Weapons

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gbjbaanb
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Weapons

Post by gbjbaanb » Sun, 1. Apr 18, 18:12

One think I liked a lot in X3 was the wealth of weapon types, with different stats and styles that you had to choose which to equip, with no dynamic changing in battle.

One think I hated in XR was the FPS-style weapons of "shotgun" "rifle" and "sniper" that could be swapped out any time. Like I was playing a FP shooter.

Will the weapon systems be like X3 and not XR? Will we have different weapons that can be fitted, with the X3 way of disabling some, but no more than that unless you're at a station where you can swap them out for different guns?

I think this makes a big different for immersion, fitting a gun requires a mechanic to unbolt the old and put in a new, it shoulnd't be quite so simplistic to have everything at hand all the time.

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Post by Skeeter » Sun, 1. Apr 18, 19:17

I didn't like the weapon choices in rebirth too few too specific for use. I like the old weapons like ire lasers etc from earlier games.
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Post by StoneLegionYT » Sun, 1. Apr 18, 19:48

Add some weapons Platforms too ;)

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Post by StormMagi » Sun, 1. Apr 18, 20:42

I agree, I miss my HEPTs, ISRs. CIGs, PRGs, etc. I am not sure why, lore wise, there still wouldn't be some around.
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Post by PabloRSA » Mon, 2. Apr 18, 00:56

All pre-gate weapons where damaged/destroyed due tot he 200 years? gate shutdown.

Lore wise... no access to systems due to gate shutdown so they where not able to replicate the production.

Plutach had the manoploy at the begining able to research and design their own weapons to manufacture for themselfs which eventually became the defacto design and due to shortcuts, cost savings and limited "anti-theft" they where easily replicated by the pirates

Hows that for lore?

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Post by Falcrack » Mon, 2. Apr 18, 01:06

I much prefer X3 weapons with many guns per ship, instead of X:R where it was like a single guns.

I think they should limit weapon swapping to stations, however, like the Outfitting in Elite.

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Post by adeine » Mon, 2. Apr 18, 01:10

+1 for bringing back classic X weapons.

I don't mind them being switchable in the style of X3's WSE mod or MARS for turrets, especially if there is a some animation/delay that makes switching between profiles more realistic and a tactical choice.

It could even be on a per-ship or slot basis, so some fighters or ships have easily switchable weapons while others will have to be docked.

PabloRSA wrote:All pre-gate weapons where damaged/destroyed due tot he 200 years? gate shutdown.

Lore wise... no access to systems due to gate shutdown so they where not able to replicate the production.

Plutach had the manoploy at the begining able to research and design their own weapons to manufacture for themselfs which eventually became the defacto design and due to shortcuts, cost savings and limited "anti-theft" they where easily replicated by the pirates

Hows that for lore?
A little silly.

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Post by Honved » Mon, 2. Apr 18, 16:52

adeine wrote:
PabloRSA wrote:All pre-gate weapons where damaged/destroyed due tot he 200 years? gate shutdown.

Lore wise... no access to systems due to gate shutdown so they where not able to replicate the production.

Plutach had the manoploy at the begining able to research and design their own weapons to manufacture for themselfs which eventually became the defacto design and due to shortcuts, cost savings and limited "anti-theft" they where easily replicated by the pirates

Hows that for lore?
A little silly.
A LOT silly, in my opinion.

I'd prefer a slighly more limited set of weapon "types" than in X3, but with several sizes for the ones that are used (as was done in previous "X" games, with A, B, and C sized versions). Each "type" should have its own positive and negative points (higher damage but lower projectile speed, different shield versus hull damage values, high ROF but lower damage per shot, long range but massive energy drain for the amount of damage, etc.). Larger and smaller versions of the same basic weapon types should scale up both the damage and power requirements (power at a slighly higher rate than damage output), and boost the range somewhat while lowering the Rate of Fire.

In other words, each weapon should have reasons or advantages for using it in specific situations, and no clear "I win" weapon that everyone automatically tries to get. X3 did that fairly well, but the high degree of overlap (and similar names and acronyms: PBE, PRG, PBG, PSG, PAC, PPC) between some weapons made them confusing to new players for no good reason.

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Re: Weapons

Post by GCU Grey Area » Mon, 2. Apr 18, 19:52

gbjbaanb wrote:I think this makes a big different for immersion, fitting a gun requires a mechanic to unbolt the old and put in a new, it shoulnd't be quite so simplistic to have everything at hand all the time.
Tend to agree with that, it's the way I tend to play all X games. Even though in the old games it was possible to carry an entire arsenal of weapons in the hold & instantly swap them in & out of hardpoints, generally preferred to stick to a fixed selection while in flight, albeit quite a wide selection (i.e. 1 or 2 of many different types installed).

