How likely is it that patches/fixes will require a restart?

[HoneyRun]

Did anything like that happen with X3 or Rebirth? I like that they are quick to fix their games, even though it's totally not professional - nowadays it's what Early Access is for, but I'm wondering if it has ever happened that a patch require a total restart because it added or fixed things that could not be fixed normally like AI or things like that? I'm not sure how happy I'd be to play 500h or one save and then a new patch comes and you need to restart because things get added. I understand this for procedurally generated games (Minecraft with new biomes, also No Man's Sky which already has too many resets to count and f.ucks [Germans censoring the F word!] up the planets every update...), but X games are not one of those.

[X2-Illuminatus]

It's unlikely and never happened for either of the previous games that you would have to restart your game after a patch had been released. What can sometimes happen though is that a bug fix first takes effect in a new start. However, this should either be explained in the changelog or should be clear from the context of the bug fix (e.g. a fix for a bug in a plot mission won't have any effect on your game, if you completed that plot already).

[HoneyRun]

a fix for a bug in a plot mission won't have any effect on your game, if you completed that plot already

Fair enough, I can understand that, unless it adds a one-time reward like one of the reward ships in X3 for one of the plots (my memory is a bit rusty). Thank you.