EGOSOFT and Deep Silver announce X Rebirth

[handzon]

i often use scouts to draw xenon fleets away from gates etc, drop sats way above gates and always keep one handy to use as an last resort escape pod the latter has saved my butt a few times

[ThommoHawk]

WHAT USE IS AN M5 ??? !!!

It happens to be my favourite ship class. I am not saying it is the most usefull, but it is my favourite. All M5 ships are useful as exploring rigs, (though not all can use jump drives or deliver satellites due to cargo specifications), and my pirate kestrel is always attached to my Hyperion Yatch.

They are the fastest class.
The are the most affordable class.
They are the quickest to repair laser class. (in-station cheapest).
They can still carry passengers and are essential for some taxi missions.
They make good jump drive delivery ships before you get your fist carrier.
Some have in-build triplex scanners - no need to buy one to explore, map sectors, or to survey asteroids. (hint, why is the argon M5 named the 'discovery'?)
They are essential if you want to do certain missions and keep your fighting rep low as possible, ie; corporate missions.
If you do have to fight, they can do well if you have a couple of drones in your hold.
If you ever get 'bored' then they make the perfect ship to enjoy the ultimate fighting challenge.

Oh - and a Raptor with 65 pirate kestrels can deliver the ultimate in 'fighting drones' to protect your station complex from any invasion providing the ultimate in quick response defense.

IMO M5's have a very relevant place in the game.

Edit: there are certain ships in X3TC that were introduced for the sole purpose of being able to trasverse large, non-jumpgate sectors (trans-orbital accelerators used instead), relatively quick compared to other pre-existing ships. Like the Spitfyre M3, Springblossom M6. imo the developers made this concession in ship specs becuase of the new terran sector envirnonments, and for no other reason. (Thank goodness that they did, too).

[Bobucles]

I'd like to point out that M5's have the combat potential of a few fighter drones. Fighter drones are cheaper, often faster, and more annoying than scouts could ever be.

The M5 can't really be considered any more than a "civilian" style vessel. That ridiculously low firepower and shielding have no place on the field of battle.

What is worth scouting in the X universe? All commerce is restricted through jump gates. The very nature of jump gates act as an air tight checkpoint between zones, since EVERYONE has to use them. Place a checkpoint at each gate, and you don't have any need to scout against outside aggression, because it's all coming through your front door.

The only use for scouts is to try to examine hostile zones. The best counter for that is to place a battle fleet outside the gate. Nothing gets through alive. How do you fight that? Your ships go through ONE AT A TIME, and they already have the fleet camping it. The only way to scout is to send wave after wave of expendable drones, in the hope that one lives long enough to snap a picture and send it back.

Unless, of course, there is some technology that allows ships to jump into the middle of sectors, like most mission targets in X3TC.

A fast ship is absolutely needed for players to explore with. I'm not sure an entire ship class is needed for it.

[StarTroll]

A fast ship is absolutely needed for players to explore with. I'm not sure an entire ship class is needed for it.

With X's way of implementing ships, it means 1 fast ship per race, and that becomes a class in itself, the M5, while it's true that not all of them fit the role you describe.

[Shootist]

Can we get back OT, please?

[Observe]

Can we get back OT, please?

I agree. What does debating virtues of M5's (or anything else related to existing X) have to do the new game? Surely there are other threads for such matters.

[THE_TrashMan]

What virtue is has? Everything. Ship classes are part of X. By debating what works and not, what is good and not, once fleshes out what should in in X:R.
Besides, ti's not like there's any new news.

Regarding ship classes: They way X did untill now sucks. It's a comepltely flawed way of balancing, as it goes into extreems.

Let me give you an example of good balancing:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.ph ... -era_craft

[Gazz]

Going to extremes... and a general sameness.

Install a triplex scanner into a ship - hey presto... 100% perfect scout.

Or how about missiles? Load up a Rapier (M5) with 40 Poltergeist.
That's an M5 doing 480 MJ of damage, which (swarm) can practically not be shot down.

There's no scaling, no really distinctive abilities of a ship type or class. So many features have been built into the game with no regard for how to balance them.
The M7M are the most glaring example of that. They exist "because we can", not because they fit the gameplay in any way whatsoever.

[THE_TrashMan]

Part of hte problem is that missiles are all fired from the cargo hold...

And no matter how you equipp it, your everage M5 will have 2MJ of shielding, while a M3 will have 75MJ. And they're both supposed to be fighters.
The militaries in X have lost their brains....

[Bobucles]

A fast ship is absolutely needed for players to explore with. I'm not sure an entire ship class is needed for it.

With X's way of implementing ships, it means 1 fast ship per race, and that becomes a class in itself, the M5, while it's true that not all of them fit the role you describe.

It would make sense that factions have a form of "racing" class vessel used for sports.

However, the way the universe is designed, there is no real purpose for a "long range reconnaissance vessel" type of ship. Any hostiles that go through a gate get shot, and zones are compartmentalized in such a way that there's no real reason to stray too far from the gates.

