It’s definitely the most controversial aspect of Rebirth so far, as the progression from ship to ship is one of the main joys of the series, in my experience. I’m hoping that it can at least be customized or upgraded in significant ways, to give you that same sense of progression. And hopefully you’ll still be able to command your fleet of other ships.
I think it can be quite cool to upgrade your ship like that, but also that they can probably release expansion with different ships later on.
I agree with Fugitive and Janster. Hopefully they allow enough customization to the ship to make it possible to feel like you’re flying a fighter or a transport or whatever. Obviously the idea of flying a massive capital ship is gone. And like Janster said, who knows what expansions might open up?
Does anyone remember if you could fly any kind of ship in X-Tension? Maybe there will be a sandbox only expansion to Rebirth just like X-Tension expanded Beyond the Frontier (I remember having to import X-Tension from Germany… so worth it at the time).
Yes indeed, it was one of the main draws of X-Tension that you could fly all kinds of ships. In X: Beyond the Frontier, you were restricted to one ship, the Argon Buster (or so I’ve read. I played X-Tension but never played the first game–I only bought X:BtF–in the bargain bin at EB for 5 bucks in 2001–so I could play X-Tension–which I had to order online from a UK shop).
Sigh, one of the joys of games like this is that whole collecting thingamajig, that or trying out different ships. If the X series let you play with only one ship from the start, and kept it that way, I’d not have a problem, but this feels like pulling in the reigns though.
The dev post I linked to explains that you can expand and modify ship components, but there is no mention of that having any impact on the appearance of the ship, inside or out. I doubt it except in the most minimal ways. They make a big deal about turrets and things like that, so I think that will be the extent of the visual changes.
The part that has me worried is that this seems to be the only intended outlet for those of us that like to fly different ships:
First of all there is the possibility to remotely control a drone. This is basically exactly like switching personally into another ship. You can fly drones in a 1st person perspective and it looks as if you are inside the drone. You do this, however, using a Virtual Reality environment in your ship. While your co-pilot takes over the control of your ship, goggles come down from the ceiling and you dive into the remote control of the drone.
The worst part of the preview post is this:
You won’t be sitting in the cockpit and steer such a capital ship from the first person perspective anymore simply because that is boring. Steering huge and slowly-turning ships manually just doesnt make sense. It would force us to make them turn and move unrealistically quick and even then they would be impossible to maneuver near our huge and complex shaped stations.
Boooooooooooo!
First-person control of huge, slow capital ships can be tricky, but it can be done right. I thought it was done right in Klingon Academy and Starshatter, but done horribly in Starfleet Academy. Usually a 3rd person/RTS perspective is better for controlling capital ships, IMO. If this can be done right, however, more power to 'em. Still don’t like the one ship thing, though.
Capital ship driving in the X games IS boring, and i generally just use them to carry my ships around in a carrier or something, for anything else i used a corvette or heavy fighter.
They already said you will be able to own and dock into other capital ships but you wont be able to steer them direcly, just talk to the captain and give them orders.
I don’t agree at all. I Just think its been done really badly. Instead of having proper gun platforms and stuff we can play with, most capitol ships in games are just fighters with slower movements…
Now that gets dull fast…
You do have gun platforms and can hop into any of them and fire them, they are still boring tho.
More dynamic universe is probably my biggest wish, taking over sectors and the AI factions reacting and doing things on their own, etc. I suspect much of the roughness and huge learning curve will remain since in AP very minimal effort was put into this.
Nerdgasm. Check out those videos in the RPS article I just linked. I need to get a new video card, then I’ll be in my bunk.
Release date is set for Nov 15th.
I’m actually excited about an X game for the first time since Xtension. Wacky.
It’s still just the one ship for the player though?
The video said you could get crewmembers to fly capital ships, so there’s some way of getting other ships, it seems.
I also heard that the one ship you personally fly is very customizable, at least that’s what they were saying years ago. So while it is one ship, it’s one ship you can customize to fit multiple different roles. One of the videos linked also shows the ability to pilot drones, which looked like small fighter craft.
In X3, owning anything bigger than a frigate was useful, but piloting them left a lot to be desired. Depending on how they implement it, I think having AI crew commanding capital ships is the way to go, especially if the game is as scriptable as it was in previous X games.
Hopping between ships was nice, but in X3 I did find that once I’d upgraded to a corvette, there was little reason to switch away from it anymore. Maybe to a super-fast M5 or TP to run passenger transport missions, but there could be an entirely different mission structure in Rebirth.
The video conjured up some childhood memories of the Terran Trade Authority.
I hope they’ve kept the X3:TC option of using a mouse to steer. It’s not like rudder control means anything in space anyway.
There you go Papageno.