X-Rebirth

[Blaine]

There will never be a sequel to Rebirth. They're working on X4 at the moment, and they've emphasized that it will a be a real, proper X series game. It's far too early to tell if they can deliver, but given the terrible reception of Rebirth and EGOSOFT's failure to break into the console market, it's safe to say Rebirth was a one-off spin-off.

I think the biggest challenge for EGOSOFT (aside from the fact that dumbing down their games for consoles and console players drives away the vast majority of their core customer base) is that console gamers won't tolerate absolute truckloads of bugs that take years to get fixed, and generally the games also require mods to improve certain aspects, bugs or no bugs. People think Bethesda has a rep for releasing buggy games, but that's only because they don't know about EGOSOFT.

 

[veevoir]

There will never be a sequel to Rebirth. They're working on X4 at the moment, and they've emphasized that it will a be a real, proper X series game. It's far too early to tell if they can deliver, but given the terrible reception of Rebirth and EGOSOFT's failure to break into the console market, it's safe to say Rebirth was a one-off spin-off.

I think the biggest challenge for EGOSOFT (aside from the fact that dumbing down their games for consoles and console players drives away the vast majority of their core customer base) is that console gamers won't tolerate absolute truckloads of bugs that take years to get fixed, and generally the games also require mods to improve certain aspects, bugs or no bugs. People think Bethesda has a rep for releasing buggy games, but that's only because they don't know about EGOSOFT.

I hope that Rebirth kicked them in the nuts so hard they will never, ever again do fail like that. So I'm in the usual hype-before-disappointment mode. Though X4 is probably to be released around the same time as Bannerlord or Grimoire.

 

[Raapys]

Well, X4 sounds good, but presumably their starting point will be Rebirth and not Albion Prelude, given that Rebirth has the more modern game and graphics engine. That means they're gonna have to do a lot of work just to end up back at the state of Albion Prelude, let alone offer any substantial improvements over AP.

Then again, a version of Albion Prelude with improved graphics and the new big sector design from Rebirth could end up being a decent title on its own. I never did care for the silly and boring square sector design in the X series.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

the new big sector design from Rebirth

holy fucking christ NO!

 

[Morkar Left]

Just get rid of having to order freighters instead of carrying cargo by yourself and make all shipclasses available again for the player. As much as I like Egosoft, their next game has to deliver in regard of their old formular and the advanced flight models and cockpits from E:D, SC and I-War 2.

 

[Raapys]

the new big sector design from Rebirth

holy fucking christ NO!

Anything's better than X-series square sectors. Really, anything at all. Those square sectors are some of the worst design ever conceived.

If not Rebirth-style sectors(I didn't mean the hyperlanes btw) then just get rid of sectors all together.

 

[McPlusle]

Albion Prelude is the only X game I've played at length but it's probably my favorite space sim of all time. I love the feeling of progression in this game, even more so than other fantastic space sandboxes like Privateer. What am I missing out on by not playing as much of the other entries? Are Reunion and earlier worth going back to?

 

[Tabs]

Albion Prelude is the only X game I've played at length but it's probably my favorite space sim of all time. I love the feeling of progression in this game, even more so than other fantastic space sandboxes like Privateer. What am I missing out on by not playing as much of the other entries? Are Reunion and earlier worth going back to?

No, you're not missing a thing.

 

[Volrath]

Albion Prelude is the only X game I've played at length but it's probably my favorite space sim of all time. I love the feeling of progression in this game, even more so than other fantastic space sandboxes like Privateer. What am I missing out on by not playing as much of the other entries? Are Reunion and earlier worth going back to?

Albion Prelude is the pinnacle of the series.

 

[Perkel]

i completely missed important info:

Since VR is a very complex - EGOSOFT made a complete new graphics engine that will run the game which is based on the innovative Vulkan graphics technology.

This means from now on their games will use something fucking more than DX8 and DX9 that hardly works better than DX8.

Part of the reason why X-Rebirth performance is so bad is that they are using DX9 and modern graphics which both basically are incompatible with each other.

Hopefully this means that they will be able to make X4 that doesn't work like shit out of the box.

 

[Thane Solus]

You still working as PR for Egosoft Perkel?)

 

[Perkel]

You still working as PR for Egosoft Perkel?)

?

X-Rebirth is shit but X4 on X-rebirth engine and without shitty performance is something i would love to see. I spend hundreds of hours in X3 and i would fucking love to see X4 in vein of X3.

X-rebirth was supposed to be reboot of their franchize. IT failed, they acknowledged it and instead of X2-stillbirth they are doing outright X4.

 

[LESS T_T]

VRrrr:

 

[Perkel]

I wonder how it even will work.

VR with proper 3D needs about twice power to run at same framerate. There are some techniques that can lower that but you still at least have 1.5 power more to play same game.

Thing is i have 7700k right now @ 5Ghz and Rx480 8GB and with everything on low in first sector you barely do 40-50fps with such rig.

If they still run on DX9 (!!!) engine for VR there is no fucking way someone can run it well. Unless they actually implemented vulcan renderer they were talking about earlier.

 

[Perkel]

Well...
Since X4 release date was announced (just 8 weeks!!) i thought i will give it final spin after all the patches + some mods and:
Things improved shitload and while game still naturally has issues like one ship, at least now you could spend some times playing it without cursing every 5 seconds for stupid design, bugs etc.

Thanks to New Frontiers mod:

- Economy now truly works like economy and each faction have their own wallets.
- Ships and stations are build for money and resources instead of being spawned by factions.
- Sectors also change hands so Beryl for example can make a economic war with other corporation for sector.
- Above means that factions can be effectively wiped out and you can try to cripple them.
- Factions now have diplomacy and they change their statuses between them. They divide into governments, corporations and bandits. Meaning that You won't see Albion fighting Berryl, but you will see Berryl fighting other corporation.

Devs patched a lot of thing since 1.0.

- They added autopilot and SETA (time acceleration)
- They made separate GUI sidebar like in previous X3 and it works at all times instead of being on display of your ship in right side.
- They added ability to buy small/medium ships. There aren't a lot of them but you can now form fighter squadrons.
- Ship fleet management screen was overhauled and you can now make properly squads instead of everything flying after you.
- They added trade command software so you can take information about trade from just visiting sector and you can improve trade queue length
- They added separate missions panel where you can take missions vide X3.
- They added remote access to people, you only need to visit stations for very few missions. You can trade inventory items from space easily.
- They reworked highways, they didn't fix them but at least now they don't hold 9 tubes in them and you can speed up in them.
- You can get trading updates from people by using smalltalk option (and with mod you can just buy it from station manager for a price)
- Two expansions increased size of universe by about 50% and effectively doubled amount of various ship types.

Unfortunately there are still some gripes here:
- Trading aside from containers goods seems to be pretty not worthwile compared to missions. You can earn 300k for stupid taxi service while your ORE transporter will net you 50k for a spin which takes much longer.
- No autotrading software outside of station traders. To auto trade you need to build station first. (though there are mods for it)

TLDR: With some mods and patches game went from BAD to MEDIACORE/GOOD.

I am having some fun but it is still not X3. two main gripes:
- Lack of ability to change ship
- Lack of small/medium ship presence in game. It is still mostly capital ships game.

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I think the biggest lesson from it is that those two gripes will be fixed with X4 and if you would take XRebirth and would fix just those two you would end up with pretty great game (along with New Frontiers changes)