7.0 /Endgame, 4X Elements? Diplomacy?

[Kotare]

So I might be wrong but I was under the impression based on some of the Xvlogs from last year that 7.0 would be adding some 4X elements and more of a reason to take and control sectors, faction building, meaningful diplomacy ect... I found the Crisis to be underwhelming, just another combat encounter showing up when I have already smashed entire sectors worth of ships. Was finally hoping to have something more impactful on the game then just changing the color of the sector icon on the map. Also we still really need some kind of upkeep/ maintenance costs for ships and crew.

[Flippi]

I haven't played the beta, so I'll only get to see how 7.0 looks like when it comes out. But from the few posts I read, it seems Egosoft has to put in a bit more work to get the crisis mechanic done right. Apart from making it optional, as some players requested it.

In terms of 4X and Diplomacy, there's a bit to unpack. In order for Diplomacy to work, the reputation between each NPC faction would have to be dynamic, at least to some degree. Otherwise what would be the point? And once reputation is dynamic (following any rules the devs set up), X4 would turn into a 4X game, kinda. But then there's a catch to this too. X4's factions aren't balanced to each other at all. Not in the slightest. I'm not only talking about the ship line-ups, where several factions don't have a XL Battleship or have other holes in their roster, but also about the economical aspect. Some factions have a good economy going even without the player helping them out. Others are basically screwed. So Egosoft would have to balance things a lot more for any 4X type of thing to work out well.

Personally, I feel like X4 (or rather any X game) actually suffers from a different kind of challenge. Namely, an economical one. Throughout each and every X game, the player never had to compete with a proper rival, making earning money relatively easy and almost impossible to fail at. That also makes the immersion go a way quite a bit for me. But there was one time, when a mod fixed that problem for a moment. X3 Reunion's AI Competitors, which was never made compatible for any following X game, was that mod. And the few different approaches to make something similar for any of the newer games, failed in my opinion due to a few reasons.

So there's quite a few things, Egosoft could do in order to bring challenges to the game, increase immersion and what not. Whether it be a 4X mode or something like AI Competitors.

[Hector0x]

My impression is that Egosoft has reached the limit for 4X elements in their games.
Just look at their last major milestone. Ship & station construction now consuming actual resources in X4. This is a huge achievement for the simulated gameworld but it has probably caused some serious headache for their story designers, because the factions need to maintain a certain equilibrium so that the lore always make sense.
If Egosoft would go full on sim and ramp up these emergent mechanics even further, then their desired story content might become impossible to implement due to all the unknown variables from the simulated sandbox.

And they also can't really afford to add more risk and challenge for the player either, because an X4 playthrough can easily last for hundreds of hours. They might get serious flak by their fanbase if all that perceived progress is lost because an X game now wanted to actually be difficult for the first time in recorded history.

Vanilla will always be a compromise between curated content and simulated content. It's unsatisfying for both sides but i don’t see a solution that doesn't require to disable the story content.

It's sad that the simulated sandbox is fundamentally flawed. The relation shifts between NPC factions are static and only allow for story-driven changes by the player.
If the vanilla universe doesn't receive frequent stimulation by the player, then stuff that makes zero sense tends to happen.

The core issue is vanilla factions being unable to initiate or end a war without player guidance. Eventually one NPC faction always ‘wins’ their current wars and another faction practically 'looses'. These lore based wars are eventually decided, but they are never allowed to end.
So the winner just quietly builds up his fleet power till he hits an artificial pop cap, after which his economy stagnates because there is not enough resource consumption. What he should do now is start a new war but he can’t.
Meanwhile the loser factions are completely burned out but still send a trickle of troops into useless border skirmishers. Nothing truly disruptive or interesting happens in the gameworld. After some time the initial situation has settled down and has to wait for player intervention like when he triggers a relation shift in some story event or helps some faction. I cringe hard whenever i read someone boosted the economy which defeated the Xenons and now he asks how to bring them back. This Xenon comeback should tend to happen NATURALLY because of actual game mechanics, not because of the player.

Vanilla ‘diplomacy’ just doesn't work. We need to replace it with proper sandbox diplomacy.
A new faction logic that understands basic geopolitics. An AI that can declare war against who tf it wants to. Factions who know when they have been defeated. Who accept to get vassalized and pay tribute for the moment and try to win their independence back later in an opportune moment after they managed to recover. We need contracts, treaties and broken promises that the AI can remember. Actual politics would solve everything, including the overpowered player empire.

I don’t want to play X4 anymore until features like that are part of the game. 2 months ago i started to make it happen. I can't provide many details yet and there is no ETA. Thousands of lines of code already exist but debugging the new faction logic is painfully slow. I honestly don’t know whether it’ll release in a few months or in a year.

Just wanted to let you guys know that exciting new mods are still very much in the works. Proper diplomacy being one of them.

[Falcrack]

Just wanted to let you guys know that exciting new mods are still very much in the works. Proper diplomacy being one of them.

Sweet! You worked on Mayhem mod right? That was one of my favorite X3 mods

[fury1ord]

My impression is that Egosoft has reached the limit for 4X elements in their games.
Just look at their last major milestone. Ship & station construction now consuming actual resources in X4. This is a huge achievement for the simulated gameworld but it has probably caused some serious headache for their story designers, because the factions need to maintain a certain equilibrium so that the lore always make sense.
If Egosoft would go full on sim and ramp up these emergent mechanics even further, then their desired story content might become impossible to implement due to all the unknown variables from the simulated sandbox.

