Question about the ship designs.

[Mystic~Moon]

The design... well there is one design I can not really stand. Its the corvettes. They were build around the landing pad and it makes the ships look like a brick. Its basically, the huge landing pad, some engines, the bridge, some metal parts around the pad and some turrets. Not much you can do to really design a cool ship there with those pads.

[Frostnads]

Can't help but wonder if Star Citizen's worldwide talent hiring blitz adversely affected the Egosoft team.

Having a blast with X4 but also sorely miss the highly detailed mammoth ships from previous X games. So much so that I, for one, would gladly purchase various X4 Ship Pack DLCs. Gimme Gimme
Am I alone?

[Baconnaise]

Arawn and Taranis were great. The Fulmekron/Olmekron ships including the cargo were absolutely massive. Hell the cargo ships in XR could even be used for battle were so powerful. Scaldis battle barge with two gigantic station guns on it? Check. It was all so detailed including the stations with the very seksi backdrops. Rahanas looked amazing in the various configs. Newer one's sort of change the look too but I can't spot them a mile away like in XR. I will say though I like some of the designs in X4 like the Paranid and some Teladi. Paranid fighters, for example, are ugly but the M class look decent. Paint mods are great and make the ships look far more detailed like in XR imo. It's a must. Rebirth had similar issues at release and for a long spell with the lack of ships. They eventually added more faction oriented ships like the Fulmy Olmek and Styrvok etc.

[Dreez]

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.

I don't believe that the current lacking designs of the ships was decided to help frames during fights,
Besides, i played X:R and had plenty of fleetfights in that game with multiple Xenon Vs my fleets, and my frames never had issues.

The core of this, is that the design has gone backwards instead of forwards .

[RWolf]

Well if Egosoft did lose the ship/station artist that worked on X3 and or XRebirth, then that would explain why X4 is visually at a much lower tier. There are amateur mistakes riddled all over the place in X4, which reminds me of student level work rather than that done by seasoned professionals. Case in point:

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The above is one example out of many, where you can see that the artist have only modeled and textured HALF of the asset and then just flipped it over to make up the other half. EVERYTHING in X4 appears to be a symmetrical asset with badly mirrored (reversed) textures. This is really bad workmanship, its lazy and unnecessary. There are times when you might want to use this approach for one part of an asset, a piece or a certain small time prop, but not hero assets, not the entire damn game.
Just load up the game, look at any asset or texture, and see if it has been flipped and mirrored in one way or another, even entire layouts of platforms get the same treatment. Even if the user is not consciously aware of this tactic being done, their brain is picking up on the pattern and its making the world look cheap and uninspired.

Now compare that with the stations in xrebirth:

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Notice how the artist makes use of asymmetry and various forms to break up any potential pattern recognition. The tiled textures are done well enough that you also do not see a repeating pattern like you do with X4. There is a lot more visual contrast and variety going on, as opposed to mirroring everything you possibly can to reduce the workload and file size. While you can still find assets being mirrored in XR, its far less noticeable due to the actual design of the ships and use of textures, lights...ect

How could Egosoft under develop assets for X4 when they had so much to work with from X3 and XR already? The new art direction and style is stale, lifeless, boring. It is beyond generic, and it shows. I could care less about modular parts or whether something fits on a cute little square landing pad they littered throughout the universe, all they did was limit the quality by chasing after such features, especially when its not entirely necessary.

[battou]

The more I look at Rebirth and X3 and then at X4 - the more Im thinking about abandoning X4. No matter what and who says, the graphics and Style is important. If I wanted to just play trade and battles as pure data and outcomes I could play chess or economycal strategy. Right now game looks very boring, pale and uninspiring. Hope theyll release some GRAND revamp update at some point. Otherwise there is no real point in X4 when there still is X3 and Rebirth.

Kinda starting to regret that I have purchased CE.

[Jaswolf]

Same bad feeling for me about X4 ships and stations design
Everything looks the same and gives the impression to having been built with only simple forms (box, cylinder, dome) and simple shaders

The only thing I like in X4 is the stars background and planets which I find gorgeous.

I'm considering to reinstall XRebirth too, if only it could be updated with the new engine and the new map UI, I would be more than happy.

