Question about the ship designs.

[furirkeeper]

Regarding docking and jump gates with very big ships.
In rebirth the biggest ships could also fly through the jump gates, so unless these gates are smaller that should work.

But otherwise I see no reason why big ships would need the jump gates, just give them a jump drive. The jump drive could take you to your own navigation beacons that you have placed, that could work I think.
Also, why would the really big ships even need to dock at a station, if they make them "work" like a station other ships could dock at them instead, so all resupply go via a cargo ship.
Also since they would be very very big they should also be very very expensive to buy and almost impossible to capture.

I also wouldn't mind paying to get this these things in a DLC.

[Barnardstar]

Overall I think the ships look okay. I like the fighters the best, and the cap-ships are fine (although I agree, not as good as previous games). The frigates are a different story. The Teladi, and Paranid ones are fine(ish), but the Argon (Cerberus?) is just a flying box with a few random bits stuck on. I can see that they were super restricted by having to fit a s-dock in it and have it be able to land on an M dock... but oh god is it ugly!

One other thing that bothers me about the Cerberus (biggest ship I've flown so far), is how fast and agile it is. I remember my Centaur in X3, sure it was fairly agile for it's size, but it felt a lot heavier than a fighter and it took some thought to maneuver it. The Argon frigate in this game feels like it weighs nothing.

Also, I know they want to have ships be faster, because it's no fun flying something that crawls along, etc. But capital ships should be slow, who cares if it's boring to fly. With the new map, one of the things I was looking forward to in this game was directing my empire from the bridge of my flagship and letting my crew do the flying and shooting (suicidal with the AI the way it is, I know), which doesn't really need a fast ship.

One other thing. The speed differential between the different classes seems weird. In X3 My Nova was tough, but sooooo slow compared to a disco (which was made of tissue paper). In X3, an m3 would murder an m5 without thinking about it, but only if it could catch it... Now, the difference in speed between a disco (m5 analogue) and an eclipse (m3 analogue) is minimal, and as a result, there's no reason not to upgrade.

[nqrott]

The current ship designs are just crap. There is no excuse for game mechanics or something. They just hadn't the time and money for make it right.
The walking in station feature is just useless, it is an eycandy for 10 or 15 Minutes to see your own ships starting the first time. EVE Online was starting to develop suchs a feature awell and discared it.
X is a space eco sim not a first person shooter.
I read some arguments about the M and S dock have to be on top of the ship, i ask why?

Why i can't fly into an Hangar with my S and Dock there, some Stations have it and even the SPacesuite is working in this way. That would be fine for me i don't take care how the ship will be stored inside the hangar.
In x3 many Ships had to dock on docking clamps, we still have that in X4 for the L and XL, why not mix it? Huge stations have a hangar you can dock and walk around for eyecandy, Small stations use their clamps, 90% of the station you use the elevator, you really care if that elevator is on your ship, airlock or walk 10 meter towards it?

I can remember on situations in x3 where stations are overusages, and your freighters have to wait for free docking slots. that never happend to me in x4 i even see only my ships docked in stations, or npcs at my stations but not npcs on npcs stations. If you see starting a NPC ship of an M dock, the platform is opening and the ships is coming from below. So there is an internal hangar for NPCs already.

I will go further and say X4 missed here even a chance, you have the new and nice station build options, why not use this, the dock could be a limiting factor for your production and force you to build more docks to have no waiting queues for the S and M freighters.

Currently X4 forced me back to X3 with LU mod.
Perhaps some day we will get a new X3 (design, big Economy, epic fleet fights) on a new multithreaded engine with a better gui and the options of the new interactive map, to use the mouse and set commands via MAP is the ONLY improvment from x4 compared to x3!

[shinzah]

I can remember on situations in x3 where stations are overusages, and your freighters have to wait for free docking slots. that never happend to me in x4 i even see only my ships docked in stations, or npcs at my stations but not npcs on npcs stations. If you see starting a NPC ship of an M dock, the platform is opening and the ships is coming from below. So there is an internal hangar for NPCs already.

As a miner, docking queues are the bane of my existence. I run into them everywhere at busy ore/ice/silicon processing stations in M class.

There are tons of free S class docking bays though, there's just not many S class ships that need to be docked or docking at a lot of stations.

