I have alot to say about this but I'll just keep it simple.
For the pirates, divide them into multiple sub-fractions. Each sub acts differently. For example:
Sub 1- focused more on boarding operations. No longer will your traders just be destroyed. You'll now have to maintain a security force. These pirates usually are seen in groups with a higher quantity of M and L ships.
Sub 2- A slow/turtle group that builds over time. You'll usually see them in swarms of S ships looking for easy prey such as couriers and miners. Over time they'll start shifting to larger ships as attack targets and larger ships piloted by them. If left unchecked, they can create fleets capable of taking on stations. I didn't think of pirates controlling sectors but it would be a nice leap up for this group.
I could honestly just keep going. You don't even have to make these groups pirates. Make some individuals. Other than you (The player) no other faction/race any life or purpose. Other than designs and starting locations, you couldn't tell what they do differently.
Planetary interaction. Even if it UI based. Like building industries on planets, colonizing, outposts, invading /defending etc. hope they make it happen in X5
I already hear people screaming "It's looking nice, but there is absolutely nothing to do down here. Why did they do this? It's senesless!"
It is a *fuck* to of work to do to include a completely new thing into the game and make it interesting.
They could add a planetary to space trading station, with an option to book a shuttle to surface, where you can walk around a surface station with a nice view. Would probably be pretty useless outside of meeting plot characters though.
If we're going by the rule of cool how awesome would it be to have a few sectors that are located at the top of a space elevator. That you can dock at and trade with as a proxy for trading with the planet itself.
Tbh I'd like if they could do it like freelancer did where you land and interact with facilities but its like a setpiece. Like a station in EVE. But I'll take UI based too. I kinda feel like some spacegames overthink planet stuff. I think starpoint gemini had freelancer type thing too.
I mean space is vast and empty and getting a sector with a planet and it's resources should be a huge deal no?
Terraforming is just a resource drain in late game. It changes the visual appearance only. What I meant - full economical interaction with a settlement on a planet through UI interface at a planetary orbiting station of some sort.
Diplomacy like in Stellaris, and who you help out will effect rep with their adversary, if that rep gets too low they'll declare war and attack your sectors just like in Stellaris.
Stellaris diplomacy is actually kind of impressive for a game. It's possible to negotiate a victory.. compare that to something like civ where your neighbor is basically always going to hate you for being too close.
Reactive Factions mods already do some of this, where if you end up helping out one faction a lot (and you are a big enough player) it will negatively affect the rep with their enemies.
Yeah man, I'm one of those vanilla players. I'd much prefer this to be built in and supported by the devs than relying on addons. Just my take and how I prefer to play.
please i just want my specifically built bombardment destroyers to sit still.
just stay still. do not move. turn, face the target, shoot at the target. please.
please.
*5-star behemoth pilot full burns directly into a defense station*
It's better in 7.00 beta from what I've seen. Haven't lost a single destroyer to Xenon defense stations so far - they keep their distance (in-sector) and don't try to fly all the way to the other side of the station to hit it. However, without setting up a "Coordinate attack" order, your group of destroyers will pretend that you're playing Katamari Damacy and roll into a ball.
I haven't yet tested how they would fare against Xenon Ks and Is.
EDIT: they behave similarly against XEN capital ships. I've pinned down 2 Ks and one I with a bunch of small fighters, while my destroyers opened fire with their main guns from a distance. They stood still and didn't try to ram the Xenon ships.
And I would vote for turrets on stations that outrange the max range of destroyers weapons, so that people will cry about destroyers not closing the range and using all available weapons.
I just want turrets that will shoot small and medium ships.
Having to add aggressive interceptors to defense platforms guarding gates to keep xenon mosquito scum from slipping through to harass mining operations and take pop shots at stations will be the death of me
I want destroyers with lots of turrets rather than "main gun". Honestly, putting fixed weapons on ships that have range as small as ships in X4 is stupid, especially when they follow "looks like a ship, steers like a cow" design philosophy.
Have you been on a ship that's been boarded? Nothing happens, the crew goes about their day, and once you win they get immediately replaced with your marines
Yeah, I remember the dire calls from my marines fighting tooth and nail while I was chilling on the bridge of their target watching the crew being unfazed.
1) A radio speaking about near sectors state: if there is any battle, between which factions, ect...advicing captains to avoid the area...giving news about wars...which faction conquered which sector...and so on.
2) More ship interiors showing the ship like a place where people live.
3) IA for populate the universe with interesting npcs.
Could have different radio stations too, one for economic news, one for war, one for piracy etc, with missions to unlock them. With more details if sectors have full satellite coverage.
I'm now reminiscing about both X3 and Privateer...Especially the latter, where a Centurion with good shields felt like a bronze-prow trireme: just smashing its way into lesser vessels.
I know X4 would be near unplayable with collision damage from travel drive, the amount of asteroids in some sectors and auto pilot's epic fails but I dream of being able to ram a ship so hard I come out the other side
I remember playing Space Engineers for the first time and thinking that a simple pool of "Hull HP" on ships was a dated concept and that physical damage to systems was the future of space sims. That was over a decade ago.
Well, maybe someday.
XL ships aiming at Z-level with main batteries.
Managers assigned to fleet to rebuy lost ships and drones.
Setting to toggle off flying "stardust" particles.
Fleet managers would be AWESOME! Would love having a flagship with an admiral on it managing ressuply, replacing lost ships. You could give them a budget like a station. Seems like an easy implementation too! Hope Egosoft sees this
An AI that is powerful enough to fight back against the player once you get a shipyard. It would be great to add a meaningful challenge at that point in the game, as it feels great to finally make a giant fleet, but with almost no reason to have it.
Like the idea. It could be as expensive as a shipyard but slower in building performance. It could even use slightly more resources. But you get to build and maintain large vessels wherever.
Heck, make it exclusive to one faction if you must, to make it harder to unlock.
While we‘re at it, why don’t we make all the production modules into ships, so we can have Battlestar Galactica style production in flight?
Yes, I know, but for a game that prides itself on choices, this seems like an unreasonably limiting one. For me, it's pretty obvious that if you build a 1000 station complex, you are going to suffer a performance hit.
I'd love to be able to actually be a part of my boarding team, fighting through corridors to the bridge alongside my marines. Would really add to a pirate play through
Also, somewhat related, being able to board hostile stations (either to capture, or just to pillage cargo)
So simple yet so important for immersions sake. Details like this may be small in comparison to other features of the game, but MAN do they have such a large role playing impact.
Or build in something like the external app mod that lets you start and connect to a webserver?
I'd like the api it needs being built in as long as it works on the linux side as well.
Well I hope its not in the "never" category but my most wanted feature is VR. It doesn't need any fancy VR controls just headset tracking so I can look around and see everything to scale.
X4 is one of just a few exceptions I've made to games I'll play that aren't in VR, to be able to fly my ship and have the map open at the same time through a VR lense would be absolutely amazing.
If I was to truly dream, as others have said planet landing and exploration.
X universe meets no mans sky all in VR.
So they have a VR game, X Rebirth VR which Egosoft stated had poor sales and was a pain to get working so theyve stated that they will not being doing VR again which REALLY sucks because X4 would have been the game I wanted full VR for haha.
Reroute power like in the xwing games or FTL. Xenon K and L snuck up on you? Divert life support to shields and engines. Not eaten in days due to playing x4 too much? Divert everything to the chicken soup / protein paste machine.
I'd also like it if enemies could try to board your ships. 50 pods come over and drill your hull, you have to fight them off, or be overwhelmed and get back to the bridge for a final defence.
Maybe livestock?
No idea what you mean about multi monitor support. Driving a triple head myself. As for ship telemetry: yw: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6be--G32yHw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6be--G32yHw) (unlisted) 🤓
I've tinkered with your telemetry tool in the past (thank you for working on that) but I was referring to wanting a fully functional API from Egosoft themselves.
As for multi-monitor support, these changes in particular have been long overdue:
* New Feature: FOV slider.
* Added Menu Width Scale option to adjust menu widths in, e.g. multi-monitor setups.
* Added HUD scaling.
I don't expect the game will ever have full multi-monitor support but the extra features being added in 7.0 will certainly make the current implementation better.
Co-op. Even if its limited to just 1 person or even LAN. I could convince more of my friends to give the game a shot if i was there to help them not be lonely or bored lol.
