Suggestion: Skirmish mode multiplayer

[Falcrack]

Rather than ask for multiplayer for the whole galaxy, which may not be possible due to the huge amount of data which would need to be shared, I would like a way to simply have fleet battles in a single sector with other players.

Two or more players could be given a budget, choose ships or stations based on that budget, place their assets in their starting zone for a sector, and fight. Since only a single sector and a few ships and stations would be involved, the bandwidth requirements would be much lower.

Alternatively or in addition to this, you could send a limited number of ships (based on cost perhaps) from your single player game via a Ventures module into the multiverse combat zone. Surviving ships can pick up any valuable mod parts after the battle from destroyed enemy ships, and get to harvest valuable and unique resources in the multiverse and bring them back to their single player game.

Not gonna include a poll because I know how hostile some players are to any mention of multiplayer for X4. But I think this would be a lot of fun.

[Nanook]

No! Egosoft should not waste time on trying to develop something that only a few players will likely use, and many will probably find inadequate anyway and whine about.

Multiplayer options have been discussed ad nauseum on the forums and Egosoft has repeatedly said no, and polls show the majority of players agree.

[chew-ie]

Sounds like a super fun community project to work on. Pick an engine (or write one) which has network capabilities, read the original game data for models & weapon data and visualise the battle arena.

[Raptor34]

I'll advise you to take a look at Riftbreakers which also has a post-launch co-op mode they are working on due to customer demand. It's been a year now and while they've made progress, it has definitely been rough going. And I don't think they output as much as Egosoft either.
Whenever I see these posts that's what I think of. It's not as easy as people think, and definitely way harder than I even expected.

So no, maybe if Egosoft want's to do a couple months exploratory coding to see if it can be made to work sure, but if no appreciable progress is made, shut it down. Because frankly I expect it to be a blackhole of dev time and resources for nothing in the end.

[azaghal]

Not gonna include a poll because I know how hostile some players are to any mention of multiplayer for X4. But I think this would be a lot of fun.

See? You did not even _need_ a poll for people to get hostile

Personally, I would find some kind of skirmish style thing (as described) fun, maybe even something with a wave defense sort of thing. Probably would end up buying a copy of the game for my brother so we can play together.

On the other hand... Unless you design and implement your game around the network/multiplayer capability, it's probably not possible to add it after the fact.

Best regards,
Branko

[chew-ie]

Not gonna include a poll because I know how hostile some players are to any mention of multiplayer for X4. But I think this would be a lot of fun.

See? You did not even _need_ a poll for people to get hostile

Personally, I would find some kind of skirmish style thing (as described) fun, maybe even something with a wave defense sort of thing. Probably would end up buying a copy of the game for my brother so we can play together.

On the other hand... Unless you design and implement your game around the network/multiplayer capability, it's probably not possible to add it after the fact.

Best regards,
Branko

Just to be clear here - my post wasn't meant hostile.

I'll advise you to take a look at Riftbreakers which also has a post-launch co-op mode they are working on due to customer demand. It's been a year now and while they've made progress, it has definitely been rough going. And I don't think they output as much as Egosoft either.
Whenever I see these posts that's what I think of. It's not as easy as people think, and definitely way harder than I even expected.

So no, maybe if Egosoft want's to do a couple months exploratory coding to see if it can be made to work sure, but if no appreciable progress is made, shut it down. Because frankly I expect it to be a blackhole of dev time and resources for nothing in the end.

Interesting ... ai-made wrap-up by brave search engine

[vvvvvvvv]

Rather than ask for multiplayer for the whole galaxy, which may not be possible due to the huge amount of data which would need to be shared, I would like a way to simply have fleet battles in a single sector with other players.

Two or more players could be given a budget, choose ships or stations based on that budget, place their assets in their starting zone for a sector, and fight. Since only a single sector and a few ships and stations would be involved, the bandwidth requirements would be much lower.

Alternatively or in addition to this, you could send a limited number of ships (based on cost perhaps) from your single player game via a Ventures module into the multiverse combat zone. Surviving ships can pick up any valuable mod parts after the battle from destroyed enemy ships, and get to harvest valuable and unique resources in the multiverse and bring them back to their single player game.

Not gonna include a poll because I know how hostile some players are to any mention of multiplayer for X4. But I think this would be a lot of fun.

It was discussed to the death along with detailed description of why it is a problem.

I'd suggest to approach it differently. Gather enough money (crowd fundding?) so the development would be worth it financially or maybe can be outsourced. I think 1-5 million EUR would cover development of this feature. Obviously discuss things with egosoft first. Cause even if you throw money at the problem, the company may be unwilling to go along with it.

