So,we don't have the XL class non-carrier warships in X4

[razor202]

Last year I just posted the topic below to discuss this problem and it seems that my worrying is ture. The so-called destroyers like the Behemoths are just L class warships and they are more like the M7s in X3 rather than the M2s. Besides, the carriers in X4 don't have enough heavy firepower. I missed the old M2s and hope the XL class non-carrier warships will be added to the game in the future patches.
viewtopic.php?f=146&t=396908

[Playbahnosh]

Yea, ship variety is underwhelming to say the least, only a tiny fraction of what it used to be in X3/TC/AP. It's not only their type, but most of them look almost exactly the same as well.
Well, Ego did say they gonna release DLCs with more ships and content, I'm curious just how large will these actually be... I want my TM's and my Griffon back

[Vaeo]

"You can pilot anything!"

*proceeds to make the game with less ships than any other game*

[-Kulu-]

For me the biggest issue is the sizes. Ships alle feel the same size to me. Even the bigger ships are small. Remember the first time you flew by a TL, M1 or M2 in the days? That was impressive!https://external-preview.redd.it/EXq4Z2 ... 328f29ab04

[Kadatherion]

Unfortunately, I believe we'll have to rely more on mods for that this time. Ships feeling, looking and behaving like smaller ones is in good part a result of how the universe and traveling works now. You have to travel long distances, gone are the jumpdrive times that would instantly pop you into a smaller, enclosed sector, so you can't really have the sluggish and incredibly slow behemoths of X3, it would mix badly with the flow and feel bad gameplay wise to many players. There are those who wouldn't mind though, and mods will probably cater to that audience.

[Warnoise]

Unfortunately, I believe we'll have to rely more on mods for that this time. Ships feeling, looking and behaving like smaller ones is in good part a result of how the universe and traveling works now. You have to travel long distances, gone are the jumpdrive times that would instantly pop you into a smaller, enclosed sector, so you can't really have the sluggish and incredibly slow behemoths of X3, it would mix badly with the flow and feel bad gameplay wise to many players. There are those who wouldn't mind though, and mods will probably cater to that audience.

At this rate Egosoft should just open source the whole thing and let the modders make their game. Recently Egosoft is getting worse and worse with X rebirth and now X4 and i personally think rely too much on modders....i hate those who abuse the goodwill of others tbh.

[JamesTheClarke]

For me the biggest issue is the sizes. Ships alle feel the same size to me. Even the bigger ships are small. Remember the first time you flew by a TL, M1 or M2 in the days? That was impressive!https://external-preview.redd.it/EXq4Z2 ... 328f29ab04

Agreed, this ship sizes currently just don't feel right. The first time I came across a Mammoth in X4 I actually thought this was an M6 type vessel from X3. Then I looked it up online and thought "that's it?!"

I'm honestly also a bit concerned about the new design direction of the ships in general. The new Teladi "Mushrooms" just look a bit too sleek for them, gone are the bulky rectangular masses of scrap metal slowly ploughing across space.

In a similar vain the old sleekness of Argon ships has been tempered by more angular and flat surfaces which reminds me a lot more of Terran ship design overall. Argons used to employ curved, sleek and narrow designs - opposing their Terran relatives with their wide, flat and angular ships.


I hope Egosoft keeps in mind what made the ship design in X3 so fantastic, especially since half of the major factions are currently missing in X4. It's easy to paint oneself into a corner design-wise when not all of the main factions are available at launch.

[Playbahnosh]

... There are those who wouldn't mind though, and mods will probably cater to that audience.

EGOSOFT always heavily relied on modders to fix and expand their games. Hell, the Bonus Packs for previous X games have been solely modded content. Also, many of the now "core" features we take for granted in previous X titles, like Mosquito Missile Defense, Sector/Universe Traders, CAG/CLS, the turret fixes, fleet mechanics, station automation, mobile mining, stock market, etc, were all done solely by modders and incorporated into the game later. And what incredible games they've become as a result of that. I know I sank thousands of hours of gametime into X3TC alone, which wouldn't have been possible without modding the game to oblivion.

But, there are a lot of things that simply couldn't be done in old X games, due to the severe limitations of the old engine. With X4, we got a new engine. It's still heavily a work-in-progress, but I think when the modders get comfortable enough in this new setting, we'll see some incredible stuff unfold in this game in a few months/years. I don't think EGOSOFT realizes just how much their continued existence is thanks to the modders alone.

