X4 Foundations Poll #2: What did you like?

[Dread Quixadhal]

I ticked all the boxes, as I've loved all the activities I've done so far (minus the bugs or performance issues), and the ones I have not done yet sound fun, and other iterations in previous games were fun.

There are some caveats, although I'll address those more in the "what don't you like" poll. Suffice it to say that the game needs better AI (not harder, per se... but more able to make use of ship features, and more able to react in sensible ways). I love being able to stand on my ship and order the pilot to dock somewhere. I don't love cringing as they try to plough through bulkheads and have to cheat to clip through asteroids.

[ChillAsIce]

I have been playing a peaceful trader who tries to stay on the good sides of everyone. As such, I like anything that makes such a job easier. The ability to queue multiple trade orders and deliveries for my ships have been very helpful. I tend to manage the construction of my stations personally.

[Snafu_X3]

About dogfighting.. it could be better if turrets would aim correctly, but I have contradictive feelings here, since I know the moment turrets start aiming correctly AI will be too easy to beat.

I suspect if turret aim is fixed it would make enemy ships /harder/ to beat, as the fix would apply to all ships no matter their owner (once turret dmg is fixed, an acknowledged misbalance). Whether that would make the game more enjoyable for you I have no idea..

[Neloth23]

First off, thanks Bernd, for asking our opinion on this. The poll doesn't reflect everything that I like in the game, so I'll list other positive things in the second part of this post. This is going to be a bit long though...

So, here's what I like so far:

• Remote mining/trading. Bringing back some form of automation was a good move. I hope sector trade will return at some point. As a side note, auto mining is perhaps a little too profitable right now.

• Building stations. The modular building is a great idea and seems to work quite well in game. The building interface works rather well IMHO.

• Exploration/data vaults. Exploring and using long range scanner are quite fun and a welcome addition. I've found only one data vault so far, but I intend to continue hunting them as they provide nice little puzzles that don't detract from the core gameplay. That's a nice touch! A suggestion though: it would be nice to have some procedurally generated wrecks or loot to explore/find beyond the borders of hexes.

• Capturing small ships. The capture/salvage mechanic works fine for me and I find it rather immersive. Finding a crew for captured ships on the other hand... (see my post in poll #3!) I haven't boarded any large ship, so I can't comment on that.

• Small scale fights. That's a mitigated like. I think you tried to make fights more engaging (with NPCs using boosters for instance), and I like this idea. But the execution is not there yet, mostly because of the AI and the balancing of the game (more on that in poll #3).

What I also liked :

• The size/structure of the universe: sectors feel more natural than in X3 and leave more room (literally!) for exploration.

• The travel drive: at last we have one!

• The general sense of scale: it's always nice to feel so small compared to a fighter, a frigate, and so on.

• The soundtrack. Alexei nailed it once more!

• The landscapes. There are beautiful landscapes all around (special props to the magnificent asteroid fields). If I may add a small suggestion here, it would also be nice to have some unique systems, like we had in X Rebirth. For instance, the fragmented moon in Albion was a very nice touch, and I liked the fact that a whole sector was inside its debris field. That was gorgeous and memorable.

• EVA's. Very good idea to bring them back! It brings a lot of immersion and cool gameplay potential.

• The cockpits and bridges. They add a lot to the immersion. Great job!

• The design of the S and some M ships. All in all, I like the S ship designs. As for the M, some are okay (Mercury, Drill, Peregrin), but too many are copy/pasted (see my post in poll #3).

• The lovely details. I think Rebirth was more detailed, but there's still plenty to like. (Special mention to the chairs resizing to fit a Paranid or a Teladi!)

• The 3D map : that’s a good addition. I just wish we could also access the various menus without using the mouse (as in previous games).

Summary

I wouldn't review the game for now as it is clearly unfinished, and that wouldn't be fair. That being said I enjoyed my time so far and I don't regret purchasing it. It has a lot of potential, but there are some balancing issues and some areas that need to be finished before I can recommend it.

To be continued on poll #3...

[shahman76]

I'm having a good time, generally speaking. I'm just not that into the whole collecting stuff, data boxes etc. But I love the whole empire building aspect of X games.

[ypsylon]

Well from the list provided I can pick only building stations.

