6 destroyers destroyed by a bunch of fighters

[sh1pman]

This is hilarious. HOP launched their attack at Argon and sent 6 Odysseus Sentinel destroyers to Second Contact. They were met by 9 fighters and 1 Cerberus drone carrier, while Argon big ships were absent, presumably fighting Xenon somewhere. 15 minutes later, last Odysseus got blown up. Apparently, destroyer beam turrets did negligible damage to the fighters. Missile turrets also didn’t help, fighters were too agile to get hit by a missile (even though the missiles were called heatseekers or something like that, I checked!). Destroyers’ shields couldn’t regenerate under constant fire from fighters’ small weapons. As a result, the capitals didn’t stand a chance and were blown up. What an epic battle that was. Fighter pilots are real badasses and deserve a promotion

[IRONOX]

There are a lot of dead angels for turrets on the bigger ships...
Its fairly easy to take out a destroyer with a fighter. Also the long shield recharge favor this

[Doc_Orange]

There are a lot of dead angels for turrets on the bigger ships...
Its fairly easy to take out a destroyer with a fighter. Also the long shield recharge favor this

This would be the explanation when there would be real tactics. In reality I observed that the turrets of the destroyers are not hitting and when they hit they hits are weak.

[IRONOX]

yeah... another drawback that the turret AI is still broken and the damage is underwhelming :/

[Helmut_AUT]

I really want to play this game. But then I read stuff like this here and wonder if it will be worth it before end of 2019...

[Bubonosaure]

This is why I'm playing with FOWC. . The turret balancing is just enough to make bigger ships good again and I sincerely hope egosoft takes notice of all of blackrain's changes. Vanilla is a joke right now. It's like playing an early access alpha.

[Ghalador]

I think the most stupid thing ever invented is that recharge delay. That must go away! Makes jokes out of capital ships!
A fart in your general direction keeps the huge capacitor banks of your 1200 m battleship from recharging the one thing that is made to be shot at?!? Seriously?
Of course shields are regenerating constantly!

Then while they are at it , reworking the turrets in general, Egosoft should introduce real capital ship weapons!
How many hits from a 360 mm ship howitzer do they think a gun boat can withstand?

[Général Grievous]

The most stupid things was to not take back Rebirth good fight mechanics but invent a brand new one.

In Rebirth, fights were awesome. But no possibility to take direct control of any ship.
In X4, fights sucks but you can direct control any ship.

Very frustrating...

[Invasion]

I really want to play this game. But then I read stuff like this here and wonder if it will be worth it before end of 2019...

Wait for a sale then. By general standards the game is still in early access. In its current state its still a downgrade compared to any variation of X3 (even without mods)
But if you have an idea of the roadblocks you will have to encounter and work around, and still think it will be good experience, then by all means you can play it right now.
Just don't let people fool you into thinking its all just fun and rainbows.

[csaba]

I find it hilarious that when controlling a destroyer you need to use the main cannons to take out fighters reliably.

Also scaling is questionable. Bombers have 4 turrets 2 main guns, literally packed to the brim. Destroyers with 10 times the surface area have 10 turrets 2 main guns with obvious gaps on their structure.

[reanor]

I find it hilarious that when controlling a destroyer you need to use the main cannons to take out fighters reliably.

Also scaling is questionable. Bombers have 4 turrets 2 main guns, literally packed to the brim. Destroyers with 10 times the surface area have 10 turrets 2 main guns with obvious gaps on their structure.

Yeah and on carriers you don't eve see those turrets, they are so tiny, do so little dmg and there are so few of them that it simply feels as if they weren't there. The balance is none-existent in X4... so are the turrets... considering how bad they are... You pretty much flying a bunch of metal meat shield that can do little of anything other than flying...

[pref]

Don't get all the complaints... every other day my turret manages to fire at an enemy ship. Maybe it even has 30% hitrate on capships?

