Question about the ship designs.

[Tomonor]

Docks are standardized to accommodate all ships within a size class. Frigates have an issue with this, as they all have to be able to fit an S dock with an S ship landed on it, but then also have to be able to land and fit on an M dock themselves. The result is that The S dock on a frigate takes a massive proportion of the ship's overall volume. Since docks are standardized, the end result is a large proportion of every frigate being visually identical: every frigate has a flat top side with the same landing pad on it.

The thing is, fighter docks were also standardized in X2 and X3 (XR didn't have any M/L ships with functioning docks for S ships, at least not in vanilla). But frigates in those games had much fewer constraints on size because they didn't have to fit on a landing pad in a dock. So you could make frigates much, much larger, and the fighter bays would be a much smaller proportion of the ship's overall design.

X3's TM ships had similar lookalike issues to X4's frigates, as they all ended up with the same fighter bay section that takes up most of the model.

Yeah, but then again, who told Egosoft that we aren't content with the old, cap-ship size frigates? I mean I get it, they wanted to make Carriers stand out more, thus they made Destroyers smaller, and Frigates even smaller (and Corvettes nonexistant), but still. I miss my Centaur.

[Alewx]

Yeah, but then again, who told Egosoft that we aren't content with the old, cap-ship size frigates? I mean I get it, they wanted to make Carriers stand out more, thus they made Destroyers smaller, and Frigates even smaller (and Corvettes nonexistant), but still. I miss my Centaur.

I feel with you.

[Phoynix]

Trading ships look great.
Mining ships look great.
Some paranid fighters are nice...

majority of fighters and military craft are craptastic... its actually looks like they had the square docking space setup and then modeled the ships inside that docking space "area" resulting in all the ships coming out square. It was a great idea in theory... but the docking spaces should have been made 3X area volume for smaller ships and all larger ships should have docked with a tether like in x3 allowing large and long ships.

Beyond that the new designs for Teladi, destroyer turret placement is very ineffective as its blocked from back/forward by its own hull, they just can't put many guns on target they seriously need upgunning due to that alone, they kinda do look cool through.
Argon is so generic to me its like big MEH, and Paranid destroyer lost its sleak look from x3 that was iconic with the Paranid race.

I expect part of it will be fixed easily in mods.

[IRONOX]

To me it looks like they had to fit many things in one object.
For once the new docking-ports and mechanics which made limits to the size of diffrent ship-classes.
Than the is the lore. Due to the shutdown of the jumpgates many sectors lost supply and with thr rise of the Xenon thread they need to build more ships with less resources in a small amount of time.
So that ships got smaller and not as well-designed and eye-pleasing is bound to these circumstances.

Maybe ES will release some ways to get better and nicer ships later on when the economy is growing or we are able to activate more gates to new/old sectors

[Dreez]

It's not just the size i'm questioning. It's the apparently lack of detail on each ship.
Most Argon ships looks like they got some wierd plumbing going on while their main hull is made out of oilbarrels welded together.
And the Paranid ships.. just no.

The amount of details can also help making a ship "feel" larger. These new ships just looks like big legoblocks glued together
instead of actually designed with passion, like the previous installments ships.

Look at this video of the Arawn.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlXLoeF97bU&t=86s

It shows just what is missing in pretty much every M/l/XL ship in X4.
Imagine flying past that in a small ship while it's engines are humming, it was magestic.

And please take this as constructive criticism. I've been what gorgeous ships you can design and create, so why settle for lesser .

[Alewx]

Look at this video of the Arawn.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlXLoeF97bU&t=86s

It shows just what is missing in pretty much every M/l/XL ship in X4.
Imagine flying past that in a small ship while it's engines are humming, it was magestic.

And please take this as constructive criticism. I've been what gorgeous ships you can design and create, so why settle for lesser .

It also was quite obvious a Galactica look-a-like.
I loved the X3 TC designs every race its own style, even the subfactions with their own stuff. Separate but clear designlanguage.

[A5PECT]

Yeah, but then again, who told Egosoft that we aren't content with the old, cap-ship size frigates? I mean I get it, they wanted to make Carriers stand out more, thus they made Destroyers smaller, and Frigates even smaller (and Corvettes nonexistant), but still. I miss my Centaur.

You're getting caught up in names. An X4 frigate is effectively an X2 or X3 corvette, in terms of relative size and function to other ships: bigger than a fighter, smaller than a capital ship, forward guns and a few turrets, and ability to dock a fighter or two.

There isn't a complete analog for X3's frigates in X4. Some X3 frigates, like the Tiger, are somewhat similar to X4 destroyers, but X4 doesn't have any "mini-carrier" ships like X3's Shrike or Cerberus.

[Tomonor]

Yeah, but then again, who told Egosoft that we aren't content with the old, cap-ship size frigates? I mean I get it, they wanted to make Carriers stand out more, thus they made Destroyers smaller, and Frigates even smaller (and Corvettes nonexistant), but still. I miss my Centaur.

You're getting caught up in names. An X4 frigate is effectively an X2 or X3 corvette, in terms of relative size and function to other ships: bigger than a fighter, smaller than a capital ship, forward guns and a few turrets, and ability to dock a fighter or two.

There's no direct equivelant to X3 frigates in X4. Some X3 frigates, like the Tiger,
are somewhat comparable to X4 destroyers, but X4 doesn't have any "mini-carrier" ships like X3's Shrike or
Cerberus.

I honestly don't mind. I'm just coping with the changes.

[A5PECT]

For the rcord, I like the parts of X4 frigates that are unique, and I'm frustrated that their designs are dominated by their docking bays.

