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Re: X Rebirth

#331
Victor Tombs wrote:
fox wrote:Um, what song?
:lol: Just Google, "What does the fox say", fox. It's had wide exposure now but at the time Katawa introduced me to the song they had only just released it. Katawa had a knack of finding the bizarre, quirky and downright rude on the internet. He had me in stitches and my stomach turning on many occasions. :angel:
I... think I know what you mean... now.
But it feels like I am late. Like I was de-iced yesterday. Like I am some kind of dinosaur... and... gosh, my forearms look short...


Cornflakes_91 wrote:Fox, the way you describe it its still broken, just mot the economy but the market interface.
Agreed, my descriptions leave something to be desired. But I would like to see you, pawing on the keyboard like I do. Think it is easy?

I say again that the economy is not broken. The devs purposely left open or semi-open spots in it so the keen player would find opportunities to make money. The economy is not ruled by a script, it is truly dynamic and it truly adjusts to the consequences of actions and inactions. The only part of the game in which the economy is somewhat biased is during the initial period, because the stations are [still] living off the initial conditions and stock amounts set by egosoft for the various economies. It is like a matchstick: you provide the initial spark to ignite the burning, but then it keeps burning on its own. Unlike a matchstick, the economy will not run out of fuel because it is self-suficient, even if it has its slow moments.

If I (or someone else, like a random enemy attack) destroy a mining ship, the station owning that ship is not going to receive Ore and other basic resources. They may run out of stock and their production halts. The AI will react by commissioning the construction of other mining ships which will then be tasked to resume the gathering of resources (or if she finds an importer of such basic resources she may buy them for a short term fix. You may even be *that* guy, showing up with a yummy supply of minerals). Speaking of ship-building, this may take a while of course. And what if the shipyard is actually busy in building ships for another client? Or what if the shipyard itself is missing one of the base wares it needs to build the commissioned ships? Shipyards are just as part of the economy as every other station and ship is.

If the player uses his freighters to trade goods between systems (the classic "middle man"), he is essentially moving wares from one economy to another. In the long run this can cause a shortage of goods in one local economy, and the saturation of the market in another local economy. In the former case you would see a high demand for goods otherwise normally available; in the latter case you would see one or more stations halting production of goods because their stocks remain unsold. Again the AI will find ways to balance it all out, provided that you let her. Or you may just happen upon them and offer the help they need (buying/selling as appropriate) incidentally lucrating out of it.

None of the system economies is perfect. This is by design, otherwise you would find no spot for building your own stations. All economies have one or more weakness that is for you to identify and exploit. One system in particular has a very broken economy. Many things are missing in there. That system is perfect for the player that seeks a challenge and is willing to build a whole infrastructure to get the economy back up and running. Naturally this will need some inordinate amount of Credits, which is perfect for those indecently rich players who need an excuse to burn money.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:If the player has to jump through three dozend hoops to get basic commodity price info theres something wrong with the interface.
Again I expressed myself in suboptimal way. You only need a Trade Agent in each station. You do this one time per station, and it lasts forever. And all of your trade agents everywhere will forever give you real-time updates of the wares being sold and bought, and at which price. That is how you build your personal net of informants.

The scanning of stations has nothing to do with it. Scanning comes into play if you want to know exactly what a station is producing, how much of it, and when will the next batch hit the market (so you could promptly reserve the stock for yourself, before others, in case the ware tends to disappear fast -- for example). _Collaterally_ this scan data also allows you to identify problems with stations when they are not producing something. At that point you can choose to intervene and solve the issue quickly, or let the AI do it as it normally does, but it may take a while because their intervention is generic and not aimed like the one you might enact. That is it.
Cornflakes_91 wrote:A proper interface like the one in eve online and some filtering like "show me buy offers sorted by urgency" with urgency defined by how low the stock of the station is and the lower in the resource pyramid the factory is.
I agree that the trade interface could use more improvements. And they are coming, if slowly.
It is already very usable. You easily find buyers and sellers, and you can sort them by type, by distance, you can even filter things by name (there is a text box in which you type the filter). And you can sort it by margin, because the more a station is willing to pay for something the more they need it (think: urgency).

You can also reduce the trade offers to those pertaining a single station, by clicking on the very station in the map (more precisely you click on any of the "Trade offer" icons visible on the station in the map) and the trade interface will narrow to what that precise station is buying and selling.
The options for a pleasant user experience are there, believe me.
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#332
The X Rebirth Saga
The year is 2523, and you have returned from a seven year deep space mission.

As usual, you haven't had the pleasure of a woman in all that time, so one of the

first things you do upon returning, is to visit your favorite brothel.

