NEWS: X³: Terran Conflict announced

[Algoran]

Actually you can change the view distance in X3, there are mods that do it, for example:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=161316

[MadBoris]

Actually you can change the view distance in X3, there are mods that do it, for example:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=161316

Thx for the info, I try and keep mods to a minimum to avoid stability issues but good to know, I may check that out.

[Syndrome]

<very_happy>WOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

This sure brightens up my day.

WOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!</very_happy>

[roxy]

Fantastic news.I've played practically every space simulator game out there and i still love X3 by far.Looking forward to it with excitement.

[Wurtzel]

I think the burning questions will be: Will the Goners and the Paranids embrace Christiananity when they meet up with the all powerful Earth god's diciples???

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Question should be taken with a grain of salt

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[pjknibbs]

2 Xenon_Slayer:
Does X3-TC use some ships, effects or ideas from Xtended mod, or no?

He won't answer you--assuming he even knows the answer, he would be unable to tell you because he's under NDA, as are all people above level 3 developer status.

[TheLastHero]

Beam Weapons
Many games have tried beam weapons many have failed, egosofts way of getting around beam weapons was to simply not let the player use any.

Anyone who has played freespace 2 knows How beam weapons should be done.
How they work

They dont fire instantly they charge up

They target virtual point near the target and then strafe across to a second point on the otherside of the target.

They have a inner and outer edge, an outer edge that does small ammounts of damage but lets the player know they better try to get away and an inner core that WTF IM DEAD anyone unlucky enough to be hit by it.

The effect is that the damage they do to a target is based on not only the beam weapons damage but also the targets size which stops instant killing everything thats small and weak.


Strafeing
Computer pilots need to learn to strafe.

Weapons and Missiles effects.
bullet and missile tables need to be merged.
This allows guided bullets such as say an energy torpedo to flak that actually has a detonation area.. amoung a whole heap of new weapon ideas for modders.

Flak
Flak needs to actually ACT like flak, it needs to detonate at a random range near the target and be highly inaccurate damaging an area and allowing small damage to fighter groups/missiles.

Missiles need hitpoints
Missiles also need a minium arming range that they cant detonate when destroyed killing the actual person shooting the missle and making them useless.

Number of guns.
Not sure how this would be fixed because many people would cry, craft need the number of guns they carry reduced or changed so that specific points can only carry specific guns.
An example of this is a battleship turret fully armed with pulse beam emitters. Even heavy Fighters just melt instantly so they were given a extremly small range that normaly a fighter doesnt come into. As its mostly a problem on cap ships it could be a change just to them.
Giving cap ships light medium and heavy turrets and spliting the type of weapons between them. Then diffrent cap ships could have diffrent uses... carriers would have mostly light and medium weapons letting there fighter fleet deal with other cap ships and dealing with fighters/bombers themselves.

This would add alot of combat veriables.
The Argon m6 due to its turrets could be given light turrets(which house weapons such as PBE) they would be deadly to fighters but not very good agasint heavier cap ships.
So to tackle one you dont send in fighters but another m6 etc... while a split m6 is a anti capship craft and your best use fighters to deal with it.


Turret fire rates
Turrets on both player and computer ships only fire twice a second... even if the weapons they carry shoot far faster.

Groups
Groups such as fighter wings ETC need to be added in a easy to do fashion, mods allow it but they all end up being fiddly.

[Cervo-mix]

Is it just me or it doesn't sound exciting at all, excepted maybe for hard core fans ... ?

Just a pack of missions with a new scenario ?

I didn't like X3 since it was using kinda the same paleontological interface as X2, with the same cold and dead universe, where nothing happens, with the terrible mission system and log system... with always the same chatting with other pilots...

Egosoft devs should try to play other games, like Civ 4 or Oblivion, to see what a polished game looks like ...

[kotekzot]

scripts. look into them. if you wanted you could make the universe come very much alive.

[God-Demis]

How about putting back engine trails? This shouldn't be difficult!! Red for split, orange for paranid, green for teladi etc...
Then it would be wise to remove those brackets around the ships and stations, as they destroy the atmosphere. Make it as X2 was, but make the targeting faster, almost instant(I press the t key and the object is targeted at once, not after 1 second.


Opinions pilots?

[kotekzot]

there are engine trails, they are just not a rainbow anymore.

[Algoran]

i LIKE rainbows! all them pretty twinkly lights, streaming from gate to gate in a way that always reminded me of those arial shots of coruscant in starwars.

