X4 needs more economic challenge

[Raevyan]

If you ask me any attempts to balance the economy or make it more challenging is useless unless the underlying ai is fixed. Most problems only occur because the ai is really bad. If you implement balancing around a bad ai and at some point someone fixes the ai you generate a new problem.

I really wish egosoft would fix the problems with the ai first before they implement changes to the symptoms. My universe is going overboard with smart chip stations. Yards and wharfs are out of stock, smart chip stations are full. The ai is not able to distribute them and instead building more smart chip stations. Also I got the feeling that the ai got worse compared to rebirth. At least the combat ai. If you give an attack order the ship will fly to the targets position when you have the order. When it arrives it will do the same again. Never saw that kind of behavior in Rebirth (correct me if I am wrong).

[photomankc]

My universe is going overboard with smart chip stations. Yards and wharfs are out of stock, smart chip stations are full. The ai is not able to distribute them and instead building more smart chip stations. Also I got the feeling that the ai got worse compared to rebirth. At least the combat ai. If you give an attack order the ship will fly to the targets position when you have the order. When it arrives it will do the same again. Never saw that kind of behavior in Rebirth (correct me if I am wrong).

I'm seeing this too... but only to some extent. Some other products are in actual short supply, but the yards do seem to run out or stay low on products that are not at all hard to find.

[spankahontis]

Wharfs and shipyards are really the problem when it comes to getting too rich too fast. Within one ingame day after putting up a wharf, you can have a shipyard put up, and have every blueprint in the game. You go from having only tens of millions on hand to having FU money in a massive leap. Factions buy ships non stop even at 150% price. It doesn't matter what kind of fees, restrictions, or other handicaps you put on any other aspect of the game. As soon as your wharf goes up, money is no longer a concern.

I've found that as well, you build a factory, you slide the price you'll pay for materials to 0% and they arrive at your construction site just as fast as if you moved the price to 100%? It's redundant.

I don't understand how building a Mega-Factory makes so much money when everywhere is bottlenecked, Factories are all full.. Even the shortages at the Equip. Docks, Wharfs and Shipyards at the beginning are resolved when the economy goes into expansion.

Xenon should be working to cull the number of Stations by building Fleets of Destroyers and sending them off to clean Sectors of Stations, shake up the economy.

IDK, maybe 50 or more New Sectors? Some new Factions with conflicts to expand the War mechanic? Maybe even make the Xenon into 2 Factions? One that builds Stations and pushes into Neighbouring Sectors, while the other Factions job is to randomly raid a Sector with large fleets of Destroyers.
At any rate, this Economy needs an enema!

Too low level to be simulated. The game is performance issue prone as is due to the sand box nature. Let alone with 5,000 more small ships running all over the place.

Habitation is large, the size of towns considering they house 1,000 people. It is also the future, in space. I would expect supply deliveries to their habitation make the most sense as it exposes them less to the dangers of space as well as allows for the most efficient transport. If they want to travel between stations then they should be using commuter ships such as L passenger transports. They could use these to go to large shopping hubs and leisure/recreational facilities which might only be available/make economic sense at huge stations or one per sector.

Rebirth the Home of Light Expansion, it looked like they were doing that, those little stations on the highways. They'd of been awesome places for pops in that sector to visit and trade in.
But they were just Eye-Candy.

Increasing the Population in a Sector could of lead to these "Special Population" buildings/modules that can only be built if there is a large enough population in that Sector to unlock them or make them run at optimal efficiency.
- An Arcade/Casino. Requires electrical goods, food, medical supplies, water and other wares to run properly.
- A Botanical Garden for nature lovers. It requires water, Med supplies and other wares to function.
- A Mega Shopping Complex. Will take allot of items and serves as a Trade Hub, you're more likely to find what you're looking for (Unlike a Traders Corners) Though it would need balancing?
- A Pleasure Palace. Found in Pirate Sectors as they are places of debauchery, drugs and other vice. Require Illegal Wares to run properly.

Just a few ideas. The Races could have similar buildings that best fit their culture so you have ample variety.
Habitations are Race specific anywhere, you build an Argon Habitation, only Argon move in. So certain special buildings require a certain Habitation population?

I'm going to have to grudgingly agree on the economic challenge. Stations are okay. They make decent money but they take a good long while to start overflowing to you. The money from a few stations will get you in a position to build fleets of L/S and a few M's pretty nicely but I was not rolling in cash or anything. Replacing losses kept the income tied up and several times I would need to raid the funds before they overflowed to get some breathing room. Then you build a warf and suddenly you go from a few million per hour, to hundreds of million per hour even if all you can get blueprints to are S ships and weapons. Now EVERYTHING is chump change.

Especially if you build The Wharf and connect it with all the Factories lower end to High-tech to provide the Wharf with everything it needs to just roll out Ships at a none stop rate.
I did that before, made this mega-self sustaining factory that made everything and connected a Shipyard Cradle to it and I had a near endless flow of credits coming in, rolling out several fleets to raid Xenon Sectors.
Just before that bug hit that made ships stay in the cradle because they were missing a particular item like a drone even though I had a full stock of them and blockaded my cradles.

They just can't seem to win. lol

[Imperial Good]

Habitations are Race specific anywhere, you build an Argon Habitation, only Argon move in. So certain special buildings require a certain Habitation population?

Actually habitation is not entirely race specific. Yes most of the people moving in are of that race, however nothing stops other races from also living there. This is seen in HOP space where HOP only own Paranid habitation but there is still a diverse population of Split, Teladi and Argon living at their stations. Lore wise most factions can eat the common food of each other, just many prefer not to.