Oh and stations looks epic for sure.

Rest I don't do, I don't know how (yet?) or I won't do (boarding, hated that in every other game, Rebirth in particular, not going through that stuff anymore). Rest I can explain in what I don't like.

[SimB]

I am missing the plot lines from the X3 series games.

Currently I do not have a reason to build my war fleet after I helped the (awesome) boron.

Please make more story missions and make big battleships / carriers worth it and give us a reason to use them!

[birdtable]

Boso Ta,, an emotional link to the game, greatly underused for mission story lines.... It appears that building the empire is most popular, cannot disagree...... Love 80% of the game.

[nemesis1982]

I voted for the remote trading/mining. This is in conjunction with stations. Also current bugs are not factored in. This looking at the feature not how well it works currently.

[Tomonor]

1. Personal trading + mining: I used to love trading back in the X2 days, but mostly because it was the fastest way to make money there. Here, not so much. And that's fine too. I also generally like the idea that ships mine the minerals/gases themselves, instead of relying on stations to produce these things.

2. Remote trading + mining: Yes, not bad, although the hard NPC leveling and the unusable seminars make this part a bit tedious to successfully set up.

3. Building stations: I never was a tycoon myself, so can't say too much here. I love it that you can customize the stations, but some of the NPC generated ones can get buggy (floating habitats around the plot but not connected to the structure), and some of them are straight up ugly (usually shipyards), where in X2 and X3's XTC you would say "Wow, what a beauty".

4. Missions (including subscriptions): They are a good way of making money, but I feel like the guild missions don't really make an impact. They MIGHT do, but they are not felt. That has to be addressed somehow imo. Regular missions needs a variety, I would also like to see the return of escort missions, although I can see they are a bit harder to maintain with the differing travel mode speeds.

5. Never tried FPS hacking and don't know how to steal actually. I sort of both like and dislike how blueprint stealing is handled. What I don't like in it is the randomized outcome. I can get out of the ship and spacewalk to the hacking point, only to gain another discount. There should be a way you can tell if it worths climbing out of the cockpit.
Also, afaik we can only gain either discounts and blueprints this way. Is it possible to extend this feature somehow? Like, gaining access to rumours or some trivial things like that.

6. Exploration / Collecting Data Vaults: Once again, both hate and love it. Love it, because finally, a feature that explains the history of the universe canonically. Also love it, because the long awaited exploration is in. But also Hate it, because after a point you get confused on what you discovered and what you didn't. This can be fixed easily by leaving the POI marks visible on the map.
In general, exploration is lacking. You have to be really lucky to discover an abandoned ship or lockbox yourself, even after hours(!) of flying aimlessly. This feature has to be extended too.
A more invested fix for it could be the Salvaging feature. Like before, you could find wrecks and derelicts randomly in the universe. However, you could aswell dismantle these, break into them (extended, so it's not just an access hatch with two vaults inside, but traps, and labirinths), or even repair them for usage! Imagine the possibilities!

7. Capturing (S and M ships) + Boarding (L + XL ships): I love how accessing a ship from spacewalk is handled. This is done properly, couldn't be better. Maybe more airlocks for bigger ships would be good, though?
As for boarding with marines, can't comment there. Haven't tried it yet.

8. Small scale fight (personally against small groups): Generally like it because of the new physics system, the flight models are just AWESOME. But, there are some questionable design choices that fundamentally make the fights boring with an expectable outcome:
-First off, booster's shield drain. That has to go, not because the player isn't OP enough, but because the NPCs use up their shields by boosting ALL THE TIME. Make it use a separate fuel or make the NPCs cheat by not using shields the same rate the player. But this way NPCs are usually shieldless after a few seconds.
-Secondly, booster + travel mode combo. Don't misunderstand, it's good to have it like that. But in combat, I can easily boost after an enemy until I reach 1000m/s speed, quickly switch to travel mode and catch up to the enemy without sacrificing ANY of my shield. Now that's just OP.
-Missiles: I think turning the missile launchers into separate weapon gimbals was a bad choice. NPCs are rarely generated with missile launchers. But when they are, they are sure to win, because ships can house a limited amount of Flares. And when the player is tasked to choose between missile launchers or laser weapons, they will surely choose lasers, because those don't have to be refilled. Something has to be changed here imo.

