[Suggestion] Difficulty settings

[pref]

Not like that in my game at all.

A dev posted that budgets are near infinite but based on what you tell it's the same with you.
When you start a game HOP doesn't have much and in my case they couldn't even build ships. Just grant them access to wares and they start to build 10s of stations. Their state regarding eco or warships does not matter at all in expansion rate.
I bet if you just built good amount of production lines for argons they would build a lot regardless of their current state.

I never saw any faction have more then 1 carriers and 5-10 destroyers the same time. Kept boarding all the L and XL warships at some point and there wasn't more then that even though i had good sat coverage.
HOP didn't even have a carrier during first 200 hours.

[pref]

Heh, with the way large ships travel at the moment, I'm struggling to picture a rapid response fleet in X4

Yeah same here.
Though i would also question response, unless revisiting the enemy's past locations counts as a response..

[GCU Grey Area]

A dev posted that budgets are near infinite but based on what you tell it's the same with you.
When you start a game HOP doesn't have much and in my case they couldn't even build ships. Just grant them access to wares and they start to build 10s of stations. Their state regarding eco or warships does not matter at all in expansion rate.
I bet if you just built good amount of production lines for argons they would build a lot regardless of their current state.

I never saw any faction have more then 1 carriers and 5-10 destroyers the same time. Kept boarding all the L and XL warships at some point and there wasn't more then that even though i had good sat coverage.
HOP didn't even have a carrier during first 200 hours.

HOP economy is none of my doing. Game is very new (started when the 3.0 beta came out). Just over 100 hours into it so far. Only just got round to building my first station to support ANT shipbuilding. So far my effect on the economy has been fairly minimal - just a single ship for most of the time & an M freighter with a 7.9K hold just isn't going to make that much of a difference. Suspect your game may be older, they may have tweaked the fleet numbers in 3.0b. HOP fleet was several times larger than what you mention (right from the start of the game) & included multiple carriers & resupply vessels.

[pref]

Suspect your game may be older, they may have tweaked the fleet numbers in 3.0b. HOP fleet was several times larger than what you mention (right from the start of the game) & included multiple carriers & resupply vessels.

That's good if they have increased the quota. Every faction should have a strong fleet as long as their eco isn't significantly crippled.
Haven't tried the beta yet.

[radcapricorn]

Heh, with the way large ships travel at the moment, I'm struggling to picture a rapid response fleet in X4

Yeah same here.
Though i would also question response, unless revisiting the enemy's past locations counts as a response..

Well in 3.0 beta any military and police that's already present in the sector seem to gang up on incoming hostiles rather efficiently, at least as far as their speed allows.

[pref]

Well in 3.0 beta any military and police that's already present in the sector seem to gang up on incoming hostiles rather efficiently, at least as far as their speed allows.

Do they follow well even if target heads for a new destination? There were no issues with ganging up, only when AI has to follow a target that changed location during the "chase".

[radcapricorn]

Ah, no, they don't.

[blanmgr]

Heh, with the way large ships travel at the moment, I'm struggling to picture a rapid response fleet in X4

Yeah same here.
Though i would also question response, unless revisiting the enemy's past locations counts as a response..

Have you seen how fast the Xenon Destroyers move across the sector? They move must faster and respond faster then you own ships to move in travel speed. It will would be nice to order a ship or Destroyer to move in "Travel Speed" to engage but you are reliant on the AI which seems to always move the Xenon Destroyers in "Travel Speed".

[pref]

Have you seen how fast the Xenon Destroyers move across the sector?

It's not about speed but the logic scripts use when they try to chase a target.

[blanmgr]

Have you seen how fast the Xenon Destroyers move across the sector?

It's not about speed but the logic scripts use when they try to chase a target.

Either way, the scripts allow the AI to be more responsive than the player which once again is another unbalance situation. The player need to be able to "order a ship" to move in "Travel Speed" in response.

[Alan Phipps]

We are rather getting off the topic of difficulty settings once we start to discuss the AI and ship travel.

[GCU Grey Area]

Suspect your game may be older, they may have tweaked the fleet numbers in 3.0b. HOP fleet was several times larger than what you mention (right from the start of the game) & included multiple carriers & resupply vessels.

That's good if they have increased the quota. Every faction should have a strong fleet as long as their eco isn't significantly crippled.
Haven't tried the beta yet.

This a big enough HOP fleet for you?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5bm246zdct225 ... 1.jpg?dl=0

[pref]

That really depends on opposition and what they do.
If they get stuck on a khaak godmode module or a lonely P while a couple PAR destroyers kill one of their stations and a foreign CV is building an admin module in HOP space or they just never get rebuilt after losses because HOP lost a station or two then it's not really enough.
I mean hack 5 or so smartchip fabs, takes a few clicks each, and you got rid of HOP and PAR military?

