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

[Chris0132]

What flying a capship was in X3 was necessary, because there wasn't really any other way to kill a bunch of enemy capital ships, you couldn't lead a daring fighter charge to hit the weak point, you just had to slowly drift around in your capship while the turrets shoot them up. Not really very action packed.

But what you are saying is like complaining "In order to eat I need a mouth, and that's not very exciting". You know ... you can try to eat through the nose ... dangerous but I reckon it would be exciting.

The point is a certain task should require certain amount of resource. That's not to say it does indeed possible to take out multiple capships with a fighter already in X and for me that's already bad enough, I don't want to see a gimmick to make it any easier. If you're into the God Protogonist thingy and see targets many time your size go down around you like flies I would recommend you to look at Japanese anime based game, I can even recommend some tittle to server your taste like various Gundam game or Project SYLPHEED. All those explosions look cool but sometime I wonder if all those big, expensive target are there just for the little craft the protag flying to blow up. I don't want those kind of thing in a Sim, even if it's only a half decent Sim, if X is still a Sim that is, unless they decide to go the arcade route.

To a point, yes, but in X everything takes a long time.

By the time you can afford a few fighters, you've done a huge amount of busywork, you don't need to do more busywork to afford a capship just so you can sit in it and be invincible.

The problem with having capships be the start and finish of all combat is that you make everything else useless. To the point where either you only use other ships out of sheer boredom, or because you want to roleplay or something, or because you want a self enforced challenge, OR the game is balanced around the capital ship and using anything but the capital ship is effectively impossible (see late game TC generated missions).

If all elements of the game fill a required role, the game is much more balanced, and when it's balanced you have a more interesting game because there are many effective ways to play it, whereas the only effective way to play all the content in X3 is to make a lot of money, buy a lot of capital ships, and swarm everything with them.

It'd be nice to be able to use a ship I like, rather than a ship I need, or if I have to, use quite a few ships I like, and maybe have a ship I need in the area to fire the occasional PPC volley at something I can't quite kill by myself.

yeah we dont want another Q situation were you can fly in behind its wing things and hold down fire until you kill it lol

Perhaps not, but flying in past the intial point defence fire, taking out its PPC turrets, flying round to disable its engines, then calling in an overgunned corvette to smash down the shield generator protecting a critical system, blowing that up, then getting away before the entire thing explodes, all the while dogfighting with drones being launched by the Q, that would be rather fun, no?

Don't confuse bad implementations with bad ideas please.

[Nanook]

Well, as long as I can upgrade The One Ship to a death star - in size, not just firepower - I can probably accept the monoshipular system.

At which point it becomes a capital ship, and Bernd said we can't fly capital ships personally. Now whadda ya do?

Sounds like this game is gonna cater to the M6/M7 crowd and leave the fighter jocks and the bigship captains, and probably the freighter pilots, too, out in the cold.

[thetack]

what about us traders dont forget its possible to play X3 and X2 without firing a shot outside the plots, i dont care about cap ships the biggest thing i have ever flown in any of the games is an M6.
i trade, i build trading empires where everyone but the purple triangles and ibms love me if there was a way to trade with them even they would too
all i want to know is do i have to have steam and will my rig run it , if i dont and it will i will buy the game play the game and then flame Ego if they f***k it up, until the game is released no one but them and testers know a monkeys d**k about the game its fetures and the stuff that will come out in patch 1 after all how mutch is mentioned in the manuals for X3 that never made it into the game.
Ego will release then we can kick s**t out of them if they f**k up or buy them beer if they dont until then stop moaning whining and crying about it.

rant over normality will return after a pint or two.

[Nanook]

what about us traders dont forget its possible to play X3 and X2 without firing a shot outside the plots...

I thought my inclusion of 'freighter pilots' covered that. I guess I should've mentioned TL-driving empire builders, too. Most trader-types don't personally fly TL's, though, for obvious reasons. Sorry for leaving them out of my rant.