9. Large scale fight (fleets / wars / Attacking a Xenon sector): Well, basically turrets. They are near useless, thus making large scale fights laughable. Even on/against M class ships.

10. Summary: Would you review the game on Steam thumbs up?: Yes, and I did. Even though the game is flawed, it's only a matter of time it becomes a masterpiece. Too bad the general consumers don't have the patience as I do.

[Zealoth]

Personally I think more useful data would be gathered with a detailed poll what we don't like.

I like simply flying. With my new hotas it's just a joy. So station scanning for a while is really fun...but then I want to earn some money and I'm frustrated by cataloguing new stations, tagging them with satellites, scanning them up for hours on end. It gets really grindy. Scanning is really fun, but needs to be somewhat overhauled - when I scan X module Y times it becomes scanned by defaul as soon as i see a station? When I know the bluepring of the module I no longer have to scan it? So exploring is kinda fun and a boatload of tedium. The first datavault was kinda cool, but then it as well gets repetitive. I love the spacesuit flight though, feels amazing.

Trading is lifeblood of the game and it can be fun, but right now, with traders being downright lobotomised....The fully simulated economy gives me a lot of hope, because I've been dreaming about a game that doesn't cheat constantly.

Missions are painfully generic, like, Starbound-missions-generic. And they don't even provide you with much of value past the first few million. It's like grinding boars.

Combat can be really fun, but right now, the weapon selection is really poor (and they are not interesting either way - i miss all those weird and quirky weapons weapons, each with their upsides and downsides), shield/boost is awful, no ship specific reactors mean that most of the ships feel exactly the same to fight with. Most of ship modules feel like placeholders. The upgrades via loot are also annoying and place-holder-y

Station building is amazing when it comes to the build menu, but you can't remove existing stations fully, the build/internal storage is confusing and borky, plus there are no behaviours for own pilots to transfer wares between stations. Also, each module produces such massive amounts, it gets really frustrating. Can't set the station to only sell or only buy, so the braindead station manager will send all subordinate traders to buy wares that are already being produced at 2x or 4x or more of consumption. The imbalance also means we pretty much end up with a station that produces almost everything in excess, which feels kinda wrong. Compared to X3, in X4 the factory modules (according to my napkin math) produce at least and order of magnitude more, without corresponding price increase.
Building an income decent enough to be able to start throwing my weight about even just slightly (Buy a Destroyer and load it up) took me days of gameplay, dozens of XL SPP's (you know, ~17M a pop) in Akeela's Beacon, tons of spacefuel fabs, wheat farms, mines, crystal fabs and other crap. And still I wasn't able to just go around and buy whatever I'd like, it took time. In X4 I just drop 3 solar modules for like maybe 3Mil or 4 Mil and I'm just rolling in ecells, enough to run a dozen other modules, each producing tens of thousands of wares per hour.

And yeah, after years I still remember some of the sectors in X3. Kingdom End with it's amazing music. Akeela's beacon with it's size, suns, nebula and lore. That pitch black sunless pirate sector. Omicron and the transit to terran space, how different it was. Red Light with that crazy shipyard. They had lore to them. Often unique music, colors, planets, different feel...Here I just fly back and forth and often I'm not sure which one I'm in without looking at the map


I did thumb up the game, even though it does not really deserve it yet. Sadly on steam I can't vote "can be really amazing". I would vote it down because it's missing way too much stuff to be called Foundations. Personally I thought it was meant as return to foundations...But I guess I upvoted it on steam beause I can see it be a foundation for something great in the future - given the new engine, overhauled economy. Please make it another X3:AP. Work with modders on better and more varied behaviour scripts and controls for ships. The new map pretty much lets us play as desk warrior, but the extremely barebones ai of own ships is REALLY frustrating

[morbideth]

I like the cockpits. Granted, there are a lot complaints about how ships look from the outside, but from the inside I think they are very well done. Each ship has a bit of character, from that perspective. You find yourself not just looking at the ships speed, hull, shields, etc. but also the visibility from the cockpit.

[mr.WHO]

I selected only 2 things that I enjoyed without any problems:

1) Exploration - going into Xenon sectors for the first time is hell of a fun! Too bad there are only 4 small Xenon regions - I'd love to have new "deep" Xenon region with would be several large hex in sequence.

