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

[Perkel]

The fact that people have said several gameplay decisons are a step backwards from X3 makes me worry though.

Jiggy Bloopes is autist and he can't live without his jumpdrives.

Imho true step backs imho:

- removal of weapons, shield, missiles as commodity to trade. So you can't make factory of your own missiles now, stuff like this is made in docks which naturally makes little sense.
- shield regen delay when hit
- stupid highway
- research behind homebase which sits in certain sector and you can't move it away

All of those can be fixed with mods aside from armament commodities. Other stuff is just less content that can be fixed with expansions and mods. On other hand there are plenty of good additions like map which is really useful now and you can play game like RTS from that view. Crew skills, janky at the moment but most of mods for X3 added it to base game and they implemented it officially. For all downfalls of increasing complexity it is still nice to see your ship in dock. Another huge upgrade is that ships can fight in huge groups, in X3 if you would have like 30 Buzzards half of them would crash into other ships and destroy in first 2-3 minutes of combat until Litecube guys came and fixed AI, now it doesn't happen. Travel mode fixed constant use of SETI, by removing jumpdrives they added whole strategy layer and you still can teleport to ships you own after research.

X3 vanilla wasn't great game either, it is mods that made it one of the best games ever.

 

[cw8]

Wait for the Terran expansion, it should get better and better. It's already pretty decent now. I wish for a Boron addition as well. Hope they add more mid-tier ships, like a lot more. And the M0 class ships too.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

when the tutorial bugs and gets stuck, it can only end with an uninstall within 30 seconds.

perkele must be rich with all this shilling.

 

[cw8]

Well that was quick, Terran exppack revealed:

X4: Cradle of Humanity - Unveiling the next chapter of X4: Foundations
X series returns to Earth, with Terran factions re-joining game, including economy, ships, weapons and stations
EGOSOFT unveils the next chapter in its long-standing space simulation franchise. X4: Cradle of Humanity is the second expansion for the latest game in the series, X4: Foundations, which was released for PC in November 2018.

The teaser trailer for X4: Cradle of Humanity will premiere today at 23:45 CEST / 10:45pm BST / 5:45pm EDT / 2:45pm PDT during the gamescom studio live show, produced by IGN, over at www.youtube.com/IGN.

Later this year, X4: Cradle of Humanity will bring the X series back to Earth, significantly increasing the size of the game's universe with new sectors, and welcoming two Terran factions to X4: Foundations, along with their economy, ships, weapons and stations. New game-starts will introduce the identity and political stance of the Terran factions, as well as giving an alternative perspective on existing story developments in X4: Foundations.

X4: Cradle of Humanity will also shed light on what has happened to Earth in the decades since the jump-gate shutdown. Furthermore, a certain pirate faction that is well known to fans of the series will be making a dramatic comeback!


X4: Cradle of Humanity

Q4 2020
Action
Simulation
Add to your Wishlist

X4: Cradle of Humanity will be accompanied by the biggest free update to X4: Foundations yet. Update 4.0 will be made available to all owners of the base game and is set to further enhance X4: Foundations in a number of ways, including major new gameplay features (e.g. a new terraforming feature) and wide-ranging visual improvements (e.g. volumetric fog). Details of these, and on other new elements of the 4.0 update, will be disclosed at a later stage.

Join us for a livestream on Friday, August 28th, 2020 at 7pm CEST / 6pm BST / 1pm EDT / 10am PDT at www.twitch.tv/egosoftofficial to find out more about our plans for the future of X4: Foundations and X4: Cradle of Humanity.

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/392160/view/2767977977917156493

 

[Perkel]

Terraforming ? Wut ?


screenshots from steam page:

 

[Razor]

Movable HQ?

 

[deuxhero]

Pretty. What do we blow up first?

 

[Infinitron]

 

[ADL]

Still waiting to buy into this. Hope this is what finally makes it comparable to X3

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

keep waiting.

 

[Volrath]

Why no Boron first ffs?

 

[Perkel]

Why no Boron first ffs?

Because there won't be any Borons. The only Boron in game looks like actual Boron and its a squid that requires vat with water. Borons were dead the moment they decided that they will have cockpits for ships.

