DLC ideas/prediction/thoughts

[Zetoss]

Borons would be greeted with warm smiles by many of us who played anything before XR but if I recall correctly the main problem is that creating models and animations that look credible would be extremely difficult. As far as I can tell there are some options to deal with this but they tend to come at a great cost...
* Option 1: Cram those squids into uncomfortable suits that not only keep them alive out of water but also make them fit into regular crew seats so the animations and models become more manageable. Sort of ruins the joy of seeing them flap about and it will feel like a missed opportunity to show off a truly interesting race instead of the endless variants of two legged things we've seen in scifi forever.
* Option 2: Their work stations are water filled compartments (no need to fill their entire ships with water, right?) and can only be used by boron crew. Ruins their image quite a bit to turn their ships into aquarium expos where the player can get up close and tap the glass, not to mention boron ships can only be operated by borons and the poor squiddies can't leave their ships, ever.
* Option 3: The gate shutdown cut off a boron outpost and in the face of a dire situation in the sector they collectively decided to alter their genes and change their pysical structure to survive with far less water exposure and have a much easier time operating ships by some argon allies that were stuck in the same area, a plausible scenario since several decades have passed. Comes with the price of not being "true" borons any more.

Last and best option: We all buy every DLC and extra thing that pops up for X4 and wait for 2022, that should give Egosoft enough time and funding to solve the problem in a way everyone is going to like.

[DaMuncha]

Fish CAN breath air, problem is fish are stupid, panic, and hyperventilate, and die from absorbing too much oxygen.

[Karvat]

I still don't understand people asking for:
1) Planetary landing, in a space simulator
2) Storyline dlc, in a sandbox game
-Why should they spend all that time to bring the planetary landing, if later there will not be anything to do on the planet; just buy a walking simulator instead
-Why should they work on a storyline dlc instead of bringing back half of the races of the universe if one of the main reasons why these games are so loved is because you make your own story, your totally free to decide what to do and when to do that, without any bond

[Silla]

Fish CAN breath air, problem is fish are stupid, panic, and hyperventilate, and die from absorbing too much oxygen.

So humans simply underventilate in water because they aren’t stupid enough?

[Silla]

I still don't understand people asking for:
1) Planetary landing, in a space simulator
2) Storyline dlc, in a sandbox game
-Why should they spend all that time to bring the planetary landing, if later there will not be anything to do on the planet; just buy a walking simulator instead
-Why should they work on a storyline dlc instead of bringing back half of the races of the universe if one of the main reasons why these games are so loved is because you make your own story, your totally free to decide what to do and when to do that, without any bond

Im simply to lazy to make my own story all the time and instead want to be entertained...is this so hard to understand? Even better I’d be willing to pay for well done extra entertainment and you don’t have to buy it and do just your stuff. Sounds more sensible than landing on planets without something to do in comparison, doesn’t it?

[DaMuncha]

Fish CAN breath air, problem is fish are stupid, panic, and hyperventilate, and die from absorbing too much oxygen.

So humans simply underventilate in water because they aren’t stupid enough?

We dont have gills to filter oxygen out of the water. and we need alot more oxygen than fish do. The largest fish are mammals and breath air.

[Silla]

We dont have gills to filter oxygen out of the water. and we need alot more oxygen than fish do. The largest fish are mammals and breath air.

The thing is fishes probably don’t die because there is to much oxygen as you claimed. I claim they die because their gills are collapsing hence they can’t exchange CO2 in its surroundings because of the lack of water ...even if the left surface area is enough to take in oxygen only... so if that be the case fishes still suffocate on land because of an increased CO2 content in their blood similar as to when a human‘s lung would collapse and he’d suffocate as a result.

Besides how can a fish and a mammal like a whale be of the same kind? It really depends on the definition but most people would not group them together or else hippos or crocodiles might be classified fishes too *Sarcasm Mode OFF*

[Commander SAMU]

My biggest wish for a DLC is that the Borons (and afterwards the Split ) will make its way back to the x universe, otherwise it's not the same feeling as it was in the good X titles.

