capital ship sizes

[Jesus]

I think L and XL ships are far too small for the amount of ships going into them.

Kinda insane that 40 S ships fit into a tokyo or even 100 into a raptor ... let alone the M ships - but watching the landing pads descend into the ship ... and looking at how little room there is in that docking cubicle under the pad ...

probably a dumb question, but are there any mods or undertaking that is attempting to remedy this?

[Doom]

Originally posted by Jesus:

probably a dumb question, but are there any mods or undertaking that is attempting to remedy this?

New E variants have smaller capacity. usually 2x landing pads.

Basically originally Egosoft didn't want to touch old models, and in case of old models on L miner (like Magnetar) can usually carry 40 S-ships, and those S ships could be S miners filled with ore. It just can't work efficiently, as it will take eternity to deploy or gather all those S ships with just one S dock, and you can't "mine with commander" for using S miners with L miner commander.

They started to dial it down at some point after Terran DLC, I think. E variants of the ships have small, but sensible capacity.

[Jaggid Edje]

I'm not aware of any mod that reduces it, but it would be a pretty simple mod to create. You could probably teach yourself the basics of modding ships and make it yourself in about a day's worth of work.

[trooperrob]

many of the original ships had very large storage, as the devs didn't spend a lot of time on it.
Their solution now is the E variants, as changing the capacity of existing ships would upset people with saved games.

[Jesus]

quite honestly, I think the capital ships in general are quite badly designed in their dock placement, as if it were just an afterthought. the only ones that look almost plausible are the paranid and the split - but even with the paranid, I wonder what kind of sohnen-tech allows for such a compact XL engine compartment. the terrans with their tokyo on the other hand ... that has to be on purpose.

not only the carriers basically across the board, but in general ... the placement is just so immersion-breaking - dont even get me started on the frigates.

All in all, everything above a corvette is just badly designed with the launch pads ... let alone being much too small in general,

[conrado.lacerda]

I took a look at the specs for the newer aircraft carriers used by the US Navy (which can hold 70 or more jet fighters of similar size to X4's small ships), and their dimensions are not that different from X4 carriers, the only major discrepancy is in the "waistline", i.e. X4 carriers should be bulkier in order to internally house that many small ships. But, considering that X4 carriers don't need to store fuel for their subordinates, maybe their size is not that implausible.

[Venerable_Sin]

Originally posted by conrado.lacerda:

I took a look at the specs for the newer aircraft carriers used by the US Navy (which can hold 70 or more jet fighters of similar size to X4's small ships), and their dimensions are not that different from X4 carriers, the only major discrepancy is in the "waistline", i.e. X4 carriers should be bulkier in order to internally house that many small ships. But, considering that X4 carriers don't need to store fuel for their subordinates, maybe their size is not that implausible.

You know. I don't disagree with you, but when I look at medium ships I see the size of the medium ship compared to the size of the carrier or auxiliary ship and wonder... If they are able to reduce the size of the ship, why can't I teleport the carrier too? I mean You can look at the mass of the ships and see that it doesn't add to the mass of the carrier that was put inside the ship by reducing engine go/stop times of the carrier. (Maybe this will be addressed, but if it is then the teleport sci fi theme I've made up for myself to justify --- doiiii, dis square won't fit inside dis square, doiiii---- common sense kind of thing will no longer apply) I mean if you wanna talk fantasy and say the mass was converted into energy, then why is there a capacity in the first place and then why can't you use that energy to just teleport the ship itself at the cost of X amount of mass or ships. If you want to say, well it's because you wouldn't be able to land safely and end up anywhere in space then your counter argument would be the same as a spotter is to a sniper. You could simply put a targeting device in the area, much like stargates are catapults as well as targeting devices. Ya know? If I was a game developer or decision maker I would make 5 or 6 different explosions that easily showed the amount of ships that were internally stored (Maybe by color or some kind of Nebulous looking cloud that would dissipate over time or a larger explosion than what is currently with different colors that aligned with the mass of the internal storage energy being released) and are now released because of the ship dying. Just my thoughts on the matter. Maybe I watched too many cartoons and Star Trek as a kid. :)

Idea for next DLC: Add a ship specifically designed to be consumed to allow for the transport of L or XL ships as well as a device and quest line explaining why and how to do this using a targeting device or some kind of satellite, new or existing. It would be consistent with X4 canonical lore (Kha'ak technology) as well as an extension of the crisis content. I think everyone would eat that up and it would change game dynamics a bit, refreshing it for many players. May even start up a new meta. This would definitely make a lot of money and make many people entertained.

Speaking of common sense kind of things, I wonder why the player isn't able to be the boss of the station manager too. Currently you have to micromanage the station manager or do his/her job for them when you could much simpler just turn on and off the priority ware mechanic, by ware or by station, to have an employee, instead of doing the employee's job for them. You could add this to the ware basket mechanic or improve upon it by adding a copy paste function or a select all function. Just another thought I'd like to add here. :) Thanks for reading.

