Suggestion for Devs - Remove cheat code in campaign mode

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T-1000
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Suggestion for Devs - Remove cheat code in campaign mode

Post by T-1000 » Mon, 11. Jun 18, 23:57

Hi there,

After finishing camaign missions I would like to submit feedback for improvements (and hopefully this could stick in X4 also).

There are very cheap cheat programmed code chunks in the game which are braking immersion:
1) After finishing campaign the Plutarch Mining Corporation stations still stay as RED enemy across map. When AOE win war in campaign story those stations should change faction to AOE.
As it stays RED enemy after finishing campaign the station faction change can be done only with cheating mods currently.
2) The station damage - why NPC factions do not re-build destroyed stations elsewhere as the market demands are changing as well? The current game code is cheaply cheating with full station respawn in seconds when player leaves map. This is really braking immersion without having persistance state saved.
3) The jump beacons - please make them in EMPTY SPACE so the capital ships can boost to their locations. Making beacons right on top of enemy stations is very bad idea. Or allow player to make own jump beacons and let configure their fleets to use them as waypoints for player/station trading and logistics.
4) The warp gates - move away on distance from stations. Warping right into RED enemy station without any posibility to avoid fire is impossible currently.
5) Make posibility to fully control ships in the fleet with commands. At vanilla game it is very limited and is not useful. The Manual Command Extension (basic) mod is satisfying this need to some extent but the game is still very limited in regards to protecting target/fleet formations/etc.
6) Remove money grinding as campaign objective. It have to be more creative with story line. Why allied faction do not just give required resources to the player when for building stations/etc? Also why allied faction do not make any efforts to support player with ships and resources at all?
7) Allow up to 4 player co-op freeplay and possible campaign. This is big thing and is really needed to spend time with friends together. It is getting very lonely for solo after while out there.

Hopefully those points will reach developers minds.

Cheers!

RainerPrem
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Re: Suggestion for Devs - Remove cheat code in campaign mode

Post by RainerPrem » Tue, 12. Jun 18, 05:17

T-1000 wrote:Hi there,

After finishing camaign missions I would like to submit feedback for improvements (and hopefully this could stick in X4 also).

There are very cheap cheat programmed code chunks in the game which are braking immersion:

1) After finishing campaign the Plutarch Mining Corporation stations still stay as RED enemy across map. When AOE win war in campaign story those stations should change faction to AOE.
As it stays RED enemy after finishing campaign the station faction change can be done only with cheating mods currently.

...

Hopefully those points will reach developers minds.

Cheers!
Hi,

in case you didn't notice: PMC's reputation is no longer fixed after the completion of the campaign. It's just a little below the necessary reputation to dock at their stations and get missions with them.

There is a totally non-cheating method to boost the PMC reputation that little bit to get their stations friendly: kill "enemy" ships close to those stations. Best scenario is the Badlands Colony. You only need to avoid shooting AT the station when killing Xenons and SUWs.

At other stations you need to check the mass transit for red dots, which do NOT belong to PMC or wait for a marauder group to attack.

cu
Rainer

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Miniding
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Re: Suggestion for Devs - Remove cheat code in campaign mode

Post by Miniding » Tue, 12. Jun 18, 08:15

T-1000 wrote:Hi there,

After finishing camaign missions I would like to submit feedback for improvements (and hopefully this could stick in X4 also).

There are very cheap cheat programmed code chunks in the game which are braking immersion:
1) After finishing campaign the Plutarch Mining Corporation stations still stay as RED enemy across map. When AOE win war in campaign story those stations should change faction to AOE.
As it stays RED enemy after finishing campaign the station faction change can be done only with cheating mods currently.
2) The station damage - why NPC factions do not re-build destroyed stations elsewhere as the market demands are changing as well? The current game code is cheaply cheating with full station respawn in seconds when player leaves map. This is really braking immersion without having persistance state saved.
3) The jump beacons - please make them in EMPTY SPACE so the capital ships can boost to their locations. Making beacons right on top of enemy stations is very bad idea. Or allow player to make own jump beacons and let configure their fleets to use them as waypoints for player/station trading and logistics.
4) The warp gates - move away on distance from stations. Warping right into RED enemy station without any posibility to avoid fire is impossible currently.
5) Make posibility to fully control ships in the fleet with commands. At vanilla game it is very limited and is not useful. The Manual Command Extension (basic) mod is satisfying this need to some extent but the game is still very limited in regards to protecting target/fleet formations/etc.
6) Remove money grinding as campaign objective. It have to be more creative with story line. Why allied faction do not just give required resources to the player when for building stations/etc? Also why allied faction do not make any efforts to support player with ships and resources at all?
7) Allow up to 4 player co-op freeplay and possible campaign. This is big thing and is really needed to spend time with friends together. It is getting very lonely for solo after while out there.