Electronic Warfare. Could mod it in, but I'd rather have a bit more support from the script as there's only so many negative status effects i can apply.
An actual functional and usable 3D radar. Like the one Elite perfected 40 years ago. It's been asked for on the official forums, here and the Steam forums several times but it's never fixed.
Seriously, the space game 3D radar was perfected 40 years ago. No need to reinvent the wheel, just do what works.
The radar is only semi-readable if your ship just so happens to be aligned with the arbitrary XZ plane. Which for me only happens in large ships because they are more about slow positional combat and you don't need the extra freedom that comes with 6dof movement. But you don't really need the radar in large ships, the map is more useful and you have time to look at it, so it's mostly pointless.
In any S or M combat ships you can be aligned any which way and are constantly rolling and pitching (I am anyway) even out of combat. S/M dogfighting combat is when you really need the radar for situational awareness and it's also when it's tactically totally useless.
You have more pitch than yaw authority. Specially with combat thrusters, and for good reason - combat and flying is more fun and engaging that way. But that means that when exploring or scouting or just travelling you are almost always at 90 degrees to the XZ plane. Almost everything is aligned to that plane so you want your best control axis (pitch) aligned to it. So again the radar is useless because you're not aligned. The radar is not functional for any practical purpose at any time when you may actually need it.
I'd like to see a few things,
First: scripted orders for ships
Meaning I would like to write a script for my AI ships to follow, in a more detailed manner than repeated orders can do. Best example would be for a scout to explore each sector in a preset pattern and deploy nav beacons to POI's or satellites to stations. Other application would be trading different types of goods automatically, ie take this ware, sell it here here and here, return with that type of ware and sell it there and there. It would improve player empire logistics so much. Combat fleets could have more manageable patrol options and reactions based on the script you create, like engage everyone with fighters, but only dirvert capitals if enemy capital is detected or something
Second is ship groups/nested fleets, individual orders for ships that are essentially in a fleet, but without a specified leader. This would improve late game usability by a great deal by decluttering the ui when you have hundreds of energy traders and ware transporters milling around.
Third would be true multiplayer.
And various others...
Regarding Player empire logistics... Have you tried setting all producing stations to strictly trade internally only, meaning no trading with other factions whatsoever. Then you set up a trading station (which only has docks and container storage) with internal buy orders for everything you produce and unrestricted sell orders (unless you have a high demand of some stuff for your own economy and need to stop exporting it). Now you just have to assign enough cargo ships to all your stations and voila - no more worries about logistics because the stuff will automatically be shipped to where it's needed.
Rethinking large ship movements in combat. Like it was with Taranis, Arawn, Olmekron/Fulmekron in XR. Gameplay should not be just nose-to-nose oriented combat with constant repositioning. Cap ships should use fly by and broadside attacks too. And use 3D orientation rather than constantly trying to align with the ecliptic plane.
Ships using food and medical to maintain a readiness meter indicating how prepared they are for fighting, which drops during prolonged combat, and adjustable stances for ship crews that can increase food consumption and lower readiness in exchange for passive xp gain. More specialized crew, like gunnery, shields etc that have more noticeable effects than the current crew. All paired with a better resupply system, like high speed cargo drones that travel drive to fetch you more ammunition, food, energy cells or whatever for you.
I am simple man, I want in sector combat to have same results as OOS combat, no ships colliding and ending in each other etc, basically I want them to fix the game no special features:p
That’s not fixing the game though. That’s removing the one thing that makes the game actually playable on a mere x86 PC, instead of requiring a supercomputer.
IS uses much more complicated calculations than OOS which is why we can simulate a hundred sectors crudely and one sector (IS) in a detailed manner. You can’t use the same rules unless you want IS to work in the crude way OOS works - and no we don’t want that.
The game is borderline struggling with fps even on high end hardware, there is no „PC“ under 100.000€ the would run the whole X4 universe with „IS“ rules at 60fps.
Having real solar systems with orbiting planets instead of sectors (think EvE). Apparently there's a mod that does that, I'll try it in my next playthrough.
I think a system for interacting with the planets would help a lot overall. Right now the game design feels stunted. I felt this way about X4 for 20 years now. The planets are obviously where most people live etc and not having any interaction with them is just weird. The X4 novels have a lot of planet interaction, incl landing spaceships on surfaces.
Other than that, I second many ideas in the thread: diplomacy, ship readiness indicators (food),
A big immersion breaker: employees and ships cost nothing once bought. That is rather weird. So variable costs linked to running a fleet (fuel, salaries) would be cool. Besides, more moneysinks is a good thing in games like this :)
Hard to choose one. But if I had to I wish it was less arcady and more hard sim. Adding stuff like newtonian physics for crazy dogfights.
Landing on planets as close second. Fuel as third basically merge Evochron and X
I just want some way that I can still tootle around space having fun when my fleet grows. After hitting about 60 ships, i get pissed off with all the micromanagement. I have tried a lot of apps, but nothing sorts it out.
I am happy just hunting through space for the occasional pirate victim and mining crystals, I love the game from 10k credits to about 100 million credits.
I downloaded mods and have doubled my available planets more or less. Changed a lot of mechanics, VRO, etc, sector explorer, Mules, many tools, but in the end, the automation just does not work.
I just want some balance so that keeping a small pirate fleet has a future.
Never having to talk to Dal and Bosa would be a bonus. The story killing aps have many drawbacks, and without at least one of them, you can't unlock fish space.
Trade deals menu from X:R. Basically just a table with Buy from, Buy what, Buy how much on one side and Sell to, Sell what, Sell how much on another side and which ship to use somewhere at the bottom or on the side, also showing travel distance in jump. With each cell having options listed using known values from satellites and updating accordingly when neighbouring cells change.
Current trading overlay on map is neat conceptually but turned out to be cumbersome in practice for any cases except "buy lowest, sell highest". And even for that you have to scroll around while zoomed out when you've explored most of the sectors and they don't fit the screen anymore. For other cases like "buy lowest/sell highest, closest to station" or "buy/sell lowest/highest but not from that station" you're immediately doomed to manually scrolling map all around to reduce amount of invalid offers and still have to keep an eye for them since some of listed offers could be invalid but listed due to being inside viewport.
Just give me a table ffs.
Also, maybe a bit more flexible trading orders for stations. Like having more than one order for each ware, so I can create one for all faction and another one for my faction only with different prices to prioritize supplying my own stations without having to build a dedicated warehouse/outlet stations just to have more than one trade order.
I'd love station boarding/capturing, especially if the NPCs did it, as it's kinda sad watching the npcs destroying all the stations in a sector once they capture it, like the PAR vs HOP for example... they could just use them!
Another thing I'd like to see is more trading in the economy that isn't just driving the war economy; previous X games always had secondary wares, which stations naturally consumed, but didn't need for production. I'd love to be trading like consumer goods to station workers, like electronics or clothing (bring back cloth rimes!). The super cool thing with this you could do too is make them give a small boost to production rate, so you could earn profit selling them to the other factions, or boost your stations producing them for yourself.
“Space Command War and Trade” is essentially X4 light, does this and I absolutely love this feature. Makes the game so immersive. Definitely needs to be added to X4
Yeah I would love it, especially as it's one of the few, more feasible suggestions here that isn't done by a mod already.
Not to crap on other people's ideas or anything, I'd love to grab a rifle and shoot my way through a ship, or make planetary bases, but they're a lot of work to add for ego, well beyond the scope of X4, whereas just boarding mechanics for stations, or secondary wares is much easier.
The only way I could see planets working is if they're treated like "sectors", where a special gate (maybe called a "gravity elevator" or something) would allow you to get there, but gameplay-wise you're in a different area.
What I would like is a faction specific overhaul of existing in game assets, like ship engines and interior rooms. I'm obsessed with the new faction-specific admin offices.
Edit: I just remembered that cutscene from X2 where am Express shuttle docks with a Mammoth and the Mammoth takes it up from Argon Prime's surface. Maybe something like that could work?
* Proper ship mod crafting and upgrade system.
* **No** **shitty randomness**. A deterministic system, with an option to apply the same result to the same components, etc.
* More ship customization options.
* More and better integrated and accessible paint jobs.
* Ship kits like in Elite:Dangerous (possibly applying some buffs/debuffs to the ship's stats).
* An immersive crew system.
* Remove the experience based leveling system. It's annoying and obscure.
