Going through some negative feedback while planning the next 4.0 update

[Gregorovitch]

In my case that would have not made the slightest difference to the outcome. For several weeks I essentially had the ONLY shipbuilding facilities available to ANT & ARG. They kept trying to rebuild their own, but HOP were remarkably efficient at hunting them down & smashing them all over again, long before they ready to build ships of their own. Both factions needed to completely replace ALL of their warships (if they had any left they were exceptionally good at hiding from my satellite network) & almost all of their commercial fleets. Soon as I turned my shipyard on for NPC sales they were using it at capacity for weeks - build queues for several dozen ships were pretty much a constant feature. Had no choice about which blueprints to purchase - they needed absolutely everything ASAP, or face extinction. Would have been fine if I could have set my ship prices lower (frankly would have preferred to give away all those ships for free). However 50% was the least I could charge them & it still wrecked my enjoyment of the Trade side of the game.

Heh. My game went exactly the same way as it happens. Only difference is I kicked the HOP's out of all ARG and ANT space myself and that gave ARG the space to rebuild their shipyard. They ordered some ships from me but mostly rebuilt their own navy. Now they're OK.

I am curious as to why you consider this to have ruined your trade game though. And what you would have done about the HOP situation if we didn't have any ship yards.

[GCU Grey Area]

I am curious as to why you consider this to have ruined your trade game though.

The torrential flood of money made Trade pointless - what's the point of queueing up even a high value (1 million+) trade run when the shipyard generates 10x as much before that freighter has even reached the first gate on it's journey?

And what you would have done about the HOP situation if we didn't have any ship yards.

My subsequent game dealt with HOP effectively without building a shipyard. Essentially, just took a ton of war missions for ARG & PAR, to supply them with warships (built at their own shipyards & wharves) & also construct heavily armed defence platforms in key sectors. These were typical designs & proved effective for keeping HOP contained:
Argon:https://www.dropbox.com/s/0nkcy56wt77si ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Paranid:https://www.dropbox.com/s/fgqhdg7ggjavn ... 1.jpg?dl=0

[xant]

The torrential flood of money made Trade pointless - what's the point of queueing up even a high value (1 million+) trade run when the shipyard generates 10x as much before that freighter has even reached the first gate on it's journey?

I wouldn't consider this an issue. Sure, at that point trading runs gain you more or less peanuts, but getting to that point takes quite a few credits. And don't forget that it is still the player's choice if they sell obscene amounts of ships to make billions. If you willingly put your hand in boiling water, don't complain about it being hot.

That being said, my issue is set a bit earlier: it is too easy to get the best blueprints a faction has to offer. It shouldn't even be a matter of credits and reputation, but of missions, theft and reverse-engineering/research. The problem isn't with shipyards, but that you can sell any ship of every size and configuration as soon as you have some credits, since you can collect all blueprints without any hassle.

[GCU Grey Area]

I wouldn't consider this an issue. Sure, at that point trading runs gain you more or less peanuts, but getting to that point takes quite a few credits. And don't forget that it is still the player's choice if they sell obscene amounts of ships to make billions. If you willingly put your hand in boiling water, don't complain about it being hot.

True, however had no way to know that at the time - very first shipyard I built & there wasn't much on the forum about them back then. Thoroughly enjoyed building it & did feel a sense of accomplishment at effectively saving ANT & ARG from extinction simply by supplying them with ships. But the cost was too high in terms of spoiling other aspects of the game I also enjoy. Abandoned that game soon after & have not built one since. It is a pity though, it was a LOT of fun building it & essentially the only thing stopping me from enjoying shipyards now is that the slider for construction prices won't go any lower than 50%. Completely understand why there's a maximum limit on that slider, but why does there need to be a minimum?

[Gregorovitch]

also construct heavily armed defence platforms in key sectors. These were typical designs & proved effective for keeping HOP contained:
Argon:https://www.dropbox.com/s/0nkcy56wt77si ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Paranid:https://www.dropbox.com/s/fgqhdg7ggjavn ... 1.jpg?dl=0

Yes those would definitely give the HOP pause for thought. I built a "death tunnel" defense station design at Second Contact Flashpoint south gate. It certainly works.

I am curious as to why you consider this to have ruined your trade game though.