 

[Spectacle]

They could still have borons as a non playable race with ships and stations that are sealed off to other races.

 

[cw8]

Don't get why you can't play as Borons. I loved their cap ships in X3. Just give the player a perm scuba diving suit when piloting their ships or some type of small high tech device that allows u to breathe underwater that we see in so many games/shows.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Why no Boron first ffs?

Because there won't be any Borons. The only Boron in game looks like actual Boron and its a squid that requires vat with water. Borons were dead the moment they decided that they will have cockpits for ships.

Yeah, fuck ship variety and one of the main races that have been there since the first game, the main ally of the Argons. What we really need is COCKPITS and walking through stations for hours on travelators. That's what REALLY sets this series apart.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Don't get why you can't play as Borons. I loved their cap ships in X3. Just give the player a perm scuba diving suit when piloting their ships or some type of small high tech device that allows u to breathe underwater that we see in so many games/shows.

https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/comments/a2qzff/boron_dlc_detected_ingame_files/

The real reason is $$$. Egosoft's MO has, since X3 been:

Release a barely working game with minimal content, keep updating it through free patches and eventually release a "sequel" that includes everything the previous game should have been since the start.

Now it seems they're going for the Paradox model: Release a not-really-working-at-all-game that's more an Alpha or proof of concept, then keep charging you for endless DLC packs out your ass, until eventually you have a working, feature-complete game which they will then sell as the ULTIMATE COLLECTION. This will be followed by some more DLC that will eventually be included a COMPLETE COLLECTION. And then of course some minor DLC that you can't get in any collection and have to pay for separately.

 

[Zarniwoop]

The fact that people have said several gameplay decisons are a step backwards from X3 makes me worry though.

Jiggy Bloopes is autist and he can't live without his jumpdrives.

Imho true step backs imho:

- removal of weapons, shield, missiles as commodity to trade. So you can't make factory of your own missiles now, stuff like this is made in docks which naturally makes little sense.
- shield regen delay when hit
- stupid highway
- research behind homebase which sits in certain sector and you can't move it away

All of those can be fixed with mods aside from armament commodities. Other stuff is just less content that can be fixed with expansions and mods. On other hand there are plenty of good additions like map which is really useful now and you can play game like RTS from that view. Crew skills, janky at the moment but most of mods for X3 added it to base game and they implemented it officially. For all downfalls of increasing complexity it is still nice to see your ship in dock. Another huge upgrade is that ships can fight in huge groups, in X3 if you would have like 30 Buzzards half of them would crash into other ships and destroy in first 2-3 minutes of combat until Litecube guys came and fixed AI, now it doesn't happen. Travel mode fixed constant use of SETI, by removing jumpdrives they added whole strategy layer and you still can teleport to ships you own after research.

X3 vanilla wasn't great game either, it is mods that made it one of the best games ever.

Nice try, kiddo. Autists are people who use mods, complain about muh balinse and celebrate quality-of-life features being removed (that you could always ignore if you wanted). Why don't you cut your leg off, then you need more strategy to get to the shops

Saying mods improve it is silly. That's like buying a car and telling everyone "oh hey it's not so bad once you change the engine, all the wheels and the interior". Some more gameplay decisions (apart from the inexcusable removal of jumpdrives), that are not just a step back from X3 but straight up retarded:

-Adding shit crystal shitcancer from Stillbirth
-Adding shit station scanning cancer from Stillbirth
-Adding shit cockpits no-one cares about and in turn REMOVING AN ENTIRE RACE from the game
-Tiny universe even after the expansion (inb4 hurrr durr secterz expand when you get near the borders derp)

Ships in the dock were in the first 2 games, they only removed it in X3, now it's back.
Yeah, fleet combat is WAY better now . your 30 Buzzards (or in my case, 40 Elites), will fly single file into whatever you tell them to attack and at least the first few will get melted. Then they will land at the carrier and not repair until you painstakingly tell each one to repair itself.
Oh and of course the shit shield mechanics combined with the utter feebleness of your capship weapons means your entire fleet of 8 destroyers, a carrier with 40 fighters, 6 frigates and several bombers will be annihilated by a single tiny Xenon Defence Platform (which is indestructible, unlike your stations). Making the entire sector-claiming mechanic pretty pointless.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Have to say though, the Split Raptor is a goddamn mobile death fortress. It's so laughably much better than any other carrier (those are pretty useless against anything bigger than a fighter) I'm surprised the balancefag degenerates like Perkele haven't been bitching about it or demanding it to be nerfed.

