It is about time Egosoft takes some ideas from other sandbox games

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

You're highly negative. Here in this thread and throughout the forums.

Nope - not even close, just because I disagree with the position of some and indicate community developed mods are the best way to address their wants and desires (at least in some cases) does not make me personally "highly negative".

In the specific case of this thread, what the OP is generally asking for IMO is not necessarily appropriate for the Vanilla game on the whole. The X-games have in the main had a balanced and workable formulae of gameplay and general ideas and the general game formulae is what makes them popular with people like myself. This is not an attack on the individual (unlike your claims to the contrary), it is merely opposing the general ideas being presented - there is a substantial and notable difference.

Egosoft have some ideas planned for X4 v3.0 regarding how the player faction mechanics work but the details have not been disclosed yet, but I am sure as details emerge relevant discussions will happen in these forums. Personally, I hope they do not go too far down the civ-type-game-type diplomacy route but stick more to the patterns they have followed with the X-series to date (no specific reason yet to think they wont stick to existing guidelines).

I know at least some of this forum community may want more content of specific types but where the X-series is concerned that has always been the purview of community developed mods with regards to going above and beyond what Egosoft deliver as part of their vanilla experience. Sometimes, the content of community mods get adopted (normally in the form of either optional DLC or a new game) by Egosoft with the Authors' permission but whether the ideas (either the content as-is or more typically Egosoft's version of it) do or don't get adopted is fundamentally down to Egosoft.

I have seen too many games I have enjoyed totally ruined by concept and/or balance changes to the baseline content being pushed for by the relevant community, for MMOs that can be a totally intractable problem with no workaround and this is due to community developed mods not really being an option for them. Where the X-Series are concerned, Egosoft's traditional approach to adopting community proposed changes is more reasonable - keep the main game in-line with Egosoft's own vision then allow the community to add to it via mods, if any of those mods have content they think they can re-use or adapt then they look into the options to adopt them either in a new game or as entirely optional DLC (c/f signed/approved mods/scripts). I much prefer Egosoft's traditional approach to that which some seem to be expecting.

[radcapricorn]

"You're highly negative."
"Nope."

Classic.

[CBJ]

Stay on the topic of the thread and don't make it personal. And if you think a thread is getting personal, inform a moderator rather than responding in kind (or indeed passing comment on it). This is all in the forum rules.

[BigBANGtheory]

Personally I don't think Egosoft is short on ideas and suggestions on the contrary they have a surplus and frequently have to choose between them. I'd say quality and expansion is their main concern atm atleast it feels that way to me.


In the spirit of the thread title though two areas that would seem to fit well in X Universe from other sandbox games is:

- Diplomacy : So you have allies and enermies functioning together potentially allowing you to be the trade or military arm of an alliance (not really the domain of mods as you'd need a much more powerful AI system)

- Survival : Where resources are much more scarce and you need to be thinking ahead in order to survive as opposed to just wealth creation i.e. a much harsher PvE scenario (probably the domain of Mods)

[reanor]

I like the way Stellaris added the element of surprise and practically dread with mid- and eng-game crisis. But I agree with the poster above, how will the game decide mid and end game point? Stellaris is built around the years ticking and at appropriate point, the script kicks in. Also, Stellaris been updating their game with new content for almost 3 years. Egosoft, instead, keeps stamping new buggy games releases them in Alpha state and then continue on fixing bugs for 1-2 years after that. So the game is released pretty much in Alpha state, then we have Beta's and then game is gold 2-3 year after it's already released. Stellaris was originally released 3 years ago. They didn't need to focus on fixing bugs in a new engine, create new assets all over again, etc. It's very possible they may come up with Stellaris 2, but it will probably take another 3-4 years. But anyway, the X4 is good in it's own sauce, we just need to have patience for another 2-3 years, before the Vanilla game is really playable. I don't know, if it will ever be bug free though. We are past v2, beta 2.2 and yet still same stuff happens even though patch note marks those bugs as resolved... Then again with Egosoft order of things, we are still early in game's development. After v4 is out, in 2020, we can maybe then consider the game half polished and 75% bug free.

