Going through some negative feedback while planning the next 4.0 update

[Imperial Good]

More "map work"? and for what? more (unnecessary) credits?

Maybe the idea was unclear... The ship would automatically fly to its pickup point once constructed with a minimal, and free crew while under the player's faction code. No extra player interaction or attention required.

And with pirates and other factions trying to destroy these ships in transit, payment becomes unreliable unless you invest in more patrols.

This is intereseting and all - but has anyone considered that you don't necessarily control when ships get ordered and built? So if you got to jump to it every five minutes to babysit new ships to the customer's base, how are you going to feel about that if you're in the middle of a invading a Xenon sector or trying to save the ARG from the HOP?

The point of the idea is that the ships will almost always arrive successfully so their AI player can deploy them in a sensible way rather than instantly lose them to a HOP Odysseus which was finished a few seconds earlier. Other friendly to you factions will not try to intercept or even pirate the ships since they are under your faction code. Only your enemies (which might just be KHK and XEN) would try to kill these ships.

This would mean that a shipyard/warf in HOP space could supply ships reliably to HOP, PAR, ANT and even TEL (which would be your friends) without any sort of degeneracy occurring.

[Waltz9]

But lately I turned my game back from 4.0 beta to 3.3 because I believe the entire station system is completely broken right now.
If you build a station the universe will only supply one thing of its requirements. After a long time your miners stop working.
If you have habitats but do not want other races to supply its requirements your traders will just sit back being confused what to do.
Its a pain to deal with all this in its current state so I rather wait the next updates.

I have been playing beta 4 for a while and I have never had that issue. I usually just drop the price I am willing to pay for wares to the minimum price, the only time my miners stop is if my storage fills up. Are you using any mods?

nah. I'm always a vanilla player. and I set my stations so I never have to buy anything. it will fill up from my own miners. Nothing else but I noticed it even in 3.3
you build a split habitat and you need medical supplies, chelt meat and scruffin fruit.
all 3 settings are set to not to trade with other races.

if the station does not automaticly supply it himself and you add a trader to it then you will see in the traders behavior it will look for the 3 items but it can't because it isn't allowed to trade with other races.

This isn't the behavior in one game because I started many times over. I played new games in the 4.0 like 10 times already.
Yes I love to test things and adapt my playing style.

[Jeraal]

... rambling ...

As the successor of a game that was not designed to be an X-game, which is merely set in the X-universe and doesn't deserve to hold the X in the title, Foundation also doesn't succeed in being an improvement to X3.
Overall the game is boring. So-called improvements are mostly superficial. Several design choices are even unnecessary and form the restriction of why Foundation is less than half the game it could and will be.

I'd give you a thousand up votes if I could. Especially regarding the X that shall not be named. I loved X3 and before. X4 has great, but yet unrealized, potential.

[BigVern]

As the successor of a game that was not designed to be an X-game, which is merely set in the X-universe and doesn't deserve to hold the X in the title, Foundation also doesn't succeed in being an improvement to X3.
Overall the game is boring. So-called improvements are mostly superficial. Several design choices are even unnecessary and form the restriction of why Foundation is less than half the game it could and will be.

I've just started in X4 after being a long time hold out. I actually think Rebirth started off better with Yisha coming on board your ship, which kind of kick started things. Of course you soon realised you actually had to go off and do indie stuff to fund the main campaign and toughen up the Skunk. It also fell apart in the middle with that wretched fab building mission where you couldn't get the parts and ended up using Notepad++ simulator to cheat in the required assets. But overall you were driven along by the story which integrated with your other radiant gameplay.

Now I don't get that vibe in X4 at all. There doesn't seem to be anything at the start to even tell you there is a story in there. Trading is pretty much dead and as I posted in another thread, radiant missions are slow to generate and hard to find.
If you were going to redesign one thing, go back to TC where a nice little icon popped up above any station or ship offering work.

