Hi team, dynamic relations can be hilarious at times

[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.

[Reimu Hakurei]

+1 in the 'relations move too fast' camp.

I assume increasing the points numbers of the middle ranks would be pretty easy to do. I remember seeing these listed on a website or displayed by a mod, and they pretty much go up by a whole order of magnitude for each rank increase/decrease away from neutral. If all relations had the same high-ish points requirement (eg. if every rank had the same number of points as rank 9), reputation would move smoothly and consistently.

It has been suggested by the developers of X3FL (in the pre-release interviews I think) that maintaining neutral relations with every race should be possible, with only the attaining of higher ranks requiring hostilities with their enemies, but the reality seems to be constant flip-flopping between outright allied and hostile states. As it stands right now, players are encouraged to just pick a single 'main' alliance to side with from the outset, and pretty much stick to it.

[kermit6664]

Atleast I got an ok rep with all of the races, burned through agents like there is no tomorrow...........I'm now 90 hours into the save, havent started one sector trader out of fear for F'ing up my rep.
Also, if I do a mission for Boron, Split Paranid or Teladi, my Terran rep go down to almost minimum(Hard mission), it is kinda ridiculous, taking that hard of a hit, transporting a dude from one station to another!

Here is before one mission:
https://ibb.co/4NP4fCh

And after:
https://ibb.co/kmkZWDJ

I just cant belive it is ment to be like this!
I can handle 1 or 2 levels of "rep hit", but this is just beyond!

[Klord]

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

May we know the soft cap here?

I still dont gain Split/ Paranid rep even after blowing a hole on both Argon and Boron relations.

[Midnightknight]

Alright ...

I was starting to enjoy the game really much, even with the Xenon Hub attacked continuously, even with the fact it's really hard to find 25MJ shields in this univers and most of the place selling them actually don't want to sell them to you. (Another issue with this dynamic relations) but now i just want to stop the game and am a bit salty.

Been trying to rise my split relation for the whole day, and it was really hard cause most of the time i couldn't simply dock at their stations. Finally i was allowed in their space and able to do missions for them when i picked a really juicy boron mission to get the money to buy my Ocelot. The joke is after this single transportation mission for 400K credits, i dropped so much in rep with the split i'm shot at sight.

I thought it was a bug, cause it's really stupid but looks like it's a feature and something the devs really don't want to change ... And to me that ruins all the fun.


Yes it was maybe too easy to be friend with everybody in TC, but here we are at the other extreme. It's damn frustrating and impossible and almost everything makes you drop in reputation. You scan illegally someone, you loose rep, you shoot someone you loose rep, that's alright, but you don't gain reputation to the enemies of the race you bullied. You earn rep, again you loose rep. Come on ... Like someone said, what's the issue with taxiing someone of another race? There as splits people in boron stations and vice versa. In your system they just be killed on sight! It makes me think about X3:Reunion when you were shooting by error a ship that get in your fire range in a fight and all the army was suddenly turning hostile and kill you. That's fun for a video on youtube and point how ridiculous is the situation, but it's no fun at all to play it.

So now ... I don't feel like i want to continue as the game is completely screwed, i could take hours and hours to try to rise again the rep, but seriously why would i? It will drop another rep unsuspectingly and have all my assets randomly blown up without much you can do, nothing you can control, it's simply a gratuitous punishment for trying to explore the universe. You don't want to be annoyed? Stay in Boron/Paranid systems and don't do anything else. That's not really the liberty i was hoping in this new X3 with a universe bigger than ever, with many new features that in the end i will just pass on cause there is an annoying mechanic only here for frustration, something you would expect in a pay2win game.

And once again i'm really sorry about that and don't want to be rough, i know this is made by modders and i used most of your mods for TC/AP and enjoyed them a lot, the job here is amazing and i enjoyed it a lot, but this feature is exactly the mod you simply wish to disable or not install cause it's no fun at all, and having it forced this way is a real big issue.
If you don't want to take it off, it needs at least a big rework cause it makes the game completely impossible to play, it's not a sandbox anymore but "Choose your side and fight to death".

[X2-Illuminatus]

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.

I mentiond this on the last page, in case you missed it.

Obviously, our focus lies on bug fixes and plot stoppers first.

[Midnightknight]

Yeah thank you missed it.

Maybe you should make a sticky post to tell what you will work on/rework to avoid being spammed by people like me lol.

Thank you for your time.