Hopefully those points will reach developers minds.

Cheers!
I personaly used the war against PMC to steal lots of their cap ships and so loose hard rep…

But after the end of war, I started to rehab myself to them with protecting them from xenon/pirates ships neer their stations and my rep now is +12 I think (-20 at war's end)

No need to cheat your rep !! Just need bravory and patience to make them "friends" again...
Miniding
X3 Reunion - X3 Terran Conflict - X3 Albion Prelude - X Rebirth - X4 CE...

T-1000
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Re: Suggestion for Devs - Remove cheat code in campaign mode

Post by T-1000 » Tue, 12. Jun 18, 09:23

Miniding wrote: I personaly used the war against PMC to steal lots of their cap ships and so loose hard rep…
That can be any faction you are fighting, really. The point I made is about bad placement for beacons/warp gates as map design flaw with possible intention to create cheap "gatecamp" scenario. Which also blocks player from making alternative options as player is not allowed to build new tradelines/gates/beacons.
Just for curiosity satisfaction - In my finished campaign the war against PMC continues and I have -30 rep against them and had forced hand for every other faction to make negative standings towards PMC (by "friendly fire" on friendly stations from PMC while being shot at). So plenty of opportunity for making own stations to fill resource gaps for friendly factions.

Cheers!

donzi
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Re: Suggestion for Devs - Remove cheat code in campaign mode

Post by donzi » Wed, 13. Jun 18, 02:34

T-1000 wrote:There are very cheap cheat programmed code chunks in the game which are braking immersion:
I can't quite understand this.. The so called 'cheat code' I know of would be things like cheating missiles onto certain ships since there were problems restocking ammo on them -- back in 3.xx or something though. Don't see that happening so far in 4.30.

..then in the campaign, some of it is easier than normal play. That kind of cheat is probably good since hitting a brick wall in the campaign could just make people rage quit.
T-1000 wrote:1) After finishing campaign the Plutarch Mining Corporation stations still stay as RED enemy across map. When AOE win war in campaign story those stations should change faction to AOE.
As it stays RED enemy after finishing campaign the station faction change can be done only with cheating mods currently.
..as already someone mentioned, it's not static and it seems that you missed reading some of the info on game mechanics and play.. Almost seems like your first playthrough.

By slamming PMC during your game enough to bring it down so it was -30 -after- the negative, plot, rep lock took plenty of effort against PMC imo. I just ended the campaign and was restored t0 -17 with PMC.

I've actually in previous games grinded up the rep with PMC before the conflict and had been restored with something like -5.

If you were -30 after the campaign then that is rough. I suspect you could rectify it, slowly by doing like has already been mentioned, but more or less your treatment towards PMC got you the rep, not the game all by itself.
T-1000 wrote:2) The station damage - why NPC factions do not re-build destroyed stations elsewhere as the market demands are changing as well? The current game code is cheaply cheating with full station respawn in seconds when player leaves map. This is really braking immersion without having persistance state saved.
The npc station repair is afaik not magic/cheated but done with some respect to their ability and resources to fix it. I've entered zones where stations were damaged previously apparently as there was no conflicts when I entered the zone.

..if were destroying the PMC stations, well, -30 rep is perfect immersion for that. lol

Stations can't be destroyed completely since the economic situation, npc and player could just turn to a stagnated mess. You can use hacking to cripple npc station production though, which will last a while and effectively make it economically gone for a while..
T-1000 wrote:3) The jump beacons - please make them in EMPTY SPACE so the capital ships can boost to their locations. Making beacons right on top of enemy stations is very bad idea. Or allow player to make own jump beacons and let configure their fleets to use them as waypoints for player/station trading and logistics.

