Ships design: Atrocious?

[Ghostar]

Hi All,

I remember X3TC/AP and the unique design for each faction; you have bulbous design for Boron, long and spiky for Split, naval futuristic for Argon and so on.
Sadly i see X4 design are they are ugly, like a mishmash of cubes and prism each glued to another without some aesthetic design. Cerberus is pretty ugly, and most of Argon design are ugly as hell...Elite one is okeyish.

I know that aestehrtic it is a personal thing, but what are your opinions?

[Zealoth]

Yeah, the first look through discovered models made me shudder

I have to admit some of the designs are growing on me though. My starter Discoverer is pretty to me now <3

Also, as an engineering student those ugly, blocky modular designs make deep sense. Not only purely-space borne ships would pretty much evolve towards the most cubic shape possible (It really helps with moments of inertia if most of your mass is in the center), but the universe is in turmoil after the whole Rebirth business (i guess in more than one sense ) In X3TC each ship felt hand built by master shipwrights. X4 designs remind me of WW2 Liberty ships - the fastest constructed one took just under 5 days (!)

Saying that, I do agree that the racial archetypes could be a little more pronounced. And I'd hope that later on more...unique ships could be added too

[MegaJohnny]

I think most ships look pretty cool, but sadly a step back from X3 and XR. I feel like there was some economising for the ships we didn't see in the trailers - e.g. Guillemot being a Kestrel with more wings and the Quasar being a Discoverer with... more wings. That was a little disappointing.

I think the main problem with the frigates is, because they have a dock, they're built around it and can't avoid being boxy-looking. You don't get this with the L ships, since the dock is a small part of the ship and can flow nicely with it.

The cockpits are very cool and look distinct internally, but I wish they looked more distinct from the outside, like with different canopy colours or something.

My pain with the Argon ships is that in X3, they were recognisably "human" but were unique in their own way, too. The capital ships had this mixture of dark colour hull and glowing yellow neon that looked very 29th century. But from XR onwards the human ships look pretty bog standard. They're still fantastically detailed, no denying that, but they don't have a distinct flavour anymore.

[Tomonor]

This is a touchy topic for me, mostly because I hate changes in general (let it be a new building in town, a new situation in life, or the departing design direction of games).
The X series is known for changing its canon and artistic direction in every big title.

I have started out with X2, and that's the norm for me, basically. It had modular ships, space stations that look enormous while also remaining modular, and things were divided up logically. The universe had a lot of lore to tell even if you weren't seeking it.

X3 spiced things up with less modularity. Ships felt like they were all hand-crafted, so basically they were nice to look at. But the engine's shaders also made sure all of the ship shine and reflect light like a mirror, so they were also glamorous meanwhile. The stations lost their internal docking bay, I always hated that. However, meanwhile X2's universe felt alive with all the flashy advertisements running on stations, nebulae fading the horizon, and ship engines still visible in the other side of the sector, X3 pretty much screwed that up and felt empty, unimpressive in that regard. X3 also had a weird sense of scale on things.

X-Rebirth was both good and bad regarding the ship and universe design. The scale and flashiness (that X2 held) came back. But along came a pretty horrendous UI and overcomplicated management system that wrecked the whole experience. The ship in general were bad looking (although that was intended due to the lore) and everything felt rusty - even your own ship. This spawned a mental block for me that I could never fully identify with the Skunk, and nor can I ever change it since that's the only playable ship.

X4. Well, once again, some design is spot on, some are horrible. I wish Egosoft somehow intergrated both X2 and X3 ships into the game more. For example, nothing will beat the X2 Nova's look, period. That one is basically a Tie Interceptor. But I also understand that the new subsystems, interiors, and docking system at some point pretty much tied up the hand of the artists flowing imagination. You can't just implement something awesome if it's not compatible with the game.

Thus, we get very pretty Argon capital ships, but boxy/boring fighters (and the horrendous Callisto courier).
We get pretty awesome Teladi fighter ships (although I wish the Buzzard remained more curvy, X2 style), pretty mild looking M class ships, but dang boring mushroom-style capital ships.
And we get sleek/sweet looking Paranid fighters, but damn the shape of their capital ships are wrong. They seem like they were caught up in a vise and squeezed. So they became thick, but unlike women, it doesn't look good on them. The X3 games had the peek looking Paranid capital ships.
Least, but not last, not sure if it's a bug or not, but there are many ships with the same models. Variants (Sentinel/Vanguard/Raider) models don't have a difference between them. Then there are ships with the same models but different names (Vulture/Tern, Mercury/Ides). The Mammoth/Albatross/Heracles CVs are also identical. There are also ships that have been shown in the trailers, but are absent ingame.

Ships that I especially dislike design-wise: Phoenix (the X-BtF/X2 design should have never been changed), Quasar/Pulsar/Castillo (they look lazily done), Odysseus. That's a pretty good rate, actually.

Ships that I wish would came back from the dead: X2 Buster/Nova/Titan/Phoenix/Dragon/Scorpion/Raptor, X3 Discoverer/Buster/Nova/Centaur(!!!)/Colossus/Gladiator/Pegasus/and all of the PAR capships.

[ADMNtek]

i really liked the PMC style ships in XR especially the L and XL PMC ships.

[13913408324]

I like almost all of Argon design，and S & M class of Teladi design.But L & XL class are ugly,because they are like mushrooms. As for Paraind，the model of their ships are a bit rough and crude .

Yes i like the ships of X-rebirth too!

[Imari]

Dont really mind ugly ships, i still use them.
Only issue i have is lack of variety. It feels like x4 has a smaller ship library.