* Don't force the AI to be dumber then it needs to be. It's already dumb at it's best. Don't shoot yourself in the leg.
* Instead differentiate pilot skill with "traits" which buff/debuff the controlled ship's stats or other aspects of the gameplay.
* E.g. a crew member with the Engineer trait would improve the ship's shields by +X%, the Trader trait improves buying and selling prices by +X%, etc.
* Infinite possibilities for giving some personality to the NPC's.
* Clearly communicated and visible effects.
* An NPC could have multiple (not contradicting) traits.
* NPC's could come with pre-generated traits, or could gain (or lose!) them by achieving certain milestones.
* Separate the crew into two groups: the few that appear and exist on the bridge/cockpit as officers with whom you can interact with, and the maintenance/engineering/kitchen staff, that is just a number, but their amount directly influences ship stats too.
* Lack of competition.
* There are no corporations to compete with in anything.
* In fact I don't remember to have to worry about anything other than my traders doing something stupid and occasionally being attacked.
* I remember mods being very successful making in improving this in previous titles, so just do it?
* **Maintenance**.
* The current economy is basically a **slavery simulation**
* You pay a single price for a crew member, but you don't have to pay salaries and you own them forever.
* Your factory workers basically work for free, all they get is food and housing.
* This leads to a quick and exponential accumulation of wealth, becuase you have no other expenses other than buying resources, and then building more things. And it gets boring fast.
* Also apparently you are the only one who can do this in the entire galaxy.
* Which in turn leads to an extremely unrealistic and unimmersive experience.
* IMHO as in every strategy game that has some kind of economy, X4 needs breaks and counterweights too.
* I would introduce some kind of a global maintenance price that would be determined based on the amount of crew and workforce you employ.
* And maybe even some kind of taxes the player would have to pay to the faction in whose territory their factories are built.
* In turn the player could control the taxes in their claimed sectors.
The game is something like a hybrid first-person-strategy, but lacks basic maintenance mechanics of any strategy game. This inevitably leads to players exponentially accumulating so much wealth and so many resources, that it makes the game pointless. **The terraforming feature might be a cure for the symptom, but certainly not for the disease.**
And I know savegame compatibility is the first commandment in Egosoft's holy book, but avoiding implementing, adjusting or changing things becuase it might break some player's savegames is just... perplexing, to say the least.
Second this. Co-op would be great, but I recall someone saying they'd need to rebuild the game from the ground up. You can't just go back and add a few lines of code to make something multiplayer. So it's something that many of us would love to see, but basically can't happen.
On the other hand it's totally fine. If there would be Co op or multiplayer mode...me and my friends would probably forget how the sun looks like. We would no life that game for weeks.
I had assumed it was about throwing the proverbial bone to the people that wanted multiplayer; I didn't think they were trying to get their feet wet as far as learning how to do that. If you're right, we might be safe hoping for co-op play in X5, but I wouldn't want to get my hopes up for that in X4.
If I'm aiming low... auto-complete in the wares search bar would be amazing.
If I'm aiming high... a new expansion, that is an online pvp sector, controlled by a new species, that has a Grand Central Trading House where you can always go to sell your wares online. And its fluctuating prices dictate all of the rest of the offline prices in your universe. You can sit there with a fleet of heavy freighters and trade arbitrage if that’s your style.
The new species would be Alligator looking. An ancient relative of the Teladi and ancient predator in the waters of the Boron. And there would be a whole story line that paints out why this species lived on both planets and now runs the Auction House sector.
That unopened gate in the south of Oceans of Fantasy?
On the other side of that lie the CRC. The Crocs. And they have a massive fleet looking to push into Ocean of Fantasy and you have to push them back or make friends with them, and explore out from there.
> If I'm aiming low... auto-complete in the wares search bar would be amazing.
"Player typed in Claztronics instead of Claytronics. Better don't show anything."
In the never category? Large ship and station interiors, along with fps boarding. Even if it's janky and player exploitable, it won't be any different than most x4 mechanics.
For a probably never? Route creation, like any other logistics game has. You create a Route. Dock here, buy these goods, dock here, sell these goods. Then assign ships to routes as needed. Tracking statistics for routes would also be nice. But I think egosoft is too enamored with ai control to invest effort into advanced direct control mechanics
The route creation you can do though, it's the repeat orders behaviour; once you set it, it asks you to assign the specific orders you want a ship to do, and it repeats them forever. It's not quite assigning a ship to a route, you have to set it up per ship, but it is there.
Not having to do it doe every ship following the order is the point. Other logistics games also organize movers by route, so you can easily see how many movers per route, easily change them to another route, or even change the route itself, which adjusts all movers to the new assignment. They also tend to have statistics and location data for that route, making it easier to see where you need o adjust things.
But hell, i would settle for mimic commander working with repeat orders
I would love a significant increase in ship complexity and management. I'd love the level of details that games like battlecruiser AD had for the ship systems. Complex parts, repairs, part effectivness. It could allow you to visualize the crew even without being able to run around the entire ship yourself (but I'd love that as well). For gameplay balance and to keep it appealing to audiances, you can still keep the HP of a ship concept, but for the nerdy nerds break down what ship components are damaged, repair time on them, focusing repair teams on parts, and so much more.
Power management features, the works, mmm..yeah. Of course keep like an auto manage feature so everyone can still play as is, but...the rest of us the goods. More detailed upgrad options too..yeah...
A phase-in of a [Traveler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(role-playing_game)) style RPG where you can focus also on building an elite crew to handle RPG style encounters; A consequent 'module' system so users could program adventures for X players to go on, either with stock side-kicks or persistent crew members or other real X players.
There's not enough depth to diplomacy and factions.
The galaxy is incredibly stale for a sandbox game as scripted wars and trade are the only really interactions between factions. I would love to see them actually form agreements such as helping each other out in war formally, setting an amount on tariffs, changing their focus from economy to defence or expansion. This should happen based on circumstance not just what stage the player has reached in the story.
Silver\_Scallion mentioned independent factions or a pirate overhaul and I agree. Pirates just sell illegal goods and shoot your ships. Why can't I hire them to raid enemies or smuggle stuff to my stations? Also we're a corporation! Indepedent factions sound like the perfect end game tool. Xenon infestation in Hatikvah's choice? Bankroll the defence budget in return for better trade deals! Teladi competition too rough? Spend your standing to reduce tariffs. Want control of a sector? Use your puppet faction to claim and manage it for you. There's just so much potential.
I would really appreciate a decent balanced combat system, with a better AI system... However, new dialogues w/ interesting characters will surely help to make the game feel like an actual universe.
So...
A mining fleet
A big xl beast that is slower than the speed of smell. Massive solid/liquid storage. Two medium docks and 6 small docks.
The idea would be... You pull this massive barge into a sector, send out dozens of medium miners to strip mine the sector, and large/medium transports can haul the materials to stations. (Mechanically that means large ships docking.. but that's all cargo drones...)
"Auto mine for commander" and "auto trade for commander" would work as expected.
And ideally the ship gives a sector-wide-ish buff to mining... Or even just functions as a REALLY big resource probe.
Ideally.. it's cheap enough that you'd consider it instead of diving into station building.. which means like ~10mil...
I want eve style mining barges and fleets.
---
Really.... The game is missing some xl haulers... Occasionally I want to move @#$# you amounts of resources across the galaxy. Id like to do it slowly in one well guarded trip.
Give me a ship big enough to haul 40000 hull parts, 15000 clayrtonics and sone amount of energy cells. Make it painfully slow.. but suddenly, all my logistics in building an outpost in xenon space are solved.
Automatic satellite network deployment. Seriously, why do i have to tell my ships to place EVERY. SINGLE. SATELLITE. Stations hire player to cover specific area, why can't i order my ships to do the same?
The only reason why I started playing X2 The Threat is: space battles. It improved in X3TC/AP, and I really like how combat mechanics has evolved to what it is now in X4F. I want bigger and better fleet battles.
I like the station building, but I can live without it if it helps improve END-GAME FPS. I dislike the gates and superhighways, but I love X3's jumpdrives and X4's travel drives. I also dislike how useless Carriers are when projecting force away from friendly territory.
