Did Egosoft miss what the fans wanted?

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Did Egosoft miss what fans wanted?

Yes.
45
13%
No.
142
40%
Too soon to tell.
168
47%
 
Total votes: 355

Seanchaidh
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Re: Jumpdrive and NPC

Post by Seanchaidh »

Nanook wrote:The original theme of the game universe was a jump drive failure that lead Kyle Brennan to discover the X universe. Making them disappear in the game denies the original lore of the game. The X universe without jumpdrives just isn't the X universe. :P
This is true. There could be in-universe explanations for jump drives becoming too problematic or unreliable to use, though, related to the evolving difficulties with jump gate shutdowns and reorganizations and such. Since jump drives (at least in X3) depend in a crucial way on the jump gates (even when jumping to beacons; otherwise why would the cost depend on number of gates traversed), disruptions to the jump gate network (like a jump gate firmware update XD) could potentially make them unusable by the TerraCorp variety of jump drive. If the jump gates were put in place and are still managed by inscrutable, possibly beneficent observers, intentionally ruining the TerraCorp jump drive interaction with the jump gates makes a whole lot of sense: functional jump drives are militarily destabilizing as they make every place vulnerable to attack. Godlike managers would want a military paradigm which is less prone to wild swings in fortune.

The disappearance of the Rebirth jump drive is a little more difficult to justify in such a manner, but perhaps a few high profile collisions at beacons could do the trick to convince authorities that beacons should be taken down. Or perhaps their use by pirates or Xenon or other hostiles could also contribute to that impulse. Safety and security concerns mixed with the ascendance of competing technologies.

But that still leaves the unfocussed jump drive. Hopefully that exists in X4. It poses no particular problem to gameplay; you jump to a random place unconnected to the gate network (because the universe is vast and 99.999% of it isn't anywhere close to the gate network) and then jump back. As far as travel within the sectors connected by gates is concerned, it doesn't actually move you anywhere.
gbjbaanb
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Post by gbjbaanb »

To get rid of the jump drive as an offensive tool is easy - you give ships a short "disabled" time after jumping where they have to recover, even if its only shields that start at 0 when you arrive. Jumping ships would be sitting ducks, which is maybe why you'd send fast fighters first to clear a path for you (ooh, a real good reason for having fighters!) rather than send your slow destroyer over that'd get pounded to bits by the defences.

There are other ways to make jumping disadvantageous in battle but not for player enjoyment (as jumping you really only need movement to not be annoying).

I liked jump drives, X3 was a fine, fine game overall. And it had jump drives, and nobody really complained about it. everyone seems to be complaining about highways to some extent.
vrod
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Post by vrod »

No jumpdrive?

I super enjoy playing X3 right now. I would only hope that X4 just brings the series into the present. (better graphics, easier controlling of other ships/fleets).

(No need to have shields down if you jump-in.) That sounds kinda dry.

Please just keep the jumpdrives how they are!
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Malakie
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Post by Malakie »

Jump drives ARE an essential part of the X series, period. Without jump drives, the game is not what we know and love.

My hope has always been that x4 would be a combination of the best of the entire series combined with the best of Rebirth.

I truly want there to someday be an X5.. perhaps with planetary landings and more. Basically a single player Star Citizen if you will.. X4 hopefully will be a first step in that direction.

I don't play many games and those I constantly play are very few and rare. The X series was at the top of my go to list from way back. Today it is #2 on my list.. only for the reason that nothing can truly top Star Citizen in what they are doing there for space simulation.

In fact, I routinely will play multiple games at once even with X3 TC or Rebirth.. When on a long trip through space, I will often have another game, maybe something turn based, that I also am playing.

I fully plan on having X3 or X4 playing simultaneous with Star Citizen. That will be a while though since Star Citizen itself most likely will not see full release until 2020 or so, although SQ42 will probably come out next year. And as for SQ42, once played through, I won't play it again being it is a linear game.

And THAT is the beauty of the entire X series (minus Rebirth)... up until Rebirth, the X series was NOT linear campaign.. i.e. not only could you continue to grow and expand but the game was never the same game twice in a row even if you use the same starting point.

My hope is X4 becomes my every day goto game and expands and grows from there... Jump drives are a MUST if that is to happen.. and highways, well, to me they could go away completely if I had my choice.
Take it light.....

