X-Rebirth No piloting Capital ships!!??

[BiancoAngelo7]

if there aren't newer and better cap ships in rebirth, along with newer and better ways to use them and be immersed in them, then I can pretty much guarantee that I wont be buying the game.

[Shads62]

I'd like to see something like Homeworld 2 incorporated into rebirth, where you are more of a fleet admiral directing individual ships. I especially liked the ability to target the enemy capital ships subsystems in Homeworld 2. But then I love micromanagement and I know many people don't.

chuck Homeworls 2, Freelancer and all the xgames into a pot and stir

[saco3]

It would be really cool if I could give orders from the bridge instaid of flying it my self though that is enjoyable too.

I just really hope they work on the Auto pilot some more I mean that level of stupidity makes me think twice about using it especially since most sectors have asteroids in them.

[Drewgamer]

A lot of people don't really like change (I know I'm one of them). But cmon people, this is egosoft we are talking about. I'm confident that the creators of the X series can come up with a fun way of controlling capitals. I mean let's face it, with the current system you are essentially just tellin the ship where to go, with limited control of the gun batteries. Whatever egosoft comes up with will be much deeper and enjoying (i hope xD).

[AgamemnonArgon]

It's less change and possibly removing an element of FUN.

How many people would have gotten as far in X3TC without their personal (Insert ships here) : Boreas. Cobra. Shrike. Tiger.

And of the course, the Panther.

Would I use a Battlestar MOD if I could not Command lots of Battlestars.
Er - no.

I would buy the game, but like so many others that I own, it would end up spending time on the shelf, not in the drive unit of my PC.

It's only a PC game, but a rather good one, and I would like to maintain every element of fun.

Care to remove something ? Take out the lighting that makes it too dark, or dusty.

Not Commanding Capitals.

That being said, I will still be buying the next game, because it supports the company, that have made my all time favourite games.

Nothing I own is as good as X3TC.
A superb game.

[imperium3]

I'd like to see something like Homeworld 2 incorporated into rebirth, where you are more of a fleet admiral directing individual ships. I especially liked the ability to target the enemy capital ships subsystems in Homeworld 2. But then I love micromanagement and I know many people don't.

chuck Homeworls 2, Freelancer and all the xgames into a pot and stir

I think you can be a happy man then, because Bernd already confirmed that you can target ship subsystems. That's probably the best thing that I've heard about the game so far

[gilboa]

Just adding my 2c worth (given the number of times this has been said in this thread alone, we could more-or-less finance the development of X:R...):

0. The AI path finding is, ummm, not particularly good at, well, piloting things. (though as others have said, trying to get a decent path-finding for so many concurrent objects without dropping a 24 core machine to its knees is almost impossible)

1. Ever had a chance to see a docked USN carrier in real life? This thing is ***HUGE***. Somehow Egosoft didn't quite manage to convey the scale difference. Furthermore, given the nature of space travel, capital ships capable of traveling the ***HUGE*** distances of space, will make today's super carriers look like an undersized dingy. (More on that later)

2. Speaking of carriers, the speed model is completely broken. One of the biggest ironies of ship design is that most USN ships are incapable of following a USN carrier running at full throttle (E.g. a Gerald R. Ford class super carrier is capable of circumnavigate earth at an ***average*** speed of close to 30kn, while a Arleigh Burke class destroyer will simply run out of fuel after ~1000nm or so). Same goes for airplanes: The SR-71 would make an F-16 look like a toy-plane; The 1950's super-sonic B-70 would have outrun most, if not all interceptors including contemporary ones; A F-15 or F-16 would be hard pressed to chase a B-1A (the one that got canceled) or a TU-160 for more than a couple of minutes, and the same goes for the Concord and TU-144.
The reason for the above is quite simple: Trying to stuff weapons + pilot + sufficient fuel for an intercontinental flight into a F16 (M4) or F15 (M3) package is virtually impossible. Same goes when trying to stuff a house-sized nuclear reactor + steam generators + radiation protection into a 10,000 ton destroyer.

In the end, as much as I enjoy flying capital ships, I must agree that the current model is wrong; Capital ships should be slow to turn and slow to accelerate / decelerate, but the scale (compared to M5-M3) and speed should be redesigned completely. (The irony is that a X-series games based on a Newtonian physics model would have made the M3 vs. M6 vs. M2/M1 flight model much more believable and far more leveled)
Having said all that, I'll be mighty sad if instead of fixing the current model, Egosoft will chose to simply remove Capital ship flying altogether.
Simply put, nothing beats piloting a fleet of heavily modified X3:R/XTM Argon Leviathana into a Xeon Grid sector and watch dozens of K's and J's go "pop".

