Why unit cap or other limits on player owned assets would be a good thing

[Falcrack]

Most other games have a unit cap, and for a very good reason. Performance. Take away the limits on the number of player units, and players can and will expand to infinity, where eventually hardware limitations will cause the game to slow to a crawl. Then those same players will get online and cry about the horrible performance of the game, because they have found the limits at which their machine begins to suffer poor fps, which may be a number much higher than the devs may have intended.

[chew-ie]

Been there, proposed that, got yelled at. Glad it's not me this time.

My dream for X is a well defined limit for player assets along providing an "unshackeled mode" for experienced players which lets them ultimatively deactivate the limits - in being full aware that performance degradation starts "now".

[Raptor34]

Imo a soft cap would work better. As in the devs design the game for say, 1000 player assets and retune the AI accordingly. If you want to go above that, you can, but you'll eat the performance issues that comes with it.
Also crying about performance is one thing and idgaf, I care more that limiting myself doesn't give me better AI because the devs designed the game for players that build big.

[Thomas2052]

I like this idea from a gameplay perspective - the player can become extremely overpowered through sheer numbers, and the wit to deploy those numbers in a coordinated manner.

Rather than an arbitrary number, I would like an immersive mechanic to bring in this cap - something like crew wages or fuel costs of something similar.

It would make your fleet composition much more considered with a finite allocation of craft.

I know this will be unpopular with most - the argument I hate against it is 'it's a single player game, just don't build lots of ships' - the limits of the game and how to manipulate them are the fun! And example of why this argument doesn't work is 'How fun would it be if you could just buy ships for free? - if you don't like it, it's a single player game, just don't do it.' /rant

Anyway, I like the idea, although I have never got to that sateg of the game.

Regards

[GCU Grey Area]

Nah, very much appreciate that the only restrictions on what I can have are the physical limitations of the PC I run the game on. Having said that I don't tend to go all that far with regard to ships, e.g. prefer to keep my war fleets to roughly equivalent to whatever my NPC enemies are fielding. I do however derive a great deal of pleasure from building stations right up to the limits of what my machine can cope with (which, incidentally, is about 3k modules before I have to significantly downgrade the graphics if I want to look at them without graphical glitches). It's one of my favourite parts of the game. Would hate that to change.

[flywlyx]

You're assuming that the X4 universe runs well with NPCs alone, but that's not the case.

The recommended CPU is an Intel Core i7-6700, but let’s be honest— with a 6700, you’ll still barely get 30 FPS in map view if the sector is busy.

Most RTS and 4X games include unit caps for game design reasons, encouraging aggressive play. A game without caps tends to favor passive gameplay, which can make it boring. X4 simply isn’t that type of game.

[Raptor34]

You're assuming that the X4 universe runs well with NPCs alone, but that's not the case.

The recommended CPU is an Intel Core i7-6700, but let’s be honest— with a 6700, you’ll still barely get 30 FPS in map view if the sector is busy.

Most RTS and 4X games include unit caps for game design reasons, encouraging aggressive play. A game without caps tends to favor passive gameplay, which can make it boring. X4 simply isn’t that type of game.

VIG aside why is that assumption wrong? Early game clearly runs better than late game. And if it's because the NPCs build too much, just give them less jobs.
Side note, I wish VIG has less jobs, maybe after the plot is over. I just passed by looking at the map and good lord, that lag fleet.

[flywlyx]

Early game clearly runs better than late game. And if it's because the NPCs build too much, just give them less jobs.

This is what Egosoft should focus on: refining the entire economy system so the game runs more efficiently on its own.
Putting limits on the player in a sandbox game just sounds ridiculous.

[Falcrack]

Imo a soft cap would work better. As in the devs design the game for say, 1000 player assets and retune the AI accordingly. If you want to go above that, you can, but you'll eat the performance issues that comes with it.
Also crying about performance is one thing and idgaf, I care more that limiting myself doesn't give me better AI because the devs designed the game for players that build big.

As far as a soft cap, my idea would work something like this.

Imagine that owning a sector gave the sector owner 1 million credits per hour. But each ship costs 10,000 credits in maintenance per hour, so that sector could theoretically support 100 ships. Now multiply that by 100 sectors (assumining all sectors provided equal income), and the carrying capacity of the universe would be 10000 ships. These are just example numbers of course, different ships and stations would have different maintenance costs based on their value, and different sectors would provide different income based on their population.

