Missing Combat missions?!

[tuman78]

In all the X series of games I have played so far there has always been combat missions i.e. defend a station, patrol a sector, kill a pirate etc. This was something I always enjoyed and is my goto game style i.e. blow stuff up. In X4:F I can not find a single one of these missions and as such I am missing the Fight part of this game.

Am I missing something here or are these missions really not in this game? If not can any one (devs?) explain why the fight part of this game is gone and if there are any plans to bring it back?

Thanks.

[Geek]

I miss them too.
But generic combat missions require to spawn ships out of thin air, and that is a big issue for some people.
A typical case of realism going in the way of fun.

[Nikola515]

If people dont like them than dont do them... It is simple as that I agree with OP X4 is boring and only aspect that work is trading. I'm actually playing game with scout because there is no threat of anything. There is not even reason to upgrade to new ship

[Helmut_AUT]

Am I missing something here or are these missions really not in this game? If not can any one (devs?) explain why the fight part of this game is gone and if there are any plans to bring it back?

I too would like to know. I'm not a veteran, only started with X:R, but that was my playstyle there. If the "full economy" means that for some reason they can't generate combat missions anymore, and the "war" doesn't work either, then what we have here is mostly a space trading and building sim.

[Teleth]

Combat missions in X3 were indeed pretty disgusting. I don't think it was at all interesting to just spawn a few special crafts for the player to blow up. I think it's okay to do this occasionally for story but these kind of things have very little effect on the game world, mostly just on your wallet, which is not something preferable in a sandbox environment.

That said, there's no reason why these missions cannot still exist - the game simply has to choose appropriate targets of engagement and give them orders to create a scenario for it rather than wish them out of thin air.
Stations could order assassinations/strikes of rival traders and assets who can be protected by wings or marauders, or you could be ordered to cripple production of certain production chains etc. All the combat you could ever want really, outside of an actual war zone. That's just one quick idea, there's really a huge choice of interesting scenarios that could be drummed up without resorting to spawning anything.

It seems like there either is no procedural mission generation going on, or the 'war' was supposed to fulfill this niche of the game.

[Mavo Pi]

I got a combat mission yesterday but they seem to be very rare. Mission was issued by Antigone and I had to destroy a HOP miner ship in one of the HOP sectors.

[Geek]

Stations could order assassinations/strikes of rival traders and assets who can be protected by wings or marauders, or you could be ordered to cripple production of certain production chains etc. All the combat you could ever want really, outside of an actual war zone. That's just one quick idea, there's really a huge choice of interesting scenarios that could be drummed up without resorting to spawning anything.

Uh... I have yet to see any trading ship with escorts. So no, it is a fail.
Generally speaking, there is no way for such a system to exist without mutliplying the number of ships in the game by a huge factor, and then you will need a supercalculator to run it.

[Teleth]

Stations could order assassinations/strikes of rival traders and assets who can be protected by wings or marauders, or you could be ordered to cripple production of certain production chains etc. All the combat you could ever want really, outside of an actual war zone. That's just one quick idea, there's really a huge choice of interesting scenarios that could be drummed up without resorting to spawning anything.

Uh... I have yet to see any trading ship with escorts. So no, it is a fail.
Generally speaking, there is no way for such a system to exist without mutliplying the number of ships in the game by a huge factor, and then you will need a supercalculator to run it.

What I mean is the system assigns some appropriately sized ships to protecting the trader for the duration of the mission, not that it has a wing protecting each and every trader in existence. It's something that can be done within the laws of the game world, rather than just plopping the things into existence for some pew pew.

[Geek]

There are nowhere near enough combat ships for that to happen, except in a few core sectors.
And even there they may have other things to do.

[Vandragorax]

Agreed, we need 'spawning' on-demand assets for certain missions like combat. There is no big deal with spawning assets, as long as it's done in a believable way that fits with the game and scenario. EVERY game has AI that 'cheats' and some more blatantly than others, hell even RTS games have AI that cheats whilst the player has to collect every resource, manage their build queue, think about strategies etc. the AI just 'cheats' and usually has unlimited resources, just mimicking a player in terms of how many things they can build per minute or whatever.

Put the pitchforks away and please let's be real about game design, it is ABSOLUTELY OK to spawn assets, just make it believable.

[Kalantris]

Well communications in X4 world seem to work weirdly. On one side Boron can contact you from all imaginable dimensions across the galaxy, you can basically do the same ordering people around, firing pilots across the galaxy etc. On the other side you can't really get that mission, because you're too far away from a certain station. Obviously if you want to sell your old phone the best solution is to stick that flyer on your front door, so that all your neighbours can see it. Not like we have e-bay or anthing .

And here's how it relates to combat missions: Whenever there's a clash including a faction you have a high standing with, they contact you and give you a mission to join them. You can refuse and go back to your trading stocking up on those hull parts, that are inevitably going to skyrocket in a couple of minutes or you can accept and go to the sector where hell just broke loose and fight. You succesfully complete the mission once you destroy a certain number of ships depending on the mission difficulty (which should depend on your pilot rank) or once all enemy ships in the sector are gone. There, combat missions, no rules broken. You can make station defence missions if a station is under attack, a raiding mission if it's your side, that's going to invade an enemy sector, a defence mission if it's just a gate skirmish and so on.

[Teleth]

And here's how it relates to combat missions: Whenever there's a clash including a faction you have a high standing with, they contact you and give you a mission to join them. You can refuse and go back to your trading stocking up on those hull parts, that are inevitably going to skyrocket in a couple of minutes or you can accept and go to the sector where hell just broke loose and fight. You succesfully complete the mission once you destroy a certain number of ships depending on the mission difficulty (which should depend on your pilot rank) or once all enemy ships in the sector are gone. There, combat missions, no rules broken. You can make station defence missions if a station is under attack, a raiding mission if it's your side, that's going to invade an enemy sector, a defence mission if it's just a gate skirmish and so on.

