Lino, how about some X4 graphic specials?

[Skeeter]

Hopefully if a ship has multiple turrets they have multitargetting capability and not all point to one ship to attack. Especially on cap ships.

[Lc4Hunter]

Hopefully if a ship has multiple turrets they have multitargetting capability and not all point to one ship to attack. Especially on cap ships.

That was one reason for my question how the turrets/grops will work and if there are technically limits.

Multitargetting turrets are nothing new or very difficult - take a look at the goold old Fresspace2, there this was standard. But in Freespace you had no chance to control them like in a X game

[CBJ]

Are these groups like the cockpits in X3 we allready know?

Not exactly the same, but similar.

Do all turrets of a groups move and turn in the same direction and do they all fire just on the same target?

No.

Is it (technically) possible to add more then 8 turret groups or is it a hardcoded limit like in X3 with the 6 cockpits? I know it would cause an UI error or would not be shown but, just in theory, would it be possible?
For example you create a ship with 12 turrets and don´t want to group them to 8. Each turret should work for itself.

In theory more turrets would function in terms of targeting and firing, but I've no idea what errors that would cause with the UI.

[Skeeter]

For the more groups thing with ui limit, could just mod the UI to allow more perhaps or use a page back and forth thing to split the UI up? Or a scroll bar.

[CBJ]

The limits are in the HUD not the menus. A HUD requiring scrolling or paging is not a good design.

[Killjaeden]

Do all turrets have to fold? On a battleship or similar i dont really see the point of having folding turrets for example.
Will there be hangar type docks to fly into (think of X3 fighter hangar), or will the platform type be the only kind of docking X4?

Are vertical ladders acceptable like many RL bombers, where they climb up from beneath through a small hole? Do cockpits always have to be walkable? Or is it possible to have small cockpits that only have a seat and cant be walked around in (e.g. like WW2 fighters). Can ship interiors be multi story (with ramps), with multiple areas for "viewing". So for example Pilot sits in upper story in middle of ship, navigator sits on bottom story on front of ship, gunner sits somewhere else, e.g. on tail of the ship?

Could you tell us the current bounding box dimension of the Nova and the Falcon?

Would it be technically possible to mod in new elements with different size class (e.g. a turret inbetween M and L with 32x32x32)? Because the jump between the two sizes is quite imense, i can see this becoming a problem for ships sizes that fall in between the maximum values.

Ship/surface elements and docks dimensions shape the ships massively in x4

And i think this is unfortunate and limits the possibilities and versatility of X4. When the art is limited in general shape by the submodules its not that great imo. It makes the ships look more like a platform build to house the elements, instead of the elements beeing integrated into the ship design if you know what i mean. In X3 the turrets where fairly small and could be fitted anywhere (not that they looked particularly good...), so this was not an issue back then. The Teladi M ship shown in the last stream and the paranid M ship in the previous stream show what i mean by platform for the elements. Practically half of the ships body is taken up by a quadratic dock for an S ship, and also very large weapons ... judging by what we've got to see so far.

[JSDD]

Do all turrets have to fold? On a battleship or similar i dont really see the point of having folding turrets for example.

... i think thats not necessary, but to have a transitional animation (folding) between "inactive" and "firing" state. omitting that animation makes those states optically indistinguishable. and to reset the "firing" animation (rotating asymmetric gun) from the current animated transformation back into "start position" in a hidden way (that is fold the turret first, then reset firing animation timer , so that the transformation "jump" doesnt appear)

Would it be technically possible to mod in new elements with different size class (e.g. a turret inbetween M and L with 32x32x32)? Because the jump between the two sizes is quite imense, i can see this becoming a problem for ships sizes that fall in between the maximum values.

the question then is: what happens to the "modularity" ? ship components have to share a common layout for those component slots, otherwise you cant simply exchange turret X for turret Y and so on ...

[Killjaeden]

the question then is: what happens to the "modularity" ? ship components have to share a common layout for those component slots, otherwise you cant simply exchange turret X for turret Y and so on ...

That's what i'm getting at. Can i introduce a new, unique module size by modding? If it would work just for turrets that'd be sufficient. S turrets as light defensive weapon fo S and M ships (because this is a forseeable thing that will most definitely crop up very near in future ) and intermediate size turret between M and L. Only ships designed with this this specific slot size in mind can use it obviously.
There may just be SML weaponry classes (idk how that works). However, larger or smaller turrets could hold multiple or less weapons of a specific size.

