Are weapon modifications or other randomized elements included in X4?

[Chris0132]

One thing I quite enjoyed in Rebirth was random weapon mods, which is probably a bit of an unusual thing I admit, but it was nice to have something, I thought, to keep searching for once you found the high tier equipment. I also enjoyed being able to customize weaponry on my craft by putting time and extra resources into it.

Now, I realize this would require some reworking for X4, because obviously we don't have only one ship. But I was thinking perhaps it could tie in quite well with the player HQ, if it had some kind of special ship workshop, that could convert ships into versions which could receive random mods, at great expense. The PHQ could also perhaps feature a new method of developing them with an R&D section which, if fed large amounts of materials, could attempt to build new mods for you.

I also quite enjoyed the lockbox hunting, a nice evolution of the special ships placed in some X3 sectors, so this could also be a nice thing to find in some of the high end lockboxes.

It would be a lot of fun, I think, to put a lot of resources and time into your favourite ship and allow it to be customized a lot more, possibly in more ways than just weapon mods, other components could potentially get custom variants that allow you to really change how your own personal ships work and make them a lot more fun to fly, and distinct from other ships in the game.

If it's not in the game at launch it'd definitely be something I'd be interested in as an expansion.

[jocan2003]

I lobe stuff like rhat to tu e tour weapon, do i want high alhpa strike to take out surface element on hit and run or fast firing sustanable damage for sogfight etc.

[reanor]

I'd love to see customization options as well. No matter we can fly all ships, ships can have standard hardpoints with customization options. Ships are just boxes in X games after all, that look like spaceships, and have a bit different physics. Having standard hardpoints on different ships wouldn't be a big deal, if they had a ship development pipeline and all the ships were designed with certain standards in mind. If they didn't design ships with anything like that in mind from the beginning, it will be pretty impossible to have customization options, which would be kinda sad.

[ajime]

Not a fan of randomness enhancement on the guns personally.
But i think the reason they have that in xr is because you don't drop guns from killing ships as opposed to x3.

[Fulgrymm]

The personalization aspect appeals to me greatly. Allows me to tweak things to fit my particular playstyle.

[nemesis1982]

I dislike randomness especially for something that should not be random. I love weapon modifications though.

[Chris0132]

Yeah it doesn't have to be everything random, but I enjoy having some element of the enhancements you can acquire, being randomly modified, it helps prevent them from topping out very easily which is a common issue in games with the scale of an X game, whereby your personal capabilities quite quickly become entirely interchangeable with any other ship you own.

Early on getting better things for your ship is novel, but that quite quickly becomes no longer really a concern. It would be nice if there were an inefficient and not immediately maximizable method of improving individual ships, which you may want to pursue on a specific basis rather than just buying more ships, and the weapon modifications from X Rebirth I think were a good example of that.

[atavistuk]

Short answer for me: No, just no.

I don't want to be forced to kill 1 million Xenon Ns just because they have a 0.001% chance to drop that widget I need for my player ship.

It's a terrible and above all LAZY system in any game period. It's why I hate loot boxes too.

Just let my buy the darn thing I'm after please!

[sd_jasper]

I don't want to be forced to kill 1 million Xenon Ns just because they have a 0.001% chance to drop that widget I need for my player ship.

With the Rebirth system, I never felt I had to hunt for weapon mods, ever. I just would occasionally go to the mechanic and see if any of the mods I had picked up were better than the ones I currently had installed. Often there was no clear answer, due to the nature of the mods effecting several factors... do I want to drop the mod that has the bigger % in cool-down reduction, for the one that gives a bigger boost to damage?
And since it was all random, it wasn't like you could really farm for the perfect "set" or whatever.

[Chris0132]

I don't want to be forced to kill 1 million Xenon Ns just because they have a 0.001% chance to drop that widget I need for my player ship.

With the Rebirth system, I never felt I had to hunt for weapon mods, ever. I just would occasionally go to the mechanic and see if any of the mods I had picked up were better than the ones I currently had installed. Often there was no clear answer, due to the nature of the mods effecting several factors... do I want to drop the mod that has the bigger % in cool-down reduction, for the one that gives a bigger boost to damage?
And since it was all random, it wasn't like you could really farm for the perfect "set" or whatever.

Yeah.

Collecting parts for SETA and stuff was annoying certainly, but the weapon mods were easy to come by.

[TrixX]

One of the main reasons I gave up on Elite Dangerous was due to the Engineer random weapons system. It's just a glorified gatcha grind and is utterly pathetic.

Hopefully the weapons won't have something similar here. I have no issue with manufacturing modifications etc. just not the gatcha randomness and the associated grind. It's boring and really off putting to those who aren't addicts.

[Chris0132]

For important basic components certainly, but I do think randomized stats on some things are good for keeping things varied. Being able to just buy or produce the objectively best equipment presents a problem in games with such a varied scope as an X game because it makes the equipment section of the game trivial once you've played the game a while. Because necessarily you no longer have scarcity on that front once you're in the position where you're using fleets of craft.

You could make absurdly expensive fixed equipment upgrades, but that also I think is a bit suboptimal because you're then grinding for resources and you won't get access to anything until you have it.

