Wall of text, i'm sorry
Slashman wrote:
The problem with TC and AP has always been that the AI is as dumb as a sack of hammers. They don't use any effective tactics. If Egosoft really has improved AI significantly with Rebirth, that could be the key to balancing things out.
What we really need is more info.
That's not true. The AI isn't as half as stupid as it behaves in the last three X series parts (Reunion/TC/AP) The AI is not a fixed and complete entity in game, it's also not a single file roaming through your RAM
It's mainly a collection of assumptions how a certain situation will develop, and how an object should behave in this particular situation. These assumptions are old, very old. I'd bet that some of them have been carried over since X-btF. To me, it seems that at least the fighting scripts were written with the strafe drive as a part of the upgrade process
Anyway, when they were written is irrelevant, but they assume a certain ship behaviour which isn't mirrored in the ship stats at all. Those fight and flight scripts are working well, if the ship stats are kept in a given range, which is roughly matching the M4 class. If you experiment a bit and expand the the dependencies between basic speed and basic yaw/pitch/roll, angular acceleration and max acceleration (with tunings already included), you will see how much more you can get out of the "AI" overall.
Did you know that you can get a M6 to dodge incoming capital fire, when it was hit? It can, even in TC, but if you apply more and more cool stats and forget about the recommended ones, you end up with a ship unable to brake, or to turn fast enough to get out of the line of fire. Unfortunately this was the way how the X series was developping in the last 7 years, so we ended up with a totally screwed ships and weapons setting, not even thinking about the missiles
Instead of researching what went wrong and deconstructing their own product, ES decided to break the line and to start over new. I assume that the mess created with all those ships led to the cut for having only a single ship available for the player. This way, it will be a lot easier to railroad the game experience for the majority of players, as all will have and do the same things. The problem is, that there are still different ship types, regardless which ones, and they will still react accordingly to scripts made in assumption of certain situations. They will still have the same problem with dependencies of stats/values, scaling their speed and agility for example. The recommended stats and dependencies will be different, as the game will be probably done from scratch, but they're still there, as this is not an abstract design problem, or solved beer the sheer willpower of the devs. It's a mathematical problem, and it won't disappear magically just because it's a new game. This is only an assumption, but everything i read, from the drone featrure to the usage of capital ships under remote control, was made to keep the behaviour of ships a lot more comfortable to handle in the development. That caps should and must turn so slow, that it would be a pain for the player to fly them themselves, that drones will be the perfect replacement for all those dogfight loving pilots out there and so on. The key element to ship classes are distinctions, the pixel shape of an object does NOT define the role. If you throw in blindly things like a M6, flying as fast as M5, mounting weapons like a M7 (Starbursts on a M6!) you'll end up with a Springblossom. The same happened in Reunion with the Hyperion. 4 GAMMA PSGs on a ship with the shape of a M6 and the shields like a light destroyer? If you do such things, and change the rest of the ships equally liberate, you don't have to wonder why in the end everything seems to be screwed up, including the "AI". You simply get ships unable to stop before turning crashing into asteroids/gates and other ships. You get those ships unable to match the rendezvous point for stations, turning around again and again in order to dock. You'll find also a hint why those wasps are circling caps instead of hitting them correctly.
If this issue isn't solved by the ES dev team, it will be carried over to Rebirth, and i think that this will be the case, as all i heard from ES in interviews and articles isn't pointing out that there will be a distinction. I may be wrong, as i haven't seen the game. And before the release day has come, nobody will.
To me, the single ship solution would be a negative experience, as far i can judge about it just from reading news and articles. On the one side, i'd be really angry to fly only a single ship just because of the inability of devs to handle other flyable ship classes. On the other side, i've not played the x series as a real time strategy game. To sit back in safety, letting my minions slaying the enemy, watching fireworks and so on, is exciting the first time, colorful the second, and plain boring the third time. I like to risk my virtual life, dodging the bullets zipping past my windshield, i like to feel alive, not safe. That's NOT a judgement about how you have to play the game in my opinion. It's just a different way. If some people are enjoying a more rts or DiD style gameplay, that's absolutely fine. Especially in DiDs you won't risk month of game progression, just because you want to testdrive your brand new Mamba against a cap. But as rts/DiD style is one way to have some fun in game, the personal engagement is too. And this has been apparently going south with the Rebirth ons ship only gameplay. Sure, you can fly drones... cool. I remember that it was a very hyped feature in the 2007/2008 announcements that you could actually instantly jump into the action, even if it was miles away, or even in a different sector.... by just using the remote control. Up to this day, i haven't found any instant action jumps... i still have to fly there, and i expect the drone feature to be exactly as thrilling like trying to steer a ship remotely controlled while staring on the enlarged upper left monitor. If you haven't tried this method... highlight one of your ships in sector, play around with the controls a bit.... and tadaaaa, you can steer it remotely even in TC. Maybe i will be proven wrong, and maybe this will get supercool. I'd be happy to be wrong, but i won't hold my breath until i see some reviews/let's play videos talking about it.
