X4 has come a long way and currently it is quite a lot of fun to play. Its a diamond in the rough, with more quality of life tweaks and improvements (plus the addition of new content) its going to turn into the best space game ever, in my opinion. So here is my massive list of suggestions that I think would really improve the game.
Firstly, lets get the big ones out of the way...
- BORON for DLC 3, yes Egosoft!? Its time! It really is.
- FPS combat. The idea of being blasted into a ship onboard a boarding pod and shooting Split dead makes me VERY excited, one day? Mechanically this could only happen during a boarding operation (no running around stations with guns out).
Onto the rest...
The smaller stuff
User Interface and Quality of Life
- Can the external camera be made to not lose target when a ship explodes so we can watch the full explosion? I asked for this in a stream and Bernd seemed interested. Switch to wreck seamlessly when ship dies?
- Add a new vendor category for] for paintmods.
- Add min/max buttons for trades. So we dont have to click and drag the bar if we want to sell/buy all.
- When you install a mod, switch the install button to a dismantle button instead of greying it out, so when repeatedly installing mods you don't have to scroll to the top each time.
- Please only display rep gains on monitor and logbook if rep actually changes a full point (or add an option for this). Currently the game spams you when basically anything happens with rep gained messages, yet your actual rep is rarely actually moving a full point.
- Allow us to send our NPC ships to scan a target ship please. Eg, to reveal a hiding SCA ship or see the condition of an enemy ships components without being in-sector.
- Notification window changes as described here.
- Add Strafe speed to ship details while building ships, this info it isn't there at all and can only be accessed from the thruster encyclopaedia entries.
- When you tell multiple ships to pick up loot they all go for the same crates. Can this be improved?
- Add better cargo scoop devices, especially one with a much larger range for capital ships (and maybe a teleporting one).
- Make the key that opens the interact menu popup also close it.
- Add 'self-destruct' option to the interaction menu for deployables.
- Can station destruction mechanics get a polish pass? The way they dont quite disappear properly and the build storage being a phantom entity makes destroying a station feel clunky and unfinished.
- Would it be possible to allow us to manually place build storage while building stations?
- Make repair drones much faster, its quite easy to leave them behind in faster L ships. Or is it possible to make them more of a visual thing so they cant detach from a ships gravity well? Building drones are insanely fast by the way.
- Could you increase the amount of materials we get back from dismantling green ship quality mods please? 'Farming' materials is taking up too much of my time and I don't think its fun. The install and dismantle cycle incentivises savescumming. I think just losing the credits is a fair trade.
- Make cargo drones faster when picking up crates, they are so slooooow.
- Could you move the transporter button slightly so crew members moving around the ship don't block it completely? Or perhaps make the entire cylinder function as a button?
- Do we need so many combat drones on stations? I often see huge swarms of them and it seems to lag the game. Reduce the numbers across the board?
- Aiming in general does not feel very nice. The reticules don't quite work as expected, the different fire modes are in need of some polish and improvements. Often weapon aiming dots will aim at a completely different place than the aiming reticule? Honestly after all this time I'm still not sure what the reticule is doing, because it certainly isn't aiming where I need to to hit a target, unless its flying in a perfect straight line - the weapon dots seem to sometimes aim where I need to, but not always.
- Can AI be made to not shoot at ships if the player has marines assaulting it?
- Change 'probation period' missions into hunt missions or just outright remove them, they are bad (A lone unresponsive xenon ship sits there for you, and usually gets blown up by AI before you get there).
- When walking around on platforms 'thanks for your help' messages still freeze the player. Its quite annoying when it happens repeatedly. Please get rid of the loss of control?
- Could you add some variety to capital ship destruction explosions? For example, a critical explosion could happen rarely where the large explosions happens instantly rather than after the smaller explosion build-up. Sometimes a ship could die without the large explosion. I also miss the super cool blue explosion ring from rebirth, could this make a reappearance as I think it looks better than the one in X4.
- Dock LOD rework. Some of the games LOD models could be improved for a huge visual benefit. Dock LODs at level 1, 2 and 3 lose their UV's for the large flat texture, fixing this one surfaces UVs would lead to a massive visual gain and not much effort. Other LODs in the game could also use new models, but I do understand why the LODs are the way they are, manually and carefully making LODs for all ships would be a big job (pray for AI in the near future to do this, eh?).
