Thanks. Have you played much Halcyon 6 (either original or Lightspeed edition)? I’m not usually a fan of pixel art games but it’s super charming so far. I hope that the strategic base/personnel management stuff isn’t too obtuse.
Thanks, Brian :) I have tried some of those in my search for a sequel to Freelancer/ Privateer. The right mix of sandbox, progression, story, combat and non-combat gameplay is elusive. I liked Rebel Galaxy, but finished it. I bounced off Drox and Star Traders. Starpoint Gemini Warlords is on my wishlist, and I may pull the trigger on that before the Steam sale ends.
I also want to have another go at X-Rebirth, which I haven’t touched for years.
Its a space city sim compared with previous X games, not SimCity.
I will elaborate because its a good example of the depth of the game. :-)
Stations are collections of modules. These modules produce goods and/or allow trade, or house NPCs. Each station has its own focus - one might be a small town with lots of different types of modules and types of NPCs (and nightclubs, and shady black-market dealers), another may be solely focused on water collection.
Traffic flows between the modules and stations. NPC captains pilot ships up to the trading modules and execute trade orders, which opens their bay doors and sends out cargo drones to collect and return the goods. Busy stations will have queues of trading ships lined up. This may draw pirates or other attackers, which means larger defense ships and their escorts are often on patrol nearby.
The PC can enter the crew modules and walk around, recruiting people to work on your ships. Even if you choose to do this remotely and call the NPCs on the radio, when you hire a new engineer they are dispatched from the crew module where they were located and take a small ship out to meet you.
Sectors usually have multiple stations. Traffic flows back and forth between the stations. Sectors have different specializations, often based on how many highways or jump gates they contain, or how close or far they are from enemy borders. Traffic flows back and forth between the sectors.
This combination of NPCs with individual personalities, that live somewhere and have goals that encourage them to travel in vehicles, with modules that provide different economic incentives for PCs and NPCs and their ships to visit, organized into stations that may have 20 or 30 or 40 or more ships around each of them, with highways connecting the long distances between them, all feels like you are participating in (and sometimes building) a space city.
I am led to believe the major difference with the New Frontier mod is that all of that stuff is only spawned once by the game creation scripts. The vanilla game will respawn stations and ships and NPCs as needed to keep its population steady. In New Frontier the various factions must build these ships from stations they have to defend (or rebuild) using resources they have to buy or collect, from a fixed “wallet” of funds that rise and ebb with real trade.
This means factions can win or lose and sectors can change hands - perhaps based on your actions!
I say “led to believe” because I have not seen it all in action yet. People rave about the mod, so I assume it works. :-)
That sounds pretty neat. Does anyone know if the New Frontier mod works with Rebirth VR?
It’d be interesting to know this, yes.
I’d suspect ‘no’ due to the differences in the map, but then there’s also that mod that apparently restores the map/campaign close to what it was in the non-VR game - so maybe together?
New Frontier gives a galaxy-wide update on all factions in regular intervals in the player log. For example the Terracorp CEO started with 10bn cr and has increased that to 11bn cr, still holding 40 sectors and 115 stations, but changing their ship mix from 52 capital and 338 small ships to 73 capital and 207 small ships. It seems like the dynamic faction “action” is working.
Two new mod call outs:
Tactical Map: Adds more functions and right-click to assign orders to the in-game space map. The author says they added it after seeing the central role the map will play in X4:
Combat Tweaks: A combo mod of combat tweaks, mostly for capital ships. I debated a bit since it may have a wide impact, but the tweaks all seem sensible.
The egosoft forum mod thread for the tweaks has some great background info on the “out of zone” combat that happens between ships when they are not in your sector.
The skills of your crew affect range and damage output OOZ.
Capital Ships:
The Defence Officer’s combat and leadership skills,
the Captain’s navigation skill,
and the Engineer’s engineering skillall contribute to the maximum range at which a ship can fire.
A capital ship with a 1/1/1 Captain, a 1/1/1 Defence Officer, and a 1 rank Engineer have maximum range reduced to 60% of what the ship is capable of.
