What’s Next for X4? An Early Look into 2025

[euclid]

Diplomacy and Agents (hope we're talking about spies) sounds very interesting.

Cheers Euclid

[Skeeter]

Sounds interesting.

[Duncaroos]

Yay! Looks like a lot of good stuff coming. I'll be interested in seeing the mini-DLCs to support the devs.

Change in the in-game economy eh? Sounds fun....I wonder what the changes will be that won't make existing games to nuts

[Falcrack]

I don't mind if they start to introduce changes that are not save compatible. I don't mind starting a new game, in fact, after a while, I get bored of super advanced games.

[Mr.Freud]

SO excited for DLSS! Hopefully it comes with FrameGen too!

[LameFox]

Will the new flight model unify physics for the player and NPCs? One of my least favourite things about personally fighting in this game is seeing the weird shortcuts they take. Feels really cheap when you are the only one who has to work within the established rules.

Hopeful it will also reduce some of the oddities around flying ships like Astrid, and that weird thing where if you rotate while drifting the direction of your momentum completely changes.

[mr.WHO]

I'm hope that the diplomacy part to be a fully optional thing. I know that are players that ask for it, am I respect this, but I have zero interest in it. If I like a diplomacy game, them I'm to play a 4X
game.

If it will be same or similar to what we had in X3:FL then it's completely optional - fun for those who want it, but those who don't want it can ignore it without affecting the rest of X3 gameplay.

[Lord Dakier]

Just wanted to say a big thank you to the Dev team for providing the road map. More information about the general direction is always welcome, even when we don't know all the details.

...The Hyperion is real

[adeine]

Will the new flight model unify physics for the player and NPCs? One of my least favourite things about personally fighting in this game is seeing the weird shortcuts they take. Feels really cheap when you are the only one who has to work within the established rules.

The main thing I hope it addresses is the insane inconsistencies of how long it takes for ships to decelerate depending on circumstances (especially when dropping out of travel drive).

I'd be celebrating if it somehow also fixes the weird time jitter/stuttering of ships in the direction of travel.

[LameFox]

Will the new flight model unify physics for the player and NPCs? One of my least favourite things about personally fighting in this game is seeing the weird shortcuts they take. Feels really cheap when you are the only one who has to work within the established rules.

The main thing I hope it addresses is the insane inconsistencies of how long it takes for ships to decelerate depending on circumstances (especially when dropping out of travel drive).

I'd be celebrating if it somehow also fixes the weird time jitter/stuttering of ships in the direction of travel.

Speaking of travel drive, I could do without the weird sensitivity toggle that makes it so if you press shift 1 while your ship is yawing it gets stuck in yaw you can no longer counter without toggling off FA or travel drive. I don't want to get my hopes too high for changes coming this late to an already released game, but the flight mechanics have long been something I considered a weak point; there's a lot of room for improvement here.

[Artean]

Very exciting news! Thanks for the road map, Egosoft.

[CBJ]

I'd be celebrating if it somehow also fixes the weird time jitter/stuttering of ships in the direction of travel.

Funny you should mention that. The new flight model did not fix that problem, or at least not directly. For a while the person working on it was worried that the new flight model actually caused it, until they realised that it could be reproduced with the old flight model too. However, that sequence of events resulted in it being investigated further and ultimately fixed.

[adeine]

However, that sequence of events resulted in it being investigated further and ultimately fixed.

Very excited to try out the beta when it releases!

[Notafinancialadvisor]

Speaking of travel drive, I could do without the weird sensitivity toggle that makes it so if you press shift 1 while your ship is yawing it gets stuck in yaw you can no longer counter without toggling off FA or travel drive.

Not sure I understand this point correctly. Could you please capture this in a video for us or send us a bug report with more detail?

[LameFox]

Speaking of travel drive, I could do without the weird sensitivity toggle that makes it so if you press shift 1 while your ship is yawing it gets stuck in yaw you can no longer counter without toggling off FA or travel drive.

Not sure I understand this point correctly. Could you please capture this in a video for us or send us a bug report with more detail?

Steering sensitivity appears to be artificially reduced by travel drive. This can cause the player ship to be stuck with their current yaw (or pitch I think) when entering travel drive, because it no longer has the sensitivity to counter it. Mainly shows up in small craft with combat engines since their travel drive is more responsive.

This is 6.20 but it does happen in 7.10 also I've just rolled back for unrelated reasons: https://youtu.be/vp0gJ0tuUi0?si=aWv401mV8UKfRQGO

This gets a bit grating if you use travel drive during combat manoeuvres. Or at least it does with mouse steering, I haven't checked other sorts.

