The most important thing for you in an X game

CorruptUser · Post by **CorruptUser** » Mon, 18. Dec 17, 05:31

Ability to actually alter the entire universe through becoming an economic powerhouse; this means more than just lots and lots of profitsss

Oh, and obviously, ability to fly any ship I want.

While we are at it, can we have some gosh darn respect? If we manage to make it to X-Treme fighter class, if I see a pirate in some beaten up blastclaw, I should be able to say "hey, do you know who this is" and the pirate should immediately turn tail.

Hector0x · Post by **Hector0x** » Mon, 18. Dec 17, 15:03

This moment - when you're about to fight with your personal ship alongside the fleet that you built, equipped and customized from humble beginnings.

As long as this is a part of X and X alone, i will continue to play X.

Let's be honest. There are many games out there that perform better on the individual parts of this formula (space sim and strategy game). But none of them bring those parts together like X does.

JSDD · Post by **JSDD** » Tue, 19. Dec 17, 12:23

most important:

artificial life (by far!), the "intelligence" of npcs, the flight/fight behavior of npcs (including autopilot), possibility to choose friends/foes (playing as pirate/xenon), enemies with a bigger plan on how they build their empire ...

2nd most important:

beautiful, dynamic environment, possibly visible star constellations from the real world

3rd most important:

plots, dynamically generated missions that serve a purpose

...

least important:

walking on stations, "personal" interactions with npcs

zanosg · Post by **zanosg** » Sun, 24. Dec 17, 20:32

DJC wrote:
zanosg wrote:
DJC wrote:
zanosg wrote:As I have said. If there is no "classic mouse mode" for us with mouse and keyboards im not buying the game. I dont care how good it will be. Its unplayable for me without this basic function.
Would I be correct in saying that you do not want the ship to react like it does in Rebirth, but would rather have the ship react like it did in the previous games. No curser, move mouse - move ship? If that is what you mean then I completely agree I cant stand the "new" steering method most games space games have adopted as of late.
That is correct. I have given up on Elite due to this very thing. I cant even beat smaller NPC ships when in fights due to the ship being totally uncontrollable. I have made a mistake with Elite because I assumed that the simple basic mouse function would be available and Im not making that mistake again.
I completely understand, I am not sure how many other people feel the way we do on this matter. But, I just watched the most recent Twitch video "#3" and it does seem to show that they have incorporated a choice for this option. They call it "Flight Assist" apparently turning it off will give us the steering we are looking for. However they did also indicate that this is an option in Rebirth that not many people know about. I have not gone back to Rebirth to find out yet, so I do not know for sure if it is as they have indicated. Personally I would find it hard to believe that I would have missed this option in the first place. But the video does seem to indicate the return to the classic flight style you speak of.

Flight Assist only gets rid of "atmospheric flight". Its got really nothing to do with "Classic mouse mode" control. Im not sure about X4 as I dont really have any answers to go by. But in Elite flight assist when turned off would make your ship behave like a true spaceship, not a F16 fighter. So if you want to travel sideways you can or if you want to travel in one direction and flip a ship and still travel in same direction you can.
My concern with Classic mouse mode is how the "crosshairs" of the ship are tied to mouse XY axis.

Litreb · Post by **Litreb** » Tue, 26. Dec 17, 09:51

I hope there will be extra-vehicular activity, being able to leave the ship to make some repairs for exemple, or floating towards a derelict ship to try to claim it... that has alwas been a very important feature to me

siboda · Post by **siboda** » Fri, 29. Dec 17, 18:36

From what i've seen so far in the streams, there is no deal breaker for me. I got 100 hours out of X:Rebirth even, so i trust Egosoft to make a game worth the money in my mind. There are some things i would really enjoy though.

Immersive Boarding - I didn't mind how Rebirth did it, but being apart of that boarding process sometime would be nice. Maybe not in X:4, but eventually could be a nice feature.
Better AI - All AI overall, but especially non combat npc's reaction's. The way they didn't care if people around them were getting blown up was off putting.
Immersive Ship/Station Maintenance - I would like the option to make minor repairs and changes on ships and stations. Being able to graffiti my ships would be cool.
No Granny Faces - No explanation needed.
Better Voice Acting - Rebirth wasn't the worst i've heard, but a little more effort(or less effort in some cases) would be appreciated. Voice acting isn't easy, but I feel like a high school drama department could have put more soul in the characters.
Quantity of ships - The more ships, the better. Not to the point that quality starts taking a hit, but i want a very large garage and hard time deciding which awesome ship to fly.
Speaking of Garage - A garage to view my smaller ships.