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GCU Grey Area
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Re: Jumpdrive and NPC

Post by GCU Grey Area »

Seanchaidh wrote:The disappearance of the Rebirth jump drive is a little more difficult to justify in such a manner...
From a lore perspective it's only an issue if the XR sectors are part of the X4 map. If not the XR jumpdrives & beacons could have been a purely local technological development in response to the gate network shutdown & not available elsewhere - i.e. the Rebirth jumpdrive technology still exists, but there's no way for anyone to get to the XR sectors to acquire it.
Seanchaidh
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Re: Jumpdrive and NPC

Post by Seanchaidh »

GCU Grey Area wrote:
Seanchaidh wrote:The disappearance of the Rebirth jump drive is a little more difficult to justify in such a manner...
From a lore perspective it's only an issue if the XR sectors are part of the X4 map. If not the XR jumpdrives & beacons could have been a purely local technological development in response to the gate network shutdown & not available elsewhere - i.e. the Rebirth jumpdrive technology still exists, but there's no way for anyone to get to the XR sectors to acquire it.
That's true. I had assumed at least one of them would be in; Omicron Lyrae and Home of Light seem like they'd be glaring omissions. But perhaps not!
Graaf
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Re: Jumpdrive and NPC

Post by Graaf »

Seanchaidh wrote:
GCU Grey Area wrote:
Seanchaidh wrote:The disappearance of the Rebirth jump drive is a little more difficult to justify in such a manner...
From a lore perspective it's only an issue if the XR sectors are part of the X4 map. If not the XR jumpdrives & beacons could have been a purely local technological development in response to the gate network shutdown & not available elsewhere - i.e. the Rebirth jumpdrive technology still exists, but there's no way for anyone to get to the XR sectors to acquire it.
That's true. I had assumed at least one of them would be in; Omicron Lyrae and Home of Light seem like they'd be glaring omissions. But perhaps not!
Technically, if the Rebirth JD can jump to gates in Omicron, HoL & Mealstrom, then they should also be able to lock onto the other X3-gates once they now the "address". Considering that previously mentioned gates are "old" gates, the Terracorp JD should be able to jump to them regardless.
Not having the Terracorp JD in Rebirth is strange considering Terracorp, located in HoL, did make it.
Seanchaidh
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Re: Jumpdrive and NPC

Post by Seanchaidh »

Graaf wrote:
Seanchaidh wrote:
GCU Grey Area wrote:
Seanchaidh wrote:The disappearance of the Rebirth jump drive is a little more difficult to justify in such a manner...
From a lore perspective it's only an issue if the XR sectors are part of the X4 map. If not the XR jumpdrives & beacons could have been a purely local technological development in response to the gate network shutdown & not available elsewhere - i.e. the Rebirth jumpdrive technology still exists, but there's no way for anyone to get to the XR sectors to acquire it.
That's true. I had assumed at least one of them would be in; Omicron Lyrae and Home of Light seem like they'd be glaring omissions. But perhaps not!
Technically, if the Rebirth JD can jump to gates in Omicron, HoL & Mealstrom, then they should also be able to lock onto the other X3-gates once they now the "address". Considering that previously mentioned gates are "old" gates, the Terracorp JD should be able to jump to them regardless.
Not having the Terracorp JD in Rebirth is strange considering Terracorp, located in HoL, did make it.
Rebirth JD can only jump to beacons, though (they do the work of superhighways for large ships). And if the Terracorp JD is dependent on an interaction with the Jump Gates, it is possible that the people who actually built the gates (or their successors) and who still exert control over them (as evidenced by the gates shutting down apparently by design, then coming back in a limited fashion) could sabotage that interaction and make it unusable.
Requiemfang
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Re: Jumpdrive and NPC

Post by Requiemfang »

