great early/mid game, late game soul crushing micromanagement

[ESonix]

Here's my feedback on X4 after about 125 hours playing as a peaceful mega-trading empire. The early/mid game was an absolute blast, but once my empire grew quite large, I found myself trapped in a soul-crushing quagmire of micromanagement.

The late-game heavy micro appears to be partially by design and partially due to poorly functioning game mechanics. Here are a few examples, with some suggestions for improvement:

1. Rookie pilots and level requirements: If X4 wants to stick with level requirements for pilot duties (auto-mining, auto-trading, etc.), then they really need to add some kind of auto-training capability. Maybe the ability to hire training managers or possibility to build a flight school or something. I mean, come on, I'm the CEO of a galactic trading empire, do you really expect me to manually micro-manage every single pilot's activities for 10's or 100's of in-game hours? It's insane (especially considering how ludicrously slowly pilots gain levels).

2. Manager assignments to new stations: Again, I'm the CEO of a sprawling empire, is it really necessary for me to personally shuttle managers around to stations? Can't I just give them a few bucks and have them take a shuttle themselves?

3. Fleet orders: This just appears to be broken, or at least somewhat braindead. I tried many times to assign military ships to the "protect" role for my large trading ships, and it basically just doesn't work. The typical behavior is that the protectors just fly off somewhere halfway across the galaxy and either continually ask me for new orders, or engage in combat with behemoth sized Xenon battleships and self destruct. This is obviously not by design and is something that really needs serious improvement.

4. Large-sized ships with auto-trading: Basically, it's just completely broken as far as I can tell. Even with a properly leveled pilot I found that all of my L sized trading vessels would just do idiotic trades, like buy 5 energy cells on one side of the galaxy then sell 5 energy cells on the other side of the galaxy, when instead they easily could have done a full-capacity trade on something else and made 500,000Cr on a single trade. This obviously just needs to be fixed. (and until it is, you are left to the task of micro-managing your L-sized trading ships yourself)

5. Transferring pilots/staff around: Generally just an unnecessary major pain in the neck. There's got to be a better way. Similar to suggestion #2 above, maybe they could just take shuttles or something? Or heck,

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just have them use the same teleportation technology that I have been using myself, our empire obviously already has the necessary technology in hand!

6. Auto-mining or trading ships that get stuck with unsellable inventory: This has happened to my mining ships quite often. They end up filling their cargo hold with something that nobody currently wants to buy, then they just get completely stuck. Typically the only solution seems to be to have them jettison the cargo. I think a better solution would be allowing ships to store unsellable cargo at friendly ports until demand for the item returns (at which point they could pick it up and sell it). Once they store the unsellable goods they could get back to work auto-mining or trading something that is currently in demand.

Ok, well, that's about it. Please take all of this as constructive feedback. I really like X4 a lot and see a lot more potential once Egosoft fixes more of the problems and weaknesses. To be honest I wish they would just put all of the non-essential features (like multi-player ventures) on the back burner for a while and focus on improving some of these deficiencies in the core game mechanics.

[MHDriver]

Had much the same experience so I hope somebody that gives a shit will read your thread and put some action to it..

[RainerPrem]

2. Manager assignments to new stations: Again, I'm the CEO of a sprawling empire, is it really necessary for me to personally shuttle managers around to stations? Can't I just give them a few bucks and have them take a shuttle themselves?

Who told you that? Let any of your ships land there and make one of their service guys the manager. After some time they have at least one management star.

[SPiDER]

Aye most annoying though is the endless station miner spam saying order completed but your auto traders dont msg saying "i'm full instruction pls" jusr constant map scanning seeing if and why a ship is idle..and Implement the seminars pls pls pls.

[ESonix]

2. Manager assignments to new stations: Again, I'm the CEO of a sprawling empire, is it really necessary for me to personally shuttle managers around to stations? Can't I just give them a few bucks and have them take a shuttle themselves?

Who told you that? Let any of your ships land there and make one of their service guys the manager. After some time they have at least one management star.

Yes, true. I guess I'm a very low-micro kind of guy. Would love to see a right-click on station "hire manager and send them there" button or something. I realize this is just personal preference, may not be for everybody

[ESonix]

Aye most annoying though is the endless station miner spam saying order completed but your auto traders dont msg saying "i'm full instruction pls" jusr constant map scanning seeing if and why a ship is idle..and Implement the seminars pls pls pls.

Yup, been there done that! Um, let's see, look through the whole list of ships and see who is idle, then try to figure out why, then try to get them going again.

