XR vs X4

[Ketraar]

The "come first, serve first" idea is good for restaurants and bars, but for trade, deals are pre-set and pre-paid, like it is now and that is good as it is. Should we be able to fly trade ships in future (which I hope we do) then for the player ONLY I could see this working. Basically you'd have a remove trade as is and a "hands-on" for the player to fly him/herself the ships and you can then load the wares that are not reserved yet, either by NPC or remote player ships with deal queued.

MFG

Ketraar

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Rebirth also has the functionality whereby if the player, rather than his/her owned NPC traders, is near stations, they can find discounts and special missions for needed goods. Similarly, they can dock and chat up NPCs for additional discounts. Having trade reservations does not make player-flown trading pointless.

[Nikola515]

@Santi

Yep. But instead of manager sealing order ships would do it. Amount of materials in uneverse is still same so it would not run out. We just change how transactions work pretty much. Thats why AI that sends ships should be efficient as possible ;p

@Sparky

Ok. Now you lost me there.... Im talking about stations using ships. Not that would manager be smart enough to use fast ship. Yes small ship will get there faster but it's cargo is secure from point manager made that order. This this was point of this whole argument (ships should have bigger role )

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

My last reply was an addition to Ketraar's comment about a future where we may be able to fly trade ships, which Graaf had mentioned on the previous page.

You may only be talking about stations but I, and I think some others, disagree with your repeated statement that speed is irrelevant. Even in terms of station's trading with their ships speed can matter, IMO.

Even if we assume that speed doesn't help survival (questionable since all main game L Traders are faster than the Titurel and Marauder Phoenix), if my station needs less than a full load of a ware, the extra space in an XL is wasted and it has to wait longer for the ware to arrive. At the other end of the spectrum, if the entire cargobay can be filled, XL ships don't always offer the best storage/Cr (after buying crew, 5 construction drones and 15 cargolifters per hull).

XL storage/Cr
11.3 Lyramekron
25.2 Scaldis
33.3 Lyranea
24.7 Titurel

Rahanas storage/Cr
37.2 Bulk
22.7 Container
27.2 Energy
69.6 Liquid

(I don't have TO ship stats to hand; Sanahar, Lepton and Stryvoks have lower storage/Cr)

So for Bulk and Liquid, a Rahanas is more cost-efficient than classic XL traders. Whereas for Container and Energy, classic XL traders are more efficient.

From personal experience, I am rarely filling a cargobay with a single container ware and I doubt a station's trader would either. It looks to me like Energy wares only are more cost-effectively traded in an XL ship, and then only if the XL ship can be filled.

In terms of survivability, I haven't factored in speed or hit points but these are hard to quantify and can be left to players to decide on, alongside delivery speed. I'm not saying XL ships are worse or better than L ships but I am saying that since XL ships are not necessarily more cost-effective, the added speed from L ships is not an irrelevant statistic.

[Nikola515]

@Sparky

Don't get me wrong i do see your point and what are you taking about.... But in XR unlike in X3 stations have huge capacity for cargo. In X3 station would need to whole bunch of fast ships to keep it running while in XR that is not problem anymore. Having one ship or more will always keep stations running (in XR ). So having slow ship or fast will always do the job. Thats why i was saying speed don't really matter. As for lack fusion reactors this is made so player could make and sell them . If economy had everything what would be point of building player stations;)

[Santi]

It could work only for the player and his ship as said before, personally I think it could make trade too frustrating, but for Station managers will not work for several reasons.

Imagine you need 1000 units of Bio wiring, an offer is made, your ship Captain finds a station that has Bio wiring and goes and buys 1000 units, now while in the way back, a NPC ship will arrive to your station and deliver 1000 units of Bio wiring. Now you have 2000 units of Bio wiring that you may not need, the extra expense and your ship busy trying to sell that Bio wiring that is filling the cargo hold.