[MegaJohnny]

I just hope they tell some cool stories about the Dark, and how it affected different factions.

[Vandragorax]

I personally am not that bothered about Boron, Split, or Terran... I would much rather see an expansion focused on Khaak or Xenon. We already have a lot of races we can play 'in the same way' as each other, sure the artistic designs are different but otherwise gameplay is pretty much the same.

IMHO it would be way more interesting to have a twist to the gameplay itself, playing as the 'bad guys' would be a fantastic change of scene for a totally different stance But even if Egosoft decided they didn't want us to actually play from their perspective, having a whole expansion focused around them as a super-threat with a whole load of new stuff added around that idea would be huge for gameplay.

Imagine all the secrets Xenon or Khaak could hold (new research opportunities for our HQ?) I mean in Rebirth we had that amazing Khaak structure hidden deep in the ass-end of nowhere, but it didn't really do anything, it was just present. I would have loved to have more interactions like that for deep space exploration, but have something valuable to do with it gameplay wise

[XD733]

Any kind of ground or FPS combat is not a good fit. That would be a huge, sweeping change to the game and it would be next to impossible for them to do it well. At best, it would feel tacked-on and half-baked like the outside-of-ship activity in X:Rebirth.

Plus it's way too much effort for a DLC.

Crossovers (???) are a weird idea that would never happen.

I think the best DLC would be building on what is already in the game by adding races and sectors. E.g., DLCs that add Boron and Split races, ships, and sectors. That's already already a ton of work and probably more than would be warranted by a typical DLC, but it's at least within reach. And there are already a ton of excellent ship and station designs to draw on from X3.

Personally I'm hoping most for Boron. They were always my favorite non-Human race in the previous games. As far as them being aquatic, the answer is that Borons can't travel on non-Boron ships without special upgrades, and the same is true in reverse. And the player can't play a Boron.

[sd_jasper]

What I want from future DLC: new ships, new factions, new areas, new station modules, and maybe new races. (but mostly just more ships).

[Karvat]

I still don't understand people asking for:
1) Planetary landing, in a space simulator
2) Storyline dlc, in a sandbox game
-Why should they spend all that time to bring the planetary landing, if later there will not be anything to do on the planet; just buy a walking simulator instead
-Why should they work on a storyline dlc instead of bringing back half of the races of the universe if one of the main reasons why these games are so loved is because you make your own story, your totally free to decide what to do and when to do that, without any bond

Im simply to lazy to make my own story all the time and instead want to be entertained...is this so hard to understand? Even better I’d be willing to pay for well done extra entertainment and you don’t have to buy it and do just your stuff. Sounds more sensible than landing on planets without something to do in comparison, doesn’t it?

It is better to add other races and varieties in a game with endless possibilities of approach rather than a storyline that you finish in a couple of hours and then abandon the game because there is nothing else to do

[Scoob]

Perhaps the Boron and Split will be introduced together in a future DLC, they're not the best of friends so introducing some additional conflict into the game might be fun...or perhaps they've had to unit to face a larger foe...that'd be interesting!

As for Borons and their ships being full of water. Why? All that added mass would not be efficient at all, so I'd imagine all Borons would remain within sophisticated armoured environmental suits at all times, their vessels and stations being air filled at most, perhaps even a vacuum if no air-breathers are aboard. All the game needs, from a first-person perspective, is a decent suit model, perhaps with a large window so we can see the Boron within. No reason these environmental suits can't be bipedal but with extra arms.

Really, the focus for introducing the Borons should be their ships and tech, not about filling everything with water! Lol. Personally, from a Lore perspective, only their private chambers should be their own environment - i.e. full of water - but they should be fully capable of interacting with all the other air breathing races in their own environment, hence the environment suit.

I get that people might want to experience the more alien environment of a Boron ship, perhaps that's where ES plan to go with this. However, it seems like more work to implement it well, vs. just having the Boron wandering around in self-contained environment suits even on ships and stations.

