Suggestion: Please reconsider random ranges on ship Modification installation

[solardawning]

The implementation of Modifications isn't the appropriate mechanic for a single-player game. Random ranges on values don't work here.
Consider it from this perspective: Game mechanics are like behavioral economics- you're crafting the rules, and your players will seek to optimize their outcomes according to those rules and their understanding of the underlying system.
The mechanics create incentives to act in specific ways.

Thus, your mechanics should cause players who are trying to optimize to behave in a way that results in fun gameplay. For example: Hunting targets to get modification parts leads to engagement in combat which is fun. Great!

But what incentive is created by random ranges, combined with loss of materials on rerolling? Quick save and Quick load.
It creates a horrifically un-fun gameplay loop of spending a very large amount of time reloading, waiting for a very long loading screen, in order to get 'acceptable' results.

Please consider alternatives, for example:
Decide on fixed values for a given modification, with no variation.
Or, decide on a fixed value which is relatively lower, and allow it to be progressively upgraded to higher maximum values by spending additional resources.

[Feloidea]

Or, decide on a fixed value which is relatively lower, and allow it to be progressively upgraded to higher maximum values by spending additional resources.

I've proposed this a good time ago too. Make the modification effects scale with how much you invest into it. Not only does it remove the RNG but it would also allow for uniform,ity across multiple modifcations. The latter especially would be quite welcome for main weapon modifications since it means you can match weapon performances and not have the same weapons perform slightly differently/out of sync with different modification values.

[stooper88]

I wholeheartedly agree with both of the above.

[vvvvvvvv]

The implementation of Modifications isn't the appropriate mechanic for a single-player game. Random ranges on values don't work here.
Consider it from this perspective: Game mechanics are like behavioral economics- you're crafting the rules, and your players will seek to optimize their outcomes according to those rules and their understanding of the underlying system.
The mechanics create incentives to act in specific ways.

Thus, your mechanics should cause players who are trying to optimize to behave in a way that results in fun gameplay. For example: Hunting targets to get modification parts leads to engagement in combat which is fun. Great!

But what incentive is created by random ranges, combined with loss of materials on rerolling? Quick save and Quick load.
It creates a horrifically un-fun gameplay loop of spending a very large amount of time reloading, waiting for a very long loading screen, in order to get 'acceptable' results.

Please consider alternatives, for example:
Decide on fixed values for a given modification, with no variation.
Or, decide on a fixed value which is relatively lower, and allow it to be progressively upgraded to higher maximum values by spending additional resources.

...

Mod recipe uses common components and key components. Key components you get back when you dismantle the mod.

The idea that currently works with ship mods is that you need gather hundreds of common components from battlefields before you even bother with it. if you put a defense platform in front of xenon gate (even without blockading it), and get a ship harvest the drops, in a few hours you'll be swimming in those materials. 100-300 components will be enough for rerolls. You'll probably need 20 or so rerolls to get enough values high anyway. So this is something you do when you got a pile of materials and you do it largely only on your favorite ship.

That's the the scenario that is not frustrating.

[brume]

The implementation of Modifications isn't the appropriate mechanic for a single-player game. Random ranges on values don't work here.
Consider it from this perspective: Game mechanics are like behavioral economics- you're crafting the rules, and your players will seek to optimize their outcomes according to those rules and their understanding of the underlying system.
The mechanics create incentives to act in specific ways.

Thus, your mechanics should cause players who are trying to optimize to behave in a way that results in fun gameplay. For example: Hunting targets to get modification parts leads to engagement in combat which is fun. Great!

But what incentive is created by random ranges, combined with loss of materials on rerolling? Quick save and Quick load.
It creates a horrifically un-fun gameplay loop of spending a very large amount of time reloading, waiting for a very long loading screen, in order to get 'acceptable' results.

Please consider alternatives, for example:
Decide on fixed values for a given modification, with no variation.
Or, decide on a fixed value which is relatively lower, and allow it to be progressively upgraded to higher maximum values by spending additional resources.

...

Mod recipe uses common components and key components. Key components you get back when you dismantle the mod.

The idea that currently works with ship mods is that you need gather hundreds of common components from battlefields before you even bother with it. if you put a defense platform in front of xenon gate (even without blockading it), and get a ship harvest the drops, in a few hours you'll be swimming in those materials. 100-300 components will be enough for rerolls. You'll probably need 20 or so rerolls to get enough values high anyway. So this is something you do when you got a pile of materials and you do it largely only on your favorite ship.

That's the the scenario that is not frustrating.

I entirely agree with everything you said.

Putting a heavily armed station and automating loot collection is actually quite easy in an advanced game. I think the current system is perfectly fine as it is.

In addition, I think rolling for modification gain is fun.