You have done this every time you have returned from long missions, it has

become almost a ritual. In the past, as you got closer to your home destination,

you would start to communicate with the girl you planned on getting more

intimate with when you finally land.

All the previous times you have done this, the girls you have gotten haven't been

stunningly beautiful, but with a little makeup and some nice clothes, they have

been at least presentable and certainly worth spending a little time with.

However, on this last mission, when you once again played out your little

homecoming planning, the images the girl sent you looked awesome. She made

some stunning promises of being much different than the girls of the past, and

that she was superior to them in every way.

In anticipation, you wired the credits ahead of time to the propietor of that

establishment because you just couldn't wait until that moment of nirvanic bliss

when you could hold her in your arms.

The day arrives and you land at home port. You rush to the brothel to receive your

already paid for mistress of pleasure. When you get there, you are presented with

your lady in waiting, who to your dismay, turns out to be a wretched, abysmal old

hag with sagging breasts and a face that would make a prune look smooth.

You stand there blinking in disbelief. This has never happened before. How can

this be? They have always treated you at least decently in the past, or so you

have always thought. The previous girls may not have been beauty queens, but

they were at least passable. Sure they had a few flaws here and there in the past,

but the overall package has always been servicable.

But now, what is this? What about those pictures that were sent? They certainly

weren't of this worn out old biddy. What about all those promises? This old space

granny is nowhere near what the previous girls were, not even close.

What's that you say madam? It's a success? What's a success? Wait a little bit

while she powders her nose? No. Most emphatically no. All the powder in the

world is not going to make this ugly hag look better, it will not make those saggy

breasts perk up. Why did you lie and mislead me?

You know that some spacers would just go ahead and accept the nasty old hag

and be happy about it. One in particular, the guy that flys the spaceship Roland.

That guy will accept anything that squats to pee. Most normal pilots though,

would not accept it.

In the end, you leave and never ever do business with that establishment again.

You talk to a few of your buddies and find a new place to seek pleasure from. As

you talk to your buddies you find out that this has happened to nearly everyone

who has tried that particular brothel lately. Most are just fed up with it and have

quit frequenting that place.

In the end, the madam had to close up shop because she could no longer pay for

even ugly space hags to work in her brothel.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#333
fox wrote:
Be warned, Mass traffic mods get baked into the savegame. Once you start using them you can not play without (the savegame would refuse to load). I recommend the use of the "configurable" Mass Traffic mod, so you can refine the amount of traffic ships without actually changing mod, therefore without invalidating your savegame.
Thanks for the heads-up fox.
I just loaded up XR, and found to my surprise that all my old savegames were invalid (unable to find no-jump-fuel mod) :)

I'll probably do another post later of all the plugins I do have installed.

However, there were not many mods available that reduced the Mass Traffic in-game, do you have any exact names of mods that you use?

Ta
YAY PYTHON \o/

In Josh We Trust
-=326.3827=-
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#334
FormalMoss wrote:However, there were not many mods available that reduced the Mass Traffic in-game, do you have any exact names of mods that you use?

Ta
Good thing that you made the question... it made me think of an important detail.

I first used the Reduced Masstraffic mod (which cuts traffic by -50% -- there is another version, same author, that cuts by -75%).
I later discovered that it was not enough for my CPU, but it was too late to switch mod, because I had done very much in-game and did not feel to toss it away.

Then I found Configurable mass-traffic and stardust, but to use it I had to disable the previous mod and restart the game with the new mod. Not an option for me, as I said above.
I have tried this configurable mod anyway (starting a Free Play to test with), and have verified that you can alter the amount of mass traffic without invalidating your previous saves (and there is no need to start over). I am not 100% sure that all changes take place immediately. As a precaution, once you load the game you should travel to a different Zone (any you want) and then come back, so that the game has a chance to reload the numeric data about the mass traffic to spawn.


BUT THEN...
In composing this answer to you, a thought came to mind. With the new DLC out in February, the galaxy will receive 3 more systems to play with. The problem is: mass traffic is defined per system, by means of a file called jobs.xml, and with the coming of the new DLC all the mass traffic mods will become obsolete because their jobs.xml (from the past) can not contain the (future) system-info introduced by the DLC. If the mods' authors do not come back and update their mods, it may be pointless to continue to use them. Also, if egosoft ever decides to tweak the performance by reducing the amount of mass traffic everywhere, these (old) mods that continue to use the amounts from the past, may even introduce more traffic than there would be (right, I just pictured the worst case scenario. It is unlikely to happen).

