What new game mechanics would you like to see?

[Ezarkal]

*Hide ships and other objects from property menu (Filter setting to "Show hidden ships" if you need to show them again)

Very good one.
That, or being able to create sub-groups of ships or stations. Say, put all "auto-traders/miners" together so they stop cluttering your asset list.

[Miravlix]

Change it so stations can have commanders, so they will be collapsed into a single line in the list.

Say I have a Defense Station in a sector, now I tell all the other stations in the sector that they are subordinates of the Defense Station and like a fleet they all join together and can be collapsed to just showing the Defense Station.

Since the game design seems to disapprove of MEGA stations (Workforce is gained at the same rate no matter what), but on the other hand the UI doesn't really handle 100++ of stations (Scrolling the list get beyond ridiculous with high number of entries), I seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

A way of having a "mining guild" I can hide all miners under, the universe is just begging for me to create 50++ miners, so my trade overview stops contain ICE, ORE, SILICON, HELIUM, METHANE (Five is the max it can show and it's ALWAYS the raw resources that is most needed, because it's seperate storage so a station always has room for a ton of those, even while they only need very few, making the unfiltered trade view fairly useless.) There is just no way in my life time I can deal with 100's of miners in my unassigned ship list, I need that list to just be the handful of special purpose player ships. Though I can give one tip add "!" to the start of a ships name to make it sort at the top and add say "Z " in front of miners to sort them together (Anyone know if there is something that sort after all letters, since we do have some Znames that would be sorted after "Z "?)

[Nort The Fragrent]

Add in non combat rank increase ability, ( I can not advance my Rank with ZYA unless I fight some thing for them ) as I don't fight this halts them in my game. ( -15 ) So they might as well not exist !
A trade back door ! Or some non combative approach. I can not trade at -15 rank.

Account Money allocation: To have an input box we can type in a defined amount.
When you get into the Millions and Billions, the step size is vast, and is absurdly hard to get a definitive amount. The waiting for it to scroll up and down is silly as it excelerats in amount, so you end up seesawing back and forth ether side of the amount you want. I know there is the small increment, but that too is absurdly fast when it gets going !

Also a pay out ceiling we define, so we know at what level we will receive money from the station.

Destroyed ships list to be in a seperate list in the log, so we don't have to scroll through tons of pages to find witch one that was lost and where it was allocated too.

A 5 star station manager ought to then have the ability to order the ships the station needs to function. And if one of the station ships is destroyed the manager orders a replacement.

A hold key in plan build to stop snapping.

More variety in station module connectors, also arial, Coms, control towers, Top mounted huge gun/Cannon. advertising, Player Logo panel.

[Falcrack]

Destroyed ships list to be in a seperate list in the log, so we don't have to scroll through tons of pages to find witch one that was lost and where it was allocated too.

If you type the word "destroyed" in the log search bar, it will only bring up log entries for stuff that has been destroyed. Very handy!

[Scoob]

While there are of course new game mechanics I'd like to see, I just wish the existing ones were a bit more fleshed out first. I feel we lack a LOT of control regarding how things behave.

• Turrets - we need more fire control options and to be able to set CUSTOM firing priorities, just like we could in X3. Mr Turret: Please shoot down HEAVY missiles as a priority, but feel free to shoot FIGHTERS for me if there are no missiles around.
• Combat AI - I want you to attack THIS sort of enemy, run away from THAT sort of enemy. I want you to ALWAYS dock and repair after and encounter and I want you to RETREAT if you take x amount of damage. I want you to have a self-preservation / balance / do-or-die stance when in combat.
• Trading - just take this one bloody ware and sell it will you? That's it. Oh, and you there, just buy this one...if it's not too much trouble.

This is just three obvious ones off the top of my head. So, yes, new features can be GREAT but some of the existing ones need to be built upon and they really do form the foundations (see what I did there) of the entire game.

Scoob.

[pref]

1. Fix police - it's kinda unfeasible to be at war with any major race due to asymmetric police logic not outlawing attackers of player. Real PITA to avoid constant rep loss and having to endure/evade all the time to keep rep with other factions.

