X4 Foundations Poll #3: What did you NOT like?

[Teladidrone]

I do not really "dislike" any of these options so far... but frankly, they are pretty much all not yet in a state I would consider fit for release either and therefor the poll is missing this most important option:
(Again) releasing a game in an unfinished and unpolished state XXX

Dont get me wrong - in comparison to the XR fiasco this time you are lightyears ahead. But to be honest, the bar was very, very low on that front already.
I understand, every piece of software always has bugs.
Still, I do not consider this "release" to be in a playable and enjoyable state. For me. At least another six months of polishing and testing would have been required.
I generally do not review stuff on Steam (or pay any attention to anything reviewed there)... I deeply distrust anything these buggers are doing but if I'd had to review right now it would be negative without hesitation. I am disappointed. Again. Game is not (yet?) worth the price, really not.

PS:
About 1.5: Maybe stop pushing features even you yourself consider Beta into what I consider a product still very much in Beta state itself. Repair whats broken first before opening the next can of worms. I mean really...

[Tomonor]

I don't like the general atmosphere of the game. Hear me out on this.

I know, after Rebirth we were the ones to address the problem about it not having that sandbox atmosphere - everything felt hand-placed, the tiniest generated things were not special enough to care about. But that game did provide an atmoshpere to its universe like no X game ever before. And this is the result of many things at once at first glance: general art direction, graphics, sound effects, cockpit's feeling, co-pilot with personality, sector design, music - but the most important part of it that was removed with rejoice, because it felt too restrictive - the Zones.

The Zones (in-sector boundaries, sort of acting like different districts of a city) made the tiny X-Rebirth universe feel damned big. You could get lost in the highway system, you could get lost around the stations, you could boost away, but don't get anywhere, because well, zones worked like that. The removal of zones plus the increased visibility range once again made the sectors feel... Dunno what's the proper word for it, but let's call it transparent - basically once you enter a sector, you already know from the beginning what to expect because you can literally see everything. And because of the general sandbox experience in mind, you already know what you can expect anyway.

Thus exploration also became tedious on both ranges:
-long range: fly with travel speed for many minutes, sometimes alternating between travel mode and long range scan mode, and check the map occisionally for questionmarks
-short range: enable scan mode and fly around the stations hoping you don't get caught by police with your AGI heuristic cores-filled inventory while you are searching for red dots.

The superhighway/accelerator gate system also makes navigation confusing once again. Not because of their existance, but because accelerators in theory fills in the same role as superhighways. I believe there were some technical limitations to superhighways this time, but its such a bummer that they can no longer do that traveling-magic that they could back in Rebirth.


What I originally thought X4 would be like:
Obviously, this is strongly opinionated to me, so please don't get offended if your opinion differs.
I wanted X4 to be Rebirth with the feeling of X2 - beautiful giant sectors, flashy space cities filled with life through various zones with a less tedious traveling system; the ability to discover/re-discover actual entire solar systems and the possibility to study the historic records of these places. I wanted the game to provide that sort of life it never failed to deliver, and don't get me wrong, there are some really good ideas that does provide this - the radio chatter (although minimal), the bridge crew communicating with each other, the many NPC ships... But despite this, it feels like I'm playing X-Tension.


How to solve it:
I will try to stick to reality with these suggestions as much as possible, taking the fact into consideration that the game is already launched and too big design changes can't be addressed anymore.
-Sector music has to be constant once again, X2-X3 style. It also wouldn't hurt if we would see the return of Rebirth tracks. Not saying that the current tracks are bad per se, but they fill in the role of these exploration-esque space diving tracks - they are long and provide a relaxing, sometimes even lethargic vibes to the game (eg, Bright Promise, I swear I get depressed everytime I hear that track). So, we need X-Rebirth's upbeat tracks that are stuck to a single sector.
-Make core-systems feel like core systems. Oddly enough, the sectors that are included in the highway circle don't quite feel like core systems. Some of them have giant design flaws, like Argon Prime - that poor sector no longer feels like the home of Argon, but like an outpost. A possible fix to this is to increase the distance between the Jumpgates and include crossing highways that lead elsewhere, maybe a dead-end, maybe another gate.
-Make sector layout more intereting: try to mimic zones/pockets/districts with the stations but also make it believable. Near highways should be these super-flashy megacomplexes that visibly had more budget than other stations, and should sell high-tech goods. The further away you go, the more outposts you should find. Right now, the original, hand-placed layout of stations feel generic and uninteresting, and this is basically what the old Zone system solved - by splitting up the sector, it applied the doorway effect on you: it may haven't made sense that there was this and that type of stations in that particular zone/zone cluster, but you would forget it, because the game made you feel like you have went through a doorway (highway) and entered a new room (zone).
-Make sector layout more intereting: Some of the sectors are really beautiful and provide good vibes. And some of them are uninteresting, mostly because of the placement of planets, uninteresting backgrounds, weird lightning colours. If I recall it right, Rebirth had a planet in Maelstrom that had an animated orbiting moon (flying around the planet on its plane), a literal Blackhole in Omicron Lyrae, a sector that was well within planet orbit, Devries was orbiting range of a Sun, Albion with a giant shattered planet, etc-etc. What happened to this type of imagination? I'm not saying that every system should have such special themes, but damn are they not impressive right now. In fact, the only memorable sectors are Second Contact Flashpoint, Memory of Profit, and Grand Exchange. Why??
-Add Commercial/Residential stations to the mix. The universe shouldn't only house industrial stations that's only purpose is to provide for the war effort, because this is how the universe feels like right now. There should be entertainment stations, habitation stations, where people live, study, reproduce. You get it. More life, more believability.
-Make civilian traffic visible - part of why Rebirth felt more alive was due to the fact that it had LOTS of civilian traffic, and damn their traffic line was visible. You don't necessarily have to increase their numbers though - just apply such a lighting to their engines/models that you can see them from afar.
-Add buffer Systems for races: basically, the idea behind this would be to have more Systems for a race to extend its resources into - but these "buffer sectors" or "border sectors" should also be connected to the other clusters similarly in the core regions, just not by a circular highway system. Thus creating a labyrinth layer of outer sectors.

