Old Player Returning needs advice =)

[XOOR]

Good evening guys, I am XOOR an old player returning to the game with a newISH gaming PC. I have played all of the X series of games up to and including Albion prelude. I have not played Rebirth yet and was wondering would you guys suggest playing rebirth first or jumping strait into foundations?

I was just wondering if the story content for Rebirth is very important also here is the laptop I am using:

ACER Nitro 5 AN515-54 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel® Core™ i5, GTX 1050, 256 GB SSD

Intel® Core™ i5-8300H Processor
RAM: 8 GB / Storage: 256 GB SSD
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 3 GB
Full HD screen
Battery life: Up to 8 hours


Any advice would be MOST appreciated thank you guys I look forward to diving back into the x-universe after getting bored of Elite Dangerous on Xbox =)

[Alan Phipps]

Regarding your laptop, you are going to be at the lowish end of performance in X4 because of your stock clock frequency (unless your CPU is constantly in turbo) and your graphics card's 3 GB dedicated VRAM which is the minimum needed. You *should* be able to play OK in most in-game situations but it may get sticky in areas of high cpu activity or graphics loading.

X Rebirth is a bit less demanding on your system so I would say try that first (although you don't need any gameplay or background from XR to play X4) and see how you get on. If your XR gameplay experience on the laptop is OK then you could try X4 on it with perhaps a bit more confidence (although performance will never be great).

X4 specs:

MINIMUM:
Processor: Intel i5-4590 3.3GHz or AMD equivalent
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 780/970 or AMD equivalent (Vulkan support required)

RECOMMENDED:
Processor: Intel Core i7-6700 or AMD equivalent
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1070 or AMD equivalent (Vulkan support required)

[Cdaragorn]

I agree with Alan that you're going to see some performance drops in some areas due to the slower CPU and less VRAM, but this should mostly happen inside stations and I doubt it would get so bad as to be difficult to play.

I would honestly suggest trying X4 first. Definitely get on the 3.0 beta as there's a lot of rebalancing in there that you'll want. X4 will be much more familiar for you than Rebirth would as you'll have the ability to fly any ship. Rebirth is a more fleshed out and balanced game right now but X4 is getting there. Most of us are pretty excited for 3.0 + Split Vendetta DLC release later this month as that should bring a LOT more balancing improvements as well as more ships and systems.

Having played all the previous titles you mentioned just be aware of how Ego's games typically are 1 year in from release. We're not where we want to be yet but we've definitely come a long way in good ways. I personally love the immersiveness being able to walk into each ships cockpit brings to X4 but agree that we need a lot more variety of ships still as well as better customizeability and more systems to flesh out the universe.

[XOOR]

Thank you both for the sound advice I will give X4 Rebirth a go before foundations and hopefully get another gaming desktop down the line. Its really nice to come back see the community still friendly and active, cant wait to try X4 Foundations with VR in future maybe ;P

[Alan Phipps]

If you already have VR then there is an X Rebirth VR version now.

[XOOR]

I wish I had VR that will be something to look forward to in a couple of years time I'm hoping =)