BOREDOM OF MINING FOR CRYSTALS

[PaperDog]

You find crystal hunting boring and want a hint, cheat or short cut, and that's fine. Others don't want a cheat nor to be tempted by any quick fix. It was a toss up whether it moved to S&M or Spoilers and the latter won.

BTW, it's not 'my' game and I'm not 'you guys' who can influence the game design; I'm just a player like you who happens to have volunteered to moderate the forum too.

Yes. Crystal Hunting bores the crap out of me... (And subsequently, so does corn hunting) lol! In this case, the spoiler alert to crystal hunting IS 'crystal hunting', literally. Cheats are cheats... But This was more a question of asking if there was anything in the game design that provides an alternate approach to zombie flight through space... .

[dtpsprt]

Really? You call this a "spoiler"?
To me, A spoiler would imply the exposure of a critical (hence, meaningful) subplot to a significant and meaningful main plot. If you are even calling this crystal hunt a meaningful sub plot, then surely you guys could have added more intrigue and sensible options to it? As it currently stands, ( unless people actually enjoy navigating aimlessly through the open map), this mind numbing exercise only serves to 'kill' the spirit of the intended bigger objective. Sorry, I'm just being honest. ( In my opinion), it would have been better to offer an explicit, tactical procedure and challenge, like... You can get 'x crystals' by taking out enemies 'near' a 'pirate base', located in x sector; You can purchase Y crystals for the mere sum of 1,000,000,000 from the HOP faction, etc... Or even through a sub-series of activities to unlock various paths... ANYTHING but wandering the map , hoping to get lucky. My point being, I think this hardly qualifies as a 'spoiler' But thats just my own opinion

Ahhh... there were actually two quests like you described in X3 TC in 2 different subplots. Personally I don't expect anything even resembling X3 (or X2 for that reason) to "reach" X4, except for race and ship names of course...

[Dachmich]

If you take control of one of the larger mining ships the lazers auto target/destroy all asteroids you get close to. The rate at which you find them is relatively quick but I recommend DO NOT use cargo drones as they will simply play bumper cars trying to dock.

I used my own miner as you have described... Perhaps I'm in the wrong asteroid field. Any sectors I should look at?

Hey PaperDog

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4.0 save, Grand Exchange 1, Chthonios Mineral (L hull) 10 crystals dropped instantly as soon as I teleported to the ship and took control. Spaceflies and Lodestones drop in similar manners.

Sry for late reply

[dtpsprt]

Usually you should try Trinity Sanctum III (where the Data Vault is, not the "north" icefield) or/and Argon Prime in the resource field that snakes around the Wharf.
That said, the crystals on demand for the mission are "easier" found on Faulty Logic and Atiya's Misfortune(!!!). So you have either "pacified" these sectors already, or you use a good Fleet to watch your back, or just plain edit the savegame....

[Gimbutz]

Ahhh... there were actually two quests like you described in X3 TC in 2 different subplots. Personally I don't expect anything even resembling X3 (or X2 for that reason) to "reach" X4, except for race and ship names of course...

Give us further specific examples of old mission mechanics you liked (ideally in a separate thread) and we'll add them to our ever-growing brainstorming session. You'll find that acting in good faith will yield better results than repeating "X4 will never have good missions" over and over again. You might even inspire others to share and discuss their thoughts instead of quenching feedback with the notion that nothing's going to change anyway.

[dtpsprt]

Give us further specific examples of old mission mechanics you liked (ideally in a separate thread) and we'll add them to our ever-growing brainstorming session. You'll find that acting in good faith will yield better results than repeating "X4 will never have good missions" over and over again. You might even inspire others to share and discuss their thoughts instead of quenching feedback with the notion that nothing's going to change anyway.

Will do...

[PaperDog]

Ahhh... there were actually two quests like you described in X3 TC in 2 different subplots. Personally I don't expect anything even resembling X3 (or X2 for that reason) to "reach" X4, except for race and ship names of course...

Give us further specific examples of old mission mechanics you liked (ideally in a separate thread) and we'll add them to our ever-growing brainstorming session. You'll find that acting in good faith will yield better results than repeating "X4 will never have good missions" over and over again. You might even inspire others to share and discuss their thoughts instead of quenching feedback with the notion that nothing's going to change anyway.

