Just stick to Albion Prelude.
Extended TC is nice but also ads a lot of bullcrap, whereas AP offers a cleaner experience and a better Sandbox than Vanilla Terran Conflict.
Hell, the changed behavior of enemy Missile Frigates and ramped up Corvette Laser Generators alone are a reason to chose it over TC.
That aside: Anyone playing Rebirth Beta 3.0 and willing to give a few comments whether it's worth playing?
What bullcrap ? XTC is extremely focused. Sure there are some things like space lifeforms but they are rarity.
Only downside (if we can call it that way) is faction system reputation. Which means that for a long time you will need to work your way up just to be able to buy simple ship. Still it gives you this nice idea of progression so that you won't be buying m6 just like that because you had spare few mln. You can reach common rank quite quickly so you will be able to buy smaller traders and older fighters.
My most beloved thing in XTC was always taking small fighter carrier (3-4 fighters) jump to destination clean enemy and go back to mother base. Later that fun increased as i had proper carriers and i basically dropped armada on enemies heads.
As of 3.00 good changes. With every new update to 3.00 beta they add new features:
Release Notes
Version 3.00 Beta 4 (188947)
Note: Voice recordings and localisations for texts that are new in 3.00 are not yet included.
Note: This is not the complete and final new feature list for 3.00.
• New Feature: Interactive holomap with mouse support, rotation, panning and automatic zoom between map levels.
• New Feature: Stations can now be built in Empty Space zones.
• New Feature: Dangerous regions that can damage your ship (feature implemented but regions not yet in map).
• New Feature: Crafting of special items (menu present but feature not yet fully enabled).
• New Feature: Beta 3 New non-plot mission chains.
• New Feature: Beta 3 Employee training to improve skills (feature not yet fully enabled).
• New Feature: Beta 3 Ware exchange between player ships and stations.
• New Feature: Subsystem target cycling.
• Beta 4 Added ability to run in first person mode.
• Added custom trade offer price settings.
• Added new kind of floating crate that must be opened by destroying locks.
• Added new trade and targeting software upgrades for the player ship.
• Added option to enable automatic refuel when ships call player if they are out of fuel.
• Beta 3 Added build progress display to monitor and map.
• Beta 3 Added option to display non-squad ships in Trade Offers menu.
• Added Patrol Zone order to continuously secure a zone.
• Added Gather Resources for mining in different zones.
• Beta 3 Added option to recall all drones.
• Added encyclopedia page showing station build costs.
• Beta 3 Added estimated profit to trade menus.
• Beta 3 Added default drone setups to ship dealer drone menus.
• Beta 4 Added encyclopedia button to trade details.
• Beta 3 Added shortcut display to new main menu.
• Beta 3 Added shortcuts for property owned, player inventory and undock.
• Added new in-game statistics.
• Beta 4 Added new tips.
• Beta 4 Added ability to rename Empty Space zones once a player station has been built there (improves new feature in 3.0).
• Beta 4 Improved gamestart balancing.
• Improved smalltalk gameplay.
• Beta 4 Improved smalltalk reward balancing.
• Improved AI turret avoidance.
• Improved AI fuel station selection to reduce queues at the pumps.
• Improved AI attack behaviour on fleets of capital ships.
• Beta 3 Improved AI missile target selection.
• Beta 3 Improved small fighter attacks on big targets.
• Improved positioning of highway advertising signs to avoid traffic.
• Improved price calculation and discount system to make trading viable for a wider range of wares (new base prices to come).
• Improved balancing of police licence prices, bounty rewards and mission rewards.
• Beta 4 Improved behaviour of Recall Drones and Smart Defence buttons in Ability menu.
• Beta 3 Improved refuelling behaviour so that local budgets are no longer wasted on fuel.
• Beta 3 Improved effect on production efficiency of station employees, including skill levels.
• Beta 3 Improved AI engineer balancing.
• Beta 4 Improved holomap colour settings.
• Fixed occasional highway-related sound cut-out.
• Fixed builder ship positioning.
• Beta 3 Fixed respawning of hidden ships once claimed.
• Fixed further cases of production getting stuck when storage for some products is full.
• Fixed attack/defend configuration of Defence Officer not working in some cases.
• Fixed unfriendly NPCs allowing further question options after "Where can I find...?".
• Fixed Refuel command being displayed twice in the pilot info.
• Beta 3 Fixed command info showing 'Docking' when ships undocking.
• Fixed wares being listed as available for resource gathering on ships not capable of mining them.
• Beta 3 Fixed negative credits in logbook messages.
• Beta 3 Fixed missing remaining discount time.
• Beta 3 Fixed "unlocked" percentage being shown for player-owned objects.
