Ships I have Found !

[Nort The Fragrent]

Ships I have found !

How many ships have I found abandoned? Not many! I claimed 3, then lost interest. I can build the ships I need!

So what has changed from X3 to X4 regarding ship search and discover, then work out if it’s dangerous to claim. It seem’s all too easy in X4, so has no challenge. And the ships you find are off the shelf ships anyway, so simpler to go and buy or build what you want.

When I found the Falcon in X3 that had the cool paint job, or the pirate ship that was so different from all the others I was delighted, excited, enthused, and happy.

Why has the delightful feature been dulled down in X4?

Ok, as a fresh faced X4 pilot, finding a ship at the beginning is helpful. But very soon they become insignificant in the game.

Having set placing for ships to find in X3 was a bit pointless, once you read the list of where they are. (that was a spoiler) But I can see no reason why in X4 they can introduce a ship to find. At a random location, as generated by some monthly update. Like our station placement, we are told each player has a different game set up. And changes by the way each player plays. So why not a new ship to discover somewhere in your own unique X universe.

They have a plethora of ships from older games they can pop in, and yes I know some would argue the interior cockpit issue would prevent this from happening. Not so. They can still be flown as before in the older games.

Or they introduce a new ship design, one that you don't get from a ship yard’s. One you have to find. It then has the blueprints in it.

This can be an on going addition to the game with each update. Knowing that a new ship has been introduced but not knowing what or where, will add quite a nice level of interest to the game.

Or on discovery of a new ship it is just about useless at first! So then you have to find, the better engines, thrusters, cargo capacity, etc. All unique to that ship, so it becomes a task for us to complete…. (not standard as known components, but new ones) Then you can may be introduce the new items to your existing fleet. !!!

X3 ships needed quite a bit of upgrading to be functional, Trading ship cargo space a case in point. This is lost in X4 !

Finding or at least having the knowledge there is something out there to find, is a big element, to game enjoyment.

[Tomonor]

I think the following reasons are the culprit behind this issue, some of them aren't even related to ships:

-Earning Credits is faster process than it was in previous X games, rendering the feeling of progression minimal (too much rewards for too little).
-The ships are too similar statistically. Their handling, speed, firepower differs minimally only. Thus there's no real joy in trying out a new craft for they are all the same.
-Ships are considerably cheaper than they were in previous X games. This is not necessarily a bad thing (in case of fleet management), but they do lower the hype for abandoned ships.
-Paint Jobs are repetitive in their specified vanilla usage rate. The Paint Job feature goes hand-in-hand with the Online Ventures feature which is wrong imo. Paint Jobs and rare item crafting should be about ingame exploration.
-There's a number of hand-placed abandoned ships by the devs. But the ones you do actually find in typical sensor range are spawned by the Clearing Mines mission. I know it's a fixed bug at this point, but the spawn rate of these missions still hold a stigma in my game's presence (I've filled the Wharf of Argon Prime with ships I cba to equip properly).
-The ship pool is too small currently and even if they were bigger, they would be similar after a point due to the universal modular engine design and size limitations.

How to fix: Egosoft has to elevate the exploration features of the game (with randomly generated abandoned ships with the addition of danger/booby traps), but before that can happen they have to fix puny bugs like the ingame map's super-zoom problem.

Now awaiting Roger to disagree...

[Axeface]

Ships have lost their magic because everything is diluted. Being able to switch out different races engines and shields (and the difference between even these is miniscule!!!), ships stats being similar, race design language is all over the place - The Manorina and the Sunder for example are two ships made by different races yet the design language is almost exactly the same. Balance is a real problem, look at Interceptors VS Scouts - compare the Elite and the Discoverer, its very strange...
Weapons being incredibly generic "Beam Weapon" - no more High Energy Plasma Throwers or Ion Cannons... just Beam Weapon, Pulse Weapon M, Pulse Weapon S.... why on earth did they do this!? I have no idea... "lets make everything generic".
Theres not one single thing that makes X4's ships uninspiring its a combination of a hundred things, with balance being the main offender.

They have a plethora of ships from older games they can pop in, and yes I know some would argue the interior cockpit issue would prevent this from happening. Not so. They can still be flown as before in the older games.

