Is this game worth getting?

[Ketraar]

I see your point, but bringing back "the old system" is as much if not more work then fixing the existing one. I cant say why it takes so long, all I hope is that there is no going back only forward and I'm willing to wait, but I understand peoples frustration.

MFG

Ketraar

[yoyolll]

I've been seeing Nikola reporting the same bugs since release, and most have not been fixed. Economy has barely even been touched. I don't think that they will be "fixing" it at any point in the future. My hopes are that XR2 is not a mess like this game and the devs also concentrate on economy as much as they do on combat and visuals.

[Nikola515]

I've been seeing Nikola reporting the same bugs since release, and most have not been fixed. Economy has barely even been touched. I don't think that they will be "fixing" it at any point in the future. My hopes are that XR2 is not a mess like this game and the devs also concentrate on economy as much as they do on combat and visuals.

I agree with you. For what I have seen in past 2 years egosoft haven't even got interested in doing anything about it. And unfortunately i have my doubts that they ever will..... It is a damn shame because I always loved XR economic concept(the way it should be ).

[BigBANGtheory]

Well its hard to tell because like many other aspects and features its been a one sided discussion for years.

[GCU Grey Area]

I have cell fab and it is full and no more room to produce anything.Station is 100% finished and it should trade trough whole sectors. I have 8 Rahanas assign to them

8 of them? I'm curious, why so many? Don't think I've ever assigned anywhere near that many ships to a single station. I generally aim for 1 specialised freighter for each ware type used by the station + 1 universal freighter (often a Titurel) to provide help wherever needed. If a station is really struggling with particular wares (generally because it has lots of resources of the same type, e.g. drone factory has quite a lot of container wares), I might consider providing 1 additional freighter of the appropriate type, but that's about as much as I'd want to spend on transports for a single station.

[Nikola515]

Originally i had 3 Rahanas but i though maybe my manager needs more ships because station was always full and stations around it empty. So i added more ships but it seems that was not the case

[DaMuncha]

We're no longer here debating our opinions on weather or not the game sucks. We're all here to debate the degree at which it sucks.

[pref]

Sorry but what rules for traders? Buy this at this price, sell this at this price? Wow, lot of thought into that! Or did you mean something else? Please explain

Yep. Possibility to control trade routes with source/destination, price tresholds, stock levels.
Though generally im really not into waiting for production cycles, or offers to pop up (unless it's the game i choose to play, but 80% of the time it isn't the case).

At least in X3 (even with MORTs) i could dock the ship at the station, and it could instantly buy as soon as the wares showed up.
Instead now i have to wait for an offer, which might not even be posted - i noticed on several occasions that not the full amount (~50% even) was posted for an end product (at my own fabs as well as npc ones), i assume because some NPC trader booked a trade quicker then the time it takes for the trade window to refresh, or before the offer got posted.

Also this offer system blocked me from directly manipulating my stations' cargo. If any NPC decides to buy my stuff at the far end of the universe, he can just reduce my stock and have priority over me regarding the wares my own fab produces.

While the only advantage is that it's fail-safe - once the offer is taken, you have the wares. Which leaves you with the challenge of spotting min/max values in the trade list again.
Even this was better in X3, as your asset's capabilities mattered in the race (speed, jumpdrive, or running there with a jump beacon in an M5).
In XR all you are left with is a race to click on the trade window sooner then the AI does.
(Last i played was on 3.1 btw.)

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

AIs don't reserve wares until they are just about to dock, I think.

Since Rebirth's economy has a different focus comparing to X3 (capital ship traders, massive amounts of wares, different station production working and overall larger stations), I think that the current stock reserve system fits well here.

[GCU Grey Area]

Instead now i have to wait for an offer, which might not even be posted - i noticed on several occasions that not the full amount (~50% even) was posted for an end product (at my own fabs as well as npc ones), i assume because some NPC trader booked a trade quicker then the time it takes for the trade window to refresh, or before the offer got posted.

Bear in mind that production cycles are generally on the order of 15-20 minutes. Data for resource consumption rates, production rates & time to resource depletion are given in hours for each production module. Suspect your 50% amount was from a factory with 2 synched modules operating on 15 minute cycles. Also there is sometimes a lag of a few seconds between a production cycle completing & the goods appearing on the trade screen. To ensure I get them I open the trade screen within station details (rather than the main trade screen) & alternately press 2 (trade offers) & 1 (back) until the wares appear - means I can buy them within a matter of seconds of them becoming available.

Also this offer system blocked me from directly manipulating my stations' cargo. If any NPC decides to buy my stuff at the far end of the universe, he can just reduce my stock and have priority over me regarding the wares my own fab produces.

