I automatically assume Split all around were the best. Well for combat they were but I didn't realize how good Teladi engines were for non-combat. Thanks for a very informative video!
These are great videos. Thank you. I ran similar tests about a year ago, under patch 6.x, with similar results, though my conclusions differed somewhat. To me, anything other than Terran on L/XL ships simply isn't worth considering. My reasoning follows: - First, there's the AI and the little goofy hiccups that can take it out of travel drive, both in high and low attention. Although it's true that Terran loses ground when there are more non-travel maneuvers, it's also true that the average trip might see 2-3 unexpected drops from travel drive, only requiring tiny course corrections before the recharge commences. This doesn't happen as often in low attention, but it can still happen. You also potentially run into maneuver-free delays like fleets waiting on their mates after a jump. - Second, you mentioned lower mass/drag favoring Terran drives--well, if we're talking L/XL combat ships, where Terran might ordinarily show its worst face, then it's worth pointing out that L/XL combat ships are the most likely beneficiaries of Hull/Engine mods, mitigating the Terran engines' disadvantage in cruise mode, and improving its advantages elsewhere. - Third, I'm likely to put my best crew on L/XL combat ships, and Terran derives outsized benefit from their skill. - Fourth, you mentioned use-case differences--e.g. if using "overwhelming force," you probably just want your fleet to arrive as quick as possible and don't care about its maneuverability afterwards. I agree with this assessment, and I'll add that by the time I'm in a position to get picky about engine load outs on L/XL ships, I'm already rich enough to field overwhelming force. I'm also already rich enough not to care about the price premium for the Terran engine. I have a similar take on L civilian ships, btw. Mediums simply annihilate Large in bang-for-buck--and I say that as someone who mods the highway out of the game. Eventually I always replace my Medium traders/miners with Large, to declutter, but by that time I've already effectively won the game, anyway. Even the threat of Kha'ak doesn't really move the needle, earlier on; it's actually cheaper to buy a handful of Katanas to babysit your M miners than it is to buy Ls instead. Fittingly enough given the topic, if you buy reasonably fast M miners, they can escape pretty well on their own, too. Further on the subject of Medium civilian ships, I just watched your other video; it's excellent. My testing suggested that the SPL Boa is the best Medium trader, using either ARG or PAR engines, though I don't think I tested Teladi. (In my defense, I hate lizards.) This conclusion was based not just on speed, at which the Boa excels, but on the ratio of cargo capacity moved per unit time, over a 10-jump round trip with two docking maneuvers. I say ARG or PAR engines because they're relatively strong at both cruise speed--for escape--and max travel; ARG are slightly better at the latter and PAR are slightly better at the former, but these are not overwhelming differences. Preference reigns. Similarly, the PAR Plutus took the M miner crown in cargo volume/time; the Cthonious Sentinel took the L miner crown, and the Shuyaku Sentinel won the L trader match up (using Terran engines). The main difference between my method and yours for the M ships seems to be that I just assumed Combat engines would be best, for survivability's sake, and maybe to a tiny degree for the sake of maneuvering at e.g. docking time. Anyway as you can tell, I love me some long-winded discussion of this game's mechanics. Happily subscribed.
Thank you for your work. I quickly realised that I wouldn't know anything for sure without practical testing, but I had no idea how to go about it - or any inclination to go to that much effort, honestly.
Thank you for this very informative video. I always thought Terran engines were the best so all my L and XL ships, both military and non have them. My shipyard builds them and then they get the exceptional drag and mass mod and basic travel mod. It was great to see that my own observations were not so far from your very expertly crafted tests. Great job, pat yourself on your back.
The raw data and basic calculations are all on paper for this one. I'm going all digital for the next round of tests though, so maybe I'll make those datasheets available if I can figure out how to do it without doxxing myself.
I had a group of Katanas and 1 Nodan in a group ordered to upgrade and repair at Brennan Wharf. Some how the game glitched. My katanas left dock with Small Sized engines. The drifted like drunk walruses and traveled faster in any direction with maneuvering thrusters than they did with the engines. It qas surreal to watch. Took a full 10 minutes to get them back into dock and switched to Medium Engines. They only really moved when i wasn't watching them.
11:25 Wasn't charge time also reduced in TER engines? I distinctly remember that the time between issuing a travel command and start of acceleration is lower. IIRC it was the time penalty after the charging sound until the chime and start of "attack".
@@vdis Yep. They're the First Terraformer War era engines of Old Earth. If you're not thinking of them, then maybe Terran engines got nerfed at some point in the past, because they don't have any charge time bonus these days.
Huh, if only I had known. I had used to put split engines on a lot of my capital ships because I did not consider the travel speed buildup. I had always felt the split were sluggish on long travels.
During long military fleet transit I usually just sit in SETA somewhere else in the universe while doing empire management stuff or watching TH-cam so it usually doesn't matter how long it takes for ships to get there so Split should win but I still use Terran because once in high detail you still often need to transit from one end of a sector to another, and split travel times just make my brain hurt. Maybe I should use them on the AI escorts cause they tend to exit travel drive either too far or too close to the enemy so forward speed should help them but at that point it's just easier to fit everyone with Terran gear. However for trading in the case I don't want to bother with Terran economy I might just favor Teladi so this was an informative video for me. It's a bit iffy because of Engine Parts and mainly the Antimatter Converters but you might be even able to sneak it into a Closed Loop economy.
Although you can just use the Terran scrap method as such you only need ore and helium for microlattice to produce a full Terran "scrap" fleet or a closed loop fleet with Terran shields, engines and weapons which is just a weird flex so Teladi doesn't make sense unless you are exclusively using Universal production.
Excellent Video! Now for my questions, didn't find these were answered in detail in the video or comments. 1) Crew on NON combat ships, I inferred that you should always have full complement of crew. Is that true? Some other test videos have suggested that crew doesn't matter for trading (I think those were single sector tests though). 2) What engine mods would you recommend in a) Non-Combat; b) Combat; and c) mixed scenarios for AI ships. BR /S
1) The important stat is the crew's Combined Skill, which is a weighted average of the pilot's skill (weighted 70%) and the service crew's average skill (weighted 30%). On the service crew side, empty slots and marines count as zeroes. So, you can run with no crew and still get up to 70% efficiency just from a good pilot, but service crew helps crank that efficiency up closer to 100%. 2) Modifying the chassis for lower drag is my #1 recommendation for all-around better flight characteristics. As for engine mods, I usually just go for forward thrust on non-combat and mixed role ships. On dedicated combat ships, I go for either forward or rotation thrust, whichever they're worse at. These are just my personal preferences, not scientifically tested.
