Living Breathing WARRING Universe?

[gbjbaanb]

i voted maybe. Everyone seems to gewt excited and want everything all at once, but we know not even StarCitizen with 3 dev studios and tens of millions of dollars can;t deliver everything.

Start with a playable game, then add "natural" wars in a DLC or update afterwards.

[Morkonan]

I vote for both scripted and emergent wars.

There's one caveat, though - It's extremely difficult for any one race to severely damage another, alone, without the player's help.

Again, another warband reference - I Warband and in most Warband mods, it's extremely difficult for one faction to completely destroy another without the player's intervention. It can happen, but it's just very rare and more a result of other events (multiple factions warring) or bad luck with the RNG for that faction.

"Wars" might be a bit strong of a choice, though. In X3TC, factions that hate each other will send raiding fleets. These are some of the mostest funnest things to watch in X3TC and the profitss from scooping up the wares can be huge. BUT, these are inconsequential raids - They don't actually "do" anything other than have one faction's ships attack a sector.

I'd like to see that mechanic in X4, perhaps with the chance that such a recon in force could have a much stronger outcome, but I think it'd be best for the game if the factions couldn't substantially hurt or defeat each other without the player's input in some way.

[RAVEN.myst]

So, I guess that because there was no diplomacy with the Kahak and Xenon, that all the X series is nonsense?

Also a good point - those may not be 'wars' in the conventional sense, but rather the intent being utter genocide, but in effect this is a REALLY total war...

[Killjaeden]

Also a good point - those may not be 'wars' in the conventional sense, but rather the intent being utter genocide, but in effect this is a REALLY total war...

With the difference beeing that it's basically sidelined all the time. Occasionally xenon or khaak attack, occasionally races strike against them. All the time where there were some actual results, it was scripted as part of missions, in the past games.

Never have Xenon or Khaak fleet wrecked large swathes of space as they theoretically could have. In essence, they always confined themself to "hostile space" and waited for the player to wreck them at his leisure.

[RAVEN.myst]

Never have Xenon or Khaak fleet wrecked large swathes of space as they theoretically SHOULD have. .

There, I fixed it

Yes, my 'total warfare' comment was in the lore-based abstract - as you say, it kept being downplayed and has never yet had its day in the sun (with the exception of... is it Litcube's? I don't use mods, but am I recalling right that that one has Xenon pushing in with determination?) Here's hoping that gets some attention in X4 (though I don't recall reading anything about it, so I'm probably just dreaming here...)

[Killjaeden]

XTC has xenon and khaak invading, but since they pull their ships out of their bum, they overrun large parts of the universe as quickly as the script decides (because race response is incapable to deal with an allout incursion) and then are forced to stop at a certain sector count to not ruin the entire game.

Iirc they said that in X4 xenon will have economy, combined with that ships are manufactured more based on economy is certainly a good thing to provide an interesting but extremely hard to balance dynamic. If they are a fledgling presence compared to races, their economy will be weaker and if the player smacks it down once, it will take ages to recover.

[RAVEN.myst]

XTC has xenon and khaak invading, but since they pull their ships out of their bum, they overrun large parts of the universe as quickly as the script decides (because race response is incapable to deal with an allout incursion) and then are forced to stop at a certain sector count to not ruin the entire game.

Yes, I also remember Xenon rampaging across the horizontal corridor to the East of Omicron Lyrae in X2 as well - was quite amusing to watch and screw around at the edges of (until, that is, I discovered station-building and trading etc. and discovered what a PitA those rampages could actually be, heheheheh.)

...certainly a good thing to provide an interesting but extremely hard to balance dynamic.

Indeed, and I wish ES best luck with that - I'm daring to hope!

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Yes, my 'total warfare' comment was in the lore-based abstract - as you say, it kept being downplayed and has never yet had its day in the sun (with the exception of... is it Litcube's? I don't use mods, but am I recalling right that that one has Xenon pushing in with determination?) Here's hoping that gets some attention in X4 (though I don't recall reading anything about it, so I'm probably just dreaming here...)

Litcube's Universe for X3:AP has a Xenon-like faction trying to take over the entire galaxy, and they will if the player doesn't get stuck in. Getting stuck in is an interesting exercise as so many game mechanics have been overhauled.

Another example is the CWIR mod for X Rebirth, which has main factions trying to take over the space of their rivals, and the Xenon trying to take over anything. The player can help factions our or go it alone as an organic or Xenon.

[birdtable]

Warring Factions are best left to modders, Egosoft hopefully will realise the benefit of a strong modding community through increased sales and player satisfaction by providing a good solid working base to start from.......
There is one hell of a difference between a scripted Xenon Incursion and all the varying desired ambitions from border aggression to full out Sector annihilation by some overpowering marauding Xenons or any other race you so desire.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

I would see this extended, have Egosoft use the skills of Litcube and Blackrain to produce a DLC that has wars.

Reward these people by contracting them to produce DLC.

Obviously has to be done to more exacting standards.

Have them reward modders that have contributed so much to the enjoyment
of their games.

