In x4 will ai build fleets as time goes on?

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Skeeter
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In x4 will ai build fleets as time goes on?

Post by Skeeter » Fri, 4. May 18, 21:02

Just curious if faction/races in x4 will put effort into building up and sending out fleets Vs their enemies since there suppose to expand more in x4 the Devs said iirc. As in working to do it not just be cheating by spawning new battleships and fighter wings to protect it etc but buying them or manufacturing them themselves like the player would have to. If so how big and how frequently.

If Devs can comment that would be nice since players won't really know. Unless they've seen more info from the Devs streams more than me.
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Alan Phipps
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Post by Alan Phipps » Fri, 4. May 18, 21:44

They did say something about the principle of that topic in the X4 devs' FAQ Index:

Q. Will spawnpoints of ships be more logical and realistic? In X:R ships often spawned out of nowhere right next to their target station or far away from any realistic home zone, which felt really unrealistic and static. Will X4 do the same or will ships, even smaller ones, actually spawn in shipyards/next to shipyards and fly from there to their target zone, like in earlier X games?

A. Wherever practical, ships will be built rather than spawned.

Also in the X4 Announcement Sticky, Bernd said:
  • Most dynamic X universe ever:

    X4 will be the first X game to allow our races and factions to freely build and expand their empires; the same flexibility the player enjoys in creatively designing space stations from modular building blocks is also available to them. Races expand their empire based on supply and demand, which leads to an extremely dynamic universe where every action the player makes can influence the course of the entire universe.

    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.
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j.harshaw
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Re: In x4 will ai build fleets as time goes on?

Post by j.harshaw » Sat, 5. May 18, 00:52

Skeeter wrote:As in working to do it not just be cheating by spawning new battleships and fighter wings to protect it etc but buying them or manufacturing them themselves like the player would have to.
Yes. So managing to infiltrate an enemy faction's front line and damaging that faction's economy does have a direct impact on that faction's ability to reinforce that front line. Since that line can have multiple fronts, damaging a faction's economy enough could produce gaps in their defences or could cause that faction to spread their forces too thinly to be effective.

This also opens up gameplay where you could damage a faction without having to just destroy stuff, although you could, of course, do that too. For example, simply helping supply their enemy can directly feed into that enemy's ability to bolster its military infrastructure, or reconnoitering territory could help a faction successfully gauge the weight of force needed to take that territory thus freeing unnecessary forces to fill in gaps elsewhere or precluding a potentially disastrous defeat if the endeavor proves hopeless given the balance of forces in play.
Skeeter wrote:If so how big and how frequently.
Answer to this one is a bit more complex and might expose too much of the innards of the systems in play. Are you sure you want the long answer? Short answer is that the various factions have different strategies governing how they grow and distribute their forces taking potential expansion and contraction of territory into account. Also important: they do not grow their forces indefinitely.

Those limits as well as the faction having to build new ships and grow their economy to build those ships does mean that a faction that finds itself steamrolling opposition for a while can quickly find itself overextended, without the means to defend the territory it has gained long enough to develop the economy needed to effectively defend their newly won gains. Ideally, this should result in an almost-constant push and pull of territory in border regions between factions hostile to each other.

Fun when it works. We're working on the cases where it doesn't.

Skeeter
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Post by Skeeter » Sat, 5. May 18, 01:26

Cheers for the reply
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Falcrack
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Post by Falcrack » Sat, 5. May 18, 03:06

For races that start to steamroll and become too powerful, perhaps there could be a self-limitng mechanic where they simply stop trying to expand past a certain point. Empires which have lost a lot of territory will still try to gain it back, while those that have grown to critical level will be content to sit on their gains and make no further attempt to expand.

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Re: In x4 will ai build fleets as time goes on?

Post by Falcrack » Sat, 5. May 18, 03:10

j.harshaw wrote:
Skeeter wrote:If so how big and how frequently.
Answer to this one is a bit more complex and might expose too much of the innards of the systems in play. Are you sure you want the long answer?
I think the answer to this is obvious. Yes, we want the long answer!

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Post by mr.WHO » Sat, 5. May 18, 10:05

Regarding steamroll factions - I'm against artificial limitations - if faction is strong enough in economy and fleet it should be able to dominate the galaxy.

This should be allowed, so if player wanted to side with faction, then it could achive ultimate victory for that faction (end game aim).

However, with no player action, factions should be more or less ballanced to keep status quo - I know this would be the hardest part for Egosoft.

I mean the most frustrating thing in X3 was that even if you were able to supress Xenon sector with shipyard, they will just constantly respawn with no regard to (non-existent) xenon economy.

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