Any chance for a change/option for Dynamic Relations?

[Old Drullo321]

Hello there,

Since the announcement of X3:FL I followed the forums/discussions and played FL a little bit myself. There are alot of new features, addition and balance changes in FL, which either I like or can live with it, except the way the Dynamic Relations thing work. I guess I'm not alone there. This "feature" alone prevent me from playing the game in its current state. Now you could argue to just use mods if I dislike this feature that much. You're right, i could. And while I have no problems in general to use mods (e.g. I play super stable heavily modded Skyrim with hundreds of mods), some games, like the X-series I like to play unmodded. Through the years I started liking achievement so that is a further point I would miss.

Don't get me wrong, I think you designed FL with its Dynamic Relations system as a core part and I think you are also proud of your work, which you can really be, but in my opinion the Dynamic Relations system in its current implementations stops alot of potential players playing this game. Are there any small chances that you may add a way to disable/tweak this system in a way, that more people can enjoy FL?

[andreihaiducul]

You can already disable or alter it by editing some global values.

You should give it a chance though. It's actually lore-friendly and especially appropriate for this time period. The game also gives you a couple of means to manage relations (missions and/or agents) and you can, in fact, be friendly with everyone (just not best friends).

[Old Drullo321]

Can I modify those global values in a settings file? Do i get a modified for that, otherwise it is not worth it.

I won't give it a chance, it fundamentally changes the way, the X-series has to be played and I don't want to tinker arround before just doing a simple taxi mission. There are enough threads and posts pointing out the issues with the system and how it diminish the fun people have with its current implementation. Don't get me wrong, the feature itself is pretty neat. And if this would be a complete other game, I wouldn't mind. And I also see that some, maybe even the majority (I don't know?) like it. Lore-friendly doesn't automatically mean fun.
You can implement alot of things in a lot of games that add more realism, more deepth and/or more lore. E.g. you could add a starvation mechanic in almost every game. It would make any RPG more realistic but i doubt it fits in every game other then those who aim for perfect realism.

I think, the pro and contra of the Dynamic Relations system are already discussed in other threads and I don't need anyone who tries to convince me living/playing with it. On the other hand I don't want to convince others about the bad sides, all I ask if there is any chance in the future about further adjustments or free modifications to it.

[fireanddream]

Praying to Jesus/the dev team for this option. Please just let the filthy casual me enjoy essentially AP with tons more features.

[Ramdat]

Can I modify those global values in a settings file? Do i get a modified for that, otherwise it is not worth it.

The devs have stated that they have no plans to change the dynamic relations system or allow mods to earn achievements.

You can modify those global values in the Globals file, as described here.

Yes, it does make your game modified. However, you can still earn achievements by using external tools like Steam Achievement Manager. Simply use the tool to unlock an achievement at the same time as you unlock it legitimately in-game. It is "cheating", but they are your achievements, so it's up to you if you still feel a sense of pride and accomplishment if you do it. It is a common misconception that this tool is against Steam's terms of service, but it's not. The only grey areas are using the tool to unlock achievements in VAC-enabled games, or for games which have tangible rewards for achievements, such as Team Fortress. But, this is not that type of game.

[Midnightknight]

People telling you to give a chance to DR are making a bit of fun of you to my opinion.

That doesn't mean the game can't be played with DR, but just you can't play it like a sandbox anymore or as you wish to play it. And having people continuing to tell you you can are just completely blind or dishonest.

If you want my opinion, yes you can play FL with the DR and yes you can actually enjoy it, but you need to actually be led correctly BEFORE starting the game for this to happen. You need to know a few things, and if i actually knew them at start it would have saved me a lot of frustration before being able to play correctly FL. Cause FL have a lot of farm required to progress, and realizing you are "Stuck" after 150h of play with no warning is something that i do not enjoy very much.

First forget about neutrality, it's not possible, people will claim it is, that's plain lies. You can maintain neutrality for a time, even a really long time, but ultimately you will have enemies and once it happens DR will be more and more uncontrollable. If you reaaaaaly want to remain neutral, you need to balance exactly the missions and trade you do with all the races, what will become a full time job. You made a hard mission for the Argons? Now you need to make one for the splits, one for the paranids and one for the borons. Lol good luck and even like this you will notice you end up with unbalanced relations that needs you to send agent, that will most likely mess a bit more with the rest. in fact the only way to remain neutral is play only with Teladis and prevent anybody except them from buying to your station, or on the long term you will not remain neutral. You will notice it pretty fast with the corporation that will turn red really fast.

Now that it's said, you need to take a side in the conflict and you need to build your stuff in this "side" territory. Why? Because sooner or later your DR will simply align on theirs, their friends will become your friends and their enemies will become your enemy. each trade, each mission will push you to this situation, aligning your diplomacy on theirs. Why is it important? Because if you are building some stuff in Teladi space for example and you turn hostile to Borons, the said borons will attack you in Teladi space and if you dare to fight back, the Teladi police will attack you for it. Remember, told you about neutrality lol. Also the satellite network will make you nut with it's warning every 2 seconds to tell you an enemy as been spotted in the sector you have your PHQ and you can't attack this enemy. If you build in someone with same diplomacy, no issue, you blow it up and voila.

