No DLC with 8.0?

[Tamina]

Thanks for the free update but I came to wonder, this is the first time a large patch hasnt gotten a complementary DLC with it, financing the development of the patch. Or at least that I know of.

Did I miss anything?

If not then this naturally leads to the next question, if I may ask, whats going on? Where is this wonderful journey of many years heading to next?

[Starlight_Corporation]

There's one in the works to accompany patch 8; however, not all major patches come with DLC's (patch 8, but we don't have 8 DLC's); Note the current DLC in the works is a small one, style Hyperion DLC (but different).

Where it will all lead to? Unknow, only the Devs know. Maybe to a new X4 that uses X4 Foundation & all DLC's as foundation to progress further (style X3 releases, there were 3 X3's, 4 if you include Farnham's Legend). Maybe to a fresh new start as X5. Who knows? Nobody but the devs.

[Raptor34]

Where it will all lead to? Unknow, only the Devs know. Maybe to a new X4 that uses X4 Foundation & all DLC's as foundation to progress further (style X3 releases, there were 3 X3's, 4 if you include Farnham's Legend). Maybe to a fresh new start as X5. Who knows? Nobody but the devs.

Not a new one yet I hope. Imo there is still some things they should test out here before they start on a cleaner slate. And definitely a whole bunch before they move over to X5.
Like they should at least see how much they can expand the crew system here, where even if it fails at least it's here and not in a new game where they would probably have integrated a whole bunch of shit to it which means that we suffer the fallout.
I'll also like to see actual fleets, not basically a swarm of ships that mimic a fleet but are basically singular entities with simple instructions ala swarm intelligences.

And for X5, they need to look at all the shit that are stuck behind save compatibility and figure out how to deal with that with the next engine. They've come a long way since X3 where apparently almost anything can break it, I still remember when tweaking ships that it's inadvisable to load into a system with mid-save tweaked ships because it'll just CTD, i.e. you better make your save in some empty sector. And let's not forget how you cannot add new sectors without new saves. But they still need to deal with the current two known issues that is the Terran accelerator models and also the HQ model. Though by deal what I mean is they need to collect more info on what they might want to change and make preparations so that in X5 they can change them at will.
That aside, frankly I'm impressed with what they actually can change, the CV model and stat change is actually fairly significant. I don't think that is possible in X3 after all.

[BitByte]

I think that's why Egosoft released Mini DLC 1 and are planning for Mini DLC 2 for this year (like they announced in roadmap) to balance income as they are not releasing full DLC.
In 2026 there should come Exploration update and might be it contains full DLC next time.

[alt3rn1ty]

I think that's why Egosoft released Mini DLC 1 and are planning for Mini DLC 2 for this year (like they announced in roadmap) to balance income as they are not releasing full DLC.
In 2026 there should come Exploration update and might be it contains full DLC next time.

Thats what I think is happening. We already have a new sector in 8.0 betas' (bit of a rude one too, right next door to where my Shipyard is based and has a Xenon Shipyard + Wharf + Factory, so glad Xenon have no ships in my game to make those grow into a local nightmare), but I think there will be another new sector to come with the mini dlc.