X4 needs more economic challenge

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by Falcrack » Thu, 18. Jul 19, 16:27

I don't like a strict maintenance cost for ships. Who would we be paying maintenance costs to? I prefer to have crew wages be the cost, coupled with a necessity to have crew on board in order to maintain the ships. Insufficient crew leads to ships that slowly degrade over time.

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by Killjaeden » Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:41

There's one solution to this...
Put it all in. Tax on Sales, maintenance fee, crew costs, worker payments, tax on taxes ...
And then provide difficulty options to tweak it - from 0 to "yes, 99% tax is totally reasonable". Along with sensible presets (e.g. Very Easy to Xtreme)

It's about bloody time X got an option for configuring difficulty of the various aspects. It's overdue.
After X3 Reunion it has progressively gotten faster and faster of how to make money and progress in the game (same with reputation). The problem with this is, that you approach endgame much much sooner. And the endgame has been and still is X's greatest weakness. From lacking opponents (proper race reaction to powerful players, or competing companies) economically and militarily, to a lack of controls for large scale battles . Most of the major problems in X become only really apparent in late game.

:!: Players must be able to tweak difficulty, to balance the amount of fun they want to have vs. their available time vs. duration of their preferred "game phase" !

X for me provides the most fun in the early stage, where you only had a handful of ships, no stations, no capitals, broke on cash all the time. "Space survival". In the latest games this phase ends after maybe 3-10h at most, sometimes even after the first story missions ... in X3 Reunion that could easily be 15-50h, depending on how you played/ got along. Bankrupt Assassin start for life.
Last edited by Killjaeden on Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:44, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by pref » Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:42

Killjaeden wrote:
Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:41
There's one solution to this...
Put it all in. Tax on Sales, maintenance fee, crew costs, worker payments, tax on taxes ...
How is that a challenge?

In my book this is all just balancing income/cost levels.

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by Killjaeden » Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:54

pref wrote:
Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:42
How is that a challenge?
In my book this is all just balancing income/cost levels.
It's not challenging your mind or your "gamer skillz".
Providing challenge is not the point. It reduces progression speed. It reduces the exponential "power growth" of the player.
It does add challenge. If you lose a thing you can't replace it as quickly. You have to be more clever in how to use your money. You can't just buy the best of the best for everything in an instant. You dont pile up gazillions of space bucks in 1h. No it's not particularly exciting on paper to see "oh i now get 30% less...". But it's important. If you can only maintain a fleet of 10 Destroyers, because they cost so much to keep running, suddenly there is a compelling reason to build more factories.

Dont like it, set all maintenance cost to 0, and enjoy hoarding billions without any purpose or reason to spend them. I assume ES made progress faster and faster so even "casual" players with little time can play it. Totally fine. But they need to provide possibility to make progress slower. Or you'll keep getting "bored after 15h" threads...

Plenty of "empire games" have recognized this and provide some small countermeasures to the otherwise explosive power growth of players. Stellaris has "administration inefficiency" losses the larger the faction gets, has maintenance for fleets and armies so you have to increase production/income to be able to build more, etc etc.
Last edited by Killjaeden on Fri, 19. Jul 19, 23:01, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by pref » Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:59

Killjaeden wrote:
Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:54
It's not challenging your mind or your "gamer skillz".
Providing challenge is not the point. It reduces progression speed.
..
Dont like it, set all maintenance cost to 0, and enjoy hoarding billions without any purpose or reason to spend them.
The point here would be to provide that reason and purpose along with the means to achieve it. And it should add to the think part at least a bit.
If you reduce income by whatever percent, it just takes doing more of the same stuff you already have been doing to get on the same level.

No clue about balancing, stopped when 2.0 got released - not saying if the game does or does not need it.

And judging by the thread title providing challenge is the topic.

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by Player » Fri, 19. Jul 19, 23:16

MakerLinux wrote:
Wed, 26. Jun 19, 17:01
I don't agree with this idea, at least right now. I think X4 first needs to make the economics data clearer. It's too broad and at the same time too pulverized, it's quite hard to get a good economic outlook, and even see if you're having profit or not. Add to that the traders/station configuration which sometimes leads to unforeseen results. For greater economic challenges the consolidation of data, consistency of orders given and streamlining of interface is a need that should be addressed first, otherwise it will make the mess even greater.
+1
I Agree

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by Killjaeden » Fri, 19. Jul 19, 23:19

pref wrote:
Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:59
The point here would be to provide that reason and purpose along with the means to achieve it. And it should add to the think part at least a bit.
I added to my previous post, but i repeat it again - Simple example:
If you can only maintain a fleet of <number> Destroyers and <number> of Fighers, because they cost so much to keep running, you can no longer grow your forces at that point. If the situation requires you to have more ships to patrol your space and/or strike against enemies - you have to increase income -> more traders and stations.

For stations you need space. If you ran out of space you need to aquire new one. Maybe even capture a sector. More space means more patrols required -> Economy must increase.
Right now you can just get more and more ships without ever changing your income, by waiting. It adds purpose for expanding, it requires more planning... so yes it qualifies as "providing challenge".

