after our work on the 3.50 update for X Rebirth will soon be finished, we are currently considering to also start working on another update for the X3 games (X3TC and/or X3AP in particular).
I’m glad to hear that because there are a lot of deficient areas that are needlessly laborious, irritating, and/or frustrating that need to be fixed or refined
So here is a list of things I’d like to see addressed
For TC I’d like to see some more of the improvements in AP back ported to TC things like simply being able to type the first couple of letters on your nav map while this takes a little getting used to its much better then the system that TC uses
There are also numerous quality of life improvements I’d like to see implemented
1.) the circle of shame bug that prevents ships with poor turn rate from picking up cargo pods this is one bug that I find tremendously irritating having ships running the collect ware command endlessly circle cargo instead of picking it up requiring manual intervention from me defeats the whole purpose of having an automated way of picking up cargo
please get this one fixed you have know about it forever and its not a difficult problem to fix im sure if you look around there are already third party mods that fix this but I shouldn’t have to load third party mods to fix a problem that you should have fixed with an official patch
2.) I’d like to see the ability to beam aboard cargo, astronauts, marines, drones, ships etc. added if you have the special command software and a transporter device installed this would allow big ships like the TL for example to be used as a salvage ship and would allow for faster retrieval of cargo astronauts, marines, drones and would also allow for faster docking of ships aboard carriers or any other ship that is capable of docking ships
It also makes recovering captured ships faster currently I have to mess about transferring a docking computer to the captured ship to dock it quickly it would be so much simpler if I could just beam the ship in to the docking bay of the recovery ship
It would also be nice if the recovery ship could dock ships of any size because currently I cant dock TP/TS/M8 etc which means I have to mess about bringing spare jump drives and ecells to recover the ship to a safe location this is somewhat elevated when you acquire the Arran but that doesn’t usually happen until quite late on in the game but I need that ability from the start of the game as caping is how I usually make most of my creditsssss to begin with trading is something I only usually do later when I can afford to buy and equip a UT or buy and run stations
3.) id like to see space walk boarding be conducted with the transporter device if you have one installed making space walk boarding far simpler as I can simply beam my team on to the hull of the ship you already made tp ships hold up to 30 marines but they are still largely useless due to them not having an effective delivery method for those marines transported boarding would fix that and make them a viable and lower cost alternative to missile frigates and boarding pods
4.) marine training time taking a group of marine from 0 to 5 starts takes days or weeks real time depending on how much you play this is far far far to long and needs to be addressed I understand that you are going for a little realism here but days or weeks real time to train a squad of commandos is massively excessive and could be reduced without really impacting the game at all also the inability to train fighting is just a stupid over site and should be implemented if commandos can train in hacking hull cutting and engineering then they should be able to train in fighting as well
5.) The inability of ships running the special command software to pick up cargo that is near obstacles due to collision avoidance this is something else I’d like to see fixed
6.) a command to recover drones added to the special command software as well as a command added to the drones control panel to tell them to dock back onboard the ship they where launched from when the threat is dealt with this means that my UTs don’t have to keep buying drones every time they get attacked and I don’t have to manually recover the drones either and on the subject of drones it would be nice if they didn’t self destruct when they run out of power and instead only had to be replaced when destroyed
7.) Better control over groups of units currently when I used the broadcast to all ships control panel there are many commands that I cant issue to the whole group and I therefore have to instruct each ship individually like for example if I want to instruct a whole group of ships to move to a specific position at the moment I cant do that I have to instruct each ship individually this is extremely annoying and tedious and can so easily be fixed
8.) more control over my STs/UTs like the ability to black list sectors I know that was added to the AP bonus pack but it should be added as a standard part of the mk3 trade software for both TC and AP id also like to be able to select what drones my STs/UTs buy I’d also like to be able to control there behaviour when attacked
9.) rapid response ships I’d like to be able to set up a rapid respond team that will automatically jump to the location of any ship/factory that is under attack so for example so if one of my trade ships/factory gets attacked 2 springblossomes that are signed to it as a protection detail will promptly jump to the ship/factory that is under attack and blow up the attacker and then once the threat has been eliminate return home now currently I do this manually when I receive an alert that one of my ships or stations is under attack but it would be nice to be able to configure this and simply have it happen automatically
