Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

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DragonEye501
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Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by DragonEye501 » Mon, 26. Jul 21, 17:45

Specifically the Large and XL ships seem cooler and bigger than the vanilla designs. Though it might just be that new car smell. What do you guys think? :gruebel:

Raptor34
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by Raptor34 » Mon, 26. Jul 21, 17:46

New design flow for the DLCs essentially.

DragonEye501
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by DragonEye501 » Mon, 26. Jul 21, 18:29

Raptor34 wrote:
Mon, 26. Jul 21, 17:46
New design flow for the DLCs essentially.
If that's the case I wonder if they are planning on redesigning the base game ships, or maybe even add one new xl battleship for each race (except Terran since they already get one). :D

MatthewK
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by MatthewK » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 10:49

I recall one dev mentioned they initially had a design constraint on max length of L ship, which was later dropped in favor of better looking ships. I believe it was around the time of Split Vendetta.

Also. When it comes to new or revamped designs, I also recall the devs standing firm on not having this in their scopes for now, so we're stuck with what we have. Personally, I wouldn't mind even a purely cosmetic DLC that would consist entirely of new ship designs for existing factions and updated models for existing ships, but I imagine the hurdles when it comes to supporting dual designs.

Flippi
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by Flippi » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 11:15

I'd really like to have more ships to choose from, instead of revamping old designs. Even if it means, putting XR or X3 ships back in.

The X3 Oddyseus would be good for the Paranids for example. And no, the X4 Oddyseus is NOT based on the X3 design. It's based on the X3 Hercules. The X3 Oddy never had a handle and had a different shape.

The old Agamemnon would also be really neat to have. And since Egosoft now seems to follow a more traditional Naval doctrine instead of the M and T classifications, it could be something like a Light Cruiser. (or Heavy, depending on the balance).

But I guess it's up to the modding community to make that happen. Gotta learn how to put my extracted AP ships into X4....
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MatthewK
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by MatthewK » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 11:57

Rebirth uses the same new engine as x4 so extracting ships from there is much easier, there are already numerous mods. With x3, after extracting the only reusable part would be a barebone 3d model that you'd need to adapt to x4 standards (standardised turret,engine,shield placement etc). With S and M its even harder as all of those need to handle walkable interiors, landing gear etc.
EDIT: I recall in vro there's a new L class ship based on old Centaur model, so you can use that as a reference how a "ported" ship would look like.

Flippi
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by Flippi » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 12:12

Rebirth uses the same new engine as x4 so extracting ships from there is much easier, there are already numerous mods. With x3, after extracting the only reusable part would be a barebone 3d model that you'd need to adapt to x4 standards (standardised turret,engine,shield placement etc). With S and M its even harder as all of those need to handle walkable interiors, landing gear etc.
I'm aware of that. I already checked some tutorials about it. It's just something in terms of modding where I am not experienced enough. Was more of a mapper in X3 for the most part. My models in this example are in the .obj format (ready to be loaded into blender). But textures are an issue, maybe because I used gmax when I converted them years ago. So I'd have to retexture them from the ground up. After I smoothed them out, due to the converting process costing a bit of detail on the models. And that is all before talking about interiors, as you already wrote. A bit much for a 3d modelling noob, especially if there aren't that many tutorials and information to rely on yet.

I'm still surprised X Rebirth ships aren't part of the base game though. Especially the smaller ships actually looked good. But still don't forget the larger ships like the Arawn. Really, I hope Egosoft decides to put those back into vanilla, so we don't have to go modfied for those.
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DragonEye501
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by DragonEye501 » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 18:01

I've tried the XR ship pack mod and the Ship Variation Enhancement mod and while I do think the designs are cool I also felt like they added alot of bloat interms of ship selection. I enjoy how, in vanilla, every ship has a specific role currently with each faction have a single scout->heavyfighter->destroyer->carrier. But now with the Terrans getting an extra M class and XL, I kinda hope they add similar class ships to the old factions.

Also while alot of the XR designs do fit with the argon/teladi designs unfortunately nothing from XR really matched the specific Paranid designs (which is the faction I'm currently playing.)

I know a lot of people don't really enjoy the Paranid designs but I think there super cool with how slick, fishlike and beige they are. I just wish they had one super battleship like the Poseidon in ashipmod.