The torrential flood of money made Trade pointless - what's the point of queueing up even a high value (1 million+) trade run when the shipyard generates 10x as much before that freighter has even reached the first gate on it's journey?

Yes I agree that shipyards currently make virtually all other economic activities virtually meaningless from a profit incentive point of view.

[Lord Crc]

it is too easy to get the best blueprints a faction has to offer. It shouldn't even be a matter of credits and reputation, but of missions, theft and reverse-engineering/research.

Yeah, I think military blueprints (ie primary weapons, military ships, wharf/shipyard modules) should be gated by missions that prove your allegiance. Setting up a sector miner and waiting a long time should not be the only minimum requirement for making your own destroyers!

[ubuntufreakdragon]

The main issues of X4 are Balancing and AI.
AI got quite a few improvements, but combat AI still sucks.
Combat AI should at least get rules for keeping certain distances.
Turrets need a Command to fire at missiles&S/M Ships. (Firing you mainguns at them should be a thing to)
Economic AI if you remove the miners ability to find resource fields please add a prospector command to find them and place probes.

The Balancing on the other Hand still sucks at the same level as 1.0:
Combat ships are only Balanced by amount and placement of hardpoints, that why a Rattlesnake kills fleets while a phoenix dies by flies.
There need to be a cause to leave some hardpoints empty or use lower lever equipment, X3 used energy consumption here and I recommend a reintroduction.
I want the missile defence Mosquito back those flares are useless.
Civil ships are only feasible in smaller sizes, with the repeat orders behaviour L freight ships lost their last cause of existence (to manually supply build plots) the need much more cargo space to be at least a bit competitive to smaller ships.
If you compare the values of M to L cargo ships you will notice all M ships have more space than hull points while all L have much less space than hull, their storage should be multiplied by 4, especially if you consider the price-difference. And station Container S/M storage modules need much more storage too, there is no cause to build them given how cheap an L storage is. Station Container: S 25k M 100k L 1M Liquid/Bulk: S 100k M 500k L 1M

[dtpsprt]

As someone who lived through enconters with X-Rebirth NPC, I find X4 NPC dialogues charming, polite and happily short. Once you play several hours of X-Rebirth you will crave for X4 simple "hello there".

Actually, it seems that the "lesson" learned by X Rebirth (being a testbed and not an actual X game) seems not to have gotten deep enough. You can't hit your toe with a hammer to feel the joy of having the pain go (like Nietze suggests)... a bad thing is a bad thing period.

[dtpsprt]

it is too easy to get the best blueprints a faction has to offer. It shouldn't even be a matter of credits and reputation, but of missions, theft and reverse-engineering/research.

Yeah, I think military blueprints (ie primary weapons, military ships, wharf/shipyard modules) should be gated by missions that prove your allegiance. Setting up a sector miner and waiting a long time should not be the only minimum requirement for making your own destroyers!

+1 to that with the addition that by doing these mission you willingly reduce your reputation with their opposing factions, making it (at least almost) impossible to "serve" both of them at the same time. Blueprints should be lost with loss of reputation too (ship and weapon).

[xant]

Blueprints should be lost with loss of reputation too (ship and weapon).

Taking away anything from a player is always a bad mechanic, so I'm against it. Once obtained you should keep your blueprints. The method of obtaining should be much harder and come, among other things, with (non-permanent) reputation loss, though.

[jlehtone]

Taking away anything from a player is always a bad mechanic, so I'm against it. Once obtained you should keep your blueprints. The method of obtaining should be much harder and come, among other things, with (non-permanent) reputation loss, though.

When Xenon shoot up your Miner, that is "bad mechanic"? Is it "taking from player", or player "giving up" reputation, rank, and related privileges with one faction in exchange to gain some with other?

There are multiple playstyles.
One can become Patriotic Paranid, who publicly hoists the holy colors and renounces inferior Argons (while technically Argons freeze accounts of known terrorist, i.e. discontinue blueprint licenses, etc).

A shady (or ubiqutous) trader that somehow manages to both keep reputation with all sides and exploit their secrets. This indeed should be very difficult to achieve and maintain. If it would remain possible to become true Lord of War, then it should be fine that "simple patriots" are limited to one faction.