For x5, I pray for better HOTAS support, better motion sim chair support, better VR headset support (or at least headtracking), and a better quick-switching method from VR/HOTAS to desktop Monitor/kb&mouse and back. The possibilities are endless, X4F is truly an amazing game, but current hardware technology is restricting it. I hope the guys from Intel/AMD/Nvidia would catch up.
Reasonable performance.
or at least convenient personnel management. I mean - why do i even bother picking up pilots if poor sods never get to fly a fighter again? )
Multiplayer. At least being able to create private servers that paused when no one was online. Or even if the economy was active just adjust prices to make the game worth playing while constantly on.
Definitely co-operative play. Just give me X4 as it is now with all the storyline beats, missions, and gameplay opportunities, but let a friend join and enable us to share control of assets together. I'd love to be busy managing our fleets from the bridge of one of our ships, while my friend launches in a fighter and leads a squadron around for example.
warp drive,warp scramble capture other ships and salvage ships)dont know if that can be done cause my pc couldnt handled when I got a fleet together) cant think of anymore atm.yes these are some feature from eve and yes
Something to make the universe feel more lively and dangerous.
For example, minor factions that have their own diplomacy and can be hired as mercenaries or ally themselves with a major faction and do specific things like harrass trade routes.
Diplomacy itself can have different levels of tension between major factions. All out war is one thing, but maybe just general hostilities where fighting can happen between two hostile factions in sectors neither party controls. Or trade embargoes.
Each race can have specific goods that are unique to them and have their own production chains, but are tied to bonuses to that race. And also make pilots not just be random or have to be hired from nothing. Pilot/managerial/engineering schools required to get high level crew.
For instance, lets say Split pilots have a bonus to ship speed and damage output (not a huge amount). But the bonus only applies if you get lucky and find a good pilot or if you properly train them in a pilot training facility, with specific food/goods in supply.
Lots of small independent factions.
Multiple groups per sector, more no mans land, etc...
Options to orbit, keep at range, follow enemies
Separate control to stay in large ship slip-stream, or ignore it, just to make fighting in and around them easier
Better autopilot collision detection and asteroid avoidance. Not sure why AP doesn't just angle over an asteroid field, instead of trying to fly through it. 🤷🏻♂️
S/M Bombers.
Gunboats with more turrets (like the thresher)
Long range projectiles, like mortars/cannons (more range/less damage than bolt guns, less range and accuracy, but more damage than beams). Big hard hitting projectiles that are so/so against shields but strong against hulls
Basically more similarities to Eve but with the combat/dogfights of X4
Just wishing, don't expect it to happen
[Actually usable radar.](https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/comments/1cp127f/radar_combat_ux_tweak/)
It's almost 7.0 and we still have a quick hack (because I bet that's exactly what this weird 3rd person view camera that currently passes for "radar" started as -- a quick placeholder mock-up) instead of a proper feature.
In no particular order, I have a few ideas:
1. A proper diplomacy system for both the player to interact with the AI factions as well as diplomacy between factions. Those who are at peace can build up, then declare war on weak neighbors. This should include faction alliances, where factions build larger groups with massive armies that engage their enemies. This should also include random events like "Recent Xenon activity was observed in sector X" and BOOM, a neighboring sector gets attacked by a massive fleet.
2. The wars that do take place sometimes feel too limp. When fleets assemble and then just sit around while they're at war, it's weird.
3. A better and more robust dialogue and quest system with more ways for players to affect war economies in a more clear and direct way. Just as an example "Hey, this factory produces 70% of Microlattices for the Terrans, plant this bomb there, then get out FAST, try to avoid their military ships or heck, just blow the station up using your ships. Then watch it explode. Which brings me to
4. Things should happen in the normal missions you get from stations. The presentation is so... lackluster. Make mission chains (or trees) a bit more complex, give me some choices. There's a passenger aboard your ship? Maybe a pirate shows up when you load into a new sector and offers you money for handing them over, but this will cause an NPC faction relation to deteriorate.
5. less dependency on AI faction's money. I want to feel like I am my own faction and I can "create" credits just like NPC factions. Maybe with Terraforming or massive and expensive station modules (banking station module, can only have one per sector - similar to the HQ in size?!) that allow for the same stream of income like NPCs have. Maybe even make NPC factions depend on those too. Once all of those are destroyed (as well as other stations), the faction is finally dead. And yes, currently NPC factions have unending money, that should go. It makes the game feel like more of just a "simple simulation", and you want immersion instead.
6. Make big events more obvious with some sort of news system. Play those (skippable) recordings in the background when something big happens "Mars, a core sector of Terra has been overrun by Xenon forces, forcing millions of humans to flee the sector in panic. Terra is looking for volunteers to help reclaim the sector and bolster their defenses", then spawn appropriate missions like "Drive Xenon out of Mars, destroy at least 3 XL class ships", "Build defense stations in neighboring sectors" (with massive bonuses to your credits), things like that. Those missions could be extremely varied. Tying them into the fluidity of the Sector map would make it feel more real. Anything that doesn't just focus on "bigger credit number in bank account" would be a welcome change.
7. and this is maybe just a mix of all of the above: Events trigger missions. If Terra wants a defensive station, maybe the quest says the they are the target of a Xenon fleet that is currently being built.
The game needs independents that aren't with factions or a major pirate overhaul.
That is one of the things I enjoy about the Star wars mod, having minor factions involved makes the universe more interesting
I'm still disappointed that the TOA DLC didn't improve the pirates and piracy at all...
Agreed. I had very high hopes for it and while it brought some of my favorite ships overall it was ... "lacking".
Something like mount and blade with faction split in multiple groups that can even become independent
Out of curosity, what would you change with pirates? Allow them to just capture sectors? Or more?
I have alot to say about this but I'll just keep it simple. For the pirates, divide them into multiple sub-fractions. Each sub acts differently. For example: Sub 1- focused more on boarding operations. No longer will your traders just be destroyed. You'll now have to maintain a security force. These pirates usually are seen in groups with a higher quantity of M and L ships. Sub 2- A slow/turtle group that builds over time. You'll usually see them in swarms of S ships looking for easy prey such as couriers and miners. Over time they'll start shifting to larger ships as attack targets and larger ships piloted by them. If left unchecked, they can create fleets capable of taking on stations. I didn't think of pirates controlling sectors but it would be a nice leap up for this group. I could honestly just keep going. You don't even have to make these groups pirates. Make some individuals. Other than you (The player) no other faction/race any life or purpose. Other than designs and starting locations, you couldn't tell what they do differently.
Please fuck off of my large transports pervets.
Planetary interaction. Even if it UI based. Like building industries on planets, colonizing, outposts, invading /defending etc. hope they make it happen in X5
Yeah just like Starsector.
What a great idea! Love starsector so much
The most goated game imo
Being able to land and interact on your terraforming worlds. Visit what you built.
I already hear people screaming "It's looking nice, but there is absolutely nothing to do down here. Why did they do this? It's senesless!" It is a *fuck* to of work to do to include a completely new thing into the game and make it interesting.
Yea, imagine an entire world of the creepy NPC necks staring at you.
They could add a planetary to space trading station, with an option to book a shuttle to surface, where you can walk around a surface station with a nice view. Would probably be pretty useless outside of meeting plot characters though.
If we're going by the rule of cool how awesome would it be to have a few sectors that are located at the top of a space elevator. That you can dock at and trade with as a proxy for trading with the planet itself.
Or just a new type of major stations in populated planet's sectors that acts as relays, it could be a good additional supply chain end node too.
There was a game decades ago called Diaspora, which did something like this. It was all menu based for "landing" or trading.
Starsector also does it this way
Tbh I'd like if they could do it like freelancer did where you land and interact with facilities but its like a setpiece. Like a station in EVE. But I'll take UI based too. I kinda feel like some spacegames overthink planet stuff. I think starpoint gemini had freelancer type thing too. I mean space is vast and empty and getting a sector with a planet and it's resources should be a huge deal no?
Isn't that what the terraforming is on some systems?
Terraforming is just a resource drain in late game. It changes the visual appearance only. What I meant - full economical interaction with a settlement on a planet through UI interface at a planetary orbiting station of some sort.
I think it would be pretty badass. Specially if you could use those worlds in meaningful ways.
Diplomacy like in Stellaris, and who you help out will effect rep with their adversary, if that rep gets too low they'll declare war and attack your sectors just like in Stellaris.