Looking back on what I wrote, I'm probably better off with a total conversion mod, though.

[Neloth23]

Here are the things that could be improved in X4, in my opinion. As the poll doesn't cover everything, I'll take the liberty to add some things. My apologies for the long post.

What I don't like:

• Large scale fights. It's not that I don't like large fights (on the contrary!), but it's just that, for now, any ship larger than a S seems useless. For me, this has to do with numerous issues that I will detail below.

What could also be improved:

• The balancing of the ships. To my mind, this is one of the main problems in the game. Some ships are far too weak. I remember killing a Buzzard with my starter (unmodified) Elite without taking a single hit! As for frigates and destroyers, they are pathetic right now. All it takes is two N's to kill a frigate. I don't think destroyers fare any better. The point is that I should fear those ships not laugh at them! And that fear is part of the game experience for me. What is the point to own a destroyer in late game if I wasn't in awe of its power beforehand? Which leads me to another big issue...

• The design of some M, L and XL ships. There is too much copy/paste in the design of M and L traders (no real difference between a Vulture and a Tern for instance). As for the design of the frigates, destroyers and carriers, it’s very disappointing. Frigates look like flying parking lots, destroyers and carriers look like toys and are largely forgettable, except the Odysseus, which is the unlikely cross between a dead penguin and a hairdryer... (Yeah, I have a weird mind... ) That doesn't encourage you to own them, which is a shame as most of the end game revolves around this. X3 and X Rebirth had some of the best ship designs I have ever seen (Valhalla, Heavy Centaur, Arawn, Taranis, Midir, I could go on forever...). Bring us back your old magic, please!

• Not enough weapon types and no specific weapons for a given ship class (L, XL). Also, the weapons seem to come straight from a FPS, which is a bit odd IMHO. It would be great to bring back HEPTs, PPCs and others.

• The AI. It needs a lot of work (ships depleting their shields while boosting in the middle of a fight, NPC pilots not being able to tell the difference between docking and ramming a station, and so on.)

• The progression in the game is a bit too fast. It is very easy to get lots of money quickly (with auto mining for example) and to find abandoned ships. While I found that X3 was perhaps a bit too extreme in the time it took to get more advanced ships/stations, X4 goes there far too quickly and there is no sense of accomplishment. A good balance between X3 and the current X4 would be ideal IMHO.

• The incomplete encyclopaedia. We should be able to see damage stats for weapons, not guess it! I'd also like to know why the civil war between Paranids started in the first place.

• The wars being a bit underwhelming. I just see minor skirmishes without real impact (it doesn't seem really dynamic). It would be great to see factions conquer/loose territories, giving us new opportunities of missions and profitsssss!

• The war economy. Tying the economy solely to war seems a bit unrealistic. Why not also implement the use of food and energy cells by stations to simulate people eating, station maintenance, and so on?

• Ship explosions and subsystem destructions are underwhelming compared to Rebirth. On the other hand, mine and asteroid explosions are gorgeous, so maybe these are placeholders?

• Crew management. The idea is good, but as of now it's not really fun. Replacing captains is a chore, finding decent personnel for claimed ships appears downright impossible. And I can't even tell if my engineers will gain experience one day. This is also tied to another problem...

• Cumbersome UI. For instance, to manage my crew, I have to sift through a dozen submenus to see all the stats of a given crew. The captain stats appear twice (!), which is not only useless but clutters the interface for no reason. It would be best to group all these informations under one menu or submenu for clarity's sake. Sometimes less is more.

A side note on ventures:

I don't use them personally. I don't have problems about it as long as it doesn't punish us solo players for not using it or introduces microtransactions. I just feel that it should be worked on much later, when the core game works.