[Baconnaise]

Unfortunately, I believe we'll have to rely more on mods for that this time. Ships feeling, looking and behaving like smaller ones is in good part a result of how the universe and traveling works now. You have to travel long distances, gone are the jumpdrive times that would instantly pop you into a smaller, enclosed sector, so you can't really have the sluggish and incredibly slow behemoths of X3, it would mix badly with the flow and feel bad gameplay wise to many players. There are those who wouldn't mind though, and mods will probably cater to that audience.

At this rate Egosoft should just open source the whole thing and let the modders make their game. Recently Egosoft is getting worse and worse with X rebirth and now X4 and i personally think rely too much on modders....i hate those who abuse the goodwill of others tbh.

I actually think X-Rebirth turned out to be a great game and likely the best in the series with one caveat. You're still technically stuck with just the skunk. That right there is what sinks what is likely the best (after years of patches and mods) X game in the series.

[Warnoise]

Unfortunately, I believe we'll have to rely more on mods for that this time. Ships feeling, looking and behaving like smaller ones is in good part a result of how the universe and traveling works now. You have to travel long distances, gone are the jumpdrive times that would instantly pop you into a smaller, enclosed sector, so you can't really have the sluggish and incredibly slow behemoths of X3, it would mix badly with the flow and feel bad gameplay wise to many players. There are those who wouldn't mind though, and mods will probably cater to that audience.

At this rate Egosoft should just open source the whole thing and let the modders make their game. Recently Egosoft is getting worse and worse with X rebirth and now X4 and i personally think rely too much on modders....i hate those who abuse the goodwill of others tbh.

I actually think X-Rebirth turned out to be a great game and likely the best in the series with one caveat. You're still technically stuck with just the skunk. That right there is what sinks what is likely the best (after years of patches and mods) X game in the series.

Speaking frankly, the universe of X rebirth at launch is far more fleshed out than X4. At least in X rebirth the factions felt different, there was a story between them and they had purposes. The design of the ships was amazing (S/M ships were meh though). Too bad the bugs and some wierd design choices made X rebirth into a bad X game (which i personally enjoyed after the patches)

[Kadatherion]

... There are those who wouldn't mind though, and mods will probably cater to that audience.

EGOSOFT always heavily relied on modders to fix and expand their games. Hell, the Bonus Packs for previous X games have been solely modded content. Also, many of the now "core" features we take for granted in previous X titles, like Mosquito Missile Defense, Sector/Universe Traders, CAG/CLS, the turret fixes, fleet mechanics, station automation, mobile mining, stock market, etc, were all done solely by modders and incorporated into the game later. And what incredible games they've become as a result of that. I know I sank thousands of hours of gametime into X3TC alone, which wouldn't have been possible without modding the game to oblivion.

But, there are a lot of things that simply couldn't be done in old X games, due to the severe limitations of the old engine. With X4, we got a new engine. It's still heavily a work-in-progress, but I think when the modders get comfortable enough in this new setting, we'll see some incredible stuff unfold in this game in a few months/years. I don't think EGOSOFT realizes just how much their continued existence is thanks to the modders alone.

No doubt about that, although I do think they realize it very well, or at least better than most other companies (X3AP is a fine example of this, there was so much content and ideas coming from modders natively put into it). The only thing that I don't understand is why, when a new game comes out, so many of the mechanics they learned from mods and then integrated more or less directly from them, are lost and the process has to start anew, AGAIN.

But I also believe we tend to overestimate how many people actually use mods. There's a lot, for sure, but in the grand scope of things they still are a minority of any game playerbase, and as such customers. Hell, even in Bethesda games, that for players like us have value almost only because of the huge modding capability and relative offer they generate, people who actually play them modded is definitely a small minority.

Fact is, Egosoft has chosen an approach they thought would best cater to the whole audience, and they won't deviate TOO MUCH from it, it would make no sense. As stated, if you were to add the colossal ships from X3 back in here, to make them work as expected they'd have to profoundly revisit how the actual space faring works, which quickly becomes like making a total different game. They need to make and polish a game they believe is going to be well received even by the "casuals": often these choices stray very far from the vision of more invested players that (not) coincidentally also are used to the modding concept. That's why I believe it's going to be mods, more than ever, that will bring the game closer to my own tastes. Egosoft has to think about a bigger picture: a bigger picture that, unfortunately, I know only seldomly matches my own vision of an old gamer that's very patient and tied to admittedly very old habits which are progressively dying in the current videogame industry.

