Do you feel the move to main weapon destroyers was successful?

[JoeVN09]

I like the changes made to capital ships in X4. It's cool that current destroyers closer match the real-world naval definition of destroyers than the old ones did, which more resembled a heavy cruiser or battleship role. Main batteries have great cool factor and feel appropriate on this class of ships, I think. It makes their large size feel useful, and it means epic space battles with lots of big ships are a much more common occurrence.

The problem is the lore: new "destroyers" have the same naming and heritage as the old "destroyers". The Odysseus, Phoenix and Osaka are clearly tied to their X3 namesakes, despite having very different roles and designs, and would more accurately hearken back to the Deimos, Shrike and Yokohama frigates. The Rattlesnake is clearly the old Tiger's design philosophy on a Cobra hull. I can't help but feel the XL ship models are wasted on Auxiliaries; the name 'Odysseus' deserves to go on a battleship with the form factor currently occupied by the Atlas. Much as I like the current L and XL ships, I think there's room for more battleship or dreadnought-type designs like the Raptor, Asgard and I.

The class reshuffle trickles down to smaller vessels, too. What we now call a frigate is a box for an S ship to go in, with almost no room left for any other design consideration since they have to fit on an M landing pad. I'd much rather frigates had been a lighter class of L-size ships, avoiding this design limitation and the role conflation with corvettes they currently have.

[taztaz502]

Well from my experience the AI very rarely use them and if they do 9 times out of 10 they'll miss, even 5* in everything.


I wish they had longer range like 10x what they have now, stations already take forever to kill unless you're in an asgard so they won't be over powered, especially if they fixed the combat AI to send out fighters to disable hardpoints on the big ass capital ship shooting it from afar.

It also wouldn't be over powered vs ships as the chance to hit anything from range is significantly reduced, at the minute everything feels unbalanced and face roll.

You could literally have 20 asgard escorted by 500 med and small ships and they would under perform vs 1 player piloted asgard. (Or any destroyer to be fair)

For me this is what is holding X4 back, Yeah the economy etc is mediocre but it works, once you get a shipyard and credits become redundant and you start building and managing your own fleets you come to realise just how bad the AI is.

(First person to say use 5* pilots will get a karate chop to the throat, i've not noticed ANY difference in AI for rank of pilot, the ONLY difference rank gives in my opinion is unlocking more orders/commands and yes i've tested a lot, you can now easy test it yourself with creating your own new game.)

The only AI that ever performed as expected is your wingman at the start of the terran campaign.

Spoiler

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He becomes utterly terrible once you unlock and recruit him as your own during the campaign, ends up stupid like everyone else.

I really hope ego do something drastic to improve combat AI or it's off back to x3 which is a shame because i thought X4 really would be a great "foundation" to build upon but from what ive witnessed from the patches since release nothing really gets much better, and the patches tend to break more than they fix.

[GCU Grey Area]

Well from my experience the AI very rarely use them and if they do 9 times out of 10 they'll miss, even 5* in everything.

Not my experience at all. Do these ships look like they're rarely using their main guns, or missing 90% of their shots?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cm0sqhiwfbc8x ... 1.jpg?dl=0

[builder680]

I'll chime in once more to say that ship variety in general is really disappointing. Egosoft had the ideas of a well-polished (created over several years) mod FREELY available to them that included balancing of weapons, shields, and the addition of DOZENS of ship models in the SRM/XRM mods created by paulwheeler. That man took X3 and made it what X4 should be now. OVER TEN years ago!

They should have hired him, tbh. When I bought X4 a couple weeks ago, my expectation was enormous variety in ships and weapon/shield loadouts, not to mention script improvements to things like satellite placement, resupply, attack formations, and carrier management (hello, CODEA) that were written for FREE for you OVER TEN YEARS AGO. My disappointment is (probably) measurable on a seismometer.

X4 is a fun game, but Egosoft seems to have willfully rejected so many things that made the game better and it is just irritating. I find this version fun, but it could have been so much better if Egosoft had just accommodated more of the more popular mods of X3 into the base version. The sheer willfulness of their disregard on that point is just glaringly apparent and it REALLY irritates me.

[NightmareNight91]

L size destroyers should have been L size frigates, destroyers should be XL depending on lots of turrets instead of main guns. The current M size "frigates" are a lame joke. I dont care about real world classifications, this is space.

[jlehtone]

I dont care about real world classifications, this is space.

Yes, space where military M-ship that can carry S-ship and 100 missiles is "frigate", military L-ship is "destroyer", and military XL-ship with turrets and (optional) main guns is "battleship".

Space fiction/fantasy tends to have a "main gun" in really big ships, even the earlier X-Universe games do.

[taztaz502]

Well from my experience the AI very rarely use them and if they do 9 times out of 10 they'll miss, even 5* in everything.

Not my experience at all. Do these ships look like they're rarely using their main guns, or missing 90% of their shots?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cm0sqhiwfbc8x ... 1.jpg?dl=0

well its my experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TET7LNryWRg

[GCU Grey Area]

well its my experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TET7LNryWRg

45 second video, significantly shorter than the cooldown rate of Asgard's XL beam weapon. Takes my Asgards around 1 minute to cooldown between shots & that's with Annihilator mods improving cooling of their XL beams by around 35%.

[A5PECT]

It helps to stop thinking of X4 destroyers as comparable to X3 destroyers, and instead compare them to frigates from X3.

Of course, the issue then becomes the lack of X3-style destroyers in X4. The additions of the Raptor and Asgard have begun to address that; hopefully the devs revisit the base game factions' ship lineups at some point.

[taztaz502]

well its my experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TET7LNryWRg

45 second video, significantly shorter than the cooldown rate of Asgard's XL beam weapon. Takes my Asgards around 1 minute to cooldown between shots & that's with Annihilator mods improving cooling of their XL beams by around 35%.

It's not even shooting its plasma turrets.

[GCU Grey Area]

It's not even shooting its plasma turrets.

Range to target = 12.8km
Max range of L Plasma turrets = 8.9km (Paranid variant)