[Morkonan]

...
Never have Xenon or Khaak fleet wrecked large swathes of space as they theoretically could have. In essence, they always confined themself to "hostile space" and waited for the player to wreck them at his leisure.

Xenon migrations can certainly cause havoc, wrecking everything in a great swath across several sectors before they're stopped. Sometimes, they don't get stopped... However, they are moving from one sector to another, not actively trying to kill everything in their path. (They often do a great bit of crippling damage, though.)

There are also times when, in certain games, they can put a heck of a lot of pressure and damage on certain sectors. IIRC, in my longest game, many Split sectors near the Xenon core sectors were basically uninhabitable for commerce. The only thing that helped was that they were fairly large, with widely scattered stations.

The Khaak don't make an appearance, usually, in anything much more than a M6. While powerful, for what it is, it doesn't do much damage. Khaak fighter groups can harass merchant traffic, but that's about it.

[CorruptUser]

The best I can come up with to prevent a race from being completely annihilated is to create a homefield advantage of some form. I'm thinking that core sectors have HEAVILY fortified gates. Not the joke of orbital defense stations from X3AP that were just an M7 without engines, but something that would scare a fleet. It would double as a reason for players to create massive fleets, perhaps with missions involving a race asking for the player's support in an offensive.

[RAVEN.myst]

The best I can come up with to prevent a race from being completely annihilated is to create a homefield advantage of some form.

That's a nice idea, and easily enough implemented in an abstract yet transparent manner: apply a modifier/multiplier to, say, each of a faction's ships' damage dealt - the farther from own borders, the lower the damage dealt. This will create a self-righting equilibrium system with the equilibrium point being roughly around the territorial borders (when enemy factions share a border) - and it's not even really too contrived or artificial, as it in abstracted form simulates the fact that military forces generally ARE weaker the farther they are from home: not only in terms of simple "comfort" (less familiar with alien territory, while back home they know the terrain well, can use local features to own advantage), but also because the more extended the lines of supply, the more strain is placed on the expeditionary force (yes, I know that this becomes progressively less of an issue with advances in technology, but it never fully goes away.)

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I like the concept of logistics impacting on performance but I don't think the typical X travel times make it believable. Ships don't tend to expend projectiles or need fuel for in-sector movement or need much time to do anything.

An alternative way to simulate logistics would be to have surviving attack fleets pull back to home sectors x hours after departure. They would fight while they are fresh and at some point, the call would be made to disengage before notional fuel reserves deplete.

Something I'd suggest perhaps either way would be to disallow the use of some form of local infrastructure like jump beacons as long as alternate, slow means of travel were available (like boosting between sectors in the same system). This would provide a bonus to manuvourability of defenders, which could be degraded as beacon-containing sectors were conquered, and probably reduce the frequencies of attacks when attack fleets are far from.

[Morkonan]

The best I can come up with to prevent a race from being completely annihilated is to create a homefield advantage of some form. .

I'm sure that's possible, but it's overly complicated. To keep a race/faction from being annihilated when you didn't want them to or without player interaction wouldn't be difficult.

The simplest mechanics rely on forbidding one faction from attacking an enemy core sector, like during simple "Raid" mechanics where one faction will attack another faction's assets in an outlying sector and will respond with overwhelming, defensive, force to similar incursions by an enemy by generating a defensive response fleet.

War and the destruction of a race can be limited to either something that can only be caused by the player's involvement, making it impossible for a race to vanish from the game without the player's direct assistance, or by something that can only ever happen after an event, again triggered by a player, so that races will always be available to the player up to a certain stage in the game's progress.

Lastly, "respawning" a destroyed race could also be possible, either randomly after xx time has passed or due to player intervention, like the completion of a quest/mission. The race will generate a "Rebel Fleet" somewhere in it's prior Core sector. It will attempt to take over the sector by destroying all enemy-held stations. If that happens, it "wins" and the sector returns to its possession. It will then treat all formerly held sectors as being invaded by hostile forces and generate fleets to attack these sectors, winning them back if all enemy-held stations are destroyed.

In short - In * sandbox games where the possibility of an AI war between NPC factions exist, there are several things that have to be done:

1) They must remain around long enough for the player to be able to interact with them in meaningful ways, else having them in the game at all is a waste of resources.

2) The player plays the game, not the AI, so significant events in the game, like the complete destruction of a faction, are usually tied directly to player interactions.

3) It is usually possible to retain critical faction assets that the player needs to acquire or to somehow "respawn" a previously defeated faction so the player may acquire them, usually requiring direct player interaction to do so. (ie: The player plays the game, not the AI.) This allows the player to correct mistakes, reintroduce certain faction mechanics, regain access to certain game assets, etc)

In all of these sorts of mechanics, it is imperative that "the player play the game." The most important variable in any game is player interaction, so any mechanic that can produce extreme results in gameplay must be limited to player interaction or be so unlikely without it that it will almost never occur.

* Games where an objective, or one of them, is to remove a faction from play do not usually have these mechanics, of course.

