Captain Snuggles, as a returning player that feels pretty overwhelmed right now, I would love to see some of your raw gameplay. As I'm sure you are aware, the X4 content on UA-cam is a virtual desert with little solid gameplay (and decent commentary) that gives new and returning players the opportunity to emulate and employ strategies used by more seasoned players. I wish you luck on your journey to create great content!
If only! I haven't had time to play X4 for fun in several months. I'll probably start an actual playthrough once 7.5 fully releases, and I'll see about posting some gameplay from that. In the meantime, Perun Gaming has a very popular playthrough in which he explains and analyzes things nicely, so if you enjoy my videos, you'll probably enjoy his as well.
I like the Guppy. It's affordable pretty early on, agile and fast enough to be a player's main ship, and quite versatile in what it can do in combat. You can engage in small to medium brawls with it using the group of fighters you'll passively accumulate over the course of the early game, or even 1v1 a K since it can pack quite a large number of Dumbfire turrets for its size and is hilariously tanky. Once you move on to another main ship you can then assign a wing or two to it and use it as a budget patrol carrier. It's also cute :3
Guppies form the backbone of any patrol fleet I assemble, they are small and fast enough to work as patrol and QRF ships, but cheap enough that late game you can group them with fleet carriers as a back up fighter force or dedicated bomber task group.
I've specifically been looking for mods that added more L-class carriers since I got hooked on the Guppy. I only found one, sadly, but it's Terran and looks nice and those guys with their slow-ass fighters definitely need them. I even wish the ship was fully adopted into the vanilla game. The mod's lore is on point with it being a repurposed mining ship as a fast fighter support carrier meant for the Militia, while the Protectorate proper doesn't need nor does it want to focus on S-class deployment.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 VRO is a large mod that tweaks just about every ship and piece of equipment in the game, but one of the things it does is just that; most (if not all of them without vanilla LCVs, I haven't specifically looked) races have an L-class light carrier based on their miner hull that has a capacity of about 20-30 S ships, no launch tubes, and like 4 S pads. That way it's great for deploying a semi-permanent patrol force somewhere but they struggle in "reaction time" as it takes a while for those fighters to dock/undock.
@@OOZ662 too much baggage with installing VRO. I guess I might try it just to see how it is since I don't have any save or mods I don't want to risk messing up, but I don't think that would be my solution.
The Raptor perfectly embodies Split design philosophy. It doesn't care about fighter deployment or retrieval speed because its operators only ever plan to use it offensively
Shark have instant travel drive, launch tubes and can bring 80 S friends if you use the ocuppy the landing pads trick (64 fighters for normal capacity), its turrets are there...just to be , Raptor have 98 M flak turrets, and can bring 100 S friends with its normal capacity. Prior to beta, my choice would be the "fire works factory" Raptor, but in beta, with fighters really liking to collide and/or get stuck in the geometry of its "mouth", I guess the Shark is in.
@@marvinehre9770 It is a good carrier, and it is the real fast response carrier in the game with instant drive. I only place it second in my preferences because of my gameplay choices. For example, my boron fleets must use boron ships, and my choice for fighters are Mako for interceptors and torpedo Irukandji for bombers, so specialised roles. With the Raptor I use only Chimeras, with both interceptors and bombers using 4 Thermal and 1 smart missile launcher for interceptors and 1 torpedo launcher for bombers, so I have interceptors that can bombard, and bombers that can intercep, and when I activate Position Defence, I have 100 fighters that will engage all types of targets, from S to XL. But that is just my gameplay choice, If I were to put 40 Chimera interceptors and 40 Chimera bombers on a Shark, I would achieve the same capability with Position Defence, losing only 20 fighters, and keeping all the Shark advantages, and they are really solid advantages.
I haven't played vanilla in a while, but back then whether your travel drive was instant or not depended on if you have Travel engines installed; Combat has no spool-up and All-Around has either no spool-up or one of roughly a second. For capitals I think it might be different, but I'm assuming if you took any capital and put Split All-Around engines on it, they wouldn't have spool-up.
@@OOZ662 Only boron capitals have instant travel drive, all other races need spool-up, no matter the engines used. Also boron stuff can only be used by borons, so no slaping of boron engines on other races ships, to get them instant drive.
Thanks for this! To those who have not experienced carriers yet, there is a HUGE Absolute difference between these carriers. This video breaks down those differences in terms of shipped deployment and mentions other considerations as well. Shark, baby, all day long! Not only does it excel in carrier operations, it can tank for you with its amazing shield and hull capacity. I cannot tell you what a joy and relief. It is to never worry about any of my sharks dying in a position defense. Exact opposite experience with the raptor. When I got my hands on those, I thought I was in business! Such an exciting design, I love flying in and out of it, and the thing is HIDEOUSLY well armed. But the sucker performs terribly, and dies way too easily. Raptor has got to be the most disappointing ship for me in the game. I feel like I have to protect them like little babies.
The Raptor seems more like the ship that likes to punch down for a show of power, though I don't believe that was the intent behind it. After the introduction of the Boron and their carriers, an idea latched on me and I think it would be appropriate implementing a feature to the Raptor that has it accelerate fighters on the runway like out of the barrel of a gun, automatically upon undocking without any input from the fighter pilot.
I think the Raptor and the Tokyo could use a system like the virtual landing pads on the Boron carriers that quickly guide the ships in a predetermined path both in and out so there's no risk of collision with the inner walls of the ship. Consider the raptor: upon undocking, instead of driving out of the runway yourself you're accellerated forward like out of the barrel of a gun and ships launched this way may even maintain some momentum.
