[MOD] REM (Realspace Engines Mod) - Hardcore space sim for X4 - 1.5.1

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Realspace
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[MOD] REM (Realspace Engines Mod) - Hardcore space sim for X4 - 1.5.1

Post by Realspace » Thu, 17. Mar 22, 14:53

Realspace Engines Mod
Hardcore space sim for X4
V 1.5.1

Built on latest Steam's update (5.0 + Hotfix4)
Compatible with ALL dlc's SV and COH (their ships are modified too)
Compatible with Tides of Avarice


DOWNLOAD LINK: https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/848/

Image

What inspired this mod

Even for a futuristic craft, X4's ships have accelerations/decelerations that are totally un-immersive. In "real life" any pilot would become a gelatin at every boost or stop. This mod attempts to recreate more believable physics for all ships. Moreover, there is no speed limit in space except that of light. Accelerations, on contrary, vary according to the mass/thrust.

What the mod offers:

1) There is no real speed limit (there is, but you never get there in actual game). There is a speed limit for assisted flight, still it is quite high.
Since accelerations are not instantaneous you have to manage the top speed or let the autopilot do it for you.

2) Horizontal/vertical thrusters can be used for navigation, there is much less friction (there is none in real space) and they have higher top speed (virtually unlimited). As for thrusters, the basic cheap mk1 has very nerfed performances

3) Accelerations/decelerations are more believable, so don't expect instant stop. Don't go close to an object at high speed and ask for instant stop.
This reflects in the travel mode too, which is still very useful for faster accelerations and for reaching higher speeds (since there are no highways)

4) Boosters don't push speed over the top (there is no "perceivable" top speed with FlightAssistOff), but they last indefinetly. So you can use the booster to better navigate expecially when using FlightAssistOff, their push is much stronger and are a must for fast accelerations/decelerations. Boosters are AFTERBURNERS

5) Mouse wheel throttle is more precise, so you can set smaller increases. Since top speed is higher and inertia is a thing, you need to use small increments when close to a station

Nerdy considerations you don't need to read:
For what I understood, X4's physics work a bit differently than in Rebirth, where I made a similar mod even before v3.6 (before 'flight assist off' was introduced). Instead of having parameters for drift (which also relates to mass), there is a drag factor, which is the inverse. Also it affects top speed. It makes no sense because there is no friction in space, but there is no top speed either anyway (and I did not mess with mass parameter to see how it effects physics). At the end it does not change much. But you can't have real inertia, there is always some minimal friction at work even with flight assistance off. Nothing really tangible


Mod is very safe to remove since I only changed ship's physics, nothing more (no model nor guns). You can even change its parameter and reload the current save without closing the game

Please report any issue, in particular how big ships behave with this mod, I still did not test it

Other considerations for playing:
The way the game's engine manages physics is kind weird, it calculates a drag factor (that does not exists in space) to address accelerations and speed. The other (contrary) factor being thrusters oc. So when you cut engine, the ship goes back to its top speed even with flight assist off, but if drag is low this happens slowly so you barely notice it. So I have to find the right balance to still have inertia and not overdo with the non-sense drag (you can see it at work when cutting engine off, if you keep going in circle, the ship decelerates as it was a glue). In general, F.AssistOn makes some tricks as f.i. keeping the inertia you had and transferring it to the new direction you go (which would happen only to an airplane in the air). The good news would be that this kind of physics model could easily be applied to atmosphere flight simulation (by increasing the drag factor on the fly), had we some some atmospheric sector in this game... :roll:

This is not an issue but a sort of in-game help/trick: autopilot can manage crazy speeds by teleporting the ship, it does it also for npc, so for as silly as it is, this trick avoids crazy things happening. When in trouble, activate autopilot! :D

In general, one should approach travelling in a different way: either let the autopilot do its job, or manually setting top speeds by using the throttle (that I made having more discrete steps) to max 3000/4000 ms inside a sector.
More is not needed, you risk spending more time to decelerate. But if you use mods that enlarge sectors, then having higher top speed is great


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Known issues:
1) Split start, where you have to be rescued. The stupid pilot keeps accelerating away instead of waiting for you. I changed the script in the start mission but that did not resolve the thing. Simply start the game without this mod, be rescued, the turn it on.
2) Some ships that have a mass different from the expected class, as the kuki, can have bad performances. This happens bc mass is a very important factor now that engines are not overpowered and friction is no more, so please report any ship that has very different performance. Be aware that Mk1 engines/thrusters for S and M are intentionally very sh**ty, as they have to be, given how cheap they are
Last edited by Realspace on Thu, 5. May 22, 17:19, edited 31 times in total.