[Vandragorax]

I'm againsit crisis as X4 has a real economy and all ships are built so I don't want the game to throw in some ships that were magically created out of nowhere

I'm still so puzzled by this mindset. How do you KNOW whether the ships were built "legit" or not? You might only explore 5 sectors for the first few hours of the game, why does it matter if you 'think' that all the stuff you see was "legit" built in the game or not? How do you know this is true for a fact? Can you forensically analyze the game logs and tell where every ship got built and when?

Sorry I'm being facetious but I really struggle to understand why some parts of the economy can't be "faked" or "helped" to some degree. As long as it's seamless to the player of course, everybody would be put off by enemies appearing within radar range with no explanation, but there could be a high degree of subtlety about it.

I strongly believe that most of the flaws of the X series so far, including with X4, are due to Egosoft trying to make the AI and background workings of the game too complicated and complex. They NEED to take shortcuts and make the AI simpler but more refined, even if that means doing things in a "cheating" or "faked" way, as long as it feels natural and not obvious to the player then I don't see why it shouldn't be like that. I really think that people calling for the entire economy to be "real" and every asset to be built "legit" in the game world have made this game what it is now, a weird mess where things don't work properly, from economy, to ship building, to wars. It could all be fixed by having the AI cheat once in a while in a way that's not noticeable.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

I'm againsit crisis as X4 has a real economy and all ships are built so I don't want the game to throw in some ships that were magically created out of nowhere

I'm still so puzzled by this mindset. How do you KNOW whether the ships were built "legit" or not? You might only explore 5 sectors for the first few hours of the game, why does it matter if you 'think' that all the stuff you see was "legit" built in the game or not? How do you know this is true for a fact? Can you forensically analyze the game logs and tell where every ship got built and when?

Just monitor the shipyards and where the ships go afterwards - there is enough evidence to support the premise that beyond the initial population on game playthrough day 0, all (or at least most) subsequent active ships are built somewhere.

Sorry I'm being facetious but I really struggle to understand why some parts of the economy can't be "faked" or "helped" to some degree. As long as it's seamless to the player of course, everybody would be put off by enemies appearing within radar range with no explanation, but there could be a high degree of subtlety about it.

In X3 and prior, everything was on the most part faked to one degree or another. This mostly changed with the new game engine and X-Rebirth and it has seemingly been a key design decision for both X-Rebirth and X4.

I agree with the principle of what Bozz11 is saying but it seems that there are some exceptions to the general rule of thumb regarding ship population (e.g. mission generated salvage targets - these may be taken from the built ship population but I suspect not).

I disagree that adding ship spawns as some people would seem to like solves anything and depending on the precise circumstances may adversely affect an individual's sense of immersion. There are multiple factors to consider in this regard but I also *DON'T* think the game would be improved by the extreme random scripted events (e.g. crisis) that some seem to want to occur and certainly I do not think they should be implemented in Vanilla if "cheats" are required to offset their effect on the in-game economy. It would not be unreasonable to have a community generated mod that implements something along these lines though.

[reanor]

I think the good way of implementing this, would be in one of the DLCs, unless modders will do something huge. The unknown enemy fleet can enter the known X4 space sector and as the emergent event, send a message to the player screen. Like aliens land on earth and take over all the TV channels to broadcast their evil demands - this or that or else... After player defeats the unknown enemy fleet, they can either:

1. Loot the key sequence that will open the gate that was not working until now;
2. Board and capture a ship that would allow some kind of a new extended technology research to appear in the player's tech window, for a Boron friend to ponder about;
3. One of the ventures could trigger something crazy
4. etc.