Overall i'm super hyped for X4, keep it up Egosoft!!!

Snafu_X3 · Post by **Snafu_X3** » Sat, 30. Dec 17, 00:33

siboda wrote:From what i've seen so far in the streams, there is no deal breaker for me. I got 100 hours out of X:Rebirth even, so i trust Egosoft to make a game worth the money in my mind. There are some things i would really enjoy though.

Immersive Boarding - I didn't mind how Rebirth did it, but being apart of that boarding process sometime would be nice. Maybe not in X:4, but eventually could be a nice feature.

It's already been explained several times why FPS combat is unlikely to be a part of X4, but how about this for a compromise: you <player> leave the current piloting role you are doing to your NPC copilot. You can then direct your individual marines' actions via cameras (if marines' skillsets are compartmentalised as in X3:TC/AP), but only in a limited sense: you can control the strategy but not the tactics of a boarding operation

No Granny Faces - No explanation needed.

Are ppl not allowed to get old in space? However, the frequency could be toned down a bit..

Speaking of Garage - A garage to view my smaller ships.

Already confirmed in the video

csaba · Post by **csaba** » Sat, 30. Dec 17, 11:31

Why do people always want an added FPS component in X I don't understand.

It's like building a completely different game. Look at Star Marine for SC, merging those 2 will take ages and probably lengthen the release for another 2 years. (not including the development hell that IP is in already.)

It was already said that interiors will be toned back so no chance for that.

zanosg · Post by **zanosg** » Sat, 30. Dec 17, 15:42

CorruptUser wrote:While we are at it, can we have some gosh darn respect? If we manage to make it to X-Treme fighter class, if I see a pirate in some beaten up blastclaw, I should be able to say "hey, do you know who this is" and the pirate should immediately turn tail.

I dont think that should be done like that. I just think that M3s should stay away (keep their distance) from M2s, M1s, and M7s in most cases. This is due to a fact that M3s dont have a chance against any of those big ships, yet in X3 M3s just go on suicide missions attacking big ships. They should stay far enough away so that big ships weapons can not reach them.

My other suggestion would be to improve AI navigation. Nothing worse than seeing M2 try to navigate around M4. IMO M2 should just fly in a straight line and anything smaller should get out of its way.

Riccardoman · Post by **Riccardoman** » Mon, 1. Jan 18, 18:37

I forgot a very important thing

The ingame music player or at least an easy editor to change tracks behaviour or the music played inside each sector

Some tracks from previous games are unforgettable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uL6dpqFD7g and it would be a pity if they would not be included or could at least be added easily into the game

BrigandPhantos77 · Post by **BrigandPhantos77** » Wed, 3. Jan 18, 21:21

Important to me, and things I wish would be added; these would make me buy most games.

I love exploring, not just space, but being able to explore every inch of a station.

I love seeing my accumulated thing. So I can go walk through all my "acquired" ships.

Trophies and places to see said trophies.

Just imagine you built your station. You added your facilities. Then you added an office where you can explore and manage all your assets. It also has a hangar for all your most prized acquisitions, whether it be that Xenon LX that was hard won, or a model of that Q you finally boarded and captured.

Research and development labs that let you make the ultimate ships in the game. Choose which parts of a ship to improve, and ultimately whether its speedy DPS, or a massive tank. The cost to research might be expensive, but for those of us who take the time to amass our wealth, worth the cost.

Choose from names recognized in the database, so that the computer can say the name of our new craft. And being able to update it later to produce better variants.

A prototype template can also be purchased, and researched to create a player produced only craft. The template would be expensive, but allow for a completely customized design for those who wish to take the time. Research times comparable to construction times of similar craft at PHQ.

Also being able to not only RE some Argon craft, Elite IE.... you want to make it faster. For a price your research team can figure out how to do this. Or you want to slightly expand it's shield space, same. Cargo bay? for a cool million credits you can figure out how to increase it by 10%.

Of course this would apply to all ships, and I am sure would seem an ambitious request.

Just imagine you could field an Argon Colossus, then walk around said Colossus. Take a trip to the Hangar and look at all your fleets assembled there. Or go to your quarters and take a nap "instead of always SETA" and let your autopilot carry you to your destination, and wake you up when your in system or 25 km from your docking point.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

Don't overlook how planets can be interacted with either. Make atmospheric lifters available with the ability to jump down to planets.

