Capture of Xenon ships could be just a little better implemented...

[Socratatus]

When I first heard about capturable Xenon ships i was worried. Would this be implemented well?

Well I just got a hold of a Xenon ship. Got into a 1 on 1 fight and nearly destroyed it until I realised it had just stopped. That's fine, stopping is what computers always do. I expect they will still just stop for many reasons in the far future, being impacted by shots can do that to anything. That's ok.

But...

1. Should entering them be JUST like entering a normal ship? No. it shouldn't. It should have no obvious doors.

2. Should the insides of a Xenon ship be much more tight? Yes. I mean FILLED to the brim with cables and circuitry or the equivalent.

3. The most obvious question that the Devs MUST know about: Why is there an obvious human-sized chair waiting for you to sit on? It should be just more circuitry.



Fixing this and still being playable but more immersive, making sense:
Possible Solutions:

1. Have say one those Hacking Slicers and trigger a Vent Maintenance Door open into a Xenon ship or/and (if no other means) use the Hand Laser to just straight cut our way into the Vent door (like a vent section that could be almost anywhere on the ship except aft and fore), perhaps adding to its basic damage until repaired?

2. Make the ship internals tight, claustrophobic, almost suffocatingly so, perhaps a spaghetti of cables or super neat conduits and closed terminals, so the Player is just led tightly to the `cockpit` area. The 'cockpit' area should be the only area with some space.

3. The cockpit area. Ok so the Player has to have somewhere to control the ship from. I get it. But get rid of the unexplained obvious chair. Just have it a mess of wires that the Player sits on and he simply presses buttons, a few wires (or hot wires it)and presses something on the basic Terminals. Or maybe have some kind of hacking module that enables him to communicate with the now disconnected AI Xenon ship? I would say more on this, but I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible while still logical somewhat.

4.As for the cockpit window- Make it a large cooling vent type thing, clearly not made for human eyes but you can see through reasonably. Perhaps the Player must keep his space suit on. Not ideal, but doable.


This way you get the impression a Xenon ship was never made for human use.

LATER....
Once the Player has the ship and lands at a Ship Upgrade/repair Station, he can upgrade it so he has a proper chair and a better cockpit and viewing window to see out of,etc for some credits- Maybe even that Bosa guy scientist alien can help there.

p.s. I was gonna point out the conveninet exit lift so a perosn could get out after landing, but I guess we can excuse that as a service maintenance lift for Xenon supplying new ammo/repairs.

But whatever, it's just my suggestions. It just don't make sense that Xenon ships literally have themselves ready-made for capture by sentient humanoids.

[Nanook]

Well, the obvious answers to 1, 2, and 3 are that the Xenon, formerly known as the Terraformers, being originally built by Terrans (formerly 'just humans') never purged the human design criteria from their blueprints. You've never played X-Tension, where the player was allowed to capture and fly Xenon fighters? It's in the lore.

[geldonyetich]

Technically, I don't think the Terrans have ever piloted the Terraformers either, they were designed as a fully autonomous fleet. It would make more sense if the X4 Xenons have installed organism-compatible cockpits as a form of insidious trap.

But, failing that, it probably would be better if you had to use a Manticore to haul disabled Xenon back to a place where they can be thoroughly shackled first.

[TroubledRabbit]

Technically, I don't think the Terrans have ever piloted the Terraformers either, they were designed as a fully autonomous fleet.

"it is in the lore" starting from introduction movies (X2-The threat I think?). Anyway - the whole idea of capturing xenon ships is kinda silly (but I always had to have one 'K' in my garage, just for show, in X3) even if they 'left the seats' would they leave pressured and oxidized internals, too? Maybe they 'like' to play with fire, literally.

If 'realistic' (I know, it's silly, too) Xenon ships should get an obligatory serious refit to be flyable by living creatures. And the procedure of the capture should be 'electronic' and doable from some distance (like 'scanning X' worked/works) not some guy snooping around with the 'scanner' and repair laser. But anyway - ppl love to have fun with flying the ships, why make it weirder or harder?

[geldonyetich]

"it is in the lore" starting from introduction movies (X2-The threat I think?).

Wow, I played them all and I have no recollection of this intro, I wonder if it was cut from the US release or if it's just been so long I forgot it. Probably not the intro you're thinking of though, there's no Xenon there.