[Playbahnosh]

... The only thing that I don't understand is why, when a new game comes out, so many of the mechanics they learned from mods and then integrated more or less directly from them, are lost and the process has to start anew, AGAIN.

The answer to that IMHO is in the name: EGOsoft. Simply, they think they know better. It's their game after all, so it figures after all these years the devs would have a pretty damn good idea how to make a space sim...
aaaaand that's where they are completely wrong. The hard truth of the matter is, if you think about it, EGOSOFT actually never made a good game. Ever since they started the X series, all they did is release a buggy-crashy mess with barebones mechanics and then let the modders and the community feedback shape what it became later. The devs only released a scaffold of a game, but it was the community that made the games great, not Egosoft. Even the simple fact they had to integrate huge modifications and extensions to core mechanics and features from mods into the official game shows it severely lacking in those features and Ego couldn't make them themselves.

The thing about mods, as opposed to studio developed games, is the fact mods have a "sink or swim" selection process. The mods that are actually used by the community, usually get developed further and expanded upon. Useless or faulty mods simply vanish because no one would use them, quite understandably. It's like a free-for-all of game mechanics, the community votes with their usage/engagement what they want and do not want to be in the game, and this directly shapes what the game will ultimately become in the long run. If you played X3TC, tell me you could play the game without Mosquito Missile Defense, the turret improvements, CLS/CAG, Sector/Universe Traders (or Trading Software MK3), all the station and fleet automation improvements, etc. I damn sure couldn't. These are just the mechanics and QoL improvements I simply can't imagine the game without anymore, and apparently a lot of other people neither, seeing as how the Bonus Pack is a thing. And Egosoft knows this full well.

The problem with X4 is, again, the Egosoft guys thought they learned from their previous games and knew what they were doing, so they opted to just forget about all the improvements the community made to their games along the years. Sadly, the same exact scenario developed, again. Egosoft made a scaffold, a Foundation of a good game (yes, pun intended), on which now the community will build an actual good game in the coming months/years, and I bet Egosoft will be just as blind to what is exactly happening as they were countless times before, patting themselves on the back for the success of a game they did not create.

They need to make and polish a game they believe is going to be well received even by the "casuals": often these choices stray very far from the vision of more invested players that (not) coincidentally also are used to the modding concept.

That is exactly what Rebirth was. An X game "for the casuals". With all main mechanics of previous X games reworked, dumbed down or simply removed, the controls and UI designed for Xbox controllers, the complete lack of freedom and choices, being railroaded into a concept, a story with handholding, all interaction through NPCs, titty-window, etc. It was an X game designed for a 10 year-old CoD player, the "lowest common denominator". EGOSOFT either couldn't or wouldn't understand the fact, that they created a very niche game with the X series. A game, that caters to a small but very loyal hardcore audience who would play their games for years instead of dropping it after an hour and moving on to the next popular garbage. This small but loyal fanbase simply wasn't enough for Ego. They thought they can make empire building space sims mainstream somehow. I mean, just think about it, they couldn't get any wronger if they tried It's like playing denpa grindcore at a disco, or jumping in the swimming pool in a suit&tie. It just doesn't work that way.

Instead of looking at what actually worked in the past, what made the X series such a hit with it's audience, what keeps people still playing the game after decades, they opted, again, to try and reinvent the wheel. Literally no one asked for flashy station interiors or walking NPCs or gigantic sprawls of unnavigable station-cities. When I looked around the forums, my friends and myself back then, people were literally asking for "X3TC with better graphics", nothing more, nothing less. After years of modding and patching, that game had everything most players ever wanted, they way they wanted it. The only reason it stopped there was the limitations of the very aging X2 engine that was ported over to X3. With a new engine, a lot more stuff could be improved even further than before. But no, Egosoft opted to "know better", scrapped all the community improvements and went with their own idea of what X4 should be, and it shows, sadly. Of course they will be proven wrong yet again (for the 6th time now) when the modders and the community finally starts to sculpt and shape the game to what we want, instead of what Ego thought we wanted.

