NEWS: 2nd Twitch Live Stream on Sept 27th (20:00 CEST)

Informer · Post by **Informer** » Wed, 27. Sep 17, 22:31

Great presentation. X4 did already look great. The different stations look really cool. You could see a great difference with this new engine.
Hope to see more soon.

Thanks Egosoft.

Post by **Tamina** » Wed, 27. Sep 17, 22:33

Is the Stream going to be reuploaded on YouTube? The tablets from totally not my working place can't play videos in 60fps - sadly Twitch doesn't allow reducing video quality like YouTube does.

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Wed, 27. Sep 17, 22:38

Tamina wrote:Is the Stream going to be reuploaded on YouTube? The tablets from totally not my working place can't play videos in 60fps - sadly Twitch doesn't allow reducing video quality like YouTube does.

Answered on page one - Yes

Post by **Xenon_Slayer** » Wed, 27. Sep 17, 22:41

BigBANGtheory wrote:I'll have to watch the replay

It's already up on Twitch here and will be on Youtube soon.

16:15 for some sick camera work.

And yes, we need to sort out quality control options on Twitch. It's partially on their end.

Staja Bepon · Post by **Staja Bepon** » Wed, 27. Sep 17, 22:41

watched it on my phone, so i won't know for sure on big screen until it gets uploaded. but dang man this looks good, graphics 100% better than 1st vid. Station building is awesome too. i just hope I don't die before it comes out

monster.zero · Post by **monster.zero** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 00:38

Looks amazing! Keep up the great work.

A stream like this once or twice a month would be fantastic.

Skeeter · Post by **Skeeter** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 01:36

I really like the picture options like desaturation that was shown.

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 01:41

The way Bernd ends presentations always makes it sound as if he can't wait to get it over with

"Dont show too much, they will just bombard us with more questions!"

Feedback about interactables (e.g. ship seat) - i would suggest changing the solid green color. This "color it" style reminds me of games from 2000-2005 (e.g. Thief). A frame, or little icon in the center of the screen (to indicate an interaction option) would be less jarring.

Oh and that poor Nova (?) NPC pilot that they displaced had to fly upsite down and tethered to the ship through space. Not sure if the pilot worker union approves of such treatments to employees...

Post by **Tamina** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 10:48

Sparky Sparkycorp wrote:
Tamina wrote:Is the Stream going to be reuploaded on YouTube? The tablets from totally not my working place can't play videos in 60fps - sadly Twitch doesn't allow reducing video quality like YouTube does.
Answered on page one - Yes

Thanks, missed that one

Owen, push the [Upload]-Button already

Skeeter · Post by **Skeeter** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 11:11

One thing that seems silly to me is having to double click basically to take over from the NPC pilot when you want to fly. As in the videos you click once to get him to move then again to sit and take control. Why not make it one click so you just click on the seat the NPC gets up and after a second it automatically puts you in and ur in control. As two clicks for two actions seem wasteful when 1 click one action saves time and does the same job.

Or is there a valid reason to do it twice to take over?

BigBANGtheory · Post by **BigBANGtheory** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 12:05

I found Bernd's discussion on the hostile plot/sector take over very interesting because it adds motivation and reward for players to go do it. In previous X games you've had the option of doing many things but it can feel bland if you start to question why you are doing it or if you should even engage with that gameplay element. Sector ownership (with some material benefits e.g. defense and economics) is a powerful motivator for gameplay imho. I hope it make it into X4 even if it comes later...

Vandragorax · Post by **Vandragorax** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 12:25

I just had a couple of queries, I dunno if anyone can answer besides CBJ

1) What were the green diamonds on the map mode? Looked like player satellites to uncover fog of war?

2) Will there be limitations in place during station blueprint building so that we do not block L/XL docks? It looked like they are big poles sticking out either side of a docking hub and at some point Bernd built very close to the top one, I'm wondering if that would render the port impossible for AI to close up to?

Overall great presentation though, it really made me excited seeing how things are progressing, and of course we still have a year left so lots will change till then

And I'm glad to hear Bernd answering one of the questions with "I don't want to commit to that since it's not available in the game yet" (I think it was about whether players could take over and claim sectors). Good on him for realising that it's better to say it's not available yet rather than just saying yes

Super excited for the fact that I need to be more tactical with fleet positioning now, i.e. I can actually camp a gate into a sector to ensure that my enemies get blown to bits as soon as they enter. Also as above, really interesting to hear about 'hostile plot placements' where you can build anywhere without a licence but the factions there might try to displace you. I like it!

Finally, I'm LOVING the travel mechanic changes:
- No jumpdrive
- Long highways to get from gate to gate
- No highways navigating around the whole zone
- Gate to cross between clusters

This keeps the best of both worlds, being able to travel around 'fairly' quickly using gates and highways, even with capital ships, but still feeling the enormity of space by having to fly a LONG way in some clusters/zones to get to things or explore/discover stuff.

It finally looks like there is some emphasis on tactics, strategy, and placement, not making the universe feel tiny because you can literally warp to anywhere at any moment and never have to travel, like in X3 or Rebirth. This is the same problem you get in any game with a "fast travel" mechanic, sure it's nice to save time but you can't possibly feel immersed or enjoy the journey.