Another example, your manager puts up for sale 20 Cargolifters, your ship picks them up, and goes to deliver them to shipyard A that needs them, while shipyard A is sending a ship to your station to buy them up. Or it could be another ship delivering them before yours arrive.

That will create a slowdown in the economy that eventually will collapse it, solution, pay up front before delivery, and the deal is yours.

[UniTrader]

Imagine you need 1000 units of Bio wiring, an offer is made, your ship Captain finds a station that has Bio wiring and goes and buys 1000 units, now while in the way back, a NPC ship will arrive to your station and deliver 1000 units of Bio wiring. Now you have 2000 units of Bio wiring that you may not need, the extra expense and your ship busy trying to sell that Bio wiring that is filling the cargo hold.

Another example, your manager puts up for sale 20 Cargolifters, your ship picks them up, and goes to deliver them to shipyard A that needs them, while shipyard A is sending a ship to your station to buy them up. Or it could be another ship delivering them before yours arrive.

That will create a slowdown in the economy that eventually will collapse it, solution, pay up front before delivery, and the deal is yours.

Cannot happen in the Trade Script i am currently writing because my Captains reserve (or update reservations) of all Trade Orders before doing anything else, and this includes both Transfers (buying at remote Station and selling at home Station) because the Manager adds both orders to the Orderlist at the same time. And iirc EGO handles this the same: when doing a Trade run for the Home base the Amount is reserved at both the Target and Home Station at the same time and the respective reservation is cleared when executing each deal.

in short when the ship goes to buy the Ware its already considered as in storage at the home Station and Trade Offers are updated accordingly.

[Nikola515]

It could work only for the player and his ship as said before, personally I think it could make trade too frustrating, but for Station managers will not work for several reasons.

Imagine you need 1000 units of Bio wiring, an offer is made, your ship Captain finds a station that has Bio wiring and goes and buys 1000 units, now while in the way back, a NPC ship will arrive to your station and deliver 1000 units of Bio wiring. Now you have 2000 units of Bio wiring that you may not need, the extra expense and your ship busy trying to sell that Bio wiring that is filling the cargo hold.

Another example, your manager puts up for sale 20 Cargolifters, your ship picks them up, and goes to deliver them to shipyard A that needs them, while shipyard A is sending a ship to your station to buy them up. Or it could be another ship delivering them before yours arrive.

That will create a slowdown in the economy that eventually will collapse it, solution, pay up front before delivery, and the deal is yours.

Good point

They could always do what they did in X3 buy random ware and fly to Xenon sector I think they could probably fix that by creating large storage in shipyards for items like that. If shipyards have too many of something use them to make room for more. Building ship with 150 drones if shipyard is full. But this would only solve some of problems.... This just reminded me on that bug in OL when all ships wore loaded with wares and nowhere to sell them

[Ketraar]

@Uni
Think santi was referring to a supposed scenario and not the reality of the existing one.
Unless I miss understood myself.

MFG

Ketraar

[BigBANGtheory]

Maybe its just me but with all the gameplay elements, features and quirks from XR Trade is not one of those that stands out screaming keep me I'm great or change me I'm a disaster.

Sorry I know that's not very helpful, consider this for a moment though; if XR had your perfect solution to space sim trade do you think that would have much of an effect on its reception by the majority of owners? I don't think it would tbh

Imho Trade is a secondary gameplay element a foundation to support the primary gameplay of expansion and combat (whether that is defensive or offensive based on player choice). Egosoft has as far as I can tell spent a lot of time and effort on the foundation gameplay/simulation with XR and (trying to be kind here) ran out of time to concentrate on the primary gameplay elements the proverbial icing on the cake that everyone enjoys the most or atleast most people if not everyone.

Play around with trade make some changes and sinks by all means as long as the vision isn't lost on the big stuff.

[Ketraar]

Sorry I know that's not very helpful, consider this for a moment though; if XR had your perfect solution to space sim trade do you think that would have much of an effect on its reception by the majority of owners?

