So the X series of games

gibboss28

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I'm curious if anyone has any experience with these games, I'm just curious to know what these games are like and if they're worth picking up. There's currently a deal on the Humble Bundle for them: https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

So yeah, what are these games like, is it worth picking up and also for a bonus question, what would be your perfect Sunday?
 

Atmos Duality

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Quite bluntly, I found X3 to be incredibly boring.

The dogfighting quickly became boring, and managing a small hauling company was about as thrilling as managing a real one.
...Minus the actual money.
 

Aeshi

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I've had lots of fun playing X3 Terran Conflict & Albion Prelude (around 230 hours on the former, around 80-120 hours on the latter), can't really speak for any of the others though. I will agree with Atmos in that they are something of an acquired taste

Egosoft's website [http://www.egosoft.com/download/index_en.php] has demos of X3 Reunion and X2, might want to check those out first and make your mind up based on your experience of those (although being older games in the series those two are harder and not quite as well-polished as the newer games)
 

RikuoAmero

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Just in case you might be confused, there are three separate titles called X3, it's not like it's one game with two expansions. The first is X3: Reunion, then X3: Terran Conflict, then X3: Albion Prelude.

EDIT: Just in case you want an extreme challenge, I've just fired up Albion Prelude, my first time playing it and noticed a difficulty called Dead is Dead. Apparently, you can only save upon quitting, and get this...you can only load your saved game ONCE. If you die in game, that's it no loading, but if you save the once, and then reload, you can never save or load again (in that specific game). I do appreciate the thought of extremely hard difficulty settings, but to me, this is just ridiculous, since you can't plan for power outages, no matter how skilled you are.
 

Clowndoe

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I think you're best off looking in space-sim circles. It's just too niche to get a good feel for it here.
 

Ranorak

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I've tried several times to get into them, because they seem so much fun.
But the moment I load a new game, I'm instantly lost and have no idea what to do, where to begin or even what options I have available.

It's like they toss you into a new playground, but never explain how all the new rides work.
 

Vern5

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gibboss28 said:
I'm curious if anyone has any experience with these games, I'm just curious to know what these games are like and if they're worth picking up. There's currently a deal on the Humble Bundle for them: https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

So yeah, what are these games like, is it worth picking up and also for a bonus question, what would be your perfect Sunday?
The X-Series is not for the faint of heart. I hope you like slow travel times, cargo trading, and factory economics because you're going to be doing a lot of that if you want to make any decent amount of money. This is the kind of hardcore game that challenges you to stick with it through boring trading tedium so you can one day afford to buy and equip a combat-ready ship with which to hunt bounties or pirate traders. The struggle makes every ship upgrade and factory construction sweeter but you might end up just getting bored and moving on to something faster paced.

Find a demo. If you end up liking it then get either Terran Conflict or Albion Prelude. This game can be a lot of fun, you just need to be sure its YOUR kind of fun otherwise you'll have some wicked buyer's remorse.
 

Joccaren

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The X games start off immensely slow, and have a relatively high learning curve. I got the whole series [1 through to Albion Prelude] at a local store for $5, and for me its fun, but I will repeat - ITS VERY SLOW. 6 hours into the first game and you probably still won't have weapons, or have left the starting system. You'll be trading resources, upgrading your ship little by little, and trying to pay off a debt you got in the first 10 minutes. The later titles speed things up a bit, but don't expect anything fast paced. At all. You take forever to get places, you take forever to earn money, and you take forever to even figure out WTF the story in the game is. They're fun, and good space sims, but you better have a bunch of patience. And look up controls online. In game its often not clear, or you're not told at all.
 

Owyn_Merrilin

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RikuoAmero said:
Just in case you might be confused, there are three separate titles called X3, it's not like it's one game with two expansions. The first is X3: Reunion, then X3: Terran Conflict, then X3: Albion Prelude.