[Viperswhip]

For me, I am seeing very little difference between the ships anyway. There's no stats on the shields, a low variety of weapons, and ya, the ships sizes are reduced, but that doesn't bother me too much.

[Imari]

The ship variety and pool seems even worse off compared to X Rebirth to be honest.
Am kinda disappointed.

[Warnoise]

... The only thing that I don't understand is why, when a new game comes out, so many of the mechanics they learned from mods and then integrated more or less directly from them, are lost and the process has to start anew, AGAIN.

The answer to that IMHO is in the name: EGOsoft. Simply, they think they know better. It's their game after all, so it figures after all these years the devs would have a pretty damn good idea how to make a space sim...
aaaaand that's where they are completely wrong. The hard truth of the matter is, if you think about it, EGOSOFT actually never made a good game. Ever since they started the X series, all they did is release a buggy-crashy mess with barebones mechanics and then let the modders and the community feedback shape what it became later. The devs only released a scaffold of a game, but it was the community that made the games great, not Egosoft. Even the simple fact they had to integrate huge modifications and extensions to core mechanics and features from mods into the official game shows it severely lacking in those features and Ego couldn't make them themselves.

The thing about mods, as opposed to studio developed games, is the fact mods have a "sink or swim" selection process. The mods that are actually used by the community, usually get developed further and expanded upon. Useless or faulty mods simply vanish because no one would use them, quite understandably. It's like a free-for-all of game mechanics, the community votes with their usage/engagement what they want and do not want to be in the game, and this directly shapes what the game will ultimately become in the long run. If you played X3TC, tell me you could play the game without Mosquito Missile Defense, the turret improvements, CLS/CAG, Sector/Universe Traders (or Trading Software MK3), all the station and fleet automation improvements, etc. I damn sure couldn't. These are just the mechanics and QoL improvements I simply can't imagine the game without anymore, and apparently a lot of other people neither, seeing as how the Bonus Pack is a thing. And Egosoft knows this full well.

The problem with X4 is, again, the Egosoft guys thought they learned from their previous games and knew what they were doing, so they opted to just forget about all the improvements the community made to their games along the years. Sadly, the same exact scenario developed, again. Egosoft made a scaffold, a Foundation of a good game (yes, pun intended), on which now the community will build an actual good game in the coming months/years, and I bet Egosoft will be just as blind to what is exactly happening as they were countless times before, patting themselves on the back for the success of a game they did not create.

They need to make and polish a game they believe is going to be well received even by the "casuals": often these choices stray very far from the vision of more invested players that (not) coincidentally also are used to the modding concept.

That is exactly what Rebirth was. An X game "for the casuals". With all main mechanics of previous X games reworked, dumbed down or simply removed, the controls and UI designed for Xbox controllers, the complete lack of freedom and choices, being railroaded into a concept, a story with handholding, all interaction through NPCs, titty-window, etc. It was an X game designed for a 10 year-old CoD player, the "lowest common denominator". EGOSOFT either couldn't or wouldn't understand the fact, that they created a very niche game with the X series. A game, that caters to a small but very loyal hardcore audience who would play their games for years instead of dropping it after an hour and moving on to the next popular garbage. This small but loyal fanbase simply wasn't enough for Ego. They thought they can make empire building space sims mainstream somehow. I mean, just think about it, they couldn't get any wronger if they tried It's like playing denpa grindcore at a disco, or jumping in the swimming pool in a suit&tie. It just doesn't work that way.

Instead of looking at what actually worked in the past, what made the X series such a hit with it's audience, what keeps people still playing the game after decades, they opted, again, to try and reinvent the wheel. Literally no one asked for flashy station interiors or walking NPCs or gigantic sprawls of unnavigable station-cities. When I looked around the forums, my friends and myself back then, people were literally asking for "X3TC with better graphics", nothing more, nothing less. After years of modding and patching, that game had everything most players ever wanted, they way they wanted it. The only reason it stopped there was the limitations of the very aging X2 engine that was ported over to X3. With a new engine, a lot more stuff could be improved even further than before. But no, Egosoft opted to "know better", scrapped all the community improvements and went with their own idea of what X4 should be, and it shows, sadly. Of course they will be proven wrong yet again (for the 6th time now) when the modders and the community finally starts to sculpt and shape the game to what we want, instead of what Ego thought we wanted.