Introducing entirely new subsystems be even better, as it could be used to interact with custom scripts - that would be really something. Think for example sensor suites / electronical warfare modules. It might not be integrated into the standard UI, but scripts could(?) potentially still utilize custom module types.

I'm thinking that with this very limited selection of sizes they chose especially in terms of turrets, that they are already on the path to boxing themself in for the future. It might align with current plans, but what about 3 years from now? Think X3 and all the additions X3TC and AP made in terms of shipclasses and roles alone. Then add mods to that and the class system of X2 made no sense anymore and was desperately in need of overhaul after X3TC. I see the same thing happening with Turret sizes now. 16x16 m of turret on a 90m wide ship (max) is a very big chunk of space. People might want to create M ships with very limited weaponry (only defensive in nature), which would make using the M turrets way too prominent -> call for a smaller turret type. They dont need to create the assetts for it now if they dont have the capacity. But at least they should mentally prepare and consider in the code base that what they chose now as the only options may not be sufficient or granular enough in 1-3 years post release (or 1 months when modders are concerned ).

Another question: Are L ships forced to use L Turrets in their design? Or can they also have points with M Turrets (mix medium turret "slots" with large ones)? I hope this is not restricted, as it would mean a significant restriction in design freedom otherwise.

[linolafett]

Surface elements are connected via compatibility tags. E.g. "small" "large" "medium" "extralarge". If you want to have a new connection for a new size category, you just introduce a new tag on the ship connection and on the surface element connection like "notthatlarge" or "smaller" or "ilikecookies".
If both elements (component and target) have the same tags, they are deemed compatible, so they can be attached.

[Lc4Hunter]

@Killjaeden: I think the given sizes for the elements, in this case turrets (what else do we need ), are max-sizes.
You can make a turret smaller of course but you shouldn´t make it to small.
So you have a kind of "sizing-area" where you can work within.

Like with a car. A mid-size car has to be bigger than ... but smaller then ...

---

The informations about the scaling was very interesting.
So you just use the generic measurement units from max.
1 Unit = 1 Meter.

i made a fast render from the Xenon-Destroyer (btw i love this thing lino!), the X3 Titan, X2 Titan, Skunk and the astronaut from X3.
I scaled the astronaut to be about 1,90...2,00 Meters.

I think all in all this looks ok but the Skunk... is this thing really about 220...230m long?! It looks much to huge in my opinion.

[ external image ]

[Killjaeden]

Surface elements are connected via compatibility tags. E.g. "small" "large" "medium" "extralarge".

Thats cool, very nice.

And what about the cockpit walking/ vertical ladders?

@Lc4Hunter
They are max sizes, so on the ship you have to reserve that space for the turret no matter what. And if the ship is on the smaller size you have to build it with the largest in mind. It propably makes it even worse to model an L turret but only use 20x20m surface - because the design of the ship suggest a big one, but the turret doesnt deliver on that expectation.
Imagine that teladi corvette they showed, designed for M dock and now you put an XS dock on it (i know, hypothetical case) That would just look ridiculous.

Scale on X3 cap ships is arbitrary - there is no defining size feature other than window texture - which can easily be changed to be larger/smaller (to certain degree), and window size doesnt dictate scale (can have airplane sized windows, or full roomscale windows)

[Lc4Hunter]

Surface elements are connected via compatibility tags. E.g. "small" "large" "medium" "extralarge".

Thats cool, very nice.

The question here is how "open" this tag-binding works.
If we´re able to define own tags we have no problems... if you have such a special ship that requires own surface elements you could create them and bind them via an unique tag to this one ship.

Scale on X3 cap ships is arbitrary - there is no defining size feature other than window texture - which can easily be changed to be larger/smaller (to certain degree), and window size doesnt dictate scale (can have airplane sized windows, or full roomscale windows)

Sorry but this is not correct. Every (!) model (ship station, planet, ...) in X3 has a specific size. If you import the models into Max you have the correct scaling between them - thats everything else then arbitrary...
X2 uses exactly the same scaling. That you can see when you import the X2 Argon Titan into Max and the Wreckage of the X2 Titan from X3.
The match exactly.

