Things I would like to see changed in X3 (since it came out)

[g04tn4d0]

Put the option to enable/disable the old X2 cockpits in the menu. With recent polls always tipping toward putting the X2 cockpits back in and since I am well aware that the cockpit graphics themselves are not actually mission from the code, why not just make both parties happy and let the player decide whether or not to have cockpits. ***EDIT*** THIS WAS DONE RECENTLY IN THE FORM OF AN OFFICIALLY DISTRIBUTED 3RD-PARTY MOD. THIS MOVE IS CLOSE ENOUGH TO WHAT I WANTED. I CONSIDER THIS MATTER CLOSED. ***EDIT***

Put the option to enable/disable the gate travel animations back in the menu. Same explaination as above except I'm not sure if any polls have been setup. The animations should be an option.

Allow TS/TP class ships to dock in M1s and TLs. WTF were you thinking, EgoSoft? It doesn't hurt anything to let the freighters dock in the carriers and transports. It doesn't unbalance anything. Hell, if the player has the cash to buy a TL with a few superfreighters, then by all means they should be able to! It's just fun to park your ships inside your capitol ship! Players regularly make insane amounts of money in X3. It's not hard with SETA. You're not balancing any gameplay here, just hurting the fun factor.

Remove the System Override Software. It's pointless. Why is it legal to get out and hotwire a surrenderred ship but illegal to carry software that can do it when you're still inside your ship? When someone surrenders and ejects from their ship, it belongs to the player. It did on X2 and it should in X3. Adding extra steps just makes an otherwise enjoyable, streamlined process into something tedious.

Add a command to sell a station! What, I'm stuck with a station once I place it unless I blow it up? That's crazy. You should be able to delete it out of the game either through "selling it" and turning into an AI-owned station or just outright erasing it.

How come we can't undo software and engine upgrades on ships? I'd like to get my money back for that Duplex Scanner now that I have a Triplex, you know. Hell, I'd like to sell software that wasn't working out. The upgrades increase the resell value of the ship so why can't I just tear them out if I don't want to sell the whole thing? Even though some players buy hundreds of ships, the ones that concentrate on having a single ship would probably appreciate this small detail.

Allow the damn HUD to be stretched, resized, and completely customized. It's obvious there's some serious confusion as to how the HUD should have been implemented in the first place. Hell, give it some basic Windows GUI controls and let the player decide which features should be enabled or disabled and how big the screens should be. And get rid of those context icons. Swap them out with a right-click text menu that gives ALL possible things you can do to/with the currently selected target. Have them expand out to the right like the Start Menu or any other Windows right-click context menu. For a good example, play a game of Eve Online.

Finally, I'd like to see about 10x the amount of things to do on the BBS. It's mainly just a large collaboration of unfunny news articles. It should be packed to the extreme with missions to undertake. There should always be missions for people that want to fight, taxi, haul, and gamble. Always.

Anyway, these are, of course, just my opinions. I felt like expressing them in a single post since I spend most of my time chiming in with my nonsense in other people's posts. Anyone agree or disagree with my logic here?

[apricotslice]

Regarding the override software, it was put in becuase people hated the ships turning green and then becoming automatic targets and getting killed immediately while you faught on. At least this way, people can choose when to make the ship officially theirs.

However, as far as I'm concerned, claim software should be on the ship like strafe now is, and the mk2 version should be standard.

Most of the rest of it, yes please.

regarding bbs missions, all you see is your rank or the next highest one. We should be seeing all ranks below us as well, and if a top ranked person who can command 1 mil a mission wants to take a 2,500 credit mission to pass the time, they should have no trouble finding one. Put a set of toggles in if people want to see less (I dont need the info stuff, I just want missions, toggle off).

[pjknibbs]

The cockpits are NOT in the code. The people in the scripting and modding forum who put the X2 cockpits back in actually transferred the cockpit data from X2 to do it, AFAIK. Anyway, Egosoft are not likely to do this--removing the cockpits was a design decision, and if they ever WERE to put them back in, they'd remodel them to suit the X3 graphical style, not recycle the X2 ones.

There is NO gate travel animation in the game code at all, so it isn't trivial to just "put it back in".

Agree with the TS/TP docking at carriers.

As already pointed out, it was demand from the forum members which led to the additional "claim" stage being added to the capture process. Saying you don't want it NOW is far too late--you should have been discussing it when the idea was first mooted during X3 development.

