The truth about reimagined capital ships vs old

[Sturmer]

Looking at Colossus E, Zeus E, etc. there is really not much point except they look nicer?

I would've been happy about it (since some of the ships really are an eyesore, like the Odysseus), had Ego not nerfed their capabilities in turn.

Colossus is a HUGE ship and yet the S wing is down from 40 ships on the old version to 28 on E. That's a 30% decrease in performance for a price increase from 8mil to 13mil for hull. Why do that when the point of upgrades has always been to make something better? Zeus E is even worse! S ships from 40 to 16!!! 60% decrease for price increase of 2 mill!!!!

So you had 2 Zeuses with 80 S ships patrolling a border with Xenon. Now to have some S ship coverage you need 5 of them. And you've just gone from 75 mill investment to 195 million!!!

It gets even worse if you want to build them yourself because you need a lot more of the hard-to-get components like weapons, turrets, hull parts, etc. Anyone with a shipyard knows that weapons are always in shortage, even with weapon factory complexes (my 20x weapon factory complex with optimal workers and casino can't keep up with just one of my shipyard's demands most of the time so the production stalls and my traders have to buy weapons from AI).

Same with L destroyers. Behemoth E is much bigger than the old one and with longer arms it offers more space to place more L and M turrets and more L shields, yet the devs didn't take the opportunity to make it better. With increased mass and size ALWAYS comes more space to put more generators, more L turrets, more L shields, more engines, bigger thrusters.

E could've been an improved Behemoth that would actually perform well and survive longer for higher price, becoming a battle-cruiser by WW2 classification. It can easily fit additional 4 L turrets/shields on the "shoulders", not to mention 20 or even more M turrets (with how long the arms are now, the small turret coverage is appalling). There is SO much wasted space on it right now! It would make SENSE to buy an actually improved E version instead! Especially when you're buying in bulk. Zeus same. And so on. Helios for example has you going from 32k m3 storage and 40 S ships on Sentinel to 25k m3 storage and 2 puny S ships on E for an almost 50% increase in hull cost!

IRL engineers and designers don't change plane/ship design cause of fashion, but to improve their performance and increase their capabilities.

E versions are more expensive to buy and more expensive to build. Yet they offer NO upgrade in performance compared to older versions. Only Heron E is an improvement over the old one in storage (but at the cost of S wing).

Okay, I love the new looks far more than the old ones (especially on Paranid ships that I always thought were a bit ugly, especially the fat old Odysseus; which is sad since they have THE most beautiful bridges of all capitals in the game, so the new ships are beautiful with beautiful bridges), but I've long since built my first shipyard which prints Credits so I have like 20 full carrier and battleship groups with escorts while I personally fly an L or M, etc. so I no longer personally fly E's and thus admire them, thus their looks don't matter. It matters only what I get for my credits (bang for buck). Because of that the only Es I have in my fleets are Odysseus and Atlas (and that only because I use them as drone carriers and their S complement doesn't matter).

So on a strategic and financial level I see a HUGE downgrade! Where before my carrier fleet would have a single carrier I now need 2 or 3. Where before a single carrier in my version cost 29mil I now have to pay 34mil for 2 (so 68mil). This increases the number of units on the map, the number of ships in my lists, etc.

AND this ultimately increases the load on my computer due to AI and other processing.

To sum up: I fully support new ship designs, they look MUCH better, BUT they should NEVER come at the cost of capability decrease or same capability for higher price (either credits or hull parts and e-cells for bigger hull that goes unused on combat ships). At worst they should be direct replacement in everything (even price), at best they should be notable improvement.

Thus, Egosoft, when you are making new E versions please make them BETTER than the ships they are replacing, IMPROVE on their capabilities (shields, turrets, storage, S/M wings and docks, engines), especially for combat ships! And I would be really grateful for an M-only carrier. *wink*

[LameFox]

Looking better is why they exist. They just also take it as an opportunity to rebalance them from their original copy & paste stats at launch, of which ship capacity was one.

That being said, I agree the Behemoth is kind of inexplicably bad. Similar to the Minotaur actually. Both nice looking ships that seem like they exist to be the worst example of their class.

[Thomas2052]

There is a bit of a balance issue - the Guppy with the ability to store 16 s ships (if you block the pads) vs the Zeus E with 24 with the same trick stands out. One is considerably bigger and costlier than the other!