Yes, I tested the Heron, Barbarossa, and Colossus both unladen and fully laden with cargo. Surprisingly, there were no statistically significant changes in performance. Either the added cargo mass is not included in low-attention physics calculations, or the extra mass just doesn't make a meaningful difference for the AI due to the way it handles deceleration.
When compared to other ships with equal numbers of engines and similar mass, Boron ships performed very poorly in the transit test: last place at the XL size, second to last for L. That said, if you ignore the mass and engine quantity and compare them to their direct counterparts in their respective roles, they come out a bit more favorably. For example, the Shark (5 Boron engines) was about 27% faster on average than a Raptor (1 Terran engine).
Argon are the only Commonwealth engines that can be built entirely from Closed Loop parts, which is much simpler than using their Universal blueprint. Terran can also be produced from scrap using the Pioneers' scrapyard modules, but they don't have a second blueprint like Argon do.
Question I got 3 builders training service crew and marines non stop And 5 star service man i distributing between my fleet How much service crew should be on a destroyer or freighter to take effect? Im usually sending 20 5 star service crew to 1 ship, but some of them has 45 seats and some over a 100 What is a optimal quantity?
You generally want to completely fill the ship. The important stat is combined crew skill, which is a weighted average. Empty crew slots count as a zero for that average, so if you have 100 service crew slots, 20 of them are 5 stars, and 80 are empty, they'll average out to just 1 star. That said, the pilot is more important than the service crew for the ship's combined crew skill. It's weighted 70/30 pilot/crew, so if you have the average 1-star crew described above combined with a 5-star pilot, you end up with a total combined skill of 3.66 stars.
I still prefer BOR engines for my personal L/XL ships because I absolutely loathe the charge time. Often makes me just skip travel drive and use SETA instead. Wish it could be modded completely away (in-game mods that is) - or y'know, just let us put frigging Boron equipment on the other ships - remove the organic glow effect on other ships and hey presto, looks OK. For AI ships, I don't really care, but I've noticed after doing a few tests myself that Terran are usually faster. Why Egosoft still hasnt added all engine stats to the upgrade menu after 6 years is beyond me. More tests please, like M and L turrets, destroyer main batteries and such.
I feel like an average between the transit and combat performance might have made more sense than sum of the two numbers. Good work though! I did a few drag races a while ago and these numbers match what I found back then. My tests were more focused on the different combat ships than the engines though, so all I really found out was that the erlking is quite busted.
Yeah, the Erlking is nuts. Average would probably have made more sense for Boron, but I liked using the combined ratios for all the other races and didn't want to change the method for the one odd race out. Maybe I should have.
@@CptSnuggles07 The Boron ships could easily be explained as having more mass: the borons can't be cooped up in that tiny encounter suit, so the habitation "has to be water filled", but to allow us non-amphibians to HAVE Boron ships and NOT for only Boron crews to get on board, we magically make shared spaces filled with air and therefore the Boron in them HAVE TO have encounter suits. Doing "more mass, less drag" would also make for a bad fighter for the Borons, if you can't accelerate, top speed doesn't matter, the opponent speed is all that matters, and if you turn slowly in a furball, most of the time is taken with guns silent while you rate the nose on target. Which may be opposite to what they wanted the "feel" of Boron ships to have. So Boron engines are odd, because they aren't allowed to fit the lore or actual use because they are incompatible with each other. But it is too late now, and I ain't the owner of Egosoft to design it the way I think fits: few fighters BECAUSE FIGHTERS ARE NOT WORTH HAVING, but excellent large ships that refuse to get swarmed by fighters so that THEY can do the jobs other races use fighters for. That means few fighters from the Boron because they didn't bother, the number of pilots wanting or able to get 24/7 into a constricting encounter suit could NOT be countenanced, but an M class ship has enough space to allow them to relax and not get claustrophobic in a communal, larger (and not available to players, even Boron players) pool, so can be manned by borons, but able to resist swarms of those small fighter class khak. And their destroyers, facing swarms of fighters but on occasion having to take the khak stations out (that even M sizes can't do), are also especially able to take out fighter swarms and not get swarmed themselves. Meanwhile their dolphin or small traders RACE around, not being able to turn because of all that mass doesn't matter, but the massive top speed and decent acceleration by brute forcing it with lots of engines, means they will run away from Free Family pirates and never need to engage in combat. That would leave the Boron weak to Xenon Ks and Is, and the destroyers of other races, including the Asgard when the gate eventually opens, so "quick development" to patch that gap to fill the "anti-captial class" role because the Ray, for example, was optimised to take out fighters, lots of them, but can't do enough damage to take out big ships or big stations, and making it a better anti-capital would make it more vulnerable to fighters, and there are now few fighters to combat the enemy fighters.
My testing, "shortened" to fit: Teladi L or XL All-Round engines. They do best even if they are nowhere near as fast as Split ones but because they are good for getting TO travel speed or out quickly, those are generally the best and going outside that is something to think about before doing. Split travel speeds are terrible. Paranid M Combat or Argon M All-Round. The time spent spooling up for travel engines make them entirely useless in any sort of combat, including when you are hit by a pirate. You just can't fail to get hit in 3 seconds. Argon do best all-round, Paranid are best combat engines, and carrier cases are for most irrelevant here. Split S Combat for carrier fighters, Paranid S Combat for combat military ships, Argon S All-Round on anything else. Carrier fighters never get to travel speed, so that being terrible is not a problem. Patrols need to avoid having low travel speed. But a default setup should be the All-Round, of which the Argon are the best at it. If you want decent travel speed but high normal speed and, importantly, don't care that there is that terrible 3 second delay for it, the Split Travel at either S or M do make good engines, the only travel engines that are any use at all, their natural speed means most combat is faster than normal, but if there isn't any combat, they can get to decent high speed in travel mode. Terran engines don't have any (or much) spool up time for non-capitals, but don't get to high speeds, even the Argon outpace them. Teladi engines have a minor boost in that the time taken to get to their lower top speed is quick, but that only really matters for travel, and that 3 second delay means you should never bother with travel engines, so the Teladi benefit doesn't matter. Boron engines don't have a spool up time for medium and small craft, but are boron only.
