Everything too cheap?

[taztaz502]

You can buy a destroyer for 10-12 million fully loaded or a carrier for 20 million fully loaded, while in x3 it would cost around 40-60 million for a barebones frigate. (Yeah ships were 100x better in X3 but it just seems we hit endgame right at the beginning.) 2 station missions and you've got yourself a carrier or destroyer.

Then you have small fighters which are all similarly priced within around 100k-700k depending on weapons, for example i can have a discoverer with 2 bolt repeaters or an eclipse with 4 pulse lasers that will cost roughly the same price. Obviously i would go for the eclipse since small ships don't have much class diversity. Interceptors and heavy fighters perform the exact same role for example.

I also wish they would add upkeep of things like ships and stations, Stations are a bit build and forget atm, which is great and i love it like that i just wish we had to pay for personnel's wage and had to feed crew on ships. (Could make it effect morale if they're starving, if morale gets low enough then they jump ship.) then we could use resupply ships/carriers to feed our people on board ships, traders etc would just buy small bits of food on their travels.

I haven't even made it to the point where i've considered building a shipyard or wharf because i can buy everything so cheap anyway (And i think i get a discount because the shipyards/wharfs i use are usually full of stock, so think my ships are a lot cheaper as a result which if fair enough)

Just think the game needs a bit more longevity so you actually have something to work towards other than facerolling other empires.

[Tomonor]

You can buy a destroyer for 10-12 million fully loaded or a carrier for 20 million fully loaded, while in x3 it would cost around 40-60 million for a barebones frigate.

Now you understand how Terran Conflict felt like after the previous titles.

[taztaz502]

You can buy a destroyer for 10-12 million fully loaded or a carrier for 20 million fully loaded, while in x3 it would cost around 40-60 million for a barebones frigate.

Now you understand how Terran Conflict felt like after the previous titles.

I've owned the X-games for about 10 years before i actually sat down and spent some time trying to play one at which point that was albion prelude, so i skipped TC and x1/2 and also skipped rebirth.

Thankfully X3 aged remarkably well especially with litcubes universe and mayhem etc. I'm just glad the foundations are solid for X4 it really has the potential to be a space sim for the ages if they tackle a few of the issues plaguing it at the moment.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

For me, I'm more concerned by the lack of need for L/XL ships unless wanting to fight a faction (which leads to game over if following through to extermination). I miss X2/X3/XR missions against pirate/Xenon capital ships. Some X4 missions can target capitals but they tend to be in chains requiring completion of station construction and/or trading missions.

[Killjaeden]

Thankfully X3 aged remarkably well especially with litcubes universe and mayhem etc. I'm just glad the foundations are solid for X4 it really has the potential to be a space sim for the ages if they tackle a few of the issues plaguing it at the moment.

Thats just the thing though... X games always had "the potential". But it was never used, it was never refined. Game balance (cost of things) in X3 never changed at all whatsoever - they only added new income opportunities on top, becoming easier and easier. AI never truly changed, despite there being lots of potential. Advanced factions/dynamic universe where never implemented, even though scripts proved it was possible back then already. Whenever something was changed in the base game it was (to my knowledge) primarily driven by some community members who found a loophole / pushed egosoft to implement their tweaks. Egosoft has thus far always left the gem they created raw and covered in mud. We'll see what changes about that in future.

Now we have a new engine, multicore processing ... and yet i have the feeling that suma summarum we're not significantly better of performance wise than back in the X3 days with hardware of that time.

[DaMuncha]

For me, I'm more concerned by the lack of need for L/XL ships unless wanting to fight a faction (which leads to game over if following through to extermination). I miss X2/X3/XR missions against pirate/Xenon capital ships. Some X4 missions can target capitals but they tend to be in chains requiring completion of station construction and/or trading missions.

I will NOT take ANY mission where they require me to Build a station, Attack a station, Scan a xenon defence station, Scan a enemy capital ship, Place Turrets, Place Mines, or Steal and Deliver freindly faction ship.

[longliveX]

ships are cheap because you lose too little. The root cause is "peace", when you lose one-third of your assets in a battle, you won't complain it again.believe me.