I do wonder if the main issue comes from raised expectations from the 1.0 load outs - eg everyone gets 40 + landing pads.

It seems this was a bit of a placeholder - as seen with Destroyers having the same as well - and now any adjustment seems like a nerf.

I though the Boron DLC and Paranid E series were going to set a more logical pattern - storage of multiples of your landing pads.

But to make that viable, every carrier would need to stick to it. The elephant in the room is the Raptor. Able to store up to something like 130 s ships, there's almost no point in taking any other carrier, except for aesthetics. And no real trade off too for doing so, again except aesthetics.

Regards

[LameFox]

That is not entirely true. The raptor is very good for S ships, but terrible for M ships. It also lacks the launch tubes that some others have for its S ships (although this primarily matters in high attention). From memory it's not quick to travel either, and has similar cargo space to a Colossus (or at least the old Colossus) despite many more ships to resupply.

It's certainly a fun carrier to watch in action, though...

[gbjbaanb]

They do look really good though....

but the stats, I said as much on the beta forum, a carrier that can only carry 28 ships isn;t much of a carrier, and this is supposed to be dedicated to the role. I agree with the turrets on the other destroyers, it seems to me that they got the split capitals right but woefully failed to improve the other races capitals to be roughly comparable. I wonder how a behemoth would fare against a rattlesnake, or how many colossuses would be needed to win against a single fully equipped raptor. The E classes should have been buffed to be something remotely close to a 1-1 power rating, different tactics and different stats sure, but right now one seems ot be worth half the battle power of the other.

Turrets also needed a buff. I have been boarding, and my current tactic is to slipstream the enemy and simply facetank the M turrets while I take out the L turrets. They are so useless, some of the pulse turrets don't even scratch my shields. I hoped the 7.0 release would have done something to make them a bit better at least.

[H34Dru5H]

With the Zeus E there is also space for 12 M ships, so that's 36 in total.I have not studied the new E ships yet but you can also attach wings of ships to the carrier permanently launched in position defence locations. These ships will only dock at the carrier if they need repairs then return to their duties. I found with the Colossus for example, having interceptors repeatedly launching to intercept then all having to land again took a long time. They might launch quickly but landing again is the problem. I prefer to keep squadrons in the air always at the ready and use my precious bays for bomber and torpedo squadrons and any other ships I want to keep safe when they are not required.

[Fazmaster]

To sum up: I fully support new ship designs, they look MUCH better, BUT they should NEVER come at the cost of capability decrease or same capability for higher price (either credits or hull parts and e-cells for bigger hull that goes unused on combat ships). At worst they should be direct replacement in everything (even price), at best they should be notable improvement.

What they did is called balancing and is a standard procedure in games. Sometimes stats are raised (buffed), sometimes reduced (nerfed), it's not a one-way ticket ('same or better'). It was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to drastically nerf the amount of S/M bays on destroyers and other non-carriers, I personally would have gone even further away from these 'copy-and-paste leftovers'. Egosoft imo shy'ed away from that far too long, probably because of to be expected reactions like this, but they had to be reconsidered eventually and with those new variants the chance was finally taken. KUDOS they did!

[jlehtone]

What they did is called balancing and is a standard procedure in games. Sometimes stats are raised (buffed), sometimes reduced (nerfed), it's not a one-way ticket ('same or better'). It was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to drastically nerf the amount of S/M bays on destroyers and other non-carriers, I personally would have gone even further away from these 'copy-and-paste leftovers'. Egosoft imo shy'ed away from that far too long, probably because of to be expected reactions like this, but they had to be reconsidered eventually and with those new variants the chance was finally taken. KUDOS they did!

Indeed.

Colossus is a HUGE ship and yet the S wing is down from 40 ships on the old version to 28 on E. That's a 30% decrease in performance for a price increase from 8mil to 13mil for hull. Why do that when the point of upgrades has always been to make something better? Zeus E is even worse! S ships from 40 to 16!!! 60% decrease for price increase of 2 mill!!!!

So you had 2 Zeuses with 80 S ships patrolling a border with Xenon. Now to have some S ship coverage you need 5 of them. And you've just gone from 75 mill investment to 195 million!!!