[kermit6664]

@Devteam, I think you have done a fantastic job with the new mechanics, I truly do, but the consequences of doing one wrong move, and there hence start to "Save Scumming" every move in this game is getting tiresome, I got 86.9 hours(according to Steam) in this game, and my biggest limiting factor is: that I dare not set a trader out, because if I trade with the wrong faction at the wrong time, I'm F*ked, and have to use a couple hours more to get Agents, to smooth over a little error I did.
X games has allways been about:
EXPLORE, TRADE, BUILD, FIGHT..............as I see it, we only get one option out of those four...........and that is Explore..........after that you have to use 200+ hours to trade, to get to the proper building, to then get to BUILD for the "proper" fighting............OK........I got about 2,5k hours in X3:TC, but that is not because it took me that long to build up!
As I said, this game has potential, and I can not thank the "Dev team" enough for this, but there has to be some changes to get to the: TRADE, BUILD, FIGHT, of the game.

As I said, I now have 86.9hours in this game(according to Steam), I've jumped back to AP, where I had a real chance of making a name for myselfe in the universe, I wont throw away anymore hours on this before there has been some changes to it.

[zamiel]

I just don't see what this adds to the game. It's yet another thing you have to micromanage and all the benefit is that you avoid punishment for playing the game the way you should.
This and the SE changes are just features that take away options.

[fireanddream]

I mentiond this on the last page, in case you missed it.

Obviously, our focus lies on bug fixes and plot stoppers first.

Thank you guys, truly, for following it up. I just want to make sure that the team knows they are not underappreciated while we keep complaining.

To summarize our frustration easily: if the Teladi can befriend everyone, why can't the player?

We are not complaining because the game is no longer "easy" or "not exciting enough", we are complaining because the notoriety system is such a foundation of the game, that no matter how the players want to play the game, they cannot go around it. Changes to such a foundation requires the whole game to work with it, and right now, we are having a game largely similar with AP but with FL's notoriety system.

Traders can't even trade like a Teladi.

I did manage to maintain positive relations with the major races, provided that I 1) no longer do any mission for anyone except Teladi 2) still be enemy with all corps except MMMC 3) still be enemy with the two pirates.

I don't believe that's the canonical "trader" gameplay the team envisioned.

I don't play like a pacifist. In AP the terrans were my official enemy. But that was fine because 1) that was my choice, 2) that was not DYNAMIC.

I can blacklist all terran sectors, set terrans to enemy, treat them like the Xenon, treat their sectors like Xenon sectors, from the very start. It was not necessary to DYNAMICALLY check notoriety every now and again, in case my ships been selling to the wrong faction a little too much.

A hard floor for dynamic relation hits would have been fine. Like, the player will never go under -1 from relation hits resulted from relation gains with other factions.

Or, make the hit a fraction of the gain and/or be rank specific. Right now, it's as if the allies would hang anyone who rescue a German citizen in WWII.

FL is so good but I can do nothing but exploring the sectors. If I do missions, trade, build, fight, do piracy, etc., 40% entities of the game would suddenly turn into xenons.

[blackice7777]

I presonally like the idea of dynamic relations since it adds more non-standard play, not like in XT/AP. I think it should be enhanced to provide equal possibilities for those from us who wants to be a friend with all races and for those who likes to "choose your side and fight".

For now, I lost nemesis, all freighters and very close to loose my PHQ, anyhow I can't move it to another sector nor protect it. This is because I started to explore the paranid and split sectos first and recklessly did some missions for them. That's all fine, it makes the game harder to play, but at the same time there should be a possibility to buy new HQ from the friendly races with high rank (I think this is not the case now).

Also, the jumpdrive, transporter and insurance shouldn't be only Argon/Boron/Goner prerogative (I may be wrong, but I've already explored 80% of the galaxy and didn't find the place in paranid/split/teladi sectors where I can buy this things). It obviously forces the player to go for Argon-centric playstyle, to keep rep with Arg/Bor/Gon at quite high ranks just to be able to equip ships. I believe, all these essential for survival devices should be equally available for all races.

Missions. It was just a simple xenon-patrol mission for 3 sectors marked as "Easy". The problem that next 2 sectors were the boron core sectors I'm not allowed to enter, and after very polite warning, the Boron military fleet striked against me. I think that simple mission should be classified in this case as "Impossible" with the record that I will have to enter enemy sectors and paid accordingly. (BTW, what if I would complete this mission? I would become a boron frined and the enemy of race issued the mission?)

Anyway, I would like to say thank you to the devs! I'm writing this not to harm but just to provide yet another piece of information to think of.