[solardawning]

Thank you for your thoughts.
I see that you feel the primary reason it does not need to be changed is that (paraphrasing) "the player should only want to do it to a small number of ships", and should automate material collection before they even bother trying.

I don't believe that is sufficient reason to have a system designed to encourage players to reload.
"modify fewer ships and it's less frustrating" isn't helpful when we're talking about structural ways to make it less frustrating. It essentially amounts to saying "don't do it".

[vvvvvvvv]

I entirely agree with everything you said.

Putting a heavily armed station and automating loot collection is actually quite easy in an advanced game. I think the current system is perfectly fine as it is.

In addition, I think rolling for modification gain is fun.

The only thing I'd like to see changed is how percentages are handled. I'd rather prefer if things rolled in integer increments rounding to nearest value. I.e. +1, +5, +10, +11... without getting +24.76, like it works now.

Thank you for your thoughts.
I see that you feel the primary reason it does not need to be changed is that (paraphrasing) "the player should only want to do it to a small number of ships", and should automate material collection before they even bother trying.

I don't believe that is sufficient reason to have a system designed to encourage players to reload.
"modify fewer ships and it's less frustrating" isn't helpful when we're talking about structural ways to make it less frustrating. It essentially amounts to saying "don't do it".

When you begin modding ships I'd expect you to give up on reloading. Here's why.

Let's say you're trying to install Slingshot.

And you aim to get forward Thrust >= 25%, Boost THrust >= 45% and Travel Thrust >= 45%.

The chance of forward thrust rolling high enough is (1.0 - (25-10)/(30-10)) ==> 25%. The chances of getting boost/travel would be ... (1.0 - (45-20)/(50-20)) ==> ~16%. All three together would be 0.25 * 0.16 * 0.16 ==> 0.0064, meaning 0.64%. That means to achieve the desired target you might need to perform 156 rolls or more and note that result is not guaranteed. Reloading isn't going to help you here.

However you are less greedy, and aim at >=40% for secondary values, it'll become 2.25% chance of rolling this high, which is about 50 rolls. That is manageable. Attempts will typically burn through a stack of 150 materials or so, which isn't that bad.

That's why you use this on a single ship and this is why reloading is not gonna help. Number of attempts is quite large, and trying to for 50 or more times quickly becomes annoying. The system is a lottery where you burn resources and get improvements if you're lucky. You'll be also doing this on your own shipyard, and by that time it is sort of already an end game as you burned through 150+ mil (I think) to get its blueprint.

[solardawning]

I've installed full exceptional modifications on about 30 ships- one of each destroyer I ever want to fly as a flagship, as well as a wolfpack of 11 Odachis (one I fly + 10 NPC wing).
I like to change the ship I am flying regularly.

Yes, it absolutely took an immense amount of parts, and I generally reload every 20 attempts if I didn't get a result I find in an acceptable range. I spent probably 11 hours looking at the loading screen.


That's precisely the problem I am articulating. The current mechanics create an incentive that is not fun. Players, including myself, will take the shortest path to optimization, based on their understanding of the system. As it is implemented now, the system is designed to incentivize save-scumming.
This is an extremely not fun experience.

I accept that your response to encountering this is to choose to use it less. That's a valid point, and I appreciate you contributing it.

[GCU Grey Area]

Frankly, it sounds like your 'acceptable range' was unreasonably high if you spent 11 hours modding just 30 ships.

I mod almost all of the ships I own (100s of them, including ALL L/XL freighters, miners & warships) & doubt I've spent anywhere near that long at the modding workbench. However I don't reload when modding (you can do a LOT of rerolls in the time that takes) & don't aim for excessively high results. Very pleased if that occurs, however it's not essential as long as those mods give my ships a noticeable edge against unmodded ships of the same type.

When installing high tier mods which affect many attributes I also find it important to focus on, at most, 2 of those attributes (e.g. for Expediter I focus on projectile speed & lifetime) - as soon as those are good enough I stop, regardless of what the rest are. If you aim for very high results across the board it's going to take many, many times longer.

Ultimately though it's a choice - you need to decide whether trying to get the best results possible is worth your time. If you do it is going to take a long time to get there & if you reload it's only going to take longer (if anything the length of time it takes to reload is a strong disincentive for me to use that approach).

[Axeface]

In the short term something at least needs to be done about weapons not being synchronised because of installing mods. Let us roll for all weapons at once or something?
Ide say the entire feature needs a redesign, but weapon synchronisation is the biggest issue.

[Nanook]

I'm with the OP on this. They've proposed a perfectly good, and IMO, a much better alternative to the RNG. The negative replies to this seem to come from players with very well established games with lots of resources.

I doubt the vast majority of players are that far along, and typically may only have a few mod parts with which to mod their ship(s). Early in the game, when you want to mod your own ship, you often have barely enough parts to make even one RNG roll. So saving and reloading is the only way to get an acceptable result.