I do still have the old Zeus in my fleet. Can't you still buy the old variants and their blueprints? You are probably almost never at that border, so it should not matter what your ships there look like.


The NPC are affected by the change in the build resources. However, look at NPC fleets. Their Zeus never had 40 fighters, so change in internal docks does not affect them. At all.


The credit price and resource cost for player are insignificant. Credits are cheap and resources are free. Our miners do not pay anyone, so our ships are free. (I know that not to be true, but since everyone and the game believe that lie, so'll be it.) With the said Position Defence a single Zeus E can lead 80 fighters, so burden to the CPU should not be a huge issue either.

[gbjbaanb]

What they did is called balancing and is a standard procedure in games. Sometimes stats are raised (buffed), sometimes reduced (nerfed), it's not a one-way ticket ('same or better'). It was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to drastically nerf the amount of S/M bays on destroyers and other non-carriers, I personally would have gone even further away from these 'copy-and-paste leftovers'. Egosoft imo shy'ed away from that far too long, probably because of to be expected reactions like this, but they had to be reconsidered eventually and with those new variants the chance was finally taken. KUDOS they did!

I'm confused. The Colossus *is* a carrier. And its had its ship bays nerfed drastically. Meanwhile, many L miners still can carry 40 S ships, are twice as fast and have decent turrets.

[Ragnos28]

Was pretty annoyed at first with the concept of having carriers that cost more and have LESS fighter capacity, with fighter capacity being about the most important atributes a carrier has, and I suspect is the reason for which the US navy went to all that trouble to make sure their carriers have bigger fighter capacity that any other carriers in the world, when they could went with really fast ones by having less fighters, hell maybe remove all fighters, imagine the speed gain , but hey what do they know, they are only about the most powerful navy in the world.

But now, I'm all zen about the E variant carriers, the devs enjoy making them, I enjoy not using them, because no carrier commander in history ever went...man, I sure hope that I have LESS fighter cover at my disposal... whatever makes them happy. Even the claimed concept at the time...man, you do not have "fast response" carriers, so we make some for you, enjoy ... went to hell with the introduction of the boron carriers, the only true "fast response" carriers, with their instant travel drive.

Now, could I hope that Egosoft will use lots and lots of human and time resources to make an E variant of the Raptor, so I can have another carrier that I don't use, you now, for balance and stuff? Pretty please?

[jlehtone]

Look at HOP.
Do they use Zeus Sentinels? No. Is the reason the "hideous look"? Could be.
Do they use Zeus E? No. Is the reason the "hideous stats"? Could be.
If that works for the holy, then it works for me.

The NPC factions make believe that the pre-E models did never happen. I'm fine with that too, although I might collect old relics (Asgard, Erlking, Zeus Vanguard, Ark of the Covenant, etc) when I encounter them. For "the museum".

Meanwhile, many L miners still can carry 40 S ships

You are right, that unfortunate mistake ought to be rectified.
Alas, direct measures were swept from the table by the save compatibility. Rightfully so.
Luckily, I can at least not use L miners and definitely not fill them to the brim with S ships.

There are many ships in the game that I don't use. There are even ships that I do have collected, but nevertheless do not use.

[MKL81]

What they did is called balancing and is a standard procedure in games. Sometimes stats are raised (buffed), sometimes reduced (nerfed), it's not a one-way ticket ('same or better'). It was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to drastically nerf the amount of S/M bays on destroyers and other non-carriers, I personally would have gone even further away from these 'copy-and-paste leftovers'. Egosoft imo shy'ed away from that far too long, probably because of to be expected reactions like this, but they had to be reconsidered eventually and with those new variants the chance was finally taken. KUDOS they did!

I don't think you've actually understood OP. What you mentioned was never part of complaint. It was actually about carriers.

The NPC are affected by the change in the build resources. However, look at NPC fleets. Their Zeus never had 40 fighters, so change in internal docks does not affect them. At all.

The credit price and resource cost for player are insignificant. Credits are cheap and resources are free. Our miners do not pay anyone, so our ships are free. (I know that not to be true, but since everyone and the game believe that lie, so'll be it.) With the said Position Defence a single Zeus E can lead 80 fighters, so burden to the CPU should not be a huge issue either.