2) Small scale fight - basically fighter dogfight in my opinion is most fun in the entire series (maybe except boosters draining shields which is not good for AI controlled ships).

[Nort The Fragrent]

What do I like ?

I like that the game has finely been released, ( The time from Rebirth to x4 was way too long )

I like the Docking , way more immersive than X3, good job. Although I would like the opportunity to turn and look the other way on the dock !

I like that we don’t have to walk too far, and can take a look around. Be nice to have a work station on our own dock ! And an office with a good all round view of our station !

I like that the game is effected by what I do or more importantly what I don’t do. I play with no guns, no fighting, and have no wish to go to war. Thus my game is nice and peaceful. I like that. Thank you.

I like the strange structure in the South east of Grand Exchange I, cool, I would like to find more oddities like that.

I really really like the station building, the production modules look good, and each is designed for it’s function, good job. Can we have more. They are a big asset to my game enjoyment.

I would like more station appendage modules, to better enhance the look of the stations. An aerial tower, Communication disks, a docking control tower with good all round viewing. A ship management chart in the office !

I like that I don’t have to worry about how much fuel my ship has and how far it can go. Thats why I don’t play ED. It’s a real pain.

I like the music on start up, but where is the rest of the once good sector music? I miss that as it gave a good atmosphere to the game.

I like one paint job, the rest seem sort of all the same !

I like the shipyard introduction, it is a cool feature.

I would like better station building module placement, snaps to where my cursor is please, not hop all over the place. On a big build that can be quite frustrating.

I like that you have kept the older gate’s and also the Rebirth funnels. The highways are useful, but there are too many of them.

I like the game very much, yet it feels small in space terms. Can we have more sectors, ( with no highways Please) Make them hard to find, hard to navigate, and interesting to view ! Yes interesting backdrops, moons, nebular, gas clouds, they need not be integral to the game, just more places to fly through. Add a section that is vast, and will satisfy the explorers, not the fighters.

[gorgofdoom]

Well, I've played a lot of hours. I've done all the things listed. Most of them are overly tedious. Even personal ship combat either in a S/M or a L/XL, requires a lot of patience. I can, for example, solo a xenon K in the cheapest fighter in the game. It's not really fun, though. I tried sending a fleet of 30 quesars (torpedos, chainguns, and ion cannon things) and 7 cerberus sentinels (beam turrets and plasma cannons, each with 12 drones) to take out a single K class, only to have them be completely slaughtered while having zero effect on it's hull. When piloting a L/XL, i feel excessively underpowered compared to the Xenon. Even with the main cannons of a behemoth, my DPS was lower than 1/3 of the turrets on a xenon K, and again it defeated me. Only when it decided to sit ontop of my station (164 modules, all kitted out with weaponry and 500+ defense drones) was I able to get it's shields down and kill it. Again, not very fun.

The only thing i can say i enjoyed, more or less, was stationbuilding. Though there is some missing functionality (putting modules upside down. Seriously! the computer can do it, why can't I ?!) that impacts the layout of stations. Also, having to order my M class ships to transfer the hull parts 300 at a time to build storage that is for THE SAME STATION that required upwards of 50,000 of them.... is tedious. Buying bigger ships helps this as a stopgap, but is not a solution for such an issue.

For this, and a little bit of early game immersion, i would suggest adding a self-repeating trade route option. IE: Take (kind) of good(s) from this specific dock(station, resupply ship, etc) to another specific dock and drop them off regardless of buy/sell orders at the dock.

Still, though, it's pretty satisfying to overload the local markets so all components are as cheap as they can be. I can't say it actually helped the faction i was residing with, though. they still have a half dozen broken Xenon stations that periodically spawn fleets (with no apparent input of materials). I might add that these stations are invincible afaik. I've set up blockades for the build depots, which is as much as i can do to keep them down. (not fun)

At this point, i think that having a large fleet of ships has one effect: melting my CPU.

So, invading other sectors is out, since i cannot actually destroy their stations. Killing things is possible, but i have to be the pilot or i'm just wasting millions of credits. Boarding ships is fun, but it takes a lot more effort (mostly moving all those crewmen around) to pirate than it does to legitimately build these ships.