[Chris0132]

An M6 with a decent cargo bay holds more than TS, plus the subsystem idea means you can probably slap more guns, OR more engine/cargo space on your ship. Essentially allowing you to build whatever kind of ship you want, as long as it is in in the M4-M6 weight class. M5s seem to be what the new drones do, and a TS is basically a cheap M6 without any guns on it.

I know in the video they mentioned having things like storage subsystems and engines as a subsystem, as well as shields and turrets, as I said before, different balances of those amount for 90% of the difference between most ships of the M4-M6 class range.

[perkint]

An M6 with a decent cargo bay holds more than TS

I think you're stretching it there! Isn't the hyp the biggest, with just over the minimum you can get in a TS?

TS is basically a cheap M6 without any guns on it

Again, a huge stretch there!

I know in the video they mentioned having things like storage subsystems and engines as a subsystem, as well as shields and turrets

Yeah, but engines mentioned as targettable subsystems and storage as something you can add to stations. I am not convinced you'll be able to add storage modules to ships.

But, as always, we don't really have enough info to know one way or another, for sure

Tim

[Nanook]

An M6 with a decent cargo bay holds more than TS...

Sounds like you're confusing 'TS' with 'TP'. The M6 with the largest cargo bay is the Hyperion Vanguard, with a max of 3333. The smallest TS cargo bay is on the Split Caiman and it maxes out at 3500. The largest TS cargo bay is on the Mistral Superfreighter, at 15,000.

BTW, the next closest M6 cargo bay is 2000 on the Springblossom, and the sizes drop dramatically from there.

[Chris0132]

Who on earth flies a superfreighter? They're slow as hell.

If you're going to trade, honestly I would have thought you'd pick speed and a few thousand units of cargo, then buy and sell expensive things, which generally earn you more money and don't come in large enough sizes to merit more than 2000-3000 units of cargo. Stuff like weapons, chips, weed, booze, that sort of thing.

Unless you're supplying a massive complex, which you would obviously do by remote, a few thousand units of space is generally all you need. Bulk is for the AI, precision is for the player.

If I'm trading I'd prefer to fly a katana than anything else, decent speed, durable, guns if you need them (and you always do sooner or later) and I think the cargo bay is like 1500, which is more than enough to carry a million credits of guns around the place, and I'd be much more comfortable doing it in a katana than one of those flying coke cans that pass for freighters.

My point is basically you don't need a TS to trade, you can trade with anything bigger than an M3 quite easily.

[Geek]

If you really play as a full time merchant, trading weapons is not going to be your main activity. In fact, this is not even an option at the beginning. Trading basic wares (ecells, food...) requiresa large cargo bay, because the profit per unit is very small.

BTW ships having subsystems does not mean they are modifiable at will. These are two different things.

[Chris0132]

They did say that stations would use modules (which would be subsystems) to customise their functionality, that you could stick shield generators and turrets and economic things onto them at will, it seems reasonable that this would extend to ships as well, given that you have the technology already built and they did show ship-sized turrets as part of the module presentation.

So it isn't explicitly confirmed, but it seems highly probable.

And yeah at the start you can't trade weapons, but trading anything other than high-cost stuff is really slow and boring, I find it difficult to imagine anybody would actually play the game the way the AI runs universe traders, doing high value trading yes, doing cargo run missions, yes, those can be quite profitable. Doing manual distribution for your own high-value factories, maybe, done that myself, starting the game doing a bit of bulk trading to get the first few credits, sure why not.

But playing the entire game in a TS running ecells from place to place, I find that a bit hard to believe, and if people do do that, I think they need to be given better options because they are clearly not finding much in the game to enjoy.

You could pretty easily make pure trading possible without requiring giant cargo bays by just adding a few more medium-value wares, that way you can turn a profit in most places without having to fly a superfreighter. And it would mean you could switch more easily to high value trading, speed trading, maybe a bit of light combat, without having to sell your ship and buy a new one and get set back a few hundred thousand credits in the process.

[Geek]

I do not think stations modules and ships subsytems are the same.
Stations modules could probably operate on their own, while a single subsystem has not meaning without the parent ship.

[Nanook]

Who on earth flies a superfreighter? ....

