Single ship = can't pilot other ships?

[Kittens David]

no no no I don't want to stay in that 2 guns 0 turret little ship... wanna leave for a turreted ship.

[Shootist]

no no no I don't want to stay in that 2 guns 0 turret little ship... wanna leave for a turreted ship.

Enjoy your wine with a variety of cheese.

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[CutterJohn1]

It makes sense that once you have a capable ship (and you start out with it in rebirth) you'd improve that ship. These are not commodity products.

What if the skunk isn't capable at what I want to do? What if I want a faster ship? A better drone carrier? A ship with turrets because maybe I suck at dogfighting? What if I want to do a peaceful trader playthrough and just fly around a hauler? Ordering another ship around is not the same. If it were, then we wouldn't be flying a ship at all.

I'm trying to think of space opera where this isn't the case. I mean a war veteran might talk about how they flew x fighter or wish they could fly a mark y one day... you know the kind of thing... but a proper ship no.

Most space operas have the protagonists as a military officer, and as such not free to make a decision about the matter, or the ships are incredibly expensive and represent an astounding amount of capital. They don't leave the one they have because it was difficult enough to get that(or they just won it off Lando in a sabacc game). Neither of those things is true in this series.

And I can only think of two sandbox space games that didn't give you a choice. One was Darkstar 1, which sucked. The other was XBTF, which transitioned to multiple ships due to popular demand.

[pigeonpigeon]

Indeed. So lets judge the results of the design decision. I can now own a ship, and be barred by a mystical force from getting onboard and flying it. Kind of kills any sense of immersion they are trying to establish.

And how is it really any less immersive that whan we had in X3? Quite frankly, controlling capital ships in X3 was the single most immersion-breaking action in the game, for me. Not only was the interface inappropriate for it, but it was also completely improbable for a single person to simply steer a 2 km long space ship like it's a fighter. There was no bridge, no crew. Capital ships were simply bigger fighters that flew like parachutes through molasses, and strafed faster than they flew, with guns that didn't even reach the other end of the ship...

To me, I actually prefer it this way. In an ideal world, Egosoft would implement cockpits and internal models of many ships, including bridges for capital ships, so we could control them all in a truly immersive way. But they didn't have the resources to do that (and a good, immersive interface for direct control of a crewed capital ship is no easy task, no matter how you look at it). That would be awesome and a huge step up! But they had neither the time nor money to include such a feature, at least not from the beginning.

I do hope that eventually we'll be able to fly some other ships, either through official patches or modding. But I understand why they did what they did, and I can live with the sacrifices.

[Lord Dakier]

To be honest I was coming around to the idea, but I keep thinking with one ship the game is going to potentially less sandbox-y. I mean in X3 I'm a fighter pilot, tactical special ops leader, large trader, small trader, capital ship commander, fleet admiral and pretty much whatever else I want to be. In XR I'm simply a Corvette captain, good or bad.

The thing I need is a reason as to why I don't need to leave the Skunk and the only viable one I believe is that it's OP. Otherwise I see no other reason why realistically a person would stay in a single ship. Simply like the Normany except that looks 1000 times better looking.

[Meltdown]

I'm making an extreme effort to contain my otherwise extremely negative opinions about the one-ship-only thing, because I've always thought a game should be played before any strong objections are moved against it, so I'm giving Egosoft a chance to sell me on their idea - however unlikely that might seem right now.

This is the strongest statement I'm willing to make before I actually play the game.

[AgamemnonArgon]

Think of it as someone giving you a model ship for christmas, but they will not give all of the parts to complete the model.

Or a box of chocolates with some flavours missing.

It really is not good enough to just have one ship in this day and age.

[Zaydin]

To a newcomer like me (I only just started playing the series a week ago when I picked up the Humble Egosoft Bundle), having one ship isn't a huge deal. Makes balancing the game a bit easier, from my perspective, and makes things a little more accessible for newcomers if they start with a half-decent ship at the start.

And quite honestly, if Egosoft manages to deliver on the promise of 'total freedom', and be able to do whatever you want, being limited to directly flying one ship and drones is fine by me, since all the freedom will give the game a huge replay value.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

in X3 I'm a fighter pilot, tactical special ops leader, large trader, small trader, capital ship commander, fleet admiral and pretty much whatever else I want to be. In XR I'm simply a Corvette captain, good or bad.

The difference in X-Rebirth is the corvette cane be configured to suite your tastes. How much it can be configured/reconfigured is a point that has not yet been clarified by Egosoft.

In addition, role wise you can probably be a Pirate, Mercenary, Bounty Hunter, Business Mogul, Trading Mogul, or perhaps a Spy. The point being the roles in X-Rebirth are probably more about what stations you build and what ships you buy, rather than what ship you fly.

In X3 on the other hand, the role was less well defined and tended to be dictated by the type of ship you fly in the main. Your actions basically have affect on your reputation and how hostile other races are to you but not much else.

It sounds like in X-Rebirth, your actions will have greater impact on the universe and hence your roll in it.

