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hobbesmaster posted:Wasn't the map in vanilla X3 pretty small? https://roguey.co.uk/x3/universe/ Not that small... But they still kept adding sectors in TC and AP. Pretty sure X4 will get the same treatment.
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Dec 18, 2018 17:34
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:58 |
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This is a good time to be playing Rebirth. Just following the storyline, I'm kind of liking it so far. And the Skunk cockpit designs are pretty immersive.
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Dec 19, 2018 02:39
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hobbesmaster posted:Something egosoft says is beta... oh dear. Leal posted:Ready and waiting for SS Cocks to be sent to my world! Cue 
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Dec 21, 2018 00:31
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In X2 I set up a swarm of Paranid Also every ship used the same combat algorithm, meaning capital ships would spend most of their time in one spot trying to line up their target for an attack run. RIP Syndrome fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Mar 3, 2020 |
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Mar 3, 2020 09:46
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They're still amazing games though. The huge handcrafted universe made exploration interesting and there are few games that do alife/agent-based simulation on that scale. One of the big wow moments was finding my first pirate base (I was following pirates around to see what they were up to).
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Mar 3, 2020 10:32
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The fundamental issue is that the game world is complex, and the AI design is way too simple. Example: An X4 station isn't too different from an airport, except there is no ATC, no concept of approach lanes, go-arounds and loitering, and the pilots can't talk to each other. Everyone just tries to get close to a docking spot while pathing around obstacles in a kind of brownian motion. Incoming and outgoing traffic are in the same space. Of course it devolves into a huge pileup. They've tried to add higher-level control with fleets and faction AI, but now each unit gets saddled with conflicting goals which are resolved by simplistic rules, which makes ships either die trying to stay in formation, die due to being left behind, or the entire formation being prevented from moving. It's a hard problem. Without the AI there wouldn't be much of a game, and the AI must avoid cheating to sustain the (very good imo) level of immersion, so it's also extremely visible. Obviously there are also issues with simpler fixes, like miners being filled up with wares they never offload, but they're probably getting lumped with the other issues that're effectively unfixable in X4.
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Jan 28, 2024 17:17
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Yeah. The AI is really the only sore thumb in the game now as far as I'm concerned, but I understand how they'd be leery of big changes in a years-old game with lots of DLC and mods. I'd buy an X5 with only AI improvements, though. Maybe it'd be possible to mitigate the pileups by having a queuing system for each station/gate where the ships waiting in line find a random parking spot well clear of any other objects, and having separate incoming/outgoing corridors that AI ships could stick to. Transport death could be mitigated by having the faction remember combat death locations/enemy capital ship spottings for up to an hour and marking those areas off-limits, but it'd probably have to be shown on the map or you'd be scratching your head wondering why your ships stopped moving when they can't find a safe path. Fast escorts should move ahead of their escortee, while slower escorts stay close. Wings must figure out if they actually have a chance of beating an enemy before engaging. All ships should make more informed fight/flight decisions (e.g. is flight even an option, or would it be if the escort could buy some time?). When attacking a big target like a station, a non-dumb attack vector needs to be chosen. Routes need to be reevaluated periodically to ensure they're still good. Etc. More complex AI behavior would also make it more inscrutable, so when it does something dumb it'd be harder to figure out why. Feedback to the player must be detailed without being overwhelming. So they'd need to think carefully about it, plan it out and do a lot of testing/simulation with all the moving parts.
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Jan 28, 2024 20:23
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Fruits of the sea posted:I think at one point Egosoft had considered implementing a proper ledger but stopped halfway through. Would have been nice to get an overview of receivables, break down income from traders/stations etc by year or whatever. For sure. The double-entry accounting is a nice touch, maybe even necessary if you're trying to keep track of a large empire with lots of accounts. But it's missing the "report" functionality of irl accounting software to interpret it. For instance, it'd be nice to be able to see the return on investment for a particular vessel/station. I shouldn't have to read raw logs to try to figure out if I broke even on a particular vessel, or where to expand/downsize.
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Jan 29, 2024 16:03
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Travic posted:I'm thinking about upgrading my computer as well. Currently using a Ryzen 5 3500 and it runs ok, but is a little jittery from time to time. Simulation granularity, maybe? I imagine a fast ship and destroyer bullets may just skip right through each other instead of colliding at high timestep values, so small/medium ships become impossible to hit, while big ships, being slower and occupying a bigger volume, don't. Relatedly, I tried to exploit this in X2 by making a ton of cheap Pegasus M5s with max engine tunings. Capital ships couldn't hit them, but unfortunately, at 1000m/s they wouldn't be able to get off any shots of their own before having to break for their next attack run. So they'd just buzz around the target uselessly like a swarm of angry bees.
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Feb 15, 2024 00:23
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:58 |
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Travic posted:Got it. I did end up ordering a new cpu so that'll be fun. May even help with the SETA problem if it can handle the calculations faster? Maybe. Likely it'll get better but still give you different outcomes. Gotta confess though, I mostly stopped using SETA when we got travel drives. Too immersion breaking and tempting to turn the game into a waiting simulator. Or maybe I'm just that much of a masochist 
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Feb 15, 2024 23:49
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