X4: Foundations - Mount and Blade with space-ships. Now with significant Beta update

[Zarniwoop]

Read in the forums there are fewer ships as well. And people getting Frigate class ships after few hours of play means they streamlined most of the stuff. In X3, few hours of play and you're only working towards a new trading ship or M3 fighter. I don't think there are M6 corvette classes as well?

Yep, biggest problem with this game. Streamlined to hell, but somehow even more difficult to get into than previous games.

Frigates after a few hours? System of highways that catapult you around the whole map within minutes? Player HQ almost immediately? That shit is supposed to take massive amounts of time and 'tism to achieve, but be satisfying when you finally do. No one would play Factorio either if you could build rockets right from your inventory. This game is tailored to the "participation award" crowd. Gib rewards now, earn it never.

And NO Boron or Split sectors?

They spent all their time and resources on station interiors and ship skins instead of the stuff that matters


Decent early alpha but not much more. At least this has the potential to be a better game, unlike Stillbirth which was DOA.

 

[Kruno]

I have spent almost no time in the tutorials and the interface is fully usable and figurable to me without any documentation. I had trouble figuring out the X3 interface, but X4 seems to be the most straightforward of the series.

 

[Thane Solus]

the more we play, the more we find out that this is quite closed to Alpha. It seems after 40-50 hours into the game, the game dies. Economy dies, enemy are left only in their home systems, and the game becomes shit: https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/comments/a2wtk4/50_hours_in_gameplay_review/ thats even worse than the scripted X3 AP bullshit. As a quick fix, i bet your codex ass, they will start spawning enemy fleets from time to time (cause they cannot into dynamic universe, like ever) so ships die, and economy its refreshed (ships need to be built, so now everybody is moving, buying, producing)

The AI i think its worse than X3, but it doesnt receive dmg on collision, otherwise, they will be no ships left on the map. We got punked hahaha)) Same shit. Will see if they fix anything properly, they already sold wayyyy too much than they deserve for an Alpha. These guys are absolute incompetents when it comes to programming in 3d, collision and pathfinding, and now UI and of course design and balance. Nothing new, just shiny things, the rest barely works.

Also you can kill frigates with your starter ship, since the AI again its crap on targeting. In X3, man, i would die in seconds...

Player HQ fixed position in teladi space FUCK YOUUUUUU!

Extra Egosoft space diversity: Around 50-70% of Models in Argon, are Black, cause its NOW!!!! 2018!!! fuck me...

Extra Nexus SJW Squad: Some dude remove blacks from game, since he said they are all rastas, look ugly, so he made everybody spawn white. One day later Nexus deletes his mod...

Fuck this planet!

MY RECOMMENDATION: Try the ... 'free version'... wait a few months to buy! (probably we will get the functional game in one year, if ever).

 

[Zarniwoop]

Like I said. Like every X game. In a year or 2 it will be amazing.

 

[ZeniBot]

I don't mind, I always thought the square sectors were extremely dull and artificial.

I do think these ones are too big though. At least they could have concentrated the occupied parts, so it turned more into 'cities' instead of this 83948329423 miles between everything.

I don't think the sectors are too big, I just think that the amount of sensor FOW clearing they give you is shit. Considering that I can comfortably get from one side of the map to the other without Seta I'd say the sectors are just the right size. With Seta it'd be too fast given that we now have space lane highways.

I just want a bigger sensor like X3 had. Because I can't see shit without it.
And yeah the fact that the other races are missing is straight up bullshit. Wake me when the Terra and Split show up.

 

[Niklasgunner]

Yea, after about 5 hours of play I didn't see anymore xenon ship and their border systems seem wiped clean of stations. They could use a big economic buff

 

[Perkel]

When it comes to economy it seems like they forgot to place secondary resources to keep economy from stalling (fairly easy to mod in). Or there is a bug when it comes to expansion and factions don't fight as much as they predicted.

