[RESTARTED] X-TRA POLLS Round #12 | What are your LEAST FAVOURITE activities in the game? (vote multiple options!)

[Dr Reed]

I picked other.

There is no automate everything I win button.

[Alan Phipps]

"There is no automate everything I win button." There is, but by default it is double-bound with the 'rage-quit' button, and I'm unsure which function takes precedence if you press it.

[BitByte]

Ship M is a trader. It is not part of a fleet. I attack it, in a neutral sector, to rob it. It does not drop cargo, I destroy it. There is a loss of reputation with the ship's faction. There are no witnesses, no stations nearby, the emergency beacon is destroyed. The same thing happens with assassination missions. After the destruction of the ship, there is a loss of reputation, even when it is alone and there are no witnesses.

Killing have caused always reputation loss no matter where you do it. If you kill faction asset or destroy surface element from station/L-/XL-ship it causes rep loss (excluding distress beacons). And it does not matter where you are.
You just need change the way of your piracy (or accept there's concequenses with your actions) to minimize casulties. Don't destroy laser towers, escape pods or ship itself but "tease it" so crew will bail out or accept to drop their cargo when you ask it (ToA will teach you this is not aware from it).
Factions which have fixed reputation with you (BUC and SCA) won't cause rep loss in case you won't do decisions that will change this.

[LameFox]

Piracy is definitely something that could be improved in a lot of ways, but yes, killing anything has always caused a rep hit. A ship, a turret, even a laser tower or drone. I always found it to be a very unintuitive choice from a gameplay angle, sort of akin to having your crimes reported by a chicken in Skyrim.

[sirprosik]

Other - Specifically Seek out High-Yield Resources marked as Very Easy lol.

Current save trying very hard to raise VIG rep from -9 to anything positive at this point.
VIG mission to find .28/km in Windfall marked area huge sphere. Many many points inside
the sphere are random places report .18 /km. So far spent more than an hour flying around
in a modded Xperimental Shuttle dropping and picking back up the resource probe.
Called in an L miner to local mine hydrogen - any location near the ship while mining reports
once again .18/km.

[Submarine]

I selected Other:

1. Having to manually, one-by-one, manage ship orders ....
   1. Telling ships NOT to boost during attack (a request featured multiple times by multiple users that could be implemented as a default global order).

This, so much this.

[jlehtone]

Ship M is a trader. It is not part of a fleet. I attack it, in a neutral sector, to rob it. It does not drop cargo, I destroy it. There is a loss of reputation with the ship's faction. There are no witnesses, no stations nearby, the emergency beacon is destroyed. The same thing happens with assassination missions. After the destruction of the ship, there is a loss of reputation, even when it is alone and there are no witnesses.

Fight Rank. It used to be the access card to big jobs. Not in X4 any more. Nevertheless, every kill counts towards the rank, and hence we did learn to report every single one of them. To everyone.

On assassination the reporting retains rationale: if we don't prove that the deed was ours, then we are not eligible for the pay either. Who knows how many competing contractors the clients employ. Although, it should be enough to provide the evidence to the client, not to the whole galaxy.


Yes, there is no piracy (in some meaning of piracy). No turning off the body cam before we do more than expected from cops. No disguise to divert blame to someone else. No tools to jam all communications. Or is there? We can slaughter a crew of a ship one by one, yet none of them ever rats us out.

[alt3rn1ty]

Boarding was my only choice. Its just something that feels too tedious for me and would rather work towards getting blueprints and building my own, though I wouldn't want it changed as currently it adds to the immersion for those who like boarding, better than in previous X games.
Plus I always seem to end up destroying what I want to capture

Otherwise I just about love everything in the game.

[LameFox]

Boarding was my only choice. Its just something that feels too tedious for me and would rather work towards getting blueprints and building my own, though I wouldn't want it changed as currently it adds to the immersion for those who like boarding, better than in previous X games.
Plus I always seem to end up destroying what I want to capture

Otherwise I just about love everything in the game.

