X-Rebirth

[Zarniwoop]

Olololollloll capital ships are gone because they're boring. Looks like Steve Jobs just faked his death and went to work as the new spin-doctor for Egosoft. Still want the game badly but that's a bullshit excuse. There are only 2 reasons for removing controllable cap ships. Either they're too fucking lazy to do it properly, or the graceful cruising around in a big ship is not exxxxxtreme and akshun-y for the consoletards that they'll inevitably cater for soon. I really hope it's the first one.

 

[Gord]

Learn to read.
Capital ships are in, you don't steer them directly though.
Btw., while I'm not sure I like their approach, I even agree that steering them manually doesn't make much sense/IS boring, especially if they really reduced things like turning speed and maneuverability.
However, before I make a final verdict on it, I'd like to see how they actually work in-game and whether commanding them through NPCs works well enough and is a fun replacement.

 

[trym88]

Olololollloll capital ships are gone because they're boring. Looks like Steve Jobs just faked his death and went to work as the new spin-doctor for Egosoft. Still want the game badly but that's a bullshit excuse. There are only 2 reasons for removing controllable cap ships. Either they're too fucking lazy to do it properly, or the graceful cruising around in a big ship is not exxxxxtreme and akshun-y for the consoletards that they'll inevitably cater for soon. I really hope it's the first one.

The answer is pretty obvious. They wanted to make the game more like a simulator, where you can use the interior of a space ship and have a visual cockpit. If they tried to make walkable interiors for every ship in the game (including capital ships), they probably would need 100 years to finish the game.

 

[MetalCraze]

You haven't experienced the new features of the game and already claim that it will be boring. It won't be X3: Terran Conflict with one ship. It will be X Rebirth with one ship... That's a difference. When you read the feature list of X Rebirth and everything in the list is not interesting for you then you should probably forget about Rebirth.

Dude it will be a typical X game with bigger ships (that you cannot fly anymore) and stations and no variety of gameplay.

Being stuck with exactly the same ship is the worst mistake they've ever made.
Before when you got tired of limitations of one ship you could switch to another that was completely different in its limitations and advantages. Now you are stuck with the same floor and ceiling forever. A ship that will always be the same, will always behave the same.

When even linear space shooters give you different ships to not become boring and X doesn't it's just hopeless.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Learn to read.
Capital ships are in, you don't steer them directly though.
Btw., while I'm not sure I like their approach, I even agree that steering them manually doesn't make much sense/IS boring, especially if they really reduced things like turning speed and maneuverability.
However, before I make a final verdict on it, I'd like to see how they actually work in-game and whether commanding them through NPCs works well enough and is a fun replacement.

There's only one here who can't read, and it's not me. They've said this long ago and I've been bitching about it ever since. Occasionally, I WANT TO CONTROL MY GODDAMN SHIPS GODDAMMIT! This is a step backwards. One of the best things about X2 was not being stuck in one ship any more. Unless they have MASSIVELY overhauled the AI, it will suck. You haven't experienced true suffering until you've waited for an AI controlled transport to build your station in exactly the right spot in Seizewell or Ore Belt. Turning. Then waiting. Turning back. Flying forwards 20m. Then swinging completely the fuck around because a tiny little fighter got too close. Then moving another 3m and again turning almost 180 degrees because one of the 50 gazillion asteroids got a bit too close. Add in an existing huge missile complex and the problems only got worse. Piloting the thing yourself solved all of that.

The answer is pretty obvious. They wanted to make the game more like a real simulator, where you can use the interior of a space ship and have a real cockpit. If they tried to make walkable interiors for every ship in the game (including capital ships), they probably would need 100 years to finish the game.

They didn't need to make interiors, it was fine the way it was. Or make it like X2 where only some ships had cockpits. X is a trading and building sandbox game, now they want to turn it into The Sims with NPC's going about their daily bullshit lives.

 

[trym88]

Dude it will be a typical X game with bigger ships (that you cannot fly anymore) and stations and no variety of gameplay.

Being stuck with exactly the same ship is the worst mistake they've ever made.
Before when you got tired of limitations of one ship you could switch to another that was completely different in its limitations and advantages. Now you are stuck with the same floor and ceiling forever. A ship that will always be the same, will always behave the same.

When even linear space shooters give you different ships to not become boring and X doesn't it's just hopeless.

You still fly them because you give them commands like you did in the last x games. The only difference is that you maybe won't see them in third or first person view and you cannot execute precise turning commands (like up, down, strafe right, strafe left and so on...) but who cares about turning commands in capital ships? Is strafing important with a capital ship? In X3 fighting with a capital ship was like that: Jump into a sector, activate automatic combat system and watch your enemies die. You will be able to do the same in X:Rebirth I guess...

And summarizing the new features to "bigger stations and ships" is a pretty poor move by you. It's obviously more than that. I don't say that the new features will actually be awesome or anything because I don't know it, but I won't start to doom the game before I've seen it.

 

[Gord]

There's only one here who can't read, and it's not me. They've said this long ago and I've been bitching about it ever since. Occasionally, I WANT TO CONTROL MY GODDAMN SHIPS GODDAMMIT!