[Doom]

Originally posted by Jesus:

what kind of sohnen-tech allows for such a compact XL engine compartment.

The engines in this game are pretty much thruster nozzles. They aren't small however. XL should be at least tens of meter in diameter. You could fly in space and check.

Additionally, like conrado mentioned, real life ships are quite small. Carrier has length in ballpark of 300 meters. Astrid, an M ship, is in ballpark of 200.

X4 does not list ship dimensions, but you can measure it using stations. The smallest station connector module is 400 meters long (I know this because only 5 station connectors fit into 2 kilometers). From that we can already guess that Teladi L miners are at least half a kilometer long. This can be seen on screenshot.

An M dock is half of this length. So an M ship will be under 200 meters long. Argon Nomad, a fairly compact XL Aux seem to be 9 or 10 M docks long. That's already almost 2 kilometers.

If we continue with this... the side ratio of M dock seems to be 4:3, it is 3 S-docks wide, this tells us that an S dock is 50x50 meters or smaller. The box under it, IIRC is half its size deep. Given that an 3MS6 pad is 400x400 meters, and 9 S docks fit in it, and 9x50 = 450, larger than its width... That implies that S pads are likely a bit smaller, and not 3:4 ratio. Possibly 40 meters. 40x9 = 360 and fits into module, leaving roughly enough space for one more dock, which matches visual data on screens. That tells us that an S dock is 40x40 meters, and at least 20 meters deep, and M pad is likely 200x120 meters. So. With that in mind, a real life aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R Ford, is 333 meters long, which is a bit over 1.5 M docks. Gerald R Ford, however, is said to have a crew of over 4000 people. Meanwhile the largest X4 ships have 300+ at max. Gerald R Ford, supposedly, can carry 75+ aircraft, which is more than most carriers can hold, and it has to use a runway.

Now, note that this is a "back of a napkin" sort of calculation, there could be a mistake somewhere in it. It might be possible to extract exact numbers from the game using export tool, or get precise data on egosoft forums from a dev.

[Venerable_Sin]

Originally posted by Doom:

Originally posted by Jesus:

what kind of sohnen-tech allows for such a compact XL engine compartment.

The engines in this game are pretty much thruster nozzles. They aren't small however. XL should be at least tens of meter in diameter. You could fly in space and check.

Additionally, like conrado mentioned, real life ships are quite small. Carrier has length in ballpark of 300 meters. Astrid, an M ship, is in ballpark of 200.

X4 does not list ship dimensions, but you can measure it using stations. The smallest station connector module is 400 meters long (I know this because only 5 station connectors fit into 2 kilometers). From that we can already guess that Teladi L miners are at least half a kilometer long. This can be seen on screenshot.

An M dock is half of this length. So an M ship will be under 200 meters long. Argon Nomad, a fairly compact XL Aux seem to be 9 or 10 M docks long. That's already almost 2 kilometers.

If we continue with this... the side ratio of M dock seems to be 4:3, it is 3 S-docks wide, this tells us that an S dock is 25x25 meters or smaller. The box under it, IIRC is half its size deep. Given that an 3MS6 pad is 200x200 meters, and 9 S docks fit in it, and 9x25 = 225, larger than its width... That implies that S pads are likely a bit smaller, and not 3:4 ratio. Possibly 20 meters. 20x9 = 180 and fits into module, leaving roughly enough space for one more dock, which matches visual data on screens. That tells us that an S dock is 20x20 meters, and at least 10 meters deep, and M pad is likely 100x60 meters. So. With that in mind, a real life aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R Ford, is 333 meters long, which is a bit over 1.5 M docks. Gerald R Ford, however, is said to have a crew of over 4000 people. Meanwhile the largest X4 ships have 300+ at max. Gerald R Ford, supposedly, can carry 75+ aircraft.

Now, note that this is a "back of a napkin" sort of calculation, there could be a mistake somewhere in it. It might be possible to extract exact numbers from the game using export tool, or get precise data on egosoft forums from a dev.

Holey Moley! And all I did was put my thumb and index finger on the screen to measure the size of a medium ship then went down the carrier and found out that ... Nope that many squares don't fit into that one big ass square. That ain't happening, Captain! So what in the world would allow all of those fat ass Paranid medium ships to fit inside of something that is smaller than the total dimensions of the combined medium ships I just approximated with my eyeball and moving my fingers across the screen of the Split Carrier (Which is mostly hollow). The individual teleporter came to mind and that huge story I had to invent for myself, mentioned in the previous post, is what I came up with.

