Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

This forum is the ideal place for all discussion relating to X4. You will also find additional information from developers here.

Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum

Pares
Posts: 468
Joined: Wed, 6. May 09, 15:46
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Pares » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 17:12

Another little annoyance I'd like to see addressed is that you cannot add a captain to a captainless ship in the upgrade menu directly (and I think through any other means either). You can only add a crew member who you then have to promote to captain. Also related to this is if you have two ships docked at a station, and one of them doesn't have a captain, ware transfer doesn't work. It doesn't matter if you are controlling the captainless ship or not. Basically it is not possible to transfer e.g. satellites or laser towers from a captured abandoned ship that you just want to sell without adding and promoting a crew member to captain. Well, thechnically there is a way, you can drop everything you want then collect it with another ship, but come on...

af_2017
Posts: 696
Joined: Sun, 7. Oct 18, 19:55
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by af_2017 » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 17:18

Gigaflux wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 16:37
af_2017 wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 12:23
mr.WHO wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 09:36
- Missile rebalance (you need hundreds missiles to take out a station in L/XL ships, while Torpedos are only available to S/M ships).
i think this is intentional because i remember in xr it was possible to shred everything quite fast launching swarms of missiles from safe distance.
Well, af_2017, that sounds quite realistic
aight, time to discuss realism in computer games.
all those prices/slow to produce are nothing because it is just a matter of time. One can have billions in an hour and tons of factories which will make the missiles.
I am not a game product manager and have no answers how to balance the game to make people play more but obviously they(egosoft) tried to do so.
And yup, i was slightly frustrated also when found out that torpedo launcher is not such effective as before.
X4 is not a destination. It's a journey. Unfortunately in a wrong direction.

User avatar
Nort The Fragrent
Posts: 954
Joined: Fri, 5. Jan 18, 21:00
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Nort The Fragrent » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 20:32

X4’s Housework list.

Station specific crew/workers, Argon food = Argon staff only.
Shipyard to Have Faction specified Blueprints Only, Just one Faction’s ships can be built at that shipyard. And again! Thats the crew you get too.

If you are at war with a faction, why have their crew on your ships and stations?

A station can only have one food available, so you can not intermix and build multiple complexes.

Need a better assortment of Solar panels to chose for a build.

When landing on a station, ( your station ) The Large blank area at the top of the screen to include that stations details. Subordinates, Station information ect so it’s right there for you to attend to.

Stop that Bright white screen flash, each time the Map is opened.
Put the Map on Half the screen,
Have the default zoom when opening the map to that sector, not so close you fall off your chair.

Better mining efficiency with mining ships. At the moment you need so many miners just for one station to function properly, Its absurdly out of balance. Stations idle, with no raw materials getting in, despite the fact there are ten or more miners out there fumbling around !

Make Solar Panels direction efficient ! Facing the wrong way and they should not work.

Not sure if this is available in game already! Old discarded Station Build hubs. ( Those red boxes ) That are filling up my long game. There are sectors now with loads and loads of disused Building hubs. Can they be removed. They are not mine, can I get rid of them in some way. ?

Declare peace option. A must.

Rework the Paranid ship design’s, please.

Make the Weapons and shield icons in ship upgrade, and station defence set up all fit on the screen at once. They are too large, and require lots of unnecessary scrolling up and down.

My Station Office, with chair, and usable monitors for Fleets, Trade ships, My empire management.

Right ! This is a corker.

Individual Turret attachment that fits onto all those empty clip-on attachments on station builds.
Put a Turret on the end. Just one per raw end.
:)

MHDriver
Posts: 464
Joined: Wed, 27. Feb 19, 19:39
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by MHDriver » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 20:45

@CBJ.. Some really well thought out suggestions in this thread.. :wink:

Pares
Posts: 468
Joined: Wed, 6. May 09, 15:46
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Pares » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 21:11

How about not stopping the epic music when entering stations, then suddenly resuming it when you leave? Just let us enjoy the cool music inside stations too.

User avatar
mr.WHO
Posts: 8549
Joined: Thu, 12. Oct 06, 17:19
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by mr.WHO » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 21:33

Pares wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 21:11
How about not stopping the epic music when entering stations, then suddenly resuming it when you leave? Just let us enjoy the cool music inside stations too.
This is the reason why I do not stay in stations (other than the Bar) - there is no music playing in the background :(

Midnitewolf
Posts: 564
Joined: Tue, 23. Mar 21, 06:18

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Midnitewolf » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 21:51

I personally think the most important thing for them to polish is the UI and command structure since what we have is very, very rough and unintuitive. Here is my list of what I feel is needed and needed badly.