They state specifically that you can land on capital ships, move around on them and that you have multiple ways of commanding them.
How that will work out, I don't know yet of course, but to me it still seems fundamentally different from

capital ships are gone because they're boring

If I would have to make an educated guess as to how exactly many of the specialized tasks (mining, building, etc.) will work, I'd guess at the moment that you can either order them to do it automatically, or take control of a drone and perform the task manually. In that case it might be more comfortabe than with a slow-moving capital ship.
Of course it's possible that it will be shit or not possible at all in the end, but personally I'd like to play captain on my personal capital ship.

Btw. from what I read from people who played the demo at Gamescom, Rebirth seems to be a game that is best given some time to mature after release before buying it. Some features are missing yet and will only "possibly" be in on release.

 

[MetalCraze]

You still fly them because you give them commands like you did in the last x games. The only difference is that you maybe won't see them in third or first person view and you cannot execute precise turning commands (like up, down, strafe right, strafe left and so on...) but who cares about turning commands in capital ships? Is strafing important with a capital ship? In X3 fighting with a capital ship was like that: Jump into a sector, activate automatic combat system and watch your enemies die. You will be able to do the same in X:Rebirth I guess...

"you still fly them the only difference is that you don't fly them"
also apparently there only were either a starting ship or capital ships in X series before

And summarizing the new features to "bigger stations and ships" is a pretty poor move by you. It's obviously more than that. I don't say that the new features will actually be awesome or anything because I don't know it, but I won't start to doom the game before I've seen it.

Dude it's exactly the same X game with a few more cosmetic gimmicks (like lifeless interiors of stations) and all fun removed.


You fly one ship. One ship. All that "giving commands" shit was there before. But it does not make the X game fun.
Getting new shit and flying it was the only reason to ever play X.

What else?
Plot? "zomg evil aleinz attacked us for 5th time! Save da galaxy!!1"
Wasting weeks of real life delivering same shit from A to B like it's your job just to get one more ship (AI of which will not be able to deal even with a single pirate and you'll lose that ship) instead of just cheating 9999999999$ and having fun?
Exploration where all sectors are exactly the same shit with max 4 exit gates always in the same places and different nice backgrounds?

 

[trym88]

"you still fly them the only difference is that you don't fly them"
also apparently there only were either a starting ship or capital ships in X series before



Dude it's exactly the same X game with a few more cosmetic gimmicks (like lifeless interiors of stations) and all fun removed.


You fly one ship. One ship. All that "giving commands" shit was there before. But it does not make the X game fun.
Getting new shit and flying it was the only reason to ever play X.

What else?
Plot? "zomg evil aleinz attacked us for 5th time! Save da galaxy!!1"
Wasting weeks of real life delivering same shit from A to B like it's your job just to get one more ship (AI of which will not be able to deal even with a single pirate and you'll lose that ship) instead of just cheating 9999999999$ and having fun?
Exploration where all sectors are exactly the same shit with max 4 exit gates always in the same places and different nice backgrounds?

Yeah, they made only cosmetic gimmicks, right... Sure that you won't give Google another try?

 

[J_C]

Getting new shit and flying it was the only reason to ever play X.

Dumbfucks gonna dumbfuck.

Spoiler

Waiting for th inevitable Skyway witty retort.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

Here, I'll spoil the retort for you, JC.

 

[Zewp]

I'm not so sure, though. I really enjoyed being able to buy new ships and eventually working my way up from a humble fighter to those gigantic tankers that destroyed everything in their path the moment they jumped through a warpgate. Not being able to buy new ships to pilot myself sounds very negative to me. Ejecting my ship and jumping into another was something I did very frequently in the previous games.

They're really going to have to make up for this omission in other areas of the game.

 

[Gord]

As I understand it, you will still be able to get new ships and build a fleet, the difference is, you aren't able to fly them directly but you are restricted to commanding them.
Gameplay with a larger fleet might be pretty similar in the end.
But who knows.

 

[MetalCraze]

I find "google for awesome new features" funny. So basically you can't name me even a few?


As for fleets - they were always pointless in X. So yeah you got a fleet. Now you can destroy whole sectors and AI will never do anything about it staying completely passive. Oh right it may send a lonely cruiser once in a while which will get completely obliterated before it will even do anything.

At the same time the fleet micromanagement was always horrible. Need to babysit every single trading ship jumping into a sector when it's attacked by pirates since AI of escorts was always terrible.


If flying new ships wasn't what saved X from total boredom then what else was there? Can anyone tell me?

 

[J_C]

If flying new ships wasn't what saved X from total boredom then what else was there? Can anyone tell me?

What's the point? You know exactly that whatever we tell you, you will still say it is shit and boring, even if it is not.

 

[Spectacle]

I didn't think that skyway was so easily amused that getting a new ship is all it takes for him not to be bored.

 

[Space Satan]

X: Rebirth is in a win-win situation - there's simply no alternative. Star Citizen is year(s?) away from completion and there is no competition for privateer-trader space sims.
Overall, to be successful they have to fix only a few things
- Cheap retarded art
- Dumb trade empire management.
- Unprofitable piracy.
- Boring flights
- Lack of Elite-like dynamic backstory, with magazines, newspapers and stuff.