It has 101 turrets, the second most in a player accessible carrier is the Paranid Odysseus that has 19 A wave of LAZORS just melts anything in its path including Xenon K's

It takes 100 fighters and 30 M sized ships, where every other carrier takes 40 and 10

Also, it looks badass. Like a Super Star Destroyer

Of course, it takes pretty much all the Hull Parts in the universe to build but once it's done, it's a worthy flagship.

 

[Blake00]

Back in the 2000s I was hunting for games like Freelancer and a friend showed me X3 Reunion. Was so blown away (Argon prime seemed so real and I loved how the planet and its moon reflected off the shiny Argon capital ships hulls) that I went back and played X1 and X2, then of course played through X3 Reunion. Haven't quite finished my Terran Conflict game yet (got stuck on that bloody collect a gazillion resources to open the gate connectors mission lol) so I haven't got around to playing Albion Prelude or X Rebirth (but I own them). Been religiously following X4's progress since release as Egosoft always seem to convert their failed game releases into awesome games after 2 or so years of patches and addons haha.

It satisfied a lot (but not all) of my Freelancer cravings plus it adds in a lot of those business empire management features from RTS games and 4x TBS space games that I love. Was always sad that the earlier games didn't have Freelancer like space station and planet landings so it's cool that they've added the space station ones in to the newer games (shame they'll never do planets).

My games similar to Freelancer addiction is also why I've been following Starpoint Gemini 3's beta testing (very Freelancer like!), Rebel Galaxy Outlaw's post release progress to see if they do addons (as it sounds a bit barebones), and Everspace 2 (who've dropped the random rogue like stuff for Freelancer like open world).

Was very happy to see this news a few weeks back. The terran ships were pretty badass in Terran Conflict.

Why no Boron first ffs?

Because there won't be any Borons. The only Boron in game looks like actual Boron and its a squid that requires vat with water. Borons were dead the moment they decided that they will have cockpits for ships.

I see the neverending argument from the Egosoft forums has made its way here lol. There have been PLENTY of suggestions on ways to do it (eg humanoid shaped encounter suits) on the Egosoft forums, there's like a giant thread there full of ideas and suggestions so they can do it. So yeah I too was kind of surprised that they didn't do a Boron expansion (using fan suggestions on how to achieve their look and mobility in non-liquid environments) and then put in a bit of a cliffhanger story ending with a Terran tease, so they could then save the Terrans for a big stand alone game with a new story like they did back in the day with Terran Conflict (same engine but separate to X3 with a sexy cliffhanger to bridge the games). Reckon they would have made more money in the long run IMO even if some fans would have hated having to buy a new game again though of course haha.

Have to say though, the Split Raptor is a goddamn mobile death fortress. It's so laughably much better than any other carrier (those are pretty useless against anything bigger than a fighter) I'm surprised the balancefag degenerates like Perkele haven't been bitching about it or demanding it to be nerfed.

It has 101 turrets, the second most in a player accessible carrier is the Paranid Odysseus that has 19 A wave of LAZORS just melts anything in its path including Xenon K's

It takes 100 fighters and 30 M sized ships, where every other carrier takes 40 and 10

Also, it looks badass. Like a Super Star Destroyer

Of course, it takes pretty much all the Hull Parts in the universe to build but once it's done, it's a worthy flagship.

Funny you should bring it up as I was just drooling over this video the other day. The 'Pilot' youtube guy did very sexy video on the Raptor haha.. my god when the sun reflects off it like that... drools. And those dark red C&C NOD like interiors.. oh baby lol. Can almost see why all those crazy people bought gorgeous super expensive ships in Star Citizen lol!.. almost.

 

[Skdursh]

Petition to rename The Raptor to The Queef just because.

Why the fuck does the formatting here hate putting spaces after italicized text?

