if i had known that you could only fly one ship i wouldn't have wasted my money.

I have to say that the game has potential to be fun and great.  The option of controller support really adds in greater control for combat... but ultimately this game needs the AI options from the previous X3 games... the ability to tell a trade ship to do stuff and so you can ignore it... or more options... I want to build stations and have options, that and I do feel a single ship limits your own gameplay, why can't I perform trades with a ship of mine?

It's like they took twenty steps back.  I do like the game and like the options that stations have defenses and how gun have their own placements... but ultimately I think the game will need a lot more than "a few months" to become a better game.

Hopefully they can really work on this game and make it more of the great game that it can be.  It has that potential but just feels like a step down at this point.

Not saying that egosoft pulled off something sinister here, because egosoft has a very good reputation about supporting their products. They have a habit of releasing bug ridden games, Then fixing them almost to perfection afterwards. If anyone remembers the x3 reunion release. it was almost the same situation. It was bug ridden crap in the initial release, but after the patches (and 2 stand alone expansions) the game became quite enjoyable.

The nefarious company's out there count on you NOT researching their products before you buy them, or flat out buying "blind" into it. They rely on name recognition alone to boost initial sales (especially in the case of many horrid sequels to good games). Most of the time they will put out maybe one, or 2 patches then they are done with it. They got your money. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

I am not so sure about rebirth (notice i am still not calling it "X"). I agree it is quite a few steps backwards from X3. I think egosofts "intention" was to recapture what made "X Beyond the Frontier" great. If anyone remembers playing X:BTF That game also focused on a single player ship. The difference (other than the badly dated graphics of X:BTF) Is that you could own autonomous traders in X:BTF. You didnt have to babysit them like in Rebirth. There are a few other design choices if i was in charge i would have rejected. Like the whole highway concept, and Fleet needing to be attached to you by the hip. The idea of Rebirth itself may have looked great on paper. However. It failed miserably in the execution IMO.

Despite that. Like i said before Egosoft has a reputation for fixing their games. They are addressing several of the major design flaws. I would wait a while and see what the next series of patches brings.

Funny that you mention the X3 bottleneck.. I too bought the XR and my 1½ years old, not so high end, laptop with i7 and 550m wasn't enough for good gaming experience. So after thinking for a while about buying a new desktop pc for the game, I finally went and installed the X3:TC. I bought it when it came, but never played it since at the time it was way too slow for the laptop I had back then. And it turns out, now the X3:TC runs very smooth. No lag at all, not even with max singularity boost. No matter what sector I fly or how intensive battle I take part on, I just cannot make it to slow down. And the most odd thing is, that I'm running it on full-hd display with full graphical settings.

This and the AP expansion will entertain me for a while before I have to get back to the buying a new darn expensive desktop pc with electricity bill worth of sauna's stove.