Is there a lore reason for the existence of almost no battleships?

[DevilsKnock𝄡]

I like having large ships just filled to the brim with weapons so I just got the two ship packs that add some in and add more variety but I'm curious why only Terrans and Xenon seem to actually have XL combat ships or battleships. Pretty much every faction has XL carriers so I feel like XL combat ships would be a given. Did Egosoft just not want them in this game or, like I mentioned in the subject, is there an actual lore reason behind it?

[TwinChops]

Because they're big, slow and useless. The Terran battleship is a relic of the Past.
(same as in reallife btw)
Just look at it and you will see how many blindspots it has, XL ships in general are not very usefull and allways need other ships for cover.

[Aieonae]

Originally posted by TwinChops:

Because they're big, slow and useless. The Terran battleship is a relic of the Past.
(same as in reallife btw)
Just look at it and you will see how many blindspots it has, XL ships in general are not very usefull and allways need other ships for cover.

Erhh... except I had station many fleets of Asgards almost everywhere.

As for cover...yup if you find one Asgard too expose have 3 then. Otherwise, go 6 to camp out any Xenon I.

[Pandorian]

Originally posted by Aieonae:

Originally posted by TwinChops:

Because they're big, slow and useless. The Terran battleship is a relic of the Past.
(same as in reallife btw)
Just look at it and you will see how many blindspots it has, XL ships in general are not very usefull and allways need other ships for cover.

Erhh... except I had station many fleets of Asgards almost everywhere.

I think you making the point that it was fleets(plural) that consists of Asgards(plural) doesn't invalidate the point they were trying to make which is that they're pretty useless on their own. In fact it kind of reinforces that point.

[TwinChops]

Originally posted by Aieonae:

Originally posted by TwinChops:

Because they're big, slow and useless. The Terran battleship is a relic of the Past.
(same as in reallife btw)
Just look at it and you will see how many blindspots it has, XL ships in general are not very usefull and allways need other ships for cover.

Erhh... except I had station many fleets of Asgards almost everywhere.

As for cover...yup if you find one Asgard too expose have 3 then. Otherwise, go 6 to camp out any Xenon I.

Proving my Point lol

[DevilsKnock𝄡]

Originally posted by TwinChops:

Because they're big, slow and useless. The Terran battleship is a relic of the Past.
(same as in reallife btw)
Just look at it and you will see how many blindspots it has, XL ships in general are not very usefull and allways need other ships for cover.

You know, that is a fair point. I guess I didn't consider that as honestly, most space games tend to not consider the inferiority a battleship suffers in water. Though I think in most games, that is made up for by the idea of placing such large weapons on a battleship that just couldn't exist in any other ship design (even this game has the Asgard as an example). In real life, battleships serve zero purpose due to our hardest hitting weapons mostly being missiles which destroyers can use just fine. That and air support which is where aircraft carriers come in.

[Aieonae]

@TwinChops

I don't get your point, I seen overpriced defense platforms gotten destroyed.

I also seen overpriced defense platforms with fleets of fighters suffering a plenty losses.

So had I seen over-hyped fighter carriers having a struggling maintaining a full fledge of fighters without losses.

As for station siege, the Asgard can literally clean up a xenon sector without losses within 3 hours, while a fleet of 3 Asgards doing the within 1 hour, try that with a behemoth or better the tactical mess from fleets of suicide destroyers to suicide fighter carrier?

While a single Asgard basically nutted everything short another Asgard or a Xenon I.

So how are they exactly useless when I can literally use practically everywhere?

If you ask me lorewise. Frankly, there are literally no need to kill any factions profit wise only Terrans are that xenophobic to see absolute xeno-genocide as an appropriate solution by using capital XL like Asgards.

[Cellar_Cat]

It's not done for a lore reason AFAIK. Lore wise destroyers, AKA M2 class ships, were the big, slow, gun covered ships until recently. In X4 they've changed the game mechanics surrounding mobility and weapons a lot to favour fighters and fighter-like gameplay, which has left that role pretty empty.

In fact, at launch, capital ships did not even have continuous shield regen anymore. You could (and I did) kill a destroyer with a discoverer.

[Cellar_Cat]

Originally posted by TwinChops:

Just look at it and you will see how many blindspots it has, XL ships in general are not very usefull and allways need other ships for cover.

This is another example of a design change. Big ships are given blind spots on purpose. Approach any L or XL from behind and you'll find you can put a smaller ship in a blind spot at the engines and cripple it.

That's not a lore thing. In older games they tended to have fewer turrets firing that way, but would still kill you if you did this. They've specifically done it for gameplay reasons, to promote the player's ability to take on large ships in smaller ones.