In X2 The Threat, I remember going down to Antigone Memorial and getting to interact per story line.

Also, and this is something I feel would make a great patch to x3ap, founding your own corporation, with the game able to recognize this and say the name of your corporation "preset names" when you select your factories on the sector map.

One thing I never got or understood, when the NPC place a factory, they get tagged Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc... but that is not possible for the player. "Maybe there is a signed mod that does this? Link requested?" It would be nice to have this feature.

Things that drew me to the other releases, features I loved...

Bulletin Board with treasure hunt's and other random events. Maybe with the ability to walk around stations, bring these back. Place random quests and requests on them to simply accept.

You could still have random npc's advertising as well. No reason to not have both.

I was also thinking, and I know this was player mod added, but the UT's, are missing a step. Sector Trading and Universe Trading are great, when the ship doesn't enter a Xenon sector or a war zone. They are missing Region Trader, which includes all the area's belonging to a single Stock Market. Jump drives available, but never to leave the region. Not even a single jump outside.

Modules I think would make great for factories and space stations.
- Regional Office Module; Controls the regional assets for which it is built in. You can decide which top end factories are most important, and move resources to them via Freighters. You could also localize where your Credit account is based out of. All factories would draw upon it, like in a complex. You could set it up similar to the Fleet Control.
- Fuel Module for factories; This would store energy cells separately so that Freighters could have access for Jump Fuel specifically. The Factory would not touch this even if completely out of Energy Cells. However, the player can manually transfer between the 2 of they so desire.
- Research Module; This has been explained above.
- Trophy Module; This can house anything from Ships to actual Trophy's. Anyone seen Battlestar Galactica? The new one with James Edward Olmos? Remember the big replica of the Cylon Baseship they had at the start? Imagine having a large replica of a Xenon J or K adorning this room. Or even a Khaak Destroyer.

I know you guys have this game almost ready for us, and I know these are probably some idea's that will likely not get second thought. But these are features that draw me to them. Not to mention crafting. Its the sole reason I faithfully still play

Spoiler

Show

Minecraft

after all this time.

Sorry for the Novel folks, I'm excited for what's coming.

phantomrock2 · Post by **phantomrock2** » Thu, 4. Jan 18, 00:42

Being able to buy ship schematics as we advance in friendship rank with the race & never see the schematic never being offered for sell anymore. Such as one with more weapon load-outs. One with more shield load-out or cargo space from the start.

No useless ships for races who are traversing the universe & who cap out with a low percentage for the highest rank of friendship and who also fly around in UFOs and never ever offer for you to know where they are going & what they are doing or offer you to come and dock and buy whatever they are selling. Very annoying.

I know some indication is coming on whether to know where would be a good place to open a factory. However, elude to it even more.

Please, no penalizing the player for NPC ships colliding with our ship. IF I am going to spend hours on end playing the game I should be able to fly my expensive ships but not with total impunity though. However, the penalizing the player because NPC ships collided with us...

If a race has some heavy cruiser destroyer that seems awfully impossible to obtain without possibly drawing the ire of your own faction then offer it for sell for THAT RACE only. Meaning that if I started with one race I can only buy that ship if I a member of that race faction. Not because I have the highest rank of notoriety or friendship with them.

All sorts of elusive tech not being offered for sell but somehow keeps showing up at and in stations and also in sectors but we can never buy it is very annoying to the advanced player. I am not sure about the dynamics of this but this would have me not wanting to do much in the X3TC & AP.

The franchise You have is great with so many ways and aspects to take it. So let us see a lot of DLC that broadens the gameplay such as tech, weapons, new sectors & what not but I can see you guys already know this

Gazz · Post by **Gazz** » Thu, 4. Jan 18, 16:31

I... guess I'm back? Tentatively?

After the Rebirth disappointment I had no longer paid any attention to Egosoft but I'm pleasantly surprised with what I'm hearing now.

The most important things for me in an X game:

Ability to personally fly anything from small ships to capital/carrier ships.
Does not have to include every dinky drone or satellite.
Exploration
Not just "finding cool loot" but also resource concentrations or... a fortunate distribution of supply and demand.
Asymmetric distributions are harder to pull off and still keep the game working but in the long run give you more material for conflicts, missions and the likes.
Ship design and roles.
As you said yourself in some twitch video, X3 had too many ships.
One of the reason were the boilerplate variants that quadrupled a large portion of the ship types without doing anything interesting.
The variations were just too minor.

