A use for chairs: drone and turret operator

[Falcrack]

I would like it if sitting down in the non-captain chairs or consoles gave us the option to control either drones for the ship, or individual turrets.

Upon sitting down in the gunnery control chair or console, we could select one of the turrets, or one of the available drones, and we get a view from either the turret or the drone we are controlling.

[CBJ]

Turret control is something that existed in X2, and we've wanted to reintroduce for ages. It's still very much on our wishlist, but hasn't made it to the top yet.

Drone control is something we tried in X Rebirth. For various reasons, including both technical and gameplay factors, reintroducing that is somewhat less appealing.

[Raptor34]

Turret control is something that existed in X2, and we've wanted to reintroduce for ages. It's still very much on our wishlist, but hasn't made it to the top yet.

Drone control is something we tried in X Rebirth. For various reasons, including both technical and gameplay factors, reintroducing that is somewhat less appealing.

Remember in X2 when you could do that picture in picture thing and remotely control ships? The capital ship tutorial had you remote control an Argon Nova to snipe something. I think having something like that would be good. While admittedly the combo of auto ejecting, enemies seemingly ignoring space suits and teleportation means going out into combat is pretty much risk free. Being able to remote control a ship from the safety of a carrier feels more immersive. And going by how live streaming seems to work, maybe even allow us to remote control over to the next sector? Scouting would be more fun if you don't actually have to risk yourself imo. As is I just send some gopher to do the job because it's annoying to get shot down.

[mr.WHO]

The problem is that those are rather complex mechanics that add nothing much to the game unless combined with some serious rebalance effort.

Medium turrets are weak individually - player controlling one turret won't improve their performace much over "attack my target" turret command.

Same is with drones - single X4 combat drone in player hands really doesn't stand much against anything.
In X-Rebirth, the only drone I ever used was that heavy torpedo drone.



Really, instead of turret control, I'd rather see turret rebalance and variety (e.g. medium turrets not beign copy/paste and each faction getting some new, unique turrets, symilar to what Borons have).

Same with drone - instead of direct control, I'd prefere more drone types (e.g. each faction having their unique drone, like in RE mod) and improvements to NPC launching/retreiving drones (instead of current Auxilary ship carrying 100 drone, but only automatically launching 5 of them and calling a day).

[Nadja]

I'm thinking of EVE Online, where you can easily control drones.
There, you have a small window with, for example, 5 drones, and you can assign each drone an individual target (or ally), give it the command to circle at a distance of xx km, or send it back to the ship hangar, etc.
In principle, the drones are controlled in the same way as all other ships. The only difference to normal ships is the exclusive parking space in a ship instead of at stations.

In X4, it would be enough for me if you could tell the drones to attack small ships only (like turrets) and not stray too far from the ship. For example: Defend ship within 5 km.

[Themroc]

Perhaps at least the map and the loot magnet switch ...

greetings T.

[alt3rn1ty]

Turret control is something that existed in X2, and we've wanted to reintroduce for ages. It's still very much on our wishlist, but hasn't made it to the top yet.

Did you guys ever look into changing some ships seats, so that we can actually hear the "Navigator" responding to the Pilots commands ..
viewtopic.php?p=5190977#p5190977

On the Hydra Regal, the Gunnery seat is next to the Pilot seat. But the Navigator is way at the back of the Hydra Regals cockpit space, so when the Pilot says things like "Navigation, take us into the dock", unless you have the volume up at 100 and listen very carefully you can not hear the Navigator responding.

Always seemed a shame that all the work went into giving the Navigator and Pilot dialogue between the two, but you cant hear half of it.

So the Navigators designated seat needs to be next to (or as close as possible given the ship design) the Pilot seat.
Alan said in the follow up post to the one linked that he would inform modellers of the request.

Maybe this idea would rub up against any gunners also wanting to be up front.

[flywlyx]

That only works if the AI can handle the ship properly. Right now, it struggles to maintain distance from enemies, leaving players with no time to do anything except focus on piloting.

[capitalduty]

Turret control is something that existed in X2, and we've wanted to reintroduce for ages. It's still very much on our wishlist, but hasn't made it to the top yet.

Drone control is something we tried in X Rebirth. For various reasons, including both technical and gameplay factors, reintroducing that is somewhat less appealing.

also could be interesting to have a direct control of multiple turrets? this could be very interesting, even more than just one turret IMO.