[Graaf]

I actually think Rebirth started off better with Yisha coming on board your ship, which kind of kick started things. Of course you soon realised you actually had to go off and do indie stuff to fund the main campaign and toughen up the Skunk. It also fell apart in the middle with that wretched fab building mission where you couldn't get the parts and ended up using Notepad++ simulator to cheat in the required assets. But overall you were driven along by the story which integrated with your other radiant gameplay.

I'll have to take your word on all that. I haven't played Rebirth. At least Egosoft told me well in advance there wasn't much for me to be interested in.

[jmrc]

One of the things that bother me a bit is that the factions should respond to enemy invasions with all their force. I'm currently in a game where ANT is completely ignoring a Xenon horde invading The Void after taking over Frontier Edge. I don't see any ANT destroyer anywhere and I'm not even sure if they have any. The ANT traders and miners in The Void go about their business, getting hunted down by swarms of Xenon M and S. I'd like to see more "realistic" response to this and it seems that every major faction should start with several destroyers to prevent these overruns.

[dtpsprt]

As the successor of a game that was not designed to be an X-game, which is merely set in the X-universe and doesn't deserve to hold the X in the title, Foundation also doesn't succeed in being an improvement to X3.
Overall the game is boring. So-called improvements are mostly superficial. Several design choices are even unnecessary and form the restriction of why Foundation is less than half the game it could and will be.

I've just started in X4 after being a long time hold out. I actually think Rebirth started off better with Yisha coming on board your ship, which kind of kick started things. Of course you soon realised you actually had to go off and do indie stuff to fund the main campaign and toughen up the Skunk. It also fell apart in the middle with that wretched fab building mission where you couldn't get the parts and ended up using Notepad++ simulator to cheat in the required assets. But overall you were driven along by the story which integrated with your other radiant gameplay.

Now I don't get that vibe in X4 at all. There doesn't seem to be anything at the start to even tell you there is a story in there. Trading is pretty much dead and as I posted in another thread, radiant missions are slow to generate and hard to find.
If you were going to redesign one thing, go back to TC where a nice little icon popped up above any station or ship offering work.

There actually is no vibe to get... More so because the map covers all the screen isolating the player from the universe and it's used everywhere and for everything(!!!) leaving completely out the element of flying your ship in a beautifully designed Universe. The plotlines are restricted to making money with the "think" part put last (and least), while it should be first (as it was in the previous X games, even Rebirth). Once the player figures out how, the game is just boring.

As for the mission icons, they do exist but the map is so badly designed that you have to really make an effort to see the system you are in(!!!). Personally can't see what was wrong with X Rebirth's (solution) of separate map(s) and separate menus (like for trading), assuming that the X3 mechanics can not be transferred to X4. Adding to that the constant flickering of the sector while it expands (why should it?) is not only annoying nut frustrating as it kicks your mouse off if you ty to point to somewhere.

[BigVern]

Got to agree, even with my limited time the map and its interconnected menus is one of the worst UI's I've seen in a game!

[GCU Grey Area]

Got to agree, even with my limited time the map and its interconnected menus is one of the worst UI's I've seen in a game!

Really? Guess it might take a bit of time to get used to it, however I find it far more useful than any of the maps we've had in previous X games.

Don't know if you've ever tried to run a fleet of manually operated freighters in the old games but it was really quite awkward - having to go sector-by-sector to find good trades & then keep notes (on paper) to remind myself of what I was planning to do with each ship. X4's map makes that orders of magnitude simpler. Can zoom & rotate the map to focus on multiple sectors in a region & get a broad overview of available trades. Then it's just a few mouse clicks to keep each ship profitably busy for hours. Generally find having around half a dozen sectors or so visible simultaneously is sufficient to get a decent disparity in prices (i.e. profit margin), while not requiring excessively long journeys to make those trades.

Works quite well for fleet combat too - was never able to plan out attacks this well in previous X games:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5qclmezr2k6su ... 1.jpg?dl=0

[Gavrushka]

I'm not sure how the UI could be radically overhauled to maintain functionality while making it easier. - From watching the beta forum, I do note that improvements are constantly being made, but I fail to see how such a complex game with so many options can have a more simplistic UI. I hear it being criticised frequently, and I accept there's one monster of a learning curve, but I've yet to see an alternative offered.

