EGOSOFT and Deep Silver announce X Rebirth (updated 2011-07-29)

[unknown1]

The fourth quarter is closing in fast.Fingers crossed for a release during this time.Still,they haven't changed the "X Rebirth is expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 2011".

[cheakytoast]

Hello! I thought i would post some of my ideas that i personally would love to see in rebirth (although i know some are already impossible) or possibly in a huge-assed mod for TC.

- First off would be better defence for stations - so far we have lasertowers (which are near useless in TC imo) or assign our own patrols. I feel that creating and assigning a small fleet to defend a few stations would cost wayyyyy too much considering that the stations would probably take years to payoff the inital fleet cost. My idea would be to allow turrets on stations similar to the oribal defence stations (even a few PAC's should warn off any pesky pirates).

- Secondly I think lasertowers should be vastly improved. I noticed that in TC the shields installed on the LT (lasertower) went from 25mj to 200mj which is a nice improvement but the weapon installed sucks. I placed a LT to defend a station and that one LT could not fend off a single M3. I was hoping that LT would be restored to their former glory (well i know i was certainly scared of their 100% pin-point accuracy in x2).

-The next point is one that has somewhat been fixed and that is connecting stations. I think it was an awesome idea to allow us to do this but i'm sick of tube flying around the sector and i'm sick of all my ships ramming into them. I know there are several mods already for this but i haven't personally found of one that i think suits the game. I think factories should either transport goods via the transporter device (assuming the target factory is in the same sector) or use automated freight drones which are built free of charge due to their basic design. Or perhaps we could just build one giant factory.....

-The next point is to add more ship classes to the game. I noticed a fair few new ships to TC which i was very happy about but i still feel they need to take it a step further. Mainly instead of having just M2's break it down futher such as M2L (light) M2H (heavy) ect. So instead of having basic M2's you could have a light M2 which would have decreased firepower but increased speed, it's mainly used to support ships that are in need. (this was semi done with the introduction of raiders, vanguard ect). I also noticed how they added the missile friagte which i think was awesome... perhaps more ships like this could be added. For example i know the Griffon was meant to be somesort of drone-prototype ship (i think, don't quote me on that). It would be awesome if there was a ship class where their weapons were stripped to a minium but instead it actually produced Mk2 fighter drones and released them into the battle. This way you would have to play the game strategically since you're gonna have to take that ship out of harm's way if it run's out of drones.

-My next point is to make TS's much stronger (shield wise). I know this was somewhat done in TC with the introduction of TM's aswell but i still think it needs more improvement.
I personally think that a TS should be able to withstand a beating from the local pirate gang. In my games my TS's get killed by as little as 2 m4's. Perhaps allow upto 400mj shield for TS's... this way the TS can actually survive until i come to their rescue.

-I think this has been mentioned before but i'll quickly mention it here aswell. Beef up the TL's. I think it's a bit of a joke that a TL has a maximum of about 1200mj shielding. In my personal opinion a TL should be able to withstand a short fight from another capital ship. Again in my games i've seen my TL's destroyed by a small gang of pirate m3's and m4's.

-This next one is a little different. What i'm purposing is the additon of special equipment/perks to ships. For example a special device that can be installed which could increase shield regeneration or reduce the effectiveness of enemy fire. Each ship could have a limit to how many specialized equipment that can be installed (such as 2 equipment slots - maybe pirate ships could have a lot more due to pirates liking to customise their ship). These special equipment could be used on anything such as increasing scanner range, comm range, transporter range, convert rooms in the ship for cargo space, added effects to weapons ect.

-One thing that has annoyed me in TC is the lack of rewards for good deeds. I recently saw a xenon M1 causing trouble in my local argon sector and decided to take care of it.... for my reward i was given 10k credits....... Really? 10k? I actually lost quite a lot more than i got in return. Again in my opinion if i destroy an enemy capital ship i should be rewarded with atleast enough money to buy an additonal fighter.

-The next one may sound a little odd but i don't want to be treated as my own race. What i mean by that is if i start off a argon merchant then i want to be treated as an Argon and not as a 'player race'. I'm sure quite a few of you noticed that in the terran plot (in TC) the terrans seem to not have a problem with you being a commonwealth race despite their rather xenophobic nature. In fact they treat you as if you were a terran that has absoletly no knowledge of the commonwealth races. So basically what i'm wanting is an adaptable script which is affected by which race you are.

