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

[anvi]

Yeah pretty close. I like the sound of that but I think it is too big and does too much, and I also think the combat will be pew pew pew lazerz. I would rather tactical yet real time combat. I played a space game last year that had good combat but it was just too small. Elite Dangerous looks and feels great but I want to be able to build businesses and an empire. I want a bit of Eve, Space Rangers, Elite, X3, Star Citizen, and another space game I forgot the name of. But all put together in the correct proportions.

 

[cw8]

I'll wait till X4 has Boron and Split before diving myself in.

 

[Tweed]

Well, this whole thread is pretty depressing now. Glad I held off on buying X4 though, maybe in a few years the community will be able to fix it up to be the ultimate space game.

 

[Thane Solus]

Wait at least 6 months. i got so pissed off in December, that i wanted to refund my copy from GOG.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I'll wait till X4 has Boron and Split before diving myself in.

Those will be expansion packs, or as the new, more millennial gaymerz call it, DLC. Interesting to note that after pumping out around 4 patches per day the first few weeks, there has been jack shit for the past month.

For me, the absence of 40% of the major species is not even in the top 3 deal-breakers. Those are:

1. The absence of like 70-80% of the universe. Egosoft's excuse that the "sectors are much bigger" is laughable. Yes lololololllol the sectors keep expanding forever as you fly, but that was the case in previous games too. In X4 though the amount of stations is tiny compared to previous games. Each system has like 10 factories max and the systems are nowhere near the independent mini-economies they used to be. Which given the game's intro is the opposite of what you expect to find. After being isolated for a while they would be MORE self-sufficient, not LESS.

2. Much of the cancerAIDS from Stillbirth remains. It's like instead of giving fans what they love, they tried to merge the old X with the shitfuckery of Stillbirth. In the Stillbirth engine. This is clearly demonstrated by the way you get around. Real X games had jumpgates, jump drives and SETA. Stillbirth had some highway shit, no SETA and no jumpdrive. Solution - mash it all together. Now you have highways, SOOPER highways, accelerators and jumpgates, AND SETA as some obscure crafting upgrade. No jumpdrive (because as shameless shills like Perkele will say, it's unbalanced or something equally pathetic), but lol you can teleport anywhere in the universe like a goddamn Stargate. That's totally balanced amirite?

Station scanning, crystal mining and other pixel hunting minigames? Mandatory walking around stations? The retarded way shields work? "Crafting?," research"? all lifted from Stillbirth.

3. Zero campaign or story after you get the HQ (which happens almost immediately after the tutorial). Never a strong suit of the X series, there was at least SOMETHING in the way of a main storyline. Also zero major conflicts/threats to the universe. Forget the epic battles of X2 or TC. Forget any mystery and tracking down ancient Earth colony ships. Which is silly given that the HQ seems to be some old station built for an unknown purpose (looks Terran if you ask me), it would be perfect for some storyline to start off on.

The game, currently, is nothing more than an engine sandbox. Lots of patches have come out so I'd say it's moved from pre-Alpha to Alpha stage.

 

[cw8]

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=413064

Split incoming this year?

 

[Zarniwoop]

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=413064

Split incoming this year?

Only 2 posts/people in that thread are not retarded.

Only 1 mentions FIX THE ECONOMY FIRST and only one mentions that currently all species ships are p. much the same, fix that first.

I've figured it out. Modern Egosoft players are monumental, LARPing peasants. They don't care about the deep monocled economic sims that the X series always was. They want to walk around 200 nearly identical stations with slightly different skins and hack terminals.

 

[Twiglard]

Space combat games don't work. You need gravity for sensible combat flight maneuvering. If Skyway's still around he's probably tryharding flight sims now. Is he around?

Space combat games are either jousting or enemies buzzing like flies for you to have to aim at them. And X3's underwater physics.

They don't care about the deep monocled economic sims that the X series always was.

Yeah, right. Like the economy AI being able to spawn stations at will. Everything's static, stations destroyed won't have an effect.

Adding a supply system (like the Falcon 4 RTS-ish map) is probably too hard for games like this, given possible anomalies that can deconverge the entire system pointlessly.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Ah Skyway...

I think the Russians got him. He's in in hell, doomed to run through banal, shit, boring corridors forever.

 

[anvi]

Starpoint Gemini Warlords shows how space combat should be done. They didn't develop it enough and it is far too shallow, but it shows how it should be done. You should start in small ships that are pew pew lazer fights like most space games, but large ships should be tactical combat with abilities that work in a tactical way. Give me that type of combat but in a game that lets you build an empire would be amazing.

 

[Zarniwoop]

The Starpoint series makes evereything feel and play like a fighter.

