Update: THIS INFORMATION IS OUTDATED, DO NOT FOLLOW. After countless issues with the game, I have given up on it long time ago. I might try again, maybe sometimes in 2015.
I think it's about time someone start explaining some mechanics in the game instead of berating it. I AM disappointed with the current state of X Rebirth but I'll try to enjoy it. The game has it fair share of bugs, yes. But it is also due to its lack of explanation of what's going on that is killing it for the players (e.g. is my ship moving? is it charging up? how do I repair my ships? how do I do trade?). I found that once these are cleared up, the experience is actually slightly better and better is always a good thing!
I am still in the process of finding out a lot of stuff so I'll be updating this thread. The purpose of this thread is to explain as much as possible about the game's mechanic and hopefully make sense to you guys and make it more enjoyable at it's current state. It is not for bug reporting or solving any game breaking bugs. Feel free to chip in more explanation.
For starter, just a few explanation, but I will keep it as up-to-date as possible
Ship, Jump and Fuel
Sometimes your ship's captain will complain about being unable to jump because it is out of fuel (Cell Fuel). This is because his destination is 1 or more 'Jump' away. So what qualifies as a Jump?
Unlike smaller ship, a trade ship or container ship cannot travel through the Highway (yellow gates) or the Super Highway (blue gates), if they need to travel between Sectors (connected by highway) they will just do a small jump (no fuel needed), but if they need to travel between Systems (connected by super highway) a (big) Jump (fuel will be needed).
So your ships will only complain when they need to jump between Systems and does not have enough fuels. But fear not! Even when they complain being out of fuel, they will still jump! With 1 big caveat. that is they will need to charge up their Jump Drive for about 10 minutes before they can jump. So if you wait for around 10 minutes after the complain, you will see that it will then start to move! I suppose if they have enough Cell Fuel, they will just jump immediately, otherwise they will have to charge up for 10 minutes.
Trading
In order for you to do trading, you need to make sure to do few things:
a. Explore and visit stations that buy or sell certain goods in order for those goods to appear on your Trade window. In another words you need to discover them.
b. When you order your captain to buy something, you will actually transfer that required credits to the captain immediately, even before the goods are bought! If you repeat the order again, it will actually create another order on top of the previous one. So don't be surprised if your credits disappear more than you expected. But fear not, if all the orders has been carried out and the captain still have fund on this account, it will be refunded back to you.
c. Get some of those Cargo Lifter URV into your trade ship! Trading in X Rebirth requires goods to actually be transferred physically between your ship and the station. So you will need Cargo Lifter URV to lift and transfer the goods from the station to your ship when you are buying and from your ship to the station when you are selling. You can usually see how many cargo lifter is being used when your ship has docked via the ship's Details screen. 1 Cargo Lifter can transfer about 4000 cargo space (different goods has different cargo size). You can get Cargo Lifter URV from Ship Dealer at any Shipyard (not from Drone Seller!).
d. It is also wise to give 1 order at a time to your ship, so far, this has kept me away from trouble
e. Usually you will get some message from your captain when certain part of the trade is being done e.g. when the ship has docked, when the transferred is complete, etc. I am still
not sure what exactly being said yet, so more on this later.
Combat - Defending vs Attacking
NOTE: Please note that I haven't fully tested all of these yet, but this is based on my investigation on the UIs etc.
DEFENDING: So your freighter is doing a trade run and it got attacked and destroyed like a stupid duck? Ok, here's a few thing that are easy to miss:
a. Make sure you install some turrets to it when you build it, if not, go to a ship dealer and upgrade it.
b. Make sure you give some drones (e.g. Interceptor URV), these can be bought from a Ship Dealer at Shipyard too
c. Make sure you hire a Defense Officer (DO) and set it to work on that freighter. Your Defense Officer will only works if it has something to fight back!
ATTACKING: [This is bugged at the moment, but if it is fixed, this should work like this]
a. Make sure you did everything written above in the DEFENDING section!
b. You can actually give command to a Defense Officer too. You can set his/her behaviour to Defend or Attacking. When it is on Defend mode, it will only attack when it is being attacked! So even if you are getting decimated, it would just sit and stare at you like a peking duck if the Destroyer itself is not being attacked. So you need to set it to Attack mode.
How? Go to your Destroyer's Detail window (the one that show its Hull%, Speed, Cargo space etc), you can expand its Management panel, it should show you the Defense Officer if you have one. Select the DO and click on the Details button. Now it should bring up a new window with details of your DO! there should be a drop down box that allow your to change his current Order.
Repairing
Currently it seems that assigning Engineer to work on your ship does not actually do any repair on it when damaged. This is potentially bugged. [It's reported to be fixed in 1.14, I will check it later]
There are, luckily, alternatives to repair your ships:
1. To repair your own ship (Albion Skunk) just go to any station with Engineer and select Repair Ship option.
2. To repair your freighters, destroyers or capital ships you need to dock at a Ship Yard and find a Ship Dealer. Talk to him and select option Modify a Ship and then Repair Ship to repair one of your ships.