And that's the kicker. A 5% difference here and there is meaningless.
I do remember rebalancing the M2+ and many of the M7 ships for AP and doing such a thing after the overall design is finished is... hard.
There just aren't enough angles of freedom to play with.

Ship design has to start with the roles you actually want to fill in the game, modified by the race/faction variation you want to see.
Then you can figure out which game features you need to realise that vision.
Do the more economic teladi ships have more fixed guns instead of gimbaling? Do you have that technology? Can the AI deal with it? Does the AI have to cheat and always use gimbaling guns with a smaller arc so that the player notices it less?
Do they have turrets with limited rotation arcs? An increased chance for critical hits/system failure due to less redundancy and cheaper parts?
Which corners were those cheapskates cutting?
"Internal upgrades" to factories with minimal if any addition of external geometry.
"Building up" a factory station can be fun and rewarding but I still remember the 500 station complexes of old.
That was way too many game objects and way too much geometry. More like a hack that went out of hand.
Missiles and turrets.
(I had written the odd turret script or two back in the day)

This here was a considerable technical issue and always an extremely precarious balance.

The swarm missiles of old were a cool idea but the implementation needed to die in a fire.
Design a missile that a turret can not track and you have a dominant strategy right there. A weapon for which there is no defense.
Cost is not a useful balancing factor in a game where your can improve your economic power over orders of magnitude.
Note how in AP the cargo space requirement changed to limit how many "good" missiles you could carry.
That's the kind of stat that actually affects the player's propensity for using them in combat.

Now missiles could be powerful but expensive. That would be step one.
(but see the note on "cost" above =)
They could be greatly ineffective against shielded ships.
Missiles in flight can chain-react in a large area. That would automatically prevent players from wanting to spam dense missile clouds that bog down the game.
Missiles can have more tactical abilities like temporarily reducing the target's maneuverability, making it more visible, keeping the shields down for a time to make the target more vulnerable to an armor-piercing missile...

Just looking at the number or cost of missiles does not get you far.

By now I'm actually working on another game (as in getting paid for systems design and balancing) but X3 will always stay a fond memory.

Riccardoman · Post by **Riccardoman** » Thu, 4. Jan 18, 17:15

He's coming back from MARS!

BrigandPhantos77 · Post by **BrigandPhantos77** » Fri, 5. Jan 18, 07:20

phantomrock2 wrote:
Please, no penalizing the player for NPC ships colliding with our ship. IF I am going to spend hours on end playing the game I should be able to fly my expensive ships but not with total impunity though. However, the penalizing the player because NPC ships collided with us...

Much agreed. Or penalizing the player because some drunk NPC crashes into one of your factories. I lost recognition to Terrans because several kept crashing into one of my complexes in Uranus. Guess they wanted to go roto reuter on it, and give it an anal enema.

ajax34i · Post by **ajax34i** » Sat, 6. Jan 18, 00:54

The most important thing for me in an X game is that the X game has all the things in it that make X games X games.

Because threads like this imply that it's ok for Egosoft to make incomplete buggy not-even-games, as long as the 1 trick pony feature that they manage to put in the game matches the 1 feature you're suggesting we pick in this thread.

"Most important thing is I want to fly all ships!"

"Ok!!! No missions, no plot, no combat AI, no collisions, no movement while your copilot speaks, no missile balance, no gun balance, no encyclopedia, no localizations, no mods allowed, no joystick support, no Split no Borons, but you can fly all 3 ships, go!"

Nort The Fragrent · Post by **Nort The Fragrent** » Sat, 6. Jan 18, 20:35

I am an old fan of X3Reunion, played it several times. Eventually acquiring thousands of ships, stations, and pretty much filled the universe with my overwhelming dominance of the trade side to the game.
Exploration and finding stuff, ships etc., magic.
Then X3Rebirth! Well! More like Afterbirth.
A dumbed down, single ship game! With its stupid tunnels, Come on! We want space to explore, not get whizzed straight to where things are, we want to find them for our selves.
And then to spend hours wandering around in stations trying to find a dumb idiot to trade with. This is not a space game, it’s a station game!
We want ships, space and lots of it.
Avatars are a waste of resources, use this computing power to have better ships, better space scenery, better stations. (Not ones to wonder around in, ones to fly around and marvel at their beauty or complexity)
I would like to immerse myself and believe I am in space, with marvelous skyscapes, brilliant planets, and ships of all kinds that can be acquired and flown.
I am not that much interested in how the cockpit looks, it is incidental to the fact that I am flying my ship through space.
Can we have control of the ship whilst taking off and landing. Docking your ship makes it more real. Getting sucked in by an automatic bit of hazy software is dull, the docking on x-reunion was better than Afterbirth. But can be improved upon.