Use ware transfer with one of your ships to directly access wares stored inside your station. It's often more convenient anyway - no need to find the relevant entry on the trade screen & transfers are unrestricted with respect to ware limits (though obviously overall storage capacity still applies) & even whether the station actually has any use for the wares at all (e.g. temporary storage of stolen gun turrets inside a food factory in order to empty the hold of a boarded freighter, until I can find a buyer for the guns). You can also restrict NPCs from trading with your stations, either completely or on a per ware basis (e.g. I often restrict sales of RMP & other station building materials, but I'm happy for NPCs to deliver resources to those factories).

[pref]

It was not exactly 50%, and different each time. Just mentioned that the loss could go as high as 50. Sometimes i could get (almost) the full cycle. Or the full amount usually for not so hot wares.

Not sure though how freight transfer works concerning trade offers (can you kill an offer by removing the stock or not). I assume it cannot take any autoallocated cargo. Last time i played, no freight transfer was possible between my ships and stations at all so i cannot say.

[GCU Grey Area]

It was not exactly 50%, and different each time. Just mentioned that the loss could go as high as 50. Sometimes i could get (almost) the full cycle. Or the full amount usually for not so hot wares.

Often production modules on the same station have different production rates (due to different efficiency modifiers). Suspect this may be the discrepancy. If you're ready for it you can always get the full output of a production cycle - the NPCs aren't that fast & can't reserve wares that haven't been produced yet, any more than the player can. I generally set an alarm to remind me when an important NPC station's production cycle is about to complete so I can be ready to buy. Personally find it much better than the situation in X3 where I had no idea how long I'd be waiting for an NPC factory to produce it's next batch.

Not sure though how freight transfer works concerning trade offers (can you kill an offer by removing the stock or not). I assume it cannot take any autoallocated cargo. Last time i played, no freight transfer was possible between my ships and stations at all so i cannot say.

No idea what happens if you take away all the wares from a station & there's an existing trade in progress. However not sure why I'd want to kill a trade in that manner anyway. Depending on the specific ware involved I'm either perfectly happy with NPCs buying as much of it as they want or I restrict trade in that ware (e.g. station building materials), let the station stockpile & if it runs out of storage capacity I'll organise a manual trade run to sell the excess. Consequently there is little to no automatic trade in wares I manually adjust via freight transfer.

[BlackRain]

It was not exactly 50%, and different each time. Just mentioned that the loss could go as high as 50. Sometimes i could get (almost) the full cycle. Or the full amount usually for not so hot wares.

Not sure though how freight transfer works concerning trade offers (can you kill an offer by removing the stock or not). I assume it cannot take any autoallocated cargo. Last time i played, no freight transfer was possible between my ships and stations at all so i cannot say.

I am pretty sure that with ware transfer, you can remove any ware you want in any amount, it doesn't matter if an npc wanted to trade it (but obviously need to remove it before it is actually being moved to the npc ship)

You, of course, don't need to do that, though. You can just restrict the trade to NPCs and they wont be able to buy it anyway

[pref]

Nice that it gets better slowly. Not being able to use/store my own wares the way i wanted was a huge source of dissatisfaction. Made my own production kinda pointless apart from making money.

Still, back to the original point about trade, it seems to hold that the nature of the challenge has been changed
from being able to get there first (utilizing knowledge of the game world better)
to clicking quicker on the trade offer in the list (refreshing the trade list more often).
Unless there were any changes regarding trade since 3.1

I mainly see this as a step back from gameplay pov - even if the system is more complex.
Then comes the lack of possibility for empire config (suppliers/consumers, blacklists etc). But this might be more of a station AI topic and not trade.
And probably there will be soon (or might exist already) a cag/cls equivalent mod.

Generally im not liking the way of thinking i sense behind this - reduction of gameplay to easy and/or repetitive tasks. The trade list click vs getting there, the full auto stations vs cag/cls, minigame instead of satellites, conversations instead of ui for fleet control, station presets vs configurable plexes, or even not having FF because it confuses players - all pushes the game in a direction i dont really like. Hope this attitude is not on the list of things to be kept for the next title.

Anyway im not saying it has to be X3 all over again - just trying to explain why the huge level of dislike from my end regarding a seemingly smaller detail.
X3 is just an easy reference in this case to show the attitude change between the 2 games. I dont mean there is no other way to make a good space sim except X3 on XR engine (though i'd probably enjoy that for a loooong time).

[BlackRain]

Nice that it gets better slowly. Not being able to use/store my own wares the way i wanted was a huge source of dissatisfaction. Made my own production kinda pointless apart from making money.