Likewise, the fact that nearly all firepower is concentrated ahead now, and turrets hit like wet noodles.

[TwinChops]

Originally posted by Aieonae:

I don't get your point, I seen overpriced defense platforms gotten destroyed.

I also seen overpriced defense platforms with fleets of fighters suffering a plenty losses.

So had I seen over-hyped fighter carriers having a struggling maintaining a full fledge of fighters without losses.

As for station siege, the Asgard can literally clean up a xenon sector without losses within 3 hours, while a fleet of 3 Asgards doing the within 1 hour, try that with a behemoth or better the tactical mess from fleets of suicide destroyers to suicide fighter carrier?

While a single Asgard basically nutted everything short another Asgard or a Xenon I.

So how are they exactly useless when I can literally use practically everywhere?

If you ask me lorewise. Frankly, there are literally no need to kill any factions profit wise only Terrans are that xenophobic to see absolute xeno-genocide as an appropriate solution by using capital XL like Asgards.

ONE Behemoth comes at the low Price of ~16m
ONE Colossus comes at the low Price of ~18m

ONE Asgard comes athe not low Price of ~155m

(both fully equiped with the best stuff that the Race thats making them have(almost, i have a slight Bias for Argon FLAK so the Asgard has it too, but that only means it got cheaper lol))

I can almost buy 10 Behemoth in place of just one Asgard. Or i go Ham and get like 4 Colossus plus whatever is left in money in fighters, both Fleets would destroy your One Asgard, yes i would take loses, but you would allways end up with the Bigger loss.

[Pandorian]

Originally posted by TwinChops:

ONE Behemoth comes at the low Price of ~16m
ONE Colossus comes at the low Price of ~18m

ONE Asgard comes athe not low Price of ~155m

(both fully equiped with the best stuff that the races thats making them have)

I can almost buy 10 Behemoth in place of just one Asgard. Or i go Ham and get like 4 Colossus plus whatever is left in money in fighters, both Fleets would destroy your One Asgard, yes i would take loses, but you would allways end up with the Bigger loss.

Also given that an Asgard has been admitted to HAVE to be with a fleet, that means the fleet has to move at the speed of the Asgard. So the question becomes why even have the Asgard? Yes it is good at one-tapping ships and station modules, but ships rarely travel alone and stations consist of more than one module. What utility does it bring that can't be accomplished by just having more cheaper ships?

I think the biggest issue with Asgards is that they are abysmal if not player controlled. The AI just doesn't know how to use them to their full power.

[TwinChops]

Originally posted by Cellar_Cat:

Originally posted by TwinChops:

Just look at it and you will see how many blindspots it has, XL ships in general are not very usefull and allways need other ships for cover.

This is another example of a design change. Big ships are given blind spots on purpose. Approach any L or XL from behind and you'll find you can put a smaller ship in a blind spot at the engines and cripple it.

That's not a lore thing. In older games they tended to have fewer turrets firing that way, but would still kill you if you did this. They've specifically done it for gameplay reasons, to promote the player's ability to take on large ships in smaller ones.

Likewise, the fact that nearly all firepower is concentrated ahead now, and turrets hit like wet noodles.

Idk about that the old games did it different, im pretty sure in my ~1500hours of X3:TC (and an similiar ammount of non steam AP) i still was easly able to kill any M2-M1 with an M3 on my own because of Blind Spots (but thats maybe also because i played those game way to much lol). Or you know, sit back in a M7M or whatever the bigger class was called and kill it frrom so far away lol

[Cellar_Cat]

I mean there were doubtless some blind spots on them but I don't think it was nearly so clear and consistent as it is now, where every ship can be approached that way. And you had to be able to keep up and stay there without being rammed (or gently tapped) and could not destroy the engines and so on.

So far as I know they've never codified blind spots into the lore, though. Not much about ship design really seems to make it in beyond the limited encyclopedia entries.

[Aieonae]

Originally posted by TwinChops:

ONE Behemoth comes at the low Price of ~16m
ONE Colossus comes at the low Price of ~18m

ONE Asgard comes athe not low Price of ~155m

(both fully equiped with the best stuff that the Race thats making them have)

I can almost buy 10 Behemoth in place of just one Asgard. Or i go Ham and get like 4 Colossus plus whatever is left in money in fighters, both Fleets would destroy your One Asgard, yes i would take loses, but you would allways end up with the Bigger loss.

Had you realize how flawed are your cost calculations?

All these cumulative "small" losses do add up together with overtly complicated to tactical deployment on field, simply doesn't justify the effort.

