New Ship Class?

[DaMuncha]

I want more M ships with a large group of roles, ATM we have bascially 1 M trade ship and 1 M fighter ship for each race, Im getting bored of using and seeing the same ships. And flying all ships in a class feels exactly the same, sure one ship may have +5% speed while the otehr has +10% cargo space, they all handle the same, with no real benifit over the other.

[teleportationwars]

What classes would you want?

[ballti]

Maybe ship behavior, like interceptor will intercept all ships in travel mode and put them instantly on max normal speed, x type of M attack only M class, y type of S will attack only S...… or this can be "programed" via type of weapons on ship etc

[MegaJohnny]

I think it'd be enough to try to differentiate the ships already there.

From what I can see the Minotaur/Cerberus and Peregrine/Osprey have identical amounts of hardpoints and shields, just that one is slower and has a fighter bay.

Even something simple like making bombers less shielded, and letting frigates only use "light" M weapons, could help set them apart.

[Max Bain]

What classes would you want?

- Artillery ships L, slow but with special front places for long range artillery
- missile/torpedo boats L with lots of missile spots and only a few turrets
- interceptor class M ships, fast and heavy front fire, but weak armor
- battleships XL strong armor and good firepower but slow and not very agile
- military transports L or XL, strong armor and lots of crew and medium fire power (good for capturing ships)
- multipurpose ship XL (something like the enterprise), not good or bad at anything, but able to do a lot of tasks like trading, mining, combat
- some kind of tank ship L with strong shields but weak firepower and some supprt module slots

But most ships do only work if Egosoft will bring back the specific weapon limitations for specific ship classes. Right now, every ship can mount every weapon which reduces diversity a lot and was a very bad move in my opinion.

[Tya]

Would love the old TM ships to come back. An M ship with 4 fighter docks, no fighter storage, and a turret or two. Great for early game carrier gameplay.

Also, obviously, XL combat ships other than the carrier.

[spankahontis]

Maybe ship behavior, like interceptor will intercept all ships in travel mode and put them instantly on max normal speed, x type of M attack only M class, y type of S will attack only S...… or this can be "programed" via type of weapons on ship etc

Yeah, i'd like to feel that I can't just Travel Mode my way out of a problem.
A Pirate has an Interceptor, you can't just Run away as easy as before, the wolves hunt you.

I think it'd be enough to try to differentiate the ships already there.

From what I can see the Minotaur/Cerberus and Peregrine/Osprey have identical amounts of hardpoints and shields, just that one is slower and has a fighter bay.

Even something simple like making bombers less shielded, and letting frigates only use "light" M weapons, could help set them apart.

I think Bombers need to just be Bombers and that's it, you can't fit them turrets, they have powerful Shields, they will fly towards the target in a straight line to hit Destroyers, pull away and repeat the process.. They should be the bane of Destroyers.

But their weakness is they have no way to defend themselves against smaller/faster ships, which incentives fighter escorts to do their job to protect their Bomber while it does it's job.

But most ships do only work if Egosoft will bring back the specific weapon limitations for specific ship classes. Right now, every ship can mount every weapon which reduces diversity a lot and was a very bad move in my opinion.

Absolutely! +1

We need a Rock/Paper/Scissors approach towards ships.. Certain Ships should only be allowed certain weapons or risk making them too unbalanced. If you could have a ship that could do everything then you would buy that ship and only that ship.

High powered weapons should be on ships with plenty of power reserves to use them like Battleships, Carriers and Frigate Class ships.

At the moment I find there is a confusion between Frigates and Corvettes and I'm unsure why?
Maybe it's the size difference between when you are flying about and when you land on a docking platform.
You see the Frigates sheer scale when you land your ship, when you fly around in space? I don't know? It just looks like it shrinks and doesn't give me the impression that i'm flying a Frigate??

[MegaJohnny]

I think Bombers need to just be Bombers and that's it, you can't fit them turrets, they have powerful Shields, they will fly towards the target in a straight line to hit Destroyers, pull away and repeat the process.. They should be the bane of Destroyers.

