Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

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Dreez
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Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Dreez » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 13:29

With the release of Terran DLC and the new awesome looking designs of ships, battleships and "dreadnauts",
will there be new ships for the orginial races ?, considering all their current ships looks like complete trash
while the Terran capitals looks frikking awesome .
Of all the things i've lost, i miss my mind the most.

gevers
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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by gevers » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 20:36

The way I see it is either a Boron dlc or an "expansion" dlc with added ships for old races.
But I don't think an expansion dlc is gonna be profitable for the company.
So probably we'll see the new hardcore boron ships destroying everything here and there.
I feel so bad for the poor and battered xenon.

ITHedgeHog
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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by ITHedgeHog » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:36

I've forgotten where I watched it but Linoh said it takes about 18 months per ship to bring them to the game, so I would not be holding my breath for a raft of new ships turning up.

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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by al_dude » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 22:01

I rather want them to rebalance some of existing ships and modules.

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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Wraith_Magus » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 23:05

ITHedgeHog wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:36
I've forgotten where I watched it but Linoh said it takes about 18 months per ship to bring them to the game, so I would not be holding my breath for a raft of new ships turning up.
18 months for how many employees? I can't imagine the whole company was working on just one ship, and for that matter, the people who do work on models are typically drawing a salary constantly, so they tend to be given work at whatever rate they can accomplish it.

Statting and programming a ship, likewise, isn't nearly as difficult as modeling it, at least after you have the scripts of all the other ships to work from. Adding in a new mining ship, for example, would only take copying the code of existing mining ships. This is something modders can do, and there are mods that add new ships. Like this one, for example, which adds in ships from X: R and makes bigger versions of the existing carriers with more pointy bits at the end.

The thing is, these mods are just different stats on existing base ships with some of the components rearranged or scaled up. This is also exactly how most of the long list of ships from X3: TC and AP wound up being added - they were just reconfigurations of parts from existing ships.

The 18 months per ship thing is likely only when creating a whole new line of ships for a race. I seriously, seriously doubt that when making the Zeus or Odysseus, whichever one came second, they threw out all the modeling and texture work they had done for the previous ship and started over from scratch, and their. The Teladi L and XL ships even moreso are just the same design across the board, with only their small and medium ships (especially the Guillemot with its cool swing arms) being really distinct. They're not copying much from the Guilemot to the Osprey, but they're definitely copying from the Condor to the Phoenix. (I'm presuming they made the XL first, then scaled it down, since that would leave less texture blurriness.) For that matter, there is ONE builder ship that just has different names! Clearly that was either when EgoSoft had decided it wasn't worth it to make distinct ships and just decided to ship the game with the same ship for everyone, or there was something particular to the coding of the builders that made it hard to have any different layout.

So again, if you wanted to have unit variety like existed in X3: AP, you could just do what X3: AP did, and just rearrange the doodads on the same basic hull to give it a just-distinct-enough look. Meet the new Paranid Harpy corvette - it's like the Nemesis, but it has thinner "wings" that are angled higher with two small fins sticking off at lower angle to give it a stunted "X-wing" shape, and the seat is on the right side of the cockpit instead of the left! Totally distinct! Takes way less artist time to add new variety to the game, so long as there's one or two distinct parts (make the fins new and help give the Harpy a more distinct silhouette) and people are generally fine with only minor variations, because it does help sell the racial aesthetic, anyway.

Beyond that, what you really need to do is come up with reasons for new ships. X3: AP had missile ships, for example, but X4 basically just makes missiles part of regular ships and an option where you swap out regular weapon slots for them. I think "bomber" variants are still a good idea if you were to do something like have a version of a small ship with not-garbage missile capacity, or if you made more distinct variants of missiles, such as ones meant to be fired from longer range but require distinct ship types, so that it's a fragile sniper type of ship. Frigates from X3: TC have been completely demoted to corvettes that are just more boxy because the physics-defying "hangar" needs a stupid amount of space for its disappearing trick animation, but I could see someone making a "bigger frigate" that has two or three pads, for example, and fitting back into a role between M and L sizes while leaning much more towards the M size. (The way that the game has a hard limit on sizes of M ships due to landing space requirements can make that hard, though, and maybe it would be easier to do an undersized L ship that can't dock at M slots, but doesn't have quite as bad the cripplingly slow speed and travel mode start delay.) With that said, even just saying "It's a corvette with no turrets but 6 forward guns, enjoy!" is a decent reason.