10.) scout for enemy’s this is a nice command and is effective except for the annoying fact that once there are no more enemies it simply fly’s to the centre of the sector and turns the command off I don’t have a problem with the ship going into stand by but it should continue to run the command until I decide to turn it off I shouldn’t have to be continually turning the command back on because the computer turned it off because there are no more enemies around
11.) I’d like to see the collision avoidance around terrain stations improved the collision avoidance around terrain stations is huge and messes with ships being controlled by the ai which is extremely irritating especially when I tell my ships to follow me they get to about 5 km and wont follow any further due to the massive collision avoidance zone
12.) the balancing of many ships is off and needs fixing most fighters shielding is to weak and needs to be strengthened the reactors of many ships are to weak and needs to be strengthened the strengthening of hulls in AP was welcome I’d like to see this back ported to TC many ships have acceleration/deceleration that is to slow a good example being the khakk corvette having to take nearly 2km to go from max speed to 0 is not acceptable this needs to be fixed many ships have a turn rate that is to low and makes the ships difficult to fly like the Arran I cant fly this using classic flight mode which is what I pilot with due to the turn rate being so stupidly low
13.) missiles is another area that really needs work in TC there overpowered and in AP there utterly useless in both games they need to be rebalance there is also a lot of redundant missiles that could be removed because they are simply not needed
14.) Defence against missiles is another is another area that needs rebalanced in TC its pretty poor in AP it’s massively overpowered
15.) automated turret control this is a welcome change in AP id like to see it back ported to TC in addition id like to see it refined so that I have control on a ship by ship bases so that I can turn it on for some ships and off for other
also id like to be able to set up weapon groups for main guns so that I can with the press of a button go from having 8 CIGs equipped to having 8 PBGs equipped for example
having to swap guns mid fight is slow and tedious and is going to get you killed I need to be able to set up weapon groups before hand and then simply be able to switch between them but pressing the 1 to 4 keys on my keyboard
16.) I’d like to see incomplete features like beam weapons and drone carriers finished and added to the game
17.) I’d like to see the new ships added in AP back ported to TC
18.) I’d like to see some of the weapons upgraded many weapons like the HEPT weapons that are meant for taking on fighters can’t hit them unless you are at point blank range due to low shot speeds some
Some weapons like flack don’t have a long enough range to effectively cover ships because the ship is so large and need the range increasing
you could also rework turrets and instead of having 8 guns per turret you could have 2 guns per turret and simply add more turrets overall the number of guns doesn’t increase but having then more divided like that makes turrets more effective I mean capital ships like the Boreas should have more than 6 turrets if you really want to be realistic
19.) many ship modals are poorly designed and cause issues when undocking the khaak corvette is one the springblossom is another such ship the big fins on that ship have the irritating habit of colliding with docking clamps resulting in the destruction of the ship I have lost count the number of times I’ve had my springblossom trade ships be destroyed because they hit the docking clams when undocking this is not acceptable and needs to be fixed my ships that are under ai control should not be getting destroyed because they are colliding with docking clamps
20.) insufficient space for ships to dock this is another massive bugbear that I have with this game npc ships taking up all the docking clamps preventing me and my ships form docking all stations should have unlimited docking for m5, m4, m3, ts, tp, m8 ships and the exterior docking clamps should only be used for larger ships like m6s and above
21.) the inability of larger ships like M7M to dock at factories is another constant irritation if I need to refuel/rearm my frigate / capital ships then they should be able to dock at the stations in question I shouldn’t have to be using a third party to refuel/resupply them its tedious and unnecessary and needs to be fixed
22.) jump drives needing ecells this is another irritation that could be so easily fixed by simply adding a new ships component a portable generator which will supply the jump drive with the energy it needs to activate a jump and then it simply takes short time after jumping to recharge before you can jump again unless you use ecells this could also be used in conjunction with the afterburner again the portable generator supply's the power and when the generator is drained it takes while for it to recharge unless you use ecells
23.) The cargo bay screen this could do with some improvement it would be nice to have it separate out cargo in the cargo bay from equipped equipment for example if my ship has 8 HEPT equipped on the cargo bay screen the shields and guns that are currently equipped would appear in there own box above the box that wholes a list of all the goods currently in your cargo bay if that makes sense