[adeine]

Steering sensitivity appears to be artificially reduced by travel drive. This can cause the player ship to be stuck with their current yaw (or pitch I think) when entering travel drive, because it no longer has the sensitivity to counter it. Mainly shows up in small craft with combat engines since their travel drive is more responsive.

This is 6.20 but it does happen in 7.10 also I've just rolled back for unrelated reasons: https://youtu.be/vp0gJ0tuUi0?si=aWv401mV8UKfRQGO

This gets a bit grating if you use travel drive during combat manoeuvres. Or at least it does with mouse steering, I haven't checked other sorts.

I think what you're seeing is the difference between flight assist being on or off rather than travel drive (see icon).

Flight assist locks you to flying straight ahead, i.e. any steering is based on actual change in flight vector. When you turn it off, you're free to turn away from the direction of travel.

[azaghal]

Looking at the roadmap, while some of those items certainly look interesting, are there any plans to overhaul/improve the UI/UX and deal with quality-of-life improvements related to general empire management? Is there any kind of less attractive (for marketing purposes) listing of items that would get more attention in the upcoming development cycle?

There are so many little things that individually might not be such a huge problem on their own, but that start to add up (kind of a "death by thousand paper cuts"). While some of the mods have tried to address certain shortcomings, it would have really be helpful to see some of those integrated into the vanilla game. I know this is a bit of a vague statement, but I am still pondering if I should post some of the items in the forum with more specifics.

Best regards,
Branko

[Notafinancialadvisor]

Steering sensitivity appears to be artificially reduced by travel drive. This can cause the player ship to be stuck with their current yaw (or pitch I think) when entering travel drive, because it no longer has the sensitivity to counter it. Mainly shows up in small craft with combat engines since their travel drive is more responsive.

This is 6.20 but it does happen in 7.10 also I've just rolled back for unrelated reasons: https://youtu.be/vp0gJ0tuUi0?si=aWv401mV8UKfRQGO

This gets a bit grating if you use travel drive during combat manoeuvres. Or at least it does with mouse steering, I haven't checked other sorts.

Ah, that. I have a feeling that was done on purpose to increase the skill ceiling of that flight assist toggle. The slowing down from and steering while in Travel Drive mode have changed, so this specific behaviour does not happen anymore. That said, there can now be ships that have a similar soapiness to their controls in general. Looking at you - Miner filled to the brim with ore.

[LameFox]

Steering sensitivity appears to be artificially reduced by travel drive. This can cause the player ship to be stuck with their current yaw (or pitch I think) when entering travel drive, because it no longer has the sensitivity to counter it. Mainly shows up in small craft with combat engines since their travel drive is more responsive.

This is 6.20 but it does happen in 7.10 also I've just rolled back for unrelated reasons: https://youtu.be/vp0gJ0tuUi0?si=aWv401mV8UKfRQGO

This gets a bit grating if you use travel drive during combat manoeuvres. Or at least it does with mouse steering, I haven't checked other sorts.

I think what you're seeing is the difference between flight assist being on or off rather than travel drive (see icon).

Flight assist locks you to flying straight ahead, i.e. any steering is based on actual change in flight vector. When you turn it off, you're free to turn away from the direction of travel.

The reduction in sensitivity appears to be part of the flight assist, yes. It toggles off naturally when you are pulsing travel drive, and travel drive itself seems to stop providing thrust if you instead toggle off flight assist, so any method of quickly toggling travel drive seems to result in the same issue.

[LameFox]

Steering sensitivity appears to be artificially reduced by travel drive. This can cause the player ship to be stuck with their current yaw (or pitch I think) when entering travel drive, because it no longer has the sensitivity to counter it. Mainly shows up in small craft with combat engines since their travel drive is more responsive.

This is 6.20 but it does happen in 7.10 also I've just rolled back for unrelated reasons: https://youtu.be/vp0gJ0tuUi0?si=aWv401mV8UKfRQGO

This gets a bit grating if you use travel drive during combat manoeuvres. Or at least it does with mouse steering, I haven't checked other sorts.

Ah, that. I have a feeling that was done on purpose to increase the skill ceiling of that flight assist toggle. The slowing down from and steering while in Travel Drive mode have changed, so this specific behaviour does not happen anymore. That said, there can now be ships that have a similar soapiness to their controls in general. Looking at you - Miner filled to the brim with ore.

That should be interesting to see then. A lot of the weirdness I've experienced in this game has been due to travel drive... like when you toggle it off at speed, rotate the ship without thrusting in a new direction, and end up with your momentum shifting to carry you off in a totally different direction.