- I know you dont want loading screens, but an optional super quick (3 seconds) fly-by animation when going through jumpgates like the old games had would be an awesome addition imho. Shows off our ship and their paintjobs, looks cool, and gives us an option to not see planet textures loading in.
- When traveling through superhighways many graphical glitches appear, such as huge blue surfaces (from the radar?) Please fix this, also please remove orange 'hazard zone' leftovers from Rebirth. As they no longer serve a function and are simply strange. Would be cool if the UI fizzled out when entering and back in when exiting, would look cinematic.
- Add some kind of effect to ships when they use gates/jump, a large flash or something. Currently they just kind of appear, sometimes they move and suddenly stop, but not always?
- Can missiles be made more visually interesting and varied (trails, effects, explosions, sounds).
- Could we get some more improved damage effects? Damage doesn't really produce any effects in X4 except in the final explosion. Rebirth had ships on fire at half HP and looked very epic. Rather than bonfires though I'de like to see more realistic effects, like eruptions of smoke and debris rather than smouldering holes, discharges of electricity, hell you could even have tiny little sprites of npcs shooting out of decompressions?
- Please change engine LOD files so engine flares appear at all distances (can be very few polygons). The engine glow disappearing suddenly is very jarring and noticeable. Its the biggest LOD pop-in issue, imo.
- Please add race specific combat drones. Would be nice if they used paintjobs too.
- Engine effects could look better. I for one like the saturated effects in Rebirth a lot more than the over-bright flares of X4, can these be improved and made more colourful? Effect in general could use a lot more post effects.
- Please add/explore support for Nvidia DLSS technology.
- Please add functionality to the games code to allow for paintmods that override the 2-colour setup of ships, without having to use an overlay texture. So a ship can have 1 single colour over the entire ship with the base metal appearance.
- Please add an auto-eject and auto-teleport option for ship destruction!
- Allow us to move the HQ please!
- Can cargo bay extensions make a return? In X4 this could simply be Cargo Capacity chassis mods!
- Can our own crews have a chance to use escape pods? If their escape pod reaches a friendly unit or station they should be added to the unassigned crew list. It would be amazing if crew could eject from destroyed ships too, adding the opportunity for missions revolving around picking up stranded crew after battles!
- Increase engine, shield and M and L turret hull points significantly. Stripping turrets off of capital ships with weapons like the Burst Ray is too easy. The player is easily able to cripple several xenon capitals in minutes with a single fighter.
- Add a new higher quality sensor package for highlighting and targeting of sub components.
- Add risk to hacking station terminals - I find it really jarring that I can lock an entire faction down with a few mouse clicks and 2 easily obtainable items, with absolutely NO risk (hacking production terminal on shipyard and wharf).
- Ship recycling. The AI and player should be able to recycle ships, returning a percentage of materials to the shipyard/wharf/eq dock. Player selling to AI shipyard = AI chooses what happens to ship, for player wharfs and shipyards a new option for recycling specifically should be added. Mechanically and visually this is the same as ship construction but in reverse? Easy to implement? **Implemented sort of?
- Blueprints as licenses instead. Building a factions ships requires payment for use of license (optional checkbox during building at player shipyard/wharf). This requires ship IDs to be tracked so factions know when you illegally build their blueprints. Shipyards are too profitable for the player, this could reduce that somewhat.
- Can we get missile priority turret mode like in X3? I think you want us to manually switch modes when missiles are inbound to give us something more to do in combat? The problem is that we have to release controls of our ships to change the mode, its clunky as hell in combat - without hotkeys or further work on making it much more fluid to change mode we need missile priority.
- Add a 1 star trade behaviour for simple trade loops.
- Critical hits. When the hull of a ship is being hit could there's be a small chance for a critical hit to happen, causing a large visual effect and a large drop in hull points? (could also kill a lot of crew).
- Improvements to capital main weapons mechanics. For example, the gun sounds are linked to the mouse button depression not the weapon actually firing (if you release the mouse as soon as you fire the weapon the noise stops, its weird).
- Please add more capital ship main weapons to add variety and choice. Anti-fighter, missiles?
- Can we get the engine wake/heat mechanic from Rebirth added to X4 please? Make the shaking more violent too! Betty can comment on this instead of Yisha now!