[mr.WHO]

It might be just my game but in 150h gameplay I lost like 2 M-size freighters due to pirates and that is all. Never lost anything to Xenons, albeit my empire is in Nopileos' Fortune far from Xenons.

I do miss anti-Pirate and anti-Xenon missions of X3 TC.
Current take out 2 x "P" mission in X4 is PATHETIC JOKE!

They could at least make it variable like "take out destroyer", "take out 10 fighters", "hunt down 10 miners".

[Tanvaras]

My only real gripe is how cheap everything feels to buy, S class are liking buying a drink from a vending machine with spare change, M class are as simple as saving a few bucks instead of buying some junk food, And Capital ships, like buying a second hand car. I miss actually having to work a little to afford that new ship/station which gave you that accomplished feeling. Today in X4 I can spend 30 mins in a quick play and end up buying a few fighters, and if my trade ships (current game stated new a few days ago) are on the ball, can buy some lesser XL ships.

I would like to see the ship/station prices tweaked a little to make it a bit of the challenge to become a Space Empire, X4 is currently targeted at Casual in every way. Which is a good thing since it brings many more to the X Series fold, but also makes the players who have been here since the early days long for that challenge.

Other than that, X4 is fun. I have been enjoying the game quite a lot and with the DLC due very soon I am sure its only going to get better.

[longliveX]

Simply changing the price is meaningless. your question is like a player saying that the enemy is too weak, I hope that Xenon will send out 100 battleships each time. this is subjective, why? if another player says, I think 100 is too much, I hope it is 80, developers won't be able to do anything because they can't tell the difference between 80 and 100 ,these numbers should be defined by the game itself.

so is the price of the ship.

[Karmaticdamage]

The devs probably didn't want the early game to be too hard as not everyone who picks the game up is going to know how to amass over a hundred million in their first ingame day. Also it is intended in X4 that the player will wield an enormous empire. Fleets of destroyers, etc. Rather then just a few ships like in X3. Using a huge fleet in X3 wasn't really possible because they would end up killing each other by accidental ramming. Luckily ramming death is no longer a thing in X4.

[Falcrack]

I want capital ships that are more expensive, but also a lot more threatening.

[IronSquid501]

IMO if they wanted us building massive fleets and tons of stations they should make the world a bit more threatening. As it stands, there appears to be a cap on how much power the factions can muster, and it's pretty low considering that the player can have a fleet of dozens or hundreds of ships not long after they build their first shipyard

I personally think that this issue could be rectified if factions increased in power and aggression as the player does, so new players who take a bit longer to get on their feet aren't overwhelmed, but veteran players still feel a sense of challenge

[Falcrack]

A big part of the reason that players can become so overpowered late game is that there is no cap set on number of station modules for the player. If there was a limit on number of station modules per sector, or a limited amount of workforce per sector combined with a strong requirement to have workforce to run stations, that would limit the ability of the player to exponentially expand late game.

[Warnoise]

I am one of the few people who believe spawning enemy ships for the sake of money sink would be helpful for the late game.

Pirates, Xenons, Khaak AI will scan a random sector and spawn amount of ship that is calculated according to the defense forces of the targeted sector (for balance purpose). Or just add the damn thing as mission.

That will make threat always present and keep the player busy with protecting his sectors from incoming threats.

Currently, late game threats are literally inexistent. You get some few xenon ships and some random enemy fighters harassing your traders. And that's it.

War with other factions is total loss (you gain nothing from it).

[Rei Ayanami]

I am one of the few people who believe spawning enemy ships for the sake of money sink would be helpful for the late game.

I disagree. If Xenons, Khaak and Pirates don't spawn enough ships, then artifically spawning ships for free isn't the answer since that's immersion breaking, but boosting their ship production, be it faster build times, less ressources needed for the ships, higher station efficiency or more shipyards + miners. The only race i could think of just "spawning out of thin air" would be the Khaak, since lore-wise they have jump drive technology even for small ships, but even then they should be produced somewhere and then jump to their target sector.