[mr.WHO]

I think that from X4 capships only two are OK:
- Collosus - kinda looks like XR Omicron Lyrae design
- Xenon I - transfer from XR

[Mr_Cossack]

Even though i love X4 i do agree ship designs are kinda meh. Especially the mushroom looking ships i hope to see some mods replace them all soon.

[furirkeeper]

The ships don't look like they did in rebirth, I agree. I never played X3. Maybe not as beautiful as before perhaps, but I still like them. Regarding the size and amount I guess they needed to rethink a few things to work with the new features, such as the combination of no loading screens, flying every ship, different interiors, the modular ship customization. They also needed to design the ships so that they could have docking bays.

I will not pretend to know why they designed them in the way they did, but these are my guesses.

With that said, I still hope they will add a lot of ships in the DLCs, and preferably larger ships.

One thing that I don't understand though is why some ships in the game that have different names still look almost identical. But I suppose the most logical reason is that they did not have time to make more variations.

Still, the game is awesome, and will only become better with all the fixes and additions.

[mr.WHO]

Unfortunately the ships in X4 cannot be better.

Look at frigates - they are that way (design way, turret placement) because they need to be able to land on M-dock. Only OSprey seems to have any acceptable turret coverage at the bottom (but not directly at the bottom).

L and LX ships cannot be bigger because they need to fit gates/accellerators/superhiways...BTW has anyone seen L/LX ships using superhighways?


The designs are limited by the X4 mechanic - that's why Paranind capships looks so bad - they took X3 designs and tried to adapt it for X4 mechanics.
If you try to adapt X3 or XR designs you will fail.

[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.

I don't believe that the current lacking designs of the ships was decided to help frames during fights,

In X:R the most massive battle was like 10 on 10. At it lags like hell. X4 can handle battles with dozens of ships.

[Cisor]

Unfortunately the ships in X4 cannot be better.

Look at frigates - they are that way (design way, turret placement) because they need to be able to land on M-dock. Only OSprey seems to have any acceptable turret coverage at the bottom (but not directly at the bottom).

L and LX ships cannot be bigger because they need to fit gates/accellerators/superhiways...BTW has anyone seen L/LX ships using superhighways?


The designs are limited by the X4 mechanic - that's why Paranind capships looks so bad - they took X3 designs and tried to adapt it for X4 mechanics.
If you try to adapt X3 or XR designs you will fail.

L ships avoid superhighways, but they do use Gates and Accelerators. They use Travel mode alongside the highways.

[mr.WHO]

Wait, then does it mean sectors connected via super-highways are unreachable by L and LX ships?

[Jaswolf]

...
With that said, I still hope they will add a lot of ships in the DLCs, and preferably larger ships.
....

Egosoft should make an official statement, telling us what we can expect in the first DLC at least.
I think that could reassure a lot of us.

[M4dSc13nc3]

I'm new to the X series so I don't have anything to compare to other than other games. I like the capital ships for the most part, I love the function of the odyesseus but the model looks odd to me, like it's almost too fat and elongated. I agree with the other posters about the frigate designs because of the landing pad. I have no idea if there is a difference between the vanguard or sentinel versions, or if there is supposed to be a difference. Honestly I would love some ship packs as minor paid add ons other than just major dlcs, I'll give you more money for that Egosoft! Keep up the great work patching btw!

[Redtor]

I know ES is a small development studio, but this very studio created utterly amazing capitalships like the Boreos and Tyr. Alot of large ships with amazing designs
and when you flew beside them in your fighter, you felt like a tiny ant compared to these benemoths, and you know if ONE of those guns hit you... you might die.

And then... we go from these amazing designs to this ..... Now yes.. i know it's comparing a Carrier vs a Corvette , but it's still the overall feel it lack of detail.

And it's not only the design itself that has aggravated me, its the fact that our capital ships are TINY when compared to any other X-game..
Back in X-Rebirth were we were flying our Corvette, the Skunk made fighters feel small. But when we flew our CORVETTE next to the Arawn or Taranis or any other of the capitalships, our Corvette felt like an ant in comparrison.

