What’s Next for X4? An Early Look into 2025

[Raptor34]

Exciting news! I had guessed from the poll about the boost model that there could be a flight model overhaul in the works. Definitely joining the beta when available.

One thing I keep hoping for is the ability to customize my character's appearance instead of just selecting from a limited number of presets. I know people are going to say "it doesn't matter, you never see yourself"... except we do; in a few scripted scenes, and in the live stream view. Even more when using the "Auto-camera and autopilot" mod.

It's a small thing, I know, and there are much bigger things going on... but I still hope for this eventually.

Spoiler

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I want to play a Yaki but the only available preset for the custom start has the full face cyberware like Orcanica. That is the one cyberware that creeps me out, specifically the eyes.
Oddly enough, I'm not that bothered by Obelisk's cyberware.
If not a full character customization system maybe at least a few more preset options for Yaki with less extensive cyberware, eventually.

But anyway, totally excited for everything on the roadmap!

And while they're at it, uniforms! Though I suddenly shudder at how our save file would bloat if we give fine grained controls to it, so I'll settle for being able to assign uniforms, or not, though now that I think about it, NPCs already keep their uniforms through saves so it's not like it's not being tracked...
So yeah, at the very basic, let us create some uniform presets for each of the crew types(captain, service crew, marines), and then apply those presets to ships individually. And of course the option to not apply the uniform preset too. Like recently I crewed my Sapporo with a mix of TER/PIO/ARG crew, all obviously with different uniforms, I'll like that to remain an option even if it's more work to do personally. For the rest, I get to create themed fleets, though I guess I already do that by having single habitat stations or just buying from factions... But this would probably be more useful if we say unlock something unique like QUE crew or maybe special uniforms in the future. And as already noted, Yaki crew since they are the one faction you cannot just go buy from their shipyard, for obvious reasons.

[Poacher886]

So finally we get some sort of diplomacy...

And its linked to the damn Player station that no body uses or has, because we are all role playing via the Custom start!

Why do major features (ship mods) and now diplomacy mean we HAVE to have a player station!! What about Pirates or basically any start that does not involve or want to involve a Headquarters?

Why cant we just fly to a Factions capital ship or Station and board it to discuss diplomacy?

[alt3rn1ty]

Brilliant!. Once again Egosoft are coming through with the late development polishing/QoL improvements, as they usually do to put the finishing touches on yet another excellent X series game.
I think the start of the next beta with such an overhaul is going to warrant a brand new game start for testing everything.

As part of these flight model changes, we’re also adjusting the balancing of every ship in X4 to make the most of these improvements. This task involves revisiting engines, thrusters, and other ship components,

Which will also have an impact on in game modifications to the same. So yeah, new game start needed I think.
This is going to be my personal favourite XMas present, if the beta goes live before then.

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Just one hope from me (all sounds very good otherwise, I have read all posts up to this) ..

Will the new Flight model also fix all the niggling little issues which have never been fully resolved on S/M enclosed Wharfs:

If you are travelling as a passenger in a ship, with an AI NPC Pilot ..
Small/Medium ships jiggling around the mouth of the dock entrance to line up on approach to the dock
Same ships having trouble with enclosed docks on Terran stations

.. And maybe fixing a dock which has been deliberately built inverted. For example the PHQ rock, if you build a 3M6S dock above the rock, so that when you land upon it, get out of your ship and look up, you see the rock above you (because the dock is inverted). When a dock is built inverted, quite often since 7.10 S/M ships landing at such a dock would fly above it (so they are positioned below the dock bottom), and then try to fly through the bottom of the dock to reach the landing platform situated on the under side.

See the first screenshot in this post for a visualization of how the problem can come to be. In that screenshot you can see a couple of docks coloured yellow above the rock. Before 7.10 I could have an inverted dock (just for the view of the rock when you are walking about on the dock), but after 7.10 I had to change the design so the dock is built the .. erm .. correct way up?, (I mean in space there is no correct way up, but judging by the way NPC AI tries to land at these docks they cant handle the idea of turning upside down before making a good approach inverted), and now I dont build inverted docks, I just use an inverted Conservatory to get the same view, as ships docking became too much of a problem, especially if you are riding gunshot in the ship and have an NPC pilot. The NPC driven ships regularly try to drill through dock walls or dock bottom to get to the landing platform.

The Terran Station enclosed docks, where an NPC Pilot tries to fly down the tunnel to the inner space, and then manoeuvre within to land on a platform, for me has never been as smooth as the egosoft created video for the Terran DLC. And quite often they will not only have trouble getting inside to the docks, but then instead of landing fly outside in the opposite tunnel before turning around again and making another approach to docking.