Much of my earlier negative feedback was performance related, and I feel the recommended specs should include a SSD drive as later in the game, the jerky framerates around bigger stations.

But what I feel is missing from the game now is immersive elements. I recognise it'd take a pretty large financial investment by Egosoft to script, voice and integrate more variety in NPC conversation, but there seemed to be so much more of it in the previous game which I played and loved. (Rebirth) - And nothing feels as 'big' as it did in Rebirth. - All these little quality of life features that helped me forgive many of Rebirths failings are missing entirely from X4. I know the team are still working on core gameplay and adding features, but how I wish we could make it look Rebirth-pretty. - X4 is great to look at, but more like a winter landscape covered in snow kind of pretty rather than the vibrant Spring/Summer appeal that was its predecessor.

Christ, having a Teladi fart on a spacestation, or a Paranid monologue itself senseless, or a Split lass following you around begging to pilot your Raptor would just make a difference. For me at least. - I do recognise for others this stuff is projectile vomit...

[Gregorovitch]

I'm not sure how the UI could be radically overhauled to maintain functionality while making it easier. - From watching the beta forum, I do note that improvements are constantly being made, but I fail to see how such a complex game with so many options can have a more simplistic UI. I hear it being criticised frequently, and I accept there's one monster of a learning curve, but I've yet to see an alternative offered.

I agree with this.

The big issue with X games is not just that they are complicated but also that there a precious few if any games like it (cockpit view space action games, yes, strategy games, yes, both at the same time not so much) so there are no genre bench mark UI's to influence X game UI design other than previous X games themselves. Another is that as with any any complex piece of software the needs of the noob are very different from the requirements of the seasoned player.

Improvements could be made, sure, but I think it's important to talk about specific improvement ideas in detail.

[dtpsprt]

Got to agree, even with my limited time the map and its interconnected menus is one of the worst UI's I've seen in a game!

Really? Guess it might take a bit of time to get used to it, however I find it far more useful than any of the maps we've had in previous X games.

Don't know if you've ever tried to run a fleet of manually operated freighters in the old games but it was really quite awkward - having to go sector-by-sector to find good trades & then keep notes (on paper) to remind myself of what I was planning to do with each ship. X4's map makes that orders of magnitude simpler. Can zoom & rotate the map to focus on multiple sectors in a region & get a broad overview of available trades. Then it's just a few mouse clicks to keep each ship profitably busy for hours. Generally find having around half a dozen sectors or so visible simultaneously is sufficient to get a decent disparity in prices (i.e. profit margin), while not requiring excessively long journeys to make those trades.

Works quite well for fleet combat too - was never able to plan out attacks this well in previous X games:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5qclmezr2k6su ... 1.jpg?dl=0

Don't know if you ever found it out but in X Rebirth (same engine as X4) all you had to do was get the trade subscriptions of the stations all over the universe and then you had two choices, search for individual product trade offers or trade runs (place to buy and place to sell) all over the explored Universe in one click. As for X3, let's just don't go into the "autotraders issue" just for this time...

Fleet combat? This is just one sector. Fleet deployment? What Fleet deployment when the Fleet will not stay together just because some of it's ships can follow the Highway and some can not (and that not even taking into account what happens when they have different traveldrive speeds (and Egosoft made certain via algorithm that even the same ship model with the same engine will have small differences in their statistics simply because two parts cannot be identical)?

[dtpsprt]

I'm not sure how the UI could be radically overhauled to maintain functionality while making it easier. - From watching the beta forum, I do note that improvements are constantly being made, but I fail to see how such a complex game with so many options can have a more simplistic UI. I hear it being criticised frequently, and I accept there's one monster of a learning curve, but I've yet to see an alternative offered.

I agree with this.

The big issue with X games is not just that they are complicated but also that there a precious few if any games like it (cockpit view space action games, yes, strategy games, yes, both at the same time not so much) so there are no genre bench mark UI's to influence X game UI design other than previous X games themselves. Another is that as with any any complex piece of software the needs of the noob are very different from the requirements of the seasoned player.

