Idea: A "career mode" for longer games.

[HelicopterGearbox]

It would be interesting for there to be a setting to control game progression length-either a setting or a slider. It would rebalance the cost/power of larger ships/station/blueprints.

For example, a destroyer would be 120 million instead of 12 (with an armor boost to match), and stations could cost in the hundreds of milllions if not billions of credits.

You would spend much more time "on the bottom" working versus being in command of large numbers of ships. Reaching the later stages would be harder.

I might make a mod that does this anyway. It would not be hard to implement at all, since its just changing numbers.

Thoughts?

[LameFox]

It doesn't really sound like it's imposing much additional challenge to me, but it does sound like it makes you spend more time in the phase of the game where you have established an income and are just waiting for credits to roll in to buy blueprints. After that, credit cost won't matter anyway, as you build your own stuff.

You could also do it through resource requirements I guess, and increase credit costs for constructing things incidentally. But that stands a much higher chance of breaking the NPC factions' economies.

Ultimately if you want things to take longer, I guess it would achieve that. Although, how fast you do things is really up to you already.

[Raptor34]

Frankly I don't see the point unless it also comes with AI improvements. The biggest issue is X4 is optimized for big games, not small ones.
The AI is dumb and it encourages throwing numbers at the problem.

[GCU Grey Area]

Rather like the idea. Find the game much more engaging in it's early phases where I have to consider carefully how to spend my credits. It becomes less interesting for me in the late game where I have so much money flooding in I literally can't spend it fast enough to keep up, even with self-imposed rules to limit this (e.g. only buy ships rather than building them for free, never building shipyards which sell to NPC factions, etc). I usually restart when I hit that point. Would welcome a slider to increase the cost of ships etc, to keep me in the interesting phase of the game for longer. Would not however want those ships to differ in any way from the standard version (i.e. no 'armour boost to match').

[jlehtone]

For example, a destroyer would be 120 million instead of 12 (with an armor boost to match), and stations could cost in the hundreds of milllions if not billions of credits.

You would spend much more time "on the bottom" working versus being in command of large numbers of ships. Reaching the later stages would be harder.

However, 120 mil destroyer means that player can get 100 mil within two hours from start. You did consider that path, did you not?

Besides, stations are now quite cheap (unless you build big) and yet plain Miners have better ROI. Not to mention that those big stations take time to build; money is hardly the issue. Make stations more expensive and then there is no reason to build them. (IMHO, there is almost no reason to build them even now.)


The X games are a fantasy, where you can turn a pauper into Musk within hours. Casually -- the earlier games were a bit less casual. That dream is not without a dark side.

[Socratatus]

None of my games have ever actually ended.

Well with the exception of being blown up by a trapped Loot box...

[vvvvvvvv]

It would be interesting for there to be a setting to control game progression length-either a setting or a slider. It would rebalance the cost/power of larger ships/station/blueprints.

For example, a destroyer would be 120 million instead of 12 (with an armor boost to match), and stations could cost in the hundreds of milllions if not billions of credits.

You would spend much more time "on the bottom" working versus being in command of large numbers of ships. Reaching the later stages would be harder.

I might make a mod that does this anyway. It would not be hard to implement at all, since its just changing numbers.

Thoughts?

I do not see this as fun.

People will simply steal ships instead of buying them and this is effectively equivalent to increasing number of HP on monsters. Economic HP sponge. If you can manage it with normal economy, you'll achieve the same result with inflated prices using exact same path, except it will take longer.

[Privata]

I think we need a lot of various options for this sort of thing
Half the community thinks the game is too easy, the other think its too hard

another issue, to me anyway, is how PHQ focused the game is. you cant just be someone
It would be great to just have the option to skip all the quests without the reward but keep the outcome on the galaxy (and maybe some of the functional features like upcoming diplomacy room could be a module for any station)

[thedavid]

When I saw the title I thought this would be like a job system but that isn't what OP is suggesting at all.

X4 still has some factions that don't have a mission subscription and they need it. Hatikvah trade guild please. Ministry police union please.

I think it might be nice to have some companies in the game that can hire you. And not just that one guy in the common room. These would be missions where the player has to actually do it. Be a miner as a job. He a trader and fill orders. It would give players some direction during wait times.

Also. I think the OP is also asking for some equilibrium to be added to the game. Right now after couple of hours in a new game things start to change. Borders shift and factions change in power. Once one faction start to get going it is a snowball that the other factions can't stop. It this was slowed down or delayed so that the player had time to catch up to the big factions before too much changed it might be nice.

