How will the game progress when not playing it? Lets say I start a mission that needs to be completed in 60 minutes. If I then leave the game and come back 2 hours later will I then loose that mission or will time continue from where I left it?

Time will not continue while you are not playing, it's a classic single player game, so you can just save and come back to complete the mission when you're ready

JoshParnell wrote:Time will not continue while you are not playing, it's a classic single player game, so you can just save and come back to complete the mission when you're ready

Awesome!!

dear god (josh ) please tell me your not considering adding time based quest to the game those get me killed off (or pissing someone off) more than any other quest type imaginable.

Pahaha I imagine some missions will be time-sensitive, most probably won't be though. Maybe certain important courier missions will be time-sensitive. But you don't have to take those

The only thing I hate more than a time limit in games is "having to watch somebody elses ass" missions ... I tend to loose those I should protect

Well, you'd have a choice in what missions you take.

charnode wrote:The only thing I hate more than a time limit in games is "having to watch somebody elses ass" missions ... I tend to loose those I should protect

Escort missions clearly deserve their own topic. There are ways to make them not suck - or not suck as much at least.
It's not a problem with the type of mission - it's all in the implementation.
I'm deliberately not going into details here. Even if temptation beckons. =P

You're probably tired of hearing this but I wrote an X3 script to fix one highly annoying aspect of convoy escort missions. Kind of a reflex, you know? =)

offtopic:

What was that annoying behavior?

/offtopic

You could accept an escort mission and find out that the convoy's speed was faster than your own ship.
You had no chance to keep up, not to mention any protecting.

Also, due to navigation / pathing issues, convoys could get strung out over 10+ km. There's was no way to cover that much ground with a capital ship.

So I scripted limited control over the individual convoy ships because it stands to reason that the merchants would trust the judgement of the trained professional in military matters whom they hired for the explicit purpose of protection from professionals in transfer of ownership. =)

Gazz wrote:You could accept an escort mission and find out that the convoy's speed was faster than your own ship.
You had no chance to keep up, not to mention any protecting.

Also, due to navigation / pathing issues, convoys could get strung out over 10+ km. There's was no way to cover that much ground with a capital ship.

So I scripted limited control over the individual convoy ships because it stands to reason that the merchants would trust the judgement of the trained professional in military matters whom they hired for the explicit purpose of protection from professionals in transfer of ownership. =)

Gazz, with all this thought you're putting into this game, PLEASE tell me you're at least an alpha tester on this. This sort of thing is something that many would overlook, and I know those fixes are minor at best.

What was that annoying behavior?

The usual, topped with a few X-specific WTF-moments.

First of all, the AI of the escorted ship decided to take the scenic route and bumbled merrily along paths that would or would not take it closer to its intended target. Second, it didn't bother to dodge but decided to take those shots directed at it like a man.
(These are common problems with escort missions, not limited to X specifically).
The X-icing on the cake was that you always escorted several slow-as-molasses, chronically underarmed/armored freighters, and that the enemies encountered depended on your combat rank. Which means that in the beginning, you had a few fighters to kill, while in the end, the game threw corvettes and heavy fighters at you in minute intervals, rendering the missions unplayable since the ships you escorted would explode if only hit by a few stray projectiles.

But yes, escort missions deserve their own thread, since they easily become the most avoided mission type due to errors in the implementation.

DWMagus wrote:Gazz, with all this thought you're putting into this game, PLEASE tell me you're at least an alpha tester on this.

Heh. I bought beta access but mostly I'm playing a game of Inception with Josh's mind. =P

The devil is in the details. I'm good with details. I'm also the best beta tester I have come across so far. I know how this sounds but it's a fact (*). In a team of about 20 voluntary testers on BC3k, I reported about half the reproducible bugs. I'm afraid I won't have the time for that amount of work, though, real life and all. And beta testing is work. It's not the same as getting to play a game for free.


(*) Note that I'm unusually free of humility issues. It's just who I am.

You asked and I have delivered. Escorting ships thread! ^_^

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=319