-Next up i want the people working for me to be smarter. I hate that you have to be careful when setting up factories because only a few sectors away is a xenon sector and my traders for some reason think that they'll be absolutely fine flying through it. I would also add to this by allowing my weaker ships to do what ever it takes to get their attacker to leave them alone. Whether it's dropping their freight to pirates, calling for help to the local stations or security force or just attempting to take refuge at the closest station.

-Next up is allowing yourself to become a fulfledged pirate (add a pirate ranking system). With this i would also request a lot more pirate sectors. (there seem to be so few in TC).

-Un-nerf ion disturptors... not much else to say... in x2 i used them all the time... now in TC they seem totally pointless....

-Get rid of mini-asteriods.... they are far tooooooooooo annoying and destorying them takes way tooo much effort... add the option to remove them?

-Get rid of those insta-death zones. for example Earth.... you can't even auto-dock without being blown up.... their are a few other sectors where the planets are too close to the gates and can fairly easily end up dead.

-Make the territories more even. By this i mean having more large blocks of territories like the argon-prime block. The TC universe seems quite messed up in certain places. Especially these random xenon sectors. If their is a single xenon sector with a dozen common wealth sectors surronding it then why is it still there? surely someone can take out a single sector.
In my ideal universe there would be the argon and boron on one side, split and paranid on the other. And in the middle would be a mixture of teladi, xenon, khakk, pirates and unknowns.
Also with this i would add the imporved races mod simply because it's so amazing with it's ability to take over sectors.

-More risk = better rewards... I feel that this game doesn't reward you for taking risks. If i take out a M2 i shouldn't be given 10k credits and thats it i should be given atleast several million credits. Same if taking out xenon sectors/pirate bases ect. I think that i should be given either the sector to claim as my own, a very large cash reward or additonal ships to continue with the war effort.

-These last few notes are more of a rant than anything else... sorry!
First off i really like some of the designs in TC such as the boron shipyards look absolutely amazing! but overall the desgns off the majority of the ships and stations were pretty much just copy and paste. I loved that in x2 you could tell what that ship was or what that station was just by looking at it (boron had their weird green textures ships and stations, argon with their shiny chrome ships ect). but unfortantely there wasn't much of this found in TC imo. Especially when it comes to facotories and TS's, TM's and TP's. I actually think the crystal fabs, and SPP are the same for almost all races, same for shipyards and equipment docks. I was especially disappointed with the Argon captial ships (the argon M1, M2 and TL) look identical to me. Same for argon M5, M4 and M3 (discover, buster, elite and nova).
I also don't see why the discover, buster and nova were completely changed from x2 . Atleast in x2 you could tell them apart.

-My last topic is that in X2 each race was known for building their ship a specific way which seems to have been some-what lost in TC. For example teladi have increased shields, boron ships have increased cargo ect (should be the other way around imo). It would be nice if this was brought back

Alright i'm done..... I'm soooo tired right now. I want to apologise to anyone who attempted to read this. It's far to late for me to be typing such a long thread. I just had to write this out and post it before going to sleep otherwise i would end up staying up for hours thinking about the x-universe

Thanks for reading if you did. I'm interested in hearing your opinions too so please add or argue against my proposal.
Night ya'll..............

[Lorien]

Those game stats look remarkably similar

Tim

Maybe they play X together in the dev-only coop mode :>

sshhh, dont let the secret out

Is that accessed through the -topsecret switch you need to add to the shortcut?

[aka1nas]

Thats doest give me back the ability to do wharever i want.

Whats the problem if i want to use a Caiman with forward IREs to hunt down other TS? i can do it in X3TC... thats the whole idea behind a sandbox, player able to use every element in the game as their wish.

X:R may have another elements, but it removes the most important one of in X games.

We dont even know what ship types are in game (in the case there is anything more than drones). There is nothing more than capitals and drones for all we known.

Boarding probably is out too, there no mention to it anywhere, i was hoping to be able to disable->disarm->board ships... That was one of the most important point in having subsystem targeting.

It doesn't sound like fighters as such are going to be around anymore. You'll have capitals of various sizes and drones for the agile dogfighting. I.E. a bit more like EVE.

Though the tele-operated drone thing they talked about in the video is probably the best of both worlds. You can fly your little fast ship during fleet ops still, and when it gets smushed you're still around and can jump into another.

Without fighters, the old bailing/capturing mechanic is probably out, with something more like boarding being more likely. As long as there is still a way to salvage defeated ships in some form, I think I can live with it personally (this is one of the major features of X for me).

[PTR]

....

Some of the things you want is already confirmed for X:R. It looks like all the small ship classes are replaced by drones, but the larger ships can be fitted with different turrets (laser/missile) or extra shield slots (as far as I understand). These can also be fitted on the stations. Connecting stations with tubes is out.