- Gilboa

[Nanook]

...
1. Ever had a chance to see a docked USN carrier in real life? This thing is ***HUGE***. Somehow Egosoft didn't quite manage to convey the scale difference...

Ever see a USN carrier on a perfectly flat ocean with no other ships or anything else nearby? If you didn't know it was a huge carrier, you'd have no idea how big it was. Scale is perceived in relation to surroundings, and the surroundings in space can't convey the scale of ships, or even stations, very well. You need to use the external camera view of your little M5 up close to a Teladi Phoenix some time. I think the huge size of the Phoenix will be quite evident.

[Gothsheep]

...
1. Ever had a chance to see a docked USN carrier in real life? This thing is ***HUGE***. Somehow Egosoft didn't quite manage to convey the scale difference...

Ever see a USN carrier on a perfectly flat ocean with no other ships or anything else nearby? If you didn't know it was a huge carrier, you'd have no idea how big it was. Scale is perceived in relation to surroundings, and the surroundings in space can't convey the scale of ships, or even stations, very well. You need to use the external camera view of your little M5 up close to a Teladi Phoenix some time. I think the huge size of the Phoenix will be quite evident.

Also in space 'huge' is a bad thing, due to pressure differential. The goal of any warship should make it as powerful as you can while being as small as possible.

[JMCorp]

@gilboa

i wanted to argue a little bit on your point about the size difference between caps and fighters. specifically your argument why they should be different.

my main point in difference with your opinion is that you're basing your assumption on 20th century tech. in the [far] future that this game would be taking place in, the technology would be completely different. your reasoning doesn't make sense if the tech that runs the engines is the same power no matter the size. if it only takes a golf ball sized reactor to run a fighter and a cap ship then the only thing that makes a difference is the number of golf balls you can fit in that ship. to run the cap ship maybe you need 100 golf balls, but they're still only golf ball size, so the rest of the ship is crew quarters and stuff.

and in space the relative size of the carrier versus fighter doesn't make a whole lot of difference either, since it requires the same amount of force to propel mass in space. in an atmosphere and within the gravity envelope of the earth, not to mention the propulsion systems being completely different between naval and air travel, you have to fight gravity and the friction from the atmosphere and ocean. in space you have no friction and the gravity envelope is negligible. so what you're fighting with in space is changing the speed of the vessel you're flying based solely on inertia, which is a whole different ball game.

look at the space shuttle. it takes very little energy to change the vector on that thing in space, and how many tons does it weigh? The Space Shuttle weighs 165,000 pounds empty. or about 82 tons. though to be fair, that's nothing compared to a supercarrier's 105K tons, the math involved in trying to figure out the energy needed to alter the course of 105k tons in space is well beyond me.

even so, i'm sure the advanced technologies of the future space races have made that a moot point, and the limiting factor involved is whether or not they can change vector without killing the passengers of the vessels.

[gilboa]

@Nanook,

Actually, I was comparing an M3 to an M2, but as you said, we are both talking about perceived sized - a very subjective term.

@JMCorp,

"it requires the same amount of force to propel mass in space".
Most likely bad wording on your end, but space or no space, it takes X amount of energy to accelerate Y amount of mass at Z m/s^2.
Assuming that an M2 has 1000 times to mass of an M5, you'll require a power source that's 1000 times more powerful to reach the same acceleration.

In the end, when taking about future technology we can only use history as our guide, and as it stands, both in air on the sea, some problems can only be solved by size.

P.S. The space shuttle is not an ideal example (to prove your point), at take off the Shuttle assembly weights in at >2,000 metric tons (Depending on the target orbit) with most of weight centered around the huge fuel tank required to feed the booster and shuttle rockets.
If anything, the shuttle proves my point (some problems can only be solved by size)

[dalin80]

On the subject of capital ship scale it can be achieved both through external reference (parked next to a small fighter) or via internal reference (a doorway or windows on the hull itself). And to be honest the internal references never seemed quite right in past x's, the light blobs never really seemed like windows. More details help of course but come at the cost of more poly's and higher res textures.

HMS Not-The-Galactica we have seen in the screenshots so far looks much bigger then any past ships even if it isn't, the extra details on the model really help show the scale

[gilboa]

@Gothsheep,

You assume that the ship hull most be pressurized entirely - a wrong assumption.
Say you've got a leaky nuclear reactor that's being used a power source, on land, you must surround the reactor by (hundred of) tons of led/concrete/etc.
In space, you simply put 1 mile from the crow cabin and connect it by I-beams... (AKA 2001: A Space Odyssey).
Beyond that, look at sub-marines, even though they face space-like pressure differential their size is anything but small....

- Gilboa

[pjknibbs]

Beyond that, look at sub-marines, even though they face space-like pressure differential their size is anything but small....