The thing I need is a reason as to why I don't need to leave the Skunk and the only viable one I believe is that it's OP. Otherwise I see no other reason why realistically a person would stay in a single ship. Simply like the Normany except that looks 1000 times better looking.

The upgrade options and their impact on the operation of the skunk will be the tell-tale on this concern. It has been stated that the Skunk will not be an M1/M2/M7, but it has not been stated what it will be or can be except for being a unique upgradable corvette-sized ship.

I love to speculate as much as anyone but there comes a point where it is pointless to do so and may even be counter productive. With only about a month and a half remaining till release we will have to just wait and see.

I think we all have the same (or similar) concerns (to a greater or lesser extent) but we are kind of at the point where we need to sit tight and wait for either X-Rebirth to be released or for sufficient unambiguous information to be released by Egosoft to allay our concerns.

The biggest bone of contention for a long time has been being restricted to piloting the Skunk and it's drones BUT we do not know enough specifics about either to draw any substantial conclusions on how it will affect game play.

We need to stop thinking in terms of X3 and what we could and could not do in it... X-Rebirth is going to be a whole new game and not an X4, Egosoft have been clear on that point since the beginning as far as I have seen.

Most of the negative complaints I have seen about X-Rebirth seem to be tantamount to saying: "forget improving the engine just give us X4". Those that do think that way will just have to be patient, what has been done has been done and it is too late for things to be changed now.

[MegaJohnny]

In addition, role wise you can probably be a Pirate, Mercenary, Bounty Hunter, Business Mogul, Trading Mogul, or perhaps a Spy. The point being the roles in X-Rebirth are probably more about what stations you build and what ships you buy, rather than what ship you fly.

Hear hear. That's always been my view on this topic - if there's anything that's fundamental to an X game, it's the empire and fleet building and the sweet economic simulation, and how the player wrestles this universe. If those aspects were taken away, we're left with a pretty run-of-the-mill space sim. As it happens all of these things are staying and better than ever - you can hear it in Bernd's voice how happy he is about ships you destroy being real ships with real jobs.

It is a shame that we must stick with the Skunk, but if it was this decision that let them make all these other improvements, then so be it.

[Sahvion]

It really is not good enough to just have one ship in this day and age.

Ummm, says who? Thus far I've seen mixed opinions on the 'one ship' deal. Some people like it, some people don't, some of us actually LIKE the idea of a single ship (personally, I love it, because in X3 all I ever USED was ONE ship... although that was to challenge myself)

Whether the one ship is a good idea or not, I can't answer.. the games not out yet and thus there is no figures on how the game has done.

[CARISMBLUE]

I can understand Egosoft that flying big ships in previous X games was horrible and therefore they decided to take a different approach. But this does not tell us why we can't change our "smaller" ship. In my opinion the X Rebirth ship is ugly and I'm a bit disappointed that this is going to be my ship for the whole game. Sure people may also like the ship but everyone is different. The real reason to this limitation is different in my opinion. If we could change our ship egosoft would have to model different interiors, different cockpits and so on. They wanted more depth in the game in cost of other features. That's my opinion. Because as long we don't talk about big ships, I see no reason why egosoft limited us to one ship.

[Ulfarus]

I have been very vocal about the one ship thing in that I am against it. I also don't like the way trading is going either. Also prefer no Cockpits.

The one ship is an immersion breaker, no matter which way you try to justify it.

The fact that you can massively upgrade the Albion Stink is another immersion breaker, it is very Darkstar one. In Darkstar one you go from pathetic to uber ship, sorry but that is part of the reason the game was rubbish.

The reason they have done this is because of having a walkaround interior for the ship and it would take time to create more interiors. I don't remember many people asking for this. Yes it is in mass effect, but after the first couple of times walking around the Normandy, it became a huge pain in the arse.

I predict extra ships will be paid for DLC, because of the work involved. Due to this I expect extra ships functionality to be hard to MOD as it will be locked down by the devs. If this happens I expect an explosion of rage from players.

All in all as a gamer who has pre-ordered and owned every X game from the XBTF, you can count me out.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

...

There is no way we can say that any given feature is an immersion breaker at this point (because we have not played the game yet), we can say we do not like the idea of said feature though.

Immersion is the result of look and feel and game play flow, if everything feels fluid and looks reasonable then the feeling of immersion is not broken.

[Kittens David]

Indeed we can't have a global judgment on the whole game but still, we can judge point by point from what we know. To me the greatest flaw is the one ship and my only hope to save that game is in the hands of the modding community.

[CutterJohn1]

(personally, I love it, because in X3 all I ever USED was ONE ship... although that was to challenge myself)

Yes, and that is great. The problem is that your ONE ship, my ONE ship, and the ONE ship of a bunch of other people, were different ships.

I spent a great deal of time in my Pirate Centaur. In other games I was fond of the Split Panther. Some games I just headed straight for a Hyperion. One playthrough I never left my Nova Raider. Another, inspired but Nuklear Slugs wonderful playthroughs, I played a game where I couldn't pull the trigger, and depended on turrets and fight software. When AP came out, I fell in love with the Ariadne(Bit undershielded, though... I eventually modded my game to bring the M7Cs up to 1.5-2gj shields).'

