Ships and their specs (yet another one)

[-XTM-]

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=108357

Seeing the ships now in a sizechart I just couldn't resist opening a treath about it.

While this is a great effort it also brings up the 'what gives' feeling.

Imho it painfully clearifies the total randomness at which Ego decided to equip ships regarding their cargo and weapons....

I mean, realy...look at the Boron and Teladi carriers and then tell me in all honoustly it's justified they're their poor Argon and Split cousins.

Yes Teladi suck at high tech but that's still a far cry from relevance towards a carrierbay of a lousy 35 compared to a ship (raptor) which is only dwarfed by it in size, yet holds almost twice that number, has much better speed and to top things of, the biggest lasergen of them all.

Don't even get me started on TL specs (who doesn't go Mammoth or Orca after trying them all????) cause I cant make heads or tales of them at all.

I know...balance and such...personal prefs, race differences....but I yet have to find the first human player who isn't ticked of by the terrible performance stats of the Teladi-ships and goes for them anyway because of their good looks...paranid ships more or less following right after.

Why not go for realy big differences? Basically meaning expending on the allready existing ones cause the id behind it isn't bad at all.....it just makes you go into a rather forced direction then having the feeling that it all depends on the path youre intending to walk in the X-Universe.

Here's my two cent's on a possible track-change:

-Split Being the more agressive race so
huge shields and weapon-gens but lacking a real battleship capability rather believing in speed and power.
Very bad cargo and fighterbay...modestly cheap.
Average rankings yet rare due to high demand from within the military.
Can dock at SY and ED

-Boron Most advanced so highest tech-level and best overall performance regarding arc's of fire etc. Yet mainly defensive weaponry, docking support for M6 class ships.
Very good cargo and fighterbay.
Rather rare...high rankings required.
Very Expensive.
Can't dock, high maintance regarding (more expensive) supplies.

-Argon Somewhat ballanced tough tending towards the war-path.
good shields, good cargo, good weapon and fighter loadout...nothing maxed out though.
Average prices, Average rankings and availability.
Can dock at SY and ED.

-Paranid, Second highest techlevel, but poor performance again in area's like cargo and bay-size.
Reasonable speeds and weapon loadouts.
Cheaper then average....due to for example very high output shipyards.
Average ranking required, high availibility.
Can dock at SY and ED.

-Teladi, Huge cargo...realy massive....trading righteousness, big fighterwing, docking support for special-TS-class ships.
Terrible performance at weapons, shields and speed levels.
Fair yet very fluctuating prices, also difficult to obtain since their in high demand.
Can't dock, have their own support-vessels (but only these are the ones that can actually perform a TS funtion on it....should be nice if included in the overall purchase package).

-Terran War-like so not equiped for anything else then fighting.
Good bay-support, very good weapons...should be able to mount someting special (which they do I believe).
Very high price since rare items, also insanely high rankings required.

Currently you've goto admit, those spacefly powered engines realy do make a difference

Curious what the rest of the community thinks about this and plz, in a more or less constructive way.

[szuur]

If u read the manual its more like this:
Agressive: Speed and weapons are the main thing, low schilds and low hull
Boron Peacefull and defensive so big tough schips with lots of schilds
Argon Most Advanced high weapons but poor in low tech weapons schilds speed average
Paranid likwise of the Split only a bit more towards argon so lil less speed still low schilds but kinda average
Teladi Trader based so big cargo holds and enourmous Schilds , due to teh lack that they wearen't in the boron an Xenon Conflicts they never realy developed weapons.

Terran's ain't realy in the game as a play race

[-XTM-]

Now thats what I call constructive!...I guess after all I should have read the manual then..silly me.
Worse comming from a fellow countryman...

Youre not having to agree, you could have told me to go fish cause everything in the game is fine as you like it.

I think there's room for improvement to make things more dynamic.
Youre summing up a jump-off point which is exactly the basis I don't agree upon when looking at the models and their stats ingame.
(just out of curiousity, are you even aware of those stats?..did you check out the various xls-sheets about them?...I don't understand your remarks about them cause if it was like your telling...the differences would be much more apparant then they seem to be ingame)

But plz keep smartassing -if you intended it that way- too yourself in the future.

[xeon_1]

the terran ship's can only mount 2 weapons the alpha and the beta magnetic cannon
the bolt it fires looks like a ppc but packs a lot more punch

thrust me i tryed 8 of the beta's against a fully loaded titan in argon prime let just say the titan didn't last long and i wasn' t even using the other turrets to help just the one in the back

but i would like to ask egosoft to fix the engines of the terran ship they haven't got an exaust flame
and some of the weapons mount's on then also don't exist fire but you can mount a weapon there
and in cockpit mode the camera isn't in a good place you see true the hull off the ship i only had this with the terran M3 haven't tested the others

and for cap ship in general
upgrade the weapon generator and on some ship a few of the turret's never fire when they aren't controled by the player
[/spoiler]

[Swanny]

I agree - with more evident differences between the races ships, and different big pluses and minuses, the game would be more interesting.
I liked the idea of being able to dock M6's in the Boron carrier only. Neat !

[-XTM-]

Swanny, my guess is everybody would like a Boron carrier with m6 docking capabilities

I just had a dream...I saw a Raptor coming out of hyperspace, blazing at full speed towards seemingly overwhelming ods.

Suddenly it looks, from a distance, like it's falling apart but in fact it's anything but....
It's wing of 6 side-mounted Dragons is detaching itself like shelves of reactive armor.
Yes my friend, those huge slaps of rusty m2-metal are good for more then mounting the occasional turret:)

Do I drink too much Cola?....hmmmm....

For now I would be very very happy if the next patch would include a Teladi M6 and playable Terran models.

Or is that like saying, Yes even MORE Cola!!! ?

[Sandalpocalypse]

mod it yourself! some of that probably isn't possible or is tough to do, but a lot of it is pretty easy

[-XTM-]

I've thought of doing so but my experience is (being I've done a reasonable amount of OFP scripting) it always takes much and much more time then expected and the end-result still's always a compromise.

Also, I'll wait for the next patch first, see what gaps are left when it's there before modding the obvious and more or less forfeiting on the fact that currently my X3 runs like a old milk-cow.

So I'm happy to admit all of these thought are partially frustration based, partially 'there's always gonna be someting vanilla you don't agree upon' and -whatever room there's left in the partial area- partially real serious beliefs at how the game could become even better.

[Yonder]

(in regards to Boron) best overall performance regarding arc's of fire etc.

I would disagree with this. Boron's are supposed to have good technology, so you could say that their guns/shields should be more efficient from a power standpoint. However placement of turrets for effective firing arcs boils down to a knowledge of tactics and battle experience. These are things that the Argon, Paranid, and especially Split have down to a science, but I wouldn't say the Boron do.

[-XTM-]

Good point...it was just a basic setup...risky in the way that although it tries to eliminate a -one preffered race filofophy- in ships...by doing so it might as well just change the preffered race and nothing more.

My guess is it would be a real pain to go for big differences and yet obtain some form of balance.
But still, I'm wanting to bet good money that the current ship-specs can be improved in usefullnes and both fun-factors.

Ideally it would seem that you need some ships of all races to make a real good fleet...but then again, the game actually doesn't suck too much at that at all.

Hmmm, now what's my point exactly *grin* again.....*sigh*...