New Interview by PCGames

[Chris0132]

Is it even a spaceship without a cargo bay?

I mean in a scifi sense, what spaceship (or regular ship, for that matter) doesn't have a cargo bay come up at some point?

I mean, how else would you justify the search for dilithium crystals or priceless alien artifacts or the shady smuggler character or the place for the plucky engineer to get trapped in when the space vortex disables the ship or all the other things that you see in scifi.

If your ship didn't have a cargo bay it wouldn't be scifi.

[BarrenEarth]

Is it even a spaceship without a cargo bay?

I mean in a scifi sense, what spaceship (or regular ship, for that matter) doesn't have a cargo bay come up at some point?

I mean, how else would you justify the search for dilithium crystals or priceless alien artifacts or the shady smuggler character or the place for the plucky engineer to get trapped in when the space vortex disables the ship or all the other things that you see in scifi.

If your ship didn't have a cargo bay it wouldn't be scifi.

I don't know... you were the one in the Fighters thread saying that drones with no pilot, no cargo and no multi-function capability were spaceships so you tell us.

Also, I don't think Tie Fighters had a lot of cargo space... or the fighters from B5... they were still spaceships no?

[Chris0132]

Well they're fighters but in the sense of 'the ship' like you would say 'the enterprise' or 'the millennium falcon' or 'the battlestar galactica' you always have a cargo bay. It's sort of essential to anything with a bit of story attached to it.

You can have fighter ships without cargo bays sure, but generally 'the ship' in the series or film will have a cargo bay. Possibly because 'the ship' is always based on the idea that space is an ocean so spaceships are basically giant pressure-sealed Spanish treasure galleons.

Space fighters on the other hand are based on the idea that space is a world war two fighter ace playground so they don't need cargo bays.

[BarrenEarth]

Well they're fighters but in the sense of 'the ship' like you would say 'the enterprise' or 'the millennium falcon' or 'the battlestar galactica' you always have a cargo bay. It's sort of essential to anything with a bit of story attached to it.

You can have fighter ships without cargo bays sure, but generally 'the ship' in the series or film will have a cargo bay. Possibly because 'the ship' is always based on the idea that space is an ocean so spaceships are basically giant pressure-sealed Spanish treasure galleons.

Space fighters on the other hand are based on the idea that space is a world war two fighter ace playground so they don't need cargo bays.

Thank you for completely contradicting yourself in the span of 5 minutes and proving the point.

[Chris0132]

Eh?

X isn't ace combat in space, you can play it like that if you want to but it's not designed to be just that.

It'd be a bit weird if the 'build trade fight think' or whatever game was actually 'build fight fight fight' all of a sudden.

A fighter ship would be fine if you were playing a fighter ship game but X does sort of have to be more than that.

'The ship' in a scifi series is pretty archetypal, it's big, it's got a cast of characters on it, it's got a cargo bay, an engine room, a bridge, all that stuff. It has a warp drive, maybe it launches fighters at things.

If you're playing a fighter ace game you generally either operate from 'the ship' or you have your home base somewhere on a planet.

[EmperorJon]

I think the point he is making is that "the ship", the storyline ship, the ship the heroes fly, whatever, will have a cargobay.

I always found it strange how some fighters had big bays and some small bays and stuff in X3, and how guns took up room, things like that. I would have though you'd have maybe a small area for jump energy, then guns would be mounted on the outside and not exchangeable (much as I expect capital turrets in R to be) without some serious work, and missiles should probably be preloaded into launch tubes. I guess it's too hardcore though, you risk going in the direction of that game (can't remember what it's called) where you have to go through the full start-up routines with all the switches in the cockpit.

[BarrenEarth]

Eh?

X isn't ace combat in space, you can play it like that if you want to but it's not designed to be just that.

It'd be a bit weird if the 'build trade fight think' or whatever game was actually 'build fight fight fight' all of a sudden.

A fighter ship would be fine if you were playing a fighter ship game but X does sort of have to be more than that.

