Inventory wares and trading

[MegaJohnny]

In X4 inventory items and crafting are still here. This is one of the few things I'd rather see removed in X4, and I'll try to rationalise it via my problems with it in XR.

1) It was only used by the player. AFAIK any pilot, or maybe even any control entity, can have an inventory in XR, but only the player's inventory has any meaningful gameplay or universe impact. I didn't see anywhere to transfer inventory between you and your employees, nor did I see any wares that might be placed in your employees' inventory to do something interesting. I've never seen "inventory trader" jobships or anything of the sort. I don't much like that it works one way for the player, and another way (or not at all) for NPCs.

2) It circumvents ship capacity. A big factor in your trading choice in all X games is your freighter's capacity and what cargo it can carry vs. its speed. It's a cool ambiguity in X3 which motivated the creation of "efficiency" tables, and a choice between gigantic bulk trades or quick ships carrying ultra-valuable wares. Even if you're in a combat ship and not doing any trading, you might stop to think how much loot your ship can hold before going back to sell. This ambiguity doesn't apply to inventory trading, because AFAIK your inventory is limitless.

3) It circumvents the economic simulation. This also rubs me the wrong way - item traders in XR exist only when you're near, and the wares you sell disappear with them when you move away. It feels like a flop when a big motivator for trading is knowing the trades you do have a tangible effect on the universe, however small. In XR the prices offered by item traders are totally random, and it doesn't really matter which station you buy/sell at.

4) It's fiddly and quickly loads you with illegal wares. In XR, the system is clearly designed for you to smash ships open and hoover up all the loot at once (with your loot magnet key). It's very easy to end up with a few hacker chips or illegal drugs on you, which you then have to manually drop after every fight. That got quite tedious for me.

I think inventory trading makes sense in terms of XR and its player-centric mechanics. It's a bit of early-game cash, a way to have enemy ships explode into loot without adding too many fluff wares to the economic simulation. But consider that X4 is making massive strides towards an ideal where every trade matters, and the player works by the same rules as NPCs. Inventory trading and crafting is IMO the only area that is a small step back.

[Alan Phipps]

… and adding to what you have said about inventory wares, do we really see an experienced ship's captain rooting through changing room lockers and ventilation ducts for a few kilo credits worth of lifted stuff that might well get them into serious trouble with the local authorities if their ship is scanned? (Yes, I know that looking is optional.)

Please let's roleplay more as if the player characters were rational professionals who always decide to go to a black market dealer if they want to run contraband and usually gets their 'bribery' (smalltalk) goods by appropriate means.

[Commander_K]

We do not know yet if there will be item trading. It might be that crafting is done only with items that you find in space/wrecks (like that torpedo and the weapon upgrades).

[GCU Grey Area]

Tend to disagree - rather liked it in XR, mostly for the crafting. Inventory trading was ok I guess, though the profits involved were generally trivial (in comparison to selling an L or XL freighter load of practically anything). However, did quite like hoovering up & selling the rare minerals that my mining ships occasionally produced while smashing rocks. If nothing else, collecting that stuff gave me something constructive & profitable to do while protecting my mining fleet.

[CBJ]

The player inventory is an important feature, and has been since long before XR. It is probably at its most useful, for example, for mission items that you need to carry with you and not accidentally leave behind on a ship. In X4 there are also some other items that we need you to keep in your inventory for a variety of reasons.

Some of those items may still be bought from NPCs, and some may still be used for the purposes of crafting. However the purpose and scale of both activities will be rather different in X4 in comparison to XR. You probably won't be trading inventory items for profit, for example; for trading you'll be loading your wares into ships' cargo bays, as you would expect.

[Vandragorax]

You probably won't be trading inventory items for profit, for example; for trading you'll be loading your wares into ships' cargo bays, as you would expect.

That's great to hear, as I also share the concerns about the inventory system from Rebirth as those above.

Keeping it as a place to store quest items and unique collectables is much better than also trying to use it as a kind of 'secondary trading' area. I think for Rebirth it fell into the trap of infringing too much on the cargo bay wares system but came with a lot of baggage attached which didn't really feel like it fit in with the rest of the game.

[Skeeter]

Hmm so you might need quest items and that's on the ships inventory yes?. So with a jump drive you could take quest items with you when you travel but if you use the new teleporter you leave them behind and risk them being lost by the ship either killed by enemy or accidental ai pathing. Or even maybe after teleporting so much you forget which ship you had with the quest items still on it.

Did you consider that drawback from switching from jump to teleporter system cbj?

[CBJ]

Your basic assumption is wrong. The inventory is on the player, not the ship. That's the whole point.

[MegaJohnny]

That's great to hear, as I also share the concerns about the inventory system from Rebirth as those above.

Keeping it as a place to store quest items and unique collectables is much better than also trying to use it as a kind of 'secondary trading' area. I think for Rebirth it fell into the trap of infringing too much on the cargo bay wares system but came with a lot of baggage attached which didn't really feel like it fit in with the rest of the game.

Yes! You've put it much more succinctly than I did. If inventory trading as a general activity is scaled back then that sounds great.

[Snafu_X3]

This topic is pretty much dead now,but I'll just add:

inv trading/crafting in X:R was very much nerfed in later patches (eg scrap metal -> alloy), making it something that would give a new starter player a small amount of desperately-needed cash while not worth the bother with more advanced players/playthrus.. unless you're willing to risk drug detection by cops After a bit, even the latter becomes relatively worthless: your trade ships are making you the money to a point where individual <player> trades are insignificant

[Clownmug]

This topic is pretty much dead now,but I'll just add:

inv trading/crafting in X:R was very much nerfed in later patches (eg scrap metal -> alloy), making it something that would give a new starter player a small amount of desperately-needed cash while not worth the bother with more advanced players/playthrus.. unless you're willing to risk drug detection by cops After a bit, even the latter becomes relatively worthless: your trade ships are making you the money to a point where individual <player> trades are insignificant

For me it seemed like regular trading was worthless when I could just blow up a couple of rocks and craft spacefly egg collection for ~25 million credits each.

[Snafu_X3]

Ahh.. but first you need to find the buyer, & the relevant rocks to blow. Not ideal by any means, but it certainly reduced the cheese IMO..