EDIT: Just in case you want an extreme challenge, I've just fired up Albion Prelude, my first time playing it and noticed a difficulty called Dead is Dead. Apparently, you can only save upon quitting, and get this...you can only load your saved game ONCE. If you die in game, that's it no loading, but if you save the once, and then reload, you can never save or load again (in that specific game). I do appreciate the thought of extremely hard difficulty settings, but to me, this is just ridiculous, since you can't plan for power outages, no matter how skilled you are.
That's not so much a difficulty setting as a realism mode. Basically all roguelikes[footnote]in fact, you could argue it's not really a roguelike if it lacks it[/footnote] have a mode like that, usually as the default or only option. You also see it in games where you're basically living a life -- like Mount and Blade, or in this case, the X series. Modes like that really add something to the game, make it so every decision is life and death.

OT: What I'm curious about is the flight model. I've heard it's Newtonian physics based, but how heavily? I can't stand games that go all out with it (like Allegiance or the old Frontier games), but in games that are more loose with it (like Moon Breakers) it can be a lot of fun.
 

XX Y XY

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I've only played X3: Terran Conflict. Incredibly high learning curve, you'll spend as much time reading wikis as you will playing the game the first time through. Well worth it though once you get things moving. One of the most addictive and immersive games I've ever played.
 

LordLundar

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Owyn_Merrilin said:
OT: What I'm curious about is the flight model. I've heard it's Newtonian physics based, but how heavily? I can't stand games that go all out with it (like Allegiance or the old Frontier games), but in games that are more loose with it (like Moon Breakers) it can be a lot of fun.
Not terribly heavy. It essentially boils down to acceleration isn't instant. Going from dead stop to full speed and vice versa for example takes a bit of time regardless of how fast you increase the throttle.
 

Owyn_Merrilin

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LordLundar said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
OT: What I'm curious about is the flight model. I've heard it's Newtonian physics based, but how heavily? I can't stand games that go all out with it (like Allegiance or the old Frontier games), but in games that are more loose with it (like Moon Breakers) it can be a lot of fun.
Not terribly heavy. It essentially boils down to acceleration isn't instant. Going from dead stop to full speed and vice versa for example takes a bit of time regardless of how fast you increase the throttle.
But it doesn't, say, force you to wrap your head around relative velocity where you, say, are going at a high speed relative to a planet, but have to use your thrusters to adjust it relative to other ships for dog fighting? You just about need a physics degree to do any dogfighting in some of the more complicated (and, admittedly, realistic) Newtonian flight models.
 

LordLundar

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Owyn_Merrilin said:
LordLundar said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
OT: What I'm curious about is the flight model. I've heard it's Newtonian physics based, but how heavily? I can't stand games that go all out with it (like Allegiance or the old Frontier games), but in games that are more loose with it (like Moon Breakers) it can be a lot of fun.
Not terribly heavy. It essentially boils down to acceleration isn't instant. Going from dead stop to full speed and vice versa for example takes a bit of time regardless of how fast you increase the throttle.
But it doesn't, say, force you to wrap your head around relative velocity where you, say, are going at a high speed relative to a planet, but have to use your thrusters to adjust it relative to other ships for dog fighting? You just about need a physics degree to do any dogfighting in some of the more complicated (and, admittedly, realistic) Newtonian flight models.
Nowhere near it. When it comes to dogfighting it's more like a fighter jet than a physics lesson. When I meant acceleration takes time I'm talking a few seconds at most. If you've played the X-Wing series or Decent: Freespace series you'll feel right at home.
 

thiosk

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Its a neat... thing. I got really obsessed with it. Apparently. Played on steam tells me 750 hours or so, which is astonishing, because I don't remember a single hour of it.
I bought a fabulous joystick and piloted for aeons. I was building complex factory systems.

Because I was a vast-corporation-builder sort, the dealbreakers for me came down to the wackyness of offscreen combat. It was too easy for me to lose large ships to tiny fighters because of the way it worked.
However, moddability was amazing, and at the time I quit there was an active effort to rewrite most of what happened off screen.