- Anti-missile-laser-system. A new type of turret that doesn't take a turret slot. Or even, a mod to turret components themselves that shoots independent of the turret!! Would require a new dummy location/hook on turret models where laser fires from?
- Allow L and XL ships to sync with gates rather than have to fly through them, they fly fairly close, stop, charge up and whoosh, they jump (Like Rebirth jump beacons). This will help a lot with gate jams and improve L and XL ships travel times. It would be cool if they align themselves with the gate and shoot away from it with a flash when they jump.
- Allow rare ship bails in fights between AI. Finding abandoned ships that are not scripted/hand placed is really cool, and something that just should be in the game in my opinion.
- Please reduce the amount of S and M ship storage on destroyers, such as the Odysseus. This will bring them in line, make carriers more important and less ships is always good in my opinion as this game suffers from bloat and performance problems.
- Allow us to repair ship sub-components directly. Eg, shooting repair laser at an engine speeds up that components repair speed and prioritises it.
- Pirate capital ships. Could pirates get modified freighters they use as capital ships? For example the Sonra, but with much of the cargo part of the hull removed and some more guns strapped to it? This is the perfect opportunity to kitbash rather than building completely new ships.
- Add many more ways to acquire paintmods! The vast majority of paintmods are UNATTAINABLE for players that don't want to use ventures. There are many more that are unattainable for all players unless they use mods. There is a lot of variety out there, just out of our reach! **I think many have been added as mission rewards?
- Allow us to turn off visitors and still use ventures (Stupid names and ships blatantly sent by players destroy my immersion completely, but I would like to use ventures).
- The Sonra, Mokosi, Incarcatura and Veles are incredibly similar in stats - can something be done about this to set them apart?
- Could damage to hull be made to sometimes kill crew? Currently a (player owned) ship either survives combat or doesnt - apart from a small repair bill of 20% of the hull (in the case of larger ships) combat doesnt really have any long lasting impact. Losing crew when a ship is being pounded without shields might add some extra tension and risk to combat?
- Give weapons and missiles proper names. Eg, Pulse Laser > Impulse Ray Emitter. Or Small Tracking Missile > Mosquito Missile. For missiles the current name could be used as a descriptive tooltip, eg, Mosquito Missile mouse over would read [Small tracking missile].
- Can you add more call outs to friendly ships? Currently we get 'Requesting immediate backup', but could we get things like 'Shield down!' etc? I believe there are lots of sound files for this kind of stuff, it would add a lot to large battles.
- It would be really nice to be able to give crew members nicknames. Im not asking to be able to change their full name like you can in other games, but give them a callsign.
- Would it be possible to let us pick a uniform for our crews? This would of course require a new set of clothes for all races that is similar. Would be great to be able to pick a colour for the uniform too.
The BIG stuff. Harder to implement features
- Please add missions to ships! These could be a mix of dynamic and static missions. For example an escort mission might just spawn on an npc ship that just picked up cargo, but a Distress call mission would appear on a ship that is actually under attack. There are many other types of missions that could be added to ships. Repair missions could ask the player to EVA near a ship and repair subcomponents.
- Skilled crew that REALLY do things! For example, great engineers could shunt power to shields when they go down, instantly recharging some shield power and saving the ship - "Shields back online, captain!". Sometimes they could stop weapons from being overheated, "Flushing coolant... weapons online!". Your ship should feel like a powerhouse with great crew and equipment. I believe you have the voice files for this kind of stuff already and I think it would feel amazing to have a good crew with events like this. For performance reasons this would have to be in-sector only or player only?
- Please fill out the encyclopeadia. It could help new and old players alike so much, stop confusion, make things easier to understand, the benefits are endless. It should inform about lore and give a general description of mechanics of things, like pulse laser entry could say "This low-energy weapon is accurate and dependable". Another example, Combat thrusters description should explain that they give excellent strafe speed (this info is complletely lacking from ship build menu) at the cost of rotation speed. Missiles could get proper names, eg, "Small tracking missile" should become a tooltip for the "Mosquito Missile". ** A lot of work has been done here, so it goes green, still more to do of course.
- Resurgent factions.