Summary:

Right now X4 has problems, true, but I don't think it has major defects. All these gameplay, design and UI issues can be resolved. It will take time and efforts, but I am confident that you guys can do it, seeing how hard you worked patching the game since release. Also, the fact that you ask our opinion on the game is a very positive point and I thank you for that.

This game has a lot of potential and there are many things to like. You managed to create a huge, complex and deep game with limited resources, which is an impressive feat. While I can't yet give X4 a recommendation, I certainly wouldn't give it a thumbs down. I hope X4 will become the best game in the series.

Until then, Fröhliche Weihnachten and enjoy a well deserved rest!

[Brianetta]

I really want to like trading. I flew a TS trader in X-Tension and X2 more than anything else, manually moving wares around. I loved it. That's really hard now. It's hard to find a use for a large cargo ship, and hard to determine what's going to be profitable.

[shahman76]

Which areas of the game did you NOT enjoy in particular?
Note that there is another topic where we ask the opposite question of what you did enjoy!
This does of course leave you the option to select any area in neither of these two postings if it is not clearly the one or the other:

I would NOT give this game a downvote on Steam. Thumbs up for sure. But I would like to see more variety in mission type; missions that fit into the larger factional narrative, or an update on the flavor text of existing mission types to make them fit into the universe. Its like quest givers dont give a damn about the goings on of the larger universe. And missions that add an element of risk, are fun and challenging, and certainly more combat missions for sure. Mercenary work for faction leaders should be a lucrative path to profitsssssss.

But upvoted for sure!

[nemesis1982]

I voted that I dislike the missions since I find them mostly bland. It's better then the X3 missions. However I am maybe one of the few people who liked the X Rebirth story chain. I did like the Player HQ mission even though it feels rushed, way to short and way to easy. Do not want the Hub type of difficulty. but a bit of a challange would have been nice.

I voted for the Hacking/Scanning/Blueprint since it's often a pain. It's fun to do a few times however some are just implossible. Guidence is bad and it gets extremely repetative.

[birdtable]

Exploration/Collecting Data Vaults ... These two things should be separate, I enjoy exploring but just fly past the Data Vaults .. Do I enjoy exploring ..YES,, Do I enjoy looking for Data Vaults .. NO ...the repeated tedium.
MISSIONS .... These must have been decided late Friday night, everyone wanted to go home and all there was to nibble on was a bowl of lemons so everyone agreed with the Puritan.

Just my opinion..

[ypsylon]

I don't want to bash X4, still with heavy heart it doesn't compare well ATM to X3/TC/AP/X-tended which I played religiously for xxxx hours and only ME Trilogy beats that clock. So yeah. This will be a bit longer than what I like. I have clocked about 90hours so far and yes I'm very slow and super-turtling ahead (#2) - my first priority is to establish decent satellite coverage, just like any other X game.

1. Worst part about trading is dynamic map. Filters getting stuck. Windows run around the screen like crazy never know what the heck is really going on. Make map usable. Fully customizable interface would be nice. Anchor trade offers for station to right edge of the screen instead bloating the view of the sector. Especially infuriating when AI builds like 3 or 4 Fabs in space of 10 pixels in between then its really blood boiling experience to click the fab you want or check if you selected properly. Map, map, map. 50% of problems I have with this game is MAP. I so miss X3/TC version. I got rude shock with Rebirth and still gobsmacked by craziness and lack of logic in new design. I don't know, perhaps with 16K monitor it would be fine, but I'm suicidal at 1440p.

I don't mine. There is no point. Stocks are overflowing with minerals and water. Don't wasting very few resources I have. Many dropped containers that I've picked up had to drop again because selling was impossible.

2. While personal trading is manageable - player is after all keeping tabs on everything, remote or auto is just unmitigated disaster. I lost 2 large transports when I've set to auto. As a result it wiped out M of credits invested. Trades are stupidly inefficient. Simple example. There is pirate station which wants 30000 units of SpaceFuel or Spaceweed. And there are 3 locations within 4 sectors which sell the stuff at bargain basement pricetag. I have selected proper filters, narrowed wares on the list. Easy peasy.... Not exactly. Trader goes on some stupid voyage to the most expansive trade station in the region. Instead buying 4000 units of SF at Fab and selling it with 1M profit, it buys it from TS at nearly same price Pirate base wants it, delivers stuff for a tidy 1k credits profit. Some trades netted even less or lost money. Really? Furthermore because AI is dumb it often getting stuck in stations or being blow by pirates to bits even if they should obliterate pitiful tiny single raider. Because of 2 disasters in quick succession I no longer auto-trade. Have for now literally one Merchant vessel and controlling this lunatics every step of the way - which means I watch map and monitor their progress all the way... Slow and boring, but I'll not lose another ship to brainless lines of code. As a result I don't do basically anything else, take my iPadPro and draw (badly) to pass the time. Seriously, not an ounce of lie in this.

