Timelines compared to other great games in the modern day.

[Ziron]

I haven't bought it yet and have all other DLCs. This one is mostly negative though, i'd like to discuss this. Some people say there is racing of some sort that is required or something like that? I would like to know more details on what is wrong with it. Don't you get a whole 2nd galaxy to explore? From the description, that is how it appears.

[Goro san]

PPL play X series for sandbox.
Timelines is "story mode" where you select missions from literal menu.
It is ment as giant tutorial mode for new players, missions are mostly important moments from X lore. Issue is, you get little to none context to whats hapening, if you dont know lore alredy its completly random battles, races etc.
What more some missions are really diferent to how most ppl play, for examply one where you need to use small fighter to take down defence station turrets that can one shot you. 90% of players just bring an destroyer or 3.
Its not bad by any streach... but it has issues....

EDIT:
To claryfy, it does add few sectors and ships to open galaxy, but you need to UNLOCK these by playing timelines 1st. Thres no new faction no new map etc, just missions you sellect from an menu -> after you finish it one more quest in open galaxy mode.

[PeaceMaker]

Originally posted by Ziron:

I haven't bought it yet and have all other DLCs. This one is mostly negative though, i'd like to discuss this. Some people say there is racing of some sort that is required or something like that? I would like to know more details on what is wrong with it. Don't you get a whole 2nd galaxy to explore? From the description, that is how it appears.

There's like a zillion threads on it already. But you want personal attention, right?

Nah. I'm busy. I ain't beating that dead horse again.

[Caedes91]

It is made for nobody, except for ego. It fundamentally goes against the core gameplay of this game which is the open universe singleplayer sandbox.
4X players who are used to sit back while managing their empire, are dropped into ♥♥♥♥♥♥ race and manual mining missions under a timer, while story andies get subjected to crap writing and google translator voice over with fanfic mod level presentation.
Action players vomit over the saggy flight controls and will drop it for better arcade space fighting games.
It only offers 4 new ships, that are locked to their own equipment, so no customization, another fundamental gameplay mechanic spit on. One of these ships you even cannot mass produce, because the supposed singleplayer sandbox just tells you so.

[Doom]

Originally posted by Ziron:

I haven't bought it yet and have all other DLCs.

Timelines adds very short arcade missions that are playable from main menu and are barely connected to x4 sandbox mode. They also tried to do a cinematic story there which didn't quite work.

Some missions are very hard, and there are a lot of racing missions which people normally aren't fans off.

Basically, imagine, I don't know, that you're a car racing sim fan of some game, they announce a DLC, you grab it, and instead of more cars, you have awkward story mode with walking around, there are no cars, but you can date a car mechanic. That's roughly the feeling.

Egosoft tried "something different" here and it didn't quite work out.

That's still a good thing because the last time "something different" they tried resulted in Rebirth. This time there's at least a bit of something for the sandbox content.

[Storm]

Just on a side note, to finish Timelines is INCREDIBLY easy. You DO NOT need to even earn 1 star on many of the missions, you just need to ATTEMPT it. And getting 1 star is VERY easy as well.

So if you get 0/1 star on the missions you dislike, and 3-5 stars on the missions you like, you can keep progressing till the end and get all the ships / systems unlocked.

If you finish the Timelines missions, there's a sandbox mission that unlocks just like the normal DLC's do.

Timelines is worth it from every angle.

[XartaX]

The best thing about Timelines is that it teaches you some very specific skills. Like how to dismantle a capital ship/station in a fighter.

As a story it's weak, and some content in the sandbox is locked behind having to do it. Meaning people who only want to play the sandbox feel forced into several hours of playing something they don't want to play.

[FuryoftheStars]

Originally posted by Storm:

So if you get 0/1 star on the missions you dislike, and 3-5 stars on the missions you like, you can keep progressing till the end and get all the ships / systems unlocked.

And what happens if you dislike all of them?

[Tommytools]

Originally posted by Storm:

Just on a side note, to finish Timelines is INCREDIBLY easy. You DO NOT need to even earn 1 star on many of the missions, you just need to ATTEMPT it. And getting 1 star is VERY easy as well.

So if you get 0/1 star on the missions you dislike, and 3-5 stars on the missions you like, you can keep progressing till the end and get all the ships / systems unlocked.

If you finish the Timelines missions, there's a sandbox mission that unlocks just like the normal DLC's do.

Timelines is worth it from every angle.

Races? No. Just no. I make sure to unlock the right techs/progress in my budgeted games to prevent me every having to do a race in X4 again. Just the thought of having to do a race in X4 makes me want to play something else. I don't play racing games, I don't understand what folks find fun about them (but if you enjoy them, by all means continue), for me it's just pointless running around in circles (or flying, driving, etc).