Seanchaidh wrote:
Graaf wrote:
Seanchaidh wrote:
GCU Grey Area wrote:
Seanchaidh wrote:The disappearance of the Rebirth jump drive is a little more difficult to justify in such a manner...
From a lore perspective it's only an issue if the XR sectors are part of the X4 map. If not the XR jumpdrives & beacons could have been a purely local technological development in response to the gate network shutdown & not available elsewhere - i.e. the Rebirth jumpdrive technology still exists, but there's no way for anyone to get to the XR sectors to acquire it.
That's true. I had assumed at least one of them would be in; Omicron Lyrae and Home of Light seem like they'd be glaring omissions. But perhaps not!
Technically, if the Rebirth JD can jump to gates in Omicron, HoL & Mealstrom, then they should also be able to lock onto the other X3-gates once they now the "address". Considering that previously mentioned gates are "old" gates, the Terracorp JD should be able to jump to them regardless.
Not having the Terracorp JD in Rebirth is strange considering Terracorp, located in HoL, did make it.
Rebirth JD can only jump to beacons, though (they do the work of superhighways for large ships). And if the Terracorp JD is dependent on an interaction with the Jump Gates, it is possible that the people who actually built the gates (or their successors) and who still exert control over them (as evidenced by the gates shutting down apparently by design, then coming back in a limited fashion) could sabotage that interaction and make it unusable.
The gate makers are very much still in existence, they exist in digital form and are comprised of many species and races including a self-aware former terraformer ship called DEFA or DECA (can't remember I'll have to go back and read it somewhere). So yes it's quite possible that the gate makers could pull something like that with the tech involved with JD. They did after all shut the whole gate network down. I think the lore explained it as to stop the war that was happening between the community of planets and the Terrans as well as trying to prevent the annihilation of the Xenon since one of them was able to gain self awareness.
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Post by Skeeter »

Maybe as a compromise es can make 1 JD in x4, hide it or quest reward it and be made so fits the players ship only so u can't buy loads and can't equip it on other ships ur not flying right now.

As removing it completely seems kinda strange since the birth of the JD and plots around it since the first X game has it firmly established in lore and gameplay. If they try to explain it away in new lore it will be so hard it will make it unbelievable to players who read it. I reckon.
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Seanchaidh
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Post by Seanchaidh »

Skeeter wrote:Maybe as a compromise es can make 1 JD in x4, hide it or quest reward it and be made so fits the players ship only so u can't buy loads and can't equip it on other ships ur not flying right now.

As removing it completely seems kinda strange since the birth of the JD and plots around it since the first X game has it firmly established in lore and gameplay. If they try to explain it away in new lore it will be so hard it will make it unbelievable to players who read it. I reckon.
I don't think that would be a good solution. Especially considering that you can teleport to another ship; what happens to that Jump Drive? And why shouldn't you be able to let one of your other ships use it? What in principle should prevent the player from figuring out a way to replicate the technology? Or a giant corporation like Terracorp from doing so?

Limiting jump drive technology to the player ship and burying it behind some amount of plot resolution gives you all the trouble of explaining why in the X Universe what used to be a very common technology has all but disappeared without then actually getting the full gameplay upsides of being rid of it.

If you want the Jump Drive to still exist while not allowing people to as easily bypass defenses or easily and immediately respond to threats, a much better way to do that is to use the gate shutdown to explain how or why it operates differently. Rebirth does this a bit (or could do it fairly easily without changing any game mechanics).

Rebirth's JD is consistent with my offer of a potential explanation further above: jump drives are no longer able to lock onto or traverse through gates because something about the gates changed with the shutdown. Because the Argon, Paranid, Boron, Split, and Teladi civilizations expanded through the gate network without actually understanding where it was they were going, they don't have the knowledge to make jump drives work for interstellar travel without relying on the gate network; the gate network in real space is supposed to be nothing like how it appears in the in-game galaxy map (which is a map of connections between gates).

If gate connections are unrelated to the physical location of the star systems they connect, then it is very plausible that interstellar civilizations which rely on the gate network would have no real idea how to make a jump drive navigate between systems without the jump gates cooperating. They'd only have interstellar guessing (the unfocussed jump drive). And they'd only be able to to reliably go to places they'd already gone to without using gates (in-system beacons).

Now what could be pretty cool is if a few of the destinations in the gate network actually are close to each other in physical space, and eventually someone notices (perhaps by placing extremely detectable signal beacons in every system and then to trying to find them from other systems). Then jump beacons can be used for a much more limited form of interstellar travel-- just from one particular system to another particular system. Perhaps your navigational computer can only find the jump beacon in Third Redemption if you're in, say, either Ceo's Buckzoid or Third Redemption.

