X-Rebirth, growing fears…

[hourheroyes]

Thanks, Egosoft crew, for delving into this wasps nest of speculation and finger pointing and giving us a few real answers.

Everyone has been SO dramatic about what will cause them to buy, not buy, cancel preorders, tell their friends, blaspheme, and all other sorts of slander when most things have been wild speculation. The game LOOKS fantastic, both in sense of immersion and graphically, and even though some features may not pan out how I'd like them to, who am I to say what the entire experience is going to look like until I actually see and feel real gameplay?


That being said, I do have one question I haven't seen much attention paid to--everyone is curious about piloting capitals, but what about leading squadrons of fighters? It'd suck to have a carrier ship without a fleet of smaller ships, or even hiring a few extra fighter to escort you into scary territory. Is that possible?

[Ketraar]

Here is a comparison

I hope it gets modded into something a little bigger.

Extrapolating comparison of ships in Albion Prelude is hardly a good thing to do, misleading at best. The Albion Pride in AP is "just" a Plot Ships that pops up once. Also scale of ships got lost way back in TC and only got worse in AP.

Just saying, if you want to make a case don't compare apples with linuxes.

MFG

Ketraar

PS.: Here an enlightening image that shows scales link

[Kittens David]

Anyway it seems meaningless going through the trouble of saying the Skunk isn't "no bigger than a CH-53" but actually "20 times the size of the CH-53", if the comment is yet again to complain about it being so small. M6 are all-round fighters. The Skunk can fight on his own and launch fighters, that's what makes it versatile, even more than a M6 actually. A M3 can't do much on his own.

BLAH BLAH BLAH... sounds like an Apple fanboy speaking about his religion. <.. and enough with the veiled insults thanks. Alan Phipps>

Well more honestly I never said it was as small as but from the video of landing and the player walking out it honestly looked no bigger than a CH53 to me.

Moreover in the pic even if out X AP... well it is clearly smaller than the centaur....

But to me the greates difference between the two are the lack of turret on the skunk.

Nevertheless I don't care of the smallness of the Albion Pride if modders can get us in other ships with turrets hangar bay and all... if not then I won't care even more as I won't buy it. That's why I've put that last question: modders can give us other ship or is the game coded in a way the skunk is the sole available ship.

[Santi]

Yes they can, drones are just "another ship" but without the fully modelled 3D environment.

[giskard]

I thought it was good to see Bernd taking the time to answer questions.

[Kittens David]

Yes they can, drones are just "another ship" but without the fully modelled 3D environment.

I speak of real ships not drones.... Ship like those transports

http://www.egosoft.com/games/x_rebirth/ ... lector.jpg

or this one

http://polychromium.files.wordpress.com ... en_004.jpg

or even this

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IKMyIW1kawY/T ... 0x1600.jpg

you know real big ship... drones you dont pilot them you just command them from your seat in the skunk... so while you are commanding them you are a sitting duck...

What I mean and you have perfectly understood it it to leave the skunk cockpit and go fly in another ship cockpit or command bridge.


{Images posted directly to the forums should not be greater than 640x480 or 100kb, oversize image now linked - Terre}

sorry for that Terre.

[Sevanje]

O my holy sun rays, it is a GAME, not some house that you are puting all your money in. Stop with this madness, if you don't like it (I don't even know how because we know very little about it) just go do something creative yourself, or go play other X games all over again.

[Santi]

Yes they can, drones are just "another ship" but without the fully modelled 3D environment.

I speak of real ships not drones.... Ship like those transports

http://www.egosoft.com/games/x_rebirth/ ... lector.jpg

or this one

http://polychromium.files.wordpress.com ... en_004.jpg

or even this

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IKMyIW1kawY/T ... 0x1600.jpg

you know real big ship... drones you dont pilot them you just command them from your seat in the skunk... so while you are commanding them you are a sitting duck...

What I mean and you have perfectly understood it it to leave the skunk cockpit and go fly in another ship cockpit or command bridge.


{Images posted directly to the forums should not be greater than 640x480 or 100kb, oversize image now linked - Terre}

sorry for that Terre.

Yes you can, you just need to mod the 3D environment (aka the cockpit) to those capital ships. The drones just prove that the game engine is not hardcoded for only one single ship as each drone has its own size, speed and weapons. The VR is a gimmick like the "transporter device" in X3.

[BigBANGtheory]

I thought it was good to see Bernd taking the time to answer questions.

Yes indeed, and others too its good to see you guys chiming in with facts to offset the fiction

Whatever way you want to pitch it X Rebirth looks like a significant step forward at the core where it counts.

[giskard]

Whatever way you want to pitch it X Rebirth looks like a significant step forward at the core where it counts.

Yes, it certainly looks like a massive update over the old sector model, which was probably the thing that made X feel so dated. I think it will be worth giving it a good play to see how it feels once the dust settles before deciding if its still X or something else entirely.

[MegaJohnny]

Wow you really are completely oblivious, aren't you kittens? It is fine if you don't like something but stop spreading lies. The Skunk is not a small ship, it is the size equivalent of an M6. It is larger than an M3 fighter and larger than an M8 bomber.

Calm down, being belligerent won't help anything.

And as much as I'd defend that the Skunk would be properly sized for an M6, when we consider the speed and agility of the Skunk, and the total lack of turrets, it seems more sensible to classify it as a heavy fighter than a corvette to me.

