The big ladies...

[Demonitron]

Does anyone think the big ships will be added to X4? I'm talkin' about M0/M2+ type affairs such as the Valhalla, Megalodon, Kyoto, I etc. Perhaps not on release but maybe in DLC?

[Tomonor]

Obviously not on release, since not the Terrans, nor the Boron will have a presense in vanilla DLC-free X4.

But if you meant the literal size of the ships, I don't see why nots. Most likely redesigned, but they will probably come back, if as nothing else, but a good selling point.

[Chris0132]

Though bear in mind without jumpdrives, any ship must be able to fit through the gates.

Though I assume the gates are probably going to be a little bit bigger for that reason.

[CorruptUser]

IIRC, the Valhalla wouldn't fit through gates either; you either had to use jump beacons or also acquire the Aran.

[DavidGW]

I'm not sure if we've seen any real XL sized ships yet, so I would say yes.

I would be absolutely shocked if the Xenon I was not more or less directly ported from XR (maybe with some weapon balance and placement changes, but overall hull mostly identical), probably others added like the J, and equivalents for Paranid, Argon and Teladi.

[Kittens David]

What ? are you telling me that the big ship Destroyer/carrier are not in X4 ?
Please dont tell me that we are still capped into puny little fighters. My main interest in X games is to leave those tiny ship behind and head for capital ships... I not pseak about corvette which are still trapped into dogfight (pointing nose to target and using fixed guns) but i speak about frigates and over, ships you can keep flying ahead and let the AI turrets manage all the fights

[Chris0132]

What ? are you telling me that the big ship Destroyer/carrier are not in X4 ?
Please dont tell me that we are still capped into puny little fighters. My main interest in X games is to leave those tiny ship behind and head for capital ships... I not pseak about corvette which are still trapped into dogfight (pointing nose to target and using fixed guns) but i speak about frigates and over, ships you can keep flying ahead and let the turrets manage all the fights

?

We've seen lots of pictures of the big ships and you can apparently pilot them too, but we don't know whether or not you can manually aim the turrets is all.

[csaba]

The Xenon I from Rebirth is very likely. Which was double the size of the second and third largest capitals (Arawn, Fulmekron). Although it came only with a DLC.

I don't really expect much else tbh in the base game. Large ships take a lot of time to fully model.

And anyway if sub-systems behave similarly to the ones in XR than a wing of fighters will demolish any capital ship as they have less weaponry now. I feel like this time Ego is trying a different approach to prove "how piloting large ships is boring".

[DavidGW]

The Xenon I from Rebirth is very likely. Which was double the size of the second and third largest capitals (Arawn, Fulmekron). Although it came only with a DLC.

I don't really expect much else tbh in the base game. Large ships take a lot of time to fully model.

And anyway if sub-systems behave similarly to the ones in XR than a wing of fighters will demolish any capital ship as they have less weaponry now. I feel like this time Ego is trying a different approach to prove "how piloting large ships is boring".

I'm expecting at least one XL sized ships for each race, hopefully two: an M1 equivalent and an M2 equivalent. I'm not sure about M0's, then again I don't think the Xenon I is a real M0, just a big M2. I think some of these XL ships will be comparable to the Xenon I, because I cannot imagine that the Xenon I would not be in the base game. If it is, other races would need something similar.

Perhaps proper M0's might come in later DLC, maybe in a Terran-centric one. Not sure how they would be balanced though.

Yes, these really big ships would take a lot more time than smaller ships, but there won't be many variations, some of the small-scale complexity could be generated automatically, and the payoff would be "huge".

Capital ships might have less weapons, I don't think we know that for sure yet. If they do, then wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that those individual weapons would be much more powerful, and much more difficult to destroy? Also, X3 had dedicated anti-fighter swarm weapons like flak-cannons. X Rebirth much less so. Depending on turret AI improvements and weapon balancing, it's likely capital ships armed correctly could wipe out fighter squadrons with ease.

[reanor]

What ? are you telling me that the big ship Destroyer/carrier are not in X4 ?
Please dont tell me that we are still capped into puny little fighters. My main interest in X games is to leave those tiny ship behind and head for capital ships... I not pseak about corvette which are still trapped into dogfight (pointing nose to target and using fixed guns) but i speak about frigates and over, ships you can keep flying ahead and let the turrets manage all the fights

?

We've seen lots of pictures of the big ships and you can apparently pilot them too, but we don't know whether or not you can manually aim the turrets is all.

It would be nice to have cameras like in X2, where you could switch between turrets if you want some manual control in smaller ships, but there should be flight computers that would allow enabling turrets AI. This is one of the amazing things in X games. If X4 will do NPCs instead of computers, I don't mind that, will add extra element, if I can hire NPCs to control my turrets and have their skills increased like in XR NPC Skill increase mod. That was really cool mod.

[reanor]

The Xenon I from Rebirth is very likely. Which was double the size of the second and third largest capitals (Arawn, Fulmekron). Although it came only with a DLC.

I don't really expect much else tbh in the base game. Large ships take a lot of time to fully model.

And anyway if sub-systems behave similarly to the ones in XR than a wing of fighters will demolish any capital ship as they have less weaponry now. I feel like this time Ego is trying a different approach to prove "how piloting large ships is boring".

