Current [POLL] Would you use Steam for Rebirth?

[Slashman]

I have bought ever X game made and rebirth looks very impressive, especially the new trading trailer.

The only thing that puts me off buying another X game is the combat. The combat in X, for me, was very dull and uninspiring. Has the combat in rebirth been changed at all?

Difficult to say right now. Capital ship combat is certainly different with a focus on destroying or disabling ship subsystems.

In terms of your personal ship, though. It is a corvette. Likely less agile than a standard fighter. The weapons seem to follow an almost FPS formula. Gatling guns, shotgun-type weapons are some of the types we saw in the vids.

I never had an issue with the combat in the other X games apart from the enemy AI being really dumb and not using its weapons or abilities to its best advantage.

[Da_Junka]

It never felt like a dog fight to me. It felt as though I was stationary with the enemy circling around me, and I would attempt to lead-shoot a dot somewhere in space. Very dull.
The rest of the game made up for the bad combat at the time, and I would mostly send my wings in to do the shooting.

[Slashman]

It never felt like a dog fight to me. It felt as though I was stationary with the enemy circling around me, and I would attempt to lead-shoot a dot somewhere in space. Very dull.
The rest of the game made up for the bad combat at the time, and I would mostly send my wings in to do the shooting.

I'm trying to think of any space combat game where you didn't circle around the enemy(and vice versa) and try to line up your lead indicator.

You can buy better software which aims your guns for you so you don't have to always get it dead on in the indicator.

When you start out, in most of the X games, combat, and especially combat in early missions is pretty low key. Once your combat rank goes up, mission enemies increase in number and type.

I don't really get what you mean by feeling stationary. It is space. Movement is relative to everything else. In Rebirth, you will tend to fight more around stations and huge cap ships though. That should add a sense of movement that may have been missing from X3.

[Sahvion]

he is not an Egosoft employee so he can't provide any insight and his guess is as good as yours

Exactly--and even if I were an Egosoft employee, I certainly wouldn't be making unofficial statements that might tread on the toes of the publishers or Egosoft themselves.

Not to mention that even if you were an employee I do believe you'd have to talk to PR first to make sure you don't say anything incorrect

[A5PECT]

I'm trying to think of any space combat game where you didn't circle around the enemy(and vice versa) and try to line up your lead indicator.

I suppose you can go for the full Newtonian model. Because you know, relativistic jousting matches in space are so much more compelling. You'll spend just as much time aiming at your lead indicator while your target is an imperceptibly small blip on the horizon.

[MegaBurn]

he is not an Egosoft employee so he can't provide any insight and his guess is as good as yours

Exactly--and even if I were an Egosoft employee, I certainly wouldn't be making unofficial statements that might tread on the toes of the publishers or Egosoft themselves.

That's absurd. I knew you weren't an employee. I assumed that meant you could say more on the subject - you've been around longer, are a "site admin", should know more about the site structure and hosting than I can guess from the outside, and have more contact with ES than regular users. I'm asking for advise in how to approach this, not final answers, and not for you to take this to an employee. Its nearly as simple as what to put in a new thread.

I put some effort into that post, please give it more of a reply than "**** off".

EDIT: Fixed typo. Also reread my last post, I guess some of it could be interpreted as asking for more than advise, I think I was kind of hoping they would see it and respond.

[Mightysword]

I put some effort into that post, please give it more of a reply than "**** off".

If by afford you mean a conjured list of your wishful thinking then yeah. But it's your own volition and people will response how they wish short of dismissing it, which I don't think anyone did. But I don't you can demand how people should response to your wish. The rule of thump on a forum is that if you don't get a lot of responses, then your message does not hold as much interest as you believe it does.

Plus it seems a lot of your assumption on the "how can people answer" seem to be backward.

[Sandalpocalypse]

your to poor to "throw around" a measly 5k

Almost everyone is too poor to throw around a 'measly 5k'.

[MegaBurn]

I put some effort into that post, please give it more of a reply than "**** off".

If by afford you mean a conjured list of your wishful thinking then yeah. But it's your own volition and people will response how they wish short of dismissing it, which I don't think anyone did. But I don't you can demand how people should response to your wish. The rule of thump on a forum is that if you don't get a lot of responses, then your message does not hold as much interest as you believe it does.

Plus it seems a lot of your assumption on the "how can people answer" seem to be backward. :wink:

No, that's absurd, nonsense, and useless. By effort I mean a couple hours. Its not wishful thinking to want access to XR. It was dismissed, maybe not as bluntly and rudely as "**** off", but that seems equivalent, and is how I read it. I'm not demanding anything, I said please. No, the poll results and other replies suggest plenty of interest, the problem is people not interested are being disruptive.

The only thing backward here is my trying to hold a discussion in this thread.

[Mightysword]

You asked a person a question, and that person already give you an answer and the reason why he answered like that. Granted, not the answer you're looking for, but make no less a valid answer.

You seem to entitled yourself to the answer you want because you spent a couple hour on that, like I said it was your choice, no one force you to do it. And 2 minutes or 2 hours or 20 hours are meaningless. Someone can post a short message in 5 minutes and get a 10 pages discussion rolling, someone can write half an essay and the topic got 2 responses then disappeared. Sure people are interested in this topic, that doesn't equate to an interest in "your" message. Like I said, if they are, you would see them. I never seen a couple "disrupters" (as you call us) ever able to wall off a discussion that people are greatly interested in.