No, it isnt that simple. Few of the ships in X3 are anywhere near ready to be ported to X4. The models just arnt anywhere near detailed enough and if you looked at them in first person on a dock, would look AWFUL. X4's modelling is much much more neat and has a lot more detail, and hold up to you looking at them in first person. The actual designs is another story, Rebirths general art direction is vastly superior to X4 imo, and X3 just has so much variety that the bad outlier designs are lost in a sea of amazing designs. Some of the ships in Rebirth are closer to the required detail (and the designs are almost all great), but would still need substantial work.

[RodentofDoom]

It's possible that there will be a balance pass at some point to differentiate the different options.

Otherwise there isn't really much point in having different versions of the same thing.

[Kadatherion]

Now awaiting Roger to disagree...

If it's any consolation, I for one do agree with every word you said

[Tomonor]

Now awaiting Roger to disagree...

If it's any consolation, I for one do agree with every word you said

[Nort The Fragrent]

X3AP ship.jpg
I have just been back into X3 AP, and the difference in atmosphere is so noticeably better in X3.
The selection of ships is awesome, and I have to say the detail in the ships is way better than some of you think.
Why why has this been lost in X4?
I hope this screen shot is included here, we want these ships back. Please.

[img]X3AP ship.jpg/img]

[Nort The Fragrent]

How do i put in an image? the insert img seems not to work or i am doing something wrong.

[MakerLinux]

How do i put in an image? the insert img seems not to work or i am doing something wrong.

You host it elsewhere on the internet -- I use imgur -- and then put the link between the img tags.
If it is greater than 640x480 it will be converted to an external link, if it is this size or smaller it will be shown in the message.
To get the direct image link, when you upload on imgur, right-click on the image and copy link to image on your browser, then paste it here.

[SadMonk]

Modelling ships for X4 probably has quite some requirements.
Primarily, you need the ships to fit into the square landing platforms and they need to have an accessible Teleporter/Elevator and Cockpit. So, you'll have to design around that somehow.
For the bigger ships, if they've got some kind of landing platform themselves, it seems you'll have to add the inside-hangar-box as well, which leads to something blocky-looking like the cerberus.

X3 didn't have those restrictions, i guess. You probably had to tell the model where it should stick to the landing gear on a station's docking port and you were fine.

(Edit:) I just realized that the X4 ships have movable wings and landing gear as well, which is pretty cool but adds another level of difficulty for sure.

Actually, I would LOVE to read about the modelling process of X4 ships if some of the artists were to write a blog post or something

[Nort The Fragrent]

https://imgur.com/KtXjBAR

[Nort The Fragrent]

Well that did not work .

[Nort The Fragrent]

If the ship design team allowed us to know what criteria a ship needed, we could give them a hand to design new ships. Or lead them toward better looking ships.
The Teladi ships are to be honest dreadful, all the same, ( my 6 year old niece has dun better )

I understand there are differences, with X3 and X4 ships. Just as there is with vintage cars of today. Yet some still travel the roads. To enter your teleport in an X4 ship and then find your self helming your X3 ship is doable. Then dock, and change ships as you did in X3. If your X3 ships sits a little odd on the dock so what, it’s a vintage ship.

[Axeface]

*snip*

https://imgur.com/KtXjBAR
Fixed it for you. And the Agememnon is a great design but the detail you talk about is messy as ****, and there are really weird decisions being made about textures too.
Look at the detail texture being used in the exposed parts of the fuselage, thousands of... windows? lights? perpendicular to the 'wings'. The geometry details on the 'wings' are incredibly messy. If you get in a small ship and get close you will see just how bad this stuff will look in first person. Its just a model that was made in a different time, artists have gotten better.

The overall design works great and its certainly one of the most memorable paranid ships, it fits with the paranid designs yet its quite different. But I think your image just reinforces how much work would be involved to fix it for X4. Basically, it would need to be completely remodelled... and someone using that model as a concept - updating it and getting rid of the weirdness could make a seriously cool looking ship.

The Deimos is better though ^^


Oh, and I disagree. Any ships added to X4 needs interiors and cockpits. Just adding them and having us as floating heads like X3 would be lazy to a degree thats unacceptable.

[dholmstr]

On the design part I'm actually ok with X4 look. They are more "real" now that we have all parts included in the design. The old Nova from X3, that still look damn good, isn't really fitting into the physics of X4. Prolly the reason old ships might never be ported. Question more on why all races went into a redesign-invention frenzy when, according to lore, resources are scares. Wouldn't it be better to drive them HEPTS out more? I do like some designs but when the detail finish is less than the awsome looking ships of XR, you do wonder why.

