Universe seems to stall after prolonged play?

[Chris0132]

So someone brought this to my attention recently and I have to agree with the observations within based on similar experience.

Essentially the longer I play the more the economy of the game seems to slow down significantly. It's very hard for me to get a freighter to buy or sell anything other than fractional loads of cargo. Compared to X3 or even Rebirth, sales are very, very slow. Rebirth may have been a struggle to produce anything but when you did you could usually find a buyer whereas I feel like with a single station and a few modules I could flood the universe with any ware. It's strange that every station seems to come with the large ship piers because I don't think I've ever seen one used, and I can't imagine ever using one myself, because at this point the most sensible goods distributer is a kestrel of all things.

What, ultimately, is the end stage consumer of goods in the universe? Is it shipbuilding? Where do the ships go? I've not noticed any new stations being built, nor have I ever had to wait to have my own ships built at a shipyard. For things that are not consumed by any industrial process, such as illegal wares, where are they consumed? They are only bought at trading stations but do the stations use them up at all>?

I feel like having more final consumption of resources might be helpful, and I have to agree with the points about the universe being extremely peaceful and pirates being non existant. I've been playing for about 40 hours in this file and all the pirates are long dead, there is virtually no xenon or khaak activity, and aside from a single update early in the playthrough about xenon building a station in tharka's cascade, I've had absolutely no updates about conflict nor have I seen any actions aside from the occasional K poking its nose out of the gate in ianamus zura and immediately retreating.

I really do think that the map system, stationbuilding and management, and flight model are major improvements to the game but without conflict or a more demanding economy, it's difficult to really find much to use them for. By the time I am able to set up stations, the game feels over, and unlike X3 there are no plots or missions which provide something to use your resources on.

[respaekt]

Yeah i totally agree with the observation and also with the review from reddit and i am only 20 hours in....

The economy is slow and works not right, there is only one (teladi) wharf in the universe, where i can upgrade my fighters or put new satellite on, because the wharfs missing hull parts.... i let the game run for over an hour and the parts didnt get delivered. I decided to delivere the parts myself, took another 30 or more minutes (In X3 with the jumpdrive it took maybe 10 min).

It seems egosoft did not had enough time to really finish the game, they finished all the cosmetics, game looks great, sectors are big, ship and stationbuilding is nice.
But the economic system, also the feeling your are in a living and working universe is not there. With 30 Traders right now, i dont get any real money, they only make 1000 bugs on a 15 minute run. And i allready have the feeling iam the only one in the universe who is trading at all....

There is not really volume to the economic system.

Youre truely right, i am now geeting into the part where i would start building stations. But i dont know for what, theres no enemy that i have to fight, no real consumers for megacomplexes. No M1 Ships i want to build, there are only carriers if i saw that right.....

I think i go back to litcubes mod and X3 for the next 6 months....
Litcubes Mod was the perfect addition to X3 better managment of your empire, real opponents and the rights scripts. So gooooooood.

[Chris0132]

It's possible that it could be improved slightly by making factories bigger. Like, more processing modules, more storage. I don't know if this is supposed to happen over time but if you had some much bigger factories out there then the big trade ships would make more sense, and it would take longer for a player factory to become competitive with the market as a whole.

Also if say, more things used up resources. Like food, I think, is used by station crews just as they exist, but you could make other things fill this role. Crew training facilities perhaps which sold high quality crew but which needed constant upkeep to run. Make habitats use space fuel, weed, or maja dust as well as optional resources. Secondary resources in general could really improve the economy I think because they would add a lot more consumption to the game.

[venus65535]

Perhaps the lack of trade income is exactly the result of 'too balanced 'economic simulation. No one will buy anything if they already have what they need. I agree that there's too few big actions to drain the economy to its limit. Players simply have no place here since every faction comes with their own independent economy, relying nothing from player intervention.

I restart the game when it crushed too many times to avoid save corruption. Though I started to play from day one I now have only 10 hours or more in my latest play though. Even in that short time frame I can experience my mercury trading something like 11 microchips and earn 1000 Cr per run:/ Perhaps pilot skills do count, but price difference and consumption of wares across sectors are rather small for some real profitsss. And many times when I finally felt ready for serious actions in my med-size ship, there was simply nothing to be found. No war front and no large scale pirate raids. I can't even find a Xenon P to complete my mission. I'd rather they generate some raids for mission to make things more intense and direct.