 

[Perkel]

4.0 beta available

We announce, with great pleasure, that today is the start of the public beta phase for the much-anticipated 4.00 update of X4: Foundations. With the 4.00 beta version of X4: Foundations, you will get a first impression of our new developments and future vision for the game.

The 4.00 update is, without a doubt, the biggest free update so far to our space simulation X4: Foundations. This major update, which will be available to all owners of the game when it is released in the first quarter of 2021, enhances X4: Foundations in numerous ways, including completely new gameplay features and extensive technical improvements. For the full change log for the 4.00 beta update, please visit our forum.

Some of the most significant changes include:

Volumetric Fog
The 4.00 update to X4: Foundations will see the introduction of several wide-ranging visual improvements, first and foremost volumetric fog. For those of you with an interest in the technical side of things: most implementations of fog in games are calculated on the surface of an object by the shader used to render that surface; volumetric fog, however, is calculated at intervals in the empty space in front of the camera, independently of any surface.

In practice, this means that you will notice soft fog layers in our universe, inviting you to come closer and check them out. We also hope that you'll enjoy how the volumetric fog interacts with light, and how this technical improvement changes your sense of space in the X4 universe.

Improved Fleet Control
If you've ever commanded huge fleets through the X4: Foundations universe, then there's a good chance that you'll be excited about the following news: we've invested a considerable amount of time in improving fleet combat for the 4.00 update. This includes improved steering behavior and several important AI script changes.

There are a number of different elements to this feature, and we don't want to spoil all of them at once, but we'll start by giving you an overview of a new order called "Coordinate Attack". This tactical order is given to the fleet admiral when engaging a target fleet in battle. The admiral can subsequently give movement, escort and attack orders to all the subordinate ship groups, to coordinate positioning, formations and attacks against the enemy fleet. Once all the subordinate groups reach their positions, the new "Sync Point" feature is triggered. The admiral then moves on, to give orders to the groups of ships to attack specific targets.

This new Sync Point system allows the AI to synchronize orders to ships, but also gives you the freedom to manually trigger the release signal yourself, or let it be released automatically.

While a fleet battle is taking place, the groups of ships will dynamically receive new attack orders and will switch targets if the group configuration changes. This is especially useful once you have seen how the battle is progressing, and allows you to reconfigure your attacks with different group configurations.

Once you've had a look at this new feature and are feeling experimental, you can edit several of the order parameters. For example:

• "Fleet aggressiveness" defines how aggressively the fleet should behave, as well as affecting the initial positioning of all ships and individual formation attacks.
• "Weak targets first" determines whether to prioritize closer, weaker targets, or go for the larger, stronger ones.
• "Ignore rally points" allows all ships to ignore Sync Points.

(click gif for video demo)

This is just the first of several public beta updates for 4.00 which will lead up to the final release version of 4.00 in Q1 2021. These updates will introduce additional fixes and new features, including the Terraforming gameplay that was mentioned during our gamescom 2020 live-stream. Keep an eye on our news channels to avoid missing anything!

 

[Perkel]

patchnotes, they will be adding stuff along new beta versions too like before.

