X Rebirth

Edition 59 - January 2016

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X Universe News
Introduction

A Few Words from the Editor...

Welcome to the 59th edition of the X-Universe News. We start the new year with the announcement of the free Update 4.0 and the new Home of Light DLC, which you can still pre-order at the unbeatable price of 7.99 €. Additionally, we will have an elaborate look on the new X Rebirth wiki and talk to two of its creators. Finally, we are happy to tell you about the re-opening of the DevNet Ideas forum, where you can submit and discuss your X game ideas.

Update 4.0 and Home of Light DLC New and exciting expansion of the X-Universe
X Rebirth wiki Knowledge is power
DevNet Ideas forum Submit and discuss your X game ideas

Happy reading! - X2-Illuminatus
Update 4.0 and Home of Light DLC

New and exciting expansion of the X-Universe

EGOSOFT is very pleased to be able to announce the release of the new expansion "Home of Light" as well as update 4.0 for X Rebirth, both to be released in February 2016!

Home of Light (HoL) is an exciting expansion of the X Rebirth universe and makes the best use of the many new features of X Rebirth 4.0:


(HoL) Much larger universe: The Home of Light expansion will bring three entire new systems, including the central Home of Light, known from the X3 games, with a massive new economy.


(HoL and 4.0) Bulletin Board System (BBS): The new BBS collects all currently available missions in space for an easier overview.

(4.0) Trade improvements: Graphs showing market developments over time, a best deal finder and many UI improvements to make trading easier.


(4.0) New engine technology: Extend your ship with a Jump Drive and other new technology to travel through the universe quicker than ever.

(HoL) Trade stations: A new station type allows you to stock large amounts of any wares you like. Buy up goods when they're cheap and sell when the price is high, or when your competitors' stations mysteriously explode.


(4.0) Customizable weapon upgrades: Craft weapon modifications to improve your favorite weapons.

(HoL and 4.0) New enemies, new weapons, new missions, new and mysterious phenomena.


(HoL and 4.0) Many new secrets to explore in the outskirts of the ever-growing X universe.

The Home of Light expansion can be pre-ordered NOW at a 20% discount
for just 7.99 € on Steam.
X Rebirth Update 4.0 will be released for free.

Coming in early 2016 will be the new X Rebirth complete package, including The Teladi Outpost and Home of Light for just 49.99 €. Available on Steam, GOG, or directly from egosoft.com.

X Rebirth wiki

Knowledge is power

Since its beginning, the X community consists of many helpful users, who discuss the game mechanics and explain them to new players in our forums. Some users take this even further by writing down their experiences and findings in forum guides, FAQ articles or even by creating video tutorials. The aim is always the same: Improving the gaming experience for everyone. Another means to collect and present information, which allows working together like no other one, is a wiki. And that is what this article is about.

The new X Rebirth wiki is a place for everyone to collect information and to inform themselves about the many different aspects of X Rebirth. Originally created to host modding documentations, and to list and explain modding relevant changes within updates, the wiki has since evolved into a storage for gameplay related articles too. I asked Stefan Hett, UI engine developer at Egosoft and founder of the XR wiki, what his idea behind its creation was and how he sees its current and future development:

"Creating a wiki for the X games had been a long standing plan at Egosoft. The idea was discussed and brought up regularly during the development of X Rebirth and sometimes combined with the idea of an in-game encyclopedia (which was one of the features regularly requested by players). While we discussed different approaches, the decision was made to get the encyclopdia into the game and postpone any work on a potential wiki system for the time being.



In house we've been using different ways of documenting our development process; going back and forth between different systems. One of these systems was a product called Confluence from an Australian company called Atlassian. While the early versions of Confluence focused on documentation functionality, Atlassian improved the product over the past years, extending it to a tool which can also be used as a platform for a wiki nowadays.
With the work on integrating modding support for the UI in X Rebirth, I got the chance to revive our old plan and get the idea of a wiki system into something alife. As it's common with new ideas it's always questionable whether they will work out as intended in the end. That was quite the same with the idea of the wiki. So we were honestly thinking whether a wiki will actually be used by our community or whether it would end up dead. While most other development studios don't provide a wiki system for their players, Egosoft's belief is to work close together with its community. Therefore, it was a logical step for me to open up the documentation we put together for the modding of the UI and also allow the community to contribute content directly. Back then the main driving factor was to see how the community would react and to proof that we are on the right track, before we invest more resources on an official wiki.