[dreamer2008]

- Unfortunately I read a lot about NVidia driver related issues. Already since early november there are a number of issues that are a bit out of our hands. The most obvious one is that UI elements like the hull and shield bar might flicker or completely disappear, but also at least two driver related crashes (one limited to 30xx cards where actually the game just ends abruptly with a device lost). We are doing what we can to get support from NVidia to fix this ASAP. Please be patient if you suffer from any of these issues.

Happy New Year! So that's why I had this problem... I had no idea, and its very dangerous in combat situations when I have no idea how much shield I have left and have to jump to the map really fast to check. I hope it gets fixed soon. Thanks for the info.

[xant]

When Xenon shoot up your Miner, that is "bad mechanic"? Is it "taking from player", or player "giving up" reputation, rank, and related privileges with one faction in exchange to gain some with other?

There are multiple playstyles.
One can become Patriotic Paranid, who publicly hoists the holy colors and renounces inferior Argons (while technically Argons freeze accounts of known terrorist, i.e. discontinue blueprint licenses, etc).

A shady (or ubiqutous) trader that somehow manages to both keep reputation with all sides and exploit their secrets. This indeed should be very difficult to achieve and maintain. If it would remain possible to become true Lord of War, then it should be fine that "simple patriots" are limited to one faction.

There is no mechanic that makes it mandatory to lose my Miners to anything. When I lose one, it always comes down to me not being careful enough.

But blueprints? They aren't physical objects, they're like skills and abilities: once learned it is impossible to take them away. Knowledge can't be taken away, especially not against the will of its holder. One could argue that we might lose the ability to legally build ships and that we take rep hits whenever we do it anyway, but straight up taking away something against every logic? That's a bad mechanic.

That aside, you're not wrong that any faction should have some reservations when dealing with a third party that asks for their most valuable military secrets. As I said in my earlier posts, those blueprints shouldn't be made buyable in the first place.

[Panos]

Hi guys,
and 5.0 already in the plans of course).

With 5.0 are you going to consider a character creation? Not something fancy just as we pick a start eg Young Gun, to be able to select gender (no race) and a pre-selected avatar which do not need to be many. Just 2 per gender per race.

There are mods doing more than that tbh but prefering to keep game vanilla for the remaining achievements

[Revan Tair]

I wouldn't consider this an issue. Sure, at that point trading runs gain you more or less peanuts, but getting to that point takes quite a few credits. And don't forget that it is still the player's choice if they sell obscene amounts of ships to make billions. If you willingly put your hand in boiling water, don't complain about it being hot.

True, however had no way to know that at the time - very first shipyard I built & there wasn't much on the forum about them back then. Thoroughly enjoyed building it & did feel a sense of accomplishment at effectively saving ANT & ARG from extinction simply by supplying them with ships. But the cost was too high in terms of spoiling other aspects of the game I also enjoy. Abandoned that game soon after & have not built one since. It is a pity though, it was a LOT of fun building it & essentially the only thing stopping me from enjoying shipyards now is that the slider for construction prices won't go any lower than 50%. Completely understand why there's a maximum limit on that slider, but why does there need to be a minimum?

Tbh, why do we need MIN and MAX prices at all? I would like to see free form prices, where everything starts with their current average prices and then they are free. Would up the opportunity for the player tremendously. And this would be first a local effect etc, so it could ripple through the galaxy if left unchecked. So more opportunities. That and finite amount of Credits would be awesome + a mechanic to create new Credits (Maybe tied to overall EC production? just tossing ideas here). Those two changes are a must for me and I would LOVE to see them implemented.

tl;dr abolish min and max prices, free form prices beginning from avg price; finite credits + mechanic to create more credits.

Revan Tair

[Raevyan]

The main issues of X4 are Balancing and AI.
AI got quite a few improvements, but combat AI still sucks.
Combat AI should at least get rules for keeping certain distances.
Turrets need a Command to fire at missiles&S/M Ships. (Firing you mainguns at them should be a thing to)
Economic AI if you remove the miners ability to find resource fields please add a prospector command to find them and place probes.