I would also like there to be a rather special alien ship to find, not a ship that is intent on annihilation, No, a peaceful ship that has no need for weapons. As it is not only beautiful, but very very quick. Has impenetrable shielding, and is a joy just to fly around in.

I ended up in Afterbirth, just flying around independent of the tunnels. Taking days to fly through the broken planet, as it had some interesting views. Trading was a waste of time, and the universe was so small. So very quickly became board, and then gave up.

If Egosoft want X4 to be a success, then they need to rethink very seriously about how X4 is to be.
Think, Trade, Explore, Build, ( and then may be fight! )
Get rid of the tunnels, Gate’s are best.
Lots of flyable ships,
Huge universe to explore.
And no walking about in side stations. (That is so dull )
Planet landing.

Did I mention lots of ships?

taztaz502 · Post by **taztaz502** » Sun, 7. Jan 18, 13:06

Number 1 is the economy and trade.

Number 2 is the variants of ships and classes, ranging from scouts, fighters, bombers to huge destroyers and carriers.

Number 3 is the empire aspect of building your own stations, claiming your own sector and making it home so you can start producing your own fleets etc.

Basically just think of a more fleshed out litcubes universe and you'll have yourselves a good game.

Don't forget the freedom element, i like to build stations any where in my sectors and arrange them how i like, not be stuck to tile placements.

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Sun, 7. Jan 18, 13:22

Gazz wrote:* Ability to personally fly anything from small ships to capital/carrier ships. Does not have to include every dinky drone or satellite.

Hmm piloting satellites is propably a very calming, almost meditative experience.

Gazz wrote:* Ship design and roles.
As you said yourself in some twitch video, X3 had too many ships.
One of the reason were the boilerplate variants that quadrupled a large portion of the ship types without doing anything interesting.
The variations were just too minor.

As a seasoned Mamba pilot i can tell you that the difference between Raider and regular or Vanguar was certainly not minor. Plus the Raider definitely had the better looking nose.

Gazz wrote:* I do remember rebalancing the M2+ and many of the M7 ships for AP and doing such a thing after the overall design is finished is... hard.

The ships where designed with the balance and role in mind - just not for the vanilla environment and certainly not for a case where only one or two get implemented, the rest not. They have their role (esp. the ones you mentioned) in their intended environment. Terran M2+ in XTC it is one of five M2+ with substantial M6 docking space (and the others have high amounts of fighter docks and or better firepower in exchange). In vanilla it is the only M2 with M6 docking i think. In XTC M2+ are much better compared to M2, every race has one. In vanilla its totally gimped in comparison - so it's no wonder they 'dont work' out if its decided that they cant be what they where designed for. The new M7 in XTC where M4 drone carriers with docking limited to M4 and M5 and drone building capabilities. In AP they are expensive TM???

Gazz wrote:Cost is not a useful balancing factor in a game where your can improve your economic power over orders of magnitude.

If missiles are too expensive then their only purpose until very late game is to serve as loot drops for selling...

Nort The Fragrent · Post by **Nort The Fragrent** » Sun, 7. Jan 18, 17:33

Ship variation be it seemingly minor, makes a big difference when ordering multiples of ten ships at a time. And the variation in loadouts also matters. I purposely built all my own armaments, in my own factory’s. Specifically, for supplying my fleets of fighter’s, this made equipping them so much easier and faster.
The one thing about Reunion, was the lack of extra product from a chain of factory’s. all depended on the yield of a silicon mine, or ore, mine. Then each stage was precisely the amount needed by the next factory in the chain. The resources required to build a laser was flawed. Leaving no extra profit from the massive processing chain of factory’s, & supply ships.
After building unwieldy structures around a silicon mine, I found you could concentrate all factory’s inside the lump of rock. Took a bit of doing to get them nested inside, but the result was way better in the end.
I know this is a bit old school, but my point is the ability to have options. To be allowed to work out what you need, and be able to achieve that in a verity of ways.
Thus more variation’s help with the available budget, The expectation of the end result, and more importantly, the fact that you have a choice.
More choice = more interest, and more interest = contentment for more players.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

The most important thing for you in an X game

As FOr Me

Re: As FOr Me