Alewx
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Alewx » Thu, 17. Mar 22, 16:09

Ambitious but really nice. I sense an Expanse fan :)

Will keep an eye at it.
I7 9900k 4GHz
RTX 3080TI
32GB Corsair
Win10 64bit

But now on a freaking fast SSD aber immernoch ziemlich lahm beim laden :(

R-TEAM
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by R-TEAM » Thu, 17. Mar 22, 21:42

would like an option to "not" remove highways ....
like it as alternat P2P fast conection that is not (imho) unimmersiv for an advanced civ ...

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Realspace » Fri, 18. Mar 22, 00:09

R-TEAM wrote:
Thu, 17. Mar 22, 21:42
would like an option to "not" remove highways ....
like it as alternat P2P fast conection that is not (imho) unimmersiv for an advanced civ ...
Consider that travel mode is faster than highways with this mod.

The concept will be developed further when I will also alter the map by using superhighways to connect planets. Those will remain for very long transfer. Only zone hw are useless

Anyway, since modding x4 is modular, I'll do a version with hw, it is easy. For now we need to see how ships behave with these physics, how ai reacts, is dogfighting still viable, etc.

Btw you can still have hw: either you use my mod with a saved game or, if you start a new game, activate the mod after the first save

R-TEAM
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by R-TEAM » Fri, 18. Mar 22, 14:38

Realspace wrote:
Fri, 18. Mar 22, 00:09
...................
Btw you can still have hw: either you use my mod with a saved game or, if you start a new game, activate the mod after the first save
yea - have this thinked too as an workaround - so no pressure on your side ....
(and if this going further it is maybe better to look at the whole concept .... )

kmunoz
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by kmunoz » Fri, 18. Mar 22, 16:58

Do you know if there's a way to force flight assist off as default? If you have FA off but turn on travel drive, it turns FA back on (which is fine). But once you turn travel drive off again, FA remains on. It would be nice if there were a way to force it back off again. Not sure if this is in the scope of your mod, but it would be a nice addition or option.
Let's Play Poorly! - Suboptimal X4 Playthroughs

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Realspace » Fri, 18. Mar 22, 19:10

kmunoz wrote:
Fri, 18. Mar 22, 16:58
Do you know if there's a way to force flight assist off as default? If you have FA off but turn on travel drive, it turns FA back on (which is fine). But once you turn travel drive off again, FA remains on. It would be nice if there were a way to force it back off again. Not sure if this is in the scope of your mod, but it would be a nice addition or option.
Consider a more "sim" approach so you can use travel drive for taking direction, but with this mod you can switch it off after say you reach 2000/3000 ms and the engine does not slow down as before. So after the first "push" you can switch travel drive off and the ship continues to drift, in flight assist off.
So the procedure:
1) start Travel drive
2) turn flight assist off
3) turn travel drive off
the ship keeps its momentum, even without travel drive and does not go back to flight assist
If you have reached very high speed I suggest you use travel drive again or the booster, slowing down takes a looong time... :D

Btw it is not advisable to use travel drive without stopping it before it reaches very high speeds. I still haven't put a lower limit for travel drive, the mod indeed will pair with another where you have to use travel drive to, say, go from low orbit to high orbit and then the closest moon, inside the same sector

edit: in my game seems the travel drive goes directly in flight assist OFF when you switch it off at high speed

kmunoz
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by kmunoz » Tue, 22. Mar 22, 05:21

I just tested out the mod, and I love it! You're right that FA remains off if you have it off in Travel Drive when you switch to normal engines - I hadn't noticed that it did that. (I had assumed it switched back to FA on.) Even in regular drive you end up going so fast that I completely forgot the FA On throttle is absolute (not relative), which made for some head-scratching when I got clamped at 900 m/s because my throttle was at 60% (I was expecting slow but constant acceleration, as with FA off).

I've wondered about the utility of even having travel drive as an option, and instead just having regular drives get you to those insane speeds, but I feel like it does make sense to have at least some kind of "computer limited maximum speed" governor to prevent chucklehead pilots from flattening themselves against stations. There's probably a law. :) And travel drive is sort of like an after-market governor removal.