[Baconnaise]

When I saw the title I thought this would be like a job system but that isn't what OP is suggesting at all.

X4 still has some factions that don't have a mission subscription and they need it. Hatikvah trade guild please. Ministry police union please.

I think it might be nice to have some companies in the game that can hire you. And not just that one guy in the common room. These would be missions where the player has to actually do it. Be a miner as a job. He a trader and fill orders. It would give players some direction during wait times.

Also. I think the OP is also asking for some equilibrium to be added to the game. Right now after couple of hours in a new game things start to change. Borders shift and factions change in power. Once one faction start to get going it is a snowball that the other factions can't stop. It this was slowed down or delayed so that the player had time to catch up to the big factions before too much changed it might be nice.

This would've been all dandy if they added corporations as per the established lore and did them properly. I think that was the most disappointing thing with the DLC packs is that they continue to ignore corporations. Dynamic quests galore for the player. Anyways something must be a problem if they didn't go for the obvious fruit so to speak.

[Techedge]

I'm sorry but I don't get how "stretching" the time frame of events (by just increasing costs of things, making them "longer" to acquire) would make the game more interesting

[azaghal]

The base idea could possibly be fairly easy to implement - I guess you could simply affect the price at which player buys things from factions? To prevent player from simply selling the captured ships for way more money, simply keep the selling price at way lower levels.

Some things could be forked off of this idea, though, like:

• Make the faction reputation matter more in terms of pricing.
• Make it so that the NPC factions as well do not have as much access to heavy hardware initially. It would be interesting to see them initially battle it out with small fighters with only a couple of medium ships, and then ramp up over time their military fleets. Something that would kinda go alongside the player progression, allow player to be more impactful early game, and motivate player to play catch-up with NPC faction military might.

Best regards,
Branko

[jlehtone]

I'm sorry but I don't get how "stretching" the time frame of events (by just increasing costs of things, making them "longer" to acquire) would make the game more interesting

Possibly about gratification. You can start the game by doing just Repair Satellite jobs. They don't pay much. By the time you can buy the 12 mil ship, you have toiled a good while and reaching that goal feels "better" than if the ship had simply fallen into your lap without effort.

However, that would be a tedious grind. It is hard to justify such path, when you can get much more money with less effort. That is another source of gratification: when you find "best/optimized" least effort, max profitsss path.


There has been an another way to describe the issue: "endgame is blah". It is not so much about how quickly you walk the scout->fighter->corvette->destroyer->carrier fleet "progression", but how "short" that path is and how at the fleet stage there is no obvious "next goal", no next challenge to progress through (except the challenge of inventing goals for yourself). Well, we did get "existential crisis", but some call it blah too.

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corporations as per the established lore and did them properly.

What is a "corporation"? What game mechanics would it add?

[magitsu]

Indeed there would need to be quite inventive type of new quests, otherwise corporations would be just more of the same. For example Rebirth included corps, but they just provided a different kind of setting. Its campaign was in some ways better than X4 though... but it had nothing else really.

Low effort solution would be to bundle all kinds of previous mechanisms together like panel hacking + robbery, cover use (piracy, false flag attacks). Making interesting repeatable missions is a very hard task. The dlcs are chock full of one off missions that age like milk.

Technically it could be an interesting idea to try to corner markets in some goods. Victoria-game style.
But it is hard to imagine how it could be anywhere near hard enough task, because X4 economy is very generous to allow the AI and all kind of players/playstyles to survive eternal saves.
X4 is one of the tamest 4X games in this regard. Even a much more casual game Civilization can lead to a game over (even very early by barbarians).

[GCU Grey Area]

I'm sorry but I don't get how "stretching" the time frame of events (by just increasing costs of things, making them "longer" to acquire) would make the game more interesting

It would make the game more interesting (for me at least) because it would extend the period of time in which the choices I make about what to spend my credits on have a significant impact. For example, in the early game I often face the choice of whether to buy a new warship OR a new freighter OR a miner for one of my stations. That choice is more consequential (& therefore more interesting) than in the late game where I don't even need to make such choices; can easily afford to buy 100 of each without making a noticeable dent in the billions I have accumulated & have no idea what to do with.

Find that warfare is also more interesting in the phase of the game where money still matters. Every explosion of one of my warships has a credit value to it & losses in battle sting a bit. Becomes considerably less interesting when I'm in the phase of the game where losses in battle have become utterly inconsequential because my traders will have made sufficient profit to replace the entire fleet 10x over in the length of time it took the battle to play out.