Both ships already have that type of guidance: Tokyo for undocking, and Raptor for both docking and undocking. Problem is, they're both very slow and can be disrupted by collisions and by sudden changes in the carrier's velocity. I agree that they would be much more useful if they were faster, like a modern aircraft carrier's catapult.
@@CptSnuggles07 I haven't played with Boron carriers much, but I think they're referring to the "remote landing pad" where there's a hologram out in space that the ship "lands" on, then it behaves like a player using a Docking Computer Mk2 where the "physics" turn off and the fighter rides an invisible rail onto the actual pad inside the carrier, thus they aren't affected by collisions or velocity changes.
Captain Snuggles, sir! First allow me to thank you for all your hard work, sir! It was informative, without being overly so. It kept strictly to the point, as it should. Overall, I would rate this Presentation a solid 10/10. I would have gone 11/10 but you failed to remain objective over Music Choice, Sir! Well done and keep up the good work!
Great video, I'm pretty new to X4 and looking to buy my first carrier, it was very helpful :) Now I'm curious: How would things behave out of sector? What the Raptor might excel at is carrying lots of miners to get protectyon, since it can take the most miners per trip :D Edit: Thinking about it, you could even put frigates in the M hangars and on the M dock to fit an additional 62 Raleigh on the Raptor, if 121 are not enough... Split like lots of ships :D
OOS (or now it is "low attention mode" because you can be in the sector, but using those OOS mechanics because you are 100km from the action) you are better off not using fighters against capitals. A single destroyer can take care of maybe 10-20 fighters OOS. IS, that same destroyer can take care of maybe 5-10.
@@markhackett2302 All right, good to know, thanks :) Would teleporting away just for the undock duration and then teleporting back be a sensible thing to do?
@@Marcel_M No, if you needed to TP out, then you are in a situation that fighters shouldn't have been launched. Punt a few frigates loaded with drones, get it to attack small targets while in system if there are "too many fighters", but if you keep to just capitals and they aren't outnumbered 20-1, you go OOS and keep everything NOT a destroyer docked and safe. If that would fail, then you are in a no win situation, so your best option is to get in whatever is there as a small fast ship (an M class Dragon or Nemesis is fine too) and just run interference to MAKE the opposing AI choose to target YOU instead of your fleet while YOUR FLEET RUNS. Get them OUT of there, the ship you are in will likely die, but you driving it should last long enough that the fleet can get out of it.
And here i am just placing an Aux in every sector i got a fleet operating. That one Aux is servicing a couple hundred fighters. Imo, carry capacity is irrelevant because: Fighters are faster than any capital ship. Keeping them docked and then launching reduces readiness, it takes longer for them to reach their target destination, or start fighting. Ships only do dock for repairs, aside from that everything always stays out in space, ready for combat or movement. The aux or carrier is simply placed some distance away, behind the frontline in a secure location.ion. Though, seeing a carrier launch its fighter swarm is pretty cool. And the rule of cool usually wins. Especially in a singleplayer game.
High carrying capacity is nice for blockade running. Break through the defenses with the carrier, then deploy fighters behind enemy lines. Reduces attrition of stray fighters getting picked off in transit. Generally though, I agree, carrying capacity hasn't been really critical since Position Defense was introduced.
I'm honestly surprised the Tokyo didn't do better... I've been using it as my "main" carrier for a while and it doesn't "feel" that bad in gameplay (other than the price tag and 1 medium dock). I know everybody loves the Shark and Raptor... which makes me want to be contrarian. :P
Ive always preferred the shark based on how the ship has felt to use, and this confirms why, also because the shark has basically impenetrable shields with basically the best combat mobility.
Thank you for your hard work. I'm looking forward to many other videos. What are your thoughts on small ships? Which do you prefer to fly yourself and what would you suggest the AI fight with along side carriers?
I usually fly M ships myself. When I do fly S, it's usually either: 1) the ship I started the run with, for sentimental reasons; 2) Nova/Falcon/Guillemot, because tiltjet engines are fun; or 3) Irukandji or X-Shuttle, because speed. For AI use with carriers, I really like the Nodan V, Takoba, and Moreya as interceptors, and the Shih and Chimera as bombers or multi-role fighters. That may change with version 7.5.
Knew the Shark was great but I didn't notice it has 4 launch tubes, so I've been fielding mostly Colossus Vanguards as fleet carriers so far. I guess I can switch to fielding 100% sharks now.
16 secons in. After the patch, shark. Before the patch .. shark or guppy. Will edit after watching :D EDIT: after finishing the vid I agree with everything but am a bit surprised as my own playthrough showed considerably smoother flight paths for S ships after the patch. M ships - I just teleport OOS for a minute 😅 both patch and no patch
@CptSnuggles07 (read edit too) Tokyo, shark and raptor. I literally flew in formation with the raptor ships. BUT this IS X4 so may not be the case most of the times. The order for the ships was "collect drops" where there were none so they returned on their own. Maybe that influencd it too. One of my fav things in x4 was always to be on the deck of a carrier during operations and this time it just felt a bit better. XL and L ships are now a bit more agile as well. Edit: maybe the pilots were experienced and that made a difference because it was an old save and most pilots were at least 3 stars
@@-drey Interesting. I didn't re-test the Tokyo, but the Shark and Raptor were both significantly worse at everything in 7.5, aside from M deployment on the Shark, which was unchanged. 3-star fighter pilots in both 7.1 and 7.5. I'll be keeping a close eye on it as the beta progresses and will keep y'all updated on my test results.