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mr.WHO
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 18:11

The Difference between Split/Terran is also a subtle one - they are much better designs, with superior turret placement with overlaping firing zones, less blind zones and better firepower concentration.

Look at how crappy the Behemoth and Phoenix are.
The Odysseus only hold better because higher than normal amount of Large turrets.


I'll take Rattlesnake and Osaka over any vanilla destroyer.
Same with Raptor and Tokyo - much better than vanilla carriers (albeit again, Zeus is somewhat usable due to turret placement, unlike Collossus and Condor).

GCU Grey Area
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by GCU Grey Area » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 22:13

mr.WHO wrote:
Tue, 27. Jul 21, 18:11
I'll take Rattlesnake and Osaka over any vanilla destroyer.
Same with Raptor and Tokyo - much better than vanilla carriers (albeit again, Zeus is somewhat usable due to turret placement, unlike Collossus and Condor).
Other way round for me. My primary use for destroyers is station demolition & Rattlesnake's appallingly bad for that task due to the very short range of it's main guns. In particular it's significantly shorter than the range of L Plasma turrets. This means that for the majority of stations I attack they'd be under continuous fire for a couple of km before they could even get into position to start shooting, making Expediter mods an absolute essential before I can use them (rather than just a nice optional extra). Even with Expediters the margin for error is still on a knife edge when attacking stations armed with L Plasma. During my last Split game I abandoned the Rattlesnake almost entirely & found it much better to go to all the trouble of stealing Behemoths from the Argons for my demolition fleet. Osaka's a bit better, though main gun range is still distinctly borderline without Expediters.

As for Raptor & Tokyo, for me they're the worst & second worst carriers in the game (in that order). My primary use for carriers is to transport & deploy fighters. Turrets on carriers are much less important to me since they very rarely fire (I keep my carriers behind the destroyers during battles). What matters to me much more is the speed at which they can launch their fighters. Raptor & Tokyo lack the fast launch tubes the other carrier's possess, making them orders of magnitude slower to deploy fighters from internal storage. Raptor's particularly bad due to the long tube the fighters have to fly down before they can accelerate to full speed. Both Raptor & Tokyo are also vastly more expensive than the other carriers.

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mr.WHO
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 22:55

GCU Grey Area wrote:
Tue, 27. Jul 21, 22:13
Other way round for me. My primary use for destroyers is station demolition & Rattlesnake's appallingly bad for that task due to the very short range of it's main guns. In particular it's significantly shorter than the range of L Plasma turrets. This means that for the majority of stations I attack they'd be under continuous fire for a couple of km before they could even get into position to start shooting, making Expediter mods an absolute essential before I can use them (rather than just a nice optional extra). Even with Expediters the margin for error is still on a knife edge when attacking stations armed with L Plasma. During my last Split game I abandoned the Rattlesnake almost entirely & found it much better to go to all the trouble of stealing Behemoths from the Argons for my demolition fleet. Osaka's a bit better, though main gun range is still distinctly borderline without Expediters.
Rattlesnake with Paranid Plasma turrets and you will have the same range advantage, yet better destroyer.

GCU Grey Area wrote:
Tue, 27. Jul 21, 22:13
As for Raptor & Tokyo, for me they're the worst & second worst carriers in the game (in that order). My primary use for carriers is to transport & deploy fighters. Turrets on carriers are much less important to me since they very rarely fire (I keep my carriers behind the destroyers during battles). What matters to me much more is the speed at which they can launch their fighters. Raptor & Tokyo lack the fast launch tubes the other carrier's possess, making them orders of magnitude slower to deploy fighters from internal storage. Raptor's particularly bad due to the long tube the fighters have to fly down before they can accelerate to full speed. Both Raptor & Tokyo are also vastly more expensive than the other carriers.
Why would you even need to launch entire carrier content fast, if you have it at the back? Seriously the difference is minimal and with how derpy the standard AI is you rarely even need the 1/3 of carrier content.
For how expensive it is, Raptor is actually great battlecarrier that can hold on it's own against some random Xenon K poping-out in the flank. Tokyo while not able to hold against capships is able to wipe a lot of S/M ships very fast, so it can provide cover while entire fighter compliment is away.

Plus it works both ways - while Collossus is able to launch fighters faster, it's not able to recover them as fast as Raptor and Tokyo, so overal operation time is similar.

