Capital ships should still be able to use thrusters when engines are dead.

[Axeface]

Does anyone else thinks its just weird and a bit silly that we can strip a capital ship of all movement in seconds, even with a single S fighter?
I have noticed lately that the AI is using lateral movement when docking, I think this was added with 4.0? Could this be expanded to allow capital ships to move while their engines are destroyed? At least then capitals migth be able to do something when crippled. Boarding is frankly odd in this game, you spend a minute stripping a ship and then 20 just looking at it - at least if they could turn or move sideways they could try to bring something to bear?

[tomchk]

Great point.

[Alan Phipps]

Unless the thrusters use gases bled from the engines, of course.

[dtpsprt]

In any case thrusters require something to throw and move by reaction (uncle Isaak at work) therefore their name.
Of course either Allan is right (that they throw gases produced from their engines) or there are some "gas tanks" the amount of gases is, at "best", limited so not much good...

[af_2017]

no, they should not.
i may be wrong but i think
instead they should be tough enough to tank damage even standing still
also they should have assigned s/m ships to defend itself
also they should have repair drones to fix received damage and continue their journey afterward.
thanks!

[jlehtone]

Unless the thrusters use gases bled from the engines, of course.

Similar to a ship with rudder and propeller(s) is unable to turn when it is not moving.

Ideally propulsion would be separate from engines. (Some games have had "redirect power to shields/speed/guns". )
The engines would supply power to all systems. Kill the engines and the ship is "offline".

Both main travel and turning/strafe are by thrusters of different size. Now we can target only the main thrusters, but implicitly knock off the rest too. Would it be fun to disable or jam the "rudder" of Xenon I?

[Tempest]

imo, the shieldgenerators protecting the engine(s) could be stronger perhaps, a few seconds of burst-fire from an S-classed ship (even if using powerful weapon mods) shouldn't be able to take out an engine.

personally, i like the idea of always being somewhat on guard whilst solo'ing in a capital ship (always that threat of strike-craft crippling my engines if i overextend into something's turret range) the current mechanic of dispatching repair-drones seems to work okay (could be open to some tuning) allowing thruster-usage should allow you to bring some turrets to bear. (does roll work? not at the gaming PC atm)

i guess, in the end, no capital ship should be flying without escort realistically. (i'm just glad Ai isn't smart enough to use heavy missiles or torpedos frequently)

[af_2017]

(i'm just glad Ai isn't smart enough to use heavy missiles or torpedos frequently)

AI's fate is to lose. Noone (well, at least significantly less amount of players) will play games they can't win.

[Tempest]

i've had some rare game-over screens due to some surprise missile volleys coming from a missile battery on a station.. worth a good chuckle, and a reload hopefully not too far in the past...

[Axeface]

From a lore and believably point of view thrusters would not be the same system as engines, that would be incredibly exploitable - or at least they would be able to function with backup systems if the main drive was down. Come on guys, we are talking about spaceship destroyers here... why are we discussing rudders?

And yes. Missiles should be able to fire without the turret pointing at the target, but thats another topic.

no, they should not.
i may be wrong but i think
instead they should be tough enough to tank damage even standing still
also they should have assigned s/m ships to defend itself
also they should have repair drones to fix received damage and continue their journey afterward.
thanks!

They already have repair drones, escorts and are tough.... And in any case all of that is just postponing the 20 minute wait staring at an immobile target.

[Tarsis]

Unless the thrusters use gases bled from the engines, of course.

I think that's a bit of a stretch and it can easily be used as an excuse for how the game works at the moment due to either lack of foresight or as a development shortcut. But since you went there, lets talk "real life" for a minute

I'm no scientist but as far as I know, there are basically two types of thrusters under this category: Reaction Control and Manoeuvring thrusters. They are in some cases interchangeable, but usually have a big difference in space due to limited fuel. Reaction Control is normally used for things where you need a lot and continuous thrust like taking off, landing or re-entry and it diverts thrust from the Engines to provide attitude control. Manoeuvring Thrusters are usually fuelled separately from the Engines, can be used when Engines are off and only provide a small amount of thrust (compared to Reaction Control thrusters).

The Engine's "thrust" in space is usually referred to as Propulsion. Something like an Ion Thruster is a thruster because it provides regular interval small level propulsion that adds up over time (think of little puffs of smoke). And rocket propulsion provide a continuous, very large amount of thrust.

Now, back in game mode... We don't use fuel on X4, so we could stretch and say that the X4 ships use some kind of self-fuelled Power Plant instead of regular fuel. Which means "fuel" is infinite and therefore there is no need to use the thrust from the engines to manoeuvre. The bottom line is: If thrusters needed the engine to work, how would we use them when we are stationary in space. The engines cannot be firing if you don't want to move forward; so we couldn't use those "gases" for the thrusters. It doesn't make sense to me.