3. Building stations. There is one only tiny problem (player) and two rather big (NPC/AI/models). Tiny is that when you placing modules on the map and trying to rotate, sometimes they get stuck. Have to delete and start again, but it's not end of the world. Big are related to NPC/AI/models of stations/ships. AI doesn't expand stations when needed. Example:

Right now in BHS system, Argon Equipment Dock where you start campaign, has critical shortage of Hull Parts. Problem is: Dock's storage is filled to the brim with HP and yet still dock missing over 4000 units of HP for AI commissioned upgrades or repairs (I don't have any). Even if I deliver haul of HP, can't sell them because storage is full, but AI didn't expanded it since game start. That's serious bummer, because I know if I want some repairs done, I can't use that dock.

The other big problem are certain ships while docking/undocking. Take Cerberus Vanguard. If you don't dock in open space Luxury docking bay (without arches on both sides) ship will find some obstructions in the way no matter what you do. Example: I was doing SpaceTaxi mission, picked up passenger, flied to the station and there is a problem. Only small dock is available. Worse, dock is put bang in between of two huge vertical pylons. No way I could dock in this ship. So I did what I discovered as a solution to the problem (you need Docking Computer Mk2 for that). I moved up, then pointed bow straight at the landing pad and used boost engines to trigger landing procedure by 'kamikazing' the landing pad. I don't know if these are some missing/broken polygons, textures, or simply for some wider ships docks are too narrow. It's so annoying that I use fighters and very long freighters only.

4. Missions. Well with general missions there is small problem. Because of convoluted way map operates I have serious issues with click on that tiny little icon on top of tiny station icon bloated by windows flying around. Subscription missions - I take it you mean faction assignments under that name. Never done any. Value my -Allied- status with basically everybody too much. Attempted few, but never finished one. Much convoluted or meaningless rewards. If I have to stick my neck for killing some civilian and as a result draw every capital ship in the sector after me I expect something more than paltry 200k. More like 20M. Same with kill Xeon ship of particular type. Kill 4 Ps. OK, easy enough. And then for 3 days I couldn't find a single one. Ehhh... I'll try with Xeon/Khaak more, but only those. Worst thing about missions is when you abort it and then attempt another one it will never trigger properly. Especially SpaceTaxi type. You go find individual and you can't talk to her/him/it. Sick and tired of Goods Shortage. Noticed you can't do that piecemeal, so I went big, delivered everything in one giant haul and still big elephant poo, doesn't work. Give me a break. Picking only really simple ones (scan station/deploy sat/taxi, but only to the station chasing ships is crazy) and staying away from others (Lockboxes, deliveries, executions etc..).

5. Hacking/stealing/finding.

Well I find it really weird that you can steal a module being outside the station. Hacking well, not my trait. Was sucking badly in Rebirth and staying away from that, often you have leak inside a station which can't be done, plus with constant scanning by Police I have enough being chased back and forth just for tiny chance that I may steal something (and worthwhile at that). Why steal when you can buy without problems? Normal scanner is sufficient. Paragon for life to sprinkle X4 with Mass Effect a bit.

6. Exploration sucks. You can't plot course around the system, you can't plot course for auto exploration. Range of scanning equipment is pitiful, make it 5x more so it isn't needlessly tedious. Data vaults - I have no idea what these are, but I'll probably stumble upon them in due course.

7. Boarding/capturing

Boarding sucked badly in previous X games and steering clear from the subject. I guess nothing changed since Rebirth and I leave it there. Capturing, I find it abominable to use Spacesuit for anything, so you get the idea. Capped only one ship so far and not expecting many more. Hate being in Spacesuit. Would you believe me when I was doing Sat repair mission I was hit by freighter! It bumped me 120km+ away from my ship. Still I don't get it how I was alive after that and was returning to my ship for good 2 hours (no crew on board, it wasn't even fully equipped Eclipse Vanguard/Spacesuit at that time). Like I said - hate spacesuit.

8. Small scale is fine; nothing terrible and nothing game breaking.

9. Large. This is a bit more complicated. Apparently Argon and HOP are at war, Paranids vs Paranisds too, Xeon vs All are at war, and Khaak vs All too. Yet in 90ish hours I experienced one major Xeon invasion (probably I provoked it trying to map Xeon sector and they poured Destroyer after Destroyer with plethora of smaller crafts into these northern sectors was it Teladi or Hatikvah FL system, can't get my head around these new names). Paranids never do anything - vs each other or vs Argon/Teladi, Khaak is impotent to say the least. There is a lot of room to improve here.

10. No certainly not. It is not as broken as XR. I was so angry with XR that I deleted it couple weeks after purchase (from Library, not just drive). First of all I don't do reviews. Deleted all I've made long time ago. It is just perfect place for trolls and all twisted minds to thrive. Comment and ratings are easy to abuse, no matter what kind of protection is in place. Probably if Steam required hard ID confirmation it would be more civilized, but can't see this happening ever. X4 needs polish, quite a lot in some places, but I know Egosoft will deliver on this knowing history of X3 for example.