I'm very glad that I could win over Sparky Sparkycorp as a moderator for the English wiki. Without his commitment to the wiki, it would have hardly gotten any further than the initial UI modding documentation it was. He was the one who brought the wiki to the point where we could easily make the decision to integrate it more closely into our webpage and spread the word of it's existence.
We hope that with this announcement in the X-Universe News and the closer integration into our homepage, more of our players will take a look at the wiki and not only use it as a means to get information but also to directly contribute to it and extend the content and details it already provides today.

Obviously, we at Egosoft have further plans to extend the Wiki and its capabilities too. We hope to be able to get several of these ideas we have into the Wiki system to improve its usability further and make it a more useful resource of information to everybody than it is already right now. Please do not hesitate to let us know about your ideas, feedback, or issues you might run into with the wiki by leaving us a note in one of these threads:

Wiki support thread (English)
Wiki support thread (German)"

Of course, a wiki can only be successful if people contribute to it. That means actively writing, correcting and discussing articles to present as many pieces of information as possible in an easily understandable way. Among the users, who create articles, is Sparky Sparkycorp, who also moderates the English part of the wiki. When being asked about his experience with writing articles and his motivation for doing so, he told me the following:

"As my familiarity with Rebirth and community knowledge of it shared on the forum grew, I realised that it was starting to become harder over time to remember where I'd read or wrote something. I'd often find myself scratching my brains, trying to find an old link 😊

Fast-forward a few months and Egosoft announced the creation of the Rebirth wiki in the Scripts and Modding forum, alongside an invitation to join in. I felt it had potential to help with the issue of threads sinking down forums to become lost, and with the vagaries of my memory. With that in mind, I volunteered to help out.



Over time, the Rebirth wiki has evolved to host links to many helpful sources of information on places like the Egosoft website, and has begun to host a few new guides too. It's been nice to see the growth and to be able to find and share links to the wiki on the forum when people have asked questions there. Seeing other people begin to add guides to the wiki and to collaboratively improve existing wiki guides has been particularly rewarding. In that regard, Snafu_X3 and solntcev deserve special thanks for being keen, early guide contributors and spell-checkers 😊"

Just as Sparky Sparkycorp once contacted Stefan to help out with the wiki, we're asking you to contribute now. Whether you want to write own articles, correct or add information, or translate existing ones, every help is welcome. To get you started with the wiki, there is this article, which explains how to create and edit articles. If you have further questions or suggestions, please post them in the XR wiki support topic in the egosoft.com forum.

PS: If you are a native German speaker, Egosoft is still looking for a volunteer to moderate the German section of the wiki. If you are interested, do not hesitate to contact stefan AT egosoft DOT com.
DevNet Ideas forum

Submit and discuss your X game ideas

After what seems to have been a long deep sleep, the DevNet Ideas forum has been re-opened today. The Ideas forum is a place for everyone to submit their ideas for X Rebirth and future X series space games. Submitted ideas will be picked by the DevNet staff for further discussion and may hereby find their way into the X games one day.

Characteristic of the DevNet, posting is only allowed in English. Thus allowing users from different language forums to partake in discussions about the same topic. Additionally, DevNet moderators will ensure that discussions stay on topic. If you are not sure where to post or have problems with wording your idea in English, please contact a DevNet moderator for assistance.

If you want to submit ideas, then please sign up for DevNet base membership (Level 3, no NDA is required). Once you have done so, you should be able to see and access the Ideas forum. Before posting, please make sure you have read and understood the rules there.

We are eager to read your ideas and hope for many interesting discussions.

Official Website

http://www.x-rebirth.com
Community

http://forum.egosoft.com
Twitter follow on Twitter

http://www.twitter.com/EGOSOFT
Facebook Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/XRebirth
YouTube watch on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/user/Xuniversechannel

Copyright © 2016 Egosoft GmbH, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:
EGOSOFT GmbH, Heidestraße 4, 52146 Würselen, Germany
Tel: +49 2405 4239970, http://www.egosoft.com
CEO: Bernd Lehahn, Commercial Registry Aachen HRB 13473

Please feel free to contact us in your own language by e-mailing [email protected]

To learn more about the X-Universe News and who is involved in its creation, please see our FAQ article.

