Details you want to see in the next X game

[BigVern]

Oh I get the complex building but even after converting most of Asteroid Belt and the system you get given for solving the space Sudoku (!) into giant fabs it took hours and hours of real time gameplay to produce all those microchips. The problem by that stage too is that having amassed such an empire and all those credits, the other quests long finished there was very little left to do.

At that point I would have welcomed the chance to fly my Boreas out to Beagle Point or equivalent in an exploration mini game, just to while away the time!

Ergo, it just became a grind waiting and watching as those MC's slowly oh so slowly rolled in.

Then, when it was done, all that was really left was the Player HQ which just looked like another grind and, yes, supreme leader of the X World but absolutely nothing much left to do. So the Xenon Hub effectively became End Game for me.

And none of it carried forward into Albion Prelude which, though I haven't played it much, I understand pretty much deconstructs everything you worked towards back to X2 The Threat, nor into the shifted 'verse of Rebirth.

[FlightJunkie]

1-Unique ships, weapons, utilities and equipement.
2-Unique properties for all the above
3-Unique handcrafted missions for the aquisition of all the above
4-Ability to reverse engineer to produce all of the above to personally use or sell them
5-Research which allows you to create various types of already existing equipment with different qualities and properties from the standard originals
6-Context sensitive damage, and damage effects

[Sandalpocalypse]

endgames are difficult. part of the problem is you can have an endgame and then people finish it and still want something after that.

[GCU Grey Area]

1-Unique ships, weapons, utilities and equipement.
2-Unique properties for all the above
3-Unique handcrafted missions for the aquisition of all the above

Not so sure about unique stuff myself. Surely it takes just as much effort to create, say, a unique ship as it does to make a normal one which can be used by both the player and NPCs. Given the choice I'd much rather have a richer universe (in terms of a larger variety of ships in general use), than to have unique ships which are only available to the player. For example, was much happier to use the Hyperion in X3TC, where it was in general use by the Paranid, than it's X3R counterpart which, as I recall, was strictly player-only.

[Tycho Celchu]

1) Drag-and-drop fleet management, assigning a dozen of fighters to different ships/stations by contacting each one individually is tedious.
2) Player HQ, player shipyards, reverse engeneering.
3) Ren, Isha and Skunk (one can hope)
4) Self-destruction of torps, heading towards the ship you are boarding/just boarded (Balors, I both love and hate you). Actually, allies not attacking a ship, which is being boarded.
5) Destructible/capturable stations (with lots of marines on board of your XL ship capturing a station might be doable).
6) More faces and voices for NPCs ("are you done looking at stuff here?").
7) Shares and exchanges, with prices influenced by corporation's wealth.
8) Xenon I with it's gorgeous and terrifying Rebirth looks.
9) Being involved into the war between factions (doing a raid on a station with your friendly faction's fleet).
10) Option to turn off the freaking FPS-killing fog.

[MegaJohnny]

I like a lot of these ideas, but bear in mind these are meant to be "details" that don't take too long to implement.

I have a gripe with the music system in XR, in that it's deathly quiet when you're on a platform or in the Skunk's back room. And as much as I love the soundtrack version of the highway music, the short loops you hear in-game get old eventually. I hope in X4 the nice atmospheric music won't be interrupted as much.

[LordJorge]

Besides trading

Money from the service industry
Rent from your tenants in habitation complex
Income from the entertainment modules
those modules consume luxury goods and foodstuff for profit "products"

[ubuntufreakdragon]

Besides trading

Money from the service industry
Rent from your tenants in habitation complex
Income from the entertainment modules
those modules consume luxury goods and foodstuff for profit "products"

+habitats should consume food water and energy for lifesupport
there was a big lack of ware sinks in XR that needs to be filled.

I want a custommenu like in X3 that works without lua edits but just xml changes.
we don't need much here just a list of:
buttons
sliders
spaces
headings
some mouseover helptext

[Skeeter]

So station management a bit like from the game startopia?

[A5PECT]

So station management a bit like from the game startopia?

Egosoft would do very well to borrow some basic mechanics from the city building genre in general.

[Spero]

Really good trade mechanics and "base" construction, like previous X games.

Then take everything suggested after that, throw it in the bin, and spend even more time on those trade mechanics.

The X series does a handful of things *really* well. No, *uniquely* well. And it's fun. Building games aren't even that niche a genre anymore.

[dcarver]

Back in X3, I used the awesome drone and turret mod MARS. Drones for the win.
I would build a fleet of M2, M3's, M5's, and Cargo, and fly my M2 to clear the enemy zones, collect loot, and even destroy their bases. I would repeat many many times.