This would be a soft cap based on money. Which is the main reason why I am always asking for NPC factions to have finite money, for sector ownership to provide income, and for ships and stations to have maintenance costs. Not because I want to limit GCU Grey Area's ability to have fun. My reasons all boil down to wanting to implement a soft cap on expansion of ships and stations in the universe, with the supply of money being the rate limiting factor, so that performance of the game is kept more or less in check.

You can tune the amount of assets the game can support by adjusting maintenance costs and sector ownership income. But it requires that NPC bank accounts are not infinite for it to function.

[Raptor34]

Imo a soft cap would work better. As in the devs design the game for say, 1000 player assets and retune the AI accordingly. If you want to go above that, you can, but you'll eat the performance issues that comes with it.
Also crying about performance is one thing and idgaf, I care more that limiting myself doesn't give me better AI because the devs designed the game for players that build big.

As far as a soft cap, my idea would work something like this.

Imagine that owning a sector gave the sector owner 1 million credits per hour. But each ship costs 10,000 credits in maintenance per hour, so that sector could theoretically support 100 ships. Now multiply that by 100 sectors (assumining all sectors provided equal income), and the carrying capacity of the universe would be 10000 ships. These are just example numbers of course, different ships and stations would have different maintenance costs based on their value, and different sectors would provide different income based on their population.

This would be a soft cap based on money. Which is the main reason why I am always asking for NPC factions to have finite money, for sector ownership to provide income, and for ships and stations to have maintenance costs. Not because I want to limit GCU Grey Area's ability to have fun. My reasons all boil down to wanting to implement a soft cap on expansion of ships and stations in the universe, with the supply of money being the rate limiting factor, so that performance of the game is kept more or less in check.

You can tune the amount of assets the game can support by adjusting maintenance costs and sector ownership income. But it requires that NPC bank accounts are not infinite for it to function.

I imagine more like how DW2 does it when starting a new game. It tells you that based on your current CPU and iirc RAM that going to certain galaxy sizes that performance issues is to be expected.

[GCU Grey Area]

Not because I want to limit GCU Grey Area's ability to have fun.

Your intentions for making this suggestion would be of little comfort if such a change were made & that was the effect.

Not all that keen on the idea of being forced to claim sectors either. I just don't play the game that way. Very much prefer to pick one or more of the NPC factions & help them to paint big chunks of the map in their colours instead. Find the game's much more fun to play as a mercenary, rather than as an emperor.

[LameFox]

In my experience performance is limited by ships around the player, and specifically ships in combat, long before it's limited by ships in total. I don't think capping player assets would do much (if it was even perceptible) for that.

If they did want to reduce overall ships then I would personally rather they do it by buffing the civilian ships' capacities across the board so that fewer are needed. This would indirectly reduce my own ship numbers significantly, since that's where most of it goes by far, and also allow them to tune down the number of AI jobs for them.

[Falcrack]

Not because I want to limit GCU Grey Area's ability to have fun.

Your intentions for making this suggestion would be of little comfort if such a change were made & that was the effect.

Not all that keen on the idea of being forced to claim sectors either. I just don't play the game that way. Very much prefer to pick one or more of the NPC factions & help them to paint big chunks of the map in their colours instead. Find the game's much more fun to play as a mercenary, rather than as an emperor.

Nobody would be forcing you to claim sectors. You could run a profitable business selling wares to the factions. As long as your income exceeds maintenance (which should be entirely possible with good game balance), you would not be forced to be a sector owner. Of course, if all your assets are military assets, and you are not putting them to some use to earn an income, you might find yourself starting to run out of money due to the cost of upkeep for them.

[Axeface]

Ive suggested limits many times but I dont think i've ever properly proposed the ideas I've jotted down over the years. I desperately want to feel like I should make efficient empires, currently I chose to do this because of performance, but that (naturally) is horrible. And to me authenticity and believably are paramount. I hate the bloat we are allowed to do in these games, the mega stations, the mega defence stations at gates all over the map, the death balls of capital ships with no reaction from the factions.

I'll quickly make a broad suggestion and perhaps later i'll finally make my suggestions properly in my own thread.

1. It should be a gamestart option.
2. It should be a 'soft' limit. As in, you can surpass it if you chose with consequences.

My suggestion is a new mechanic where factions take notice when the player becomes powerful. It would be some kind of agreement in the lore between the factions, a treaty.
All assets in the game would have a 'battle value' (stealing that from another IP), when the sum of this value reaches thresholds the players rep would be CAPPED (not reduced) at certain values. That is to say that reaching the threshold doesnt reduce your rep like killing a ship does, it CAPS it at a lower value. The more assets your empire has the lower your cap becomes. Your 'actual' rep for example could be 30, but your capped rep could be 10 due to your power.