[alado]

Sorry but ships are like a brick, square and with a terrace to park. The ugliest ships in the universe x that i had never see.

[Kadatherion]

Indeed, this is an issue for many of us. It's no doubt at least in part a result of the constraints Egosoft put themselves in: limited size to allow for modular parts and docking, the cockpit/interior system that needs a lot of copypaste between ships because each model now requires much more work to do than old ones (you have to do both the exteriors and the interiors, and pathfind them, etc), but there also is a clear lack of ingenuity in the designs (these are issues that to a certain extent a talented designer can work around), focus and actual willingness to stay true to the original concepts.

The result is a mishmash that doesn't really care for differentiation (racial wise or role wise), something that you see happening also in their loadouts (same weapon loadouts for any ship, from fighters to carriers, only different in size/dps), or in how ships fly: the M6s - yes, they are M6s even if they call them frigates - fly almost just as well as a fighter, and cap ships aren't that sluggish either. Again, another game concept that works against itself: how space travel now works requires all ships to be relatively maneuverable and fast to not become too much of a pain to manage in 1st person for the player. Which means there's little variety not just in looks, but - and it might be an even more serious issue - gameplay.

This is a very concerning matter, because while we can expect Ego to work hard and fairly well at fixing bugs, restore cut content and yes, even fill some of the holes like the small roster of ships, we can't expect them to deviate too much from the basic game concept. You can't expect new ships, for instance, to be too much different in style compared to the ones we already have (although they could try to at least accentuate racial diversity), unless they scrap what they have made up until now in that department and that obviously can't and won't happen. Nor you can expect too heavy reworks of the travel model, meaning to a certain extent how ships behave will remain conceptually unchanged, although maybe they could be made to see reason and at least bring back the jumpdrive for the player. If not, mods will cater to that, and will anyway, just don't expect Egosoft to do much. It wouldn't even be fair to ask them, to be completely honest. They might have taken a path that objectively is stylistically worse, but that's the path they've taken. Little point in complaining to Picasso his pictures are too abstract for your tastes and you would've preferred Rembrandt, he's Picasso. Or, better said, there's a lot of point in complaining, they need to realize the result is lackluster and they need to try and improve it as much as it's reasonably possible, but little in expecting miracles.

[mr.WHO]

I wonder in what direction they will go when/if they bring back Terrans - I wasn't fan of Canteran ships in X-Rebirth.

[Depriest]

I have to agree that I was a bit disheartened by the new art style of most of the ships in game.I do like a decent few of the fighters style especially the Nodan, but of the frigate/corvettes I can only really stomach the Teladi bomber and the Paranid "corvette". Of the large capitals I can tolerate the look of the Teladi ships and I do like the Argon's capship design. The Paranid carrier at least looks like the old Zeus from X3, but their destroyer looked oddly squished and unfinished, especially around the engine section. I'm hoping that the Split and Terrans when hopefully added will bring a breath of fresh air.

[Baldamundo]

Very clear that having to integrate the modular ship components into the designs has quite badly hurt their artistic quality. Not to say it's an insurmountable challenge in the long run, but clearly it's caused something of a step back visually

[Alewx]

I wonder in what direction they will go when/if they bring back Terrans - I wasn't fan of Canteran ships in X-Rebirth.

The same as the existing ships, fit into the set limitations and work around that.
What I just do not get is, why can a shipyard or trading station have a hangar that is encapsuled but carriers can't?

[Felicitus Bigbeaver]

I'm not going to bother comparing with x rebirth.
However in X3 series there were big contradictions occuring. The ships max firing range being twice the length. Battleships last century could fire across each X sector. The differences between the corvette and bigger ships did not make sense, regarding the capabilities. X3 is a fun series of games but these are immersion breakers and now things are starting to make sense. Maybe egosoft could host a design competition.

[humility925]

I wonder what happen to egosoft old art staff, I look at job opening, they looking for Senior Artist (3D) that make me wonder how they lost good Senior Artist (3D) in first place? did he/she quit or fired or retired? Ship in past X's art of ship are good, I wonder it's had to do they lost or fired a good senior Artist, whatever reason they don't want or lost senior artist?

[Max Bain]

I wonder what happen to egosoft old art staff, I look at job opening, they looking for Senior Artist (3D) that make me wonder how they lost good Senior Artist (3D) in first place? did he/she quit or fired or retired? Ship in past X's art of ship are good, I wonder it's had to do they lost or fired a good senior Artist, whatever reason they don't want or lost senior artist?

You know Egosoft is small. A good senior artist might have better perspectives at other companies. So it is normal that they might look somewhere else for a better salary or a more safe future. Its sad for Egosoft and all of us but we can not blame Egosoft or the artist. That is real life which is hard sometimes .

[Phoynix]

x3 ships I believe were outside contracted and were actually made movie quality by mistake and had way to many polygons, I read an article about it years ago to that effect.

I wonder what happen to egosoft old art staff, I look at job opening, they looking for Senior Artist (3D) that make me wonder how they lost good Senior Artist (3D) in first place? did he/she quit or fired or retired? Ship in past X's art of ship are good, I wonder it's had to do they lost or fired a good senior Artist, whatever reason they don't want or lost senior artist?

[ScandyNav]

Military ships was made low detailed to allow bigger battles with more ships. If that was X:R models here, the fps in big battles would be...oh, no, there would not be any fps at all.

BUT !
But at the moment there is no big battles, because Egosoft still fixes their dynamic conflicts and "live" universe.