But their weakness is they have no way to defend themselves against smaller/faster ships, which incentives fighter escorts to do their job to protect their Bomber while it does it's job.

Yeah, I agree with that. Then if you stick some more fins on it, remove one of the front weapons and add a couple of turrets, you have a corvette!

[spankahontis]

I think Bombers need to just be Bombers and that's it, you can't fit them turrets, they have powerful Shields, they will fly towards the target in a straight line to hit Destroyers, pull away and repeat the process.. They should be the bane of Destroyers.

But their weakness is they have no way to defend themselves against smaller/faster ships, which incentives fighter escorts to do their job to protect their Bomber while it does it's job.

Yeah, I agree with that. Then if you stick some more fins on it, remove one of the front weapons and add a couple of turrets, you have a corvette!

Yeah, sounds good, they should design a Corvette for each Race, try and separate the Bomber and Corvette rather than mish-mash both into one ship chassis. It's confusing to say the least.
To watch a Bomber fly directly towards a big ship and let loose a barrage of Missiles and torpedos and then pull away and make distance for another run.
The fighter fly in to soak up the Destroyers firepower giving the Bomber the chance it needs.

Corvettes should have Energy weapons that do more damage than their Fighter counterparts due to it's size and ability for a higher power distribution, making it's beam lasers and energy-based weapons lethal to fighters. But of course semi-effective towards Destroyers and not as nimble as a Heavy-Fighter.

Egosoft need to take the roster of each Races Ships down to their merchant class ships and think long and hard about what each ship is, it's strengths and weaknesses against the other. There should not be one ship above all others.. Even Battleships/S.Battleships have their Kryptonite.

[Karmaticdamage]

I want a super star destroyer.

[Fulgrymm]

I want the Supremacy. Go big or go home, amirite?

[dholmstr]

Like said above, we don't really need ships classes (yet). But the ones we have should actually represent the job they are supposed to do (bombers damnit). You can allready do a missile fri.... destroyer with alot of missile turrets. We allready have a L size fri...destroyer with frontal "big guns" (not really big but...). Aaaaand as I have said on many occasions, M class ships should never have had that landing pad squuuezed onto them. They are corvettes imo, and L ships frigates wich are the first size with landing pads. We could use a smaller than current L fri..destroyers ships, but still an L combat ships. Acting as a first step into capital class combat for players at early stage of the game. Take the old X3 Cerberus, that design with a pad and some turrets. Stretch it to the size of L freighters.

For M class ships the drone system should be changed. Not using a figher landing pad but some "launchtubes" that spits them out a much greater speed. Then how many fighting drones a ship could use at one time would be locked to how many tubes it has. When a drone gets destroyed a new one (as long as the ship has reserv) gets loaded into the tube and spitted out,faster than a fighter.

[Max Bain]

Like said above, we don't really need ships classes (yet). But the ones we have should actually represent the job they are supposed to do (bombers damnit). You can allready do a missile fri.... destroyer with alot of missile turrets. We allready have a L size fri...destroyer with frontal "big guns" (not really big but...).

I dont like to have one or two ship classes which can be built for any purpose. I prefer distinct ship classes where you can visually see for which role it is designed. So when you see some specific ships on the radar or on the horizon you should already know that you need to prepar for incoming missile fire or you should know that they are long range artillery ships so that you need to launch your fighters. Having one ship hull for all the different roles is bad and boring in my opinion.

The other ideas I completely agree with.

[chew-ie]

Like said above, we don't really need ships classes (yet). But the ones we have should actually represent the job they are supposed to do (bombers damnit). You can allready do a missile fri.... destroyer with alot of missile turrets. We allready have a L size fri...destroyer with frontal "big guns" (not really big but...). Aaaaand as I have said on many occasions, M class ships should never have had that landing pad squuuezed onto them. They are corvettes imo, and L ships frigates wich are the first size with landing pads. We could use a smaller than current L fri..destroyers ships, but still an L combat ships. Acting as a first step into capital class combat for players at early stage of the game. Take the old X3 Cerberus, that design with a pad and some turrets. Stretch it to the size of L freighters.