Edit : Also .. GIVE US HYPERION

Edit 2 : Plus a note on L/XL docks - Will the new flight model also fix L/XL ships trying to turn around inside a dock, when it tries to depart from the dock. I see when building these docks they do have only one approach corridor, but you would expect a ship departing the dock to reverse out and manoeuvre once clear of the dock. Turning around so that the bow and stern clip the dock structure kind of grates on the immersion.
Captain "Take her out No.1"
No.1 "Aye aye Sir .. oops"

[FatalKeks]

Very interesting roadmap I actually thought, that you would end your development on X4 and move to further iterations. Looking forward to see what's to come.

Will the new flight model affect/improve ai and fleet behaviour?

[Skeeter]

Any plans for a big story campaign in 2025 from a good writer and good director hire?

[alt3rn1ty]

Oh! in addition to my last post ..

Any chance the Yaki could be fleshed out a bit more?

Their story kind of comes to an abrupt end leaving the player to wonder why they do not expand a little after you help them.
After successfully clearing out their sector and neighbouring sectors of Xenon leaving them safe .. They do nothing.
They just seem to have limitless money to buy ships from me, and then send the same ships off to their doom.
They never build anything more than their original base station, which can also get wiped out by other factions.

[Raptor34]

Edit 2 : Plus a note on L/XL docks - Will the new flight model also fix L/XL ships trying to turn around inside a dock, when it tries to depart from the dock. I see when building these docks they do have only one approach corridor, but you would expect a ship departing the dock to reverse out and manoeuvre once clear of the dock. Turning around so that the bow and stern clip the dock structure kind of grates on the immersion.
Captain "Take her out No.1"
No.1 "Aye aye Sir .. oops"

I saw it once and was surprised tbh. I thought the entire reason both sides of the dock has that long docking corridor in the plan build menu was so that you fly in one end, then fly out the other.
Like why make them so difficult to actually place if you don't make use of all that empty space? Or did something change in one of the recent patches?

[LameFox]

Another thing that occurs to me, which isn't directly mentioned here: are there expected to be improvements to fleet behaviour with the changes to flight model and ship balance?

Setting up a fleet and watching it fight is honestly one of the most consistently disappointing things I do in this game. The ships falling behind in travel, failing to aim main guns, fumbling around each other and wrecks while a couple rush out alone to die. Interceptors getting killed on their way back to the carrier without any assistance or retaliation from nearby ships unless the player intervenes. Subordinates being drawn well away from the fleet to die unsupported. It turns what ought to be one of the most engaging parts of the game into an exercise in trying not to pull one's own hair out. All the time and effort building up industry to make these fleets only to be let down.

Feels like we've been reporting these issues forever, and they sometimes improve a little bit, but it never gets to where it needs to be. Is the flight system behind some of that?

[S!rAssassin]

Travel Drive mode

May we have ability to manual speed adjusting in Travel Mode? Please

[Raptor34]

Travel Drive mode

May we have ability to manual speed adjusting in Travel Mode? Please

Yeah, especially since match speed shows that not being able to adjust speed in travel drive isn't some lore thing. It can do it, just we can't.
I'll suggest that it uses the normal speed change buttons, leave full stop and shift 1 and/or boost to turn off travel drive. I added in boost because maybe people don't want to come to a full stop and pressing 2 buttons is worse than 1.

[Falcrack]

Travel Drive mode

May we have ability to manual speed adjusting in Travel Mode? Please

+1 to this, I've been wanting manual travel drive speed adjustment for a long time.

[gorgofdoom]

re-balancing of every ship in X4

I wonder what aspects will be addressed in the overhaul? Will the Raptor continue to reign as the supreme trade ship?

[B00g11m44n]

Super excited to hear about the flight model update. I would like to offer a few points to consider when designing and testing based on experiences with X4, Star Citizen, and Elite: Dangerous.

Between the three games, the E:D implementation of "Flight-Assist Off" is by far the most fun and useful. At least, for dual-stick players. The key difference is that rotation counter-thrust is also disabled. Even if it is a separate toggle from the main flight-assist toggle, I would very much appreciate having the option to toggle rotational counter-thrust assistance.

Star Citizen probably has the most "realistic" thrust dynamics, but it has (or at least had, it has been a while) a big weakness regarding its handling of "max speed". SC implemented it as a sphere. The undesirable side-effect was that continuing to apply forward thrust, for example, when up against the "edge" of that sphere would result in a full course change forward, eliminating any sideways drift. This was almost never the desired outcome. The goal was to be able to maximize forward speed to reach the overall limit while maintaining a certain amount of drift in some other direction. The SC sphere approach made this impossible to do reliably. Please consider an alternative approach to "max speed".

