In-game tutorials
Nine in-game tutorials are available, with the Flight School also offered up-front with each fresh game start through the Event Monitor. The in-game tutorials are there to guide and teach the you specific features of the game. Only one tutorial at a time can be active. If your decided to start a second tutorial the first one will be cancelled.



Tutorials may be accessed through a few different ways:

• Sidebar: Missions (3), then Tutorials (3).
  
• Legacy menu: Info (2), Missions (5), then Tutorials (3).
  
• BBS:If you're already in the BBS Menu, the Tutorials are option 2.

Tutorial videos
You can at any time watch video tutorials. Either you can do this from the start menu or from the options menu in-game. Simply select "Video Tutorials" and decide what video you want to watch. A web browser will automatically open and take you directly to the video.

Further Documentation:
A list of official documentation and videos for both X Rebirth and XR VR Edition is available at:

X Rebirth Wiki[www.egosoft.com]

As of version 4.30, default input profiles for the Saitek X52 and the Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog are now available in addition to the generic default profile for joysticks.


For those of you who already have existing input profiles and do not want to risk losing these profiles when trying out defaults, it could be a good idea to back up your existing profile. You can do this by scrolling to the very bottom of the Controls submenu of the Options menu and activating "Save Profile" to save your existing profile. You can later load that profile to restore to an input state that you are reasonably satisfied with.


Before loading the default profiles for joysticks, use "Manage Controllers/Joysticks" to make sure that your input devices are active. If using an input method comprised of multiple devices such as some stick+throttle combos, make sure that the stick is at the first position, while the throttle is at the second position. If using a stand-alone stick, make sure that your stick is at the first position.


If you prefer, or have to, use a throttle device's entire range of motion to only control forward movement, such as when using a throttle with no center notch, you could deactivate the setting "Bi-directional Throttle". Note, however, that this can cause problems with other input devices such as gamepads or the Oculus Touch controller that expect this setting to be active.


With automatic target selection on, targets that are directly in front of your ship are automatically selected. In 3D mode, this automatically selects what you look at. The default joystick profiles were designed with this setting active, but since buttons are also mapped to other methods of selecting targets, this can be safely turned off.

If automatic target selection is on, it is useful to have a control mapped to "Toggle Target Lock". This locks your currently selected target so that looking at, or facing, other targets does not change your selection. Toggle target lock again to allow you to switch targets via automatic selection again.

Home of Light



This densely populated system features a highway "ring“ made of local highways between zones and super highways between sectors. Along the "ring“ most of the stations of this system can be found. For fast travel, the speed in super highways have been increased dramatically. This system has a full working economy and is a good place for trading.


Cold Star



Even if this system does have some stations and trade opportunities, it is a cold and dangerous place. There is much to explore and many good opportunities for mining. But watch out for dangerous areas.


Toride



This solar system is different from anything else in the game. It more or less does not feature any civilized economy but provides good opportunities for exploration. It has been reported that one can find abandoned ships and there are rumours about a huge hive of an old forgotten enemy.

Home of Light



This gamestart fits perfectly for trading. You get two very capable M-sized container trade ships and starts in a populated area close to the highway "ring". With this gamestart it is easy to get into real trading business fast.

Reunited with the Home of Light system, factions from across the Jump Gate network rush to form ties with the illustrious Terracorp. Will you support their monopoly or attempt to undercut their local advantage?



Verge Explorer



This is a gamestart for those who are interested in exploring. You start in the dangerous Toride system and enemies are always close by. The Skunk has a quite a capable crew, including a pilot and captain who can be put to good use in case you find an abandoned ship.

The road you travel is perilous, and most who came before you were forced to flee, their ships wrecked or abandoned in the unforgiving void of space. How far can you and your crew go before turning back?

New side quests



New generic missions

This is a new function accessible via the Sidebar (enter-3-2) and lists all missions available at the moment. When the Skunk enters a new zone or sector all available missions will be added to the BBS. The exception are the hidden or secret missions. In order to add them to the BBS they must first be found by flying close to the surface of stations. Missions will stay in the BBS for a limited amount of time or until you go out of range such as when travelling through a Jump Gate.