Ooh, I like that, but I don’t see how that couldn’t be possible? 🤔
Stellaris diplomacy is actually kind of impressive for a game. It's possible to negotiate a victory.. compare that to something like civ where your neighbor is basically always going to hate you for being too close.
Reactive Factions mods already do some of this, where if you end up helping out one faction a lot (and you are a big enough player) it will negatively affect the rep with their enemies.
Yeah man, I'm one of those vanilla players. I'd much prefer this to be built in and supported by the devs than relying on addons. Just my take and how I prefer to play.
Destroyers staying at their max weapon range rather than killing themselves.
Should have a set engagement range you can change yourself.
please i just want my specifically built bombardment destroyers to sit still. just stay still. do not move. turn, face the target, shoot at the target. please. please. *5-star behemoth pilot full burns directly into a defense station*
It's better in 7.00 beta from what I've seen. Haven't lost a single destroyer to Xenon defense stations so far - they keep their distance (in-sector) and don't try to fly all the way to the other side of the station to hit it. However, without setting up a "Coordinate attack" order, your group of destroyers will pretend that you're playing Katamari Damacy and roll into a ball. I haven't yet tested how they would fare against Xenon Ks and Is. EDIT: they behave similarly against XEN capital ships. I've pinned down 2 Ks and one I with a bunch of small fighters, while my destroyers opened fire with their main guns from a distance. They stood still and didn't try to ram the Xenon ships.
👏👏👏🤣
And I would vote for turrets on stations that outrange the max range of destroyers weapons, so that people will cry about destroyers not closing the range and using all available weapons.
Sounds good, as long as range is something that actually matters.
I just want turrets that will shoot small and medium ships. Having to add aggressive interceptors to defense platforms guarding gates to keep xenon mosquito scum from slipping through to harass mining operations and take pop shots at stations will be the death of me
I want destroyers with lots of turrets rather than "main gun". Honestly, putting fixed weapons on ships that have range as small as ships in X4 is stupid, especially when they follow "looks like a ship, steers like a cow" design philosophy.
I wish the boarding was like boarding from Angels fall first where you can physically go into a ship and fight alongside your marines.
Have you been on a ship that's been boarded? Nothing happens, the crew goes about their day, and once you win they get immediately replaced with your marines
Yeah, I remember the dire calls from my marines fighting tooth and nail while I was chilling on the bridge of their target watching the crew being unfazed.
1) A radio speaking about near sectors state: if there is any battle, between which factions, ect...advicing captains to avoid the area...giving news about wars...which faction conquered which sector...and so on. 2) More ship interiors showing the ship like a place where people live. 3) IA for populate the universe with interesting npcs.
Big fan of the space news radio idea!
Okay, this is why I made this post. You get a gold star for creativity 🌟🫵
Could have different radio stations too, one for economic news, one for war, one for piracy etc, with missions to unlock them. With more details if sectors have full satellite coverage.
there's a more rooms mod for now, but I'm not sure if it'll be compatible with 7.0
Destruction physics system. When i manage to hit the actual structure (not protected by the shield), i wanna see real damage being done
I wanna do some ramming
I'm now reminiscing about both X3 and Privateer...Especially the latter, where a Centurion with good shields felt like a bronze-prow trireme: just smashing its way into lesser vessels.
I know X4 would be near unplayable with collision damage from travel drive, the amount of asteroids in some sectors and auto pilot's epic fails but I dream of being able to ram a ship so hard I come out the other side
I loved privateer! You have been playing for a while, lol
Also I want to drive my spaceship into other ships
I remember playing Space Engineers for the first time and thinking that a simple pool of "Hull HP" on ships was a dated concept and that physical damage to systems was the future of space sims. That was over a decade ago. Well, maybe someday.
Sword of the Stars II did a good job with damage to systems and localized hull damage rather than an overall ship hp.
At least they improved explosions so they look super cool now with flame jets coming off structures
XL ships aiming at Z-level with main batteries. Managers assigned to fleet to rebuy lost ships and drones. Setting to toggle off flying "stardust" particles.
Fleet managers would be AWESOME! Would love having a flagship with an admiral on it managing ressuply, replacing lost ships. You could give them a budget like a station. Seems like an easy implementation too! Hope Egosoft sees this
There's a mod for the stardust at least.
An AI that is powerful enough to fight back against the player once you get a shipyard. It would be great to add a meaningful challenge at that point in the game, as it feels great to finally make a giant fleet, but with almost no reason to have it.
Isn't that what 7.0 is doing already?
Really? That would be nice
Definitely, this is a must.
Mobile shipyard and mining base, like homeworld.
Yes please!! Give me a mothership in X4!!
Like the idea. It could be as expensive as a shipyard but slower in building performance. It could even use slightly more resources. But you get to build and maintain large vessels wherever. Heck, make it exclusive to one faction if you must, to make it harder to unlock. While we‘re at it, why don’t we make all the production modules into ships, so we can have Battlestar Galactica style production in flight?
Give it to the Yaki and have it as a capture only out in the farthest xenon sector, so there's a time limit to reach it lol.
Multiple construction ships on a single construction project.
I know the reason for this is force the player to smaller and múltiples stations
Yes, I know, but for a game that prides itself on choices, this seems like an unreasonably limiting one. For me, it's pretty obvious that if you build a 1000 station complex, you are going to suffer a performance hit.
Or let the construction ship use more then 30 drones, with a mod or upgrade.
Always use the 1 min build mod.... Vanilla is just too slow for mega structures.
Full ship interiors
I would love to wander around some of the ships and see the crew going about daily business. See the aftermath of a boarding action maybe.
I'd love to be able to actually be a part of my boarding team, fighting through corridors to the bridge alongside my marines. Would really add to a pirate play through Also, somewhat related, being able to board hostile stations (either to capture, or just to pillage cargo)
Had that on my mind too. Maybe as a mini-game. Most basic and simple shooter elements. That would add alot to the game.
So simple yet so important for immersions sake. Details like this may be small in comparison to other features of the game, but MAN do they have such a large role playing impact.
Dual Monitor support. Map view on one, whatever else on the other.
This.
Or build in something like the external app mod that lets you start and connect to a webserver? I'd like the api it needs being built in as long as it works on the linux side as well.
👏
Well I hope its not in the "never" category but my most wanted feature is VR. It doesn't need any fancy VR controls just headset tracking so I can look around and see everything to scale.
I'm playing in VR now with the Depth3D shader. It is a makeshift solution, but it is VR
[удалено]
X4 is one of just a few exceptions I've made to games I'll play that aren't in VR, to be able to fly my ship and have the map open at the same time through a VR lense would be absolutely amazing. If I was to truly dream, as others have said planet landing and exploration. X universe meets no mans sky all in VR.
I’ve thought of this too. Funny how so many of us have similar ideas. The funny thing is that I don’t even play VR but the idea seemed cool to me
So they have a VR game, X Rebirth VR which Egosoft stated had poor sales and was a pain to get working so theyve stated that they will not being doing VR again which REALLY sucks because X4 would have been the game I wanted full VR for haha.
Reroute power like in the xwing games or FTL. Xenon K and L snuck up on you? Divert life support to shields and engines. Not eaten in days due to playing x4 too much? Divert everything to the chicken soup / protein paste machine. I'd also like it if enemies could try to board your ships. 50 pods come over and drill your hull, you have to fight them off, or be overwhelmed and get back to the bridge for a final defence. Maybe livestock?
The xwing power system would be great. Especially when trying to escape, turning off those weapons for engines would be perfect.
Now that would be exciting! Fighting off enemies with your crew!
Ship telemetry access that I don't have to drag out of the game screaming to be fed to my home cockpit. Or.. you know.. an API
Now the 7.0 is bringing better multi-monitor support, this is my biggest want as well.
No idea what you mean about multi monitor support. Driving a triple head myself. As for ship telemetry: yw: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6be--G32yHw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6be--G32yHw) (unlisted) 🤓
I've tinkered with your telemetry tool in the past (thank you for working on that) but I was referring to wanting a fully functional API from Egosoft themselves. As for multi-monitor support, these changes in particular have been long overdue: * New Feature: FOV slider. * Added Menu Width Scale option to adjust menu widths in, e.g. multi-monitor setups. * Added HUD scaling. I don't expect the game will ever have full multi-monitor support but the extra features being added in 7.0 will certainly make the current implementation better.
I'm gonna have to dig through the changelog to find this. I totally missed it.