 

[lefthandblack]

He's right though. I'm probably pushing close to a thousand hours logged in the previous X games. It's a yearly ritual:

1. Reinstall, patch and spend a couple of days sorting out mods.
2. Play the hell out of it until I get my megacomplexes churning.
3. Build up my fleet of doom ( for extra challenge have a personal rule to never buy ships, captures only)
4. Get my fleet of doom, have a fish-fry in Kingdom End and watch them do.........nothing.
5. Uninstall and wonder why I do this shit every year.

The biggest flaws of the X games:

1. No meaningful war.

Some of the better mods remedy this to a point, but those mods are also the ones mostly likely to render your saves corrupt and it usually doesn't show up until you have invested 50 to 100 hours at which point the only thing you can do is start over.

2. Space is boxes?

IWAR did a better job with space way back in the day.

3. Retarded AI.

Sure, you could always command ships and now it seems that that is the ONLY option you have. Too bad that any command you give a ship is likely to result in that ships doom if your in the sector or if your out of the sector depending on the command.

- Give a capital ship a command to navigate through a gate while you are in the sector > BONK BONK BONK BONK BONK............... Your Argon Titan was destroyed by GATE.

- Give a capital ship a command to defend a sector while you are out of the sector > Your Argon Titan was destroyed by Pirate Harrier.

-Give a capital ship a command to defend your station while you are in the sector > PEW PEW PEW......SPLASH SPLASH SPLASH........Your Station was destroyed by Your Argon Titan

Yeah, color me impressed if they finally fix all that shit. Unfortunately, I won't be participating since they decided to drink the STEAM Kool-Aid.


Oh, and this:

Is strafing important with a capital ship?

Are you sure that you have ever played an X game? Strafing is the MOST IMPORTANT maneuver in capital VS capital fights. In an evenly matched fight both ships will end up destroying each other when controlled by the AI (which doesn't use strafe) more often than not. In the best case scenario you might win if your ship started firing first, but your ship will be almost dead at the end of it. If you are controlling the ship, you can use strafe to move out of the way of the incoming plasma while simultaneously keeping your ships guns pointed at the enemy, something the AI can't handle.

 

[Spectacle]

I don't believe the AI uses the strafe function at all in the X games. Being able to strafe is a huge advantage for the player, in everything form fighter combat to battleship duels. It think it's a deliberate design choice to allow the player to take on much larger odds.

 

[lefthandblack]

I don't believe the AI uses the strafe function at all in the X games. Being able to strafe is a huge advantage for the player, in everything form fighter combat to battleship duels. It think it's a deliberate design choice to allow the player to take on much larger odds.

That may be part of it, but I think that the main reason that they do it that way is that you would need a Cray supercomputer to have that AI doing the calculations for strafing on top of all the processing that's already going on. It's the same reason that collision is only calculated while the player is in sector and fights amount to rock, paper, scissors when the player is not in the sector. Which is why
you get the stuff I put in my post.

My point was that AI vs AI fights (which is what you will have even if the player gives the command initially) lead to either both ships dead or one dead and one almost dead. The only way that I could see this working would be if ships were much less costly and became more like disposable units in an RTS game. Maybe that's the way they are going, I don't know.

 

[MetalCraze]

What's the point? You know exactly that whatever we tell you, you will still say it is shit and boring, even if it is not.

Nope. You know it's shit and boring and you don't write it simply because it's nothing special.

 

[Konjad]

But skyway, in your opinion everything is shit, no matter of its quality. Except when it's ArmA series or Dota2.

 

[TripJack]

or battlefield 3

though to be fair he's absolutely right about these particular games being dull pieces of shit

 

[trym88]

I find "google for awesome new features" funny. So basically you can't name me even a few?


As for fleets - they were always pointless in X. So yeah you got a fleet. Now you can destroy whole sectors and AI will never do anything about it staying completely passive. Oh right it may send a lonely cruiser once in a while which will get completely obliterated before it will even do anything.

At the same time the fleet micromanagement was always horrible. Need to babysit every single trading ship jumping into a sector when it's attacked by pirates since AI of escorts was always terrible.


If flying new ships wasn't what saved X from total boredom then what else was there? Can anyone tell me?

You still refer to X3. Don't you get that they didn't call it X4 because with Rebirth they wanted to make clear that it's a whole new X-Game from the scratch. That's the reason why it took them 7 years. Fleet Commanding will be different. The AI will be completely new. Micromanagement will be different. Everything you mentioned will not be like it was in X3. I don't know if they actually improved these things or made them even worse but we will see...

and if you are still looking for new features and stuff, go to http://www.seizewell.de/forum/viewforum.php?f=48&sid=5ed1b8ba1112146accc2efcb45d346f2 (if you understand german)

or the official X forums: http://forum.egosoft.com/index.php?c=3

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

or battlefield 3

though to be fair he's absolutely right about these particular games being dull pieces of shit

Shooting the same enemy a million times also qualifies as dull though so... heh.

 

[trym88]

Big question & answer thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1leye5/we_are_space_sim_developer_egosoft_soon_releasing/