Argon Boron Teladi Split Paranid Goner (limited ships) ATF (very limited) (i hope they come back, godly ship design) Pirate variants Xenon Khaak
So ignore my point entirely, I guess?
It is true that comparing X3AP to Rebirth is unfair but comparing it to X3TC should certainly be done.
I'm not sure whether you're tracking what I'm saying? I'm comparing X3 Reunion (abbreviated X3R) to X4 Foundations (X4). The FIRST of THREE different X3 games, each a standalone expansion, and as my OP pointed out, each rapidly increasing the amount of content.
Also, they took too away too much stuff. I personally found the old classification amazing. Now, there are few ship types
But they're still there, they just got rid of the numbers (which got silly since they went up from M5-M3, then M6 was bigger than M3s, then M2s, then M1s (except sometimes M1s were bigger than M2?), then there were M3+s and M7Ms and M7Cs, and don't forget the M8s which are between M6s and M3s in size but are a specialty ship with a designated bomber role, of and also M6+s...
Yeah, frankly, I appreciate what X4 has done to just get rid of the Ms and use ship classifications. Consider the Argon ships I've seen so far (arranged in rough order from X3-and-prior classification and new, X4-given classes):
Funny thing... even if I'm wrong in assuming there's an Argon carrier, that's 8 unique classes. How many unique Argon combatant ships did X3R have? Drumroll..... 7. Buster, Centaur, Colossus, Discoverer, Eclipse, Nova, and Titan.
So what I was saying before about the sub-classes -- yeah, there's stuff like a M5+? Or heavy scout? For the Teladi (the Guillemot as I mentioned earlier), and they have no designated Interceptor (both the Falcon and Buzzard are considered Fighters, and both have about the same mass, although the Falcon is faster and weighs 1T less so it's probably closer to an M4 I guess.) Only the Paranid, so far as I've seen, have "corvette" (M6) identified (the ol' Nemesis).
My point here, with this wall of text, is... They just identified ships on a basic classification system, not added in all these M numbers that would have been somewhat unifying, except there were exceptions everywhere. It just got silly towards the end of AP.
and the weapon /shield system is so boring—and so not favouring capital ships.
I'll grant you the turrets are idiots in terms of aiming in this game, and not being able to program certain turrets to do certain things is annoying (I miss being able to program a certain turret with a certain weapon to target X ships, while other turrets with bigger weapons targeted Y ships). Capitals definitely need some love.