I can't wait to build my first "military outpost" station right next to a gate forcibly blockading the gate from my enemies so they enter the cluster right into a hundred station guns and a fleet pointing at them

-Dna- · Post by **-Dna-** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 13:39

BlackDemon wrote:Finally, I'm LOVING the travel mechanic changes:
- No jumpdrive
- Long highways to get from gate to gate
- No highways navigating around the whole zone
- Gate to cross between clusters

I have an internal conflict on that. On one side, the Jumpdrive is basically what starts the development of the whole games lore (differente from the history, which is more bounded to the discovery of portals) and have it gone is a bit sad. Poor Mr. Brennan and his X-Shuttle

From another point of view, however, not having the Jumpdrive brings more strategy in the whole game: where to put stations, where to put ships, how to move them because I can't simply jump there with my Osaka and destroy everything

I would prefer some kind of strong limitations, like the capability to use it only in presence of beacons (so you first need to deploy a beacon before you can freely jump to its position), or only in certain sectors (i.e. far from planets), or again only certain very big - and expensive - ships can use it.

lostProfitssssArrgh · Post by **lostProfitssssArrgh** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 13:40

Everything looks great! The full screen map especially, is a huge step forward.

/Faith restored.

Just one unimportant question: will the smoke trails be optional without resorting to modding the game files? (That may have been addressed but I mostly skipped through the footage)

It's time to start saving for a new gpu...

Awesome work and thanks for the update.
-lpa

lostProfitssssArrgh · Post by **lostProfitssssArrgh** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 13:47

-Dna- wrote:
BlackDemon wrote:Finally, I'm LOVING the travel mechanic changes:
- No jumpdrive
- Long highways to get from gate to gate
- No highways navigating around the whole zone
- Gate to cross between clusters
I have an internal conflict on that...

So did I at first, but the lack of a jump-drive will also reduce the tremendous advantage the player had when it comes to trading. That can't be bad, especially if the economy becomes a universe-wide simulation rather than the illusion thereof. And in retrospect, it is true that the JD made the player completely OP overall.

Falcrack · Post by **Falcrack** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 14:09

If have a question, don't know if it has been answered yet. It appears that NPCs will be able to do station building like the player, and that they will be under the same limitations as the player in terms of resource requirements. That is great news. But, will they also have limited credits? Will they be able to potentially run out of money? What about offering missions to the player, will the reward money come from their account, or will the credits just spawn out of nowhere?

DaMuncha · Post by **DaMuncha** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 15:00

I'm sure someone will mod in the jump drive so they may as well add it to save us the trouble.

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 15:54

DaMuncha wrote:I'm sure someone will mod in the jump drive so they may as well add it to save us the trouble.

Core mechanics like this can be hard to add well to the game, because many things are hardcoded and you have to do sometimes ludicrous workarounds, most often involving "hacks" that break/ neuter the base function to "replace it" with your own. Which can create a rat tail of things you have to replace as well to allow for the initial loss of vanilla functionality.

This "fundamentalist" decision making is bothering me somewhat. Yes If Point 2 Point JD's are on ships, distances get reduced and importance of strategic ground barely existing - yes i agree with Owen there totally.
So it's not what we want - let's throw jump drives out... why? There are so many things that you can do to shape it to your needs. When you can only jump to gates, and when gates are much more uncommon due to the highway system, you are already imposing severe restrictions. You can also remove JD's from ships but create special stations that can "jump"/ teleport ships to another gate or similar station. Furthermore, there can be Inhibitors/Interdiction devices that prevent hostiles or outright everyone from jumping into the system as either fixed installation on stations or on ships - OR intercept jumping ships so instead of coming out at their target destination, they appear in the system where the interdiction device is located. Another possibility is to alter ships JD's so that in order to jump from a system, you have to fly into a gate of this system to 'access the gate network'. You can also increase cost of use. In X3 jumping cost was a joke... replace energy cells with crystals however and things look quite different. Change linear price increase with distance to exponential. So many things are possible...
ES seems to me to be quick to dismiss existing game mechanic in favor of another - instead of exploring it more deeply or merging it together. Jumpdrive has been a staple of the xuniverse. It seems silly to me that it just ceases to exist and gets replaced by some personell teleporter thing (which for some totally arbitrary and unbelievable reason does not work for ships or materials). They did it with SETA, they want to do it with JD's...

Crimsonraziel · Post by **Crimsonraziel** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 16:24

Killjaeden wrote:It seems silly to me that it just ceases to exist and gets replaced by some personell teleporter thing (which for some 'totally arbitrary' reason does not work for ships or materials).

The truth is, you are a Xenon in disguise and the teleporter actually is just a bitstream.

Don't call me conspiracy theorist, but did no one notice the reptillians between all those humans in the first live stream? I know they're up to something and they're hiding it from us!

ADMNtek · Post by **ADMNtek** » Thu, 28. Sep 17, 16:25

removing the JD is just stupid. in XR every L-XL ship had one and now suddenly they are gone why?

egosoft.com

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NEWS: 2nd Twitch Live Stream on Sept 27th (20:00 CEST)