[apricotslice]

As already pointed out, it was demand from the forum members which led to the additional "claim" stage being added to the capture process. Saying you don't want it NOW is far too late--you should have been discussing it when the idea was first mooted during X3 development.

Oops, wish someone had told me

I didnt know devnet existed back then, otherwise I would have put my 5c in.

I'm more than happy with claims mk2, and dont resent the price for it. If ego just add that script in eventually so its a standard feature, I'll be happy.

I dont mind claiming, I just think eva'ing to do it is complete madness.

[avicenna]

pjknibbs wrote:

As already pointed out, it was demand from the forum members which led to the additional "claim" stage being added to the capture process.

If I remember rightly there was also a lot of forum talk about being able to steal ships as in the X2 introductory scene. It would seem to me that Egosoft has granted that ability with the "parked" ships plus the requirement to eject to claim a ship.

[lordsloye]

I don't know if this idea has ever been mentioned or explored - haven't played anything other than X3 so apologise - don't know if this was part of previous games - but something I'd love to see having played for a few weeks is mobile Navsats.

Remote exploration and having the ability to send navsats where you want them to be would aid setting up trade networks and finding enemies immensely, plus save load time on low end machines from just flying into sectors to map.

Just my 2 cents..

[g04tn4d0]

Regarding the override software, it was put in becuase people hated the ships turning green and then becoming automatic targets and getting killed immediately while you faught on. At least this way, people can choose when to make the ship officially theirs.

However, as far as I'm concerned, claim software should be on the ship like strafe now is, and the mk2 version should be standard.

And that makes complete sense. However, I can't see how making it an illegal software upgrade would be an improvement. Quite simply, just having it remotely claimable would be fine if that were the main concern. It doesn't have to be a software upgrade and it doesn't have to be explainable; the guy bailed and now you can claim it at your convienence by clicking on him and choosing Claim from the Quick Menu.

regarding bbs missions, all you see is your rank or the next highest one. We should be seeing all ranks below us as well, and if a top ranked person who can command 1 mil a mission wants to take a 2,500 credit mission to pass the time, they should have no trouble finding one. Put a set of toggles in if people want to see less (I dont need the info stuff, I just want missions, toggle off)

Another fine point. The BBS (and a lot of the game itself) has so very little feedback for the player. The missions should be explained verbatim. We need mini-maps showing the courses that we are expected to follow, the details of mission requirements, and if there's a question of whether or not to include information then let the player decide through the menu system just like you said.

The cockpits are NOT in the code. The people in the scripting and modding forum who put the X2 cockpits back in actually transferred the cockpit data from X2 to do it, AFAIK. Anyway, Egosoft are not likely to do this--removing the cockpits was a design decision, and if they ever WERE to put them back in, they'd remodel them to suit the X3 graphical style, not recycle the X2 ones.

I don't know. Look at the mod size for the CockpitCallback. I could be wrong but I don't think you can fit all the cockpit models, meshes, and the code to add them into that pack. After working in a similar (but not same) field of software development, I have yet to meet a coder that would rather take the time to physically remove code and clean up behind themselves to disable a function rather than just remarking it out or modifying a line to skip the use of the feature altogether. As recent polls have shown, players would rather have recycled X2 cockpits or all new X3 cockpits than no cockpit at all. It's usually a 60/40 majority. Granted there are people that are quite vocal about not wanting any cockpit at all, I would definitely have them as a configurable option in the game rather than make an involuntary call for all players because I'm totally supportive of not forcing the ones that don't want cockpits into having them. It's too bad that every time a patch is released, Galaxy613's mod is broken until he figures out why and rereleases it.

There is NO gate travel animation in the game code at all, so it isn't trivial to just "put it back in".

But it shouldn't be assumed as a massive undertaking either. We're talking about people that program for a living. If they can write the whole game then they can most certainly write a small feature into it within a reasonable period of time. They took it out to save gate travel time because the engine loads the movie first, plays it, then loads the sector. Hell, just play a looping eye-candy movie file while the new sector is loading like Freelancer did for their system gates. Problem solved and it looks a thousand times better in the process.

As already pointed out, it was demand from the forum members which led to the additional "claim" stage being added to the capture process. Saying you don't want it NOW is far too late--you should have been discussing it when the idea was first mooted during X3 development.

