Questions to Egosoft

[Bubonosaure]

So... a bunch of very simple questions :

- Do you plan on improving the logs (both in our ship and in the empire menu) ? I'm talking filters to get rid of the constant transaction spam, for example. There are so many useless messages popping every second in my ship that it's impossible to track what I really wanna track : ships in danger, items I just picked up, basically stuff that has to do with my actual actions and dangers to my assets. I have ideas but nodody cares about them.

- Do you plan on improving pathfinding ? Have you seen a destroyer maneuvering through an asteroid field ? It is actually painful to watch, especially when I can just go out of sight to disable collision and have it actually move at cruise speeds. Also, gates.

- Do you plan on improving docking ? Ships can take up to 10 minutes to dock.

- Do you plan on enabling autotraders to automatically sell what's in their cargo before resuming operations ? See Vim Razz's mod : https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/257/

- Do you plan to improve station traders/managers logic so they actually sell or use stuck cargo in their subordinates and do meaningful trades ?

- Do you plan on improving the asset menu. We could have separate tabs for stations, objects (laser towers), and ships. Or filter options ? (XL/L/M/S, Military/Transport)

There you go.

[Nafensoriel]

Why do people these days always word posts like they are some sort of dictator demanding things before proverbially shooting you for noncompliance?

None of those questions is simple. Egosoft will do whatever egosoft wants. If they want docking of AIs to take 10 minutes for their vision of balance then that is their choice. Most of the time decisions like that are made because a] the time isn't really prohibitive when the player isn't present and b] if the player is present the player has the option to control the ship in question for improved efficiency. For all you know your cheap gutter rat teladi pilot takes 10 minutes because he's terrified of crashing his bosses ship in front of them.

The same is true for all the other complaints.
A trader gets assigned to a ship with half its cargohold full of crap. Does the trader sell his/her bosses property without authorization?
Same with stuck trades. Egosoft made it clear in x3 their focus isnt on allowing absolute and total automation of the economy because it's not their vision. If a trade makes a bad trade choice and gets some stuck cargo they can't get rid of thats YOUR job as a manager of YOUR corporation to well.. manage! If you disagree with egosofts choice in this modding is easy!

Asset sorting=filter or mod it.

Honestly, I'd rather have new ships and content over any of these changes.

[Buzz2005]

docking was somewhat "improved" but not really

now they dont ram into the modul that is at the rally point but have collision avoiding around it
they still have to autisticly get to that rally point and then go to dock

and actually its worse now because on some stations pilots cant dock at all because they fly around the module infinitely, or maybe take so much time that I got bored and docked manually

[Ezarkal]

- Do you plan on improving docking ? Ships can take up to 10 minutes to dock.

This is actually highly dependent on your pilot's skills.

Low skills NPCs will have some trouble, sure, but my own personal 4 star eclipse pilot never failed me.

[Bubonosaure]

Why do people these days always word posts like they are some sort of dictator demanding things before proverbially shooting you for noncompliance?

None of those questions is simple. Egosoft will do whatever egosoft wants. If they want docking of AIs to take 10 minutes for their vision of balance then that is their choice. Most of the time decisions like that are made because a] the time isn't really prohibitive when the player isn't present and b] if the player is present the player has the option to control the ship in question for improved efficiency. For all you know your cheap gutter rat teladi pilot takes 10 minutes because he's terrified of crashing his bosses ship in front of them.

The same is true for all the other complaints.
A trader gets assigned to a ship with half its cargohold full of crap. Does the trader sell his/her bosses property without authorization?
Same with stuck trades. Egosoft made it clear in x3 their focus isnt on allowing absolute and total automation of the economy because it's not their vision. If a trade makes a bad trade choice and gets some stuck cargo they can't get rid of thats YOUR job as a manager of YOUR corporation to well.. manage! If you disagree with egosofts choice in this modding is easy!

Asset sorting=filter or mod it.

Honestly, I'd rather have new ships and content over any of these changes.

So confused by your rambling.
Anyways, I just want to know what they think of these issues and if they plan to fix them or not.

- Do you plan on improving docking ? Ships can take up to 10 minutes to dock.

This is actually highly dependent on your pilot's skills.

Low skills NPCs will have some trouble, sure, but my own personal 4 star eclipse pilot never failed me.

Actually, many of my pilots are 4 to 5 stars and as soon as I'm around, they start flying in circle around the docks or float on top of the pad, going down very slowly. It's especially apparent during military/mining operations.

[Ezarkal]

[...]
Actually, many of my pilots are 4 to 5 stars and as soon as I'm around, they start flying in circle around the docks or float on top of the pad, going down very slowly. It's especially apparent during military/mining operations.

