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I'd be surprised if Boron DLC wasn't the last or second-last DLC for X4. They gotta be working on X5 on some level by now. Or at least a X4:Terran Conflict.
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Apr 9, 2023 00:42
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Did they ever add in pilot orders that let me pay someone to scout systems and drop satellites? In the base game specifically, I'm sure there's a mod for it (there always was in previous games).
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Apr 9, 2023 00:47
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Thinking about it, the thing I miss most from X3 was the corporations. So yeah, what TheDeadlyShoe said - it's not like it's unprecedented, because Duke's are in-game already, so it's not that big of a jump. If corporations were an actual economic competitor to the player, by filling niches like the player does, that'd make it different enough to justify adding it, I think.
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Apr 9, 2023 00:51
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NeurosisHead posted:Did they ever add in pilot orders that let me pay someone to scout systems and drop satellites? In the base game specifically, I'm sure there's a mod for it (there always was in previous games). There is indeed a mod for it. It's an order you give to one of your ships and it goes around spreading satellites, restocking as needed.
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Apr 9, 2023 00:52
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Taerkar posted:There is indeed a mod for it. It's an order you give to one of your ships and it goes around spreading satellites, restocking as needed. Aside from the fact that it adds a considerable amount of lag, it's basically just cheating by going to pre-determined places instead of taking account of how bases move around based on a creation-seed at game-start. I want a satellite mod that scouts sectors and when it encounters stations, it places satellite a there (unless there's already one that covers the station).
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Apr 9, 2023 00:54
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I don't think so, per the description it places satellites near stations.
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Apr 9, 2023 00:56
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Taerkar posted:I don't think so, per the description it places satellites near stations.
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Apr 9, 2023 00:57
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There's a mod that adds corporations as minor factions. It's pretty cool and I enjoyed seeing them around my last save, though I didn't end up playing long enough to really get a feel for how they impacted the economy. https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=181&t=433943
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Apr 9, 2023 01:23
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:Then it's different than the one I found, and I'm gonna need a link. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936819179 As a potential warning though the last time I played some X4 it crashed for the first time in forever. Might have been from this mod or just coincidence.
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Apr 9, 2023 01:51
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OwlFancier posted:The X series, and this game, does have a quite clear path of improvement over time. My forgiveness of the jank and the reason I keep coming back is that despite this being a 20 year many game series, it remains one German guy's labour of love and attempt to reach a singular vision of his perfect game. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Apr 9, 2023 |
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Apr 9, 2023 09:41
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:I'd be surprised if Boron DLC wasn't the last or second-last DLC for X4. They gotta be working on X5 on some level by now. Or at least a X4:Terran Conflict. This won't happen, because the DLCs are doing this now. So X5 will be the next game.
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Apr 9, 2023 11:54
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Sample_text posted:Then I guess I'll come back to the series when they make X5 The best moment to get into an X game is late in the development process of a particular generation not early. The first release and first DLC are basically beta experiences that barely work. If I was getting into the series, now would be the perfect moment - a few DLCs in, with most of the game semi optimized. Having played these for the past 20 or 30 years I have to say they’ll never really be polished and finished and will always have a certain level of jank - X call us directly from the heritage of games like the Patrician and the Guild. They’re very much a type of experience where you make your own fun and unlike the AAA experiences of for example, a civilization game. for some people, it will just never work and that’s it-they’re better off with something like Anno.
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Apr 9, 2023 15:40
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It's a one-game-genre niche where as long as Egosoft don't completely gently caress up and release something not just unplayable but also unfixable they'll probably be able to keep iterating forever. No signs they have any interest in going down the road of licensing out their special snowflake game engine, probably because it's not particularly useful for anyone not trying to make an X game.
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Apr 9, 2023 16:31
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The game has its flaws, but it's the only game that lets me stand on the deck of my mile-long battleship and watch as it and the rest of my fleet exchange apocalyptic levels of fire with the enemy. While I agree there are features that could be added to make things better (enhanced logistics and economic competition, and maybe a late game crisis would be my picks), the game as-is has given me 200 hours of enjoyment. I'm excited that patch 6.0 fixes some of my biggest annoyances, performance and fleet AI. Edit: This post made me remember my favorite screenshot from last year: a very unlucky Xenon I that had its course intersect with my Asgard mustering area. 
William Bear fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Apr 9, 2023 |
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Apr 9, 2023 18:24
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William Bear posted:The game has its flaws, but it's the only game that lets me stand on the deck of my mile-long battleship and watch as it and the rest of my fleet exchange apocalyptic levels of fire with the enemy. It's also the only game where I get to do that and also watch the enemy snipe my personal corvette off the dock of my mile-long battleship lmao I made them pay for that one
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Apr 9, 2023 19:01
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Mokotow posted:The best moment to get into an X game is late in the development process of a particular generation not early. The first release and first DLC are basically beta experiences that barely work. If I was getting into the series, now would be the perfect moment - a few DLCs in, with most of the game semi optimized. Having played these for the past 20 or 30 years I have to say they’ll never really be polished and finished and will always have a certain level of jank - X call us directly from the heritage of games like the Patrician and the Guild. They’re very much a type of experience where you make your own fun and unlike the AAA experiences of for example, a civilization game. for some people, it will just never work and that’s it-they’re better off with something like Anno. Man, I'd forgotten about The Guild! You're absolutely right, though. I'm just glad I can't catch leprosy in X4, due to merely mining in the rain 
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Apr 9, 2023 23:59
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William Bear posted:Edit: This post made me remember my favorite screenshot from last year: a very unlucky Xenon I that had its course intersect with my Asgard mustering area.