This can all be explained in a way consistent with the way jump drives worked in X3 if we just assume that the managers of the gate network took measures to prevent jump drives from utilizing the gate network to travel and locate jump targets (gates or beacons)-- perhaps figuring out how to disable that interaction is why the gate managers shut down the gates in the first place and took so long to bring them back. We can keep the unfocussed jump drive (because it doesn't really make you move in terms of the gate network anyway; the gameplay reason not to favor JD is moot for the unfocussed variety, as is interaction with the gate network) and we can have as few or as many jump beacons and jump beacon interactions as we want (including none).
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Post by Nanook »

Sorry, but the removal of the jumpdrive because some ancient race deactivated the ability to use them on the gates is nonsense. At least one of the gates in Terran space was made by the Terrans. The one between Heretics End and Asteroid Belt was made by the Paranid. So we know both groups have the technology to create and maintain gates. There's no way some ancient race is going to shutdown and prevent the usage of JD's at those gates. What the devs have created by removing the JD's is a glaring inconsistency in the supposed lore of the X Universe itself.
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Post by wellmadman »

I saw someone post that they SICK of of a few people saying highways sux or are bad? I sorry but about 45% of players is NOT a few, But I do have a nice way around it, also it will make a BIG game different to everyone, and lead to much more replayabillity.

That is at the start of the game you get Option of effecting the base game, by choosing to have the game make(or the player make) more Highways, or gates depending on what YOU the player likes.

This way if you like highways, you start game with base highways and as you get more resources or rank/levels etc, you can learn to build your own, that the computer will use to.

The same gos for gates, you choose gate option and their is none or very very few highways, and as the game gos you can learn/steal the data from terrans to build more, which the Npcs can use.

I personaly HATE highways, and cannot wait for some mod that will remove them and let us build gates.
Seanchaidh
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Post by Seanchaidh »

Nanook wrote:Sorry, but the removal of the jumpdrive because some ancient race deactivated the ability to use them on the gates is nonsense. At least one of the gates in Terran space was made by the Terrans. The one between Heretics End and Asteroid Belt was made by the Paranid. So we know both groups have the technology to create and maintain gates. There's no way some ancient race is going to shutdown and prevent the usage of JD's at those gates. What the devs have created by removing the JD's is a glaring inconsistency in the supposed lore of the X Universe itself.
If the Terrans aren't in X4, it seems unlikely that Heretic's End and Asteroid Belt would be.
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Post by Nanook »

Seanchaidh wrote:
Nanook wrote:Sorry, but the removal of the jumpdrive because some ancient race deactivated the ability to use them on the gates is nonsense. At least one of the gates in Terran space was made by the Terrans. The one between Heretics End and Asteroid Belt was made by the Paranid. So we know both groups have the technology to create and maintain gates. There's no way some ancient race is going to shutdown and prevent the usage of JD's at those gates. What the devs have created by removing the JD's is a glaring inconsistency in the supposed lore of the X Universe itself.
If the Terrans aren't in X4, it seems unlikely that Heretic's End and Asteroid Belt would be.
Misses the point, which is that the races in the games prior to Rebirth possessed the technology to make their own gates, and jump drives. So just because the 'ancients' could manipulate their own gates doesn't mean they could prohibit the races from using gates and JD's.
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Post by Alan Phipps »

Part of the story of the 'Lost Fleet' book series is about a very isolationist but technologically advanced alien race that passes on jump gate technology to both of the two opposed human factions encroaching on their borders.

What the aliens initially fail to tell either human side is that the jump gates they are installing can be remotely switched on or off, and that they can be remotely detonated at nova scale and potentially lay waste to many militarily important human systems that installed them during their factional conflict and competitive arms race.
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Pesanur
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Post by Pesanur »

The gate built by the Paranid was with the aid of the Sohnen, so it use the same tech that the rest of the gate network, and therefore, can be disabled by the ancients.
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Post by Nanook »

That's just an assumption. Besides, jump drive technology was first invented by the Xenon and adapted by the Terrans in the time of X-BTF. There's no lore that I know of that says the ancients/Sohnen can prevent jump drive use without turning off the gates. Even then, the Terrans have their own version of the gate unrelated to the others, and they also have jump beacon technology that doesn't rely on gates. Not to mention the UFJD tech that needs neither. IMO, there's no justification for eliminating jump drives in the X Universe, other than developer whim. :P

