mr.WHO wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 00:18
3.0 added "interceptor" assignment, but it's only avaliable on ships.
I'd love to see "interceptor" asignment for stations as my defense stations are cable of taking down capships, but when I assign fighters via "defense assignemnt" to take out other fighters they die fighting capships, instead of chasing other fighters.
I also fail to understand why you created "interceptor" asignment, but didn't add "bomber" assignment
As someone mention Logistic ships need bigger cargo hold as they are barelly able to resupply dozen heavy torpedo bombers or a missile destroyer or two.
In addition the traders assigned to logistic ships should dock/follow to them if idle (currently traders assigned that do nothing will stay in space in place where they got assigned to the leader - this makes them vunlerable and often force them to cross entire galaxy when they finally get the trade order - actually this behavior - dock if iddle - would be also good for traders assigned to stations).
I'd also like if we could assign trader to carriers as well since they are also resupply ships for fighters.
If the speed of progress through the game is slowed, I'm gonna be one happy bunny. - I just started a new game, and I'd forgotten what it meant to have 'scarce resources' - forgot what it meant to choose between an additional few nav sats or upgrading my shields to MK II. There'll always come a point where you can declare yourselves the boss of your game, if that's your goal, but it seems to leap out and just happen between one gaming session and the next here. - I really, really would like to see the challenge continue longer.
One of the difficulties, doubtless the greatest difficulty, is maintaining game balance for the player. Now the thing is, it's impossible in such a complex sim to make the game balanced for the player late game. - 'The player will always find a way.'
Can I suggest one nuclear option 'unbalancing' idea which may involved health warnings and checking life insurance policies? - Why not have a 'It's time to end you' button nestled deep within a submenu where the player can opt to have a massive invasion force gate into a random player dominated system at a random point in the next few gaming hours/days.
And did I mention the Admiral's chair? A simple button to have the player sit on a crate/squat on the floor and be unable to do other than look around until they hit that button again would work for me.
Also, +1 for bigger logistic ship cargo holds.
Oh, and stop the dude/dudette stood in front of you from going 'hello' every few seconds when you're getting intimate with the map.
Gavrushka wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 08:43
If the speed of progress through the game is slowed, I'm gonna be one happy bunny. - I just started a new game, and I'd forgotten what it meant to have 'scarce resources' - forgot what it meant to choose between an additional few nav sats or upgrading my shields to MK II. There'll always come a point where you can declare yourselves the boss of your game, if that's your goal, but it seems to leap out and just happen between one gaming session and the next here. - I really, really would like to see the challenge continue longer.
One of the difficulties, doubtless the greatest difficulty, is maintaining game balance for the player. Now the thing is, it's impossible in such a complex sim to make the game balanced for the player late game. - 'The player will always find a way.'
Can I suggest one nuclear option 'unbalancing' idea which may involved health warnings and checking life insurance policies? - Why not have a 'It's time to end you' button nestled deep within a submenu where the player can opt to have a massive invasion force gate into a random player dominated system at a random point in the next few gaming hours/days.
And did I mention the Admiral's chair? A simple button to have the player sit on a crate/squat on the floor and be unable to do other than look around until they hit that button again would work for me.
Also, +1 for bigger logistic ship cargo holds.
Oh, and stop the dude/dudette stood in front of you from going 'hello' every few seconds when you're getting intimate with the map.
I dont think restricting us from moving while someone is invading is a good idea i like to fly a fighter in the massive battles. Leave the button just crank up the aggression. I think one of the main problems of ppl is that they are friends with everyone. Im currently at war with every single faction except ARG and ANT. The problem is that they seem to attack me with no tought behind the attacks, if the AI starts focusing our traders infrastructure with larger than 3 fighters raid parties we will be in a heap of trouble if this is combined with the slower replenishing resources. I think the way to go is to make the AI strain our economy but that will never ever happen if the player is friends with everyone.
Bernd wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 00:26
How likely are you to start a new game?
We are making many changes to make the path towards your own shipyard longer and more interesting but if you continue with that save, then it is hard to "fix" without drastic agressions against player stations.
Personally herr Bernd I start a new game every time I reach the point where I can have my first Wharf(!!!) since, after that, everything becomes "inevitable". And that actually happens in about 2 game days.
