Full scale systems from Elite in X5

[Falcrack]

Elite has some good things going for it. While I prefer X4 overall, there are some things Elite in my opinion does much better than X4, and I kind of wish were included in some future X game.

One such thing is full scale systems that are in Elite. I would love if travel within systems in X4 were like Elite, with the Supercruise being used instead of the X4 travel drive. No highways or accelarators needed. The sense of scale using supercruise around planets in Elite is incredible.

I would like there to be actual orbital mechanics, with positions of stations, jumpgates, planets, and moons changing over time, maybe sped up like 10 fold compared to reality.

Jump gates could still be a thing, they would just be in orbit around planets or moons or the sun. We wouldn't need 400 billion systems, just maybe ~100 systems connected by gates. I wouldn't want landing on planets either, I don't think it adds much to Elite, just keep it a space based game.

Elite, with the dynamic and more realistic economy of X4, and without spawning ships and the need to always be connected to a server, would be my dream game.

[Raptor34]

We don't even need a hundred systems imo. Like look at the X3 map, Argon space is literally 9 systems in a grid, or 12, it's been awhile. 12 systems? Does it actually add anything to the game? Not really, they are all Argon space and if it's 12 or 3 doesn't make a lick of difference.
What we need is pirate alley, or whatever the systems around Brennan's Triumph is called. Or to be precise we have our core systems like the Ring currently, then lawless space out to colonies. Piracy would make way more sense if it occurs in neutral zones than the current system where pirates drive around with tanks with switched license plates.

[Falcrack]

We don't even need a hundred systems imo.

I would be fine with less than 100 systems, as long as the systems we do have are large with many distinct areas. Full scale systems with 5-10 or more planets, comets, maybe multiple suns, etc.

I like the interdiction system for supercruise like Elite, if pirates in X4 did that, that would represent actual pirate threats to the player. Right now, pirates represent zero threat to players in X4, only to stupid NPC pilots who forgot how to use the boost and travel drive.

[af_2017]

I like the interdiction system for supercruise like Elite

Interdiction is always a loss for the target in the game.
Because target needs to orient against random point in space.
Whilst attacker needs to orient target.
Being a target you are just allowed to win NPCs because they pretend being weak.
That's a broken mechanic.

That whole "scale" through longer travel is a weak design in general.
There's no gameplay, just watching black screen.
I'd like to waste my time in games doing something interesting (in the game) instead of watching youtube or whartever.

[Raptor34]

We don't even need a hundred systems imo.

I would be fine with less than 100 systems, as long as the systems we do have are large with many distinct areas. Full scale systems with 5-10 or more planets, comets, maybe multiple suns, etc.

I like the interdiction system for supercruise like Elite, if pirates in X4 did that, that would represent actual pirate threats to the player. Right now, pirates represent zero threat to players in X4, only to stupid NPC pilots who forgot how to use the boost and travel drive.

Egosoft just needs to make AI that can actually use missiles. After all we already have disruptor/EMP missiles.

[Falcrack]

That whole "scale" through longer travel is a weak design in general.
There's no gameplay, just watching black screen.
I'd like to waste my time in games doing something interesting (in the game) instead of watching youtube or whartever.

Part of the problem in Elite is the lack of an autopilot. In X4 with Elite's system travel mechanics, we would set our destination and use autopilot to get around. Or use an NPC captain to fly us from place to place, and use the down time to manage our other assets, something that Elite does not allow. We could also use teleport to go to different ships and stations.

We wouldn't have to have the same super long system travel times that Elite has, maybe just make the travel drive a little faster, or systems not quite as large. Part of the reason some travel times in Elite are so long are due to binary stars systems, where the other star is an extremely far distance away, and those types of system need not be common with custom made systems.

[Raptor34]

Speaking of travel time. I had a thought of a hazard that disables travel drive. In such a case, even a short 50km between gates can be a long journey.
Of course I was also thinking of piracy when I came up with this idea. Like en route from the core Ring for instance to a distant colony 2-3 sectors away.
Thinking further this would mean that you now would need to rely on fast fighters to defend, assuming you aren't just using a convoy, because anything else would take forever to respond to attacks.

[LameFox]

The sense of scale was definitely something Elite got right IMO.

X4 is a step up from older games in that regard but I feel like it didn't step as high as it could have. The systems feel bigger than they did in X3, but not by a lot, and I think a big part of that is how we travel across them now.

In X3 travel was slow. Even though I could skip it to some extent using the jump drive, the primary means by which I flew around a system conveyed that it took some time to do. In X4 travel is fast. Sure conventional flight is still gradual, but that's no longer the primary means of travel: travel drive is. So my primary means of travel is telling me the system is tiny. The highways when present make it go by even faster. And although I can't bring a ship with me, teleportation is actually less limiting than the jump drive. I don't even need e-cells.

This means the scale is mostly coming from visual cues alone, like seeing distant stations. But most things aren't actually placed very far around a given sector; they cluster in the middle, mostly appearing between the gates, which themselves don't generally take long to travel between. While the sector technically expands beyond that for a long way, there are not really any landmarks there in nearly any system that give me a human-readable feeling of scale. Some planet backdrops, sure, but that's a sphere and it could be any size. I don't even know how far away I am from it and if I did it would be the kind of distance that is so far out of lived experience that I feel nothing about it.


