Whoops SETA - yep that's the one.
Yep it seems v fiddly, takes some getting used to.
Essentially, approach target to less than 1km, double-click the green icon, and the icon should have a green dock option next to it, which you click to dock.
Old x games just needed a Shift D to dock, much easier, not sure why they went with this ...
OK I finally managed to click the green button and got the pop up, then struggled for ages with the next basic step of selecting the ship to add it to the squad. It seems double-clicking rather than clicking on the squad helps. Not sure if double-clicking helps earlier. These controls are really fiddly ATM.
I've just well and truly f***ed my game up it seems. Was travelling and thought it was telling me to enter a blue super highway, seems not afterall as it yanked me away and threw my destination behind me. Guess I was travelling to just behind it. Anyway Was travelling in the superhighway and it wasn't saying where to or what to do and nothing seemed to be happening so changed lanes a few times and pressed Z to leave but it didn't do anything immediately then the screen when all funky or a moment and now I'm in nothing. Blank empty space. 1423442 km from anything. Would take forever to fly that distance but it doesn't matter as wherever I fly the number stays stuck at 1423442, No idea if that's an overflow number or something else but anyway that's it for that it seems. Gah.
Warming up to it, had a CTD, though. Seems as if it's best steered by using a Joypad.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Ah, that bug. I got the CTD during travelling on the way to that particular mission.
Seems as if I'll simply wait for the first major patch to fix that particular problem. In the meantime, it's off to XCOM: Enemy Within.
(Nice feature: You can enable random seeding upon loading in this XCOM addon - which means that reloading will indeed yield a different result. Before they only had one seed which was set at the beginning of the mission. Which meant that the same actions also lead to the same results.)
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Had a few problems with the Ecells one myself. Had to reload a couple of times (thankfully saved) and in the end realised that the trade ship is simply god awfully slow. I was being told to fly here there and everywhere but the trade ship wasn't following.
Sure it may be pretty to be able to see a cargo ship take stock to your trade ship etc but the overall feeling of having to wait an age seems to be more like a dodgy freemium MMO game than a proper single player game. Currently got my ship outside the HOA Lonely Giant that the Ecells need taking to and am just leaving the game running while using a PC to browse the internet and wait this while I wait for my Rahanas to catch up. Interestingly while the Rahanas is moving (dead slowly) to me the ship menu reports it as having 0m/s Engines (which is a green status apparently). Hmm having no engine could be a problem I'd think. At this rate it seems it'd take another hour and a half for the Rahanas to actually catch up to me. I'm really hoping this is a bug that gets patched and not a design "feature".
EDIT: Well it did finally catch up 10 minutes after I posted this but I took a while doing other things before posting it. It does seem you need to simply wait a while for it to catch up but it'd be nice if it told you that or gave an ETA or method of speeding up time etc
Also for anyone who is going to do the mission note that it seems (from Googling elsewhere) that you must sell exactly 100 to advance through the storyline. I bought more than that before knowing it and had saved the game after that. I sold just 100 and then thought I'd sell the rest before continuing with the plot but then when you try to go to Trade no menu pops up like its supposed to! After trying various fixes (eg changing Anti-alias to reset the menu state) that didn't work it seems continuing with the plot made it work. Maps etc were disabled too but like they were open just nothing was there (you span around etc). If its going to be disable them due to the plot it should do so and say so, not just half do and half don't. Anyway working again, making way slowly but surely through it.
Yeah, that waiting around is a problem. You had the SETA feature in previous games which sped things up (partially to combat the plodding speed of everything, including your own ships).
I still remember one of the Elite games to have full Newtonian movement. Which, coupled with a horrendous AI, made combat somewhat unsatisfying. My usual combat routine consisted of: Get a huge freighter, load up a massive shield and then simply speed up to a fraction of c. Usually resulted in enemy fighters being smeared across my front/Back shield because they usually overshot me on approach and were unable to use a proper delta-v.
Not to mention that the autopilot was only usable if you also enabled time compression. Because otherwise you'd simply ram the station you were trying to fly to.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
After a clinking and fiddly start the last little but has gone without trouble and quite fun. The plot is intriguing, the combat fun and the controls are getting easier once you've gotten used to it. Still very early but making progress now and it doesn't feel like a fight against the software anymore.
Spoiler:
I just wish they'd have invested at least some of that money to hire a proper dialogue writer and gotten rid of voice overs - if you can't do it right, don't do it at all. At least when it comes to voice acting.
Though I distinctly remember one of the Might&Magics (think it was part 7) to take the cake in that area - intro CGI where a group of adventurers get ambushed by a dragon. Aaaand... obviously it was done by people who were either paid nothing or were massively bored. Or both. The same voice could've been used to intone: "You now need to get form A342 from bureau 23c on your right." Instead they said: "Oh. A dragon. Help."
And then there was the atrocity of Baldur's Gate where they used a Saxon to do the voices for a Paladin. Now, there's nothing wrong with flair accents. They have to be fitting, though. I mean, what would you say if there was this avatar of the light, fighting against evil and being the straightest arrow - and he greeted you with: "Ah'll whupp some ass, ya ken?" in a Redneck accent?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Yep it improves a bit once you've gotten used to the fiddlyness and past the bugged trade mission.