And no, it's not the ease of getting money that puts me there. It's the lack of other things (like content, interesting plots with interesting twists) that has us all focused in the economy. For as long as the game remains "stuck" in the economy part it makes very little difference as far as the prices or the holds of ships are concerned.
A good idea would be, for example, to release the SCA reputation so the Hatikvah mission will have some real difficulty and require an "organised" approach since you have to destroy some of their ships and then be able to land on their stations.
Also, some "polish" in the game (as it is getting close to maturity) would not go amiss. Get rid of the obsolete "hints" at the leading screens. Stop this continuous "hello" form NPC's it's not boring, it's irritating. The Boron, after he gives his assessment (yes after) the first time you meet him at the PHQ says "Hello there". Once you enter the science laboratory in the PHQ you can not visit the station's trader, you have to go somewhere else first(!!!). The ships will stop some 50km before their destination and continue at, most possibly, 10% speed to reach it.
And, last but not least, I can fully understand that for you simulating a real economy can be a lifetime goal and I sympathise because I am well aware of the programming difficulties this presents but I'm sure that a great part of the players would rather fly a ship than a map, as the case is now. Let some automations exist and some "intelligence" in the Artificial Intelligence.
End of "rant"
Anyway Egosoft and the X Universe are deep rooted in my heart and this is the reason that at some point I "loose it"... May 2021 bring you profitsssss
Yeah, great, another useless feature called tactical command. What good is it, when my destroyers still fly towards an enemy station on full speed to die in 5 seconds?
What good is it when they, by some miracle, stop in time, only to bump to each other or even shoot each other? Becaue they can not follow even the basic of formation and, of course, AI can not use travel drive at all. Both IS and OOS.
Do you realise that it has been two years since release? Yet there are still basic mechanics not working.
And by the way, have you already fixed that malarky when a new given order is put at the end? I would really like to meet that genius who came up with this...
Intel Core i5 4590, 2 x 8GB DDR3 1600, MSI GTX 1060 Armor, Asus H97 Pro, Asus Xonar DG, Crucial MX100 128GB SSD + 1TB WD Caviar Blue, Seasonic S12G 550W, Corsair 550D, 22'' LG
Bernd wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 00:26
How likely are you to start a new game?
We are making many changes to make the path towards your own shipyard longer and more interesting but if you continue with that save, then it is hard to "fix" without drastic agressions against player stations.
Personally Herr Bernd I start a new game every time I reach the point where I can have my first Wharf(!!!) since, after that, everything becomes "inevitable". And that actually happens in about 2 game days.
+1.
But being a little slow and suboptimal in my gameplay, it's a few hundred gaming hours, not 50 or so. - It's much like Game of Thrones... You go through all those series, all those episodes and then *boom* the pace accelerates exponentially in the last couple of episodes and you're left a little confused as to what happened. That's what shipbuilding does in X4 at present. For me, any challenge ends when the wharf comes on tap. It's no longer a case of firefighting or difficult choices. You feel omnipotent.
Either ramp the challenge to match on wharf appearance, or reduce (massively) the powerful impact it has on a player's game.
It is true that Late game is not for everyone who plays the game (more than 100h in a game), but surely many people who arrive comment on their plays, make videos and broadcast and say how interesting it can be when you have many hours in-game so I think it's a smart move to improve this area of the game, people who buy the game look at the full package, a lot of fans are here with 1000+ hours in the game, myself included.
I am that type of gamer who is looking to build an empire and take the entire galaxy by force ... this is a long term goal, because of this normally a wharft and the shipyard is just the beginning of the adventure, the money is irrelevant in this part, resources and assets are really what matters most. Because of this most long time veterans are looking for more challenge on late game. Remember the mote in this area (trade, fight, build, think, explore, strategy)
I am missing the fight and strategy part on the many hundred hours games. I am looking forward to see what your are putting in the table for COH in this regard and maybe plans for 5.0 update and beyond?
Bernd wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 00:26
How likely are you to start a new game?
We are making many changes to make the path towards your own shipyard longer and more interesting but if you continue with that save, then it is hard to "fix" without drastic agressions against player stations.
