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[Gabeux]

I'm 100% sure it's too early to make a thread for it, but X4 (from X³ Albion Prelude, X Rebirth, now X4 Foundations) has been announced.

Here's the trailer.
Here's the annoucement presentation.
In case you're interested, a X:Rebirth VR stand-alone game is also on early access, here's the trailer.

Basically, everything that was harshly criticized has been addressed. The game's gonna have a huge focus on not annoying/boring the player to death.
Some things that caught my attention:

• The focus on making the game less clunky means it will feature a cool map system - reminds me a bit of Starpoint Gemini Warlords, or SPAZ 2 maps - on which you can give many orders to your fleets, which finally enables players to command their assets with a strategic interface.
• We'll be able to destroy whole stations (which was awkward on X:R and was only possible with mods).
• There will be a research feature.
• One of the research items will be a teleporter, which will enable you to teleport to any of your ships. Further research will raise the range of the teleporter. This can potentially lower the classic downtimes of the X games.
• Stations will drop the "build tree" of X:R and will now enable you to fully, freely build modular stations. There will be production, habitation, storage, and a couple more types of modules.
• The boring scan-parts-of-all-stations minigame will now be 'less repetitive' and by scanning station modules, you'll unlock the module blueprint which will enable you to build it on your own stations.
• Economy may finally be fully simulated, meaning that Egosoft seems to want to reduce/remove the aritificial (magical) drains and supply.
• Factions may finally be functional and dynamic - along with the building and economy changes, this means that factions/npcs will build modules they deem necessary/in demand. Stations might follow certain 'growth routes', instead of always following presets, as the build system is not tied to dedicated stations anymore.
• You can fly every ship, including capital ships. All ships will be crewed, and S-class ships (fighters, whatnot) will also have space for a co-pilot. Egosoft is probably trying to address the annoyance of X:R when dealing with crew, so I suppose crewing your fleets will be more straightforward.
• You will be able to land S ships on M ships. Some M ships may have an hangar.
• You will be able to walk around on hangars/decks/landing pads, and get inside ships. This means you can personally switch ships in first person.
• Game Starts will be similar to X3 TR and X3 AP, different characters, different races, different plots. Some plots will be available for all, some plots will belong to a character or race.
• Game world will be a mix of X3 and X:R. Meaning there will be dense, well-developed sectors, and classic warp-gate-only, less developed/exploration sectors.
• Technical and graphics-wise, they are focusing on newer technology and they are trying a new approach to development. As they got experience in the new engine and APIs via X:R VR, and X4 was pretty much playable even on pre-alpha, this makes me believe they will bump into MUCH, MUCH less technical issues and will develop the game focusing on whether the features are fun/streamlined/engaging, or simple garbage.

There are probably other minor things, but that's all I can remember for now.
I feel positive for this one, as I believe Egosoft took such a beating with X:R that they now matured. They seem serious about merging the best of X3 and the best of X:R, along with the lessons learned with the worst of both games, into the new game. If they manage to do that, X4 will be damn fun, and a worthy successor to X3 AP.

There's no release date planned, and they do not yet know if they will try Early Access (aren't all X games Early Access anyway?), but it's sometime in 2018.

-- 05/12/2018:
- Released on Steam on 30 November

[Mephansteras]

Well, guess I'll watch this at least. Maybe we'll get something good from it this time!

[etgfrog]

Is the teleporter for the player way of moving between ships or can you use the teleporter to freely move stuff between stations?

[Aklyon]

Hmmm.

[Sensei]

It's got walking, and I'm not sure how to feel about that.

[ollobrains]

i wont be pre ordering and their communications process needs to be much stronger and hidden less behind lack of information, heck even an early access period might be in order with regular updates, and of course listening to player feedback, we shall see but i wont buy until the game is out, the stuffup that was x rebirth will make sure that trust is never fully put back until they deliver, ill watch with interest though

[Gabeux]

Is the teleporter for the player way of moving between ships or can you use the teleporter to freely move stuff between stations?

They didn't specify anything, but from what I've got it's for your player [character] to move into any ships/stations, from anywhere.

But after they pretty much vanillafied that "Never Enter Stations Again [NESA]" mod into X:R, I'm pretty sure they must know how most people hate the walking part of the game.
If they just don't forget how much people hated the unnecessary minigames and walking around, it would be great. It's really hard for them to miss the target at this point, given the sea of hate and criticism spread across the internet community feedback but, eh..it's always possible. 

A side note I forgot to mention, loading times appeared to be three times faster than X:R on their presentation. Although that's not a huge issue as X:R would load only once, it gives me a bit of hope of improvements on the technical side.
I'm happy they didn't simply reuse X:R to make X4, though, otherwise I would've not even bothered making a thread.   

[etgfrog]

I figured that would be the case. I wonder if they are taking hints from eve online with the new stations there and how to balance the cost. I also wonder if you can actually take a bunch of resources into an empty system and create a self sustaining economy that doesn't need credit input or outside resources to continue to expand.

I need to stop...now I'm thinking about a way to implement a mission system so it has actual effects on an area. More specifically that the missions are generated by what is actually wanted by the station owners. Which also has lead me to think about how if there are pirates in an area that a station owner might cut a deal with the pirates that their ships are off limits due to it being cheaper then hiring a mercenary to clear out the pirates. I guess that is a problem of pirates existing in most space games for the sake of being killed and not due to profitability of taking cargo.

[Gabeux]

A second livestream showing the current state of the game with the devs answering questions can be found here.

To save the time..