[Doom]

Originally posted by Venerable_Sin:

Holey Moley! And all I did was put my thumb and index finger on the screen to measure the size of a medium ship then went down the carrier and found out that ... Nope that many squares don't fit into that one big ass square. That ain't happening, Captain! So what in the world would allow all of those fat ass Paranid medium ships to fit inside of something that is smaller than the total dimensions of the combined medium ships I just approximated with my eyeball and moving my fingers across the screen of the Split Carrier (Which is mostly hollow). The individual teleporter came to mind and that huge story I had to invent for myself, mentioned in the previous post, is what I came up with.

Old L miners and very first ships indeed had improbable sizes and could fit too many ships. And that did cause a question: why is that space used for ships and not ore.

In general, however, all S-ships will fit into 40x40x20 box, and if you look into the box while it stores ships, there seems to be enough space to stack 2 or 3 ships vertically. Not enough space to move them around though. It would be a LIFO. Last In, First Out.

40x40x20 is quite big. Modern jets are in ballpark of 20..22 meters long. 20 meters tall also is 4-5 story building.

[joeball123]

Originally posted by Doom:

X4 does not list ship dimensions, but you can measure it using stations. The smallest station connector module is 400 meters long (I know this because only 5 station connectors fit into 2 kilometers). From that we can already guess that Teladi L miners are at least half a kilometer long. This can be seen on screenshot.

An M dock is half of this length. So an M ship will be under 200 meters long. Argon Nomad, a fairly compact XL Aux seem to be 9 or 10 M docks long. That's already almost 2 kilometers.

If we continue with this... the side ratio of M dock seems to be 4:3, it is 3 S-docks wide, this tells us that an S dock is 50x50 meters or smaller. The box under it, IIRC is half its size deep. Given that an 3MS6 pad is 400x400 meters, and 9 S docks fit in it, and 9x50 = 450, larger than its width... That implies that S pads are likely a bit smaller, and not 3:4 ratio. Possibly 40 meters. 40x9 = 360 and fits into module, leaving roughly enough space for one more dock, which matches visual data on screens. That tells us that an S dock is 40x40 meters, and at least 20 meters deep, and M pad is likely 200x120 meters. So. With that in mind, a real life aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R Ford, is 333 meters long, which is a bit over 1.5 M docks. Gerald R Ford, however, is said to have a crew of over 4000 people. Meanwhile the largest X4 ships have 300+ at max. Gerald R Ford, supposedly, can carry 75+ aircraft, which is more than most carriers can hold, and it has to use a runway.

Now, note that this is a "back of a napkin" sort of calculation, there could be a mistake somewhere in it. It might be possible to extract exact numbers from the game using export tool, or get precise data on egosoft forums from a dev.

A problem with this kind of analysis is that it seems fairly likely that the game plays a bit fast and loose with scale - none of the models used for station traffic are significantly larger than your space suit, for example, even when one of them is supposed to be a "tour bus," and things like the 1M6S dock being more symbolic than literal representations of the "real" thing could go some way towards explaining how all those M-size ships that can go down the lift fit inside.

Also, it's worth mentioning that cargo capacities - particularly for the freighters - give another handle for the rough scale of the game's ships. A twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) is about 6.06m x 2.44m x variable between 1.3m and 2.9m but commonly about 2.6m; if you'd prefer an older unit, a register tonne is about 2.8 cubic meters. The Incarcatura Sentinel's 54,000 cubic meter cargo capacity, then, would put it at somewhere around 1,400 TEU (roughly 1,260 - 2,800 depending on what height you assume for your TEU) or about 19,000 register tonnes (add a bit if you want to compare GRT), which is fairly large for a freighter in the Second World War but rather less so in the present day. If you assume that the Incarcatura Sentinel's cargo volume is a cylinder with a 10m radius, the length of the cylinder is only about 172 meters; if you instead assume a square profile 20m on edge, the length needed for the cargo volume is just 135m.

Obviously, the cargo capacities could have been chosen for gameplay reasons rather than to show the literal capacities of the ships in the game, but that's also true for the relative scales of everything you can see in the game.

[Carlsberg]

Me, I'm childishly simple. It says I can stuff 40 S ships in there and I'm happy with that, If I need more space, (space? lol), I have a trailer out there in the yard.

[Doom]

Originally posted by joeball123:

A problem with this kind of analysis

Ship cargo volume is not based on ship model, that is known. You don't need need to use TEU to check it, just grab Argon courier and wonder where are 2k cubic meters supposed to go. Or Irukanji with its 520 cubic meters.

Station traffic can be small. If it doesn't far and doesn't need to fight gravity, there's no need for strong engines, meaning it could be comparable to real life car. One could argue that the suit is oversized.

Some station traffic models can be a bit smaller than necessary, but in general game tries to maintain consistent scale. Fly to one of the windows next to station and compare its size to the suit.