That Terrans are so fast to start off is odd, though. It is why they are so darned expensive, sure, but terrans, blocked behind the inactive gate, has mostly huge sectors to traverse, and absolute top speed is more important than fast attack speeds the bigger a sector gets. Therefore the terran engines should be the other way round: faster in travel mode but taking LONGER to get there, like noticeably longer, such that it is, for large terran sectors, significantly faster, but for the smaller sectors in the CoP, their effective top speed would be lower. To do that, though, would be why you'd make them a lot cheaper. And since a lot of terran engines are already bought, and that change would make that expense lost, maybe Egosoft are too afraid of the ire it would produce to delete "their credits earned" that way. Or, that people HAVE now chosen to use Terran Engines because of that fast rise time despite it being much more expensive, the decision the would have made is now entirely different, and they would complain that a full refit is required. A refit that may also lose them credits. And so changing those figures is, now, too late. Nobody in the beta program told them to change it. And now it is too late. Hence they brought up the E class. Because that obviates that change to a released ship: make a new one!!!! However, since the builders were replaced in-situ and not replaced with an E class, they STILL got the far-too-large docking space because alll they did was cutnpaste, "all XL ships get 40+10, all L ships get 40" that was then broken to allow the Raptor to do a real, but since the Raptor wasn't already released, it doesn't matter that it was a carrier with 121 docks internally. If they'd replaced with an E class builder instead, then the new designs got non-tardis tech for docking but that was wasted space for builders anyway, and more drones makes the builder just as hard as nails as if it had 40 fighters to defend it, but no longer requires a cry of "but WHERE are they storing them?!?!?" Because of cries of "I cannot install if you take $THIS away from me!!!!", they had to make it an E class instead, so that they could change the model and not make it nuts (where does an Oddy store 10 Ms?) or wasted (what use does a Behemoth HAVE for 40 fighters on it, let alone an Incarcatua?), but the choice to not have the sane versions of ships would not mean that those people don't get the new updates and also therefore no new DLCs (because the DLC requires that the update gets accepted). We're happy for MORE. So M freighters went up from 6000 to 12000 and everyone rejoiced, but that meant the 18000 L class freighters fell down and stopped being at all useful in comparison by a factor of 3. Of course we'd take a tripling of the L freightes too! But we will complain bitterly if 30 fighters were taken from the Behemoth and the Oddy had a pad for an M but not space inside for one and STILL lost 30 fighters because "Well, where would they go???" wasn't what we wanted. Doubly so if those lost ships were summarily deleted or required a restart to avoid deletion. Same for speed, turn rates or missile loads or deployables, etc. We're happy with it being upped, but even if it doesn't destroy quietly any excess stuff, we are upset if it gets reduced, even if it is for good reason. If I were to ignore complaints and owned Egosoft, I'd swap Terran and Teladi, but reduce the cost of Terran engines to "normal". The Boron are only "good" because it has so many engines, and it was designed to hold those engines, and those engines alone so was designed to hold a LOT of engines in the hull. I'd have to look to see this isn't how it is already done and so this change CANNOT work to, um, change things, but I'd up the mass and reduce the drag, meaning that acceleration is bad but top speed is good, and if the Boron ships take 2x as many engines as "normal" to get to "normal" speeds, as compared to the CoP average, then Boron engines should be 1/2 the price. And if that means more than normal thrust for the price, well since those engines are ONLY Boron engines, it absolutely doesn't matter that "if you could fit them on the Argon Eclipse, the Boron S class engine would make it beat the best a pure Paranid combat ship can mange" because you CAN'T fit them on an Argon Eclipse. Only a Baracuda, et al. And to maintain a "fast turn" Baracuda, maybe its figures could be finagled with the reason why it "lies" is because the engine can't handle a ship where main engines are ducted to aid in turn/strafe leaving less going straight out the back, so IT has to be given a fake max turn rate and mass and drag because that is just how the engine does it.
I would have liked to see the footage from the parkour as well. I'm having trouble believing (without seeing) that Split engines actually do better in combat due to their high charge time. In my scenarios ships with commonwealth engines kind of were always late for the show. But I haven't done any thorough analysis which is why I'm curious about the footage.
Oh wait, drag race was the only measure for battlefield performance? But in those TER have also won. How did Split come out top in your ranking when they were last in the destroyers drag race?
Drag race splits were included alongside top speed, acceleration, and boost speed, averaged across all tested ships for each engine. Those stats aren't hidden like travel performance is, so they didn't need the same amount of testing, but they are extremely important with the new AI behaviors. If you want video evidence of that, pretty much all of my combat videos show capital ships with Split engines winning fights against superior opponents by outmaneuvering them. But like I said in this video, if you only care about arrival time and not about how your individual ships maneuver in combat, Terran is a fine choice.
@@CptSnuggles07 interesting. My experience is up until V6. I haven't played v7, yet. It was becoming a bit boring to always only choose terran for all and everything. Seeing the other races coming closer to their lore is refreshing. Especially the Split who by lore should outclass every other combat ship. Which they did back in the X2 days, not so much in X4.6.
Love your videos but it feels like the models in your game are in low resolution (I can count the pixels)? And I am not really a friend of putting other factions technology on ships (like the TEL plasma on TER destroyers in timelines). That is why I would like to see a of their ships with their tech.
I have to record with a slightly below average bitrate due to technical constraints. It might not look great on some monitors, although it looks fine on mine. As for using faction-specific tech, you should be able to use the info from this video alongside the in-game ship comparison tool to predict ships' relative performance with their respective factions' engines. That footage might make for good viewing but not for good science, as there's just too much variation in the ships' mass, drag coefficients, and engine quantity. For example, I did try putting the Osaka and Tokyo in the drag race, but it was pretty pitiful. Terran hulls aren't designed for mobility, but Boron hulls are, so for a fair comparison of the engines it's better to put the Terran engines on an off-race hull that is designed for mobility, like the Odysseus.
The quality is good enough for "normal" mode but in full screen on a 1080p Monitor the symbols on the map look like a step pyramid instead of a triangle. For the race tech This was a video about their engines so it was the right choice for a comparision. But wouldn't the race ships with their tech be an idea for a new video?
yeah im making a mod that changes lots of things, this is one of the things i noticed and didnt like.. Travel engines should be good at what they say on the name tag, (imagine that) and teladi should have the best of them. just like how everyone expects split to have the best combat drives. and argons or terrans to have the best all rounders. another thing i didnt like is M ships boost speed being the same or higher than their actual FTL speed... which is nuts. then theirs the instant booster off effect i dont like either, so you cant tap boost and chain bursts of speed to turn and maneuver between bursts, if you release the boost button you stop instantly even if it took you several seconds to build that speed. alot of Egosofts base "balance" if you can even call it that has me scratching my head and dont get me started on M class shields, Frigate performance, and the lack of Medium missile turrets FOR medium ships.
@@CptSnuggles07 as it stands im giving Frigates and gunships missile turrets, but not Corvettes cuz they are already strong enough and dont need help, especially after the M shield changes i did.