Truer words have never been said in this forum. +1

[Dreez]

If the largest non-carrier combatships won't be much larger than a "corvette" sized ship, i'm going to be sorely disappointed.

I was hoping for M6 M7 M2 M0 size differenses. Sofar i'm rather disappointed in the design of the Argonships, because they all look identical.
Back in X3TC, there was a huge differense between all the classes of one race of ships. The Centaur and Cerberus looked nothing alike,
while the Argon M2 looked like a Cerberus all grown up on Steroids, alike but still different enough.

I might also add that the differense in size and firepower between the M6 M7 and M2 was significant.

I've just started playing X4, barely gotten anything done, haven't even bought a new ship yet. But i'm really hoping my fears are unwarranted.

[Playbahnosh]

Truer words have never been said in this forum. +1

I don't know about that. All I know, I've been a space sim fan ever since Freelancer and XBTF. I played almost every single space sim that came out ever since, and there is a good reason I spent thousands of hours in X3/TC and not other ones. Because X is the game that let me play my own story, had the freedom and possibilities to TRADE-FIGHT-BUILD-THINK or any combination of it. A game that didn't railroad me into a vision of what the devs thought I should play, but a game actually built by the community, intentionally or otherwise. I actually didn't mind Ego releasing buggy messes with broken mechanics and barebones content, because that allowed the community to turn the games into what we wanted to play. Take X3AP for example. It's basically a fully patched X3TC with a TON of modded content integrated. The stock exchange, the faction wars, CLS/CAG, Dockware manager, etc, those all mods, none of that was made by Egosoft, they just incorporated the most popular mods and unofficial fixes and patches into a X3TC frame, and released it with a few bits of story. Was it a blatant cash-grab? Sure it was. But you know what? That was the best X experience I've ever had, aside from modded X3TC, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone with this.

I don't think Bernd and Ego will ever realize Rebirth didn't tank because it was a bad game, but because it was a bad X game. Sure, it was a buggy-crashy, unfinished, unplayable mess, but that wasn't the real issue. It was the fact, that it simply wasn't an X game at all. Rebirth took away the one thing that made the X series such a success with it's community: the freedom and possibilities. Constrained to one ship, basically no customization, railroaded into one stupid plot in a very constrained universe, forced to bumble around stupid station corridors hunting awful NPCs, etc. It was a Freelancer 2 wannabe, and a terrible one at that. It had basically nothing to do with the X series at all. Now, after years of patching I guess it's a playable game now, but that doesn't change the fact it's the game's core, it's very idea that's wrong. Just imagine a GTA game where you are forced to drive only one car with a chick riding shotgun you can't get rid of. See what I mean?

[Kadatherion]

Word by word my own thoughts, Playbahnosh, except for one thing: there were - and are - indeed a lot of people pressuring for the station interiors. Which is a mighty fine concept on paper, less so in reality, unless you have a 100mil budget to make both the actual space sim and such a feature at the same level of polish, detail and depth. Interiors are now way better than they were in Rebirth - they are streamlined and with some much needed shortcuts, wasting less of your time, and less generic - but still... they do waste your time as they are still mandatory for a plethora of functionalities that would feel natural to have via your cockpit (at least *too*), and still are overall quite generic and, most of all, devoid of real features and much depth gameplay wise. They are not as embarassing as they were, but still there's lot of room for improvement. Some of which Ego itself will never really be able to do (like giving some real dialogue to npcs): but at least the system seems decent enough now that maybe we can hope for mods in that department too.

Fact is, Ego often has nice ideas, but the execution is chaotic, a disorderly ragtag of a function that mindbogglingly forgets how the same result could be obtained in much easier, less confusing and more functional ways. Hell, think of cargo exchange between ships: someone took the time to script how to do that in space, with the two ships having to follow each other, one dropping a ware, the other one scooping it up, which isn't just unintuitive, it takes ages... and you can't simply transfer them when both ships are docked via a basic click interface like in X3? Nor via transporter device? Were they high when coding that forgetting the much easier solution? They actually spent way more developing time than needed to get a result that is neither realistic (and as such is not "immersive" in the least) nor comfortable for the player, leaving a glaring, blatant hole for everyone to scratch their heads at. This kind of feeling permeates the game from top to bottom, it's just silly. These actually are the errors that usually *modders* do, as they are amateurs who often get to their intended result improvising and working around some hardcoded roadblock, not the actual devs: with X games this comparison often gets turned upside down.