I did a test! Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy_fQvW4CNM
Let's Play Poorly! - Suboptimal X4 Playthroughs

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Realspace » Tue, 22. Mar 22, 11:49

kmunoz wrote:
Tue, 22. Mar 22, 05:21
I just tested out the mod, and I love it! You're right that FA remains off if you have it off in Travel Drive when you switch to normal engines - I hadn't noticed that it did that. (I had assumed it switched back to FA on.) Even in regular drive you end up going so fast that I completely forgot the FA On throttle is absolute (not relative), which made for some head-scratching when I got clamped at 900 m/s because my throttle was at 60% (I was expecting slow but constant acceleration, as with FA off).

I've wondered about the utility of even having travel drive as an option, and instead just having regular drives get you to those insane speeds, but I feel like it does make sense to have at least some kind of "computer limited maximum speed" governor to prevent chucklehead pilots from flattening themselves against stations. There's probably a law. :) And travel drive is sort of like an after-market governor removal.

I did a test! Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy_fQvW4CNM
Nice!
You should definetly use my STARS mod too for videos lol :D

I think I'll do a less hardcore version that has lower top speed and faster decelerations, still in the verge of realistic sim

1) the way the game's engine manages physics is kind weird, it calculates a drag factor (that does not exists in empty space) to address accelerations and speed. The other (contrary) factor being thrusters oc. So when you cut engine, the ship goes back to its top speed even with flight assist off, but if drag is low this happens slowly so you barely notice it. So I have to find the right balance to still have inertia and not overdo with the non-sense drag (you can see it at work when cutting engine off, if you keep going in circle the ship decelerate as it was a glue). In general, F.AssistOn makes some tricks as f.i. keeping the inertia you had and transferring it to the new direction you go (which would happen only to an airplane in the air). The good news would be that with this kind of physics model one could easily have a switch to atmosphere flight simulation (by increasing the drag factor on the fly), had we some some atmospheric sector in this game... :roll:

2) thrusters are not differentiated, so when removing the drag factor, lateral or vertical thrusters give the same push as the back thrusters, which is quite unrealistic, given how big the back thrusters are . Again this is controlled by the non-sense drag factor, not by (lateral/vertical) thrusters (that don't exist), as it should be. So to have a realistic factor, which should be less than the back thruster, the only way is to increase the drag factor thus it has other effects too.

3) This is not an issue but a sort of in-game help/trick: autopilot can manage crazy speeds by teleporting the ship, it does it also for npc, so for as silly as it is, this trick avoids crazy things happening. When in trouble, activate autopilot! :D

In general, one should approach travelling in a different way: either let the autopilot do its job, or manually setting top speeds by using the throttle (that I changed into having more discrete steps) to max 3000/4000 ms inside a sector.
More is not needed, you risk spending more time to decelerate. But if you use mods that enlarge sectors, then having higher top speed is great
Last edited by Realspace on Tue, 22. Mar 22, 16:47, edited 1 time in total.

kmunoz
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by kmunoz » Tue, 22. Mar 22, 16:39

Realspace wrote:
Tue, 22. Mar 22, 11:49
You should definetly use my STARS mod too for videos lol :D
I will! Is it functionally compatible with ToA? That's what I was waiting on.
Let's Play Poorly! - Suboptimal X4 Playthroughs

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Realspace » Tue, 22. Mar 22, 16:45

kmunoz wrote:
Tue, 22. Mar 22, 16:39
Realspace wrote:
Tue, 22. Mar 22, 11:49
You should definetly use my STARS mod too for videos lol :D
I will! Is it functionally compatible with ToA? That's what I was waiting on.
Yes it should, I used texture's subst and material diffs so nothing from vanilla is deleted, only replaced (textures or shaders).
The worst scenario is having some textures replaced while others vanilla

BTW: I laughed so much at your comments in the video...you had the same epiphanies I had when modding the engines and seeing the weird effect it has on the strange physics of the game :mrgreen:
I followed similar experiments and saw how the "invisible glue" interacts with the inertia and how sometimes AI teleports ships :mrgreen:

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Realspace » Tue, 22. Mar 22, 22:50

Version 1.0 is out
This is the first stable release.
All engines have been rebalanced. Differentiation has been increased.
Boosters are more effective so they are your tool to navigate in full inertia. They make the difference, so now combat engines are very effective having higher booster's acceleration (unlimited booster is for all, acceleration is different).
Travel top speed has been greatly reduced, travel engines have largely higher top speed
I still have not touched the guns and missiles, let's test how it goes

R-TEAM
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by R-TEAM » Tue, 22. Mar 22, 23:22

mhh - have not read anything over this ....
will the other ships use this too .. and work flawless with it (AI ships)
- or is this player ship only ??

