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It was quite significant if you wanted to slap a load of HEPTs on something cos they absolutely ate energy in exchange for spitting death. Essentially it gave you more freedom in your gun loadout because you generally had more slots than you could supply, meaning you would pack more than one kind of gun or variable amounts of energy consuming loadouts. In X4 you just want as many good guns as you can get and ideally all the same type cos you wanna fire all of them at once all the time.
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Dec 13, 2018 03:44
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Yeah that's what I was thinking of I think I remember shoving 8 HEPTs on my mamba and just going 'oh dear' but at the same time using mostly Terran ships I was used to just shooting forever with decent power. I did feel like ammo weapons were kinda both a pain in tracking down ammo, but also silly since you could buy waaay more than enough easily.
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Dec 13, 2018 03:45
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Terrans are kinda the weird one out because they can only use their own guns and their own guns are always really efficient. But all the other races gave you a lot of variety in overloading your ship if you wanted to.
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Dec 13, 2018 03:47
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XR had per-weapon drain, but mostly it just made you switch weapons constantly when trying to blow up a larger ship, which was boring.
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Dec 13, 2018 04:15
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So does X4, it uses the Rebirth system except you can shoot multiple guns at once now.
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Dec 13, 2018 04:21
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xanif posted:I run my trade ships, that don't have a high enough level captain to autotrade, to distribute wares. Hull parts and engine parts mostly. All the shipyards in my game are functional with just 3 10k storage haulers running around to fill the gaps that the AI don't consistently take care of. Even ignoring the whole subject of "Players should(?) compensate for the failing economy". It would be nice if the encyclopedia entries for materials like Hull parts and Claytronics outright said "Oh, these are required for ship/station building, Specifically" Particularly with opening demonstration of the economy. You get to things like claytronics. With no "Used to craft X", and a generic yet promising flavor text of "It can be used for drat near everything but the hull of a station! It's SUPER important and ALWAYS in demand!" In my launch save the only thing demonstrated by Claytronics was that nobody was buying it despite it being one of the most expensive production module blueprints. Except for the usual example of "3 dot buy/sell!... Haha gotcha, it's just the trade stations stockpiling it for average price again!". Not even a warning that only displays when you try to go shopping like a Wharf low on hull parts. The gradual patches of the economy should help there, but it is still a situation of "Well, if you ALREADY knew-" On the subject of economy. While sort by volume is a very useful filter, and will be more so when you start building a station mega empire and want to source a ton of materials ASAP (even more so if/when we get player owned shipyards). So far it's mostly been false positives in trying to find good prices. Between the rocky economy where argon cow factories are either not selling anything (But some HAT free port is), or 1 dot sales with overpriced meat because they can barely keep the factory running. OwlFancier posted:Ehh it does allow more variety between ships, it's hard to not just make more guns = good otherwise. If you're allowing a lot of weapon choice you probably want some kind of variable ammo supply between ships so as to make some more alpha strike based and some more sustained. The Kestral Scout is slower than a Paranid MINER equipped with bargain mk2 engines. "No, gently caress you. THREE engines on the Mining ship or we execute you for heresy!" Section Z fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 05:00
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Do I have to individually hire 75 people to get workers for my station? Please tell me there’s an easier way
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Dec 13, 2018 06:09
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Section Z posted:At least ships definitely have distinct speed profiles before you account for some of the crazy crafted mods shown off in the thread. Teladi and Argon Small ships even given Paranid engines, are mostly going to be slower than a Paranid with some MK2 whatever engines. I swear some of the ship speed stats are typos. Paranid Miner ships in particular, the LARGE versions are the 2nd and 3rd fastest ships in the game for travel speed (7479, and 6830) Ultimate Shrek Fan posted:Do I have to individually hire 75 people to get workers for my station? Please tell me there’s an easier way I think if you build a habitation module, it will fill over time on its own.
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Dec 13, 2018 06:12
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Slickdrac posted:I think if you build a habitation module, it will fill over time on its own. Ah gently caress, thanks. How do you research teleportation?
