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[Gabeux]

Bahahha! I really like it that the game builds all ships instead of spawning them. From what users saw in files, it is indeed true. Although I cannot confirm it for the Xenon, because I killed a LOT of their scouts and more scouts would randomly pop in on my radar range in their sectors. Then again, it seems one of the Xenon groups in my game is struggling to assemble any fleets, while another one seems to be growing, unattended in the dark.

Of course, in order for this ship-construction-instead-of-spawning to work, they tweaked the economy.. and they may have simplified certain things too much for some people, as I think most station modules only require 3 building materials: Energy Cells, Hull Parts and Claytronics. I haven't looked deep into econ yet though. Next time I play I'll stop wasting time dying and reloading 100 times and will go pay attention to the Trade part of things, since this iteration doesn't seem to give you many options to make bank being a Combat pilot early on. Unless you count killing mines as combat...how many ships manage to get stuck per hour in minefields, and who's filling the universe with mines!? 

[Broseph Stalin]

Docking is much simpler now that I've figured out I was reading an indicator backwards. Having difficulty making progress, still getting regular crashes, one of which ate my save.

[Ygdrad]

Docking is much simpler now that I've figured out I was reading an indicator backwards. Having difficulty making progress, still getting regular crashes, one of which ate my save.

Hopefully you're doing like me and using all 10 save slots, rotating between them. I fully expect to lose one sooner or later.


Edit: After spending more time with the game I can still see this having the potential to be a great X game, but I wouldn't say it's better than X3 in every way anymore. Here are points where it currently falls short:

- Weapon variety is way down and nothing on offer is really geared towards capital ship use or feel special, it's only a few bland weapons, it's all basic fighter weaponry really. As far as I can see a gun is a gun, no size/class difference.

- The map is relatively small compared to even the first X3, which had 97 sectors if i'm not mistaken, X4 has 47. It doesn't help that the highway loop is extremely fast and everything is within 2 sectors of it, making it feel really small, nothing feels remote, it's like the xenons are living in your backyard. I think Egosoft leaned a little too far on the side of convenience here, they obviously haven't given up on X Rebirth's attempt to attract a more casual/mainstream crowd and it completely ruins the feeling of this being a big place that was present in X3.

- Different factions' ship equipment seem to have stat variations but you can't see any of the stats except the main one like shield hp.

- The encyclopedia lacks info for a lot of important stuff, a lot of entries are just blank.

- Missiles don't show up on the radar/map, can't be targeted, don't seem to run out of fuel and will chase you even if you switch to travel mode and eventually hit you if you don't leave the system, which is very annoying for small ships that can get 1-shotted and only hold one flare. Hopefully turrets can shoot them down but seeing how they have issues hitting a ship...

- The AI feels worse than in X3, it can't aim straight most of the time and is pretty terrible at managing distance/positioning. It's also way too enthusiastic about wasting all of its shields boosting away and then coming back to you before they've recharged.

- Auto traders are pretty bad at the moment, even losing you money at times instead of generating profit, definitely not worth investing in. This is likely to get patched, but for now the economic side of the game is pretty busted.

- You'll have to do all the exploration yourself or micromanage an AI ship since the exploration command is woefully inefficient and fails to get anything valuable done in a single sector in any sort of sane timeframe, even with the fastest ship.

- The player HQ is in the middle of Teladi space so if you want to play as a pirate you can forget about it unless you keep Teladi friendly.

- Haven't found or heard of any special or unique ships or variants yet so I'm pretty sure we're limited to only the 3 factions' designs.

- Can't match or control speed in travel mode which makes fleet formations iffy and interdicting traveling enemies annoying. Forget escorting anything in a sane fashion.

- Piracy is very limited not only due to the other issues I've mentioned, but also due to the absence of jump drives. If a ship drops its cargo(and I have yet to see any carry much value) you'll need a cargo ship to pick it up, but since you can't jump cargo ships in or out of the sector and they're slow, they're going to get intercepted by the sector's military.

- It might just be a bug some people have, but the radar makes no sense, you can't use it to line up targets, rolling the ship makes it rotate on two axis instead of one for some reason.

I'm still having fun and the UI is definitely so much better than X3's, but I definitely see just how much more work the game needs now that I've had time to get used to things. Hopefully extra content won't come as standalone expansions like they did with X3.

[Gabeux]

Aye, I agree on all points. The only reason I'd want this instead of X3 is due to the Loadout feature really. It was the number 1 thing I hated on previous X games.
They did name X4 as "Foundations" and did hint at wanting to have a polished base game first, so I'm really hoping that holds true, and that they'll build up on Foundations once they've patched things up.
There's a lot of things that clearly look like placeholders and 'coming next'. Especially since they mentioned being #1 in Steam in Germany and #2 Worldwide, hopefully that gives them some inspiration.. 

Honestly, the 1.10 patch gave me a LOT more stability for some reason. I don't remember the map-warp bug happening after it. Maybe after 4h or so I may still bump into the bug that makes you fall below a station/platform when walking, there's the combat music that should be fixed next patch, and the ever-creeping map-warp..other than that is fine.

[milo christiansen]

So, it is another broken v1 from EgoSoft? Aren't they known for broken first versions that age well with patches?