A lot of people. Don't assume everyone plays the game the same way you do.

[thetack]

slow and boring trading, i cant think of anything more boring than flying a destroyer and killing everthing in sight, the best part of the game was the begining finding that lucrative e cell run and working out the credits vs profits of expanding the m4s hull and or engine tuning, once you can buy anything you want the game is as dull as eastenders.

[StarTroll]

If you want to play a pure trader, you will obviously have to start trading cheap common wares to aciqure the minimum capital to get to trade in wepons and high tech stuff, so boring it may be but necessary. We don't know how well the economy will work in X:R but in X3TC trading in weapons wasn't exactly a possible choice for trading, since a factory had to have more than half of its stock and selling it to an EQ where you have static prices to even make a single benefice.

[Mightysword]

By the time you can afford a few fighters, you've done a huge amount of busywork, you don't need to do more busywork to afford a capship just so you can sit in it and be invincible.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here at all.

The problem with having capships be the start and finish of all combat is that you make everything else useless.

If you're talking about pass X games, then that's definitely not true at all. If you're talking about Rebirth, I seriously doubt that ship of yours is a fully featured capital ship from the get go, even if it will eventually be one.

whereas the only effective way to play all the content in X3 is to make a lot of money, buy a lot of capital ships, and swarm everything with them.

Again, not true, not true at all. It sounds more like this is the only way you know how to play it, but definitely not the only way that everyone have to play. You can comfortably play the game at Ace of Ace with nothing more than a wing of fighters. There are always "easy" and "very easy" missions on the BBS, you can always go after pirate and Xenon instead of taking out big fat target. You can always load torpedo and kill big targets in your fighter. It seems to me you complain is because you always want to go after the highest rank mission, the biggest target, the fattest payout while at the same time, don't want to bring a bigger gun, and that doesn't make sense. Also using your own argument, if a fighter can already solo everything "comfortably", what is the point of flying a cap ship unless you're bored?

[Chris0132]

slow and boring trading, i cant think of anything more boring than flying a destroyer and killing everthing in sight, the best part of the game was the begining finding that lucrative e cell run and working out the credits vs profits of expanding the m4s hull and or engine tuning, once you can buy anything you want the game is as dull as eastenders.

Flying a superfreighter is like flying a destroyer without the explosions, it is quite possibly the only thing in the game more boring than flying a destroyer, and flying a destroyer is pretty dull, which is why I think both parts of the game need improving. While it is possible to enjoy them obviously, as it is possible to enjoy almost anything. I enjoy debugging entity logic in half life 2 levels, doesn't mean it's a good idea to put it in a game or that it is a fun activity.

There's a lot of room for improvement in trading, players shouldn't be forced to use dull ships and do dull cargo runs in order to make money trading, the game would be vastly improved if trading included things like buying smaller amounts of goods, and flying them places in more interesting ships. Say you have to make a delivery in an asteroid belt, have players fly through it and dodge rocks. Have the occasional small pirate attack so you do a bit of light fighting, have players find unusual and valuable cargo out in space so they have to make cargo runs unexpectedly if they want to cash in on them. Break up the monotony a bit. I imagine it would improve the game for a lot of people if you did that.

That's sort of the point of a sequel, improvement, even stuff I like in X has plenty of room for improvement, why would I buy a game that doesn't change things from the previous iteration? If I want to play that game I'll play that game, I want a new one, a better one, a different one. Hell I'll pick different rather than better if I have to pick one or the other, because different is ultimately more interesting than 'the same but slightly better'.

[Chris0132]

Again, not true, not true at all. It sounds more like this is the only way you know how to play it, but definitely not the only way that everyone have to play. You can comfortably play the game at Ace of Ace with nothing more than a wing of fighters. There are always "easy" and "very easy" missions on the BBS, you can always go after pirate and Xenon instead of taking out big fat target. You can always load torpedo and kill big targets in your fighter. It seems to me you complain is because you always want to go after the highest rank mission, the biggest target, the fattest payout while at the same time, don't want to bring a bigger gun, and that doesn't make sense. Also using your own argument, if a fighter can already solo everything "comfortably", what is the point of flying a cap ship unless you're bored?