24.) beam weapon is another area I’d like to see fixed I understand why you nurfed beam weapons but I personally disagree with this the main benefit of beams is there accuracy and as I have stated many times before you cant balance beam weapons the way you balance conventional weapons it just doesn’t work if beams are to powerful you need to turn down there damage not there accuracy therefore id like to see the nurf to beam weapons reverted and there damage adjusted accordingly because it is extremely frustrating having a beam weapon and not being able to hit targets because you nurfed the hell out of the accuracy and the beams keep scattering around the target instead of all beams simply focusing on a single point
25.) khaak id like to see them put back in to the game personally I think it’s a mistake removing them from the game completely in addition to adding them back into the game I’d also like to see there tech evolve along with the other races of the x universe
26.) Un-capable ships this is something that I would like removed all ships should be capable unless its something like the ozias that is part of a quest chain but after the quest chain is complete the ship should have the uncapable flag removed so that the player can cap the ship if they desire
27.) unobtainable ships/equipment this is something else id like to see removed all ships/equipment should be obtainable and should either be capable from the respective race in the case of something like kyon emitters or should be buildable in the appropriate factory in the case of something like ghoul missiles this means adding missing factories to the game or adding things like hammerheads to the appropriate factory for example and in the case of prototype/rare ships these should be available from the appropriate ship yards or available as quest rewards or as derelicts or capable from the appropriate race just like the Hyperion is from the paranid
28.) cloaking tech this is something that is mentioned in the manual but was never implemented in the game it would be nice to have this implemented in the game as it would be quite helpful as a means to protect UTs by making them invisible and thus much less likely to draw the attention of hostile ships unless they get to close it would also help with protecting other assets like satellites and laser towers which the computer has the irritating habit of targeting continually in addition it also adds some other options for creating new missions for example infiltrate some area and commit sabotage blowing the place to bits or infiltrate some area to recover something important that been hidden there etc just use your imagination
29.) Flying round inside stations when docking I’m not sure why you removed this from the game but I’d like to see it added back it gives the stations a little more realism if you can fly round inside of them and in the same vain maybe add the ability to land on installations on planets and fly through the atmosphere I’m not sure if this would be possible due to the limitations of the game engine in tc and ap but its something worth looking into because I know its something players have asked about before this could also add a little more scope to the game for creating missions
30.) GOD removal this is something that has caused no end of trouble with the god engine removing things like tractor beams etc. from the game while this was supposed to have been fixed it hasn’t and is still something I have issues with
31.) explorer command it would be nice if this has an explore universe command where by I set it once and it will automatically repeat this command for every sector in the game except for dangerous sectors like xenon space
So I set it to explore a sector from 0,0,0 out to a range of 50 km it will do that and then fly to the next unexplored sector and then repeat this command until such a time as it has explored the whole universe at which point it will notify me that the job is complete and dock at the nearest friendly station
if coming under attack while exploring it will simply doc at the nearest station and wait till the enemy is gone
In the same vain it would be nice if you could simply buy star maps that will simply update your computers map accordingly
32.) frigate level weapons it would be nice to have some frigate level guns added to the game something that is in-between cigs and ppc
ibl are nice but really they are capital level weapons and cant be used effectively by frigates they don’t have the power core for it
33.) jump to location it would be nice if I could jump to any location within a sector instead of just jumping to the gates the computer can do this so why cant the player ?
34.) jump to me would be nice if this command actually did what it’s name implies aka the ship being instructed to jump uses my ship as a jump beacon and lands next to me and not at one of the gates half way across the sector
35.) the process of complex building this is something else I think needs work what might be better is if you buy and place the hub and then simply go in to the stations command console and select add production line and then select what production line you would like to add and then you pay a fee equal to what the station in question would cost and then the production line will be added to the station so the effect is kind like the Aldrin Mixed Food Production Base where it’s a single station but it simply produces multiple products that eliminates all the hassle involved with complexes while still retaining the good parts
36.) the inability to use the jump drive in sectors that use the trans orbital accelerators this is annoying I should be able to jump to them just like any normal gate
I think that pretty much covers most of the areas of the game that really irritate me I’m sure there are some other things I’ve forgotten but that should be most of it