With secondary resources like in mods for X3 economy can't stall because those resources are sinks and infinite.
They are not great way to make money but they are good enough for AI to pick up when factories have full stock no one seems to buy. So they work like kind of overflow mechanism where economy is close to being clogged up.

As for faction wars, this is actually pretty easy to mod from what i hear and egoforum mod dude is already working on it.

My main issue right now when it comes to gameplay is shield recharge system.
Simply put it allows for small fighters to take down big ships easily because shields need to wait like few seconds before they start recharching when shields were hit. Which means as long as you put fire on big capital ship its shields will go down.

So Ego or modders need to add constant recharge to shield.

Fighters do have a lot of uses fighting capital ships now that subsystems exist in X4 but that shield recharge mechanic needs to be changed.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I don't mind, I always thought the square sectors were extremely dull and artificial.

I do think these ones are too big though. At least they could have concentrated the occupied parts, so it turned more into 'cities' instead of this 83948329423 miles between everything.

I don't think the sectors are too big, I just think that the amount of sensor FOW clearing they give you is shit. Considering that I can comfortably get from one side of the map to the other without Seta I'd say the sectors are just the right size. With Seta it'd be too fast given that we now have space lane highways.

I just want a bigger sensor like X3 had. Because I can't see shit without it.
And yeah the fact that the other races are missing is straight up bullshit. Wake me when the Terra and Split show up.

In X3 (and 2,and 1) the big sensor range was only available after an upgrade. The default range on a new ship was p. poor.

Of course, you didn't have a space subway taking you everywhere and revealing most of the map in the process either...

 

[ZeniBot]

well by all means if you can find me a sensor upgrade then I'll shut up, but its not clear to me there even is one. I thought upgrading the long range scan software would help but that proved to be a waste.
Frankly the long range scan mechanics in this game are trash and should be removed. I didn't like them in Rebirth and I especially don't like them here.

 

[Mark.L.Joy]

Played for a few minutes to check it out and have much better impression than I got from hours of stillbirth, gonna wait for patches, expansions, mods and maybe get a new GPU before playing it for real and replay AP meanwhile.

 

[Niklasgunner]

Yeah, I am done for now. Good first impression but its too easy and very few fights happen.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Just bought a shiny new Mercury Vanguard.

One thing they got right this time at least, is scale. The freighter is fuckhueg compared to the starting fighter.

Edit: How do you get automated ships to use "travel mode"? They just crawl along at 150 m/s.

 

[lefthandblack]

the more we play, the more we find out that this is quite closed to Alpha. It seems after 40-50 hours into the game, the game dies. Economy dies, enemy are left only in their home systems, and the game becomes shit: https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/comments/a2wtk4/50_hours_in_gameplay_review/ thats even worse than the scripted X3 AP bullshit. As a quick fix, i bet your codex ass, they will start spawning enemy fleets from time to time (cause they cannot into dynamic universe, like ever) so ships die, and economy its refreshed (ships need to be built, so now everybody is moving, buying, producing)

The AI i think its worse than X3, but it doesnt receive dmg on collision, otherwise, they will be no ships left on the map. We got punked hahaha)) Same shit. Will see if they fix anything properly, they already sold wayyyy too much than they deserve for an Alpha. These guys are absolute incompetents when it comes to programming in 3d, collision and pathfinding, and now UI and of course design and balance. Nothing new, just shiny things, the rest barely works.

Also you can kill frigates with your starter ship, since the AI again its crap on targeting. In X3, man, i would die in seconds...

It runs better on older hardware than I thought it would, that was my main concern. It seems that they may have achieved that by leaving half of the game out and dumbing down the rest.
There is far too much Rebirth cancer remaining as well.

Player HQ fixed position in teladi space FUCK YOUUUUUU!

This is well and truly bullshit. Hopefully it's moddable.

Extra Egosoft space diversity: Around 50-70% of Models in Argon, are Black, cause its NOW!!!! 2018!!! fuck me...

