2.0 poll

[darrund]

it has been a few days since the release of version 2.0 and I am curious to see what everyone here thinks of it.
Unfortunately it is quite difficult to try and capture everyone's different opinion, since that would have to include too many answers (and some I haven't even thought off), but it will give a general indication on what the players of this forum are thinking of it.
Your vote can be changed since I believe it is too early yet for a final opinion and people may need to review their original opinion after some in game time.

[Chris0132]

I like it a lot, the universe is extremely active and I'm ramping up factory production to keep pace with the war efforts consuming all the resources. The xenon are much more dangerous now and the turrets on ships are also very dangerous. Saving up for a phoenix so I can start knocking out some of these xenon defence stations that are popping up in border sectors.

[adeine]

It's a massive step in the right direction, but there's still a lot of aspects of the game that are incredibly underdeveloped or broken:

• Ship roles and balancing are mostly non-existent, partly due to woeful lack of equipment (meaning all ships carry more or less have the same loadout).
• IS & OOS combat do not mesh well, capital ships tend to lose all their turrets OOS and just spin around in circles with fighters easily taking them out.
• Autopilot/AI is still completely borked, some of the biggest issues being:
  • Ships struggling to navigate and dock when IS.
  • Making functional fleets and controlling them is an AI and UI nightmare, practically impossible IS.
  • Defence drones getting irreparably stuck in place with the only solution being to remove them as subordinates and send them off on an attack command (otherwise the ship having launched them will be perpetually stuck trying to recall).
  • AI piloted capital ships take forever to get anywhere (if they do at all) because of constantly engaging and disengaging travel drive, waiting for subordinates and having to traverse gates from behind.
  • Ships randomly lose their attack commands when targeting stations.
  • Stations form invisible, indestructible obstacles when in construction, build storage and derelict plots do not decay.
  • Defence stations do not engage hostiles when they should, especially OOS.
• Station planning requires external tools because the ingame interface does not show pertinent information in a convenient manner.
• Automation of traders and miners is not very useful right now.
• Even on the lowest tier game start, early game is sorely missing as there's no reason to bother with the different tiers of S ships instead of going straight for their M equivalents (cheap enough or thrown at players in pristine condition as abandoned ships). This makes X4's small(er) selection of ships feel even less fleshed out.
• Game feels like it is still lacking a lot of personality:
  • Station interiors are all the same, regardless of race or faction.
  • As are the generic monosyllabic greetings instead of e.g. being welcomed in the name of Queen Atreus and the Kingdom of Boron, or the Priest Duke, or the Chairman Ceo, etc. for a more immersive touch.
  • As are all the promotion speeches. Another great opportunity for some world building and giving the factions their own personality, background and feel, but right now they are pretty much word for word identical.
  • No sector security or RRF to hail you or warn you of entry into hostile space (as far as I can tell?). I think entering Terran space for the first time is/was a memorable moment for many.

That said, 2.0 is a world of difference compared to how the game launched. Hopefully 3.0/DLC when it arrives will be an equally big step.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

It is a huge step in the right direction feature wise but the release of 2.0 shows up glaring flaws in Egosoft's current release control/quality assurance management and execution. They seem to have a capable team but the project is being managed VERY POORLY IMO.

1. The station planning UI is much better than 1.60 in many regards but it still needs work.
2. The AI has had more aspects broken than fixed IMO.
3. The general UI code is still heavily flawed but an improvement over 1.60.
4. The blueprint management for the new Ship Construction/Maintenance modules is also bugged - It seems maintenance bays will not show module blueprints for refit until you own at least one Ship blueprint compatible with the corresponding ship construction bay.
5. In an existing game, the initial war mission for PAR v. HOP is STILL showing ARG as the giving faction - the others are showing correctly. Seems like the testing of that "fix" was not done with due care and attention.
6. WRT the new levels of AI aggression, I am neutral about it at this point in time but it does seem to be manageable and roughly comparable to X2/X3 aggression levels. The building of stations in other faction space seems passable but why do Xenon stations spawn with neutral civilian mass traffic... that seems at least a tad bizarre.

I am sure the above is not a comprehensive list but it is the main aspects that I have noted.

[Chris0132]

The building of stations in other faction space seems passable but why do Xenon stations spawn with neutral civilian mass traffic... that seems at least a tad bizarre.[/list]
I am sure the above is not a comprehensive list but it is the main aspects that I have noted.

This actually works both ways, defence stations in xenon space will spawn xenon traffic regardless of their owner. I am guessing that mass traffic is dictated by sector ownership, not station ownership.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

The building of stations in other faction space seems passable but why do Xenon stations spawn with neutral civilian mass traffic... that seems at least a tad bizarre.[/list]
I am sure the above is not a comprehensive list but it is the main aspects that I have noted.

This actually works both ways, defence stations in xenon space will spawn xenon traffic regardless of their owner. I am guessing that mass traffic is dictated by sector ownership, not station ownership.

What I am getting at is that since mass traffic should notionally dependent be on the station occupants and/or who the station trades with the general idea of what type of mass-traffic spawns for each station regardless of location should probably be reviewed. Given that in the X-lore, the Xenon are inherently hostile to biological life it does not make sense for their stations to have civilian mass traffic from the biological races. Then again, perhaps Xenon stations should not have any mass traffic regardless of location.

The main issue with this happening at Xenon Defence Stations in biological life controlled space is that when attacking the stations it can generate inadvertent friendly-fire-related voice messages from the neutral civilian mass-traffic.

[mr.WHO]

1. The station planning UI is much better than 1.60 in many regards but it still needs work.

What was the changes in station planning? I don't see any difference between 1.6 and 2.0.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

1. The station planning UI is much better than 1.60 in many regards but it still needs work.

What was the changes in station planning? I don't see any difference between 1.6 and 2.0.

Try editing large stations with lots of modules and you will see what I mean - performance in the editor/planner with such stations in 2.0 is much better.

Still have issues with selection and snapping on some occassions though - that bit seems unchanged.

[Shimrod]

I've been taking a break since about 1.5.

I signed in to try 2.0 and my situation in Faulty Logic appears the same. Red drones coming out of my stations. I flew out to the indestructible 0% health xenon defense station and spent 5 minutes shooting down an apparently infinite stream of drones. Saving the game still took somewhere between 10-15 seconds. Not really feeling the love so far, but haven't had a lot of time to play it yet.

[LennStar]

General Ai fighting is a lot better.
AI trading is better too, but still very strange in some parts. (Nobody trading Hull parts? Why do 5 of my station's freighters go for the same medical supply station in 30 second intervals?)

Xenon building defense stations (or other way round) in biological sectors is very strange, at least as long as all the other races stations are still there. Not to mention that this creates an invisible station you fly hard into.
"RACE Station" never getting build seems to still exist.

Lore and immersion is still a very sore wound.

[darrund]

This poll is going,for the most part,as I expected it.
There are mixed feelings of course (I assumed it would have been like this) but it gives some clear indications on what is going on.
I hope that ES would take notice on what people are saying all over these forums (in fact I KNOW they do) and the next patches will help improve on these numbers by a significant amount on the positive side.
It is also clear that many people will express their dislike whenever there is a poll but also others will be sentimentaly attached and try to defend their game.Both are understandable.
All I can say is that the way I see it, things are still promising and ES will have their hands full for quite some time to make things better.
How much time? I don't know and don't believe anyone else does either.
I can only hope...

[radcapricorn]

They do, they do. Problem is, there's a lot of us, and we want everything yesterday.