[Folly]

So, it is another broken v1 from EgoSoft? Aren't they known for broken first versions that age well with patches?

Rebirth is the only game that fits that description afaik. It was a pretty big disappointment, but hardly cause to assume that all of their games are like that.

X4 does have a very active 'Bug Reports' forum right now, but also lots of people saying that it's running flawlessly. Not the smoothest launch ever, but nor is it bad enough that interested buyers should be wary imo.

- Weapon variety is way down and nothing on offer is really geared towards capital ship use or feel special, it's only a few bland weapons, it's all basic fighter weaponry really. As far as I can see a gun is a gun, no size/class difference.

I've found anti-shield and standard guns so far, as well as dumbfire missiles and tracking missiles. Not terribly diverse, but they've got the essentials covered. Also a bunch of faction weapons that I haven't unlocked yet.

[Ygdrad]

- Weapon variety is way down and nothing on offer is really geared towards capital ship use or feel special, it's only a few bland weapons, it's all basic fighter weaponry really. As far as I can see a gun is a gun, no size/class difference.

I've found anti-shield and standard guns so far, as well as dumbfire missiles and tracking missiles. Not terribly diverse, but they've got the essentials covered. Also a bunch of faction weapons that I haven't unlocked yet.

I don't think there are any faction-specific weapons. At first the Argons were the only ones selling Ion Blasters(anti-shield weapon), Teladi and Paranids were the only ones selling Beam Emitters laser, which is the only weapon to use on your fleet and turrets because it's the only weapon the AI will ever hit anything with, but now the Argon wharf sells beam emiters too.

So all-in-all you have 3 launchers(dumbfire, seeking, torpedo), and only 6 guns, one of which(the shotgun) is 100% useless, another(the plasma launcher) which is too slow to hit anything but one of the very few capital ships you'll rarely encounter, and only one of which the AI is able to use. This leaves you with only 4 viable guns for the player and only 1 for your AI fleet.

[Ozyton]

As someone who has never really palyed these games are there good videos on the gameplay? Greyduster has some out but the game's just been released so I suppose I shouldn't expect too much.

[Ygdrad]

As someone who has never really palyed these games are there good videos on the gameplay? Greyduster has some out but the game's just been released so I suppose I shouldn't expect too much.

As a new player there's definitely some fun to be had here past the bugs. As a fan of X3 it's hard not to be disappointed with the current content/state however. Most reviewers will have a good opinion of the game behind the bugs, just like I and a lot of others did because you don't notice the limitations of the game early on.

Edit: Ozy, I don't personally know any youtuber showcasing X4 gameplay who isn't currently blinded to the game's issues due to just starting out or hating on the game because they aren't used to the X series. Twitch might be a good place to go since it's easy to find people playing and switch around to find the kind of player you're looking for. Shameless plug: I will be streaming the game around 10am EST(in about 9h23m from now) if you're interested in someone who's enthusiastic about the game, but still being a realist about its issues. https://www.twitch.tv/ygdrad

Edit 2: On a more positive note, X4 launched in better shape than previous titles so I guess Egosoft is ahead of the curve and may make X4 great quicker than they did their other titles.

[Gabeux]

Hope they don't make mods prevent achievements in the future. Pretty bizarre, but pilots currently don't seem to level up and Digital Seminars are not fully implemented, so probably Pilots never level up. Just like X:R, it forces me to grab a mod to give some way for them to level up.




It begins.

[BigD145]

As someone who has never really palyed these games are there good videos on the gameplay? Greyduster has some out but the game's just been released so I suppose I shouldn't expect too much.

Pretty good and he's starting tutorials. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLY58FrxPQ7JdwxPIjdVmig/videos  Plus he doesn't ask you to subscribe.

[Ygdrad]

As someone who has never really palyed these games are there good videos on the gameplay? Greyduster has some out but the game's just been released so I suppose I shouldn't expect too much.

Pretty good and he's starting tutorials. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLY58FrxPQ7JdwxPIjdVmig/videos  Plus he doesn't ask you to subscribe.

Not sure what's wrong with youtubers who spend 5 seconds asking/reminding you to subscribe. If anything it shows you they care about their channel's future. Tobel isn't obnoxious and neither is his voice thankfully, he does a good job of explaining things thoroughly but he needs to figure out conciseness. Those tutorials are longer than most channels' lets play episodes .

[forsaken1111]

5 seconds is fine, some of them have a 10 minute intro/outro about it.

[etgfrog]

I was going to say, yes, 10 minutes has been the most annoying that I've seen.

I've just found something that is rather amazing, every sector will scale with how far out things have been colonised. I flew out to the edge of the map because there was a massive asteroid and watched the map slowly expand out as I was flying.

[Whivy]

I haven't really tried the game yet (only fiddle on menus) but am I the only one to regret the old UI ? I don't remember it being that much of a mess, and i really found the blue themed to give the game a great atmosphere. Most of the game was dark blue anyway, but it gave it identity. Now... this dark basic theme make me think i'm using some old backoffice management software, based on excel design. I don't like the new map as well. And even with using the AA setting before the last one (4x MSA i think, the 8x is too laggy) i don't find the game, inside station (game start), beautiful.

No comment about gameplay for now.