Deep Space : A Question of Depth

[Moonrat]

A quick question for y'all... for those that venture there, how far into deepspace do you usually go (ie. the distance from sector center or the furthest you are from a reference point like a gate or station)?
I'm aware that some folk like to see how big they can make that big ol' sector hexagon purely for the fun of it, but I'm more interested in what "normal" pilots might consider "deepspace" to be?

I'm making slow but steady progress on the next major release of my"Encounters" mod and I am trying to code/balance frequencies etc. based upon how far into deepepace you are.
But then the question struck me, Egosoft have coded where "deepspace" might begin, but where do actual players consider it to be?

[Tomonor]

Considering the inability to set or control the map's sector-zoom after exploring it beyond, I simply don't go exploring.

It would also be an entirely different story if Egosoft ditched the concept of the imaginary boxed sectors. They seemed to roll without it in XR, but apparently gotten back to it in X4.

[csaba]

Back around launch when the map scaling into emptiness rage was going on, I took a max speed exceptionally modded Nodan (over 12km/sec travel) and followed the asteroid trail in Nopelios 2 till the end:

https://imageshack.us/i/pn48ozOgj

There was nothing out there but you can see at a point the map stopped scaling, I recall it was around 4500 km, so that's the absolute limit.

As far as what would be decent as a target distance I'd say 1000 km is the sweet spot that is still a bearable travel time without an overly kited explorer what I had. Takes about 5 mins to reach with an average 3km/sec ship. However it still far enough away that you don't just accidentally run into encounters between two stations.

[Angsaar]

Unless individual sectors of the map can be re-zoomed at some point I'll tend to avoid "really" deep space on a number of them, but your mod does make it a lot more interesting to explore! Depending on the variety of events I'd probably go up to something like 600 Km out, beyond that I'm not sure the travel time would be for me.

Depending on how detailed chances-per-distance can be set up I think lower chances every 200 Km would be nice, with some rarer events at the fringes, like crashing a pirate party or something

Something neutral like rescue or wrecks would also be grand! Distress call (possibly traps) sound interesting too.

[radcapricorn]

As far as vanilla game is concerned, I consider this depth to be 0. There's absolutely no reason to go outside inhabited area within a given sector. They wanted to promote exploration with these "encounters", they failed. Whether the game defines it somehow or not, it doesn't matter one bit.

[Nort The Fragrent]

I have flown far and wide into the deepest corners, way beyond the map edges. In the hope I might find something ! But No. A compete waist of time.
In Unholy Retribution I have placed my venture station out some 1200Km just so I get some space time in.
Some stations I have out as far as 2000km. It makes no difference to trading, the ships still arrive. And in numbers.
One of my shipyards is 2000km out, and it is thriving.
When I was into exploring 3x Rebirth I spent a hole weekend getting deep inside the broken moon. It took an age to get in there, but was so worth it for the changing views. This kind of thing is missing from x4, there is no space worth exploring, it’s all bland dull, and black.
In x3, I did get to circumnavigate several moons, so I am into getting out away from the centres.
But x4, is hopeless, yes ES listen,,,, we want more stuff in deep space to find, explore, investigate. Even if it is a fractured moon. Give us some stufffffff.

For me 3000, and above is getting deep.

What I would like it to fly between sectors, independent of gates. Set my heading and let my ship go at full tilt. Even if it takes two days flying time. It would make this space seem like space, not a poky little village.

[Moonrat]

Many thanks folks, that's an an interesting set of posts

Seems like I'm not a million miles (sic) away from where I thought deepspace was and what players might like to see when they get there. Keep the comments coming...

I can't promise everything everyone wants on the next release but it will provide some extra interest further out as well as providing a good base to add more content onto going forwards.
(I'm still on the "up" part of the skills curve with MD but it's now getting much easier to code/test/debug stuff... if only RL didn't keep getting in the way )

[Thecrippler]

Back around launch when the map scaling into emptiness rage was going on, I took a max speed exceptionally modded Nodan (over 12km/sec travel) and followed the asteroid trail in Nopelios 2 till the end:

https://imageshack.us/i/pn48ozOgj

There was nothing out there but you can see at a point the map stopped scaling, I recall it was around 4500 km, so that's the absolute limit.

As far as what would be decent as a target distance I'd say 1000 km is the sweet spot that is still a bearable travel time without an overly kited explorer what I had. Takes about 5 mins to reach with an average 3km/sec ship. However it still far enough away that you don't just accidentally run into encounters between two stations.

How many times do you need to scroll in and out ??? this option is so LAME i hope in the 3.0 this thing will get remove am getting tired scrolling in and out if this is not fix egosoft be prepared to buy me new mouse and won't be cheap Razer Mamba HyperFlux

[csaba]

Back around launch when the map scaling into emptiness rage was going on, I took a max speed exceptionally modded Nodan (over 12km/sec travel) and followed the asteroid trail in Nopelios 2 till the end:

https://imageshack.us/i/pn48ozOgj

There was nothing out there but you can see at a point the map stopped scaling, I recall it was around 4500 km, so that's the absolute limit.

As far as what would be decent as a target distance I'd say 1000 km is the sweet spot that is still a bearable travel time without an overly kited explorer what I had. Takes about 5 mins to reach with an average 3km/sec ship. However it still far enough away that you don't just accidentally run into encounters between two stations.