Ok there isn't much damage done, but considering all the threat i can be scared of it seems kind of balanced

[reanor]

I'll prolly start from scratch and play modded to heck game. Get the turret mod, economy mod, trade mod, shield mod, venture mod, weapon trace mod. I've ran the previous modded game for about 150 hours then 350 or so hours in vanilla, end game is totally borked... the best I can do now is to make billions every 2-3 days from my factory complexes and fly monster fleets, make myself enemy of everyone, but it's so boring... I've also realized that I run ventures for the sake of running ventures, I don't remember when I last used anything I get from ventures.

And what's even more funny that a single modder made a lot more complicated venture mod, with different venture modes, with all ship classes, themes of ventures, etc. So ONE guy modder, made venture mod a lot more exciting than the whole Egosoft company couldn't. It's kind of sad. Then again, I probably have to be grateful that they created this game in the first place and gave us an ability to do extensive and complex modding. So yeah, removing my vanilla saves, shelfing them until better times and starting modded game from scratch. That's a third restart, I'll prolly have 1000 hours in this game soon...

[Scoob]

This is part of the reason I started adding mods to my game. I really wanted to stay vanilla so I could provide useful bug reports with saved games, however, the game simply stopped being even remotely fun for me as I gained larger assets of my own due to how easily the smallest of ships could take them out. Watching a Xenon M and N take out a fully-loaded destroyer is...well, rather saddening really.

X Rebirth, in its matured patched-up form, made Capital ships feel like super hard death machines, I loved them. X4's take on larger ships is a little underwhelming. I get why the turret count has been reduced from 100+ to 20 or so tops, for performance. Equally though, I wonder why combat has such a massive performance impact in X4, when large battles ran fairly well in Rebirth - exact same hardware for me.

I've been using the shield rebalance mod, which also tweaks turrets and weapons, along with Aggressive AI, and this provides what I consider an excellent balance. No more RIDICULOUS shield recharge delay, which allows skirmishes to play out much better in my view.

Shield recharge delay, with a fast recharge after not being hit for 10 seconds, might work ok on a nimble fighter that actually has a chance of avoiding being hit, but anything M-Class and above. Nope. I also think the shield-draining boost mechanic is silly. I mean, when do you most need to boost? When you're getting your arse kicked and your shields are out! A separate capacitor for boost - or even separate "emergency boost" fuel would be a far far better mechanic in my view. I hope this can be modded - some engines allowing for longer boost suggests it should be.

If this mechanic isn't changed in the future, I will continue to mod. Either tweaking things myself, or applying a Mod if it does what I want it to.

Interestingly, I was forever tweaking weapons and shields in the various X3 titles, but I was generally pretty happy with X Rebirth, after it'd been patched a few times. I did make my own "hull shields" mod before they were part of the game though...very strange omission by ES that was!

Scoob.

[Grimmrog]

I think the most stupid thing ever invented is that recharge delay. That must go away! Makes jokes out of capital ships!
A fart in your general direction keeps the huge capacitor banks of your 1200 m battleship from recharging the one thing that is made to be shot at?!? Seriously?
Of course shields are regenerating constantly!

Then while they are at it , reworking the turrets in general, Egosoft should introduce real capital ship weapons!
How many hits from a 360 mm ship howitzer do they think a gun boat can withstand?

farting in ones general direcion is exactly what turrets do. And thats why they fail to destroy anything. Their projectile speed is poop, thats why they fail to hit smaller objects. When current in athmopshere weapons can reach exit speeds of 1000ms, one would expect that futuristic weapons in space would actually have much higher speeds to exactly circumvent that Problem of not hitting stuff at 1,5km+ distance. But instead we have those big soap bubble fart turrets that cannot hit anything at decent speed. Even the pulse laser turrets have such a bad speed that any course/speedchange makes the projectiles miss, And this makes any lead aim the AI turrets do completely being a nonworking concept. And thus we all best use laser turrets because they hit due to not having any traveltime.

But I just wonder, how are off-sector battles done? Do they only get calculated? Does accuracy of turrets not matter then? Because I had an L trader which did fairly well until the moment I went to watch it live and then ti seemed to not being able to hit anything anymore.

[DeFragMe]

I think the most stupid thing ever invented is that recharge delay. That must go away! Makes jokes out of capital ships!
A fart in your general direction keeps the huge capacitor banks of your 1200 m battleship from recharging the one thing that is made to be shot at?!? Seriously?
Of course shields are regenerating constantly!