I'm expecting at least one XL sized ships for each race, hopefully two: an M1 equivalent and an M2 equivalent. I'm not sure about M0's, then again I don't think the Xenon I is a real M0, just a big M2. I think some of these XL ships will be comparable to the Xenon I, because I cannot imagine that the Xenon I would not be in the base game. If it is, other races would need something similar.

Perhaps proper M0's might come in later DLC, maybe in a Terran-centric one. Not sure how they would be balanced though.

Yes, these really big ships would take a lot more time than smaller ships, but there won't be many variations, some of the small-scale complexity could be generated automatically, and the payoff would be "huge".

Capital ships might have less weapons, I don't think we know that for sure yet. If they do, then wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that those individual weapons would be much more powerful, and much more difficult to destroy? Also, X3 had dedicated anti-fighter swarm weapons like flak-cannons. X Rebirth much less so. Depending on turret AI improvements and weapon balancing, it's likely capital ships armed correctly could wipe out fighter squadrons with ease.

Which wouldn't make a lot of sense tbh. Capital ships supposed to have main heavy weaponry to go against other large ships and stations, and squadrons of fighters to protect them from the enemy small fighters. But I don't believe the X4 will be more of a role behind the ship game, most likely it will be similar to XR, where number of guns increased with the size of ship, and large ships had some additional large guns that were only used against slower moving targets.

[Sandalpocalypse]

at least some turrets will be configurable, so the effectiveness of a capital against particular targets may vary.

[csaba]

The Xenon I from Rebirth is very likely. Which was double the size of the second and third largest capitals (Arawn, Fulmekron). Although it came only with a DLC.

I don't really expect much else tbh in the base game. Large ships take a lot of time to fully model.

And anyway if sub-systems behave similarly to the ones in XR than a wing of fighters will demolish any capital ship as they have less weaponry now. I feel like this time Ego is trying a different approach to prove "how piloting large ships is boring".

I'm expecting at least one XL sized ships for each race, hopefully two: an M1 equivalent and an M2 equivalent. I'm not sure about M0's, then again I don't think the Xenon I is a real M0, just a big M2. I think some of these XL ships will be comparable to the Xenon I, because I cannot imagine that the Xenon I would not be in the base game. If it is, other races would need something similar.

Perhaps proper M0's might come in later DLC, maybe in a Terran-centric one. Not sure how they would be balanced though.

Yes, these really big ships would take a lot more time than smaller ships, but there won't be many variations, some of the small-scale complexity could be generated automatically, and the payoff would be "huge".

Capital ships might have less weapons, I don't think we know that for sure yet. If they do, then wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that those individual weapons would be much more powerful, and much more difficult to destroy? Also, X3 had dedicated anti-fighter swarm weapons like flak-cannons. X Rebirth much less so. Depending on turret AI improvements and weapon balancing, it's likely capital ships armed correctly could wipe out fighter squadrons with ease.

There was a discussion early this year where some people got Lino to spill some spoilers about ship sizes and weapon groups.

I think capitals were given 6 weapon groups as in X3 and earlier. Front, Back, Top, Bottom, Right, Left. It was also mentioned that each group could have more than 1 weapon to it. While XR behaved similarly the combat capitals had several dozen weapons on each group while what we saw in X4 trailers were bigger sized but fewer weapons much like how it was in X3.

This is why I came to the conclusion that since subsystems still seem to be the norm (which was a good gameplay mechanic and would be a shame to loose it) missile boats will severely damage the functionality of said capitals. Of course you can increase the shield strength for the hardpoints but then what's the point of having them at all if they fail at the same time the ships main shield drops?

Also as mentioned above, reducing the number of hardpoints pretty much excludes the mixing of anti-fighter and anti-capital weaponry since XL sized capital ships generally have very little dedicated guns towards small enemies as it is not their function. The Taranis in XR had 2 swarm missile turrets and a few Hailstorm turrets, the rest of it's 60+ weaponry was good against either foe but were mostly geared against capital ships.

[mr.WHO]

IMO for base X4 the only sure big ship might be "Xenon I" if the port it 1:1 from X-Rebirth.

Hopefully if ther will be Terran DLC we could see Valhalla again (although I was never a fan of X3:TC model with those tiny wing/fins sticked to the side - the Valhalla from Cadius ship pack was much better and looked more like badass Wooden):
http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/cho ... NQ==/?ref=

I wonder what would X4 Terrna designs look like - they anounced two DLCs for X4, but these can also be separate Split and Boron DLC.

[reanor]

IMO for base X4 the only sure big ship might be "Xenon I" if the port it 1:1 from X-Rebirth.

Hopefully if ther will be Terran DLC we could see Valhalla again (although I was never a fan of X3:TC model with those tiny wing/fins sticked to the side - the Valhalla from Cadius ship pack was much better and looked more like badass Wooden):
http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/cho ... NQ==/?ref=

I wonder what would X4 Terrna designs look like - they anounced two DLCs for X4, but these can also be separate Split and Boron DLC.

Looks like 4 evil bunnies are sitting on the end of it...