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Apr 10, 2023 09:53
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Mokotow posted:The best moment to get into an X game is late in the development process of a particular generation not early. The first release and first DLC are basically beta experiences that barely work. If I was getting into the series, now would be the perfect moment - a few DLCs in, with most of the game semi optimized. Having played these for the past 20 or 30 years I have to say they’ll never really be polished and finished and will always have a certain level of jank - X call us directly from the heritage of games like the Patrician and the Guild. They’re very much a type of experience where you make your own fun and unlike the AAA experiences of for example, a civilization game. for some people, it will just never work and that’s it-they’re better off with something like Anno. Then I'd wish for 6.0 they'd at least make the AI slightly less suicidal, re-balance the weapons cause lel weapon balance, and find a use for medium ships that aren't your own personal corvette.... for starters. And for the love of god, make destroyers keep range and not fly into space stations and get themselves killed. EDIT: And find some way to "stabilize" the Xenon. Because for me they ended up a neverending ever-swarming pain in the rear end that sent fleets halfway across the galaxy just to gently caress with me, but , from what I read on reddit, others have them completely pacified from the start, which grinds the economy to a halt cause nobody buys their Weapon Components anymore. Sample_text fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 13:44
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i guess i can start a full vanilla game now in prep for 6.0, then just add mods as they get updated. game probably hates stuff like VRO and ship mods being added mid playthrough though eh?
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Apr 10, 2023 16:35
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I'm curious, how many brand new starts have you had over the course of playing the game? Because each start is seeded based on a GUID-like structure (or you can supply your own), and that pseudo-random number changes a heck of lot of things. I'm not sure anyone's successfully managed to even parts of it. Also, for what it's worth, the game has incredible divergence from the seed it's given - so even if two playthroughs start out with the same seed, they can end up different places simply based on the fact that at lot of the other number generation also happens to be pseudo-random. And that's before we start introducing the player into the mix. BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 16:35
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:I'm curious, how many brand new starts have you had over the course of playing the game? 2. One as terran , one as split. If this extreme divergence is part of the game, then they should either: a)make the xenon more fun to fight. Get rid of their stupid pretzel shaped space stations so destroyers can have an easier time blowing them up. They suck to fight, their ships don't obey the rest of the AI logic. If my ships could fly in one direction and shoot in another the same way me and xenon fighters can, it would make setups like in-sector long range sniper weapons a lot more viable. Or my destroyers just had their primary weapons removed and have all their firepower focused into their doom-turrets, it'd make their stupid behavior where they refuse to face and shoot at a stationary target a lot more bearable. b)eliminate xenon economy all together and just have them spawn ships based on an algorithm so both extremes are narrowed down. Sample_text fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 17:52
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Sample_text posted:2.
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Apr 10, 2023 18:07
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Random can absolutely be fun, see drawf fortress, etc. You can always become the enemy if your bored.
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Apr 10, 2023 19:17
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man this game is weird in vanilla, im really going to have to add some mods, just not VRO i guess, apparently that'll be awhile for 6.0
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Apr 10, 2023 20:07
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queeb posted:man this game is weird in vanilla, im really going to have to add some mods, just not VRO i guess, apparently that'll be awhile for 6.0 Yeah, I hope VRO gets updated soon, since it can't be applied to an existing save. A few days ago, the creator of the mod said "VRO is not working with 6.0 and will not work with DLC on launch day, so you will need to wait for an update. How long, i cant really tell for now." I don't think he said anything else after that. How can I live without my Starburst Shockwave Cannons? 
William Bear fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 20:19
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I've never played with VRO, but I think I might start a vanilla run with boron and hopefully some QoL mods - I can't live with the crappy vanilla pilot EXP system anymore - I need the mod this time around. Then I might restart with VRO because it sounds great.
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Apr 10, 2023 20:25
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queeb posted:man this game is weird in vanilla, im really going to have to add some mods, just not VRO i guess, apparently that'll be awhile for 6.0 The only mod I played with and I can "sorta" reccomend is this: https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/839?tab=posts This will "fix" the suicidal AI somewhat by doing 3 things: 1)Brute-force introducing "avoid" orders at the top of the order queue , if you order small ships too close to a capital ship or a station. These are basically move orders that go the opposite direction. This behavior can be disabled both on each individual order, so you can intentionally order ships to go against overwhelming odds, or from a behavior tab to remember it. 2)Turns Capital ship attacks against stations more clever by having them take up a firing position first, then slowly advance till they're in range, and also re-targeting station parts as they're destroyed. They will also naturally circle around a Xenon station without running into it to take care of the modules on the other side, although the wonky pathfinding will make this take a while. 3) In the event that small fighters are ordered to attack a target much larger than themselves they'll automatically target the submodules first, so disarming, taking down engines, etc. This let me used 10 Chimeras with Blast morters to neutralize a K, for example , and 20 of them with some fighters to draw fire, to take down an I . The bad part is that it seems to mess up Carrier behaviour. They now will seek to avoid direct combat at all cost, which sucks if you want to make use of all those flak turrets on them to help your fighters out.