Where in Asgards, just point to point destruction without overtly tactical concern, and near zero chance of destruction.

[Humble]

I guess it's matter how useful is it or not, if swarm fighter take out battleship, why had battleship when you can had swarm of fighter, unless swarm fighter had small firepower they carry, no matter how many, they are not able to destroy battleship, then battleship would be useful, assumed whole flank coverage that can shoot far than fighter shoot and very accuracy, instant get all fighter/bomber destroyed, then battleship would be build by every faction for sure, and battleship would strike in heart of fear, but in this game it's little fear, most player don't see asgard as fear, but rather thinking" Oh, I got to cap this ship into my own" star trek borg, assumed player had marine to board it. Now if we talk about X2 The threat, it's don't even had battleship but bigger ship, more player fear of bigger ship to destroyer! Why? Because rule of system, X2 fighter or smaller ship do not had power to bring shield down while bigger ship had very good turret unlike this X4, X2 even had jump drive, unlike X4.

It's matter useful or not useful, It's same way people using M miner over L to make more profit, but once khaak or xenon destroyed "M", they want L so Khaak or Xenon can't touch this, well most of time, unless happen near of Xenon Sector where Xenon can overwheling number of fighter to take out L Miner, or Xenon destroyer or battleship can take "L Miner out"

Here is problem with balance, if you can swarm fighter to take out battleship/destroyer, then why we had those battleship and destroyer in first place? If one said for station, well, we can use swarm fighter to take out station as just as well. I think if battleship need to be build or enter game, they had to be useful, not useless for cost, they had to handle any of threat even swarm of fighter, otherwise no point to had it.

X2 is where larger ship more useful due smaller ship like fighter, no matter how many, unable to damage larger ship with massive shield that had fast regen, but in X3, larger ship got nerfed little bit, now X4, larger ship got hgue nerfed, and you can had a swarm of fighter with missile to take out larger ship easy.

It's all depend on gameplay design, I guess. game developer can make this gameplay design.

In real life we had no more battleship, at least on ocean, while we had carrier that only forced on carry and command aircraft flying in the sky over sea and land, it's missile, torpedo, bomb rule over battle, due mass of destruction, no matter how good armor is, in the end, I guess battleship or anything larger with more hull/armor wasn't very cost efficient, Now I guess game would be bored if there is no battleship, no destroyer, no frigate, might well better smaller with carry ton of firepower, shoot them before they shoot you for some people.

Space and planets might not had same rule, maybe space, battleship might be better due can do more hull, more firepower and can move fast, but I think it's double edged sword, if there is stronger effect gravity, it's might be bad for more heavy tons armor and big size, bigger they are, bigger they are, the harder they fall.

I think there had to be right, balanced, so most player prefer play M, not too small, or not too large, due speed, comfort turning, reasonable able to handle anything, so go on.

[Humble]

Originally posted by TwinChops:

Originally posted by Aieonae:

I don't get your point, I seen overpriced defense platforms gotten destroyed.

I also seen overpriced defense platforms with fleets of fighters suffering a plenty losses.

So had I seen over-hyped fighter carriers having a struggling maintaining a full fledge of fighters without losses.

As for station siege, the Asgard can literally clean up a xenon sector without losses within 3 hours, while a fleet of 3 Asgards doing the within 1 hour, try that with a behemoth or better the tactical mess from fleets of suicide destroyers to suicide fighter carrier?

While a single Asgard basically nutted everything short another Asgard or a Xenon I.

So how are they exactly useless when I can literally use practically everywhere?

If you ask me lorewise. Frankly, there are literally no need to kill any factions profit wise only Terrans are that xenophobic to see absolute xeno-genocide as an appropriate solution by using capital XL like Asgards.

ONE Behemoth comes at the low Price of ~16m
ONE Colossus comes at the low Price of ~18m

ONE Asgard comes athe not low Price of ~155m

(both fully equiped with the best stuff that the Race thats making them have(almost, i have a slight Bias for Argon FLAK so the Asgard has it too, but that only means it got cheaper lol))

I can almost buy 10 Behemoth in place of just one Asgard. Or i go Ham and get like 4 Colossus plus whatever is left in money in fighters, both Fleets would destroy your One Asgard, yes i would take loses, but you would always end up with the Bigger loss.

I'm petty sure First time getting Asgard cost billion, due buy blueprint (roleplay not to steal) then set up and create shipyard, and not only that, but time to set up, I'm petty sure for Asgard it's start up billion to get Asgard since player can't buy those from factions shipyard, but after that, I guess that might be it more or less.

How many fighter/bomber you can had for billion if one don't go for Asgard and not set up shipyard?