Even though I like capturing ships (it's certainly not my least favourite thing to do) the process really is tedious. There's no need to have the player keep pestering a ship that is already helpless—it's never going to turn that situation around. The only thing that ever causes me to abandon the attempt is when the ship is attacked by something I don't want to kill, and that's not really a challenge for the player as much as a frustration with the inability to communicate to my "allies". Nor is the process of training marines interesting, and it often seems the least irritating thing to do is just send low-skilled ones in waves, which feels stupid to do but saves time and doesn't cost much.

Now that I've thought of it, I guess I only do this for the reward and the concept. Certainly not the mechanics.

[Simon84s]

Blueprint hunting.
The online features.

[Nanook]

... There's no need to have the player keep pestering a ship that is already helpless—it's never going to turn that situation around....

I don't understand. Once your marines are on onboard, you can fly away and do other things. No need to "pester" the ship. Even if it flies away, once your marines complete their task, the ship is yours. Some of the locals may try to do it harm, but protecting it is just part of the fun.

If you're talking about capturing S and M ships (not boarding), then yeah you have to "pester" the ship a little to convince it to bail. This is a test of your patience and the NPC's morale. Once you learn the nuances of forcing a pilot out, there's not a lot of pestering needed. I always scan a target before attacking and if the pilot's morale is high, I just don't bother because they're unlikely to bail no matter what I try. Sometimes the NPC's 'win'.

[alexthespaniard]

I think it's right and proper to ask which activities are fun and which aren't. But above all, to ask how to make the current activities more fun. For me, the manual/personal activities are the ones that need a new look in terms of depth and to ask what replayability they have.
The automatic ones that represent the mid-late game have only a problem with the UI.
Exploration lacks things to discover and again, to ask what replayability it has.
I think Recycling is a fantastic idea where there are many possibilities to add.
Piracy, Piracy, Piracy... I think it's a type of gameplay that attracts many players and is a bit abandoned.

[LameFox]

... There's no need to have the player keep pestering a ship that is already helpless—it's never going to turn that situation around....

I don't understand. Once your marines are on onboard, you can fly away and do other things. No need to "pester" the ship. Even if it flies away, once your marines complete their task, the ship is yours. Some of the locals may try to do it harm, but protecting it is just part of the fun.

If you're talking about capturing S and M ships (not boarding), then yeah you have to "pester" the ship a little to convince it to bail. This is a test of your patience and the NPC's morale. Once you learn the nuances of forcing a pilot out, there's not a lot of pestering needed. I always scan a target before attacking and if the pilot's morale is high, I just don't bother because they're unlikely to bail no matter what I try. Sometimes the NPC's 'win'.

If you are fly-by boarding a ship in a safe (for the victim) area then it might be okay to leave it, but for other ships I'd say it's highly incentivised to sit there keeping it immobile, as if it runs away it might very well die elsewhere. There's also a very strong incentive in some cases to manually bail the crew, e.g. SCA ships, because otherwise it will take good marines or cost a fair number of cheap ones. And that is VERY dull to do. To be fair having the option isn't a bad thing, I just wish (as with so many activities in this game) the actual mechanics of performing the option were entertaining.

S and M ships definitely have the same problem though, although (aside from Prometheuses... Promethei?) it's over sooner. There just isn't much need to make the player spend several minutes trailing a ship they've already soundly beaten, occasionally knocking on the hatch with an autocannon to remind the crew of their predicament. It adds tedium but there's very little risk of any reversal occurring. I'd rather we just disable the ship in combat and then progress to capturing it once the fight is over. That way if they want to have it take a while, e.g. to add a risk of being caught, then the period of dull waiting at least doesn't require a lot of player input. Things that need more activity on my end ought to reward that by actually being fun to do—and tailing a ship poking it isn't really.

[jlehtone]

I think it's right and proper to ask which activities are fun and which aren't. But above all, to ask how to make the current activities more fun.

They might be testing stepwise approach. This poll identifies the least fun activities. Followup questionaire could focus on the apparent top priority item.