The Tokyo was always kinda disappointing because it looks so great, but its so not as good as it should be. It's like they decided too much of the Terran stuff was great, so they made the Tokyo below average. I still feel it should have a 'niche' advantage. Sure, the Shark can have the most strike craft and the Raptor the most guns, so make the Tokyo the most agile for deployment! Give it 20 launch bays, battlestar style. If it could quickly deploy and pack up just as fast, it would more closely align with Terran drives and doctrine of being able to hop around from point-to-point in a hurry.
The Beta 7.5 Tokyo carries up to 90 S ships (+32) and 5 M ships (-6), and its mobility has been reduced even farther below that of the other carriers - considerably worse than the Raptor now, at least on paper. So it is moving into a more distinct niche, although I don't know yet whether I'd call it an improvement overall.
@@CptSnuggles07 I don't know if that is a niche, more of a nerf. If they want it to be a mega carrier but slow as molasses, give it a bonkers fighter load. 90 isn't bonkers enough to make up for it's price and downsides, even if I ignore the standard Terran ship price premium.
Highlights of the beta so far are: Vanguard/Sentinel variants now have the same capacity as the E variants, Zeus E was given 8 extra internal storage for S ships, Condor was nerfed to 24 internal storage, the same as the Zeus now, The tokyo's S capacity was buffed to 72, and both the tokyo and raptor's M capacity were nerfed to 4
The Condor nerf is rude, but everything else makes sense. Looking forward to testing the changes after Egosoft makes a few rounds of improvements to the beta AI.
@@CptSnuggles07 yeah, personally i think the condor should have the same capacity as the colossus E. would still probably end up being the worst carrier but it would only be slightly worse
@@Chrismasterski I think you are forgetting that the Teladi have surprisingly good fighters. Their Falcon is almost as nimble and fast as the Nova, but while the Nova has 1 shield, the Falcon has 2. Fitting with all Takobas makes good testing of a carrier but terrible balancing of races. IF the Condor is faster AND a bit cheaper, and therefore really used as "instead of fitting a lot of expensive engines to lots of small ships, lets fit ONE expensive engine to their carrier", it still fits its niche. The Colossus should have been faster or bigger (e.g. 48+8) because the argon's only strong point is how cheap the base hull is, therefore benefits from cheap Mk1 stuff, but that means it needs to carry a lot more fighters. Personally, it ought to have been bigger, toward the supercarrier class. The current release has the problem that you utterly miss the Sentinel and Vanguard versions of many of those ships, and it SHOULD be that you make the E variant "generally better" at least so that nobody who has the chance will use those "older" designs. That way someone who has the Vanguard somthing will still use it as long as they have it, but will get the E variant in future.
The Galactica does, of course! (yes there are two mods, however after using both, the Battlestar Galactica mod version is truer to scale, and has much better model boundaries than the Ossian Raider version).
Hi cap, great video, thanks. I generally use Colossus Vs or Raptors as Fleet carriers, and I find the Zeus E operates really well in an escort carrier role. I notice you didn't include the Xenon H. I'm currently experimenting with it and find it works well as a small escort carrier, or area denial unit with a couple of destroyer escorts.
The H is technically a destroyer, so I didn't include it here. I have a video on it from back when it first released, and I do think it's interesting as a hybrid carrier or drone carrier, although generally I hate using single-dock ships in any type of carrier role.
@@CptSnuggles07 Yeah it takes an age to recover it's fighter wing. but they launch fast with 16 launch tubes. As destroyers go, it's not great. In fact it's pretty poor. But it's nice to have an additional 16 fighters for a carrier group.
Good old Colossus Sentinel. Nice shield, launch tubes, more docks than "E", more agile as Raptor,.....with some mods faster as "K" and bigger shield... Sentinel>Vanguard because of HP/Speed. Btw supply ship...Teladi is a real good one, and has a nice ring.
I'm basically brand new to the game. The first fleet setup i was introduced to was with a Col Sent. Wasn't sure why they didn't make the cut for testing.
There wasn't really a "cut" to be made; there's no point testing both the Sentinel and the Vanguard variants because they share the same models and will therefore have the same performance in this test, aside from mobility. Welcome to X4!
@@CptSnuggles07 Thank you for the welcome and info. It wasn't until this video that I realized there were differences in the models for the E's and wasn't sure if there may have been something the game stats don't show to differ the V and S as well.
@@Vormehk, In simple terms, Sentinel has +10% hull but is -5% slower against Vanguards. Until beta 7.5, when the boost mechanics changed, there was (in my opinion) an advantage for Sentinels as long as they were at least as fast as K.
A good simultaneous ToT is what a carrier wants. If you send 100 fighters 1 minute apart, they will die. If you send all 100 at once, they will survive and most likely not lose many, or any at all. So you may want to look what "Coordinated attack" from a carrier is, and therefore you can do what time it takes to get to "all fighters" at the coordination point.
That was my original plan for the test, but C Atk doesn't use launch tubes and therefore doesn't showcase the full capabilities of the carriers, so I switched to this setup instead. Deployment time without launch tubes is proportional to (not equivalent to) retrieval time, so you can look at the carriers' relative retrieval times to get an idea of which ones will deploy fastest for C Atk.
The issue is Destroyers don't actually function as cruisers or destroyers. Destroyers are siege ships, the only reason to bring up a fleet of Destroyers is to siege down a station, and even then you need to keep an eye on them to stop one or two from just flying into the station. Still, even then they are better than losting 2 fleets if fighters trying to take down a Xenon station, even with Torpedos and missiles.