ROFL! Yes, after reading the reasoning behind changing it, I would have agreed with the move to make claiming into a two-step process. However, making the player get out of their ship to do so and having remote claiming an illegal software upgrade was not the answer. It overcompensated for the problem and then, in my opinion, got a little... how should I say... "too creative". It would have been optimal to just have the player legally able to do it from within their ship. No need to explain why or how. Just keep the gameplay rolling smoothly.

Agree with the TS/TP docking at carriers.

I am especially upset about the TLs not able to dock similar-purpose craft. It's a large trading vessel. Not just a 28 million credit tow truck. The large, expensive ships in the game should have more bells and whistles, not less. Give the player enough options to actually have fun with their largest purchases. Sure a carrier is fun to someone who just wants to cruise around, shoot at stuff, or use it for OOS defense. But what about the people who don't play the game that way? What about the people who are happy because they can hang out in their TL with any scout/fighter/freighter they happen to own? When making a sandbox game, we must never assume what the player will want to do with their time. That is the first step to limitation and isolation of the target demographic.

Remote exploration and having the ability to send navsats where you want them to be would aid setting up trade networks and finding enemies immensely, plus save load time on low end machines from just flying into sectors to map.

What you are describing is essentially sending out a probe in any other sci-fi setting. Probes are a fantastic idea and, luckily, are easily created using the script editor. If you don't know how to script, try starting up a discussion on the script forum and see where it gets you. You might get someone excited enough to help bring your idea to life.

[shadowfawx]

The cockpits are NOT in the code. The people in the scripting and modding forum who put the X2 cockpits back in actually transferred the cockpit data from X2 to do it, AFAIK. Anyway, Egosoft are not likely to do this--removing the cockpits was a design decision, and if they ever WERE to put them back in, they'd remodel them to suit the X3 graphical style, not recycle the X2 ones.

There is NO gate travel animation in the game code at all, so it isn't trivial to just "put it back in".

Agree with the TS/TP docking at carriers.

As already pointed out, it was demand from the forum members which led to the additional "claim" stage being added to the capture process. Saying you don't want it NOW is far too late--you should have been discussing it when the idea was first mooted during X3 development.

I don't know about everyone else. But I have gate animation, however after about 1.5 seconds it fades out. But I can DEFINATELY see the funnel animation.

[pjknibbs]

That's just the animation of entering the gate. In X2 there was an option to have a "warp tunnel" effect which filled in the gap between exiting one sector and entering another...this does not exist in X3.

[Graaf]

1: Cockpits
2: Gate travel animations
3: Allow TS/TP class ships to dock in M1s and TLs
4: System Override Software
5: Sell a station
6: Sell upgrades
7: Customized HUD
8: More BBS-missions

1: Personally I like it this way. No bars to clog your view.
2: Like X2 it will be turned off, before I go through the first one.
3: TL's yes, M1's undecided.
4: I like it this way. Its also easier to deny when the police ask questions.
5: Why? Expand it into a Weapons or Shield Complex for personal use.
6: Capture a ship, transfer the equipment and sell the ship.
7: I wont comment on that.
8: Wait for patch 1.4 or the BBS-mission Expansion Pack.

[g04tn4d0]

8: Wait for patch 1.4 or the BBS-mission Expansion Pack.

Unfortunately, the BBS will remain pretty much the same for 1.4. However, this does bring into question what exactly the BBS expansion pack will entail and if EgoSoft intends to charge people for it.

[Duth6964]

I don't know if this idea has ever been mentioned or explored - haven't played anything other than X3 so apologise - don't know if this was part of previous games - but something I'd love to see having played for a few weeks is mobile Navsats.

Remote exploration and having the ability to send navsats where you want them to be would aid setting up trade networks and finding enemies immensely, plus save load time on low end machines from just flying into sectors to map.

Just my 2 cents..

It's my understanding that you can. Sort of anyway!
If you command one of your M5s to follow a freighter that is moving to unknown sectors, it should follow them, therefore opening up the map.

I'm sure this was written either in the manual or may'be I seen it here on the forum. I haven't actually tried it myself yet though.

[Griefheart]

I have to agree on all points.

Docking tp/ts is NEEDED, frankly using just the transporter device is lame, especially as the goners are the only ones to sell. If you piss them off you just basicly made cap ships unusable.