[Jaswolf]

I've reinstall X rebirth +DLC , "vanilla experience" deleted all the mods I've collected so far(30+), put in max settings, BLOWN AWAY !!!

The visual experience, the atmosphere, the lighting, the shaders, even the FXAA are much better than what we have right now in X4.
The ships design are more "mature" whereas in X4, to paraphrase a youtuber that I've watched recently, "look like plastic toys".
The engines performance are on par between XR and X4 maybe slightly better in X4.
My only guess would be that the design choice was made to cater a new audience that is more attracted by simple slick and colorful design like in No man's sky ?

So far, the only visual stuff that I like in X4 are the space backgrounds (skyboxes), planets and nebulae. They remind me a lot of those from Eve online but better.

I fully know that art perception is totally subjective, but I think that giving some feedback can somewhat be useful.
I don't blame anyone nor want to hurt anyone, it's just my opinion and fully know and respect that a lot of passionate work have been poured in both games.

[venus65535]

I'm no professional in design, but even I have seen some 'flaws' in many models in X4. Some perfectly ellipse shaped window or frames with little regard of its construction process, tiny/fragile structural support for major fighter component like engine or weapons, dangerous exposure of cockpit window (unless it is as hard as armor) in a combat vessel, etc etc. I can go on but lets stop there.

When design a ship, not only its function but also its construction process, structural stability and pilot protection must be taken into consideration. Shapes could be design in favor of its building process or function like modulized armor plating or windows made up by prefab parts, like how its done in many real world engineering to speed up production.

For ground-based aircraft we study aerodynamic to make them properly function, in vacuum of space at least we can use basic principle of law of physics: minimizing propulsion we need and get the max acceleration while keeping the ship in one piece. I know that's how rotational engine came from, but some of them seems too fragile in overall design to me. I recommend to understand the basic concept of strength of materials and structural mechanic to apply them in the designs. For instance structures connecting components which generate high torque should be taken extra care of, because not only do they have to be able to withstand a certain amount of incoming fire (amount decided by ship engineer, foreseeing how tough it should be), but also have to keep the ship in one piece under high speed maneuver.

Finally, the cockpit/bridge in most ships is the single most vulnerable spot, as long as the glass it used is weaker than hull in terms of strength. I do think large coverage of glass or exposed positioning reduces survivability of pilot in combat. We can compensate lost of viewing range by, for instance, extending in-cockpit UI to display holographic or transparent visual feed received by ship sensor even if they are blocked.

About artistic or balancing aspect, there's some nice principle in design I recall when I saw someone in this thread mentioned asymmetrical(contrast) and repetition, although its abbreviate term sounds a bit... weird: https://www.instructables.com/id/CRAP-principles/
I came across this concept when I was learning about city planing in city skylines and it did helped in some way. I think large structures like capital ships and stations can also benefit from utilizing them.

To me capital ships are like giant bricks of firepower with immense durability, a flying stronghold in space. Perhaps more like a city than a ship. Try to avoid weak spots like skinny structure or outgrown 'limps', and play its opponent during design phase to see how to break it apart (physically). Many many lives depends on its survival after all, the design of a capital ship should be taken great care.

Hope this helps. To be honest, I do hold the desire to see some improvement in ship designs, maybe even a total overhaul of them. I know it may be too subjective to say good-looking or bad-looking, but at least being reasonable and physically correct is something can be achieved by applying scientific knowledge and design principles.

[Baconnaise]

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.

I don't think you played XR at all.

[lordmuck]

About these turrets vs PC performance. I am sorry but I think that is BS considering what we have available in terms of hardware. If your pc is struggling to handle large fights in X3 or Rebirth then I think it may be time to upgrade. OR the devs can give us an option as to how many MAX ships to be spawned in a fight / some control over ship spawning if your PCs cannot handle the so called "expensive to calculate turret tracking if we have 10 turrets rofl" AND if it is true, then I doubt you chose the right game engine for the job. X3 we had so many weapon and turret slots.. What has changed? Our hardware has devolved ?

[Solflame]

Am I the only one that actually like the new designs, at least the small ship ones? The ones from Rebirth made zero actual sense on how they'd work in a real-life situation, which is why they were scrapped for X4 where every ship had to be walk-on/walk-off, and this is w/ magic teleport elevators!

The Arawn was probably one of the few ships that *might* have made the conversion, but it was designed to use a completely different launch system than any other ship.

