NEWS: 2nd Twitch Live Stream on Sept 27th (20:00 CEST)

Crimsonraziel · Post by **Crimsonraziel** » Tue, 3. Oct 17, 22:17

Kitty wrote:
Crimsonraziel wrote:
Greenhorn wrote:Hi im just thinking people, in x3 I use the jumpdrive not just to explore ,but more importantly nobody mentiond it ; to escape from battle/ trouble coming my way/,no way to out-run the oppents too many drone/fighters hitting my shields knowing I wont survive for long.hmmm, having no jumpdrive in x4, makes me a little jitters..
Exactly. I recently wiped out an entire xenon sector (more than 60 capital ships in total, some respawns etc.) with only one ship and hit & run powered by jumpdrive.

And that is the problem.
That's not a problem, that is a solution. You had a tool, you found a way to use it. That's the sandbox.

Next step could have been to have NPC use the same strategy.

So future battles will be decided by who brings more energy cells.

Kitty · Post by **Kitty** » Tue, 3. Oct 17, 22:36

Crimsonraziel wrote:
So future battles will be decided by who brings more energy cells.

So YOU think.

Jumpdrive is away, btw.

Game over.
PS: this could've been good for the solar cells market.

BigBANGtheory · Post by **BigBANGtheory** » Tue, 3. Oct 17, 23:25

Crimsonraziel wrote: So future battles will be decided by who brings more energy cells.

No, if Egosoft have got it right and done their homework battles will be won by:
- who can economically build and support the largest fleet
- who can control their fleet the best

both points is down to ES to sort out and the player to figure out, that is the gameplay draw..... hopefully

-Dna- · Post by **-Dna-** » Tue, 3. Oct 17, 23:59

BigBANGtheory wrote:
Crimsonraziel wrote: So future battles will be decided by who brings more energy cells.
No, if Egosoft have got it right and done their homework battles will be won by:
- who can economically build and support the largest fleet
- who can control their fleet the best

both points is down to ES to sort out and the player to figure out, that is the gameplay draw..... hopefully

I Hope that the doom-stacks from Stellaris do not invade the X-Universe

Crimsonraziel · Post by **Crimsonraziel** » Wed, 4. Oct 17, 00:19

BigBANGtheory wrote:
Crimsonraziel wrote: So future battles will be decided by who brings more energy cells.
No, if Egosoft have got it right and done their homework battles will be won by:
- who can economically build and support the largest fleet
- who can control their fleet the best

both points is down to ES to sort out and the player to figure out, that is the gameplay draw..... hopefully

Which is the AI, if we don't implement some mechanics to cripple it.

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Wed, 4. Oct 17, 12:54

Crimsonraziel wrote:Which is the AI, if we don't implement some mechanics to cripple it.

Unlikely. Competent AI that deals well with "foreign influence" and other things that requires it to re-strategize and be proactive is difficult. I don't know of a strategy game where the higher difficulty levels of AI do not resort to cheating in one way or another.

Crimsonraziel · Post by **Crimsonraziel** » Wed, 4. Oct 17, 13:16

Killjaeden wrote:
Crimsonraziel wrote:Which is the AI, if we don't implement some mechanics to cripple it.
Unlikely. Competent AI that deals well with "foreign influence" and other things that requires it to re-strategize and be proactive is difficult. I don't know of a strategy game where the higher difficulty levels of AI do not resort to cheating in one way or another.

What makes you belief, this would be different in this case?

Sorkvild · Post by **Sorkvild** » Wed, 4. Oct 17, 15:28

Youtube classified latest X4 gameplay as Star Citizen :faceplam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk4pPuC3GjA

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Wed, 4. Oct 17, 16:06

So SC fans browsing YouTube get to see X4 stuff and vice versa; win-win.

Kitty · Post by **Kitty** » Wed, 4. Oct 17, 20:56

Killjaeden wrote:
Crimsonraziel wrote:Which is the AI, if we don't implement some mechanics to cripple it.
Unlikely. Competent AI that deals well with "foreign influence" and other things that requires it to re-strategize and be proactive is difficult. I don't know of a strategy game where the higher difficulty levels of AI do not resort to cheating in one way or another.

Well, it's a matter of 2 things:
- machine power
- financial power (ie : how much you pay the game developpers)

Today, we have largely the knowledges to have very proficient AIs. If the game designers cheat it's because... it's cheaper.

So what ?

That does not change the result here. WHo wins is a matter of tuning the game balance.

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Wed, 4. Oct 17, 21:03

"What's all this hoo-ha about AI anyway?"

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Thu, 5. Oct 17, 01:29

Hi all,

The "X4: Foundations - Announcement Reaction Q&A" thread has been updated with new Q&As from the 2nd X4 livestream that took place on 27th September.

Each of the 6 subject areas have had some Q&As added to end of of their respective Q&As posts (see date stamp 03-10-2017).

Regards,
X2-Illuminatus and Sparky

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Fri, 6. Oct 17, 13:09

Kitty wrote: - machine power
- financial power (ie : how much you pay the game developpers)
Today, we have largely the knowledges to have very proficient AIs.

What do you mean by "we"? You? Me? Egosoft? If you by "we" mean the human race then that isn't really helpful. Just because there has been advance in science doesn't mean it is practical for implementation in games.
Please give an example of AI in a strategy or economical game that can act pro-actively and can predict the players intention reliably and act in such ways that it spoils the plans of the player (or other AI). To my knowledge there are no such highly developed AI in games, but i don't know everything...
How much you pay the game developers doesnt make the AI smarter. Making game AI act smart is difficult and game AI can only be as smart as the developers that create it. If the developers that create it had zero knowledge of battle tactics, the battle tactic part of the AI will suck be inadequate.