I predict extra ships will be paid for DLC, because of the work involved. Due to this I expect extra ships functionality to be hard to MOD as it will be locked down by the devs. If this happens I expect an explosion of rage from players.

This is my biggest worry.. Its like that old game, Independence War 2. The plot needed the player to have 5 ships, so the game only supported 5 player ships. Period. Modders tried for years to lift that limit, but it was simply impossible. It was a hardcoded limitation of the engine.

We don't even know at this point whether modders will have the capacity to do any of that. They certainly had no need to program in the capacity for the player to change their ships, so it may not even be in. And it may never be able to be as freeform as previous X games.

On the other hand, if we're able to easily flag any ship as player flyable, and simply reuse the Skunk cockpit(since there is no unified HUD any longer), then bonus. I can easily pretend that I'm just bolting on a standardized command and control module.

Who knows.. Maybe it will be easy to flag capitals as player flyable as well.

[Kittens David]

(personally, I love it, because in X3 all I ever USED was ONE ship... although that was to challenge myself)

Yes, and that is great. The problem is that your ONE ship, my ONE ship, and the ONE ship of a bunch of other people, were different ships.

I spent a great deal of time in my Pirate Centaur. In other games I was fond of the Split Panther. Some games I just headed straight for a Hyperion. One playthrough I never left my Nova Raider. Another, inspired but Nuklear Slugs wonderful playthroughs, I played a game where I couldn't pull the trigger, and depended on turrets and fight software. When AP came out, I fell in love with the Ariadne(Bit undershielded, though... I eventually modded my game to bring the M7Cs up to 1.5-2gj shields).

Yup, we all had our favorite ship and they were all different but here in X-rebirth for our good sake, we all will have to love the skunk. Sounds like soviet era when the state decided for you what was good and hat wasn't. Kinda contradictory with an open game....

x rebirth... Trade, fight, build, think.... should be a little more explained :

X rebirth :

-Trade : in the way we want you to trade
-Fight: only the ship we have chosen for you
-Build : only what we want you to build
-Think :... Joke.... no let us think for you, you are too stupid for that.

[CutterJohn1]

Yup, we all had our favorite ship and they were all different but here in X-rebirth for our good sake, we all will have to love the skunk. Sounds like soviet era when the state decided for you what was good and hat wasn't. Kinda contradictory with an open game....

People can have the Model T in any color they desire, so long as that color is black.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

The problem is that your ONE ship, my ONE ship, and the ONE ship of a bunch of other people, were different ships.

I spent a great deal of time in my Pirate Centaur. In other games I was fond of the Split Panther. Some games I just headed straight for a Hyperion. One playthrough I never left my Nova Raider. Another, inspired but Nuklear Slugs wonderful playthroughs, I played a game where I couldn't pull the trigger, and depended on turrets and fight software. When AP came out, I fell in love with the Ariadne(Bit undershielded, though... I eventually modded my game to bring the M7Cs up to 1.5-2gj shields).

The Skunk is known to be upgradable and possibly configurable in different ways. We do not know how one person's Skunk configuration will differ from another's nor do we know the exact nature of the upgrades... yet.

Ok, we know the Skunk will never be a capital ship but that does not necessarily prevent playing the role of a fleet admiral, nor will it be a massive cargo haler but that does not necessarily prevent playing the role of a trading mogul.

I understand why some people are perhaps jarred by the idea of only having one upgradable ship but depending on how it is implemented (which we know little of yet) the problem may not be as great as some people (such as yourself) are fearing.

I find it irritating to come into this forum and find page after page and thread after thread of negatively/positively biased speculation about the game. Can we try and curtail or at least tone down some of the rhetoric.

[Kittens David]

The Skunk is known to be upgradable and possibly configurable in different ways. We do not know how one person's Skunk configuration will differ from another's nor do we know the exact nature of the upgrades... yet.

Ok, we know the Skunk will never be a capital ship but that does not necessarily prevent playing the role of a fleet admiral, nor will it be a massive cargo haler but that does not necessarily prevent playing the role of a trading mogul.

I understand why some people are perhaps jarred by the idea of only having one upgradable ship but depending on how it is implemented (which we know little of yet) the problem may not be as great as some people (such as yourself) are fearing.

I find it irritating to come into this forum and find page after page and thread after thread of negatively/positively biased speculation about the game. Can we try and curtail or at least tone down some of the rhetoric.

The skunk won't upgrade with turret or multiple guns. It will stay forever 1 gun, one missile launcher. The skunk won't evolve visually. Bernd said it. so the skunk from the start and the skunk from the end will be the same beside being twieeked like it was possible with every ship in the previous X : better cargohold/speed/armor/shield/manoeuvrability... Nothing new on the bridge except you are stuck to the skunk.

But once again... Wait for the modders and we might have other ships, turreted ships, multiple guns ships, bigger, smaller and a lot funnier than the skunk will ever be for many many players.