sound of new items. Compile from existing ones and their descriptions. I think modern TTS engines can easily generate anything of that to record and use. Also fix some vanilla pronounciation and coupling issues.

3. If possible, on galaxy map, find a way to draw long lines between connected sectors that skip elements between them.

4. Spawn destroyed capital ship debris on the place of killed ones. Make recycling possibility by using TL or other specialized ship equipped with recycling drones. Drones 'cut' debris and bring them as ware to TL, those debris can be used in HQ recycling or sold at new recycling facilities, where they make specified amount of resources with set of random chances.

5. Slightly shift commonwealth TOAs appearance to look like they're made of commonwealth teladianium rather than Sol white hull plating.

6. Xenon start and fun hidden Broken xenon start.


I'm done, thanks!

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