Thought: when visiting large Boron stations in their own sectors, perhaps we might get a window onto a more natural Boron environment. Force fields would enable us to transfer from O2 to H2O environments seamlessly, but we'd need suit upgrades to traverse said environment at more than a human swimming speed.

Scoob.

[mr.WHO]

Fish CAN breath air, problem is fish are stupid, panic, and hyperventilate, and die from absorbing too much oxygen.

So humans simply underventilate in water because they aren’t stupid enough?

We dont have gills to filter oxygen out of the water. and we need alot more oxygen than fish do. The largest fish are mammals and breath air.

Actually when I was a child I watched on Discovery Channel that humans can breather under water as long as the water has unnaturally high concentration of Oxygen in it (they put a lab rat into that "water" and for first it was panicked like hell, but after several seconds it was just confused like hell. Scientists said that such "water breathing" had no negative impact on the lungs, but might be highly unconfortable for several first attempts (especially when you fill in and throw out that water from the lungs) - it was even proposed that such "oxygen water tank breathing" would be ideal for high-G accelaration space ships.

Now that I think about it - this should be good excuse for Boron ships to have much higher acceleration/deacceleration than other races.

[Silla]

It is better to add other races and varieties in a game with endless possibilities of approach rather than a storyline that you finish in a couple of hours and then abandon the game because there is nothing else to do

I think both are greate...even better in combination. And who said that a story dlc could only fill a few hours ? What are a few hours? If Id be entertained for 25-50 hours this would already be a lot..considering that most people don’t play straight through. The problem is that EGO hasn’t been always greate at telling storys. Yet I do not understand why people are always telling me this game would be only good at projecting my „own“ story but not that of others...for me that’s a ridiculous claim. If at all what might be missing is an underlying technology to improve on it, maybe even for modders to easier create and share stories ...as for example an selection option for question and answers, player decisions trees, cut scenes tools etc. ? What do other open world game do most of the time ...telling stories. Some of which are pretty good. Why would that not work with a modern X game on top of a sandbox is beyond me.

The biggest hinderance is that content creation such as ships, systems, modules is easier to implement as it doesn’t need voice overs and possible additional technology for the game...but not every developer is occupied with doing content creation and implementation. On top of that working on story telling might be a reason to improve on the humanoids animation part...

[Silla]

Actually when I was a child I watched on Discovery Channel that humans can breather under water as long as the water has unnaturally high concentration of Oxygen in it (they put a lab rat into that "water" and for first it was panicked like hell, but after several seconds it was just confused like hell. Scientists said that such "water breathing" had no negative impact on the lungs, but might be highly unconfortable for several first attempts (especially when you fill in and throw out that water from the lungs) - it was even proposed that such "oxygen water tank breathing" would be ideal for high-G accelaration space ships.

Now that I think about it - this should be good excuse for Boron ships to have much higher acceleration/deacceleration than other races.

Yep that’s also something I had thought about before yet it’s not very feasible to go diving in space ...I simply think there should be lore of some sort to solve the problem with the flying bath tubes called ships.

[mr.WHO]

Yep that’s also something I had thought about before yet it’s not very feasible to go diving in space ...I simply think there should be lore of some sort to solve the problem with the flying bath tubes called ships.

Based on similar principles The Expanse has "juice" injected to your veins for high-G manouver - this is more pragmatic as you save space and mass with your own body acting as a tank.
However as Borons are aquatic in nature it might be much more comsortable for them to actually use water filled crew compartments/cokpits.

Imagine Boron fighters blowing up in a cloud of water that immediately turn into ice

[Solflame]

That would be an amazing visual effect. Theoretically, these things would have to have pressurized holding tanks for when they're getting in and out of them to avoid flooding non-Boron stations and ships, so you could justify it even when the ship isn't filled w/ water!

[atavistuk]

Or they could be 'retcon'd' to be Amphibious instead of Aquatic.

But it would still be cool if they were very alien, like a mass of tasty-looking squiddy tentacles with googly eyes perched on top!

(Still looking forward to the Split - Best Race that isn't a all destroying AGI)