It's akin to removing warp drive technology from Star Trek. :o
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Seanchaidh
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Post by Seanchaidh »

Nanook wrote:That's just an assumption. Besides, jump drive technology was first invented by the Xenon and adapted by the Terrans in the time of X-BTF. There's no lore that I know of that says the ancients/Sohnen can prevent jump drive use without turning off the gates. Even then, the Terrans have their own version of the gate unrelated to the others, and they also have jump beacon technology that doesn't rely on gates. Not to mention the UFJD tech that needs neither. IMO, there's no justification for eliminating jump drives in the X Universe, other than developer whim. :P

It's akin to removing warp drive technology from Star Trek. :o
It's more like removing trans-warp. :wink:

I agree in a very limited sense: the complete removal of the jump drive concept and theoretical possibility doesn't make a lot of sense. But the idea that jump drives would necessarily have to be able to interact with jump gates as they did in X3 also doesn't make sense; if there are things the gate creators can do to control the operation of the gates, it's hardly a stretch to think they'd have ways of making jump drive through the gates either impossible or too dangerous to be worth it.

Think of it this way: it's obvious that a multiple gate jump in Terran Conflict relies on weaving a theoretical path through the actual gate network (all in an instant and pre-planned and navigated) because the energy cost is based on the number of gates passed through and not location in physical space (which could be anywhere; maybe not even the same galaxy; it's very possible that Home of Light is closer in physical space to Earth than Heretic's End is).

If it didn't depend on weaving such a path-- if it just locked on to the location of the destination jump gate-- then there isn't a reason it should cost more energy to skip more gates. The only way it makes sense is if the jump drive depends in a very crucial way on the gate network when making focused jumps to a different sector.

So the gate managers decide to scramble the signals produced by the gates a bit and make it impossible to get a reliable read on further gate locations by looking through a jump gate. Or maybe it's something as simple as making them wobble just ever so slightly. Consequently, attempts to jump more than one gate away are no better than an unfocused jump. Or maybe they do something to make jumping spacecraft "bounce off" in some manner before reappearing, so they can't even do an in-system jump to a gate.

There are plenty of technobabble explanations that are quite plausible, and it makes a whole lot of sense that people who are capable of creating a vast, interstellar gate network would have ways of regulating travel through it (especially the travel of less sophisticated beings) and would not hesitate to employ them if they thought it was a good idea.

Indeed, maybe the reason they shut the gates down for so long was precisely so they could rig the gates to prevent jump travel through them; maybe it was a big technical problem that they had to spend years to solve. There's plenty of room here in the lore to have pretty much any interaction between jump gates and jump drives that the developers want in X4 (including no interaction whatsoever). That's a convenience of interstellar travel relying on a tool provided by powerful and mysterious benefactors/manipulators: their motivations can conveniently align with developer intentions.

That being said, I very much want to see unfocused jump in X4-- it doesn't make any sense to get rid of that-- and I think some cool things could be done with a much more limited jump beacon system than was in Rebirth (having a jump beacon at every sector and completely relying on it for in-system capital ship travel between sectors seemed a bit much).
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Post by Nanook »

Seanchaidh wrote:
Nanook wrote:That's just an assumption. Besides, jump drive technology was first invented by the Xenon and adapted by the Terrans in the time of X-BTF. There's no lore that I know of that says the ancients/Sohnen can prevent jump drive use without turning off the gates. Even then, the Terrans have their own version of the gate unrelated to the others, and they also have jump beacon technology that doesn't rely on gates. Not to mention the UFJD tech that needs neither. IMO, there's no justification for eliminating jump drives in the X Universe, other than developer whim. :P

It's akin to removing warp drive technology from Star Trek. :o
It's more like removing trans-warp. :wink:

I agree in a very limited sense: the complete removal of the jump drive concept and theoretical possibility doesn't make a lot of sense. But the idea that jump drives would necessarily have to be able to interact with jump gates as they did in X3 also doesn't make sense; if there are things the gate creators can do to control the operation of the gates, it's hardly a stretch to think they'd have ways of making jump drive through the gates either impossible or too dangerous to be worth it....
Only on the gates they control!. Why would you think they could control it on gates the Terrans designed and built? Or on jump beacons? If, for example, the Terrans built two gates to connect two sectors together, how would the 'others' control access to those gates? That's what makes no sense to me.
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