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Dec 13, 2018 06:20
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Ultimate Shrek Fan posted:Ah gently caress, thanks. Scan stations for the boron storyline to start, and work your way through the storyline missions for the PHQ.
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Dec 13, 2018 06:24
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Section Z posted:At least ships definitely have distinct speed profiles before you account for some of the crazy crafted mods shown off in the thread. Teladi and Argon Small ships even given Paranid engines, are mostly going to be slower than a Paranid with some MK2 whatever engines. The speed profiles are odd and I don't really like them. It's far more to do with ship class than profile. You can have ships that carry three engines be slower than ships carrying one.
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Dec 13, 2018 06:46
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OwlFancier posted:The speed profiles are odd and I don't really like them. It's far more to do with ship class than profile. Like the Teladi M Frigate having two engines for 1.9 travel speed with a mk3 travel engine. It doesn't even have more shield generators than other frigates. While the two engine Argon M Frigate gets 3.8 travel. Or the poor unloved Teladi Guillemont Scout. FOUR loving engines, only one gun and one shield. Still slower than Paranid everything, and slower than the 3 engine Argon small ships (On that note, feels like they got the ARG "Courier Vanguard Courier" and ARG Miner speeds backwards). FOUR engines for 5.7 travel tops. And it's a 960 cargo scout doesn't make up for that compared to it's peers. It is a SCOUT, with four goddamned engines. It should be the fastest thing in the universe. What sorry sack of poo poo got stiffed with "Three engines is slower than a ship of the same type with one engine"? I can at least understand stuff like noncombat ships getting by on less engines than warships. But it's clear now that I take a second look there are some huge issues within the same category. Slickdrac posted:I swear some of the ship speed stats are typos. Paranid Miner ships in particular, the LARGE versions are the 2nd and 3rd fastest ships in the game for travel speed (7479, and 6830) The above mentioned fact that even within factions, Argon's 3 engine miner is NOTABLY faster than their 3 engine Courier model does hint that there are probably some basic fuckups of the "we got it backwards!" variety too. Section Z fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 08:01
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So, about that multiplayer... https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=4770423&sid=03de03e21d5efb65c707e45587f59f80#p4770423 "Sorry to disappoint you, but these functions were just experiments. The Online Features options will have further uses down the line, but these functions aren't among them."
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Dec 13, 2018 08:32
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Section Z posted:Yeah in situations like that where the is a HUGE gap between the same ship category, all multi engines are is a CR tax for visuals. Which can gently caress right off. Had a thought on the backwards between classes though. The L class ships are ALL faster in travel speed than their M counterparts, which kind of would buff the role of a carrier type ship, if docking/undocking weren't ungodly slow and the fleet function would work to pair up smaller miners to mine for the big ship, or allow for superfreighters. e; double posting is a 1.32 bug
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Dec 13, 2018 08:41
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Probably very much for the best tbh, probably also shouldn't have launched the game with them in, though...
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Dec 13, 2018 08:42
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Slickdrac posted:For anyone restarting, your first order of business should be getting a handful of trading ships to keep the shipyards and wharfs supplied when you need to. Else you're going to get stuck waiting for possibly hours to get any new ships or even just restocking on equipment. Does this mean if your ship build is stuck in a queue, you need to bring enough materials to get your ship build plus all the other ships that aren't yours that are also waiting to be built before you can get your ship completed? I don't mind the idea of having to provide my own materials since the building itself only takes a couple minutes (should take longer Imo), but I don't want to have to provide resources for 7 other NPC ships each time I want to produce one for myself
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Dec 13, 2018 10:45
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Hoo boy. I was afraid someone was going to ask how that works. OKAY. So, short answer, if you cover the shortfall in one sale, and you're 1st in the queue, it will build your ship right away. Long answer, it depends on your queue location, and what the supply level is at, and what a sale to it brings it to. So take this generic ship queue with arbitrary values of an ambiguous item needed for each to be built. For ease, the dock has 0 of this item. Ship 1-300 needed Ship 2-400 needed Ship 3 (You)-200 needed Ship 4-100 needed In this case, the shipyard will tell you that 1000 items are needed. If you bring 1000 items, it will start work on all 4 (If it's a wharf at least, shipyard can build 1 L and 1 XL at a time) If you bring 700 items, it will begin work on Ship 1 and 2 If you bring 500 items, it will begin work on Ship 1 and SHOULD begin work on your ship If you bring 200, it should start on your ship If you bring 100, it will start on ship 4 In sum, if you want the drat thing to get on with it, get the big fucker trade ship and load it up with whatever it's short of to sell. I was at war with the HOP trade dock for hours this morning even with 6 M trade ships doing nothing but bringing it items because all the S ships they kept asking for kept stealing materials.
