X-Rebirth

[theSavant]

The more I read and see from X-Rebirth, the more I think this is the right game. Not some crazy blazy joystick dogfights, but acting in a slow relaxed pace, getting some trades done, diving into the economy, feeling like Captain Picard in his chair, commanding my Firefly crew, joining large scale battles only when I wish for.

 

[theSavant]

Sad to see almost no discussion here. I have found this quote from the star citizen forum:

The X Series were great to play, for a while, after you figured the mechanic, and explored more systems, and having set up a good economy of your fleets, it started to get repetitive, and....lonely.

This reminded me of the following:
Somewhen in your life you start to recognise patterns. And you recognise patterns in games. Many games get boring then. Let's take "Darkstar One" for example: it also had pirates, economy, fighters etc. and yet - when I played for 1-2 hours (the demo was enough) - I could already recognise the repetitiveness, the boringness, how generic everything was. It was everything built upon generic modules. Everything the same. It was the same in 300 star systems I have read in a review. This completely turned me off.

The universe was dead, before it has even begun.

And this is what I'm afraid most: that X-Rebirth features the same, and that these patterns totally kill the game. That all these gigantic and different space stations, different sol systems and awesome nebulas *may not cover the simple fact*, that it's totally generic and forseeable in its nature. They said they made the space stations "lively" and with their own "eco system"... but if "lively" only means that you see a trading fleet come through a jumpgate every 5 minutes, docking on the station... repeat endlessly and this on every subverse - then I don't need to play something like that anyways. Because each star system would be the exact same, only with different clothes.

Now that's what I'm afraid most. I hope it is not this way, because I see no other game in near future featuring a precious Captain Picard seat...

 

[theSavant]

Ah whatever, enough the doubts, I'll certainly not gonna skip this title. It's just too impressing and I trust the developers. Definite buy.

 

[mikaelis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mKvZ1U-T2kQ#t=5m2s

Did you say something, theSavant ?

As to your concerns. It is pretty well explained in the video I linked above (new one with trading and mining explained!). It will definitely be LESS generic than before, because EVERY single ship and station that are present in the universe are PART of the economy. It was communicated before, but perhaps it is the first time said so bluntly. So, you can influence the global economy by for example starting wars with some of the powerful companies (obviously later in the game). In other words, no cheating by computer in terms of spawning generic ships and resources in stations. You can likely drive the local systems to dark ages by destroying their sources of income, defences, etc.

The only concern of mine is, how will the AI deal with it? Will certain NPCs wage occasional local war with one another, thereby changing the state of the universe notch by notch? I surely hope so!

 

[Xi]

Colonization of planets, interstellar planetary war, and politics is all this franchise really needs. I like the revisions to the UI. Simplifying game interactions is not a bad thing for this series. Being trapped in a web of UI elements and not understanding how to accomplish a simple task, like collecting ore, docking to a station, and/or placing structures in space is ridiculous. Keep the gameplay but make it easier to perform the same actions.

 

[Space Satan]

Colonization of planets, interstellar planetary war, and politics is all this franchise really needs.

X: rebirth is, firstly, a spacesim. Colonization of planets, interstellar planetary war, and politics belong to strategy aspect. Although great additions I would like to see in the game, devs better to concentrate on the main features of spacesims - combat, UI and trading.
They solved partly docking by "docking computer", because it was a torture to dock without one before.

 

[theSavant]

Damn, video is private

 

[mikaelis]

Damn, video is private

WTF? Why would they do such a shit? It was working yesterday.

EDIT::
Looks like it was released too early by some early access guy (probably against NDA or something). Since it was Bernd talking I assume he and Egosoft wants to release it a bit further in time. Oh well, you will probably see it in 2 weeks time as an official video.

 

[Space Satan]

So, what was in that video?

 

[mikaelis]

Basically, Bernd was explaining trading and mining. Showing that you have (i) personal trading - you dock to the station and buy wares in FPP from NPCs. This one is about special wares like blueprints, ship upgrades, etc. And (ii) trading wares in order to profit. Basically you are flying in your ship and looking for best trades. Once you find it, you order the captain of your trader(s) to execute the deal. You can watch it in RT (in Albion Skunk) as they fly in, load cargo and fly to sell it, but you can also go and look for other profitable deals to "queue" them, or explore, or fight, or mine. He also mentioned that some of the freighters are specialized, like design only to collect e.g., solar cells, while others are more universal and can collect diverse wares (but probably less?)