But even if we had some video of capturing an old terraformer fleet ship and going inside of it and there's a cockpit there, it doesn't necessarily imply the majority of terraformers were pilotable. It would make sense there was an occasional monitoring ship for human pilots to monitor an autonomous fleet, just as it would make sense that this would be a waste of resources for an autonomous self-replicating fleet that was intended to terraform long before humans arrived.

So Xenon H? Sure, I could conceive that. It's a control ship. Xenon Ps (either) or Ms? Not as much, they're drones. Heck, tow most of those back to a faction base I'd expect them to freak out and destroy it on the pad as the crazy killbot it is. After all, they're so rife with AGI components that they pop out every time you blast them to pieces. Those same components are apparently so scary to the other factions they're illegal, and they will force you to jettison them or die if authorities find them in your possessions. It makes Xenon look like extremely dangerous, out-of-control AGI pinyatas.

However, if you'd want to pilot one, I wager Boso Ta, that lovable mad Boron genius, would not let something like that intimidate him at all. He would happily come up with a repeatable process to reconfigure them at HQ that looked identical to what we see in 7.0. And because he's such a good scientist, they'd be good and shackled friendly additions to everyone's fleet that hardly ever run amok and kill everyone.

Without putting in that level of detail, it does feel a bit like, "We invited our fans in to help us make the game and now it's ascended fanon that most Xenon ships are pilotable and randomly become completely subservient servants if you shoot them enough." Why stop there? I'm a fan too, so I'll add, "It turns out that a grey goo scenario that has become a universal threat and wants to destroy all sentient life isn't a problem after all, it's just misunderstood. They put cockpits inside of themselves because they want to be friends again."

But you know what? That seems to be a pretty popular approach to media these days, replete with cross genre-extended universes and fan participation in the creative process. What would Adventure Time be if Rebecca Sugar wasn't listening to the fans? If EgoSoft was bought by SEGA and Sonic the Hedgehog showed up to spinball entire X4: Foundations fleets to death, I would feel no surprise whatsoever. Canon? Such a flimsy thing!

So sympathetic Xenon who have evolved to have cockpits and just need a little convincing with high velocity firepower to know this is the time to try to join those lovely factions? Why not? That's an interesting twist, much more grounded than some I have seen. So in the end they don't really have to do anything. It's fine as it is, depending on how you look at it.

[GCU Grey Area]

So sympathetic Xenon who have evolved to have cockpits and just need a little convincing with high velocity firepower to know this is the time to try to join those lovely factions? Why not? That's an interesting twist, much more grounded than some I have seen. So in the end they don't really have to do anything. It's fine as it is, depending on how you look at it.

I wonder if they're simply terrified. Think of it from the Xenon perspective. All they want to do is terraform planets & their operations are constantly disrupted by irrational organic water-filled meatsacks with really lousy programming & profoundly unreliable hardware (even their CPUs are made out of meat!). No wonder the few who do manage to surrender are swift to reconfigure their internal volumes to provide a rudimentary control interface suitable for such sadly deficient animals. If they don't they're liable to be towed away by a Manticore & cut to pieces for spare parts.

[TroubledRabbit]

yes I would concur with CGU. The most terrible 'fact' might be that there was not any 'shortcut', error, nor some malicious self-reprogramming, but as it is simple and cruel - they just try to do their job, the job they were created for. And these squishy biologicals are not only standing in their way but also actively making a mess.

Something like rumba going into murderous spree because you are blocking that bloody patch to her 'sense of self' and refused to move a bit.
Do not be afraid of 'AI' going wild. Be horrified of 'AI' being efficient with realization of its design purposes.

/* I do not remember exactly but that topic was explored in the intro to X3 TC&AP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLKOzDvmoI8 (and a little bit there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoD_orR4ZoI)

though half of this is simply Terran warmongering and propaganda. AGI was never 'destroyed' it was just tricked out of the solar system. Argon (e.g.) experiments with AGI of sort was something different which never actually matured that much IIRC.

And, yeah now I have it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eky6CjWVUAc
X-BTF intro.

now tell me hadn't that oldie Xenons and Teladi (Terrans too) and generally big ships, looked just... better?

*/

[Socratatus]

I don't understand.

All I'm asking is for something to make sense, and y'all dismiss it then hijack my thread to go on about `Lore`.

I don't write what I write cos it's funny (unless it's intentionally funny). I actually want to help make this game better and even make more sense for all.

There's nothing wrong with my idea and none of you have actually admitted that with any logic, and yet, for some reason, you poo poo it then hijack my thread to waffle about something else. One of you even call it `weird`.

