X-Rebirth No piloting Capital ships!!??

[Shootist]

Hi guys,

ok lets be a bit more precise about the capital ships then. Piloting a huge capital ship from the seat of the pilot is boring, therefore we left that out.

ON THE OTHER HAND: The player can own and can command ships and he can use them for a lot more different things than before.

Stations as well as large ships have a lot more ways to interact with them now and your own as well as other factions ships are much more interesting to play with.

Instead of sitting in the cockpit you will assign people to command ships for you.

Hope this clears things up...

-Bernd

Thanks!

I hope everyone at Egosoft becomes multimillionaires and are invited to drive on BBC's Top Gear.

[Demotruk]

I think he means that you will only command them by communicating with the captain, which is fine by me. Piloting a cap ship personally was never a big aspect of the game for me, and in fact the way they work in X3 always seemed a little silly. This way I imagine they'll make there be more to capital ships in terms of capabilities but only indirect control from the player.

Edit: sorry, didn't read full thread.

[Gothsheep]

Hi guys,

ok lets be a bit more precise about the capital ships then. Piloting a huge capital ship from the seat of the pilot is boring, therefore we left that out.

ON THE OTHER HAND: The player can own and can command ships and he can use them for a lot more different things than before.

Stations as well as large ships have a lot more ways to interact with them now and your own as well as other factions ships are much more interesting to play with.

Instead of sitting in the cockpit you will assign people to command ships for you.

Hope this clears things up...

-Bernd

Keen! Appreciate you dropping by to clarify things.

[Flozem]

Here's hoping we can train crews as we can marines... would be cool to have the ai improve with more experience. Please give us a nice interface to command our ships though....

[Gothsheep]

I do hope we can still be on a capital ship to use it as C&C ship, and we're not stuck inside a flying tomb of a fighter while one of our underlings gets to luxuriate on a comfy carrier somewhere.

[A5PECT]

I'm thinking it's analogous to how in X3, the player could fly a freighter himself and trade goods between stations, or he could hire a UT to do it for him (having to train it up from an ST, of course).

In Rebirth, you might be able to command capital ships yourself, or hire a sufficiently-trained captain to run the ship for you.

[Tolmos]

Question: How does this affect carriers and such?

An example: I empire build. When fighting a large fleet, say such as you would find in a Xenon sector, I often bring a fleet of capital ships and fighters. Among them is generally a carrier. When things get bad, like really bad, I dock into my carrier, where it is safer and I can directly manage the battle without having to dodge missiles and lasers.

Carriers are one of the #1 things I love about the X series, so their inclusion in Rebirth is of the utmost importance to me. Any word on the future of carriers and player ability to dock with said carriers in X-Rebirth?

[Catra]

On a more personal note, why do you immediately assume changing the capital ship mechanics will make the game less fun?

Because assuming they fix the AI to do fleet stuff, and make capitals less "fightery", it be nice to be able to jump into the hot seat and do your own maneuvers instead of simply watching it unfold.

Its a serious step backwards, and its real sad that people support it. I know I won't play X:R untill a mod comes out so I can pilot the capitals.

[SIMON POPPLEWELL]

Not such a big deal for me as I fly an M5 most of the time in anycase. But I guess it will make it more realistic to have crews flying you capitals, lets just hope there are some big improvements with the autopilot in this game...

[Mightysword]

I'm skeptical, right now I don't think we can really tell it's a good thing or not. From the sound of it we will leave what probably is our MOST expensive investment in the hand of the AI, so I think a decisive factor would be how good the system is. I think it might be fun if it works, but knowing the state of AI control in computer game, some how I think there will be many moment of we see our millions vessel go down in flame while we yell at the screen "THAT'S NOT HOW I WANT YOU TO MOVE!!!".



It will also depend on how the combat system is designed as a whole. It's true that Capital Ship combat in X have always been dreadful and it's not because of some specific reason like turning rate/shield/duration ...etc... but IMO, the reason simply is because there was never a Capital Ship combat model in X. Capital ship combat was nothing more than a number inflated dodge fight combat without any unique principal. I'm eager to see if this point is addressed or not.

[Catra]

I'm all for crews ( I use CODEA and MEFOS all the time ), but taking away the ability to maneuver your own ship is silly.

[Gothsheep]

Maybe we should actually see what it is they're doing before we condemn it.