When the gate opens, the player would discover new sectors where all those ships came from. They'd be real shipyards that created these ships, etc. Everything based on existing economy. Don't need to create 'fake' ships. New faction, new discoveries to make and so on and so forth. Don't need to make it a crisis, but the game misses some mystery, to be completely honest. From the start of the game, you pretty much already know what the end will be like. Who likes to watch a movie when the ending is already known.

[brekehan]

I've always hoped for an X game that was more strategy and less cheating. My heart sank in my chest when I got into scripting X2 and found out that the god engine just replaced things. I really wanted a universe where I could feel like I was strategically fighting against a faction AI, and that both he and I had to depend on the resources that we've made available to ourselves. Only he had much more of them, and I started with a single ship.

I feel like that is the direction they are heading and I really hope it comes to full fruition. I think they've just run into a lot of problems along the way. I hope it irons itself out over the next year.

I really do not want to play in a universe where things ...just...spawn.

[Aven Valkyr]

I think we need to sit back and wait for the devs to release more races, more sectors, more wars, and get the dynamic portion of the game world fleshed out. With Xenon and Split conquering sectors, who needs "content" in the form of missions, when your mission is to defend the space of your allies, protect your own assets, and burn down the sectors of your enemy, and essentially "win" the game? That's what I"m looking forward to.

[frankzappa]

-Mid-game crisis: I
-Late-game crisis:

This is the only reason I haven't got X4. I grew up with Elite but the only space game I really loved was Space Rangers 2. It was lacking in many ways too, but mostly I find it far more satisfying than bigger space games. The main thing that hooked me is that at the start you are so weak, pirates are scary, enemy factions are scary, but The Dominators (a bit like The Borg from Star Trek) are taking over parts of the galaxy and they are so scary and so deadly, you avoid them by miles! But half way through the game when you can beat pirates and enemy faction ships, you do a few skirmishes with the Dominators and manage to kill one or two before having to flee quickly. It gives you a really great sense of progression, like this once invincible race is now at least able to be hurt, and you know that soon you can face them properly. And you do, eventually you get so strong that you can fight them in a confident way and it makes all the hard work and progression so worthwhile.

To me, the X series really needs this more than anything. There needs to be an enemy that wont wipe out the world at the start, but will need to be dealt with eventually. Players will be compelled to make progress to save the universe from this ever present danger. p.s. I also loved in Space Rangers how the Dominators dropped really powerful items, so killing them wasn't only satisfying to see you making progression towards the endgame, but it gave really good in game rewards too.

p.s. The other thing I am disappointed in is that I want to see the combat improve and evolve. I am tired of the pew pew lasers shooting a target predictor. It is ok for small dogfighting ships but for larger ships I want combat more like Starpoint Gemini Warlords where you have abilities that you use in combat in a tactical way. Like you approach from stealth and then unload, you start with a blast that lowers the target's shields and resistances and then you blast it with your most powerful attacks and missiles. Then as it fights back you hit it with an emp. And then you either engage stealth again and sneak away and wait for a second attack run, or can double tap the stealth which doesn't let you cloak but it blasts the enemy target with some damage instead. And the abilities have cooldowns so it works more like tactical combat. That game is the first time I've seen a space game work how I always dreamt of. Shame there were only 4 of those abilities and the rest of the game was pretty weak.

[EmperorDragon]

I strongly believe that most of the flaws of the X series so far, including with X4, are due to Egosoft trying to make the AI and background workings of the game too complicated and complex. They NEED to take shortcuts and make the AI simpler but more refined, even if that means doing things in a "cheating" or "faked" way, as long as it feels natural and not obvious to the player then I don't see why it shouldn't be like that. I really think that people calling for the entire economy to be "real" and every asset to be built "legit" in the game world have made this game what it is now, a weird mess where things don't work properly, from economy, to ship building, to wars. It could all be fixed by having the AI cheat once in a while in a way that's not noticeable.