I'm not sure why i even have to explain this?
If you state getting less income is not providing more challenge then picture a Gamestart where you have a Scout/M5 and a magic income of 1mio/minute vs. a Gamestart where you start with just a M5 and a fluffy dice. Same starting conditions, less income... same challenge? I think not!
f you reduce income by whatever percent, it just takes doing more of the same stuff you already have been doing to get on the same level.
Doing more of the same is not a bad thing, if originally you where doing barely anything...
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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by pref » Fri, 19. Jul 19, 23:47

Killjaeden wrote:
Fri, 19. Jul 19, 23:19
you have to increase income -> more traders and stations.
pref wrote:
Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:59
If you reduce income by whatever percent, it just takes doing more of the same stuff you already have been doing to get on the same level.
Think we talk about the same thing.

It's just for me having to build 30% more stations, and release more traders would not really cut it. It just becomes repetitive after a while.

For me the problem is that all you can do now is increase profits, there isn't really a goal beyond that with current game features.
What i would like to see is getting something out of the trade/build aspect besides profit, and first and foremost getting tools to manage our production and trade activity in greater detail.
Better control in what wares we trade with who,
ways to automate trading so i don't need to do 10s or more manual trade runs every couple minutes,
some changes in economy so that you cannot saturate it with a couple stations just to name a few,

and when all that is done there could come the goals on top of that - better equipment, more power to defend/attack, stronger opposition, getting access to tech and QoL features that make management easier as you hit a larger scale etc.

Right now the only purpose not directly connected to profit is to build a couple of stations near a shipyard and hope AI traders will help support your chosen race and not trade in 5 ecells instead of hundreds of ship equipment.
Or build a SY for yourself, but i found that does not bring any real change to what happens in the game as by that time i could have any ship i wanted even without that. When you can spend a couple billions on blueprints and infrastructure the game is finished anyway.

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by spankahontis » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 00:09

Killjaeden wrote:
Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:54
pref wrote:
Fri, 19. Jul 19, 22:42
How is that a challenge?
In my book this is all just balancing income/cost levels.
It's not challenging your mind or your "gamer skillz".
Providing challenge is not the point. It reduces progression speed. It reduces the exponential "power growth" of the player.
It does add challenge. If you lose a thing you can't replace it as quickly. You have to be more clever in how to use your money. You can't just buy the best of the best for everything in an instant. You dont pile up gazillions of space bucks in 1h. No it's not particularly exciting on paper to see "oh i now get 30% less...". But it's important. If you can only maintain a fleet of 10 Destroyers, because they cost so much to keep running, suddenly there is a compelling reason to build more factories.

Dont like it, set all maintenance cost to 0, and enjoy hoarding billions without any purpose or reason to spend them. I assume ES made progress faster and faster so even "casual" players with little time can play it. Totally fine. But they need to provide possibility to make progress slower. Or you'll keep getting "bored after 15h" threads...

Plenty of "empire games" have recognized this and provide some small countermeasures to the otherwise explosive power growth of players. Stellaris has "administration inefficiency" losses the larger the faction gets, has maintenance for fleets and armies so you have to increase production/income to be able to build more, etc etc.

It's not fast in a sense that if you want to build a Shipyard/Wharf which is the fastest way to make your millions/billions. You still have to pay 150 million Credits to get the Blueprints for the Shipyard Cradle as you can't EMP/hack it.
Then you have to pay around 500 Million credits to get the blueprints for the Ships/Turrets/Shields/Engines/Boosters/Missiles/Other stuff.
Then aqiure the funds to buy the materials to build your station and then to fill up the storage to start building ships.
For me, I've spent several days worth of game time just to build 2 Massive Self-Sustaining Ship-Tech Factories and 2 massive Food/Illegal ware factories which gets me about 40 million credits in about 4 hours of game time.
Slow process for me, people probably know how to gain money faster.

At the moment there is simply no 'boom or bust' cycle, at first certain industries lacked wares like Engine Parts at the start of the campaign, but eventually that gap gets plugged and everything becomes over produced where you can buy it super cheap, but nowhere demands anything for you to want to sell it cause you wont get a profit worth bragging about.
Which is why you can just simply slide the "Pay for materials" slider to 0% and everything is dirt cheap and the ai gets excited that there is somewhere out there that traders can offload their wares cause nowhere out there you can sell your storage full of Smart Chips.

It's broken, where as in X3 there was the God Engine to regulate the boom and bust cycle, not a solution I want to see come back, but it stabilized the X Economy.
In X4 there is no restraints, there is abundance and no serious demand, War is the only way to re-shake the economy by seeing a load of stations wiped out by the Xenon or by one of the major Factions and as soon as one or 2 of those factions are out of the picture? The economy is back to being stale and dead.

It's not a Stellaris solution we need, but the War Mechanic fixed and other innovative solutions to keep the Economy thinking on it's toes.
It gets boring because an engine that they said "They can never tell how the playthrough will turn out" to knowing exactly how it will end, it's predictable, Egosoft need to work on that first.
But maybe Maintenance costs further down the line? Even if there was an 'economic difficulty setting', and a 'war based difficulty setting' separate from each other? That might spice things up?
Maybe something where not keeping up with costs will cause stations to be abandoned? Stations slowly fall apart or Pirates move in so you always have a Pirate Faction that you can't truly wipe out, a fail safe if Wars and Xenon fail.

