X-Rebirth

[belowmecoldhands]

Don't see why fast-travel would be a bad idea in a space game. So yeah, not really decline there.

I'm really hoping they've changed the flying mechanics though. Not necessarily Newtonian physics and all that, but at least something far better than what was there. Also hoping for proper beam weapons, varied "sectors"( would prefer if they removed them altogether and did it the I-War style instead) and a game engine which uses all my CPU cores so the game can actually run good.

How about interesting travel? As far as fast travel is concerned, I favor a compressed time feature which I know X2 had. I don't however like hte jump drive. Why? Because I think having to traverse the gate network makes things interesting. It adds a strategic/tactical element to the placement of gates and defensive/offensive forces. It's made even more interesting when s*** is happening (like pirates/khaak/xenon who actually pose a threat) and when gates aren't always on the map and when you could grab stray tasks or quests on the space lane or find drifting cargo pods or learn something new about a system you're passing through.

I guess I'm one of those players who like to travel. Not necessarily slow travel, but I do want interesting travel, you know? How about a few gates here and ther that cross the universe? It's instant, but can't be used everywhere. Might have other constraints to make it interesting. Don't think I'd be against a station that provides a jump point, if it's expensive or limited somehow.

And aren't people forgetting these games are modable? If it's oo slow or fast then get the right mod.

Just trying to give my perspective on the time when I used to play X2. I haven't tried X3 or Rebirth.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

if the setting was more in the low-tech 'exploration age' rather than the 'all empires have established their holdings and all technologies are discovered' stage.

That's the premise of the extended mod for TC (XTC). (well aside from the 'low tech' part).

Site is currently down but take a look when it's back up: www.thexuniverse.com


For me X3 is the space sim par excellence when run with Improved Races (makes the factions dynamic) and the Ship Rebalance Mod. You do need a fast PC (at least 3ghz and core 2 performance absolute minimum).

But with those two mods the battles are what I always dreamed of playing Freespace and Xwing back in the day. Full scale fleet actions with you in command of a carrier/destroyer/fighter/whatever you choose + your task force.
You see turrets rotate and fire, fighters undock from hangars, see explosions lighting up cap ships inthe far distance (like in return of the jedi), beam weapons lance out (a la free space), the screen rocks and shit blows up and the bass rumbles.

From my perspective X3 has two major flaws unmodded.
1) the universe is static (described as a cold war), the economy IS dynamic (more dynamic than a sim bodged together from an econ text book would be) but the factions aren't
2) carriers are unmanagable.

thankfully mods fix both these things.

I agree. One of hte things I didn't like about X2 (no it's not X3) is nothing really changed. You had tp get mods for that. I think the reason why they didn't allow the universe to change on its own was because making it dynamic would have required a lot more balancing work. Just getting to the stage where a dynamic economy can be playable was an accomplishment.

In vanilla X2's case, chains of factories were unmanageable. This was addressed by player-made scripts or mods. However, some things in the game can't be resolved this way. You can't think of anything which can't be fixed?

(not saying carriers were manageable in X2.. just giving an example of something unmanageable)

 

[belowmecoldhands]

It depends on what you're doing, I guess. In 15-20 hours you can already be pretty rich if you're just capping ships and selling them.

The problem with a pure trading approach is that the first section when you're still trading everything yourself is the slowest part, but after that everything really starts to take off. The moment I could start affording AI traders I suddenly got stinking rich in no time at all. They should slow that down a bit.

Hard to please everyone and also hard to make sure everything is balanced. Thankfully, it can be modded.

Me, I like slow progression, I just want interesting progression. I want things happening, you know? Just travelling a boring space lane redundantly until you have some money is not interesting. On the other hand, dealing wiht pirates and other hostiles and having to decide which systems to travel through and reading the news networks for clues or figuring out how the ship works or wondering which stations to go to or finding your first cargo pod or so forth is all very fun to me if it overlaps.

You know games are about interesting progression, not about going from a small one ship operation to a galaxy spanning economic and military empire. A game can be centered on just living in a office on one of the stations, it doesnt even need to include owning a ship or being wealthy. It can be anything, it just has to be interesting (and thus fun).

X2/X3/etc's problem is they try to do so much and the result is lack of depth (fun) in each part. The real depth in the game is learning all of them and exploiting all of them in the right amounts to be the best you can be.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

The main thing is to make the Universe seem more alive and make you feel like a smaller part of it. Shift the borders, have occupying forces. Make the progression from player to demi-god more difficult, and make capital ships more expensive. Perhaps when you do reach demi-god status, make it so you can create your own faction.

And crews for ships. Holy shit, that seems so basic for a game like this. Crews that gain experience, take attrition (once a ship begins taking hull damage), and perhaps have certain loyalties that will make certain actions cause a mutiny (a morale system of some sort).

*sigh* There's so much they could do, but it feels like they just have the framework for it right now.

I don't think any of us really appreciate the massive undertaking elite-type games are. To make a simulation FUN is hard! I think that's what they were trying to do. They wanted a living breathing space-based world, but making it fun is hard.