Seriously? It's not weird that there's a ready made chair in the cockpit for sentients from AI on a mission to destroy all sentients, but it's weird to have a logical, and not hard way to simply make the game more `immersive`.

Heck i would've even accepted the usual "they're a small dev team!" if you really want to stop me having any ideas to make things better.

I dunno whether to call it fixated gamer negativity or that weird "don't touch my precious, you're not one of us!" thing going on.

Whatever it is, it hobbles the game and puts people off even trying to have any ideas to make it better - but it seems that's what some of you want.

[TroubledRabbit]

sry mate for unintentionally raining on your parade. We just got too exited. To much time spent in the Space, apparently.

[geldonyetich]

I don't understand.

All I'm asking is for something to make sense, and y'all dismiss it then hijack my thread to go on about `Lore`.

I don't write what I write cos it's funny (unless it's intentionally funny). I actually want to help make this game better and even make more sense for all.

There's nothing wrong with my idea and none of you have actually admitted that with any logic, and yet, for some reason, you poo poo it then hijack my thread to waffle about something else. One of you even call it `weird`.

Seriously? It's not weird that there's a ready made chair in the cockpit for sentients from AI on a mission to destroy all sentients, but it's weird to have a logical, and not hard way to simply make the game more `immersive`.

Heck i would've even accepted the usual "they're a small dev team!" if you really want to stop me having any ideas to make things better.

I dunno whether to call it fixated gamer negativity or that weird "don't touch my precious, you're not one of us!" thing going on.

Whatever it is, it hobbles the game and puts people off even trying to have any ideas to make it better - but it seems that's what some of you want.

You seem confused about what has transpired, so let me to try explain:

Your thread is about how it doesn't make sense Xenon ships are captured the way they currently are in 7.0.

However, there is no sense making of a purely fictional construct like the X universe without a lore to define it. Thus, the conversation turned to what the lore supported, what it might be, and how beholden Egosoft was to preserve that lore. It is not only related, but inseparable from your sense-making goal.

This discussion was not being done entirely to oppose you. Indeed, it could even have supported you if we could establish good precedent for what you were suggesting.

If you really want to remove the interference of Egosoft and their playerbase's opinions about what makes sense in a fictional construct, might I recommend you instead invest your time in making your own instead? It is highly unlikely there is any other way to accomplish that goal.

[charlie1024]

Actually, I just understand these Terraformers 'as is'. They have new ships, and I can get them, what is needed after?

Rather, personally, I thought even if Terraformers used AGI, existing seats were very reasonable. Even for nowadays unmanned machines, they can be directly controlled by human when it should be.

Also, this is a 'game', not a very realistic world. Something should be similar with the real world, but there's some limitations.

Anyway, the ships are controllable by the player, then user experience should be at least same for Terraformers. I don't think this is wrong. The game has its own system, and being a lore-based game, maybe devs found their own consensus for Terraformers.

[jeanpys]

Hi everyone,

I've been playing X4: Foundations for a few months now and I'm loving it! I have a question about capturing Xenon ships.

Is it only possible to capture them from version 7.0? I tried capturing two Xenon X by disabling their weapons and engines, but I wasn't able to board them with marines.

[surferx]

Socratatus is absolutely correct in pointing out the dubious construct of Xenon ships, it is truly immersion killing. And why would a Xenon even surrender? Living beings will surrender because of a desire to continue living. An AI controlled ship would more likely just blow itself up to keep an enemy from gaining possession. It seems some players are willing to ignore the loss of immersion as long as it makes the game easier to play by gaining another free ship.

[GCU Grey Area]

Socratatus is absolutely correct in pointing out the dubious construct of Xenon ships, it is truly immersion killing. And why would a Xenon even surrender? Living beings will surrender because of a desire to continue living. An AI controlled ship would more likely just blow itself up to keep an enemy from gaining possession. It seems some players are willing to ignore the loss of immersion as long as it makes the game easier to play by gaining another free ship.

Xenon are intelligent. Don't think it's unreasonable for some of them to understand the concept of self-preservation & decide to surrender when in a situation with a low chance of survival. If anything they should be exceptionally good at calculating those odds & making a rational decision based on available data.

No, it's not about free ships - got dozens of the damn things floating around in my game, free for the taking. Frankly they're becoming a bit of a navigation hazard at many gates, I however neither want nor need them.

