Diplomacy update public beta out NOW

Have they fixed the UI being so cumbersome yet?
I cant get over how this game is so cool but would be much easier to control as if it were sins of a solar empire.

>>2088485 (OP)
Fuck yeah, dickplomacy

>>2088485 (OP)
It sounds like faction relations will only changed based on player input, can anyone confirm that factions will not change relations with each other on their own?
>>2088530
You just get used to it

>>2088768
>It sounds like faction relations will only changed based on player input
Really? That's not good.

>>2088530
>>2088768
Seconding this. You get used to it.

It could be better, but you get used to it. The game has a pretty intense level of functionality and designing a UI for it is a challenge for anyone.

I spend most of my time playing in the map interface nowadays.

Been trying the SWI total conversion lately. It's cool but I'm not sure it's actually better than the base game all in all.

>>2088485 (OP)
Fuck yeah dickplomacy.

good to be back.

How disappointed are we?

>>2088842
>It could be better, but you get used to it.
Compared to how even x rebirth was x4 has UI like a dream that's beamed directly into your skill like neuralink.

>>2088530
At some point, you'll start to realize that if you think you should be able to do something with a particular right-click dropdown menu, you probably can.
It's cumbersome to navigate, so to speak, but you there's a lot of redundancy as to where and how you can give orders, input units, etc. etc. for better or worse.

>>2089123
You couldn't even click on the map in X2.

>>2089123
I think it's pretty good all things considered, even compared to other games with similar levels of complexity.

Obviously I like the game, I have about 800 hours in X4 now.

One Argon run, one Terran run, one Boron run, now playing as a freelance republican industrialist / militia in SWI.

How does the diplomacy interact with the old diplomacy questlines?

>>2089017
batteries firing
plasmas flying
fighters dying
ass jiggling
another beautiful day

>>2088485 (OP)
I guess version 8.00 is probably going to be the last one, right? Is there any other DLC on the horizon?

>>2090192
There is
>one mini dlc
>some exploration update
>probably more
They are not actually done with x4. Sometimes I don't really think they have an off ramp because they don't know what to do with x5 on account of not being able to write stories for shit. They clearly want to try coasting on german grant money and mini dlcs as long as they can though.

>>2090288
What's X4 missing that previous games had? Corporations/minor factions with their own (short) quest chains/rank system/rewards and passenger ships/missions for 100+ passengers to do tours.

Maybe Aldrin and it's huge asteroid? The HUB? All the major races are in.

Actually, I'd love an Aldrin & unknown sectors + HUB DLC, make it so it doesn't require the Terran DLC but have interaction/quests if it does. Plus bonus points for the Springblossom.

There is currently a bug in the beta where if you buy blueprint/license from the ambassadors in your embassy, the cost gets instantly refunded after purchase. Meaning you can get blueprints for free

This game frustrates me with how tedious it is in certain sections. Why do I have to search around manually for comm data leaks to get a black market contact so I can smuggle illegal goods. It's just retarded.

>>2088768
>It sounds like faction relations will only changed based on player input, can anyone confirm that factions will not change relations with each other on their own?

As far as I understand, mostly no. Factions don't have the diplomacy features you as a player do. However, there is project Null which you can activate which adds occasional random events with associated relationship changes between factions. This an opt in feature tthrough an agent though. So you have to unlock diplomacy before activating it.

IDK if the player can be targeted by Project Null.

>>2090726
I have avoided black market stuff entirely because it's shit. I avoid piracy for much of the same reasons because it's shit AND brokenly easy. I just hope diplomacy fixed up faction logic so they can attack people not next to each other now. The boron fleet sent to the argon in particular was one of the most bandaid token things I have ever seen in a video game.

>>2091060
>>2090726
Would be nice if a black marketeer had a dialog option for "introduce me to another black marketeer", pay 10,000 and it'd start one of the black market introduction missions at a random station in sector.

Or some repeatable quest chain to setup your own black marketeers in a stations you choose. Would start in the PHQ and then require 1 of each hacking item, along with some crewmember with 3+ management and poof, new blackmarket in that station.

>>2090288
I'm hoping that the downscale to mini-dlc like Timelines and micro-dlc like the Hyperion (one ship per year lmao) is because they're actively working on X5. I can't believe they've got all the staff that used to be able to put together faction DLCs yearly just sitting around playing farm simulator.

>>2091190
Well, no. You might have noticed instead of a regular expansion they gave us a flight sim update and now this diplomacy update. We can probably assume those are rather complex.

The starwars overhaul is great

>>2091268
There are three cons
>bloatware rpg features like upkeep
>performance
>VRO balancing meaning no dogfights

>>2091277
I can't remember having any real dogfights in vanilla, everything dies quickly there too

>>2091289
It wasn't good at it but you didn't get sniped at 15km by beams either.