I should also point out that, as others have mentioned, there's been a lot of power creep. Split ships are awesome, and their mk4 combat engines are just flat-out better than other alternatives. Likewise, the Terrans have just flat-out better shields, and eventually the price doesn't matter at all, so you can't exactly count on that for balance. Asgards ruin things, and Katanas are preferred playerships for many players now because it's one of the fastest ships in the game with great forward arc firepower, but if you liked the 5 guns on the Nemesis, well, don't worry, the Kuraokami is literally just a Yaki version of the Nemesis (another example of how to just reskin the same ship and make it 'unique') that is better in every way but turn rate. (But best at vector thrusters and still better at turning than the Katana.) There's a definite sense that if you're not buying the DLCs, you're missing out on some extreme powerups, so I worry that they're going to continue this trend of making ships that just obviously make the original game's ships obsolete, or have new module equipment that is objectively better in every way. (Terran shields of the same mk are weaker in overall capacity than Teladi shields, but a higher-mk shield is just always better, if vastly more expensive, but again, just make a factory and build your own. Due to the simplicity of Terran economics, it's actually really easy, outside of the stupid monster that is the computronic substrate resource requirement, so there's far less factory you need to pay to set up to have the whole Terran economy going.)

With that said, I'd honestly rather see the modeling team work on modeling actual interiors so the walking around "platform mode" isn't such a miserable joke. I think a huge problem is that they have been spending too much time on details when at this point we need quantity more than quality. (Get in a spacesuit and go look at the backs of the trading stands, behind the locked doors. You're not even allowed in there, but they set up shelves with extremely detailed junk sitting on them. Go fly into a meat factory or hull part factory - the glowy 'shields' have no boundaries, you can just fly a spacesuit or even ship right in there. They have individual lanes marked in the swimming pools and trams running along the inner ring of the Terran habitats we CAN'T VISIT. Egosoft is clearly prioritizing the external looks of stations to a "let me bury my nose into a station and count the pixels in the texture" degree, but then doesn't let you do ANYTHING in the utterly vestigial platform mode besides talk to the NPCs that have nothing to say because they haven't spent enough time making the game pretty enough in the insides to allow you in yet. They won't let you talk to NPCs that don't have meticulously voiced dialogue in every racial accent, so every new line would have to be recorded with every voice actor, requiring they hunt them all back down and bring them all back in with new contracts, so no new lines of dialogue are added for anything but linear plot characters that only need one voice actor, even when they could just be making text lines (especially in the completely abandoned "No Information Available" Teladi and Paranid encyclopedia entries) to actually expand the lore or interactivity in the game with wider mission variety.

Pares
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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Pares » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 23:29

There are assets in the game that could use some visual improvement first (planets, backgrounds, Odysseus), and a lot of race specific stuff is missing (construction ships, station interiors).

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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Ezarkal » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 23:33

ITHedgeHog wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:36
I've forgotten where I watched it but Linoh said it takes about 18 months per ship to bring them to the game, so I would not be holding my breath for a raft of new ships turning up.
I'll let the man himself give the exact times for an average ship if this thread catches his attention, but he did state the Terran battleship would have taken about 2 months if done by a single person.
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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Imperial Good » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 01:38

Adding new ships for split would potentially be problematic from a DLC perspective. It is entirely possible for players to own such a DLC without owning Split Vendetta. As such those ships would need to be available in the base game, even if they are Split themed.

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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Dreez » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 02:04

Imperial Good wrote:
Wed, 21. Apr 21, 01:38
Adding new ships for split would potentially be problematic from a DLC perspective. It is entirely possible for players to own such a DLC without owning Split Vendetta. As such those ships would need to be available in the base game, even if they are Split themed.
I don't think it's that hard. I know several games which the coregame has lots of assets but you need an expansion or DLC to unlock them,
Age of Conan is one such game, and there are many more. So i think it would be farely simple (as simple as any programming is for games)
to implement new ships to the core game but they're unlocked only when you have the DLC's for said ships.

