X4: Foundations

X4: Foundations

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Terran capital ship kitbash and minor adjustments
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4 Feb, 2023 @ 10:56am
21 Feb @ 3:06pm
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Terran capital ship kitbash and minor adjustments

Description
Summary

This is a simple replacement of vanilla Terran ships and includes small adjustments. Currently it replaces the Tokyo class XL carrier, Honshu class XL support and the Osaka class L destroyer. It also replaces a few of L/XL Terran engine sounds.

I recommend starting a new game after this extension is activated.

Standalone version is available here.


How and why

The models were modified in Blender with its equivalent of ctrl + c and ctrl + v because I'm a noob but at the same time I found the shape of the ships too annoying to just keep playing. Egosoft's models are beautiful and richly detailed but I didn't like some of the choices in their design, therefore I committed this mod. It changes some of their turret placements and dock capacity. Whether this mod makes Terrans more/less overpowered, most likely. I did this so the ships would feel better to me.

Tokyo

The Tokyo now looks like its center of thrust aligns with the center of mass. It also has 2 engines now. However, it has lost its M dock and M ship storage entirely. In my opinion there wasn't enough space in the ship to store M ships and I didn't like how the M dock cut into what I assume to be some kind of engine housing. I increased the forward and backward drag by 2 to compensate the extra engine, it should be as fast as vanilla.

Osaka

This Osaka looks like the front didn't fall off. The new prow looked a bit barren to me, so additional 8 medium turrets are now on the front of the ship, 4 on top and 4 on bottom. The new internal space has been used to store more missiles, twice as many as in vanilla. I also added one more large turret so the destroyer now has symmetrical turret coverage. The new large turrets sockets have that grey paintjob all large vanilla turret areas have.
The XS/drone hatch that used to be in the middle is now where the bottom middle large turret used to be and the drone waypoints were adjusted accordingly. The structure there still looks rough and I might adjust this at a later time, but nothing crazy, I will just add a few more sides to make the shape smoother.
Lastly, I removed those weird winglets on the sides of the bridge area, they reminded me too much of car spoilers.

Honshu

The Honshu had the radiator/sail removed and is now symmetrical. The donut/ring/saucer section most terran ships seem to have is sadly no longer perfectly round on this ship. I wish I could make it circular and not look out of place but I lack the Blender skills for that.

Cockpits/bridges and sounds

The cockpit/bridge of the ships has been replaced with the Argon equivalents. The Terran bridges look fine on civilian ships but don't fit in my opinion on military ships. They also look rather dull with only white and black colors and have too much empty space. Argon bridges are more cramped and have more colours, so they don't feel as boring.

The replacement models have proper wrecks. The wreckages should keep the paintjob of the ship before it blew up.

The Terran engine sounds were too loud for me, so I replaced them with hums of engines from Freespace. I also toned down the volume of thrust up and down sounds, so sitting on a bridge of an L+ ship equipped with Terran engines shouldn't hurt your ears as much.

Quality and performance

As I mentioned before, its just a kitbash with copy-paste tier editing, so there is more than just a a few rough edges on those models and there is some geometry hidden beneath the outer shell of the ships. This will have an impact on game performance. If the size of the exported files is to be any indicator, the Tokyo from this mod should be around twice as hardware-heavy as vanilla, while the Osaka should be around one and a half as intensive. The Honshu should theoretically be easier to run due to having less elements.

In addition 6.0 changed how collision meshes are made, so if you notice significant performance drops with the mod in comparison with no mod please let me know. I did unbogus the docking area of the Tokyo, so NPCs should be able to dock without issues with collision being in path of their docking/undocking path. However, due to how AI works in the game, there still will be a goober or two who will get stuck under the ship or to the side, constantly hitting the hull of the ship for as long as you are in range to prevent OOS simulation from engaging. If you have pilots who can't dock at your Tokyo, fly away a few dozen KM from the carrier, then with OOS simulation they will dock fine. Also, consider firing them. This is just how X4 AI works, the mod does not touch this.

Collision slingshots

With the new physics engine the ships behave strangely when you collide with them. Most of the time nothing interesting happens, but in other instances you might get catapulted at ludicrous speeds away from the ship, which will also start spinning through space. My guess is its the engine freaking out when two meshes are about to overlap. This could be caused due to particular geometry of my collision meshes. If you know how to address this, please let me know.

Installation and compatibility

I do not recommend installing this mid playthrough, although it is possible. If you do that, the hardpoints (turrets, shields, engines, docks, drone waypoints and also some light sources) will be still be in the same place as they used to be in vanilla but the models of the ship will change. It will look like a mess. Also, the old Terran bridge will be sunken into the inside of the ship and you won't be able to see outside much. Freshly built ships will have neither of this issues.