>more new unowned sectors
>more trade ports
I wonder why.

>>2091707
>more new unowned sectors
More places to explore.
>more trade ports
These are constant demand resource sinks for the game's economy, every hour they delete some of their resource stockpiles creating a floor of low level demand for all resources so the game's "GODAI" doesn't delete the last factory for drone parts or field coils.

Just got back into the game after a few months, and HOLY SHIT they finally added a command to let stations and fleets automatically order new ships from your shipyard when one gets destroyed.
This qol-feature was long overdue, especially for a retard like me who always forgets to buy new ones until I wonder why my stations don't produce shit anymore lol.

>>2091879
Actually the sector seems to connect hop and teladi.
It's neat but I wish they updated factions to be able to go through each other territory when applicable instead.

>>2091989
Connecting to Path to Profit? Seems the most logical place to link the two.

As it is I see too many Split/Teladi fly through Xenon territory to reach stations on the other side, so I think the AI needs to be tweaked to avoid hostile sectors more.

How do you hire more agents?

>>2092417
The game is rather unclear about that. I guess they hang around stations?

So I got a bit into diplomacy now. just the start.
>good end game use of resources like spacefly eggs
>blueprint stealing finally
>some more endgame stuff like war and peace
All good. Less good is
>fallen families are diplomatic but you can't really react to them
>Just started but they didn't seem to add many really unique events except one to make heretics end non neutral.

>>2093219
>blueprint stealing finally
How exactly does it work, what's the difference to regular EMP bombing?

>>2089017
dat ass

>>2093295
You can steal ships.

if i've never played an X game, where should I start and which ones should I skip?

>>2093578
X4 honestly.
The story isn't difficult to follow and 4 gives you exposition dumps through data vaults. It's also by far the most accessible

>>2093560
Oh, so you can steal ship blueprints? That's really cool.

Only ship blueprint I really want to steal is the Prometheus from Duke's Buccaneers. An all in one combat-trader hybrid.

>>2093578
X4, buy the base game first and if you like it get the DLC factions. Ignore the Timeline DLC as it doesn't really enhance the base game itself.
If you want to read up on the lore you might miss by not playing the previous games, read this:
https://www.scribd.com/document/355746917/The-X-Encyclopedia-Helge-Kautz

>>2093622
I think X rebirth actually has a decent story but you have to tolerate a lot of jank to play it.

>>2093968
An X:Rebirth 'remaster' as a DLC for X4, would be nice. Put it on it's own separate gate network, a few large interesting systems each with their own theme.

>>2093950
Tbh it's the community of planets edition or bust. Wait for a big sale when the entire pack is like $30.

>>2094108
That would actually be good. X rebirth was hated and probably quite skipped so a straight port with the ships would probably be less effort for them but also super easy to do thanks to the new and highly convenient timelines design system.

>>2093950
I like timelines. I like to rp with the ships they add and pretend they are my player faction ships.

have they touched weapon balance at all in the past year? or is it still hilariously unbalanced to the point where everything other than plasma and flak are just newbie traps?

>>2095266
>is it still hilariously unbalanced to the point where everything other than plasma and flak are just newbie traps?
I assume you're talking about turrets, but yes it is still that way.

>>2094108
>>2094143
There is already a mod that ports X Rebirth maps into a separate gate network.

>>2095426
Those are just the sectors. Not the meat of it.

>Want to try out if AI actually has improved
>Send a few destroyers to attack a Xenon defense station
>"Huh, they actually keep their distance while shooting, nice! Guess I'll send them back to where they belong now"
>Instead of keeping their distance while flying away, they just crash directly into the station and get instakilled
Guess AI hasn't really improved, but is now a bit more.. different.

>>2095693
A xenon N today was able to check me and took down my ares because I couldn't get away from it. That's a lot better than the start of the flight beta where it was unable to turn to face your ship and actually fire.

did they fuck with EMP suit bombs mechanism? I researched all the "chance to get x from leaks" tech but i haven't gotten ANY blueprints even after shitting out something like 12 EMP bombs.

>>2095693
They improved how the ai behaves in accomplishing a task, but it's incapable of doing that while managing other tasks.
They're good at fighting but terrible at being told to go somewhere while also fighting.

>>2096208
surely this is a solved problem in literally every other game

>Added new travel-mode bubble effect
???

I hate to say it but diplomacy is a little on the boring side.

>>2096605
Yep. I don't get why they refuse to implement the X3 system where improving relations with one group decreases your relations with their enemies. It's ridiculous that I can trivially supply enough arms to a faction to have them conquer the galaxy with no consequences.

