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Dirk Anger

X Rebirth

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To quote the top youtube commenter:
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY CREDITS!



I haven't played any of the previous games, except the very first one (which at the time was a nice enough Elite-Alike), but this just looks... magnificent.

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Nice. I guess the next year will be one of epic space sims.

Supposedly, it's coming out this year already. November 15th.

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Huh, and i just bought a Terran Conflict/Albion Prelude sale bundle thinking i'd check the series out.


I haven't started playing yet, is it still worth getting invested in the current game?

Even just one of those games seems like a huge investment of time.

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Yes, it is worth at least puttering around in Albion Prelude. The UI can be quite obtuse and anything you learn now will most likely be helpful when Rebirth comes out.

 

Edit: Nice, last I checked there wasn't a release date. Quote from the website says:

X Rebirth will be released for PC in Europe on the 15th of November 2013 and in North America on the 19th of November 2013.

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Can i hijack this thread for my Albion Prelude adventures?

People have been bugging me to play X3 for years, and now finally doing so, i've ended up pretty deeply ensnared by it.

I started the main Argon campaign, but the way it was handing me so much incredibly expensive gear right out of the gate was making me feel like i was missing a big chunk of the experience, and i wasn't really into how insistent and guided the campaign was seeming in the context of the game having such a dynamic and interesting set of systems governing its universe. I was also finding combat pretty savage until i figured out software upgrades, mounted turrets, and missile defense routines. (Apparently that's a thing with Albion Prelude, missiles got really intense.)

Regardless, i bailed on that game and fumbled around in a few other false starts before getting a solid game going and feeling like i had a good grasp of the systems. So now I've got a few light cargo haulers and their escorts on sector trader runs across Argon space, while i'm out exploring the territories beyond that. I feel like i've finally got a handle on the game now, but i don't think i'd have figured it out without looking at a few guides. Just so many really important things are just kind of tucked away, buried in nested menus.

 

The game kind of having this OS-like metaphor for its UI, but not letting you move those windows, have multiple windows open, or tab/minimize things is one thing that particularly bugs me. You should really be able to have multiple sector maps open and minimized, instead of having to click through four or more menus every time you want to see what one of your ships is up to.

Some other simple little things too, like it never clarifying that the icons above target boxes are to indicate quest givers aboard that object, or going to a shipyard to build a station and being told that you need a near 30 million credit hauler to do it, but not being told that you can also hire such a hauler and that one will be parked nearby every shipyard. It also took me forever to realize that there's a weird veterancy system on individual ships, working in tandem with software packages to unlock extra ship functionality. Figuring out the software packages themselves was itself a weird leap to make when just starting out.

Even before trying the main Argon campaign, my very, very first experience with the game was the game expecting me to find, fly to, and hail a tiny starship to start the tutorial that teaches me how to do those things, and then not being able to complete said tutorial because the ship in that campaign start didn't have any weapons mounted on it.

You know, but there's also just the fact of me playing the second expansion pack of the third game, so probably don't take these as genuine criticisms as much as my experience learning a complicated game.

Did i mention that i absolutely love the game? I really do, i think it's incredible. I'm certainly going to keep playing.

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That weird veterancy system you were talking about was added after release. That's part of why it feels kinda tacked on. Egosoft does this big "best of fan mods" pack every once in a while, and X3:AP included all the packs from X3:TC.

 

What are you flying these days?

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I've mostly just been rotating through an assortment of crappy cargo haulers, i've largely spent my time without any defensive capability. If a red icon shows up, i flee for the safety offered by crowds.


I'm sure i'm not playing in the most efficient manner possible, but i've got a small team of sector traders going and have a few dozen sectors scouted out.

Hot tips would be appreciated.

I'm interested in getting some stations up, but i'm not really sure where i should build, or what i should build first.

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Here's some suggestions for stations, having set up a couple of complexes in X3:TC.

 

1) Your basic power for all stations is Energy Cells. You're either going to have to import these, or start your complex in a system that has a good sun rating (to run your own solar power plants) and import or build crystals. Personally, I found it easier to have my own power plant, as crystals are easier to ship around IIRC.

2) Minimize the inputs for your complex. You're going to need to have cpu controlled ships constantly flying around to get supplies to keep the place running and that task will be a lot easier if you don't have too many different things to buy.

3) If you need to split a complex over multiple sectors, do your best to make sure they're ajacent. The time to fly across a whole sector or the cost in energy cells to warp around adds up quickly.

 

A good starter complex produces energy cells from scratch. That would require a Silicon Mine, Crystal Fab, and a Solar Array. Only input you'd need would be Food.

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Those big, slow animated menus have me freaked out a bit, now knowing how cumbersome the UI already is in X3.

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The general internet response seems to be kind of a shit show, people are really freaking out about the state the game was released in. (The Steam board was filled with some pretty remarkable vitriol, and apparently Egosoft's site got revenge-hacked at some point?)

Still, I have a friend who's pretty into the X series and he seems pretty happy with Rebirth. It sounds like a lot of the issues are standard course for Egosoft games, though there definitely seem to be some pretty gnarly bugs and omissions.

 

 


Oh god, there's no auto-pilot?

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The game kind of having this OS-like metaphor for its UI, but not letting you move those windows, have multiple windows open, or tab/minimize things is one thing that particularly bugs me. You should really be able to have multiple sector maps open and minimized, instead of having to click through four or more menus every time you want to see what one of your ships is up to.

That's the thing that put me off it, probably because I'm used to Eve Online where most of the UI are in separate windows you can drag to different parts of the screen and re-size and and overlap to create tabs etc. I'll probably get back to it at some point, but Eve's interface being better says a lot about a game's usability. : :frown:

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