Honestly, given the new restriction they have, I think they did a great job. Do I want to see more variety, especially in cockpits/center portions of small craft in the future? Yeah, definitely! Do I think Egosoft did a bad job w/ what they did so far? No, not really. About the only ship I *don't* like is the Eclipse, and even then it makes *lore* sense the way it's designed. Just wish there was more reinforcement on the brace connecting the center portion to the back half.

[Mrouija]

The walking in station feature is just useless, it is an eycandy for 10 or 15 Minutes to see your own ships starting the first time. EVE Online was starting to develop suchs a feature awell and discared it.

I tend to agree that it was ultimately resources expended that would have been better spent elsewhere, even on ship internals. I can see having the different offices on stations and such, and I kind of like them-- but I don't see much reason to be able to WASD to them. A simple office/destination screen would have sufficed for I think 99% of people. Internal docking bays, hangers and more complete flyable-ship interiors to me, are a missed opportunity. I'm honestly surprised this didn't get axed early on during a, "What does this actually bring to the table?" conference.

Though I don't think Egosoft would ever admit it, I'm hoping that most of the work they've put in on Foundations is, as the title suggests, foundation work. Much of the rest, for better or for worse, is drop in proof-of-concept stuff that will in time be far more refined than it is now.

That's my hope and, to be honest, that's how it has been in the past.

Having said all that:
Bar module when?
Casino module when?
I want to set up my warzone rec center with booze, weed and dancing argon girls.

[Kadatherion]

About these turrets vs PC performance. I am sorry but I think that is BS considering what we have available in terms of hardware. If your pc is struggling to handle large fights in X3 or Rebirth then I think it may be time to upgrade. OR the devs can give us an option as to how many MAX ships to be spawned in a fight / some control over ship spawning if your PCs cannot handle the so called "expensive to calculate turret tracking if we have 10 turrets rofl" AND if it is true, then I doubt you chose the right game engine for the job. X3 we had so many weapon and turret slots.. What has changed? Our hardware has devolved ?

You are conceptually right, but let's not put X3 into it, please, or you'll sound wrong. Large (not even very much) battles in X3 would slow down to a crawl even if your hardware were a quantum computer born of an illicit relationship between Jim Bridenstine and Elon Musk while Neil deGrasse Tyson was watching. Because it's a single threaded application. There's a reason why, to be able to make a mod focused on offering battles with more than a couple M2s and a dozen fighters, Litcube had to reduce weapon firing rates - among other things - almost 10 times than in vanilla.

[Kadatherion]

Bar module when?
Casino module when?
I want to set up my warzone rec center with booze, weed and dancing argon girls.

Human, plz, Split girls > Argon girls any time.

[dholmstr]

I just don't understand how they made that much details in X:R on capitals (and turrets), and now can't to get more object than few shields + guns in X4? Is it really the Vulcan thing or what? Why did a ship like the Arawn not being ported to this game? Yes the Arawn and the Fulmecron had just craploads turrets, maybe way more than was practical. But the while component shielding and turret batterys, why did they have to go? That whole mechanic was actually a good idea, maybe not fully fleshed out but...? Again is it the Vulcan? The designs looks were allready there, why not keep them?
And from a lore standpoint (yes X:R was a sidetrack) the Arawn was the last thing coming out from Argon prime before the gate system fall, it was a flagship, a monster, the bigshit when crap starts hitting the fan. Now it doesn't exist at all??? Even the K is there...and the M/N. They even took an old relic ship from X3, sooooo.

[lordmuck]

About these turrets vs PC performance. I am sorry but I think that is BS considering what we have available in terms of hardware. If your pc is struggling to handle large fights in X3 or Rebirth then I think it may be time to upgrade. OR the devs can give us an option as to how many MAX ships to be spawned in a fight / some control over ship spawning if your PCs cannot handle the so called "expensive to calculate turret tracking if we have 10 turrets rofl" AND if it is true, then I doubt you chose the right game engine for the job. X3 we had so many weapon and turret slots.. What has changed? Our hardware has devolved ?

You are conceptually right, but let's not put X3 into it, please, or you'll sound wrong. Large (not even very much) battles in X3 would slow down to a crawl even if your hardware were a quantum computer born of an illicit relationship between Jim Bridenstine and Elon Musk while Neil deGrasse Tyson was watching. Because it's a single threaded application. There's a reason why, to be able to make a mod focused on offering battles with more than a couple M2s and a dozen fighters, Litcube had to reduce weapon firing rates - among other things - almost 10 times than in vanilla.

