How many ships does X keep track of at the same time?

[MaxSteele]

I know X: BTF and X-Tension keep track of every single ship at every moment in the game. What I'm trying to find out is.... roughly how many ships is it keeping track of?

I've seen some other space sim games (Independence War II for example) where the developers say "Oh, there's no way we could keep track of every possible ship". But then I play X and I know it's doing it. Usually the response I get back from that is "Well, how big is the X universe and how many ships is it keeping track of?"

Has anyone ran across these figures, or roughly calcluated them themselves?

[The_Rock]

4 . 854 , 973 ,153. i think anyway.

CJ has a better answer though..

As one time if i remember correctly he did mention it taking him 6hrs fully to deploy all his fighter ships in the game to unload or to go to another sector..

[Adamskini]

how many as u want, until either:

a. u run outa space ingame
b. ur computer blows up

heh

i though that graphicaly, only ships in ur current sector are represented (if thats what u mean)
and that all other ships are just bytes of info being shuffled about (or sum such)

[MaxSteele]

Yeah, I'm sure it's just bytes of data representing the other ships, and when your ship crosses the location of another ship (or ships) , then the game draws them graphically and lets you look at their stats.

I'm not asking for how many ships CAN X handle, because of course that is all up to your system and resources. I just want to know if there's a rough estimate of how many ships are flying around in a typical X universe at the same time that the engine is keeping track of.

I came up with a rough estimate:

I'm not sure how many sectors there are in X-Tension, but I chose 30 sectors.

Some have more factories / bases than others in them, but I settled on 10.

Figure each factory has what... 5 freighters? And say 2 support fighters?

Now, not counting the capital ships, rogue pirate fighters, etc.... That comes up to around 2100 ships (frieghters and support fighters).

If someone would like to correct me on any of those numbers, that would be appreciated.

[pjknibbs]

I'm not sure how many sectors there are in X-Tension, but I chose 30 sectors.

Some have more factories / bases than others in them, but I settled on 10.

I think your estimates are way off beam--there are actually 90 sectors in X-Tension (there were only 50-something in X-BTF), and some of them have dozens of factories--I would say 10 is the number you'd find in an extremely empty sector. However, not all the ships from all factories will be in flight at once--in fact, factories only ever seem to launch one ship at a time; if a different resource runs out it waits for the first ship to return before sending another.

My own estimate would have maybe 1500 factories in the game (bear in mind the game has to keep track of all those, too), and perhaps the same number of ships.