>>2096657
I think we could go a bit beyond that and have the player align to a faction for benefits/rewards.
There is already a mod that implements relationship penalties and it was fairly clear to me that x4 isn't really big enough to support that. Even this beta they added a new sector that connets directly to the hop home system and it really showcases just how on top of each other the base game races are.

>>2096657
>>2096673
I'd make it so if the player takes ranks in a faction they become more 'of a public figure' that's known to both the faction and outsiders.

At rank 10, can do the promotion ceremony where they get access to "military" ships, or ask to work as a free agent. With the ceremony, double the reputation gains but lose with enemies, without the ceremony, prices of things unlocked like restricted ships, weapons and station modules are doubled but the player is still given access to them - and reputation gains are halved but with no loss from enemy factions.

I would also love more neutral "no man's land" sectors between factions. Neutral minor factions that don't claim sectors but offer unique ships or weapons, like the old X3 era corporations.

>pick up the game again
>completely forgot about how fucking awful and dysfunctional most orders are
>download the sector exploration mod so i don't lose my mind drawing circles in every fucking hex in the map
>completely forgot about how modded orders can randomly ignore travel blacklists because Egosoft autism
>lose scouts to Xenon stations despite blacklists telling my ships not to fucking fly there
this game sure is something huh
i bet we totally needed that fucking flight model update that made everything fly like fucking riced out tokyo drifters instead of an "finally finish implementing the basic fucking features after 10 years" patch.

>>2097106
>i bet we totally needed that fucking flight model update that made everything fly like fucking riced out tokyo drifters instead of an "finally finish implementing the basic fucking features after 10 years" patch.
I think Egosoft's design philosophy is to cater towards people who don't get too deep into the game and mostly just fly around doing contracts for a couple dozen hours. It's the only way I can explain their focus anyway.

Well yes, the flight model change was good because decoupling shields from boost was good.
I do agree that they need to fix ai exploration or give us an alternative like buying system info.

>>2097226
Yeah, it's why almost every single dlc except the first one just came with a quick onboarding plot and pretty low requirements.

>>2097226
i’m gonna object to the “couple dozen hours” demographic because you can run into the game’s serious issues long before hitting a single dozen hours, i.e. try to setup a miner with your adventuring funds and run straight into the absolutely broken orders system

>>2097326
it’s too generous to call them onboarding plots. i sure as hell had to look up what the REAL objective was for some of the missions even with multiple sandbox runs under my belt.

i can't be the only one who wishes torpedo replenishment would come with a capacity limit, or program a way to just fucking carry the extra torpedoes in carriers

seriously how did they not see any problems with a single fighter sucking up an entire freighter's worth of raw materials to max out its magazines? this makes torpedo bomber wings of any size basically a nonstarter even for massive fleets

>>2097349
Mining isn't even a problem. It's trading because all the automation orders either don't work or require extreme micromanagement all the way to manually buying and selling. I wish trading was as straightforward as mining.

>Vanilla has a hidden mechanic which checks if your mining ships are within 40km of a resource probe owned by you and silently applies a 50% penalty to mining efficiency if they are not. Thus, players are unknowingly hamstrung by this mechanic as there is literally no way to learn it exists in-game.
>Even when using a mod like Satellite Service to automatically blanket the entire sector with probes, it is still possible to receive this penalty because the probes are deployed on one plane. Therefore, you would receive the penalty if the ship moves >40km above or below the probes. Covering the entire sector with probes also reduces performance and visually clutters the UI.
what the fuck is wrong with germans

>>2097792
Does it really? I never noticed because mining is just a passive income stream and since they adjusted ai mining in 7.5 buy orders always dry up before mining rate becomes a concern.

>>2097801
>>2097792
Every problem like this is best solved by just making more ships. Which is a design issue.

>>2097846
yeah, but the game "discourages" that behavior by spawning cubed cocks on top of your miners, which is not annoying whatsoever and a great game design.

That one Split mission is STILL bugged? The one where you plant bombs on cargo drones and then have to pick up crates. I memoryholed how I never got to finish this mission over multiple runs and now I'm running into the issue again. Where's the fucking box??

>>2097792
>>2097801
A fix would be that mining ships deploy a mining probe when they mine, then recover it when they go to deliver their mined resources.

Incentive to give mining ships probes.

Or have 'survey sector for mining' as an order you can give ships, where the ship would need 10-20 mining probes and it'd deploy them in the sector raising a 'survey' stat which increases yield.

Or something like that big radar dish stations can have now, 'mineral survey module' which acts like a mining probe for the whole sector.