Nope, now it looks like Build Think Think Think Walk in station... oh and some drones

[Geek]

I think the point he is making is that "the ship", the storyline ship, the ship the heroes fly, whatever, will have a cargobay.

In Darkstar One the ship does not have a cargo bay at all.
Yes, the game does have trading. My point is cargobay and trading are not as much tied as you think they are.

[BarrenEarth]

I think the point he is making is that "the ship", the storyline ship, the ship the heroes fly, whatever, will have a cargobay.

In Darkstar One the ship does not have a cargo bay at all.
Yes, the game does have trading. My point is cargobay and trading are not as much tied as you think they are.

This, and DS1 looks like the direction that Egosoft was headed towards... Not good

[dougeye]

I think the point he is making is that "the ship", the storyline ship, the ship the heroes fly, whatever, will have a cargobay.

I always found it strange how some fighters had big bays and some small bays and stuff in X3, and how guns took up room, things like that. I would have though you'd have maybe a small area for jump energy, then guns would be mounted on the outside and not exchangeable (much as I expect capital turrets in R to be) without some serious work, and missiles should probably be preloaded into launch tubes. I guess it's too hardcore though, you risk going in the direction of that game (can't remember what it's called) where you have to go through the full start-up routines with all the switches in the cockpit.

Ships will have plasma energy cores now I hope and not green party energy cells that run out faster than a sustainable energy program! lol

[Skeeter]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmXlO0Jxd2s

Is this a new interview or pretty much the same as the one posted about in the first post of this topic?

As spotted this today.

[Caldazar]

It's another interview. Both interviews were taken at roughly the same time as far as I can tell - Bernd wears the same T-shirt in both videos.

I translated the interview to the best of my abilities. Please note that at least some of the phrases that sound strange in the translation also sound strange in the original interview. I took some liberties when translating but the facts should be straight. Have fun.

Bernd: You actually can't make it freer than our game. We do have a plot, which is the only non-free part of the whole game, but the freedom to do whatever you want to do within this universe has always been the absolute main idea of the game.

Golem: What is the biggest difference between XR and it's predecessors?
Bernd: One aspect is the way you move around the universe, the highways. The highways themselves are not the killer feature, but they allow us to make the universe really big - as big as we want and show a believable space game - and at the same time get the density so a lot happens in the same place. The highway system makes it possible to have gigantic solar systems but at the same time have a lot of activity around the player - as long as he wants it. But he can also fly far away from the highways and discover new areas. Basically we combine two things that are otherwise difficult to match.

Another important aspect for us is the level of detail in every way. For example the level of detail in displaying the economy, so you can see how things are produced. You can really feel: "Here ore is being melted and at another place mining is done." Every activity that was narrated earlier can now be experienced. Displaying these things in game was really important to us so you can perceive which component of a station performs what function. I can see that one part of a station produces ware A and another part uses and refines that ware to something higher up in our economy system, like ammunition. I can see the process and that specific building complexes perform specific functions. I can destroy and analyse these modules individually and - when constructing my own station - build them individually.

Golem: What role do drones play in XR?
Bernd: They can be scanner drones or hacker drones for example. They are specialized units that I can control remotely or give them implicite tasks.
I can launch a drone and order it to protect me, then it will fly around me and basically act as a wingman and can protect me, or I can launch the same drone and us the remote control to guide it into a target.
The remote control is a good trick for us to get into more unrealistic scenarios. A player ship is always restricting us. It can't be too fast or too manoeuvrable and, of course,I'm dead if I die with it. With drones these limits don't exist. A drone costs a certain amount but if I lose it after that it doesn't matter. I just get back into my ship.

Golem: Why is the game called XR and not X4?
Bernd: One reason is that we really started from scratch. We really sat down and rethought everything. Our goal was to bring space games back into the mass market and make them suitable for people who have never played our games - or saw them and got scared. I can't deny that.
Our games have been complicated, which is not good. Complex is good; complicated is not. We wanted to remedy that and to that end we had to reinvent and rethink a lot. Lots of gameplay mechanics have changed; everything has become different and we had to experiment a lot.