ersion: 4.00 Beta 1 (418782) - 2020-11-17

• New Feature: Volumetric fog makes space look even better.
• New Feature: Transaction Log for detailed breakdown of income and outgoings.
• New Feature: Message system for important communications from NPCs.
• Added Mark as Hostile option to Interact menu.
• Added Fire Authorisation Overrides providing control over whether ships should attack other factions.
• Added option to declare war on another faction.
• Added option to have player-owned police collect or ignore crates dropped by apprehended smugglers rather than destroying them.
• Added Assist assignment for subordinates of ships.
• Added Coordinate Attack option for fleet commanders.
• Added Interact Menu option to Claim abandoned ships with player-owned ships.
• Added Escort missions.
• Added area damage to capital ship engines exhaust.
• Added audio and visual feedback when entering damaging area.
• Added possibility for crew to bail when under attack by NPCs.
• Added possibility for NPC factions to claim abandoned ships.
• Added race information to Encyclopedia.
• Added contested sector information to Object Info menu and Encyclopedia.
• Added descriptions for licences and blueprints in faction representative menus.
• Added information about sectors and blacklists to Trade menu.
• Added shield recharge delay info to Encyclopedia.
• Added separate entries for large and medium turrets in encyclopedia.
• Added sunlight information to sector encyclopedia entries and Plot Management menu.
• Added research and associated resources to Logical Station Overview.
• Added information about equipment compatibility to Ship and Station Configuration menus.
• Added information about workforce efficiency and changes to Logical Station Overview menu.
• Added plot licence price display while placing new station plot.
• Added links to Encyclopedia for important items in mission objectives.
• Added object ID code to upkeep mission list.
• Added option to lock paint modifications per ship excluding them from changes to default.
• Added setting for default ship weapon and turret behaviour.
• Added construction plan shuffle option to player HQ.
• Added additional support to navigate complex menus (e.g. map) with controller or keyboard.
• Added ability to store crew information alongside saved loadouts (only applied when building new ships).
• Added ability to store weapon mode and ammo settings with saved loadouts and apply them in ship build/upgrade process.
• Added option to set preferred build method.
• Added sync point management to Object Behaviour menu.
• Added message when quick-save fails due to saving not being possible.
• Added optional warning about modified game client.
• Improved Kha'ak presence and behaviour.
• Improved behaviour of pirates hacking station storage.
• Improved behaviour of subordinates in fleets with fleet auxiliary ships to prefer those ships for resupply.
• Improved mining AI to better balance travel distance and resource yields between local and remote sectors.
• Improved station-based miners working for stations that require more than one mineable ware.
• Improved cases where ships preferred highways too much over direct route.
• Improved flight movement for ships docking on capital ships.
• Improved player-owned drone behaviour so that inventory items are transferred directly to player when docking at player ship.
• Improved balancing of relation penalty on destruction of drones and laser towers.
• Improved shipyard generation to provide more dock capacity for medium ships (new game only).
• Improved handling of ships sold by player to ensure their new owner recovers resources.
• Improved workforce balancing by increasing both impact of local population and effect on production.
• Improved build plot price balancing by taking into account sector population.
• Improved external camera behaviour when target is destroyed.
• Improved display of mission trade offers in trade context menu
• Improved news notifications about faction activity to filter by local area unless war subscriptions are in place.
• Improved scrolling of multi-line texts in menus with controller and keyboard.
• Improved tooltip when trying to reassign for busy ship traders.
• Improved mission icons.
• Removed Interact menu option to follow ship (still available as default behaviour).
• Removed Interact menu option to protect station (still available as default behaviour, or assign to station instead).
• Fixed ships warping when exiting local highway while player is inside same highway.
• Fixed S/M ships not able to approach and dock properly on enclosed docking bays.
• Fixed ships sometimes not being able to dock on capital ships.
• Fixed ships holding up docks for long periods of time.
• Fixed AI orders and player teleport sometimes not considering sector to be in range.
• Fixed AI ships sometimes taking longer route than they should.
• Fixed Attack subordinates sometimes not attacking their commander's target.
• Fixed attacking combat ships halting or fleeing in response to police ordering them to halt.
• Fixed boarding ships launching extra empty boarding pods if they are already ready to launch at start of operation.
• Fixed skilled marines causing more damage when claiming than marines with less skill.
• Fixed changes to defence drone modes not registering when defence drones are disarmed.