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DE!

• New Feature: Bulletin board system to keep track of offered missions.
• New Feature: Beta 3 Major overhaul of external view (enabled menus, target elements, external view in highways, and more).
• New Feature: Beta 4 Economy logging and statistics (feature now partially functional).
• New Feature: Beta 4 Time acceleration using SETA (feature now fully functional, any SETA obtained before this release will be removed on loading).
• New Feature: Beta 3 New mission to obtain player ship jump drive (feature now available).
• New Feature: Beta 3 New missions to hack stations and obtain rare or valuable items.
• New Feature: Beta 3 You can now find and craft rare weapon modifications that increase your weapon's stats when installed.
• New Feature: Flight School tutorial.
• Added 'Fly to position' order selecting a position via map click (Replaces 'Fly to Zone' order).
• Beta 3 Added ability to access various features (event monitor/info point interaction, comms, mission/trade offers, etc.) while remote controlling drones.
• Beta 3 Added event monitor and ability to open menus while remote controlling a torpedo (improves feature introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Added ability to claim ownerless capital ships by placing NPC on platform.
• Beta 3 Added current target as default destination for autopilot hotkey (Shift+A), uses mission objective as before if no target set.
• Beta 3 Added new Nyanae ships to Omicron Lyrae, replacing the Gigurum ships there.
• Added heat damage from engine jets.
• Beta 3 Added new "very hard" difficulty level.
• Beta 4 Added navigation skill influence on effectiveness of AI pilots.
• Beta 4 Added efficiency influence on cooling rate so that some weapons (e.g. Pulsed Maser) don't stop building up heat when damaged.
• Beta 4 Added mouse look for camera rotation in all external views and in the cockpit (default is middle mouse button).
• Beta 4 Added new M-sized traders to Republic of Cantera faction.
• Beta 4 Added notification if a player squad drone was lost or killed.
• Beta 4 Added missing ion and plasma resource fields to Maelstrom.
• Beta 4 Added weapon modifications as possible but rare mission rewards (improves feature introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Added BBS functionality to more missions (improves feature introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Added voice recordings (in English, German and French) for texts that are new in 4.0.
• Beta 5 Added new options to legacy main menu.
• Beta 5 Added NPC population to player owned stations.
• Beta 5 Added indication of unread entries to encyclopedia.
• Beta 5 Added mouse-over tooltips for various conversation options.
• Beta 5 Added option to switch mouse look button to be a toggle rather than having to hold it down.
• Beta 5 Added status report notifications during boarding.
• Beta 5 Added new variation to mission where player must clear an area of explosives.
• Beta 5 Added jump drive and fuel storage to Xenon I.
• Beta 5 Added in-game links to tutorial videos.
• Added savegame compression.
• Beta 3 Removed option to replace a working architect, which broke the both of them!
• Beta 4 Removed legacy shaders.
• Beta 5 Replaced "Broadcast" order with orders for multiple selected ships in the Property Owned menu.
• Improved small ship AI to use boost in combat situations based on pilot skills.
• Improved behaviour when following mission target using autopilot.
• Improved HUD toggle now toggles more elements and works in more cases.
• Beta 3 Improved speed of medium sized ships.
• Beta 5 Improved gate transitions for capital ships, with better entry positions and a queue system.
• Beta 5 Improved missiles cycling, skipping missiles for which you currently have no ammunition.
• Beta 5 Improved event monitor display when picking up multiple containers in space at the same time.
• Beta 5 Improved SETA, no longer stops when steering and stops less often in highways (new feature in 4.0).
• Beta 5 Improved balancing of NPC ship group sizes in Hard and Very Hard difficulty.
• Beta 5 Improved max skill engineers so they can now repair hull up to 100%.
• Beta 5 Improved balancing of weapon mod statistics (new feature in 4.0).
• Beta 5 Improved weapon mod UI (new feature in 4.0).
• Improved mouse accuracy in menus.
• Improved station manager logic to better coordinate multiple owned ships.
• Improved FXAA colour-correction.
• Beta 3 Improved highway entry/exit sounds.
• Beta 3 Improved crash reports to indicate whether game has been modified.
• Beta 3 Improved balancing of ship prices (increased price of container transporters by 50%, reduced other medium sized ships by 25%).
• Beta 3 Improved NPC behaviour when flying through Jump Gates to clear the area.
• Beta 3 Improved accuracy of combat damage calculations when player is not present.