4) The warp gates - move away on distance from stations. Warping right into RED enemy station without any posibility to avoid fire is impossible currently.
I'd love player designated waypoints and routes.. Older X games have that iirc.

I expect player made jump beacons could be done, but there is already enough oddball pathfinding issues with the static setup and player/npc routes.

No doubt some of the locations are troublesome, but wtf. The primary organic enemy (pirates) have few stations and iirc, not that big a deal to work around. Granted, I have best recollection of vanilla and no DLC..

I agree that some organization of the beacons and gates is a drag. It would be nice if it were not so, however, it also is something I expect egosoft thought about. The long, dragging trek from x to y does have potentially needed, injected delays that on the surface seem nuts.

On the other hand, if you made enemy of an NPC faction of your own choice, then that's certainly possible to choke your movement.

The game afaik really doesn't have much on the way of fiddling around with the NPC and alliances having more meaning beyond how a faction treats the player. There are some static enemy like HOA Vs PMC, etc but the game doesn't have the ability to allow the player to play chess with the npc interrelationships -- however I get the idea this will begin to be possible in X foundations.
T-1000 wrote:5) Make posibility to fully control ships in the fleet with commands. At vanilla game it is very limited and is not useful. The Manual Command Extension (basic) mod is satisfying this need to some extent but the game is still very limited in regards to protecting target/fleet formations/etc.
It is rough.. We can hope that changes for rebirth, however, again, I think this will be better in x foundations. You can also fire up X2, X3R, etc and get some more flexibility on fleet, fighter formations and all.
T-1000 wrote:6) Remove money grinding as campaign objective. It have to be more creative with story line. Why allied faction do not just give required resources to the player when for building stations/etc? Also why allied faction do not make any efforts to support player with ships and resources at all?
They do actually, once anyhow. :-) The CV that HOA provides has some RMP in it, not to mention the free ship.

Indirectly they can/will perk you with cash commissions for each transaction -- give you money. They sell licenses to allow you to get paid for enemy kills around their property.
T-1000 wrote:7) Allow up to 4 player co-op freeplay and possible campaign. This is big thing and is really needed to spend time with friends together. It is getting very lonely for solo after while out there.
There are statements regarding this. I'd not hold my breath for any sort of co-op or multiple players. Single player, heavy AI sandbox is their formula.



Finally, since it seems maybe you've not played XR very much, know that once PMC turns hostile to the player via the campaign -- all the red ships you see when going through Albion are/should NOT be considered your enemy. There are tons of passive PMC assets flying around which if you kill will cause repercussions.

Secondly, when PMC turns hostile, you can send trade ships into Albion and PMC will ignore them (make sure defense officer is set to "defend"!). You can hitch rides on your trade ships into Albion and be 'invisible' to PMC while onboard -- or hitch a ride with an NPC trade ship.

..on the other hand, PMC will attack on sight the Skunk and any "Fight" ships you have in Albion.

If you really need that multiplayer space sandbox I suggest the amazing EVE Online.

T-1000
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Post by T-1000 » Wed, 13. Jun 18, 11:32

@donzi

With destroying stations you can test with setting -30 to PMC in savegame and then ordering your capitals to jump through several times from Far Out in Albion to Devries gate. Then you will start seeing what is happening after you try to destroy PMC stations next to jump beacons and leave these sectors. The RIP to your capital ships is almost guaranteed no matter their size and 5 star captains.
With 400+ hours of gameplay on X Rebirth I seen that a lot.