It doesn't matter how "easy" you consider it, it's an exercise in frustration, the opposite of fun. I play games for fun, if I'm getting frustrated it's time to go play something else.

I'm probably going to buy timelines eventually, but I'll be copying my friend's save to unlock the sandbox content and never have to bother with timelines. I bought this game for the sandbox, that is the reason I have over 1600+ hours in X4.

[SirProsik]

I may be wrong but the files I think you need are in the X4 main folder.
Not sure if a save game is gonna cut it. Several xml files and a pipelinecache.bin file are what I transferred to another computer I play on sometimes to unlock progress in the sandbox. If i try to then play Timelines the saved character and progress are not available however.

[Goro san]

Originally posted by Tommytools:

[...]I'll be copying my friend's save to unlock the sandbox content and never have to bother with timelines. [...]

You dont have to. When making new game select custom game, story states and select Quettanaut as Your timelines state (that means seing ending of it).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3323139295

[SirProsik]

But does that remove all the ships like the other custom states do?

[Doom]

Originally posted by FuryoftheStars:

And what happens if you dislike all of them?

Aside from racing, the missions cover most aspects of the game.

* Fighter Combat
* Fighter vs Capital/Station Combat
* Trading in Person
* Trading via Map
* Mining in person
* Mining via a Map
* Suit navigation
* Tactical fleet combat from map screen.

So normally I'd expect you to find at least one mission to be at least okay.

If you're talking about unlocks... I think at last tiers you need something like 8 stars total to proceed further but can fail the last mission if you hate it. That typically means you quickly finish most missions at the "tier", and then get a lot of stars at the mission you like.

Originally posted by Tommytools:

It doesn't matter how "easy" you consider it, it's an exercise in frustration, the opposite of fun.

To be honest either the last or next to last racing mission was okay. Not like the usual horrible x4 stuff. Maybe I got used to it though. The trick is - when you get to last racing mission, do not set throttle to full, keep at about 75% Because finishing first is optional, you can just fly through the circuit slowly.

Originally posted by Goro san:

You dont have to. When making new game select custom game, story states and select Quettanaut as Your timelines state (that means seing ending of it).

Worth mentioning that this won't unlock ship research. You'll still need to go through every sector to collect them and then kill a Xenon H for the shard.

[FuryoftheStars]

Originally posted by Doom:

Originally posted by FuryoftheStars:

And what happens if you dislike all of them?

Aside from racing, the missions cover most aspects of the game.

* Fighter Combat
* Fighter vs Capital/Station Combat
* Trading in Person
* Trading via Map
* Mining in person
* Mining via a Map
* Suit navigation
* Tactical fleet combat from map screen.

So normally I'd expect you to find at least one mission to be at least okay.

While I like all of those aspects, I do not like any of the missions covering those as employed in Timelines as implemented.

[Doom]

Originally posted by Daoin:

Originally posted by FuryoftheStars:

While I like all of those aspects, I do not like any of the missions covering those as employed in Timelines as implemented.

for 1 or even 0 stars does it matter where the missions are ? just to take one for example a mining mission, you fly to the closest astroid mine (which teaches you shooting the smaller pieces off the astroid is faster for a small mining ship to fill its load) and land (which teaches you how to land a mining ship faster )before the xenon arrive, do it 2 times for a higher score, i guess 3 times if your an ace :) and takes far less time than any of the mining missions in game where ever they are or whoever they are for

Erm, it sums your highest stars your ever achieved in a mission, for each mission of a "tier"(Graph?). So you can't just do mining mission 8 times with 1 star. Won't count.

So, basically, the game wants you to try all missions, even if you fail, and t hen you need to have total stars to unlock missions for the next tier. You have to play it, but you can fail it. Unless I'm forgetting something. I've finished timelines content back in July. I think it might need 1 star in all missions for the "Ending" and to get Grandmother achievement.

There are also missions that unlock ships in sectors, and you'll want about 1 star if you want that ship to spawn in sandbox. Which is not difficult, but some of the ships are racing ships meaning it is a racing mission.

[FuryoftheStars]

Originally posted by Daoin:

Originally posted by FuryoftheStars:

While I like all of those aspects, I do not like any of the missions covering those as employed in Timelines as implemented.

for 1 or even 0 stars does it matter where the missions are ? just to take one for example a mining mission, you fly to the closest astroid mine (which teaches you shooting the smaller pieces off the astroid is faster for a small mining ship to fill its load) and land (which teaches you how to land a mining ship faster )before the xenon arrive, do it 2 times for a higher score, i guess 3 times if your an ace :) and takes far less time than any of the mining missions in game where ever they are or whoever they are for

That's not the point. The point is that I found all of the missions (edit: up to the point that I stopped playing it) uninteresting and/or frustrating. I have no desire to try and do better on something that I don't like in the first place.