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X3: Terran conflict

Nedrah

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I need some oppinions on this one. I got a lot of entertaiment out of the first x3 title, many an hour was spent just managing that empire or personally taking some bad guys down. However, I see they're asking 40$ for the whole game. So, how about it - is there really enough new content to justify that expense?
 

Relien

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I'm interested in this as well and from what I read about it so far it seems that if you liked Reunion you'll love this.

There's some review that's not entirely positive - fans comment that the reviewer was expecting a shooter and was unwilling to endure the rather steep learning curve (reminds me of Codexers' opinions on certain RPG reviews :) ).

There's reputedly quite a lot of new content and many flaws were fixed. If you know about the XTended mod then you know a part of what to expect - Egosoft hired the modders so their work found its way into the official release. Interface was changed, some new game mechanics added, blah blah...

That said, I have actually no idea if it's really worth it (although I believe it is).

If you haven't already, you can read these:

http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/200810_44News.html
http://x3tc.blogspot.com/
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platfor ... anconflict
 

Spectacle

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I liked the combat in X3 reunion, but the economic side was a bit too much of a grind for my taste. I take it that Terran Conflict is quite similar in that regard?
 

Burning Bridges

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I dunno, why is there no interface? Every screenshots is just another version of: spacecraft in front of planets. I mean how do you interact with the world?
 

entertainer

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GlobalExplorer said:
I dunno, why is there no interface? Every screenshots is just another version of: spacecraft in front of planets. I mean how do you interact with the world?

eh?

cursorfire.jpg


contextmenu.jpg
 

Relien

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GlobalExplorer said:
I dunno, why is there no interface? Every screenshots is just another version of: spacecraft in front of planets. I mean how do you interact with the world?
Those were probably external views of your ship or the HUD was turned off. Normally there's a sidebar with options, a context sensitive menu for interacting with your target or various menus and panels to interact with stations, your own ship or your personal things like messages, logs, statistics etc.

EDIT: All of these have to be activated of course, they're not visible by default during a flight.
 

meeneque

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green pastures of internetz
Codex 2013 Wasteland 2
Nedrah said:
I need some oppinions on this one. I got a lot of entertaiment out of the first x3 title, many an hour was spent just managing that empire or personally taking some bad guys down. However, I see they're asking 40$ for the whole game. So, how about it - is there really enough new content to justify that expense?

If I was you i would hold on with buying for some time. 40$ for beta testing is pretty much.

edit: spelling.
 

Nedrah

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True, Egosoft is a bit troika'ish when it comes to releasing bugged games. However, they really patched and polished X3:Reunion way beyond anything I would have expected.
 

YourConscience

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In your head, obviously
I am enjoying it right now. It has indeed been improved especially in the interface department - but not quite enough. Essentially it's "just" what X3 Reunion should have been.

Or to put it differently, it's the first polished product from egosoft and the only real "mistakes" it has are by design. And it's these design decisions that make or brake it for you. Examples?

- you can't mouse-lasso a dozen of your fighters in the sector view and attack-click on some enemy. That's an intentional decision to prevent the feeling of an RTS
- If you want to see what's going on in a remote sector, you have to place satellites there, it's not possible to "buy" this as a service
- missions are not nearly as smoothly scripted as you are used from all those new fps, you sometimes have to figuer out how to solve a surprisingly tricky mission (which might be tricky due to you previous actions, for example because it plays out in a sector that belongs to a race that hates you)

There are also a few gripes there, such as that the AI is still capable of catastrophic mistakes. Most visibly during dogfights or autopilot through an asteroid field.

I noticed only two bugs so far, one mission related and one ore miner related (where the ore miner wouldn't automatically pick up ore rocks).

The initial statement that when you liked X3:R than you'll love this is very true. Of course, YMMV, and I have no idea about people who are not yet initiated to the X series at all.
 

Nedrah

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Thank you!
By the way, how did Sins of a solar empire treat you? Are you still playing?

YourConscience said:
I am enjoying it right now. It has indeed been improved especially in the interface department - but not quite enough. Essentially it's "just" what X3 Reunion should have been.

I ran an extraordinary amount of mods in X3:R - if they brought the basic game closer to what a fully modded and patched up X3:R could be and tweaked/added things that were hardcoded and could not be handled by mods - hey, sold! Also I actually liked Reunion's storyline (weired, I know), so a whole new (and better?) one is welcome. Actually I remember reading about 5 seperate storylines that can be played pretty much independent, so that's great.

Or to put it differently, it's the first polished product from egosoft and the only real "mistakes" it has are by design. And it's these design decisions that make or brake it for you. Examples?