Which is another problem of X4, big ships are far too agile and small fighters the opposite. But it's much worse in Starpoint. Same with Freelancer, the game that Starpoint Gemini shamelessly copied drew inspiration from.

In the old X games, fighters were nimble and quick, and it felt like you were flying a viper from Battlestar Galactica. Capital ships felt like massive cities floating through space, unleashing a big badaboom broadside while the turrets picked off fighters and missiles.

 

[anvi]

You are missing my point. Starpoint looks, plays, and feels like shit. Launching a fighter wing is just a bunch of little dots flying around, they don't exist as entities. Also there are only about 4 abilities, the trading sucks, the world sucks, everything about it is terrible. But my point is that tactical combat is far better than pew pew, at least for big ships, and Starpoint is a working example of how that can be done. A bunch of abilities that work in synergy with each other and you have to use in a tactical way. You barely have to move the ship, you just fly into the middle of a huge battle and start targetting stuff one by one and destroying it with emp, armor reduction, nuke it dead, launch some missiles and lazers if it is big, and repeat until shields are low. Then stealth and wait to recover. There are no other space games that work like this, they are all just dogfighting which is boring and dumb. Flying in circles shooting at a target predictor is not fun long term.

 

[theSavant]

I knew there was something foul with the game

The signs were there, I've told you so, but you chose to ignore... now "bon appétit"

 

[cw8]

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=413180

X4: Foundations Milestones

Before 2.0, and between any of the coming major patches, there will also be minor steps. We try to release bug fixes as fast as we can once we feel they are safe (which is why there will also be lots of public betas). Right now you can participate in the public beta for 1.60 here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/392160/d ... 638016501/

Update 2.0

The next bigger update will bring, among other things, the ability to set up your own shipyards. Compete with the faction shipyards by selling ships to the war factions or build your own fleets.

Another focus for 2.0 is to make crew training a bit easier. Crew and pilots gain experience by doing their jobs; more so in some areas than others. However, while the first two stars are very easy to gain, the progress slows down after that. Getting from the 3rd to the 4th star takes a LOT more experience than from the 1st to the 2nd.

We aim to release 2.0 in February.

Update 2.50

• With 2.50 we aim to bring a new ship type: Resupply ships. In short, they will work like a flying equipment dock and can form the backbone of a large fleet.
• Linux version: We hope the Linux beta can start somewhere between 2.0 and 2.50 already but at the latest together with this update.
• TrackIR/Tobii support: We know lots of people are asking us to support these tools and while testing may start before it again we aim that 2.50 should bring support at the latest.
• Sector blacklists: This will allow you to set up sectors that your ships will avoid at all costs.
• Another thing that we hope to pack into 2.50 is a series of improvements around managing inventory items. This includes the ability to create and drop crates in space and possibly also to store them on stations.

Update 3.0

• As some of you may already have figured out, one cool feature of X4 is the ability to own entire sectors and even change their names. With 3.0 we aim to build upon this with a number of features to help you benefit from sector control. You can then basically become your own faction with your own set of rules.
• For all updates, we are working on better missions. At the latest for 3.0 we plan to have a number of new and improved combat missions in particular. An area we want to combine this with is improved research (in the player HQ) and the ability to potentially even move the player HQ to a different location.
• An early gameplay feature that 3.0 will improve is the ability to dock directly at station with a spacesuit and to get other NPC ships to transport you, by offering missions to them.
  With 3.0 at the latest, we want to have at least one new gamestart. There is a chance that this will have some interesting new features.

First Expansion will introduce Split race

While all of the above (free) updates may also contain new assets, we will bundle a lot of new ships, station modules, missions and new sectors into the first big expansion. Our rough timeline is to have an expansion based on introducing the Split race, their ships, a new Split economy and of course a large new area of space shortly after releasing 3.0.

I wonder if the Split expansion is free.

 

[Perkel]

So 2.0 in february then 2.5 in middle of february then 3.0 at the end of february.
And game released just a month before christmas.

lol. By end of this year game will be 134.0 or something.

No way split dlc will be for free.

 

[Zarniwoop]

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=413180

X4: Foundations Milestones

Before 2.0, and between any of the coming major patches, there will also be minor steps. We try to release bug fixes as fast as we can once we feel they are safe (which is why there will also be lots of public betas). Right now you can participate in the public beta for 1.60 here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/392160/d ... 638016501/

Update 2.0

The next bigger update will bring, among other things, the ability to set up your own shipyards. Compete with the faction shipyards by selling ships to the war factions or build your own fleets.

Another focus for 2.0 is to make crew training a bit easier. Crew and pilots gain experience by doing their jobs; more so in some areas than others. However, while the first two stars are very easy to gain, the progress slows down after that. Getting from the 3rd to the 4th star takes a LOT more experience than from the 1st to the 2nd.

We aim to release 2.0 in February.