Sometimes there is a bug where the Ship Dealer will not have an option to modify your ship or your ship is not in the list. In that case, just get off of the station and come back to talk to him/her again or go to another ship yard.
Last edited by gattsumoto on Thu, 2. Jan 14, 07:46, edited 6 times in total.
Thanks. Yes, I will eventually tackle all subjects too. I will start with the most confusing one first as these are actually what get people annoyed (including me) so much.
Added a new section on Combat - Defending vs Attacking. If you guys need any mechanic needs explanation, feel free to let me know. I will try to find out.
gattsumoto wrote:Added a new section on Combat - Defending vs Attacking. If you guys need any mechanic needs explanation, feel free to let me know. I will try to find out.
Try to see if you figure out repair.
The need for an intact drone launcher on the ship/ need for an engineer with URV construction drones.
Or if it's simply bugged.
I'm naturally unfriendly sometimes. Don't take what I say too badly.
What the hell were you smoking when you made this game, Egosoft? 'Hey we made a cool new highway system that will revolutionise X... but only the player's ship actually goes through it, it's a minigame with dozens of fake ships spawned into it that disappear when you arrive'.
"If this is your attempt to steal my ship, well, you picked the wrong one. Damn thing doesn't even have a gravidar"
Theta Sigma wrote:... Your ships can't go through the highways...
What the hell were you smoking when you made this game, Egosoft? 'Hey we made a cool new highway system that will revolutionise X... but only the player's ship actually goes through it, it's a minigame with dozens of fake ships spawned into it that disappear when you arrive'.
Only capital ships can't go through highways. If you want to criticize at least do it correctly.
I'm naturally unfriendly sometimes. Don't take what I say too badly.
Dr2i wrote:
Try to see if you figure out repair.
The need for an intact drone launcher on the ship/ need for an engineer with URV construction drones.
Or if it's simply bugged.
Sure, I'll try to find that out.
Theta Sigma wrote:What the hell were you smoking when you made this game, Egosoft? 'Hey we made a cool new highway system that will revolutionise X... but only the player's ship actually goes through it, it's a minigame with dozens of fake ships spawned into it that disappear when you arrive'.
While those big ships can't use the highways they still use jump that are as fast as using highways. So there's not much different here whether they use highway or not.
The decision to require Cell Fuel / Charging for System jump is mainly for immersion I supposed? e.g. in battle you get capital ship trying to Jump away if it takes too much damage, so you can try destroy its Jump Drive.
Thanks for a very constructive post.
I'm trying to get to grips with Rebirth having spent a few hours fighting to set up a joystick.
Very poor support but as soon as a plugged in an Xbox controller things became much more manageable. I prefer a joystick for space sims but the controller is easy to adapt to.
I'm sure a great deal of the complaints I have read on this and the steam forums is down to the very meagre documentation supplied.
I look forward to revisiting this thread regularly to check for updates.
gattsumoto wrote:
ATTACKING: So you bring your Destroyer to a fight and it just sit there like an idiot duck too?
a. Make sure you did everything written above in the DEFENDING section!
b. You can actually give command to a Defense Officer too. You can set his/her behaviour to Defend or Attacking. When it is on Defend mode, it will only attack when it is being attacked! So even if you are getting decimated, it would just sit and stare at you like a peking duck if the Destroyer itself is not being attacked. So you need to set it to Attack mode.
How? Go to your Destroyer's Detail window (the one that show its Hull%, Speed, Cargo space etc), you can expand its Management panel, it should show you the Defense Officer if you have one. Select the DO and click on the Details button. Now it should bring up a new window with details of your DO! there should be a drop down box that allow your to change his current Order.
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Thanks for the post. Especially the trading part, very helpful.
As for capship control. Did same thing, the Arawn just sit there looking pretty. Anyone manage to get this work?
Can you be docked when waiting the 10 minutes for the jump or do you have to leave the ship (I want the ship to take me along the ride all the way to OL)?
EDIT: Yes, it works indeed, very awesome Though there is no jump animation at all, would be cool.
Going to the effort of writing any sort of comprehensive guide to this game is akin to writing a guide on how to pick up a dog turd and polish it in to a perfectly spherical ball. What's the bloody point?
Theta Sigma wrote:... Your ships can't go through the highways...
What the hell were you smoking when you made this game, Egosoft? 'Hey we made a cool new highway system that will revolutionise X... but only the player's ship actually goes through it, it's a minigame with dozens of fake ships spawned into it that disappear when you arrive'.
Actually this statement is not totally correct. Yes there are fake vessels in the highway system that is true.. But not all of them are fake. I have exited the highways with other ships many times. (small freighters maybe) Hell I have actually bounced off these bastids and thrown back into the gate, only to be thrown back out like a yoyo a few times.
You have managed to answer some of the questions that have been bugging me slightly. Like needing the Cargo Lifter, had worked out i needed something, but could not figure out what it was!