@@Mikalent That "just flying into the station" is pathing. The part they were blowing up blew up, and the pathing was "Ohh, beeline for that next part", but because of the geometry it must avoid, it gets over that new part and now in range of many, many guns. If you arranged circularly, then by the time one part went boom there wouldn't be turrets left to be a threat. Until then, if you don't do that, then micromange WHEN SOMETHING ON THE STATION WENT BOOM. Because it is only THEN that a destroyer might do that "just flying into the station" thing.
@@markhackett2302 I am aware that 99% of the time your Destroyer flying into the station is because they blew up what they were shooting at, and the AI decided it needed a new (too close) angle on the next module. *BUT* unlike fighters, Destroyers are rather expensive, and it pays to keep an eye on them, I'd rather lose a bit of time (or not if I'm on autopilot), than have to pay for a brand new destroyer because the pilot had a bad roll and got a bit too close for the Gravaton turrets to be able to hit them. Or, the more common scenario, a K comes by and decides to jump right behind the Destroyer line.
@@markhackett2302 "keep an eye on them" which yes, you should, again, most people in the mid game would rather keep an eye on them, while they are sieging down a station, than lose an expensive destroyer to an avoidable mistake/issue. You also want to keep an eye on them incase you have say a fleet of Xenon Ks or an I show up.
i look at these results and conclude Guppies are best used in small packs with larger flights of fighters for maintenance duties of the combat swarm. Because they are fast, and have excellent maintenance capacity for their little friends, and are cheap. launch time isn't particularly relevant when your limiting agent becomes rate of input when throughput is the target.
@@glenmcgillivray4707 Well, if you think about it, the guppy is really the most powerful and multi-purpose ship. It can be equipped with unguided missiles to attack stations or ships, and for defense, load fighters. Or make it a powerful air defense ship and load it with attack aircraft or bombers, which it can supply + a couple of merchant ships to replenish the ammo And now it's a good patrol ship. If you compare it with the same shark, how many guppies will you buy for 1 shark? and what is the total difference in turrets and HP? + how big an area will they cover. So, in fact, the Borons are the top 2 in power after the Splits. Although it is debatable here, what is better, 1 predator or several guppies =) For the Splits, the Predator, if assembled correctly from my point of view, acts as a powerful multi-purpose base, by the way, I have a video where I invade a sector on a predator, destroying 4 behemoths along the way, and demolish a defense station, then retreat to replenish ammo. I used a mixture of missiles and anti-aircraft turrets And the Terrans are pulled by the Asgard in the form of a powerful ram =) With the Tokyo group for cover
@@leonidnikityuk9460 Borons are good against fighters, and this makes sense as they would have been mostly against Kaach before the gate opened. They are bad against capitals and stations, however, and SINCE the gate opening, THAT is a problem. Borons need a good anti-destroyer/cruiser gun (therefore the destroyer to carry it) and a good anti-station, which is often not the same. The others (apart from Split) need something to deal with fighter swarms. Split need something a lot cheaper to turn out and hold the line while the expensive rattlers and raptors are made.
@@markhackett2302 At the moment, rockets are the most powerful weapons in the game! BUT there are nuances Dumb AI Limited ammunition Difficulty of supply. And most of it is solved, except for AI. . . But again, if you build normal logistics and have a supply fleet (and harrows are strong in this too), then there will be no problems
One of the high points of X4 for me was the fact that the flight model was not realistic and a pain in the butt to deal with. If I want realism I would go play a space flight sim. This move to make things more difficult is a big ole "We don't need casuals playing our game." statement. I sincerely hope there is an option to leave things as they are since it was not broken to begin with.
I also liked the "arcade" feel of X4 spaceflight and thought it fit the universe well. I'm still trying to keep an open mind about the changes though, at least until I've finished my testing.
Using it. The M frigates still have only 1 dock and 1 storage capacity for S but at least they can repair and supply a wing of S. I feel this bridges a gap for the early game.
Well I certainly can't recommend the current beta unless you really enjoy filing bug reports, but don't write off the whole update just yet. There's still plenty of time for improvements.
i reallllly want to like this game. with over 200 hours. i just can't because of that jank you demonstrated in the beginning and mentioned throughout the video. the AI in this game is obscenely bad. The devs just need to admit they are not making much progress and open the game up for more modding support to let the community mod in fixes.
Captain Snuggles, as a returning player that feels pretty overwhelmed right now, I would love to see some of your raw gameplay. As I'm sure you are aware, the X4 content on UA-cam is a virtual desert with little solid gameplay (and decent commentary) that gives new and returning players the opportunity to emulate and employ strategies used by more seasoned players. I wish you luck on your journey to create great content!
If only! I haven't had time to play X4 for fun in several months. I'll probably start an actual playthrough once 7.5 fully releases, and I'll see about posting some gameplay from that. In the meantime, Perun Gaming has a very popular playthrough in which he explains and analyzes things nicely, so if you enjoy my videos, you'll probably enjoy his as well.
Check ragnos28 for combat. A lot of simulation for all races, mixed and purist fleets.
Search for captain Collins he has a vast amount of X4 content and if you want to see gameplay he also has a twitch account by the same name.
I like the Guppy. It's affordable pretty early on, agile and fast enough to be a player's main ship, and quite versatile in what it can do in combat. You can engage in small to medium brawls with it using the group of fighters you'll passively accumulate over the course of the early game, or even 1v1 a K since it can pack quite a large number of Dumbfire turrets for its size and is hilariously tanky. Once you move on to another main ship you can then assign a wing or two to it and use it as a budget patrol carrier. It's also cute :3
Guppies form the backbone of any patrol fleet I assemble, they are small and fast enough to work as patrol and QRF ships, but cheap enough that late game you can group them with fleet carriers as a back up fighter force or dedicated bomber task group.
