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

[Raapys]

It's actually sounding quite decent this time around.

Ships also offer a variety of upgrades. Engines, weapons and other equipment can be added in a graphical editor and actually seen on the ship.

Indicates we'll finally have actual upgrade components instead of just the regular "pay X to make ship Y times faster".

X4 will be the first X game to allow our races and factions to freely build and expand their empires; the same flexibility the player enjoys in creatively designing space stations from modular building blocks is also available to them. Races expand their empire based on supply and demand, which leads to an extremely dynamic universe where every action the player makes can influence the course of the entire universe.

I've been wishing for this since the very first game. It'll be like having a bunch of AIs playing a strategy game in the background. Could be great if they pull it off in a good way. Even if they fail, it can't be worse than what the previous games had.

Now with X4, we have taken another, massive step. For the first time in any X game, all parts of the NPC economy are manufactured from resources. Ships, weapons, upgrades, ammo and even stations. You name it. Everything comes out of the simulated economy.

And based on this, it does look like they're on the right track in terms of simulating the world properly.

Of course, the potential for bugs will be bigger than ever, and nailing the AI is gonna be quite tough due to the complexity of the simulated world. But at least modders will have something to work with.

 

[Gepeu]

Shapes up pretty nicely.

 

[Spectacle]

Now with X4, we have taken another, massive step. For the first time in any X game, all parts of the NPC economy are manufactured from resources. Ships, weapons, upgrades, ammo and even stations. You name it. Everything comes out of the simulated economy.

And based on this, it does look like they're on the right track in terms of simulating the world properly.

Of course, the potential for bugs will be bigger than ever, and nailing the AI is gonna be quite tough due to the complexity of the simulated world. But at least modders will have something to work with.

Definitely. I'm betting it will be at least patch 1.04 before the galactic economy doesn't crash completely before you've played for 10 hours. Economic simulations are hard.

 

[Perkel]

Now with X4, we have taken another, massive step. For the first time in any X game, all parts of the NPC economy are manufactured from resources. Ships, weapons, upgrades, ammo and even stations. You name it. Everything comes out of the simulated economy.

And based on this, it does look like they're on the right track in terms of simulating the world properly.

Of course, the potential for bugs will be bigger than ever, and nailing the AI is gonna be quite tough due to the complexity of the simulated world. But at least modders will have something to work with.

Definitely. I'm betting it will be at least patch 1.04 before the galactic economy doesn't crash completely before you've played for 10 hours. Economic simulations are hard.

True but they can also do some rubber banding in creative way. Like when one faction is almost completely wiped out it forms alliance with other one which gives it money and resources to rebuild. Once one empire gets to big there will be Khak invasion on it or 2-3 factions form alliance to fight it out with it etc.

X3 mods did it in such way and it worked fine.

As for stations prices etc. Let it just run normal capitalism and it will work as long as products are used and wasted. You can make a lot of credit sinks etc.

 

[Lord Pickle]

Sounds good.
Add to this galactic news and maybe some useless banter between the ships, Space Rangers style and I'm in. Text quests wouldn't hurt either.
Hell go wild and add tactical battles when boarding ships with marines.

One can dream...

 

[Data4]

Sounds good.
Add to this galactic news and maybe some useless banter between the ships, Space Rangers style and I'm in. Text quests wouldn't hurt either.
Hell go wild and add tactical battles when boarding ships with marines.

One can dream...

Yeah, and Arena play. That would be cool. Oh, and a website where you can buy ships.

 

[Duellist_D]

There was another Q&A Stream in december, but it went beneath th
e radar here.

Full recording of the stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boxj2l5MkqY&feature=youtu.be


Disregarding the goofy (and typically Egosoft like) and horrible looking PCs, i'm absolutely looking forward to this.
Ships look nice, animated gimbal for guns is also pretty neat.
Additional stuff:
- possibility to use "flight assist off"
- better joystick support right from the beginning (including X52 and Warthog)
- "travel mode" with vastly increased speed but reduced steering (behavior and effectiveness can be modified by the engines you put into the ship)
- SETA / SINZA is in ATM and will most likely stay
- Jumpgates, highways and orbital accelerators as different means of covering far distance travel
- reducing number of ship types (actually, it seems me meant CLASSES), dividing them into small, medium, large and XL instead of the mX classification from back in the day
- showcased a Teladi Falcon starting from an Osprey
- some of the upgrades to ships (engines, guns, maybe others) are visible ingame
- modules of space stations are also upgradable (shields, launchers etc)
- trading got a few upgrades


Big bummer: No Boron was already confirmed, but it seems there also won't be any Split Ships in the game.
FUCKTHISSHITREEEEEEEEE I WANT MY Dragon TO FUCK SHIT UP WHILE FLYING HIGH SPEED

 

[Country_Gravy]

So is X3: Albion Prelude the best one out until they release this?

 

[Perkel]

So is X3: Albion Prelude the best one out until they release this?

Yes. but imo if you want to try it you should rather choose X3:AP and Litcube's Universe mod.
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=365706

There is no reason playing vanilla X3 games. They give you less stuff to do, unbalanced, poor AI, poor colisions etc.

Once you get in hoo boi 500h+ is understatement.

 

[thesheeep]

I have fond memories of X3:

Had some big cargo ship to follow me around.
Ordered it to dock at a station.
Watched it in its painful, yet hilarious attempts to navigate to the (completely free, unobstructed) docking position, ramming into other ships, smaller stations nearby, etc. for over 10 minutes, before it just stopped moving completely.
'd at the fact that that was the tutorial.
Uninstalled - if the devs don't even try, why should I?*

Good times!