@@TheAngriestGamer. The balance for M class ships is to, IMO, make the Xenon more powerful. Ps boost away out of their first run at you, but avoiding that initial burst of damage by using S size and barrel rolling around so you don't get hit negates that damage, and the M class might go fast, but they do NOT get far enough away to regenerate the shield they lost from boosting. That means the Ps are dangerous, but once you learned their weakness, they are a doddle. They therefore HAVE TO BE mixed with S class fighters to fill those gaps of the M class. The shielding of the M class doesn't aid them for combat against L craft main guns or gravitons, they are too big to get missed, even by other M class, so you using a Nemesis against a P needs a different strategy, you have to tank that damage, not avoid it, and then try to out-damage the P early to take it out fast, before its fighters are attacked. As a whole, M size ships don't work in combat. Against S sizes, they can easily get swarmed because their shields recharge SLOWLY, and so the fighters may lose some numbers because your shields are big, the recharge rate is half or less theirs, meaning you are only, as far as warfare attrition is concerned, only half a fighter, not even a full one. Against M sizes, they can trade blows against them, potentially doing more, because a Nemesis has more guns than a P. But a Peregrine doesn't. So it's a case of who is better supported. One-on-one, it is potentially a match, and it is up to the ship stats as to who wins, but if one side is supported by others, even just drones or small fighters (or capitals), the unsupported M class will lose. And against L class, especially destroyers, it doesn't have enough shields to tank those capital grade weapons, not enough shield regen to last in combat by attrition, and unable to do enough damage to be worth using against them. Against other L or XL class, where there are only fighter-grade weapons and few of them, an M class can do enough to justify, but the AI doesn't do it that way, and there is no way to order "THOSE Ls but not those ones, m'kay?" so you are left with micromanagement. The M class could work IF the orders could be sent to make them useful. E.g. a fast wing of Peregrines could be ordered to do an attack with a rear-flank manoeuvrer to attack the relatively defenceless carrier and its engines, from the rear, but you can't do that. You have to make up a set of movements and THEN Order "Attack THISSHIP", then potentially more movements to run away and regroup. If you could do that, or did micromanage it that way, then some fighters would have to be taken from the front line attack to defend the carrier it came from, reducing enemy numbers on Attack. Or they would lose a capital, an expensive one to boot, and the Peregrines are now well placed to attack destroyers engines or the smaller enemies from behind, giving them a huge advantage in position and to obviate that advantage, a period of no attacks while some forces get reoriented to face the rearward threat. IMO the Beta change for guided missiles are for the M class. Throw missiles at the destroyer beyond the range its guns can hit back while your destroyer comes in for the kill. One or the other is then safe from counterattack. M class would be safer to swarming over if its shield regeneration were higher. Like MUCH higher. But to benefit the M class against S or L opponents, you need both the beta changes (which only benefit M class bombers of capital ships) AND higher shield regeneration. Consider testing just upping the shield regen of M class shields. To four times, to make it "definitely worth two fighters". If that stops it being so sensitive to being swamped by S class fighters, then it has solved that. But if it makes fighting M class boring because it turns them to bullet sponges, it fails. Either both are done adequately by reducing the shield regen rates, or something else has to be changed to make it fun and balanced.
@@TheAngriestGamer. As to more complex orders, don't just look at how it makes tactics more viable, but also how it would work. Not just how the AI would do those orders now, but also what happens if YOU jump in while that order is being done. Is the order just put in abeyance? Is the second in command now wingleader and the prior orders are continuing with a smaller wing? Or do you get each waypoint or a Time On Point marker a la DCS et al for combat, so that YOU can do the order and the HUD is designed to allow that to happen. What happens if the winglead gets blown up? What happens if you take a wingsecond ship, so the wing still exists, still has the order, but now fewer ships than expected? What happens when the order is successful and over with? What if the order is failing and ought to be replaced, how is that done? E.g. a flanking manoeuvre is issued but by RNG more of that wing is destroyed and that flanking action cannot now be successful? Or if, noticing that flanking happening, a wing is sent by the enemy fleet to intercept them, meaning that action cannot be taken without ignoring the interceptors? Sure a gunship can leave its turrets to take out interceptors, but what if they are set to Attack Capitals, or Attack My Target? Don't just think how it could work. Think how it could fail. And then how you would deal with that failure mode. And if that fails too. And other failure modes, because most things have more than one single way to fail. Doing so is how bugs are quashed. Not doing so is how bugs get shipped in games, or indeed any program.
Having a set of orders to do something, another order of "Then do your default", because if, for example, it ended with a fly here order, it would STAY there, until you manually clear all orders or delete that one or add a new one (which if it isn't "Attack" etc also doesn't end), so an ACTUAL ORDER to "Resume Duties" is required so that you can order a retreat and regroup and when they are all in place (indicating that you need a regroup that is similar to "Coordinate attack") and then "Resume Duties" so that they return to normal orders after regrouping.
They do when the player is flying them. Cargo load had no impact on performance in this test (or in my current testing of smaller ships), so the added mass might not be included in the low-attention (OOS) physics, or it just doesn't affect the AI as much as it does the player.
Haha, sure. All-Round engines are always better than Travel engines. Terran is best for all travel and no combat. Split is best for all combat and no travel. For an equal mix of combat and travel, with XL ships, Teladi is best, although Terran is still fine. For an equal mix of combat and travel, with L ships, you just have to use your judgement. They all have uses, although I'd still say Terran, Split, and Teladi are the most competitive overall. Boron is unique. Their engines are not good in a statistical comparison, but in practice they are fine.
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It's more fair to the Boron to present their combined ratios as averages of transit and battlefield. Those averages are: L -17%, XL -31%.
I automatically assume Split all around were the best. Well for combat they were but I didn't realize how good Teladi engines were for non-combat. Thanks for a very informative video!
Been waiting for a video like this for like years. Thank you.
Thank you so much for doing something like this -- super valuable resource for the community to have access to!
Thank you for making this video, so valuable to the X4 community
These are great videos. Thank you. I ran similar tests about a year ago, under patch 6.x, with similar results, though my conclusions differed somewhat. To me, anything other than Terran on L/XL ships simply isn't worth considering. My reasoning follows:
- First, there's the AI and the little goofy hiccups that can take it out of travel drive, both in high and low attention. Although it's true that Terran loses ground when there are more non-travel maneuvers, it's also true that the average trip might see 2-3 unexpected drops from travel drive, only requiring tiny course corrections before the recharge commences. This doesn't happen as often in low attention, but it can still happen. You also potentially run into maneuver-free delays like fleets waiting on their mates after a jump.
- Second, you mentioned lower mass/drag favoring Terran drives--well, if we're talking L/XL combat ships, where Terran might ordinarily show its worst face, then it's worth pointing out that L/XL combat ships are the most likely beneficiaries of Hull/Engine mods, mitigating the Terran engines' disadvantage in cruise mode, and improving its advantages elsewhere.
- Third, I'm likely to put my best crew on L/XL combat ships, and Terran derives outsized benefit from their skill.