Also, why is there a xenon sector two gates away from argon prime that deals damage over time just for being there? How is that supposed to be fun? If you don't want us to go there, don't waste dev time developing it! that's at least one whole sector that is completely useless. Yet there is, being guarded by 200+ xenon ships eating away my processing power. We might as well make that gate one way, and have xenon ships spawn at it.

My final point of contention is how freaking useless drones are.

defense drones are useful in combat when dealing with S class ships. However, by the time they are launched those kinds of fights are already over. They do not draw fire away from their parent ship, and their parent ships do not attempt to stay at range while deploying them when combating significantly larger ships. this results in the drones not having even a little bit of time to deal damage as the parent ship tends to die before the fourth drone is even launched. (I am referring to Cerberus Sentinels. this is probably true with equivalent ships)

Cargo drones are only required on stations. They can be used on l/xl to ensure the presence of drones for trading, but the capacity of the ships in question is far lower than that of... every station. I prefer using those slots for repair or defense drones. I feel obligated to add that i know they are used for ship-ship ware transfers, but when exactly does one need to do that? Perhaps with the new resupply ships, but even then i use M class ships. Docking an M class ship is much faster than using drones to move wares.

Repair drones are OK, but for M class ships they are not usable AFAIK. If they are not usable, they should not be able to be equipped IMO. (it would be a lot to ask, i know, but if repair drones were able to assist nearby ships/stations with repairs it would make them far more flexible. perhaps it could be a bonus for having ships in a wing?)

If they DO have an effect, it should be apparent to the user! the stats for drones are not easily accessible.

I know repair drones help repair my ships, but to what extent? It's already determined how much the ship will repair in HP/s (and to X% of max HP) depending on crew count/skill/drones. Please put this information somewhere so i can determine if i am making good decisions!

Drone capacity should also be revamped. 10 drones in an L trading ship when a M class ship (one that is probably 1/20th the size of the L ship) holding 12 seems a little inconsistent. Additionally it appears that the drones are almost the same size as the Cerberus. I feel like i am flying a Tardis!

P.S. My criticism is just that. it's not meant to be personal. I wouldn't spend my time writing on the X:4 forums if i didn't really like it!

[Faustov]

There's something I really liked and thought I'd share it here, maybe making someone's Monday easier.

Yesterday I took my fleet into Matrix #451 to help me deal with a Xenon K a bit faster and then instead of sending them back to the perimeter at Ianamus Zura, I decided to give it a try and send them kill off the Xenon defence stations in the sector. To my surprise, the fleet did not lose a single ship, big ships blasted modules, while smaller ones took out the station turrets. In short - they were destroying the station in a planned, meticulous manner. Awesome!

I'm tempted to send the fleet down to the Khaak stations now...

[Ezarkal]

There's something I really liked and thought I'd share it here, maybe making someone's Monday easier.

Yesterday I took my fleet into Matrix #451 to help me deal with a Xenon K a bit faster and then instead of sending them back to the perimeter at Ianamus Zura, I decided to give it a try and send them kill off the Xenon defence stations in the sector. To my surprise, the fleet did not lose a single ship, big ships blasted modules, while smaller ones took out the station turrets. In short - they were destroying the station in a planned, meticulous manner. Awesome!

I'm tempted to send the fleet down to the Khaak stations now...

I find it very ironic that bad AI is one of the reason why Xenon thrived so well!

I haven't tried large-scale combat yet, but I'm slowly getting there, and I'm eager to test it up.
Was your fleet controlled by squad leaders, or did you micromanage?

[Faustov]

Was your fleet controlled by squad leaders, or did you micromanage?

Just 1 leader - a Colossus, 2 behemoths and 6 eclipse. I first looked at them from outside, then saved and flew my ship to the station, to look closely what they were doing.

Well, xenon seem to have a target level of stations in the sector, so shortly after wiping all their stations, new ones We're built nearby. Now I have to wait for them to be finished, so I could destroy them again. I can only hope it's at least some practice for the pilots...

[spankahontis]

There is no Large Scale Fighting in this game, except the Xenon and the Kha'ak, wars are broken... Still!! After 6 months.