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Dec 13, 2018 11:31
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Yeah the problem with goods/queueing is that the stations don't really consider the relationship between who's trading with them and who's buying ships from them. They just set a queue of ships in the order that they were received, and start building them if they have the materials available for them. If they don't, they just wait until someone trades some materials to them, without considering that like, MAYBE you might be selling them a whole bunch of ship components because you want them to start building YOUR ship.
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Dec 13, 2018 14:59
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I am up to needing 15 M hauling ships to keep this drat HOP yard running. This is a bit nuts. It's not a total soft lock problem though, the ALI and MIN yards don't ever, or at least rarely build ships on their own, so they keep stocked well, and are easier to keep stocked, though ALI limits you to hauling ships, and MIN/Teladi ships aren't great.
Slickdrac fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 17:23
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Section Z posted:Even ignoring the whole subject of "Players should(?) compensate for the failing economy". It would be nice if the encyclopedia entries for materials like Hull parts and Claytronics outright said "Oh, these are required for ship/station building, Specifically" Production flowchart:  There are tons of those floating around. That's not the one I used but it was the first in my google search results and I'm not at home to pull up the bookmark I use but it's almost identical (content wise it's identical, it just differs in aesthetic presentation). I really like that I can make money off of trading in this game. Especially shipping around parts for war. I like being an arms dealer; it's essentially free money to just set a decent sized cargo ship to move engine/hull parts around. I installed the conquest and war mod so shipyards are going crazy pumping out destroyers right now. People on reddit/x4 forums said they were making bank off of claytronics but I ran the numbers and it's only like 2m per hour (revenue, not profit) in my game to run that plant for a resource that is not consumed. I haven't seen any NPC station building in game so I'm not sure what the point is. If you scan the modules on a station, more specifically the storage containers, you can see exactly what materials they are low on and what they need. It will also tell you in the ship purchase/upgrade screen exactly which parts are missing for your ship. Stations can buy more than just the three things the market filter says its buying.
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Dec 13, 2018 17:23
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NPCs build buckets of stations and they're useful for making your own too.
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Dec 13, 2018 17:30
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OwlFancier posted:NPCs build buckets of stations and they're useful for making your own too. Really...mine haven't. Claytronics has been a stagnant market for me. Maybe once the xeno's start blowing stuff up the market will move. For now, hull parts and engine parts are my milk and honey. I can see how they're useful to myself but I'm not dropping 12m on a claytronics factory when there are much cheaper modules with much better margins. Maybe when I'm drowning in credits.
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Dec 13, 2018 17:37
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They should generally start doing it just to expand their economies. Given how expensive they are a 12m factory would pay for itself quite quickly in station costs.