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] Realspace Engines Mod - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Realspace » Wed, 23. Mar 22, 14:12

Version 1.1 is out

All engines rebalanced and increased differentiation
Booster is now more effective for navigating in full inertia mod, it is indeed an afterburner
FlightAssistOff is very viable for all situations now, use thrusters and afterburner

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/848
Last edited by Realspace on Wed, 23. Mar 22, 17:49, edited 1 time in total.

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] REM (Realspace Engines Mod) - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Realspace » Wed, 23. Mar 22, 17:48

Version 1.2 is out

Fixed some errors
All engines rebalanced and increased differentiation
Booster is now more effective for navigating in full inertia mod
Lateral/vertical thruster nerfed, still you can reach high speed in any direction
COMPATIBLE WITH TIDES OF AVARICE

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/848

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] REM (Realspace Engines Mod) - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Realspace » Tue, 29. Mar 22, 19:31

Version 1.5 is out

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/848

Increased weapon's range

Total rebalace of all engines

Acceleration is nerfed even more but afterburners (boosters) are very effective, frontal thrusters more effective too for faster stops

Mk1 Engines and Thrusters are sh*t as they'd be, cheap as they are :mrgreen:

Mk2/3 give significant increases in acceleration, according to their price

S-Ships of course are the fastest (not for top speed but plain acceleration), range: 10-30 m/s

M-Ships are about the half but have very powerful afterburners (boosters), range 4-15 m/s

L and XL ships have their top speed increased, almost on pair with the others, but acceleration is much slower

Inertia seems to be well balanced in this version. The game still tends to apply some weird physics as for instance that the ship takes momentum even without thrust or on contrary "brakes" as in air friction, but it happens at very slow pace, almost un-noticeable. I think this is the best balance with lateral/vertical thrusters too, they are on pair with frontal/rear only when Mk3 Thrusters are mounted, still the afterburners (boosters) are much more powerful. Realism is saved and playability too.

AI seems to work fine, ships don't go too fast, autopilot makes its tricks.

For dogfighting I set two strategies with success:
1) fast moving ships, use MATCH SPEED ALWAYS + AFTERBURNERS for catching speed, FLIGHT ASSIST ON to remain on course of matching speed
2) slow carriers, XL etc. use FLIGHT ASSIST OFF + AFTERBURNERS to "dance" around and keep speed low

R-TEAM
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Re: [MOD] REM (Realspace Engines Mod) - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by R-TEAM » Sat, 2. Apr 22, 05:19

The Split gamestart where you start in a space suite and musst in time dock on an ship that come dont work with this mod ...
The ship cant break in an resonable distance and you die .....

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] REM (Realspace Engines Mod) - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Realspace » Sat, 2. Apr 22, 13:01

R-TEAM wrote:
Sat, 2. Apr 22, 05:19
The Split gamestart where you start in a space suite and musst in time dock on an ship that come dont work with this mod ...
The ship cant break in an resonable distance and you die .....
Thanks for report
Is it with the last version?
I removed the spacesuit from the mod but maybe it uses the same engines I changed. I planned to add it back.
What is to expected with any ship introduced by mods too, if they use vanilla engines, because vanilla engines are nerfed to work well in a full-inertia physics that has to be set for every single ship, the spacesuit too. Will check

edit: you mean the ship is not coming in time...ok, possible bc travel drive's acceleration is not insane as in vanilla so it takes longer to catch up with the player. I think this can be solved by increasing the speed of the spacesuit, which I planned o do anyway. So you can go closer

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] REM (Realspace Engines Mod) - Hardcore space sim for X4

Post by Realspace » Thu, 7. Apr 22, 12:54

Version 1.5.1 is out
https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/848

Small fix, inertia (and speed) of space suits increased.

This does not resolves the issue with split game's start

I changed the script for the start but had no success, the stupid pilot keeps accelerating away even if I command to wait. It is strange because ai generally manages the inertia decently in gameplay, I had a lot of challenging fights

Since this mod can be added/removed even without closing the game, I suggest you start Split's campaign vanilla, then add it immediately after, and reload the save...not a big deal

Realspace
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Re: [MOD] REM (Realspace Engines Mod) - Hardcore space sim for X4 - 1.5.1

Post by Realspace » Tue, 19. Apr 22, 09:59

I still have not played the game because of modding, except some skirmish where everything went ok but could not see how it goes with big battles etc..did anybody play with this mod extesivelly?

I am specially curious to know if you noticed diferences with or without the two ai-mods by Kuertee and DeadAir, in comparison with vanilla

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