SETA can be used by you to increase the in-game speed. When SETA is active time is speeded up 6 times. In order to get SETA the player must find the appropriate items to be able to craft it. After successful crafting, SETA will end up as an inventory item and can be found in the inventory menu (enter-2-1-3). The SETA icon (right ring on the upper left of the ship status monitor) will then appear.


(To the left, both SETA and Jump Drive installed. To the right, no SETA nor Jump Drive installed)

Usage
When the SETA icon is greyed out SETA is not currently available. There are many reasons for this, i.e. to close to a ship or a station. Then you have to move the Skunk's position. When the SETA icon is lit, you can press J to activate it. When SETA is active time is accelerated by 6 times and the SETA icon will rotate.

Some conditions will cancel SETA time acceleration, such as when the Skunk gets to close to stations, or an important message is being shown on the event monitor.

Crafting
The items below are needed to craft a SETA. These items are rare drops that can be found in lockboxes around the universe.


Acquisition
The Experimental Jump Drive can be acquired by completing the "X-perimental" mission chain, available from Omicron Lyrae from X Rebirth Version 4.0. When the Jump Drive has been installed (automatically) on the ship, the Jump Drive icon becomes visible. It is the left icon (the left ring) at upper left on the shield monitor. When the icon is blue, the Jump Drive is ready to use.

Usage
With the Experimental Jump Drive, you can jump to Jump Gates or Jump Beacons via the map. If a zone contains a Jump Gate or Jump Beacon, selecting it in the zone map will enable the "Jump" button in the bottom-right of the UI element. Clicking the button once will start the Jump Drive. The Drive has a ca. fifteen second charge time before the jump takes place. If, in this time, the "Jump" button is clicked again, the jump will be aborted.

In order to use the Jump Drive it has be to charged, which means that the icon must be a solid light blue ring. There is a 10 (real-time) minute cooldown before the Jump Drive can be used again, but this can be skipped by using the inventory item Jump Drive Coolant (a very rare drop from enemies and lockboxes). During the recharging of the Jump Drive the icon changes colour and goes from begin greyed out to solid.

Plasma Cannon Mk3
The Plasma Cannon Mk3 replaces the constant pulse of the previous versions with a burst of energy that can be charged by holding the weapon trigger for a number of seconds. This makes it perfect for controlling damage to larger, slower vessels. Be advised not to let the Mk3 overheat.

Railgun Mk1
Designed to release its bullet at such high velocity to cause significant and almost immediate damage to its target, this particular implementation of a railgun is also equipped with an auto-zoom that allows it to focus on far-away targets when the trigger is pulled. Releasing the trigger will fire the bullet. This makes the railgun a very effective sniper weapon.

Kyon Torpedo
The design of this torpedo means the majority of its damage is dealt to the shields. Together with increased agility over the Nova Torpedo this makes it a perfect first strike weapon against capital ships. Parts for this weapon are hard to come by and you have to go to dangerous areas of space to obtain them. No Vendors for this weapon have been discovered yet.

Weapon modifications are items that can be used to modify characteristics of various weapons. Particular modifications vary from slight bonuses or penalties to alterations that drastically change how particular weapons can be used.

Acquisition: Weapon modifications can be acquired as loot dropped from defeated ships, from lockboxes, and as rare mission rewards.
Installation: The process of installing them can be initiated by talking with a Mechanic and selecting "Weapon Modifications."
Dismantling: Weapon modifications can also be dismantled into weapon mod parts of various grades, which can be used to make new weapon mods.
Crafting: New weapon mods can be crafted using weapon mod parts of the same grade.