No, it is not "free". The way X4 is designed in terms of empire building - the upfront cost is they key and the ultimate currency is player's time. Oh sure, you can print new ships for "free", that is when you've spent already >500mil on basic wharf, factories, miners and traders to support it. For Shipyards the costs skyrocket even more. Let's give every game scenario 5 billions and we'll see if that would be fun and challenging. Same goes for fleet building - the upfront cost IS they key, at least until you have the resources to buy whatever you want/build which is like weeks of playtime.

About game balancing where units play vital role - the most common approach is to have either units that complement each other or use the RPS (rock, paper, scissor) logic, so that there would be an incentive for the player to use them, but this is also comes in tandem with some caveats. You get a unit that is easy to mass produce or quick to field onto the battlefield? Well then it will either have lower combat capabilities, lower "health", limited special abilities, whatever. Powerful unit will be harder to deploy, whether it is because they are more expensive in terms of whatever currency you have, require lots or rare in-game resources and even might have a hard cap on the unit quantity. From this very basic design perspective - what we sometimes get in X4 doesn't make sense. I get that sometimes "lore" might influence design, but in general what is the point of designing a unit that is "less capable but al least costs more" when there is no other benefit to it, that would compensate its flaws? Such approach will eventually cause that players will not bother to use this new addition = the time and effort of the developers and designer spent on creating it goes down the drain.

[MKL81]

Look at HOP.
Do they use Zeus Sentinels? No. Is the reason the "hideous look"? Could be.
Do they use Zeus E? No. Is the reason the "hideous stats"? Could be.
If that works for the holy, then it works for me.

The NPC factions make believe that the pre-E models did never happen. I'm fine with that too, although I might collect old relics (Asgard, Erlking, Zeus Vanguard, Ark of the Covenant, etc) when I encounter them. For "the museum".

I can't wrap my head around these arguments. Are those new ships ultimately created for the AI or for the player? I couldn't care less about the AI reasoning to use them, since there are some hard-coded algos into their logic and they are not bound to all the limitations that player is on the other hand. This is ultimately about what player does, not the computer.

[GCU Grey Area]

Look at HOP.
Do they use Zeus Sentinels? No. Is the reason the "hideous look"? Could be.
Do they use Zeus E? No. Is the reason the "hideous stats"? Could be.
If that works for the holy, then it works for me.

Does not work for me however. Those are precisely the reasons why, in over 10k hours of X4 spread across 9 different games, I've never played as a Paranid. Original Paranid capitals were simply too ugly to even consider using (instead tended to purge them from the universe on sight, just so I wouldn't have to look at them - they were MUCH prettier as burning wrecks), while the Zeus E is simply impractical as a fleet carrier. If they wanted to make Zeus E different from the other carriers (without turning it into a steaming pile of manure) they could perhaps have given it substantially more M hanger space than it's counterparts, to justify the pitifully small S hanger. Have similar misgivings about the Colossus E. Might be workable, but that's a LOT of hanger space it's lost. However at least in this case the originals aren't horrific eyesores. Absolutely fine with the reduced hanger capacity on all non-carrier E ships by the way.

[MKL81]

But to make that viable, every carrier would need to stick to it. The elephant in the room is the Raptor. Able to store up to something like 130 s ships, there's almost no point in taking any other carrier, except for aesthetics. And no real trade off too for doing so, again except aesthetics.

Regards

But now, I'm all zen about the E variant carriers, the devs enjoy making them, I enjoy not using them, because no carrier commander in history ever went...man, I sure hope that I have LESS fighter cover at my disposal... whatever makes them happy. Even the claimed concept at the time...man, you do not have "fast response" carriers, so we make some for you, enjoy ... went to hell with the introduction of the boron carriers, the only true "fast response" carriers, with their instant travel drive.

Now, could I hope that Egosoft will use lots and lots of human and time resources to make an E variant of the Raptor, so I can have another carrier that I don't use, you now, for balance and stuff? Pretty please?

I actually laughed a bit here and there is truth to this, but I would like to make point about what you and Thomas2052 wrote with regards to balancing. I both agree and disagree. The balancing within faction is necessary in way that it is done within each race philosophy in mind and covering most common use cases for every faction - small craft for interceptor & scout role, typical Destroyer size ship, Carrier etc, some might be unique given how given race/faction operates based on lore. But the balancing BETWEEN factions does not need to come for every like-for-like ship in straight up fashion. It is fine that Borons have fast ships, carriers including, with massive shields, they lack in some other departments like anti-large ship fleet weaponry or station siege etc. It is the player to make the choice how they play.