The Elite model I think really captures the best elements of both of these. Conventional flight is so slow relative to crossing a system in Elite that I never even tried to see if it can. So on that front it definitely comes out ahead. Its travel drive equivalent does let me get around very quickly, like in X4, but the way I interface with it makes it seem like a bigger deal: my ship isn't just speeding up, it's going so fast it will bring me up on things I can't even see (and not because they haven't popped in yet, they'd be too tiny even if they were being rendered). They're so far away, I pick a target from a nav computer to get there, rather than just look around. While moving my HUD has to change how it shows me things to accommodate navigation at this high speed. It's a completely different experience.

Then on top of all that, the visual landmarks seem to work better too: compare for instance mining in a planetary ring in Elite—which really does feel quite massive as I see it on approach and go through the different levels of detail—to the asteroid fields in X4, which might be any size really, I have nothing much to relate them to.

[NightIntruder]

Elite Dangerous and X4 are very different games, hard to compare. Different scale, different gameplay, different focus. I think the problem in X4 is not the number of sectors or their size, but the expansive nature of the AI, which would end in a slide show in mid-game if X4 had twice as many solar systems. In ED, all stations or planetary bases are static entities, while in X4 they appear dynamically, and with them their subordinates that feed on CPU cycles - defense turrets, cargo ships, patrol fighters or even influence on the economy. In ED, ships are probably generated dynamically, except for those serving the plot or missions, but in X4, ships exist from the moment of creation to the moment of destruction, with their registration, crew gaining skills and dynamically changing equipment or cargo. And there are hundreds (and later thousands) of them, along with dozens of stations that have numerous modules constantly producing some wares. X4 has a world that is full of life and constantly growing. All of this can be seen and felt, because solar systems are tiny, not many of them really, and you can track each ship's travel using satellites. There's nothing like that in ED.

However, I like the scale and freedom of exploration that ED gives, including the seamless travel, planetary landings and gravitational influences. I'd love to see planetary bases in X-series someday, which could be built from modules. But X4 is already out of breath with the current size of its living world. I doubt that the game can be optimized or redesigned in such a way that it would be possible to expand this world with additional planets and moons with bases, or to expand the number of sectors drastically. Of course, it's much easier to expand the game with empty sectors than with planets and moons (along with their biomes, faunas and floras, atmosphere and gravity). However, the dynamic and expansive nature of the X4 world and its authenticity, in which each ship grinding CPU cycles leaves its own carbon footprint behind it, remain a problem for further expansion of the world in any direction. In this perspective, enlarging the empty space of sectors would be the easiest possible thing to do, I guess

[Falcrack]

I think the problem in X4 is not the number of sectors or their size, but the expansive nature of the AI, which would end in a slide show in mid-game if X4 had twice as many solar systems.

It's not the size of systems in X4 or Elite which really slows down performance. It is the number of moving ships and active stations. Nothing I suggested would bring modern computers to their knees as long as the number of assets in the universe is controlled. Having a lot of empty space does not tax the computer too much.

[Nanook]

We don't even need a hundred systems imo. Like look at the X3 map, Argon space is literally 9 systems in a grid, or 12, it's been awhile. 12 systems? Does it actually add anything to the game? Not really, they are all Argon space and if it's 12 or 3 doesn't make a lick of difference....

Really! So you'd be fine with the Xenon (or whoever) easily running over a mere 3 Argon (or whoever) sectors and eliminating them from the game in short order. Numbers of sectors do matter, for many reasons - exploration, distribution of resources and factories, defense posture, and so on. I would not like to play a game with such a limited number of sectors. Your statement "they are all Argon space and if it's 12 or 3 doesn't make a lick of difference...." is just silly.

And been a while since you played the game? Argon sectors are not "in a grid". Some are separated by an Antigone sector, some are placed waaayyyy off in the NE corner behind Split, Teladi and Xenon sectors. Similarly for the Paranid. And if the Xenon, or perhaps HOP, takes Second Contact Flashpoint, the Antigone Republic is now split in two. The number and placement of sectors allows for all kinds of different NPC/NPC and Player/NPC interactions to take place. This wouldn't be possible with such a limited number of sectors as you propose.


{edit: fixed misquote}

[LameFox]

We don't even need a hundred systems imo. Like look at the X3 map, Argon space is literally 9 systems in a grid, or 12, it's been awhile. 12 systems? Does it actually add anything to the game? Not really, they are all Argon space and if it's 12 or 3 doesn't make a lick of difference....

Really! So you'd be fine with the Xenon (or whoever) easily running over a mere 3 Argon (or whoever) sectors and eliminating them from the game in short order. Numbers of sectors do matter, for many reasons - exploration, distribution of resources and factories, defense posture, and so on. I would not like to play a game with such a limited number of sectors. Your statement "they are all Argon space and if it's 12 or 3 doesn't make a lick of difference...." is just silly.