As for Age of Conan, there are several maps that are in the core game, but you have to buy up to 4 DLC's to unlock them,
and there is no download, just a matter of unlockinig the access.
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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Raptor34 » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 07:19

I want an Argon and Teladi corvette.

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Nort The Fragrent
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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Nort The Fragrent » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 12:00

Modern computing/software advancements have made the construction of new 3D components so easy. And with a high degree of detail.
Those who say it will take too long are living in the past. Or are still using a pencil.
Better looking ships could be introduced, it’s more a question if they want to.

Those Boot ships need to go.

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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Imperial Good » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 12:07

Dreez wrote:
Wed, 21. Apr 21, 02:04
I don't think it's that hard. I know several games which the coregame has lots of assets but you need an expansion or DLC to unlock them,
Age of Conan is one such game, and there are many more. So i think it would be farely simple (as simple as any programming is for games)
to implement new ships to the core game but they're unlocked only when you have the DLC's for said ships.
If they were implemented for free this is fine. However if the user is buying them as DLC then you are effectively locking them out of a potentially significant part of the DLC they just brought due to its dependence on other DLC which they might not have brought. This is not good value proposition and does not really make sense as the DLC is effectively depending on other DLC but is not requiring that other DLC to purchase.

In my opinion a better practice can be seen with Split Vendetta and Call of Humanity. Neither directly requires the other for core content. Sure their content can interact with each other, such as Split Combat Mk4 engines on TER ships, but there is no content that requires the other to be available such as a storyline that would require owning both DLCs.
Dreez wrote:
Wed, 21. Apr 21, 02:04
As for Age of Conan, there are several maps that are in the core game, but you have to buy up to 4 DLC's to unlock them,
and there is no download, just a matter of unlockinig the access.
This practice is fairly common in the gaming industry today. Anno 1800 does this as well with the base install having all DLC content in data files but placing that content behind a pay wall (DLC licence). Blizzard Entertainment games such as StarCraft II, Diablo III and the like also do this.

X4 is one of the few games that does not do this and currently implements DLC truely as optional downloadable content. Both SV and CoH are each separately contained sets of data files that get loaded on top of the base game data files and only downloaded if the player owns the DLC. No pay walling content.
Nort The Fragrent wrote:
Wed, 21. Apr 21, 12:00
Modern computing/software advancements have made the construction of new 3D components so easy. And with a high degree of detail.
Those who say it will take too long are living in the past. Or are still using a pencil.
Better looking ships could be introduced, it’s more a question if they want to.
If it were just sculpting meshes it would not even take half as long. I imagine most of the time making ships is spent with rigging everything to work with the X4 game engine and iterating to improve them.

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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Max Bain » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 12:17

Imperial Good wrote:
Wed, 21. Apr 21, 01:38
Adding new ships for split would potentially be problematic from a DLC perspective. It is entirely possible for players to own such a DLC without owning Split Vendetta. As such those ships would need to be available in the base game, even if they are Split themed.
Why that? Wouldnt it be possible to update the base game and the dlc at the same time? So the update for the dlc contains the new ships for splits and the update for the base game contains ships for vanilla races? Or where is the problem?
XR Ship Pack (adds several ships from XR) Link
Weapon Pack (adds several new weapons) Link
Economy Overhaul (expands the X4 economy with many new buildings) Link
X4 Editor (view stats of objects and make your own mod within a few clicks) Link

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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Imperial Good » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 13:08

Max Bain wrote:
Wed, 21. Apr 21, 12:17
Why that? Wouldnt it be possible to update the base game and the dlc at the same time? So the update for the dlc contains the new ships for splits and the update for the base game contains ships for vanilla races? Or where is the problem?
Because if the ships were a free update then there is no problem. My argument is entirely from the perspective of selling extra ships for Split as a new DLC.

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Re: Will there be new ships for Arg,Tel,Par,Split ?.

Post by Dreez » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 16:04

Well, considering the hairdryer that the Paranid has, and compare it to the awesome looking Sin and Asgard,
the core factions really need their L/XL shipmodels improved, especially the Paranid.
The Sin looks like it's been created by someone who's had years of experience with 3d modeling, while the Paranid capitals
looks like they been the project of a temp, working over a weekend .

Honestly, the Paranid L/XL ships are some of the ugliest ships i've seen in any space-sim game.... ever.
Of all the things i've lost, i miss my mind the most.

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