PS: the mods will kill me for making multiple posts in a row, but wasn't sure if for the sake of discussion clarity it made sense to include long-ass posts with multiple citations.

[X-Tie]

I get the whole "trying to balance L and XL ships", and these new ones look much, MUCH better. But it makes no sense to me that half the universe is still roaming around with non-E variants. Or are the others never getting those overhauled variants?

I also don't get why the new variants have such a ridiculously low ship storage compared to other ships like the Guppy or large miners... And why would the player still get to buy blueprints and build the old versions? Besides better looks, there is absolutely no reason to use any of these E variants. Ever. And yet now the AI uses them and is even weaker vs the other races that don't... *sigh*

P.S.: Terrans should have been the first race whose ships get the nerf bat, not the weaker races.

[CBJ]

I get the whole "trying to balance L and XL ships", and these new ones look much, MUCH better. But it makes no sense to me that half the universe is still roaming around with non-E variants. Or are the others never getting those overhauled variants?

If you start a new game then you won't see many of the old ships around at all. Even in your existing game, as and when those old ships are destroyed, they will be replaced with the newer variants built by the various factions. They are newer models of the ships, not magical replacements.

[MKL81]

I get the whole "trying to balance L and XL ships", and these new ones look much, MUCH better. But it makes no sense to me that half the universe is still roaming around with non-E variants. Or are the others never getting those overhauled variants?

I also don't get why the new variants have such a ridiculously low ship storage compared to other ships like the Guppy or large miners... And why would the player still get to buy blueprints and build the old versions? Besides better looks, there is absolutely no reason to use any of these E variants. Ever. And yet now the AI uses them and is even weaker vs the other races that don't... *sigh*

P.S.: Terrans should have been the first race whose ships get the nerf bat, not the weaker races.

I use those new Behemoth E variants, same for Odysseus, but don't bother with Colossus and use the good old Vanguard variants. There is literally zero incentive for me to build an inferior version of new ships, doesn't matter to me how much does it costs. As for the looks - I barely ever join battles by myself to check how the ships are looking. Besides, the Monitor still looks in the "old" way and is possibly one of the least imaginative and interesting ships when it comes to design. It could also use some love, but probably would have its cargo reduced by half in the process

[X-Tie]

I get the whole "trying to balance L and XL ships", and these new ones look much, MUCH better. But it makes no sense to me that half the universe is still roaming around with non-E variants. Or are the others never getting those overhauled variants?

If you start a new game then you won't see many of the old ships around at all. Even in your existing game, as and when those old ships are destroyed, they will be replaced with the newer variants built by the various factions. They are newer models of the ships, not magical replacements.

Yes, that I'm aware of and it would be totally pointless if that were not the case. What I mean is that the Split, Terran and Boron don't have any E variants. So whilst the base game factions got nerfed with new ship skins, the add-on races are still roaming around with much better ships. And that unbalances the universe even more, so it would be good if those E variants came for ALL RACES at the same time. I made the choices in my universe so that there are as many factions at war with each other as possible, so these changes affect those already weaker races even more.

So much so that I have had to limit my shipyards to building ships exclusively for those weaklings to support their war efforts and take on build missions to build them defensive stations... Otherwise they would be dead by now. So yes, if all races get the Es, cool. But not like this.

I use those new Behemoth E variants, same for Odysseus, but don't bother with Colossus and use the good old Vanguard variants. There is literally zero incentive for me to build an inferior version of new ships, doesn't matter to me how much does it costs. As for the looks - I barely ever join battles by myself to check how the ships are looking. Besides, the Monitor still looks in the "old" way and is possibly one of the least imaginative and interesting ships when it comes to design. It could also use some love, but probably would have its cargo reduced by half in the process

Why do you even bother using the new Behemoths and Odys, considering what you just said? There is no incentive to use those either . I do agree with you about the designs and find it weird how you can see the labour of love for some ship designs, whilst others look like absolute garbage. It's very inconsistent.

[humility925]

Yes, I don't know why it's nerfed carrier role by S/M bay, but I hadn't check, do anything that buffed speed, weapon, shield new ship that had over old one?