Golem: What do you think of Chris Roberts' new space game Star Citizen?
Bernd: Of course we think it's cool an of course we are watching it. Star Citizen is exciting and it is great to see that something is happening there. I certainly think it's positive.
Funnily, the last time we launched a "new" space game - X Beyond the Frontier - Freelancer was released at roughly the same time. Even then they were big and we were small. Now we are here a lot earlier and it is very exciting to compare us with them.
I'm sure we'll have a lot of features that they have not, so I don't worry a lot. Our game is simply designed differently. We always give the players every possible freedom. The economy, the realism of the economy system to depict a realistic universe, construction of own factories - I think we'll have plenty of features to set us apart.
I'm sure there are also plenty of features, where Star Citizen is better than us. We'll be able to tell once the game actually exists.

Golem: Will there be Mac or Linux versions of XR?
Bernd: It is planned. For sure, when there is a Mac or Linux version of XR it well be available for free on Steam for the people who have bought the Windows version.
It is very challenging to port the new engine to OpenGL, so this is not a project to be done within a few months. But we plan to do it. It was very well received and our X3 games reached completely new audiences. We'll certainly continue that.

Golem: Wouldn't versions for the news consoles with x86-architecture be just as interesting?
Bernd: Of course it's interesting. We will have a look at it and take a decision. The controls of the game are a lot more important than the CPU architecture. With XR we designed our games to be controllable with a Gamepad.

[Santi]

Thanks a lot for the translation Caldazar, much appreciated.

[InFlamesForEver]

Thanks Caldazar!

Interesting last bit about the new consoles, makes you wonder what they're planning on doing in the future!

[MegaJohnny]

Many thanks for the translation!

I'm glad you can give drones to the AI as well as remote control - I was afraid that it was either you in the ship alone or you 'in' a drone with the ship on autopilot. Be awesome to have a swarm of drones around for when a fight breaks out.

On the other hand I do hope that you can still buy fighters and hire pilots for them to have wingmen that way. I'm just a little worried because everything I've heard so far is the cool things you can do with your capital ships and trade ships.

It also sounds very impressive that the AI mines stuff now. I think it was demonstrated in a trailer too, but still I agree with Bernd that it's nice to see that stuff in action.

[Chris0132]

I notice he mentions ammunition in the interview, but it was also said that player ship guns won't use ammunition.

So, does he mean missiles, or do you need ammo for something else?

[MegaJohnny]

I think the point he is making is that "the ship", the storyline ship, the ship the heroes fly, whatever, will have a cargobay.

In Darkstar One the ship does not have a cargo bay at all.
Yes, the game does have trading. My point is cargobay and trading are not as much tied as you think they are.

Well, it had a pretty close analogy to it. You have a set max. tonnage, carried by drones. You can sever the tractor beam to 'jettison' the cargo. It just had a weird property that it's carried externally rather than internally.

[Caldazar]

You're welcome.

By the way, besides the interview there's also a whole article. Most of the information is already known, but there are some interesting pieces:

Even a virtual war in the universe uses up weapons and ammunition. "In the past that was faked, now it is true" (Bernd)

The player gets a key role in a universe, whose ancient jump gates were rendered useless by an artificial super nova, so long distance travel is impossible. In the beginning the player is traveling through an area callen Albion. There he came to an arrangement with the powerful "Plutach Mining Corporation". Unfortunately his copilot Yisha draws him into a conflict, which grows into an epic story. At the end of the first chapter one of the jump gates is surprisingly reactivated.

What a surprise. I bet no one saw that comming.

[InFlamesForEver]

Well I'm surprised that Egosoft have created an "epic" story, that's certainly new. Before the plots were just something to do to get more ships when you were new to the game, now they might actually have an interesting story to them.

[MegaJohnny]

Even a virtual war in the universe uses up weapons and ammunition. "In the past that was faked, now it is true" (Bernd)

Oh damn! That's very impressive. So now the economy has its own realistic endpoints for (at least some) wares rather than slowly being gobbled up by EQ docks... That's awesome.