The appeal of randomized content is that you're probably going to get something good, but you can't plan on exactly what you'll get or when. It helps to encourage trying different things, because a technically suboptimal component might be good at the point you get it, or as was the case with Rebirth's weapon modifications, different ones might be useful in different situations. It makes it difficult to optimize but fairly easy to get some use out of, which is not true of either balancing equipment costs around single ships or balancing them around empire-scale productive capacity.

So while I wouldn't really want to see the mk5 equipment nonsense returning, hinging on ten completely random drops to get anything at all, I would enjoy randomized modifiers that you could apply to parts of your ship to tweak it somewhat.

[Perkel]

Imho bigger thing would be to have this as part of gameplay itself.

Meaning that for example each station produces grades of standard weapon. So highly advanced station with top personel and amazing specialist could produce for example 100 standard laser turrets and maybe like 5 upgraded turrets thanks to those extra mile you went to upgrade station and provide something extra for it and maybe some decent credits for R&D. Out of those 5 weponas 3 are slightly better and maybe just 1 will have for example double range.

This way you can make your own ship "tuned" but also you can for example take best pilots you have and best fighter you have and outfit them with that extra top grade stuff and form elite unit in your army.

And if we go with weapons why stop there ? Engines, hull parts, radiators, etc etc etc. with right balance creating whole army with top hardware would be impossible and you would have to use standard gear but in that army you could form some units that have extra ommph.

[Vandragorax]

I very much disliked the random weapon mods added to Rebirth. It just felt like a boring lottery that I had absolutely no control over as a player. I just ignored the whole mechanic.

We've had it confirmed that we no longer will get trade wares as "inventory" items which is great as that was just more added clutter in XR which didn't really provide much interesting gameplay. But whether or not we'll still get weapon mods idk. I really do hope not (or that I'll just be able to ignore them again lol)

[Chris0132]

I would agree that I don't particularly want the weird magical infinite player inventory (but only for some things) that Rebirth had yes. If we were to see anything like weapon mods I would prefer it to be integrated into the main economy, using normal wares and/or money, possibly as a sink for player production if you wanted it rather than selling for profit: funnelling parts into your HQ to make experimental versions of equipment with random bonuses.

Failing that I quite like the idea of high grade parts being a byproduct of normal production. I suppose also you could perhaps replace randomized customization with just being able to tune your weapon mounts on a sort of point-buy system at the HQ with costs increasing the more specialized you make them.

[Alan Phipps]

Personally I would prefer to be able to influence in some way how a mod kit you find or craft, should they be in X4, affects things rather than have the effects and which weapon it fits be totally RNG decisions. For one example, a mod kit for say mining lasers should fit all marks and versions of mining lasers in my opinion rather be tied to one particular version that neither the ship dropping it would have had, nor that the player would bother to craft it for.

Further, the effects should always be two-way interlinked and balanced - although perhaps weighted in degree by the RNG. By that, I mean that an increase in say cooling rate should always require a balancing reduction in firing and/or charging rate. An increase in bullet damage, speed, range or shot quantity should always require a balancing reduction in cooling rate, and so on. That way there are no unbalancing RNG super-mods nor any totally useless/negative ones. The player can then decide what mods to keep that best suit their particular play-style (keep hosing the target while jinking about, fire only short well-aimed bursts, go for quick early damage or go for slow continued wearing away over time, etc).

[Redtor]

...Just let my buy the darn thing I'm after please!

With In-game currency, ALWAYS In-game currency.

[Chris0132]

Personally I would prefer to be able to influence in some way how a mod kit you find or craft, should they be in X4, affects things rather than have the effects and which weapon it fits be totally RNG decisions. For one example, a mod kit for say mining lasers should fit all marks and versions of mining lasers in my opinion rather be tied to one particular version that neither the ship dropping it would have had, nor that the player would bother to craft it for.

Further, the effects should always be two-way interlinked and balanced - although perhaps weighted in degree by the RNG. By that, I mean that an increase in say cooling rate should always require a balancing reduction in firing and/or charging rate. An increase in bullet damage, speed, range or shot quantity should always require a balancing reduction in cooling rate, and so on. That way there are no unbalancing RNG super-mods nor any totally useless/negative ones. The player can then decide what mods to keep that best suit their particular play-style (keep hosing the target while jinking about, fire only short well-aimed bursts, go for quick early damage or go for slow continued wearing away over time, etc).

I kinda figured that rather than being per-weapon it would perhaps be per-mounting, so you could swap out weapons but the mounting could be modified to adjust whatever you put in it. Like you put better heat sinks in and all weapons cool down faster, better barrel actuators give a higher rate of fire, better turret motors give you better tracking etc. I agree with being able to influence what you get without outright just picking it, easy minmaxing is disappointing but so is getting utterly useless things.

And yeah for the most part you want counterbalancing factors though I'm not averse to it generally making the weapon mount more effective, as you are putting resources into it and you want it to actually make you more powerful.

[atavistuk]

...Just let my buy the darn thing I'm after please!

With In-game currency, ALWAYS In-game currency.

That was implied. Sorry if I didn't make it clear. Yeah... lemme buy the modifications I desire with in game currency. I don't care how hard they make it to find a seller to get EXACTLY what I am after...

Or let us craft them, either way, so long as it is not utterly random!