But with just the ships you can´t say anything about the correct size because window textures are different on the models...
But there is the astronauts model which is a human.
With an expected size of 1,8 to 2,0 you have a scaling.
Of course this is not perfect because you have a uncertainty of about 10% but i don´t think we will get better informations about the sizes.

And for comparing this is ok.

[MegaJohnny]

And what about the cockpit walking/ vertical ladders?

Is this the kind of thing you mean? The Nova a bit later has a ladder as well.

The question here is how "open" this tag-binding works.
If we´re able to define own tags we have no problems... if you have such a special ship that requires own surface elements you could create them and bind them via an unique tag to this one ship.

I remember in Rebirth, some upgrades had tags on them, and they were just words separated by whitespace. Of course, the X4 upgrade system is entirely new, but hopefully the tagging is just as simple.

[Lc4Hunter]

Thanks MegaJohnny.
I also hope the Tags are as simple as you wrote - that would make the whole thing really unlimited for modding.

[linolafett]

If you as a player want to be able to use ladders, then its simple.
A "ladder" is just a collision mesh with a certain tag, to allow you "walking" it up when it has a steeper angle than the usual 45°.
Making NPCs then use them is more difficult, involves the right tilt/length/height of the ladder to match the animations. In addition two connections for the top end and bottom position have to be placed. Thats then much more complicated to get right.


BTW: The skunk is 45m long, so your export somehow went wrong.

[JSDD]

Introducing entirely new subsystems be even better, as it could be used to interact with custom scripts - that would be really something. Think for example sensor suites / electronical warfare modules. It might not be integrated into the standard UI, but scripts could(?) potentially still utilize custom module types.

... the game isnt finished yet, but i suppose that mods in that direction will be possible. i mean inventing new "types" of modules/components/slots, and giving some ships a hand full of slots, then write suitable scripts to control them, since all that xml stuff is very easy to extend, and i dont think that those types are kind of hardcoded ...

Are L ships forced to use L Turrets in their design? Or can they also have points with M Turrets (mix medium turret "slots" with large ones)? I hope this is not restricted, as it would mean a significant restriction in design freedom otherwise.

best would be that each node/component/slot has an explicit size/type, for example 2 s-turrets on top/bottom, and 4 m-turrets in front.

[Lc4Hunter]

BTW: The skunk is 45m long, so your export somehow went wrong.

It has been a while since i imported the skunk but i found the mistake why it was "a little bit" to big:

[ external image ]

I scaled it up 550% of its regular size...
After setting it back to 100% it´s size is correct as you said.

[linolafett]

Ships can only carry turrets of their size category or below.
M ships can only carry M turrets/shields.
L ships can carry L and M turrets/shields.

@Lc4Hunter: Reset-X-Form doh!

[Killjaeden]

Scale on X3 cap ships is arbitrary - there is no defining size feature other than window texture - which can easily be changed to be larger/smaller (to certain degree), and window size doesnt dictate scale (can have airplane sized windows, or full roomscale windows)

Sorry but this is not correct. Every (!) model (ship station, planet, ...) in X3 has a specific size. If you import the models into Max you have the correct scaling between them - thats everything else then arbitrary...

They have a scale, but its all relative. They are arbitrary in relation to a human. You can easily scale up or down the titan by 1.5x and you'd still have a valid ship model. In contrast, try that with a car, jet fighter (or X4 nova with cockpit) and youd be looking at something that just looks silly. Doors to large/small, ladders, etc. Nothing would fit. X3 capital ships have no size defining feature, other than possible internal hangars that need to be in relation to what docks there and window textures (which can be easily up or downscaled and are rather 'soft' in nature).
You could double size of X2 titan and just rescale window texture to be 2 rows on the bridge... easy.

[A5PECT]

I'm with Killjaeden in that I worry landing pads dominating the visual profiles of M ships.

I understand having everything standardized makes development drastically easier, but there has to be some way to work at least a little bit of visual variety into things. Each race having its own texture for the landing pad seems like it would be feasible. Is there a way to attach structural elements of the ship to the landing pad? e.g. a set of fins that are part of the main ship model but placed on top of or overlapping onto the landing pad.

Previous X games had medium-sized ships (M6s in X2, Hyperion in X3) dock smaller ships in "niches" in their hulls. The next size class up, M7s, used standard large ship docking bays, but they were large enough so those bays were only a small portion of the overall ship model.