And been a while since you played the game? Argon sectors are not "in a grid". Some are separated by an Antigone sector, some are placed waaayyyy off in the NE corner behind Split, Teladi and Xenon sectors. Similarly for the Paranid. And if the Xenon, or perhaps HOP, takes Second Contact Flashpoint, the Antigone Republic is now split in two. The number and placement of sectors allows for all kinds of different NPC/NPC and Player/NPC interactions to take place. This wouldn't be possible with such a limited number of sectors as you propose.

It sounds like you're picturing everything else being the same besides the number of sectors, but that's not written in stone. Fewer sectors could contain more resource fields, more capturable territory (this could be for instance the space around an orbital body, or just a radius around a defence platform). The way you divide it up is pretty arbitrary, probably the only thing you'd really be limiting is how many different skyboxes you get, since it would be weird for that to drastically change within one system.

[Nanook]

There is a difference between OOS and Low Attention, you know. With gigantic sectors, LA would predominate and quite possibly have adverse affects on performance, since ships, for example, could pop in and out of LA fairly easily, compared to having most of them in other sectors, which would require gate travel. If you haven't noticed already, Egosoft has reduced the size of sectors visible, unless they contain assets of some sort. That's presumably to improve performance.

[LameFox]

But again, that's just what it's like now, and it probably doesn't have to be. They've chosen to make that separation via gates and sectors, but in a big enough area with a lot of empty space maybe you'd break it down into smaller parts (they do this already I think?) and have the ones far enough from the player be "OOS".

[Nanook]

I don't think that would work. Right now, there's a discontinuity between sectors. I'm not sure that would be such a great idea within a continuous sector. Going from one area to another could be quite jarring, since the player would expect continuity while, say, chasing a target. Elite Dangerous solved the problem with 'combat areas' that would appear around a battle. But they don't have stations and fleets actually populating the nearby areas.

but in a big enough area with a lot of empty space maybe you'd break it down into smaller parts (they do this already I think?)

Not really. There's no discontinuity as you travel large sectors (Nopileo's Fortune II probably being the largest). It's just one continuous sector.

[LameFox]

They're not discontinuous in the sense that you'll see things (massively) adjust when passing through them but they are broken into a grid right? I remember that coming up in a discussion about 'flee' once because ships were only looking in their grid square (cube?) and it would make them miss visually nearby stations they could have fled to.

My thinking is that with things happening on the scale of Elite, you'd probably be able to have the more distant parts of the grid in the lowest possible degree of attention as if they were in a different sector, because there's just no way the player can see anything ship or station sized out there. The distance itself could do the job of obscuring discrepancies in their location. While if you were chasing something then you'd only be crossing the boundary from your current grid square into an adjacent one that's also high attention anyway, so it would be like it is now.

[Falcrack]

Really! So you'd be fine with the Xenon (or whoever) easily running over a mere 3 Argon (or whoever) sectors and eliminating them from the game in short order. Numbers of sectors do matter, for many reasons - exploration, distribution of resources and factories, defense posture, and so on. I would not like to play a game with such a limited number of sectors. Your statement "they are all Argon space and if it's 12 or 3 doesn't make a lick of difference...." is just silly.

If sectors were actually proper solar systems, a single solar system might feel as big as 9 sectors in X4 in terms of stations and resources and ships. So it would take a lot for Xenon to completely overrun a system.

[Axeface]

I really like how the X games do travel and sectors because it maintains a sense of scale and feels a bit more grounded, I like 'low sci-fi'. By having 'space magic' to transport us vast distances instantaneously (like, across a solar system with a gate) and sci-fi tech to transport us shorter, believable distances at sub-light speeds (like a superhighway from earth to the moon) and keeping ships themselves very much grounded in their local position, they have created a sense of scale. Planets have never been something you can just jaunt around at leisure.

Another thing that games often end up doing is creating 'diorama' solar systems, where planets are tiny and you can just fly around them at normal speeds. This is something that I just dont want in the X4 or X5.

I would prefer if they stuck to the current principles, and I would further prefer if they reigned in the current issues with it like accelerators spanning vast distances instantaneously (like asteroid belt to jupiter instantly).

There is something fundamental about ignoring the true scale of things that I just dont like. You dont have to make us frivolously move around entire solar systems to make things feel big (to me the result is the opposite), a single planetary system is big enough to provide a massive amount of scale without feeling like a cartoon even at sublight speeds.

[LameFox]

I would prefer if they stuck to the current principles, and I would further prefer if they reigned in the current issues with it like accelerators spanning vast distances instantaneously (like asteroid belt to jupiter instantly).

Those don't fall under 'space magic'?

Also, wouldn't that turn Sol into the kind of system this thread is about?

[Axeface]

I would prefer if they stuck to the current principles, and I would further prefer if they reigned in the current issues with it like accelerators spanning vast distances instantaneously (like asteroid belt to jupiter instantly).

Those don't fall under 'space magic'?

Also, wouldn't that turn Sol into the kind of system this thread is about?

Yes thats why i mentioned them, accelerators are an outlier. And no, because your ship cant do these things, you need gates and highways to do them. When I say 'reigned in' I mean change accelerators to take time, or retcon them into gates.
(Lots of edits)