I wouldn't necessarily expect any changes to attempt to 'fix' existing game shipyards,
except perhaps the rate at which NPC's buy ships.
I assumed any 'increased difficulty' thing you do would be aimed at the pre-shipyard(/wharf) player,
e.g. requires more effort/resource/reputation/support/time to make them, as well as the reduced buy-rate.
Personally I'm unlikely to start a new game until until the new Terran DLC/upgrade,
just because I think I 'know everything' about the current game
I almost re-started with the Split DLC, but chose not to.
Struggling up through the 'same game' (even though I know many things have been improved since I first started)
feels a bit like throwing away all my effort,
- for now I'll continue to explore the 'extreme end game' aspects,
hopefully I can create some 'galaxy-wide' scenarios that hold some interest...
(might need some save-game edits, even if only inter-faction relations).
Dear Team,
I'm a veteran player of X3 and I've played 100h to X4. Not a lot time spent in X4 but enougth to give a feedback.
My feedback Is extreme positive. In X4 there are what we have asked in this forum, in X3 to improve:
- Dinamic Economy - there Is
- Xenon aggressive -there is
- Factions wars- there are
- goal for a long time - there Is
- more tasks to do - there are
I'm very Happy to play X4 and for my point of view you are following the right way.
There are the points that I think should be better to improve:
- autopilot, when the ship arrives to the destination , sometimes the navy makes a turn before stop. The navy doesn't stop in order to I can see the destination.
- when the navy touch an other navy, sometimes start to rotate and isn't possible to control(expeciatllity during the land off). It's necessary to exist the rotation before restart.
In the next DLC/Expansions add:
a) pirates activity and possibility to be a real pirate, but should arrives with the next one.
b) Khaa'k activity. It seems for the moment not a problem like the Xenon.
c) should be necessary a restyling for the capital and transport navy of Paranid and Telady (and if possible also for Argon). Just to align the level with the Split.
d) More choise of Fighters/Frigates/Corvettes in terms of types of models.
e) Boron
f) add some new game with a level of difficult:hard and extreme, where Xenon Khaa'k and pirates activity increase.
Thanks again for your efforts, this game is the best!!!!!!
Kill XenonAs Soon As Possibile, always and wherever
Bernd wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 00:26
How likely are you to start a new game?
We are making many changes to make the path towards your own shipyard longer and more interesting but if you continue with that save, then it is hard to "fix" without drastic agressions against player stations.
0%. I don't intent to restart. Ever.
If I run out of goals, then I have lost. A restart would not change that.
You are free to attack all my stations (for I have none).
Amount of plot missions started: 0
All that I plan to do "later". Until then I will play this "almost, but not quite the end game".
I have not played more than about 300 ingame hours yet ...
I seem to share the views of exogenesis, although with different game plan.
Goner Pancake Protector X
Insanity included at no extra charge.
There is no Box. I am the sand.
Bernd wrote: ↑Sat, 2. Jan 21, 17:31
- Shipyards: We did consider for a while, to require players to have special contracts with factions in order to sell ships to a war faction and actively retaliate in case you would sell to two factions at once, but decided against it. Income per ship will still be reduced dramatically with the final version of 4.0.
-Bernd
I agree with many posters here that currently your warf and shipyard render money no longer relevant in the game plus ability to build as many ships as you want makes you God status almost immediately.
In some respects I would argue that player shipyards have opened a Pandora's box in the game that can't really be closed now, how could you remove them now?
However of the two ideas you speak of here I would think the first one (restricting sales through political means) is more promising than the second (just reducing the price of ships sold). This is because a) it provides an additional political dimension to the game but more importantly b) it won't feel right that ships cost less at your yard than they do at the factions own yards.
In short I don't think the price of your ships (and therefore the unit profit made) should be different to faction's standard prices, but rather that factions should be much more reluctant to order ships from your yards. Only when they really need to basically. Currently the cost of ship and ship equipment BPs is extremely high but this is mitigated by the enormous number of ships the factions order and the more BPs you own the more orders you get resulting in a +ve feedback loop. If the factions ordered a lot less ships that loop would be broken and getting a full set of BPs would be a much longer term project.