- Fourth, you mentioned use-case differences--e.g. if using "overwhelming force," you probably just want your fleet to arrive as quick as possible and don't care about its maneuverability afterwards. I agree with this assessment, and I'll add that by the time I'm in a position to get picky about engine load outs on L/XL ships, I'm already rich enough to field overwhelming force. I'm also already rich enough not to care about the price premium for the Terran engine.
I have a similar take on L civilian ships, btw. Mediums simply annihilate Large in bang-for-buck--and I say that as someone who mods the highway out of the game. Eventually I always replace my Medium traders/miners with Large, to declutter, but by that time I've already effectively won the game, anyway. Even the threat of Kha'ak doesn't really move the needle, earlier on; it's actually cheaper to buy a handful of Katanas to babysit your M miners than it is to buy Ls instead. Fittingly enough given the topic, if you buy reasonably fast M miners, they can escape pretty well on their own, too.
Further on the subject of Medium civilian ships, I just watched your other video; it's excellent. My testing suggested that the SPL Boa is the best Medium trader, using either ARG or PAR engines, though I don't think I tested Teladi. (In my defense, I hate lizards.) This conclusion was based not just on speed, at which the Boa excels, but on the ratio of cargo capacity moved per unit time, over a 10-jump round trip with two docking maneuvers. I say ARG or PAR engines because they're relatively strong at both cruise speed--for escape--and max travel; ARG are slightly better at the latter and PAR are slightly better at the former, but these are not overwhelming differences. Preference reigns.
Similarly, the PAR Plutus took the M miner crown in cargo volume/time; the Cthonious Sentinel took the L miner crown, and the Shuyaku Sentinel won the L trader match up (using Terran engines). The main difference between my method and yours for the M ships seems to be that I just assumed Combat engines would be best, for survivability's sake, and maybe to a tiny degree for the sake of maneuvering at e.g. docking time.
Anyway as you can tell, I love me some long-winded discussion of this game's mechanics. Happily subscribed.
Thanks for this legend! I would never have used TER engines otherwise. And it is a considerable difference.
Loving your vids on X4, cheers for taking the time to make them dude.
Thank you for your work. I quickly realised that I wouldn't know anything for sure without practical testing, but I had no idea how to go about it - or any inclination to go to that much effort, honestly.
Thank you for this very informative video. I always thought Terran engines were the best so all my L and XL ships, both military and non have them. My shipyard builds them and then they get the exceptional drag and mass mod and basic travel mod. It was great to see that my own observations were not so far from your very expertly crafted tests. Great job, pat yourself on your back.
you sometimes put some awesome camera angles and show the game vistas super well 👍, people really underestimate how good the game looks
Nice use of the Intro Case Scene OST from X2 for the ship race.
Thanks for noticing! I can't remember whether it gets used in any in-game races, but that track just screams "race" to me.
@@CptSnuggles07Yes X3 Reunion, you race for a teladi in one of the mission.
Amazing!
Always good with tests. I'd be pretty interested in the sheet you logged and did the calculations in.
The raw data and basic calculations are all on paper for this one. I'm going all digital for the next round of tests though, so maybe I'll make those datasheets available if I can figure out how to do it without doxxing myself.
That was very helpful! I love being dissapointed with my choice of enginex XD
this is so good job captain, you just made a really happy suscriber :>
I had a group of Katanas and 1 Nodan in a group ordered to upgrade and repair at Brennan Wharf. Some how the game glitched. My katanas left dock with Small Sized engines. The drifted like drunk walruses and traveled faster in any direction with maneuvering thrusters than they did with the engines. It qas surreal to watch. Took a full 10 minutes to get them back into dock and switched to Medium Engines. They only really moved when i wasn't watching them.
This video made me subscribe
Great post, thanks!!
realy informative, thanks 🙂
11:25 Wasn't charge time also reduced in TER engines? I distinctly remember that the time between issuing a travel command and start of acceleration is lower. IIRC it was the time penalty after the charging sound until the chime and start of "attack".
You might be thinking of Frontier engines, which have -50% charge time but don't share the same acceleration bonus as modern Terran engines.
@@CptSnuggles07 what are frontier engines? Is this something from timelines?
@@vdis Yep. They're the First Terraformer War era engines of Old Earth. If you're not thinking of them, then maybe Terran engines got nerfed at some point in the past, because they don't have any charge time bonus these days.
@@CptSnuggles07 a nerf? that would explain a lot.
Thank you so much.
Huh, if only I had known. I had used to put split engines on a lot of my capital ships because I did not consider the travel speed buildup. I had always felt the split were sluggish on long travels.
During long military fleet transit I usually just sit in SETA somewhere else in the universe while doing empire management stuff or watching TH-cam so it usually doesn't matter how long it takes for ships to get there so Split should win but I still use Terran because once in high detail you still often need to transit from one end of a sector to another, and split travel times just make my brain hurt. Maybe I should use them on the AI escorts cause they tend to exit travel drive either too far or too close to the enemy so forward speed should help them but at that point it's just easier to fit everyone with Terran gear.
However for trading in the case I don't want to bother with Terran economy I might just favor Teladi so this was an informative video for me. It's a bit iffy because of Engine Parts and mainly the Antimatter Converters but you might be even able to sneak it into a Closed Loop economy.
Although you can just use the Terran scrap method as such you only need ore and helium for microlattice to produce a full Terran "scrap" fleet or a closed loop fleet with Terran shields, engines and weapons which is just a weird flex so Teladi doesn't make sense unless you are exclusively using Universal production.
Excellent Video!
Now for my questions, didn't find these were answered in detail in the video or comments.
1) Crew on NON combat ships, I inferred that you should always have full complement of crew. Is that true? Some other test videos have suggested that crew doesn't matter for trading (I think those were single sector tests though).
2) What engine mods would you recommend in a) Non-Combat; b) Combat; and c) mixed scenarios for AI ships.
BR
/S
1) The important stat is the crew's Combined Skill, which is a weighted average of the pilot's skill (weighted 70%) and the service crew's average skill (weighted 30%). On the service crew side, empty slots and marines count as zeroes. So, you can run with no crew and still get up to 70% efficiency just from a good pilot, but service crew helps crank that efficiency up closer to 100%.
2) Modifying the chassis for lower drag is my #1 recommendation for all-around better flight characteristics. As for engine mods, I usually just go for forward thrust on non-combat and mixed role ships. On dedicated combat ships, I go for either forward or rotation thrust, whichever they're worse at. These are just my personal preferences, not scientifically tested.
Did you preform a test with Full cargo instead of empty cargo there is added drag effect that can give the edge to Teladi let's say over the TER?
