Is it time to give it a try?

[Big_Mike_643]

I have been a big X series fan since I played X2:The Threat. I think most of you agree, the X games usually have a rocky release, so I typically wait a number of patch cycles (often till the first major content pack) to actually play the game.

I think we all know that X:Rebirth had met the most issues and the came under the most critical scorn of any X release by far. This made me very much shy away from playing it at all.

I am curious if and how the game has improved since it's release, or if I want my X fix should I just fire up Albion Prelude? I notice it is still getting recent mixed reviews from customers, so I am still leery and thinking about waiting for the next iteration of X completely.

[Alan Phipps]

Why not try the free Steam X Rebirth demo linked in this X-U News and see if that helps you to decide?

[Ezarkal]

I notice it is still getting recent mixed reviews from customers...

I think what most people can agree on is that Egosoft approached X-Rebirth differently than it's predecessors. Some people really like the new changes. I'm one of them. I got bored out of my skull after 50h in X-3, and dropped the game. However, I have nearly 600h of gameplay in X-Rebirth, and although I'm on other games right now, I plan to return shortly.
Some people don't like the changes, though, and I can see why. They've been discussed far and wide in dozens of other threads, so I won't get into that here.

Point is, it's definitively an X game, but it's also very different from the others. In the end, you probably won't know if you love it or not before you've tried it yourself. Just keep in mind some stuff won't be as it was, for better or for worse.

From a personal point of view, I'd say the trade and build aspect of the game are great. The fight aspect is okay, and the conquer aspect is non-existant unless you go for mods. In terms of bugs, almost every major ones have been fixed, and viable workarounds have been found for most of the others. My major pet peeve since 4.0 is the new "flee" mechanism for any AI-controlled ships in combat. I hope they'll fix it soon. (Or at least I would if I didn't play with mods that mostly fix it )

[AleksMain]

X3 has NOT bugs, has faster build and trade, faster production of ships from Shipyards (excluding players' HQ).

Using X3 player can fly using different ships, use different weapon.

In X3 player can't buy Elite marines, like in X4, but he can train Elite marines.

Also large and huge stations are in Terran's sectors only of X3, while in X4 there are large stations only.

X3 has better graphical performance.

About turret targeting ("new" feature of X4) ... in X3 player has possibility to destroy all or some weapon aboard enemy ship.

Droids got new names and variations in X4.

I don't think, that in X3 player need more variations of droids, because he can use dozens and hundreds cheap droids instead.

AI got some personality in X4, some names, voices and even shape.

May be it is interesting for those, who want to talk with captains, pilots and other staff.

In X3 I give command to ships and they do, what I want. It is much faster.

Also jumps from sector to sector in X3 are much faster, than in X4.

Above is my opinion.

You must try both games, to compare them, of course.

[ezra-r]

X3:XX has very stupid AI.
Bumping is deadly in X3:XX
AI in X3:XX bumps.. a lot.

In Rebirth there isnt fighter bumping damage, and they are a tad smarter and more agile. They can be deadly when used in numbers, and they won't die bumping, which I call that a big improvement already.

Complexes in X3:XX became a riddle tube mess unless you used some mods. Complexes in Rebirth are quite more interesting, and built on stages, each with a purpose.

Stations/Complexes in X3:XX had no defences and litterally most but a few sectors had any worthy defense so you can send your cap ships and cause havoc practically anywhere and tell them to jump when patrols get close. In Rebirth stations have teeth.

in X3:XX travel is alow, you jumped to a Gate, you needed e-cells for jumps, sectors are huge and SETA gruesome, in Rebirth your ship can boost around and you can use highways to fly around a whole system. With Rebirth Jumpdrive you can jump anywhere with a jump beacon.

I recommend you grab Rebirth, install a few must-have mods, among them CWIR, and prepare for some serious action and punishment.

[AleksMain]

X3:XX has very stupid AI.
Bumping is deadly in X3:XX
AI in X3:XX bumps.. a lot.
...

In X4:Rebirth AI of capital ships is not better.

Read threads of this forum.

...
Complexes in X3:XX became a riddle tube mess unless you used some mods. Complexes in Rebirth are quite more interesting, and built on stages, each with a purpose.
...

In X3 I build really huge complexes and quickly.

They don't require defense, if you build them in proper place.

More, it is not necessary even look at them if these are SSC.

...
in X3:XX travel is slow,..

This is dependent from ship.

Exist ships, which can fly very fast.

Capital ships are slow in both games by default.

[ajax34i]

X Rebirth has improved since release.

However, the TLDR is: it's a mediocre game.

Play it, if you want, but I believe X3:AP is a better game, by far.

So it depends on whether you want something new, or whether you can get your fix from a game you've probably played to death before.

[spankahontis]

"In X4:Rebirth AI of capital ships is not better.

Read threads of this forum."