But right now Egosoft need to concentrate their resources in fixing the Economy Mechanics and the War Mechanics which are somewhat connected.
pref wrote:
Fri, 19. Jul 19, 23:47


For me the problem is that all you can do now is increase profits, there isn't really a goal beyond that with current game features.
What i would like to see is getting something out of the trade/build aspect besides profit, and first and foremost getting tools to manage our production and trade activity in greater detail.
Better control in what wares we trade with who,
ways to automate trading so i don't need to do 10s or more manual trade runs every couple minutes,
some changes in economy so that you cannot saturate it with a couple stations just to name a few,

and when all that is done there could come the goals on top of that - better equipment, more power to defend/attack, stronger opposition, getting access to tech and QoL features that make management easier as you hit a larger scale etc.

Right now the only purpose not directly connected to profit is to build a couple of stations near a shipyard and hope AI traders will help support your chosen race and not trade in 5 ecells instead of hundreds of ship equipment.
Or build a SY for yourself, but i found that does not bring any real change to what happens in the game as by that time i could have any ship i wanted even without that. When you can spend a couple billions on blueprints and infrastructure the game is finished anyway.
When Killjadeen mentioned Stellaris, it did get me thinking, the End Game Crisis in Stellaris shakes up the universe, it certainly makes the grind the mid-game becomes more interesting when you come across a Super-Faction that wants to annihilate all life making you either put aside your differences and fight side by side against this threat or see if you can go it alone?

What keeps the X-Universe Economy running smoothly is war. Seeing the HOP/Argon/Paranid fight it out I feel is a temporary solution to this cycle running smooth that can only kill the economy once the war is over.
Egosoft needs to develop a solution that sees a series of 'Events' effect the Economy, constantly challenging it so your playthrough doesn't get predictable mid to late game.

- The Xenon need to be more of a 'Force of Nature' like they are supposed to be, turning vibrant Sectors of economic power into warzones and junkyards of dead stations and ships. Like that, they could suddenly enter a random sector 20xDestroyers worth of Xenon calamity purging stations, making demand for certain wares suddenly spike as a result of the chaos.
- Natural Disasters like Solar Storms or Micro-Meteorite Showers randomly laying havoc on a multitude of Stations caught in the 'area of effect' again causing the economy to spike in certain wares.
We already have areas of effect like 'dangerous regions' that make a ships shields and hull degrade the longer they stay in.
Why not find a way to make these disasters spawn randomly in a Sector, in the path of Stations causing wares to be effected.
Solar Storms work like a Mission where you hack terminals, only this will make all stations in that Sector temporarily inoperable, maybe it's enough chaos to effect the economy
- Egosoft need to rethink Pirates as a whole, they have the potential to cause great harm to sections of space and effect trade allot more than what they currently are?
Pirates should be the product of an economy that's failed them and driven them to piracy or simply those that smell opportunity and power.
Civilian Criminals you see flying around stations, there needs to be criminals that manage to acquire bigger ships and go at Pirating alone, they don't all need to be part of the Scale Plate Pact. Pirates need to be more factional, less united.
More ambitious Pirates need to capture entire stations and convert them to pirate bases.
Pirates need to be more brazen, fly more Galleys, attack more ships in established territory (Like they did in X3).
Piracy can be reduced, but can easily grow if not kept in check and even if the Argon/Paranid manages to claim every Pirate Sector Civilians that become Criminals can still fester and grow.
Last edited by spankahontis on Sat, 20. Jul 19, 01:17, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by Killjaeden » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 00:46

spankahontis wrote:
Sat, 20. Jul 19, 00:09
It's broken, where as in X3 there was the God Engine to regulate the boom and bust cycle, not a solution I want to see come back, but it stabilized the X Economy.
In X4 there is no restraints, there is abundance and no serious demand, War is the only way to re-shake the economy by seeing a load of stations wiped out by the Xenon or by one of the major Factions and as soon as one or 2 of those factions are out of the picture? The economy is back to being stale and dead.
[...]
But right now Egosoft need to concentrate their resources in fixing the Economy Mechanics and the War Mechanics which are somewhat connected.
Yes endgame is bad. It was bad in X3 (no factions, no intelligence, no dynamic). Its still bad in X4 (bad dynamics, still no adequate faction AI-selfmanagement, inadequate controls for many assets [fleets and stations alike] )
Economy and War Mechanics are a very complex topic. I already wrote this in other posts a while ago. Very challenging to improve. We'll see if Egosoft can even provide a solution for this at all...
Endgame (i call this phase of game with tens of millions / h endgame) requires a huge amount of challenging work to provide fun. You say war mechanics need fixing - but is it really enough? To add constant war, just for the sake of burning assets? To me a "force war when resources overflow" seems incredibly hollow/ unfulfilling to me, when AI only wage war just to get rid of their stuff.
There needs to be a better solution for how war is not mandatory for not becoming stagnant... i proposed some ideas a while ago. But they themself require a lot of work put in to provide a little bit more engaging endgame.
The current situation is, that player expect a "grand strategy game" level depth for the endgame - But X4 only has the mechanics for individual ships and stations right now. The whole "grand strategy" layer mechanics that have to go on top is lacking - and Egosoft have no experience with this, it's all new for them. And only through several additional layers will "endgame" become more than just "how long can you keep building stations and ships for no purpose whatsoever until you are bored".

The thing is - adding a modifier for income is super easy. That's intern-level tasks. Making an Option menu for setting the factors is not i guess, and not done in a day i presume, but its not particularly time consuming either.
It provides immediate effect in dragging out the player getting to the endgame (should he chose a lower percentage). Yes, in your current situation (already being at endgame) it wont make anything better. But it provides a better experience for new game starts, because you dont get to endgame as quickly - forcing new approaches, different choices, etc. >> again, should you chose a difficulty higher than the status quo.

