X4 - Now with more flyable ships

Quoted for emphasis. This is the source of a lot of frustration.

Especially right now, when there’s not a lot of information available online. If I could answer these things with a Google search and move on it’d help, but right now I’m forced to sit there and try to figure out if it’s broken, obtuse, or some combination of the two.

No, we tolerate the jank because there aren’t a lot of games like this. Smartass.

A more negative take, with a lot of agreements from the comments:

https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/comments/a2wtk4/50_hours_in_gameplay_review/

I’ve barely played an hour so far, but everything I’ve read and seen on streams is making me think about refunding. I don’t think I have the patience for a launch period Egosoft game anymore. Been through this too many times with this series and it’s always the same story.

Egosoft was doing Early Access before it was a thing on Steam, I think they should label their games as such. :) They really are nowhere near finished/ready when they launch.

It wasn’t sass but admiration.

Hmm, I got a free code for this and installed last night and played for about an hour. It’s definitely “janky” but seemed like it was going to be worth the investment of learning how to play but maybe not so much… After reading that reddit post I’m debating putting it on a shelf for a few months until it gets the “NO MAN SKY” treatment… if it does. I dunno, I’ll give a few hours first but I just hate wasting what little time I have on something that’s mostly broken. Since I got it for free it sounds a lot like a “1st world problem” I suppose… anyway…

My apologies then.

My adventures in the opening sectors continue: got some more junk for my ship at the equipment dock and walked over to the shop to buy a repair laser for my satellite repair mission. Turns out, I already had one. So I bought a space suit thruster upgrade instead, because I’m not going to hustle to other end of the space dock for nothing.

I use autopilot a lot. Turn it on, switch to travel mode, and head over to my destination… I’m just not running into the issues other people are having with autopilot, I guess. I’m a bit more cautious about trusting it to navigate me through an asteroid field, though. That sounds like a bad idea.

I get a whopping +7 to my Argon faction rep for fixing that satellite. They love me here.

And a question, can anyone explain to me the color overlay that station sections get when in that short range local scan mode? I figure the color must communicate whether there is an item to find or not? Is it a proximity to something to find? It is a mystery to me.

I dont see how the game is going to get easier to learn so I would give up on waiting for that.

Anyways I have played 12 hours now and still just one crash which I lost no progress in.

I think its a fully featured and solid release. Just an alternative view.

It’s playable, but it’s clearly not finished. And I was expecting that, so I’m not slamming the game, I’m really enjoying my time with it. There’s a lot of stuff in the game clearly not implemented yet, least of which is information in the Encyclopedia which looks like is supposed to be the in-game documentation. Go try to figure out the characteristics of the different weapon types from their encyclopedia page. :)

Nothing that Egosoft and/or the legion of skilled modders in the community won’t get to, but the game is rough and unfinished. Doesn’t mean I’m not having fun or that I’m regretting my purchase, though!

Cant argue with that, the in game documentation is TERRIBLE.

I just dont see it getting better. I think X4 is a game like Kerbal, or Elite you just need to watch youtube videos to learn how to play.

I think it’ll get better in the “hey wait, the whole galactic economy froze up!” or “Why is my freighter captain buying/selling in the same station for a loss over and over and over?” sense. I agree I don’t think it’ll get much better in terms of new player onboarding, learning how to play, etc! That’s never really been their thing.

Yikes I would not be happy if I saw that economy bug. Yeah thats not trivial.

Not sure if it’s the same bug or not but I’ve stopped playing for now because all the hostile factions have stalled and while I’ve always been OK with the game being tilted a little more economic than I’d ideally like, no combat at all is not gonna cut it.

Incidentally I am enjoying this guys playthrough. he is up to his 5th vid now of him trying to become a pirate king, entertaining stuff.

Sounds like the bug where the war stuff doesn’t happen which means no one needs to build anything which means the economy seizes up. According to one post I read, Egosoft had to disable some of that behavior shortly before launch because of some issues it was causing. Hopefully that means it’s being worked on and is a high priority.

New patch is up on beta branch if folks are being blocked

https://steamcommunity.com/app/392160/discussions/0/1743353164098554541/

• Fixed freeze when saving the game.
• Partially fixed freeze when starting the game.
• Fixed upgrade orders becoming non-functional when loading a savegame.
• Fixed cause of a crash after loading savegame.
• Fixed ships not being claimable from the space suit.
• Fixed a case that could result in AutoTraders sometimes trading at a loss.
• Fixed several other causes of rare crashes.

To activate this beta you need to enter the Beta PW: IBackedUpMySaves (after backing up your saves from the user folder under egosoft/x4/…ID…/saves!

That fixes the ship claim issue I struggled with for so long as well as the worst auto trader bug. Nice!