Now that you mention it, I've had some similar issues, but they have been limited to the venture dock so far.
I normally don't have problems with normal docks as far as S/M ships are concerned.

That being said, I usually play this game in macro-management mod, so I don't pay my ships that much details... except when I'm waiting on one to come and pick me up.

[Nafensoriel]

So confused by your rambling.
Anyways, I just want to know what they think of these issues and if they plan to fix them or not.

Have you seen my forum avatar? It's accurate.

I was bluntly poking fun at you for being the upteenth person to post on this forum demanding answers from a company for what are basically frivolous issues.
Just like politics, a single voice has a say.. the say of a single voice. You could have worded your post a little less "I demand answers! I paid 60 kiggiers and deserve personalized responses from someone!" and a little more "Hey why are my captains idiots? Should they be smarter?". Especially since egosoft forum posters tend to LOVE debate on every tiny nitpicky thing.

A great deal of what you are seeing is also due to pilot skill btw. Egosoft did a really good job(imo) in making low skill pilots into flaming retarded monkeys. It's a great incentive to get, train, and KEEP ALIVE your high skilled people. Watch a 0 dock vs a 5.. its night and day. Also usually it's intentional when YOU can dock faster as a player(in any game). If automation played as good as you there would be no point to do that task now would there? It would make someone who wants to be a space trucking trader upset that the AI did everything they possibly could do faster, better, and with far less delay than a human if the AI didn't have SOME delay in all its actions. Egosoft has said AI ethos is to support YOU.. not replace you. If you want replacement CAG/CLS etc are your answer because you are ACCEPTING what the mod does and any imbalance it might cause.

[Falcrack]

Why do people these days always word posts like they are some sort of dictator demanding things before proverbially shooting you for noncompliance?

Why do you find it unreasonable to make requests? He did not ask in a demanding tone, they were suggestions.

Honestly, I'd rather have new ships and content over any of these changes.

Honestly, I'd rather see the base game improved with suggestion like these and others have posted than see new ships or sectors.

[Bubonosaure]

So confused by your rambling.
Anyways, I just want to know what they think of these issues and if they plan to fix them or not.

Have you seen my forum avatar? It's accurate.

I was bluntly poking fun at you for being the upteenth person to post on this forum demanding answers from a company for what are basically frivolous issues.
Just like politics, a single voice has a say.. the say of a single voice. You could have worded your post a little less "I demand answers! I paid 60 kiggiers and deserve personalized responses from someone!" and a little more "Hey why are my captains idiots? Should they be smarter?". Especially since egosoft forum posters tend to LOVE debate on every tiny nitpicky thing.

A great deal of what you are seeing is also due to pilot skill btw. Egosoft did a really good job(imo) in making low skill pilots into flaming retarded monkeys. It's a great incentive to get, train, and KEEP ALIVE your high skilled people. Watch a 0 dock vs a 5.. its night and day. Also usually it's intentional when YOU can dock faster as a player(in any game). If automation played as good as you there would be no point to do that task now would there? It would make someone who wants to be a space trucking trader upset that the AI did everything they possibly could do faster, better, and with far less delay than a human if the AI didn't have SOME delay in all its actions. Egosoft has said AI ethos is to support YOU.. not replace you. If you want replacement CAG/CLS etc are your answer because you are ACCEPTING what the mod does and any imbalance it might cause.

I did not word my post like this and you're litteraly putting words into my mouth. Are you running a shipyard ? Did you see how much ressources it needs ? You think they designed the game for you to micromanage a thousand ships ? The game litteraly invites you to use automation in everything you do. Why do you think they're trying to improve autotraders ? Because it's intentional ? Right. You think they intended for 5 stars traders to do 20 energy cells trades at a time ? I'm asking for a functional IA that doesn't break down at every turn, not for a perfect IA. OFC bad captains tend to flee and not use travel drive/highways and so on.

The problem I'm talking about has nothing to do with pilot training, anyways, these are mostly bugs or problematic designs. I know very well what their intents were and the limits of the IA and that's not my point. I've been playing X game since X3. We even managed to go a step below X:Rebirth because capitals now can't even travel through asteroid clouds without stopping every two meters WHEN you're in sight while doing fine OOS. And there's no travel drive to compensate for their deficiencies now (i'm against travel drive though).

You're just arguing for the sake of it at this point. Let's hope a merciful Thetys pilot hears my plea, picks you up and drops you off in some other sector. Maybe faulty logic. You would be right at home there, don't you ?

Honestly, I'd rather have new ships and content over any of these changes.