Back to finding them ships...

[Killjaeden]

How to fix: Egosoft has to elevate the exploration features of the game (with randomly generated abandoned ships with the addition of danger/booby traps), but before that can happen they have to fix puny bugs like the ingame map's super-zoom problem.

Honestly... i think no matter how much you elevate it, exploration as an "infinite" game concept will always remain a weird contradiction in a game like X. The universe (sector layout) is always the same, because the "modelled universe" is finite (what the devs have put together manually) and there is no procedural generation. Stations may be at different locations etc, but that's not really impactfull to the exploration experience.
After the finite universe is explored - exploration stops being viable. You can only "explore" the auto-expanded surroundings - which are pretty much 99.9999% empty space - so extremely uninteresting to explore. I write "explore" because it's just flying around without any guidance or purpose other than hoping you stumble upon something. And for you to stumble upon something devs have to randomly teleport/spawn stuff to you before you get too bored. Because there is no way you would find anything that would be hidden at specific locations far off in the distance. The chances are simply too small.
Things only got worse with increased distances between things in space -> even more space of empty.
The problem about "infinite exploration" is it doesnt matter in what direction you go or where you fly to, you wont find anything different. Its just the same events everywhere. And the gameplay it boils down to is "go max speed in any direction, wait until RNGjesus has put something in front of your nose, repeat".

I think Egosoft should not waste ressources trying to elevate the infinite exploration part... They have to do much more other and more important homework to do than this.
Whatever they would do, it would still not feel satisfying - imo. I have yet to see a compelling concept or mechanic for infinite exploration in a game without procedural world generation...

Ships have lost their magic because everything is diluted. Being able to switch out different races engines and shields (and the difference between even these is miniscule!!!), ships stats being similar, race design language is all over the place - The Manorina and the Sunder for example are two ships made by different races yet the design language is almost exactly the same. Balance is a real problem, look at Interceptors VS Scouts - compare the Elite and the Discoverer, its very strange... Weapons being incredibly generic "Beam Weapon" - no more High Energy Plasma Throwers or Ion Cannons... just Beam Weapon, Pulse Weapon M, Pulse Weapon S.... why on earth did they do this!? I have no idea... "lets make everything generic".
Theres not one single thing that makes X4's ships uninspiring its a combination of a hundred things, with balance being the main offender.

+1e10

Fixed it for you. And the Agememnon is a great design but the detail you talk about is messy as ****, and there are really weird decisions being made about textures too.
Look at the detail texture being used in the exposed parts of the fuselage, thousands of... windows? lights? perpendicular to the 'wings'. The geometry details on the 'wings' are incredibly messy. If you get in a small ship and get close you will see just how bad this stuff will look in first person. Its just a model that was made in a different time, artists have gotten better.

Many XTM ships (and therefore X3:TC) are very messy, true. I think i should know best, because i spent a lot of time trying to fix and at least half-polish almost all the XTM ships for the XTC port It was pretty madness inducing. However, looking at the ships in X4 i feel like they gained in technical art quality but suffered serious amnesia in the design department... i still cant understand what drove them to throw all X3 designs over board entirely (not the individual ships but the style look and feel). And how they thought the ginormous modules where a great idea. These things immediately destroy every ship's individual look, and make it look super generic. The ship designs appear to be victim of terrible size rules and poor module design - thats the only reasonable explanation i can find...

If i had to decide i would ditch the modelled engine, shield and any other modules on fighters immediately. The engine module should be an internal thing you can replace, but it wont change your ships look. Maybe a minimal change (e.g. the nozzle of the engine) could be a different shape. But everything else should stay the same. You cant interact with it anyway like on capitals.
I would also eliminate the landing platforms on ships for everything except carriers and replace them with small docking collars. Ships can only dock internally in other ships 2 classes lower (not 1!). And lastly and most importantly, shrink down turret and weapon size by 50-66% and make turret bases circular instead of rectangular and only as large as it actually has to be and not 3x the turrets body. Integrating a circular base on an angular ship is no problem, it fits generally. Integrating a large rectangular base on a smooth looking ship shape however should be among the "top 10 things to never do in design" - as X4 paranid capitals clearly demonstrate. With the terrible platforms on small ships gone we can also elongate fighters and smaller ships more (the chubbiness is very likely result of the docks being like they are now in X4)
With those measures ships we can then ... throw all the X4 designs out and design proper looking ships

[Nort The Fragrent]

Cough ! A snip is a new ship design I am working on. Cough.