2. Player policing: current implementation has no gameplay benefit imo - this feature should eliminate/reduce pirate threats (perhaps not perfectly but by a large margin). Police should scan ships actively and respond appropriately.
Police should be able to retaliate without rep loss, even if a friendly faction's asset is attacked by another friendly ship.

3. Pirating. Being able to befriend pirates, use cover mechanic to be able to plunder and sell goods like them, pirate mission chain, unique pirate ships, pirate shipyard.

4. Defence scripts that consider all visible space in target area (sats or full sector if owned) both for AI and player. Scanner range limit is so bad and makes AI look much dumber then it is.

5. Hook response commands on alerts.

5. Local conflicts that operate with temp rep changes limited to the area and do not affect global rep: to end contested sector ownership, to avoid stalemate in faction expansion, to punish player for 'friendly' sector takeovers etc.
These should only last until their goal is achieved and any rep loss should be gone when leaving the sector.

[Falcrack]

Add ability to assign multiple build ships to station production to speed it up. Because nothing is more fun than waiting 24 hours for your mega-complex to finish using a single build ship!

Also, ability to fire a construction vessel in the middle of building. Because it is also super fun to have production go at a snails pace because your hired builder is short on builder drones, and not be able to fire them after finding out!

[Nort The Fragrent]

Stop the lift doors from slamming shut just as i am going to go through.

Turn off dock landing hologram numbers once docked.

Permit 180 landing direction on docks.

Have space fly eggs hatch.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

The ability to tell a station manager what goods to prioritise.

Priority lists for buying and selling of goods by the station traders.

Priority lists for mining of resources.

Or something along the lines of mine the following resource until storage is at X%.

The temporary assignment of a trader to build storage. Once the current build has completed they return to station trading.

Better control over buying resources for shields and turrets. I am really tired of seeing a station lack shields and turrets after 20 game days.

[Hasimere]

MOVE PHQ

[alexthespaniard]

- Boarding stations like you do with ships. This could add personnel transport ship's.

- Sector Taxes for products (This would be so much fun for Comerce and pirates).

-If the factions will declare peace or war by their own between them and not in a pred way (That would be awesome a good game mechanic example is BANNELORD or stellaris) .

- If there will be any containment for infinite growing ships with no sense like a crew salary.

- War Missions like “support the main fleet attacking this station or sector. The mission will start in 20 min.” Or Support the Destroyer attack... and with a range of 50km or 100km they can pay you for ship destroyed.

- Military access treaty (For carriers and Dstry): sometimes I had next to a main faction station 2 carriers more than 10 DSTRY and they don’t care. Is like NATO having 1000 tanks next to Snt Petersbur and they doing nothing. This treaty could work with time (you have 20 min of access). If you have a good relation free if not for money. And a max limit time if you don’t pay or you don have the treaty -5 rep Every 10 minutes. The limit of Carr or DSTRY could de 4 at time in one sector.

- Power Balance: Again some times feels like you are being the new super power and any one cares about it. That could be set with market or power quotes. If you are in good relation with faction nothing happening but if you have a normal/low rep with them and you are getting their resources or being a commerce threat for their hegemony this should decrease relations between factions.

[Raptor34]

Destroyed ships list to be in a seperate list in the log, so we don't have to scroll through tons of pages to find witch one that was lost and where it was allocated too.

If you type the word "destroyed" in the log search bar, it will only bring up log entries for stuff that has been destroyed. Very handy!

The first problem is needing to do that in the first place. The second is that it doesn't tell you anything about what it was doing, so if you didn't allocate stuff in even numbers then good luck hunting down where you need to replace what you lost.
Incidentally typing in "los" allows you to quickly filter for reputation loss."Des" and "los" are what I generally use to hunt down any ship/rep losses. Doesn't help with stations though as those either don't generate log entries or use something other than destroyed as a keyword.

[phrozen1]

Economic Integration of Planets

Via Planet-Trade Stations.
Planets could produce and demand special expensive wares/resources which you then have to bring in from often very distant places.
Then you would have very expensive cargo and a perfect target for pirates so you would need to defend the Transport.