Update 2.50

• With 2.50 we aim to bring a new ship type: Resupply ships. In short, they will work like a flying equipment dock and can form the backbone of a large fleet.
• Linux version: We hope the Linux beta can start somewhere between 2.0 and 2.50 already but at the latest together with this update.
• TrackIR/Tobii support: We know lots of people are asking us to support these tools and while testing may start before it again we aim that 2.50 should bring support at the latest.
• Sector blacklists: This will allow you to set up sectors that your ships will avoid at all costs.
• Another thing that we hope to pack into 2.50 is a series of improvements around managing inventory items. This includes the ability to create and drop crates in space and possibly also to store them on stations.

Update 3.0

• As some of you may already have figured out, one cool feature of X4 is the ability to own entire sectors and even change their names. With 3.0 we aim to build upon this with a number of features to help you benefit from sector control. You can then basically become your own faction with your own set of rules.
• For all updates, we are working on better missions. At the latest for 3.0 we plan to have a number of new and improved combat missions in particular. An area we want to combine this with is improved research (in the player HQ) and the ability to potentially even move the player HQ to a different location.
• An early gameplay feature that 3.0 will improve is the ability to dock directly at station with a spacesuit and to get other NPC ships to transport you, by offering missions to them.
  With 3.0 at the latest, we want to have at least one new gamestart. There is a chance that this will have some interesting new features.

First Expansion will introduce Split race

While all of the above (free) updates may also contain new assets, we will bundle a lot of new ships, station modules, missions and new sectors into the first big expansion. Our rough timeline is to have an expansion based on introducing the Split race, their ships, a new Split economy and of course a large new area of space shortly after releasing 3.0.

I wonder if the Split expansion is free.

Still no mention of the missing 2/3rds of sectors.

 

[anvi]

I don't get why they release games like this so early. Yeah I know they are short on money and releasing it gets funds right away... But when it backfires so badly that you get bad reviews everywhere and everyone thinks your game is shallow, buggy, under developed garbage, it is not a good trade off. You would be better getting a loan or something, developing the game another 6 months, and release it to far better reviews. Fanboys would be fawning all over it and raging against anyone who says otherwise. Reviews would be positive or better. Sales would be higher. Loan would be paid off. Company reputation would be better.

Maybe I'm wrong and this game only has an audience of about 50,000 people who would buy it no matter what, and nobody else is interested.

 

[Zarniwoop]

So 1.6 is out:

