1.3 war doesn't last long and it's gone cold again?

[fanboi]

There need to be another resource sink that stimulates the economy.

What happens, when they fix the War thing, and you wipe out all opposition in the galaxy? Then you have no wars again.

[DragonEye501]

[quote=fanboi post_id=4782338 time=1544381518 user_id=509471]
There need to be another resource sink that stimulates the economy.

What happens, when they fix the War thing, and you wipe out all opposition in the galaxy? Then you have no wars again.
[/quote]

Then you've won. Start a new game and enjoy the grind all over again.

[Hector0x]

We talked about that in a couple older threads in the past few days. Yes, it's going to be an issue, because you can't prevent snowballing in a fully simulated environment. Some thought of diplomatic mechanics like you would have in games such as Total War, that try to prevent steamrolling by applying diplomatic maluses tied to "empire power", meaning that when a faction grows too strong, then the others ally against it. But the map, the number of factions, ships, pretty much the environment here is too small to really apply such a thing, which still would need so much difficult finetuning that it's going to be almost impossible.

It could work, though, in a bit simplier way if you had more space in the universe: by creating a few more "buffer" sectors between factions, and a very strong static defense at the entry point into core sectors, you could tone the war all the way up and still have much of it contained in specific areas with no risk of the whole universe being steamrolled by anyone. It's an old trick in the book of 4X games: chokepoints. IMO, it would work pretty nicely from all perspectives: want to have a peaceful playthrough? Stay out of the war zones. Want to see the fireworks? Go there. Ships are going to be destroyed at a nice pace but even if a faction beats everyone in contended space once it tries to get into the enemy core sectors, static defenses tear through them. At this point all its war machine is nullified in a very short time, and why it tries to rebuild everything from scratch, the other factions can get the advantage back and push through the contended sectors once again. And so on and so on.

It still would be a bit of a compromise: those OP static defenses would feel a bit fake and you would never really fear for the safety of a specific faction, no one risks annihilation, but that's pretty much the point: if the system can bring factions to annihilation, then the economy will break, so it must not be allowed to happen. Unless, of course, the player wants to in the very late game, by attacking himself those defenses with a force no npc empire (limited by the jobs file) could ever build up. It would even be a nice "end game objective" for the war inclined players.

I really like that whole idea. It would work under current gameplay rules (with working shipbuilding of course) and "just" requires map changes and added starting defences.

[CaptainSim]

As far as I know the developers haven't indicated that anything is "busted" or "broken" with the simulated economy. Real economies spiral out of control as well. You probably have to wait MANY real life hours for things to get rolling again, and if someone is too powerful the only person who can probably take out the most powerful faction at that point is you- the player, to bring everything back into equilibrium. If things are spiraling out of control that is probably a good thing, the Great Depression really happened.

[Mytharox]

As for the economy, what might help, what perhaps others mentioned before as I didn't read the entire thread, is letting players/ai build trading stations that 'sell' things to the local population, a percentage per timeunit, thus removing items from the market and giving credits in return, without the need for a war perse. Some items like beef or fuel might sell faster than others, but that is up for discussion.

[xwanderer]

It still would be a bit of a compromise: those OP static defenses would feel a bit fake and you would never really fear for the safety of a specific faction, no one risks annihilation, but that's pretty much the point: if the system can bring factions to annihilation, then the economy will break, so it must not be allowed to happen. Unless, of course, the player wants to in the very late game, by attacking himself those defenses with a force no npc empire (limited by the jobs file) could ever build up. It would even be a nice "end game objective" for the war inclined players.

I don't think that static defenses would even have to feel fake. Why shouldn't Argon Prime for example be heavily fortified as the races core sector? They know that the Khaak and Xenon are somewhere out there and losing AP could pretty much be the end of all Argons. Imagine entering AP and being 'guided' by massive defensive installations stretching from the gate further into the sector for several kilometers capable of taking down a dozen K's within minutes. Hmm - I actually like the idea

Total annihilation (one of my favourite games back then) would not be possible but if I saw the great Argons diminished to owning only 1 sector I would probably do anything in my power to help and make them 'great again'. That could be one huge and rewarding objective I think. Or you could finish them off and become 'Prime Minister' of course.