[Kadatherion]

Indeed. Granted, I've spent thousands of hours in X3, and I'm a creature of habit, but the ships felt much better then. Some were ugly as sin - and that comes down to personal taste - I for instance never flew Teladi or Split ships because I found them fugly, but their design made perfect sense, was coherent, it added a lot to the atmosphere. X4 suffers from some arguably worse artistic design, plus evident limits imposed by the modular system. Heck, I know this isn't really the reason, but it makes you wonder if they actually realized there was something wrong themselves, when you buy the collector's edition of X4, and in the artbook from the bonus content you see no designs from X4 but only from previous titles

Another evident issue with ship designs (and how they actually play too) in X4: L and XL capital ships are by all means more comparable to M6s and at most M7s from X3. And unfortunately the whole "open map with no jumpdrive" approach of the game works against the chance of seeing the sluggish dreadnaughts of old's comeback.

Cons: we have little differentiation between races and some definitely wonky designs. Pro: IF technically modding in new ships turns out to not be overly complicated (which the need of modeling interiors too might unfortunately very well make it be, severly limiting the pool of people actually able to create such mods), the modular system might make creating a wide variety of ships easier and we could see some nice things coming out. Modders have a long history of being able, with great creativity, to churn out wonderful designs from questionable model blocks (think Galciv).

Things like this are why while I still feel X4 is severely inferior to X3 in many aspects, I also still like it infinitely more than Rebirth: I can see mods hopefully bringing it to its full potential. But it will take time. For now, the more I play, the more I'm tempted to quit and immediately fire up my X3AP+Litcube's game and gaze at my wonderful Astraeus and the polish of a game - and mod - that's been blessed by years of dedicated work.

[Purplejvs]

Loving the game so far, but I am not keen on the ship designs at all, would really rather the X3 or rebirth styles with nice long sleep capitals,

Best looking ship in X3AP was the split tiger, and the Argon frigate, who's name I can't remember. Beautiful sleek design, you looked at a split tiger and everything on it screams "I AM A WARSHIP, I WILL TAKE WHAT IS YOURS"

The Argon Frigate in this screams "I WAS BUILT WITH SCRAPS OF LEGO"

I'm very happy that this is my main complaint about this game so far and I'm actually very impressed with the quality of release, admittedly my expectations were low due to rebirth.

[Shimrod]

I love the teladi falcon sentinel design. The gas miner I found and captured was not something I'd want to fly but looked like what I would expect a tanker to look like. Only limited exposure so far but have been quite happy. Looking forward to new gfx card so I can see them with higher resolution textures.

[pogny]

Im fine with them.

Love teladi ships

[LameFox]

I really would have preferred internal docks on frigates that you could just fly in from the side and not have to turn the ship into a slightly styled box. Also the larger Teladi ships bother me somehow. It's not that looking like a jellyfish is bad, exactly, but they're just so bare of detail.

But I do like the small and dockless medium ships of all races. It's just, when I get capitals, I'm going to be stuck with Argon.

[csaba]

I don't mind the designs.

What I do mind is the capital ships going backwards in graphics/mechanics compared to XR.

I blown up a K just to confirm but the lack of effects when ships blow up is very visible. Hardpoints also lack the destruction elements from XR. The chassis of the ships also seem a lot more washed (lower quality). Seen this with both the K and the I.

On the missing effects part, weapons and missile explosions also look basic compared to that game.

Small ships on the other hand are much more detailed. Looks like most of the resources went into that direction and not much time was left on capital ship desing.

I'm currently playing on high, likely able to bump it to ultra as my gtx 1070 is barely utilized, but I don't expect a lot of improvement.

[MegaJohnny]

I really would have preferred internal docks on frigates that you could just fly in from the side and not have to turn the ship into a slightly styled box.

Yes! A frigate with a big "mouth" might look better than a dock with some guns on it. It's a shame because the Cerberus looks like it could be really fierce, but the dock is just too big on it.

[Tomonor]

I don't mind the designs.

What I do mind is the capital ships going backwards in graphics/mechanics compared to XR.

I blown up a K just to confirm but the lack of effects when ships blow up is very visible. Hardpoints also lack the destruction elements from XR. The chassis of the ships also seem a lot more washed (lower quality). Seen this with both the K and the I.

On the missing effects part, weapons and missile explosions also look basic compared to that game.

Small ships on the other hand are much more detailed. Looks like most of the resources went into that direction and not much time was left on capital ship desing.

I'm currently playing on high, likely able to bump it to ultra as my gtx 1070 is barely utilized, but I don't expect a lot of improvement.

If this is true, we are no doubt in for a ride.

...while Egosoft reimplements all the good features from Rebirth that is

[Kadatherion]

I'm currently playing on high, likely able to bump it to ultra as my gtx 1070 is barely utilized, but I don't expect a lot of improvement.

Yep, no real visual difference between high and ultra except for LOD and max distance at which effects are rendered (and ultra also has SSAO go from normal to high, which should have been already, as it is apparent SSAO has pretty much the same fps hit from low to high, the only difference in performance is whether it's on or off). Going on ultra might impact your perfomance as the game will have to draw at max detail objects further away, but their actual look when you are close is pretty much the same.

[LTerSlash]

The worst part is when you see the Split ship graveyard in the Xenon sector and see those good ship designs.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... A41515DC3/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 62BF85A46/

[Krewzur]

The worst part is when you see the Split ship graveyard in the Xenon sector and see those good ship designs....

You should try to park an X4 capital ship next to one of those wrecks and get a look at the size difference.

Assuming they didn't shrink the Split ships.

Also don't anyone forget about the Agamemnon from X3AP! Easily the coolest looking ship ever in an X game.