I also think that bringing political factors into ships sales affords a big opportunity to enrich mid-late game play. Off the top of my head I can easily see missions where a faction under severe pressure asked you to eliminate the Xenon from a certain sector or declare war on another faction, for example, in return for which they will place a big ship order (provisionally on acceptance of the mission, payment/handover to follow on mission completion etc).
IMHO you should at least have another look at this one.
[edit] Actually there is a secondary consideration here. With "normal" station it is possible to balance your raw and intermediate ware production to exactly support you end product output. With ships it isn't by definition 'cos you have no idea what will be ordered. I am currently realising just how much "stuff" goes into ships, there doesn't seem to be any end to it. So you typically have to buy in a lot of wares to complete orders. Therefore if the profit margins on player's yard ships are squeezed too much it may not be viable to get a shipyard operation off the ground at all given the enormous initial investment in BPs and the huge supporting manufacturing base you need to set up to make your own parts.
Last edited by Gregorovitch on Sun, 3. Jan 21, 13:41, edited 1 time in total.
dtpsprt wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 09:55
Stop this continuous "hello" form NPC's it's not boring, it's irritating. The Boron, after he gives his assessment (yes after) the first time you meet him at the PHQ says "Hello there". Once you enter the science laboratory in the PHQ you can not visit the station's trader, you have to go somewhere else first(!!!). The ships will stop some 50km before their destination and continue at, most possibly, 10% speed to reach it.
As someone who lived through enconters with X-Rebirth NPC, I find X4 NPC dialogues charming, polite and happily short. Once you play several hours of X-Rebirth you will crave for X4 simple "hello there".
Personally I'd be against reducing shipyard/wharf profit, but looking at my 20 bil Cr account I can't deny somenthing is wrong and 80% it was made by SY/Wharf.
I really like the progress X4 is making, good work.
Sadly i also have the nvidia-hud-bug right now
What i am missing the most in vanilla (beside improved pathfinding and ship-ai)
is a more dynamic universe reacting to what the player does.
Some examples that come to my mind:
- Dynamic defend-missions from ships/stations when they are getting attacked
- Factions disliking you as you gain ranks with their enemies (see reactive factions mod)
- Dynamic relations between factions (see DeadAir Dynamic Wars mod)
- Pirate-factions getting more dangerous over time and target the player-assets directly at some point.
At least in mid-late game the game is lacking challenges to overcome i think.
And if a player doesn't want to fight there could be an option to pay a faction to defend your assets.
And please give the npc-factions sector-blacklists and no-go areas inside sectors so they don't waste so many ships all the time.
That would be great
Keep up the good work.
Looking forward to whats coming next
Gregorovitch wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 13:07
However of the two ideas you speak of here I would think the first one (restricting sales through political means) is more promising than the second (just reducing the price of ships sold). This is because a) it provides an additional political dimension to the game but more importantly b) it won't feel right that ships cost less at your yard than they do at the factions own yards.
Restricting number of factions a shipyard trades with doesn't make that much difference in practice - just reduces the magnitude of the billions of unspendable credits the player ends up with. Still ruins Trade. In the (so far) only game where I built a shipyard it was only selling to ARG & ANT. Still ended up making 100s of millions per hour, several billion over the course of the next few days, even with prices set as low as the game would let me (50%).
GCU Grey Area wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 13:35
Restricting number of factions a shipyard trades with doesn't make that much difference in practice .
I was suggesting that the factions order a lot less ships from the player generally, only when they need to basically. Or when it was politically/militarily expedient. That would make a difference. The amount of the difference depending on the level of reluctance to outsource their shipbuilding. In my view the most important part of this is breaking the +ve feedback loop between getting more ship and equipment BP's and getting more and more orders. You would have to be more picky about BP purchases.
The endgame content is a sore point in every X game, not just X4. And I don't think there's a way to completely solve the problem. In every game there's a point at which you find yourself at the very top, where everything becomes trivial. It doesn't mean, however, that it should be easy to reach that point. Here are my observations on that after many hours with the game:
- Faction Strength
Part of the problem is how weak most factions appear to be. I mean, those factions don't feel like they have invested years into their development, especially since I can just surpass their entire economy and fleet in a matter of days. I understand the gameplay reason for that, but factions and their military should feel huge, overcoming them ought to be a great feat of strength and economic prowess, not the result of capturing three stray FAF Rattlesnakes.