What I would certainly want improved (no mods, just bake this into system):

A. Pricing on consumables. Especially Scanning Arrays vs Advanced version. Advantages of 'better' version don't justify 20x difference in price - 5k vs 100k. No way. If it did I would corner the market long time ago better than Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice.
B. Customizable paint jobs. I was under the impression that I can literally paint the ships any way I can. Sadly it is not possible. I want my Normandy paint job guys. Make it happen.
C. There is minimal/negligible visual difference between stations architecture between factions. I find hard to believe that Paranid stations look inside as clean as Argon. Remember Split from previous games. Buildings dark, and sharp as Klingon Bat'leth. Borons full of ammonia inside. We don't have that in X4. Bring variety back.
D. Coloring of offers is confusing. If something is severely lacking it should be in red not in shade of whitish yellow. Stuff which is super cheap is nicely in green. Keep it logical.
E. Bring back trinkets you can find around stations. Few lost credits here, a crafting ware there. That was basically the only thing which I liked in XR. That RPG spark. Stations were not so devoid of life and this little bonuses, found in strangest of places, often made landing worthwhile.
F. I have no idea how to take back deployed scanner or laser tower. Is that even possible right now?

--
Dang that's long, but speaking from my heart. Digest it if you wish.

[Kayser99]

Which areas of the game did you NOT enjoy in particular?
Note that there is another topic where we ask the opposite question of what you did enjoy!
This does of course leave you the option to select any area in neither of these two postings if it is not clearly the one or the other:

Hi Bernd

I have already posted a wall of text in the #1 Poll with a list of suggestions/ fixes like others have, i don't post often so if you can consider the list it will be appreciated.
viewtopic.php?f=146&t=410262&start=45

Not that i don't like doing them, I think you should keep 90% of the different items in play, it is just the mechanics/ commands or carrying out those tasks that need tweaking. X4 at this point offers more than i find in most space sims/ games but feels almost not fully fleshed out. QOL core gameplay fixes

I answered 3 options
Missions, blueprints, large fleet battles (especially large fleet battles there aren't any without a mod "modified tag", xenon are too easy and weak and Factions camps/ spawn kills the few that come through the gate - besides i now know any ship bigger than a nemesis torpedo Derp cannon is not necessary, destroyers and carriers are not needed to take out big xenon ships...also because the defend/ protect/ attack commands don't work.

[XGamer]

F. I have no idea how to take back deployed scanner or laser tower. Is that even possible right now?

Satellites can be picked up if you park like 200m away from them, select then right click disable sat. Then you can just pick it up like any other container floating in space.

[Kalmiya]

I've downvoted Fleet Battles because ships just don't understand how to defend the ship/area they've been told to defend. For example, I have 4 fleets in Pious Mists, 3 of them constantly attacking the Kha'ak station there, and a 4th protecting position in the middle of the two closest Paranid stations. When the Kha'ak spawn in, they either go to their own station in which case ALL of my ships there simply ignore them - I have to wait and hope the defence drones take them out because the ships have tunnel vision and only attack the station. Or, they go to attack the Paranid stations and get wiped out by my 4th patrol fleet. However, if any ships from 4th get drawn to somewhere vaguely close to the edge of their "protect position" sphere, they'll bugger off and attack the Kha'ak station as well - even though it's actually waaaaay outside their sphere of influence.

To add to this, the only way to get them to stop attacking is to go through the Behaviour tab for each individual ship and cancel their 'attack' command (selecting them all at once and clicking "Cancel all orders" doesn't work), but instead of immediately going back to their previous 'Protect' command or even their original assignment to defend their leader, they go into "awaiting orders" mode with an hourglass next to their names. So then I have to go through every single ship individually, cancel assignment, then reassign them to their leader, in order to get them back on track. Even more of a bugger when you have some Ospreys or something in the wing, who then have an S class ship as their subordinates!

As you can imagine, this is a complete ballache with 20 ships per fleet, never mind 50 or a hundred!!! What we really need in this situation is a command to "revert to original order" so you can directly tell your ships (all at once) to stop their current action and rejoin their wing leader. This would mean no more telling every ship one-by-one to stop attacking, and no more unassigning and reassigning every ship one-by-one.

