[FEEDBACK] Existential Crisis - Page 17 (2024)

Managed to finish the crisis.

If you know what you get (attacks across the universe in sectors you got a (major) presence, it isn't too bad imo, big point being *knowing what you get* The seemingly random nature of the crisis happening is another issue for me.
The start of the crisis can trigger rather randomly, so you can happen to be in the middle of a plot/stationbuilding/doing stuffs & now you got 30 minutes to wrap up what you're doing.
I feel it would be much better if either the event doesn't start before you talk to Boso-Ta/other char (so you got time to finish what you are doing & is more in line with how other plots work that you can stall for a long time, even tho they give off an 'This must be done quick!' feel) or an event precedes it that you got to trigger.

Example of an event that could trigger the crisis would be Boso-ta inviting you to open a gate, asking you to rally your military forces to the gate sector to be prepared. Opening the gate fails, makes a mysterious xenon ship jump in (either an H, to show off the Terraformer Xenon design, or the Unknown Xenon ship) & then it jumps out, making Boso-ta comment that we drew the attention of the Xenon, giving a plausible explanation on why the event seems to target sectors with major player presence.
Khaak interfering can be explained by the jumpdrives, if Xenon got m, they'd for sure try to terraform Khaak sectors , which makes them retaliate by tracking jumpdrive signatures (I imagine a civilization that makes broad use of Jumpdrives like the Khaak got ways to track them down)

One of the issues I got with the event is the random nature & above is what a suggestion to make it fit the theme of the game more & give some explanation on why the attacks happen & why Xenon/Khaak are both present. If Egosoft already has something in place to better explain it, but can't show because it is tied to timelines, then I look forward to it.
What also would help is some form of tracker to indicate how far along you are, style:
Step 1) Find Xenon fleet & destroy them
Step 2) Locate Khaak Forager
Step 3) Watch Khaak Forager jump out
Step 4) Locate Khaak Ravager & destroy them
Step 5) locate & destroy multiple Khaak Ravagers & destroy them (or whatever trigger you need to locate the Unknown xenon ship, collect data shards, wipe out Xenon enough, finish 5 crisis events successfully, etc)
Step 6) Locate & defeat the Unknown Xenon ship

Crisis itself feels fine once you know what you get. Played it first to see what happened/to test the event & got exhausted as I wasnt prepared & didn't know how it worked. Reloaded the game & then used the delay option twice tor amp up military asset production& to spread out my fleets to cover my assets, making sure rapid response destroyers (Rattlesnakes) could quickly travel to sectors where i had a lower presence in case an attack would happen there (happened once, Jupiter got struck, where I was refitting a whole bunch of Barbarossa's in the Terran equipment dock.)
Often did the fights in sector with a Rattlesnake/Erlking (occasionally a Raptor) to try & fight the Xenon fleet asap & to spot the early event (the Khaak Forager). Took me spotting the Khaak Forager a few times before the Khaak fleets also joined in. Often arrived just a bit too late to see it (Xenon already began attacking something). Was unclear on what to do at first as well, so even lost a few small/med ships when I got too close to the Xenon capitals, thinking it might be a distance trigger (and I don't come within Graviton range of a Xenon ship in my capitals)
Fights in sector with the Xenon & initial ravager fleets was fun once I knew what I was getting. The longer lasting waves, I eventually coordinated OOS, sending in Raptors to take out the Khaak waves (they got the flak & plasma firepower to deal with the threat effectively)
Had a few times of overlapping attacks, but that was often from lingering Khaak fleets who spawned away from anything significant, so were often hard to find.

Final event (finding the Unknown Xenon ship) felt a bit odd after all the heavy fighting. Brought an attack force (anti-fighter Ray, Raptor Carrier with 100 fighters & Erlking) as I didn't knew what would happen & expecting a heavy fight. Turns out the Xenon ship is alone & has no capital weapons, so staying at range was an easy way to subdue the ship (Unknown xenon ship has only some low range anti-fighter/frigate weapons & while classified as Carrier with a holding capacity of 100 ships it has no landing bays or launch tubes according to the ingame encyclopedia, so no fight with a xenon swarm either.
No conclusion either, was really hoping on something that would reveal why Xenon/ Khaak were doing what they did, even just why they were fighting each other.

Short summary: event feels void of lore/explanation & confusing & exhausting if you do it the first time & don't know what will happen. Also feels random without an explanation, why do they attack? Why are both Khaak & Xenon involved?
If you know how the event works (sectors you got assets in will be targeted, guard it) it was enjoyable (I did went into this, expecting fights & losses). Mainly lost civilian assets, but could replace those easy). Pause being crucial in minimizing losing civilian assets - pause - order civilian ships to wait/direct them away)
Adding some sort of tracker would also help guiding players on what to do & how long they are along the crisis event.