Especially iconic sectors like Argon Prime feel lackluster. Supposedly the most developed sector of the Argons, it is nothing more than a one-sector system that has a few stations in it. There's no real power behind it (military or economic), no real obstacle. You can quite easily take over Argon Prime, something that would be unthinkable in earlier games of the series. Being able to compete with major factions that are around for hundreds of years in such a short time is, I think, one of the reasons why we reach the engame (and thus the 'boring' phase) so early.
- Availability of military-grade high-tech
Another part of the problem is the easy availability of even special and rare things. After selling them a bit of ore and silicon for a day, even hostile factions like the Split or distrustful factions like the Paranids are willing to sell me the blueprints for their top-notch military equipment.
I wouldn't change the current way or rate of reputation growth, though. It is fine as it is. The way of obtaining certain tech, however, should change dramatically. The military license should give you access to blueprints of MK1 equipment and M-sized military ships and nothing more. Everything else should be subject to either reverse-engineering, stealing, mission rewards or expensive research. Would certainly be a good reward for an engaging activity that consists of more than simply buying everything with money I can endlessly print in my shipyard.
Giving FAF and SCA weaker ship variants or even own pirate capital ships could also help. They are easy to capture, especially as SCA has fixed reputation. Why should such a risk-free and easy activity yield the same result as attacking a faction and capturing their ships? Obtaining real military-grade capital ships and their blueprints should be the goal of the endgame, not the means to it.
- Faction flavor
There's also something that bothers me when it comes to factions: they feel a bit too similar. Take the Teladi for example, they are supposed to be a profit-oriented corporation. Yet they behave the same as every other faction: building stations, patrolling, expanding, occasionally fighting some enemies. Rinse and repeat. There is no faction-specific flavor here; their trading-stations, albeit huge, still behave like all the others. It also doesn't help that their ships aren't the best for transport and trade. Why aren't they trying to make a profit everywhere in the universe?
Also the Split are said to have slave labor, yet all I can see is a workforce comprised of nothing but Split, the same mechanic as with everyone else. Would've been a good way to enrich the full pirate experience by adding slave trade here.
Those things could be said for every faction. The Terrans are a step in the right direction, as they have their own economy and - from what I could gather from the files - will show a certain political behaviour that differs from the old factions. I wish more factions would actively show their trademark behaviour. This would make it more meaningful what faction controls what sector, who to support or to wage war against.
- Competition
What makes many economic simulations great is having some kind of competition to play against. Right now we only have the factions, but their only goal is to expand and fight their enemies. In that regard they only compete with me if I choose to follow those same objectives. But if I go for simple trade and profit in a non-violent way, if I don't want to own a sector, then there is nobody that tries to outshine me. It feels as if I'm the only trading organisation in the universe that interacts cross-faction and that everything is on the verge of collapse without my intervention.
What I miss here is some kind of competition that provides me with certain obstacles to overcome: a mining corporation that has a monopoly for ore and silicium for a whole faction, a Nividium cartel that makes it illegal to mine, transport and sell Nividium with them being there, maybe some logistics company that has exclusive rights to transport certain goods in certain sectors. I don't know, there are many ways to give the player some economic obstacles that require a solution that doesn't ultimately end with violence. Could also be a chance to bring back bad boys like Plutarch Mining or TerraCorp.
Outdoing your competition is always a strong incentive.
- Long-term shaping of the universe and vanity projects
Terraforming is a great idea to implement bigger projects for the endgame-phase. The faction plots are also a very welcome way of influencing how the lategame works. But there are far more possibilities to keep a rich endgame-player engaged: clearing mine-fields or hazardous regions (yes, I'm talking about you, Tharka's Cascade XV!), finishing the highways in certain sectors (by making them longer or adding bi-directionality), triggering global events like economic downturns, temporary boosts to Xenon, spawning a huge Kha'ak swarm or increased pirate activity etc.
But what rich people also like to do is feeding their own vanity. Let us build a huge palace with great interior design, give us a luxury yacht, give us a room for various trophies (hunting trophies for killing a certain amount of Xenon or Kha'ak or economic trophies for reaching 99 bil credits, having 1 million workforce across all stations, owning 1000 transport ships and so on), give us things to collect and display. Not everything about the endgame has to serve a purpose other than catering to our own vanity.