Malchar
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by Malchar » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 23:00

mr.WHO wrote:
Tue, 27. Jul 21, 18:11

Look at how crappy the Behemoth and Phoenix are.
The Odysseus only hold better because higher than normal amount of Large turrets.
I tend to think egosoft play with overbidding at each dlc for marketing reason. It is an easy way to attract player simply proposing him more powerfull than in previous game.

Phoenix and behemoth are crappy ? How would be osaka syn or rattlesnakewith with 2 guns and 2 larges turrets ? it was standard for destroyer at start, but now new destroyers can have 8 turrets instead (four time more).

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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by jlehtone » Tue, 27. Jul 21, 23:25

mr.WHO wrote:
Tue, 27. Jul 21, 22:55
Rattlesnake with Paranid Plasma turrets and you will have the same range advantage, yet better destroyer.
Do you leave the main guns of Rattlesnake unused? How about your captains?

The point is that some ships are flown by player, but many by AI and AI does not exploit the features of the ship like we do. AI does not vomit, when they see their ship.


Syn vs Phoenix. We do know who wins hands down. Syn is enemy, so I fly the Phoenix ... 8)
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GCU Grey Area
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by GCU Grey Area » Wed, 28. Jul 21, 01:54

mr.WHO wrote:
Tue, 27. Jul 21, 22:55
Rattlesnake with Paranid Plasma turrets and you will have the same range advantage, yet better destroyer.
Nah - takes too long to destroy a station with turrets alone. Prefer to use main guns, as long as they're proper main guns with a proper range (i.e. more than whatever they're shooting at has got). Also since my targets are often Paranid defence platforms (good money to be made that way in the civil war), there's no range advantage to be had by installing identical turrets to what the target's got. Main problem is they've often got dozens more of them than my fleet has. For example, had a mission to take out this monster in one of my Split games: https://www.dropbox.com/s/npwt9i2ny53l6 ... 1.jpg?dl=0. Rattlesnake with Paranid Plasma turrets still not a good way of doing station demolition as far as I'm concerned.
Why would you even need to launch entire carrier content fast, if you have it at the back?
To distract enemy capitals while my destroyers blow them to bits from range, while taking a minimum of fire in return (ideally none). If my fighters can't get there fast enough those enemy destroyers start targeting my destroyers (rather than fighters they'll struggle to hit). Changes the entire flow of the battle if the fighters can't get into the fight quickly.
Seriously the difference is minimal and with how derpy the standard AI is you rarely even need the 1/3 of carrier content.
Difference is far from minimal in my experience. Fast launch tubes can dump the entire contents of a carrier into space in a couple of seconds (looks like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gra94im7nb2kr ... 1.jpg?dl=0) whereas a launch from a Raptor takes far, far longer due to the speed restriction while fighters are inside the ship (c.f. max speed in internal S/M docks at wharf or equipment dock) & the time it takes to cycle the deck lifts.
For how expensive it is, Raptor is actually great battlecarrier that can hold on it's own against some random Xenon K poping-out in the flank. Tokyo while not able to hold against capships is able to wipe a lot of S/M ships very fast, so it can provide cover while entire fighter compliment is away.
You obviously use your carriers in a very different manner to how I use mine. I don't put my carriers on the front line, there's always a bunch of destroyers between them & the enemy forces. I simply don't have much use for a carrier with that many turrets.
Plus it works both ways - while Collossus is able to launch fighters faster, it's not able to recover them as fast as Raptor and Tokyo, so overal operation time is similar.
Not really, don't really care if it takes a bit longer to recover fighters. At that point the battle's over so if it takes a little longer for fighters to dock it's pretty much irrelevant. Not going to lose ships just because fighters can't dock a little bit faster after a battle. However have lost ships because fighters couldn't launch from a Raptor fast enough at the start of a battle. Tokyo's not so bad in this regard (unlike Raptor at least the docks are near the front of the ship) but it's still not a ship I'd choose to use unless playing a strictly Terran-only game.

razor202
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Re: Terran and Split ships balanced with vanilla designs?

Post by razor202 » Wed, 28. Jul 21, 16:16

However, in X3, terran/AFT's capital ships are even stronger. In the back stories, terran's technology is much higher than other races' including the Xenon. Split's ship designs are more aggressive but more fragile than other commonwealth members'.

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