What are your goals in X-Rebirth?

[Troubleshooter11]

Simple question: What are the long-term goals you set for yourself in X-Rebirth? Because X-Rebirth does not have any antagonists to defeat, competition to outplay or even simple combat/trade ranks.

Now the X games do not need any "You won the game!" screens but i find that X-Rebirth has a lack of things to strive for once you have a few capital ships and stations. There are no difficult plot missions with unique ship/station rewards, Xenon/Khaak colonization attempts to fend off, or rival corporations trying to sabotage your assets.

So what kind of challenges or goals do you set for yourself to keep the game fun?

[DiArmada]

After starting a story-line game, which I didn't enjoy very much due to the fact that I didn't know the game, I created a new game without story line.
The benefit of X3 games is that you can put the mission aside and do whatever you want first.

In the new game I confined myself to one sector to explore and find out how things worked.
Watching ships dock and transfer wares, which station was were and where goods were produced.

When funds were enough I bought a Sanahar cargoship and learned about trading.
In the meantime exploration continued in other sectors.

The next step was building stations.
At first I owned a crystal supplier complex, again to see how the game mechanics worked.
Now I'm having five managers who run my complexes and provide me with income.

In the meantime the HOL expansion was launched and I continued exploring.
Up to this day I'm mainly exploring and finding new places.
I guess exploring takes up about 80% of my time.

[RAVEN.myst]

DiArmada, what you describe are all early to mid-game goals and activities (which all make sense - they're what the game's about, after all ), whereas what Troubleshooter is asking about are late-game things to aspire to.

OP, I also had the same problem with Rebirth - on my multiple playthroughs, on several occasions I had completed the plot, explored the whole universe (including the new areas from HoL in the last couple of games), built 24-33 stations in each of those games (ranging all the way from basic resources like energy and minerals all the way through to the highest-tech), and amassed a fleet consisting of dozens of destroyers, some "carriers" (yeah, what a misnomer, that!), dozens of light capital ships, and dozens of fighters (the last one only in the last couple of games.) And then... I got bored. Every time. Taking the toughest generic missions I could find was no relief - those are simply more of the same, and no particular challenge, so I looked for hard things to do myself - boarding the strongest ships and the like. But that, too, got tedious and monotonous, without any real sense of accomplishment or gain - oh another Fulmekron to add to my dozens - yay... woo... hoo... *yawn*

So I haven't played Rebirth in around 3 months now, and been back to the older X titles during that time (all of them.) (Yes, they too are sandboxes, but somehow they offer more interesting things to contrive in the late game, getting to the late game can take somewhat longer (in the abovementioned Rebirth games, it took me about a week or less to reach the point of two dozen stations, serious fleet, plot complete, and everything explored), and also there's more varied replayability in X3.)

That lack of "end-game" challenge is among (but far from the only!) the leading factors in Rebirth's failure to satisfy me any longer than in brief passing - and it will be a long time indeed before I bother to play it again, if I even end up ever doing so (maybe a 5.0 release would get me curious enough, I suppose.)

[Ezarkal]

My main problems with XR were 1- the lack of challenge (both early and end-game) and 2- the lack of feeling that you can seriously influence the universe (and that the universe will evolve even without your help.)
So I've installed the CWIR mod to add up some challenge and war possibilities, and I now find it hard to imagine XR without this mod on. I started a game in Maelstrom, trying to help the local economy (the mods adds a whole faction to maelstrom) while surviving waves after waves of xenons destroyers, which was quite fun for a while.

But recently, I got bored again. I'm taking a breather for a month or two, then I think I'll try to mount a suicidal offensive to wipe those xenons out from their sectors...
Yup, that sounds like a worthy objective!

[gorman2040]

I'm around 200 hours on one playthrough (I had logged 50 hours since 1.0 to 4.0 but this wasn't interesting).

I'm building one complex, have 4 trader ships and 2 destroyer/carrier.

I love taking time to think, watch and explore, also a little bit of roleplay like walking on stations and keeping usefull stuf in the skunk like food, medical equipement, etc...

I agree that combat could be more difficult to boost the challenge factor.

Yesterday I had a great fight with a Xenon I, but I was disapointed to see no good loot.

I guess the goals would be having an economy in Devries and destroying the Xenon threat in Maelstrom.

[ADT86]

My goal is to see more patches

[Xeelee2]

Building the largest fleet X-Rebirth has ever seen.

[ external image ][ external image ][ external image ][ external image ]

Work still in progress

[Ezarkal]

Oh my, Xeelee2... that's simply epic!
You have a list? I'm curious!

[Lander1979]

@xeelee2

Make sure you save often, I wouldn't be surprised if the game engine dies when all those ships decide to shoot at once.

UniTrader and I have come up against a similar issue designing a new weapon for the game, as there seems to be a limit to the number of projectiles that can be in flight at once, before the game engine simply quits.