Yes, I tested the Heron, Barbarossa, and Colossus both unladen and fully laden with cargo. Surprisingly, there were no statistically significant changes in performance. Either the added cargo mass is not included in low-attention physics calculations, or the extra mass just doesn't make a meaningful difference for the AI due to the way it handles deceleration.
Question
How did the boron ships perform compared to the others in the transit test?
When compared to other ships with equal numbers of engines and similar mass, Boron ships performed very poorly in the transit test: last place at the XL size, second to last for L. That said, if you ignore the mass and engine quantity and compare them to their direct counterparts in their respective roles, they come out a bit more favorably. For example, the Shark (5 Boron engines) was about 27% faster on average than a Raptor (1 Terran engine).
But could an unladen heron carry a coconut?
What does closed loop production mean for argon? Arent all closed loop capable?
Argon are the only Commonwealth engines that can be built entirely from Closed Loop parts, which is much simpler than using their Universal blueprint. Terran can also be produced from scrap using the Pioneers' scrapyard modules, but they don't have a second blueprint like Argon do.
Question
I got 3 builders training service crew and marines non stop
And 5 star service man i distributing between my fleet
How much service crew should be on a destroyer or freighter to take effect? Im usually sending 20 5 star service crew to 1 ship, but some of them has 45 seats and some over a 100
What is a optimal quantity?
You generally want to completely fill the ship. The important stat is combined crew skill, which is a weighted average. Empty crew slots count as a zero for that average, so if you have 100 service crew slots, 20 of them are 5 stars, and 80 are empty, they'll average out to just 1 star.
That said, the pilot is more important than the service crew for the ship's combined crew skill. It's weighted 70/30 pilot/crew, so if you have the average 1-star crew described above combined with a 5-star pilot, you end up with a total combined skill of 3.66 stars.
@CptSnuggles07 thanks! Time to train more man
I still prefer BOR engines for my personal L/XL ships because I absolutely loathe the charge time. Often makes me just skip travel drive and use SETA instead. Wish it could be modded completely away (in-game mods that is) - or y'know, just let us put frigging Boron equipment on the other ships - remove the organic glow effect on other ships and hey presto, looks OK.
For AI ships, I don't really care, but I've noticed after doing a few tests myself that Terran are usually faster. Why Egosoft still hasnt added all engine stats to the upgrade menu after 6 years is beyond me.
More tests please, like M and L turrets, destroyer main batteries and such.
I feel like an average between the transit and combat performance might have made more sense than sum of the two numbers.
Good work though! I did a few drag races a while ago and these numbers match what I found back then. My tests were more focused on the different combat ships than the engines though, so all I really found out was that the erlking is quite busted.
Yeah, the Erlking is nuts. Average would probably have made more sense for Boron, but I liked using the combined ratios for all the other races and didn't want to change the method for the one odd race out. Maybe I should have.
@@CptSnuggles07 The Boron ships could easily be explained as having more mass: the borons can't be cooped up in that tiny encounter suit, so the habitation "has to be water filled", but to allow us non-amphibians to HAVE Boron ships and NOT for only Boron crews to get on board, we magically make shared spaces filled with air and therefore the Boron in them HAVE TO have encounter suits. Doing "more mass, less drag" would also make for a bad fighter for the Borons, if you can't accelerate, top speed doesn't matter, the opponent speed is all that matters, and if you turn slowly in a furball, most of the time is taken with guns silent while you rate the nose on target. Which may be opposite to what they wanted the "feel" of Boron ships to have. So Boron engines are odd, because they aren't allowed to fit the lore or actual use because they are incompatible with each other.
But it is too late now, and I ain't the owner of Egosoft to design it the way I think fits: few fighters BECAUSE FIGHTERS ARE NOT WORTH HAVING, but excellent large ships that refuse to get swarmed by fighters so that THEY can do the jobs other races use fighters for. That means few fighters from the Boron because they didn't bother, the number of pilots wanting or able to get 24/7 into a constricting encounter suit could NOT be countenanced, but an M class ship has enough space to allow them to relax and not get claustrophobic in a communal, larger (and not available to players, even Boron players) pool, so can be manned by borons, but able to resist swarms of those small fighter class khak. And their destroyers, facing swarms of fighters but on occasion having to take the khak stations out (that even M sizes can't do), are also especially able to take out fighter swarms and not get swarmed themselves. Meanwhile their dolphin or small traders RACE around, not being able to turn because of all that mass doesn't matter, but the massive top speed and decent acceleration by brute forcing it with lots of engines, means they will run away from Free Family pirates and never need to engage in combat. That would leave the Boron weak to Xenon Ks and Is, and the destroyers of other races, including the Asgard when the gate eventually opens, so "quick development" to patch that gap to fill the "anti-captial class" role because the Ray, for example, was optimised to take out fighters, lots of them, but can't do enough damage to take out big ships or big stations, and making it a better anti-capital would make it more vulnerable to fighters, and there are now few fighters to combat the enemy fighters.
really weird. putting TER All round engines to Heron E is the best? while having so much less top travel speed... really weird feeling.
My testing, "shortened" to fit:
Teladi L or XL All-Round engines. They do best even if they are nowhere near as fast as Split ones but because they are good for getting TO travel speed or out quickly, those are generally the best and going outside that is something to think about before doing. Split travel speeds are terrible.
Paranid M Combat or Argon M All-Round. The time spent spooling up for travel engines make them entirely useless in any sort of combat, including when you are hit by a pirate. You just can't fail to get hit in 3 seconds. Argon do best all-round, Paranid are best combat engines, and carrier cases are for most irrelevant here.
Split S Combat for carrier fighters, Paranid S Combat for combat military ships, Argon S All-Round on anything else. Carrier fighters never get to travel speed, so that being terrible is not a problem. Patrols need to avoid having low travel speed. But a default setup should be the All-Round, of which the Argon are the best at it.
If you want decent travel speed but high normal speed and, importantly, don't care that there is that terrible 3 second delay for it, the Split Travel at either S or M do make good engines, the only travel engines that are any use at all, their natural speed means most combat is faster than normal, but if there isn't any combat, they can get to decent high speed in travel mode.
Terran engines don't have any (or much) spool up time for non-capitals, but don't get to high speeds, even the Argon outpace them.
Teladi engines have a minor boost in that the time taken to get to their lower top speed is quick, but that only really matters for travel, and that 3 second delay means you should never bother with travel engines, so the Teladi benefit doesn't matter.
Boron engines don't have a spool up time for medium and small craft, but are boron only.