- you can't mouse-lasso a dozen of your fighters in the sector view and attack-click on some enemy. That's an intentional decision to prevent the feeling of an RTS

I understand why the decision was made, but I'm sure there still would have been a lot of ways to make commanding your forces more convenient without having it feel like a RTS. Oh well, I handled X3:Reunion's way of managing my fleet, so TC should still be an improvement.

- If you want to see what's going on in a remote sector, you have to place satellites there, it's not possible to "buy" this as a service

Tedious, yes... I used a script that allowed me to convert a Universe Trader to a satellite deployment machine, hope that get's updated to TC.
- missions are not nearly as smoothly scripted as you are used from all those new fps, you sometimes have to figuer out how to solve a surprisingly tricky mission (which might be tricky due to you previous actions, for example because it plays out in a sector that belongs to a race that hates you)

The way X3 can sometimes prodecurally kick your ass with that kinds of information is actually part of what I like about the game.

There are also a few gripes there, such as that the AI is still capable of catastrophic mistakes. Most visibly during dogfights or autopilot through an asteroid field.

Too bad they didn't fix it, then. I used some scripts to enhance the AI - again, let's hope those get ported.

I noticed only two bugs so far, one mission related and one ore miner related (where the ore miner wouldn't automatically pick up ore rocks).

The initial statement that when you liked X3:R than you'll love this is very true. Of course, YMMV, and I have no idea about people who are not yet initiated to the X series at all.

Only two bugs great considering the state Reunion was released in. I definitely liked X3:R, so looks like this is going to be a purchase for me.

Btw: How is performance compared to X3:R? I have been reading vastly conflicting reports, with some getting better framerates and other describing the game as barely playable (compared to R, of course).
 

Thrombone

Educated
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May 17, 2007
Messages
86
I haven't played any of the X series, how are the combat controls? Does a mouse and keyboard work well, or is a joystick necessary?
 

Nedrah

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Thrombone said:
I haven't played any of the X series, how are the combat controls? Does a mouse and keyboard work well, or is a joystick necessary?

I played x3:reunion both with a mouse/keyboard combo and a joystick. If you're going with a joystick, it should have lots of extra buttons. However, in the end I settled for mouse and keyboard, which worked just fine. X3:TC supposedly has improved controls, you can steer your ship freelancer style. A joystick is _not_ necessary.
 

Seboss

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YourConscience said:
- you can't mouse-lasso a dozen of your fighters in the sector view and attack-click on some enemy. That's an intentional decision to prevent the feeling of an RTS
But you can add them to a wing and command them as a group.

It seems Egosoft added a bunch of software you can buy in the game that adds lots of special commands regarding wares collecting, fleet supply/repairs, jumping and much more.
I haven't seen anything as specific as deploying satellites or mines however.

I guess you still have to resort to scripting for this kind of tasks.
 

Trojan_generic

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Relien said:
There's some review that's not entirely positive - fans comment that the reviewer was expecting a shooter and was unwilling to endure the rather steep learning curve (reminds me of Codexers' opinions on certain RPG reviews :) ).

It is a wonderful example of a game that hasn't been dumbed down (no, it won't be published on consoles either).

How has this been accomplished in the X series? By keeping the interface difficult to use and the tutorials shitty (unfortunately, the manuals have also been all but good). This keeps stupid people away from playing it and therefore from affecting the direction of the development of the series. Without the Egosoft forums for help, it's next to impossible to progress in the game unless you know previous games in the series.

I have the X3:TC still in box, but will have to take a look soon. I hope you can't access all the functions with the mouse and that you have to go through lots of menus to find what you need. Otherwise kids might find the game enjoyable. I'll of course program this stuff in my keyboard/joystick myself.
 

Severian Silk

Guest
I played X:BtF. It was about as <s>fun</s> eye-gougingly frustrating as reading the phonebook.
 

Nedrah

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Assnuggets said:
I played X:BtF. It was about as <s>fun</s> eye-gougingly frustrating as reading the phonebook.

Lack of instant gratification?

The game has evolved a lot since Btf, you might consider having another look, if the genre is your cup of tea. It DOES have a pretty insane learning curve, but that's not necessarily such a bad thing. It definitely rewards a thinking man's approach - although making big stuff go BOOOOM obviously also is part of the fun :)
 

YourConscience

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Nedrah said:
Thank you!
By the way, how did Sins of a solar empire treat you? Are you still playing?