I love this game, I really do. It would be so great to have more to do in the later stages a playthrough, though. That you support and care for your released product gives me high hopes that you'll find a way to make the game better and better in the years to come. For that I wish you all the best and I sincerely hope that our feedback contributes to that goal!
Lots of things I totally agree with, and in other comments as well.
My 2 credits :
- Faction Navies seem weak indeed compared to the player's (after a bit of time of course).
>How to manage without too much calculations...? >Work a code based on "fleets" (and on a second approach on individual ships of course if needed), and make Factions fleets more numerous and powerful. Not just 1 Carrier with 12 fighters and 2 Destroyers.
- Player impact on economy can be overwhelmingly big too quickly.
>I think because stations work "too well" and you can stack so many of them without penalty
>How to change? >Maybe via the population mechanic : pops are mandatory to run a factory, and only a limited supply is available in each sector (or requiring xxx to increase......). Hence no more megaplexes, or if yes, you'd have to get some population somehow!
>Also maybe diminishing returns on a station : manager can only manage so much modules, above that there is a x % penalty on production?
- Shipyard make way too much money indeed
> Maybe they should come earlier and allow player to research blueprints via mission ect... and advance the game, helping or destroying factions... but not the current BOOM I WIN button
- Also ship building should have consequences.
>You can't be friends with everyone and sell them weapons to wage war against one another... you'd end up killed ...or can you ? Let us be Lords of War sure, but make it realistic and super risky , working under the shadows.....
Anyways thanks a lot for the hard work, already sunk lots of hours and probably will again !!
And for my part I'd happily restart a game. I regularly do to try different playstyles. More than happy if things change dramatically !!!
Bernd wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 00:26
How likely are you to start a new game?
We are making many changes to make the path towards your own shipyard longer and more interesting but if you continue with that save, then it is hard to "fix" without drastic agressions against player stations.
Personally I am 100% likely to start a new game when the new Terran DLC drops. For that reason I personally am 100% behind making significant changes for the player shipyard issue etc even if those might pretty much break an existing save. Of course that is not going to please those who want to continue with an existing save. It worries me that the "backwards compatibility" issue might hold back or water down important changes you have in mind.
I am wondering if:
a) straight up recommending a new start for the full blown new Terran DLC experience, and
b) offering a toned down "continuity build" option for those that want that
I think significant changes should be made. We start with nothing, anyone who has a save affected by large changes will find it a temporary set back at most. It would be a big mistake to not make these changes just to keep current saves optimal. As long as no saves are rendered useless I don't see the issue.
GCU Grey Area wrote: ↑Sun, 3. Jan 21, 13:35
Restricting number of factions a shipyard trades with doesn't make that much difference in practice .
I was suggesting that the factions order a lot less ships from the player generally, only when they need to basically. Or when it was politically/militarily expedient. That would make a difference. The amount of the difference depending on the level of reluctance to outsource their shipbuilding. In my view the most important part of this is breaking the +ve feedback loop between getting more ship and equipment BP's and getting more and more orders. You would have to be more picky about BP purchases.
In my case that would have not made the slightest difference to the outcome. For several weeks I essentially had the ONLY shipbuilding facilities available to ANT & ARG. They kept trying to rebuild their own, but HOP were remarkably efficient at hunting them down & smashing them all over again, long before they ready to build ships of their own. Both factions needed to completely replace ALL of their warships (if they had any left they were exceptionally good at hiding from my satellite network) & almost all of their commercial fleets. Soon as I turned my shipyard on for NPC sales they were using it at capacity for weeks - build queues for several dozen ships were pretty much a constant feature. Had no choice about which blueprints to purchase - they needed absolutely everything ASAP, or face extinction. Would have been fine if I could have set my ship prices lower (frankly would have preferred to give away all those ships for free). However 50% was the least I could charge them & it still wrecked my enjoyment of the Trade side of the game.
A simple button to have the player sit on a crate/squat on the floor and be unable to do other than look around until they hit that button again would work for me.
...or can you ? Let us be Lords of War sure, but make it realistic and super risky , working under the shadows..... 