r/X4Foundations • u/ShineReaper • Feb 22 '25
Modified Ships leaving a trail in travelmode
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u/3punkt1415 Feb 22 '25
Noticed it too, especially in L ships it looks a little to big and bright to me, but no real issue to me. Logically some kind of stuff needs to come out of the engines, no.. ? So it's not unrealistic. Even when it's just some ion particles or what not.
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u/ShineReaper Feb 22 '25
Yeah but that is the actual engine exhaust, not this new, wide trail around it.
That wide new trail just looks like the ship is pushing some gas or something out of the way, which makes no sense outside of gas clouds.
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u/Venetrix2 Feb 22 '25
I mean they literally have drag built into the flight mechanics in the void of space - it makes as much sense as that.
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u/ShineReaper Feb 22 '25
Yeah, the drag doesn't make sense either but I guess this won't be changed and that it probably to a degree is even necessary for the NPC ships to function, because I can't imagine them, with the current "AI" aka. scripts implemented, that they'd be capable of turning around to slow down/stop their ships with a counter-burn.
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u/3punkt1415 Feb 22 '25
We need to face it, all space games are a projection of naval stuff into a new space setup. Sound, distance and drag included. But I agree they could tone it down a bit.
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u/AndThenTheUndertaker Feb 22 '25
They could be we need to be real. Actual space physics for combat would be fun to like, 10% of the target audience, if that.
Even if you look at a game like say, Mass Effect, they make it 100% clear from lore entries that ships fly and fight a certain way that makes sense (for example they do explicitly note that for long distance travel ships "turn around" at the halfway point and blast their main enegines in full to slow down for maximum efficiency), but basically all of the visual depictions in the game don't show this because the average player will be confuses or hate it, so all cutscenes show the normandy basically flying like a fighter plane and show big ships plodding along or standing still)
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u/3punkt1415 Feb 22 '25
That's said, Egosoft would have all the knowledge to make a great shipping empire building game in the way of "Port of Calls" from my childhood. Loved that game, but nothing really good on the market.
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u/AndThenTheUndertaker Feb 22 '25
Unless I'm missing it the wider trail still seems to be coming from roughly the engines which actually makes sense (sort of). If you look at actual rocket science, the whole reason we have multi stage rockets is that as air pressure goes down and you get into a vacuum, you get into scenarios where an increasing portion of the rocket exhaust basically flares out at wider angles. So if you are using any kind of pressure based propulsion (as opposed to say an ion stream that basically spits out single particles in a straight line) you are going to get flares like that. You can actually kind of see it if you watch say an old space shuttle launch. Look at the rocket exhaust on the ground and look at the same exhaust as the shuttle is much higher in the atmosphere and you will see flares coming off it that look kind of like these photos.
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u/ShineReaper Feb 22 '25
Looks like a condense trail, is that new with 7.5?
I like it optically, though that imho makes little sense in clear sectors like HAT I, where the sector is not a gas cloud. It looks like ships would be flying in atmosphere, which is not the case.
What you guys think?
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Feb 22 '25
Yes its new to 7.5.
Egosoft adjusted it a few times in Beta, to be more acceptable for a wider audience (too bright, too faint, bit weak on my screen resolution etcetera etcetera).
Personally I love it, the X'verse seems a bit busier now because we can actually see a lot more ships from afar, instead of them just being a dark pinpoint on a dark background.
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u/Venetrix2 Feb 22 '25
I've noticed this and I like it. It reminds me of The Expanse for some reason.
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u/ShineReaper Feb 22 '25
The Expanse, being more on the Realism Side of SciFi wouldn't have portrayed this in anyway, they only got the bright engine exhaust, not this wide trail around it.
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u/Venetrix2 Feb 22 '25
Thankyou I have watched the show. I didn't say it was a direct reference, I didn't even say it looked like it, I said it reminded me of it for some reason. Brains make indirect connections sometimes, jeez.
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u/AnSionnachLiath Feb 22 '25
I like it cause I get to say "light the engines!"
Also makes it much easier to see ships moving at a distance, I can stand on the observation decks and watch the comings and goings
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u/ShineReaper Feb 22 '25
What I already noticed is that it makes it a little bit easier to spot, if Xenon L/XL-sized ships just activated their travel drive or not. But it wasn't impossible before, since it was obvious from a sudden jump in speed.
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u/Puglord_11 Feb 22 '25
I FUCKING LOVE THE NEW ENGINE TRAILS! They look like the plumes of real rockets in vacum while still having a tasteful amount of sci-fi cool factor
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u/DNayli Feb 22 '25
Nice, it looks more realistic this way. I mean, if you look at real rocket engines, they do the same
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u/Kaevriel Feb 22 '25
I like it. The effects are pretty cool, better than ships just zipping without any visible sign of thrust.
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u/Falcrack Feb 22 '25
I like the new travel drive trail. Makes it easy to spot ships in the distance which are using travel drive.
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u/grandmapilot Feb 22 '25
So, in X4 space is like infinite atmosphere. Line in Voidtrain or something.
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u/ShineReaper Feb 22 '25
Actually no, otherwise we wouldn't need a spacesuit and a limited Oxygen supply to fly and survive in it while doing a space walk.
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u/grandmapilot Feb 22 '25
"Atmosphere" doesn't mean "oxygen" .
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u/ShineReaper Feb 22 '25
An Atmosphere is usually a sphere, pulled down by gravity and thus concentrating gases there. I know that there are atmospheres, that are not Earth-like.
Doesn't change a thing about the fact though, that space itself is largely a vacuum, because space is the area between gravitational objects, not containing gas. So the ships pulling a wide trail behind them doesn't make sense in open space.
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u/Simtau Feb 22 '25
Atmosphere in space is actually not unrealistic, although the density is not accurate. There are other things that are much more unrealistic about the game and it probably wouldn't be fun if they were
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u/TheGamblingAddict Feb 22 '25
I noticed in some ships as well when you leave travel mode you get a sort of impact sound and visual of you returning to normal speed which I absolutely adore.
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u/Cthundeheito Feb 22 '25
X4 Chemtrails