X4 Foundations

[Grim.Reaper]

Saved me $40...thanks for the impressions....I am sure I'll find somewhere else to spend it:)

[sandman2575]

This sounds a lot like the fiasco that was X-Rebirth. Yikes.  :-\

[Jarhead0331]

I've watched a bunch of the streams and videos and some people are clearly enjoying it, but I simply cannot figure out how anyone can get past the controls and handling. They are simply abysmal. I spent well over an hour trying to get something that reasonably feels like actually piloting a space ship and everything I tried resulted in the same awkward and jerky movement. Joysticks, gamepads, keys...I can't figure out how someone developing the game could play this and think it felt sensible.

[PanzersEast]

I finally got it setup with some tweaking, although it was frustrating at first... mainly reading the forum and adjusting the sensitivity, inverting and a tweak here and there etc...

Also gamepad mod setting i had to turn off because it caused drifting both while in space and while in map mode.  So far I am pretty happy with the controls.

[Yskonyn]

Re controls: You need to rearrange the order of your controllers if you have plugged in several. For example my Warthog stick initially was placed at slot number three.
You need to swap your main controller you want to use to slot one.
Then set the throttle as controller 2, load the profile and everything worked as intended.
Not hard at all.

If you don't want to use a controller / joystick, but it keeps interfering with your controls just make all the slots empty in the manage controller menu.

This is actually a neat feature not many games offer (the in game reshuffling of controllers)

As for the tutorials: you need to start the first starting option.
Press H once loaded in and select a tutorial.
I've played five of them and found them pretty helpful so far. I am sorry to read JH's experience! Its definately not mine.

Also make sure to turn Autoroll and Adaptive Steering OFF when you want to use a joystick!

[Jarhead0331]

glad you guys are enjoying it. The controls are still trash. It's ridiculous. I shouldn't need to spend over an hour trying to figure out how to tweak basic control settings. The state of this area of the game needs extensive patching.

[Huw the Poo]

I barely got ten minutes in last night before passing out, but I did play enough to see that the tutorial is quite possibly the worst I've ever seen in a game, no exaggeration.

It won't put me off though; all X games launch in this kind of state, and I'm enough of a vet not to need a tutorial anyway.  I'm sure I'll be happily zipping around the universe today!

[Jarhead0331]

When you guys start talking about building stations, commanding fleets of freighters and warships and creating a trade empire, i'll Take a look at this again. Until then, I see absolutely no reason to struggle through this in its present state. Not when looking at what's available with the competition. It's infuriating egosoft NEVER learns from their past mistakes. I agree, that they will patch it and that eventually, someday, it might be a gem, but why not try to get it right at release and make a good first impression for a change?

Its like this company actually has an MO of releasing turds and then expending years of effort trying to polish them.

[Huw the Poo]

I just got accidentally kidnapped!

I had docked at a station and was pissing about with its teleporter.  After exploring the station for a bit I saw the option "bridge" so I clicked it, thinking I'd go to the control deck for the station.  After failing to get the commander's attention I wandered outside, and my first thought was "why is that planet revolving around us so quickly?"  It was only then that I realised I'd teleported to the bridge of a capital ship that was just launching from the station!

My only option was to detach from the hull, which I did, but I was already 5km from my ship (still docked at the station) and that's a huge distance for a spacesuit to cover, so I reloaded.  Lesson learned! :D

Anyway, some other random and very brief impressions.  I love the landing interface.  When you request docking permission you get green highlights in your HUD showing the exact path to follow to reach your assigned landing pad.  When nearby, you get a display slightly reminiscent of that in Elite: Dangerous showing you how to align your ship.  Another really nice touch is an actual person will be stationed at the pad, using arm waving to guide you in.  Your nose is usually pitched too high to see him, but it's a nice touch.

X4 has retained the scanning mechanic of X:Rebirth.  Your ship (initially) has three modes: travel, scan and long range scan.  The scan modes are straight out of Rebirth.  You can use the short range scan to gather knowledge of a station and also apparently this can be a source of missions and maybe other things.  The long range scan allows you to find objects up to 300km away.  I assume this will be a good way of finding debris and asteroid fields.

Travel mode, by the way, massively boosts your ship speed.  But bear in mind it takes as long to decelerate as it does to accelerate, so you need to take that into account when approaching your target!

There are still gates between sectors, however the map seems kind of integrated from what I can tell so far which makes planning easier.  You only get information on objects local to your sector though.

I don't have much else to report right now since I keep reloading to try various things.  I did have a fight and noted that even my beginning "baby's first laser gun" will auto-track your target within a certain radius of your boresight, which is nice for we keyboard-and-mouse gamers.

I'm planning to play an extended session this evening wherein I will actually try to accomplish some stuff, so more to follow.

[Yskonyn]

Lol! Yeah I was visiting a landed ship where while the captain asked me what I wanted she took off from the platform! I ran to the ramp as it was closing and luckily clipped through.

It was only later during the station tutorial I found out that there is a shortcut to return to your ship (CTRL D or SHFT D. I can't remember). I wonder if that also still works when the kidnapping ship has left the station.

I agree that the tutorials are in need of work. I haven't had problems other than while doing the station one it tells you to find a trader at the current platform, which in my opinion, would mean the immediate area of your landed ship or otherwise the platform area at your side.
I couldn't find the guy I needed until I was gawking at all those magnificent ships coming in and out that on the opposite side of the entire docking bay I saw a structure with a supermarket cart icon.
Went over there and surely enough the trader was there.
But that doesnt qualify in my world as 'at the current platform'. Might be a translation issue? But there are many reports of people finding them useless. So clearly they need changing.

There are also many reports of performance getting worse over time. Where people at min spec are having issues earlier than those with more potent rigs. Might very well be a mem leak.

I hope to play some more later tonight.

[Jarhead0331]

I'd be interested in seeing how you guys have your control settings configured and what peripherals you are using.

[Yskonyn]

I'd be interested in seeing how you guys have your control settings configured and what peripherals you are using.

I can shoot some screenshots for you when I get back.
I am using my TM Warthog.

I can also go through the controller swap thingy if you want.

[Jarhead0331]

I wonder if the warthog profile will work with a rhino?

[Huw the Poo]

Might very well be a mem leak.

I'm convinced there's a memory leak.  When I played earlier performance noticeably degraded with time, and was solved by reloading the game.

[Geezer]

Saw this on Steam and though some of you might be interested.

Performance / AA settings / Removing SSAA (for now)
With todays patch (coming soon), we will remove the option to turn SSAA on. People are sometimes not aware as to how much memory this consumes and find the game to then be unstable or extremely slow.

We will therefore remove this feature today and re-introduce it ASAP but with a warning message regarding the total consumed memory.


Graphic settings + Performance (and stability)

Please be mindful of the memory consumption on your graphiccard when changing graphics settings. Running out of graphic card memory can be the cause of all of these symptoms:

- On GPUs barely meeting our min requirements: Instant crash on startup or on entering the game if setting are too high.

- The counter intuitive thing is that this warning applies for the minimum cards (3GB GPU memory) as well as for the top range with 12GB and more. If you run in 4k with SSAA (now removed) AND high texture quality, the game will even run into problems on those cards

- After longer time of playing: Graphical glitches or missing textures (like people without heads).


For mid range cards (those closer to our minimum spec of a GTX780 or 970), it may make sense to switch to MEDIUM or LOW settings or choose custom settings and especially reduce the texture quality.


Again: We are working on making the graphic settings more intuitive in this regard, with one of the next updates. Stay tuned.