4.00 Public Beta now available

[CBJ]

• Fixed cut-off encyclopedia descriptions.

We can fix these things if we know where they happen, but we can't wave a magic wand and have them all suddenly vanish. If you have specific examples where it's still a problem with the 4.00 beta, then we need to know which texts there are and on which menu, as well as your language, screen resolution and UI scale.

[Alan Phipps]

... but please post those in reports supported with information for the devs in the public beta forum and not in this thread.

[alt3rn1ty]

The new Fleet Management and sub-ordinate ship orders from the Fleet Admiral, as opposed to the player having to micro-manage a coordinated attack sounds superb.

Will the AI also have similar coordinated attack behaviour against the player?
And does this happen OOS aswell as IS?

I will be amazed if those questions are both answered with an affirmative .. but kind of hoping they are

Well... I can assure you that in 3 instances so far (5 hours play time in the Beta) Both the Xenon and the Khaak did coordinated attacks on me... I don't think it's just RNG...

Ace . First thing I had after downloading the update a couple of hours ago was a swarm of Xenon P and M came through a gate trying to bust up my rattlesnake fleet plugging up the gate .. I was in a Nemesis with two Nemesis escorts next to the gate when they came through, best battle I have been hands on with, ever!. But I treated it like a pre-4.0 game and personally protected the Fleet of Rattlesnakes IS against the swarm of small fast ships, so I still need to rebuild my Fleets to have smaller supporting role ships

But first it would be good to know if OOS is going to be the same, or would smaller ships in a fleet OOS be practically useless because Coordinated attacks OOS dont quite work the same (ie the usual biggest guns win OOS)

Seems one of my questions has been answered elsewhere ..
viewtopic.php?f=146&t=431260
CBJ responded

So Egosoft have made improvements over the disparity between IS and OOS, I guess we just need to find out by trial and error again as to how.

[dtpsprt]

So Egosoft have made improvements over the disparity between IS and OOS, I guess we just need to find out by trial and error again as to how.

Well... if they could (or even had time to) write big "explanatory" posts, without giving out too much so that it will come as a great surprise, they would be devs in a Publishing House, not a Sofrware one. Personally I'm glad (most of the time) for a simple "yes" or "no" or "we'll see about that".
As far as their "notes" on "improvements" in Betas, new versions and DLC's are correct (what said to be fixed/altered is fixed/altered and what is fixed/altered is mentioned) that's all we need to know. It is one of the reasons I always start a new, fresh, vanilla game in any Beta and some smaller ones in every Hotfix to test and find out by myself...
Once the new version is out one can decide to bring in his old paythrough or not right? Afterall a Beta is (supposed to be) a final test before the official release as far as I remember...

[Raevyan]

I really hope that all the new fleet behavior is not tied to the pilot skill of the captain, otherwise we alle know how bad this feature will end...

[alt3rn1ty]

So Egosoft have made improvements over the disparity between IS and OOS, I guess we just need to find out by trial and error again as to how.

Well... if they could (or even had time to) write big "explanatory" posts, without giving out too much so that it will come as a great surprise, they would be devs in a Publishing House, not a Sofrware one. Personally I'm glad (most of the time) for a simple "yes" or "no" or "we'll see about that".
As far as their "notes" on "improvements" in Betas, new versions and DLC's are correct (what said to be fixed/altered is fixed/altered and what is fixed/altered is mentioned) that's all we need to know. It is one of the reasons I always start a new, fresh, vanilla game in any Beta and some smaller ones in every Hotfix to test and find out by myself...
Once the new version is out one can decide to bring in his old paythrough or not right? Afterall a Beta is (supposed to be) a final test before the official release as far as I remember...

Oh yes I agree, I wasn't complaining, looking forward to the finding out myself what works well or not.
Also going to be updating a few of my bug reports with fix confirmations .. once I get my eyes off the forum, too keen to see if I missed anything to drag myself away .

This beta update and its developments are kickass

[zakaluka]

Personally I'm glad (most of the time) for a simple "yes" or "no" or "we'll see about that".

Personally not a fan of the community speculating on mechanics for years until someone finally spends the time to read & understand the AI scripts. Which are quite difficult for even experienced modders to understand sometimes, I might add.
(cough... crew levels)

[dtpsprt]

Personally not a fan of the community speculating on mechanics for years until someone finally spends the time to read & understand the AI scripts. Which are quite difficult for even experienced modders to understand sometimes, I might add.
(cough... crew levels)

Indeed... I'm personally of the opinion to RTMF than RTFM... then apply simple logic to what you read...

P.S. I'm also personally of the opinion that simple logic is an extremely valuable commodity in permanent scarcity i.e. the KISS principle that is hardly applied anywhere...

[chew-ie]

Yeah, pong is all we really needed.

[grapedog]

I think that was already the case... i just liked not having to do an extra crew xfer. I would cap the ship, then swap marinea to service crew, xfer repair drones over, and then escort it back to a shipyard. Just before it docked, i would transfer my marines back to their launch ship, and have the cap'd ship pull in, get repairs, and hire a new crew. Now ill have to ferry around a service crew too?

I'd be much happier if they just capped marines(of say 1 boarding star or better) at 1 or 2 stars for engineering. That way you can still use em for basic maintenance crews, without having to ferry around multiple groups of people. That's gonna make the capping process much more annoying i feel.

