Hi team, dynamic relations can be hilarious at times

[Ramdat]

More info to the HQ would be nice too. Information like the time to reverse engineer, the resources gained from recycling, and the resources required to repair should be displayed before doing it.

This is already available. In your headquarters under "Adjust station parameters" -> "Docked Ships Control" select a ship and press the "i" key.

Ah, thanks, I missed that.

Do you have any plans for the diplomacy suggestions? It's an interesting system but could use some tuning in transparency and rate of change. Your team has certainly done an excellent job on this DLC though; it's breathed new life into X3 for me.

[Klord]

I would like to humbly request from the dev team to do something about the dynamic relations in a future update. Its obvious that many loyal pilots are in favor of an adjustment.
Please consider.

[X2-Illuminatus]

Before I go back to AP for good is there any quick script/plugin or command that can be used to disable dynamic relations and revert to the X-series traditional way?

The Globals file gives you control over the dynamic relations. Feel free to ask for pointers in the Scripts and Modding forum.

Do you have any plans for the diplomacy suggestions?

No plans I'm aware of, which does not mean that we won't have a look and discuss what's possible.

I would like to humbly request from the dev team to do something about the dynamic relations in a future update. Its obvious that many loyal pilots are in favor of an adjustment.

We are aware of the feedback and we will discuss possible changes. I cannot give you an ETA or tell you how these changes will look like exactly though.

[Old Drullo321]

After reading this, I don't even want to start with X3FL. While someone can argue that beeing friend with multiple/all races/companies is wrong, I don't see any problem with it. In every previous X game I was peaceful with everyone except Xenon and hostile pirates. I loved it doing peaceful missions like taxi and building stations. When even those peaceful missions give such big reputation hits beyond my understanding,that isn't fun. E.g. enemies of the Argon couldn't care less if i transport some unknown person from A to B in their territories. Additionally destroying common enemies such as Xenon shouldn't give a reputation hit for any race

[Klord]

We are aware of the feedback and we will discuss possible changes. I cannot give you an ETA or tell you how these changes will look like exactly though.

Thank you very much for the acknowledgment. Looking forward to the next update !

Until then, let me share some insight on how to earn some money doing random missions, without making everybody enemies.

DO MISSIONS FOR TELADI !

I know it feels counterintuitive to jump and fly around only in Teladi space. But since Teladi are neutral with all major commonwealth factions, their missions wont negatively impact any other faction/corporation except for Yaki. You can do combat missions in which where the enemies are Pirates, Yaki or Xenon. Can also do all non combat missions which involve in transporting passengers or hauling wares. Just make sure that mission is offered by Teladi personals !

This aint very fun, but helps in managing reputation.

[ZX9000]

We are aware of the feedback and we will discuss possible changes. I cannot give you an ETA or tell you how these changes will look like exactly though.

I hope the team are taking the feedback on this particular design decision for the constructive criticism it predominantly is, from what I have seen a least I understand you have worked on this a long time, and as a free DLC, new game really, the need to be constructive is paramount. And I love this game now, the improvements are vast.

I do try to adapt, I really do. And I understand wanting to shake things up, a system where the player have to commit can be good. Looking at the race relations, there are options, and you can blacklist your traders from sectors of factions you don't intend to ally, from what I understand. Except...

Spoiler

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My Spacelab HQ is stuck in a boron sector for the foreseeable future, I won't be getting a TL to move it anytime soon.

So I feel like I have to "lock into" borons, to avoid incidents, and thus excluding a large chunk of other options. The system also creates some new situations where suspending ones disbelief isn't really possible, particularily how does all factions know everything all the time? Sharing intel between actual allies is cool, but everyone knowing I made a few quiet deals far into pirate space, instantly?

Like when I bought all the spacefuel in

Spoiler

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Weavers Tempest

, and everyone hated that. How did anyone know, the minute I bought it no less? But aha, you say, the other factions have agents embedded in that hostile faction, reporting back at quantum entangle speed! And this agent, having successfully infiltrated a very hostile and very dangerous faction with huge fleets will risk reporting some rando buying spacefuel? No, not a chance.

The overarching issue for me is now I actually have to plan out what I want to do for the rest of the game from the start. I can't build a station somewhere I see a good opportunity, if later my path diverge and I'm suddenly an enemy of the sector owners. Station lost :/ From what I've seen myself, and the stories/consequences others have shared, this just isn't fun. There seem to be no "safeguard", if you can drop, as my own example in this thread explains, from +6 to -3 at the drop of a hat (an average transport non-violent mission, to be precise).