The main problem with difficulty regarding combat/building defenses is that the factions don't seem to behave very goal oriented. In my current game the Xenon sent 1 I and 2 Ks to the Paranids in the bottom left corner, where they secured the Paranid-side jumpgate to the Xenon sectors, but after that the I and the 2 Ks just fly around the jumpgate in circles, never really doing anything. There doesn't seem to be any faction-commander AI behind it with a plan akin to "ok, first take this jumpgate" "Done? ok, next wipe out the entire sector so we can build Xenon stations." "Done? Ok, now move the ships over to the next sector" "Oh, someone invaded out territory. Fall back and defend!", but just sending ships to seemingly randomly selected spots and hoping that they'll find something to do.

[Warnoise]

I am one of the few people who believe spawning enemy ships for the sake of money sink would be helpful for the late game.

I disagree. If Xenons, Khaak and Pirates don't spawn enough ships, then artifically spawning ships for free isn't the answer since that's immersion breaking, but boosting their ship production, be it faster build times, less ressources needed for the ships, higher station efficiency or more shipyards + miners. The only race i could think of just "spawning out of thin air" would be the Khaak, since lore-wise they have jump drive technology even for small ships, but even then they should be produced somewhere and then jump to their target sector.

The main problem with difficulty regarding combat/building defenses is that the factions don't seem to behave very goal oriented. In my current game the Xenon sent 1 I and 2 Ks to the Paranids in the bottom left corner, where they secured the Paranid-side jumpgate to the Xenon sectors, but after that the I and the 2 Ks just fly around the jumpgate in circles, never really doing anything. There doesn't seem to be any faction-commander AI behind it with a plan akin to "ok, first take this jumpgate" "Done? ok, next wipe out the entire sector so we can build Xenon stations." "Done? Ok, now move the ships over to the next sector" "Oh, someone invaded out territory. Fall back and defend!", but just sending ships to seemingly randomly selected spots and hoping that they'll find something to do.

I am talking late game. Also give me something that is immersion breaking rather than boring snoozefest.

2K and 1 I in late game wont even make it past the gate. Unless it is a weak faction then yeah, but for the player, late game we are talking about invasion made of 5+ Ks and a couple of Is and dozens of smaller ships in order for it to make a dent in the player's wallet.

There are mods that literally do exactly what you said (the one made by Blackrain), increase production speed, etc.. It didn't solve the late game issue of being too peaceful. On the countrary, that broke the early game making Xenon too aggressive from the start destryoing important stations of various factions thus, destroying the economy from the early game. If they manage to make a countdown of a couple of days (game time) where the player is strong enough to react to multiple capital ships threat, then maybe that will work. It requires AI tweaking and balance though.

[ajime]

honestly i'm more annoyed that stations tend to buy too much items they don't need instead of the ones they do and clogged up their 3m storage capacity for anything else. re-implement the standard low/standard/high buy demand instead of count available to get rid of this issue on shipyards or docks.

[AquilaRossa]

I played a couple of Paradox games heavily before I quit them. Games that have dynamic economies of sorts suffer this balance issue a lot. One change affects things and that is fixed, which changes other things. It is like devs chasing their tails.

It's more of an issue if you have expectations of of what the end game will be. In Hearts of Iron that is actual history and within reason what ifs like if the Red Army had won earlier and beaten the West to Paris and Rome, or if the Japanese did not attack the USA but the USSR instead. In X there is just the novel defining lore. I have not read it yet, so anything goes. End game is space imperialism and laissez faire I guess, but for me that goal develops into building a self sufficient network where every need is met and it is secure, while sweeping any credit hungry Teladi out of the way if they disrupt my near space utopia. Of course I have never got there. Computers can't process a universe like that yet and I always stop a play thru due to low FPS. Higher costs for objects in game might mean more hours of game play before that happens. To grind or not to grind. That is the question.

[LameFox]

Well, I agree that the ships don't feel very meaningful, but adding to the cost of the game's current ships without also tuning their balance to distinguish them more would only make it take longer to regret bothering. Also kinda wary of additional upkeep as of course it's also more that the game needs keep track of.