Probably why the XR setup didn't bother me too much - quite liked the way the guns were permanently fixed to specific hardpoints & could only be changed or upgraded by qualified personnel while docked. Only things I really missed were the special effect weapons from the old games, i.e. Mass Drivers, Ion-D, PSGs etc (got very fond memories of my old X2 Hydra with front Ion-D & rear A-PSG). Apart from that an energy blob is an energy blob whether you call it Plasma Cannon or HEPT. Not really all that concerned about the name.

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Re: Weapons

Post by Fleabum » Mon, 2. Apr 18, 23:37

GCU Grey Area wrote:generally preferred to stick to a fixed selection while in flight, albeit quite a wide selection (i.e. 1 or 2 of many different types installed).
Didn't we all? left more cargo space for all those nice and tasty loot crates. :D

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Re: Weapons

Post by GCU Grey Area » Tue, 3. Apr 18, 00:12

Fleabum wrote:Didn't we all? left more cargo space for all those nice and tasty loot crates. :D
Not everyone. Remember several threads over the years from people complaining they didn't have enough cargo space in their favourite capitals (often Terran as I recall) to have both a full set of anti-capital weapons and a full set of anti-fighter weapons that they could switch between as needed.

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Post by vkerinav » Tue, 3. Apr 18, 02:18

I'd point out that one reason why people wanted to switch out weapons in X3 was the maximum of six turret groups. It's been confirmed that Foundations will have Rebirth's independently targeted turrets, which means you can have guns for shooting fighters, corvettes and capital ships equipped at the same time, without compromising the effectiveness of any of them.

It's also been confirmed that hardpoints will have sizes, which limits the type of weapon that can be mounted there, though we can still choose between multiple types.

In my opinion, X3's system was superior for fighters, though I wouldn't mind seeing size classes applied there, too. However, the turret group system was much in need of improvement. Rebirth helped, and it looks like Foundations will fix the remaining problems.

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Post by Killjaeden » Tue, 3. Apr 18, 11:53

vkerinav wrote:I'd point out that one reason why people wanted to switch out weapons in X3 was the maximum of six turret groups.
It's more of a min/max thing people will use, if they are allowed to - doesnt matter how many weapons they have available. If they have a capitalship target, they want all weapons to be effective, not just a bunch -> swap for capital weapons. If they have mostly fighter targets, swap out for Flak artillery and fast firing lasers etc. It's a natural reaction.

In X3 you can mid-combat change every single weapon on your ship for a different one.

If you flat out dont allow it, people need to make more meaningfull decisions about loadout - which i think makes things more interesting.
On the other hand its more time consuming to try different loadouts...

A good compromise could be to have weapon changes take a bit of time (some minutes), depending on size of ship and weapon and crew. Imagine the crew has to space-walk to adjust a few bits and bobs at the very least and to a bit of shuffling and operating internally. Could be effected by crew skill and crew amount.

If you as fighterpilot would have to EVA out of your ship in space or while its landed on a station/carrier to change your weapon manually that would be enjoyable i think, interacting with your ship(s).

Player owned AI fighters could be set for different loadout and when they land, they are automatically swapped.

I also agree about the X3 weapon set beeing more interesting. I like the alpha beta gamma system. It's easier to memorize than having a dozend different weapon types and names.
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Post by Vandragorax » Tue, 3. Apr 18, 12:49

IMHO weapon hardpoints and their limitations is what makes certain ships strategically and interestingly different to one another.

I actually prefer the XR interpretation of weapon systems. When you think about it, those categories are really all that is needed and everyone in X3 used to use the same types anyway. One type of flak for anti-fighter, one type of plasma for anti-capital, one type of laser/minigun for anti-fighter. It doesn't make sense at all to have 50 different weapon types which are all just slight variations. It's too bloated.

Also if every ship can simply swap any of its weapons for any other weapon at any point, then every ship becomes exactly the same and there is no benefit over another ship besides "how many" hardpoints it has.

I think XR has so far been the best implementation, where each capital ship has a broad range of weapon types but with differing numbers of each to FIT A CERTAIN ROLE. e.g. a Destroyer has more long-range anti-capital weapon types, but a carrier is bristling with short-range anti-fighter flak type weapons. Then you had the long-range 'artillery' ships (basically equivalent of an M7) that were full of torpedo launchers.