Then while they are at it , reworking the turrets in general, Egosoft should introduce real capital ship weapons!
How many hits from a 360 mm ship howitzer do they think a gun boat can withstand?

farting in ones general direcion is exactly what turrets do. And thats why they fail to destroy anything. Their projectile speed is poop, thats why they fail to hit smaller objects. When current in athmopshere weapons can reach exit speeds of 1000ms, one would expect that futuristic weapons in space would actually have much higher speeds to exactly circumvent that Problem of not hitting stuff at 1,5km+ distance. But instead we have those big soap bubble fart turrets that cannot hit anything at decent speed. Even the pulse laser turrets have such a bad speed that any course/speedchange makes the projectiles miss, And this makes any lead aim the AI turrets do completely being a nonworking concept. And thus we all best use laser turrets because they hit due to not having any traveltime.

But I just wonder, how are off-sector battles done? Do they only get calculated? Does accuracy of turrets not matter then? Because I had an L trader which did fairly well until the moment I went to watch it live and then ti seemed to not being able to hit anything anymore.

i dont really want to add much to the discussion.. but about the speed of the bullets.. most bullets in the game move at more than 2km/s , only weapon slower than 2km/s is Plasma and missiles. The aim of the guns is just.. horrible.

[Grimmrog]

I think the most stupid thing ever invented is that recharge delay. That must go away! Makes jokes out of capital ships!
A fart in your general direction keeps the huge capacitor banks of your 1200 m battleship from recharging the one thing that is made to be shot at?!? Seriously?
Of course shields are regenerating constantly!

Then while they are at it , reworking the turrets in general, Egosoft should introduce real capital ship weapons!
How many hits from a 360 mm ship howitzer do they think a gun boat can withstand?

farting in ones general direcion is exactly what turrets do. And thats why they fail to destroy anything. Their projectile speed is poop, thats why they fail to hit smaller objects. When current in athmopshere weapons can reach exit speeds of 1000ms, one would expect that futuristic weapons in space would actually have much higher speeds to exactly circumvent that Problem of not hitting stuff at 1,5km+ distance. But instead we have those big soap bubble fart turrets that cannot hit anything at decent speed. Even the pulse laser turrets have such a bad speed that any course/speedchange makes the projectiles miss, And this makes any lead aim the AI turrets do completely being a nonworking concept. And thus we all best use laser turrets because they hit due to not having any traveltime.

But I just wonder, how are off-sector battles done? Do they only get calculated? Does accuracy of turrets not matter then? Because I had an L trader which did fairly well until the moment I went to watch it live and then ti seemed to not being able to hit anything anymore.

i dont really want to add much to the discussion.. but about the speed of the bullets.. most bullets in the game move at more than 2km/s , only weapon slower than 2km/s is Plasma and missiles. The aim of the guns is just.. horrible.

Aim is not horrible, they aim as well as lasers do, the issue is still travel times. you cna observe that when an enemie does not move in an one directional vector, because only then stays the prediction of the preaim circle true to where the opponent will be. otherwise you just miss, and that happens most of the time when the opponent moves in any vector that changes like, takign turns, changing speed. laser turrets just don't have to aim at a leading circle, and they hit, if aiming would be bad they would also miss. but the aim prediction is the issue, and it is also why a quick and nimble ship can avoid fire of opponents, since they aim the same way. As a human player you just adabt (except you are doing jousting battles) a flight style that tries to align your vector with the one of the opponent so that the aim lead is not affected by multiple directional changes.

In elite dangerous this is a similar thing but projectiles there have more variety (some at liek 800m/s others at whole 1600m/s, but ships are less nimble there when it comes to sudden vector alterations, which then creates the same issue only at specific distances depending on the guns. and here in X we see the same, where pulses are kinda fine, Lasers definately strike(not hard without ravel time) but the other weapons being smply too slow for the quickness of all small ships. And this simply comes from the way how vector changes are too unpredictable by how quickly you can change them compared to projectile speed.