I've specifically been looking for mods that added more L-class carriers since I got hooked on the Guppy. I only found one, sadly, but it's Terran and looks nice and those guys with their slow-ass fighters definitely need them.
I even wish the ship was fully adopted into the vanilla game. The mod's lore is on point with it being a repurposed mining ship as a fast fighter support carrier meant for the Militia, while the Protectorate proper doesn't need nor does it want to focus on S-class deployment.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 VRO is a large mod that tweaks just about every ship and piece of equipment in the game, but one of the things it does is just that; most (if not all of them without vanilla LCVs, I haven't specifically looked) races have an L-class light carrier based on their miner hull that has a capacity of about 20-30 S ships, no launch tubes, and like 4 S pads. That way it's great for deploying a semi-permanent patrol force somewhere but they struggle in "reaction time" as it takes a while for those fighters to dock/undock.
@@OOZ662 too much baggage with installing VRO. I guess I might try it just to see how it is since I don't have any save or mods I don't want to risk messing up, but I don't think that would be my solution.
The Raptor perfectly embodies Split design philosophy. It doesn't care about fighter deployment or retrieval speed because its operators only ever plan to use it offensively
Shark have instant travel drive, launch tubes and can bring 80 S friends if you use the ocuppy the landing pads trick (64 fighters for normal capacity), its turrets are there...just to be , Raptor have 98 M flak turrets, and can bring 100 S friends with its normal capacity.
Prior to beta, my choice would be the "fire works factory" Raptor, but in beta, with fighters really liking to collide and/or get stuck in the geometry of its "mouth", I guess the Shark is in.
After the Boron dlc, I preferred the Shark, due to its Fighter starting and landing speed.
@@marvinehre9770 It is a good carrier, and it is the real fast response carrier in the game with instant drive.
I only place it second in my preferences because of my gameplay choices. For example, my boron fleets must use boron ships, and my choice for fighters are Mako for interceptors and torpedo Irukandji for bombers, so specialised roles. With the Raptor I use only Chimeras, with both interceptors and bombers using 4 Thermal and 1 smart missile launcher for interceptors and 1 torpedo launcher for bombers, so I have interceptors that can bombard, and bombers that can intercep, and when I activate Position Defence, I have 100 fighters that will engage all types of targets, from S to XL.
But that is just my gameplay choice, If I were to put 40 Chimera interceptors and 40 Chimera bombers on a Shark, I would achieve the same capability with Position Defence, losing only 20 fighters, and keeping all the Shark advantages, and they are really solid advantages.
I haven't played vanilla in a while, but back then whether your travel drive was instant or not depended on if you have Travel engines installed; Combat has no spool-up and All-Around has either no spool-up or one of roughly a second. For capitals I think it might be different, but I'm assuming if you took any capital and put Split All-Around engines on it, they wouldn't have spool-up.
@@OOZ662 Only boron capitals have instant travel drive, all other races need spool-up, no matter the engines used. Also boron stuff can only be used by borons, so no slaping of boron engines on other races ships, to get them instant drive.
Thanks for this! To those who have not experienced carriers yet, there is a HUGE Absolute difference between these carriers. This video breaks down those differences in terms of shipped deployment and mentions other considerations as well.
Shark, baby, all day long! Not only does it excel in carrier operations, it can tank for you with its amazing shield and hull capacity. I cannot tell you what a joy and relief. It is to never worry about any of my sharks dying in a position defense.
Exact opposite experience with the raptor. When I got my hands on those, I thought I was in business! Such an exciting design, I love flying in and out of it, and the thing is HIDEOUSLY well armed. But the sucker performs terribly, and dies way too easily. Raptor has got to be the most disappointing ship for me in the game. I feel like I have to protect them like little babies.
The Raptor seems more like the ship that likes to punch down for a show of power, though I don't believe that was the intent behind it.
After the introduction of the Boron and their carriers, an idea latched on me and I think it would be appropriate implementing a feature to the Raptor that has it accelerate fighters on the runway like out of the barrel of a gun, automatically upon undocking without any input from the fighter pilot.
I think the Raptor and the Tokyo could use a system like the virtual landing pads on the Boron carriers that quickly guide the ships in a predetermined path both in and out so there's no risk of collision with the inner walls of the ship.
Consider the raptor: upon undocking, instead of driving out of the runway yourself you're accellerated forward like out of the barrel of a gun and ships launched this way may even maintain some momentum.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 egosoft will not redesign old ships, sadly
Both ships already have that type of guidance: Tokyo for undocking, and Raptor for both docking and undocking. Problem is, they're both very slow and can be disrupted by collisions and by sudden changes in the carrier's velocity. I agree that they would be much more useful if they were faster, like a modern aircraft carrier's catapult.
@@CptSnuggles07 I haven't played with Boron carriers much, but I think they're referring to the "remote landing pad" where there's a hologram out in space that the ship "lands" on, then it behaves like a player using a Docking Computer Mk2 where the "physics" turn off and the fighter rides an invisible rail onto the actual pad inside the carrier, thus they aren't affected by collisions or velocity changes.
Jank o’clock.. that part was funny with the fighters in that hanger. Should report that to egosoft with that video part.
Captain Snuggles, sir! First allow me to thank you for all your hard work, sir! It was informative, without being overly so. It kept strictly to the point, as it should. Overall, I would rate this Presentation a solid 10/10. I would have gone 11/10 but you failed to remain objective over Music Choice, Sir!