1) Adding Immediately executable orders to the right click menus that erase all existing orders and execute the new command immediately. Things like "Attack Now", "Cease Fire Now" "Protect Ship Now", "Protect Fleet Now", "Fly Here Now" etc. all command available to be issued to fleets or single ships individually. This is nearly a must have for trying to command a battle in real time without having to pause and review every detail about the unit you want to command before issuing a command.

2) Extended command/behaviors to do things like command a fleet to protect another fleet or even ordering individual fighter from a carrier to protect another individual ship or entire fleet.

3) Rework of how trading works. Best example would be to incorporate the "Mules" series of mods or something similar to assist with trading and transferring wares, basically with the goal of making it more intuitive, streamlined and capable.

4) Incorporate something like the "Reaction Force" mod where we can actually have patrols react to conflict in the areas they are patrolling rather than relying on random encounters.

5) Major focus on streamlining everything and making commands and behavior more intuitive. For example, there is no need for the command "Protect Position" to need to be a behavior. All that should be required is right clicking the fleet or ship, pick "Protect Position" from the drop down option, Click on the area of the map you want the fleet to protect. Leave the Behaviors in but make it only a requirement if you want to fine tune something about the behaviors.

6) Do a serious review of the Global Orders menus with a eye on things that are missing such as being able to set a separate default "What to do if attacked" behavior since most people will likely want their civilian ships to "Flee" and their Military ships to "Retaliate" or "Use Judgement".

EDIT: I KNEW I WOULD REMEMBER SOMETHING RIGHT AFTER I SUBMITTED MY POST.

7) Add the ability to change the build order of modules on the fly during station construction. Nothing more frustrating that designing a huge complex station and realizing that the last thing you added is the first thing you really need.

Honestly there are probably at least a half dozen other relatively easy fixes and additions to fix those challenging and unintuitive aspects of the UI and the command structure but I probably won't think of them until I am caught in yet another frustrating or awkward scenario where I go "I wish they would just....", but they are all UI and Command structure related. In my opinion this is the area that NEEDS POLISHING.

The rest, like removing plants, adding more faces and clothing styles to NPCs, etc can all wait as they don't improve gameplay and I really want them to focus on gameplay improvement instead of cosmetics.
Last edited by Midnitewolf on Sat, 17. Apr 21, 20:12, edited 1 time in total.

Endealon
Posts: 50
Joined: Tue, 6. Apr 21, 21:30

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Endealon » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 22:05

naisha wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 16:33
YES PLEASE!

We have enough content, focus on fixing and improving the game please!
Yes, I totally agree, the game has enough content already, but there are currently too many things that hinder or cloud the overall experience.

For my part, I look forward to the update 5.0, because there we will check if the developers are aware of the problems.

Endealon
Posts: 50
Joined: Tue, 6. Apr 21, 21:30

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Endealon » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 22:22

Midnitewolf wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 21:51
I personally think the most important thing for them to polish is the UI and command structure since what we have is very, very rough and unintuitive. Here is my list of what I feel is needed and needed badly.



1) Adding Immediately executable orders to the right click menus that erase all existing orders and execute the new command immediately. Things like "Attack Now", "Cease Fire Now" "Protect Ship Now", "Protect Fleet Now", "Fly Here Now" etc. all command available to be issued to fleets or single ships individually. This is nearly a must have for trying to command a battle in real time without having to pause and review every detail about the unit you want to command before issuing a command.

2) Extended command/behaviors to do things like command a fleet to protect another fleet or even ordering individual fighter from a carrier to protect another individual ship or entire fleet.

3) Rework of how trading works. Best example would be to incorporate the "Mules" serious of mods or something similar to assist with trading and transferring wares, basically with the goal of making it more intuitive, streamlined and capable.

4) Incorporate something like the "Reaction Force" mod where we can actually have patrols react to conflict in the areas they are patrolling rather than relying on random encounters.

5) Major focus on streamlining everything and making commands and behavior more intuitive. For example, there is no need for the command "Protect Position" to need to be a behavior. All that should be required is right clicking the fleet or ship, pick "Protect Position" from the drop down option, Click on the area of the map you want the fleet to protect. Leave the Behaviors in but make it only a requirement if you want to fine tune something about the behaviors.

6) Do a serious review of the Global Orders menus with a eye on things that are missing such as being able to set a separate default "What to do if attacked" behavior since most people will likely want their civilian ships to "Flee" and their Military ships to "Retaliate" or "Use Judgement".