Another issue with Fleets is that I have never, ever seen any ships (besides NPCs) fly in formation. Instead, all the fast S ships go charging off to their doom, then the M ships fly through the wreckage and take out the enemies, then the L/XL ships show up 10 years later and have nothing to do. If ships are set to fly in formation, they need to keep formation, and each ship should automatically slow down to match the flight speed and travel mode speed of the slowest ship in the fleet. They should only break formation during a battle, and once it has finished they should return to formation. If you want your S and M ships to get somewhere faster, you should be able to group-select them and tell them to 'Fly to position' or 'Attack target' as you normally would, then once they're finished you can just 'revert to original order' to send them back to your capital ship

[Graaf]

Lets elaborate on my choices to vote All of the Above:
#2: Remote trading + mining:
Remote trading. Well, I tried this "improved" way and found it very disappointing. Checked out most wanted wares. Choose Energy Cells. Bought full cargo hold of EC. Had to set up over 80 sell orders to get rid of 8200 EC. Thats about 100EC/order. Something I could have unloaded on the nearest M-sized Cahoona Bakery in X3 in 1 go. I think the main problem here is how storage doesn't work as in X3. Auto-traders are not much better. Last few income sheets show the amazing numbers of 600 credits. Yes, 6 hundred credits. Transporting 10 or 20 units of spices. What the hell is he doing with the other 8000 units of cargo space? With these results and how storage doesn't work, why would I even invest in an L/XL-sized freighter? The only thing here that seems to be working is Auto-mining. But I have a feeling that every time they sell the minerals, its not going to be a full hold.

#1: Personal trading + mining:
Personal trading. Is this the personal part of remote trading or are we talking about getting rid of the junk you pick up in space? Because with the results of the remote trading and the way it doesn't work with available storage and buy orders, I saw no point in doing that. Congratulations, we can now fly all ships, but there is no point in doing so. As for getting rid up junk, it makes far more money then trading so it must be broken / bad design. If only we could get rid of that illegal junk black marketeers don't want to buy. Mining, again Mineral mining or Crystal mining? But again, see above.

#3: Building stations:
It's mostly annoying that ESC kicks you out of the entire build/plan proces and you have to start all over again. It would help if I didn't have to consult the Encyclopedia on what a module does when inside a build plan. Also too limited with rotations. Why can I only build stations "right side up"? We are in space, there is no up.

#4: Missions (including subscriptions):
As of 1.50 Build missions are even more broken because now they don't even complete. Before 1.50 I still got to keep a station and a hefty reward. But obviously broken. Black Marketeer missions are equally broken considering you can only enter the bar once, so only doable if you have the required items. And most of the time they ask for a very expensive item I'm not willing to give away freely, but unfortunately I can't sell to them either, making the existence of said item questionable. As for a Quick Ride, why do I have to chase the client around the dock? Why isn't he automatically boarding my ship when I land?
Simply put, most missions are not interesting or not worth the trouble. And those that are appear to be broken.

#5: Exploration / Collecting Data Vaults:
It appears that most of the "universe" was explored by my EC trader going to stations I didn't know existed. And by my Auto-miners. As for mapping systems: boring. Most of the time there is nothing. No reason to ever venture outside the current borders of the map considering there is practically nothing inside those borders to start with. As for Data Vaults, I found 3, stopped looking for them after 3. Sure, it's a mission, whatever, boring. I tried to look at the data files but they keep getting interrupted by my Escort Fighters reporting in "Ready for Orders". Why are they doing that, they are on escort duty. STFU!

#6: Capturing (S and M ships) + Boarding (L + XL ships)
Unintentionally made some cowards jump ship after they attacked me. Claimed and sold them. Have no interest in boarding since first implemented in X3. I do need to test if a ship without crew can be sold to a station. I have a feeling they can operate without a pilot.

#7: Small scale fight (personally against small groups)
Pirates & Xenon trying to orbit you with full throttle but Kha'ak are playing chicken. Only getting into trouble with more then 1 enemy. 1v1 I win, 1v2 they win. It would help if my weapons/booster didn't randomly decide to not function.

#8: Large scale fight (fleets / wars / Attacking a Xenon sector)
If only they dropped some easy to target/collect loot.

#9: Summary: Would you review the game on Steam thumbs down?
Yes. This doesn't feel like a real X4. It doesn't feel like an improved X3 either. To me it looks more like Rebirth 2.

#10: Walking:
Far too much walking required.

[cole2839]

The one feature that needs the most work is remote trading and mining. General setup of traders and miners can be very difficult. It is hard to find decent pilots with high enough level to auto trade since 1.5 and moving decent pilots from ship to ship is VERY painful to do and generally unpleasant. Considering how important this feature is to the game it needs to be resolved soon.

We need more options for setting up traders and miners like:
1. Copy and paste settings from one to another
2. Pre-configured ware lists that we can save or check boxes we can click to set them up quickly
3. The ability to setup multiple ships at once
4. Ignored sector(s) option for traders and miners to keep them away from sectors you don't want them in
5. Home sector or home station options for traders with return home feature before trading
6. The ability to restrict buy and sell ware trades at owned stations so subordinate traders only trade those wares with our other owned stations. This currently DOES NOT work in game, or is not very intuitive to setup (pretty sure it doesn't work).
7. The ability to override station manager ware lists for subordinate traders and miners, with a reset option to reset it back to their control if desired.

The mod TaderTrader has already solved a lot of these issues but it would be great if they could be built into the vanilla game.