Most of the time I do supply missions to profit from trading, but I constantly got blocked from finishing them because the target sector don't need that amount of ware I was asked to deliver. This is the push for me to hack the heck out of their storage and tell them to buy my stuff.

About the link provided, although I think he's too emotional in some cases, I do consider he has his point. Escorting is a mess as ships can't travel in the same pace, and auto exploring is non existent, which caused me a bit of trouble since I constantly restart my game. Still, I'd prefer to wait Egosoft to finish what they've planned for X4 along with some improvement to the current systems, and withhold my judge until then.

[respaekt]

Perhaps the lack of trade income is exactly the result of 'too balanced 'economic simulation. No one will buy anything if they already have what they need. I agree that there's too few big actions to drain the economy to its limit. Players simply have no place here since every faction comes with their own independent economy, relying nothing from player intervention.

Most of the time I do supply missions to profit from trading, but I constantly got blocked from finishing them because the target sector don't need that amount of ware I was asked to deliver. This is the push for me to hack the heck out of their storage and tell them to buy my stuff.

The Economy needs some serious rework, i hope we dont get workarounds, but a complete fix. The economy right now is feels like a millions-credits economy, not like a multi-billion-credits economy like in x3. They should put the secondary resources back in, so there is much more consumption.

[Baconnaise]

So someone brought this to my attention recently and I have to agree with the observations within based on similar experience.

Essentially the longer I play the more the economy of the game seems to slow down significantly. It's very hard for me to get a freighter to buy or sell anything other than fractional loads of cargo. Compared to X3 or even Rebirth, sales are very, very slow. Rebirth may have been a struggle to produce anything but when you did you could usually find a buyer whereas I feel like with a single station and a few modules I could flood the universe with any ware. It's strange that every station seems to come with the large ship piers because I don't think I've ever seen one used, and I can't imagine ever using one myself, because at this point the most sensible goods distributer is a kestrel of all things

Rebirth had issues with the stalled economy when it released. Drones I think were the first things to become scarce. You couldn't buy ships etc. I was worried about this happening again. Took a long time to get the economy somewhat working in XR so I hope it's not in the same boat.

[respaekt]

viewtopic.php?f=146&t=396083

Thats the problem, see link the 5th post:

"Most detailed X economy ever:

One of the key selling points of X games has always been the realistic, simulated economy. Wares produced by hundreds of stations and transported by thousands of ships are actually traded by NPCs and prices develop based on this simulated economy. This is the foundation of our living and breathing universe. Now with X4, we have taken another, massive step. For the first time in any X game, all parts of the NPC economy are manufactured from resources. Ships, weapons, upgrades, ammo and even stations. You name it. Everything comes out of the simulated economy."

We have hundreds of stations, but less ships than that, i didnt found a single sector with 10 or more ships in it.... i am afraid we will have to wait two dlcs for that to be fixed

[Chris0132]

I'd actually like to update this and say that for some reason my refined metals station is now making very large amounts of money, though energy cells still seem to be unsellable and I can't get my own traders to sell very much. Other traders however regularly buy full loads from my station.

I still don't understand what governs these things but there does seem to be more space for sales than I had previously thought.

[respaekt]

Interesting, i will build a hull parts facric if thats possible, i can only buy hips at teladi stations because they have the necessary parts to build immediatly. See how that goes. I will report back

[respaekt]

I'd actually like to update this and say that for some reason my refined metals station is now making very large amounts of money, though energy cells still seem to be unsellable and I can't get my own traders to sell very much. Other traders however regularly buy full loads from my station.

I still don't understand what governs these things but there does seem to be more space for sales than I had previously thought.

My obersvations two days into the game are the following:

Have over 200 Autotraders, 50 miners.

With more autotraders, i also had more npc traders, but now after 2 ingame days every NPC station with wares who are used to build stuff (ships, weapons, shields) is full because nobody seems to uses them.

I can get like 10 new ships every 10-20 mins, but the npc factions dont do anything with all the resources, or only very slowly. Also no war so, no reason to build war ships... If i continue like this, i will have more than 1000 ships after 4 gamedays and i suspept that the gameengine cannot handle that many ship perfomance wise, lets see if we can brak the game

[venus65535]

The Economy needs some serious rework, i hope we dont get workarounds, but a complete fix. The economy right now is feels like a millions-credits economy, not like a multi-billion-credits economy like in x3. They should put the secondary resources back in, so there is much more consumption.