"It's too easy in previous games to be friends with everyone." Maybe, maybe not. You do have to make an effort to make friends with factions, some are harder than others. This takes time, the same way spending time can make you have fleets able to stomp anyone. If it's too easy, it can be tweaked to be harder to increase to harder levels. In FL you can become friends easier, via missions (I went from +1 to +6 from that average transport mission I mentioned) or diplomacy, but lose it just as fast. I don't think this is better. And why shouldn't someone not being overtly hostile to anyone also be able to be at least cordial with anyone? Neutral nations working hard to maintain good relations with as many as possible exist.

It's also the issue of the severity of the consequences: shoot on sight. Not being able to trade or land, this is fine. Shooting for trespassing could also be reasonable at the lowest reputation levels, but the violence is too liberally applied as it is now. I understand all sorts of nuance can't be built into the AI, but realistically any engagement where you don't have overwhelming odds is a great risk. So sane people and factions don't engage in violence unless they have to. A blanket fix could be setting a cap on negative reputation from gains with enemies.

My main issue is that this system subtracts more fun than it adds, I'm sorry to say. I do have an idea on how to work with it, to maximise opportunities, but I don't ususally do much trading or station building anyway, so this probably affects me much less than people who do.

I hope some adjustments can be considered, or maybe just make it an option to turn of, at your own risk of course, unless there are some gamebreaking dependencies. Other than that, great game, very polished, and I'm looking forward to an update

[Hexadecimal]

So basically it sounds like there are 2 main issues...

Reputations change too easily/drastically

HQ can't be moved meaning you are locked in to being friendly with Boron.


The latter I would have at least expected to be in an unclaimed sector or be able to repackage it with a TL for transport.

[X2-Illuminatus]

The PHQ can be moved. See this topic for reference.

[Imperatorul]

Just to share my experience with that dynamic relations:

I've decided to kill some Xenons to level up my fight rank. So went to Nopileos' Memorial as it was the closest sector for that and start fighting. By this, my pirate rank increased but I forgot that X3FL has dynamic reputation for a moment and got a "reminder" by your station is under attack message... Checked the map and saw an Oddyseus is destroying my Spacelab because it was in Paranid space... I wasn't able to do anything to save my station because I haven't the fire power to mess with an Oddyseus plus escort ships and not enough reputation or money to buy a TL to move the station, but however it was already too late and I've lost my station.

This was kind of frustrating.

[chip56]

So basically it sounds like there are 2 main issues...

Reputations change too easily/drastically

HQ can't be moved meaning you are locked in to being friendly with Boron.


The latter I would have at least expected to be in an unclaimed sector or be able to repackage it with a TL for transport.

You can move the HQ. The problem though is that you need your own TL for that. So it means you will have it in Boron space for quite a while. Also the plot actually demands that you build your first station there too.

The main issue is that the rep jumps too fast and for things that you would only expect minor jumps.
Defending one Paranid station from pirates?
Expectation: Losing a lot from pirates and yaki and duke. Losing nothing or only a little from the Boron/argon.
Current outcome: Instead Hostility from Argon, Boron and most corporations even though you were +4 before.

That just doesnt fit exactly for the fact that you actually engaged someone they hate too. So thats 2 issues here:
1) Very strong jumps that can instantly mess up your plans
2) The outcome does not fit with expactations.

While i managed to get most stable with the TEL and ARG/BOR and PAR with only being hostile with SPL i have the "funny" situation that ALL corporations exept the teldadi Nividum mining one are hostile to me. And that even though i didnt attack any (exept Strong arm after they reached the lowest possible rank).
And that leads to another couple things that need tweaking:
1) corporations seem to lose rep faster than they gain rep when you do stuff for the main factions.
2) The dynamics only count stuff you do in specific sectors. Killing Strong arm in Boron sectors makes Boron happy and then triggers all the dynamics for that. What happens if you kill strong arm in your own sector (xenon hub for example)? You lose rep with strong arm and thats it. No gain for anyone else.

So my general suggestion for tweaking it would be:
Reduced impact on the negative and positive effect on allies and enemies on a faction if neither they nor their allies were not part of the situation.
Example: You defend Boron against Pirates. Full impact on Boron, Pirates and the Allies of the Pirates. Low impact on others.
Taxi mission for Argon: Full impact Arg. low impact everyone else.

Maybe even tweak the whole thing to take into consideration if the Target of the mission was hostile to the Faction in particular too.
This would mean:
You defend an Argon station against Xenon. Full impact from arg. low positive impact for their allies. All enemy faction of the Argon that are not hostile to the xenon (okay those dont exist...): low negative impact. All enemies that also hate the xenon (thats everyone...) very low or no impact.