Consider, for example, a fighter with 3-4 forward guns all of the same type. It's currently almost impossible to mod them equally so as to have coordinated fire. Instead, they may all overheat at different times, reducing the damage by a significant amount over what could have been achieved.

And btw, rerolling does not give back all the resources you spend. Some are used up and gone for good, not to mention the credits are also lost, so the save/reload paradigm is the only way early players may be able to 'reroll'.

[GCU Grey Area]

[/quote]

In the short term something at least needs to be done about weapons not being synchronised because of installing mods. Let us roll for all weapons at once or something?
Ide say the entire feature needs a redesign, but weapon synchronisation is the biggest issue.

Would not want that myself. I frequently find it's beneficial to have very different results for each weapon e.g. on a destroyer with 2 guns I often like to have one which is modded to improve range (for sniping turrets etc), while the other does higher damage. Usually configure one weapon as primary & the other as secondary so I have a separate trigger for each gun.

The negative replies to this seem to come from players with very well established games with lots of resources.

Not true in my case. Periodically I restart, I'm currently on my 9th game. I have a lot of mod parts now, but certainly won't when I start my next game (probably soon after 7.5 is out of beta). For the majority of each game I do have to choose carefully how I expend my credits, mod parts & other supplies. I still don't reload though. It is however another reason why I'd recommend not aiming too high when modding ships. It's all the more important when supplies are limited.

[Axeface]

I know its fine with you. It could be an option, select the weapons you want to roll on, any or all. So you can have different rolls on all weapons for the people that want that.

[jlehtone]

I had to dig up the Dragon Incident (a "Nat 1")

the prototype ship exploded as it docked to a shipyard in Family Pride, destroying the structure and killing 500 people who were on board at the time. The Split spent a further 3 jazuras trying to find out why the ship exploded. A small fracture in the reactor was to blame, and when the reactor casing was re-designed the ship re-entered service, although many Split pilots consider the ship a curse.

Our tunings don't have a chance to produce anything like that. Should we feel happy about that? Or should we ask for booby traps? (The earlier games have had some.)


Is the RNG a uniform distribution? What if it wasn't? Maybe something like https://cplusplus.com/reference/random/ ... tribution/
where most values are "good", but there is still chance for bad or "bit better".


Having played first ~700 hours without tunings, I don't really care one way or the other.

[Raptor34]

I had to dig up the Dragon Incident (a "Nat 1")

the prototype ship exploded as it docked to a shipyard in Family Pride, destroying the structure and killing 500 people who were on board at the time. The Split spent a further 3 jazuras trying to find out why the ship exploded. A small fracture in the reactor was to blame, and when the reactor casing was re-designed the ship re-entered service, although many Split pilots consider the ship a curse.

Our tunings don't have a chance to produce anything like that. Should we feel happy about that? Or should we ask for booby traps? (The earlier games have had some.)


Is the RNG a uniform distribution? What if it wasn't? Maybe something like https://cplusplus.com/reference/random/ ... tribution/
where most values are "good", but there is still chance for bad or "bit better".


Having played first ~700 hours without tunings, I don't really care one way or the other.

Why not both? A safe option that gives you middling stats that is more expensive. And a dangerous option that gives you crazy stats, both ways. And if you do it wrong the ship ****** explodes and you get ejected out into space like if your ship get's blown up.
And you lose rep as if you blew up the station, because you did. Incentivize you to do it at your own stations.

[Falcrack]

I 100% agree with the OP. The effects should be stated up front and be predictable. No RNG for stats from modifications.

[alt3rn1ty]

The idea that currently works with ship mods is that you need gather hundreds of common components from battlefields before you even bother with it. if you put a defense platform in front of xenon gate (even without blockading it), and get a ship harvest the drops, in a few hours you'll be swimming in those materials. 100-300 components will be enough for rerolls. You'll probably need 20 or so rerolls to get enough values high anyway. So this is something you do when you got a pile of materials and you do it largely only on your favorite ship.

The last three games I had, by the time you get to advanced stage, all resulted in Xenon being extinct.

The last two times I tried to preserve them, fencing them in to a few sectors so I could farm them for resources ..
.. But then other factions just steam rolled in and finished them off.

Right now I am hunting Prometheus to build up stock of resources, in preparation for the Hyperion DLC and modding it.
So I am in agreement with the OP, rng on modding rolls is a royal pain in the butt.

I gave up on modding main weapons, as has been mentioned you cant keep them in sync once you start getting random results for each of them. So those front weapons on the Hyperion will have to stay unmodified.

[solardawning]

Another way to look at it.

Imagine that modifications in X4 didn't exist, and you were creating a game mechanic from scratch to allow players to upgrade their ships and weapons.