EDIT: I KNEW I WOULD REMEMBER SOMETHING RIGHT AFTER I SUBMITTED MY POST.

7) Add the ability to change the build order of modules on the fly during station construction. Nothing more frustrating that designing a huge complex station and realizing that the last thing you added is the first thing you really need.

Honestly there are probably at least a half dozen other relatively easy fixes and additions to fix those challenging and unintuitive aspects of the UI and the command structure but I probably won't think of them until I am caught in yet another frustrating or awkward scenario where I go "I wish they would just....", but they are all UI and Command structure related. In my opinion this is the area that NEEDS POLISHING.

The rest, like removing plants, adding more faces and clothing styles to NPCs, etc can all wait as they don't improve gameplay and I really want them to focus on gameplay improvement instead of cosmetics.
Basically, this ^

1. You tell your frigate to dock.
2. An enemy appears. You give a new order: "attack the enemy." But in X4, doing something so simple is not so easy. Giving a "new order" implies ":

a) Select the frigate (ship) of which you want the change of behavior. If you do it from the map, that means selecting from 2 possible locations: either from the list of ships, or by clicking directly on its icon. In the first case, the complexity of selecting any ship increases with each ship that is added to the list, since there is no way to re-locate its position in the list to facilitate its access. In the second, it involves clicking on a tiny icon, or zooming in to make the icon bigger, zooming again to select the ship you want to attack ... a complete disaster.

b) Delete any previous order. For some strange reason, the developers found it convenient that the last order given (the current one) is always placed at the end of the order list, counterintuitively to how 99% of the other strategy games that we all know so well work.

I wanted to be brief when writing this, but it is impossible. Such is the amount of tedious, counterintuitive and poorly designed things that it is surprising that EgoSoft deliberately designed it that way.

And we are in Update 4.0

:lol:

Gigaflux
Posts: 116
Joined: Sun, 17. Dec 06, 12:23
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Gigaflux » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 23:01

af_2017 wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 17:18
Gigaflux wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 16:37
af_2017 wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 12:23

i think this is intentional because i remember in xr it was possible to shred everything quite fast launching swarms of missiles from safe distance.
Well, af_2017, that sounds quite realistic
aight, time to discuss realism in computer games.
all those prices/slow to produce are nothing because it is just a matter of time. One can have billions in an hour and tons of factories which will make the missiles.
Okay, that discussion again. :-) Of course, games can be a simulation of the reality at best. And why do they try to? Because there's a common understanding on how the game world should function. Just generally spoken. Such an approach makes many things much more easier, because not everything must be documented (e.g. "Gravity pulls you down") and even more important; it does not contradict real life. Of course, this game design idea still allows for specific exceptions. :-)
Returning to missiles. I think, given the fact that the X universe still includes missiles, there should be an equilibrium between missiles, their targets and their costs, you certainly agree to that. One can create such an balance from scratch, but that is hardly an easy task. But you can look at our current military system in RL. This should give the game developer a good source for a naturally evolved equilibrium. Of course, that's possible only, if the missile's counterparts (AKA targets, mobile and immobiles) are somehow comparable to the jet fighters (and more) of today. ... that was my thoughts behind my statement above :-)

... end of message

Witzzard
Posts: 170
Joined: Wed, 3. Aug 05, 15:17
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Witzzard » Wed, 14. Apr 21, 23:03

Well ... that's definately true. A Shift + Click is much more commonly used for queuing commands. Though i think it works a tad better for traders - so maybe a toggle switch here instead of a direct change to an input change? As we're clearly landing in huge long lists (even for the commands i proposed) to scroll through otherwise?

FatalKeks
Posts: 147
Joined: Mon, 8. Feb 21, 23:01
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by FatalKeks » Thu, 15. Apr 21, 01:08

A lot of great stuff here! I hope at least some of the suggestions make it into the game.