About mining, you basically can order your freighters to mine, or you can participate by destroying only the most profitable asteroids. Bernd said that this is more profitable as if you automatise it, your freighters will be mining randomly, possibly taking a lot of junk as a cargo. Whereas if you participate, you can control it by choosing the most profitable minerals. It is also suppose to encourage player in participating in such operations.

He also mentioned the economy as I stated above. That is that every NPC ship and station is a part of global economy and you influence it by shooting them/destroying fractions/ breaking economy links etc. So no AI spawning their ships and stations to balance it - should make it more dynamic economy and dynamic universe as whole.

 

[theSavant]

HEY, they put the mining video online again! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thnJTvXtkFs

 

[Emily]

Sounds great

 

[theSavant]

Say, does anyone know if X-Rebirth will feature weapons with continuous laser rays / beams instead of the default laser shots?

I liked these in Freespace 2. The capital ship battle from Elite:Dangerous also featured continuous laser beams and it looked great.

 

[Space Satan]

I saw continuous lasers in Elite: Dangerous. Doubt they will use it as a weapon, maybe for mining only.

 

[mikaelis]

Just wanted to point out to those of you inerested that Gamestar.de is having 4-parts hands-on with B. Lehahn (all in German). Quite nice portion of gameplay. Only two episodes so far, but especially the second one is quite interesting. From what I gathered: You can hire (i) captain - he will be responsible for flying your other ships that you can buy. (ii) manager - he will be handling your deals and stuff on each station - basically responsible for large-scale trading. (iii) archtect - responsible for building your new factories/stations (iv) trader - you can sell him or buy from him your personal upgrades to Skunk ship. Possibly more but this was not mentioned (spies/boarding crews/explorers???).
Also nice bits about how the factories are working (you can see how the materials are processed etc. - really cool.
Then, some info about different modules, e.g., some modules of the complex will not disclose all the info to you. You can hack them using your drones to get some bonuses like discounts (drone-flight mode is also shown), hack them to disable some of their functions, or just fire them to bits and pieces, but it is often suicidal, because of high security, police-ships etc.

Also Lehahn confirmed that your ship will be something between the former M3 and M6, but they removed this M system of ship gradation alltogether.

Other than that some points already known, and some nice visuals. There is also brief capture of highway travelling (but not superhighway).

Anyway, here's the link:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=344798&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

 

[Space Satan]

So far looks very promising.

 

[Crispy]

That does look pretty cool but why is the guy using an X-box controller??

(Maybe for ease of demonstration purposes?)

 

[mikaelis]

Yes, there is this strange promo going on about this game to show that the general control was much simplified, so you can even play with your gamepad. It pisses me off a bit to be honest, but it was confirmed that the game will utilize good old joysticks like the previous ones. And you can also fly with mouse + keyboard.

 

[AstroZombie]

Rock Paper Feminism's hands-on: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/10/14/hands-on-x-rebirth/#more-172274

"X Rebirth’s game management system is much more streamlined. One thing we tell press and fans asking about X Rebirth is ‘complex is good, complicated controls are not,’ and that ‘you won’t need a PhD in space game menus to play X Rebirth.’ The goal is to have X Rebirth be as deep as fans have come to expect, but accessible to all gamers.”

Streamlined is kind of a dirty word in my book, so I can't help but worry about this.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Streamlined UI/controls is okay, streamlined game design however is a sacrilege. Unfortunately, both often go hand in hand together.

 

[Spectacle]

The menus in the X-games could certainly do with some streamlining. There are far too many multi-layer menus that require a bunch of keypresses to navigate. A separate, mouse driven, "management" screen would make things easier.

Instead it looks like we're getting a console style radial menu that will probably require tons of input actions to do anything.

 

[Turisas]

Gamepad support = automatic decline.

 

[J_C]

Gamepad support = automatic decline.

Don't mind that any decent space sims should have gamepad and joystick support. If it doesn't support analog controllers, it is not a space sim. Remember games like Freespace and X-wing? They also supported gamepads. Yeah, what shitty games, full of decline.

 

[Turisas]

I meant in the context of the series. I like my deep menus and intricate key mappings, dang nabbit.

 

[J_C]

I think the control of the ship should support gamepad, but of course the menus and bazillion options should be there, and controllable by mouse and keyboard.