So why have we gone from beautiful ships like the Arawn and Boreas, to the ugly ship like the Paranid destroyer in X4 ?, and WHY are the capitalships SO small compared to even the smallest fighters ?.

In all honesty. The Arawn, Taranis, Tyr, Boreas.. and the majority of the older capitalships feels like they were designed by someone who had a passion for sci-fi ships, while these new X4 ships looks like they've been designed by someone learning the 3D program, by comparrison.

I think it has something to do with the player being able of actually flying these ships. I mean, kilometric ships are awesome but gameplay wise are a nightmare. We already saw how slow they were in X3, and this time Egosoft put emphasis on speed. Also, imagine trying to dock one of those things without killing enough civilians to make Jonestown look like a picnic.

[Dreez]

I think it has something to do with the player being able of actually flying these ships. I mean, kilometric ships are awesome but gameplay wise are a nightmare. We already saw how slow they were in X3, and this time Egosoft put emphasis on speed. Also, imagine trying to dock one of those things without killing enough civilians to make Jonestown look like a picnic.

I loved flying these "bricks" in X3TC and their slow speed never mattered because.. jumpdrive+SETA & sidestrafing.

[Alewx]

During the night I just had to recognize that ALL the construction ships are just the same model, regardless which race. That is depressing.
DLC for improved models and more ship variety.

[lordmuck]

I think is damn appalling what they have done to these ships. They all look like toys for a 4 year old. Plastic, fake the way they are built do not look like they should function. They do not give me the drive and motivation to work for a type of class or ship in this game.

X3 That was the real sh*t, the ships looked like they actually function, like if we were living in the future that is how I would expect them to look, the sense of size when flying next to a destroyer or a carrier, which looked like it ACTUALLY HOUSES ships!. The sense of size in Foundations is ruined, its a joke.
We went from truly epic, to utter crap with the "experiment that failed" rebirth. They knew it failed, yet persisted to build on a failed game. XFoundations came out watered down even more to oblivion from rebirth, dumbed down to the point that it just does not make sense and needs explaining. Ships dumbed down to 4 weapons, I am assuming they are targeting 4 year olds diluting X3 into water.
Weapon choices are non existent, the hype of working towards getting a bigger class ship was so damn exiting in X3 that it made you addicted. Now its like "oh ye ill just get that plastic crap, it has 2 more turrets" and you dont even bother to look at it, more so NOT EVEN BOTHER with the ships stats, as the 4 stats that are there are insignificant that they do not even matter!.

Imagine walking through the interior of Cerberus in X3.. now look at the Cerberus in Foundations. If that does not make you want to puke with sadness then go play X3 again, coz you probably forgot the feeling of power matching looks.
Rebirth was like an arcade game for me, Foundations... is very close.

I remember the excitement in an M3, and looking up all the M3s looking for something with 3 125? mj shields or an m3 sacrificing shields for 2 turrets! and then having a whole plethora of weapons to check out and see what mix of weapons will go well together for the just in case moments of wanting to take on something bigger and ensuring that I can take on a squad of fighters. The looks of the M3s were also spot on, now they are all fakeish, toylike plastic and insignificant.

The weapons in this game are massive in size, making you think 'OH THIS WILL WRECK' then when you use them its like someone slowly deflated a balloon, fizzle fizzle, again size vs looks , a joke.

At first I was happy, excited I'm sticking through the bugs that I am really fighting against in game, making things a tad harder, yet I continue to play it.
At the end though X4 is an empty shell of a game in comparison to X3 and I am not including DLC in my thoughts.

Now you only talked about designs in the OP, yet there is so damn much missing from X4 in comparison to X3 without DLC! And yes we can indeed compare X4 with X3. Or simply rename this to Rebirth.2
There is only one thing I liked about Rebirth, the need to target surface components.. that got diluted down also in this

Disappointing and salty yes. Do I have hope a little, I know Ill never see the ships like we had in X3 I know Ill never have that feeling I did in X3 that the ships gave.

So "question about ship designs" = pi*s poor if they asked for another 70 euro right now to place all the X3 ships in the game with the new turret pop ups, with our X3 list of weapons, need to target surface areas, ability to walk through the ships watching crews do their thing, id pay 140 not just 70 euro!