• Beta 4 Improved balance of pirate wings for easy and normal difficulty.
• Beta 4 Improved auto-aim behaviour when not firing at cursor.
• Beta 4 Improved docking behaviour of ships.
• Beta 4 Improved guided missiles flight behaviour.
• Beta 4 Improved target selection using gamepad controls.
• Beta 4 Improved text quality for smaller fonts in some rare cases.
• Beta 4 Improved readability of target element texts.
• Beta 4 Improved event monitor to show information about environment object in drone mode (improves feature introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Improved cargo capacity of Nyanae traders in Omicron Lyrae slightly (improves feature introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Improved behaviour of ships trading with warehouse stations.
• Changed default setting for menu display from "Side Console"-mode to "HUD"-mode.
• Fixed trade ships assigned to stations not respecting their new commander's subordinate range.
• Fixed being able to issue multiple transfer orders for the same wares when using ware exchange with a station.
• Fixed another scenario that could lead to incorrect amounts of unavailable units.
• Fixed incorrect quantity of bought fuel cells on 'Refuel' order if the ship had already some fuel.
• Fixed several bugs with Marauder Pirates not being able to steal dropped containers from their targets.
• Fixed several cases resulting in ships getting stuck when following other ships out-of-sector.
• Fixed missing command info for mining drones and for transport drones picking up ware containers.
• Fixed stations complaining when player destroys an ownerless ship.
• Fixed broken game controls after interacting with a trade offer while controlling a drone.
• Fixed aim-at-indicator being displayed incorrectly when remote controlling a drone.
• Fixed rare cases where objects showed incorrect outlines.
• Fixed encyclopedia display of maximum speed for capital ships.
• Beta 3 Fixed player ship sometimes jumping positions when changing zones while flying on autopilot.
• Beta 3 Fixed engine ambient sound volume and pitch not working correctly during autopilot.
• Beta 3 Fixed autopilot stopping when following a ship that changes zones.
• Beta 3 Fixed autopilot continuing when entering a remote-controlled drone.
• Beta 3 Fixed remote controlled missiles not moving while entry animation is running.
• Beta 3 Fixed AI roll rotation in several flight behaviours.
• Beta 3 Fixed small AI ships ramming into the player when boosting in some combat situations.
• Beta 3 Fixed event monitor hints overlapping the "Press F" text on the HUD eventmonitor.
• Beta 3 Fixed capital ships boosting backwards or sideways.
• Beta 3 Fixed broken aim indicator when controlling a drone.
• Beta 3 Fixed station owned in Empire Builder not being able to replace Construction Vessel.
• Beta 3 Fixed plot Construction Vessels being boardable.
• Beta 3 Fixed station managers losing their account when involved in ware exchange trades.
• Beta 3 Fixed ships on autopilot sometimes not accelerating to full speed (e.g. when player ship leaves a highway).
• Beta 3 Fixed player ship getting stuck at the exit of a highway if a menu is open.
• Beta 3 Fixed Xenon fighters being capturable.
• Beta 3 Fixed being able to shoot dumbfire missiles backwards in external view.
• Beta 4 Fixed broken jumpdrive not allowing refuel order to be given (still not allowed if jumping required to refuel).
• Beta 4 Fixed garbled text on target elements in Russian localisation.
• Beta 4 Fixed accumulating highway ad signs.
• Beta 4 Fixed calculation error with recommended budget resulting in value sometimes being too high.
• Beta 4 Fixed incorrect flight orientation on AI drones and Xenon fighters.
• Beta 4 Fixed wrong rotation on the mining movement of medium miners.
• Beta 4 Fixed player ship auto-roll when menus are open and the auto-roll option is off.
• Beta 4 Fixed capital ships flying too slowly or getting stuck when avoiding other ships.
• Beta 4 Fixed certain ships not being able to pick up collectables.
• Beta 4 Fixed Active Missions menu getting stuck during tutorial.
• Beta 4 Fixed dark or black loading screen when pressing ESC quickly after starting a new game.
• Beta 4 Fixed player being able to click on invisible UI elements, such as while HUD not displayed.
• Beta 4 Fixed several missions not cleaning up properly.
• Beta 4 Fixed traders having too much reduced scrap metal.
• Beta 4 Fixed hack panel missions telling the player to return to ship when docked.
• Beta 4 Fixed case where jump drive mission would not show mission objective to jump to a jump beacon (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Fixed case where jump drive mission would not end because an objective got stuck (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Fixed problems with the player auto pilot going through jump gates.
• Beta 4 Fixed tumbling highway ships when the player exits highway.