[Nikola515]

In vanila it is completely pointless to even try to do anything after you are done with plot. Here are some problems that prevent having end game goals...

1) Station/Races can't be destroyed and ships just respawn out of thin air.

2) Economy is limited so building large empires is pointless. Game is just not designed for this and also lack tools like galaxy trader for players so they can use their assets efficiently(thank God for mods).

3) Having a large fleet is pointless as well do to stupid AI and there is not much use for them anyway. Balttles are in small scales and between not being able to destroy stations and respawning ships there is little use for them. All thou you can have it just for show....

4) Having large mining operation would be good end game goal as well but do to unlimited ore spawning that is impossible as well.

So there is not much you can do in vanila XR at this point But thanks to mods it is actually possible to change that somewhat Thanks to Simooms cheat mod you cand create uneverse any way you want. Add a working shipyard (something ego could do in DV after 3 years ) and turn it to NPC. You can also add any station to NPC and delite them. Im actually rebuilding DV (adding them stations) and im building my mining empire supplying them with what they need. Money that i make i use for expanding and building more stations. And i will probably end up going to Cold Star and rebuild that sector as well. It is pretty fun and :)Also it would be good idea to use Galaxy range mod for stations....

[Xeelee2]

Oh my, Xeelee2... that's simply epic!
You have a list? I'm curious!

Of course
500 ships in total:
Arawn: 19
Balor: 21
Fulmekron: 22
Light Sul: 55
Lyramekron: 38
Olmekron: 47
Phoenix: 4
Heavy Sul: 70
Stromvok: 120
Sucellus: 16
Taranis: 78
Xenon I: 10

The next fleet is going to be twice the size and with fighters but first I need to rework my squadrons.
Because if one ship moves now it will end in mass destruction due to the engine damage.

@xeelee2

Make sure you save often, I wouldn't be surprised if the game engine dies when all those ships decide to shoot at once.

18FPS if no one is moving.
10FPS if they do because half of the fleet explodes

[CBJ]

UniTrader and I have come up against a similar issue designing a new weapon for the game, as there seems to be a limit to the number of projectiles that can be in flight at once, before the game engine simply quits.

If you have a vanilla savegame in which you can reproduce this, I'd be interested in seeing it. PM me, please, if you have.

[BigBANGtheory]

Work still in progress

That's really cool, nice one . I bet there are some damaged shields in there somewhere.

[Veeshan]

I am never terribly motivated by antagonists to kill or ranks to achieve, however I certainly do enjoy out competing opponents, economically. However, that isn't what I'm focused on so far, I've seen a very sluggish start by Canterra in my campaign game, 100 hours in, so that doesn't spark much competitive fervor. Also, I'm going rather sluggish myself, definitely taking my sweet time.

No, my goals this game seem to be;

Rebuild DeVries's broken home into a healthy society (clearly campaign focused)

And

Really just get things up and running. I'm still blocked by RMP supply, so that's a big project, I'd also like to secure some nice mining zones for the relative safety of my mining ops.

Really though, my current overriding goal is simply learning the game.

Some things I've learned;
1- small ship repair is finicky and frequently fails
2- small ship repair is often not cost effective; buying a new ship is often cheaper
3- most asteroids are empty
4- ship jump drive status is not given anywhere
5- skills matter
6- some crucial resources are not sold, simply immediately used
7- etc.

Loving every minute, even when I have to load a save

[Loltak]

More or less

- Finish plot
- Build few station
- my first 1 billion
- Buy few destroyers
- Mission for eradicating pirates and Xenon - On going

After that : go to next game for a while and come back sometime.
And keep updated of X-univers

[UniTrader]

UniTrader and I have come up against a similar issue designing a new weapon for the game, as there seems to be a limit to the number of projectiles that can be in flight at once, before the game engine simply quits.

If you have a vanilla savegame in which you can reproduce this, I'd be interested in seeing it. PM me, please, if you have.

just saw this post now:
i doubt this can happen in Vanilla, except for ridiculusly huge battles...
the weapon Lander mentoined is basically a Shotgun modified to fire about 100 Projectiles, which have ben changed into the reflection of Ice Asteroids, gotten their lifetime increased and modified in such a way that they phase through anything dealing damage - i think the total projectile count simultaneously alive was about 800 to 1000, if not far more - this was some initial proof-of-concept test version though, no fine-tuning done to stabilize it (from my side) yet


@Veeshan
regarding JD status: the Info if its alive or not is directly below the Engine Status, and Cooldown is only relevant fr consecutive Jumps. info about that (and slow charge) would be nice to have though, but since slow charge is done in Script only ( basically a <wait exact="10min"/> ) i doubt it will be added in a patch

regarding the rssources: did you check for new offers on the related trading port? (or update them via Tradecomputer)? i currently believe based on Forum Reports that the Trade Agent doesnt update constantly but checks for new offers like every 30s or something, so if you check directly after a batch is done you may not see the offers