That Terrans are so fast to start off is odd, though. It is why they are so darned expensive, sure, but terrans, blocked behind the inactive gate, has mostly huge sectors to traverse, and absolute top speed is more important than fast attack speeds the bigger a sector gets. Therefore the terran engines should be the other way round: faster in travel mode but taking LONGER to get there, like noticeably longer, such that it is, for large terran sectors, significantly faster, but for the smaller sectors in the CoP, their effective top speed would be lower. To do that, though, would be why you'd make them a lot cheaper. And since a lot of terran engines are already bought, and that change would make that expense lost, maybe Egosoft are too afraid of the ire it would produce to delete "their credits earned" that way. Or, that people HAVE now chosen to use Terran Engines because of that fast rise time despite it being much more expensive, the decision the would have made is now entirely different, and they would complain that a full refit is required. A refit that may also lose them credits. And so changing those figures is, now, too late. Nobody in the beta program told them to change it. And now it is too late.
Hence they brought up the E class. Because that obviates that change to a released ship: make a new one!!!!
However, since the builders were replaced in-situ and not replaced with an E class, they STILL got the far-too-large docking space because alll they did was cutnpaste, "all XL ships get 40+10, all L ships get 40" that was then broken to allow the Raptor to do a real, but since the Raptor wasn't already released, it doesn't matter that it was a carrier with 121 docks internally. If they'd replaced with an E class builder instead, then the new designs got non-tardis tech for docking but that was wasted space for builders anyway, and more drones makes the builder just as hard as nails as if it had 40 fighters to defend it, but no longer requires a cry of "but WHERE are they storing them?!?!?"
Because of cries of "I cannot install if you take $THIS away from me!!!!", they had to make it an E class instead, so that they could change the model and not make it nuts (where does an Oddy store 10 Ms?) or wasted (what use does a Behemoth HAVE for 40 fighters on it, let alone an Incarcatua?), but the choice to not have the sane versions of ships would not mean that those people don't get the new updates and also therefore no new DLCs (because the DLC requires that the update gets accepted).
We're happy for MORE. So M freighters went up from 6000 to 12000 and everyone rejoiced, but that meant the 18000 L class freighters fell down and stopped being at all useful in comparison by a factor of 3. Of course we'd take a tripling of the L freightes too! But we will complain bitterly if 30 fighters were taken from the Behemoth and the Oddy had a pad for an M but not space inside for one and STILL lost 30 fighters because "Well, where would they go???" wasn't what we wanted. Doubly so if those lost ships were summarily deleted or required a restart to avoid deletion. Same for speed, turn rates or missile loads or deployables, etc. We're happy with it being upped, but even if it doesn't destroy quietly any excess stuff, we are upset if it gets reduced, even if it is for good reason.
If I were to ignore complaints and owned Egosoft, I'd swap Terran and Teladi, but reduce the cost of Terran engines to "normal".
The Boron are only "good" because it has so many engines, and it was designed to hold those engines, and those engines alone so was designed to hold a LOT of engines in the hull. I'd have to look to see this isn't how it is already done and so this change CANNOT work to, um, change things, but I'd up the mass and reduce the drag, meaning that acceleration is bad but top speed is good, and if the Boron ships take 2x as many engines as "normal" to get to "normal" speeds, as compared to the CoP average, then Boron engines should be 1/2 the price. And if that means more than normal thrust for the price, well since those engines are ONLY Boron engines, it absolutely doesn't matter that "if you could fit them on the Argon Eclipse, the Boron S class engine would make it beat the best a pure Paranid combat ship can mange" because you CAN'T fit them on an Argon Eclipse. Only a Baracuda, et al. And to maintain a "fast turn" Baracuda, maybe its figures could be finagled with the reason why it "lies" is because the engine can't handle a ship where main engines are ducted to aid in turn/strafe leaving less going straight out the back, so IT has to be given a fake max turn rate and mass and drag because that is just how the engine does it.
I would have liked to see the footage from the parkour as well. I'm having trouble believing (without seeing) that Split engines actually do better in combat due to their high charge time. In my scenarios ships with commonwealth engines kind of were always late for the show. But I haven't done any thorough analysis which is why I'm curious about the footage.
Oh wait, drag race was the only measure for battlefield performance? But in those TER have also won. How did Split come out top in your ranking when they were last in the destroyers drag race?
Drag race splits were included alongside top speed, acceleration, and boost speed, averaged across all tested ships for each engine. Those stats aren't hidden like travel performance is, so they didn't need the same amount of testing, but they are extremely important with the new AI behaviors. If you want video evidence of that, pretty much all of my combat videos show capital ships with Split engines winning fights against superior opponents by outmaneuvering them. But like I said in this video, if you only care about arrival time and not about how your individual ships maneuver in combat, Terran is a fine choice.
@@CptSnuggles07 interesting. My experience is up until V6. I haven't played v7, yet. It was becoming a bit boring to always only choose terran for all and everything. Seeing the other races coming closer to their lore is refreshing. Especially the Split who by lore should outclass every other combat ship. Which they did back in the X2 days, not so much in X4.6.
Love your videos but it feels like the models in your game are in low resolution (I can count the pixels)?
And I am not really a friend of putting other factions technology on ships (like the TEL plasma on TER destroyers in timelines).
That is why I would like to see a of their ships with their tech.
I have to record with a slightly below average bitrate due to technical constraints. It might not look great on some monitors, although it looks fine on mine.
As for using faction-specific tech, you should be able to use the info from this video alongside the in-game ship comparison tool to predict ships' relative performance with their respective factions' engines. That footage might make for good viewing but not for good science, as there's just too much variation in the ships' mass, drag coefficients, and engine quantity. For example, I did try putting the Osaka and Tokyo in the drag race, but it was pretty pitiful. Terran hulls aren't designed for mobility, but Boron hulls are, so for a fair comparison of the engines it's better to put the Terran engines on an off-race hull that is designed for mobility, like the Odysseus.
The quality is good enough for "normal" mode but in full screen on a 1080p Monitor the symbols on the map look like a step pyramid instead of a triangle.
For the race tech
This was a video about their engines so it was the right choice for a comparision. But wouldn't the race ships with their tech be an idea for a new video?
yeah im making a mod that changes lots of things, this is one of the things i noticed and didnt like.. Travel engines should be good at what they say on the name tag, (imagine that) and teladi should have the best of them. just like how everyone expects split to have the best combat drives. and argons or terrans to have the best all rounders.
another thing i didnt like is M ships boost speed being the same or higher than their actual FTL speed... which is nuts.
then theirs the instant booster off effect i dont like either, so you cant tap boost and chain bursts of speed to turn and maneuver between bursts, if you release the boost button you stop instantly even if it took you several seconds to build that speed.
alot of Egosofts base "balance" if you can even call it that has me scratching my head
and dont get me started on M class shields, Frigate performance, and the lack of Medium missile turrets FOR medium ships.
The balance of M combat ships and equipment is definitely...unique. Giving them some sort of limited access to missile turrets would be a nice change.