It isn't about "who wins". It is about creating a dynamic sandbox but with a self-stabilising economy which doesnt go down the drain after a single xenon incursion. If the AI is unable to act effectively (before shit hits the fan) to counteract, the destabilising effect of incursions and other events will be much greater.

Crimsonraziel wrote:What makes you belief, this would be different in this case?

What do you mean by that? I'm saying that it is unlikely that AI is will be able to act proactively. Means it can only react after things have happened (instead of preventing them from happening). Ergo, if ship travel times are long, the damage caused by spontaneous enemy incursions will be high -> very bad for a highly dynamical economy. Plus this makes it easily exploitable by the player.
-> Jumpdrive, even when it is heavily limited (like i already gave as examples) can be extremely beneficial to reduce travel time for AI in order to reduce the impact of it's inability to predict things.

Nikola515 · Post by **Nikola515** » Fri, 6. Oct 17, 13:17

I'm still confused about that mass traffic question ???? As far as we know mass traffic is useless in XR and I haven't seen single ships with any cargo in them. However I did notice stations cargolifter drones flying together with traffic and trading with stations. Is this what they are talking about or mass traffic trading works only OOZ ???

JSDD · Post by **JSDD** » Fri, 6. Oct 17, 13:39

Killjaeden wrote:How much you pay the game developers doesnt make the AI smarter. Making game AI act smart is difficult and game AI can only be as smart as the developers that create it. If the developers that create it had zero knowledge of battle tactics, the battle tactic part of the AI will suck.

for me it would be sufficient if the game is a bit more "dynamic" (a bit random guesses + some intelligent decisions made by the npcs), the best examples are "pirate guild 3" or "tortuga" plugins in X3, the "intelligence" behind those scripts were sufficient to make the whole game more interesting, and the player had to adapt to influences from those pirates ...

compared to the non-existent global "plan" behind vanilla X3 pirates, it's a completely new dimension ...

another thing: the turrets in X3, compare an "intelligent" script like MARS to the vanilla X3 scripts ... again, a completely new dimension ...

or compare lucikes trade scripts to the vanilla scripts ...what i'm trying to say is that it was even in X3 possible to improve the "intelligence" of the npc by a huge margin, even small changes can make a big difference.

unfortunately:
most of these changes were made by the community, not by egosoft ...

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Fri, 6. Oct 17, 16:15

Nikola515 wrote:I'm still confused about that mass traffic question ???? As far as we know mass traffic is useless in XR and I haven't seen single ships with any cargo in them. However I did notice stations cargolifter drones flying together with traffic and trading with stations. Is this what they are talking about or mass traffic trading works only OOZ ???

Mass Traffic in XR is a combination of the little NPC ships that I'm pretty sure 'only' exist to provide atmosphere, and cargolifters used by stations for intra-zone trading with other stations. I'm sure that works whether we are IZ or OOS. Both the little ships and cargolifters use the same routes (AKA mass traffic system/network).

I think what the following Q&As tell us is that X4 is planned to have mass traffic ships for atmosphere, but that it's currently undecided whether the mass traffic system will support station-station trading.

Q: Will there still be mass traffic trading (a really nice feature in my opinion, but i've never been able to recognize it very well)?
A: We do use the mass traffic system, so there are mass traffic ships. We use the system also for transportation of wares between capital ships and stations for example, which are located in the same logical zone in the game.

Q: Will small traffic have any uses in economy ?
A: Some may, some will not

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=396292

DaMuncha · Post by **DaMuncha** » Fri, 6. Oct 17, 16:22

Are were going to get the usless ships that spawn out of nowhere clogging up the highways? I got a mod that disabled all the magically appearing ships in highways in XR and found the highways were barely used by anyone except pirates.

gbjbaanb · Post by **gbjbaanb** » Fri, 6. Oct 17, 16:30

Sparky Sparkycorp wrote:
Nikola515 wrote:I'm still confused about that mass traffic question ???? As far as we know mass traffic is useless in XR and I haven't seen single ships with any cargo in them. However I did notice stations cargolifter drones flying together with traffic and trading with stations. Is this what they are talking about or mass traffic trading works only OOZ ???
Mass Traffic in XR is a combination of the little NPC ships that I'm pretty sure 'only' exist to provide atmosphere, and cargolifters used by stations for intra-zone trading with other stations. I'm sure that works whether we are IZ or OOS. Both the little ships and cargolifters use the same routes (AKA mass traffic system/network).

I think what the following Q&As tell us is that X4 is planned to have mass traffic ships for atmosphere, but that it's currently undecided whether the mass traffic system will support station-station trading.

Q: Will there still be mass traffic trading (a really nice feature in my opinion, but i've never been able to recognize it very well)?
A: We do use the mass traffic system, so there are mass traffic ships. We use the system also for transportation of wares between capital ships and stations for example, which are located in the same logical zone in the game.

Q: Will small traffic have any uses in economy ?
A: Some may, some will not
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=396292

So useless ships for the sake of them? I understand some ships will not be carrying cargo all the time, but we had a decent thing in X3 with loads of ships carrying cargo, even bits and bobs of weapons traders or similar, Why has the game gone backwards in this regard. X3's universe was alive with shipping that at least seemed to be going somewhere from somewhere without any problem. X4 should have the same.

Post by **X2-Illuminatus** » Fri, 6. Oct 17, 16:38

Just a few weeks ago we had a poll and a quite detailed discussion, in which people stated that they would like to have so-called "useless" ships to keep the universe busy and to add to the immersion.

birdtable · Post by **birdtable** » Fri, 6. Oct 17, 16:52

Sorry ,, but are we talking useless ships eternally circling stations or useless ships crossing the galaxy giving the appearance of trade/immersion..... ??