Yeah the software thing is lame, i tend to leave a bunch of ships at a shipyard and transfer unneeded software to THEM before i sell the ship. This is mostly duplex - triplex scanners.

Sys overide is pointless yeah, cause you have to be so insanely close... maybe if it was like the same as Coms range or scan range to capture (7KM coms, 4KM scan).

Selling a station or at least packing it up should also be an option i feel, everyone else in the universe can do it with the GOD engine. Why cant we?

Everything else you;ve mentioned is graphical / hud related and stuff... all of that is about personal preference, allthough i WOULD like to see some customised cockpits instead of the standard crap we had in X2, bring back the X-T uniqueness.

[alphalvr]

1: Cockpits
2: Gate travel animations
3: Allow TS/TP class ships to dock in M1s and TLs
4: System Override Software
5: Sell a station
6: Sell upgrades
7: Customized HUD
8: More BBS-missions

1. id like em....but i can turn them on anyway. afaik thats why its called `cockpit callback` because they are in the code. I dont want ego to waste timeturning on the pld ones that i can turn on anyway, they cud use the time toward making new ones...or not.....i can live either way.

2. i missed em at first, but really they add nothing and again id rather ego spent any spare time on somthing more intresting that `adds` to the game.

3. no i am much happer with the way it was designed and the kickass transporter device. ts ships are there to make money, docked is not making money, its the future, why dock??? ego got this spot on in my book.

4. i know why it was implemented and i love it, great feature, much better than the old way. adds a risk to owning it which just adds to the fun. leave it as it is i say, time could be better spent............etc

5. i suppose it might be nice, make sense, but again it adds nothin much to the game. i plan my builds carefully and to be honest have never ever even thought about selling a station. ok ive placed em down wrong with dockin area on the wrong side but thats a `reload situation`, not a `sell it for half what i bought it for 5 mins ago` situation

6. again its crossed my mind....but then every ships upgrades are like mods....not a unit as such....its like saying you want to sell a program upgrade patch, or the extension on your house. nope i disagree

7. it aint the best, but i see worse.....once you get used to it its fine. id be happy to see it again as is....or tweaked. but having said that id rather time was spent adding more meat to the game.

8. well you will get that in a upgrade. To be honest that has been a missed opportunity it should already be packed. i would love more bbs missions but preferably multipart branching missions with a story and events. If the bbs stays as it is it will be inttresting too see what they can add to the game with it, i think it`ll be to little to late.....but i hope im wrong.

[pa_ko]

Many X3 "by design" features are so stupid!

Many good things from X2 are droped with no reasonable explanations.

Many things from X2 and many more good ideas that people on this forum asked for are rejected by moderators and other EO(ists) as "not implementable" or "not needed by (clever) design".

It looks like X3 redesigned engine is so badly written that even things that worked in X2 (on 3 years olde PII machines!!!) can not be implemented as they will nock down already overloaded our high-end (recommended)CPUs!!!

They are not able to fix this "product" in 6 months and 4 patches (1.4 is still in development and testing, isn't it?)

For me, it looks like EGO have significant problems with development. And I don't expect that they will be able to make X3 anything more that what it is right now - joke!

[Nyax]

1: Cockpits
2: Gate travel animations
3: Allow TS/TP class ships to dock in M1s and TLs
4: System Override Software
5: Sell a station
6: Sell upgrades
7: Customized HUD
8: More BBS-missions

1) I'm a big fan of cockpits, but the cockpit callback mod fulfills all my need in that area, so provided it stays available and working then i'm happy.

2) Depends. I turned them off in X2 and X-tension as they were damn boring. On the other hand i really liked Freelancers version. I wouldn't have turned that off if i had the choice. So if they can doing a decent one, yes. But i doubt they can, so no.

3)No. I'd rather have a light freighter class of ship capable of docking with M1s, M2s (Yes i want M2 docking back) and TLs. Give it a cappacity of up to 500-600 tonnes and the ability to Haul XL size containers. You then have 1) a nippy supply shuttle craft for all your capital ships 2) A half way decent trade ship to bridge the size gap between fighters and freighters

4) i like the two step approach to capturing, but i think it's stupid that system override software is illegal. Make it Legit and that's all that's needed.

5) Never encountered the situation where i've a station i want to sell before, but if people want to do it, i say let them.