• There's nothing really anything big on the news side. They still seem to be developing it and checking what would work and what would not in terms of fun/boring stuff and all that.
• Planets might affect the stations in the sector minimally. In a Teladi sector with a Teladi planet on it, it's expected that the workforce will be mostly comprised of Teladi. Building on a desert, isolated location will make it harder to acquire workforce for your station.
• That seems pretty meh as you'd expect that planets would play a bigger whole on a modern game, instead of only being part of the skybox.


• There might not be jumpdrives anymore, and instead you would send ships where you want them to be/go, and then personally teleport to those ships.
• They fear that jumpdrives might kill exploration, but usually you DO need to explore in order to be able to jump. In all cases, we all know they'll either put jumpdrives in a later patch, or a mod will add it.
• Another motivation for removing jumpdrives is that this would make the game more strategical and tactical, making blockades and jump-gate control a thing.
• Teleporting seems to be under discussion on whether you'll be able to teleport to any station, or to any station + owned ships, etc.


• Building stations is looking nice! You can fully rotate and build horizontally, vertically, diagonally.
• I found a bit interesting that you can build Small Docks (1 M, 6 S ships) or Large Docks. This means that until you find/unlock Large Docks, Large ships won't be able to dock in your station. The same applying to NPC stations, it might make things a bit more dynamic/interesting.  Those docks can be used as garages for ship collectors, so you can visually see your collection on your stations. NPC stations might "store ships away".
• They've shown screenshots of NPC stations that built themselves, so they weren't lying about NPCs not only building new stations, but growing existing ones. I've also found interesting that those screenshots included Xenon stations that apparently built themselves. This would imply the Xenon won't be static set-pieces anymore, but that might be a stretch.
• You can deconstruct station modules and rearrange them, allowing you to transform a factory in a shipyard, for instance.
• They intend to make "plots" (the area where you build a station) have a cost to purchase. That way, building in the best economically-developed and close-to-highway places more expensive, while building on far away, desert or dangerous locations be significantly less expensive or even free. This is a little awkward, as space should be fucking big, but I enjoy it a bit.
• On the subject of plots - this might still be in development/discussion - but they intend to allow you to build without a license, for free, wherever you want. However, if the territory owner (say, Argon) see your station, they won't like it. This allows you to build military outposts / invasion forward bases without asking for permission, which would be silly (or you could just build a hidden Space Fuel fab,
   I suppose?)


• There'll be a Player HQ unique building that might be tied to the plot.
• The new map is looking even better. The idea is that you can do everything through that, instead of navigating through a dozen screens.
• There's filters so you can lower/raise the amount of information displayed. People are already requesting hotkeys to be added to the map, so they are aware.
• SETA can be used with the new strategic map open.


• Random notes:
• Weird enough, landing on stations look a lot like landing on stations on Elite: Dangerous.
• People complained that the game looked too colourful, so you can change a Color Correction option for different look and feels.
• Joysticks and re-mapping will be supported (on XR launch I don't think it was possible).

I think that's it. Looking interesting, will definitely be better than X:Rebirth, but I'm hoping they'll come through with making the things that were awkward/stupid actually work.
This means the UI (basically fleet management), static universe and better AI for specialized ships (making sure Carriers behave like Carriers, Destroyers like Destroyers, Bombers like Bombers, etc).

As mentioned before, they again seemed fully aware of all requests, requirements, loves and hates. All they have to do is to work with that knowledge and they'll have a successful title.

[JimboM12]

I have a high amount of respect for Egosoft as a dev, I've enjoyed all their games starting at X2 and all their releases (other than X:R) have been plagued with release bugs and took months of patching to get where they are now and they stick with it until its as close to done as they can get. X3 Terran Conflict was an absolute classic I spent an entire summer playing: I just had to get my personal home sector justttt right while doing the Hub quests. YOU REMEMBER THAT GRIND? i got so frustrated until i decided to build my own empire to produce all those parts. and afterward i turned all those factories to make end goods and got filthy rich. I spent it all on trying to cap Xenon ships for reproduction, PXes are decent corvettes and pretty cheap to make and Qs are quite cheap for their performance as anyone who builds a factory in a xenon patrol sector can attest to.

X:Rebirth was a ding on their street rep with me, but they gave the DLCs for free to people who bought it at release and kept patching it up. It's really not that bad anymore, i feel as though if it was released by another company with a different name, we'd probably think it was an ok game.

But with the release of X4 with all those classic features with modern upgrades taking the good features from X:Rebirth? woo!

[Culise]

Good heavens, but I'm looking forward to this quite a bit.  In fact, I think I might finally get off my lazy posterior and give Litcube's 'verse a whirl, instead of just XRM, just to get back into the whirl of things.

I do have a little part of me whispering that hopefully the economy works better than in X3, though.  I remember the inexorable collapse of the Terran sectors and the frustration of trying to find a tractor beam factory if you waited too long.  With ship construction being tied into the economy as well, I could see that getting...interesting.

[milo christiansen]

Man, I hope this is good.

The rush of diving on an M2 with my M5 (speed and skill being the only thing keeping you alive), just for the random fun of it (no M5 can do more than dent an M2). The joy of playing "Pokemon: Hull metal edition" if an NPC bailing mod is installed. That first MK3 trader or station.

X:R sucked so hard. They took all the fun parts out... This has to be better.

[Nelia Hawk]

imagines docking a fighter at a carrier... landing it next to 80 other fighters in the hangar... getting out of it and stepping to the side... and then ordering all docked fighters to undock and seeing them all launch in little groups and fly out of the hangar...

[Trapezohedron]

I hope jumpdrives are still a thing, with an optional difficulty toggle for it.

I don't really use it much, but sometimes, having an escape is better than nothing, and by escape, given this is an Egosoft game, I mean hordes of simulated ships shooting each other and overheating my RAM and processor.

But ship blockades sound fun!

[marples]

Still no Boron ships?