Ha ha! Dude I call BS ..Instead of gaslighting your fans here with reasons of why their criticism annoys you, maybe try running with clarification the old fashion way ...like... "HOW can I make this game better?". Many of us already paid the money... That's how WE support... Get it? There ARE many problems with this game. You should be thankful....If you are a dev or producer, then man-up and own it. The fact that you guys create a module with specific bells and whistles, simply because you can, doesn't mean its necessarily an improvement to the game. So, Before you get all tricky and cryptic with your plots, etc... , how about meeting some basic fundamentals first? Like, Fix the damn idiot pilots... A seasoned pilot should NEVER be destroyed on account of a stupid AI decision... And what's up with that unattended, unintended BS station attack business...? It does NOTHING for the game in terms of strategy or evolution for any of the plots or sub-plots. As far as I can tell These problems continue to exists so, yeah... 'nothing's going to change anyway' until you guys decide to fix those things .. . On the brighter side The game has tremendous potential... Its not there yet...
Rant Over.

[Gimbutz]

Rant Over.

Glad you got it out of your system. I appreciate the sentiment that the game needs a solid foundation first and foremost, but the issues you mentioned are beyond mine and the rest of the mission team's jurisdiction. The AI in particular is constantly improved upon.

What AI and missions have in common is that general statements don't help with improving them. For missions, however, there's a major advantage: You don't have to treat them like a black box and upload a save so that a developer can debug it. Your experience itself can already be specific enough to constitute workable feedback. Give us examples for what works for you and what doesn't, which mechanics you like, and, more to the point of the discussion, which mechanics worked well in the past.

dtpsprt has created a new thread to collect things that missions did right in previous games. Drop by if you want to share some memories.

[PaperDog]

Rant Over.

Glad you got it out of your system. I appreciate the sentiment that the game needs a solid foundation first and foremost, but the issues you mentioned are beyond mine and the rest of the mission team's jurisdiction. The AI in particular is constantly improved upon.

What AI and missions have in common is that general statements don't help with improving them. For missions, however, there's a major advantage: You don't have to treat them like a black box and upload a save so that a developer can debug it. Your experience itself can already be specific enough to constitute workable feedback. Give us examples for what works for you and what doesn't, which mechanics you like, and, more to the point of the discussion, which mechanics worked well in the past.

dtpsprt has created a new thread to collect things that missions did right in previous games. Drop by if you want to share some memories.

Well I must say, I appreciate your civil response to my rant. So, here is my understanding of AI: It necessarily requires a driving motif to be the seed of convention. Translation: You have to pre-define the orientation, bias and ultimate end game to get the AI to learn something meaningful. So, in real life, an 'excellent' pilot must comply with exacting standards of performance, which MUST come from a consensus of acceptable practices and predictable outcomes. Current AI operates on an infinite number of gradients to get from A to Z... If left to its own devices, it MAY or MAY NOT ever reach 'our' expected behaviors. As I have stated in other threads; AI is vastly overrated or misunderstood. AI is only as good as the objectives(s) of conventions , dictated by the developers. People in the throes of learning are the same way in real life. The purpose of specific education is actually to filter out the gradients (aka distractions) and keep focus to a narrow path of objectives. Currently, This game's AI is subject to various distractions, which your developers should examine and mitigate. It is very reasonable to expect that an AI for a specific universe of conventions, should match or at least parallel the real life expectations of that universe. IMHO

[jlehtone]

Well I must say, I appreciate your civil response to my rant. So, here is my understanding of AI: It necessarily requires a driving motif to be the seed of convention. Translation: You have to pre-define the orientation, bias and ultimate end game to get the AI to learn something meaningful.

As I have stated in other threads; AI is vastly overrated or misunderstood.

+1 for the last part.

There is "AI" as in predetermined logic that dictates actions in various conditions.
Simple example: binary search from ordered set. You pick value from middle.
IF it is too big, THEN repeat search in the first half of the set
ELSE IF it is too small, THEN repeat search in the second half of the set

A human wrote that logic and those conditions.

Then there is "AI" and in "machine learning". A program (of the previous type "AI") is given set of inputs and "correct" answer for each input.
Once the "search" is complete, the result is essentially program code: logic and conditions, but in less readable format.
Now you can give new input to this computer generated "program" and it will give some answer. If the new input is "close enough" to the samples that the program was created with and there are no anomalies in the dataset, then the answer is close to what one expects.

You can write "simple AI" for combat: IF ship is hit, THEN break left
You can shovel plenty of recorded combat into machine learner and it might come up with solution that will break left when ship is hit.

In neither case the "AI" in the game will learn nothing while you play. The code does not change. If there were a background process that continuously re-evaluates with new data (but what is the "correct" answer?) that you generate, and the tuned logic would be saved in the savegame, then you would have "learning". The Xenon in your game would gradually start to behave differently from how they behave in my game. (I wonder how many hours it takes to reach RSLG logic?)