[SIMON POPPLEWELL]

I'm all for crews ( I use CODEA and MEFOS all the time ), but taking away the ability to maneuver your own ship is silly.

It sounds like it's going to be a case of interacting with crew members which leaves very little room for actual control for the player. Unless they has a system where you can choose to give control to crew or take a more direct approach for control of ships....But at this stage it's all speculation.

[uxnhoj123]

I'd be fine with this change only if there is an accompanying buff for battleships, which Bernd implied when he said you'd be able to do new things with them.

As it stands now, destroyers just feel like glorified frigates (which themselves just feel like glorified fighters). They fly just like a fighter in slow-mo, albeit with a totally broken strafe system that you can love or hate. I don't feel high and mighty in them, just kinda . . . broken.

I hope Rebirth makes frigates a bit bigger and slower so that they can take the role we used to use destroyers for, while turning destroyers into something that fits a new role in the game. Something like that anyway. Do I have faith that Egosoft will balance it well . . . but hey, it might be a good change.

[e1team]

So? No more own flagship and safety of 10ths of GJ's of shielding above you? Can you be INSIDE your capships?

[AkrionXxarr]

Hi guys,

ok lets be a bit more precise about the capital ships then. Piloting a huge capital ship from the seat of the pilot is boring, therefore we left that out.

ON THE OTHER HAND: The player can own and can command ships and he can use them for a lot more different things than before.

Stations as well as large ships have a lot more ways to interact with them now and your own as well as other factions ships are much more interesting to play with.

Instead of sitting in the cockpit you will assign people to command ships for you.

Hope this clears things up...

-Bernd

The biggest problem I see with this is the fact that some people prefer to command over pilot. In X3 from my carrier I would command its fighters to do much of the combat for me. I agree, directly flying a capital ship as a huge fighter, alike a Destroyer, isn't very fun. But commanding from one can be great fun.

So unless I understand this wrong, this is a scenario that I see happening: Long time player builds up a huge empire, they have pulled togethor a lot of money. Say they choose to spar with another empire, the only option they have is to command larger ships from a smaller ship? That doesn't make sense to me for someone to command their capital ships from the flagship of a fighter. WWII Destroyer Captains weren't in charge of Battleship and Carrier fleets.

So when you say that you employ people to fly your capital ships instead of flying them directly, does that mean you cannot reside aboard said capital ship, and thus be required to take commanding action of your capital ships from your fighter? To me that would seem like a jet fighter pilot giving orders to the carrier it was launched from. Some further clarification would be welcome.

[DiveBomberDave]

hmmm...

I think it just means a different command system, like u stand on the bridge & tell the helmsman where to steer and the engineer how much power instead of holding the controls yourself.
I hope the AI is much, much, much better like trainable & has manouvres especially evasive ones, the AI atm never evades incoming fire.
I dont want to go throwing my ships away cuz the auto pilot is dumb.

a function to take control back like the shift-n is now would be great, i think most loyal long time players use this.

This will be my 4th X purchase so i will just have to trust that the changes will be better.

[brucewarren]

I'd be interested in knowing what happens if you have multiple cap
ships.

Are the captains now smart enough to not fire on each other if you bring
in a small fleet?

[Scoob]

Until we get a clearer idea of exactly how this has been implemented we can only guess.

My hope is that I can still sit on the bridge of my large ships and, while not being able to "pilot" it in the TC sense with a joystick/mouse I can still issue commands to control the ships actions. Whether they be fly here, attack that as we're accustomed to with current autopilot (but actually working!) or there are an array of icons etc. making such commands much more intuitive.

Bottom line for me is that I WANT to sit in my large ships, in fleet combat (which we hope works in Rebirth) because I need the epicness of sitting in my command carrier/destroyer/whatever while the poo hits the fan outside. I want to issue commands such as "fire at will" or "engage that xenon M2" or "Launch Blue Wing on CAP". Things we've all likely pretended to do in TC...just before autopiloting into an asteroid...

I have high hopes that this will be implemented the right way, however subjective the right way may be

Cheers,

Scoob.

[Triaxx2]

You know what? Now that I think about it, we already have capital ships we can order around but not actually fly. All those hired TL's. And you know what? It's NOT FUN. AT ALL. LESS FUN THAN FLYING OURSELVES.

So in short, I'll just stick with TC.