Or have sector mineral content be unknown until a mining probe is dropped there, after that as long as the probe is active in sector that sector gains 'survey data' score which increases the accuracy of the sector, going from "Ore detected" where mining ships can be assigned to the sector, to "Ore in the thousands to millions" mining ships mine 10% more efficiently to "aproximately 900,000 ore" 25% more efficiently to "925,700 ore" 50% mining bonus.

Could also buy the survey data from those Prospector ships that just patrol mineral rich sectors, make them useful for the player.

>>2098477
I personally gave up on mining when they weren't able to figure out how to incentivize the player to mine dangerous frontier sectors near xenon for big rewards.

>>2098597
Eh. As it is I have big mining fleets of large miners (who can fight off Khaak without losses) feeding 'mining outposts' which are just docks and storages which have their own mining ships hauling the ores to where the factories that consume them. Only times I mine myself is when I do one of those 'train npc' missions, and I have a medium mining ship specifically built for that - high speed with great maneuverability.

Don't know how Egosoft could make mining more interesting. And I'm more interesting in salvaging and exploring, I love finding those rare derelict large ships which have a crate or something inside them and I have to personally explore them; so I want them to work on EVA and zero-g movement. Rework the spacesuit into something less clunky, no chair, make it more like Space Engineer's spacesuit, add magnetic boots to walk on the surface of ships. And add more places to explore "on foot".

>>2098876
>'mining outposts' which are just docks and storages which have their own mining ships hauling the ores to where the factories that consume them
this sounds unnecessarily tedious to setup and potentially bottlenecked by docking bays due to having more ships floating around. does it provide tangible benefits over having mining ships directly mine for the consumers?

>>2098876
>Don't know how Egosoft could make mining more interesting.
One of the late timelines missions has you with an l miner and a small fleet defending against khaak as you mine and it's actually fun. That's peak mining. But the game isn't really set up in a way that has you doing that organically.

>>2097359
wait... carrier reload works for you?
I kinda dropped the game because missile reloading never really worked for me. The fighters were just in a perpetual Change Equipment state whenever they'd dock, never using the missile parts and other components I had loaded in the carrier.

>>2099119
they're stuck "changing equipment" because your carrier / aux ship doesn't have enough stuff to fully reload the fighter. if you have multiple fighters waiting for replenishment but the carrier doesn't have enough to outfit even one fighter, then all of the the fighters will stay stuck in that state.
this leads to hilarious scenarios like:
>have enough raw mats on carrier for 29 missiles (out of 30 that can be carried by single fighter)
>fighter stays stuck because there's not enough stuff to FULLY replenish itself
>another fighter docks, and waits because allocating resources is a SEQUENTIAL process
the most annoying part is that each missile takes a fuckton of raw resources to replenish. so from the player's pov, you see a carrier with 25-35% full cargo hold refusing to replenish the bombers for reasons invisible to you.

no, you can't decide how much each fighter gets to replenish. no, you can't feasibly bring enough carriers or aux ships to feed your bomber fleet. yes, it's the dumbest fucking endgame oversight imaginable and effectively locks you out of bomber wings.

>>2099264
I thought the solution was to swap to closed loop for the drastically lower requirements?

Is there any way I can assign ships to respond to my miners getting attacked within the sector as a priority alongside patrolling on a set route?

>>2098942
I set one up in Brennan's Triumph with large miners going around pulling in Silicon and medium miners autotrading it out to any station in management range. It's been printing money like nothing else and the docks issue isn't even that egregious if you plan out enough. My setup has a terran 6-dock ring for the large miners, and three docks for the medium miner-traders - 1 terran 4-dock disk and two commonwealth 8 medium dock sections connected directly to it.

What do you anons do to get past that midgame slump where you don't really have a fleet to fight but do have some growing factories and just mindlessly reinvest until you have a wharf?

>>2091190
Nope. Timelines was a literal scam to be eligible for government money, and Hyperion is testing the waters to see if they can get away with micro transactions.

>>2100992
Hyperion is really pushing it. They say the interior took months of work but the interior is also really uninspired. At least timelines came with a decent amount of ships.

>>2088485 (OP)

>>2099345
lowered complexity, but not in quantity.
you can check the internal encyclopedia for their build costs. torpedoes are especially bad in the cost department. npc ships aren’t judicious enough with them, so even regular missiles can empty out your carrier of energy cells in a small battle.
i’ve even resorted to downgrading all the way to unguided missiles but in the end the hassle wasn’t worth it. “trade for commander” order doesn’t work for moving fleets so even if you’re willing to accept the logistical footprint you either have to drag your slow ass carrier back to base for replenishment or manually fiddle with traders and transfer wares by hand.

>>2099719
i think i'm gonna need more docks
also i intensely hate how hauling miners sit around doing nothing half the time because trading for commander uses the default trader order and it fucking sucks ass