I'll give another example why slowing the progress to the endgame can be greatly beneficial/ provide a lot of enjoyment - (unless the endgame is the specific thing why you play X in the first place):
Reputation gain (for the races)
X3 is ideal for comparison because the different iterations are the same game at the core, but the balance of progresison is totally different...
In X3TC / AP you got reputation and money very easily. Do 3-5 Missions after gamestart and you may have already rank 4-5, enough to buy heavy fighters and all the weaponry for it. Not to mention story missions that gave free corvettes...
In X3Reunion you have to play much longer to get to that rank and have the money. More trading, more hunting of smugglers/pirates, ...

"Well that sounds stupid and barely exciting" - i beg to differ, because of emergend gameplay:

I recently player X3AP with X-tended mod again. It has about the same progression curve as X3 Reunion, if you play on normal/higher difficulty (it has difficulty options menu...) - Reputation gain is very slow as result. Being able to purchase anything (ships/weapons) requires a much more work compared to X3TC/AP. As always, i played a pirate, with no friends except 1 race (and pirates as friends)
I constantly was limited in what i could buy because of reputation. I could scrape together the money but reputation was always the deal breaker. I had to buy M6/M6+/M7/M2, each first from pirates and later from split - because teladi / pirates and have much lower reputation limits (but usually crappier ships) - i'm not sure most people that started with TC/AP even noticed this. Same with weapons. Even though i could buy a bigger ship from pirates earlier, i had to hunt for capital weaponry among the traders and military patrols to be able to outfit my ship to maximum efficiency. I had to make do with a M2 that was equipped with just M6/M7 weaponry for a long time.

With my playthrough i had to take any bredcrumb i could get to be able to progress faster. I spent considerable time in Scorpions (M4) and Asps (M4+) to be able to finally upgrade to a Mamba, which enabled me to hunt much more traders, even escorted ones - huge deal. Then M3+ Chimera for more "safety". Next upgrade was to M6 (a crappy Pirate Centaur) for boarding and fighting Armored Freighters - a considerable upgrade. Then M6 Dragon for more speed and deadlines. Then M6+ Pirate (Marauder) for more hitpoints/ being able to engage multiple M6/ being able to board M6+ (which are too tough to capture with M6 in XTC).

I experienced every ship type along my way for considerable time - because progress was harder. Instead of beeing rushed to the endgame (through massive income from few actions) and soon realizing /mourning the lack of compelling "grand scale economy/warfare" features i got to enjoy what the game already has to offer. I never planned on building stations (didnt feel like it), but due to lack of reputation had to build up normal economy anyway, as it wasn't possible to build up enough reputation otherwise in any reasonable time. So i did that, but instead of buying resources for factories i stole all of them... a thing that never crossed my mind before. Had to get several TL to haul all of the stuff i plundered, come up with new effective procedures for distributing the "borrowed" resources to my factories for "ware-laundering".

In X3AP none of that would have happened. I could have propably skipped M5, M4, M4+, maybe even M3 right away in favor of M3+ right at the beginning almost. And nobody in their right mind in X3TC/AP would have bought a Centaur, let alone a Pirate Centaur(even if they could have) ... One of the crappiest M6. Almost everyone (with some experience) would have saved up / gone for a M6+ right away, or even M7. In my first ever X3TC playthrough my first ships i used (and not sold directly) where (in that order): M3 Mamba Fighter, M3+ Chimera Heavy Fighter, M7 Tiger Frigate ... completely skipped Scouts, Interceptors and corvettes. I would have never had to deal with TS and TL working together to first pick up, transport, and then distribute all the stuff.

Based on this thread i'm not the only one who rather spends time in the early game than trying to find enjoyment in "how long can you build more stations for the sake of more stations before getting bored" - as there simply isnt more to the endgame yet and possibly also not in near future.
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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by spankahontis » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 01:59

Killjaeden wrote:
Sat, 20. Jul 19, 00:46
spankahontis wrote:
Sat, 20. Jul 19, 00:09
It's broken, where as in X3 there was the God Engine to regulate the boom and bust cycle, not a solution I want to see come back, but it stabilized the X Economy.
In X4 there is no restraints, there is abundance and no serious demand, War is the only way to re-shake the economy by seeing a load of stations wiped out by the Xenon or by one of the major Factions and as soon as one or 2 of those factions are out of the picture? The economy is back to being stale and dead.
[...]
But right now Egosoft need to concentrate their resources in fixing the Economy Mechanics and the War Mechanics which are somewhat connected.
Yes endgame is bad. It was bad in X3 (no factions, no intelligence, no dynamic). Its still bad in X4 (bad dynamics, still no adequate faction AI-selfmanagement, inadequate controls for many assets [fleets and stations alike] )
Economy and War Mechanics are a very complex topic. I already wrote this in other posts a while ago. Very challenging to improve. We'll see if Egosoft can even provide a solution for this at all...
Endgame (i call this phase of game with multi-millions / h endgame) requires a huge amount of challenging work to provide fun. You say war mechanics need fixing - but is it really enough? To add constant war, just for the sake of burning assets? To me a "force war when resources overflow" seems incredibly hollow/ unfulfilling to me, when AI only wage war just to get rid of their stuff
There needs to be a better solution... i proposed some ideas a while ago. But they themself require a lot of work put in to maybe provide more engaging endgame.
The current situation is, that player expect a "grand strategy game" level depth for the endgame - But X4 only has the mechanics for individual ships and stations right now. "grand strategy" is a completely new thing for Egosoft.


