u/Choice-Inspector-701

I love the lore in games, even when I was a wee lad, I would always read the extra bits the games have to offer. I got interested in history mainly from playing Age of Empires 2 and reading the in-game encyclopedia. naturally, when I get into a new series, I look up the lore. I never played an x game before x 4, it was the first one I got into a few months ago. Sadly, when looking up the lore of this series, there isn't much quality stuff. there is this one video from 5 years ago that everyone is referring to, it's not very good. there are quite a few mistakes, and half the time, the narrator is confused about the events instead of presenting them. Captain Snuggles has good videos, but he is not a lore guy. the videos are limited in scope and far from giving you the complete history of the series.

there is the in-game encyclopedia, of course, but it's what you would expect from a resource like this. it's a dry list of game terms and the relevant data. even the faction descriptions are single-paragraph basic explanations. not exactly what I was looking for.

luckily, some time after I started playing, I stumbled on a post by Egosoft advertising their X-Encyclopedia. I thought it might be just a digital version of the in-game encyclopedia, but no, it was exactly what I was looking for: a coherent and in-depth history of the series, presenting all the races, characters, events and even some things far beyond the scope of the game, like the ancients and the outsiders.

so to close my little rambling, I would like to make two points:

1. If you are new to the series or would like to learn more about the lore, the encyclopedia is great: https://www.egosoft.com/download/superbox/bonus_en.php?list=114 .It's written more like a sci-fi novel than a dry list of terms and explanations, and I strongly recommend giving it a try.
2. a complaint to Egosoft themselves. make this resource more accessible. when searching for the encyclopedia, google finds everything except for the X-Encyclopedia: old forum and reddit posts, fan wikis, and old game manuals. you have a great resource that I bet most players don't even know exists. maybe add it as a free DLC to the DLC list, probably a lot more players will see it that way.

Just watched 3 of my dragons fighting a hive guard and a queen guard for about 15 minutes before they got them. not chasing around, fighting. If they are running away, it's even more tedious. mind, I have mk4 combat engines and mk2 plasma and gatlings on them. this, combined with the amounts of Kha'ak we are getting now, makes this whole experience just miserable. fighters are basically useless in low attention unless you are using plasmas and missiles exclusively, they are just playing bumping carts with each other for hours unless you are bringing overwhelming numbers.

I just end up teleporting from battle to battle for things to die in high attention, doesn't feel good at all.

I have done a couple of runs without any mods, looking for mod recommendations for my next run. mostly quality of life stuff, I'm not looking big overhauls or additional ship models/sectors and the like.
for example, the mod to make agent missions take less time seems nice. I find the diplomacy system to be too slow and the resources needed for them just creates busy work in my opinion.

what are your must have mods?

First of all I would like to start by saying that capital ships feel a lot better to use in the Beta. this is especially apparent when fighting in open space, they try to dodge enemy projectiles, keep their weapons on the enemy and feel like and actual ships instead of a siege weapons on a remote control. in 8.0 attacking stations was an exercise in frustration.

now, are they actually fighting well? not by a long shot. this is especially noticeable when attacking stations. as far as I can tell, the ships have no ability to "see" or react to each other, even if they are in the same fleet and attacking together. in the screenshot you can see my Erlking making a little flanking maneuver right through 2 Behemoths. this little maneuver took about 10 minutes of ramming and was only completed when the Behemoths started teleporting a short distance away to let it pass. its even worst when attacking from far way, you give them a command to attack a target 150km from you, they have all the space in the world to work with, yet somehow they converge on the same spot and start playing bumping carts with each other. now mind you I have only 6 capital ships in this fleet: 1 Erlking, 3 Behemoths and 2 Rays. I'm afraid to think what will happens if I take 20 of them and tell them to attack a station. so to summarize the issues I have seen so far:

• attacking stations is half baked, it a lot better but still needs work.
• any change of course or target will cause the ships to drop travel speed. even if the change is minor or the target is 3 sectors away and the change has no effect on the course, they will drop travel speed, readjust and start accelerating again. this is extremely frustrating as large ships take a while to gain speed.
• they still stop 30-40 km from the target for no reason, dropping all speed and momentum and start accelerating again. this is effecting all ships (here's to my poor hydras with 600+ speed chasing a phenix in grand exchange for half an hour because of this issue) but again especially noticeable on large ships as it takes them some time to get going.

that was my two cents on the issue. I appreciate the work Egosoft have done with this update but there is still work to be done.