Suggestion for Ship ID Customization in X4

[FES365]

First, I want to express how much I love X4: Foundations. I’ve been deeply immersed in the game for nearly 1,000 hours, and it continues to captivate me with its depth and freedom.

I’d like to humbly suggest a small but meaningful quality-of-life improvement: the ability to modify ship ID numbers.
For example, allowing players to randomly reassign a unique ID to ships while docked at a shipyard or wharf. Currently, the varying character lengths of letters and numbers in default IDs often result in misaligned or uneven formatting in the asset list.As someone who’s particular about organization, this feature would help maintain a visually cleaner interface without needing to rename ships directly.

Of course, even if this feature isn’t implemented, I’ll remain a dedicated fan of X4: Foundations. Thank you for your hard work and dedication to the X universe!

[CBJ]

For technical reasons, the format of ship IDs is fixed. Allowing the player to change the ID of ships, while still necessarily staying within that format, would increase the chance of duplicates, making it harder to then identify which ship is which.

You say that one of the reasons for wanting to do this is because of the varying character widths. Wouldn't a simpler solution to this particular issue be for us to look into using a fixed character pitch for showing the IDs?

[FES365]

Thanks for the response! Fully agree a monospaced font for IDs could cleanly resolve the alignment issue without technical risks.

If it aligns with the project’s priorities, adding this as an optional UI setting would be a welcome addition for players who prefer structured lists.

As always, thank you for crafting such an incredible universe in X4!

[thedavid]

How about a middle ground?

The ships in X4 each need a unique ID. The game engine needs that. So then why does it have to be printed on the hull of the ship?

So how about a second ship ID that is not used by the game engine but is instead just a vanity ID that replaces the actual never changing ID on the ship's hull?

[CBJ]

The ID code shown on the ship is not the internal unique ID used by the game. I explained the rest in my previous post, so I won't repeat it.