Seeing how you like to use the big words in condemning how other response, I say good luck promoting your message. Oh btw, what I meant you have backward was your assumption on a person relation with a company and their ability to response in public.

[pjknibbs]

That's absurd. I knew you weren't an employee. I assumed that meant you could say more on the subject - you've been around longer, are a "site admin", should know more about the site structure and hosting than I can guess from the outside, and have more contact with ES than regular users.

I'm really not sure what the site structure and hosting has to do with any sort of non-Steam release of the game, which is clearly commercially confidential information only Egosoft and their publishers would know? Plus, it's not me who keeps the server hamsters in line, it's BurnIt! (who *is* an Egosoft employee)--I have access to the PHPBB forum admin tools, no more, no less. As for having more contact with ES than regular users, nope, not that either--I might PM CBJ occasionally if someone has a problem I can't solve with the forum admin tools at my disposal, but I'm no closer to the Egosoft team than any other forum member who isn't an employee.

I'm sorry if you found my answer abrupt, but it was the only one I could give...no matter how many sweet words I added, it would still amount to "I know nothing, and couldn't tell you if I did".

[A5PECT]

I have to say, MegaBurn, you're making a great case for your tester application.

If this is how you handle someone giving you bad news, I can't imagine how you'd react to the instability of a game's pre-release build.

[Nanook]

Ok, everyone, enough with the discussions about other posters. Please confine the debate to the topic at hand, not the posters. Issues with other people should be handled via PM, either to that individual or to a mod/admin.

[MegaBurn]

pjknibbs: Thanks, and sorry if my reply was a bit harsh, seemed necessary to get a response, and like there was a misunderstanding. On hosting, just wanted an opinion on if ES has the hosting capacity to offer Steam updates packed in archives in the downloads section, similar to patches for earlier games. I'd assume yes, easily, even trivial, but I don't know file sizes, traffic, or if they scaled back hosting due to shifting stuff to Steam, or if they added capacity for beta testing, etc.


A5PECT: I would be relentless. That's also my biggest problem with modding, can't leave good enough alone. So I brainstorm ideas, sometimes a hundred pages or more, nitpicking finite detail in the gameplay dynamics similar to how artists nitpick. Never release anything though since most of what I want to change isn't accessible in the game data, I'm really hoping XR will change that. Not sure about beta testing though, don't want to spoil it.


Nanook: Thank you.


Mightysword: *snicker*

[Slashman]

pjknibbs: Thanks, and sorry if my reply was a bit harsh, seemed necessary to get a response, and like there was a misunderstanding. On hosting, just wanted an opinion on if ES has the hosting capacity to offer Steam updates packed in archives in the downloads section, similar to patches for earlier games. I'd assume yes, easily, even trivial, but I don't know file sizes, traffic, or if they scaled back hosting due to shifting stuff to Steam, or if they added capacity for beta testing, etc.

From what I understand, Steam updates are simply a newer version of whatever file needs updating. If it is a small file, then small update, but if it is bigger then it is a big update. Steam itself, up until recently, didn't even employ delta patching. Which is where only the changed portion of a file gets downloaded. Delta updating is actually what prepacked updates are. They contain only the data that needs changing and apply only that data to the user's files.

Hosting Steam updates basically means hosting a complete version of whatever files have changed since launch. That is a lot of downloading, depending on what Egosoft changes over the life cycle of the game.

Since I assume that Egosoft are actively trying to leave that kind of updating behind, then we can probably assume that bandwidth and traffic are a significant issue along with the hassle of packaging updates in the first place. At least that is my take on it.

[MegaBurn]

Yeah, mine too. Although I thought deltas were only used on Valve games and the few others using the full Steam packaging, have they expanded it to everything?

Another option here is just maintaining it ourselves, like an unofficial community patch mod. Should be fine within the EULA terms covering mods (or "tolerated" if none). Could include a more advanced installer, incremental delta files with download on demand (and manually), various other bug fixes, mod libraries, basic utilities, etc. I could do that myself, if someone volunteered to check Steam updates then run a batch file on a daily basis - auto generate delta patches, upload them somewhere, and trigger a script on a server to update a global xml file. I might be able to host it too (Namecheap shared or Linode VPS), depending on file sizes and traffic. Could bolt an updater/patcher onto a mod manager instead of an installer.

That's a viable backup plan if ES won't do it themselves, also illustrates the point of it being easy.

[Slashman]

Yeah, mine too. Although I thought deltas were only used on Valve games and the few others using the full Steam packaging, have they expanded it to everything?

They gradually rolled it out to other games. There was a lengthy period where many of my games went through large updates to change format for it. I think all new games now use it by default. Well they should anyway...

This should explain it.

[SG4tw]

Mods and Steam and X-Rebirth


IF i buy the game from steam (i already did) i would like that option to include a way to mod my game without steam updating the game everytime i restart it...

my 2c.

[Shootist]

Mods and Steam and X-Rebirth


IF i buy the game from steam (i already did) i would like that option to include a way to mod my game without steam updating the game everytime i restart it...

my 2c.

a nosteam.exe should be released by egosoft at some point (a year, or so after release).

[SG4tw]

Mods and Steam and X-Rebirth


IF i buy the game from steam (i already did) i would like that option to include a way to mod my game without steam updating the game everytime i restart it...

my 2c.

a nosteam.exe should be released by egosoft at some point (a year, or so after release).

okey, thats nice, i use the albion prelude one atm with a 7-8 mods on the side and it makes the game much more enjoyable.

but having the game for a year without no mods could be a problem for many players....