I skipped albion and will revisit X in the next version IF complexes don't trash game performance both on and offscreen.
 

Lictor Face

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I've owned the franchise for a bit, but i've never really gotten past the first few hours. Its an EXTREMELY hardcore space simulator. I spent pretty much three or four hours figuring out what in the nine hells was I supposed to do ( I play dwarf fortress regularly. And even I couldn't stomach this UI )

I don't doubt that its a good game. But if you are a casual space fan, I recommend turning away from it. The X franchise imo is for hardcore spam sim users. For me, it felt like a job ( I play games to escape my jobs lol )
 

Owyn_Merrilin

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LordLundar said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
LordLundar said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
OT: What I'm curious about is the flight model. I've heard it's Newtonian physics based, but how heavily? I can't stand games that go all out with it (like Allegiance or the old Frontier games), but in games that are more loose with it (like Moon Breakers) it can be a lot of fun.
Not terribly heavy. It essentially boils down to acceleration isn't instant. Going from dead stop to full speed and vice versa for example takes a bit of time regardless of how fast you increase the throttle.
But it doesn't, say, force you to wrap your head around relative velocity where you, say, are going at a high speed relative to a planet, but have to use your thrusters to adjust it relative to other ships for dog fighting? You just about need a physics degree to do any dogfighting in some of the more complicated (and, admittedly, realistic) Newtonian flight models.
Nowhere near it. When it comes to dogfighting it's more like a fighter jet than a physics lesson. When I meant acceleration takes time I'm talking a few seconds at most. If you've played the X-Wing series or Decent: Freespace series you'll feel right at home.
Well darn, now I'm interested XD

All this time I thought it was more along the lines of the Elite sequels (Elite itself had a perfectly serviceable flight model like the one you're describing, the sequels not so much.)
 

Stryc9

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RikuoAmero said:
Just in case you might be confused, there are three separate titles called X3, it's not like it's one game with two expansions. The first is X3: Reunion, then X3: Terran Conflict, then X3: Albion Prelude.

EDIT: Just in case you want an extreme challenge, I've just fired up Albion Prelude, my first time playing it and noticed a difficulty called Dead is Dead. Apparently, you can only save upon quitting, and get this...you can only load your saved game ONCE. If you die in game, that's it no loading, but if you save the once, and then reload, you can never save or load again (in that specific game). I do appreciate the thought of extremely hard difficulty settings, but to me, this is just ridiculous, since you can't plan for power outages, no matter how skilled you are.
The Dead is Dead mode came from a thing one of the forum guys did where he chronicled a run that had the rules this mode enforces. You can read the whole thing here: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=222994&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

It's quite entertaining and quite a few other forum members started doing similar runs after this caught on and the Egosoft added a mode to the game to actually enforce the rules.

Overall, I'd say that if you like the idea of a sandbox game set in space where you can do pretty much anything you want and get away with it if you're good enough the X games might be what you're looking for. I would jump on this Humble Bundle deal and beat the average while it lasts as it comes with the Supberbox bonus materials disc which contains some guides that will help you to get started. The worst thing about these games is the learning curve is super steep but it can be pretty rewarding once you overcome it. There is some absolutely beautiful scenery in this game and lots of area to explore. It has an actual living universe too, the economy actually functions like you'd expect with prices rising and falling based on demand for whichever product you're looking to trade in. Several different races that you can deal with, each with their own motivations, alliances and prejudices. It really does provide a rich environment that is fun to spend time in. I used to play X3: Reunion for hours on end, just flying around trading and exploring and occasionally attacking pirates when I felt like I had the upper hand. I eventually had to break myself of the habit because the game started to interfere with me getting other more important things done and I'd stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning just playing and listening to podcasts.
 

Smooth Operator

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Well these are actual space sims, as in simulation for reals this time, as in if you don't follow it's one million point tutorial you won't even know how to move your ship.
Pick it up only if you are ready for some heavy gaming because this is no easy cruise.