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Apr 10, 2023 23:19
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All this talk about AI just makes me think the final destination for the X series is just letting the player program in their own AI. With simple factors like distance, attack angle, and target and weapon priority, players would probably come up with something smarter than any vanilla X game has ever done.
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Apr 10, 2023 23:52
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DaveKap posted:All this talk about AI just makes me think the final destination for the X series is just letting the player program in their own AI. With simple factors like distance, attack angle, and target and weapon priority, players would probably come up with something smarter than any vanilla X game has ever done. I mean, if they just behaved like Homeworld ships they'd be a million times better and more useful. And probably simpler , with less calculations needed for their movement.
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Apr 11, 2023 00:11
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X series has had pretty exposed AI code for a long time. Modders can change a lot. Buut...AI is hard, and X4 modding is more difficult in the same ways as all modding is more difficult than back in the day because of the increasing sophistication of games. Looking at the war code and fumbling around with missions made me cry uncle. In some earlier versions of the game there were even Fight Software Mk3 mods that completely replaced ai. Back then though it was too cpu intensive to do better ai for every ship, so it was only usable for small groups of player ships.
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Apr 11, 2023 00:14
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:X series has had pretty exposed AI code for a long time. Modders can change a lot. Buut...AI is hard, and X4 modding is more difficult in the same ways as all modding is more difficult than back in the day because of the increasing sophistication of games. Looking at the war code and fumbling around with missions made me cry uncle. I'm literally asking for "stand still , turn and shoot at anything that's in a cone in front of you using the engage range of the average range of your weapons." Then 2 slider bars that say: Retreat at: x % shield x % hull. There. Is what I just proposed harder than the current wonky dogfighting behavior medium ships currently engage in?
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Apr 11, 2023 00:26
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They don't actually want Space Turret Fight is why it doesn't work that way.
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Apr 11, 2023 00:28
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:They don't actually want Space Turret Fight is why it doesn't work that way. Then they shouldn't design the Xenon K and I to be like that lol . Or have Xenon fighters fight like flying turrets using flight assist off , which only they can do. So clearly there is code and behavior for it, and yet.... "they don't want it that way" I'm only asking for this cause the game gives me enemies who are best beaten by fighting like that. What I'm going with this is "maybe they're just bad game designers who should rework the game to suit the limitations rather than..... making pretzel space stations that bug out the pathfinding, and then you wouldn't need good AI than can do complicated circling around manouvers ". Not making one of the primary enemies swarms of flying gun turrets with giant hulking bricks filled with gun turrets, would allow more leeway into the AI messing up its dogfighting moves because hey, the enemy does it too". Not having space stations covered head-to-toe in hitscan point defense lasers would lessen the need for overly-cautious AI. Not have fancy-pants gimmicky weapons if they suck and the AI is too stupid to use them (like look at a ship using a Mass Driver and I can guarantee you'll be able to spot WHY they miss, without needing to be a genius coder, I promise you) I'm a clueless mook who's been playing this game for only about 100 hours or so, and even I can notice these glaring design flaws, I can only imagine what people who put thousands of hours into them see. Sample_text fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Apr 11, 2023 |
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Apr 11, 2023 00:35
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Sample_text posted:I mean, if they just behaved like Homeworld ships they'd be a million times better and more useful. And probably simpler , with less calculations needed for their movement. The dream
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Apr 11, 2023 00:39
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RBA Starblade posted:The dream 
Squiggle fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Apr 11, 2023 |
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Apr 11, 2023 00:44
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queeb posted:i guess i can start a full vanilla game now in prep for 6.0, then just add mods as they get updated. game probably hates stuff like VRO and ship mods being added mid playthrough though eh? VRO needs to be added on game start because it changes the stats of all ships and will really bugger up the game if you add or remove it mid playthrough.
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Apr 11, 2023 00:57
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Release the Boron you cowards!
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Apr 11, 2023 14:28
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I installed the Map Game Processor today. It's a bit of an upgrade compared to the Ryzen 7 1700 I built this rig with. I'm ready for the Boron. 
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Apr 11, 2023 15:01
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Speaking of AI and pathfinding, aren't they supposed to have greatly improved it version 6 that was in beta and releases tomorrow?
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Apr 11, 2023 17:51
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Krogort posted:Speaking of AI and pathfinding, aren't they supposed to have greatly improved it version 6 that was in beta and releases tomorrow? As someone who stopped playing and uninstalled, does 6.0 actually do anything about the atrocious AI ,or is it a lie ?
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Apr 11, 2023 18:27
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