The thing is - adding a modifier for income is super easy. That's intern-level tasks. Making an Option menu for setting the factors is not, and not done in a day i guess, but its not particularly time consuming either.
It provides immediate effect in dragging out the player getting to the endgame (should he chose a lower percentage). Yes, in your current situation (already being at endgame) it wont make anything better. But it provides a better experience for new game starts, because you dont get to endgame as quickly - forcing new approaches, different choices, etc. >> again, should you chose a difficulty higher than the status quo.

I'll give another example why slowing the progress to the endgame can be greatly beneficial/ provide a lot of enjoyment - (unless the endgame is the specific thing why you play X in the first place):
Reputation gain (for the races)
X3 is ideal for comparison because the different iterations are the same game at the core, but the balance of progresison is totally different...
In X3TC / AP you got reputation and money very easily. Do 3-5 Missions after gamestart and you may have already rank 4-5, enough to buy heavy fighters and all the weaponry for it. Not to mention story missions that gave free corvettes...
In X3Reunion you have to play much longer to get to that rank and have the money. More trading, more hunting of smugglers/pirates, ...

"Well that sounds stupid and barely exciting" - i beg to differ, because of emergend gameplay:

I recently player X3AP with X-tended mod again. It has about the same progression curve as X3 Reunion, if you play on normal/higher difficulty (it has difficulty options menu...) - Reputation gain is very slow as result. Being able to purchase anything (ships/weapons) requires a much more work compared to X3TC/AP. As always, i played a pirate, with no friends except 1 race (and pirates as friends)
I constantly was limited in what i could buy because of reputation. I could scrape together the money but reputation was always the deal breaker. I had to buy M6/M6+/M7/M2, each first from pirates and later from split - because teladi / pirates and have much lower reputation limits (but usually crappier ships) - i'm not sure most people that started with TC/AP even noticed this. Same with weapons. Even though i could buy a bigger ship from pirates earlier, i had to hunt for capital weaponry among the traders and military patrols to be able to outfit my ship to maximum efficiency. I had to make do with a M2 that was equipped with just M6/M7 weaponry for a long time.

With my playthrough i had to take any bredcrumb i could get to be able to progress faster. I spent considerable time in Scorpions (M4) and Asps (M4+) to be able to finally upgrade to a Mamba, which enabled me to hunt much more traders, even escorted ones - huge deal. Then M3+ Chimera for more "safety". Next upgrade was to M6 (a crappy Pirate Centaur) for capturing and fighting Armored Freighters - a considerable upgrade. Then M6 Dragon for more speed and deadlines. Then M6+ Pirate for more hitpoints/ being able to engage multiple M6.

I experienced every ship type along my way for considerable time - because progress was harder. Instead of beeing rushed to the endgame (through massive income from few actions) and soon realizing /mourning the lack of compelling "grand scale economy/warfare" features i got to enjoy what the game already has to offer. I never planned on building stations (didnt feel like it), but due to lack of reputation had to build up normal economy anyway, as it wasn't possible to build up enough reputation otherwise in any reasonable time. So i did that, but instead of buying resources for factories i stole all of them... a thing that never crossed my mind before. Had to get several TL to haul all of the stuff i plundered, come up with new effective procedures for distributing the "borrowed" resources to my factories for "ware-laundering".

In X3AP none of that would have happened. I could have propably skipped M5, M4, M4+, maybe even M3 right away in favor of M3+ right at the beginning almost. And nobody in their right mind in X3TC/AP would have bought a Centaur, let alone a Pirate Centaur(even if they could have) ... One of the crappiest M6. Almost everyone (with some experience) would have saved up / gone for a M6+ right away, or even M7. In my first ever X3TC playthrough my first ships i used (and not sold directly) where (in that order): M3 Mamba Fighter, M3+ Chimera Heavy Fighter, M7 Tiger Frigate ... completely skipped Scouts, Interceptors and corvettes. I would have never had to deal with TS and TL working together to first pick up, transport, and then distribute all the stuff.

Based on this thread i'm not the only one who rather spends time in the early game than trying to find enjoyment in "how long can you build more stations for the sake of more stations before getting bored" - as there simply isnt more to the endgame yet and possibly also not in near future.
I ran straight to the Vidar everytime in TC, and the Hyperion in Reunion.. Never saw anything worth crunching the figures.
Also what I liked "in principle" but hated it when it came out for X3:TC was the Stock Exchange, I always wanted the game to have one, playing allot of Railroad Tycoon 3 in the past appealed to me.
I had hoped that it was tied to wares, that you could manipulate the market?
Yet on the local level it was broken and unfixable that Egosoft gave up trying.
All you could do was invest in Corporations that rises/falls.. There was no risk like a real Stock Market that what you invested in could be lost in a pirate raid and your investment becomes worthless, gambling risk for reward would have been exciting but it never turned out that way.
There was never any risk, only reward if you knew how to abuse the mechanics which sadly.. A monkey could do it; I bought fleets of Osaka's through the profits I made in the Stock Market.
So this kind of easy money, I agree with you. If it's too easy? Then there's no challenge, no challenge? no sense of accomplishment.