[sd_jasper]

One thing that might make war a bit more "realistic" is if there was cost to repair ships. In XR as long as you had an engineer on a cap ship, it was basically free to repair. Even if a ship had all surface elements destroyed, and had the hull taking down to 1%, you could just park it and wait till it was back to 100% (or whatever the maximum for the engineer's skill level is).

Part of me thinks how annoying it would be to cap a ship then have to pay a fortune to get it fixed (hopefully this would be less than the cost of buying a new ship!). But I also think that this would fix the issue (in XR) where capping ships is just easy money.

This would also make factions have to spend tons of money to fix ships if they go to war. Other war is "free" as long as they don't loose any ships. And with the AI improvements in XR, I'm seeing a lot fewer ships get destroyed because they know when to flee (somewhat offset by ships now targeting engines a bit more to prevent escape).

Anyway, I'm not sure how I feel about this myself... so the cost would need to be balanced vs player fun, but I still feel that free repairs creates a lot of issues.

[spankahontis]

@ RAVEN.myst ...Being one of the ..quote " general population" as in not being averse to "mods" ... is not and I quote

"So why naysay an *option* that could potentially enhance the experience by giving players more ways to customise the game to their own tastes"

the definition of a mod.....

Tricksy! But I wouldn't say so in my opinion, no - otherwise one would have to expand the definition to include the various gamestart scenarios, which customise the experience; likewise, then, the difficulty selection would also qualify as a "mod"; taken to its logical extreme, so would graphics and audio settings. I guess the lines are a bit blurry... I guess that I (admittedly arbitrarily) define anything that is in the official release and subsequent support, however tweakable, as "vanilla".

I would think of it more of a Civilizations 6, Master of Orion, pre-game seed generation option screen.
Before you start the game you choose how many ai factions you want in your game? the size of your map? To the harshness of Terrain?

Having a similar system to X4, from the aggression of Factions to how aggressive you want the Xenon and the Pirates to be? Would be a great edition to the Sandbox.
Everyone's image of their X Universe play-through is different.. I see what you've said, not as a mod but as catering to the tastes of the X Player.

Personally i'd love to see a slider in high aggression as i'd like to be kept constantly on my Toes to an ever changing climate of peace and war.

Heck you could even script in a 'safezones' option for those who want to build an empire in relative safety of being attacked so they can build their empire and massive fleets before deciding to move to a state of war.
Choose from the list of systems that you want to be always peaceful and start your campaign in those; set loose the dogs of war in the other systems.

[RAVEN.myst]

@spankahontis: Yes, I would very much like a 4X-style set of sliders in X4 (yes, it would be somehow "appropriate", name-wise ^^) - even despite some people's protestations that "this isn't a 4X game" - but sandboxes and 4Xs have a lot of overlap, actually... and there's no reason why their features should be mutually exclusive.

@sd_jasper: perhaps a way to balance repair cost against fun (or lack thereof) might be to have a checkbox on each capital ship's engineer's detail page (or equivalent) to allow/disallow automatic spending of credits. Sure, this would be a bit abstracted (ie. "how does the engineer magically convert the cash into materials etc?"), but I think it would be an adequate compromise. I agree that those repairs being free over time is rather "magical" already, too much so, while on the other hand, sending ships to shipyards to repair for some reason feels (to me) more awkward than in X3 (which I can't fully explain objectively) - so this may represent a convenient and viable middle ground.

Also, I think that shipyards ought to have separate construction and repair docks - much of the current awkwardness of shipyards stems from the fact that there is simply too much queuing going on even when they are fully stocked with materials. This would also provide the opportunity to even further enhance the looks of these structures that now look a lot more like what they represent, than they did in previous Xs, by adding additional, likely adjacent docks, perhaps a bit more open (ie. not completely surrounding the ship), but perhaps with some robotic arms or such.

[CorruptUser]

The X series has always been a 4X game in a first person point of view. Or, really, we all PLAYED them as a 4X game. Everyone would build an economic powerhouse with a fleet of traders and factories, conquering the economy, combat only existing to give us needed breaks.

[sd_jasper]

@sd_jasper: perhaps a way to balance repair cost against fun (or lack thereof) might be to have a checkbox on each capital ship's engineer's detail page (or equivalent) to allow/disallow automatic spending of credits. Sure, this would be a bit abstracted (ie. "how does the engineer magically convert the cash into materials etc?"), but I think it would be an adequate compromise. I agree that those repairs being free over time is rather "magical" already, too much so, while on the other hand, sending ships to shipyards to repair for some reason feels (to me) more awkward than in X3 (which I can't fully explain objectively) - so this may represent a convenient and viable middle ground.

After thinking about it a bit more, I thought one way this might work is if Construction/Repair Drones are REQUIRED and CONSUMABLE. This way the player could stock up with these drones in their favorite ships for capturing, then use them to repair the newly gained ship... but that they are used up after a certain amount of repairing.

This would also mean that a ship would have to be allowed to use repair drones on another ship (or that drone bays are no longer destroyable).