Well done and keep up the good work!
Please share your results with the devs on the official forum regarding the Beta. Good feedback is needed so we don't end up with a mess.
Tokyo and Raptor is my favorites carriers.
this game is outstanding!
Great video, I'm pretty new to X4 and looking to buy my first carrier, it was very helpful :)
Now I'm curious: How would things behave out of sector?
What the Raptor might excel at is carrying lots of miners to get protectyon, since it can take the most miners per trip :D
Edit: Thinking about it, you could even put frigates in the M hangars and on the M dock to fit an additional 62 Raleigh on the Raptor, if 121 are not enough... Split like lots of ships :D
OOS (or now it is "low attention mode" because you can be in the sector, but using those OOS mechanics because you are 100km from the action) you are better off not using fighters against capitals. A single destroyer can take care of maybe 10-20 fighters OOS. IS, that same destroyer can take care of maybe 5-10.
@@markhackett2302 All right, good to know, thanks :)
Would teleporting away just for the undock duration and then teleporting back be a sensible thing to do?
@@Marcel_M No, if you needed to TP out, then you are in a situation that fighters shouldn't have been launched. Punt a few frigates loaded with drones, get it to attack small targets while in system if there are "too many fighters", but if you keep to just capitals and they aren't outnumbered 20-1, you go OOS and keep everything NOT a destroyer docked and safe. If that would fail, then you are in a no win situation, so your best option is to get in whatever is there as a small fast ship (an M class Dragon or Nemesis is fine too) and just run interference to MAKE the opposing AI choose to target YOU instead of your fleet while YOUR FLEET RUNS. Get them OUT of there, the ship you are in will likely die, but you driving it should last long enough that the fleet can get out of it.
And here i am just placing an Aux in every sector i got a fleet operating.
That one Aux is servicing a couple hundred fighters.
Imo, carry capacity is irrelevant because:
Fighters are faster than any capital ship. Keeping them docked and then launching reduces readiness, it takes longer for them to reach their target destination, or start fighting.
Ships only do dock for repairs, aside from that everything always stays out in space, ready for combat or movement.
The aux or carrier is simply placed some distance away, behind the frontline in a secure location.ion.
Though, seeing a carrier launch its fighter swarm is pretty cool. And the rule of cool usually wins. Especially in a singleplayer game.
Really try out position defence. You can assign lots of fighters to cover 2.3...4 gates. Even M Ships and they just go home for repair.
High carrying capacity is nice for blockade running. Break through the defenses with the carrier, then deploy fighters behind enemy lines. Reduces attrition of stray fighters getting picked off in transit. Generally though, I agree, carrying capacity hasn't been really critical since Position Defense was introduced.
I'm honestly surprised the Tokyo didn't do better... I've been using it as my "main" carrier for a while and it doesn't "feel" that bad in gameplay (other than the price tag and 1 medium dock). I know everybody loves the Shark and Raptor... which makes me want to be contrarian. :P
It might not be an optimal ship, but it's still a good ship. You can't really go wrong with any carrier.
Ive always preferred the shark based on how the ship has felt to use, and this confirms why, also because the shark has basically impenetrable shields with basically the best combat mobility.
Thank you for your hard work. I'm looking forward to many other videos. What are your thoughts on small ships? Which do you prefer to fly yourself and what would you suggest the AI fight with along side carriers?
I usually fly M ships myself. When I do fly S, it's usually either: 1) the ship I started the run with, for sentimental reasons; 2) Nova/Falcon/Guillemot, because tiltjet engines are fun; or 3) Irukandji or X-Shuttle, because speed. For AI use with carriers, I really like the Nodan V, Takoba, and Moreya as interceptors, and the Shih and Chimera as bombers or multi-role fighters. That may change with version 7.5.
Knew the Shark was great but I didn't notice it has 4 launch tubes, so I've been fielding mostly Colossus Vanguards as fleet carriers so far.
I guess I can switch to fielding 100% sharks now.
16 secons in. After the patch, shark. Before the patch .. shark or guppy. Will edit after watching :D
EDIT: after finishing the vid I agree with everything but am a bit surprised as my own playthrough showed considerably smoother flight paths for S ships after the patch. M ships - I just teleport OOS for a minute 😅 both patch and no patch
Which carrier were you using that had better S flight paths?
@CptSnuggles07 (read edit too) Tokyo, shark and raptor. I literally flew in formation with the raptor ships. BUT this IS X4 so may not be the case most of the times. The order for the ships was "collect drops" where there were none so they returned on their own. Maybe that influencd it too.
One of my fav things in x4 was always to be on the deck of a carrier during operations and this time it just felt a bit better. XL and L ships are now a bit more agile as well.
Edit: maybe the pilots were experienced and that made a difference because it was an old save and most pilots were at least 3 stars
@@-drey Interesting. I didn't re-test the Tokyo, but the Shark and Raptor were both significantly worse at everything in 7.5, aside from M deployment on the Shark, which was unchanged. 3-star fighter pilots in both 7.1 and 7.5. I'll be keeping a close eye on it as the beta progresses and will keep y'all updated on my test results.
The Tokyo was always kinda disappointing because it looks so great, but its so not as good as it should be. It's like they decided too much of the Terran stuff was great, so they made the Tokyo below average.
I still feel it should have a 'niche' advantage. Sure, the Shark can have the most strike craft and the Raptor the most guns, so make the Tokyo the most agile for deployment! Give it 20 launch bays, battlestar style. If it could quickly deploy and pack up just as fast, it would more closely align with Terran drives and doctrine of being able to hop around from point-to-point in a hurry.
