Mr.Mumbles: This just reminded me that I still haven't given this franchise a try yet. I did buy the Terran War pack a while back - from what I've read it is supposed to be the best of the bunch so I went with that - so I guess I ought to give Terran Conflict a go.
IwubCheeze: I did the same thing but what I ended up putting it off and picked up the X bundle later on. I then ended up playing the games in order. I've finished X:BtF and X2: The Threat and I'm playing X3: Reunion now. In my experience, the X games get pretty complex and they are quite different from each other.
X:BtF can be a hit or a miss in places and there are some flaws with can make this game irritating at times. However, it likely the game you'll be finished with sooner as I didn't think there was much point in continuing after your ship (the only one you can fly) was fully upgraded. Give it a go by all means but if you don't care about finishing it, I wouldn't blame you.
I still recommend you try X2: The threat though if you want to ease yourself into the series as it is a simpler game to get into but not too simple like X:BtF was. For factories, you'll probably only be building solar power plants. The economy is a little wonky in that regard but I liked that X2 had unique pirate ships and mining was done much better in X2 then X3 (not sure about X:AP or X:TC though). Even though I'm enjoying X3:R a lot, I still want to go back to X2 sometime in the future.
Oh, and some people couldn't get into X2 because "your starting ship sucks". Regardless of what you hear people say, the M5 Discoverer you start the game with doesn't suck provided you use it correctly. I thought it was really good and found a use for it throughout the game. The people who say "Wahhh!!! The starting ship sucks, I can't kill anything in it" are doing it wrong. You would probably laugh at someone who said "Wahhh!!!! Screwdrivers suck cos I can't hammer in nails with it". Your starter ship does need to be fully upgraded though and when it is, it shines in what it can do. You can capture similar ships (one of which is a pirate ship that's even better for capturing), do escort missions, small trade runs (late game, I kept my starting ship and used it for equipment runs) scout sectors or use it as a mobile satelite. For combat, you can take on isolated scout ships and light fighters without using missiles, anything you can't fight, you can outrun,including missiles. Just something to keep in mind if you ever start playing X2 ;)
Eh, it sucks, but ultimately all the ships do (but they have specialties: that starting ship is just a swiss army knife, so it doesn't do much of anything good, as i use the paranid M5 for exploring 'cause it's super fast, the pirate m4s and m3s are pretty good ship capturers, etc). I ended up docking my disco at one of my stations.
The problem with X2 is that you usually beat it in an M3 (it's not only too short, but it's also too grindy). I tried playing without the storyline in the default "custom universe," but i could only put up with it long enough to get into an m6 that i never finished upgrading. My main source of fun in games like these is to build a massive fleet and conqure stuff, which just doesn't happen in X2. I even wanted to get my hands on a Khaak ship (never did), but getting the ship itself as well as the components are a royal pain, and usually by the time you can get it, you don't really want it anymore (the other M3s are better once they get in range, which the inevitably will, 'cause AI). The threats to you are more of a nuisance than a threat, but you can't really overtake them (capture their territory), either. It's basically one long ugly stalemate between everyone, where everyone keeps fighting despite the lack of progress. Kinda like the wars in the middle-east right now.
paflanigan: I'm confused, it says you have to create an account and register your key.. How is this DRM free?
RoseLegion: Yeah I was considering a pruchase to support the choice of a day one release but a 7% discount plus an exclusive (don't really like fully exclusive game content even if I have it) paint mod which is DRM'ed kind of puts a damper on my desire to spend nearly $80 USD sight unseen.
Can anyone speak to the quality and consistancy of updates and support for their other titiles on GOG?
If they provide actual support for the GOG version that's a solid mark in their favor but if they're one of the groups and treats GOG like an abandonware sight I may just have to pass entirely.
More fire and forget. The games themselves aren't that buggy, aside from some really obscure bugs. I had one that no one else who ever posted on their forums got, and they had trouble taking it seriously. I kinda don't blame them, as it was more annoying than game breaking (i just had to restart my computer, implying the bug wasn't really 100% their bug, even though it didn't happen with similar games that should've experienced it). Egosoft as a whole seems to be OK, but stay away from the offtopic section of their forums: they are onesided politically (
most active post), there, and the moderation team as as a whole supports this under the banner of "
do not question my authority [rule 9, and it's applied very, very loosely in practice]." But, as far as i've seen, these political leanings don't manifest themselves in any tangible way in the games (despite how incredibly informal their jokes are in the games), and, in contrast, seem to conflict with how things actually turn out in the games.
I recommend actually buying the game if your rig can handle it. They don't seem to be in any danger of suddenly going under or anything, so it'll likely get fixed if it's broken. It has to be said, though, that requirement for adaptation is not a bug in their eyes, so if the game ends up favoring trade or combat over the other, just because that's how things end up, that's not considered a bug. For example, X2's mechanics make it so that bases respawn, just to keep the game from becoming impossible, so the game favors playing peacibly with everyone who isn't a bug or robot. In fact, the game while making room for piracy largely doesn't allow it in reality, due to bases respawning and pirates not having their own shipyards (there's a way around this, but it's pretty impractical), so trying to be a pirate is really, really unbalanced against you (i'm not even sure you can actually make them all friendly, either). On the flip side, playing cop is very lucrative so long as you don't have escorts (seems you don't get paid for their kills). X4 is probably very, very different, and might favor piracy.
i_hope_you_rot: The most important question : What's the use of an exclusive paint mod in a single player game ?
Vanity, which ends up being one of the biggeset things in the game. Jokes about
egosoft aside, in the end the most effective tactic in the games tends to be having a bunch of tiny little ships instead of buying a few really big ships, but we all focus on buying the really big ships. When i finally bought my flagship in X2, i bought it not because i liked anything abut the combat, but because i earned it so i wanted one that looked really nice on the inside, so i bought a reptilian vessel.
Yeah, they wanted to do a reboot and make something outside of the X universe, but everyone wanted more X, so they did the stupid thing and made a hybrid and released it as Rebirth. My understanding of it was, Rebirth was never supposed to be serious, anyway, so when peope started demanding support, too, it became a matter of "well, we can't please them, anyway." I don't know much about their in company funding, but they weren't really supposed to support more than just the tech-demo (engine).