[nyx]

It looks like all the small ship classes are replaced by drones,

Ehm... Reference?

@cheakytoast: You're talking about X4. X:R is no X4. Most of your wishes are obsolete. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6UAB-YNXns - Watch this

[Alexium]

Is there any public beta-testing program for the upcoming game? I'd like to participate

[Chris0132]

as for cap ships the only differnece will be you cant control the u down left right forward back faster slower movements with a joystick or mouse / keyboard which is fine by me because i like emmersion and ordering your subordinates to carry out a tactic or attack a target is much more immersive that shift-c , 2 , 2 lol

The problem is the capship crew (lack)of AI, they would have to know and use different approaches in order to attack a enemy M2. X3R + TC : any capship ever tried to attack from behind another one or from a dead spot. Will they try to avoid incoming fire?

Even the advanced combat script for AI fighters didn't helped much....

Not neccesarily, as I see it capships are huge, unwieldy, and covered in guns. They're basically battering rams, and like battering rams the best way to counter them should be with precision strikes to the vulnerable bits.

Which seems to be what the subsystem idea is going for, rather than capships just equipping a couple of FAAs and killing every fighter that gets near, it seems like being able to fly close, dodge fire, and take out key systems will be probably the most cost-effective way to kill a capship, rather than nuking it from half a sector over or using your own capship.

Which honestly sounds like a massive improvement.

[Mightysword]

Which honestly sounds like a massive improvement.

Which, honestly, sound like a massive optimistic thinking

[Chris0132]

Which honestly sounds like a massive improvement.

Which, honestly, sound like a massive optimistic thinking

Really?

Seems fairly logical to me.

We know they're putting in subsystems, we know the subsystems include things like weapons, engins, shield generators, that sort of thing, and we know you have no direct control of capships.

THEREFORE a few things can be extrapolated.

1. You need a way to fight capital ships without flying one yourself.

2. You cannot precisely target subsystems with capitalships (because you cannot control them directly).

3. Your personal ship needs to be pretty versatile without being a capital ship.

4. It must be practical to attack and destroy capital ships with smaller ships because of the above.

5. The subsystem feature is going to be a major part of the game because of the numbers of them we're given (hundreds on a relatively small station) so it seems highly probable that they will make particular effort to include precisely controlled small fighter vs larger target with vulnerable subsystems gameplay, not least because this ia a proven formula in almost every game previous to X:R because this is the standard approach to boss fight construction, and in a sandbox game, capships and stations would be the bosses.

So it isn't really optimism in the sense of mindless positive thinking, it's assuming they're going to make the mechanics they've chosen fun, and also that they have basic logic skills, neither of which are unreasonable assumptions.

[Mightysword]

Oh I'm not saying it's unreasonable "logic", I just mean base on the track record, it's very optimistic to think the feature will be implmented as nicely as theory. The feature does not make the AI, it matter little if you have a few or some cool features, it comes down to whether you can write a good AI algorithm or not, and pass track record does not give a confident vote.

[Geek]

2. You cannot precisely target subsystems with capitalships (because you cannot control them directly).

Bernd stated you can issue detailed orders to remote ships, so they are very likely to be able to target subsystems.

[Alan Phipps]

One angle that seems to have been partially overlooked is that when X-R is released no-one will go round destroying the existing X2, X3R and X3TC games and their mods. If perchance X-R when it comes out is not to the liking of some current X players, it may well be the source of a lot of ideas and technology that can be reflected back into the pre-existing games as mods. The release of X3R and X3TC did not stamp out the playing and modding of X2 or X3R respectively.

I indeed hope that despite the similar setting, X-R will be significantly different to X3 and yet offer better AI gameplay with thoughtful and long-term player-challenge and without the need for a super-computer. There were elements of X3TC as a new X game that reflected X3R and XRM a little bit too closely for my personal taste. I will give the new game a good try-out and if it should eventually prove not to be for me then the older stalwart games are still there, so nothing is really lost.

[StarTroll]

I indeed hope that despite the similar setting, X-R will be significantly different to X3 and yet offer better AI gameplay with thoughtful and long-term player-challenge and without the need for a super-computer. There were elements of X3TC as a new X game that reflected X3R and XRM a little bit too closely for my personal taste. I will give the new game a good try-out and if it should eventually prove not to be for me then the older stalwart games are still there, so nothing is really lost.