Yeah, if consumption can come from more source it could be nice. Right now the economy exists for the sole purpose of war/ship building/station building so it heavily depend on actions. Secondary resource in X3 is consumed regardless of the factory running or not IRRC, so even a strangled factory still has constant needs for ware. I think this kind of need is good for the health of economy, since it will not be bound by outer influence. Just like internal need for ware in Anno series: your population needs a lot of ware constantly, so there is always a reason to keep a lot of production running. Maybe we can have something similar in X4? More needs for people other than food and medicine so economy can still move on its own .

[Sphinx]

Hello all,

Sorry if I cannot say a lot about X3 or any mod, this is the my first X Game, but here are my thoughts.

Bought the game, installed it, learned thriugh Youtube and Reedit how to play it, started flying around to make money. Now I have 2 M-ship auto miners and already a few m class traders.

The big issue I have is that in any mayor station, such as ship yard, warft, and even a Trade Hub/station, everything is empty, no NPCs, no ships, it seems like walking through Mall of America while closed.


No pirates, no wars, no alien invasion, no faction wars, I think Egosoft must have overlooked an important bug or flaw in their base code... My thoughts:

1)Every game, being it specify an MMO or sandbox games need a money sink. No money sink, no game.

2) in MMOs the economy is normaly generated by raids etc, in a sandbox game such as this one, we need an algorithm that is scripted to code in a money sink. (Example wars, pirates,)

3)eventhough your stations look awesome, being empty looks un-natural, you would expect at least the docking teams to be there, maintaining your ship, hell cleaning teams, police, pirate spys man I could come up with100000 reasons for the Sake of realism.

4)Is this issue a simple fix? Yes it is, make it so that Pirates raid shipping lanes, and vanish, make some Alien or very hostile faction atrack, and destroy shipping.

A station need basic personnel to operate, they eat, and use goods, personnel have babies too, you get the point... There needs to be a money and resource sink, if not this game is doomed.





@egosoft #resourcesink

[csaba]

Hello all,

Sorry if I cannot say a lot about X3 or any mod, this is the my first X Game, but here are my thoughts.

Bought the game, installed it, learned thriugh Youtube and Reedit how to play it, started flying around to make money. Now I have 2 M-ship auto miners and already a few m class traders.

The big issue I have is that in any mayor station, such as ship yard, warft, and even a Trade Hub/station, everything is empty, no NPCs, no ships, it seems like walking through Mall of America while closed.


No pirates, no wars, no alien invasion, no faction wars, I think Egosoft must have overlooked an important bug or flaw in their base code... My thoughts:

1)Every game, being it specify an MMO or sandbox games need a money sink. No money sink, no game.

2) in MMOs the economy is normaly generated by raids etc, in a sandbox game such as this one, we need an algorithm that is scripted to code in a money sink. (Example wars, pirates,)

3)eventhough your stations look awesome, being empty looks un-natural, you would expect at least the docking teams to be there, maintaining your ship, hell cleaning teams, police, pirate spys man I could come up with100000 reasons for the Sake of realism.

4)Is this issue a simple fix? Yes it is, make it so that Pirates raid shipping lanes, and vanish, make some Alien or very hostile faction atrack, and destroy shipping.

A station need basic personnel to operate, they eat, and use goods, personnel have babies too, you get the point... There needs to be a money and resource sink, if not this game is doomed.





@egosoft #resourcesink

In the previous game ships, that were built, jumped into oblivion (known as move.die script) and destroyed ones got spawned in instead. This what made the economy turn in there. Now this made a lot of people angry as that game was marketed in such a way that people thought ships got built by demand and used.

Now we got ships built for demand but we have new issues.

The issue now is that ships don't get rebuilt so there are no buy offers for products. This is mainly due to the pirate/enemy factions having low/non-existent impact.

I'd imagine they can bring back the move.die script until they fix faction wars properly then the economy should start again. Without jump drives the script needs to be adjusted but it's not impossible. However they need to communicate this to the audience and promise this is only temporary until the proper fix comes.