Now that we get Terraforming it could increase the production of certain wares on the planet and/or unlock new wares.

[kroobzh]

2. NPC boarding ops. NPC pirates actively and capably board other ships, including player ships. It would give a reason to keep a few marines on your ships.

This is a really great idea. Why only the player can handle these ships? This is not fair to pirates. This process takes place under the control of AI. Perhaps you won't have to invent anything new.

[ms06f2]

clone. I don't like watching on ships. I want to fly a fighter. Add clones. Death no longer requires rereading files...

[alt3rn1ty]

+1 for salvaging wrecks, with random salvage items.

I just took over Scale Plate Green and the place looks like the biggest scrap yard you have ever seen, blur your vision and you would swear it's densely populated with asteroids.

I had a few more ideas a couple of days ago .. But Egosoft already have them covered in the AMA

[Imperial Good]

Consumer (non-war) economies. Such as recreational stations, tourism with tourist/liner ship class and planetary trade hubs to send wares down to planets, such as those we terraform.

[Retrox]

Personally, i would like to have more touches on the 'empire gameplay'. Its quite annoying to manually man e.g. a carrier with many small ships. To solve this issue, i would put op a building plan, where you can select everything, you could also manually for e.g. a carrier with its ship group, like the equipment on the ships, the commands for them and so on. This plan could be saved and be used multiple times. Also, by defining a plan to e.g. a carrier group, you can also put up a 'rebuild lost ships' feature, that improves micromanagement. By doing so, its necessary to determine the shipyard/warf, who will build them, so a selection of either owned or friendly locations is also important.
You can also link it with a 'select custom jobs feature', that let you define certain jobs like a sector patrol, that can be rebuild by the predefined building plans every time, its destroyed (similar to the NPC races). Thus, the we have less micromanagement and more fun.

[Althalos]

+ for move HQ
+ for salvaging

But also ship recycling/deconstruction and analysis. I know there is a mod for that, but this one really needs to get official.

[aard00]

But what are some new game mechanics which would you would like to see in X4? Here's my list

Beat me to it! Been mulling posting a similar topic!

2. NPC boarding ops. NPC pirates actively and capably board other ships, including player ships. It would give a reason to keep a few marines on your ships.

Great idea! Definitely need a defensive reason for marines on ships.

I also want an end to that blasted Teladi in his Osprey torpedoing to smithereens the Phoenix I've just spent the last 30 minutes whittling down to a boardable state. Right-click "Broadcast intent to capture" that goes through a player rep check + some combination of the npc attacking party's stats (to see if they comply) + rng (so always a chance to be out of luck). Success = npc's back off for x minutes. Failure = play back the "Negative" sample. Also limit how often you can trigger this action, perhaps by some multiple of x.

3. Increased benefits of sector ownership, such as collecting sales taxes.

Yes. Hardly seems worth owning a sector right now, other than not paying for plots.


I also want to see:
. NPC race matching habs on stations. If you need a mix, build a mix of habs. This way, your shipyards can also crew your ships accordingly.
. *All* events going to the log. Including *always* logging the ship/station registration and adding subordinate info where appropriate e.g. Ship x of station y was destroyed.
. A useful ticker. It's too small and info flashes by too quickly. And you have to be in cockpit view to see it. Which for me is about 20% of the time. Expand it on mouse-over? Scroll bars?
. Sectors going to Neutral after last owner's Admin is destroyed. Then and only then apply current ownership rules. (Yes, I have posted about this before )
. Fleet-wide paint mods as rewards, i.e. these add to the default schemes you can apply across your empire.
. And actually for your fleet just being able to choose a colour from a colour wheel, maybe with gloss/matte slider.
. An end - *somehow* - to that camp squealing voice that invariably waits until the moment you're about to get your booty blown to bits by the fleet of Ks and Is and everything in between to express that situation-critical nugget of information "I was asked to drop my cargo..." . Yes, I know you can set them to flee, but you still always have to break away just to check they're not fleeing *into* the approaching SCA Behemoth. It's annoying as heck!
. Fixed NPC AI docking at wharves/carriers
. Better/clearer fleet/wing management options