As for the "catering to casuals" thing... heh, we are on the same page there too, but let's be honest: a game makes most of its profits right after its launch, so from a publishing standpoint it's often more important to have some intriguing promises rather than actually delivering on them. Being able to promise the customer base you have those "seamless" station interiors, for instance, is profitable regardless of how good they actually are. Once the game has sold - and refunds are always in reality a very small percentage - you more or less got away with it.
Casuals will lose their interest soon anyway, at which point it's the purists, and the modders, either the ones keeping the game alive, or whom the devs keep the game alive for. In this we have to concede one thing to Egosoft: they don't abandon their games. Whether it might be because of passion or because they know having a still thriving community years after a launch will be beneficial for the next release (both legitimate reasons, no one works for charity alone), they do keep working on them for a long time. Something that many other developing houses won't care about even if they have atrocious day 1 releases. In this day and age of gaming, it's no small achievement.

[Osbot]

Unfortunately, I believe we'll have to rely more on mods for that this time. Ships feeling, looking and behaving like smaller ones is in good part a result of how the universe and traveling works now. You have to travel long distances, gone are the jumpdrive times that would instantly pop you into a smaller, enclosed sector, so you can't really have the sluggish and incredibly slow behemoths of X3, it would mix badly with the flow and feel bad gameplay wise to many players. There are those who wouldn't mind though, and mods will probably cater to that audience.

At this rate Egosoft should just open source the whole thing and let the modders make their game. Recently Egosoft is getting worse and worse with X rebirth and now X4 and i personally think rely too much on modders....i hate those who abuse the goodwill of others tbh.

Have you actually played any X games at launch besides rebirth? X3 was far worse, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar worse than X4 is in terms of release quality.

X3 after 3-4 years isn't the same as X4 after 3-4 days.

[Lwerewolf]

This thread needs to be set on the right course

Unfortunately, I believe we'll have to rely more on mods for that this time. Ships feeling, looking and behaving like smaller ones is in good part a result of how the universe and traveling works now. You have to travel long distances, gone are the jumpdrive times that would instantly pop you into a smaller, enclosed sector, so you can't really have the sluggish and incredibly slow behemoths of X3, it would mix badly with the flow and feel bad gameplay wise to many players. There are those who wouldn't mind though, and mods will probably cater to that audience.

They had similar environments in X:Rebirth, and the capitals there were quite a bit more intimidating than the x4 ones (size-wise). No problems moving about - they go through gates and use boosters (pretty much "travel mode" in x:rebirth - ~3000m/s with capital ships) to navigate the sectors. There's a mod allowing them to use the superhighways, but in vanilla they use jumpdrives to jump to beacons between sectors. Inter-cluster is still via jumpgates. Beyond that, big, sluggish and overpowered... excluding the balor and sucellus, unless you use the combat AI mod, in which case they use their main weapons and maintain their range advantage (= scary).

Oh, and they do look glorious when firing all guns

At any rate, must be some other reason for the decline in capital ship size. Hopefully things will get better with the expansions, but I highly doubt that they'll change what we currently have, sadly.

Unfortunately, I believe we'll have to rely more on mods for that this time. Ships feeling, looking and behaving like smaller ones is in good part a result of how the universe and traveling works now. You have to travel long distances, gone are the jumpdrive times that would instantly pop you into a smaller, enclosed sector, so you can't really have the sluggish and incredibly slow behemoths of X3, it would mix badly with the flow and feel bad gameplay wise to many players. There are those who wouldn't mind though, and mods will probably cater to that audience.

At this rate Egosoft should just open source the whole thing and let the modders make their game. Recently Egosoft is getting worse and worse with X rebirth and now X4 and i personally think rely too much on modders....i hate those who abuse the goodwill of others tbh.

X:Rebirth turned out quite well in the end, and the VR edition is one of the better VR games overall. With respect to sector/cluster feel and so on (especially with the two expansions), IMO it beats x4 in its current state. Vanilla sector design with the mess of highways is another story
As for X4 - look up the launch of X3. TC's launch wasn't very pretty either. See how both games ended up. If anything, X4 is the best major Egosoft launch so far IMO.