X4 needs more economic challenge

[spankahontis]

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.

Anyone who has binge watched the documentary series 'Nova' would know that Space is meant to be a chaotic place, Solar Flares, Rogue Asteroids, Blackholes etc. Space would be a much more interesting place if there was random situations that you can't account for. It would also greatly benefit the Economy if there was unforeseen events that would keep the Player on their Toes. But also test the resolve of the X Economy if a sudden ware was effected by random events that demand grows for that ware?
It would require balancing or maybe an economic difficulty level that makes natural disasters more frequent the harder the level. I'd love to be able to just survive as well as just thrive.

I mean how fun would it be to be walking on a station and then an announcement over Station coms that a "Solar Flare has been detected" and is "approaching" that part of space in say 05:00 minutes, causing ship shields to go offline (Stellaris has sectors that buff/debuff ships and stations) it causes all stations in that sector to temporarily cease production, security/production/turrets and shields go offline.
As a Pirate, a defenseless Station would be a dream come true, empty their storage holds out and flee a richer pirate, so many opportunities to exploit an event, leading to interesting gameplay.

Procedural Generation (Or spawning) Can work if it's done right, like I posted earlier, the God Engine kept X3's economy stable, but it was still 'a lie' in a sense that the player had no part in it. What was destroyed was eventually respawned.
If a section of space suddenly became temporarily 'uninhabitable' that would suddenly shake up a section of the market and it's Procedural Generation that is playing the role of Nature in this game which I have no problem with. It's when you have something like the God Engine controlling the economy and decides boom and bust for you does it make me as a player feel like I have no part in the making of this Universe, my decisions have no effect on the direction the economy goes; you just get rich with no risk and inevitably, you lose interest in the game.
Finding a fine balance between the generated and letting nature run it's course in the game is important.

"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."

I agree that the ai when it comes to fleets of ships and Faction behavior in situations of combat seems to be no change from X:Rebirth it needs work in order to make sure that things like Xenon Destroyers chasing a Mohammed Ali ship that's dodging all their shots and just mothballing/ soaking up the Xenon forces into a ball and making the War in X4 a joke.
This game relies too much on War to keep the economy running and it shows when everything is abundant and finding a Station that is begging for a certain ware and are charging top credits for.. it just doesn't exist, it's saturated; the war is meant to make demands for ships cause the resources to keep flowing but ship building is not keeping up with supply, what's lost is replenished too quickly.

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.

To be honest, I've seen no change. I could never go back to X3, I know X4 still has catching up to do to have the features of X3 but the problem is that's not good enough for me personally.
I'm bored with X3, I'm getting bored with X4, I find it X4 to be Diet-X3 with modders work added in to try and spice it up and fixing all the serious issues may not be enough to keep this going for me.

[Novia Star]

Ah the wonders of business management when your workers are happy to work for free.

Early games might be harder to get a ball rolling. I would think having a auto trader ship garnish part of the profit from selling something would solve "paying" your trading fleets. As for factory labor.... you could add consumer goods and food from other races to add a bit more % production Medical stuff.

The trouble i see is operating costs could outstrip profit and production if the general economy breaks down. Short on something and the factory still sucks cash out of you.

Could have building something cost 1/4 ish of the min value of the item, times the # of units made. As well as consuming goods at a factor of the total workforce on the station.

Station maintenance costs could be handled by needing other resources for production runs. It would need a lot of tweeking to make sure there was still a profit margin to reach. But makes it less a money printing machine and more of a detailed system. Having things tied to a production run. Vs static credit costs.

[peteran]

OP.
I agree, X4 needs more economic challenge. More money/time sinks would delay the inevitable economic/military domination, but could be simply offset by building more stations/traders etc

Perhaps ES need to look at increasing the competition element from NPC traders, which currently is non existent. In X3, I always got a thrill when I got that trade just b4 the NPC, and gutted when I missed the deal of a lifetime by a few seconds.

Also station building missions are so easy to make extra cash; they can be picked up and completed weeks later. Perhaps the reward should reduce the longer it takes to complete.

For me, X4 would be significantly more interesting/challenging if there was competition from the AI. Competing only against yourself and becoming more efficient gets old fast.
ZZ

I am returning to the game after a hiatus and going for a full restart. My previous game was basically a long running game to help the developers fix bugs where I often played other saves then my own.

The general feel was that the AI was very slow to react and I'm hoping this has improved, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Cabrelbeuk]

Adding consumption goods (video game, jewels, etc) that cost money, needed by the workforce, would be great and expand also production possibilities.

[Falcrack]

Adding consumption goods (video game, jewels, etc) that cost money, needed by the workforce, would be great and expand also production possibilities.

I feel regarding civilian goods, that some items should be necessary for the workforce to stick around (food and medicine), while extra civilian goods being present might give additional productivity boosts, maybe like 5% efficiency boost for each unique civilian good present. Maybe a -10% productivity penalty or so when illegal narcotics are being consumed.

If I had my way, and sufficient modding skills, the way it would work is each sector has a trading station that has consumer goods on board (including food and medicine), and civilian ships (the little mass traffic ships that currently serve no role other than eye candy) from each station in the sector would fly to the trading station, purchase it themselves, and bring it back to their home station for storage and consumption in the habitation module. Rather than have freighters deliver food and medicine and potentially other consumer goods to each station, they just sell to the central trading station, and civilian workforce then take care of supplying themselves.

[abisha1980]

I agree it's to easy to gain money in this game their should be like income tax or something.
capital ships should be rare or state controlled.

i not see a company like Microsoft with a airplane carrier or something ether right.

[abisha1980]

Adding consumption goods (video game, jewels, etc) that cost money, needed by the workforce, would be great and expand also production possibilities.

hell no, no freaking consumables i have to deal with that enough in my past live with MMO's

[Cabrelbeuk]

Adding consumption goods (video game, jewels, etc) that cost money, needed by the workforce, would be great and expand also production possibilities.

hell no, no freaking consumables i have to deal with that enough in my past live with MMO's

I was talking about trading goods and way to use them, but NOT by us player. As it has been mentioned, those could be consumed into trade center or in stations by the workforces to increase productivity. You could even imagine adding an happiness bar for workforce which act on productivity and can lead to strike if too low.