Ship sizes

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Raptor34
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Re: Ship sizes

Post by Raptor34 » Tue, 16. May 23, 21:40

j.harshaw wrote:
Tue, 16. May 23, 21:25
None that I'm aware of. I just put that together so you'd have an idea of the range of sizes.
I remember you gave sizes of the Paranid capitals once when the E came out. Do you keep like a spreadsheet of those you've already measured?

Valhalla_Awaits
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Re: Ship sizes

Post by Valhalla_Awaits » Wed, 17. May 23, 05:21

abisha1980 wrote:
Tue, 16. May 23, 06:02
Chips wrote:
Mon, 15. May 23, 22:40
abisha1980 wrote:
Mon, 15. May 23, 21:46
but they killing it with S ships to small and stupid to really exist in a real universe.
Meanwhile, xenon, Khaak, split, boron, paranid races all legit in comparison - as are weapons and drives and shields and...

but small ships size unrealistic. Damn - immersion RUINED! :D :D

Yes, mocking, gently :)
the problem is that small ships can do to much it carry to much technology for it's size. warp, weapon, shield generators
i have that problem with all small ships (star wars)(star trek) stuff that do agree with Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica
Your absolutely right. X4 takes some rather insane leaps backwards when it comes to realism. Another great example is seeing how many S and M ships fit inside M/L/XL ships. In many cases even if you disassembled the stored ships, and turned the host ship into nothing but a shell, they wouldn't fit inside it. Hell a few of the frigates are so small that even if you MELTED DOWN the stored ships it'd overflow the shell of the frigate.

I know I tend to sing the praises of VRO a bit too much. But if you want fighters brought down to reality in terms of being overpowered fast moving destroyers like they are in vanilla, I strongly recommend VRO. It brings fighters in-line with how the game SHOULD be balanced by default. Fighters can still destroy capital ships, but now they have to be purpose-fit for the role and you need an appropriate number of them.

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THE_TrashMan
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Re: Ship sizes

Post by THE_TrashMan » Thu, 18. May 23, 11:24

abisha1980 wrote:
Mon, 15. May 23, 21:46
what i really like about M ships they give the impression of something that really can exist, but they killing it with S ships to small and stupid to really exist in a real universe.
No, not really. The size of S ships isn't the issue, the design usually is. Too thin, bad positioning of weapons/things, spindly connections, too much wasted space for a military fighter, etc..

If you want to talk about size, take a look at the M-size forward cannon and compare them to a fighter.
If anything, if feels like the jumps between sizes are too sudden.
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Mightysword
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Re: Ship sizes

Post by Mightysword » Fri, 19. May 23, 04:07

j.harshaw wrote:
Tue, 16. May 23, 01:18
Rough dimensions, so take this with a grain of salt. Shouldn't vary by much, though.

Code: Select all

		Width (m)	Height (m)	Length (m)

Stork		992		873		1001
Shark		573		418		3986
@Chips, what's wrong with small ship sizes?
So I'm curious, is this due to the way the camera work in X game versus say ... a game like Freespace. 'Cause the Orion or the Hacate feel massively bigger than the Shark even though the Shark is supposed to be twice as long (2000m vs 4000m). Like unless you're really far out, you can't get the whole destroyer into view, but even if snuggle up to the surface of a carrier in X they still feel ... somewhat small?
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A5PECT
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Re: Ship sizes

Post by A5PECT » Fri, 19. May 23, 04:59

Mightysword wrote:
Fri, 19. May 23, 04:07
So I'm curious, is this due to the way the camera work in X game versus say ... a game like Freespace. 'Cause the Orion or the Hacate feel massively bigger than the Shark even though the Shark is supposed to be twice as long (2000m vs 4000m). Like unless you're really far out, you can't get the whole destroyer into view, but even if snuggle up to the surface of a carrier in X they still feel ... somewhat small?
I've never played Freespace, but I had a hunch and did some Googling. From a modding forum where players ran the game on (relatively) modern hardware:
That's because -fov 0.75 in Freespace isn't the same as setting FOV to 75 in other games. Most games have a direct correlation between their FOV settting and the actual Field of View in degrees. In Freespace the default 0.75 FOV is actually something else. It's the vertical angle of view, in radians, multiplied by 1.39626348. for some reason.

First, you'd have to convert 0.75 radians to degrees which would be ~43 degrees.
Next you multiply that by 1.39626348 to get ~60 AoV. How this converts to FoV depends on your monitor's aspect ratio, but let's assume you're using a 16:9 widescreen one. Multiply 60 by (16/9) and you get 106.666...

The default Freespace FOV for a 16:9 monitor is actually ~107 degrees, which is quite high and this is why it causes "fisheye" distortions and makes big ships less impressive.
Freespace's original and intended FoV during gameplay was 60 degrees, which made objects appear a certain size. Modern display hardware interfered with the game's display parameters and effectively increased the game's FoV. Players complained about ships in game seeming to be too small, despite nothing about the ship models changing.

It just goes to show: raw numbers don't mean much, everything is relative. The sense and experience of physical scale in games is a prime example of this.
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Mightysword
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Re: Ship sizes

Post by Mightysword » Fri, 19. May 23, 06:30

A5PECT wrote:
Fri, 19. May 23, 04:59
Freespace's original and intended FoV during gameplay was 60 degrees, which made objects appear a certain size. Modern display hardware interfered with the game's display parameters and effectively increased the game's FoV. Players complained about ships in game seeming to be too small, despite nothing about the ship models changing.

It just goes to show: raw numbers don't mean much, everything is relative. The sense and experience of physical scale in games is a prime example of this.
Uh that's the thing, the ships in Freespace 2 are much more imposing than the ship in X to me, because they appears far bigger (not smaller). I know it's something about PoV, but but I would be interested if there is a way to hack the X4 to have the same PoV. Also FS2 has been continously modded and upgrade over years for modern hardware, it's a game I've beening playing on and off for over the last 20 years and the "shock and awe" of capital ship never really go away.

Here is a video examples of the game through out the years with the graphic/engine upgrade by the community. The ship you see exploding between 11:30 to 11:43 is the Orion, and it's supposed to be half the length of the Thresher. (I clipped the timestamp in the vid below)

https://youtu.be/woNv-HJ8dN4?t=692
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surferx
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Re: Ship sizes

Post by surferx » Tue, 6. Jun 23, 14:36

Just for reference here is a video comparing ship's size from various games and movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Loc7qX7FI
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