I suspect that was something of the intention, to make a believable mission system. It's just the other half of the game is not really cooperating right now.

Agreed, we need 'spawning' on-demand assets for certain missions like combat. There is no big deal with spawning assets, as long as it's done in a believable way that fits with the game and scenario. EVERY game has AI that 'cheats' and some more blatantly than others, hell even RTS games have AI that cheats whilst the player has to collect every resource, manage their build queue, think about strategies etc. the AI just 'cheats' and usually has unlimited resources, just mimicking a player in terms of how many things they can build per minute or whatever.

Put the pitchforks away and please let's be real about game design, it is ABSOLUTELY OK to spawn assets, just make it believable.

I don't think Egosoft intended to remove combat play-styles from the game at all, but I also don't think Egosoft intends to just spawn things to circumvent their efforts of putting a real sandbox environment in place. Maybe right now it might be a good idea as a band-aid, with the war stagnating so severely. Personally though, not a fan of it as a long-term choice, nor should developers aim for below the bar just because the majority of developers take a shortcut on AI and realistic production chains. There are a fair few games in which AI don't cheat every aspect, although none of them are anywhere near outperforming players - they also don't really have to do so in X4, since players start FAR behind the other factions anyway.

[Vandragorax]

I don't think Egosoft intended to remove combat play-styles from the game at all, but I also don't think Egosoft intends to just spawn things to circumvent their efforts of putting a real sandbox environment in place. Maybe right now it might be a good idea as a band-aid, with the war stagnating so severely. Personally though, not a fan of it as a long-term choice, nor should developers aim for below the bar just because the majority of developers take a shortcut on AI and realistic production chains. There are a fair few games in which AI don't cheat every aspect, although none of them are anywhere near outperforming players - they also don't really have to do so in X4, since players start FAR behind the other factions anyway.

The main reason for spawning things on-demand instead of trying to work it into the 'real' economy as per some of the suggestions previously in this thread, is that it is a HELL of a lot less work for the devs. Complexity is also more prone to defects and bugs so the simplest approach is usually the most stable approach.

[Teleth]

I don't think Egosoft intended to remove combat play-styles from the game at all, but I also don't think Egosoft intends to just spawn things to circumvent their efforts of putting a real sandbox environment in place. Maybe right now it might be a good idea as a band-aid, with the war stagnating so severely. Personally though, not a fan of it as a long-term choice, nor should developers aim for below the bar just because the majority of developers take a shortcut on AI and realistic production chains. There are a fair few games in which AI don't cheat every aspect, although none of them are anywhere near outperforming players - they also don't really have to do so in X4, since players start FAR behind the other factions anyway.

The main reason for spawning things on-demand instead of trying to work it into the 'real' economy as per some of the suggestions previously in this thread, is that it is a HELL of a lot less work for the devs. Complexity is also more prone to defects and bugs so the simplest approach is usually the most stable approach.

On that point, I would agree - the game shouldn't have been released with such an issue, or without anything to mitigate the lack of combat people have been experiencing from 1.0. I don't think anyone is particularly happy about combat right now, in any sense of the word.

[Shuulo]

I would like to say NO to spawn on demand.
Developers need to fix economy and war, so that factions could provide missions to
1. disrupt enemy mining operations - kill miners
2. disrupt enemy trading - kill freighters
3. escort friendlies on battle mission - go and fight alongside friendlies if there is a combat nearby
4. engage enemies - simply target some military ships of the enemy
5. support invasion - big mission to help faction fleet in taking over a sector
6. destroy enemy (defense) station

All of the above DOES NOT need any spawning, but a working system that is currently advertised as a CORE of this game.
Spawning mission ships for player only is not "easier for the devs" but is a heavy immersion breaker and totally shit mechanic for most of the sandbox-lover players (who 90% of X games players are)

TLDR fix the economy/war to bring us dynamic missions - this is how it should be done in X4

[tuman78]

Thank you all for your replies, I think my question as to where the missions had gone have been answered. Just need to see if the Dev's have any plan to bring these missions back or no.
I get the reasons for not having them, but again this is meant to be a sandbox and as it stands I can't just jump in a game and blow stuff up like I have been able to do with all the other games. I just hope there is a way to do this and keep the slow build up that other people want as they should be able to play the game their way also.

[LennStar]

Is there a doubled thread or did my answer vanish??

[Tyrant597]

Rumor has it...

Spoiler

Show

You can find contracts to assassinate ships by scanning stations. Be a Hitman!

[Axeface]

There is no need to spawn ships... add combat mission to sectors bordering xenon/pirate space to go to those sectors and destroy ships. Add combat mission to destroy the (numerous) pirate ships that are in almost every zone (usually masquerading as another faction). There are plenty of opportunities to add combat missions without spawning, it just hasnt been done very well. In fact the game lacks mission variety in general (and many are buggy anyway).

Safe sectors should be safe though, and lack really dangerous combat missions... unless of course the wars start kicking off with patches and then we could have plenty.

And of course, Kha'ak and Xenon seem pretty toothless, if they were made a bit more dangerous and aggressive more combat missions could appear because of it.

[Grifiths]

If memory servers, some hostile encounters are already spawned in. I do not remember if they have to be built somewhere else, but I'd find it totally believable if the Kha'ak, as an example, suddenly appeared with a few ships and started shooting. Even if they weren't built, I'd never be able to tell the difference anyhow and it wouldn't affect the game except for them existing for me to blow up for a single mission. Possibly I could ignore it and they might take out some faction assets but the damage would be limited.