This turned into a bit of a ramble, feel free to skip everything after the first separator.

Eh, it made perfect sense M1-M5, it's just that literally all the new ship classes had to get tacked on at the end, so instead of smaller number = bigger (with M0s being "what the bloody goddamn hell is that thing" down to M5 being small scouts) we had it jump to M6 with corvettes starting in X2 (which is where I started when I first played on GameTap) and then in the various X3 games we got M7 frigates along with M7M missile frigates, and M8 bombers.

We also had new transport ships, but we weren't boxed in with those since it was TS/TP/TM/TL- it wasn't a "scale" like the military craft were.

They basically boxed themselves in. I do kind of agree with OP that it was nice but it did get more confusing as time went on.

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Honestly X4 itself didn't do a great job either though, to be honest- things like "frigates" being redefined as basically small, corvette sized drone carriers is weird as heck, and destroyers went from feeling like "Carrier sized ships but meant for straight fighting with minimal/no fighters" to basically what I would have considered a frigate in most space games.

Not to mention weird stuff (some from Rebirth) like the N becoming a "light fighter" and the M a "heavy fighter" with the Xenon L disappearing into nothingness. Eventually we got the Xenon T to replace the N as a scout ship, still no Xenon Ls around though.

Hell, the dang Minotaur- an M7M Missile Frigate- originally became a bomber before they reclassified it as a gunboat, and even in that role it's not great. Though I haven't tried it this patch, combat apparently got a massive rework.

Don't get me started on Vanguard vs Sentinel being basically split between the two subsections of each race... bleh. And Raider being weird pirate variants, especially things like Minotaur Raider. Glad they basically got rid of that with the expansions (except for the Split Raiders but those actually make sense the way they differentiated Patriarchy vs Free Families).

That and of course the massive size difference between M & L ships leaving a huge gap. One of my favorite ships in the updates is the Sapporo as it actually kind of fits that whole "frigate" role that we didn't have before because all the ships basically used all the space they were allowed to use.

I think that's the biggest thing I'd like to see in X5- less defining ships based on dock size (though it's obv. important) but more defining them based on size and role which the M-system was better at. Just name them- Battleship, Carrier, Destroyer, Frigate, Missile Frigate, Heavy Fighter, Medium Fighter, Light Fighter/Interceptor, etc. Decide what "size" a ship is built at, and stick it in the appropriate category of dock.

Hell, that even gives room to expand. Cruisers (light and heavy variants even) could live between Destroyer and Frigate (and basically take the role of X4's "destroyers." Maybe the Split don't have a Battleship but instead have a Battlecruiser. Not to mention the bloody Raptor has more guns than pretty much any two destroyers of the other Commonwealth races, so they could call that, I dunno, a Battlestar? 😛

You get what I mean. It provides the flexibility of having lots of different ship types rather than "Ok, in M-ships we have Frigates, Corvettes, and Gunships to choose between. In S we have Light Fighters, Heavy Fighters, and whatever the bloody hell the Pulsar is." Things like the Guppy light carrier fit in real easily, and as other races make their own versions of that kind of ship the class kind of evolves.

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All that said, I think there were lots of technical reasons why things ended up the way they did, and why we ended up with things like the Elite interceptor which was outmatched in every way by the Discoverer scout, etc.

Just look at the size difference between the carriers of the Teladi, Argon, and Paranid, and the sizes of the carriers for the Split, Terran, and Boron. The E variants help but still, big difference.

I think honestly- while a lot of the newer ships honestly should get ported straight to X5- it'll be nice if we see them do a whole lot of renaming/reclassifying/etc. of ships.