The End Game will always be maximize profits and own a large fleet with a few sectors under your ownership, though slowing that endgame down by placing obstacles in the way (Which you've proposed) Still leads to that inevitable conclusion.
I fear that we were never meant to have an X game without an End Game; get uber rich and that's it.

My previous post, I thought of some ideas to try and shake up a static universe.. Your talk of Stellaris had me thinking, that maybe we need dynamic events that shake the economy that we need to rely less on War to keep the economy in check but a whole multitude of Events, some natural and some human based to keep us on our toes that we shouldn't be sitting comfortably with our factories and wealth, just like that, something happens where stations of ours are wiped away by a Xenon Incursion, or a Pirate boarding Party captures your station. We need to be constantly challenged, kept us on our toes.

Sadly War is the only way to stop Factories over producing wares that leads to the Boom with no Bust crisis, once that happens, the economy flatlines with predictability.
Maybe your ideas with not being able to manage the finances for your station could lead to some pretty cool consequences, civilians on your ship strike? Or could even steal your Station from you, forcing you to send Marines to break up the stalemate.. Kind of like what 1800 and early 1900 Industrialists used to do to stop strikes, they sent in their private enforcers to break up rallies and protests?
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My most annoying Bugs list 6.0 Beta 4 + [All DLC]
--------------------------------
Nvidium Worshop Animation Enlarge Broken :(
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Save Corrupted Fixed the Crash! :-D

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by pref » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 04:25

Killjaeden wrote:
Sat, 20. Jul 19, 00:46
With my playthrough i had to take any bredcrumb i could get to be able to progress faster. I spent considerable time in Scorpions (M4) and Asps (M4+) to be able to finally upgrade to a Mamba, which enabled me to hunt much more traders, even escorted ones - huge deal. Then M3+ Chimera for more "safety". Next upgrade was to M6 (a crappy Pirate Centaur) for boarding and fighting Armored Freighters - a considerable upgrade. Then M6 Dragon for more speed and deadlines. Then M6+ Pirate (Marauder) for more hitpoints/ being able to engage multiple M6/ being able to board M6+ (which are too tough to capture with M6 in XTC).
That sense of progression is there because you have multiple steps to progress. And each makes a huge difference.

As you say, many classes of ships with big differences between them - not in stats, but in what other possibilities they open up, getting boarding capability later on which in itself had several steps and more complex mechanics, then some minor production, ability to build a more intricate trade/supply network, mapping the universe proper with plenty player made sats, later on enough cash and defence capabilities to produce own higher level weaponry, then sector takeovers, own shipyard, fighting OCV or whatever else you wanted. Race exclusive ships and upgrades, rare or hidden equipment for which you had to explore, or focus economic actions to feed a small faction etc..

This has nothing to do with how expensive stuff is or how slow rep gain is - that's just the time it takes you spend at each of the steps above. What made the game good was that there were so many possibilities to work for.
Some guy prefers 1000 hour long games, some 100 - but the point is not the time it takes.

In X4 barely the 10th of this exists. You can make it slower, but its still just a matter of getting a couple autotrade ships, build a couple factories, buy race wide trade subscription for a little cash, get a SY and it's done. And you can board a capship in your starter ship. Plus you got one really OP playership that can be acquired in a couple hours gameplay so there is no real sense of progression with getting that new better/bigger ship finally.
The game is not really there, it got pushed out extremely early - barely has the building blocks that could have served as a basis to build a game upon. There are stations that produce, ships that can trade and fight to some extent and that's it.
War mechanics are lightyears ahead, as there is not even a proper follow command (so no escort, sense in grouping fleets with different composition, organised battles), higher level attack/defend logic or support for that is non existent - it's just pick a random target and attack it, the only existing trade script is just a random profit hunt within range.

Adding taxes and whatnot on top of it is just a quick fix for too quick income - similar to the range limit in trading introduced in 2.0 - and would just make the pain that comes with managing your assets worse.

And tbh i miss endgame faction wars much less then all the little steps that allow for the next little step to be made, especially when economic advances, exploration and fight aspect has an influence on each other so the whole progression becomes less linear and allows for more complexity.
Out of all this i miss the economic intricacies and challenges the most, but that alone is not much if it has 0 implications on fight and exploration.

Once you have everything there is to be had the game is over anyway - you can postpone that with race wars to some extent, but unless opposition scales with player strength or beyond it will get old quick.

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by Falcrack » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 05:26

In any 4X game worth its salt, there are tradeoffs to owning a large military. The more military assets you own, the more you pay in upkeep costs. Otherwise your military can spiral out of control, and the game is more boring as a result. I suppose I would like X4 to be more 4X, as it were, because that is my favorite genre of games, but I love X4 as well for being able to fly space ships as well. To have a large scale, slow paced 4X game where I can also be a participant in a space ship during battles is the type of game I hope for in X4. But it is not there, because there is nothing that puts constraints on me to simply amass a larger fleet. I have no upkeep costs, nothing to slow me down from exponential growth.

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by pref » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 07:01

spankahontis wrote:
Sat, 20. Jul 19, 00:09
It's broken, where as in X3 there was the God Engine to regulate the boom and bust cycle, not a solution I want to see come back, but it stabilized the X Economy.
In X4 there is no restraints, there is abundance and no serious demand, War is the only way to re-shake the economy by seeing a load of stations wiped out by the Xenon or by one of the major Factions and as soon as one or 2 of those factions are out of the picture? The economy is back to being stale and dead.