The Balancing on the other Hand still sucks at the same level as 1.0:
Combat ships are only Balanced by amount and placement of hardpoints, that why a Rattlesnake kills fleets while a phoenix dies by flies.
There need to be a cause to leave some hardpoints empty or use lower lever equipment, X3 used energy consumption here and I recommend a reintroduction.
I want the missile defence Mosquito back those flares are useless.
Civil ships are only feasible in smaller sizes, with the repeat orders behaviour L freight ships lost their last cause of existence (to manually supply build plots) the need much more cargo space to be at least a bit competitive to smaller ships.
If you compare the values of M to L cargo ships you will notice all M ships have more space than hull points while all L have much less space than hull, their storage should be multiplied by 4, especially if you consider the price-difference. And station Container S/M storage modules need much more storage too, there is no cause to build them given how cheap an L storage is. Station Container: S 25k M 100k L 1M Liquid/Bulk: S 100k M 500k L 1M

Totally agree with you. I‘ll also add trader and manager ai to the problem. Especially those autotraders/distribute Ware ones, that prefer shorter distance to sell 1 unit instead of a full cargo load. I still see station traders transporting 10 units and since we cannot control which traders buying/selling specific wares, L freighter are pretty much useless.

Also faction ai is terrible. They still don’t react to a single K that is killing all stations in a sector...

I‘d also add the pilot leveling system to the list of problems. It’s still as bad as it was with 1.0. the changes made didn’t change that much in my opinion.

I also don’t agree with the random Khaak spawning everywhere to harass miners. We don’t have jump drives anymore. Makes no sense that they randomly spawn Out of thin air next to your miners...
Especially when you assign escort ships to your trader and they fly ahead/get left behind because they don’t fly in formation.

I‘m glad to see that Bernd took some time reading the feedback but on the other hand it’s kinda sad that he did not address the more major issue the game has. A lot of the more popular issues seem to get very Little attention.

[Bernd]

Hi guys,
and 5.0 already in the plans of course).

With 5.0 are you going to consider a character creation? Not something fancy just as we pick a start eg Young Gun, to be able to select gender (no race) and a pre-selected avatar which do not need to be many. Just 2 per gender per race.

There are mods doing more than that tbh but prefering to keep game vanilla for the remaining achievements

You may have noted that we have been working on a custom gamestart mode. The code for that is in the game already and this is what one mod is basically unlocking. We have not made it available as a general feature yet, because it is ... well unfinished. Right now it is not a priority to work on, but we will surely improve on this and release it at some point.

[dreamer2008]

Also faction ai is terrible. They still don’t react to a single K that is killing all stations in a sector...

I've seen that happen in my game too, with the Antigone Republic sector with their Equipment dock, which they lost together with all the other stations because of a single K.

[drJulien]

Great suggestions here!
Manage List of Ships!


I just want to suggest more ways to list your ships. More columns, sort by ship type (the icon), total profit and profit in past hour, qty of items traded, #kills(not counting on that one). These columns you should be able to find all ships, including those assigned to a manager.

I remember some ship lost their captain and I had to browse each manage in the tiny menu to find that ship, eventually finding it by luck. Maybe promote the best crewmate by default, or set an option to promote when you're on comms asking for someone to change jobs.

Not expecting much help on this so I'm already working on an external tool that reads the savegame. See my other reply for the project another guy started.
Good work!

[Imperial Good]

Rather than reducing sale cost per ship, the profit per ship should be reduced. This way there is much more money to be made with normal stations supplying ship building wares rather than only with the shipyard. Currently the entire supply chain is top loaded with most (90%+) of profit being made selling ships to the NPCs. This has the other side effect of once a player buys a shipyard or warf then making ships becomes dirt cheap due to them bypassing this markup and the materials are cheap.

By lowering this markup of actually making the ships, the shipyard/warf becomes an optional ultimate goal for players late game. Most of the game they could get by making and trading intermediates as that would be where most of the profit is made. The player also never gets access to cheap ships since they will either have to pay a lot more to buy in the wares, or lose out on a lot more not selling these wares or the ship to a NPC. This would encourage a much more natural flow of progression of their economy going from individual miners/traders and trade stations to stations supplying intermediates to finally shipyards/wharves using their intermediates.

It is also important that getting money is not a grind, especially early game. although getting a warf in 8 hours is a tad fast, I would not want to see that time extended past 36-48 hours if the player knows what they are doing. As it is many new people have saves that are 6-7 days in and still cannot afford ship building.