It wouldn't make sense to be able to equip the missile frigate full of lasers, or the carrier full of missiles.

Of course each faction also had variations, so like the Albion ships make use of missile launchers, but the Omicon Lyrae ships prefer to have more Plasma/JETs (which are my personal favourite).

This is a really good approach, and I think it will be a shame to go back to an X3 style where literally any ship can be outfitted for any purpose. It defeats the point of having different ship classes in the first place!
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Post by Fleabum » Tue, 3. Apr 18, 14:37

Vandragorax wrote:This is a really good approach, and I think it will be a shame to go back to an X3 style where literally any ship can be outfitted for any purpose. It defeats the point of having different ship classes in the first place!
I have to disagree with you on that, in X3 every ship was limited to both the load out of weapons, type(mostly race based) and caliber(ship type). You could not see a M5 touting HEPT's or PBG. On the larger ships you had more choice, but this is only logical, a M2 should be able to mount all missiles, all energy, all projectile or a mixture. There is no space, energy or other constraining factor unless its turret mounting size or somesuch.

Missile and torpedo types were also done along the same lines, light ships could not fire heavy ordnance.

In X4, I would love to see more unique variations of same base ships, for example a pirate will have jury-rigged their ship with whatever they could find that gives them the biggest bang for buck and on top of that given it a cool paint job. So yes, why not a pirate M5 with single cruiser style weapon on very long cool-down due to smaller weapon capacitors.

Wonder if the engine is adaptable enough that a mod could be written to randomise ship values. So you could have pirate vessels than increase their shielding at the cost of speed (diverted engine power to the shield array) or more damaging weapons at the cost of shield and speed... No more cookie cutter style ships.

This could be tired into the bounty type missions, for example if you have to go after a pirate-clan leader, his ship will have boosted values over the standard ship. Would make for interesting replay-ability. Nother mod idea, right there... gah!

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Post by Honved » Tue, 3. Apr 18, 18:00

I tend to agree that weapons should not be swappable on the fly. It should either take some amount of time, or only be allowed while docked. Of course, if you've got enough turrets or turrets with multiple weapons slots, you should be able to either define which turrets attack which targets, or enable and disable individual weapons in a turret.

Having a turret that accepts a capital class weapon might do well to have a second light fighter-class weapon slot, so you could enable one or the other as needed. Being able to switch between capital class weapons (like betwen CFA and CIG) should not be possible without some down time or being docked.

In most cases, my weapons loadouts remained pretty constant after the initial "use whatever I can get or afford" stages of the game. In a few situations, I switched the weapons configuration completely for the specific mission, but switched it back afterwards.

The most glaring example of that would be the Phased Shockwave Generators on my Diemos, which were a near guaranteed "friendly fire" incident in any civilized part of space, but wreaked absolute havoc in Xenon and Kha'ak sectors where any stray "friendlies" tended not to exist for long anyway. It was like pushing a giant earaser across a chalkboard: there was a big empty streak behind me wherever my ship passed through. That's not a good idea, however, with a lot of civilians in the sector.

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Post by vkerinav » Tue, 3. Apr 18, 18:47

Killjaeden wrote:It's more of a min/max thing people will use, if they are allowed to - doesnt matter how many weapons they have available. If they have a capitalship target, they want all weapons to be effective, not just a bunch -> swap for capital weapons. If they have mostly fighter targets, swap out for Flak artillery and fast firing lasers etc. It's a natural reaction.
Well, I can only speak for myself. If ships were limited to eight turret groups instead of six, with the extra two limited to corvette weapons, and a good dynamic targeting system, I wouldn't care as much about swapping weapons.

The other thing that would help this immensely is working fleets with assigned roles for component ships, but that's another discussion entirely.

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Post by StormMagi » Tue, 10. Apr 18, 20:59

Still, with the gate network reactivating, I would think there would be a small resurgence of old x3 era weapons. And I would doubt that they have all gone away, I would guess militaries stockpiled them as they switched over to more easily repairable weapons. There would probably also be systems where some weapon factories could keep producing their weapons.
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Post by Terraner x » Wed, 11. Apr 18, 21:32

+1 for classic X weapons.
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Post by vkerinav » Thu, 12. Apr 18, 04:31

I can't say I care that much what they call the weapons. Egosoft could insist that some technology has been lost, or that new inventions have made AP era technologies impotent. Probably some mix of the two.

What I want is a good variety of weapons, with sufficient differences to make them all viable.

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