And they also can't really afford to add more risk and challenge for the player either, because an X4 playthrough can easily last for hundreds of hours. They might get serious flak by their fanbase if all that perceived progress is lost because an X game now wanted to actually be difficult for the first time in recorded history.

Vanilla will always be a compromise between curated content and simulated content. It's unsatisfying for both sides but i don’t see a solution that doesn't require to disable the story content.

It's sad that the simulated sandbox is fundamentally flawed. The relation shifts between NPC factions are static and only allow for story-driven changes by the player.
If the vanilla universe doesn't receive frequent stimulation by the player, then stuff that makes zero sense tends to happen.

The core issue is vanilla factions being unable to initiate or end a war without player guidance. Eventually one NPC faction always ‘wins’ their current wars and another faction practically 'looses'. These lore based wars are eventually decided, but they are never allowed to end.
So the winner just quietly builds up his fleet power till he hits an artificial pop cap, after which his economy stagnates because there is not enough resource consumption. What he should do now is start a new war but he can’t.
Meanwhile the loser factions are completely burned out but still send a trickle of troops into useless border skirmishers. Nothing truly disruptive or interesting happens in the gameworld. After some time the initial situation has settled down and has to wait for player intervention like when he triggers a relation shift in some story event or helps some faction. I cringe hard whenever i read someone boosted the economy which defeated the Xenons and now he asks how to bring them back. This Xenon comeback should tend to happen NATURALLY because of actual game mechanics, not because of the player.

Vanilla ‘diplomacy’ just doesn't work. We need to replace it with proper sandbox diplomacy.
A new faction logic that understands basic geopolitics. An AI that can declare war against who tf it wants to. Factions who know when they have been defeated. Who accept to get vassalized and pay tribute for the moment and try to win their independence back later in an opportune moment after they managed to recover. We need contracts, treaties and broken promises that the AI can remember. Actual politics would solve everything, including the overpowered player empire.

I don’t want to play X4 anymore until features like that are part of the game. 2 months ago i started to make it happen. I can't provide many details yet and there is no ETA. Thousands of lines of code already exist but debugging the new faction logic is painfully slow. I honestly don’t know whether it’ll release in a few months or in a year.

Just wanted to let you guys know that exciting new mods are still very much in the works. Proper diplomacy being one of them.

Exactly how I feel after playing X4 for a while.
I am afraid Egosoft will hesitate to introduce dynamic diplomacy based on how dynamic dyplomacy in X3:FL was received by the community...
Nevertheless, I am looking forward to proper diplomacy mod from you.

[LandogarX4]

If Egosoft would go full on sim and ramp up these emergent mechanics even further, then their desired story content might become impossible to implement due to all the unknown variables from the simulated sandbox.

And they also can't really afford to add more risk and challenge for the player either, because an X4 playthrough can easily last for hundreds of hours. They might get serious flak by their fanbase if all that perceived progress is lost because an X game now wanted to actually be difficult for the first time in recorded history.

There's an easy fix for these issues. Escalate the simulation aspect of the game as part of an optional quest, which becomes available only after the main story missions have been completed.

[SirLosealot]

How about having a separate Sandbox game and a Story driven game? In the Sandbox game, anyone can declare war with anyone else.

Or what I think is the bare minimum in terms of diplomacy is that a faction can sue for a ceasefire, not a peace treaty, just a ceasefire until they regain their power and then resume the war because the lore says so. Speaking about power, this can be used as a parameters in the calculation to see if they should resume hostility or not.

Let's take the BOR for example, let's assign them a bonus of +50 or something relationship to everyone for being a pacifist in the lore. That means they are likely to accept a ceasefire from ZYA if the ZYA offers it. The ZYA on the other hand have -50 relation with ARG and BOR because they are aggressive etc... But then the game also calculates the military strength between warring factions. Let's say the ZYA is losing territories and armies left and right (which they usually do due to the Xenon), even though they hate ARG and BOR, they will sue for a ceasefire just to regain their forces to deal with the Xenon first. But when they regain their power, the ZYA will likely be the one to break the ceasefire with ARG and BOR.

Another example is TER are at peace with ANT and ARG, but the player intervene with their relationship through a certain story line so now ANT and ARG have a -50 relationship with TER which will trigger the war between them. But if ANT and ARG are losing the war (losing the military assets), they might sue for a ceasefire.

So I think something like this still works with the story driven nature of the game at the moment but allow some flexibility for warring factions in terms of strategy.

[Hector0x]

There's an easy fix for these issues. Escalate the simulation aspect of the game as part of an optional quest, which becomes available only after the main story missions have been completed.

Amazing idea actually. A toggle quest for the player where he can basically tell the game "i'm done with the stories, now let the simulation run wild".

Like the player learns about a new empty gate network around the central story sectors and can share that info to kick of a landgrab by the factions and a new kind of turf war. The starting conditions might be different but everybody can ally freely and also gets comparable fleet caps so that everyone could theoretically win.

The only downside would be lots of extra dev effort for that separate mode when its still unclear how many players would be interested.

[Kotare]

Nice to see I'm not alone in how I would like to play. I think my Steam review on launch day even griped about claiming a sector did little more then change the color on the map. Well Mr. Hector0x, I'll look forward to what ever your working on going live, sounds like a decent chunk of what I've always felt the game is lacking.

[LandogarX4]

Nice to see I'm not alone in how I would like to play. I think my Steam review on launch day even griped about claiming a sector did little more then change the color on the map. Well Mr. Hector0x, I'll look forward to what ever your working on going live, sounds like a decent chunk of what I've always felt the game is lacking.