Simulations are hard enough just on the technical side, not even touching on making them fun yet.

I think the Kerbel Space Program sim is fairly good example of a fun sim (despite its learning curve). It's also moddable. Yet this can be apples and oranges very easily. The fundamental problem still holds though and that's how to make a sim fun.

Another issue is cost. Why make a sim game when you can make something much simpler, like Tetris, which will produce cheap quick fun? Why justify spending a million on a sim when you can spend a quarter million on a pac man clone for equal fun?

 

[cw8]

How about interesting travel? As far as fast travel is concerned, I favor a compressed time feature which I know X2 had. I don't however like hte jump drive. Why? Because I think having to traverse the gate network makes things interesting. It adds a strategic/tactical element to the placement of gates and defensive/offensive forces. It's made even more interesting when s*** is happening (like pirates/khaak/xenon who actually pose a threat) and when gates aren't always on the map and when you could grab stray tasks or quests on the space lane or find drifting cargo pods or learn something new about a system you're passing through.

I have no problems with the jumpdrive, I just see it like the hyperdrives in Star Wars.
The sector gates become a problem especially in X3:AP where enemy faction ships, small and capital, clusterfuck around the gates. The moment you traverse through the gates, you crash and burn, let alone bringing an entire fleet with you.

 

[Norfleet]

That's not as funny as early versions Tradewars, where you could cause a Kessler Cascade on the spawn point. Newbies hit navhaz, become create more navhaz, they respawn...there's a reason why we called it "Navhaz: The Gift That Keeps On Giving".

 

[Duellist_D]

V3.0 went public a short while ago.

Egosoft is delighted to announce the release of the X Rebirth 3.0 update along with a new DLC,The Teladi Outpost. The DLC is available free to players who download it before 15th December.

Highlights of the 3.0 release include:

• Interactive holomap.
• Ability to build stations in Empty Space.
• Dangerous regions that can damage your ship.
• Crafting of special items.
• New non-plot mission chains.
• Employee training to improve skills.
• Ware exchange between player ships and stations.
• Subsystem target cycling.

X Rebirth 3.0 features explained:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=347274078

The Teladi Outpost DLC introduces a whole Teladi-controlled system containing two new sectors and over a dozen zones of interest, along with new Teladi and pirate factions, and various new Teladi ships, stations and weapon types.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/325580

Be sure to also check out our new trailer and tutorial video overview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K75uEQV1YMw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXQijj2-DEw




Edit: Just read the changelog
There is a fuckton of new stuff, i'm really tempted to give this a second chance.
Still not a post B-TF X, but has a decent possibility of being a really nice spacegame now.

 

[Perkel]

Yep downloading now.
I will redo my playtrough starting today. 2.5 already was nice to play but those changes plus new stuff from expansion should spice things a little as one of major problems with original was small world.

Trailer:

 

[Thane Solus]

the space assets and environments look great, probably the best ive seen so far, too bad the rest is shit (for me...)

 

[praetor]

the game does indeed look great, judging by the videos available on jewtube... i haven't followed this thing at all, so can anybody explain to me why is it regarded as such a big piece of shit by almost everybody? how much has it improved since release (obviously a lot)? what is still wrong with it, compared to previous Xes? with mods + latest patches is it close to X3TC/AP, better/worse? how's the performance?

 

[Duellist_D]

When Version V1.0 came out, it was a horrible Bugfest with hideous interior Graphics, absolute shitty Performance (25 Frames on good to very good rigs), a shitton of non-working mechanics and retarded working ones.
Combined with a new design approach (you can only fly ONE Ship, the others have to be remote-controlled) that alienated most seasoned X-Players (we are sort of a conservative bunch), Egosoft burned themselves quite a lot.

Egosoft (after some Initial "we dun nuffin wrong"-Derpity by Bernd the Boss) wrote patch after patch and steadily improved the game and the mechanic, listening to some of the things the community wanted.

So, there is obviously still only one ship in it that you can fly, but that was clear from the beginning, and if this isn't a dealbraker, its probably worth a try.

I preordered it, was pissed as hell after installing the Initial turd that got delivered and let it rot on my HDD henceforth.

I will give it a new try this Weekend if i find time and i suspect it might be worth it.
Just Keep in mind that this isn't an X Game like you probably know them, but rather one that is more akin to the very first part in the series, where you could also only fly one single ship.

 

[Perkel]

the game does indeed look great, judging by the videos available on jewtube... i haven't followed this thing at all, so can anybody explain to me why is it regarded as such a big piece of shit by almost everybody? how much has it improved since release (obviously a lot)? what is still wrong with it, compared to previous Xes? with mods + latest patches is it close to X3TC/AP, better/worse? how's the performance?

Like @Duellist_D said because 1.0 was piece of shit. Not only from bug and technical side but also from design side. Especially compared to X3TC or AP let alone mods like XTC for X3TC.

They slowly backtrack on their decisions toward design but still game has inheritent design flaws under hood that won't be easy to fix.