How many times do you need to scroll in and out ??? this option is so LAME i hope in the 3.0 this thing will get remove am getting tired scrolling in and out if this is not fix egosoft be prepared to buy me new mouse and won't be cheap Razer Mamba HyperFlux

Well the main issue is that bugs create such maps as well, destroying your whole map as your game gains hours even if you try to avoid doing it.

Had a few fighters flung out by the gate the other day and now Bright Promise looks like a gray slab in my most recent game.

So yes this needs a fix badly.

[Angsaar]

Have you played around with how flexibly you can spawn things with the encounter system? Persistent object spawning of custom assets would bring some crazy possibilities.

If conditions could be applied (like, 'if no other object in an arbitrary radius in Km's, spawn random set of objects from list' to keep from creating cluttered spots) it could be a way of populating deep space dynamically.

How creepy would be bumping into a dead mining settlement in deep space?

[radcapricorn]

Have you played around with how flexibly you can spawn things with the encounter system? Persistent object spawning of custom assets would bring some crazy possibilities.

...and then you encounter the (as of yet unfixed) bug that flings your ship 100 thousand kilometers away from any signs of life, and while your pilot carries you back to civilization, you "spawn" all those persistent things?

[Angsaar]

...and then you encounter the (as of yet unfixed) bug that flings your ship 100 thousand kilometers away from any signs of life, and while your pilot carries you back to civilization, you "spawn" all those persistent things?

Reload a save? Or leave them to their own devices?

I don't see why a bug should be limiting creativity.

edit: personally I would just load a save with or without anything spawning, the map zooming behavior alone would be enough for me to do that.

[Scott C.]

Another person whose been flung off into deep space... twice.

Both times occurred while clinging to an I shooting off turrets. Got dragged into the gate to Tharka's. Made it halfway there, but remained in Hatikvah's.

I thought is was funny until I realized the sector zoom problem. Fine control in Hatikvah's choice is now borked. Using the object list to center a target, then zooming helps a little.

Encountered nothing during the many 1000's of km flights back, which took hours in travel mode.

All 2.5

[Angsaar]

Both times occurred while clinging to an I shooting off turrets. Got dragged into the gate to Tharka's. Made it halfway there, but remained in Hatikvah's.

That and an associated save might be very important pieces of information for the devs to catch that bug!

[CaptainRAVE]

It’s a real shame we can’t rezoom the sectors that bugged out at release.

[csaba]

Both times occurred while clinging to an I shooting off turrets. Got dragged into the gate to Tharka's. Made it halfway there, but remained in Hatikvah's.

Ahhh.. The 5 kilometer blender show mercy to no one.

[radcapricorn]

Both times occurred while clinging to an I shooting off turrets. Got dragged into the gate to Tharka's. Made it halfway there, but remained in Hatikvah's.

That and an associated save might be very important pieces of information for the devs to catch that bug!

If saves were helpful, it would've been fixed already. There's already a report upon a report, with save upon save, in the beta forum. It's not reproducible via saves, only via gameplay.

[Moonrat]

Have you played around with how flexibly you can spawn things with the encounter system? Persistent object spawning of custom assets would bring some crazy possibilities.

If conditions could be applied (like, 'if no other object in an arbitrary radius in Km's, spawn random set of objects from list' to keep from creating cluttered spots) it could be a way of populating deep space dynamically.

How creepy would be bumping into a dead mining settlement in deep space?

Have you been hacking my PC ?!? You win the star prize...!!
This is indeed the direction I am trying to head with the code, getting the chance vs. variability vs. combinations is the tricky part tho'

[csaba]

Have you played around with how flexibly you can spawn things with the encounter system? Persistent object spawning of custom assets would bring some crazy possibilities.

If conditions could be applied (like, 'if no other object in an arbitrary radius in Km's, spawn random set of objects from list' to keep from creating cluttered spots) it could be a way of populating deep space dynamically.

How creepy would be bumping into a dead mining settlement in deep space?

Have you been hacking my PC ?!? You win the star prize...!!
This is indeed the direction I am trying to head with the code, getting the chance vs. variability vs. combinations is the tricky part tho'

I only know of one abandoned station that is accessible by the player though... the others are quite bland on their own.

[Angsaar]

> Moonrat

Hah ! I can barely get into my own router, so I guess we're just sailors with a similar mind XD
Shuulo has witnessed (and helped a bunch with, thanks!) my utter lack of coding skills, the prototype for FireFX was very... inelegant.

If the chance/frequency can be tied to distance bracket from center/edge-of-deep-space/gates you could call progressively rarer and stronger/creepier encounters, something like,

Near space - 1.0x chance - Assorted smugglers, pirates, distress calls (real or traps)
Deeper space - 0.7x chance - More organized pirates, abandoned settlements, locked stuff
Deeeep space - 0.3x chance - Pirate bases, a few Khaak/Zenon scout parties, better stuff
Friggin far away - 0.1x chance - Either it's really dead or really dangerous, ghost ships


Are NPC's with editable dialogue a thing for encounters?

Hell, maybe some could even have dynamic relations, so if you are on the good side with a pirate faction of a hostile race region you'd be actually safer in DS.

> csaba

Wouldn't something with the feel of that Battlestar Galactica supply base inside a radioactive gas giant (Ragnar I think it was called) be a spooky find? Something hidden among the rocks and gas of an asteroid belt, maybe.