what i want in X-rebirth

[TRAT513]

The abiltiy to take over sectors (in someone elses name at elast).
immageine clearing a sector of Xenon and then inviting the Argon in, for a huuge relations boost. The nthe Argon build a outposts there and from there on, the civies slowly build in it (unless yo ubeat them to it that is).

Not necessarily like that, but the gist is that things can change in the universe. Sectors can change, even without player imput.
No magic respawning stations out of nowhere.

Just wondering whether the races will be the same. Your opinions?

[Lbano]

Just wondering whether the races will be the same. Your opinions?

I don't know. But I need the Terrans' militaristic superiority.

[TRAT513]

Just wondering whether the races will be the same. Your opinions?

I don't know. But I need the Terrans' militaristic superiority.

Agreed

[st0gey]

Personally, and i expect to be slaughtered for saying this, i'd like to see an end to jumpgates. Don't know why but i never really liked them. Maybe it's because as a former 'Elite' player, i know they're not necessary for this sort of game. There's just something very tedious about them! I'd much rather see the bright flashes of distant ships 'jumping' in and out. I'd also like to see the stations and other sector objects given a much wider area of dispersal within each individual sector. For me, the formulaic and often cramped layout of sectors and gates conflicts with the notion of vast emptiness, associated with space. It just makes me feel like im playing a game



To add to the immersion of the game, i'd like to see


A few randomly placed rogue comets and tumbling asteroids

Changes to the always-on thrusters on the ships! (not necessary in space!)

Changes to the external sounds (there is no sound in space!)



that's my tuppence worth

[Gazz]

One part of the game that's always been extremely bland:
Missiles

The only guidance system they have is... "seeker". Or not seeker.

No heat seekers, RADAR guided missiles, optically or IFF guided... there are many possibilities.

That's why all the ECM / missile defense systems (modded and otherwise) are boring.
You can script a missile destroyed... or not do it. That's the entire range of options.

Countermeasures don't work that way. They confuse and distract instead of simply scripting all missiles within 2 km dead.
An ECM should confuse a missile, making it fly in a straight line until it has "figured out" the ECM. Chaff / flares / decoys obstruct and / or offer fake targets.

Stealth properties of ships could make certain kinds of missiles ineffective against some ships, creating more interesting diversiy.
One shiptype might have a low RADAR signature, another a low IR one, the third have a visual cloaking device but be detectable with RADAR...

One missile type fits all targets is unbelieveably boring. =/

Missiles could be a lot more powerful but used more rarely, making them meaningful.
Meaningful missiles would in turn allow different ship roles like interceptor vs air superiority fighter, which currently, are meaningless terms. There are weak and there are powerful fighters. That's it.


Right now it's more like... hostile M3? Fire a dozen Wasps. You win.
An M3 can carry a hundred Wasps and launch 800 MJ of homing missile damage in no time flat.
That's probably not bad design but rather the complete absence of any thought or design.
Someone wrote the code and noone complained. =P

That missiles are cargo and ships therefore have huuuuge missile bays is just one part of the problem.
The "ready" launch tubes should be allowed to reload from the cargo bay... but very slowly. Like a minute or more.
Then launch tubes would start to play a role and offer another way to balance ships.
This would avoid utterly ridiculous and completely unbalanceable classes like M7M. They are either godlike (vanilla) or utter crap (working turret script). No middle ground, no balance.

First you must limit missile use before they can be made worthwhile.
Then you can have a space game that's not all lazer pew pew but offers diverse tactics and ship types / roles that complement each other.

I'd like to see something like the torpedo runs from Wing Commander. Those were intense...
Torpedos hurt like hell, which is a far cry from a 300k damage Hammer torpedo that will hardly ever reach it's target if the missile defense turrets aren't comatose.
In X3, a competent missile defense script can take out hundreds of those. At once.
That is not interesting gameplay.


Another possible angle:

Missile launch tubes have different size classes.
With missiles having a cargo class as they do now, this could seriously spice up ship differentiation.

M4 in a role of interceptor might have 4 M and 2 S class tubes.
M3 in a role of space superiority fighter might have 1 M and 2 S class tubes.

As a real world analogy, the M4 could fire 4 AMRAAM and 2 Sidewinder while the M3 would have rather limited long-range capability.