I remember HOP having 5+ destroyers before 2.0 so it's not such a big change.

[Sandalpocalypse]

it confuses me that the actual war events like mounting invasions or defenses et cetera do not seem to have missions associated with them... i never really messed with war missions until recently.

[GCU Grey Area]

I remember HOP having 5+ destroyers before 2.0 so it's not such a big change.

Not such a big change?
By my count that fleet consists of 5 carriers/resupply vessels, 33 destroyers, 41 gunboats/corvettes & 42 fighters (remember most of them are organised in wings - list was way too long to display them as individual ships). Got to ask, just how big should a fleet be before it constitutes a big change?
Incidentally that's not the only HOP fleet I've seen - that fleet's just the one guarding a defence platform near the south gate in Second Contact II. It's an important choke point, but it's not even on the frontline! They have other fleets for that.

[pref]

By my count that fleet consists of 5 carriers/resupply vessels, 33 destroyers, 41 gunboats/corvettes & 42 fighters (remember most of them are organised in wings - list was way too long to display them as individual ships). Got to ask, just how big should a fleet be before it constitutes a big change?

Thought it's nine, now i see the subordinate count. That's actually quite a lot - sounds even too much (not sure what FPS i would be getting if 2 of these 50 ship fleets started to murder eachother), but seeing how that argon CV flies right into HOP SY undisturbed it might still not be enough. Also it's just an early beta not a balanced RC. HOP having that amount of ships might be just a bug or a temporary state.

How many ships exactly a faction should have is more of a balancing issue, hope 3.0 will get that right at release.
Higher quotas are really welcome, but my issue is more with the too strict eco restrictions which can easily result in them not being able to rebuild lost ships, and also how they respond to events.
I'd be happy to see changes regarding these,
- some artificial help for maintaining at least a minimal fleet that can protect their sectors and
- being able to prioritise targets sensibly and intercept them.

You can cover these problems up to some extent with an extremely high number of starting ships, but that's not really the best solution.

[Alan Phipps]

Heh, what goes around comes around. X Rebirth was heavily criticised by some players because some ships were spawned on demand rather than races/factions always having to resource and build them or take them from other duties. Now X4 is getting (more mildly) criticised for doing more of what was requested.

[pref]

Yeah i know.
Never understood why, takes LOTs of effort and there is 0 gameplay benefit.

In X4 it makes factions feel harmless in the end, and with such small number of economic entities the whole system is so vulnerable.
Maybe it could have worked with X3's or higher station count, where big numbers have a chance to even out fluctuation caused by random events. Still where is the gain?

You just need a system where actions have consequences, not one which is perfectly closed.
Can't even fathom why people talked so much about it.

[eXalt!]

Keep thinking about Rep, it works a bit weird... tending to the easy side.
You can be a recognized member of a faction and still be in good terms with their enemies, or be a trading mogul who never shot a laser and be allowed to command a destroyer.

Citizenship: ON
Accepted rank 10+ with a faction →get -30 temporal Rep with the factions they are at war with

Skill based Rep: ON
Limits the purchase of advanced (rep based) combat/trading ships to character combat/trading rating.

[Imperial Good]

Never understood why, takes LOTs of effort and there is 0 gameplay benefit.

It makes it feel a lot less frustrating to play. In X3 and XR killing a battle fleet felt worthless and a waste of time because 1 - 2 hours later it would be replaced with magic and there was nothing you could do to stop that.

In X4 you can blockade their shipyard and that fleet will not be coming back.

You can be a recognized member of a faction and still be in good terms with their enemies, or be a trading mogul who never shot a laser and be allowed to command a destroyer.

Which is kind of realistic. Nothing stops a country selling weapons to both parties of a war. Countries like Switzerland and the USA did this in the past.

As mentioned in a previous post, the solution would be some sort of "suspicion" ratting. Trading or completing missions with a faction generates suspicion points towards you from all their direct enemies. A direct enemy is an enemy which shares a war front with the faction that was helped. If your suspicion ratting gets too high with a faction, the faction may start to make compensation/loyalty demands or threats which failure to complete or comply results in massive reputation loss. Suspicion decays when you trade or complete missions for the faction which has suspicion points against you. If you trade and work for both sides of a war equally both sides view you as a reliable and useful ally in the fight. If you heavily bias towards one side then they would suspect you are an undercover enemy. The higher your reputation, the more easily suspicion points decay allowing for larger asymmetry before suspicion becomes a problem.