• Beta 4 Fixed production resource consumption not being calculated correctly in rare cases.
• Beta 4 Fixed double "Cr" in logbook messages for money transfer for Fuel Cells.
• Fixed area damage increasing with lower framerates.
• Fixed issue where a 'static' effect remained over the event monitor during the plot.
• Fixed Particle Repeater weapons building up heat slower at higher framerates.
• Fixed player ship not being able to enter highways with an open menu.
• Fixed rare case of missing highway/gate/ship group target elements after starting/loading a game.
• Fixed rare case of non-working input controls after starting/loading a game.
• Fixed interact menu not always being on top of other target elements when using mouse/gamepad controls.
• Fixed current target not always on top of all other target elements.
• Fixed target elements not always on top of other target elements which are further away.
• Fixed rare cases of clicking on a target element actually targeting another object.
• Fixed target elements jumping when interacting with it while controlling a drone.
• Fixed rare cases of crosshair showing weird animations.
• Fixed rare cases of UI issues when switching to/from external and/or drone view.
• Fixed cases where weapon panels showed startup animation in cases other than entering the ship.
• Fixed various trade price discrepancies in menus due to incorrect rounding.
• Enabled radar while remote controlling drones.
• Fixed target elements being visible through the player ship and player drone in external view (new feature in 4.00).
• Fixed aim-at-indicator being displayed in external target view mode (new feature in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed missing target elements when switching from target view to external view (new feature in 4.00).
• Fixed heat damage from engines applying to the ship the engines belong to (new feature in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed heat damage from engines still being applied when engine is wrecked (new feature in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed heat damage from engines not being applied after ship changes zone (new feature in 4.00).
• Fixed incorrect truncation when displaying money in menus (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed case incorrectly allowing player to target objects in external target view (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed black cockpit monitors when undocking from a station/ship while in external view (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed bad flight paths that sometimes could occur when NPCs navigate through areas with dangerous regions (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed occasional graphical flash on entering a highway (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 3 Fixed clothing on some character appearring black (problem introduced in 4.00).
• Beta 4 Fixed game over not showing player ship explosion sound or visual effects.
• Beta 4 Fixed game starting in non-default full-screen resolution when running it for the first time.
• Beta 4 Fixed voice samples for several encyclopedia entries in German localisation.
• Beta 5 Fixed excessive marine loss when attack strength slightly higher than defence strength.
• Beta 5 Fixed Transfer Wares order not working between small/medium ships and Construction Vessels.
• Beta 5 Fixed very rare cases where target elements were missing or being displayed when they shouldn't be.
• Beta 5 Fixed missing drone docks on warehouse stations.
• Beta 5 Fixed inconsistent checkbox state on certain menus.
• Beta 5 Fixed double sound effects in certain menus.
• Beta 5 Fixed ship capture chance ignoring hull state.
• Beta 5 Fixed various issues with economy statistics (new feature in 4.0).
• Beta 5 Fixed playership being immovable on first game start in very rare situations.
• Beta 5 Fixed player-owned warehouses being magically filled with certain wares and configured to trade these when a manager is assigned.
• Beta 4 Fixed capital ships attempting to trade with Home of Light CVs getting stuck.
• Beta 4 Fixed police ships in Home of Light belonging to PMC!
• Beta 5 Fixed missing tradeoffer locations on Home of Light builder ships.
• Beta 5 Fixed missing dock for m-sized ships on TerraCorp HQ.
• Fixed game freezing when quitting the game with Alt+F4 while in loading screen.
• Fixed startup issues with corrupted or incorrect DLLs in Windows system directory.
• Fixed several small memory leaks.
• Beta 5 Fixed more causes of crashes.
• Beta 5 Several more small performance and memory optimisations.

Known Issues

The following issues in this version are known and will be fixed in a forthcoming update.

• Some localisations for trade menus have resulted in apparently duplicate entries. The menus are actually different!
• Flight School text remains on screen after playing the tutorial.