I've played over 2000 hours of X:Rebirth and I've played around 500 hours of X:3 and i've found that the Ai in X:Rebirth has been designed better and there have been some detailed explanations into how the pathfinding has been improved in X:Rebirth. It's simply fact.
Not saying the Ai doesn't need more work, it needs allot more. But i've lost ALLOT of ships in X:3 to collisions.. 3 or 4 Osaka's exploded undocking from the Shipyard I purchased them from, i've also had ships do a 90 degree turn into a jumpgate when they enter a new sector.
So anyone that says X:3 pathfinding is better than X:Rebirth is being disingenuous; not letting X:Rebirth off the hook, they need to get their act together and start fixing the bugs, particularly the one in my signature below, pinball with asteroids in Toride is funny to watch at best but immersion breaking at worst.


"In X3 I build really huge complexes and quickly.

They don't require defense, if you build them in proper place.

More, it is not necessary even look at them if these are SSC."


Which lead to building fully self sustaining complexes that provided all the wares you wanted in a continuous loop.
Fun to build but immersion breaking to f**k, asteroids that never run out of resources, it was ridiculous and try building these complexes in areas with allot of micro-asteroids like Elaine's Fortune or Greater Pride and you get chaos with the placeholder.

Then consider defenses, you build your factory close to the jumpgates where your customers are going to fly through so your the first to get business over your competitors.
You don't build your factories in the middle of nowhere (Unless your a Pirate that wants to keep a low-profile).
Immersion is broken that way when you are playing the builder/trader game.
So yes, you need defenses.. buying destroyers to protect your stations is time consuming seeing as there is a shortage of the big guns until you build the infrastructure which takes days of game play to pull off.

[AleksMain]

...
Which lead to building fully self sustaining complexes that provided all the wares you wanted in a continuous loop.
Fun to build but immersion breaking to f**k, asteroids that never run out of resources, it was ridiculous and try building these complexes in areas with allot of micro-asteroids like Elaine's Fortune or Greater Pride and you get chaos with the placeholder.
...

I had built such complex in Elena's Fortune.

I can post screenshots:

Below you can see Products and some intermediate products of complex
http://i.imgur.com/9fiTKvr.jpg
As you see above complex has 1,160,000 Energy cells capacity and some of Solar Power Plants are idle, since it produce more, than necessary Energy Cells. I can use products any time to refuel my ships or to equip my Cobra with missiles (it is one of the SSC complexes)

Below is Sector view with complex. It is far from each gates and any Pirate (see screenshot) will not see it in his scanner.
http://i.imgur.com/icm3OCx.jpg

I had moved ALL Silicon Asteroids with yield 25+ and added to my complex.

I never build complexes near gates or factories.

Complex in Elena's Fortune had not been attacked even once, although Pirates are always enemies for me.

P.S,
Since almost every mission give me new capital ships, boarded by my own marines, then I use Mammoths to store weapons and shields of boarded ships. Sometimes I sell it in Equipment Dock (can be used HQ in Home of Light too) without any limits.
Some weapons (PPC) produced and produce my first SSC.
I have dozens of battle capital ships, but use them for my missions only.

[ezra-r]

X3:XX has very stupid AI.
Bumping is deadly in X3:XX
AI in X3:XX bumps.. a lot.
...

In X4:Rebirth AI of capital ships is not better.

Read threads of this forum.

...
Complexes in X3:XX became a riddle tube mess unless you used some mods. Complexes in Rebirth are quite more interesting, and built on stages, each with a purpose.
...

In X3 I build really huge complexes and quickly.

They don't require defense, if you build them in proper place.

More, it is not necessary even look at them if these are SSC.

...
in X3:XX travel is slow,..

This is dependent from ship.

Exist ships, which can fly very fast.

Capital ships are slow in both games by default.

* I dont need to read threads to know Capital ships. I actually play the game. Capital ships were a mess to manage with their weapon variants and their dump AI, not any longer. Do they manuver crapilly? Yes. But still they are better than X3:XX and mods get better results in Rebirth than what you could extract before. See to them.

* You build complexes quickly... since they just spawn out of nowhere but in order to connect them you end up with a tubes mess. About not needing defenses if you place them correctly. I was refering to all kinds of stations, not player only. What I said is you could cripple any stations without effort once you got capital ships, which you can't in Rebirth, mostl likely you will get heavy losses, and I don't mean that Rebirth stations can't be destroyed, with CWIR they can but still, they are dangerous if you try to take them down.. which certainly makes more sense than in X3:XX

* About ship speed. Since X3:TC ship stats became a noncoherent mess. Sentinel ships with less shields. Teladi Kestrel (fastest m5 with a rear turret, yeah right..). etc..

[Alan Phipps]

@ all: Please consider whether this current line of nitpicking argument is actually helping the OP to decide which game to play.

[buzbyx]

I just tried Rebirth on my new gtx 1070 and it looks beautiful, so I'm going to give it another shot.