Indeed. The problem with spawning ships, for example, is not in them being spawned from nothing but how and where they are spawned. Pirate ships spawning from pirate stations would be perfectly fine in order to keep their numbers up. But spawning them right in the middle of a zone (Rebirth) or being magically teleported to the player's location from somewhere else (X4) is just annoying and silly.

I really don't mind ships being spawned in to make up for low numbers, as long as they come from somewhere believable so that your defenses, blockades and containment efforts still mean something.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

Waste of time and effort IMO - the X-series games have actively supported community developed mods since at least X2 and what you are asking for here is essentially what I would consider clearly in the domain of community developed mods.

(Litcube's universe for X3 was freaking awesome, but I wouldn't have wanted to do that from the start).

Even better when you threw in the Wars mod which made it so all factions fought over territory claims had a pretty big priority on race expansion and sector re-claim invasions.
Along with a persistent threat that which was enemy to all and attacked EVERYONE, and also sent increasingly harder waves of invasions to the players owned sectors.

With the mod enabled you had to build an HQ but you can have more than one HQ these outposts give you control over sectors over time or immediately if nobody owns it already. Likewise, you had to FUND and DEFEND your own sectors whilst the usual X3 stuff happened around you.

The project is called X3-Mayhem and it req Litecube universe.

In a lot of ways, X4 feels like a baby compared to X3 it lacks a lot of things EGOSOFT could have learned from the modding community of X3 to implement into the base game things which arguably should already be the base game.
For example, they removed the script engine, okay, but they have not given us a very good UI in return and the UI we have is prone to bugging out a lot and lacks essentially any proper fleet management -

(Maybe I don't want every group to be a wing maybe I just want to group up traders so I know that bunch are traders doing X thing just I don't want to see a sprawling list and if something goes down I can recall them all back to the home sector)


I really do not want them to work on DLC just yet, if the artist team works on DLC okay we don't artists right now, we need the code team tho to go and add sector claiming and take over which was promised to be in the base but is not.
I honest to god would have employed the team behind Lite-Cube and Mayhem to work on the universe and Menu for X4 they have arguably better skills then whoever is at EgoSoft right now.

[EmperorDragon]

I really do not want them to work on DLC just yet, if the artist team works on DLC okay we don't artists right now, we need the code team tho to go and add sector claiming and take over which was promised to be in the base but is not.

Don't you mean sector management perhaps? Sector claiming and takeover is already in X4 since 1.0.

As for DLC, yes, X4 is nowhere near ready for a DLC release. Releasing DLC with the game in it's current state will leave a real bad impression, there's still a lot of work to be done before Egosoft can even think about DLC releases, planned or not.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

I really do not want them to work on DLC just yet, if the artist team works on DLC okay we don't artists right now, we need the code team tho to go and add sector claiming and take over which was promised to be in the base but is not.

Don't you mean sector management perhaps? Sector claiming and takeover is already in X4 since 1.0.

As for DLC, yes, X4 is nowhere near ready for a DLC release. Releasing DLC with the game in it's current state will leave a real bad impression, there's still a lot of work to be done before Egosoft can even think about DLC releases, planned or not.

My bad, my point remains tho, speeding up the scripts and improving the logic at same time would be better use of time I believe, along with MUCH MUCH needed UI improvements for fleet management.
I would like to see groups added separate to wings as not to be confused with war fleets.

I know I could just bunch up all my various ships into wings per job
but it still says WINGS that is what bothers me I would rather it say Traders or Miners or be able to name it.. maybe I can name it?
I have not tried to name a wing label before.

I did not know factions took over sectors in X4 interesting I am 80 hours game time, not a lot has gone on yet. Anyway still much needed improvements for UI to not bug out, and a improvements to fleet management

[EmperorDragon]

I really do not want them to work on DLC just yet, if the artist team works on DLC okay we don't artists right now, we need the code team tho to go and add sector claiming and take over which was promised to be in the base but is not.

Don't you mean sector management perhaps? Sector claiming and takeover is already in X4 since 1.0.