When designing game mechanics, you should always begin with the question: "What behaviors do I want this mechanic to encourage my players to do."
This is because any game system is an incentive to optimize; it creates behavioral patterns. As the maker of a game, you want to encourage behaviors that are fun, and keep your players exploring a variety of fun activities in the game.

So, given that, would you sit down and, listing those behaviors, decide:
"I want my players to save before doing this, and reload if they do not get results they want."

Apparently some here may disagree, but I would say no. That is not a good goal to have in X4. There are many better things to encourage players in X4 to do.
And unfortunately, this is what the current system encourages. The degree to which people will do it varies based on their own patience and tolerance, and understanding of the systems, but it is a very common outcome. This is why there's multiple game mods to change this system.

[vvvvvvvv]

The last two times I tried to preserve them, fencing them in to a few sectors so I could farm them for resources ..
.. But then other factions just steam rolled in and finished them off.

The easiest spot to have xenon zoo is in Tharka. Especially with Timelines which adds a graveyard sector.

Another way to look at it.

Imagine that modifications in X4 didn't exist, and you were creating a game mechanic from scratch to allow players to upgrade their ships and weapons.

When designing game mechanics, you should always begin with the question: "What behaviors do I want this mechanic to encourage my players to do."
This is because any game system is an incentive to optimize; it creates behavioral patterns. As the maker of a game, you want to encourage behaviors that are fun, and keep your players exploring a variety of fun activities in the game.

So, given that, would you sit down and, listing those behaviors, decide:
"I want my players to save before doing this, and reload if they do not get results they want."

Apparently some here may disagree, but I would say no. That is not a good goal to have in X4. There are many better things to encourage players in X4 to do.
And unfortunately, this is what the current system encourages. The degree to which people will do it varies based on their own patience and tolerance, and understanding of the systems, but it is a very common outcome. This is why there's multiple game mods to change this system.

Look, people see things differently, and this is one of those cases.

In my perception save scumming here is pointless because of how many rolls is there. You'll spend hours watching loading screen. Instead of that you could do something fun, let ships auto-collect drops in background, and then burn through 300+ items to get the perfect engine in a few minutes.

Likewise, it is highly unlikely that designer was thinking "oh, I want people to savescum". The reasoning seem to be: "I want upgrades to be rare so they feel special". It is a lottery. And it works like lottery. When you finally get that perfect roll, it does feel special. So, yes it is possible to land on this specific design while making a new such system from scratch.

Maybe the issue is that it becomes available too early while it is effectively an end game activity, due to amount of resources it requires.

[brume]

The last two times I tried to preserve them, fencing them in to a few sectors so I could farm them for resources ..
.. But then other factions just steam rolled in and finished them off.

The easiest spot to have xenon zoo is in Tharka. Especially with Timelines which adds a graveyard sector.

Another way to look at it.

Imagine that modifications in X4 didn't exist, and you were creating a game mechanic from scratch to allow players to upgrade their ships and weapons.

When designing game mechanics, you should always begin with the question: "What behaviors do I want this mechanic to encourage my players to do."
This is because any game system is an incentive to optimize; it creates behavioral patterns. As the maker of a game, you want to encourage behaviors that are fun, and keep your players exploring a variety of fun activities in the game.

So, given that, would you sit down and, listing those behaviors, decide:
"I want my players to save before doing this, and reload if they do not get results they want."

Apparently some here may disagree, but I would say no. That is not a good goal to have in X4. There are many better things to encourage players in X4 to do.
And unfortunately, this is what the current system encourages. The degree to which people will do it varies based on their own patience and tolerance, and understanding of the systems, but it is a very common outcome. This is why there's multiple game mods to change this system.

Look, people see things differently, and this is one of those cases.

In my perception save scumming here is pointless because of how many rolls is there. You'll spend hours watching loading screen. Instead of that you could do something fun, let ships auto-collect drops in background, and then burn through 300+ items to get the perfect engine in a few minutes.

Likewise, it is highly unlikely that designer was thinking "oh, I want people to savescum". The reasoning seem to be: "I want upgrades to be rare so they feel special". It is a lottery. And it works like lottery. When you finally get that perfect roll, it does feel special. So, yes it is possible to land on this specific design while making a new such system from scratch.

Maybe the issue is that it becomes available too early while it is effectively an end game activity, due to amount of resources it requires.

Like before, I entirely agree with your vision.

I don't want ship modification to become something like it was in X3, common, easy, systematic, and eventualy, absolutely boring. Mods shall indeed be something special, rare, hard, and with a part of uncertainty.

I don't see the point of having entire fleet of modded ships. X4 already give the player the special treatment regarding many things and that is detrimental to immersion. I want to be a cog in a vast universe, I find it quite already quite absurd to be able to build fleet capable of erasing entire nations in the game without any real opposition, having one of the biggest station in the gate network as a HQ... or to be able to mods ships in a way other faction can not.