Oh, I kinda liked it at first, but somehow I don't like it now anymore. I think it's the too heavy focus on multiplayer of this game whereas I am too much of a solo or at most co-op player. It's not Moo2ish enough I guess. :)

I ran an extraordinary amount of mods in X3:R - if they brought the basic game closer to what a fully modded and patched up X3:R could be and tweaked/added things that were hardcoded and could not be handled by mods - hey, sold! Also I actually liked Reunion's storyline (weired, I know), so a whole new (and better?) one is welcome. Actually I remember reading about 5 seperate storylines that can be played pretty much independent, so that's great.

Yes, there are 5 story lines now, but (so far) they don't come with video sequences or anything of that sort. Just text and speech.

I understand why the decision was made, but I'm sure there still would have been a lot of ways to make commanding your forces more convenient without having it feel like a RTS. Oh well, I handled X3:Reunion's way of managing my fleet, so TC should still be an improvement.

Why, yes, it is an improvement. But even commanding the wing you always have to go several clicks opening the command console and stuff if you want to give them the order to attack a specific target (not just "protect me" or somesuch).

The way X3 can sometimes prodecurally kick your ass with that kinds of information is actually part of what I like about the game.

Yes. In that respect it is slightly similar to Daggerfall where even a petty mission to retrieve a stolen dagger could bring you into a humongous dungeon with liches and all that...

Yesterday I accepted a patrol mission that for some reason said 'very hard' in it's description. I had an m3 (heavy fighter). Some Xenon P's (frigates) appeared and after some considerable effort I cleared them. And that's when the "holy sh**" moment came because looking at the sector map I realized that the list of newly appeared Xenon P's is longer than what's visible without scrolling. Even a fully kitted destroyer wouldn't have a chance here! Of course, scrolling that list down revealed even larger amounts of those nasty Xenon N's (light fighters) which are deadly with their PACs in masses. Deadly for a heavy fighter, that is.

Btw: How is performance compared to X3:R? I have been reading vastly conflicting reports, with some getting better framerates and other describing the game as barely playable (compared to R, of course).

I can't comment on the performance. Simply because I have a monster machine (E8400 with an Ati 3870) and naturally I don't have any noticeable performance problems. There seems to be a slight bug with explosions of some weapons though which on rare occasions slows down the game to second-long freezes. But these go away if I alt-tab to windows and back again.

What I miss most, however, is targetable subsystems. I would make maneuvring around large ships in fights so much more interesting!
 

Seboss

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YourConscience said:
Why, yes, it is an improvement. But even commanding the wing you always have to go several clicks opening the command console and stuff if you want to give them the order to attack a specific target (not just "protect me" or somesuch).
Nothing prevents you from assigning a wing as your wingmen. It's kinda redundant, but this way you can use the 'attack my target' (shift+6) and 'defend me' (shift+7) shortcuts.
I wish there was more combat commands though. Like 'break', 'fire missiles' and whatnot.
 

aron searle

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Nedrah said:
Assnuggets said:
The game has evolved a lot since Btf,

No it fucking hasn't.

I like the X games, but a lack of evolution is my main gripe with them.

Other than joining up stations (with a sucky interface), and a few tweaks here and there, I struggle to think how the game has changed from the first X.

(Other than graphics)

And what really pisses me of is the lack of real exploration, you know I can go down the road and buy a map of the world, obviously maps of already explored and settled sectors is to much to ask of in the future.
 

Seboss

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I don't think so. The Terran (new faction) sectors feel even more cramped because the Terran structures are like 10x bigger than the regular ones.
 

Trojan_generic

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Nedrah said:
However, they really patched and polished X3:Reunion way beyond anything I would have expected.

Btw., the first patch for the X3TC is already available, it isn't found with the game's own update function though, so that obviously needs to be patched as well...
 

Burning Bridges

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Seboss said:
I don't think so. The Terran (new faction) sectors feel even more cramped because the Terran structures are like 10x bigger than the regular ones.

Isn't that a major turnoff? I remember playing X2, and flying around areas the size of football field was so not my idea of space. I felt some important aspects of the genre are completely derailed in this game. I expected something like a new elite where you could explore solar systems without any gamey shortcuts.

I also couldn't stand the abundance of neon colored nebulae. Completely wrong and over the top. Space is mostly black.

On a positive note, I really like the ship design in X3. Ships look 100x times more believable than in most other space sims, as they seem to have taken inspiration from NASA and genuine proposals for interplanetary craft.

Well, I guess I have to wait until they release another demo - though that will probably weigh a gigabyte - and decide then. So far I'm not impressed based on the experience with X2.
 

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