Technically, natively compatible with VRO, no compatibility patches needed. However I'm pretty sure the macro files that determine ship behaviour only account for 1 engine, so those files might need adjusting in VRO if you play with both.

Not compatible with mods that replace the existing .xml of ships mentioned in this description or mods that add more turrets/shields to those ships, unless those mods were created with this particular layout of the ship in mind. This is most severe with the Tokyo since I moved the main hull, there are fewer issues with the Osaka and Honshu. If you have hardpoints sitting outside of the ship, floating in space, most likely another mod is adding/overwriting the .xml and putting stuff where it shouldn't be.

Uninstalling mid playthrough will revert to original models of the ships, all hardpoints however on already built ships will be in locations determined by this mod. So they will look out of place and disconnected from the model of the ship. In short, it will look awful. Same goes for cockpit/bridge as explained previously.

The Boron plot related Tokyo should spawn with 2 engines now, but it won't have any turrets. If that causes issues during the plot please let me know.

Acknowledgement and credit

Special thanks go to Aurum, Axeface, BrummBear, dtaco, Jabis, Lc4Hunter as well as many other authors of modding tools and guides on Egosoft forums for their help and assistance.
Lastly and most importantly thanks go to the Egosoft team for X4 and their continued work on the X series.
Popular Discussions View All (1)
2
9 Aug, 2024 @ 1:06pm
Nexus version?
goose
64 Comments
Sandwych 29 May @ 1:58am 
Could be even better if the S ship storage for Tokyo stays the same as the vanilla version. Egosoft buffed Tokyo so now it can store 72 S ships.
Darth_Venath 29 Apr @ 12:48pm 
Glad I happened upon this MOD. The asymmetrical aesthetics of the vanilla Terran capital ships really irritated me, especially when compared to the rest of Terran architecture like their space station modules.

Looks like you fixed most of my gripes.

Now, can you see about fixing the Kukri? If not, it's fine cuz I mostly use Takoba anyways. 🤣
Lupercal  [author] 21 Feb @ 5:01pm 
@Strategist Bu Shia
Tested just now and the cockpit/bridge is where it should be, not inside the geometry.
The only way for what you are describing to happen is to enable the mod mid playthrough, contrary to my recommendation from the description.
Any Honshu class ships built after the mod was enabled should have the cockpit in the proper place. The ones built before the mod was enabled will have the cockpit sunken inside the geometry.

@Enterprise1959
No I cannot make it.

@father.nikifor
I'm satisfied with current values and shape.
To edit the speed value please change the forward/reverse drag values in: zterran_kitbash\extensions\ego_dlc_terran\assets\units\size_xl\macros\ship_ter_xl_carrier_01_a_macro.xml
To change the size of any element of the model you could use Blender.
For relevant tools and guides please refer to the modding forum:
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewforum.php?f=181
Strategist Bu Shia 21 Feb @ 4:15pm 
Hey, you should probably take look at the cock pit view for the Honshu, as it's bridge currently looks like it trapped in a giant metal create. It has no possible view of space through the bridge window.
enterprise1959 11 Feb @ 3:22pm 
Hi Lupercal I'm going to try your mod but I do have to ask and tell you about my Love. My Love is to be on the bridge of the ship Yamoto or Captain Harlock ship I love that ship with big gun turret so can you make it.
father.nikifor 7 Oct, 2024 @ 6:47am 
@Lupercal
Good afternoon, mod creator! Can you make a couple of changes or help maky them by myself?
For Tokyo can you make speed X2.5 from vanila, for Honshu donut/ring/saucer section make bigger may be X1.5 from vanila or your mod?
Lupercal  [author] 5 Sep, 2024 @ 11:23am 
@knightphantom420
I think it is, as far as I can tell.
If you notice anything weird then plase report here.
knightphantom420 4 Sep, 2024 @ 4:40pm 
7.0 compatible?
Lupercal  [author] 8 Aug, 2024 @ 10:53am 
I had to remake the Tokyo from scratch. This means it will have different hardpoints. I couldn't find enough real estate to slap the L turret anymore, so I removed it as well. I hope this doesn't cause any serious issues in your game. If yes, then please let me know. I think i still have the old .cat files so I could upload them somewhere for you if needed.
Lupercal  [author] 15 Jul, 2024 @ 11:23am 
@ARandomDuckX
No, haven't heard of this before.
As a first troubleshooting step, could you please try disabling this mod and then check if the mission progresses as expected? The ships will look weird, but it shouldn't break the game.
I don't know a second thing about mission logic, however all this mod does is replace models and add some hardpoints. As far as ship type or classification is concerned, that is untouched, so it isn't clear to me how this mod could affect them.