Ship customization. What are we talking about?

[RAVEN.myst]

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I think the point here is that is not being envisioned as a "hardpoint" but rather as an integral part of the ship, essentially the gun that the ship "was built around" - rather like the chaingun that runs most of the length of the fuselage of an A-10 Warthog: you can't simply swap it out for another gun, as it would have (in this example) not only different size and weight characteristics, but also different recoil properties, as well as possibly different ammunition requirement - may as well redesign the whole plane from the wheels up....

Comparing a fighter to a capital ship is a bit silly. Fighters don't cost much, relatively speaking, and when you develop better weaponry, you build a new version. That's hardly practical or cost effective with capital ships. Any capital ship should have the ability to have its primary weaponry upgraded without replacing the whole ship. However, to do so should require a significant amount of time in 'drydock', but it shouldn't be impossible.

Technically, the A-10 Warthog isn't a "fighter", but a ground fire-support aircraft, but fair enough, scale-wise. But, you conveniently left out my other analogy (albeit a fictional one, heh.) However, as far as "upgrading" an existing system by perhaps carrying out improvements to it - sure (and yes, it would be a considerable overhaul) - but what I was referring to was specifically a weapon for which the ship essentially acts as a means of delivery and aiming, hence I said a "gun that the ship was built around". In such a case, the very design of the ship itself would (presumably) be such as to accommodate and support the weapon, and I don't mean only in terms of physical dimensions, but also in terms of ammo and/or power supply requirements, which might affect where and how such ammo is stored, how it is fed into the gun, and the ship's power core might have to be specific to that weapon; heat or radiation dissipation may be a consideration; possibly, so might recoil - one weapon might need to damp it while another might not even have it as a factor. In such a case, it would likely be simpler to build a new ship for a different such main weapon from the ground up, tailor-made and optimised to serve as platform for very specific requirements. Just to clarify: when speaking of such a main weapon, I don't mean a set of launch tubes or even the Sucellus's (somewhat underwhelming) IHC (INTEGRATED high-caliber cannon), I mean a SERIOUS weapon, something that might border on (or even be) a superweapon.

Of course, all this is very speculative, and subject to the technological framework underlying things, which is totally defined by (in this case) EgoSoft, so I'm clearly making some assumptions. Like I said, I could well be misinterpreting what was said to us... (or even if not, it's likely all still subject to arbitrary change, in any case.)

[FlightJunkie]

Thats actually great

[Morkonan]

"Spine mounted" weapons are common in sci-fi, so I can easily see analogues here. Spinal "Rail Guns" are a particularly favored theme.

A spinal weapon is typically hard-hitting, very long range, but with limited accuracy. A very large Terran "Mass Drive" would be a good candidate, here

On hard-point mounts: I'm fine with that concept, provided we have enough variety in capability and in special features that different classes of ships are, in fact, actually unique enough to qualify for different names...

What I would dread seeing is "this ship is better/larger/faster/had more cargo space/more durable" only because it has more hard-points for those features. That would be an incredibly stupid thing to do in a game like this.

On "customizable ships" : There are several systems already in other games that make ships visually customizable by the player so that they are unique. ALL use a modular design of commonly shared components. For the most part, these are loaded as needed, and what differs between them is the shading, size, rotation of these shared elements, based on null-points for a central model. (Hull, cockpit, whatever, serves as the origin point.)

In a real-time FPS/Flight-Sim sort of game, the closest analogue of this sort of system that I can think of would be my experience with "Evochron Mercenary" ship design. ALL ship designs, from player to NPC, revolve around a system of having a central origin point, like the cockpit, and a series of basic modules parented to it, with their scale, rotation, shading, etc, customized so that every class/ship does really look different. The downside to this is in such a game is having to load, for instance, fifty of these modules to represent what would otherwise be ten different ship models. The upside is a system that provides the player the opportunity to create truly unique ships while, at the same time, giving the game the ability to do the same for AI/NPC ships. (The ship is really just a collection of a central origin point with null points and modular components loaded as being locked to them, with their custom/randomized specific scale/rotation/shading/etc settings.)

IMO, that's really the only reasonable way to have fully customizable ships in a game like this, right now. Not that I'm saying I'd want that in an X game, though! I don't think it would bring anything to the table in terms of desirability. However, it could be used to give the player, only, such an advantage/tool without significant issues until they started creating such a number of customized ships that loading in a fleet of them would end up loading more assets than every ship's static model than there are ships in the game... There'd have to be an artificially placed limit on such ships, just to avoid that potential problem.

[Mackan]

Regarding concerns of front mounted weapons not being customizable, I wouldn't worry too much if X Rebirth is anything to go by. There were only two such ships in X Rebirth IIRC and they were fairly specialized in what they did. There was the Balor, essentially a torpedo boat pumping out missiles at range, and the Sucellus which is basically an already mentioned IHC cannon with engines slapped on. One could also make the argument that carriers can fit this category as well as you can't exactly swap out their internal fighter bays for something else.

In a nutshell, ships with front mounted weapons tend to have specific roles, and that's what you get them for. They also tend to be limited in stats and hardpoints compared to the more staple general purpose ships to provide a trade-off. And as their hulls are usually the main identifier, if you make their main weapons systems customizable it could prove problematic to threat assess at a glance. (Is that giant space tube a doomsday railgun pointed directly at my carrier? Or is it just a massive chaff confetti launcher here to welcome their new intergalactic overlords.)

[26072013]

Will there be some kind of feature to automate the loadout of ships? Or does the player have to equip all ships manually?

I'd like a feature where we can create some kind of blueprint for a ship (basically a saveable configuration that describes what engines, weapons and other equipment a vessel should have) and then after assigning that config either the pilot could go shopping and equip his ship automatically OR a dedicated "equipment/repair vessel" could go and install everything that's missing and available to all player ships in a certain distance.

[Crimsonraziel]

who says there is no Jump Drive in X4 ?

Bernd

[linolafett]

Will there be some kind of feature to automate the loadout of ships?

When you created a loadout you like for a ship, you can save this.
Next time you want to buy/modify a ship, you can the load and apply this loadout to it.

[26072013]

When you created a loadout you like for a ship, you can save this.
Next time you want to buy/modify a ship, you can the load and apply this loadout to it.

Cool, that should simplify things a lot! Thanks!

[FlightJunkie]

When you created a loadout you like for a ship, you can save this.
Next time you want to buy/modify a ship, you can the load and apply this loadout to it.

Cool, that should simplify things a lot! Thanks!

I think there might be default loadouts too