Also the colour was a quick way to identify the type of ship.

[tuatha]

Is it just me or it doesn't sound exciting at all, excepted maybe for hard core fans ... ?

Just a pack of missions with a new scenario ?

I didn't like X3 since it was using kinda the same paleontological interface as X2, with the same cold and dead universe, where nothing happens, with the terrible mission system and log system... with always the same chatting with other pilots...

Egosoft devs should try to play other games, like Civ 4 or Oblivion, to see what a polished game looks like ...

I guess we're just hoping (maybe unrealistically) that they will have listened to the criticism they got over X3 and fix the mistakes for this new one. They had a situation at the beginning where even the die-hard X fans were up in arms about the clumsy interface, lack of missions, poorly constructed storyline and occasionally bizarre economy.

They've had ages to take all of that on board and remedy some of these problems so there really won't be any excuse for failing to improve on X3 imo. I'd say most people are just hoping that the impressive engine and artwork will be matched in other areas of the game on this occasion.

I'd like to support them because there really aren't very many people making these games nowadays, but honestly if it comes back with all the same major faults of X3 I'll most likely be spending my money elsewhere.

[esd]

It's about here I should remind people that there's little point putting your ideas in this thread. There's little point putting your ideas in this entire forum section - they're extremely unlikely to be noticed.

If you really want your idea(s) to stand a realistic chance of being seen, you need to post them in Devnet. You can sign up to Devnet in your forum profile.

Be aware that the rules there are much stricter than they are here. Make sure you read them completely before you post anything there.

[pot]

Looking forward to this! Please make the game look even better with higher rez textures and features in the GF8 series, supporting multi-core systems and EAX 4 or 5.0 please! My PC runs this game perfectly with 8xAA and 16AF so there is alot of headroom there. Adding HDR and SM3.0 along with some other cool graphic features would be cool. I hope to see a mixture of new technology and fun missions/storyline.

I am really hoping they spice up the graphics bhut it's unlikely since money is made on expansions by not having to recreate the wheel. I play at 1900x1200 w/ AA and AF so I would like more, especially with next gen medium priced cards sure to be killer. View distances in the clear solar systems has always been an issue for me with X3 (wish I could modify view distance and LOD), I loved the ability to see long distances in the early X games, it added alot to reality.

Yeah I run at high res with everything maxed as well, running a Geforce 8800gt and 3ghz C2D so X3 flies, pun intended. I will keep hoping that some extra graphics polish is added to the next X3 installment.

[Jakesnake5]

Strangely enough, colored engine trails are NOT as difficult as you'd think.

I myself have done a mod that changes all the original but unused trails (they are defined, but only 1 or 2 are actually used, such as the smoke trail) to reference the same smoke trail definition that XTM uses for its ships (grey/white trail), and alters the color it uses in each.

Modding can acquire some VERY nice results. But, as you may know, it DOES take experience, patience and alot of practice with a smidge of good luck thrown in to make it work right.

[Atkara]

Btw, did you guys notice the new teaser picture?


Besides Saturn and 4 of it's moons, there are 5 ships, one of them being larger than the rest. I'd describe the scene as an M3, escorted by four M5s of some kind.

Their shape though, puzzles me. The first thing that came to my mind as I was looking at them was: "Terraformers"...

[BigBANGtheory]

If it has a new 3D RTS style sector map (like everyone wants) I'm in.

If it is just a story expansion, not interested sorry fella's game engine changes are mandatory for an X3 expansion in my view.

Engine changes are not only un-neccesary (afterall, not everyone can run it at full-whack yet... there's lots more oomph to be had from that engine), but changing the engine would make it a new game in my opinion.

Bear in mind though, lots of places would have bundled up Bala Gi, called it an expansion and charged you for it - so I'm expecting lots more from this.

Not changing the whole engine silly, changing the parts that blatently hold back the game as is.

I like X3, but it has some serious gameplay flaws which absolutely need to be addressed in a retail expansion.

There is huge potential left in X3, a new story is a small capitalisation on that potential.

[dains]

Oh, and **** multiplayer. If you want to play with other people go for EVE instead. I'd prefer to see all of Egosofts assets going into improving the single player aspect.

Anyone whose played EVE and X will surely recognise that EVE is nowhere near as good as an X MMO could/would be.

/agree completely. I hope this expansion gets people who don't want to pay a subscription, or younger people who don't have a credit card or want to use it, to get into X and avoid the useless waste of life that is EVE.

[holtmart]

oh my god, so f****** awesome!