 

[cw8]

the game does indeed look great, judging by the videos available on jewtube... i haven't followed this thing at all, so can anybody explain to me why is it regarded as such a big piece of shit by almost everybody? how much has it improved since release (obviously a lot)? what is still wrong with it, compared to previous Xes? with mods + latest patches is it close to X3TC/AP, better/worse? how's the performance?

At time of release, it was bug-ridden mess. Controls didn't know what it wanted to be, it belonged to neither PC or console controls. It worked funny with the keyboard and it worked funny with a gamepad. I played all the earlier Xs with a gamepad for flying and the more essential controls like firing, targeting and docking with the keyboard for the other functions.
Biggest problem I had with the game for me is that you fly one ship. You can't change ships. Compared to X2 and X3s where you can fly, buy and own ANY ship from small fighters to bombers to corvettes to frigates to destroyers and carriers. There is no bigger joy than to slowly build up your personal fleet with destroyers and carriers with their full load of fighters into a fight. You can fly any ship you want, like I can fly in with my carrier, jump into a fighter on my carrier to dogfight, then jump onto a frigate to spam missiles. You can't do that in Rebirth since it's only 1 ship.
They made a big deal out of visiting stations and walking inside them, something u can't do in the earlier X games but it turned out to be generic and boring. Kinda like a placeholder with npcs.

Well obviously until they give us a means to fly other ships, I won't consider it as good as the earlier Xs.

 

[bonescraper]

the game does indeed look great, judging by the videos available on jewtube... i haven't followed this thing at all, so can anybody explain to me why is it regarded as such a big piece of shit by almost everybody? how much has it improved since release (obviously a lot)? what is still wrong with it, compared to previous Xes? with mods + latest patches is it close to X3TC/AP, better/worse? how's the performance?

They did some cosmetic changes, but the game is shit at its core. It's the worst piece of crap i ever bought. Don't even think about this turd or you'll get brain cancer.

 

[praetor]

what the flying fuck?! you can only fly one single ship in the entire game?!?!?! i think that's the most insane, outrageous, idiotic design decision for a sequel ever made. bar none (although... like Duelist mentioned, since this is a remake of the 1st, and in the 1st you could also fly only one... it kinda makes sense. still megastupid but...). a pity 'cause it looks (visually) really good. hopefully "mods will fix it" if egosoft doesn't

anyway, i wasn't asking for myself, i thought i'd buy something nice for the gf since she liked Freelancer quite a bit (she wanted something similar but full offline solo since i'm getting Elite)... i guess i'll get her X3TC/AP (plus some mods... anything essential to recommend that isn't the big ones like xtended or litcube?)

 

[Sinatar]

Elite Dangerous goes live in 4 days, who the hell is going to play this garbage patched or not?

 

[cw8]

Elite Dangerous goes live in 4 days, who the hell is going to play this garbage patched or not?

Lost all interest when online DRM is implemented.

 

[Perkel]

Elite Dangerous goes live in 4 days, who the hell is going to play this garbage patched or not?

Considering Elite Dangerous dropped completely offline i'd say that X-Rebirth will be better game that ED.

 

[Sinatar]

Elite Dangerous goes live in 4 days, who the hell is going to play this garbage patched or not?

Considering Elite Dangerous dropped completely offline i'd say that X-Rebirth will be better game that ED.

How did you not melt typing this post? I mean you had to be connected to the internet to do so and clearly you're allergic to the interwebs.

 

[Morkar Left]

what the flying fuck?! you can only fly one single ship in the entire game?!?!?! i think that's the most insane, outrageous, idiotic design decision for a sequel ever made.

I think it's more stupid that your ship has no cargo space for trading.

 

[Duellist_D]

Elite Dangerous goes live in 4 days, who the hell is going to play this garbage patched or not?

Considering Elite Dangerous dropped completely offline i'd say that X-Rebirth will be better game that ED.

How did you not melt typing this post? I mean you had to be connected to the internet to do so and clearly you're allergic to the interwebs.

Enjoy your Elite: Disconnecterus

 

[Perkel]

How did you not melt typing this post? I mean you had to be connected to the internet to do so and clearly you're allergic to the interwebs.

I am not alergic to interwebs. I am allergic to shitty online games.

ED is space game. Online means: LAG, disconections, LAG, LAG, desync, LAG, disconection, lack of modding and obviously F2P model that will come later because they will have to pay for servers. And after few years (or months if they just stock money and call it a day) they will shut this down and you won't be able to play it.

Enjoy:

 

[Perkel]

Is there anyone here that's effectively playing 3.0 + DLC to give us some word on how is it? I don't really give a damn about release state X-R if they actually managed to turn it into a good game now, I wouldn't be playing 1.0 anyway.

Today i am starting fresh 3.0 game to see what is up and i will report later. Probably will record few videos too as i want to finally test huge battles.

edit:
OOHHHHH FUCK YOU. I forgot how annoying is to build your trade network information from ground up. That small talk shitty QTE gives me nightmares.

Fuck it i have better things to do that listen to that shit 400 times to build network, i'm out.

 

[Raapys]

Aren't there mods?

 

[Perkel]

there are no mods removing this crap.