• Fixed claiming of abandoned ships with marines.
• Fixed efficiency bonus from workforce not being applied if productions were not running during shift change.
• Fixed idling ships sometimes wandering off.
• Fixed ships retrieved from storage sometimes being rotated by 180 degrees.
• Fixed miners subordinate to stations in hostile sectors refusing to work in their commanders' sectors.
• Fixed subordinates set to supply fleet not getting appropriate assignment if set via order queue menu.
• Fixed turrets on ship that player is personally flying firing on wrecks.
• Fixed ware transfer sometimes stalling when involving one ship docked at another.
• Fixed weapons sometimes recovering from overheating too late.
• Fixed cases of many NPC subordinate ships being ordered at shipyards but never assigned to commander.
• Fixed ship traders getting stuck indefinitely attempting to build costly ships.
• Fixed software upgrades on resupply ships not starting.
• Fixed Black Marketeers sometimes not having correct race for their faction.
• Fixed faction representatives not being respawned after loading certain older savegames.
• Fixed Split character sometimes being placed in cockpit floor in Fires of Defeat gamestart.
• Fixed HQ manager in Accomplished Scientist gamestart sometimes being invisible Kha'ak or Xenon character.
• Fixed incorrect hints in Flight School when playing with configuration of multiple joysticks or controllers.
• Fixed success criteria in sabotage mission.
• Fixed already opened core-shield switching to closed when loading savegame in Paranid storyline.
• Fixed game freezing if fulfilling mission by delivering fleet that is directly subordinate to player.
• Fixed missing guidance to mission character in End of Terrorism/Oppression missions under certain circumstances.
• Fixed NPC ships avoiding player during payment objective of End of Oppression/Terrorism Split story mission.
• Fixed multiple crew delivery missions reacting to delivering NPC.
• Fixed Split Vs Argon mission referencing Paranid ship types.
• Fixed Abort Mission button wrongly appearing enabled under certain circumstances.
• Fixed Ships in Construction entries showing 1:00 as time left when completed.
• Fixed broken safe deposit storage menu when closing it under certain circumstances.
• Fixed cut-off Ship Interactions menu under certain circumstances.
• Fixed cut-off encyclopedia descriptions.
• Fixed highlight visitor setting turning off in certain situations.
• Fixed licence icon in ship selection of Ship Build menu disappearing sometimes.
• Fixed misplaced sorting arrow in Load Game menu.
• Fixed missing icons in certain menus with specific resolution, UI scale and language combinations.
• Fixed overlapping texts in player info box in upper left corner of some menus.
• Fixed menu crash in Crew Information menu in certain situations.
• Fixed missing warning when trying to trade with station that only has capital ship build modules.
• Fixed mission guidance on Map not showing multiple objectives correctly.
• Fixed order lines being shown on Map even if object icon is filtered out.
• Fixed incorrect sorting of Map objects by name in certain cases.
• Fixed wrongly aligned background elements in expanded flow-chart nodes.
• Fixed rounding issues when truncating text.
• Fixed Bling Bling achievement being granted by looking at encyclopedia.
• Fixed station module and ship blueprints being available without any reputation restriction.
• Fixed excessive credits sometimes being transferred to player when cancelling upgrade.
• Fixed weapon cooldown delay re-starting when another weapon finishes cooling down.
• Fixed ships with turrets that are in storage doing damage when the player is not present.
• Fixed gates and superhighways sometimes being shown outside sectors on Map.
• Fixed inability to interact in first person mode in certain savegames.
• Fixed getting stuck in floor when in docked capital ship.
• Fixed being able to fall off dock area of Zeus.
• Fixed missing visual element on hackable console in security office.
• Fixed parts of venture room vanishing depending on view angle.
• Fixed flipped player logo on Asp.
• Fixed incorrect colour on Paranid mass driver beam.
• Fixed rolling character eyes.
• Fixed stall on entering super-highway.
• Fixed several causes of crashes.

 

[anvi]

If it gets better reviews in the new year I'll get this. So far it seems sorta 50/50 whether people recommend this or x3 with tons of mods.

 

[Perkel]

If it gets better reviews in the new year I'll get this. So far it seems sorta 50/50 whether people recommend this or x3 with tons of mods.

X4 is better mechanically already. It is the content that is lacking.
Still Litecube for newbs is amazing game to sink you teeth in and X-tended for hardcore guys like me.

 

[anvi]

If it gets better reviews in the new year I'll get this. So far it seems sorta 50/50 whether people recommend this or x3 with tons of mods.

X4 is better mechanically already. It is the content that is lacking.
Still Litecube for newbs is amazing game to sink you teeth in and X-tended for hardcore guys like me.

The problem for me is it is such a big time investment. Sucks when I start on 100+ hour adventures and then find the late game kinda sucks. So I'd be more inclined to X3 with mods to make sure it plays how I want. But I'm hoping X4 will develop close to that point soon.