For M class ships the drone system should be changed. Not using a figher landing pad but some "launchtubes" that spits them out a much greater speed. Then how many fighting drones a ship could use at one time would be locked to how many tubes it has. When a drone gets destroyed a new one (as long as the ship has reserv) gets loaded into the tube and spitted out,faster than a fighter.

Exactly my thoughts - especially the "M with landing dock" issue. They should really be transformed into drone carriers - Egosoft shouldn't be afraid to go a step "backwards" here and correct an existing idea. The drone system from X:Rebirth would be the one thing one could salvage (as it was pretty good).

Having a L Cerberus with S-Docks and it's glorious former role & shape from X 3 really sounds fantastic.

[mr.WHO]

New classes that I find essential:

S size: none
M size: TM and TS (to ferry personel and workforce)
L size: Proper Frigate (demote current frigates to heavy corvettes) - half the size of a destroyer, but armed with similar number of light anti-fighter turrets.
XL size: Battleship, XL size Miner, XL size freighter



With above we would fill all the gaps with current X4 system.

[Tomonor]

Ya all are still throwing around the old military designations as if they are still a thing

[mr.WHO]

Ya all are still throwing around the old military designations as if they are still a thing

I don't care about the naming/terminology - I care about practical application.
TM was always practical.
TP were useless to me in X3, but I'd love to have something to ferry workforce to my mega-complexes.

[Greenhorn]

(1) I would like the( TM ship )to ,as it was easy,to start many missions with.im sure new players would like this. For x4 I would combine( tm ship) with the( tp ship).=better.

(2) I also would like a command ship- multipurpose ship. In x3 I was in the griffin for a long time end game.And the tm in the middle beginning game ,overseeing my stations.when neede to resupply fighters to stations.

My favorite ships in x3 was; as long /mid term operations when having my, factories/support /easy jobs todo/ are;. Argon skiron m6.Tm yaki.Terran sprigblossom.Argon griffen.Parinind hyperion vanguard.

Hope egosoft /moderaters see theses ideas.bye all.

[Pesanur]

Like said above, we don't really need ships classes (yet). But the ones we have should actually represent the job they are supposed to do (bombers damnit). You can allready do a missile fri.... destroyer with alot of missile turrets. We allready have a L size fri...destroyer with frontal "big guns" (not really big but...). Aaaaand as I have said on many occasions, M class ships should never have had that landing pad squuuezed onto them. They are corvettes imo, and L ships frigates wich are the first size with landing pads. We could use a smaller than current L fri..destroyers ships, but still an L combat ships. Acting as a first step into capital class combat for players at early stage of the game. Take the old X3 Cerberus, that design with a pad and some turrets. Stretch it to the size of L freighters.

For M class ships the drone system should be changed. Not using a figher landing pad but some "launchtubes" that spits them out a much greater speed. Then how many fighting drones a ship could use at one time would be locked to how many tubes it has. When a drone gets destroyed a new one (as long as the ship has reserv) gets loaded into the tube and spitted out,faster than a fighter.

The problem isn't those M sized ships having a landing pad. The problem is having internal storage for S ships. They need to have a simple landing pad for a single S ship docked externally, without internal storage.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Ya all are still throwing around the old military designations as if they are still a thing

I don't care about the naming/terminology - I care about practical application.
TM was always practical.
TP were useless to me in X3, but I'd love to have something to ferry workforce to my mega-complexes.

TM role is filled by the new Frigates in essence - drones notionally replacing fighters

TP role is redundant as a specific ship design in essence, saying that versions of the S/M trading ships with cargo bay sacrificed for crew capacity would not go amiss and would address the notional missing gameplay element. Currently, the S/M traders are seemingly intended to double up as short range crew transfer shuttles.

Workforce is a background simulated factor and possibly should remain that way.

Carriers/Destroyers are essentially in-line with the X2 concepts - IMO we do not need to resurrect the overall ship balance of X3 and thus no real battleships other than what we already have (i.e. Xenon I).