[LTerSlash]

Hi Bernd,

First of all i would suggest to search for every feedback thread in the forums they are petty much accurate.

The game right now has 4 mayor flaws that i see inmidiatelly:

1) The lack of storytelling quest chains, the lack of X3:AP style mini plots is a problem for a few people, especially new people that are getting to know the game, or for X veterans to have a option to do something else.

2) The ships... im sorry to say it, but several ships are plain ugly and capital ships looks like toys.

3) The balance, i can kill a K in my starter ship, the weapons are unbalanced, and capital ships are too weak, boarding is too easy, i can kill a station with a corvette, i can kill everything with a corvette whiout too much effort, this is really odd since attacking a M2 with a M6 in X3AP was not easy at all. Here i can kill a destroyer with a scout. Ill suggest to review the X3AP ship balance compared to X4.

4) The UI for some things is very bad, like transfering marines and cargo from one ship to the other, talking to ship crew that is not the captain, some basic ship orders are wierd, like "revisit know sites" to refresh trade orders, Why would i assign a ship to refresh trade orders when there is maybe 20 stations at most in the system? it should be a option to be global. I feel i need to go too many times to ship->information->assign a order on the ship so it would not do something else.
The scout command is broken what is making exploring the sectors too hard.

Just a small resume.

[grapedog]

i love all those things, but they could all be better in little ways. but that is what mods are for, and time for the devs.

[Zasso]

The lack of a Field of View/FoV setting

[Scoob]

I didn't respond to this one initially as I don't dislike any of the listed features. There are some that I don't partake in, but I don't particularly dislike them. However, there are some specific areas that I don't like so much:

- AI Pathing.

This is the most stand-out feature that causes a lot of frustration for me. Having ships blatantly going the wrong way when they're supposed to be approaching a dock, then subsequently getting stuck and clipping through superstructure is really bad. The thing is, sometimes ships surprise me. I.e. they get it wrong, and don't approach the dock as they should, but then proceed to zig and zag through the stations superstructure like a total pro. Of course, they're going the wrong way but they're showing fantastic object avoidance on the way to their incorrect destination. For whatever reason, the game will often send ships to an additional, invalid, waypoint on their way to dock. Their initial approach might seem fine, then they veer off in the wrong direction. It's this extra waypoint - often inside the station superstructure it seems - that throws everything off.

There's a difference much of the time between ships moving from in-sector and those coming from another sector. At my own station, ships coming in through the Gate - M-Class Miners and Traders - path mostly perfectly to the dock. Even when they get it wrong, they appear to manage to mostly fly the long way around the station and dock ok. If given a move order from in-sector however they fluff it up most of the time.

So, the pathing issues are most noticeable when docking. However, combat pathing is a bit poor too. Any ship given an attack order flies to where the target was at the time the order was given. I've seen ships of mine fly backwards and forwards for 20+ minutes in-game as they constantly fly to where the target was. The comical thing is they regularly pass within turret range and said turrets open fire, but the ships continues its course to where the target was - they just happen to be passing each other while in Travel Mode, the target ship just happening to be going the other way, towards its next waypoint.

It's mostly Small and Medium Class ships that struggle with pathing when Docking, Large ships are generally ok. However, after many hours of working perfectly, my Large mining ships started getting stuck approaching the dock on my station. They'd get within a few ship lengths of the dock, then go super slow. Literally, their speed would not registers (0 m/s) but they would still be very slowly moving towards their dock. Running SETA showed their slow speed. Then, when about a ship length away, they'd suddenly resume normal speed, dock and unload. Needless to say, ships not docking can cause station starvation quite quickly.

I sit and watch my ships a LOT in-game. I'll regularly be a passenger on one of my ships or simply watching them in External View while standing on a dock. It does seem that pathing for docking is very CPU intensive, when lots of ships are docking I can take quite a major FPS hit, going from a steady 50-60fps to 30's and below. So, docking is taking a LOT of CPU power, but it's getting it wrong. I can't help but think that if the ship got its initial approach right - i.e. it actually flew to the dock and didn't try to fly into the super structure - there would be less of a CPU hit as the ship wouldn't be spending 20+ minutes (yes, I've had ships stuck longer than that!) constantly fighting it's self as it appears to try to both fly into and avoid the station super structure.


- AI Trade Logic

I really wonder what the "Managers" are thinking. They'll focus on buying DAYS worth of a resource they already have enough of to feed many hours of production time, totally ignoring things the station is totally out of. Most noticeable with mining ships. ALL of mine focus on Ice alone, until the storage is near full, and only then reliably gather Silicon and Ore for example.

To add to this, the UI gives us options to select which specific resource a given ship should mine. This is FANTASTIC and it works, but only for a single run - the game resets the players selections when it undocks next. That needs to be fixed. Managers are rubbish and they need to be fixed, but in the meantime - and it's a good feature to have in general - PLEASE let player selections stick.


