Limits on player expansion

[Falcrack]

I know it might be unpopular to suggest there needs to be limits to the number of player assets. But I think there are good gameplay reasons for having limits, be they hard limits in the form of unit caps, or my preference of soft caps in terms of maintenance or wages (ie each ship and crew costs money to maintain, so too many purely military ships will be losing a lot of money over time). To me, the game becomes boring late game because I know I can simply outbuild the AI factions (which do have hardcoded limits), and just get an easy victory simply by steamrolling them with excessive numbers.

Additionally, one of the key complaints by players is late game performance. You get these kinds of complaints from players who have spent thousands of hours on a game and have added thousands of their own ships and stations to the game, crippling performance. If just for game performance reasons, I feel there ought to be some limits set on player expansion.

[Nanook]

I know it might be unpopular to suggest there needs to be limits to the number of player assets. But I think there are good gameplay reasons for having limits, be they hard limits in the form of unit caps, or my preference of soft caps in terms of maintenance or wages (ie each ship and crew costs money to maintain, so too many purely military ships will be losing a lot of money over time). To me, the game becomes boring late game because I know I can simply outbuild the AI factions (which do have hardcoded limits), and just get an easy victory simply by steamrolling them with excessive numbers.

The best limiting feature I've found is Self Control. Works like a charm.

Additionally, one of the key complaints by players is late game performance. You get these kinds of complaints from players who have spent thousands of hours on a game and have added thousands of their own ships and stations to the game, crippling performance. If just for game performance reasons, I feel there ought to be some limits set on player expansion.

Which would mean there would be no "late game" by definition. If you want your game limited in such a way, use my method above, but why force all players to attempt to do so?

[chew-ie]

How about making it optional?

Welcome fellow Spacerat!

You reached the endgame - do you want limits to be imposed on you?

[jlehtone]

How about making it optional?

The Self Control™ is optional.

[Nico07091980]

I know it might be unpopular to suggest there needs to be limits to the number of player assets. But I think there are good gameplay reasons for having limits, be they hard limits in the form of unit caps, or my preference of soft caps in terms of maintenance or wages (ie each ship and crew costs money to maintain, so too many purely military ships will be losing a lot of money over time). To me, the game becomes boring late game because I know I can simply outbuild the AI factions (which do have hardcoded limits), and just get an easy victory simply by steamrolling them with excessive numbers.

Additionally, one of the key complaints by players is late game performance. You get these kinds of complaints from players who have spent thousands of hours on a game and have added thousands of their own ships and stations to the game, crippling performance. If just for game performance reasons, I feel there ought to be some limits set on player expansion.

I see your point. I was there. My options were to start a new game (as usual), install a mod to change everything or to dismantle all my assets and start new with all the blueprints and a lot of money. I chose to dismantle most of my stations and ships and have so much fun since then. I have been building citadels for each faction where all materials and ships can be build on one station. I decide who has the most supplies and who will get sovereignty over wich sector. I maintain the xenon in one corner of the universe. All of that I do with just about 10 of my citadels + my HQ. It's a blast, so much fun. Performance gets a noticable hit when I'm near a citadel but it is far far away from unplayable.

Lots of looters for ship mods and boarding crews round it up. To be able to fly any ship and try it out all the ingame ship mods is terrific. I'm loving it!

Did you try a Dragon with damage mods on torpedo launchers? UNREAL!

I hope you'll enjoy the game again soon.

[adeine]

I know it might be unpopular to suggest there needs to be limits to the number of player assets. But I think there are good gameplay reasons for having limits, be they hard limits in the form of unit caps, or my preference of soft caps in terms of maintenance or wages (ie each ship and crew costs money to maintain, so too many purely military ships will be losing a lot of money over time). To me, the game becomes boring late game because I know I can simply outbuild the AI factions (which do have hardcoded limits), and just get an easy victory simply by steamrolling them with excessive numbers.

Additionally, one of the key complaints by players is late game performance. You get these kinds of complaints from players who have spent thousands of hours on a game and have added thousands of their own ships and stations to the game, crippling performance. If just for game performance reasons, I feel there ought to be some limits set on player expansion.

Hard disagree.

I think it would be neat to have a challenge in the game (hopefully something 7.0 can provide?). Maybe something like having a game start where practically the entire universe is overrun by Xenon, with raised production caps, could be another idea. Imposing arbitrary limits on the player is not it.

In an open ended game, like X games ought to be, you're always going to run up against hardware limits at some point. What is and isn't a crippling performance impact depends on the system you're playing on and your personal tolerance (I don't play X games expecting to have a rock solid 60 FPS, certainly; some people do). Where would you draw the line?

[Nerwesta]

I find kind of funny and both wild you're starting this debate now, while we are being told Egosoft is planning a whole late-game situation for those who seemingly are feeling too much powerful.

[LameFox]

In a way, performance *is* a soft cap.

But I don't really feel it is necessary, in a sandbox game. I play in a self limited way already to get a more immersive and challenging game, which ideally does not have terrible performance. Not that I am counting ships, and I don't want to, but looking at my current game for instance: I counted the production modules Terrans have (except food based ones), and made my Terran factories to contain a little less than half of that. Then I'll try to do something similar with commonwealth (more annoying to count though). If this game goes long enough that I get all the blueprints and eventually start fighting the other factions (lacking a good way to steal them, this is generally my goal) I won't just mass a huge blob of destroyers, but rather build smaller mixed fleets and try to attrition them down by my fleets being more effective in combat.