Another thing why i don't like the single ship idea is, that ROLEPLAY (in capital letters) is a lot more than some animated menu options with a hot babe in the background and a starcraft like cockpit. The player defines mainly his roles by his ability to ACT, not to talk or to deploy satellites. If i'm in the mood to play a galaxy wide known warlord, i simply refuse to sit in something smaller than a M7. I'm not trying to pimp up a M6 like a douche. If i'm an assassin, i'll play that by having the meanest arsenal of guns and missiles to onehit my target. I simply DO NOT waltz in with a M6 so big it could be a pregnant garbage can. I won't dock at a dirty soyfarm to shove in soybeans into the ships bay with my bare hands, if i'm sitting in a fancy M6. I'd do that with my old and trusty, slightly smelling TS freighter. Blue grass played from the Music system of a anime style customized Honda CRV isn't exactly suitable. And i think i'm not alone with my opinion. The look of the player, the way and ability to act is defined by the type of ship you're flying is your role. Roleplay is not only talking to a virtual hot babe and to tell a retarded but three eyed superior being in which way he should be heading. I'm not comfortable with flying the same ship. And in this case i don't even like the look of it.
Furthermore, the cut in the x series means also that a single ship gets in the way of modding. I know my ins and outs of the stats, a bit of MD and basic modelling. If i see a NEEDED feature, which is exclusively tied to a single ship, it gives me the creeps. The crew function will be tied to the ship as such, as youd need backgrounds, camera points and the according adjustments in the files, like the number of viewpoints. You can not simply make a new model and paste it over the old one, even if it uses the same entries. The cameras in the object senes will have to match the ones defining the stats. If you do a mighty destroyer as replacement, you may end up with a peaceful view on the inside of the ships hull. We don't know a single thing about how objects are handled so far, maybe it's simple, but i fear it's like always and we need to work around things a lot.
Now, when it comes down to modding and Steam... i don't want to start a discussion about Steam, this belongs in a different thread. But with the mod folder as probably the only option to mod things, we're bound to the way the game handles it. If the Cockpit and crew features are bound to the script engine (which is already announced, there will be scripts), the question arises... does the game read scripts from the modding folder at all? Does it eventually only read only Mission Director files from that folder? Will there be any way to change these things via MD? If the game only reads certain types of files from the mod folder, than that's it with modding, there will be no new ships mod without a decent workaround. And this workaround will be constantly screwed up by all those patches. A nightmare to support, because of the auto update steam function. Many users will be threatened away from using mods from the beginning. And we haven't heard anything about it, even Gazz got no further public available informations about modding when he asked earlier this year.
Also, there aren't enough active MD coders to handle a bigger mod, even if they'd work together. The XML language works, no doubt about that one, but it's very ressource hungry if you don't plan your checks right, or if you use larger files. The implementation of the conversations file makes mods incompatible with each other by default, for example. The files themselves get very quickly unreadable and require a certain level of experience, whereas the Script editor is a lot more straight forward for those who have been tinkering with programming and coding before. Those few MD coders are not enough to dig out the needed details. You may want to take a look at the MSCI, you may even remember Deadly Da's X wiki. A game like Reunion or TC is so complex, that it would take years for a handful of people to even write a documentation. If the cut in the engine is that deep, we won't see decent mods soon. And i don't mean months. Where are all those scripters and modders? The majority has already left or is bound by the ES NDA. The publisher of Rebirth will be Deep Silver, and they move all their games over to Steam, regardless if it works or not. Happened to the risen 2 modding community also. Deep Silver is part of Koch Media, and Koch Media is the german branch of Sony. So they work according to the Sony philosophy. Do you expect a company under Sony's supervision to be modding friendly? The Risen 2 community asked for only some details, and eventually a small modding tool... everything was denied from the beginning. Do we have modding tools from ES? No, X3Editor, YAGG, everything generated by users. ES is very modding friendly when it comes down to the usage their own material, and i'm very happy about it. Except Bethesda with TES there's no company so tolerant towards their modding community, so two thumbs up here. Every feature incorporated in a patch or even addons like AP were not simply taken from the modding forum. Each author was asked politely before, and this is a commendable behaviour. But when it comes down to actively supporting, i think they aren't allowed to hand out modding tools, because of their publisher. Now, how long will it take to dig out and document the examples and structures? Who will write the perl script for the GMax if there's no Exporter for a possible new object file extension? It requires a decent amount of enthusiastic people working on that. I'm pessimistic when it comes down to a possible ship mod for Rebirth. I expect ES to hand out less informations about modding than before, because the game will be, judging on Deep Silvers last dlc policy, plastered with unnescessary dlcs. New ship crew? A Split one? No problem, 9,99 €. New ship? 15 €. That's the way i expect when watching Deep Silver and not ES. Mods would be in direct competition, and the interest in supporting a community capable of doing exactly this would be very low, if the publisher follows the same strategy he showed already before.
Wall of text, i know. Sorry. I also don't want to step on anyones toes, nor start any discussion. Nobody should feel personally offended, it's not intended. But this one ship feature is a step backwards for me, because the people working on that game have been a bit short sighted. I do clearly like to fly more than a single ship. I don't need a cockpit, or something fancy. Still, we will see how it works when the game is released, and maybe i'm completely wrong. But i fear i'm not. So far, i have buried my dreams to play another part of the X series silently very deep. Time will tell what'll happen.