* And no, that was not at release, but at least a year later.

 

[Turisas]

Should've just done it manually, feels good when you slide it in.

 

[Perkel]

Fuck i can't wait for X4. I have this huger for good space economy game on X3 level but everything there is, is only EVE and its multiplayer garbage.

Don't fuck it up ego please.

 

[Uselessdeernoise]

damn now im hyped - btw does anyone still remember x-tension ? Because alot im hearing sounds like they are going back to some of that feeling.

 

[Blaine]

I wish they'd quit with this highway garbage. I suspect that someone with seniority came up with the idea (or rather, the idea to include it in the X series); so now they're stuck with it, or else he'll lose face.

Then again, if it means not having everything crammed together into one tiny "system room," maybe that'd be nice.

 

[Perkel]

Highway concept if fine imo. Just X-rebirth badly executed it.

Space is big. Games tend to do 4 things or they mix things from that list:

- Jumpgates. Fine system but you make everything sqare box
- Give player ability to quantum travel etc. Then combat suffers because anyone at any time can just jump out
- Create way that only high cap ships can move and you need high cap ship to get via jump somewhere
- time compression like SETI in X3 and after patch in X-rebirth.

Highway system is between 2 and 3rd. Small ships don't need to use larger vessels but at the same time they can't just jump out anytime at will.

Problem with X-rebirth highway system aside from being technically bad (minigame, 9 lanes that changed into one with everything crashing in it, AI that couldn't really handle it etc) is that everything was basically very very very close to highway. So even if fight broke out you were just a few seconds away from safety.

What they need to do is to design travel around those systems rather than places and then patch highway system onto it. Meaning that realistically in unsafe environment you don't want costly weapon production facility being few seconds away from enemy force that will just get out of highway and steamroll everything.

Jump gates should connect distant star systems. It was done like this in X-rebirth and it was fine imo.
Highways on other hand should connect different planets but not in way X-rebirth used it where it basically connected EVERYTHING. Just main hubs and even in those hubs buildings should be close together but more spaced out.

Also they should not remove SETI.

 

[Turisas]

- Give player ability to quantum travel etc. Then combat suffers because anyone at any time can just jump out

No need for it to be instant though, it'd be easy to prevent it from being used in combat if that's what they wanted.

 

[Turjan]

The highway system is the logical advancement of what they introduced in X3, the trans-orbital accelerators that connected the different planets of the Sol system (as Albion Prelude spelled out). That one technically worked like a jumpgate in X3, but I'm sure it was meant to function like the highway system and they just couldn't make it work. I hope they manage to further smooth this out.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Highway concept if fine imo. Just X-rebirth badly executed it.

Space is big. Games tend to do 4 things or they mix things from that list:

- Jumpgates. Fine system but you make everything sqare box
- Give player ability to quantum travel etc. Then combat suffers because anyone at any time can just jump out
- Create way that only high cap ships can move and you need high cap ship to get via jump somewhere
- time compression like SETI in X3 and after patch in X-rebirth.

Highway system is between 2 and 3rd. Small ships don't need to use larger vessels but at the same time they can't just jump out anytime at will.

Problem with X-rebirth highway system aside from being technically bad (minigame, 9 lanes that changed into one with everything crashing in it, AI that couldn't really handle it etc) is that everything was basically very very very close to highway. So even if fight broke out you were just a few seconds away from safety.

What they need to do is to design travel around those systems rather than places and then patch highway system onto it. Meaning that realistically in unsafe environment you don't want costly weapon production facility being few seconds away from enemy force that will just get out of highway and steamroll everything.

Jump gates should connect distant star systems. It was done like this in X-rebirth and it was fine imo.
Highways on other hand should connect different planets but not in way X-rebirth used it where it basically connected EVERYTHING. Just main hubs and even in those hubs buildings should be close together but more spaced out.

Also they should not remove SETI.

SETI = Search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

SETA = time acceleration device in the X universe.

Anyway the highway system is cancer

Jumpgates don't really make everything a square, they are just arranged in a square pattern. The systems themselves can have factories anywhere. This is a perfectly logical and effecient arrangement to be used if you are going to be building deep space factories. Egosoft is German so they do things in logikal und effizient ways.

 

[Spectacle]

Highways belong on the ground not in space. Jumpgates are much better. Both serve the same purpose of making space seem bigger without having lots of emptiness between the areas where actual gameplay happens.

 

[:Flash:]

In the X novels the Jumpgates actually orbit planets, not necessarily geostationary. I had always hoped they could incorporate that into the games.

 

[Beastro]

In the X novels the Jumpgates actually orbit planets, not necessarily geostationary. I had always hoped they could incorporate that into the games.

X... novels?

 

[:Flash:]

In the X novels the Jumpgates actually orbit planets, not necessarily geostationary. I had always hoped they could incorporate that into the games.

X... novels?

https://www.amazon.de/s/url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=helge kautz
They're actually surprisingly good, better than most Star Wars novels. The author was the webmaster of THQ when the first X was published, and the first novel ("Farnham's Legend", the only one that was translated to English) was included with the German version of X-tension.
The problem with the novels is that a lot of plot points are left hanging in the open because they have to be written as a novel to go with the current X game instead of a sequel to the previous novel. E.g. the X2 novel is really good, but never gets resolved, because the next one had to deal with the X3 universe setup.

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

This is going to be done before Star Citizen. Really activates the ole almond doesn't it.

 

[Perkel]

For now it looks like Empire Strikes Back but it can end up and Phantom Menace too...

 

[Grotesque]

I can't wait for this game to come out!
I am so HYPED!!