[iforgotmysocks]

Now u made me jelly. I want dem new graphics cards. But my ol' gtx 780 just doesn't wanna die. Damn, Nvidia, why do u produce with such damn good quality. :3

And ya, i recently started X-R again too, after dropping playing and modding a couple months after release. It's so much better now. Still alot to do and u still might get mad occationally when things don't work out at first, but i've tons of fun, so i'm good.

[Ezarkal]

Now u made me jelly. I want dem new graphics cards. But my ol' gtx 780 just doesn't wanna die. Damn, Nvidia, why do u produce with such damn good quality. :3

And ya, i recently started X-R again too, after dropping playing and modding a couple months after release. It's so much better now. Still alot to do and u still might get mad occationally when things don't work out at first, but i've tons of fun, so i'm good.

Until very recently, I played on a gtx 560 ti, and graphic quailty was excellent. I just switched to gtx 960 and the graphic upgrade was very minor. I now run at ultra instead of high, and while it's an improvement it's not groundbreaking.
So maybe that 560 ti was a beast of it's kind (evga makes some pretty good stuff after all) or I used to severy beat it. Come to think of it, I did run a few games that were way beyond my specs in terms of graphics.

X-R is mostly a processor-heavy game, I think. A good graphic card is always a plus, but a good cpu and a lot of RAM will get you pretty far.

[Boronenheld]

If u like a really bad user interface, no control of ur battleships, not existed game balance and hundreds of little bugs/poor game design decisions, u will love X:R. Otherwise play X3, wich is a far far better game at all.

[Assailer]

If u like a really bad user interface, no control of ur battleships, not existed game balance and hundreds of little bugs/poor game design decisions, u will love X:R. Otherwise play X3, wich is a far far better game at all.

I would say different game, but not necessary better. Perhaps wait for steam sale, then it's definitely worth getting it.

[tstivers]

Only if you enjoy playing glorified excel where you have to talk to clippy to actually get anything done. But even then, OpenOffice.org is a better alternative.

[Ezarkal]

Only if you enjoy playing glorified excel where you have to talk to clippy to actually get anything done. But even then, OpenOffice.org is a better alternative.

I also got bored out of my skull with these bland responses. I recommend the "Silence You All" mod, which delete all messages except the most important onces. It's a sanity saver.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=383812

[MrFiction]

I see some people mentioning the new game has better trade and build options compared to X3. Can anyone elaborate on the difference between X3 and Rebrith in this aspect? Can you still build huge complexes and have a bunch of MK3 like traders running around (haven't progresses far enough into Rebirth to find out)

[Ezarkal]

Build:
You can still build complexes, but they are pre-determined, and usually focused to optimizing a single ware, or on producing 3-4 wares of a similar tier (for shipyard supply and the like). eg: You can build a construction shop, which starts by a plate foundry that builds reinforced metal plates (RMP, for short). You can then expand the station by building other modules from a station-specific list. In the construction shop's case, you can add up to 2 more foundry, 2 steel refinery which produce refine metal (required for RMP), and 2 chem refinery which produce chemical compounds (another required ware for RMP). In addition to that, you can expand the station with a few storage and defense modules. Once you've built everything on the list, that's it. The station is fully built and can't be expanded any more.
So the big difference is that complexes are pre-made, and usually focus on 1-3 types of wares. You chose how much you want to expand each station, but it's more limited than in X3 on that aspect. I like it, though. Station complexes are beautiful and much quicker to build, and you don't risk making a big mess by misplacing something.

Otherwise, building is pretty easy, game-play wise. You buy a construction vehicle (CV), equip it with drones, send it to a build location, chose a station and supply the build wares through trade ships. You don't have to hire those bulky mammoth ships to ferry your station across 3 sectors, ramming everything in it's path.
So yeah, it's different.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, you can only build at certain "build spots". There are usually 2 of those per zone, and you can also build between zones (thus creating your own zones), but you won't be able to build 10 stations in a tiny radius. Due to the size of the stations, the quality of the graphic and the presence of mass traffic by civilian ships, I'd say that's mainly for performance issues.
That being said, I did manage to build 5 stations in certain out-of-zone locations.



Trade:
I was never much of a trader in X3, so I can't really compare.
Manual trade in XR is pretty easy, although the UI is in much need of love. You get a trade menu in which every stations where you have a trade agent (or recently scouted for trade offers) will display their offers for buying and selling wares. You can then cycle through your ship and easily place trade orders.
Automated trading is a disaster. You assign trade ships to a station manager, and that's pretty much all you can do. You can set a price limit for whatever the manager will buy or sell, and you can restrict certain ware trades to your faction only. But that's pretty much the limit of what you can set without modding. You can't tell your manager to focus on supplying station X, Y and Z, you can't establish trade routes... you can't do much. Your unbound traders (those directly under your control) don't have any form of automated trade or trade routes either. You can queue up to 7 orders (with the right trading software), but you'll have to place each order manually, and do it again once the queue is done. While it's fine in early to mid-game, it can becomes a management nightmare in late-game.