Improvements could be made, sure, but I think it's important to talk about specific improvement ideas in detail.

To both of you: You answer your own question there. The obvious thing to do is to split the one in all UI. It will function better, be less of a learning curve for the noobs (getting aquainted with one thing at a time without things to loose themselves in) and also minimising it's size so hat it can grab the focus of the player on the task at hand.

[MSterling]

That is the problem, and it is self made. You're shoving your hand in boiling water and complaining about the pain. When credits don't make sense if you get them via shipbuilding, why are you rushing to make them?

This falls into the category of player skill and experience playing the game. Why take 10 hours to do what can be done in 1 hour?

Nope, it has NOTHING to do with player skill. YOU choosing to do it is not a skill based choice. Why take 10 hours to do it? Why complain about having to take 1 hour instead of 10?

Many players, like myself, like a challenge as it gives a sense of accomplishment.

But not a challenge you are taking. Just challenge yourself to do it without using shipyards for anything other than your own ships. Make the shipyards a tool for saving money and guaranteeing the ability to solve losses.
YOUR choice.

The issue is that you can set your sell price to 150%

That is removed by not being able to set prices to 150%, and making selling at anything more than 80% (as an example) would preclude you being the choice. "Buy Teladi" or "Split First", "Make Argon Great Again".

Personally I suggested...

And I read your suggestion. I discard it. I personally suggested we reduce the ability of shipyards to produce money rather than cheaper ships for your own use.

If you cannot find a reason for me to change my opinion, I do not have any reason to change my stance.
If you can only tell me what you "personally suggested", then I can ignore your suggestion, since it isn't mine.

[MSterling]

To both of you: You answer your own question there. The obvious thing to do is to split the one in all UI. It will function better, be less of a learning curve for the noobs (getting aquainted with one thing at a time without things to loose themselves in) and also minimising it's size so hat it can grab the focus of the player on the task at hand.

How about, instead of this, you get a station to sit at at the bigger ships, one where it presents a GUI that allows some special use. Sit at the managers' seat at a station and you get one that presents only those bits that deal with stations and trading. Sit at the tactical officers' seat on a destroyer and you get ship-wing interface for combat. Sit at the same seat on a Auxilliary and you get one that shows what is needed to resupply and reform a fleet (including info on what ships were lost so you can order them up and pre-order them to join in when complete).
And so on and so forth.
Because you may need to do the current workload in any position, including standing on the dock of a bay (watching the tides drift away), the current UI remains.
But this allows a safe static process of the UI progression, never losing anything, but adding a new UI and a reason to sit on a big ship (you have multiple stations to choose from, no need to let a bridge only have tactical operations, it can have a management console too, for your use. And developing new UIs will not have the insane task of having to keep multiple, possibly incompatible, design goals in mind, it can narrow down the focus to produce a better UI for one specific role, at the cost of being no good at anything else.
The difference between a GUI and a command UI is that the former makes what has been programmed for easy to do, but makes what wasn't programmed in impossible. The command line gives you access to everything, but help with nothing.

[MSterling]

Fleet combat? This is just one sector. Fleet deployment? What Fleet deployment when the Fleet will not stay together just because some of it's ships can follow the Highway and some can not (and that not even taking into account what happens when they have different traveldrive speeds (and Egosoft made certain via algorithm that even the same ship model with the same engine will have small differences in their statistics simply because two parts cannot be identical)?

This is why game design for X series is so hard. A lot of people with opinions who haven't played a lot of another type of game.

Play more wargames. Heavy war simulation wargames.

There is VASTLY more than "just one sector" to fleet combat.

