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:
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Released on Steam on 30 November