Military assets would have a MUCH higher value than civilian. So, for example, turrets on a station would have a high value, but production modules wouldnt. How you protect your assets and how powerful they all are suddenly becomes very interesting.

That is just a brief overview and there are LOADS of caveats and things that would have to change to make this make sense, but hopefully that gets the broad idea across.

And I want to reiterate two things, its optional, and it is a CAP not atrophy of rep.

[vvvvvvvv]

Most other games have a unit cap, and for a very good reason. Performance. Take

I believe red alert 1 allowed you to have 500 soldiers at once and that's a game that needed 8 megabytes of RAM. Unit caps did exist for a good reason, i.e. if the only number format available is a byte, t hen you can't have more than 256 different things no matter what. That also comes into play when it is network-bound. However, this does not apply here.

We are not on a retro console. This is a PC. There should be no unit caps and I should be able to have as many ships as it takes to melt my computer. Hardware improves. All unit cap means that when your machine becomes more powerful, the game won't utilize the extra power. Another thing is that in RTS games those caps exist not because of performance but to make "fair fights". X4 is all about unfair fights.

I'd recommend to take inspiration from Factorio, Satisfactory and Dyson sphere, and not from games which used to run on incredibly weak hardware. Factorio allows you to have one million construction robots active, and does not prevent you from having more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh-2Lk87Gms

[taztaz502]

Most other games have a unit cap, and for a very good reason. Performance. Take away the limits on the number of player units, and players can and will expand to infinity, where eventually hardware limitations will cause the game to slow to a crawl. Then those same players will get online and cry about the horrible performance of the game, because they have found the limits at which their machine begins to suffer poor fps, which may be a number much higher than the devs may have intended.

So I've got to limit my game because people play on potatoes?

You the guy who pitched X: Rebirth and Timelines to egosoft?

[Starlight_Corporation]

I feel these proposals would force players to play more like me. Not sure if that is a good thing. I get by with a small military force compared to my economic side. Don't own any sectors. Do have a massive trade empire. Unit caps would incentivize folks to make peace with the universe. Minimize enemies, because the more enemies you have, the more military ships will eat in your unit caps & they don't generate money & you'll always need a military to keep Xenon at bay & fight the Khaak menace (currently mining so hard, the Khaak swarms are a threat to my L miners in certain sectors).
Don't mind playing like this, enjoy that X4 allows it, but I choose to do so. Unit cap proposals would force players to adopt a very similar playstyle. Zero military stations (None of my stations are armed) & a small military task force to guard mining area's & keep watch at Xenon gates.

I fail to see a need for a unit cap tbh, unless you want to promote economic play at the cost of military play. Larger economic side -> easier to replace military losses. Which means imposing stricter limits, because the civil economy is more straining to the performance then the military ships.

In short: impose unit limit -> discourage military play & promote peaceful play because you really don't need much military ships to fight things & seeking enemies is just going to penalize the way you play when a unit cap is implemented. Yes there's games with unit limits & they work, because it is part of the game. The X series is not one of those. A unit limit is far more then just cap units to a certain limit (even very generous) & call it a day, you got to design the game around it, so your AI can work with it.

[taztaz502]

Would it even solve performance issues?

Understandably if all of your assets are in the same system and you're in there too i could see performance issues.

But i play the game minimised half the time while playing other games and alt-tabbing between the two without any issues, Even on my older system.

[jlehtone]

The recommended CPU is an Intel Core i7-6700, but let’s be honest— with a 6700, you’ll still barely get 30 FPS in map view if the sector is busy.

I did play X4 couple years with i7-6700. Never did check the FPS. It never felt bad.

... the argument I hate ...

You forgot the "it does not affect my gameplay when other players overbuild and whine about lack of performance". Forum visits, when it is seemingly flooded with "ideas", "suggestions", and "brokeness", can be annoying but we can only hope that devs adopt similar mental spam-filters as we do.

This is what Egosoft should focus on: refining the entire economy system so the game runs more efficiently on its own.
Putting limits on the player in a sandbox game just sounds ridiculous.

This sounds like a more rational approach.

[Falcrack]

1. It should be a gamestart option.
2. It should be a 'soft' limit. As in, you can surpass it if you chose with consequences.

I would support both of these points. So that nobody complains about me ruining their fun. "Make it optional" is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it is a very good thing.