Flanks exist. Supply lines exist. Retreat and reinforcement are things that exist in real wargame simulators. STOP is a thing in real war simulations. Simultaneous Time On Point. You come to that single sector through every available gate, ensuring there are no reserves nearby, you time it so that the track from there to the estimated locus of action of the opposition are equal no matter what route your forces too. Seeing attacks from only the front portion, you lure the enemy to attack with their superior force, leaving their rear ignored. Every gun is pointed on way.
Then your other forces come in from behind, to fire on the undefended rear and the weak rear portions of the emeny hardware.
They turn some around to present a threat to slow your rear assault, but now your flanking forces arrive and in turning, the enemy presents firing solutions on the backsides of the ships trying to turn, slow as they are because they have to turn around and present to the aft forces, meaning a change of velocity, passing through zero.
If you arrange your timing correct, and set up the lines right, you can win in a one-on-one fight at a two to one disadvantage, or win with normal superiority of forces (a third more and up) with minimal losses.
Having denuded the enemy, they need to flee. Your tactics then denote whether you will give them an out so they do not try to fight their way out or whether you exterminate all threat. If they leave, and you guessed their retreat lines, you can follow them back to their source and remove that as a source too.

Of course a lot of this isn't possible in this game YET, but some is. The rest require a more complex decision matrix for AI, and all of it require better autopilot pathing and threat decisions. If you are fleeing, you don't want to flee through the engagement zone of a destroyers' batteries.

[MSterling]

... rambling ...

...meaningless guff...

This is an X game. Get over it.

[GCU Grey Area]

Don't know if you ever found it out but in X Rebirth (same engine as X4) all you had to do was get the trade subscriptions of the stations all over the universe and then you had two choices, search for individual product trade offers or trade runs (place to buy and place to sell) all over the explored Universe in one click. As for X3, let's just don't go into the "autotraders issue" just for this time...

Did rather like the trade interface in XR (quite possibly my favourite aspect of that game). Was very useful being able to see ALL the trades available for each ware, not just the best one available on the visible map area. However not sure that approach would work as well with a map the size of X4's. Would have to be an awfully big spreadsheet to fit them all in. Not sure what you mean by "autotraders issue". Rarely used them in X3 & simply don't use them at all in X4. The ease at which manually operated freighters can be used en masse in X4 has made them entirely redundant for me.

Fleet combat? This is just one sector. Fleet deployment? What Fleet deployment when the Fleet will not stay together just because some of it's ships can follow the Highway and some can not (and that not even taking into account what happens when they have different traveldrive speeds (and Egosoft made certain via algorithm that even the same ship model with the same engine will have small differences in their statistics simply because two parts cannot be identical)?

Have successfully waged war on a considerably larger scale than just a single sector (e.g.https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8r9pf5qbo7ve ... 1.jpg?dl=0). Had no issues with deploying my forces across what must have been around 1/4 of the map. Would have been awful trying to do that with X3's map, which can't even show the relative position of ships across just 2 adjacent sectors, let alone a big chunk of the universe map. As for fleet cohesion, recommend investing in carriers. Mostly my fleets looked like this while in transit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/llur76vqnbiu2 ... 1.jpg?dl=0.

[Kpla Keltak]

The biggest problem for me personally with X4 is the unwillingness of Egosoft to put things right that are all ready present in the game, which is compounded with all the wasted development time going into stupid features to attract more buyers...eg Ventures, warping player HQ....and just to cap it all now we have Terraforming.

why wont Egosoft put all the things right that have been wrong for over 2 years.
why wont Egosoft develop the game features that are already present rather than adding more and more stuff that doesn't work.

how can this be immersive when all the details are missing or broken.

how is it i could do simple things in X2 and X3 that i still cant do in X4.
I remember being shot up battling the Xenon and limping away with due to battle damage
I remember Xenon taking out satellites that i had placed in their sector so i could gather intel
I remember having patrols with way points.

Please stop building more and more features into the game until you get the stuff that's here already working.....and its a very big list.

and its annoying that you know about every single item on that list....but wont sort it.
too busy wasting time on DLC's and Terraforming etc.

Yes...new features would be nice and DLC's, but sort everything else out first.....please.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Kpla Keltak: It might be worth taking the time to read Bernd's opening post of this thread which is presumably what you are replying to.