[Tomonor]

-too long quote-

I think it still can be medicated with randomly generated content, however there must be clues before the player is able to find these, thus the whole system can be split into different stages:

-Stage 1: The player hears a rumour (by npcs talking on chatter/in person/by text message) or finds a clue (long range scanner bleeps in the distance/light source reflecting in the distance/randomly or not randomly received data burst directs you in that general direction/debris scattered that way/etc-etc.) [Important note here: if the first clue is ignored by the player, the rest of the clues/encounter/mission will not spawn, preventing further stress on the computer]
-Stage 2: The player starts exploring (looking for further clues) and finds the precious object
-Stage 3: (optional): The precious object might be guarded by NPCs/Entities, or requires an effort to unlock (puzzle/shoot the lock/key required/has to be delivered)
-Stage 4: Profitsss.

As much as "empty space" matters in this game, Egosoft could utilize its exploration aspect. The randomly generated lockboxes (working now) are a good start imo. But if we were able to find other things too (including ships), that would be awesome.


As for X4's exploration satisfaction, well it is to be expected to be somewhat lower than in games that have dedicated hand-placed unique secret areas. But if I think about it, even Minecraft has these randomly generated areas (especially the mineshafts) that are nothing out of the ordinary, yet can be both challenging and satisfying.
I do agree that Egosoft has to fix more important issues with X4 beforehand, but that shouldn't stop us from mindstorming and daydreaming.

[Killjaeden]

1 - I suggest not to get lost in the narrative too much when brainstorming the concept of exploration -- The narrative of exploration always sounds cool. Clues, scrambled signals, scanner bleebs, mysteries, deep space, forgotten stuff, strange places, etc. Yes i want that, gimme gimme gimme. However, if you break it down to the actions that take place instead of the narrative, it becomes clear that your proposal would just prolong the "fly into any direction, get reward" by adding intermediary waypoints. It would boil down to "randomly receive a 'go to' mission, fly to location to get new 'go to' mission , <repeat a few times> , ... get reward"

2 - No matter how well you sugarcoat the objective "go to place to get stuff" with narrative, it gets boring old quickly, because flying is not challenging, mechanically stimulating, visually interesting or interesting in any other way.
And the bad part about narrative in procedural missions is that it wears down extremely quickly / you see repeats very quickly. Plus it requires writers, or even worse, significant time for several voice actors. Your proposal would work well for a set of handcrafted missions. Missions where you can place something interesting for the player while doing the mission. It would not fare well as a procedural type of mission.

Your point 3 - would be also very repetitive, because fighting you do all the time. It would be interesting if the fight was "special" but on a procedural mission the "special" bit wears off after 2-4 times of the same event, even if you have anything special to "offer". Puzzles you would have to design manually, so they repeat as well. I dont remember exactly, but didnt X3AP missions or the community mission have "puzzles" in them? They where not very popular if i remember correctly. And if you think of easy to execute puzzles... skyrim "puzzles" spring to mind... which almost every player would get (i guess?). Except those puzzles are so boring and uninspired it would be a waste of dev time to implement...

Ask yourself why you want exploration missions ? Because you want profits? Or because you want to experience something new ? What would your proposal offer after doing it for the 4th time? Only the profits part is the answer, there's nothing new or exciting in it anymore by that time.

As for X4's exploration satisfaction, well it is to be expected to be somewhat lower than in games that have dedicated hand-placed unique secret areas. But if I think about it, even Minecraft has these randomly generated areas (especially the mineshafts) that are nothing out of the ordinary, yet can be both challenging and satisfying.