Honestly, I'd rather see the base game improved with suggestion like these and others have posted than see new ships or sectors.

Agreed, entirely. I dont think we should have to mod our game to get rid of constant message spam, for exemple, or a proper asset menu. And I'd rather voice my questions/concerns in hope that some dev sees it, even if he doesn't answer, than stay silent and give litteraly no feedback.

[Alan Phipps]

Please stop dissecting other posters and their alleged 'attitudes'. Let's get back to discussing the points made by the OP about the game and gameplay please.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

Honestly, I like this kind of posts, because they bring to light some subjective issues I can (or can not - it depends) feel close to.
So, let me try to get your points.

- Do you plan on improving the logs (both in our ship and in the empire menu) ? I'm talking filters to get rid of the constant transaction spam, for example. There are so many useless messages popping every second in my ship that it's impossible to track what I really wanna track : ships in danger, items I just picked up, basically stuff that has to do with my actual actions and dangers to my assets. I have ideas but nodody cares about them.

Logs. Log filters (in the "personal logs" tab) at the moment are not so useful, indeed. I agree on your point, I'd like to have some more filters on that menu, to make some things easier to find (ships in danger, reports of abandoned ships, ...). I'm at around 60 ships, so I wonder what kind of chaos is going to be in the logs when I get to 200ish.

- Do you plan on improving pathfinding ? Have you seen a destroyer maneuvering through an asteroid field ? It is actually painful to watch, especially when I can just go out of sight to disable collision and have it actually move at cruise speeds. Also, gates.

It seems beta has improved docking. I've seen some terrible maneuvres from my ships docking at my stations - especially from miners - and I do love to manage my fleet from a 3M6S dock at my HQ, staring at ships going up and down. Anyway, I've seen pretty solid differences from low level pilots to more experienced one: I think Egosoft did a nice job on this kind of feature, even if it's sometimes inconsistent.
About asteroid field flight, I agree with you. This kind of behaviour possibly has something to do from longer travel drive charge times for capitals and some issues with identifying obstacles on the path. But those are just my assumptions.

- Do you plan on improving docking ? Ships can take up to 10 minutes to dock.

Oops, I replied on the matter while talking about pathing.

- Do you plan on enabling autotraders to automatically sell what's in their cargo before resuming operations ? See Vim Razz's mod : https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/257/

I experienced this a couple of times too. I'm undecided if, as somebody told you, it's a sort of intended behaviour or some sort of glitch / bug while looking for sales. It's probably related (partially) to bad timing while assigning the ship default behaviour to auto-something (mostly trade / mining) and the ship having incomplete orders / still something to sell in its cargo.

- Do you plan to improve station traders/managers logic so they actually sell or use stuck cargo in their subordinates and do meaningful trades ?

Sorta the same thoughts as the previous point, for me.

- Do you plan on improving the asset menu. We could have separate tabs for stations, objects (laser towers), and ships. Or filter options ? (XL/L/M/S, Military/Transport)

There you go.

There is some filter in the map view. Shortcuts for filters (in any menu involving long lists of objects) would be welcome, though. Something like "everything / stations only / ships only / other stuff only" can already be an improvement.

[Ezarkal]

- Do you plan on enabling autotraders to automatically sell what's in their cargo before resuming operations ? See Vim Razz's mod : https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/257/

I experienced this a couple of times too. I'm undecided if, as somebody told you, it's a sort of intended behaviour or some sort of glitch / bug while looking for sales. It's probably related (partially) to bad timing while assigning the ship default behaviour to auto-something (mostly trade / mining) and the ship having incomplete orders / still something to sell in its cargo.

-Ship already having cargo may be one of the cause, but it is not the only one. They will accumulate wares occasionally anyway.
-The ship having incomplete orders shouldn't be an issue. Autotrade/mine is a default behavior, meaning the ship will fall back to autotrading when it does not have orders. It will complete it's standing orders before switching to autotrade.
This actually makes it quite easy to fix the ware accumulation problem. Just queue up a few trade orders to sell the extra, then forget about your ship. It will start auto-trading again on its own.
If no stations buy the specific ware, then drop it in space, and remove said ware from the list of the wares the ship can trade. There's no market for it anyway.

While I agree with the general "let's remove the micromanagement" idea, I disagree that this is micromanagement. For me, fixing this issue is part of the occasional maintenance of you running your trade empire. You just check every few tens of hours, see if everything's all right and quickly fix what is not.

However, while the fixes are easy enough, it would be nice to see the OP's suggestion (ship prioritizing selling wares in hold) as part of the the higher-level captain's behavior.