The Beta 7.5 Tokyo carries up to 90 S ships (+32) and 5 M ships (-6), and its mobility has been reduced even farther below that of the other carriers - considerably worse than the Raptor now, at least on paper. So it is moving into a more distinct niche, although I don't know yet whether I'd call it an improvement overall.
@@CptSnuggles07 I don't know if that is a niche, more of a nerf.
If they want it to be a mega carrier but slow as molasses, give it a bonkers fighter load. 90 isn't bonkers enough to make up for it's price and downsides, even if I ignore the standard Terran ship price premium.
Highlights of the beta so far are: Vanguard/Sentinel variants now have the same capacity as the E variants, Zeus E was given 8 extra internal storage for S ships, Condor was nerfed to 24 internal storage, the same as the Zeus now, The tokyo's S capacity was buffed to 72, and both the tokyo and raptor's M capacity were nerfed to 4
The Condor nerf is rude, but everything else makes sense. Looking forward to testing the changes after Egosoft makes a few rounds of improvements to the beta AI.
@@CptSnuggles07 yeah, personally i think the condor should have the same capacity as the colossus E. would still probably end up being the worst carrier but it would only be slightly worse
@@Chrismasterski I think you are forgetting that the Teladi have surprisingly good fighters. Their Falcon is almost as nimble and fast as the Nova, but while the Nova has 1 shield, the Falcon has 2. Fitting with all Takobas makes good testing of a carrier but terrible balancing of races.
IF the Condor is faster AND a bit cheaper, and therefore really used as "instead of fitting a lot of expensive engines to lots of small ships, lets fit ONE expensive engine to their carrier", it still fits its niche.
The Colossus should have been faster or bigger (e.g. 48+8) because the argon's only strong point is how cheap the base hull is, therefore benefits from cheap Mk1 stuff, but that means it needs to carry a lot more fighters. Personally, it ought to have been bigger, toward the supercarrier class.
The current release has the problem that you utterly miss the Sentinel and Vanguard versions of many of those ships, and it SHOULD be that you make the E variant "generally better" at least so that nobody who has the chance will use those "older" designs. That way someone who has the Vanguard somthing will still use it as long as they have it, but will get the E variant in future.
I generally use the Raptor for sector defense with position defense orders, or in major OOS battles. Personally, I prefer the Shark.
The Galactica does, of course! (yes there are two mods, however after using both, the Battlestar Galactica mod version is truer to scale, and has much better model boundaries than the Ossian Raider version).
'ate Raptors, 'ate split, luv me Shark, simple as.
Hi cap, great video, thanks. I generally use Colossus Vs or Raptors as Fleet carriers, and I find the Zeus E operates really well in an escort carrier role.
I notice you didn't include the Xenon H. I'm currently experimenting with it and find it works well as a small escort carrier, or area denial unit with a couple of destroyer escorts.
The H is technically a destroyer, so I didn't include it here. I have a video on it from back when it first released, and I do think it's interesting as a hybrid carrier or drone carrier, although generally I hate using single-dock ships in any type of carrier role.
@@CptSnuggles07 Yeah it takes an age to recover it's fighter wing. but they launch fast with 16 launch tubes. As destroyers go, it's not great. In fact it's pretty poor. But it's nice to have an additional 16 fighters for a carrier group.
Good old Colossus Sentinel.
Nice shield, launch tubes, more docks than "E", more agile as Raptor,.....with some mods faster as "K" and bigger shield...
Sentinel>Vanguard because of HP/Speed.
Btw supply ship...Teladi is a real good one, and has a nice ring.
I'm basically brand new to the game. The first fleet setup i was introduced to was with a Col Sent. Wasn't sure why they didn't make the cut for testing.
There wasn't really a "cut" to be made; there's no point testing both the Sentinel and the Vanguard variants because they share the same models and will therefore have the same performance in this test, aside from mobility. Welcome to X4!
@@CptSnuggles07 Thank you for the welcome and info. It wasn't until this video that I realized there were differences in the models for the E's and wasn't sure if there may have been something the game stats don't show to differ the V and S as well.
@@Vormehk, In simple terms, Sentinel has +10% hull but is -5% slower against Vanguards. Until beta 7.5, when the boost mechanics changed, there was (in my opinion) an advantage for Sentinels as long as they were at least as fast as K.
A good simultaneous ToT is what a carrier wants. If you send 100 fighters 1 minute apart, they will die. If you send all 100 at once, they will survive and most likely not lose many, or any at all. So you may want to look what "Coordinated attack" from a carrier is, and therefore you can do what time it takes to get to "all fighters" at the coordination point.
That was my original plan for the test, but C Atk doesn't use launch tubes and therefore doesn't showcase the full capabilities of the carriers, so I switched to this setup instead. Deployment time without launch tubes is proportional to (not equivalent to) retrieval time, so you can look at the carriers' relative retrieval times to get an idea of which ones will deploy fastest for C Atk.
Okay, but which carrier is the prettiest? This requires more testing. (It's the Shark).
Aren't the Boron just great? They've got the prettiest carrier, soundtrack and queen in the game.
Biggest mistake i made was having a destroyer fleet. Its absolutely useless. I hope the new flight models fix this
The issue is Destroyers don't actually function as cruisers or destroyers. Destroyers are siege ships, the only reason to bring up a fleet of Destroyers is to siege down a station, and even then you need to keep an eye on them to stop one or two from just flying into the station. Still, even then they are better than losting 2 fleets if fighters trying to take down a Xenon station, even with Torpedos and missiles.