- Performance

The only other thing I'm going to mention isn't a feature, but performance in general, as this impacts ALL gameplay...

Now, my CPU is technically below the minimum spec of "Intel i5-4590 3.3GHz", however, I wonder why that particular CPU is considered so much better for X4 than my 2600k and 4.6ghz. Sure, the 4th Gen Intel will have a slightly better IPC than my old 2nd Gen, but I have an extra 1.3ghz which will more than make up for that, plus I have HT which can be beneficial potentially. Are there some specific features of the newer architecture that are in use? I.e. some new command that 4th Gen and newer have built in, but older CPU's have to do "long-hand" so to speak? I do see high CPU-load in-game, and it's certainly the main limiting factor when my FPS drops below my vSync'd 60. Perhaps my CPU spends a lot of time waiting for my slower DDR3 1600 Memory - that'd still report as the CPU being "busy" while it waits of course, though HT allows for additional efficiencies here...potentially. Or perhaps there's some other issue.

As an aside, I experimented with overriding the games set Timer Resolution, as I noticed it was quite high, setting it to the lowest level did appear to yield a slight uplift in performance. I noticed that this value was actually increased to the maximum in an update. So, I guess the Devs had a peek at this too. I wrote a tool years ago to get Crysis 2 (I think it was) running better as the CPU wasn't running quite a full whack, so my (then) SLI setup wasn't being fully fed. The tweak made quite a marked difference.

Anyway, I'm sure this will be the case, but my hope is that Egosoft dedicate a decent amount of time to both fixing the broken pathing issues - which might free up some performance in theory - as well as work directly on performance. It seems a little odd to me that a 2018 game is so very limited by one heavy thread. I literally have no other games I currently play that exhibit the same performance profile when examining CPU load. X Rebirth doesn't show the same profile - I went back and doubled-checked it - but then that was using DirectX, and perhaps Vulkan cannot take advantage of the "Multi-threaded Optimisations" present in nVidia's drivers DX could. Regardless, the X4 Engine doesn't perform as well as Rebirth's engine on my PC, despite, quite often, X Rebirth appearing a lot busier, with MUCH more complex ships due to significantly more turrets etc.

I'll just finish off with a Merry Christmas to everyone reading Not long until lunch, where I put on the extra pounds I'll spend the next year losing...good to have my New Years Resolution pre-planned

Scoob.

[SMoOoVEeR]

I would like large scale fleet/faction wars really much, it is just not really happening.

[Brand Emanuel]

At this point, I have got 10 hours of gameplay in. And all in all, you made a pretty nice game and the feeling of the old X-Trilogy comes back, alltogether with what actually was good in Rebirth. So I am gonna dive in deeper into the game!

My issues, that I had so far:

Performance: Especially with OBS: Unfortunatelly it seems, that Vulcan Engine is not really compatible with OBS, which causes the game capture not to be accepted, unless I play in windowed mode and with screen capture. I am aware though, that this might be an issue on OBS' side though, but I thought I mention it, since this was the biggest issue, before I could even start up and show the game properlay and in a way it should be presented best.

The problem was basically, that the FPS was under 10 for the most part of the game for the viewers, which is not exactly enjoyable for them. (If there are any fixes or tips, how to improve that would be appreciated)

Ship Loadouts: Relatively early, I managed to capture an S-Class ship in the Teladi Sectors. The Valkyrie load out was for my needs just perfect, with Paranide propulsion systems and all. Unfortunately this ship had the roll bug, which is why I wanted to transfer the loadout to another Valkyrie. Unfortunately, this is not possible. I would wish this wuold be made possible. To sell the ship itself, but being able to transfer upgrades between ships.

Personell Management:

This leads me back to the captured Vessel from before:

I have tried to transfer my personell forth and back inside my ship. I found out, that I can't put a pilot from one to another ship in space. (fair enough, Maybe the teleporter would gain me that ability)
But what I noticed, while I was fiddleing around in the menus: There was practically no possibility to hail the crewmember from menu, which would make things so much easier and convieniant.

Also, in my eyes it makes no sense, that I need to be docked, to tranfer my crew from one position in ship, to another.

So, just my two cents, from what I could gather so far from my experience. I hope it helps, to improve this otherwhise really enjoyable game!

[Scoob]

Regarding the AI's problems navigating to a Dock, I just did a little test. I built a station that was just a Dock. I plan to expand on this eventually, so I placed the Dock in the South-West corner of the plot. Interestingly, ships still totally miss the dock initially, choosing, it appears, to fly to the centre of the plot.

In my game currently, there's nothing in the centre of the Plot, so there's nothing for them to run into, however, the ships still get very confused. One of mine, as I was watching it attempt to dock, had flown to the centre of the plot and seemed unable to turn around. It then proceeded to strafe sideways and slightly backwards, towards the dock.

It does look like it's this "fly to centre of plot" logic that is mostly responsible for our docking woes. I doubt behaviour at this level is able to be modded at all.

Scoob.