6) Yes. I kind of understand the logic in making some of them not sellable (e.g. why would someone pay you money to make your engine run worse?) but some of the more 'product' based items like the software packages and scanners should be sellable

7)meh.

8)Yes, yes, and thrice yes. Hell yeah, definitely, positively, yes.

and in case that wasn't sufficently clear- YES

Even if no new types are being offered, we should still be offered many, many, many times more missions then we are at present. Every single board should have at the very least half a dozen missions on offer, and for gods sake ditch the STUPID idea of offering the player missions they can't actually undertake. That serves no purpose other then to annoy and frustrate. It was a dumb idea including it in X2 and a remarkably dumb idea leaving it in x3

[Kraznor]

1: Cockpits
2: Gate travel animations
3: Allow TS/TP class ships to dock in M1s and TLs
4: System Override Software
5: Sell a station
6: Sell upgrades
7: Customized HUD
8: More BBS-missions

1 - Eh, cockpits are kinda cool, but eventually you wish they weren't there. I like that as is.

2 - Would be nice, not crucial

3 - /signed

4 - /signed

5 - /signed

6 - /signed

7 - Again would be nice, not game breaking as the HUD is rather nice as is.

8 -/SIGNED PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE add 1000% more BBS missions. I'm SICK of flying station to station looking for something to do.

[g04tn4d0]

6) Yes. I kind of understand the logic in making some of them not sellable (e.g. why would someone pay you money to make your engine run worse?) but some of the more 'product' based items like the software packages and scanners should be sellable

When you modify a car to go faster, you are adding on aftermarket parts and modifications. These items can be uninstalled and sold seperately for use on another car later. You just put the old parts back on. Could be assumed that to make the ship handle better and go faster that there are add-ons installed. Add-ons that could be uninstalled and sold seperately. Same with cargo expanders. They are subspace compressors or some crap like that if I remember correctly. If they plugged in, surely they can be unplugged and resold.

[Cycrow]

unless u just tune the engine to improve its speed.

what about when u bore the engine to icnrease its capacity, you could hardly remove this and put it on another car when u've finished with it

[Nanook]

1: Cockpits
2: Gate travel animations
3: Allow TS/TP class ships to dock in M1s and TLs
4: System Override Software
5: Sell a station
6: Sell upgrades
7: Customized HUD
8: More BBS-missions

1. Yes, but not the old X2 ones. I want individualized cockpits such as were in the even older game X-Tension. And they should be integrated with the HUD, not just plastered on the screen.

2. Yes, if and only if it plays during what's currently the black screen, i.e., during the time the next sector is loading. I turned off the one in X2 because it extended the loading time for the next sector.

3. Most definitely. This omission left a lot of us out in the cold and removed a lot of gameplay options. No longer can we remotely equip a group of TS's by having them dock in a TL and exchange equipment. No longer can we carry captured TS's to a shipyard for sale or repair. No longer can we transport a load of TS's to a new factory/loop/complex in a remote sector. All losses. And the argument about size simply doesn't hold water. The TL's and M1's are actually larger than some stations. So there's no reason not to have a few external docking ports, the same as a station.

4. This should not be illegal. End of comment.

5. Don't see the use of this. But I suppose if you got just a fraction of the original cost back, that would be ok. Although I don't know who would buy it, or why.

6. Not necessary. All non-tuning type upgrades can simply be transferred to another ship. It would be good if we could transfer the upgrades to one of our Trading Stations or Equipment Docks and then to another ship. That would actually be more useful to me than selling them. Engine, steering and cargo upgrades are integral to a ship and become part of it, so should not be removeable for any reason.

7. Ok, I guess.

8. Coming, eventually. One change I'd like to see, is not offering missions that the player cannot take. It's a waste of BBS space, and does nothing but frustrate the player. Another change I'd like to see, is have all BBS messages, at least missions, visible as soon as you enter a sector, but require the player to land at the appropriate station to accept them. Having to hop from station to station just to see what's available is tedious and annoying, and really reduces the 'fun factor'. I'd much rather spend my gaming time doing the missions, not looking for them.

Let me just add a couple more:

9. Logos -- Both X-T and X2 allowed the player to add logos to both their ships and stations. I really miss this in X3.

10. Toggle for the annoying station announcements. These have gotten really annoying after 2 years of X2 and now several months of X3. We could kill them in X2, so we should be able to do it in X3 as well.