[DeFragMe]

farting in ones general direcion is exactly what turrets do. And thats why they fail to destroy anything. Their projectile speed is poop, thats why they fail to hit smaller objects. When current in athmopshere weapons can reach exit speeds of 1000ms, one would expect that futuristic weapons in space would actually have much higher speeds to exactly circumvent that Problem of not hitting stuff at 1,5km+ distance. But instead we have those big soap bubble fart turrets that cannot hit anything at decent speed. Even the pulse laser turrets have such a bad speed that any course/speedchange makes the projectiles miss, And this makes any lead aim the AI turrets do completely being a nonworking concept. And thus we all best use laser turrets because they hit due to not having any traveltime.

But I just wonder, how are off-sector battles done? Do they only get calculated? Does accuracy of turrets not matter then? Because I had an L trader which did fairly well until the moment I went to watch it live and then ti seemed to not being able to hit anything anymore.

i dont really want to add much to the discussion.. but about the speed of the bullets.. most bullets in the game move at more than 2km/s , only weapon slower than 2km/s is Plasma and missiles. The aim of the guns is just.. horrible.

Aim is not horrible, they aim as well as lasers do, the issue is still travel times. you cna observe that when an enemie does not move in an one directional vector, because only then stays the prediction of the preaim circle true to where the opponent will be. otherwise you just miss, and that happens most of the time when the opponent moves in any vector that changes like, takign turns, changing speed. laser turrets just don't have to aim at a leading circle, and they hit, if aiming would be bad they would also miss. but the aim prediction is the issue, and it is also why a quick and nimble ship can avoid fire of opponents, since they aim the same way. As a human player you just adabt (except you are doing jousting battles) a flight style that tries to align your vector with the one of the opponent so that the aim lead is not affected by multiple directional changes.

In elite dangerous this is a similar thing but projectiles there have more variety (some at liek 800m/s others at whole 1600m/s, but ships are less nimble there when it comes to sudden vector alterations, which then creates the same issue only at specific distances depending on the guns. and here in X we see the same, where pulses are kinda fine, Lasers definately strike(not hard without ravel time) but the other weapons being smply too slow for the quickness of all small ships. And this simply comes from the way how vector changes are too unpredictable by how quickly you can change them compared to projectile speed.

oh, dont worry, i know that, but have you ever seen how especially turrets shoot at stuff that flies completly silently without turning? i mostly see this on khaak (since their movment is quite linear compared to Xenon and other factions), the guns just.. miss, for no real reason. i would expect my pulse turrets (shoots nearly flying 4km/s on a target not even 2km away) to constantly hit the target. Afterall it is not changing direciton, speed or anything. but no, most shoots still miss.

thats why i think they are not aiming at the right place, and there for the aim is quite bad. The shots usually land (at least on khaak ships) behind the target, like it is not traking far enough into the front. One might say it is traking speed, but it isnt, i have the same problem with turrets that trak slower or faster. Its like it has a randomnees inside it of how good it actually will hit.... but hey , maybe it is the crew, i dont know.

[pref]

I also think the shield-draining boost mechanic is silly. I mean, when do you most need to boost? When you're getting your arse kicked and your shields are out! A separate capacitor for boost - or even separate "emergency boost" fuel would be a far far better mechanic in my view.

But then you get an easy way out of any harm, and if NPC ships also have this this would be extremely annoying - no battle ever finished, anyone can escape whenever they please.
Game hasn't enough tension even in current state, would be sad to see it being made even more easy.

[Sentinel-Ghost]

I also think the shield-draining boost mechanic is silly. I mean, when do you most need to boost? When you're getting your arse kicked and your shields are out! A separate capacitor for boost - or even separate "emergency boost" fuel would be a far far better mechanic in my view.

But then you get an easy way out of any harm, and if NPC ships also have this this would be extremely annoying - no battle ever finished, anyone can escape whenever they please.
Game hasn't enough tension even in current state, would be sad to see it being made even more easy.

The boost mechanic definitely needs a rework, maybe shorten the boost duration and have it on its own separate 'fuel gauge'?

Capital ship weapons do seem a bit lackluster, the projectile speed seems fairly comparable to X3, its just the DPS, range and cool-downs that seem to be out of whack.