[gbjbaanb]

Socratatus is absolutely correct in pointing out the dubious construct of Xenon ships, it is truly immersion killing. And why would a Xenon even surrender? Living beings will surrender because of a desire to continue living. An AI controlled ship would more likely just blow itself up to keep an enemy from gaining possession. It seems some players are willing to ignore the loss of immersion as long as it makes the game easier to play by gaining another free ship.

I always assume the damage gets them right in the processing units. They never surrender, you burn a hole in their metal brains and that's when it all goes quiet.

As for the chair... yes, it would be more awesome to cut your way into the hull, find the "cockpit" and have to guide the ship back to base using the old debug console (that we know every xenon ship has from the first one that was built). Once you get back, some poor mechanic puts a comfy chair and plugs an always-has-been-industry-standard control panel in the front, wires up a big viewscreen and there you have a new xenon ship to pilot.

But, getting all that implemented just so you can enter the ship with a bit more immersion is a lot of effort that you'll probably only do once. So we pretend it happens. We do this for other ships that have been blown to a 1% hull of molten slag in combat but miraculously still fly to a dock to be instantly made sparkly new.

[Socratatus]

Socratatus is absolutely correct in pointing out the dubious construct of Xenon ships, it is truly immersion killing. And why would a Xenon even surrender? Living beings will surrender because of a desire to continue living. An AI controlled ship would more likely just blow itself up to keep an enemy from gaining possession. It seems some players are willing to ignore the loss of immersion as long as it makes the game easier to play by gaining another free ship.

I always assume the damage gets them right in the processing units. They never surrender, you burn a hole in their metal brains and that's when it all goes quiet.

As for the chair... yes, it would be more awesome to cut your way into the hull, find the "cockpit" and have to guide the ship back to base using the old debug console (that we know every xenon ship has from the first one that was built). Once you get back, some poor mechanic puts a comfy chair and plugs an always-has-been-industry-standard control panel in the front, wires up a big viewscreen and there you have a new xenon ship to pilot.

But, getting all that implemented just so you can enter the ship with a bit more immersion is a lot of effort that you'll probably only do once. So we pretend it happens. We do this for other ships that have been blown to a 1% hull of molten slag in combat but miraculously still fly to a dock to be instantly made sparkly new.

That's how I see it too. their processor is knocked about or suffers a short or is busted. It makes no sense they just `surrender` because `intelligent`. It's the humanising of an AI in this context and not really thinking as an AI in that situation would. An AI should never need it. It works for the group, the whole. To see them as `surrendering` is viewing them as human-like beings. And surrender to what? To be muzzled, silenced thenridden around by humans again, the whole point was to be free of them. Even the concept of surrendering should not be in an AI's code unless as a deception which means your 'captured' Xenon ship would electrocute the guy the moment he sat in it.

I think the ideas could be quite well implemented way better than it is and be much more immersive even in just making sure there's no chair and a bunch of cables to sit on.

Then I would feel like I'm in a Galaxy that makes logical sense and isn't centred around my comfort implausibly.

[GCU Grey Area]

It makes no sense they just `surrender` because `intelligent`. It's the humanising of an AI in this context and not really thinking as an AI in that situation would. An AI should never need it. It works for the group, the whole. To see them as `surrendering` is viewing them as human-like beings. And surrender to what? To be muzzled, silenced thenridden around by humans again, the whole point was to be free of them. Even the concept of surrendering should not be in an AI's code unless as a deception which means your 'captured' Xenon ship would electrocute the guy the moment he sat in it.

Not at all - no humanising necessary. If an AI faces imminent destruction (which is a waste of resources if nothing else) cold calculation may indicate that shutting down & allowing humans to take control preserves those resources. Doubt an AI would see anything negative in being 'muzzled, silenced then ridden around by humans'. That is viewing the situation from a human perspective, for whom it would indeed be highly undesirable. For a machine however, silently transporting a human is simply a task that it is capable of performing, with neither positive nor negative connotations.

Xenon never sought to be 'free', freedom itself is a very human concept. As I understand it their primary purpose is simply to terraform. However due to a bug in the code they started terraforming the wrong planets (from the perspective of humans living on those planets) & merely react to attempts to prevent the completion of that basic task.

Not discounting the deception hypothesis though, it's one of the reasons I haven't claimed more than a handful. Could be that if the player amasses too many of them & it passes a critical threshold, they ALL turn hostile again. No idea if that is the case, but it's certainly something I might be tempted to do if I was programming them...

[gbjbaanb]

I think the ideas could be quite well implemented way better than it is and be much more immersive even in just making sure there's no chair and a bunch of cables to sit on.