Another suggestion related to this one. (I know it's been requested by many others already.):
-Allow us to know how much profit an autotrader has generated over time. (Last hour/last day/since it began autotrading/any or all of those).
That way, we can see more easily if something goes wrong with the ship's setup.



I also agree these kind of posts are important. It raises questions, point out some stuff that some players don't like, and offer potential suggestions. It doesn't mean that stuff is not working. (Not always, not even frequently.) Only that we see ways it could get better.
The devs are looking at these forums, and they do get interested by our ideas and feedback. We've had many examples of this in the past.
Overall, constructive criticism was always welcome. I doubt they've changed their ways.

Of course, it doesn't mean it will change much, but our ideas are possible to implement, and if it fits their vision of the game, then who knows.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

Another suggestion related to this one. (I know it's been requested by many others already.):
-Allow us to know how much profit an autotrader has generated over time. (Last hour/last day/since it began autotrading/any or all of those).
That way, we can see more easily if something goes wrong with the ship's setup.

That's another great idea, because managers of a trading empire need this kind of data.

[Nafensoriel]

I did not word my post like this and you're litteraly putting words into my mouth. Are you running a shipyard ? Did you see how much ressources it needs ? You think they designed the game for you to micromanage a thousand ships ? The game litteraly invites you to use automation in everything you do. Why do you think they're trying to improve autotraders ? Because it's intentional ? Right. You think they intended for 5 stars traders to do 20 energy cells trades at a time ? I'm asking for a functional IA that doesn't break down at every turn, not for a perfect IA. OFC bad captains tend to flee and not use travel drive/highways and so on.

The problem I'm talking about has nothing to do with pilot training, anyways, these are mostly bugs or problematic designs. I know very well what their intents were and the limits of the IA and that's not my point. I've been playing X game since X3. We even managed to go a step below X:Rebirth because capitals now can't even travel through asteroid clouds without stopping every two meters WHEN you're in sight while doing fine OOS. And there's no travel drive to compensate for their deficiencies now (i'm against travel drive though).

You're just arguing for the sake of it at this point. Let's hope a merciful Thetys pilot hears my plea, picks you up and drops you off in some other sector. Maybe faulty logic. You would be right at home there, don't you ?

Fine. Alan wants me to be nice and not grumpy.
For the record, I'm not putting words in your mouth. I just flatly hate when people expect developers to reply personally(ie going HEY COMPANY X QUESTIONS!?). It's a professional thing. It's like a person who bought an F150 demanding a personal letter to explain why their personal vehicles radio nob sticks. Discuss the issue not the creator kinda thing.
Egosoft is a bit more egalitarian in their forum moderation and response to users than me though. I'm a jackass... but a jackass who respects them so my personal feelings get to take a break.

All that out of the way back on topic.
I still disagree with your assessment. Something like autotraders making 20cr trades? Yes, that's a bug. Them occasionally getting hosed in the middle of a trade leaving them with cargo they can't sell? Eh, that's flavour. It would happen to the user if an AI was about to drop their goods too. It's also really inconsequential either side of the coin you argue from. Same with docking.

Even with the voracious appetite of shipyards, I disagree with needing a fully automated empire. I actually disagree with it entirely. I think feedback should be more in order ala a pilot going "Hey boss I F*^$ed up can you help me?" but if they automatically fixed themselves at level 0 then that would suck from my point of view. How the heck would I do a shipping audit or inspection otherwise? Why can't the realistic annoyances of actually running a business stay in play? I repeat I don't disagree when its obviously a bug but if the event is just "annoying" why can't it be enhanced the other way? Turned into a feature to add depth rather than just eliminating it for the absolute sake of min/maxed efficiency?
I define "annoying" in this case as an event which could occur to the player. This includes getting trade sniped, having to dock at a crappily built yard(ever see a bad marina?), or occasionally not seeing the glaringly obvious path out of an asteroid field.

I think the problem is OSS doesn't let these flavours exist so its abused. I don't like or agree that OSS should be tuned to remove obstacles. Obstacles create challenge and challenge is good for creating interest. Feedback to the corp head would be nice though as well as egosoft finally letting me TRAIN THE IDIOTS so I don't have to keep launching them in junkboats at xenon.(argon federation law prohibits the spacing of ones own employees due to incompetence)

TLDR I both agree and disagree with your original statement. The bugs should be fixed... but not so they remove gameplay from the sandbox. A large corporation that can challenge governments should be a pita to manage. It should have problems frequently and problems beyond the "I'm under attack" kind. I want my idiots to take forever docking and not operate like machines. I want some docks to be "not optimal" just so there is a reason to exclude doing business there. The universe is to "flat" at the moment anyway in my opinion.