Compared to what? Some of the largest submarines in the world are ballistic missile submarines, and the largest of those (Russian Typhoon class, not sure if there are any bigger) are maybe 175m long and 23,000 tonnes surfaced. Compare that to a Nimitz-class carrier, which is 332m long and masses 100,000 tonnes--e.g. nearly twice the length and four times the displacement!

Having said that, I don't think it's comparable anyway. Submarines are required to handle a *much* greater pressure differential than a spacecraft is, but it's in the opposite direction--it's tending to crush the ship, not blow it apart like a balloon. The structural requirements for that are entirely different.

[Mightysword]

...
1. Ever had a chance to see a docked USN carrier in real life? This thing is ***HUGE***. Somehow Egosoft didn't quite manage to convey the scale difference...

Ever see a USN carrier on a perfectly flat ocean with no other ships or anything else nearby? If you didn't know it was a huge carrier, you'd have no idea how big it was. Scale is perceived in relation to surroundings, and the surroundings in space can't convey the scale of ships, or even stations, very well. You need to use the external camera view of your little M5 up close to a Teladi Phoenix some time. I think the huge size of the Phoenix will be quite evident.

The problem with the perceived size in X is that the camera use a fish-eye scaling zoom so everything appears much smaller than it actually is. Yes like you said if I do a size by size comparison a M5 is much smaller than a Titan, but when I'm inside the cockpit of a M5 and do a flyby, the Titan honestly doesn't look "that" big. Whether in Freespace for example, flying along side a Destroyer give you that kind of awe inspiring feeling and you realize how small you are comparing to it. The funny thing is in term of the size ratio, the Titan/Disco is greater than Hecade/Hercules.


The size is alright, but something got to be done about the distance/size reduction ratio with the X camera.

[X2-Eliah]

Setting fov to 70 is a good start, btw - feels better.

[gilboa]

Compared to what? Some of the largest submarines in the world are ballistic missile submarines, and the largest of those (Russian Typhoon class, not sure if there are any bigger) are maybe 175m long and 23,000 tonnes surfaced. Compare that to a Nimitz-class carrier, which is 332m long and masses 100,000 tonnes--e.g. nearly twice the length and four times the displacement!

... We are way OT here, but the only reason neither the U.S nor the Soviet Union produced bigger subs is, well, there's no need to.
Unlike a theoretical 1,000 ton airplane (which will most likely outstretch the current limitation in wing design and materiel science), there's no theoretical limit that stops you from producing a 100,000 ton submarine (displaced) based on multiple pressure halls (as you remember, the Soviet Typhoon class SLBM was actually built out of two Delta class pressure halls) - though thus far, there's little need for such a giant. *

Beyond that, as you said, comparing the near-0-pressure in space to crushing pressure at -500m (let alone -10,000m), is irrelevant. (Hence the reason the space shuttle uses a free-form thin aluminum skins covered by ceramic thermal protection and submarines require a very thick and extremely complex round steel pressure hull...)

... AND hence the reason X:R should include 10,000m long M9's capable of using their 40,000m Delta-PPC to crush the Xenon G's!!! (Did I mention how OT we are? )

- Gilboa
The only thing I can think of is a submerge-able carrier - but as far as I remember only the Imperial Japanese navy ever tried to design such submarine - an unsuccessful attempt.

[Regeaj]

Hi guys,

ok lets be a bit more precise about the capital ships then. Piloting a huge capital ship from the seat of the pilot is boring, therefore we left that out.

ON THE OTHER HAND: The player can own and can command ships and he can use them for a lot more different things than before.

Stations as well as large ships have a lot more ways to interact with them now and your own as well as other factions ships are much more interesting to play with.

Instead of sitting in the cockpit you will assign people to command ships for you.

Hope this clears things up...

-Bernd

Are you retarted? Seriously, you just lost a customer.

I WANT TO SIT ON THE BRIDGE OF MY BATTLECRUISER, and yes I also want cockpit / bridge-view.

God Im glad Xtended and Babylon 5 will keep Terran Conflict Up-to-date. Seriously how stupid are the developers. THE ONE ****** THING that makes X so great, being able to control your own battlecruiser, and you take it out "because its boring lol".

WHY DO YOU THINK NEARLY EVERY FANMOD ADDS A NEW CAPITAL SHIP? Thats what we use X for!

[Fulgrymm]

Customer? You haven't registered any of the games, so there is no proof that you are actually a customer.

[Regeaj]

Seriously, Im not going to buy Rebirth. Why would I? Fighter-based Space-Sim with an economy part? I never cared that much about the economy part, and if you take the epicness of controlling large fleets FROM A BRIDGE OF YOUR OWN FLAGSHIP out I can play Black Prophecy or something.