Resource sinks already exist in the form of stations eating food and medical supplies periodically. That market is still going in my stalled economy game.

On the NPCs issue I found that stations with larger workforces seem to have a lot more NPCs loitering around. This would explain the lack of crew on most "Trading Stations" as those don't really have production lines. Sometimes I see this on a Wharf/Shipyard I don't know why it seems more like a bug than a design issue.

[Ornias]

Hello all,

Sorry if I cannot say a lot about X3 or any mod, this is the my first X Game, but here are my thoughts.

Bought the game, installed it, learned thriugh Youtube and Reedit how to play it, started flying around to make money. Now I have 2 M-ship auto miners and already a few m class traders.

The big issue I have is that in any mayor station, such as ship yard, warft, and even a Trade Hub/station, everything is empty, no NPCs, no ships, it seems like walking through Mall of America while closed.


No pirates, no wars, no alien invasion, no faction wars, I think Egosoft must have overlooked an important bug or flaw in their base code... My thoughts:

1)Every game, being it specify an MMO or sandbox games need a money sink. No money sink, no game.

2) in MMOs the economy is normaly generated by raids etc, in a sandbox game such as this one, we need an algorithm that is scripted to code in a money sink. (Example wars, pirates,)

3)eventhough your stations look awesome, being empty looks un-natural, you would expect at least the docking teams to be there, maintaining your ship, hell cleaning teams, police, pirate spys man I could come up with100000 reasons for the Sake of realism.

4)Is this issue a simple fix? Yes it is, make it so that Pirates raid shipping lanes, and vanish, make some Alien or very hostile faction atrack, and destroy shipping.

A station need basic personnel to operate, they eat, and use goods, personnel have babies too, you get the point... There needs to be a money and resource sink, if not this game is doomed.





@egosoft #resourcesink

In the previous game ships, that were built, jumped into oblivion (known as move.die script) and destroyed ones got spawned in instead. This what made the economy turn in there. Now this made a lot of people angry as that game was marketed in such a way that people thought ships got built by demand and used.

Now we got ships built for demand but we have new issues.

The issue now is that ships don't get rebuilt so there are no buy offers for products. This is mainly due to the pirate/enemy factions having low/non-existent impact.

I'd imagine they can bring back the move.die script until they fix faction wars properly then the economy should start again. Without jump drives the script needs to be adjusted but it's not impossible. However they need to communicate this to the audience and promise this is only temporary until the proper fix comes.

Resource sinks already exist in the form of stations eating food and medical supplies periodically. That market is still going in my stalled economy game.

On the NPCs issue I found that stations with larger workforces seem to have a lot more NPCs loitering around. This would explain the lack of crew on most "Trading Stations" as those don't really have production lines. Sometimes I see this on a Wharf/Shipyard I don't know why it seems more like a bug than a design issue.

The ships not building is not a symptom it's the cause of it all, not the pirates or enemies:
The issues is that once a certain bottom threshold is reached in terms of faction ship numbers, the factions go turtle to preserve their owned sectors.
At this time they should restore their numbers by building ships again, but they simply don't. This means they never reach enough ships to continue the war.

Xenon is also a faction that needs to build ships and gather resources, so even Xenon is affected... that's why Xenon sectors are quite empty and not restoring.

Simply put: if the shipyards start building, the war issue fixes itself... Enemy factions have nothing to do with the issues. In fact the primary "enemy" faction (Xenon) is just a normal faction (including how it restores its numbers) with negative relations and the war is between the normal factions too... Actually most of the economy-sink in the war is the infighting between the normal factions.

TL:DR Fix the shipyards, fix the issues.

And no, no stupid disappearing resource patches please.... Ships not building stalls both the war AND the economy, Your disappearing resource solution (which it basically is) would only solve the economy. That being said, the issue is that the shipyards are not constructing ships in the first place, if they would create ships the issue wouldn't be there in the first place...

Acutally, the war IS the resource sink (besides food and consumables)... War kills ships, ships get build, building requires resources... and so on.
Well stations seem extra empty due to a lack of supply ships coming in due to economy stalling which is caused by, yet again, no ships being replenished...

So well... The ships not building is the cause of a LOT of economy (and war) issue atm.
Basically the combined war trigger and the economy sink is frozen :')

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Short version, something broke on the ship assembly line. Egosoft is working on it.