All of that I can do right now, by myself. Being herded into it by added limits would just make it slightly more irritating. And things like a money sink "soft" limit are the last thing I want. This game is already too heavily built around being buddies with everyone. Even if I am self-sufficient in products, money only comes from other factions or selling things at a trade desk... that would make the way I'm trying to play massively worse.

[Falcrack]

I know all the arguments about using "self control", but honestly I prefer it in the game if there is some sort of programmed limit to prevent me from going over a certain level. Because in X4, there is no easy way for me to know when I have reached any given threshold in terms of units or stations. It is simply more fun for me when there are set limits that I know I need to work within rather than rely on arbitrary limits which I can change at any time on a whim.

But I am not really in favor of arbitrary unit caps. If ships and stations required maintenance costs, then any ship or station that is not directly involved in making me money would act as a unit cap of sorts. If I am losing more money than I am earning because my military has grown too large, that would be a good indicator to me that I have hit a limit of sorts. At least until I invest in more money generating assets to be able to support a larger military fleet.

[LameFox]

But again the reliance on credits as upkeep would massively undermine the player's freedom to *not* be selling things. Being self sufficient would no longer be an option then, unless you paired it with some other kind of economic overhaul like the ability to build civilian hab stations and sell to them. And even then, it's sort of pushing people into playing the economic game whether they want to or not.

[Falcrack]

But again the reliance on credits as upkeep would massively undermine the player's freedom to *not* be selling things. Being self sufficient would no longer be an option then, unless you paired it with some other kind of economic overhaul like the ability to build civilian hab stations and sell to them. And even then, it's sort of pushing people into playing the economic game whether they want to or not.

Maybe the need for maintenance could only apply to ships not directly piloted by the player. Any ship you are piloting would not get damage over time, but NPC piloted ships would slowly accumulate damage which would need to be repaired. I suppose the Getting Paid mod, paired with the Wear and Tear mod, kind of does what I am thinking of. The only shortfall of that is that there is no station maintenance mod that I know of. Defense stations for example I consider to be far too powerful, because they can be built once to obscenely high power levels but never require one credit to maintain once built.

[Imperial Good]

Rather than limits I would prefer additional complexity. Small player economies can remain rather simple but once you become big enough you have additional mechanics to start to deal with. Ideas for such mechanics could include wages, maintenance, larger scale combat threats, more complicated logistics, additional building constraints, growing population, tougher competitors, e.t.c. This way new players do not get overwhelmed but more veteran players find things more challenging as they become very big.

I think the "crisis" system expected with 7.00 might help this a little, but some people might prefer non-combat challenges.

[GCU Grey Area]

Agree to an extent about more upkeep requirements, wages, maintenance, etc. Although that's more for the sake of having greater complexity in the economic model, rather than for the purpose of being a soft cap.

However, intensely dislike the idea of hard limits on what I can own & build. I'm fully capable of using the Self Control™ method to ensure I get a difficulty level I enjoy for military matters. Meanwhile for stations I think it's simply fantastic that the only real limit is what my PC can cope with. Thoroughly enjoy the architectural possibilities that only truly vast stations can provide, so would certainly not want this aspect of the game to be subject to unnecessary limitations beyond those imposed by the hardware in my PC.

[taztaz502]

If the economy was better i would love upkeep for ships and stations.


Maybe we'll have it for X5.

X3 kind of had it with jump drives consuming energy cells.

[jlehtone]

"kind of"
The habitats are kind of upkeep too.


In games like Civilization there are "issues" that grow non-linearly with the size of the civilization (e.g. pollution, corruption, unhappiness) and some means to counter them. More efficient counters require technology advancement. Therefore they have an optimal growth rate. If you grow faster, then the issues overwhelm you. If you grow slower, then the competitors overwhelm you.

X4 does not have such issues. Price of food or jump fuel is linear to size of your company, the "counter" is credits that are near endless, and there are no competitors. Granted, Xenon might have a break early on, but the player can punch the lights out of them quite soon.


Granted, the "unhappiness due to size of empire" seems to exist -- Falcrack has those symptoms ...

[chew-ie]

issue growth & counter vs X series

Interesting thoughts...

Granted, the "unhappiness due to size of empire" seems to exist

[Hector0x]

I know it might be unpopular to suggest there needs to be limits to the number of player assets.

It might but you are definitely not alone.

In vanilla you can just build an op empire in 2-3 days and declare victory. I never did that and never will because it feels pointless. I know its just a game but still. There has always been at least a self imposed challenge or limitation in all my playthroughs but ofc actual game mechanics from mods are better.
Small scale operations are not my style in any X game because other titles handle this way better. So for me X is a first person empire builder type of game.

I don't think wages or upkeep are a good soft limit for X4. It just prolongs the grind and players will find workarounds and money exploits. Hard limits are lame too.
Political soft limits would be better. Why should the AI sit idle and allow you to become more powerful than them? They should keep the player in check very early. I don't think the 7.0 Crisis mechanics will help here. The player will already be op once he opts into that.

But then you could also argue that X is a very slow paced game. If the player sinks 100h does he really want a challenge? Would he even accept to loose at this point?