X4 currently has a big problem with complete loss of flight control (liner thrust and rotational) whenever the player ship is on contact with any other ship, drone, or station. An object with a higher thrust-to-weight ratio should always be able to accelerate away, and should be able to scrape or push along a surface. Similarly, a fighter or drone bouncing around in a hangar or repair drones trying to skim along the surface to do repairs should not have any noticeable affect on a capital ship's ability to rotate or accelerate when they collide, and should result in only relatively small changes in vector or rotation when flight assist is off.

X4 also currently has a big disparity between FA-on thrust and FA-off thrust. If one accelerates to max speed, toggles FA-off, flips 180 (flying backwards) and then thrusts to zero, the times it takes to reach zero is very different between using FA to reduce speed vs. manual max-thrust. They should be the same.

Please consider these cases when designing and testing the new flight model.

[Ragnos28]

I like the idea of DLCs that deliver just new ships , I would have bought ToA if it would have come with just the Astrid, w/o me having to deal with everything else in the DLC, the same for Timelines, here's my money, gimme the ships.

[mr.WHO]

I forgot about more E ships.

Along Nomad E, Condor E and Stork E...we still have some Xenon ships left:
KE
IE (someone should hide Internet Explorer logo inside the ship interior).
Possibly remaining Xenon fighters (NE, ME, TE).


That way we would have all factin ships up to date and all Xenon E ship flyable.

[mr.WHO]

I've been thinking about more cancdidates for mini-DLC and Albion Skunk came to my mind.

However, I was skeptical to have Albion Skunk without X-Rebirth region, but if I remember correctly, first Skunk were already present in X3:AP, before gate shutdown.

Therefore, the mini-DLC Skunk could be the design continuation on Argon side, instead for on Albion side.
That way, the skunk could be upscaled and have more robust interior (I recall there were concept arts where it had two decks).
It could even have a lore explenation that Argon Skunk was the "normal", while in Albion, due to lack of resources after gate shutdown, they had to go with downsized design.

[Spectre01]

I've been thinking about more cancdidates for mini-DLC and Albion Skunk came to my mind.

However, I was skeptical to have Albion Skunk without X-Rebirth region, but if I remember correctly, first Skunk were already present in X3:AP, before gate shutdown.

Therefore, the mini-DLC Skunk could be the design continuation on Argon side, instead for on Albion side.
That way, the skunk could be upscaled and have more robust interior (I recall there were concept arts where it had two decks).
It could even have a lore explenation that Argon Skunk was the "normal", while in Albion, due to lack of resources after gate shutdown, they had to go with downsized design.

In lore, the Albion skunk appeared back in AP wasn't the sole ship of its class. Its description did say they made bunch of them but it's just too expensive for that class of ship so mostly only the rich CEO brought them as sort of personal command vessel. So they don't need to reconnect the Albion side back into the gate network to reintroduce the ship. Just don't make it to have the exact same modification like the Skunk does.

Thou I'm more incline to agree that Hyperion has a higher chance than the Skunk.

[Greenhorn]

(1)EGOSOFT PLEASE give us Skunk/Vanguard/ Springblossum, .(2)OH I hope that new starcitenz guy ego hired won't sabotage egosoft game, ..And (3) the human NPCs faces should look more real,(4)i forgot (5) what's you all think.

[Raptor34]

Speaking of the Skunk. After thinking about it further I'm actually more certain that it would be the Hyp instead.
Just a theory of course but they said it would be a reimagining. A Skunk would already fit well as an M-class ship, and the interior is already well known. Perhaps add some small drone capability or ditch it or whatever but it would most likely be the same.
A Hyperion otoh because of it's 2 fighter docks does not fit so neatly here, not if you want to keep it's traditional sleek shape. And also because I figure they are not going to have the docked fighters basically be floating mid-air. That's why I think this is more likely because it would actually have to be reimagined to give us a ship worthy of the name rather than some nerfed version.
I imagine it would be technically an L-class ship in the sense that it would dock using piers, but in size would be closer to a super-M. Also I was thinking about Boron docking methods, but the slide in from the side wouldn't work for an M-class because they can't launch while docked in a station, like a wharf for instance. But if it uses piers, that wouldn't be an issue. I posit it would be something like a Ray, but miniature and Paranified. And with more guns of course. Ray specifically because I'm thinking of how it's fighter dock is like, though I think the Hyp might actually have it fully enclosed and perhaps with opening and closing bays. And it would lack internal storage so you don't have to stretch it down too far. Either that or they just used the old dock from above technique. But I think an internal bay would look better.

[Falcrack]

I forgot about more E ships.

Along Nomad E, Condor E and Stork E...we still have some Xenon ships left:
KE
IE (someone should hide Internet Explorer logo inside the ship interior).
Possibly remaining Xenon fighters (NE, ME, TE).


That way we would have all factin ships up to date and all Xenon E ship flyable.

Don't forget the J, the main Xenon carrier from X3.