Perhaps it is wiser to not make use of these mods and wait for someone to make an up-to-date version?
Otherwise -if you have patience- you can easily write your own mass traffic mod. The Reduced Masstraffic mod comes with it own premade jobs.xml. In it you can see which numeric fields are to be changed in the original jobs.xml if you wanted to alter the masstraffic yourself. You could extract copy of your current jobs.xml (egosoft gives you the tools for this) and modify its numbers according to those seen in the jobs.xml from the mod. This would ensure that you make use of up-to-date data. You could also easily adapt to the new system data introduced by DLCs once you see it.

ALSO...
Given what I have seen with the configurable mass traffic mod, I do not think that these mods bake for real into the savegame. Bear with me. All the savegames you make contain a reference to each of the mods in use at the time that the save itself is made. This is a precaution to prevent unwanted game corruption in case you reloaded a past savegame that absolutely requires a mod that you use no more. And it makes sense.

BUT...
The mass traffic amounts are not actually defined inside the savegame itself. The info are external, inside jobs.xml, and they can be changed at will, anytime, without invalidating your past saves (as the configurable mass traffic mod demonstrates). That means that if you disable a mass traffic mod, then the only thing saying that you still need the mod in order to play with your old savegame... is the very *reference* -to the disabled mod- being found inside the savegame itself. Kind of a paradox. Since the savegame is in .xml format, you can edit and remove this mod-reference manually, so allowing the game to load your past saves without forcing on you the continued use of the mass traffic mod. I hope that makes sense.

FOX...
me
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#336
Hey FOX (sorry for calling you fox, as if in a whisper) :)

I've just read this speculative article http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=349638, and seeing as you know more about the modding of XR than most of us here, I was wondering if XR still ails from the core problems of how XR was programmed in respect to the PC platform?

It is an interesting read, yet it does make me wonder why XR would jutter and freeze when the Egosoft Dev's said it would work best with multi-core CPUs.
They were the reason why I went out and built a rig with a 6-core CPU with 32 Gbytes of RAM.

Edit: wrt the mass traffic mod I have installed now, it has also removed *all* traffic inside the warp-tubes? The yellow thing that acts like a highway between stations.
tbh I have not noticed any difference in the number of little ships moving around the stations :)

P.P.S. Thanks for the excellent info on the mods, I'll check out NMM later. Do you use the NMM tool for managing XR mods?
YAY PYTHON \o/

In Josh We Trust
-=326.3827=-
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#337
I have little knowledge on how to mod XR. The experts are on the egosoft forum.

Initially Rebirth was conceived for the console platforms as well. There were limits it had to stay within, because consoles have very specific hardware (the advantage of developing for a console: the limits are known, and the hardware is the same for every user). These limits would affect the PC version too, of course (the disadvantage of a unified version you just recompile for different platforms: the strongest version is from the weakest platform in the bunch -- usually).
But since the console versions never happened we will not know if the console-imposed limitations were present from the start when X-Rebirth was finally released. Perhaps they were, or maybe just some of them. Surely egosoft did not decide at the last moment to dicth the plans for a console release, so they had time to adjust things for the PC. Maybe they turned a few knobs up a notch while at it, who can tell?
Whatever the case, things at launch were a disaster. But everyone knows that.

The *core* of the game has certainly changed since launch, although on the exterior little is visible. Being now a PC-only title, they can optimize things for the PC like they could not if it was also a console title.
But the game will not become another X3, and hardly will ever lose the vestiges hinting that it was supposed to *also* be a console game.
People have to understand that "X-Rebirth" is not "X4: Rebirth". Egosoft never said it would be, and it was no secret what X-Rebirth would play like. Rumors and news of it were out well before the last expansion for X3 (Albion Prelude), would hit the market.
The "haters" that continue to call Rebirth a broken or dumbified game because it is so different from X3, miss the point entirely and make fools of themselves.
And "those" that continue to preach their disappointment with the game, saying that they will not play it, and that egosoft should close for good, and blah, should make everyone a favor and quit it. The world is in no hurry to participate in your sorrow, and you are not due virtual pats on the back because a videogame broke your virgin heart. You are not the first to be disappointed. And Rebirth is not the first to cause disappointment, to cut on features, or make major turnabouts during development. It is common practice in every ambitious game design, you just think Rebirth is bad because you are aware of what happened. How many other games you played that did the same but you were none the wiser?
So grow up and live with it. The world is an unfair place, and your continued delusion about a videogame is childish & ridicolous.