If you want to do all the missions, you'll fairly quickly outpace fighters, it doesn't take very long for me to run into corvettes when doing defence missions, or swarms of xenon fighters with instahit weapons, things you simply need a bigger ship to deal with.

If you only do very easy missions you're going to have to grind a hell of a lot in order to get anywhere, it's just the game punishing you for not using a capship, which is entirely the point. Either you use a capship, or the game becomes stupid hard/tedious. The other way it can go is that using a capship makes the game stupidly easy, but you can never have a proper balance while one type of ship is way more powerful than any other.

Which is why I keep saying that making all ships required is a better way to do it, a capship is more powerful, but lacks the ability to do things you need doing, so you bring fighters for that, at the moment it's just capships are more powerful, lots more powerful, and that's it.

[Mightysword]

But that's natural. Again, it seems to me that you want for a fighter to do the same thing as a capital ship and earn the same pay out. So someone bring in a 100mil vessel and earn a 20mil payout, it makes sense that if someone only bring in a 5mil vessel to earn a 1 mil payout. The game "gives" you the option, it doesn't punish you for that but it have to scale in a way that make sense. It's like because you want to use a level one weapon in a RPG for whatever reason then when the later bosses kick your butt, you complain that the game is punishing you for using your favorite weapon. Or if you like to trade in your M5, yeah it will get tedious but that's up to you if you don't want to use a TS. That - does - not - make - sense.


Also what you said about the game scaling is totally untrue, it doesn't have to be "stupid hard/tedious" or "total faceroll", you can always make adjustment to make the game "just right". It's not like X3 was set up in a way that if you fly a fighter, you can't fly a capital ship, and it's not like there is only a M3 and a M2 with nothing in between. You are free to decide which asset you want to bring

- Use one fighter.
- Use a wing of fighter.
- Use multiple wings of fighter (if you love fighter that much).
- use a M6.
- Use a M6 with multiple fighters escort.
- Use multiple M6.
- Use M8
- Use M8 with fighter.
- Use M7.
- Use a M7 task force. (mixed with other classes).
- Use multiple M7.
- Use M2.
- Use M2 with M1 escort.
- Use multiple M2.

So no ... I think you just have to be more diverse in your game. And again, if you insist a single fighter should be doing the same thing as a M2, then a Japanese anime game is much better suit for that.

Which is why I keep saying that making all ships required is a better way to do it, a capship is more powerful, but lacks the ability to do things you need doing, so you bring fighters for that, at the moment it's just capships are more powerful, lots more powerful, and that's it.

Oh I agree with that, but it wasn't what you have been saying though

[strude]

Or equally look at fallout 3, portal 2, half life 2, call of duty 4, team fortress 2.

Change is not inherently bad, I don't see any reason for excessive pessimism, this is the same company who has been making X for a long time, I think at this point you can cut them a little slack.

Of these I've only played Portal 2 and Half Life 2, but I can't say either of those titles offered what I'd call change.

Portal 2 was Portal with some new game mechanics added to the existing ones. Not really a change in the inherent game play.

Half Life 2 was a typical FPS. It added much more physics interaction to what was present in Half Life, and I felt it had a great and compelling story, but nothing that I'd call a change in game play mechanic from the original.

From what I understand of the other titles, they are essentially typical for their genres, and didn't offer a huge amount of change from their predecessors game play. As a list of titles highlighting how change isn't bad, I feel it offers little in the way of examples.

[Zloth]

YOU WILL BE ABLE TO CONTROL MORE THAN ONE SHIP! "control" being the key word...

This.

It sounds like the same system we have now but, instead if dying with your ship, you just get 'connection lost' and you'll have to control a different ship. What I'm wondering is how much range do we have in that control? Will we need to be in the same sector? A neighboring sector? Maybe it's something that starts short ranged but can be increased for a not-at-all-reasonable fee? Could certain enemies be able to track the source of the control and jump in next to you while you're having your out-of-sector experience? Could even more expensive technology mess with that tracking to make it look like some third party was really in control?