Xenon Cap ships look like Paranid designs.

[Lander1979]

As the title suggests. I think the current Xenon capitol ships look like Paranid ship designs from earlier X games, and I feel they kinda look out of place for this reason.

IMO the new designs look too "organic" to be coming from the mind of a Militant Scientific calculator gone wrong(what use does a rogue AI have for organic curved shapes? it's digital blasphemy I tells yee). Traditionally Xenon cap ships were stylishly brick-like, and I do miss the borg-cube-likeness they portrayed, they looked like something an AI would create.

Also, I miss my Paranid tech (and I think the Xenon cap ship designs would be better suited as a Paranid cap ships).

[Lander1979]

I'm beginning to feel the urge to make a mod...

[sd_jasper]

Well, the shapes we identify as organic forms came about from the evolution of various lifeforms to something that was more suited to survival than other previous forms.

It would make sense that a self-replicating machine that can iterate and improve with each generation might also find "organic" shapes superior.

[Privata]

Well the current lore is :
The xenon are mimicking organic evolution.
Even when it would not make sens for them as they even use station modules that should be organic only , its a sub plot and in my opinion one of the best ones.

However I agree that the ships look like X² paranid ships , but to me they do not look like X3 or XBTF paranid ships.

Listen to all the info about xenon you can around the universe , be it module info or just genral ship info and you will find a lot of stuff about the organic mimicking.

[Requiemfang]

As the title suggests. I think the current Xenon capitol ships look like Paranid ship designs from earlier X games, and I feel they kinda look out of place for this reason.

IMO the new designs look too "organic" to be coming from the mind of a Militant Scientific calculator gone wrong(what use does a rogue AI have for organic curved shapes? it's digital blasphemy I tells yee). Traditionally Xenon cap ships were stylishly brick-like, and I do miss the borg-cube-likeness they portrayed, they looked like something an AI would create.

Also, I miss my Paranid tech (and I think the Xenon cap ship designs would be better suited as a Paranid cap ships).

Need to remember though they pretty much redesigned all the races, except the Split ships which look exactly the same. But that's only one small part of a larger faction/race. Who knows what Split ships will look like in the next game. Seriously look how different Teladi ships look when compared to the previous game, major design overhaul there. Xenon have the N and M which are the exact same designs from the previous X game, but other than that the ships had a total redesign. Of course purple meanies have returned and from just looking at the screenshots I've seen their ships, at least the fighter craft look pretty much the same.

[Nanook]

Well, the shapes we identify as organic forms came about from the evolution of various lifeforms to something that was more suited to survival than other previous forms.

It would make sense that a self-replicating machine that can iterate and improve with each generation might also find "organic" shapes superior.

If they evolved on planets, with atmospheres, maybe. But the Xenon are inherently spacefaring, and there's no need for their battleships to have "organic" shapes, since there's no aerodynamics or hydrodynamics to worry about in space. And considering it's only the Boron, a water-borne species, that had a need for organic shapes, and none of the other racess did, I doubt the Xenon would ever evolve in such a manner.

I'm with the OP on this. I think the new Xenon capital ships look silly and out of place. BTW, I had the same opinion of the Paranid in X2.

[birdtable]

Have to agree with Lander1979, the Paranid M1 and M2 do resemble Xenon I with a slight squinty eye...... I mean the viewers eye not an I with a squinty I.

[Killjaeden]

Totally agree... Even the intergalactic trashbin aka #deca in X3AP was already miss-step in design imo.

Back to the square roots please (haha pun haha)

But seriously, whenever i look at XR ships and stuff, i can't recognize anything as "X". It's totally alien, apart from some reused ships.
If it was just the alienating gameplay design decisions, i would propably still play the game some time. But combined with the totally new and -what i can only describe as random- design, it just kills the game for me.

I understand the change of design from X2 to X3. In X2 the ships where really clunky, mostly owed to the graphical limitations at the time. Those don't translate well into a game with more advanced graphics.

The same isn't the case however for X3 to XR. The ships in X3 still fit in (as demonstrated by the cases of reuse). We had those ships and their designs for so long, every player who played X3 and offsprings will know how a Nova looks for example, or can immediately tell apart a Teladi from an Argon ship . And yet they threw all that over board. I don't need copies of old ships, but at least keep the specific look of the races ships.

Not even the design guidelines of the different races hold true anymore. Recognizability = zero. Which means that it basically appears to me as another random scifi setting, where only the story line and race names fit something i know. And that just isn't convincing.

[Snafu_X3]

Don't forget there are other reasons for ships to have more 'organic' rounded looks, eg defence

Look at the evolution of castles from square towers to round ones, for instance. Round towers provide better defence (survivability) despite being more difficult to build, as shots tend to bounce off curved surfaces unless they hit at precisely the right angle (pun not intended). Tanks, to be more up-to-date, went through a similar process in the 1940s & later; surface warships similarly, although slightly earlier (& was prolly more of an offshoot from streamlining efficiency to gain more speed & burn less fuel anyway). Modern-day combat aircraft don't do this mainly to save on weight/mass, but if you look closely at the designs there may be some similarities turning up..

Although that's not intended to provide the designers with an excuse as to why the K has that huuuuge blind spot on its back..

[hisazul]

I like new xenon look well enough, tho I liked old design just as well.