@@CptSnuggles07 as it stands im giving Frigates and gunships missile turrets, but not Corvettes cuz they are already strong enough and dont need help, especially after the M shield changes i did.
@@TheAngriestGamer. The balance for M class ships is to, IMO, make the Xenon more powerful. Ps boost away out of their first run at you, but avoiding that initial burst of damage by using S size and barrel rolling around so you don't get hit negates that damage, and the M class might go fast, but they do NOT get far enough away to regenerate the shield they lost from boosting. That means the Ps are dangerous, but once you learned their weakness, they are a doddle. They therefore HAVE TO BE mixed with S class fighters to fill those gaps of the M class. The shielding of the M class doesn't aid them for combat against L craft main guns or gravitons, they are too big to get missed, even by other M class, so you using a Nemesis against a P needs a different strategy, you have to tank that damage, not avoid it, and then try to out-damage the P early to take it out fast, before its fighters are attacked.
As a whole, M size ships don't work in combat. Against S sizes, they can easily get swarmed because their shields recharge SLOWLY, and so the fighters may lose some numbers because your shields are big, the recharge rate is half or less theirs, meaning you are only, as far as warfare attrition is concerned, only half a fighter, not even a full one. Against M sizes, they can trade blows against them, potentially doing more, because a Nemesis has more guns than a P. But a Peregrine doesn't. So it's a case of who is better supported. One-on-one, it is potentially a match, and it is up to the ship stats as to who wins, but if one side is supported by others, even just drones or small fighters (or capitals), the unsupported M class will lose. And against L class, especially destroyers, it doesn't have enough shields to tank those capital grade weapons, not enough shield regen to last in combat by attrition, and unable to do enough damage to be worth using against them. Against other L or XL class, where there are only fighter-grade weapons and few of them, an M class can do enough to justify, but the AI doesn't do it that way, and there is no way to order "THOSE Ls but not those ones, m'kay?" so you are left with micromanagement.
The M class could work IF the orders could be sent to make them useful. E.g. a fast wing of Peregrines could be ordered to do an attack with a rear-flank manoeuvrer to attack the relatively defenceless carrier and its engines, from the rear, but you can't do that. You have to make up a set of movements and THEN Order "Attack THISSHIP", then potentially more movements to run away and regroup. If you could do that, or did micromanage it that way, then some fighters would have to be taken from the front line attack to defend the carrier it came from, reducing enemy numbers on Attack. Or they would lose a capital, an expensive one to boot, and the Peregrines are now well placed to attack destroyers engines or the smaller enemies from behind, giving them a huge advantage in position and to obviate that advantage, a period of no attacks while some forces get reoriented to face the rearward threat.
IMO the Beta change for guided missiles are for the M class. Throw missiles at the destroyer beyond the range its guns can hit back while your destroyer comes in for the kill. One or the other is then safe from counterattack.
M class would be safer to swarming over if its shield regeneration were higher. Like MUCH higher.
But to benefit the M class against S or L opponents, you need both the beta changes (which only benefit M class bombers of capital ships) AND higher shield regeneration.
Consider testing just upping the shield regen of M class shields. To four times, to make it "definitely worth two fighters". If that stops it being so sensitive to being swamped by S class fighters, then it has solved that. But if it makes fighting M class boring because it turns them to bullet sponges, it fails. Either both are done adequately by reducing the shield regen rates, or something else has to be changed to make it fun and balanced.
@@TheAngriestGamer. As to more complex orders, don't just look at how it makes tactics more viable, but also how it would work. Not just how the AI would do those orders now, but also what happens if YOU jump in while that order is being done. Is the order just put in abeyance? Is the second in command now wingleader and the prior orders are continuing with a smaller wing? Or do you get each waypoint or a Time On Point marker a la DCS et al for combat, so that YOU can do the order and the HUD is designed to allow that to happen. What happens if the winglead gets blown up? What happens if you take a wingsecond ship, so the wing still exists, still has the order, but now fewer ships than expected? What happens when the order is successful and over with? What if the order is failing and ought to be replaced, how is that done? E.g. a flanking manoeuvre is issued but by RNG more of that wing is destroyed and that flanking action cannot now be successful? Or if, noticing that flanking happening, a wing is sent by the enemy fleet to intercept them, meaning that action cannot be taken without ignoring the interceptors? Sure a gunship can leave its turrets to take out interceptors, but what if they are set to Attack Capitals, or Attack My Target?
Don't just think how it could work. Think how it could fail. And then how you would deal with that failure mode. And if that fails too. And other failure modes, because most things have more than one single way to fail. Doing so is how bugs are quashed. Not doing so is how bugs get shipped in games, or indeed any program.
Having a set of orders to do something, another order of "Then do your default", because if, for example, it ended with a fly here order, it would STAY there, until you manually clear all orders or delete that one or add a new one (which if it isn't "Attack" etc also doesn't end), so an ACTUAL ORDER to "Resume Duties" is required so that you can order a retreat and regroup and when they are all in place (indicating that you need a regroup that is similar to "Coordinate attack") and then "Resume Duties" so that they return to normal orders after regrouping.
This video is by no means boring but somehow it makes me fall asleep. This is my third attempt. Wish me lu
Okay, I've almost done it last time. One more try!
Argon ftw. Meatgrinders for scrap
Side note teladi stops faster from travel drive so you don’t wreck.
wait hang on do ships handle differently with higher cargo load??
They do when the player is flying them. Cargo load had no impact on performance in this test (or in my current testing of smaller ships), so the added mass might not be included in the low-attention (OOS) physics, or it just doesn't affect the AI as much as it does the player.
Thanks man!
And please do summup for someone who is 5 lol
Haha, sure.
All-Round engines are always better than Travel engines.
Terran is best for all travel and no combat.
Split is best for all combat and no travel.
For an equal mix of combat and travel, with XL ships, Teladi is best, although Terran is still fine.
For an equal mix of combat and travel, with L ships, you just have to use your judgement. They all have uses, although I'd still say Terran, Split, and Teladi are the most competitive overall.
Boron is unique. Their engines are not good in a statistical comparison, but in practice they are fine.
@CptSnuggles07 yes, thanks a lot, it's not for me, it's eh for my friend lol
@@CptSnuggles07 Downside to Terran is they have a huge cost. If cost matters, don't use Terran engines if you can help it.
Price vs gaining
I will love to sell all ep.
Please run “ builders can haul” mod with a albatross for 5+jumps on ai pilot. Please log every minute it takes from your life
What we learned, despite all the talk about rage quitting and despite all the diverging factors, the game is heavily favorably towards the player. 😅
NERD!!!! Marry me...! ❤💕💞💗💖💘
DODGE!
I think i sink in the Black Hole....