• Added music tracks from previous games.
• Added map filter option to disable allied order queue visualisation.
• Added option to edit or remove assignment in order queue.
• Added tooltips explaining why Request Dock At option is greyed-out.
• Improved overall game performance.
• Improved AI attacking of stations.
• Improved reward calculation for Rescue Ship mission.
• Improved reward calculation and area range for Repair mission.
• Improved reward calculation and fleet variation in Fleet Delivery mission.
• Improved location check for claiming plot in Station Building mission.
• Improved likelihood of NPCs providing information when asking for the way to a station.
• Improved AutoMiner behaviour to avoid mining in enemy-held territory depending on crew skill.
• Removed ability to map right mouse button to avoid conflicts with context menu function.
• Fixed player-owned stations not transferring money to the player after having earned a surplus.
• Fixed player-owned ships mis-identifying some ships as being abandoned.
• Fixed ships sometimes undocking and docking again when given an order that doesn't require a ship to change docks.
• Fixed NPC-owned capital class mining ships not being able to mine due to lack of collector drones.
• Fixed mining ships sometimes not going to their designated positions before starting to mine.
• Fixed delay after player issuing AutoMiner order.
• Fixed capital ships with forward-mounted weapons sometimes orienting broadside to big targets.
• Fixed capital ships not acquiring some station modules when attacking them.
• Fixed fighters manoeuvering against and firing upon the center of stations rather than acquiring station modules.
• Fixed player-owned squadron subordinates pursuing targets to the ends of the universe.
• Fixed combat ships assigned to a station not staying in the vicinity of the station.
• Fixed captured visitor ships sometimes not accepting orders.
• Fixed UI allowing player to order player-owned ships to "Dock to Trade" at player-owned stations that have no trade offers.
• Fixed ships wanting to undock from a venture platform worrying that they might leave the player stranded at the station.
• Fixed player-owned free traders preferring build-related trades.
• Fixed free traders tending to prefer trades involving buying low amounts or high prices.
• Fixed player-owned station-based traders ignoring sell offers at the station below a certain threshold.
• Fixed rare case that would prevent AutoMine and AutoTrade orders from functioning.
• Fixed lasertower orders being assignable to things that weren't lasertowers.
• Fixed lasertowers erroneously attempting to move while in highways.
• Fixed computer pilots of drones and lasertowers sometimes bailing.
• Fixed player-owned ships formerly owned by pirates retaining their cover ownership.
• Fixed docked ships on claimed ships retaining old ownership and crew on board.
• Fixed theoretical ability to improve relations with Xenon and Kha'ak.
• Fixed not being able to select items to deliver to Black Marketeer when playing multiple delivery missions simultaneously.
• Fixed receiving pilot comm chatter while not in a cockpit.
• Fixed Security Office not being available on all stations.
• Fixed Boarding mission where ship was already captured earlier.
• Fixed mission character disappearing during Delivery mission.
• Fixed duplicate greeting of Black Marketeer during Delivery mission.
• Fixed cases of missing dialog choices for Black Marketeers.
• Fixed Tutorial and Help menu in ultra-wide resolutions.
• Fixed large number of queued orders breaking the order queue menu.
• Fixed map shortcuts not working after using minimize.
• Fixed wrong production resources shown in LSO and encyclopedia.
• Fixed hidden information (shown as "???") on player stations in certain cases.
• Fixed loadout statistics showing changes in engine performance when applying a paint mod.
• Fixed venture reward menu sometimes not displaying reward information.
• Fixed custom player logo not being displayed on target monitor.
• Fixed comms monitor not showing up on incoming reports from pilots.
• Fixed excessive L and XL travel engine prices.
• Fixed certain M-sized turret slots on some L-sized ships not allowing mining turrets to be fitted.
• Fixed mirrored logos on some ships.
• Fixed NPC position in bar.
• Fixed various NPC animation issues.
• Fixed player ship standing still when opening the map after undocking from a station.
• Fixed problems docking certain M-sized ships (especially Drill) without docking software.
• Fixed ships protecting stations with the Protect Station order chasing targets out of the designated area.
• Fixed new NPC stations potentially having their build storages owned by incorrect factions.
• Fixed squadron subordinates sometimes not keeping up with their commanders.
• Fixed dock showing stop sign while ship docked after loading savegame.
• Fixed occasional loss of control input while in flight.
• Fixed incorrect graphics settings displayed after changing Graphics Quality.
• Fixed Account Management and Logical Station Overview menus not setting manager budget when setting station account.
• Fixed menu crash in supply node of Logical Station Overview.
• Fixed menu crash when opening Info menu for certain stations.
• Fixed menu freeze in Account Management menu.
• Fixed map freeze if a commander was docked at one of their subordinates.
• Fixed UI showing possibility to edit default behaviours of subordinates.
• Fixed strange items being added to inventory after venture completes.
• Fixed unclaimed venture rewards getting lost on subsequent save/load cycle.
• Fixed planned station builds being lost after saving and loading.
• Fixed some memory leaks.
• Fixed causes of several freezes and performance issues in specific circumstances.
• Fixed several other causes of crashes.

Still shit. LMAO @ Egosoft's life.

One bit of though is the first item. It's great to have it finally fucking sound like an X game at least.

 

[Thane Solus]

now imagine that the game was released with these bugs + another * 3, and half of the features not working. We can talk about balance and fun in 3 to 6 months...

Oh finally the real ratings are coming. In the first week it had over 70% score, since games like these take a couple of hours to see how broken they are. I guess thats how you make money these days, make the first hours fun, or/and with a grind, and later when the player found that it was for nothing, too late for him to refund. Win! Win!

 

[Zarniwoop]

Yep. That's why there's no more demos or previews either. And they even managed to convince millennials to buy the game BEFORE it released.

 

[anvi]

I thought millennials were the only group who buys games before they are released?

 

[Zarniwoop]

Exactly. There were zero groups that retarded. Now there is one. That's one too many.

Buying a game before it's released and with no demo is almost as stupid as getting married to a woman you haven't fucked.

 

[Modron]

Eh pre-ordering is less retarded than morgothing (Day one purchasing for those who fail their lore roles) or buying in the first 2 months though as pre-orders usually come with discounts and often some lulzy dlc bundle incentives. Granted it's not something I do regularly, really only preordered Yakuza 0 and Kiwami in the last couple of years. I suppose I have gone in on a number of ea games but those were usually in development for years before I jumped on board. Trying to recall but this is basically what I have early accessed: Battle Brothers, Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill Slap and Beans, Exanima, ATOM RPG, and I guess technically Mount and Blade, and Underrail. Granted ATOM and Battle Brothers had demos, but I haven't really been let down by jumping into things before I've played them.

Granted I am kind of miserly with my vidya purchasing so I really only jump at the stuff that really sounds great.

 

[Country_Gravy]

Granted

 

[Zarniwoop]

2.00 already? Beta at least.

LOL with 2 bug fixes. Normally 2.0 is where the game is actually complete. But this one is a long way off I'm afraid.