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Dec 13, 2018 17:38
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xanif posted:There are tons of those floating around. That's not the one I used but it was the first in my google search results and I'm not at home to pull up the bookmark I use but it's almost identical (content wise it's identical, it just differs in aesthetic presentation). xanif posted:Really...mine haven't. Claytronics has been a stagnant market for me. Maybe once the xeno's start blowing stuff up the market will move. For now, hull parts and engine parts are my milk and honey.  Just look at the previous posts understandably confused about Teladianum, for example. ...Man, now I'm imagining the dark secret of NPC Economy crashes being their little robot brains trying to work off of the Encyclopedia entries. "Everything is shutting down! What do we do!?" "What about those Claytronics we stopped giving a poo poo about?" "You fool! We've been over this, Claytronics has no 'used to craft' entry!" Section Z fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 17:46
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OwlFancier posted:They should generally start doing it just to expand their economies. Not in my game. Not sure why. Ran the numbers with the active claytronics orders and found it was 2m/hr in revenue. If I see the price go up I'll chase it but for now, nah. Section Z posted:That's was kind of the point. Basic industry in a space industry game (run from the view of your cockpit) should not have any elements you need to look up a chart for I disagree. I like complex economies like this but it might not be for everyone.
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Dec 13, 2018 17:47
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Section Z posted:That's was kind of the point. Basic industry in a space industry game (run from the view of your cockpit) should not have any elements you feel the need to look up a chart for So like. X is Factorio in space.
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Dec 13, 2018 18:06
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xanif posted:I disagree. I like complex economies like this but it might not be for everyone. You could add three times as many required ingredients to X4 and it would be just lovely so long as the game properly communicated the production needs (And, you know. the NPCS didn't gently caress it up). FileNotFound posted:So like. X is Factorio in space. Crushing you under the perfectly functional weight of "Part A makes Part B. Which makes Parts C F and G. Part C is used for-" with it being painfully, depressingly clear why you are loving up, is complex. Driving people to ask "What the gently caress is this teladnium used for then?", or responses of "Well Claytronics is being used fuckall in my universe" isn't what makes an economy complex. Section Z fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 18:18
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I'm puzzled, how are you expecting that to be conveyed that it isn't? The encyclopedia spells out, item x is made from items a, b, and c, and can be used to make item K. Compared to X3, the industrial system and flows are downright simple.
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Dec 13, 2018 18:25
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Section Z posted:Poorly communicated does not mean complex X4.txt
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Dec 13, 2018 18:27
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I dunno how else you should communicate it other than a chart. If anything the chart is the best way to communicate it, and the game does list it in the encyclopedia and in the logical overview.
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Dec 13, 2018 18:41
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Slickdrac posted:I'm puzzled, how are you expecting that to be conveyed that it isn't? Something more that flavor text interpetations mentioning the important fact that Teladnium is the ONLY(?) alternative ingredient in the game. It's an exception to the established rules, so of course it throws people off. Claytronics having a line explicitly stating it's purpose as station crafting material would reassure people staring at a stalled economy that has no desire for claytronics, and wondering "Is it just meaningless flavor text? Like so many other games?" Etc. Particularly when so many of the stumbles talked about in X4 are not QUITE down to player error. "Learn from example" is wonderful goal for a living, breathing uinverse. But in the state of the game, learning from example includes "Surely three stations inside a radioactive green rocks field is great for the economy." Obviously that's an extreme example of something no sane player will even attempt (I'm sure some have). But it does highlight why relying on the demonstrated NPC economy to learn the game is a bad idea. OwlFancier posted:I dunno how else you should communicate it other than a chart. If anything the chart is the best way to communicate it, and the game does list it in the encyclopedia and in the logical overview. Section Z fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 18:42
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Radio Free Kobold posted:X4.txt I kinda feel like that's basically xseries.txt.