..

the End Game Crisis in Stellaris shakes up the universe, it certainly makes the grind the mid-game becomes more interesting when you come across a Super-Faction that wants to annihilate all life making you either put aside your differences and fight side by side against this threat or see if you can go it alone?

What keeps the X-Universe Economy running smoothly is war. Seeing the HOP/Argon/Paranid fight it out I feel is a temporary solution to this cycle running smooth that can only kill the economy once the war is over.
Egosoft needs to develop a solution that sees a series of 'Events' effect the Economy, constantly challenging it so your playthrough doesn't get predictable mid to late game.
I think it's a false expectation to have a proper economy without external influence (aka god or whatever else script that keeps certain parameters in desired range).
There always needs to be some holes in the market, and it also has to work without player intervention so those who mainly fight can have their fun as well.
It's impossible to just create so perfect game rules that auto-fix every issue that can come up without forced intervention, the idea that everything has to come from ingame economy won't work ever.
There has to be a feedback effect between different aspects of the game to have a good system, but that is enough. No need to go for the extremes be it autospawning everything or expecting a simulation of really limited scale to correct itself.

The need for war to have any economic demand is a result of this concept, though demand isn't long term, nor predictable - which would be important for real economic gameplay.
It's not normal that on day 2 you need to build complexes for ware X, and the market gets saturated by day 3 so you can demolish your build and move on to ware Y, and next day there is no real demand at all because the xenon fleet decided to hunt a scout ship that it can never reach.
A lot of things could be implemented like the events you mention, but that is for laters - for when you are able to manage a fleet of 10 ships smoothly, and have coordinated action either economically or in combat and there is a reliable economy.

And imo it would be more important to flesh out and detail the way to omnipotency, not try to handle a player that has grown beyond any limit.
No matter what the time will come when you are too strong, and are better off starting a new game - have a new journey which can be different due to all the possibilities that you can go for.
Imo the point of race wars and such is more like providing an ever changing background and some variety, not to have an ever lasting end game. Even those games cannot provide an endless chess of battles and resources that are aimed at strategic gameplay, and they are not "hindered" by the 3D simulation of battles from the cockpit and this level of freedom regarding player interactions and asset hoarding.

Don't know if you ever played LU - that game has it all, impeding doom, well thought out economic competition, smarter faction AI, smooth management tools. And still the best thing is the road to a huge empire from an M5, not the actual end game. You can let the OCV get half the universe and conquer it back, it's all good but at one point a break and a new game pays off much more then forcing the same game to last longer.
Problem with X4 is that you reach that point in a couple 10 hours, imo it needs more intricate rules, more detailed progression and much better thought out mechanics that fit each other.
Like travel drive is nice but AI has to be able to stay in formation,
sector takeover is nice but AI then needs to be able to manage the concept,
flying multiple ships is nice but there has to be a reason/advantage in doing so,
wars having effect on economy is nice but economy features need to be able to cope with that.

What kept players with X3 and ensured serious thousands of free modder manhours was the detailed game world regarding small mechanics, and the gradual introduction of features where you had to progress a bit in one aspect to allow progression in another so trade/build/fight were connected in a well thought out way.
All the small things that do not need extreme dev resources, but complement each other well.

Somehow ES lost that on the way, and i don't feel the same careful thinking behind the features that are implemented since.
It's more about forcing features that sound good in an ad as flashy bullet points, but not much thought given about how all that will add up to be a good game and get the most out of the available dev resources so they go for features that they can carefully think/flash out and drop the ones that sound good but are of little benefit gameplay wise.
I mean hello, a main selling point is race war, dynamic universe and economy but the scripts and AI are nowhere near handling that, not even the player commands, let alone NPC AI?
The devil is in the details, but that seems to be forgotten where planning and mechanic design is concerned.

Also it seems to me they aim for granting access to nearly everything within 20-50 hours of play in fear of features staying hidden from players and loosing on sales because the need for a too long attention span. That alone probably kills any possibility for long term enjoyment and sense of exploration or achievement.

At least when the split come there is a chance for more variety in ships - hopefully in mechanics too and not just in models and textures.

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by pref » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 07:53

Falcrack wrote:
Sat, 20. Jul 19, 05:26
In any 4X game worth its salt, there are tradeoffs to owning a large military. The more military assets you own, the more you pay in upkeep costs. Otherwise your military can spiral out of control, and the game is more boring as a result. I suppose I would like X4 to be more 4X, as it were, because that is my favorite genre of games, but I love X4 as well for being able to fly space ships as well. To have a large scale, slow paced 4X game where I can also be a participant in a space ship during battles is the type of game I hope for in X4. But it is not there, because there is nothing that puts constraints on me to simply amass a larger fleet. I have no upkeep costs, nothing to slow me down from exponential growth.
In those games the trick is with resources and asset count having a feedback effect on eachother. Resources should be limited, but plenty. Right now the smallest resolution in territory/resource acquisition is a sector which makes the map way too small. But resources are near infinite in each.
You could limit prod module count per sector, and so tie in the need for resources/territory as upkeep fee as you could not have whatever income in a single sector - but that seriously conflicts with the base concept of managing huge player empires and freedom in building/trading which is a key part of the game.
And anyway it would feel much more natural to limit unit production speed according to the available resources directly then, as player has lots of ways to make money, and this could allow other non military economic output to stay unregulated and also make the map layout important.
Otherwise the only meaningful parameter of a sector would be the allowed prod module count which is a bit shallow.