[DragonEye501]

I don't see why people are so afraid of factions getting destroyed. To me, thats all part of the dynamic sandbox experience. I hate to make this comparison but Mount and Blade has one of the most Dynamic Sandbox Enviroments that I've seen in a game. I started with joining Swadia and they lost all there territory within a few ingame months. It was a fun experience being on the losing side and fighting to your last breath. I decided to start over, once again joining Swadia. Only this time the king made some smarter moves and now we own a good chunk of territory. These kinda things were never possible in all prior X games (except mods). It was a shame because they had all these persistent systems in a static universe.

If egosoft wants the most DYNAMIC UNVERSE EVER, they should let the ai go crazy and balance the economy accordingly without restricting the Ai with things like quotas. Right now if you remove quota's the ai will quickly more ships then our systems can handle and break the game. So make ships more expensive/more resource intensive. Now Im not saying this is the solution but its just an Idea.

All in all, this is just my personal preference and I can see why egosoft would be afraid of this.

[maderas]

Something's definitely wrong with the Xenon. Kha'ak as I understand tend to get their only station camped by Xenon, so can't comment there, but Xenon have plenty of idle shipyards that just aren't doing anything after the initial invasions. As for the people complaining that they don't want any war in the game... like, I'm sorry, but unless Egosoft drastically changes the economy your opinion is pretty much irrelevant. The entire system hinges on the AI purchasing and then losing ships, the end point of every production chain is making ships. Without regular destruction of ships the system doesn't work.

[Socratatus]

Too many people want huge wars without thinking of the consequences to the game...

If there is a real economy simulated in the game then just like reality, a huge continuous war will destroy the economy and eventually the game.

What you really want is a situation where wars actually happen every now and then, but are over relatively quickly. Any really big long war should be few and far between just like in reality.

Some of you people need to think a little harder. what`s the point of all this realistic economy if the whole thing is wiped out in a week?

[maderas]

Too many people want huge wars without thinking of the consequences to the game...

If there is a real economy simulated in the game then just like reality, a huge continuous war will destroy the economy and eventually the game.

What you really want is a situation where wars actually happen every now and then, but are over relatively quickly. Any really big long war should be few and far between just like in reality.

Some of you people need to think a little harder. what`s the point of all this realistic economy if the whole thing is wiped out in a week?

Nobody in here is asking for permanent war that I saw, though there are a few saying they want no war at all. You shouldn't accuse people of not thinking and then be objectively wrong in the first line of your post, it's a bad look for you.

I might argue there's no point in a realistic economy if the entire thing stagnates and stops functioning within 12-20 hours of playtime, so...

[Socratatus]

I might argue there's no point in a realistic economy if the entire thing stagnates and stops functioning within 12-20 hours of playtime, so...

I didn`t say the economy should stagnate. However, economies do stagnate in reality sometimes, are you saying we shouldn`t have that happen ingame every now and then?

[maderas]

I might argue there's no point in a realistic economy if the entire thing stagnates and stops functioning within 12-20 hours of playtime, so...

I didn`t say the economy should stagnate. However, economies do stagnate in reality sometimes, are you saying we shouldn`t have that happen ingame every now and then?

Yes, I'm saying exactly that. I'll go even further and say that it's frankly preposterous that you're trying to imply it should function any other way. The only way to fix a stagnant economy in X4 right now is by going and blowing up enough of a major faction's ships that they start placing buy orders again, which is kind of pointless if your end goal is trade because that faction is going to hate you and you're not going to be able to trade with them anymore. It doesn't take much to see this is very, very far away from being an ideal solution.

[DragonEye501]

[quote=Socratatus post_id=4782475 time=1544385179 user_id=100801]
Too many people want huge wars without thinking of the consequences to the game...

If there is a real economy simulated in the game then just like reality, a huge continuous war will destroy the economy and eventually the game.

What you really want is a situation where wars actually happen every now and then, but are over relatively quickly. Any really big long war should be few and far between just like in reality.

Some of you people need to think a little harder. what`s the point of all this realistic economy if the whole thing is wiped out in a week?
[/quote]

I rather see an economy destroyed by war then then thrive in peace. Egosoft has always been a fan of creating artificial holes in the economy for the players to fill. However in this case they've created a simpler real economy thats easier to manage. So let the ai fight eachother, the holes will create themselves. Then it will give us the players more oppertunities to fix it.