I have sympathy only for those that are angry because egosoft released the X-Rebirth that was, knowing full well WHAT they were serving to the players, while pretending to be surprised and sorry for it.
This was dishonest behavior -- and in fact egosoft paid dearly for it.
They grabbed cash via the preordering and the initial sales, but have lost times more in the long run (took the egg, booted the chicken). Their next game, if any, will not see such sweet treatment, and their business is forever scarred by the X-Rebirth incident.
Players who preordered may have "lost" 60 bucks, which sound like a lot, but the sum certainly does not threaten their lifestyle.
But egosoft with her behavior has burned millions, which *does* threaten their future, because if they do not regain the players' trust there may be no next game or an egosoft to work at and pay the bills with.
All considered, egosoft has lost the most. Maybe it is time to bury the waraxe -- and do not preorder again.
FormalMoss wrote:P.P.S. Thanks for the excellent info on the mods, I'll check out NMM later. Do you use the NMM tool for managing XR mods?
I do not use the nexus mod manager. Being the old DOS era type I like to handle my files manually.
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#338
ORLY?
fox wrote:The "haters" that continue to call Rebirth a broken or dumbified game because it is so different from X3, miss the point entirely and make fools of themselves.
Define "haters" please. You also assume they hate the game or are mad because it's different from X3, which in some cases that is true. People who use the term haters are the ones who make fools out of themselves because there are better and more specific ways to describe the situation. The term haters usually ends up being a term someone throws out against someone else who doesn't agree with what they believe and are therefore a "hater," because of it.
fox wrote:And "those" that continue to preach their disappointment with the game, saying that they will not play it, and that egosoft should close for good, and blah, should make everyone a favor and quit it.
Why should they quit? It's been over two years since release. Ever wonder WHY even after all this time most people still will not touch it? Ever wonder WHY it still leaves such a bad taste in peoples mouths? Ever consider the fact that the response received was in fact created by, and due solely to what the devs did? People didn't just wake up one day and decide to trash ego. It was in response to what ego did. Stimulus - response, not response - stimulus.
fox wrote:So grow up and live with it. The world is an unfair place, and your continued delusion about a videogame is childish & ridicolous.
People did live with it. They walked away from it and never went back. That seems pretty grown up to me. Oh, you mean you just don't want to hear them complain about it, even if the complaints are/were justified. For some reason I have a mental image of some people with their hands over their ears going, "blah blah blah, don't want to hear it...blah blah blah." That is sure grown up.
fox wrote:I have sympathy only for those that are angry because egosoft released the X-Rebirth that was, knowing full well WHAT they were serving to the players, while pretending to be surprised and sorry for it.
This was dishonest behavior -- and in fact egosoft paid dearly for it.
They grabbed cash via the preordering and the initial sales, but have lost times more in the long run (took the egg, booted the chicken). Their next game, if any, will not see such sweet treatment, and their business is forever scarred by the X-Rebirth incident.
Players who preordered may have "lost" 60 bucks, which sound like a lot, but the sum certainly does not threaten their lifestyle.
But egosoft with her behavior has burned millions, which *does* threaten their future, because if they do not regain the players' trust there may be no next game or an egosoft to work at and pay the bills with.
All considered, egosoft has lost the most. Maybe it is time to bury the waraxe -- and do not preorder again.
There ya go. That's the crux of it. They KNOWINGLY foisted that piece of garbage on their loyal fans...and that was AFTER they lied about what was going on. They knew their fans were PC gamers, that is why they hid the fact they were trying to make a game that would work on a console, they knew it would piss them off. Seven years. Seven years of stringing along extremely patient fans waiting for the next big thing. And how were they rewarded for their extreme patience? Well, we all know. The fans got kicked in the nuts for all their trouble, money, patience and time.

So yeah, lots of people are still pissed about it. Deal with that. That is reality. If you don't want to hear it, then too bad. The people who got burned still have to listen to the mewlings of the fanboys raving how wonderful it is. You either just ignore it or don't bother reading it if you don't want to hear it. Pretty simple.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#339
Oops.
FOX, Poet - I didn't mean to start a flamewar about the opinions of what happened with XR - I just wanted to understand why my XR may stutter from time to time and understand the mechanics of the game.

FOX has given me invaluable advice on how the aspect of trading works in a system.
And also highlighted how I can edit my saves to *hopefully* get them working again.

EDIT: I don't want this thread to be locked, as I've oh so many more questions to ask :)
I'm a DOS head too, and I'd love to plumb the depths of FOX's mind regarding XR and DOS scripting and so much more :)
:glee:
YAY PYTHON \o/

In Josh We Trust
-=326.3827=-
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#340
FormalMoss wrote:Oops.
FOX, Poet - I didn't mean to start a flamewar about the opinions of what happened with XR - I just wanted to understand why my XR may stutter from time to time and understand the mechanics of the game.