Any way you look at it, it's about the same number of clicks... the only "difference" is that it would be a nice idea (for those that love and embrace caping) to have a "special" crew ship to transfer from so they won't be searching...

And that is the annoying part, is ill have to have a couple ships full of service crew doing nothing but waiting around near my capping ships, or hsve additional ships thats only purpose is to provide additional repair drones via xfer to the newly capped ship.

It just adds having more stuff required to do the same thing.... but i am not sure i see the benefit to player enjoyment. In my mind changes towards more realism should be balanced by whether or not it makes a process more or less enjoyable.

Unless there is another reason to make the change that I am not aware of. And how does this affect single crewman? If i have a service crew member on board, and i want to make him a marine, or vice versa, is that not allowed any more?

[dtpsprt]

Unless there is another reason to make the change that I am not aware of. And how does this affect single crewman? If i have a service crew member on board, and i want to make him a marine, or vice versa, is that not allowed any more?

You can always "personally" call to assign him to another (or the same) ship in another post. Of course doing so for 20-30 people is the "icing of the cake" for masochism....

[Solomon Short]

No, Solomon Short asked about weapon mode, not weapon mods.

These are the settings for turret behaviour.

Ah, thank you.

That is a very useful change!

[SparvieroGed]

any feedbacks about performance?
I'm a bit worried.

[chew-ie]

any feedbacks about performance?
I'm a bit worried.

For me it's mostly the same. The volumetric shadows are optional and the devs invited all to share their experience in terms of performance to further optimize them. Although it should be clear that the volumetric shadows do need certain hardware - like a middle class pc isn't expected to have enough ressources left for raytracing. So expecting them to have zero impact is kind of wrong.

Other then that quite a few optimizations were made - so chances are that performance gets better. (e.g. they are constantly looking into those crazy mega complexes people build; there were some changes to AI / NPC behaviours which I am aware of which were the source of situational performance issues)

You could use the public beta and check if your rig has any troubles. Reporting any findings could also net the possibility for improvement.

[Stoats not Goats]

any feedbacks about performance?
I'm a bit worried.

Like what chew-ie said it feels pretty much the same performance-wise even in GE where the fog and asteroids are incredibly dense. Graphically, I reckon its a great improvement with the volumetric fog but no noticeable performance cost.

[SparvieroGed]

[/quote]

For me it's mostly the same. The volumetric shadows are optional and the devs invited all to share their experience in terms of performance to further optimize them. Although it should be clear that the volumetric shadows do need certain hardware - like a middle class pc isn't expected to have enough ressources left for raytracing. So expecting them to have zero impact is kind of wrong.

Other then that quite a few optimizations were made - so chances are that performance gets better. (e.g. they are constantly looking into those crazy mega complexes people build; there were some changes to AI / NPC behaviours which I am aware of which were the source of situational performance issues)

You could use the public beta and check if your rig has any troubles. Reporting any findings could also net the possibility for improvement.

Thanks, I will try it.
I'm on a laptop and my biggest problem are temperatures.

[Warnoise]

Still no "bomber" subordinates roles for anti capital/station?

[mr.WHO]

Still no "bomber" subordinates roles for anti capital/station?

+1 for this - I was bitchin about it ever since 3.0 beta.

[mr.WHO]

One thing I wonder from watching trailers - there are two color patterns for Terrans:
White & red
White & blue
(unconfirmed, possible) mettalic silver? hard to tell on that assymetric fighter

If this isn't simply a different paint mod or default paint color pattern then I guss this might indicate Earth (blue) and Mars/colonies (red) factions.

Maybe it's like Earth faction want to rebuild Earth defences (new Torus or something better), build fleet and kick Argon ass.
While Mars faction is more interested in colony development and terraforming, kinda isolationist faction?

[avilonrayne]

It is a pretty standard requirement for games involving a shared online experience to need an unmodified client.

This is incorrect. Many online games, including big ones such as World of Warcraft, allow client modifications. Most of these MMO mods are limited in scope, like UI changes and such, but if an MMO can allow mods, why can't X4? There are also a ton of games with predominant online features that allow unlimited modding. Minecraft is a great example here. The host of any of these games simply shares the mods with the clients that join, and the mods are only in effect for the client while they are connected to that host.

The whole Venture system, since its release, has made no sense at all for why mods are restricted. If someone sends a modified ship, simply replace it with a ship of matching size and role when it gets sent out to other players. There could even be a preset "default ship" for each size and role that all modified clients send out.

So, can you please explain why these "planned online features" warrant isolating your modding community from part of the game? Mods make X4 quite a bit better, largely by fixing broken AI and adding new features at a much faster pace than Egosoft can. There are plenty of mods that don't alter gameplay, too. A popular one on Steam Workshop right now changes one of the playable character models, for example.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to play the game, probably un-modded for a while to see how all the new changes work. I happen to like the unmodified game for the most part. It's just the AI that messes up too much that gets on my nerves. I really hope y'all have fixed the docking behavior for in-sector ships. I just wish it didn't feel like Egosoft was being outright hostile to the modders that, quite frankly, keep the X games alive. I wouldn't still be playing X:Rebirth and X3:AP without mods.