[Bernd]

That being said, I do have one question I haven't seen much attention paid to--everyone is curious about piloting capitals, but what about leading squadrons of fighters? It'd suck to have a carrier ship without a fleet of smaller ships, or even hiring a few extra fighter to escort you into scary territory. Is that possible?

Yes you can assign small ships to larger ships (carriers or not) as well as to stations. Thats the command hierarchy I was talking about.

Ships that are in YOUR (personal) command hierarchy however are directly taking orders and oftentimes this happens implicitly. That mans you dont necessarily have to even open a COMM first. The goal here is that such ships will often feel like just an extension of your own ship. We want to save the player the work of going through menus to select the ship for a job first.

e.g: If you have a collector ship (for minerals) in your group and start tagging asteroids they will quickly confirm their actions and start picking up the minerals. That way you do actually have a pretty direct control over what these ships do without actually sitting in their cockpits.

-Bernd

[giskard]

Sounds like a real time saver.

I remember having to hit the same keys over and over to issue orders and then again when I felt the ships did not respond fast enough, sometimes a wrong key press ended my game pretty quickly.

But there reaches a point when the players computer ends up playing the game for the player, which would be boring.

On the other hand having fleets of ships designed to do a single job following you around, means swapping out the fleet for a different type of fleet would completely change how game feels. Eg mining or combat or both.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

ship hierarchy information

Well, that's pretty awesome. I DO like the idea of implicit commands, a lot. I hope it's not, like, ALL implicit though. Sometimes it's beneficial to tell a specific ship to go do a specific thing in a specific place.

As always, we appreciate you dropping into the trenches to clear things up, Mr. B.

If you still have the time, would you mind clarifying this - While I'm walking around in a station or capital ship, can I open a comm link to one of my properties and give it an order? Or is that something I can only do sitting in the pilot seat of the Skunk?

[MegaJohnny]

It sounds like the principle is now less about telling X ship to perform Y action, and more like telling X ship what his role is beforehand, so that when you say you want Y job doing ("mine these asteroids!" in your example), he'll hop to it without being prompted.

I hope I've got the right picture, because that sounds pretty awesome and fast without compromising on anything.

It also sounds like this encourages you bringing a "posse" around with you, which is also great - it's something I shyed away from in X3 because I didn't really trust the AI with them, but I always wanted to do it.

[Mightysword]

Ships that are in YOUR (personal) command hierarchy however are directly taking orders and oftentimes this happens implicitly. That mans you dont necessarily have to even open a COMM first. The goal here is that such ships will often feel like just an extension of your own ship. We want to save the player the work of going through menus to select the ship for a job first.

Somehow that reminds me of the those Special NewType gundams with telepathic attack satellite.

[BlackRain]

Wow you really are completely oblivious, aren't you kittens? It is fine if you don't like something but stop spreading lies. The Skunk is not a small ship, it is the size equivalent of an M6. It is larger than an M3 fighter and larger than an M8 bomber.

Calm down, being belligerent won't help anything.

And as much as I'd defend that the Skunk would be properly sized for an M6, when we consider the speed and agility of the Skunk, and the total lack of turrets, it seems more sensible to classify it as a heavy fighter than a corvette to me.

How can you tell someone to calm down over the internet? Heh, I am completely calm and the guy was being extremely hard headed and hostile. He also seemed to be completely ignoring what people were saying, Bernd himself, so saying he is oblivious is hardly being belligerent since he was being oblivious in completely ignoring everything going on around him.

[theeclownbroze]

Wow you really are completely oblivious, aren't you kittens? It is fine if you don't like something but stop spreading lies. The Skunk is not a small ship, it is the size equivalent of an M6. It is larger than an M3 fighter and larger than an M8 bomber.

Calm down, being belligerent won't help anything.

And as much as I'd defend that the Skunk would be properly sized for an M6, when we consider the speed and agility of the Skunk, and the total lack of turrets, it seems more sensible to classify it as a heavy fighter than a corvette to me.

How can you tell someone to calm down over the internet? Heh, I am completely calm and the guy was being extremely hard headed and hostile. He also seemed to be completely ignoring what people were saying, Bernd himself, so saying he is oblivious is hardly being belligerent since he was being oblivious in completely ignoring everything going on around him.

Why do you care?

[Cakefish]

If you feel that there is not enough information to make an informed decision on whether to purchase, then simply wait. There are several months until release for Egosoft to explain and demonstrate more about how the game works. And just after launch all the answers will be there for you, guaranteed, so you can make an informed decision then. No excuse for piracy.

[BlackRain]

Wow you really are completely oblivious, aren't you kittens? It is fine if you don't like something but stop spreading lies. The Skunk is not a small ship, it is the size equivalent of an M6. It is larger than an M3 fighter and larger than an M8 bomber.

Calm down, being belligerent won't help anything.

And as much as I'd defend that the Skunk would be properly sized for an M6, when we consider the speed and agility of the Skunk, and the total lack of turrets, it seems more sensible to classify it as a heavy fighter than a corvette to me.

How can you tell someone to calm down over the internet? Heh, I am completely calm and the guy was being extremely hard headed and hostile. He also seemed to be completely ignoring what people were saying, Bernd himself, so saying he is oblivious is hardly being belligerent since he was being oblivious in completely ignoring everything going on around him.

Why do you care?

Heh, I am bored so I am wasting time posting here