With a 5/5/5 Captain, a 5/5/5 DO, and a 5 rank Engineer, maximum range is at 100% of nominal range.The Defence Officer’s primary skills (combined skill using the default Egosoft calculation) alters the damage that a capital ship is capable of inflicting OOZ.
A 0/0/0 DO will inflict 20% damage. (He/she’ll miss a lot.)
A 4/4/4 DO will inflict 100% damage.
A 5/5/5 DO will inflict 120% damage.
I added my Nexus mod list to the link to my Steam mods, above. I will keep it updated.
I started in Canterran space. They control a number of sectors. I got used to commanding my capital ship, saved up for a trading ship that is now ferrying energy back and forth to make money, and then went hunting.
One of the sectors within the “borders” of Cantera is controller by Reivers. I checked the logs and they are a minor faction that started with 1 capital ship. Since the game began they increased that to 5 capital ships. Time to interrupt their growth.
We could not take all five in a head to head fight - I tried just for fun and reloaded that save. I ended up strafing a few to lure them out. Two followed me to an adjacent zone where my capital ship captain and a few allies made quick work of them. 3 left.
I crept along the edge of the space highway and got one more on long range sensors. I called over my capital ship and ordered it to attack. It launched its drones then slowly crept in to close the distance. The enemy ship also launched it drones, so I went on intercept and cleaned them out. Myself and my capital ship captain managed to take out the enemy capital ship, although this was a tougher fight. 2 left.
After we clear out their capital ships then we will move on to the Reiver stations. I have no idea how to attack and destroy a station, but I will figure it out. If we clear those stations than we should take the sector from the Reivers, eliminating them permanently.
The New Frontier mod sandbox has been dynamic. Zones are slowly changing hands. 140 ships were built by the factions, and 24 stations were built. I have taken out the capital ships that were patrolling the enemy zone I want to take over, and am working on the money to buy the fleet and the missiles I will need to destroy the enemy stations.
It’s a deep, immersive game. Time flies by. :-)
Great little AAR Milspec, having not played any of the X games since the very first one it makes me want to get into this and learn the systems some. I miss the old days of games with dynamic campaigns in them. You’ve certainly piqued my interest, thanks.
That sounds fascinating @milspec. I especially love the transparency (log) that the mod seems to provide. Much better knowing that the foundations are solid rather than that the AI is cheating with spawns.
Hey @milspec, I know you run three and a half million mods, but if you were to choose the top 3-5 “must-have’s” from a gameplay or QOL perspective, what would they be?
Haven’t tried this game since the disastrous release but I’m going to give it another go. I loved me some X3:TC so sooo much.
Its not 3.5 million, its only 32 Steam + 2 Nexus = 34 mods. :-) Most are small quality of life tweaks, so one approach is to install them all. I have 25 hours and a friend 40 hours into a New Frontier game with all of those mods, no issues.
That doesn’t answer your question, so here are the most important categories.
The “Fly By” suite saves a lot of busy work. I don’t think I could play the game without these:
The next goal is to reduce how often you get out of your ship, or do mundane things like recruit crew:
And finally a few random mods that I use every single session:
For another view on this, see Bateau’s post:
I listed 13 mods. If that is too many then start with the top category and work your way down. Enjoy!
Thank you!
And I can tell from a cursory scan how I would need these mods from preventing me from chucking this again. My god, what a disaster 1.0 was. I’m so glad to hear positive things about the current state of the game, because I think the X series is something special (even if an acquired taste).
Hi. I am not playing at the moment, I was off on holiday for a while and now distracted by No Man’s Sky.
However, I can endorse New Frontier. It works. The factions build ships and stations, and use them to try and take sectors. I whittled down a faction’s capital ships and put a dent in their production and cash, as reported by their log updates. A friend in another game settled an empty sector and build his own stations, and was trading between them and the neighboring sectors, triggering attacks from pirates (who also have cash and build limits).
It is a fine game and a fine mod, still installed, and I want to get back to it one day.
That’s great to hear. Sold!