Ah yes ! now I remember that it was single core. Well.. what about today's engine? .. I donno.. X4 is just not sitting right with me. It should not bare the 4 as in a continuation of 3 as it is a dumbed diluted empty shell that has nothing to do with x3.. This is rebirth2.0.

[desiriel]

I've a positive opinion of X4 even with its evident shortcomings in terms of balance, dynamical universe and AI/interface. But I'm pretty confident that Ego eventually will sort these out.
Graphics and music in X4, on the other hand, have been a massive disappointment. Those were the two aspects which made poor XR really shine. Playing XR you could immerse yourself in the beautiful universe or the occasional battle and forget for a while its other problems.
I expected for Ego to keep in X4 the beautiful of XR, not to downgrade it and make it ugly (which, in a sci-fi game, makes for a good part of its attraction factor).

[Imari]

Hmm compared to the new argon carrier, not so sure if it is really that small. Standing outside my elite landed on a carrier, I still feel tiny next to the capital.
But never really got into XR so do not know about the comparison between them.

But the abrupt and massive change in design philosophy between the argon ships from one game to another is quite bugling.

The current carrier has like 10+ turrets, only turret variants are size S and M. Same with destroyer, it also has the twin cannons which are pretty lame. Don't need to compare to the behemoths in X3. We drop 1 level lower, XR Arawn has 70 turrets. It also has an internal hangar(though non-functional). That speaks volume about its size. The Taranis destroyer has 40+ turrets with a nice array of weapons and anti capital beams. Sucellus, one of the smaller destroyers has almost 30 turrets with a spinal mount IHC anti capital cannon. Even the Teladi ships had better designs and stats then their current X4 clones.

X4 ships are extremely disappointing.

[mr.WHO]

The capships in X4 definetly feels undercooked.

Frigates are tiny that they should be classified as Heavy corvettes (while Nemesis is correctly classified as corvette).
Destroyers feel like they should be classified as frigates.
Carriers need more guns, even if they are only light anti-fighter guns.
Last, but not least we need proper XL Detroyer/battleships.

[Dreez]

Take a look at this amazing screenshot of the Tyr ship from X3:TC, a 10 year old game in an "outdated" engine.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... olor=black

10 years ago...

Even this simple fighter looks SO good with the "outdated" engine.
https://x3tc.net/x3_img_ship/1adee6d5b2180sc.jpg

The magestic Aran, THE trophy to have in X3, and perhaps one of the coolest designed and original ships i've seen.. makes you go "wow" when flying past it
and no matter what ship you fly, you feel like an ant next to it.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... olor=black


So... what happened .

[lordmuck]

Take a look at this amazing screenshot of the Tyr ship from X3:TC, a 10 year old game in an "outdated" engine.


10 years ago...

Even this simple fighter looks SO good with the "outdated" engine.


The magestic Aran, THE trophy to have in X3, and perhaps one of the coolest designed and original ships i've seen.. makes you go "wow" when flying past it
and no matter what ship you fly, you feel like an ant next to it.




So... what happened .

My thoughts exactly on all the ships from X3 in comparison to x4. X4 not just fails, is blown into oblivion with these absolute atrocious models/functionality of ships turret locations/turret amount and textures.

[Killjaeden]

To me "the ships had to fit into the class limits" is not a valid reason for bad looking ships. The class limits where arbitrarily decided upon by the devs in the first place, they where not set in stone, like they are now for modders. When the limits, class requirements and standard component sizes decided on paper or in some meeting room stand in the way of nice ship design, the limits and class sizes and features are poorly chosen and need to be adjusted - simple as that.

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.

To be fair - there was a lot of mirroring in X3's later ships particularly X3:TC ships - that sometimes where mirrored twice or thrice. The craftsmanship of many new ships in X3:TC was pretty low. The key difference is that they had cool shapes and design and they all fit with the race design. And since you didnt land them anywhere to walk around them and put your face into their hull, it wasn't very noticeable.

The argon ships look very clumsy to me, they have nothing of the elegance of X3 Argon fighters. The teladi ships dont fit the race at all, they are in fact more elegant than argon ships...