[spankahontis]

Habitations are Race specific anywhere, you build an Argon Habitation, only Argon move in. So certain special buildings require a certain Habitation population?

Actually habitation is not entirely race specific. Yes most of the people moving in are of that race, however nothing stops other races from also living there. This is seen in HOP space where HOP only own Paranid habitation but there is still a diverse population of Split, Teladi and Argon living at their stations. Lore wise most factions can eat the common food of each other, just many prefer not to.

Odd, cause i'm sure the Habitations say they are Race specific, you're right the Docks do have all Races on them?
Could of sworn I saw it somewhere?

[Raevyan]

One might get the impression that ai is spawned to buy at player stations and/or to prefer player stations instead of buying lower on other npc stations. I also accepted some build missions to build more smart chip factories.
One thing I also noticed is that when you build a station npc's are flooding your build storage as if they were waiting for you. The longer I play the more I get the impression that ai ships are spawned to supply player station building. They are not able to distribute wares even within a sector but if you build a station 10 freighters are suddenly on the way.

[Falcrack]

One might get the impression that ai is spawned to buy at player stations and/or to prefer player stations instead of buying lower on other npc stations. I also accepted some build missions to build more smart chip factories.
One thing I also noticed is that when you build a station npc's are flooding your build storage as if they were waiting for you. The longer I play the more I get the impression that ai ships are spawned to supply player station building. They are not able to distribute wares even within a sector but if you build a station 10 freighters are suddenly on the way.

With the ware reservation system, it does not take long for ware reservations to be made, even if the freighters making the reservation are several sectors away. So no, not that surprising when the ware reservations fill up so quickly, the supply ships are not being spawned from nowhere to build your station.

[Karmaticdamage]

Habitations are Race specific anywhere, you build an Argon Habitation, only Argon move in. So certain special buildings require a certain Habitation population?

Actually habitation is not entirely race specific. Yes most of the people moving in are of that race, however nothing stops other races from also living there. This is seen in HOP space where HOP only own Paranid habitation but there is still a diverse population of Split, Teladi and Argon living at their stations. Lore wise most factions can eat the common food of each other, just many prefer not to.

Odd, cause i'm sure the Habitations say they are Race specific, you're right the Docks do have all Races on them?
Could of sworn I saw it somewhere?

Argon habitat only has argon workers, Teladi and Paranid habitats give you a diverse group of argon,teladi,split and paranid. Its probably an oversight.

[spankahontis]

Actually habitation is not entirely race specific. Yes most of the people moving in are of that race, however nothing stops other races from also living there. This is seen in HOP space where HOP only own Paranid habitation but there is still a diverse population of Split, Teladi and Argon living at their stations. Lore wise most factions can eat the common food of each other, just many prefer not to.

Odd, cause i'm sure the Habitations say they are Race specific, you're right the Docks do have all Races on them?
Could of sworn I saw it somewhere?

Argon habitat only has argon workers, Teladi and Paranid habitats give you a diverse group of argon,teladi,split and paranid. Its probably an oversight.

That's probably what it is?

[capistrc]

I suggest a tally of maintenance costs to be assessed\ each for the following: industry and ships. For industry a 5% of total production converted to credits and a flat cost of 2k for S, 4K M, 10K large, 20K formXl ships. Combat ships get a 25% increase. This will be assessed periodically over a period of time. If this is not paid, a global penalty to production or combat will be assessed. Penalty could be random and can be ‘paid off’ after each period. So if penalty is assessed due to non-payment, they have to wait until next period to remove it. Non-payment gets increase in balance due to interest. Penalties include global reduction of prod of 5% for example. Penalties accumulate.
For ships penalties include 5% shield or wpn penalty for all ships. Again these accumulate.
Cost increase once threshold is reached say total value of stations > 10 mil, 50 mil, 100 and so on. Ship cost increase as well say 50 ships, 100 ships etc. increase is 5% or some order of magnitude due to threshold. That way starting players have minimal impact while huge players will feel it more. Example: 20% cost increase when 100 ships reached etc.
There could be option to concentrate penalty for stations, but ships are global (to make calc simpler). For example, out of 4 factories, set 1 to have no penalty while the rest can take its penalty and spread it among themselves.
Cost of ships can be lowered by adding equip docks, but of course it will have a cost because factory value increased.
Major races do not get penalty due to vast resources and planetary support. Pirates...not sure.
Calculations are such so they won’t require lots of calculations. Running total could be shown in menu.
Penalties should be restrictive for huge empires.
Lastly, a cost involved when accepting rank from race example 10 mil for level 20 or 100m for 25 etc. accepting rank in one race will get penalty in enemies race. If rep goes below 5 of threshold (25 if 30 rep and mil license achieved) will remove benefit and they’d have to work to get it once more. A certain ship threshold will also see a penalty. Ally or not, major races are wary of giving tech to others they feel would be too dangerous if they turn into enemy. Much less if they were allied with an enemy race as well. Player can only achieve rank 30 with one faction (arg and Teladi; hop ...) due to war.
Values up for discussion of course. Thoughts?

[Falcrack]

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.

[Killjaeden]

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.

[pref]

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.

[Killjaeden]

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.

[pref]

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.

[Player]

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

[Killjaeden]

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...

[pref]

you have to increase income -> more traders and stations.

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.

[spankahontis]

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.

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.

[Killjaeden]

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.