A fighter bomber, having an L class torpedo tube would be another possibility, as would be the Wing Commander style Broadsword with 2 or 3 L class tubes...
Give the M7M 8 L class (torpedo) tubes and you have one badass missile frigate, which is able to launch a devastating volley... and then is out of the fight reloading the tubes for a few minutes.
Totally different M7M class... and balanceable!


Missile bays in short:

• Missiles are not fired directly from the cargo bay.
  Instead, every ship has a certain number of launch tubes.
• Missiles are installed into these tubes like lasers are into laser bays.
• After firing, a launch tube automatically reloads the missile it had just fired.
• Reloading a launch tube takes time.
  A lot of time. 1-4 minutes, depending on the size of the missile.
  This finally allows to balance missile use for ships, preventing the 100 Typhoon spam "tactic".
  
  The missile's refire time simply has a different meaning now.
• Launch tubes come in different sizes, akin to the missile's cargo class.
  A ship can have a variety of different-sized tubes, as described above.
• The current missile firing mechanic stays the same.
  One key to browse through loaded missile types, one key to fire.
  If you have a missile type loaded in more than one tube, you can simply launch the same missile more often in quick succession.
  = Basically no change to the HUD UI. Maybe display how many of this type are ready to fire or how long til the next is ready.

Must. Have. Differences.

I'd like to see an end to jumpgates. Don't know why but i never really liked them. Maybe it's because as a former 'Elite' player, i know they're not necessary for this sort of game

The point of having jumpgates is strategy. To have a choke point in space that is worth holding / defending.
ELITE / Frontier did not need this because in those games, nothing worth protecting existed.
So there was no gameplay feature required to make it possible to protect "it".

If you had to protect a station in infinite space and enemies would teleport in from every direction there would be nothing you could do to protect it.
Jumpgates let the enemy arrive from a small area in space. You can mine it. Deploy lasertowers, ODS, protecting ships.
The fight now has a focus instead of taking place in a vague area of 4000 cubic km.
And that's only for a 10 km radius sphere! Space is big. Really big. Without creating artificial choke points, many tactical considerations become moot, which would be a shame.

it is a fairly expensive routine, but as your limiting it to in sector objects, and you can seperate it up, in shouldn't be a problem.

basically, u compute the straight line path from your current position to the destintation target, trace along the path until it intersects with the collision sphere of the station, then plot a way point on the edge of the sphere.

then starting from that way point, the process repeats until you reach the end.

then the ship simply fly between these way points avoiding all stationary objects in sector

Expensive is relative since only one WP at a time would need to be computed. Then the ship would have a lot of time to compute the next WP while flying there.

Problematic would only be completely unrealistic "dense" asteroid fields like we have in X3.
That would be a bitch to compute because you have very little safe space to plot a path between some of them.

But in principle - yes. Could be done.
Having to script that would be somewhat... inefficient... to say the least. =P
Too much math to parse through a script language.

[fchopin]

I would like exploration and something new in the new game.

[Gazz]

Well, that narrows it down quite a lot. =P

[bobxii]

it is a fairly expensive routine, but as your limiting it to in sector objects, and you can seperate it up, in shouldn't be a problem.

basically, u compute the straight line path from your current position to the destintation target, trace along the path until it intersects with the collision sphere of the station, then plot a way point on the edge of the sphere.

then starting from that way point, the process repeats until you reach the end.

then the ship simply fly between these way points avoiding all stationary objects in sector

Expensive is relative since only one WP at a time would need to be computed. Then the ship would have a lot of time to compute the next WP while flying there.

Problematic would only be completely unrealistic "dense" asteroid fields like we have in X3.
That would be a bitch to compute because you have very little safe space to plot a path between some of them.

But in principle - yes. Could be done.
Having to script that would be somewhat... inefficient... to say the least. =P
Too much math to parse through a script language.

I think the point I failed to get across was:

Of course nobody wants to script the pathing calculations - obviously this is a job for something written in a low-level language and implemented as a function.

The problem with the current implementation (as I understand it) is that every ship/missile in the sector does its own pathfinding independently, with the massive memory overhead that comes with hundreds of instances running concurrently. The current response to these performance concerns is to simplify the pathfinding function into the one we have currently, which is even weaker than the one Cycrow described.