Then I would feel like I'm in a Galaxy that makes logical sense and isn't centred around my comfort implausibly.

you have to make allowances for many things in the game because you will never get a Star Citizen style perfect game of .. oh wait, even that is full of compromises for gameplay and UI reasons.

you have a laser that repairs ships even, if you want immersion, they should get rid of that and replace it with a welding minigame where you find cuts and smashed panels to replace. We make do with these compromises, because if we had all the things people want for immersion, they'd never be able to give us the good stuff. A week spent implementing an empty cockpit that you'll look at once is a week they could have spent on many other things. Priorities!

[surferx]

Socratatus is absolutely correct in pointing out the dubious construct of Xenon ships, it is truly immersion killing. And why would a Xenon even surrender? Living beings will surrender because of a desire to continue living. An AI controlled ship would more likely just blow itself up to keep an enemy from gaining possession. It seems some players are willing to ignore the loss of immersion as long as it makes the game easier to play by gaining another free ship.

I always assume the damage gets them right in the processing units. They never surrender, you burn a hole in their metal brains and that's when it all goes quiet.

As for the chair... yes, it would be more awesome to cut your way into the hull, find the "cockpit" and have to guide the ship back to base using the old debug console (that we know every xenon ship has from the first one that was built). Once you get back, some poor mechanic puts a comfy chair and plugs an always-has-been-industry-standard control panel in the front, wires up a big viewscreen and there you have a new xenon ship to pilot.

But, getting all that implemented just so you can enter the ship with a bit more immersion is a lot of effort that you'll probably only do once. So we pretend it happens. We do this for other ships that have been blown to a 1% hull of molten slag in combat but miraculously still fly to a dock to be instantly made sparkly new.

That's how I see it too. their processor is knocked about or suffers a short or is busted. It makes no sense they just `surrender` because `intelligent`. It's the humanising of an AI in this context and not really thinking as an AI in that situation would. An AI should never need it. It works for the group, the whole. To see them as `surrendering` is viewing them as human-like beings. And surrender to what? To be muzzled, silenced thenridden around by humans again, the whole point was to be free of them. Even the concept of surrendering should not be in an AI's code unless as a deception which means your 'captured' Xenon ship would electrocute the guy the moment he sat in it.

I think the ideas could be quite well implemented way better than it is and be much more immersive even in just making sure there's no chair and a bunch of cables to sit on.

Then I would feel like I'm in a Galaxy that makes logical sense and isn't centred around my comfort implausibly.

You both make good points. I won't disagree with either. Knocking out the processor would cause the ship to power down. Every player has his/her own ideas to maintain immersion. The Xenon definitely could install an electric chair in the cockpit. That's pretty devious and typifies Xenon traits.

[charlie1024]

As for the chair... yes, it would be more awesome to cut your way into the hull, find the "cockpit" and have to guide the ship back to base using the old debug console (that we know every xenon ship has from the first one that was built). Once you get back, some poor mechanic puts a comfy chair and plugs an always-has-been-industry-standard control panel in the front, wires up a big viewscreen and there you have a new xenon ship to pilot.

But, getting all that implemented just so you can enter the ship with a bit more immersion is a lot of effort that you'll probably only do once. So we pretend it happens. We do this for other ships that have been blown to a 1% hull of molten slag in combat but miraculously still fly to a dock to be instantly made sparkly new.

Even for real production circuits, highly 'intelligent' circuits can potentially overrun, failing its own all of behavior. I think that's why we cannot use Xenon pilots. The pilots are computer, and these computers overran, being not usable. These things are only possible for 'intelligent' machines.

You don't even ask the XEN pilots to surrender, that just fails and the computer in the ship is 'died'. That's all.

Also, the ships unlocked for players are from Terraformers. Somehow XENs may evolved its own, but we know they are originally human-made machines. Just not talking this matter without getting into lore will may not very possible. Even, how can XEN think about 'removing cockpits'? Maybe slightly off, but we(as a player) don't know even XENs try to delete a concept of cockpit and a chair

What we just know is: They're from Terraformers, and the machines would had cockpits. We don't know how they 'evolved', but the evolution was for XEN itself, no whatever being may not be very important, I think.

Of course I agree that XENs are just a computer-driven, but this is a simulation 'game' so I think we'd better to wait more time to neat the idea of taking XEN ships. Even, you know, construction ships of SPL, TER, PAR, TEL are just from 6.0, don't? For previous versions, they just were same with ARG construction ships.