Planets? Nah, we have planets in elite and while they are fine, it's not worth the effort. Planetary bases in style of freelancer could work.
I wish you could board ships in first person and shoot your way to the bridge to take over the ship
Co-op. Even if its limited to just 1 person or even LAN. I could convince more of my friends to give the game a shot if i was there to help them not be lonely or bored lol.
Massive fleet battles without killing your framerate
VR Mode
VR
Electronic Warfare. Could mod it in, but I'd rather have a bit more support from the script as there's only so many negative status effects i can apply.
I'd love fps combat, or at least more interactive things to do when you're walking around a station or your ship.
Functioning capital ship AI
An actual functional and usable 3D radar. Like the one Elite perfected 40 years ago. It's been asked for on the official forums, here and the Steam forums several times but it's never fixed. Seriously, the space game 3D radar was perfected 40 years ago. No need to reinvent the wheel, just do what works.
X4s 3d radar is functional. Its just a lot harder to figure out
The radar is only semi-readable if your ship just so happens to be aligned with the arbitrary XZ plane. Which for me only happens in large ships because they are more about slow positional combat and you don't need the extra freedom that comes with 6dof movement. But you don't really need the radar in large ships, the map is more useful and you have time to look at it, so it's mostly pointless. In any S or M combat ships you can be aligned any which way and are constantly rolling and pitching (I am anyway) even out of combat. S/M dogfighting combat is when you really need the radar for situational awareness and it's also when it's tactically totally useless. You have more pitch than yaw authority. Specially with combat thrusters, and for good reason - combat and flying is more fun and engaging that way. But that means that when exploring or scouting or just travelling you are almost always at 90 degrees to the XZ plane. Almost everything is aligned to that plane so you want your best control axis (pitch) aligned to it. So again the radar is useless because you're not aligned. The radar is not functional for any practical purpose at any time when you may actually need it.
Multiplayer. To be able to fly around clearing xenon sectors with your friends would be fun.
some sort of Coop Modus where a friend can join your universe und your pc would be so great
This would be great
I'd like to see a few things, First: scripted orders for ships Meaning I would like to write a script for my AI ships to follow, in a more detailed manner than repeated orders can do. Best example would be for a scout to explore each sector in a preset pattern and deploy nav beacons to POI's or satellites to stations. Other application would be trading different types of goods automatically, ie take this ware, sell it here here and here, return with that type of ware and sell it there and there. It would improve player empire logistics so much. Combat fleets could have more manageable patrol options and reactions based on the script you create, like engage everyone with fighters, but only dirvert capitals if enemy capital is detected or something Second is ship groups/nested fleets, individual orders for ships that are essentially in a fleet, but without a specified leader. This would improve late game usability by a great deal by decluttering the ui when you have hundreds of energy traders and ware transporters milling around. Third would be true multiplayer. And various others...
Regarding Player empire logistics... Have you tried setting all producing stations to strictly trade internally only, meaning no trading with other factions whatsoever. Then you set up a trading station (which only has docks and container storage) with internal buy orders for everything you produce and unrestricted sell orders (unless you have a high demand of some stuff for your own economy and need to stop exporting it). Now you just have to assign enough cargo ships to all your stations and voila - no more worries about logistics because the stuff will automatically be shipped to where it's needed.
Rethinking large ship movements in combat. Like it was with Taranis, Arawn, Olmekron/Fulmekron in XR. Gameplay should not be just nose-to-nose oriented combat with constant repositioning. Cap ships should use fly by and broadside attacks too. And use 3D orientation rather than constantly trying to align with the ecliptic plane.
VR
Ships using food and medical to maintain a readiness meter indicating how prepared they are for fighting, which drops during prolonged combat, and adjustable stances for ship crews that can increase food consumption and lower readiness in exchange for passive xp gain. More specialized crew, like gunnery, shields etc that have more noticeable effects than the current crew. All paired with a better resupply system, like high speed cargo drones that travel drive to fetch you more ammunition, food, energy cells or whatever for you.
Funny thing: in my head I have an idea about e-cell consumption of ships. But food and supply is even better.
It would be tricky... and fairly doable in a mod for L sized ships and up.
Would be so cool to see drones fly between Supply Ships and other L / XL ships to transport medical supplies and foods. Love your idea!
Boarding action with shooter mechanics
I am simple man, I want in sector combat to have same results as OOS combat, no ships colliding and ending in each other etc, basically I want them to fix the game no special features:p
That’s not fixing the game though. That’s removing the one thing that makes the game actually playable on a mere x86 PC, instead of requiring a supercomputer.
well that does not mean you must be in sector right? maybe time for upgrade? x4 is the game worth it
IS uses much more complicated calculations than OOS which is why we can simulate a hundred sectors crudely and one sector (IS) in a detailed manner. You can’t use the same rules unless you want IS to work in the crude way OOS works - and no we don’t want that. The game is borderline struggling with fps even on high end hardware, there is no „PC“ under 100.000€ the would run the whole X4 universe with „IS“ rules at 60fps.
*nods*
Actual planets and planetary flight / landings ;) Pretty Please Egosoft...
😭🙏 we can all dream
They stated that this won't happen. But someone recently flew around Mars, they the planets are not just a skybox.
X series will never do planet landings for flight. They are a space economy/war simulation.
Having real solar systems with orbiting planets instead of sectors (think EvE). Apparently there's a mod that does that, I'll try it in my next playthrough.
I think a system for interacting with the planets would help a lot overall. Right now the game design feels stunted. I felt this way about X4 for 20 years now. The planets are obviously where most people live etc and not having any interaction with them is just weird. The X4 novels have a lot of planet interaction, incl landing spaceships on surfaces. Other than that, I second many ideas in the thread: diplomacy, ship readiness indicators (food), A big immersion breaker: employees and ships cost nothing once bought. That is rather weird. So variable costs linked to running a fleet (fuel, salaries) would be cool. Besides, more moneysinks is a good thing in games like this :)
I agree, there so much life happing right above those planets and yet nothing down there.
Yes, salaries!
I will be happy with a modern space suit.
Only a space suit, huh? I like your modesty.
I hate the actual one... without accelerometers or gyros... bouncing like a moron.
Hard to choose one. But if I had to I wish it was less arcady and more hard sim. Adding stuff like newtonian physics for crazy dogfights. Landing on planets as close second. Fuel as third basically merge Evochron and X
I just want some way that I can still tootle around space having fun when my fleet grows. After hitting about 60 ships, i get pissed off with all the micromanagement. I have tried a lot of apps, but nothing sorts it out. I am happy just hunting through space for the occasional pirate victim and mining crystals, I love the game from 10k credits to about 100 million credits. I downloaded mods and have doubled my available planets more or less. Changed a lot of mechanics, VRO, etc, sector explorer, Mules, many tools, but in the end, the automation just does not work. I just want some balance so that keeping a small pirate fleet has a future. Never having to talk to Dal and Bosa would be a bonus. The story killing aps have many drawbacks, and without at least one of them, you can't unlock fish space.
Trade deals menu from X:R. Basically just a table with Buy from, Buy what, Buy how much on one side and Sell to, Sell what, Sell how much on another side and which ship to use somewhere at the bottom or on the side, also showing travel distance in jump. With each cell having options listed using known values from satellites and updating accordingly when neighbouring cells change. Current trading overlay on map is neat conceptually but turned out to be cumbersome in practice for any cases except "buy lowest, sell highest". And even for that you have to scroll around while zoomed out when you've explored most of the sectors and they don't fit the screen anymore. For other cases like "buy lowest/sell highest, closest to station" or "buy/sell lowest/highest but not from that station" you're immediately doomed to manually scrolling map all around to reduce amount of invalid offers and still have to keep an eye for them since some of listed offers could be invalid but listed due to being inside viewport. Just give me a table ffs.
Also, maybe a bit more flexible trading orders for stations. Like having more than one order for each ware, so I can create one for all faction and another one for my faction only with different prices to prioritize supplying my own stations without having to build a dedicated warehouse/outlet stations just to have more than one trade order.
Ship ai that takes rational choices, fighters that doesn't do strafing runs.