Lastly, not every race have access to all technologies, and many can't be bought unless you have a really high reputation (Like some factories). And if you are neutral you will need to steal them. If you are enemy, it's the same you will steal them, but at least you have access to all those of you side, making all less annoying. You will also not have to spend many agents to balance your DR, and can use them to actually steal stuff. It's the same with boarding, some ships are actually easier to board than to buy ... So remaining neutral makes all way too complicated with no benefits at all.

And second lastly, with the actual setup of alliances, don't bother trying to side with the terrans or the Yaki, i don't even understand why they bothered making relations with them, you might think it's possible to play with them but you will realize it's just an illusion of choice as everything is really made for them to be nothing more than NPC victims.

Might be some other stuff to warn you about, but i think it's the majors. Personally i started to play in Teladi space and it was such a mistake. At first trying to remain friendly with everyone except the borons/pirates/yakis only to realize how impossible it was. Setting laser towers around the PHQ lead me to high diplo drops with Teladis that were attacking me when i was defending against military and so on. In the end i spent hours of game with my 3 TLs to move all my factories to paranid space and now i have diplomacy aligned with them, as Argons do not like me cause i kill borons and trade with Paranids. Now i blow up every red ship i see and got rewards for it instead of warning spamming and angry police that do nothing to protect your stuff. The game as turned a lot less frustrating and a lot more enjoyable, it's almost like in AP, the only thing is you are forced to play this way and from almost the start. Where in AP you could take sometime to prepare yourself and get familiar to the game mechanics before choosing to make war or not.

But well, devs are the one deciding and they decided this feature was really important to FL to make it different from the previous one. Personally i always said, "Think different" doesn't necessarily means "Think better" and i'm convinced they should have avoided such a feature in a sandbox game, at least in the current implementation that is really punishing for nothing in return, only forcing you to play in one way of many that was possible in TC/AP, needing to decide at start and preventing you to change your mind. (Or with a lot of pain and time lost)

[andreihaiducul]

You can change the profile on your satellites (or a subset) so that they only warn about certain races. Similarly, you can set the Friend-or-Foe settings on your ships (and lasertowers) and disable "show as enemy if enemy to me" so they will not attack races when they temporarily dip into negative relations.

The only troublesome part for me was the pathfinding, as it uses the global blacklist that's by default tied to your relations rather than the ship's Friend-or-Foe settings. Still that's easy to manage with a separate profile as well.

The game is still a sandbox and you can swap alliances at will using agents. I don't really understand why people are dead-set on being the hero of every faction at the same time. With the new spy and diplo mechanics, you can still get all the equipment and factories regardless of your current allegiance.

[Midnightknight]

You can change the profile on your satellites (or a subset) so that they only warn about certain races. Similarly, you can set the Friend-or-Foe settings on your ships (and lasertowers) and disable "show as enemy if enemy to me" so they will not attack races when they temporarily dip into negative relations.

And you get a warning your ship is under attack cause a fighter from an escort attacked one of your ship and you weren't warned of their presence before they start attacking (and don't tell me it never happens, i lost 3 traders like this). Or this Colossus is actually attacking a factory, cause why not? And for laser towers yeah so when one is attacked, all the other remains neutrals and waits for the one attacked to be killed, then it's another. I got 4 killed in a row by a single M3 like this, and in the end had to set them all aggressive till they deal with the troublemaker before setting them back again to neutral. No that's not working, at least not all the time and when you realize it didn't worked it's too late. And i didn't even spoke about what happens when you are IS, where they will actually attack those red corps ships even if they are told to not do so and you are forced to com all the police ships to apologies ... Like i said this is not working, in the current implementation at least it doesn't works. And people telling new players "they could" aren't really making any good to the game and will only lead to more frustration and anger toward this feature.

If it works mostly for you, i'm happy for you. But there have been plenty of people reporting it's not working reliably, and you can't say something "works" when it fails 20% of the time. This thing is a nightmare and i listen to all the people with the "good way" to play and in the end spent hundred hours on a game that wasn't fun and i wasn't enjoying. Micromanaging Laser Towers and my ship relations wasn't really fun at all, especially now i start to have a lot of them, cause you are required to have patrols everywhere you try to mobile mine cause of pirate spamming and sometime xenons. The whole DR is designed to force you into war, just like all the previous games were designed to make you friendly with everyone. and with two direction so opposite it's only natural transition isn't smooth at all. Inciting people to make it the hard way on their first playthrough could work only if they are masochists.

[Erqco]

Praying to Jesus/the dev team for this option. Please just let the filthy casual me enjoy essentially AP with tons more features.

We will pray together, I have not hope anyway and doesn't matter. The best thing about this experiment is that has make me play again to AP and now X4, I want games not a job.

[piranhai aka Dragonslayer]

Praying to Jesus/the dev team for this option. Please just let the filthy casual me enjoy essentially AP with tons more features.

We will pray together, I have not hope anyway and doesn't matter. The best thing about this experiment is that has make me play again to AP and now X4, I want games not a job.

I agree here. I played now 100 hours FL and made not as much progress as in AP or TC. I think like 80 hours I made these missions to get agents to stabilize my reps with the factions in choose. The system just does not feel right.