Also for "If you really need that multiplayer space sandbox I suggest the amazing EVE Online." - been there, done that for 10 years. It is completely different game focusing on PvP ganking and super-slow progression with easy-to-loose earned items after long grinding. My suggestion was about co-op with friends on same storyline/sandbox and not about PvP MMO with strangers.

ajime
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Post by ajime » Thu, 14. Jun 18, 03:16

Secondly, when PMC turns hostile, you can send trade ships into Albion and PMC will ignore them (make sure defense officer is set to "defend"!). You can hitch rides on your trade ships into Albion and be 'invisible' to PMC while onboard -- or hitch a ride with an NPC trade ship.
I think that happens on OOS only. if you're riding, get ready to be smashed bywrecksville's Rechrage cellfab's Heavy turrets.

donzi
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Post by donzi » Thu, 14. Jun 18, 03:17

I've misinterpreted somewhat then what you'd wrote. The basic stuff I'd wrote about I expect you know well about it. I'd not considered the desired longterm play with -30 rep. Suppose you can work around albion and pmc via the DLC gates or something. I was more or less talking about 'regular' play where people are not making enemies with non pirate NPC and the temp rep drop does not send the player to -30.

So, you're playing to make PMC your worst enemy right from the start, for good? ..or once they seize the gate?

I guess it doesn't matter since the game really doesn't have the underpinnings to allow player to have more in depth allies, and frankly doesn't support well playstyle that creates enemy of any, particularly primary npc factions. A lot of work to XR for something they seem to be addressing for the next game.

PMC as enemy is plot and is a temporary rep drop as you know, which doesn't really extend NPC 'warfare' with the player with any depth beyond the campaign. I'd not really considered shooting myself in the foot by making argon or albion my enemy. I want/need the production and trade from those systems.

Besides, the backbone of the economic simulation more or less is based a populated AL and OL.. which in turn is unfolded via the campaign. So I guess really, we don't have a real sandbox, ever. I can't see the campaign aspect of x going away so it's presumably going to continue to have weight on the post campaign environment in some rigid ways along with all the core things what have been in X for a while like NPC economy and behavior AI with kinda fixed good and bad guys.


fwiw, I think there are some mods that create a better galaxy to play war in with more than pirates and xenon, but you know this already.



Yeah, as cool as EVE was early on (~6 years with a few accounts) when I began playing it the MMO cestpool slowly cleared up the binders I put on.. Ironically I SWORE to never play MMO years before EVE.. the space thing kind of pulled me in. sigh.

..just seems to co-op all the npc ship, etc AI the most straight forward would be via a client-server game, like an MMO... why I even brought up eve, since it does function well despite the people playing it.

Proper co-op seems a very long shot for x to me. The best ones I play were designed from scratch with that in mind and even then, some of them struggle to provide co-op in any remarkable way.

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Miniding
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Post by Miniding » Sat, 16. Jun 18, 18:19

As I said, ytou can get back PMC friendly… just do what it takes to increase your rep (mission defense/Patrol often get enemies near PMC stations and Killing them will get up your rep with PMC... That's the way I did it.
Miniding
X3 Reunion - X3 Terran Conflict - X3 Albion Prelude - X Rebirth - X4 CE...

donzi
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Post by donzi » Sat, 16. Jun 18, 21:05

ajime wrote:
donzi wrote:Secondly, when PMC turns hostile, you can send trade ships into Albion and PMC will ignore them (make sure defense officer is set to "defend"!). You can hitch rides on your trade ships into Albion and be 'invisible' to PMC while onboard -- or hitch a ride with an NPC trade ship.
I think that happens on OOS only. if you're riding, get ready to be smashed bywrecksville's Rechrage cellfab's Heavy turrets.
Maybe that was something with other rep, npc issues or ??
Early in my current game I'd hitched rides into Albion from NPC and later on my own trade ships to not deal with the mobs of fighters, etc.. It may be that if you've got aggro and then just hop on a trade ship they know where you are and do attack the cap ship.

I'd mainly hopped on in DV and then off wherever I was going in Albion.

Hitching rides may not shed any existing aggro (which makes sense) just as docking on stations doesn't shed existing aggro. IIRC, I was most often not being hunted when boarding any NPC cap ships.

However I also play in Albion a bit careful when the campaign rep loss is active -- mainly to try and plan around those annoying times when ship control is stolen by data bursts, Yisha, etc.

Perkel
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Post by Perkel » Tue, 19. Jun 18, 19:01

I don't think devs care about either game anymore and i don't think they ever cared about campaign.

I mean Terranis you get in campaign was never fixed that is like few years old bug. It can't move and most of the time PMC will just show up and destroy it before you can even do anything with it.