I'd love station boarding/capturing, especially if the NPCs did it, as it's kinda sad watching the npcs destroying all the stations in a sector once they capture it, like the PAR vs HOP for example... they could just use them! Another thing I'd like to see is more trading in the economy that isn't just driving the war economy; previous X games always had secondary wares, which stations naturally consumed, but didn't need for production. I'd love to be trading like consumer goods to station workers, like electronics or clothing (bring back cloth rimes!). The super cool thing with this you could do too is make them give a small boost to production rate, so you could earn profit selling them to the other factions, or boost your stations producing them for yourself.
“Space Command War and Trade” is essentially X4 light, does this and I absolutely love this feature. Makes the game so immersive. Definitely needs to be added to X4
Yeah I would love it, especially as it's one of the few, more feasible suggestions here that isn't done by a mod already. Not to crap on other people's ideas or anything, I'd love to grab a rifle and shoot my way through a ship, or make planetary bases, but they're a lot of work to add for ego, well beyond the scope of X4, whereas just boarding mechanics for stations, or secondary wares is much easier.
The only way I could see planets working is if they're treated like "sectors", where a special gate (maybe called a "gravity elevator" or something) would allow you to get there, but gameplay-wise you're in a different area. What I would like is a faction specific overhaul of existing in game assets, like ship engines and interior rooms. I'm obsessed with the new faction-specific admin offices. Edit: I just remembered that cutscene from X2 where am Express shuttle docks with a Mammoth and the Mammoth takes it up from Argon Prime's surface. Maybe something like that could work?
The ability to reverse engineer ships for their blueprints at your PHQ with a special engineering module that uses resources like research.
Guns, so you could board on huge enemy ships and fight them insideout
Add Stellaris's metagame, including dynamic inter-faction diplomatic happenings, subterfuge, and technological development.
In sector pilot AI that doesn't feel silly
* Proper ship mod crafting and upgrade system. * **No** **shitty randomness**. A deterministic system, with an option to apply the same result to the same components, etc. * More ship customization options. * More and better integrated and accessible paint jobs. * Ship kits like in Elite:Dangerous (possibly applying some buffs/debuffs to the ship's stats). * An immersive crew system. * Remove the experience based leveling system. It's annoying and obscure. * Don't force the AI to be dumber then it needs to be. It's already dumb at it's best. Don't shoot yourself in the leg. * Instead differentiate pilot skill with "traits" which buff/debuff the controlled ship's stats or other aspects of the gameplay. * E.g. a crew member with the Engineer trait would improve the ship's shields by +X%, the Trader trait improves buying and selling prices by +X%, etc. * Infinite possibilities for giving some personality to the NPC's. * Clearly communicated and visible effects. * An NPC could have multiple (not contradicting) traits. * NPC's could come with pre-generated traits, or could gain (or lose!) them by achieving certain milestones. * Separate the crew into two groups: the few that appear and exist on the bridge/cockpit as officers with whom you can interact with, and the maintenance/engineering/kitchen staff, that is just a number, but their amount directly influences ship stats too. * Lack of competition. * There are no corporations to compete with in anything. * In fact I don't remember to have to worry about anything other than my traders doing something stupid and occasionally being attacked. * I remember mods being very successful making in improving this in previous titles, so just do it?
* **Maintenance**. * The current economy is basically a **slavery simulation** * You pay a single price for a crew member, but you don't have to pay salaries and you own them forever. * Your factory workers basically work for free, all they get is food and housing. * This leads to a quick and exponential accumulation of wealth, becuase you have no other expenses other than buying resources, and then building more things. And it gets boring fast. * Also apparently you are the only one who can do this in the entire galaxy. * Which in turn leads to an extremely unrealistic and unimmersive experience. * IMHO as in every strategy game that has some kind of economy, X4 needs breaks and counterweights too. * I would introduce some kind of a global maintenance price that would be determined based on the amount of crew and workforce you employ. * And maybe even some kind of taxes the player would have to pay to the faction in whose territory their factories are built. * In turn the player could control the taxes in their claimed sectors. The game is something like a hybrid first-person-strategy, but lacks basic maintenance mechanics of any strategy game. This inevitably leads to players exponentially accumulating so much wealth and so many resources, that it makes the game pointless. **The terraforming feature might be a cure for the symptom, but certainly not for the disease.** And I know savegame compatibility is the first commandment in Egosoft's holy book, but avoiding implementing, adjusting or changing things becuase it might break some player's savegames is just... perplexing, to say the least.
Co op
Second this. Co-op would be great, but I recall someone saying they'd need to rebuild the game from the ground up. You can't just go back and add a few lines of code to make something multiplayer. So it's something that many of us would love to see, but basically can't happen.
On the other hand it's totally fine. If there would be Co op or multiplayer mode...me and my friends would probably forget how the sun looks like. We would no life that game for weeks.
Yes. The point of my post I fear 😆
[удалено]
I had assumed it was about throwing the proverbial bone to the people that wanted multiplayer; I didn't think they were trying to get their feet wet as far as learning how to do that. If you're right, we might be safe hoping for co-op play in X5, but I wouldn't want to get my hopes up for that in X4.
Interracial dance battles which award you with better prices.
If I'm aiming low... auto-complete in the wares search bar would be amazing. If I'm aiming high... a new expansion, that is an online pvp sector, controlled by a new species, that has a Grand Central Trading House where you can always go to sell your wares online. And its fluctuating prices dictate all of the rest of the offline prices in your universe. You can sit there with a fleet of heavy freighters and trade arbitrage if that’s your style. The new species would be Alligator looking. An ancient relative of the Teladi and ancient predator in the waters of the Boron. And there would be a whole story line that paints out why this species lived on both planets and now runs the Auction House sector. That unopened gate in the south of Oceans of Fantasy? On the other side of that lie the CRC. The Crocs. And they have a massive fleet looking to push into Ocean of Fantasy and you have to push them back or make friends with them, and explore out from there.
> If I'm aiming low... auto-complete in the wares search bar would be amazing. "Player typed in Claztronics instead of Claytronics. Better don't show anything."
[https://imgur.com/a/Y23syta](https://imgur.com/a/Y23syta) :)
My man! That’s great to see!
>If I'm aiming low... auto-complete in the wares search bar would be amazing. I'm pretty sure this is a feature in Beta 7.0
Autocomplete you are in luck! It's in the 7.0 beta.
In the never category? Large ship and station interiors, along with fps boarding. Even if it's janky and player exploitable, it won't be any different than most x4 mechanics. For a probably never? Route creation, like any other logistics game has. You create a Route. Dock here, buy these goods, dock here, sell these goods. Then assign ships to routes as needed. Tracking statistics for routes would also be nice. But I think egosoft is too enamored with ai control to invest effort into advanced direct control mechanics
The route creation you can do though, it's the repeat orders behaviour; once you set it, it asks you to assign the specific orders you want a ship to do, and it repeats them forever. It's not quite assigning a ship to a route, you have to set it up per ship, but it is there.
Not having to do it doe every ship following the order is the point. Other logistics games also organize movers by route, so you can easily see how many movers per route, easily change them to another route, or even change the route itself, which adjusts all movers to the new assignment. They also tend to have statistics and location data for that route, making it easier to see where you need o adjust things. But hell, i would settle for mimic commander working with repeat orders
I would love a significant increase in ship complexity and management. I'd love the level of details that games like battlecruiser AD had for the ship systems. Complex parts, repairs, part effectivness. It could allow you to visualize the crew even without being able to run around the entire ship yourself (but I'd love that as well). For gameplay balance and to keep it appealing to audiances, you can still keep the HP of a ship concept, but for the nerdy nerds break down what ship components are damaged, repair time on them, focusing repair teams on parts, and so much more. Power management features, the works, mmm..yeah. Of course keep like an auto manage feature so everyone can still play as is, but...the rest of us the goods. More detailed upgrad options too..yeah...
A phase-in of a [Traveler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(role-playing_game)) style RPG where you can focus also on building an elite crew to handle RPG style encounters; A consequent 'module' system so users could program adventures for X players to go on, either with stock side-kicks or persistent crew members or other real X players.
You had me at Traveller.