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Dec 13, 2018 18:50
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Section Z posted:So much as a single line of text added to the encyclopedias would sort a lot of it.  Section Z posted:Claytronics having a line explicitly stating it's purpose as station crafting material  When you build stations, there's a tab that spells out what items you need. Now that I look, the encyclopedia also tells you what each station module needs. Each production line tells you exactly how many of what items per hour it needs and how much it produces. The flaw there is that it doesn't group together multiple modules into one drop down in logistics (I understand why, so they can run independantly). But this isn't really rocket science to figure out? Yeah, Teladianium isn't spelled out "WHEN YOU USE STATION MODULES FROM THE TELADI, IT'LL USE THIS INSTEAD OF REFINED THINGS", but the Encyclopedia doesn't really go into mechanics like that in the first place. Maybe it should be more explicit, but it's also one of those things that's a "known" thing by anyone who's not totally new to the series so they didn't cover it. Alternative ingrediants for the same process is absolutely RAMPANT in X3, so it's more anomalous that it's an oddball rather than the norm in this one. Slickdrac fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 18:51
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There should be flavor text, but also game text that directly says what it does. Have a little top down production view Materials Item Uses You could got horizontal instead, really whichever looks more visually pleasing. Clicking any of the materials or uses will open up that article. That is how you make proper documentation, and it should be something that can be automatically generated considering the rest already exists in game.
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Dec 13, 2018 18:59
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Slickdrac posted:Flavor text. So if the rebuttal is "Flavor text", clearly we're down to the last legs that is pure difference of opinion  You also probably know more about the inner workings of the game than most of the fanbase at this point, which is honestly cool. But it's also the sort of thing most won't have the advantage of. Gorelab posted:I kinda feel like that's basically xseries.txt. pixaal posted:There should be flavor text, but also game text that directly says what it does. When "Would a single additional sentence kill you, X?" becomes a point of contention.
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Dec 13, 2018 18:59
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I mean it does tell you what makes an item, and what the item can be used to make. Items that are not used to make anything else are final products that are consumed by final stage construction such as stations, ammunition, equipment fitting, and shipbuilding, which are not part of the industrial chain. Like this is one of the better documented things in the game, but a flowchart helps to visualise it on a large scale. The game even gives you a flow chart when you look at a station ingame. The only change I think would really be beneficial is adding station modules to the encyclopedia once you scan them, rather than once you acquire the blueprint. Oh and actually I'd like a broader economy cos the new stations are great and I want an excuse to build more of them. Ideally with lots of alternate routes such as fusing hydrogen into helium or synthesizing water from it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Dec 13, 2018 |
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Dec 13, 2018 19:10
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It's not "Flavor text", this is a German game, that's where you learn the mechanics and wtf things are. The rest of the page is spreadsheet fodder. 90% of those text boxes are empty, many will always be that way. If there is something in there, it's usually worth reading
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Dec 13, 2018 19:28
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Section Z posted:
Given that the EgoSoft team is - what 20 people? I think they do not have the resources to invest in documentation and keeping it updated. This does mean even that one sentence.
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Dec 13, 2018 19:50
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OwlFancier posted:I dunno how else you should communicate it other than a chart. If anything the chart is the best way to communicate it, and the game does list it in the encyclopedia and in the logical overview. I used a C20th device called a 'pen', with a stack of flat sheets of a wood and clothe amalgam called 'paper'. It's been frighteningly effective so far. Gorelab posted:I kinda feel like that's basically xseries.txt. No word of a lie, The first time I loaded up 'X: beyond' and got past the nice Teladi, the first station I docked with was incomprehensible. Why couldn't I buy? What was all this stuff? Best of it is _that_ is the immersion. You got thrown into a strange universe with nothing except the basics in the manual, and they didn't explain anything beyond the basics. There's some embedded knowledge from playing these games over the years, but the act of opening the encyclopedia, or checking the 'station logical view' isn't some hugely insurmountable obstacle.
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Dec 13, 2018 19:54
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I mean yeah, I do absolutely think that X4 needs better documentation, but sadly with a small team making weird games it's kinda understandable. Compared to X3 and X:R it's like surprisingly learnable from the get go though. For both of those games I needed to have a wiki open at all times and in X3:TC I didn't know about jumpdrives forever, in a game where a shitton of the missions that you get basically expect you to get them. I had to look up where to get one and go on a crazy journey since Earth doesn't open up till the end of the Terran plot.
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Dec 13, 2018 20:00
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