Minecraft:

• It generates new worlds, so you can end up surprisingly very cool constructs by chance. No mineshaft is the same, and there are different archetypes that can blend into each other if you are fortunate. Many different "worlds" (normal world, "under world" aka caves etc, nether, etc) with different biomes / differences in look and feel
• Many different and diverse travel boundaries/ challenges to travel, depending on worlds. In caves you are motivated to only going into the direction the level dictates and only divert at junctions (way of least resistance). You never know what lies behind that next junction or which way is the correct way. There are challenges to navigate - There are differences between going up or down or level. Especially vertical movement (up/down) requires more efford/ can be more challenging. You can modify the level, requiring you to make decisions and execute some actions on your own, e.g. dig through a section.
• Atmosphere during exploration (in caves specifically). In caves its dark and you get the "fear of darkness" - step into the unknown, this sort of thing. Additionally, there is usually a feeling of claustrophobia. Both feeling mix , rise and fall. There are moments of relief of feeling claustrophobia when you stumble upon a huge cavern, but then the "fear of darkness" spikes upwards because there are so many angles and possibilities/dangers that could wait (as opposed to just a narrow corridor where you can spot every possibility at one glance. Until you fully lit the place. Sometimes the place feels boring after you lit it, because it doesnt look as impressive as you thought it could look and isnt as dangerous as you feared it could be. Other times it looks even more impressive than you imagined, but the fear of darkness is gone -> less exciting to be in this place.
• Movement is mechanically interesting. You have 4 directions + jumping + sprinting + crouching + block building. Navigating tricky section requires good timing at times, measure of eye, carefull approach (jump and run appeal).
• There are stakes. You can get lost, you can run out of ressources. There are holes to fall into, lava to burn you, things to fall on you. Enemies who are normally just a nuisance that can attack and result in you getting knocked off a ledge. (you fall into lava you lose all loot you collected). You can't reload. If you lose ingame assetts (if you had any.. at your time of death). If you die you have to decide if you want to try and recover your items or not -> next adventure .

The ingame reward of the exploration is often not the key part to making exploring a fun experience. It's just the cream on top/ carrot on stick to encourage exploration. The journey in minecraft cave exploration is a big part of the reward and the challenges it involved. I dont think there is any other game that is not a minecraft clone / alike that offers a better and long-lasting exploration experience as minecraft.

X-Series:

• The universe is a static piece, only stations and ships can vary. Beyond the hand crafted systems there is a whole lot of nothing. You wont see anything different or new after exploring the hand crafted part (atm you will see nothing whatsoever even).
• Navigating new space is boring/ not any different to traveling in known space. There is no necessity and no benefit to not travel straight from point A to B. It doesnt matter in what direction you travel/ there are no limitations either (by that i mean it makes no difference going "up" "down" "left" etc). Avoiding objects and obstacles is super easy because of that. The only "boundary" in space is distance and "vision/scanner range". Distance is a super boring/ weak boundary, because to overcome it you just need to wait longer or a faster ship... Vision is also a bad boundary when combined with a "landscape" that has practically unlimited freedom of movement, because it means that finding things by chance is super unlikely. In comparison, in Minecraft the game places a chest in a cave. You will likely find it, because there the space to look for it is actually quite small. In X4 you will never find it, unless the vision/sensor range is proportional to the volume of space you search in
• The movement is mechanically uninteresting you only stop or slow down when you land or fight (maybe not even there). 95% of "flightaction" is by moving the mouse around and engaging travel boost so it doesnt take forever to get anywhere...
• In X there are no real stakes when flying your ship personally during exploration. If you die you have reload the game after the game over and "catch up" to whatever you where doing before your death. If you are lucky you only lost a few seconds. If you are unlucky you lost minutes, hours or more. You lose personal time but you never lose ingame assets by dieing.

So saying "minecraft does it, so it should be possible for X to offer nice exploration" is not very thought through.
And if you want exploration, less available space to fly trough is better than more... As counterintuitive as that may sound, its true.

[Tomonor]

What's with you guys nowadays anyway? Going for the 'most anti-fun person on the forum' title?

When I think of exploration, I expect to find something beyond the standard plane of the sector, let it be lore-related (that indeed requires writers/voice acting), loot related, a bunch of enemies to shoot down, or just random/fun/interesting encounters that would justify the idea of flying beyond the damned imaginary box you are settled in (the one big feature Egosoft kept advertising as ground breaking). I wouldn't care if it gets repetitve (since it is bound to, duh) as long as it's put well together and provides proper risk/rewards.

However, if you break it down to the actions that take place instead of the narrative, it becomes clear that your proposal would just prolong the "fly into any direction, get reward" by adding intermediary waypoints. It would boil down to "randomly receive a 'go to' mission, fly to location to get new 'go to' mission , <repeat a few times> , ... get reward"

Isn't that just the case with any open world game's any mission, ever?