What do you expect from Egosoft? (next game)

[Artean]

I like travelling in XR the way it is - highways, boosting and hitchhiking on cap ships for point to point jumping. The only thing I would like to see changed is, just as Bernt suggested, more areas up for exploration outside of the highway network. Highways gives a feel of 'civilized' or 'developed' space, whereas regions without would feel more 'unexplored'. I would like to see both.

[BigBANGtheory]

IMO the only devices used for travelling, should be ones that are installed on your ship:
jumpdrives, boosters, frameshift drive, FTL device.

That works well in a vast universe/environment because you can travel endlessly and be self sufficient much like ED or Battlestar Galactica. I'm not sure it works so well in a constrained one and X Universe has always been a sandbox with sides. So unless Egosoft alter the universe to the point of something like ED I don't think it would work for them.

What is missing of course in many scenarios is the travel through hyperspace itself, in the Babylon 5 scenario the gates allow you access to hyperspace where you have to navigate to the exit it doesn't just dump you from A to B.

[skylinedr]

I always thought JD is a very bad idea. As some of you pointed, it makes the universe very small and kills any tactical gameplay. So why not limit that thing in another way:

(1) only used by capships
(2) needs huge amount of some energy
(3) charge time 120 seconds instead of 10 seconds to prevent player make short range jumps (gate or beacon in the same sector...)
(4) if the jump is completed, arrived at the destination there will be some random damage to the ship systems, cause jumping through subspace is damaging on all dead matter
(5) cooldown time at least 1 hour realtime, or maybe 30 minutes


Take all these points together, i would say you can bring a JD to your next X.

[Red Jack]

The Jumpdrive is a pillar of the lore and cannot be removed: the whole series started with a Jumpdrive test

I think that we need a more tactical Jumpdrive, used to teleport fleet to the right position and deploy fighters or drone for the battle. Something like the old Xenon Invasion Mission of X2/X3 without the capability to perform multiple jumps so quickly.
Or use again the awesome idea of TC/AP with the Jump-Beacons! Put the possibility to move these beacons, destory them or place a sort of Jammer-beacon to disable the possibility to Jump in or out and it will be more and more awesome!

[UniTrader]

- for sure some kind of intrediction for boosters and jumpdrives is needed (device / missile / ship / all of these).

just found out by chance that there is an EMP Missile for the Player in the Game files and according to these it disables the boost for 30s
but i dont think you can actually find it somewhere currently.. (all possible references dry up at some point before the player could encounter it)

[Clownmug]

- for sure some kind of intrediction for boosters and jumpdrives is needed (device / missile / ship / all of these).

just found out by chance that there is an EMP Missile for the Player in the Game files and according to these it disables the boost for 30s
but i dont think you can actually find it somewhere currently.. (all possible references dry up at some point before the player could encounter it)

That's the constrictor missile. It's only sold by arms dealers in the Teladi Outpost cluster.

[UniTrader]

- for sure some kind of intrediction for boosters and jumpdrives is needed (device / missile / ship / all of these).

just found out by chance that there is an EMP Missile for the Player in the Game files and according to these it disables the boost for 30s
but i dont think you can actually find it somewhere currently.. (all possible references dry up at some point before the player could encounter it)

That's the constrictor missile. It's only sold by arms dealers in the Teladi Outpost cluster.

possible, didnt check TO files..

[jeroll3d]

I expect a procedural universe - planets surface include - with quality from Egosoft.

I dont know if this is possible...but, i like this idea.

[BigBANGtheory]

I expect a procedural universe - planets surface include - with quality from Egosoft.

As I recall Egosoft have previously voiced a preference/limitation for far planetry atmosphere no surface landings. I think it would be nice (not essential) for some interaction with planets even if it is civilian traffic or cargo lifters.

[Ketraar]

I expect a procedural universe - planets surface include - with quality from Egosoft.

I dont know if this is possible...but, i like this idea.

Not sure if this contains sarcasm, but I'll use it regardless to demonstrate a typical post to my point about how pointless suggestion topics become. Thanks.

MFG

Ketraar

[jkflipflop98]

Everyone keeps saying they want "more control. Better control!" . . . but what does that look like, exactly? Are we talking a completely different interface for commanding a fleet - almost turning it into it's own game like a basic version of Homeworld? Are we talking the same commands we already have except with better fleet mechanics like all the ships jumping at once and actually holding formation without having to do the stupid 30 minute capship mating dance? Are we talking making the "splines" that the capship use to move visible and able to be manipulated by the player?

[HarpRe]

In X3 it was possible to send a ship to a set of coordinats that would be good enought. But Homeworld like command from the bridge of a cap ship would be awsome. Remindes me of Flagship thoug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVr98bTzxH8

About JD: I like the Jumpdrive but not in its current form.

From the lore I would think that the XR JDs are a new generation of JDs. Build for InSystem travel. Maybe not even for Gate use. So maybe this are already P2P JDs. But I don´t realy like it. The old JDs were already able to log on to beacons and I think they just would have optimesed that part after the gate shut down. I mean how many of the experimantel unfokust JDs were there when the gates shut down?
But would be a nice quest: Find a extrem damaged cap ship that tryed to find other sectors after the shut down ...