Plus 4X requires very predictable battle outcomes and strict balancing between different units but that would render the personal presence useless/boring. That is a conflict that has no good solution.
And it would need very reliable fleet management and high level NPC AI that can manage resources and plan ahead - which seems impossibly far right now. This one hurts way more right now then infinite resources, as the AI just cannot handle this regardless of any other factors. Nor can the player manage a higher number of units with ease.

Just having some taxes won't help this, you would have to do some serious changes to get any closer to 4X. And start with ship/fleet commands and AI.

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by Killjaeden » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 13:17

pref wrote:
Sat, 20. Jul 19, 07:01
[...] And still the best thing is the road to a huge empire from an M5, not the actual end game. [...]
Problem with X4 is that you reach that point in a couple 10 hours, imo it needs more intricate rules, more detailed progression and much better thought out mechanics that fit each other.
[...]
This has nothing to do with how expensive stuff is or how slow rep gain is - that's just the time it takes you spend at each of the steps above. What made the game good was that there were so many possibilities to work for.
Some guy prefers 1000 hour long games, some 100 - but the point is not the time it takes.
You are contradicting yourself... just adding more intricate rules, more steps in progression etc doesnt change the 20h it takes from dishwasher to trade mogul. Money gain and reputation gain has to be slower or it will always stay 20h no matter what you add inbetween. Haven't you read my last post?
The extra steps you praise X3 for exist in X3AP vanilla. In X3AP you can skip most of the steps that are inbetween because you get so much money and reputation so quick. Reduce power growth by reducing reputation and money gain significantly, suddenly the intermediary steps become meaningfull / maybe even necessary for the player.
pref wrote:
Sat, 20. Jul 19, 07:01
And imo it would be more important to flesh out and detail the way to omnipotency, not try to handle a player that has grown beyond any limit.
If you grow omnipotent in 20h, you are still omnipotent after 20h so any fleshed out intermediate step will be only worth 2-3h at most...
Game progress has to be slowed down for the intermediate steps to be necessary.
Upkeep costs dont handle an omnipotent player. They slow his growth. It's a pre-requisite for being able to flesh out the way to omnipotentcy.

What's a single Flak Artillery weapon worth it in X3 to the player ? In X3AP you can buy them after maybe 3-4h game time. Totally unspecial. You go to dock, buy one, end of story.
In my playthrough i described last post, i got all excited and giddy from finding a single flak weapon in a traders cargo hold, because i was not allowed to buy one due to low reputation. It was hard to track one down, i had to go deep into hostile territory for it. With this i finally had a weapon to defend my Carrack against fighters
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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by radcapricorn » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 13:29

@Killjaeden, pref et al., I invite you for opinions on this topic.

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by capistrc » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 18:08

You don’t see the races and factions building without limit. There seem to be some factors beyond the economy that limit their growth that is factored into the AI. Is there? If so, the player must be subject to the same factors. For me, once I built my stations, especially my first wharf, my growth is unheeded and limitless - especially if I open it to sell to the other factions.
Taxes and wages would work, and maybe even maintenance and logistics. For simplicity, maybe calculate them together as predetermined values and assess them periodically. The value could be distributed to the various factions - how i’m Not sure. The cost should multiply by a factor once a threshold is reached ... say # of ships/type, # of stations and so on. Penalties to production and/or combat (cumulative) could be assessed. Interest applied if not paid in full when due. For example, cost could multiply by 20% if > 200 ships (where M ships=4 ships, L=20 and so on). X50% if over 500 ... etc. Maybe maintenance bays could alleviate some of the cost.
Penalties have to be such that it becomes severely limiting once a high threshold is reached - though not impossible.
Random global events can also occur that would affect all races or the player only (bonus or not) that could affect economy like ‘social unrest in Argon prime - all production reduced by 25% for a period of time’ or ‘HOP elects new cardinal and calls for renewed faith - increase production by 20% for HOP’ or ‘production widget defect found - maintenance cost increase by 20% or pay 10% of total value to fix for player’ and so on ... temporary of course. Like rubber banding, some could be used to ‘balance’ the growth a bit at times by player.
The cost (not the event) does not have to be assessed tot he races since they do have planets (which the player will never have).
Thoughts?

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by capistrc » Sat, 20. Jul 19, 18:21

‘Like rubber banding, some could be used to ‘balance’ the growth a bit at times by player ...’ I meant ‘to’ player...
A better reputation system can help in this as well. Pay for lvl 20,25,30 rep level. If you do, you’ll get rep hit with races who are enemies of the benefactor race. You’ll lose privileges if you get 5 below the threshold and must pay for it again if u regain level.
You can only get benefits for lvl 30 rep with one group of allied races. Ex: Argon and their allies but not HOP even if u reach 30. Together with taxes/wages/maintenance ... this will help limit the player a bit while making sense.
Lastly ... player growth will have a negative rep to some races as they see player become more of a threat.
Races should not provide tech to build mil ships without some sort of contract that keeps them in check as well.
Thoughts?

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Re: X4 needs more economic challenge

Post by capistrc » Sun, 21. Jul 19, 02:12

It is realistic. Maint costs etc do curtail no of ships stations etc you can maintain. That’s why as much as we’d like to, our own military can’t produce and keep unlimited amt of forces etc. it’s logistics.
Players should not be able to produce unlimited forces as well without even allies getting worried as far as rep goes as well.

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