A better and overall more controllable solution would be to implement a far more complex function to be run by one instance only, that manages all of the pathfinding operations for the entire sector.

In this way, we can take advantage of obvious performance hacks, such as comparison with previous calculations (example - repeated traders moving from gate A to gate B), scheduling calculations base on priority, and the most glaringly obvious perk of using splines to smooth out static paths for capital ship motion efficiency.

[StarSword]

Unless the Terrans decided to blow up their jumpgates again, they'll be in the game. None of the stars near Earth can supernova (as some here have theorized).

That is to say, they'd better be in the game.


I'm fully with Gazz on the ECM thing. Even the old Escape Velocity series had ECM. The way they implemented it there was, there were four different categories of jamming (the first two were usually designated radar and heat-seeking, though there were exceptions), and each missile has a jamming vulnerability value for each of those categories. To make a missile not vulnerable to a particular type of jamming, you set its JamVuln for that category to zero. Jamming outfits were treated as Always On, and essentially added a modifier to the RNG that determined whether the missile would continue to seek, or would go flying off in a straight line.

The WEAP resource also featured boolean flags that gave the user the option wherein if a missile was successfully jammed, it might lock onto the ship that fired it. A missile could also be set to be distracted by radar interference and asteroids (which moved, by the way).

Incidentally, though, X actually does have different guidance systems, at least in-character. "Image recognition" missiles are optically guided, and there are also heat-seeking missiles like the Thunderbolt: if fired "cold" (i.e. without a target selected), heat-seeking missiles will go for the nearest hostile object.

And I'd like for the remote-guided warhead to actually be remote-guided. As it stands, it's just a missile like any other.


As far as scripting, you need to be able to write scripts in, say, Notepad. Basically, an external script editor in other words, and one that doesn't trigger "Modified" tags on your savegame.

[AgamemnonArgon]

I'd not like to know the Commonwealth is no longer there, not the familiar alien races. They should be there.
Attractive looking ships please, are a must.
Everything buyable without doing stories or plots to get rewards.
Everything X Universe can already offer, without turning it into a shoot em up.

[StarSword]

I doubt they'll be gone, they've been staples of the X-Universe for too long. But I hope we get some new ones.

Picture it: a newly discovered series of sectors leading us to a race not previously encountered. Are they friends, foes? Technologically superior or inferior? Religious fanatics like the Paranids, warlike people like the Split, or something else altogether? (I'm hoping for the latter.)

[kotorone1]

Maybe you could have some big asteroids like in X2, where you had to maneuver inside a asteroid to find a hidden ship

seeing as im playing X2, please elaborate further i need free ships

[cnecktor]

I want no brackets around everything minimal ui hud clunking up the screen. I want nice looking cockpits. No more flying like your plastered to the outside of the window, it doesn't even have to be full cockpits, just give us something that make you feel the ship your in, like fast m5 to slower m3.

I know some don't agree with this, but I want to fly in to planets and fly on planet side. I want to have missions like that planet mission form x3r only from your ship view and collect resources to use in factories, that will make them produce product faster or make races addicted to my products. So I can drive price up or drive price down. I also like to see your ship get impounded if breaking the law planet side and also the ability to steel ships. I know seem redundant, but I mean like steel a ship while the owner is docked on a station or planet like in x2.

[SpidaFly]

Cockpits are even more obstructive than UIs though. That's why modern fighter technology is moving toward enhanced reality to help pilots see through obstructions in their aircraft.

SOME cockpit might be nice, even as a form of UI in an of itself. Like instead of the side bar popping over, perhaps you look down to your navigation consoles and what not. Other cockpit elements must be minimal as to not create claustrophobia and limit visibility. Having a full cockpit almost seems like a step BACKWARDS technologically speaking, "cool" though it may be.

Also, if they're going to go down that road, anything bigger than an M3 should have a bridge. Not a cockpit.

I would like exploration and something new in the new game.

Exploration along the lines of EVE (like I posted earlier) or something different?

I'd really like to see some sort of useful probing/scanning mechanic in this game.

[Catra]

My wants:

More stuff to do outside the ship, like say;

At a trade station, you can get various jobs to say, put crates of goods in the "right" area. Give docking clearances, maybe to pirates that want to take from the station, who may or may not give you your cut. >=]

Make personal relationships. Like say with the dock master at said trade station, do a good job get a raise.