Well X3TC is the "immediate" to X3R in the same series so of course the game would reflect the prequels. X:R is not a sequel, not even part of the series, it just shares the same settings as the X series. That is basically the gal behind X:R not being X4, to try new stuff without the restrictions of the past games.
Now if X:R is the first of a new series, how will we differenciate the two, 1st X and 2nd X series ?

[Alan Phipps]

Well I for one could never understand why they couldn't name even a totally new game but in the same genre series as X4-Rebirth.

[dougeye]

I indeed hope that despite the similar setting, X-R will be significantly different to X3 and yet offer better AI gameplay with thoughtful and long-term player-challenge and without the need for a super-computer. There were elements of X3TC as a new X game that reflected X3R and XRM a little bit too closely for my personal taste. I will give the new game a good try-out and if it should eventually prove not to be for me then the older stalwart games are still there, so nothing is really lost.

Well X3TC is the "immediate" to X3R in the same series so of course the game would reflect the prequels. X:R is not a sequel, not even part of the series, it just shares the same settings as the X series. That is basically the gal behind X:R not being X4, to try new stuff without the restrictions of the past games.
Now if X:R is the first of a new series, how will we differenciate the two, 1st X and 2nd X series ?

i think the "its not x4" quote is used to clearly display that this game is not just a makover of the old engine / graphics. as far as lore and the universe goes it is part of the x series its just based further along the timeline.

[softweir]

Is there any public beta-testing program for the upcoming game? I'd like to participate

Egosoft is highly dependant on volunteer beta testers! You do, however, have to sign a contract with Egosoft, essentially saying that you won't blab any secrets about their product(s), you won't get paid, you won't share blame for disclosure of secrets that you didn't do.

(I don't know if they are still recruiting for X:R, but there's no harm signing up.)

To sign up:

1. Go to your Profile
2. Scroll to the bottom, tick the radio button marked "I want to participate in the X-DEVNET:" and fill in your full and correct name and postal address. Forum nickname doesn't count! (This is so they can return a signed NDA to you.)
3. Click on to the link right at the bottom, where it says "Click here to view and print the development agreement ...".
4. Follow the instructions exactly.
5. Sign and post TWO copies of the NDA to Egosoft, or sign and send a copy electronically.
6. Wait. This may take some time.

[DominusNox]

XR/XTC Big ship navigation are bored me in to deep sleep, just some priority assignment in targeting systems and enjoy a beutiful view from behind the ship

There is still some navigation problem however, but they mentioned earlier that some major improvement has been made in pathfinding algorithm for X-R

So in X-R they give us almost all we have in XTC, regarding capships
we still able to control targeting sys, jump drives, weapon loadout
we still able to observe our capship from any point
plus we can land on hull, for what reason? My guess in that way we will be able to gain control over bigship

Definetly want to play a demo plus buy a game pluse downlod all patches and addons and mods et cetera

[handzon]

It looks like all the small ship classes are replaced by drones,

Ehm... Reference?

@cheakytoast: You're talking about X4. X:R is no X4. Most of your wishes are obsolete. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6UAB-YNXns - Watch this

i noticed the release date of 2012 top of screen in video , damm

[plynak]

Which honestly sounds like a massive improvement.

Which, honestly, sound like a massive optimistic thinking

Really?

Seems fairly logical to me.

We know they're putting in subsystems, we know the subsystems include things like weapons, engins, shield generators, that sort of thing, and we know you have no direct control of capships.

THEREFORE a few things can be extrapolated.

1. You need a way to fight capital ships without flying one yourself.

3. Your personal ship needs to be pretty versatile without being a capital ship.

5. The subsystem feature is going to be a major part of the game because of the numbers of them we're given (hundreds on a relatively small station) so it seems highly probable that they will make particular effort to include precisely controlled small fighter vs larger target with vulnerable subsystems gameplay, not least because this ia a proven formula in almost every game previous to X:R because this is the standard approach to boss fight construction, and in a sandbox game, capships and stations would be the bosses.

1) Really? Why? The idea of capital ships is that they can take care of themselves. In other words why to spend millions of credits for a cap ship, if it can be destroyed by 10 much cheaper fighters?

3) And that is the problem. The whole idea of having one ship seems really stupid to me. It defies the very basic idea of X games that every ship you see you can get and fly. Not to mention that a ship of size of an M6 taking down M2 is strange.

5) Umm, sorry, but a large target with vulnerable system is a contradiction. Why would anyone build a multimilion capital ship with a vulnerable system???

But what worries me most is the total lack of official information. It seems that they only have the game engine and now are deciding, what to do next. Come on Egosoft, these are your official forums for gods sake. Yet we have to get information from videos on Youtube and then speculate?