Note though that the "learning" is heavy. Google probably ran a month in huge supercomputer to get code that can tell in millisecond whether photo has a puppy. Luckily, X4 does not need CPU for other things ...

[PaperDog]

Well I must say, I appreciate your civil response to my rant. So, here is my understanding of AI: It necessarily requires a driving motif to be the seed of convention. Translation: You have to pre-define the orientation, bias and ultimate end game to get the AI to learn something meaningful.

As I have stated in other threads; AI is vastly overrated or misunderstood.

+1 for the last part.

There is "AI" as in predetermined logic that dictates actions in various conditions.
Simple example: binary search from ordered set. You pick value from middle.
IF it is too big, THEN repeat search in the first half of the set
ELSE IF it is too small, THEN repeat search in the second half of the set

A human wrote that logic and those conditions.

Then there is "AI" and in "machine learning". A program (of the previous type "AI") is given set of inputs and "correct" answer for each input.
Once the "search" is complete, the result is essentially program code: logic and conditions, but in less readable format.
Now you can give new input to this computer generated "program" and it will give some answer. If the new input is "close enough" to the samples that the program was created with and there are no anomalies in the dataset, then the answer is close to what one expects.

You can write "simple AI" for combat: IF ship is hit, THEN break left
You can shovel plenty of recorded combat into machine learner and it might come up with solution that will break left when ship is hit.

In neither case the "AI" in the game will learn nothing while you play. The code does not change. If there were a background process that continuously re-evaluates with new data (but what is the "correct" answer?) that you generate, and the tuned logic would be saved in the savegame, then you would have "learning". The Xenon in your game would gradually start to behave differently from how they behave in my game. (I wonder how many hours it takes to reach RSLG logic?)

Note though that the "learning" is heavy. Google probably ran a month in huge supercomputer to get code that can tell in millisecond whether photo has a puppy. Luckily, X4 does not need CPU for other things ...

indeed, so my point was that the AI on pilots (combat) should have its basis in real life combat scenarios. As a former U.S Naval Surface ship warrior (anti-submarine warfare) , we practiced specific combat and evasive maneuvers to minimize any grave threat and damage in combat. Patterns included "Crazy Ivan" (for example) to dodge wake-homing torpedoes. However, in order to be appropriate and effective, there had to be a host of conditions prevalent for that context. Without the luxury of AI decision trees or matrixes, "close enough" was not typically adequate enough. (The Irony is that Naval technology uses AI to train under) . To illustrate the necessity of qualified battle decisions in the game, I have had situations in the game, where if I issued a command to a squadron or fleet to attack a specific target, and if that target should jump-gate into an enemy sector, then should my squad still follow and chase that target? In my case, that actually happened; where a Xenon M drew my squad of corvettes into a Xenon sector. Waiting on the other side, of course, was a full enemy fleet , which annihilated my squad. (On the flip side of that; The Xenon AI apparently registered my squads presence in that sector as a significant incursion, and thus responded by sending an I class and 2 K classes. My gate defense system dispatched them in short work. In real life, a squadron would never arbitrarily stray into enemy space. ( I think there is a setting in the game , which prevents that?) But in terms of AI, its just not a viable or completely qualified decision.

[alt3rn1ty]

In answer to the OP

Go searching for Sedatives first (and keep hold of them for a mission requirement if you haven't done that bit yet), that will make searching for Crystals seem like a breeze afterwards

Heretics End is a good place to find Crystals, or at least in my current game its been the place with the most often occurring.

[Matthew94]

I'm doing this paranid mission now and the crystal drop rates are truly awful. Has anyone finished these missions post-4.0?

[dtpsprt]

I'm doing this paranid mission now and the crystal drop rates are truly awful. Has anyone finished these missions post-4.0?

Yep!!! Edited the save file!!! Life is too short to worry if and when Ventures will come back and what they will entail... Besides... both Split and Paranid plots are just time crunchers (trying to make the game take longer for no apparent reason).

[Matthew94]

I seriously recommend editing your save file...

Which tag should I search on?

It's in your <inventory> they are "ware ware="inv_crystal_01"> 01 through 05 all kinds of crystal. If you have just one of these just search for it. If not search for $PlayerTaxi, inventory is close to this point

This is what I did in the end. Thanks for posting this. The quest seems near-impossible without save-game editing. The worst part is that

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after the quest ends, you're told the pontifices disappeared and thus all that work was for nothing.

What a slap in the face to the player. Well, that's me done until at least 5.0 or the release of new DLC.