X Rebirth: Beta Patches

X Rebirth is suffering from its share of bugs.  Most new games do, but XR seems to have more than its fair share.  For example, trading.  Trading is an integral part of the game universe, but it is on the buggy side at the moment.  This has far reaching effects, including plot progression and trade empire building.

In response, the developers have started a beta patch program.  Players can get in development patches rather than wait for the fix.  This is a pretty positive change.  It gets EgoSoft more feedback and test support, and it gives anxious players something to chew on.

For all of the details, head on over to the beta forum:  http://forum.egosoft.com/viewforum.php?f=141

To enable the beta version, open up Steam.  Go to Library, find X Rebirth, right click on it, choose properties.  Then you choose the beta tab and enter in: IBackedUpMySaves  Then opt in!  You should be all set.  To turn it off, set the Opt In to None. Fair warning though, these patches may not be stable, so don't expect too much.

In an ideal world, there would be no need to leverage the community for patch testing.  In this case though, I am pretty happy to see them take this step.  I'll be watching it closely :)

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X Rebirth Impressions

X Rebirth has been out for about a week now, so I figure it is a good time to give my initial impressions of the game.  It's important to note that the game is called Rebirth for a reason and not X4.  It shares a good bit with its predecessors but is also a fresh start.

Graphics.  The space graphics are pretty cool.  Stations are huge complexes which look great.  The lighting is also amazing.  My GTX680 has been keeping up so far, although I have not witnessed any large fighs yet.  The environments are also outstanding, with a lot of variety between areas.

Bugs.  Sadly, the game is pretty buggy.  I hit one issue that prevented me from continuing the main plot line, that is until someone figured out how to correct it by editing the save file.  I shouldn't have to do that.  To EgoSoft's credit, they have been diligent about releasing patches.  During my time playing the game, I've had a few CTD's, so saving often is highly recommended.  F5, quick save, is your friend.

Console.  It is pretty clear that X Rebirth was meant for a console.  In fact, I use my xbox 360 controller to play the game.  The menus scream console.  It would also explain why it seems like some of the depth which made earlier games is gone.  Now the question is, which console and when?

Plot.  No spoilers, but the plot line has been pretty slow so far.  I've been doing a lot of flying, and not much of anything else so far.  Hopefully it'll pick up soon.  I'm really just using the plot as a tutorial before I get down to the real draw of the game: free play.

Trading.  Trading was one of the major features of previous X games and it is again in Rebirth.  The problem is, it is not very user friendly at the moment.  To start, you have track down all the traders on a station since there are usually multiple.  You can purchase a Trade Computer which will gather all of the merchant info for a station by getting close to it.

The data you gather is only temporary.  After 2 hours it will disappear from your trade list.  Unlike previous games, there does not appear to be satellites which can be used to keep getting updated data.  That means you'll have to revisit all of the stations to add them back to the trade list.

Stations.  In Rebirth you can now dock with and walk around in stations.  Sorta.  They use the same ~3 interiors for every station.  You can then walk around and find vendors, folks to hire and mission objective NPC's.  I think this was a completely unnecessary feature and doesn't really add much to the game.

Skunk.  In Rebirth, you are limited to flying one ship, the Albion Skunk.  In previous games you could fly almost anything.  I always thought that was a great feature, so I am sad to see it taken out.  Your ship is pretty limited in what it can do.  For example, you can't trade goods, you have to have a freighter to order around.

Combat.  I haven't done too much fighting yet, but what I have done has been fun.

Modding.  The modding community is alive and well in X rebirth.  They've already released mods which change the game in significant ( and sometimes better) ways.  I will be going over some of the mods in future posts as I use them.

Overall.  I have to say I am a bit disappointed in the game.  It seems to be much more restrictive than the other entries into the franchise.  It just feels like a step backwards.  That's not to say there isn't potential for it to be a good game, it'll just take some time and a lot of patches.

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X Rebirth: Cancelling Trades

Interested in cancelling or clearing a ships current trade orders?  With the just released 1.17 patch, Egosoft has added a way.  Just follow these steps...

Info -> Property Owned -> Ship -> Select DE (Detail) -> Select Captain Details -> Highlight Pending Trade

There should be a Clear All button available at this point.  Just choose that and it should wipe out the Pending Trade.

It doesn't seem like this fixes stuck trades, like in the deliver 100 Energy Cells plot mission.  I had to initiate a new trade for it to show.

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X Rebirth: Control your Ships

Out of the box, X: Rebirth does not give you many options for controlling ships that you own.  Have no fear though, the intrepid modding community has already started work on a solution.  Introducing the Manual Command Extension!

Included at the time of this writing:  Hold your Position, Move to My Position and Follow Me.  The ships have to be in your squad, but other than that you can give them rudimentary commands!  It's a great start considering the game has only been out a few days.

You can find all the details here:  http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=350741&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

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X Rebirth: Stuck Trading Energy Cells in the Tutorial - Solution

For the past day, I have been stuck trying to complete the tutorial.  Specifically, the part where you are supposed to buy and sell 100 e-cells.  From the looks of it, people are stuck at all parts.  I finally got by this mission today, here is how.

1)  Freighter not buying E-Cells?  Taking the side mission seems like it overrides your buy order.  So you may want to wait for the freighter to complete his mission of buying the e-cells before taking the other one.

2)  Freighter bought the goods, but won't deliver them?  This one took a while for me, I went to the destination system and waited.  I watched the freighter via map using the SM option in Property Info.  He slowly made his way to me.  Once he arrived, I made the sell order.

3)  Freighter at destination but won't sell?  Have too many trips planned?  This solution work for other issues as well.

• Open your saved game (back it up first) file at ' My Documents/egosoft/x rebirth/<number>/save 
• Search it for '<shopping>'
• Remove all entries inside of the shopping tag
• Save file, start up X Rebirth and reissue the sell order

For me, this fixed my problem and I was successfully able to complete the mission. 

This thread is what got me the saved game answer.

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X Rebirth: Capturing a Ship

One of the most enjoyable activities in the X series is capture a ship.  In X Rebirth you can also do that.  This simple guide is for capturing small ships.  Capital ships require Marines.  So to capture a small ship, just do the following steps.

1)  Hire a pilot.  You must have one aboard if you want to claim an abandoned ship.  Be sure to ask other ships where you can find one, it saves a lot of time.

2)  Attack your target.  Go slow and get his hull low, be careful not to destroy your prize.  You will hopefully see an escape pod jettison from the ship, unless they are being stubborn and going down with it.

3)  Once abandoned, get close and bring up the claim menu while targeting the vessel.    You should see a pod leave your ship and attach to the target.

4)  It should now be yours!  I did this against a small Hydrogen Harvester.  Once my pilot had taken control, I gave her orders to start collecting Hydrogen.  Good times :)

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Incredible

November is shaping up to be one heck of month.  Not only is the XBox One coming out, Egosoft's latest edition in the X series is also being released: X Rebirth.  If you are not familiar with the X series, think of it as a universe simulator with a heavy focus on fighting and economic activities.  They recently released a video discussing Trading and Mining.  The game looks amazing and I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

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