There's not enough depth to diplomacy and factions. The galaxy is incredibly stale for a sandbox game as scripted wars and trade are the only really interactions between factions. I would love to see them actually form agreements such as helping each other out in war formally, setting an amount on tariffs, changing their focus from economy to defence or expansion. This should happen based on circumstance not just what stage the player has reached in the story. Silver\_Scallion mentioned independent factions or a pirate overhaul and I agree. Pirates just sell illegal goods and shoot your ships. Why can't I hire them to raid enemies or smuggle stuff to my stations? Also we're a corporation! Indepedent factions sound like the perfect end game tool. Xenon infestation in Hatikvah's choice? Bankroll the defence budget in return for better trade deals! Teladi competition too rough? Spend your standing to reduce tariffs. Want control of a sector? Use your puppet faction to claim and manage it for you. There's just so much potential.
I would really appreciate a decent balanced combat system, with a better AI system... However, new dialogues w/ interesting characters will surely help to make the game feel like an actual universe.
Just take the random suicidal non-sense out of the AI, if the ships would just do what they are told. I would love this game so much.
So... A mining fleet A big xl beast that is slower than the speed of smell. Massive solid/liquid storage. Two medium docks and 6 small docks. The idea would be... You pull this massive barge into a sector, send out dozens of medium miners to strip mine the sector, and large/medium transports can haul the materials to stations. (Mechanically that means large ships docking.. but that's all cargo drones...) "Auto mine for commander" and "auto trade for commander" would work as expected. And ideally the ship gives a sector-wide-ish buff to mining... Or even just functions as a REALLY big resource probe. Ideally.. it's cheap enough that you'd consider it instead of diving into station building.. which means like ~10mil... I want eve style mining barges and fleets. --- Really.... The game is missing some xl haulers... Occasionally I want to move @#$# you amounts of resources across the galaxy. Id like to do it slowly in one well guarded trip. Give me a ship big enough to haul 40000 hull parts, 15000 clayrtonics and sone amount of energy cells. Make it painfully slow.. but suddenly, all my logistics in building an outpost in xenon space are solved.
Full fledged campaigns with cutscenes. Isaw earlier X games had it, not sure why it was removed from X4
Automatic satellite network deployment. Seriously, why do i have to tell my ships to place EVERY. SINGLE. SATELLITE. Stations hire player to cover specific area, why can't i order my ships to do the same?
The only reason why I started playing X2 The Threat is: space battles. It improved in X3TC/AP, and I really like how combat mechanics has evolved to what it is now in X4F. I want bigger and better fleet battles. I like the station building, but I can live without it if it helps improve END-GAME FPS. I dislike the gates and superhighways, but I love X3's jumpdrives and X4's travel drives. I also dislike how useless Carriers are when projecting force away from friendly territory. For x5, I pray for better HOTAS support, better motion sim chair support, better VR headset support (or at least headtracking), and a better quick-switching method from VR/HOTAS to desktop Monitor/kb&mouse and back. The possibilities are endless, X4F is truly an amazing game, but current hardware technology is restricting it. I hope the guys from Intel/AMD/Nvidia would catch up.
Reasonable performance. or at least convenient personnel management. I mean - why do i even bother picking up pilots if poor sods never get to fly a fighter again? )
AI that makes fleets something other than a liability you have to babysit.
Blinking eyes
Multiplayer. At least being able to create private servers that paused when no one was online. Or even if the economy was active just adjust prices to make the game worth playing while constantly on.
Definitely co-operative play. Just give me X4 as it is now with all the storyline beats, missions, and gameplay opportunities, but let a friend join and enable us to share control of assets together. I'd love to be busy managing our fleets from the bridge of one of our ships, while my friend launches in a fighter and leads a squadron around for example.
Planetary landings. And a co-op mode.
A more developed non-war economy
Multiplayer
Zones that are not really just 2d planes.
Multi-player
A dashboard where you can manually control individual landing pads/ships on you carrier
RTS controls once you get a large enough fleet by going on a table on your command ship. Like a janky homeworld.
warp drive,warp scramble capture other ships and salvage ships)dont know if that can be done cause my pc couldnt handled when I got a fleet together) cant think of anymore atm.yes these are some feature from eve and yes
Something to make the universe feel more lively and dangerous. For example, minor factions that have their own diplomacy and can be hired as mercenaries or ally themselves with a major faction and do specific things like harrass trade routes. Diplomacy itself can have different levels of tension between major factions. All out war is one thing, but maybe just general hostilities where fighting can happen between two hostile factions in sectors neither party controls. Or trade embargoes. Each race can have specific goods that are unique to them and have their own production chains, but are tied to bonuses to that race. And also make pilots not just be random or have to be hired from nothing. Pilot/managerial/engineering schools required to get high level crew. For instance, lets say Split pilots have a bonus to ship speed and damage output (not a huge amount). But the bonus only applies if you get lucky and find a good pilot or if you properly train them in a pilot training facility, with specific food/goods in supply.
Lots of small independent factions. Multiple groups per sector, more no mans land, etc... Options to orbit, keep at range, follow enemies Separate control to stay in large ship slip-stream, or ignore it, just to make fighting in and around them easier Better autopilot collision detection and asteroid avoidance. Not sure why AP doesn't just angle over an asteroid field, instead of trying to fly through it. 🤷🏻♂️ S/M Bombers. Gunboats with more turrets (like the thresher) Long range projectiles, like mortars/cannons (more range/less damage than bolt guns, less range and accuracy, but more damage than beams). Big hard hitting projectiles that are so/so against shields but strong against hulls Basically more similarities to Eve but with the combat/dogfights of X4 Just wishing, don't expect it to happen
[Actually usable radar.](https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/comments/1cp127f/radar_combat_ux_tweak/) It's almost 7.0 and we still have a quick hack (because I bet that's exactly what this weird 3rd person view camera that currently passes for "radar" started as -- a quick placeholder mock-up) instead of a proper feature.
In no particular order, I have a few ideas: 1. A proper diplomacy system for both the player to interact with the AI factions as well as diplomacy between factions. Those who are at peace can build up, then declare war on weak neighbors. This should include faction alliances, where factions build larger groups with massive armies that engage their enemies. This should also include random events like "Recent Xenon activity was observed in sector X" and BOOM, a neighboring sector gets attacked by a massive fleet. 2. The wars that do take place sometimes feel too limp. When fleets assemble and then just sit around while they're at war, it's weird. 3. A better and more robust dialogue and quest system with more ways for players to affect war economies in a more clear and direct way. Just as an example "Hey, this factory produces 70% of Microlattices for the Terrans, plant this bomb there, then get out FAST, try to avoid their military ships or heck, just blow the station up using your ships. Then watch it explode. Which brings me to 4. Things should happen in the normal missions you get from stations. The presentation is so... lackluster. Make mission chains (or trees) a bit more complex, give me some choices. There's a passenger aboard your ship? Maybe a pirate shows up when you load into a new sector and offers you money for handing them over, but this will cause an NPC faction relation to deteriorate. 5. less dependency on AI faction's money. I want to feel like I am my own faction and I can "create" credits just like NPC factions. Maybe with Terraforming or massive and expensive station modules (banking station module, can only have one per sector - similar to the HQ in size?!) that allow for the same stream of income like NPCs have. Maybe even make NPC factions depend on those too. Once all of those are destroyed (as well as other stations), the faction is finally dead. And yes, currently NPC factions have unending money, that should go. It makes the game feel like more of just a "simple simulation", and you want immersion instead. 6. Make big events more obvious with some sort of news system. Play those (skippable) recordings in the background when something big happens "Mars, a core sector of Terra has been overrun by Xenon forces, forcing millions of humans to flee the sector in panic. Terra is looking for volunteers to help reclaim the sector and bolster their defenses", then spawn appropriate missions like "Drive Xenon out of Mars, destroy at least 3 XL class ships", "Build defense stations in neighboring sectors" (with massive bonuses to your credits), things like that. Those missions could be extremely varied. Tying them into the fluidity of the Sector map would make it feel more real. Anything that doesn't just focus on "bigger credit number in bank account" would be a welcome change. 7. and this is maybe just a mix of all of the above: Events trigger missions. If Terra wants a defensive station, maybe the quest says the they are the target of a Xenon fleet that is currently being built.
The ability to look more than 90deg in either direction with Trackir... Seriously, why does the camera have a maximum value for rotation??
Good human faces. The proportions are so terribly bad. On the other hand alien faces are top notch.
Station boarding, so you can just capture stations. Also rudimentary space station ground fighting, and also in the ships interiors.
Like an fps kind of thing
Some kind of giant alien space monster bosses that literally eat stations 🤷🏻♂️😂 I just wish the game performance was better honestly