Do a few favors for him, and find out if he's a good guy / neutral / shady guy, if he's a shady guy, then you can bribe him at any time to "lose" cargo manifests and forge new ones for your ship. If he's a neutral guy, then you need to do a lot more, and bribe him a lot more to do the same thing. If he's good then there's nothing you can do.

station raids. Take a bunch of marines / mercenaries, make a "game plan"(much like the rainbow six series), then blast your way in, distribute what marine / merc gets what, then get out before more heavier enemies arrive on scene.

A proper black market. =p

[tianlongprc]

My wants:

More stuff to do outside the ship, like say;

At a trade station, you can get various jobs to say, put crates of goods in the "right" area. Give docking clearances, maybe to pirates that want to take from the station, who may or may not give you your cut. >=]

Make personal relationships. Like say with the dock master at said trade station, do a good job get a raise.

Do a few favors for him, and find out if he's a good guy / neutral / shady guy, if he's a shady guy, then you can bribe him at any time to "lose" cargo manifests and forge new ones for your ship. If he's a neutral guy, then you need to do a lot more, and bribe him a lot more to do the same thing. If he's good then there's nothing you can do.

station raids. Take a bunch of marines / mercenaries, make a "game plan"(much like the rainbow six series), then blast your way in, distribute what marine / merc gets what, then get out before more heavier enemies arrive on scene.

A proper black market. =p

While that would be completely awesome I do not think that is going to happen. There only only a few games if any that let the player go from a space ship and do what you are talking about. I mean I love the idea and wish there was a game that could do that much, but at the current rate there are really no developers that are will to take the money and time to make a game that would be so epic as you are talking about.

Some day there will be a game like that but it will take a long time.

I also wish that there would be some kind of customization that you can do to your ships. So that my red squadron can look a little different from my blue squadron.

..... but I would just be happy with a good endgame empire building model right now.

[Dycor]

Yea,implement aspects of "Space Trader" in to X:R.

[sbfast]

I'd like to be able to run the game as a server so I can access my empire from my work computer, and so the mod community can build android apps which let me manage my empire even when I'm away! Well. One can dream.

I'd love to see less variant hulls but more additional modules for ships. Energy recharge boosters, shield boosters, afterburners, external hardpoints etc. Loads of things that allow you to tweak and customize your fighter, but force you to make decisions as you can't fit them all. Different races or even shipbuilders which specialize in different types of ship mods.

Also get rid of the fixed shield values, so different places have subtle variations on shield power that fit in the same slots but are optimized against different weapon types.

[StarSword]

Along the lines of what tianlongprc said, I'd like them to bring back a feature I read they had in X2: being able to apply an insignia to your ships and stations.

And I'm also thinking they need to separate weapon and shield bays from freight bays (why should a shield generator, laser, or missile be stored in cargo when it's equipped?), and ensure the AI will use any command the player can. This will make missile frigates and bombers more balanced. The former will force the player to think strategically and make every shot count (instead of filling a Gannet with Flails and Hammers and merrily blasting away). The latter fixes issues where strafing is considered "cheating" by some players (since the AI doesn't do it), and the fact that M7M and M8 are next to invincible when personally or remotely flown by the player, and absolutely pathetic in AI hands or OOS.

While we're at it, why not make Barrage the default attack setting instead of forcing you to go through multiple menus to find it?

And turrets should start rotating to face targets before the target enters firing range.

[Gazz]

And I'm also thinking they need to separate weapon and shield bays from freight bays (why should a shield generator, laser, or missile be stored in cargo when it's equipped?)

Like I said before, the important bit is that missiles must be limited or at least put on some sort of serious cooldown / reload timer.
Lasers / shields have been limited to predetermined slots for a long time.

Without that, missiles will remain either inconsequential or game breaking with no middle ground.

Noone can properly balance missiles if the player can simply fire 100 of them when 5 won't work.

While we're at it, why not make Barrage the default attack setting instead of forcing you to go through multiple menus to find it?

And turrets should start rotating to face targets before the target enters firing range.

MARS has been doing both for quite a while. Definitely not impossible but takes more work than you might think.
(Sorry, but AI M7M were practically useless with their vanilla missile scripts =)