• Beta 4 Fixed incorrect unit capacity calculation in trader menus.
• Beta 4 Fixed production times in the info menu not updating.
• Beta 3 Fixed "Account Updated" notification sometimes reporting double amounts, even when transferred amounts are correct.
• Beta 3 Fixed trades failing completely if pilot funds are not sufficient for entire amount.
• Beta 4 Fixed additional wares being transported if an empty transport drone is destroyed on its return trip.
• Fixed ships with trade orders stuck in following player ship (stuck trades will be completed after current task).
• Fixed capital ships not shooting at some stations.
• Beta 4 Fixed station not attacking enemies in several situations.
• Beta 4 Fixed damage per second simulation for ships using missiles as weapons when player is not present.
• Beta 4 Fixed demolition drone ammo.
• Fixed remote controlled missiles not moving if player stops controlling them.
• Beta 3 Fixed custom trade offer price settings not being saved in savegames (feature introduced in 3.0).
• Fixed player-owned ships unable to deliver wares to homebase if manager had no money (introduced in 3.0).
• Fixed ships not finishing planned trade trips in certain situations.
• Fixed ships behaving as though moving while actually standing still.
• Beta 4 Fixed ships getting stuck in highways.
• Fixed at least one cause of unexpected warping of player ship to a new location.
• Fixed cockpit camera movement not working when loading a savegame. • Fixed missing voice feedback for some orders.
• Fixed incorrect NPC voice feedback when there are no explicit orders.
• Fixed prices of new trade software upgrades (feature introduced in 3.0).
• Fixed object positions on map when viewing a different sector.
• Beta 4 Fixed inability to zoom out when viewing large objects via external camera (introduced in 3.0).
• Fixed random initial mouse position when mouse cursor activated on platform.
• Fixed subsystem target cycling not doing anything when no target object is selected (introduced in 3.0).
• Fixed target cycling sometimes skipping a target or selecting the wrong one.
• Fixed missing control remapping for new subsystem target cycling keys (introduced in 3.0).
• Fixed rare case of current target being lost when cycling targets.
• Fixed repaired surface elements not being targetable.
• Fixed capital ships not showing target elements directly after having been constructed, refueled, or repaired.
• Fixed several other rare problems with target elements.
• Fixed various problems with "re-pinging" of mission targets.
• Fixed various problems with crosshair information display.
• Fixed ability menu not updating if new drone is installed while menu is open.
• Beta 4 Fixed slider range for drones on small ship trader.
• Beta 4 Fixed problems targeting certain buttons using mouse controls (introduced in 3.0).
• Beta 3 Fixed flickering of buttons in Ability menu with mouse controlsin some cases.
• Beta 3 Fixed case where buttion in Ability menu could get stuck in the active state.
• Fixed several other minor menu behaviour issues.
• Fixed various causes of the most common causes of crashes and improved crash reporting.
• Beta 4 Fixed several more causes of game and menu crashes.
• Optimisations resulting in performance improvements, especially in busy areas.
Note: If a problem is not listed as fixed above then it is probably not being addressed in this patch, but may be planned for a future one.
Note: When switching back from the Beta to the Release version, you may encounter problems with the controls. To resolve this, go to the in-game Start Menu and select Settings, Controls, Restore Defaults. Alternatively, if you make a copy of your inputmap.xml file before starting the Beta, you can simply copy this file back into your \Documents\Egosoft\X Rebirth folder. Deleting the file will not solve the problem as it will be restored from the Steam Cloud.
64-bit
Only 64-bit versions of the game are now being provided.
Note: The system requirements for the game have always stated that it requires a 64-bit version of Windows, and that future updates for the 32-bit version was not guaranteed indefinitely.
Steam does not currently support automatic crashdump upload for 64-bit applications. We are therefore using a third party tool to provide this facility. If there is a crash then a standard crashdump will be created and uploaded to the third party site, from where we can perform analysis to determine the cause. As with Steam crashdumps no personal information is included in these crashdumps.
Note: The primary aim of the 64-bit version is to remove the memory limitations of 32-bit. This should improve stability, because the game is less likely to run out of memory, and reduce stutter, because certain essential assets that cannot be loaded in the background can stay in memory for longer. It is not likely to significantly improve general performance, though it's possible that it may do so for certain people under certain circumstances.
Known Issues
Please do not report things that are listed in the documentation as known issues.
• Transport drones sometimes take time to reach target (workaround: just wait).
• Autopilot flight over surface of large objects can be erratic (workaround: disable autopilot).
• Using Alt-Tab during fullscreen video playback will cause video/sound to get out of sync (workaround: press Esc to skip video).