FOX has given me invaluable advice on how the aspect of trading works in a system.
And also highlighted how I can edit my saves to *hopefully* get them working again.

No problem. I just don't like it when someone tries to sweep reality under the rug and pretend that somehow, the fans are the bad guys and that the very people who created this crapfest, are somehow the "victims."

The stuttering is due mainly to poor optimization usually. People like to say that the game is just too advanced for most systems, which is mostly a bunch of bull. Even people with top of the line systems had problems with the game, although I guess they have fixed some of it. The AI is dumber than a rock. Not sure if it's still happening, but ships used to hump stations, rather comical actually. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73R74GFjTpQ

If I remember right, their new engine uses DX9, so it shouldn't be stressing modern computers much if at all.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#341
@ Poet1960:
Spoiler:      SHOW
Poet1960 wrote:ORLY?
fox wrote:The "haters" that continue to call Rebirth a broken or dumbified game because it is so different from X3, miss the point entirely and make fools of themselves.
Define "haters" please. You also assume they hate the game or are mad because it's different from X3, which in some cases that is true. People who use the term haters are the ones who make fools out of themselves because there are better and more specific ways to describe the situation. The term haters usually ends up being a term someone throws out against someone else who doesn't agree with what they believe and are therefore a "hater," because of it.
fox wrote:And "those" that continue to preach their disappointment with the game, saying that they will not play it, and that egosoft should close for good, and blah, should make everyone a favor and quit it.
Why should they quit? It's been over two years since release. Ever wonder WHY even after all this time most people still will not touch it? Ever wonder WHY it still leaves such a bad taste in peoples mouths? Ever consider the fact that the response received was in fact created by, and due solely to what the devs did? People didn't just wake up one day and decide to trash ego. It was in response to what ego did. Stimulus - response, not response - stimulus.
fox wrote:So grow up and live with it. The world is an unfair place, and your continued delusion about a videogame is childish & ridicolous.
People did live with it. They walked away from it and never went back. That seems pretty grown up to me. Oh, you mean you just don't want to hear them complain about it, even if the complaints are/were justified. For some reason I have a mental image of some people with their hands over their ears going, "blah blah blah, don't want to hear it...blah blah blah." That is sure grown up.
fox wrote:I have sympathy only for those that are angry because egosoft released the X-Rebirth that was, knowing full well WHAT they were serving to the players, while pretending to be surprised and sorry for it.
This was dishonest behavior -- and in fact egosoft paid dearly for it.
They grabbed cash via the preordering and the initial sales, but have lost times more in the long run (took the egg, booted the chicken). Their next game, if any, will not see such sweet treatment, and their business is forever scarred by the X-Rebirth incident.
Players who preordered may have "lost" 60 bucks, which sound like a lot, but the sum certainly does not threaten their lifestyle.
But egosoft with her behavior has burned millions, which *does* threaten their future, because if they do not regain the players' trust there may be no next game or an egosoft to work at and pay the bills with.
All considered, egosoft has lost the most. Maybe it is time to bury the waraxe -- and do not preorder again.
There ya go. That's the crux of it. They KNOWINGLY foisted that piece of garbage on their loyal fans...and that was AFTER they lied about what was going on. They knew their fans were PC gamers, that is why they hid the fact they were trying to make a game that would work on a console, they knew it would piss them off. Seven years. Seven years of stringing along extremely patient fans waiting for the next big thing. And how were they rewarded for their extreme patience? Well, we all know. The fans got kicked in the nuts for all their trouble, money, patience and time.

So yeah, lots of people are still pissed about it. Deal with that. That is reality. If you don't want to hear it, then too bad. The people who got burned still have to listen to the mewlings of the fanboys raving how wonderful it is. You either just ignore it or don't bother reading it if you don't want to hear it. Pretty simple.
That is not a friendly tone. You seem to take it personally. And want to quarrel.
I will be direct: go quarrel by yourself with a wall -- I have more productive ways to use my time.


@ FormalMoss:
Do not worry. There is no flamewar :), and whatever this is: is no fault of yours.
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#342
@ Fox

I apologize. In the future I will try to use more friendly wording like you did. Words like, childish, delusional, haters, foolish, grow up and ridiculous.

I might even throw in a few things like glitter, fairies and unicorns. Those are friendly too. :angel:
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
Post

Re: X Rebirth

#345
fox wrote:I have little knowledge on how to mod XR. The experts are on the egosoft forum.
I just thought you might like to know that Gazz, one of the green jackets here, has been intimately involved with the X games for many years. He did some fine work on modifications for the previous game(s) in the series. ;) :)

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