I had drones distract and collect loot, I had M5's protecting M3's, I ordered multiple wings to go off and attack, defend, collect, and find enemies. Then I'd use my M2 to attack enemy M2's. Ended up being very tactical space battles, and after the clearing 3-4 zones I returned to my home to repair, equip or sell the loot in my space station.

!@#@ that was fun. Getting loot, like ppc's, was a lot faster then having a full end-to-end weapon factory.. and 100x more fun.

[gbjbaanb]

So station management a bit like from the game startopia?

Not completely, just build a module, it generates X credits and wares (eg poop n trash) that you have to offload somewhere that wants it (farms and recycling stations) if you provide your module with enough resources (eg goods, food, optional luxury products).

its not much different from any other factory - give a missile fab ore, microchips and chemicals, get missiles in return. These give credits instead.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

what about some armour-plating value the remove a certain amount of damage per shot.
e.g. An IRE fired against the hull of a disco would do 10 damage but against the hull of a Titan it would only do one damage per shot.
same goes for shields.
so against big targets you need different types of weapons than against small ones.
of course surface-elements should be less armoured than the hull

[Dupin]

Not all of the following is a small features, but still:

- EVA, possibility to ejecting from your ship, fixing or hacking some elements of the ships and stations, magnetic boots maybe;
- possibility to visit the internal docks of the stations and capital ships;
- hidden places inside the stations, which can be accessed only in a spacesuit or using small vehicles;
- no restrictions as to size and structure of the construction of a station;
- more complex mining with voxel asteroids;
- giant asteroids with a network of tunnels;
- larger asteroid fields and star systems, on which you can fly seamlessly;
- more astronomical objects, such as electromagnetic anomalies, nebulae, black holes and other;
- reconstructed Torus or new similar giant structure;
- FOV-slider;
- cinematic camera mod.

In general, I want to see as much as possible seamlessness in everything.

[gbjbaanb]

what about some armour-plating value the remove a certain amount of damage per shot.
e.g. An IRE fired against the hull of a disco would do 10 damage but against the hull of a Titan it would only do one damage per shot.
same goes for shields.
so against big targets you need different types of weapons than against small ones.
of course surface-elements should be less armoured than the hull

Ah, the old rifle round v tank problem. Yes, I think this makes for a better game - big ships are invulnerable to small ones, unless they have bigger guns. But that makes fighter wings less useful, unless they can shoot off the surface features from a big ship and fire missiles at them. Which might not be such a bad thing as cap ships could then have less HP and could be more easily destroyed (or crippled) by bigger weaponry whilst retaining a long lifespan v fighters.

That would mean you wouldn't bring your destroyer to bear on another one unless you had first taken steps to reduce its ability to fight back - and carrier wings suddenly become very much the weapon of choice in cap ship battles.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

Another one:
splitt dronestorage from droneramp:
in XR each ship could store about 150 drone per ramp
all could be used at once
if the ramp gets destoyed all docked drones are lost
the launched contiue to work

This just fells illogical, I would prefer:
a ship can hold x drones in total
a dronepad allows starting and controlling 25 of these at once
if a dronepad gets destroyed all docked drones stay intact but the launched once will be disabled.
if a ship has more than one pad and one gets destroyed the excess drones will dock instead of disable.
disabled drones should be collectable like containers.

[spankahontis]

How about a Mobile Factory?

- Cheap means of manufacturing for early players.
- Xenon Ships that collect raw resources and build Ships in bulk to launch attacks on NPC Stations to attack.
- Mobile Pirate Stations constantly on the run from authorities.

There could be so much fun to be had with that.

3) Ren, Isha and Skunk (one can hope)

Be cool if they appeared as side-characters, like you had side-characters in X3 Reunion onwards that you, the Player worked alongside.

Also maybe have a Game Start as Ren Otani with the Skunk as his ship on the side.
Maybe even have Yioulus the Teladi make a return.

[adeine]

Picking up from suggestions to improve the bailing/escape pod mechanics to be more integrated into the lore and immersion:

- The environment and NPCs on stations should react to their station being seriously under attack (perhaps when shields fall to 0). Doesn't need to be a great change, but there should be chaos, fewer people, and maybe some red warning lights. Having people casually mill around while the station they are on is being shot to pieces would be hilariously jarring.

- When stations are close to being destroyed, AI ships should vacate the station and there should be a substantial number of escape pods launched (perhaps correlated to the number of habitation modules the station has?). This always felt a little off in prior X games as stations just went up in smoke with no one trying to get away or anything, but wasn't as immersion breaking since you couldn't actually see first hand what was going on.