I think it's boring and unrealistic that factions can be utterly wiped out, and I'm a player that really enjoys the possibility of endless gameplay. A script should fire every couple of game hours checking if a faction has any stations, if they dont there should be a chance to spawn a fleet far from a sector center in one of their home systems. This implies lore of faction presence in a system outside of player eyes (eg, Argon Primes planet has millions of inhabitants, far more than space) and puts the limitless sector sizes to great use - it adds the looming threat of returning enemies for end game players to keep them on their toes. This fleet in the case of main factions like Argon should be heavily modified and well armed, with a mix of resource collectors, traders and military ships, they should move together to around 2-400 km's from a sectors center and immediately start building a shipyard and wharf. - Salvage gameplay.
Allow us and the AI to salvage wrecks for raw resources.
Salvage drones should work much like repair drones, and as they fly around wrecks crates appear with the resources for you or AI to scoop up. Mechanically these drones could work and look just like repair drones. Alternatively they could be a mix of repair and cargo drones, they salvage the wreck creating crates, and then pick up the crates.
Add a new subfaction called the "Ministry of Reclamation" that is comprised of mostly Teladi that have their own station and ships and fly around salvaging equipment, wrecks and ships. - Please bring back the Kha'ak as a full faction! They would need some capital ships. They could be the exception to the no jumpdrive rule. I would like to see them implimented as a unpredictable menace that can jump both fleets and their station anywhere they want periodically. Their lore could be linked to the player HQ and they could even be slightly different than the Kha'ak we know (alternate dimension Kha'ak). Their capital ships could take on the pyramid aesthetic of their fighters rather than X3 bug-esk ships.
A large anomaly could appear where they are going to jump to, giving the factions and player time to react and prepare - missions to fight them should be like Xenon invasions in X3, lucrative and exciting. If you or the AI destroy enough of their ships, or damage their station enough they all just jump out and start preparing for another assault.
Also, I think this should be added alongside the Boron and part of the Boron story and lore **Kha'ak have received many changes, not all the suggestions but this one goes tentatively green. - I'm sure you are aware of this and actively working on it, but NPC models are in need of more variety for clothes, armour and hair. Crazy pirate hairstyles and clothes could be added for all races, like in X3. Split are in need of more clothing desperately. The current Split clothes would look pretty cool in black by the way. Split need punky looking hairstyles!
The new NPC face system is great, but is still in need of tweaking and further variety. - Galactic news network! You know we all want this and how cool it would be, and the game already reports some events. Adding cool fluff text to all of these and adding more would be really great (The X3 XTC mod had this and it really is good).
- Taxes and wages. I think the player should pay wages to their employees and taxes to governments of sectors where they have stations. The cost of taxes should depend on total player empire asset value, a player with an absolutely huge empire should have to pay high taxes for their assets in other faction space. This should work both ways, factions with stations in player owned sectors should pay also.
- Allow us to move the HQ please! (The hard way, with writing, research, voicing and plots).
- Power management on ships. I dont really need to explain this I think. Power management is fun and given this games modding feature it could add a lot of depth (we could mod to increase energy reserves).
- Could you add new station modules that include an interior observation area? This could just be a connection or bridge module. This would allow the player to place module in places with great views.
- Could we get a rework/redesign of the Odysseus? The model is problematic in many ways. I wont get into it here and i'll simply say it's not my favourite ship model.
- Is it possible to add boarding of stations?
- Allow us to move workforce, add passenger transport ships and add missions to stations to fullfill workforce quotas. Workforce could be a valuable commodity.
- Please add boarding actions to AI! If a ship is being boarded the player should not be able to dock or teleport, the player should also be able to help ships/stations that are under assault by boarding with their own marines!
- I would still like to see a complete rework of engine models. Each races engines could look actually different, not just another colour.
- Introduce the originally planned mini-plots for the gamestarts.
- Some form of diplomacy like in total war games. Being friends with a factions enemy effects your possible max rep with them? Wasnt diplomacy planned for 3.0 but it got canned/cut? What happened to it?
- Add terminals to ship interiors that allow us to hack them (iirc Rebirth had this, it was fun to hack a ship from the inside in the middle of nowhere, allowing for safer boarding). A way to temporarily disable the travel drive of a ship when we want for ease of piracy. A way to force drop cargo? Disable communication entirely?