[Nanook]

...
If you are fly-by boarding a ship in a safe (for the victim) area then it might be okay to leave it, but for other ships I'd say it's highly incentivised to sit there keeping it immobile, as if it runs away it might very well die elsewhere.

Never, ever had that happen. My marines always capture a ship before the crew can repair the engines enough to be a problem. It does require me to damage the hull sufficiently so the marines can break in quickly. But that's just to cost of doing business. If I'm in a hostile sector, I will leave a protector ship behind, so that if something attacks I can teleport in and deal with it. Rarely happens, though. Oh, and I never do "fly-by boarding". Too cheesy for me.

There's also a very strong incentive in some cases to manually bail the crew, e.g. SCA ships, because otherwise it will take good marines or cost a fair number of cheap ones. And that is VERY dull to do...

Can't disagree more. I never worry about forcing the crew to bail before boarding. It's called planning ahead and being prepared. If the target appears to be too difficult for my current crop of marines, I board something easier in order to build up their skills. There's a lot more than one fish in the sea, you know. Of course, I do like a challenge. I'd find it dull and boring if there weren't a challenge.

No disrespect intended, but it sounds like you want boarding to be quick and easy?

[LameFox]

Never, ever had that happen. My marines always capture a ship before the crew can repair the engines enough to be a problem. It does require me to damage the hull sufficiently so the marines can break in quickly. But that's just to cost of doing business. If I'm in a hostile sector, I will leave a protector ship behind, so that if something attacks I can teleport in and deal with it. Rarely happens, though. Oh, and I never do "fly-by boarding". Too cheesy for me.

I have known SCA destroyers to get one engine repaired and seemingly instantly enter travel drive and shoot off at high speeds to a gate without apparently needing to accelerate. The game can be very strange about that.

Also, I'm not sure if they ever fixed it, but with destroyers specifically it's my experience that if you leave something near them and go away, they'll hit it with their main guns once in low attention.

Can't disagree more. I never worry about forcing the crew to bail before boarding. It's called planning ahead and being prepared. If the target appears to be too difficult for my current crop of marines, I board something easier in order to build up their skills. There's a lot more than one fish in the sea, you know. Of course, I do like a challenge. I'd find it dull and boring if there weren't a challenge.

Well that's the thing though... bailing the crew is preparing, and it's not a challenge. There have been times I'd use civilian ships to train marines, but that's likewise not much fun to do. I mean military ships like a destroyer only barely put up a fight vs the player even in a small fighter. Things like miners, traders, construction ships, are totally helpless. Nor are most of those especially valuable in terms of selling (though I might take some to use), so I find the actual incentive is pre-bail destroyers early on, not worrying about grinding marine skill at all. Or else to spam them with weak marines, reducing the total profit by a small margin, but at least ending it sooner and moving on to the next one. That's not a lack of preparation, it's a thing that actually works effectively and so I take it into account in preparing.

No disrespect intended, but it sounds like you want boarding to be quick and easy?

I want it to be fun. Right now it's easy but it's also boring. If it was fun to do I wouldn't worry about how long it took.

[Nanook]

...
I want it to be fun. Right now it's easy but it's also boring. If it was fun to do I wouldn't worry about how long it took.

I guess we just have to agree to disagree. I play whole games where the only ships I use or own come from bailing/boarding - I neither produce nor buy any. I quite enjoy the process of purloining NPC ships and I've become quite good at it.

[jlehtone]

Boarding is fun, IMHO.
It could be more fun, if there would be reputation loss when I get the ship -- more for military vessels.
It could be more fun, if there would be (tiny) reputation loss for each person (defenders and attackers) who dies in the fight.

With those in place there would be incentive to add piracy tools: "non-boring toil" to avoid getting blame for blatant crimes you do.

[Bierzerker]

Other : I wished the explore command (which is not really efficient) to be able to automaticly put satellites.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

Setting up multiple stations supplying each other.
X3 had hvt, cls1, cls2 and universe traders.
X4 has station subordinates, NOTHING, repeated orders, and automated traders.

We need a command to link multiple large stations in different sectors without the configuration hazel of repeated orders, that does not kill CPU performance.