@@Mikalent That "just flying into the station" is pathing. The part they were blowing up blew up, and the pathing was "Ohh, beeline for that next part", but because of the geometry it must avoid, it gets over that new part and now in range of many, many guns.
If you arranged circularly, then by the time one part went boom there wouldn't be turrets left to be a threat.
Until then, if you don't do that, then micromange WHEN SOMETHING ON THE STATION WENT BOOM. Because it is only THEN that a destroyer might do that "just flying into the station" thing.
@@markhackett2302 I am aware that 99% of the time your Destroyer flying into the station is because they blew up what they were shooting at, and the AI decided it needed a new (too close) angle on the next module.
*BUT* unlike fighters, Destroyers are rather expensive, and it pays to keep an eye on them, I'd rather lose a bit of time (or not if I'm on autopilot), than have to pay for a brand new destroyer because the pilot had a bad roll and got a bit too close for the Gravaton turrets to be able to hit them.
Or, the more common scenario, a K comes by and decides to jump right behind the Destroyer line.
@@Mikalent Then you already knew you were wrong when you claimed in your first post here "you had to micromanage"....
@@markhackett2302 "keep an eye on them" which yes, you should, again, most people in the mid game would rather keep an eye on them, while they are sieging down a station, than lose an expensive destroyer to an avoidable mistake/issue. You also want to keep an eye on them incase you have say a fleet of Xenon Ks or an I show up.
Will you make a discord at some point? will you start streaming?
I've thought about streaming some of my tests. Could be fun. Need to look into it a bit more. I haven't considered Discord at all.
Hope they add Xenon carriers.
Guppy is basically the best "destroyer" in the game =)
i look at these results and conclude Guppies are best used in small packs with larger flights of fighters for maintenance duties of the combat swarm.
Because they are fast, and have excellent maintenance capacity for their little friends, and are cheap. launch time isn't particularly relevant when your limiting agent becomes rate of input when throughput is the target.
@@glenmcgillivray4707 Well, if you think about it, the guppy is really the most powerful and multi-purpose ship.
It can be equipped with unguided missiles to attack stations or ships, and for defense, load fighters.
Or make it a powerful air defense ship and load it with attack aircraft or bombers, which it can supply + a couple of merchant ships to replenish the ammo
And now it's a good patrol ship.
If you compare it with the same shark, how many guppies will you buy for 1 shark?
and what is the total difference in turrets and HP? + how big an area will they cover.
So, in fact, the Borons are the top 2 in power after the Splits.
Although it is debatable here, what is better, 1 predator or several guppies =)
For the Splits, the Predator, if assembled correctly from my point of view, acts as a powerful multi-purpose base, by the way, I have a video where I invade a sector on a predator, destroying 4 behemoths along the way, and demolish a defense station, then retreat to replenish ammo.
I used a mixture of missiles and anti-aircraft turrets
And the Terrans are pulled by the Asgard in the form of a powerful ram =)
With the Tokyo group for cover
@@leonidnikityuk9460 Borons are good against fighters, and this makes sense as they would have been mostly against Kaach before the gate opened. They are bad against capitals and stations, however, and SINCE the gate opening, THAT is a problem.
Borons need a good anti-destroyer/cruiser gun (therefore the destroyer to carry it) and a good anti-station, which is often not the same.
The others (apart from Split) need something to deal with fighter swarms.
Split need something a lot cheaper to turn out and hold the line while the expensive rattlers and raptors are made.
@@markhackett2302 So just for the tasks of destroying large targets you have MISSILES and TORPEDOES!!!
And the Borons have good capacity!
@@markhackett2302
At the moment, rockets are the most powerful weapons in the game!
BUT there are nuances
Dumb AI
Limited ammunition
Difficulty of supply.
And most of it is solved, except for AI. . .
But again, if you build normal logistics and have a supply fleet (and harrows are strong in this too), then there will be no problems
Any answer other than raptor is wrong...
One of the high points of X4 for me was the fact that the flight model was not realistic and a pain in the butt to deal with. If I want realism I would go play a space flight sim. This move to make things more difficult is a big ole "We don't need casuals playing our game." statement. I sincerely hope there is an option to leave things as they are since it was not broken to begin with.
When I want realistic spaceflight then I play Kerbal Space Program. The kind of dogfight combat just isn't realistic in space!
@@DrAHorn it just makes the game harder.
I also liked the "arcade" feel of X4 spaceflight and thought it fit the universe well. I'm still trying to keep an open mind about the changes though, at least until I've finished my testing.
So the colossus is the best, cheapest, sexiest and carrierest of all carriers, as I already knew.
Still sees the Colossus storing all its ship in its dong, I'd rather use something else.
@@FortuneHunters dumping your load fast is, in this case, a good thing at least
There is mod for making some M ships carrier. Never tried.
Using it. The M frigates still have only 1 dock and 1 storage capacity for S but at least they can repair and supply a wing of S. I feel this bridges a gap for the early game.
I will most defo not be updating to 7.5 the game is good how it is now and the fact it makes AI worse im out.
Well I certainly can't recommend the current beta unless you really enjoy filing bug reports, but don't write off the whole update just yet. There's still plenty of time for improvements.
i reallllly want to like this game. with over 200 hours. i just can't because of that jank you demonstrated in the beginning and mentioned throughout the video. the AI in this game is obscenely bad. The devs just need to admit they are not making much progress and open the game up for more modding support to let the community mod in fixes.