Still, back to the original point about trade, it seems to hold that the nature of the challenge has been changed
from being able to get there first (utilizing knowledge of the game world better)
to clicking quicker on the trade offer in the list (refreshing the trade list more often).
Unless there were any changes regarding trade since 3.1

I mainly see this as a step back from gameplay pov - even if the system is more complex.
Then comes the lack of possibility for empire config (suppliers/consumers, blacklists etc). But this might be more of a station AI topic and not trade.
And probably there will be soon (or might exist already) a cag/cls equivalent mod.

Generally im not liking the way of thinking i sense behind this - reduction of gameplay to easy and/or repetitive tasks. The trade list click vs getting there, the full auto stations vs cag/cls, minigame instead of satellites, conversations instead of ui for fleet control, station presets vs configurable plexes, or even not having FF because it confuses players - all pushes the game in a direction i dont really like. Hope this attitude is not on the list of things to be kept for the next title.

Anyway im not saying it has to be X3 all over again - just trying to explain why the huge level of dislike from my end regarding a seemingly smaller detail.
X3 is just an easy reference in this case to show the attitude change between the 2 games. I dont mean there is no other way to make a good space sim except X3 on XR engine (though i'd probably enjoy that for a loooong time).

While it is true that you click on a trade menu, it doesn't have to be exactly like that. I mean, you could, for example, go on your trade vessel and travel with it to Omicron lyrae for example. Go around one of the sectors and look for trades, sectory by sector, without going into the trade menu. You can click on stations in the map menu or while near a station and look for trade offers for that station. You could buy a good, like food, and then go around in your trade vessel looking manually for good opportunities, sector by sector, zone by zone.

It really comes down to how you want to play in my opinion. I like to just look through the trade menu and have my ships make trades (there are mods for auto traders too).

You can manually run your stations. Another example. You are running your station and you are on a trade vessel, or not, and have your trade vessel pick up goods from your station and then take the ship to wherever and look for trades in different areas (not looking at the trade menu), etc.
If that is your thing.

[pref]

Yes you can do it like that, but you would be much better off using the trade list doing whatever else meanwhile.
This is just a slower way to click on the offer. You will be at no advantage because you are 20 mins closer to the station, or have a better ship at same distance as the npc, as the wares are allocated when taking the offer.
Whoever has a quicker refresh rate wins the deal as i see.

[Santi]

NPC's stealing your trade is a normal occurrence in all X games included Rebirth, you buy and sell wares and so do NPC's. I do know that in Rebirth those NPC's will buy or sell wares according to Station offers, making the trade menu a more organic market, in previous games you could always make money with E-cells, Silicon, Ore and a few more wares, it takes some time and knowledge to find out and set up a good trade route, something that I enjoy doing a lot, but it was always the same for every start afterwards.

Now you can really oversupply stations and your 2 new ships that you bought, to even make more profit, are now surplus to requirement and a waste of your money. The reason you keep refreshing the Trade menu is because as stations produce wares the offers change, in quantity and price. Add the capability to fly to the station and do the "sights", small talk minigame and you have the ability to make a so so deal into a nice one.

The challenge is now to keep an eye in the market and find out what wares are in demand right now, compared to find out what wares and where will be always in demand. I like both systems but I lean more towards a more organic market as it makes every game start a bit different.

[BlackRain]

Yes you can do it like that, but you would be much better off using the trade list doing whatever else meanwhile.
This is just a slower way to click on the offer. You will be at no advantage because you are 20 mins closer to the station, or have a better ship at same distance as the npc, as the wares are allocated when taking the offer.
Whoever has a quicker refresh rate wins the deal as i see.

What I mean is, you DO NOT Take the offer until you arrive at a location. So let's say you find a good deal on reinforced metal plating while traveling around. You don't look at the trade menu. You just head over to gemstone manufactury because there is a shipyard there and you know shipyards use Reinforced Metal Plating. When you get there, you click on the station in the map, bring up details of the station, click on trade offers (only shows you trade offers for that station and no other). They want RMP and you make a profit (Now what you don't know is that there might not be an offer when you get there because another merchant may have already taken the deal before you got there).

[GCU Grey Area]

I mainly see this as a step back from gameplay pov - even if the system is more complex.
Then comes the lack of possibility for empire config (suppliers/consumers, blacklists etc). But this might be more of a station AI topic and not trade.
And probably there will be soon (or might exist already) a cag/cls equivalent mod.

You don't get sector blacklists (etc) in X3 either unless you mod the game - vanilla trade commands don't have those functions. As for CAG/CLS, there is an XR CLS mod equivalent: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=377014 but no XR CAG mod yet that I'm aware of, perhaps because vanilla station freighters are already closer in functionality to CAG than to the old mk2 trade commands.

[Graaf]

You don't get sector blacklists (etc) in X3 either unless you mod the game - vanilla trade commands don't have those functions.

It always wonders me why people always refer to the Bonus Pack as mods. Since it is Egosoft-approved, I consider it as DLC.