Thrusters should be separate from engines as far as damage is concerned. And ideally, we should have HUD indicators that show us what is damaged in a capital ship (something like an Engine icon popping up in red). All other games I've played that has modules that can be damaged individually, stop working individually AND have indicators. The problem is that we don't really have a proper HUD. We have a radar with a Hull and Shield indicator (which are backwards - shield should come before hull) and a blue circle that I don't know what is for (no explanation in game).

I'm new to X4 and basically thought my game was bugged when my Syn completely stopped moving (not even Yaw, Pitch, Strafe). There were no warnings. I can understand if you couldn't move forward, but not being able to use the manoeuvring thrusters because the engines are down just doesn't make sense to me.

[Buzz2005]

didn't anyone realize that ships without engines can turn OOS, so why not IS?

[grapedog]

I think xenon engines are ok, because of how much they take to take down. Even a powerful S ship is gonna take a little while to take out an engine, and there are guns very close so where only an S can hide in that dead zone. M are usually gonna get pelted by something trying to tuck into that area.

The other factions engines are so much easier to destroy. Id like to see them require a little more effort, or have ships protect themselves better. Seems incredibly easy to cripple a lone destroyer that has no friends.

[al_dude]

Only Teladi knows what they are doing with engine placements.

All other races put engines (or an engine for Terran) on the back. Teladi spreads them out.

[Alkeena]

Only Teladi knows what they are doing with engine placements.

All other races put engines (or an engine for Terran) on the back. Teladi spreads them out.

Agreed on this point. Having played around with modding the AI to explicitly target engines I've gained a newfound respect for the Lizards. They're the only ones with even remotely sensible ship designs but everyone hates them for it because they're not min-maxed to the extremes.

If you died because of your engines the solution is to bring escorts, or if you insist on going solo to fly Teladi

Also since thrusters aren't a targetable subsystem (and making it targetable would be way too greebly imho) I feel it's a quite reasonable simplification to just tie them to the engine subsystem.

[jlehtone]

Agreed, a point of big ships is that they can be disabled. It could be awesome to disable thrusters and still leave engine intact, but this current combo is ok too. (I mainly shoot Xenon engines to stop them from turning.)

They're the only ones with even remotely sensible ship designs but everyone hates them for it because they're not min-maxed to the extremes.

Phoenix is awesome. Granted, it could take longer for it to chew something thicker, but it can keep chewing long after the Split have already run for a "bigger gun".

[Imperial Good]

AI already focuses ship engines. This is why losing them is quite common if you get overrun by a S/M swarm.

Most ships have quite protected engines because they are located behind the ship. In L/XL combat you should not be showing your engines to the enemy, like XR ships did. S/Ms can remove them, but in that case you need either more L/XL ships or your own S/M to keep them busy.

Phoenix engines are not that protected. Due to how small the dome is, they are vulnerable to splash damage from missiles targeting other surface elements or even the front of the ship. Out of all the ships the Xenon Branch 9 Destroyer I probably has the toughest engines since not only are the engines well shielded and inherently very durable, but they have a small area upon which you can fire at them and even have a targeting offset that makes auto aiming them difficult (manually shooting batteries often hits them more reliably).

[Tarsis]

...
Also since thrusters aren't a targetable subsystem (and making it targetable would be way too greebly imho) I feel it's a quite reasonable simplification to just tie them to the engine subsystem.

I'm OK with that concept. But if that's a game design decision, at least explain that within the game so new players like me don't think there is something wrong with the game. There are a lot things that don't make sense to a new player, for example, how is it that a missile with a 17km effective range can only be deployed/fired at around 5km of the target
If that's a turret limitation, at least show the turret's range on the Encyclopaedia... but it says nothing. Which leads me to believe the range is based on the missile (but that's not how the game works).

[chip56]

They're the only ones with even remotely sensible ship designs but everyone hates them for it because they're not min-maxed to the extremes.

Actually i think that the Teladi have the only destroyer thats even remotly designed to handle fighters while the others are more vs stations/ other L/XL ships.
I think the teladi destroyers would really benefit from implementing S size turrets (faster tracking anti fighter only turrets with less range than M turrets) and giving them a couple of those. That would really highlight that its designed for a slightly different role than the other destroyers and make them an interesting choice. Such turrets i think would also fit reasonably well on (non Split) carriers.

[GCU Grey Area]

Phoenix engines are not that protected. Due to how small the dome is, they are vulnerable to splash damage from missiles targeting other surface elements or even the front of the ship.

That is true - missile strikes to turrets on the dome section can damage the nearest engine. However a single missile is extremely unlikely to get all 3 (I've certainly never managed that when hunting SCA Phoenixes - always needed 3). That's the big contrast with the other destroyers. May occasionally lose a single engine on a Phoenix, but the enemy has to work much harder to completely immobilise it. Compared to being able to nuke the engine cluster on most other destroyers with a single torp, or even just sustained gunfire. Did not have even a single case of losing all 3 engines on my Phoenix during my Teladi game, whereas this was not a particularly uncommon occurrence in my subsequent Argon & Split games: https://www.dropbox.com/s/epky5sg7flkvq ... 1.jpg?dl=0