[radcapricorn]

Just make Boso Ta being able handle recruitment. He can stick however many pulse measuring devices on people as he wants.

[Buzz2005]

Aye most annoying though is the endless station miner spam saying order completed but your auto traders dont msg saying "i'm full instruction pls" jusr constant map scanning seeing if and why a ship is idle..and Implement the seminars pls pls pls.

they fixed this is new beta, they sell of cargo if its in the list, so far works

[78stonewobble]

Well it's not the only game where micronanagement becomes a problem later.

Sometimes devs forget that the player perspective changes.

In regards to eg. Training employees, that's fine for the first few times, when you're managing a small company and for teaching you how they work.

Later on however, if eg. You've trained 10 pilots/managers/whatever to lvl 1, the game should just let you hire lvl 1 employees, having them be more expensive.

"fleets" is another area, where they could optimizer. Eg. You start with manually kitting out a fighter or 2 and manually babysitting the beginnings of your fleet.

When you start having wings/squadrons of fighters, they replenish fuel, ammo and losses on their own (they could also start using squadron ai in combat).

Repeat with bigger and bigger ships. From eg. First carrier capital ship to multiple battlegroups.

So you still have the awesome factor doing things the first x number of times, but after eg. 10 times it gets automated.

You move management level with the player perspective from low level humble beginning to top level ceo admiral level.

Ps: I don't know how hot ppl. Are on the economy detail, but eg. With fleets you could abstract it from each individual ware, to... The more fleets (including your own) the more expensive the parts for them become) until production capacity of friendly factions improve, which makes it cheaper again. So you don't necessarily have to move any individual product across the universe (tho if you do you can earn more or less).

Put the emphasis more on production and consumption, than eg. Ai flying your precious wares completely perfectly, but markets with great demand makes moving freight more profitable... Maybe scale npc transport sector a bit after it.

Well, just some random thoughts on it

PPS: The economy thing is also a way the player more directly can influence the universe in later game. Eg. If you're friendly to a faction x and hostile to another faction y. Your empire makes it cheaper for x to field fleets and expand at the cost of faction y. If you're neutral to both factions you're just gonna have bigger battles going on and profits as.

[ESonix]

Yes, totally agree with all of that. The first few times training or whatever are ok and can even be instructive, but doing it 10 times, 20 times... no, not fun. I'm perfectly ok letting the AI take over at that point, realizing that this is something that I already "know".

[pref]

Yes, agree on all points.

With the addition that there should be more trade scripts that allow you to control what wares will go where - just having a generic AT is so insufficient for this game.
Player should be able to supply specific stations, areas (black/white lists), and set up stock/price level conditions.

I don't want to micro every single trade run that is not just about selling whatever ware to wherever to make more credits.

[Buzz2005]

Yes, agree on all points.

With the addition that there should be more trade scripts that allow you to control what wares will go where - just having a generic AT is so insufficient for this game.
Player should be able to supply specific stations, areas (black/white lists), and set up stock/price level conditions.

I don't want to micro every single trade run that is not just about selling whatever ware to wherever to make more credits.

we should have options like station trader for NPC stations, you put some on shipyards and see what is the closest hull factory for example then put some ships for that station, in no time you have a nice chain of wares

[Honved]

I'd probably prefer one alteration to the suggestions: if you've trained up 10 traders to Level 1, you still don't get to automatically hire Level 1 traders until you've gotten one of those 10 to Level 2. That way, you can only hire one level LOWER than your current best, not on par with them.

[CaptainSim]

Completely disagree with most of OP's sentiments. If you've ever run a business, you know it is not easy, it is hard grueling work. It should be simulated, to some degree, in X4. It takes time to level your employees, but you reap the benefits of it later when you have a fully trained staff. This is why many businesses must grow slowly, because you must first hire and keep a well trained efficient small staff before you can grow it further. Many managers often complain that they must do their employees' work for them as well as their own work, if the staff is not yet fully trained. If you don't want the challenge of MANAGING your empire, with all the micro analysis that requires (until your workers are themselves competent), then I would suggest doing something simpler like exploring, dogfighting, taking missions, or small trading.

Alternatively, grow your business MORE SLOWLY. This is a matter of proper strategy, rather than a problem with the game. Keep only a small staff until they are fully trained, then hire a few more until they are fully trained, etc...

The other issue you described of TRAINED pilots not making good trades (presuming they are at the FULL star level, lower levels may trade but not very well) is possibly a bug that will be worked out soon. But this is a separate issue from the work of training up your staff.