[DragonEye501]

A note on people afraid that war will destroy the economy: The faction Ai has alot of tools already implemented to prevent this from happening.

1. Factions can build new stations based on demand.

2. Factions can upgrade pre existing stations based on demand.

3. All "good factions" (not xenon or khaak) only have cooler wars against eachother. Factions with a relation <31 with eachother only destroy enemy defense stations and military ships. Also these factions can still trade with eachother.

So all the mechanics are already there in the scripts, they just got to encurage it by makeing the ai a bit more agressive.

[Player]

I do not know why, but what matters is that the game is dead. I do not even find a single flying xenon in the game.I hope egosoft solves this crap they did without having to restart a new save.

[nickolaiproblem]

I'd suggest if you've hit a wall of boredom with the game with their being no war, I'd put it aside for a couple of updates and then come back to it.

Yea I jumped in after 1.3 I am probably going to hold off on playing anymore. I think they need to shipbuilding as one of main things that AI can do because without 1.3 can't work. So I would suggest putting it aside until shipbuilding makes wars actually happen.

[Kadatherion]

Hey everyone, just so I don't flood this thread taking it away from its intended topic - the war issues themselves - I've condensed my ideas about resource sinking, war mechanics, safeties, events et cetera - some of which I've already mentioned here - in this topic: viewtopic.php?f=146&t=406802. Feel free to have a look and share your opinion. Word of advice: it's a mean motherf**** of a wall of text

[Buzz2005]

every station should constantly use
energy cells (to keep the lights and machines on ), food, medicine and drugs

when the station has all of there storage full and stops producing
energy consumption goes down a little ( machines are off)
food,medicine and drugs go up ( people don't work so they eat and do drugs more, and get sick more bc of consumption of said food and drugs)

factions should produce ships for attacking, defense and skirmishes/scouting
of course there needs to be a balance in number of ships for each goal and when its done goes of attacking, if its attacked then produce for defense and constant small ship producing for scouting bc they die all the time

events could be attacking the choke points to make a path for scouts and then retreat, you kill some defense ships (some of your die too) and keep them occupied until your skirmishes enter and travel drive away further into the sector to later **** with them a little bit
maybe an event for them to wait like an ambush for there ore and gas collectors, or plant mines in asteroid fields

then full on attack with some randomizer for ships to retreat if they are losing ( you could have some full on attacks and all the ships just kamikaze until they die or only some run away or almost all just run back )

factions should have backup wharfs and some stations (they fill them up and just leave them full until the need) in the safest part of there space if they get annihilated bc xenon and khakk are always just about war and don't have the civil needs for there stations so they have some advantage and faster production

I dont have any idea if all of this is possible in any way but I think the station idea is a nice economy boost, you just need to play with the numbers for consumption
and hell they have all of us here to test it lol

[jonesskill]

Xenon die too early in a new game.

I think that is a pblem related to the lack of a jumpdrive to allow xenon AI move faster and keep alive making things running fast.

Just remember -all the another factions can trade eachother - xenon are excluded in a few sectors, with the same lame L/XL ships than us but with asteroid belts with shield/hull damage.

My second savegame now - 20 Hours and xenon seems to be dead even in their sectors - no mining/trade activity.

[Ovni]

Xenon die too early in a new game.

I think that is a pblem related to the lack of a jumpdrive to allow xenon AI move faster and keep alive making things running fast.

Just remember -all the another factions can trade eachother - xenon are excluded in a few sectors, with the same lame L/XL ships than us but with asteroid belts with shield/hull damage.

My second savegame now - 20 Hours and xenon seems to be dead even in their sectors - no mining/trade activity.

Aren't Xenon supposed to be this plague that probably still infests most of the galaxy? It seems that they should follow different rules than other factions, something like receiving reinforcements from off-map, or even occasionally invading other factions through map edges. Since they're machines, not much prevents them from slowly traveling through space even in the absence of jumpgates - that's what their original terraforming mission involved.

Hell, you could actually show Xenon/Khaak activity level and imminent invasions in relevant map edge hexes. I think it would look good and provide a sense of ever-looming danger to the good races. A sense that any space for the civilized world has to be won back.