After the lore only the xenon have a working understanding of a P2P JD (state X3AP) so all other ships should use the beacons and gates. That gives enought tactical deph I think. But please directly. No chaine jumps (use more energy and time to charge is ok).

To transport the player the new 1st Person time offers a good chance. specially at the beginning. You could have ships flying a route. The player can dock and wait till he/she arrives at the sector of dreams.

(Yes you can explaine the current jump mecanic because of administration problems. As goverment I would request chainjumps too because you would otherwise not be able to follow criminals so you just change the operation software)

But what I want is a better AI for mission targets. I mean I try to catch an criminal on a JD-ship and he just waits to die? He should at least try to run. maybe even trough a gate to escape the sector. And don´t start me on the Xenon. How is it that machines that calculate bevor an asult have not enought ships to desteroy the station even if the player is not around.

But at last if possible I like to have my spacesuit back and not targeted first by the enemy. (don't nead the repair laser tough. Just want to feel emptyness and scale fo the universe after I had to eject from my ship again)

[mr.WHO]

I think that Terran have P2P jumpdrives too, albeit probably much less accurate and/or need to calculate jump much longer (e.g. can jump to the zone with no beacon, but not to exact location you select).

[jeroll3d]

Sarcarms?

No! Falarei em português: não tem nenhum sarcasmo nisso. É um desejo pois confio na qualidade da Egosoft no desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias.

Abraços do Brasil.

[BigBANGtheory]

Everyone keeps saying they want "more control. Better control!" . . . but what does that look like, exactly? Are we talking a completely different interface for commanding a fleet - almost turning it into it's own game like a basic version of Homeworld? Are we talking the same commands we already have except with better fleet mechanics like all the ships jumping at once and actually holding formation without having to do the stupid 30 minute capship mating dance? Are we talking making the "splines" that the capship use to move visible and able to be manipulated by the player?

I think it depends who you are asking, to me it should look something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVr98bTzxH8

i.e. a Homeworld style 3d holomap integrated into the bridge of either capitalships or your flag ship, but can switch to fullscreen if the play wants. That to my mind would work, other solutions seem to heavily compromise the experience for the player. The key question though is what Egosoft thinks it should look like and will gamepads drag us back into the darkages or will they have the option of a more list generated UI (which mouse users won't want).

[Tamina]

This game looks like it is played solely in 2D while XRebirth is in 3D.
How does the Homeworld thing looks like?

[Gligli]

I expect a procedural universe - planets surface include - with quality from Egosoft.

I dont know if this is possible...but, i like this idea.

Not sure if this contains sarcasm, but I'll use it regardless to demonstrate a typical post to my point about how pointless suggestion topics become. Thanks.

MFG

Ketraar

Eleven, already? Nice week in perspective... <- this is a sarcasm (I think)
But I share your point of vue regard to 'suggestions'. Fuzzy topics...

procedural content topic
You're all welcome

[BigBANGtheory]

This game looks like it is played solely in 2D while XRebirth is in 3D.
How does the Homeworld thing looks like?

HW is based soley in the 3rd person so its not a like for like replacement thing with X Universe the two are different and will always be so, what HW has though is the best solution to date regarding the command and control of large numbers of ships in a 3d environment.

skip to 15min mark on this clip and you get a good feel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p1CIeV85LY

Notice :
1. how easily the player/reviewer is able to work with the Z axis, how the interface works for the player and helps to provide a perspective by drawing circles, lines and triangles to show the relative position of co-ordinates. The player isn't fighting the interface and struggling to move, command, order things about its intuative.
2. how simple and quick it is to command and control a group of ships of mixed type.

You could argue "how deep do you want to go" in the whole tactical gameplay thing and how that might fit into X Universe, I would still say as an absolute minimum you want to learn from those 2 features I highlighted above. That is what Homeworld teaches us...

How you integrate that into X Universe should be the real question.... having given it some thought and listening to the opinion of others it would seem to make most sense to place such an interface/capability into the bridge of a player owned captialship, a ship that you do not need to pilot but you can command its navigation. You then drop into a more traditional pilotable ship as and when you choose even to the point of joining a battle as a pilot you've initally orchestrated as a commander.

Going from X3 to XR we've started to see Egosoft adopt some of these principals like wings > squads, the 3d holomap and targeting from map so its heading in the right direction. The main issue I see atm is the holomap isn't very interactive it needs to be a tool that works for the player and helps them to achieve what they are trying to do instead of constraining them... but not simply by dumping menus and lists infront of the player.

[Gligli]

(...)The main issue I see atm is the holomap isn't very interactive it needs to be a tool that works for the player and helps them to achieve what they are trying to do instead of constraining them... but not simply by dumping menus and lists infront of the player.

* ... think 5 min of this old good HW...*
The main difference I see is the camera/map...
That inspire me two things:
- A strategic drone-camera ?(a bit weird)
- An additional room in the Skunk for strategic "projections". In example, there are already places in station where you can find tiny balcony in the centre of a (not so)big room...and add monitors everywhere or some kind of projector/emitter. (sounds like the bridge)

[mr.WHO]

Strategic projector room would be good for capship bridge, but even better for Player HQ - Kinda like space version of 80s movies NORAD commad center

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