Extra Nexus SJW Squad: Some dude remove blacks from game, since he said they are all rastas, look ugly, so he made everybody spawn white. One day later Nexus deletes his mod...

Fuck this planet!

This is bullshit too, fortunately it still exists here:
https://www100.zippyshare.com/v/DG5FStht/file.html

 

[Turjan]

I know why I didn't buy this although I sunk thousands of hours into X3.

So now the economy depends on stuff being destroyed in conflicts. Which don't happen. Both of these points are asinine. That they still didn't get a grasp on collisions of the autopilot is a disgrace. Turrets not working is a regression.

Stuff like food or energy should always sell, no matter the state of the galaxy. The same should be true for basic consumer goods. At worst, the amount you sell should go somewhat up and down. I thought they would introduce a new goods sink when they added Earth space sectors with their lifters. Some kind of planetary trade dock could play the role of a wildcard in the economy to help with fudging numbers and give you the illusion there's more to the universe than the dozens of stations you see.

As far as conflicts are concerned, I think none of the X games has found a perfect formula yet. At least in X3, it took a while until you realized that all wars you waged were pointless.

 

[moleman]

Will wait for a few patches for this one.
But it makes me want to try X3 TC. Only played X-Beyond and X2.

What about X-Rebirth. It received two DLCs as far as I know.
Has it been patched and upgraded to an enjoyable state, or is it still shit?

 

[cw8]

At least in X3, it took a while until you realized that all wars you waged were pointless.

Pretty pointless when the enemy ships just kept spawning. And of course, yours don't. I wonder if there is a mod that actually made a faction war meaningful.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Will wait for a few patches for this one.
But it makes me want to try X3 TC. Only played X-Beyond and X2.

What about X-Rebirth. It received two DLCs as far as I know.
Has it been patched and upgraded to an enjoyable state, or is it still shit?

It's shit.

Patches can only fix bugs, not completely change the design focus of the game from a console shooter to a deep economy sim.

Albion Prelude is the most polished, complete and content rich of the series. Not really any campaign mode to speak of though.

Do not touch Stillbirth.

 

[Turjan]

At least in X3, it took a while until you realized that all wars you waged were pointless.

Pretty pointless when the enemy ships just kept spawning. And of course, yours don't. I wonder if there is a mod that actually made a faction war meaningful.

Yeah, I know there is. I'm just talking about what Egosoft delivers.

 

[Zarniwoop]

New patch out. lel, looks like they realised at the rate they were pumping these out, we'd be at version 34.2 by Christmas and decided to decrease the numbering. This one is simply version 1.21

 

[lefthandblack]

Unfortunately it looks like 1.21 breaks more than it fixes. At least they are consistent.

 

[Razor]

How is the industrial gameplay like?

From the few info tidbits I have seen they seemed to put a lot more effort into at least factory construction UI and management. No more spaghetti complexes with 15 fps when in sector.

 

[Grotesque]

So how much I have to wait, after the first that bought the game at release, playtest it for me and then buying it for me patched at a fraction of the initial cost?

 

[Thane Solus]

Unfortunately it looks like 1.21 breaks more than it fixes. At least they are consistent.

When you release patches almost every few days, the chance of those changes to be tested in x4 its close to zero, so they pray they didnt fucked much and fixed more, and get a praise from retards. Egosoft fanboys are as retarded as paradox squad, probably more.

Any other company releasing a game in this state with a price tag of 50, would be linched by gamers and "journos", egosoft with their army of fans, and retards, actually sold more than 500k in a week, with a Alpha product, that looks nice (graphicx).

FML

 

[ZeniBot]

Unfortunately it looks like 1.21 breaks more than it fixes. At least they are consistent.

hah this is why you play the superior demo version. I've never been so happy to not have patches!

 

[Perkel]

Most of X people assumed this release will be dumpster fire mate.
There are some questionable design decisions but nothing that can be patched or fixed or simply modded and ego games always had huge modding community that literally took those games from their borked gameplay state into true tour the force of space sims.