By implementing you would actually still have a negative impact and make it at the very least much harder to be friendly with everyone. It would also fit more with expactions and simulate the fact that they might not like you helping others but that they would turn a blind eye if it was against another enemy of them.

And what could we do if we want to not only make it harder but instead much harder to become friendly with everyone at once?
If you are already at a high rank with a faction that faction could gain increased negative drops.
Example: You are lets say Rank 5+ with Paranids.Y ou defend an Argon station against Xenon. Full impact from arg. low positive impact for their allies. All enemies that also hate the xenon and rank below 5 very low or no impact. Paranid would lose full rep, however the rep loss is capped so that you cant fall below 0 in one shot.

Result: you can be high rank with one side and have acceptable but not the best ranks with the others if you never attack them. Single missions cant screw you massivly over for factions that were not even involved. This would also fit real life politcs more: Okay, we dont like that you export steel to our enemy. However we will not invade your country over that and still trade basic stuff with you too. But you can forget joining our high tech super secret research joint venture and you can also forget about us exporting state of the hard equipment to you!

[maxolina]

I think the issue is that whatever they do it has to work with X3's default reputation system, which is somewhat hardcoded into the base game.

Therefore if you do a transport mission for the Boron while already at a very high Boron reputation, the gain in absolute rep points will be enormous and even if you only take 5-10% of that and apply it as negative rep to other factions, that could be a huge amount if those other factions were at a lower level to begin with. Even multiple reputation levels at once as is happening right now.

If there's no way to get the current rep level for the faction at the time of calculating the other gains/losses in order to apply a correction based on the difference between it and the rep level of the faction that is being influenced, then there's no way to fix this.

[Hwitvlf]

The setup in TC/AP always struck me as ludicrous as you could spend weeks terrorizing a faction and then blow one pirate M6 in their home sector and all was forgotten. In FL there are significant consequences for your actions. That's a huge improvement in my opinion.

I beg to differ in this regard. Last night I jumped from Paranid Enemy of Priest Xaar (-5) to Friend of Priest King (+5) from couple of transport missions. Thats a lot of rep change for random missions though it had some consequences.

You're right. I didn't mean that reputation changes are slower in FL, just that I feel it's an improvement to have good and bad consequences when helping factions. As far as I know, reputation changes are tied to the difficulty of the completed mission, and the points needed to change reputation ranks seems to be the same as it was in TC/AP. "Very Difficult" missions always gave a drastic reputation boost- now they just have a drastic impact in both directions.

I think these fast changes are mostly what's frustrating people. If the points needed to change reputation ranks were greatly increased, you would keep the richness of the new system without having players surprised by sudden swings in their friend/foe list. This would give you time to use diplomacy to repair rep which is slowly dropping from something like Universal Traders, or fix the results of "accidentally" blowing up 20 Argon freighters and selling their cargo on the black market during a Red Bull induced frenzy at 2 A.M.

Diplomat: "Those freighters were obviously sinister Pirates masquerading as law abiding Argons! That's where they made their mistake; they looked too much like law abiding Argons. My client is practically a hero!"

[Snafu_X3]

As far as I know, reputation changes are tied to the difficulty of the completed mission, and the points needed to change reputation ranks seems to be the same as it was in TC/AP. "Very Difficult" missions always gave a drastic reputation boost- now they just have a drastic impact in both directions.

AFAIK you're correct

I think these fast changes are mostly what's frustrating people.

That seems a very good analysis, other than the Xenon problem (discounting Boron/Goner rep loss from killing anything at all)

Diplomat: "Those freighters were obviously sinister Pirates masquerading as law abiding Argons! That's where they made their mistake; they looked too much like law abiding Argons. My client is practically a hero!"

LOL! However, freight/bio-scanning those ships may reveal that they're really pirates.. who knows?

[RegisterMe]

Just to add my two penneth... I haven't encountered problems with this. Yet. But I expect to with the system as it stands. I don't like that. I understand why some people might like the challenge it presents, but I play X games for the "space train set with lasers" aspects of it, not to contort myself and my gameplay to fit some set of criteria to not bork / unbork my relations with the "good guys".

And yeah, I get that the agents system provides some tools to address this, but a) I don't like missions (the only way to get agents) and b) there are things I'd really prefer to be "spending" them on.

To my mind it's onerous, and "unfun". I'll probably look to mod it out.