Just announced:
Patch 1.13 - 2013-11-18
• Fixed player occasionally being sent 1000s of km into space on leaving superhighway.
• Fixed some invalid (but harmless) values in some savegames.
• Fixed some causes of ship traders getting stuck (more to come on this).
That was quick.
Had decided not to play and wait until there were more patches, bug-fixes, guides and mods out.
But ended up making myself useful so I'm ready when that time comes; mapping out sectors, increasing faction rep, doing a few jobs to increase money, investigating stations for future trade opportunities.
Already quite a few mods and guides out.
Quite a few parts of the game are completely borked though. Needs some big updates.
Normally the following steps are how you'd approach generating money in an X game, and this is I suspect how Rebirth will work too, once the mechanics of the game have been fixed and are working better:
Normal money-making in X Games
1. Trade - buy high & sell low. Eventually, your trade pilots gain enough experience to trade on their own, and you can leave them free to jump around the X universe buying and selling entirely on their own, making you cash.
2. Running missions from stations - Escort missions, delivery missions, combat missions (take out specific enemy), combat missions (patrol area) etc
3. General combat - picking up crates dropped from destroyed ships and selling - taking over ships when pilot abandons, then selling ship - using marines to board and take over ships, then selling ship
4. Producing and selling your own wares - once you have quite a bit of cash and are well-established in some sectors of the X-Univers, building stations and open or closed loop station complexes, and selling your wares on the open market
In Rebirth at the moment:
1. Trade is fairly borked. Fleet command options are missing, so controlling your trade ships remotely is nigh on impossible - essentially they need to be babysat, which is time-consuming and slow. A mod is out already with basic fleet commands (stay there, follow me), but much more is needed. Not sure if trade automation will be included, but you can bet mods will be released to do so.
2. Running missions from stations, seems ok. I've run a few different mission types successfully and gotten paid for it.
3. General combat. Most of these elements seem ok, if a little easy. The Skunk seems massively OP, and the forum is full of stories of people being able to take down huge capital ships with little effort. In normal X games, a fighter class ship would be blown out of the sky as soon as it breathed on an enemy capital ship. Boarding seems entirely possible in Rebirth, but not tried it yet. Pilots do abandon ships for you to take over to use or sell as per previous X games - just listen out for the enemy pilot's broadcasts when you're shooting at them.
4. Have no idea yet about station building ...
Rebirth Game imbalance - easy money
By far the easiest way to make money at the moment is by long range scanner (ENTER, 1 MODE, - long range scan option is in there), in fairly remote sectors. There are crates that you detect, which you shoot and drop wares for you to sell. The forum has lots of stories of people generating over a million in less than 60 minutes play by this method. Clearly this is an imbalance and will be addressed shortly, but seems to be the easiest way to make cash at the moment. I've not done this myself.
~
In terms of your comments about PMC - yes indeed, you need to stay away from all the sectors in the Albion system while you remain their enemy. Trying to do anything with their patrols taking pot-shots at you is a pain in the arse.
Spoiler:
~
I am giving it a break though, until these fundamental aspects of game design are addressed. The game will be much more fulfilling when it works properly.
Patches are being released almost daily at present, but only to address bugs so far, not game design.
Need to wait for mods too. Mods generally make this game, and Egosoft incorporate the better mods into their own patch and update releases.
Harsh: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...ink-x-rebirth/
But probably not too far off the mark.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
I poked at it a bit more recently, and then gave up again. I'll check back in in a year to see if it's improved, but right now the game is a big disappointment. It's a shame - this was actually my most looked forward to game of 2013.
(Also 2012)
(And pretty high on the list in 2011)
One of the popular theories is that this is an aborted Xbox-port. The console controller centric UI is a strong pointer in that regard. Some people have found other references to Xbox360 in the game files itself.
Then there's the restriction to DX9 and the lack of support for a joystick.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Yes, initially disappointed too. There's much for Ego to sort out.
However, I think the depth is there. Have spent a bit of time this evening viewing the wonderful YT vids that dedicated folk are creating.
Station building, in this vid for instance.
Or this vid, where he outlines how to disable a freighter's defenses, and sends in marines to board it, all to get the materials on board the freighter for use in building the station. Some great stuff. Quite different to previous Xs.
So it seems there's really quite a lot involved. It's complex - as it should be. So yes I am encouraged by the depth to the game that some intrepid people are slowly revealing, wading through the bugs and design faults.
I'm giving it till the new year. I have two weeks not working after xmas, and I'll dedicate some time then.
Should be enough time for a couple of major updates to be released, and for guides to become comprehensive. They're releasing small updates almost daily atm.
Agreeing that this needed another 6 months of development and beta testing before release though. There's a lot of pissed off people on the forums.
This is part of a flash sale on Steam right now, and it reminded me how disappointed I was with the game. Anyone know if it ever stopped sucking?
Well, they are on version 2.0 now. But I haven't yet returned, too.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
From what I read they have done quite a few improvements. Haven't had the time to look into it. Might be worth a try.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Able to fly other ships, or still limited to the Argon Skunk ...?
Haven't picked this up again since launch either, can't find the enthusiasm.