As for DLC, yes, X4 is nowhere near ready for a DLC release. Releasing DLC with the game in it's current state will leave a real bad impression, there's still a lot of work to be done before Egosoft can even think about DLC releases, planned or not.

My bad, my point remains tho, speeding up the scripts and improving the logic at same time would be better use of time I believe, along with MUCH MUCH needed UI improvements for fleet management.
I would like to see groups added separate to wings as not to be confused with war fleets.

I know I could just bunch up all my various ships into wings per job
but it still says WINGS that is what bothers me I would rather it say Traders or Miners or be able to name it.. maybe I can name it?
I have not tried to name a wing label before.

I did not know factions took over sectors in X4 interesting I am 80 hours game time, not a lot has gone on yet. Anyway still much needed improvements for UI to not bug out, and a improvements to fleet management

No, I think it's my bad. Only the player could take over sectors in earlier versions. If you are referring to AI factions taking over sectors, that is only possible since 2.0. Even though AI factions can take over sectors now, it's still a rare occurrence due to the bad AI war logic. It needs drastic improvement indeed.

It's pretty annoying that we still cannot rename wings, I kinda expected that to be resolved early on. I currently rename wings via savegame editing to keep things organized.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

Don't you mean sector management perhaps? Sector claiming and takeover is already in X4 since 1.0.

As for DLC, yes, X4 is nowhere near ready for a DLC release. Releasing DLC with the game in it's current state will leave a real bad impression, there's still a lot of work to be done before Egosoft can even think about DLC releases, planned or not.

My bad, my point remains tho, speeding up the scripts and improving the logic at same time would be better use of time I believe, along with MUCH MUCH needed UI improvements for fleet management.
I would like to see groups added separate to wings as not to be confused with war fleets.

I know I could just bunch up all my various ships into wings per job
but it still says WINGS that is what bothers me I would rather it say Traders or Miners or be able to name it.. maybe I can name it?
I have not tried to name a wing label before.

I did not know factions took over sectors in X4 interesting I am 80 hours game time, not a lot has gone on yet. Anyway still much needed improvements for UI to not bug out, and a improvements to fleet management

No, I think it's my bad. Only the player could take over sectors in earlier versions. If you are referring to AI factions taking over sectors, that is only possible since 2.0. Even though AI factions can take over sectors now, it's still a rare occurrence due to the bad AI war logic. It needs drastic improvement indeed.

It's pretty annoying that we still cannot rename wings, I kinda expected that to be resolved early on. I currently rename wings via savegame editing to keep things organized.

Oh right, well I was talking about factions taking over sectors and the owner changing to that faction. player included.
In X3 we had really smart modder create a mod for LiteCube's Universe called Mayhem which pretty much changed entire game in a big way, by that I mean factions in X3 can and did fight to extend their borders along with attempt to take back borders they lost, it was done via a station you built in the sector and provided you were able to defend it and clear out the other stations the ownership changed and the whole sector became part of your very own empire name included (you could name your empire)

Ai would do this all day long while also fighting a global threat which attack absolutely anyone which was in the lore of the mod was a super-Ai which had gone self-aware and it too created it own army only difference was the lore explained how it worked the this particular enemy to all would appear from near no where once the players HQ reached level 10 and began invading the player and others at set sort intervals which you would have to defend it would only do this to your MAIN sector and increasingly got harder the longer the time ingame went.

It was ruthless and persistent and it gave X3 that feel it was always missing.


As for naming fleets
I came across this today https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations ... escription
Sadly not updated for 2.2x
Now either the actual dev gets around to it or I come to a solution which ever comes first, unless another comes first I am not fussed but this is sorrely needed, I might convert it over too the workaround API for HUD changes and intergrate the right click API so it can be done more efficently using a proper button etc.

[ei8htx]

I really don't get how X3 had the very simple ability to filter on ship type, and yet this wasn't carried into X4.

Now in X4, you see EVERYTHING. And there's no way to filter it out.