[Snafu_X3]

a) I don't like missions (the only way to get agents) and b) there are things I'd really prefer to be "spending" them on.

You can also 'buy' agents with discovery points..

[Klord]

thats because your gaining rep with pirates. Argon and Boron are enemies to pirates

I have a query regarding the rep system.

My Split and Paranid reputation is stuck at +7 rank 98%.



For Split I did,
> 3 Passenger transportation
> 2 Xenon patrols
> 2 Ware transportation
> 1 Return abandon ship
> Sent 2 agents on notoriety increase missions

For Paranid I did,
> 2 Passenger transportation
> 1 Ware transportation
> 1 Killing mission

The reputation level wont increase and stuck at 98% even though there is a green arrow next to the rank. Meanwhile Boron reputation drops little by little each time I complete missions. (It was at max level before).

My query is, is there a soft cap to faction notoriety which doesn't increase if the player is having a good relationship with the said faction's enemies?

In my case Im at top notoriety rank with Argon and Boron. Is this preventing me from gaining Split/ Paranid rep beyond a certain level?
Or is this a bug?

Im trying to obtain Acinonix Prototype ship from Split. I need to be at top of the split notoriety for that.

[fireanddream]

The reputation level wont increase and stuck at 98% even though there is a green arrow next to the rank. Meanwhile Boron reputation drops little by little each time I complete missions. (It was at max level before).

My query is, is there a soft cap to faction notoriety which doesn't increase if the player is having a good relationship with the said faction's enemies?

In my case Im at top notoriety rank with Argon and Boron. Is this preventing me from gaining Split/ Paranid rep beyond a certain level?
Or is this a bug?

Im trying to obtain Acinonix Prototype ship from Split. I need to be at top of the split notoriety for that.

How did you maintain this level of rep with all major races? I've been putting off playing FL for the past couple of days because... the dynamic relation means I will have to keep an dynamic blacklist. To exclusively camp in Teladi sectors are just boring.

Meanwhile even I do as good a job as yours, Corps and their sectors are still off limits.

Even while I'm befriending the Teladi I got a bit sad cause the Yaki was my buddy in AP. Always sent my "return abandoned ship" ship to their shipyard and let them take care of the debt collectors.

I'm just an space uber guy, man, it's not like I'm blowing up people, why do I have to be hated by 2 out of the 5 races at all time?

At this rate I may finish divinity original sin 2 and then come back and see if there is an update. The team consists of players who actually play the game, so I have my faith in them.

[Cycrow]

There is a maximum rank you can achieve if you are at max ranks with their enemies.

once Argon/Boron drop down enough, you will start gaining rank again with Paranid/Spilt

While the notoriety you earn for Paranid/Spilt wont increase their rank until then, it does still drop their enemies rank

[tim-ski]

Sounds like we're going to need a spreadsheet to optimise this... very X. Seriously, I've been capped at multiple levels of 98% for reasons that defied explanation beyond having hit some invisible coded barrier. How is the player supposed to know that their, say, Boron rep is stuck at rank+98% because their Paranid rep is 3 levels too high? Much of the feedback you're seeing in this thread is born out of confusion with a dynamic system that does not explain its dynamism beyond the occasional red or green arrow. Arrows which, incidentally, can simultaneously describe a 0.1% change of no consequence and an accidental declaration of war.

[Klord]

How did you maintain this level of rep with all major races? I've been putting off playing FL for the past couple of days because... the dynamic relation means I will have to keep an dynamic blacklist. To exclusively camp in Teladi sectors are just boring.

Meanwhile even I do as good a job as yours, Corps and their sectors are still off limits.

Even while I'm befriending the Teladi I got a bit sad cause the Yaki was my buddy in AP. Always sent my "return abandoned ship" ship to their shipyard and let them take care of the debt collectors.

I was actually in positive relationship with Terracorp as well. For no apparent reason, It has gone down. I only noticed after doing aforementioned missions.

I do the same thing, camping around Tealdi space hunting for lucrative missions. Its no fun at all, I agree. Lets hope there will be an improvement with next update.

There is a maximum rank you can achieve if you are at max ranks with their enemies.

once Argon/Boron drop down enough, you will start gaining rank again with Paranid/Spilt

While the notoriety you earn for Paranid/Spilt wont increase their rank until then, it does still drop their enemies rank

Shoot... should have known that earlier. Wasted 2 good agents for nothing.

Ill assume that Argon/Boron rank should be two levels lower to increase Split/ Paranid rank (as im stuck there with splits).
So, its time to blow some Argons up. As much as it hurts to kill friendlies, I badly need that Acinonyx.