How on earth would anyone know what "the majority" thinks. Usually "the majority" thinks whatever people think serves their argument. This elusive majority is as abstract as lightsabers, yes its cool but no one has really seen a working one.

Imho Trade is a secondary gameplay element a foundation to support the primary gameplay of expansion and combat

This may be true for you, but I could not disagree more. For me X was THINK TRADE BUILD FIGHT, in that order, where FIGHT is waaaay after BUILD. The only gameplay mechanic not mentioned in the 4 core ones is exploration, which I guess could fit within the THINK bit and thus come as priority to the rest anyway.

MFG

Ketraar

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

@Ketraar: +5000 rep for the lightsaber comment/observation.

@All: To me X has always been a Jack-of-all-types sim and despite the apparent deficiencies in X-Rebirth it still fits that description and IMO all activities need to be treated with equal reverence.

From my perspective, the trade mechanics are better in X-Rebirth than in the X-Trilogy and are in-line with changes that have been talked about for the X-Trilogy. The only thing that would perhaps make it better and fill an apparent gap is for there to be direct player economy trading but all fleet/empire economy trading should have always been pre-emptively agreed transactions based (like they are in X-Rebirth).

The area that I think needs the most attention is predominantly the control of assets wrt ALL activities. We are not talking about just ship based activities but also station control as well. In the main, I am not talking about direct control of specific activities but rather giving us the facilities to tell the AI what we expect from it. Whether the AI is currently up to the job universally is besides the point, specific behaviours can always be (or at least should be able to be) improved via patches and/or mods.

[Graaf]

Imho Trade is a secondary gameplay element a foundation to support the primary gameplay of expansion and combat

This may be true for you, but I could not disagree more. For me X was THINK TRADE BUILD FIGHT, in that order, where FIGHT is waaaay after BUILD. The only gameplay mechanic not mentioned in the 4 core ones is exploration, which I guess could fit within the THINK bit and thus come as priority to the rest anyway.

Although I share your opinion about X3 with THINK TRADE BUILD FIGHT (defend mostly), I do have to agree with BBT about TRADE in Rebirth. It looks mostly as a secondary activity after FIGHT and BUILD, and due to its handling it really is just MANAGE, not TRADE.

How on earth would anyone know what "the majority" thinks.

We don't. But we do know that the majority of the people who purchased Rebirth do not play it. 377 last month vs 14664 on release. Or do you prefer 92479 actual purchases? The majority are the 98.7% NOT playing Rebirth after purchase.
True, not as fascinating as a working lightsaber, but I also like numbers...and statistics...

[Graaf]

... and are in-line with changes that have been talked about for the X-Trilogy.

When, where, with whom?

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

... and are in-line with changes that have been talked about for the X-Trilogy.

When, where, with whom?

It has been a topic of forum discussion in the past (I believe there has been at least one discussion where the orders based trading concept has been raised - would have been a long time ago though), similarly walking on ships/stations and planetary landings have been discussed too - amongst other things (e.g. having capital ship bridges with crews has been talked about since X2). I reckon all of the changes that have been argued as "not being asked for" in X-Rebirth have been discussed in these forums at one point or another since at least X2 if not before that.

The details of past discussions are moot though, what matters now is how things can be improved. Personally, I think they need to carry things forward from what they have rather than to try and shoe-horn in specific mechanics from the old engine. From the sounds of things, that is what Egosoft are trying to do (moving forward with newer alternate mechanics and not shoe-horning/retrofitting specific older mechanics).

[BigBANGtheory]

Sorry I know that's not very helpful, consider this for a moment though; if XR had your perfect solution to space sim trade do you think that would have much of an effect on its reception by the majority of owners?

How on earth would anyone know what "the majority" thinks. Usually "the majority" thinks whatever people think serves their argument. This elusive majority is as abstract as lightsabers, yes its cool but no one has really seen a working one.