If I had to pick 3, I would pick :

1. Adding immediately executable orders
2. An order for patrol ships to react to threats in sector ("Reaction Force")
3. Bomber role for fighters


Also I would like to see a "Board"-like convenience function for attacking stations. Like:

Step 1: Move in position (same as coordinated attack)

Step 2: Disable Turrets and Drones/Ships
-> Assign the ships which should target turrets (probably mostly fighters/bombers)
-> Asssign the ships which should target drones/ships (cannonships and fighters)

Step 3: Attack modules
-> Assign/Allow L/XL-Ships to move in

Pares
Posts: 468
Joined: Wed, 6. May 09, 15:46
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Pares » Thu, 15. Apr 21, 08:45

Midnitewolf wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 21:51
Honestly there are probably at least a half dozen other relatively easy fixes and additions
Well... how easy is something to change or add depends on the quality, maintainability and extendability of the source code. There are many things that look trivial to fix to me from the outside (like adding a captain directly to a captainless ship from the upgrade menu, or transfering wares between captainless ships), yet they are in the game from 1.0. So I can only hope it's because of the small team + priorities (and maybe incomprehensible design decisions), and not because of spaghetti/ravioli/lasagna code...

capitalduty
Posts: 365
Joined: Mon, 23. May 16, 02:02

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by capitalduty » Thu, 15. Apr 21, 23:13

Agreed with most things on OP.

I would love Egosoft look into mod that does Subsystem Targeting Orders. Is possible officialize some of his content?...this could really add big new layer of gameplay for fight oriented players.

Can we please add new attack commands for capital ships:

-"Bombard target" from a set distance and maintaining range and orientation.
-"Assault target" Close in at full speed.

Can we please add direct orders as quick commands for our squadron:

-Fleet attack my target.
-Fleet defend me.
-Fleet escape battle.
-Fleet target subsystems.

Can we please review the entire flee order...doesn't work well IS.

Can we please add order to deploy or dock repairing drones?

Can we have a rebalance of missile storage on supply ships so the can properly rearm missiles of fleet?

Can we please make that capital ships target by default other capital ships first when directed by a general attack order?

Can we please add turret custom behaviours? (as example: target missiles then fighters then medium then capital similar as X3 AP)

Thanks for making X games...X4 is gonna be the best one in the series because all your hard work!!

Raevyan
Posts: 1463
Joined: Sat, 4. Oct 08, 17:35
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Raevyan » Fri, 16. Apr 21, 00:24

Pares wrote:
Thu, 15. Apr 21, 08:45
Midnitewolf wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 21:51
Honestly there are probably at least a half dozen other relatively easy fixes and additions
Well... how easy is something to change or add depends on the quality, maintainability and extendability of the source code. There are many things that look trivial to fix to me from the outside (like adding a captain directly to a captainless ship from the upgrade menu, or transfering wares between captainless ships), yet they are in the game from 1.0. So I can only hope it's because of the small team + priorities (and maybe incomprehensible design decisions), and not because of spaghetti/ravioli/lasagna code...
Problem is they just keep adding new bugged features instead of fixing the existing ones in the first place. Just look at what a mess 4.0 and CoH was. CoH reintroduced bugs that were fixed in previous versions...

rubahax4
Posts: 109
Joined: Sat, 12. Jan 19, 17:03
x4

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by rubahax4 » Fri, 16. Apr 21, 09:09

Egosoft has managed to create a great map and great station building, also a real economy. I think this is a great achievement.
All that remains is to improve the Artificial Intelligence, especially the combat one. It is difficult, but it is very important, and it is necessary to focus all your efforts on it first of all.

Midnitewolf
Posts: 564
Joined: Tue, 23. Mar 21, 06:18

Re: Can we start to polish the game after 4.0?

Post by Midnitewolf » Sat, 17. Apr 21, 20:26

Pares wrote:
Thu, 15. Apr 21, 08:45
Midnitewolf wrote:
Wed, 14. Apr 21, 21:51
Honestly there are probably at least a half dozen other relatively easy fixes and additions
Well... how easy is something to change or add depends on the quality, maintainability and extendability of the source code. There are many things that look trivial to fix to me from the outside (like adding a captain directly to a captainless ship from the upgrade menu, or transfering wares between captainless ships), yet they are in the game from 1.0. So I can only hope it's because of the small team + priorities (and maybe incomprehensible design decisions), and not because of spaghetti/ravioli/lasagna code...
Here is the thing. Most of what everyone has asked for here, has actually be done by Modders. If a modder can do it in their spare time when not doing their real job, why the hell can't the developers do it when it is their real job? I mean the "immediate Orders" I am practically begging for was a mod at one point, right up until the guy who created it got bored with the game and stopped updating it. Surely the devs could add it into the game pretty easily.

No the reason we don't have this stuff is because the Director, who probably never even played the game, decided it wouldn't be profitable and what they need to do is add more content they can sell. I am a realist, I get it and understand it and this is why I keep suggesting Egosoft creates an "X4: Remastered" version of the game which focuses on all the things players have been asking for and/or causing them issues and frustrations. The maybe add in a few token new content pieces and sell the remastered version at full price.

Post Reply

Return to “X4: Foundations”