Important part is that races still maintain vastly different ship design. You can't mistaken Split ship for human ship... and Teladi ship are also easily identified.

Even >some< terran ships are still unique in their look. Tho a lot of them look like generic human flying boxes. But we got barely any Split ships and no Paranid no Boron and no >>>>REAL<<<< terrans.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I think they look pretty mean, which can be evolutionarily useful because their ecosystem comprises tin cans controlled by humanoid flesh bags rather than fields and lions. Their insectoidal design hints at the hive mind trope, which like it or not, isn't exactly unreasonable for cybernetic sci-fi - at least to me anyway.

[Nanook]

Seems to me there's a lot of strrrrettttttching involved in trying to justify Egosoft's odd ship designs, especially the Xenon, in this game. Fact is, there's no reasonable explanation as to why the Xenon would suddenly have such radically different ship designs, considering the relatively conservative nature of such a species. I mean, going from what they had in AP to what they have now, it's like it's a totally different species. Not even the Argons/Terrans had such a radical departure from the old ships.

Of course, then there's the Teladi. It looks to me like someone in the art department at Egosoft was reading too many Ian Douglas Star Carrier novels. IMO, consecutive games should keep to an evolutionary theme, not a revolutionary one. It makes the whole game world more believable.

[Nikola515]

I think Xenon ships might have little inspiration from Mass Effect Ripers in XR....

[Snafu_X3]

there's no reasonable explanation as to why the Xenon would suddenly have such radically different ship designs, considering the relatively conservative nature of such a species.

Search fo 'Branch 9' in the I-G Encyclopaedia; this may give at least /some/ explanation as to the differences (although it carefully avoids the 'why')..

[Privata]

I think Xenon ships might have little inspiration from Mass Effect Ripers in XR....

I think they look more like the geth dropship rather than the actual reapers.

[strude]

Fact is, there's no reasonable explanation as to why the Xenon would suddenly have such radically different ship designs, considering the relatively conservative nature of such a species. I mean, going from what they had in AP to what they have now, it's like it's a totally different species. Not even the Argons/Terrans had such a radical departure from the old ships.

I disagree. Being an AI, they are able to analyse their designs and redesign their ships far more efficiently and quickly than any organic could.

It's more likely that they could observe weaknesses in their designs through internal simulation, and redesign their ships accordingly, possibly many many time before something is even produced. Therefore, the design revision process would be very quick, and changes from one "manufactured" design to the next could be radically different due to simulation testing. Flawed designs would be discarded before being produced.

[Requiemfang]

Here's a random thought to toss out there during the gate shutdown who knows what unknown alien races the Xenon came across during the shutdown. Who knows how many obliterated million/billions there were. If they encountered a race out there and fought them it's likely that the Xenon learned during this encounter that certain designs of their ships weren't efficient enough and decided to copy the other races designs or incorporated them into it's newly designed ships.

[Lander1979]

Here's a random thought to toss out there during the gate shutdown who knows what unknown alien races the Xenon came across during the shutdown. Who knows how many obliterated million/billions there were. If they encountered a race out there and fought them it's likely that the Xenon learned during this encounter that certain designs of their ships weren't efficient enough and decided to copy the other races designs or incorporated them into it's newly designed ships.

More likely these were Paranid Ships running experiments using Xenon AGI and things kinda got out of hand...

That would explain the organic shape of the ships and the lack of Paranid around the place, as for where the Boron are?... well Split Happens...

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Not even the Argons/Terrans had such a radical departure from the old ships.

I personally think the XL OL ships look nothing like Argon ships from X3 games, and that the Xenon are hardly alone in having seen overhauls.

[Killjaeden]

I disagree. Being an AI, they are able to analyse their designs and redesign their ships far more efficiently and quickly than any organic could.

Please propose to me why an organic shape would make more sense in space compared to the kinda modular/ box shaped designs they had in X3.

Box shaped designs are easier to manufacture, always. Since Xenon are STILL all metal and not some organically grown ship (in contrast to the borons, which had their living hull thingy going on), it makes no sense to me, as a mechanical engineer, to make a space ship that is organically shaped. With the modular, boxy, design you could think of them beeing able to combine and/ or replace components on a ship for repair and upgrading. With this organic design... this aspect just falls apart.

If hivemind/ swarm is a thing they want to suggest with the design- why the hell do we need a mechanical version of the khaak? We already have organic hivemind with those. Unless they want to combine the two (which would be an epic mistake imo for enemy diversity) they should be kept completely distinct in gameplay and look.

I suppose you could argue that they didn't want to include boxy xenon, when all the other shipdesigns are generic human metalboxes already... But that's more a fault of their decision to make most of it human based, instead of including more other race designs from the get go. They went with random human designs "look corporations", where nothing truly fits together.

The races in X3 (and also X2) had very strong themes in terms of design. If those themes wheren't so strong and inspiring, i wouldn't have spent ~4 years of my freetime expanding the model selection as a modder/modeller (some of them are in X3AP, the rest is in the XTC mod). Now with XR i feel like this has been lost. I blame this change on the shift to corporations as the controlling "entities" instead of the actual races. I would strongly urge Egosoft to pull back the influence of corporations and focus back again on mostly unified races beeing the main controlling entities, like it was in X2 and X3.