Imho Trade is a secondary gameplay element a foundation to support the primary gameplay of expansion and combat

This may be true for you, but I could not disagree more. For me X was THINK TRADE BUILD FIGHT, in that order, where FIGHT is waaaay after BUILD. The only gameplay mechanic not mentioned in the 4 core ones is exploration, which I guess could fit within the THINK bit and thus come as priority to the rest anyway.

How? Simple really you ask, you listen and you analyse.

I'm gonna stick my virtual neck out here and say quite bluntly that THINK TRADE BUILD FIGHT are not of equal importance and whilst people have different preferences and playstyles I'd predict there to be a preffered or dominant playstyle.

Figuring out what that is and broadly speaking portioning focus to those elements accordingly would be no bad thing imho. Getting it wrong is a real risk. Whether you agree with player feedback, reviews etc or not isn't that important we all have a personal view on things and no one is every 100% correct, but if you take the time to listen I don't see people having too much issue with Trade. Some minor elements yes and some wider issues on personal trading but nothing major nothing that really justifies a strong negative reaction.

[Graaf]

Multiplayer has been and is being discussed too, but fortunately they didn't include that! And that capital bridge is mod only.

And I didn't see Egosoft give us polls about what we think they should do. They clearly took every brainfart we once had in the last decade and tried to make something out of it.

Sure actually building a station is progress compared to X3. But it looks like its still no replacement for an X3 complex. Problem with trade however is that the current system only works with the single ship limitation. It is not going to work with player piloted transports. It is a step back. Like the UI in X3 already was a step back, apparently it's even worse in Rebirth. And I know X3's UI is because people complained about not having mouse control in X2.

The details of past discussions are moot though, what matters now is how things can be improved. Personally, I think they need to carry things forward from what they have rather than to try and shoe-horn in specific mechanics from the old engine. From the sounds of things, that is what Egosoft are trying to do (moving forward with newer alternate mechanics and not shoe-horning/retrofitting specific older mechanics).

Sometimes you need to take a step back to go forward. And in Rebirths case that would be back to X3. There is not a lot that people like about Rebirth and going forward on the things people do not like, isn't going to get them back.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

The details of past discussions are moot though, what matters now is how things can be improved. Personally, I think they need to carry things forward from what they have rather than to try and shoe-horn in specific mechanics from the old engine. From the sounds of things, that is what Egosoft are trying to do (moving forward with newer alternate mechanics and not shoe-horning/retrofitting specific older mechanics).

Sometimes you need to take a step back to go forward. And in Rebirths case that would be back to X3. There is not a lot that people like about Rebirth and going forward on the things people do not like, isn't going to get them back.

That is where we will have to agree to disagree wrt the required progressive action - X-Rebirth was the necessary step back, and needs to continue going forward from it's current state IMO.

X-Rebirth was never going to be comparable to X3 (that much was obvious from the pre-release info) but a future X-Rebirth based title may get to that point (albeit with different mechanics).

[UniTrader]

@graaf

Technically a trade system like in X3 is no problem (no reservations, you buy the ware available at the current station) BUT if you actually do it this way you have a BIG disadvantage against the ships who use reservations because the big deal you just discovered may be taken when you arrive by a ship which arrives 20 minutes later.
or do you mean the drone ware exchange? imo also no big problem to solve - either restrict the player to smaller ships to pilot directly or disallow undocking until the all outstanding deals are done. (my preference is the former because the player is not the helmsman)

[Graaf]

@graaf

Technically a trade system like in X3 is no problem (no reservations, you buy the ware available at the current station) BUT if you actually do it this way you have a BIG disadvantage against the ships who use reservations because the big deal you just discovered may be taken when you arrive by a ship which arrives 20 minutes later.

This, they wont work together. And having the ability to pilot transports but only work with reservations is called TRANSPORT, not TRADE.