[flywlyx]

No! Egosoft should not waste time on trying to develop something that only a few players will likely use, and many will probably find inadequate anyway and whine about.

Multiplayer options have been discussed ad nauseum on the forums and Egosoft has repeatedly said no, and polls show the majority of players agree.

As far as I can tell from this survey:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/392160 ... 7015648924

Would you like to be able to play X4 with friends?

46% · Yes
16% · No
38% · Wouldn't matter to me

If you are interested in a multiplayer option, what would it ideally look like for you?

14% · MMO
63% · Online Co-Op
16% · Asynchronous Multiplayer

Most players don't seem to agree with that "no."
However, Egosoft went ahead with the "Asynchronous Multiplayer" venture.

[Raptor34]

I'll advise you to take a look at Riftbreakers which also has a post-launch co-op mode they are working on due to customer demand. It's been a year now and while they've made progress, it has definitely been rough going. And I don't think they output as much as Egosoft either.
Whenever I see these posts that's what I think of. It's not as easy as people think, and definitely way harder than I even expected.

So no, maybe if Egosoft want's to do a couple months exploratory coding to see if it can be made to work sure, but if no appreciable progress is made, shut it down. Because frankly I expect it to be a blackhole of dev time and resources for nothing in the end.

Interesting ... ai-made wrap-up by brave search engine

Most of that is basically what I remembered excepting the thing where it was expected to release Q4 2022, but helpfully the search engine also provided this below.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 1157676103
which basically gives a timeline of what happened up to August 2022, like when they started working on the game, MP and all that. Thanks for that btw, I tried looking through the steam announcements since I owned the game but there have been so many over the year and the lack of search so I gave up.

Anyone wanting MP in X4 I'll advise you to take a look at that post linked above. It details the struggles and challenges in making MP in a game which wasn't built to support it. And honestly that's basically what made me not want MP in X4, I believe that it'll basically suck up enough resources that it'll either be dropped in a couple months, or kill the game.
Unless as I've suggested before, crowd fund the whole thing so Egosoft can hire extra devs to deal with the network stuff.

Edit: A quick glance through tells me that that's not the whole thing, but I've been looking at the devposts on steam announcement over the years, if you're interested, I'll look through those too. It is fairly interesting.

[jlehtone]

Two or more players could be given a budget, choose ships or stations based on that budget, place their assets in their starting zone for a sector, and fight. Since only a single sector and a few ships and stations would be involved, the bandwidth requirements would be much lower.

Bandwidth?

Make a mod. A Galaxy with only one sector. Two NPC factions, hostile to each other.
Player strictly as observer (no ships, at most stations), with scanner coverage.
Each player decides the assets and jobs of one NPC faction. The NPC will carry out the skirmish.

Therefore, you need a template for the mod(s) and means to insert the NPC into it.
You could call it "Frontlines", since it will resemble Timelines; very restricted scenario(s).

[Falcrack]

Two or more players could be given a budget, choose ships or stations based on that budget, place their assets in their starting zone for a sector, and fight. Since only a single sector and a few ships and stations would be involved, the bandwidth requirements would be much lower.

Bandwidth?

Make a mod. A Galaxy with only one sector. Two NPC factions, hostile to each other.
Player strictly as observer (no ships, at most stations), with scanner coverage.
Each player decides the assets and jobs of one NPC faction. The NPC will carry out the skirmish.

Therefore, you need a template for the mod(s) and means to insert the NPC into it.
You could call it "Frontlines", since it will resemble Timelines; very restricted scenario(s).

I'm not terribly interested in a form of multiplayer where I have no direct control over my ships. That is one reason why I was so unimpressed with Ventures.

[flywlyx]

Bandwidth?

Make a mod. A Galaxy with only one sector. Two NPC factions, hostile to each other.
Player strictly as observer (no ships, at most stations), with scanner coverage.
Each player decides the assets and jobs of one NPC faction. The NPC will carry out the skirmish.

Therefore, you need a template for the mod(s) and means to insert the NPC into it.
You could call it "Frontlines", since it will resemble Timelines; very restricted scenario(s).

If the X4 AI were smarter and we had the ability to customize their behavior, I’d definitely be interested in trying this type of auto battler.
However, with the current X4 AI, I’d say it’s completely pointless.

[Raptor34]

Bandwidth?

Make a mod. A Galaxy with only one sector. Two NPC factions, hostile to each other.
Player strictly as observer (no ships, at most stations), with scanner coverage.
Each player decides the assets and jobs of one NPC faction. The NPC will carry out the skirmish.