Aside from that trading aspect of the game is completely ****** up. Absolutely no reason to try trading when you can just fly around and collect loot from crates for milions.

Small ships were added but they can't keep up with your ship which means they are useless, on other hand they can't defend your traders because they can't jump with trader so they are left out.

It is just patched up (barely) broken game. And you shouldn't even try playing campaign because chance is that something you relly on will just blow up or take 30 minutes to fly anywhere.

If you want to play X-Rebirth just play Free mode or one of the starts. At least it will save you hours upon hours of wasted time because you will relaize something broke and you can't continue campaign.

I just wish X4 will be free and somewhat balanced that trading actual is meaningful.

donzi
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Post by donzi » Wed, 20. Jun 18, 02:03

Perkel wrote:I don't think devs care about either game anymore and i don't think they ever cared about campaign.
I think it's unreasonable to think they don't care about XR or XR VR or any of their games. Particularly though, XR since it began a new code base which obviously isn't going away and will be part of X4. They have trickled code from X4 back to XR afaik, but it's no surprise X4 is the first priority so benefits from their continued work I expect will continue to trickle back into XR and VR some as time permits.

Campaign mode may have it's quirks, but it's been around and even enhanced. I expect they know campaign is a hook that is needed to get some segments of players to consider buying the game.

There's always gong to be a certain amount of "that's working well enough, we'll get back to it" decisions made and well, egosoft IMO does a respectable job getting back to some of those things.
Perkel wrote:I mean Terranis you get in campaign was never fixed that is like few years old bug. It can't move and most of the time PMC will just show up and destroy it before you can even do anything with it.
This (loosing it) may have happened to me once, but if it did I forgot about it. I've always been able to acquire the Taranis and in fact this last play I did it with the mission guidance of 'get 8 marines' -- surprised me.

Aside from that I can say the ship works fine in 4.30 for me. Very happy to have it.
Perkel wrote:Aside from that trading aspect of the game is completely ****** up. Absolutely no reason to try trading when you can just fly around and collect loot from crates for milions.
Well, as of 4.30 I am getting the idea trading has somehow gotten a bit messed up. Manual trades, explicate BUY and SELL operations seem pretty much the same as ever aside from a few quirks. However trade deals and station trading is giving me grief I'd not had in ~3.62.
Perkel wrote:Small ships were added but they can't keep up with your ship which means they are useless, on other hand they can't defend your traders because they can't jump with trader so they are left out.
As you say, it's a new thing but has issues. I've given having squad fighters around a go off and on, same for using them as escorts... same for using drones on the skunk.. Nice ideas but plenty of things to be sorted out.

Despite their quirks, having fighters and drones can help to varying degrees. I just get too attached to a skunk fighter 'wing' and as you say, they don't travel well so I typically just don't want to have them around me, bumping into my ship or me shooting them.. lol

There are some changes in 4.30 that I want to try out by more work with small/med ships but so far not comfortable enough yet to soak the cash into them aside from a few little miners who never leave their home zone.
Perkel wrote:It is just patched up (barely) broken game. And you shouldn't even try playing campaign because chance is that something you relly on will just blow up or take 30 minutes to fly anywhere.
To each their own. I always play campaign vanilla until I burn out then restart with DLC, wash rinse repeat through the different starts. Campaign though has always been my longest played game. In part I want to try and catch things with vanilla to report as bugs and/or compare to the changelog fixed things and of course see what is new.
Perkel wrote:If you want to play X-Rebirth just play Free mode or one of the starts. At least it will save you hours upon hours of wasted time because you will relaize something broke and you can't continue campaign.
Campaign is a nice ice breaker for me.. After doing it I remain motivated to continue and play and shore up all the other things that there is to do. Getting the free Taranis and CV for the URV Forge make for nice incentives and more ability to explore, fight and so forth, escalate my position in the universe. ;)
Perkel wrote:I just wish X4 will be free and somewhat balanced that trading actual is meaningful.
I doubt it will be free. :wink:

If you're just X4 lurking and have not given 4.30 a shot, might be some of the gripes you have with XR have been given some TLC.

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