If zones were connected by real space, then scouts would have a very important use for traversing these "shortcuts". For example, two boron sectors may be in the same solar system, but separated by 10 gates in the network.

Actually, freelancer had a pretty good system for this. The larger gates were made for handling primary "capital grade" traffic. The smaller jump holes were far out of the way, through asteroid and mine fields, in dangerous sectors where ambushes are common. Only small ships dared to make the voyage.

[aka1nas]

Going to extremes... and a general sameness.

Install a triplex scanner into a ship - hey presto... 100% perfect scout.

Or how about missiles? Load up a Rapier (M5) with 40 Poltergeist.
That's an M5 doing 480 MJ of damage, which (swarm) can practically not be shot down.

There's no scaling, no really distinctive abilities of a ship type or class. So many features have been built into the game with no regard for how to balance them.
The M7M are the most glaring example of that. They exist "because we can", not because they fit the gameplay in any way whatsoever.

The main problem is that M5s are still a holdover from when all of the fighters were balanced to be progressively stronger playerships with zero regard for NPC usage. The subsequent balancing attempts have failed to give them a strong role for anything other than a player-flown ship when you need to cross a distance very fast.

A working cloaking device and an actual need for scouting in-game would make these ships useful.

[A5PECT]

The main problem is that M5s are still a holdover from when all of the fighters were balanced to be progressively stronger playerships with zero regard for NPC usage. The subsequent balancing attempts have failed to give them a strong role for anything other than a player-flown ship when you need to cross a distance very fast.

Exactly. The gameplay of the entire X-series up to Terran Conflict has been founded in the design philosophy of XBTF, a ten year-old game engine.

Now that Egosoft is starting anew, they have a chance to make serious improvements to the AI to bring their abilities to a level that is competitive with the player. I'm personally hopeful for this after hearing from Apoch; he stated that he has an entire development kit solely for developing AI behavior. It's strong evidence that ES is taking time and effort to improve that aspect of the series.

I don't know what exactly they have in store for Rebirth, but I can barely contain my excitement.

[Sn4kemaster]

Has egosoft released any info about the minimum specs needed to run rebirth?

I have tried to check but not come across any yet....im assuming it will support multi-core processors, but what of minimum ram, graphics etc?

[CuriosityKillsTheMADCat]

"Has egosoft released any info about the minimum specs needed to run rebirth?"

The answer (as always) is: Soon (tm).

MFG

CKTMC

[A5PECT]

Has egosoft released any info about the minimum specs needed to run rebirth?

I have tried to check but not come across any yet....im assuming it will support multi-core processors, but what of minimum ram, graphics etc?

The game is half a year away from release, it's still going to be worked on and performance optimizations are near last on the list of things to do.

You guys really need to learn to just be patient.

[Eisenkalle]

You guys really need to learn to just be patient.

Best statement ever!

Yeah let us be patient, but do not stretch it (like specs and other details 2 days before release, online-patch included).

Well, I will be patient and see what we get.

All I ask for is a (tech-)demo in advance. Otherwise many people might feel butt-hurt from falling down... High anticipations and/or expectations about the product, which are not fulfilled, are the biggest relationship-killer.

[A5PECT]

Ego has released rolling benchmarks with Terran Conflict (and I think Reunion). So I'm pretty sure we'll get something for Rebirth, too.

[Eisenkalle]

Ego has released rolling benchmarks with Terran Conflict (and I think Reunion). So I'm pretty sure we'll get something for Rebirth, too.

I used the TC rolling demo right before I decided to buy TC.

It was already several month after TC was released. I was testing my system, if I could run TC on it.

My point is, that Egosoft should deliver a rolling demo before it is shipping out the new game. I am not interested in a game, which is not suited for my system/hardware. I am not that wealthy to go and simply buy a new PC, only to play a new game.

[Zloth]

OK, then buy a new PC so you can play this AND play Arma 3. Problem solved!

Personally, I'm hoping the game has strong multi-core support and has a 64-bit version. When you've got hundreds of little NPC ships going about their business, strong CPUs are a must. I'll be surprised if Rebirth doesn't require at least 2 cores and I won't be shocked at all if it requires 4.

[ThommoHawk]

Ego has released rolling benchmarks with Terran Conflict (and I think Reunion). So I'm pretty sure we'll get something for Rebirth, too.

I used the TC rolling demo right before I decided to buy TC.

It was already several month after TC was released. I was testing my system, if I could run TC on it.

My point is, that Egosoft should deliver a rolling demo before it is shipping out the new game. I am not interested in a game, which is not suited for my system/hardware. I am not that wealthy to go and simply buy a new PC, only to play a new game.

yeah, the demo benchmark for X3TC was released, and afterwards ego patched the game nearly to death, a large proportion due to memory leak and framerate performance issues, which rendered the demo obsolete as far as a indication as to your PC Performance.

Even if the game does come out this year (which I don't think it will) I will probably not play it for a year after release (though I will get the game as soon as released), when all the patches for it have fixed the bugs it is sure to have...