Therefore, you need a template for the mod(s) and means to insert the NPC into it.
You could call it "Frontlines", since it will resemble Timelines; very restricted scenario(s).

If the X4 AI were smarter and we had the ability to customize their behavior, I’d definitely be interested in trying this type of auto battler.
However, with the current X4 AI, I’d say it’s completely pointless.

Considering how many AI mods are out there that has the restriction of not bogging down the system, I wouldn't say this is impossible. AI scripts that are unfeasible for a galaxy with thousands of ships would even in an unoptimized state be feasible in a single sector with only dozens of ships.

[flywlyx]

Considering how many AI mods are out there that has the restriction of not bogging down the system, I wouldn't say this is impossible. AI scripts that are unfeasible for a galaxy with thousands of ships would even in an unoptimized state be feasible in a single sector with only dozens of ships.

I wouldn't say it's impossible, but given the amount of effort Egosoft has put into AI improvements and the performance of those AI improvement mods, I doubt I would be satisfied with their capabilities.

[Raptor34]

Considering how many AI mods are out there that has the restriction of not bogging down the system, I wouldn't say this is impossible. AI scripts that are unfeasible for a galaxy with thousands of ships would even in an unoptimized state be feasible in a single sector with only dozens of ships.

I wouldn't say it's impossible, but given the amount of effort Egosoft has put into AI improvements and the performance of those AI improvement mods, I doubt I would be satisfied with their capabilities.

You're missing the point. Those mods need to handle the entire universe on your home PC. An arena mod would be much simpler since you only have a handful of ships. It's like the old MARS mods, excellent, but turning it on for every ship basically kills your computer.

[flywlyx]

You're missing the point. Those mods need to handle the entire universe on your home PC. An arena mod would be much simpler since you only have a handful of ships. It's like the old MARS mods, excellent, but turning it on for every ship basically kills your computer.

AI scripts for combat ships don’t require significant resources; the issue lies in the limitations of the X4 engine, which lacks the necessary functionality to properly manage AI behavior.
For example:https://youtu.be/9hr6OLVhWNs
Defeating a Xenon K with an Ody E should be as simple as reversing and opening fire, but no mod has managed to achieve this. Why?
Because scripting a ship to reverse effectively is extremely challenging within the current engine constraints. Additionally, there are numerous other issues Egosoft must address before achieving a truly capable and reasonable AI.

[Falcrack]

Even if we couldn't have an arena mode with multiplayer functionality, I would at least love a single player arena mode where we could set up custom combat scenarios. That alone I am convinced would be quite doable with the current engine, and would partially satisfy me.

[vvvvvvvv]

You're missing the point. Those mods need to handle the entire universe on your home PC. An arena mod would be much simpler since you only have a handful of ships. It's like the old MARS mods, excellent, but turning it on for every ship basically kills your computer.

That is like Elite Dangerous CQC, the mode almost no one is playing.

The "arena" was requested before, but primarily for testing loadouts. Meaning no networking involved. With networking, there's just... not much point. Because it'll be effectively a small mini-game.

[chew-ie]

You're missing the point. Those mods need to handle the entire universe on your home PC. An arena mod would be much simpler since you only have a handful of ships. It's like the old MARS mods, excellent, but turning it on for every ship basically kills your computer.

That is like Elite Dangerous CQC, the mode almost no one is playing.

The "arena" was requested before, but primarily for testing loadouts. Meaning no networking involved. With networking, there's just... not much point. Because it'll be effectively a small mini-game.

This is a different context though. For an X game a [standalone] battle arena with the x series ships and weapons would be a unique experience impossible with the released games. As there is zero multiplayer capability. In ED there is no point in going into a sandbox multiplayer mode if you have the multiplayer mode all around you.

[vvvvvvvv]

As there is zero multiplayer capability. In ED there is no point in going into a sandbox multiplayer mode if you have the multiplayer mode all around you.

In ED, typical multiplayer experience is never meeting anyone for months, only in order to get ganked by some uber-engineered ship in Shinrarta or another popular system. So there in theory should be plenty of reason to use CQC. In theory. In practice, it is not a popular mode.

Basically, the problem is that arena would be missing t he things that make X4 worth playing, and at the same time doesn't offer much by itself. You'd need to do quite a bit to make it work. Create different movement routines, for example, just for the arena, because current ones are not MP aware. Then it'll play different compared to base game, but at the same time there won't offer much.

Worth keeping in mind that there are a ton of dead MP titles online.