The Weapon Mod Interface
The Weapon Mod Interface contains a list of weapon mods that you currently have with details for each one. This interface can be accessed in two ways:

1. Through the Inventory, [Sidebar (Enter) -> Information (2) -> My own status (1) -> Inventory (3) -> Weapon Mods (2)]
   
2. And via each weapon in the Ship Details of the Albion Skunk. [Sidebar (Enter) -> Information (2) -> Ship status (3) -> Weapon Systems -> select Weapon -> Details (4)]

The Crafting Interface
Like any other craftable item, weapon mods are crafted in your Inventory. [Sidebar (Enter) -> Information (2) -> My own status (1) -> Inventory (3)]

Please note that the resulting weapon mod does not appear in the Inventory. Rather, it appears in the Weapon Mod Interface where all of your weapon mods can be examined in detail at your leisure.





Weapon mods come in three grades: Low, Medium, and High.

Low-Grade Weapon Mods
Low-grade weapon mods are experimental in nature and tend to throw a weapon out of balance. They alter a single aspect of a weapon, but that single aspect tends to be altered drastically. The quality of these weapon mods is also extremely random, and there is a fairly high chance that a weapon mod will provide only a penalty.

Medium-Grade Weapon Mods
Medium-grade weapon mods are more conservative than low-grade weapon mods. They modify between two (2) and three (3) attributes of a weapon, but the extent of each modification tends to be much less than with low-grade or high-grade weapon mods. This usually results in a marginal net bonus or penalty to the weapon without changing that weapon's essential character.

High-Grade Weapon Mods
High-grade weapon mods are highly refined pieces of kit that can drastically improve a weapon, but equally drastically change that weapon's characteristics. They modify between three (3) and five (5) attributes, and the extent of modification tends to be on the high end; between that of medium-grade mods and low-grade ones.

Introduction
Warehouse ownership is only available to the player in Home of Light. They are also unique in the way that instead of possessing production lines, they can be set up to buy & sell any ware. As with other stations, ships can be assigned to their crew to Protect, Trade and Mine, with harvested resources bought/sold just like other wares.

Taking into consideration the presence of NPC traders throughout the galaxy, examples of things they offer include:

1. Trading of wares for profit.
   
2. Ability to acquire or stockpile wares.
   
3. Automation of supplies of harvested resources to other stations via Trade ships.
   
4. Cost-effective strongholds, heavily armed.
   
5. Fleet resupply for drones it may purchase.

Selecting a location
As with any station, identifying a suitable location is key to keeping the Warehouse busy and helping you in whatever task(s) you plan for it.

Things to take into consideration:

1. Any station without a Command Relay (the big radar dish) can only trade up to sector-wide. Can its ships acquire (or sell) the wares you want them to?
   
2. Whether your customers and suppliers are your assets or NPCs; where they are located (how dangerous is it for them to get to you)?
   
3. If you'd like to harvest particular resources, where are they located?
   
4. With up to ~300 weapons, where would you like to place your fully armed and operational warehouse?
   
   Construction
   Warehouses are built like any other station, but can only be built the Terracorp Construction Vessel (Home of Light DLC). The first stage of a Warehouse requires surprisingly few components, costing ~2.5 million credits.. although it bristles with the ability to mount surface elements, so an additional 16 million credits offers 102 HIT/MA, and 56 Plasma/MAs, 2 V Launchers and assorted Force Field Projectors.
   
   Note that the initial stage only offers Container storage. Whilst that is a popular class of wares to trade, it is worth emphasizing that this means that the Architect must extend the Warehouse with additional storage modules before Bulk, Energy or Liquid wares may be stored and/or traded.
   
   Station management
   In general, Warehouses are set up and managed like regular stations, with crew and Manager settings such as Supply Options (new to v4 vanilla). Where they differ from other stations is that the Manger has an additional option called "Manage trade offers" instead of "Manage trade offer prices", with which you can add or remove wares to the list of items the Manager may trade.
   After pressing "Add trade wares" and selecting one, you are presented with number of options:
   
   1. The ability to select whether the Warehouse will Buy and/or Sell the ware*
      
   2. A definable Stock Limit.
      
   3. Definable Sell price (default = maximum = approximately 7.5% above base price in the encyclopaedia).
      
   4. Definable Buy price (default = one below the maximum).
      
   5. An 'x' button for removing the ware from the list; (at the bottom of the list (scroll down if necessary) is the 'Add trade wares' button)
   
   *The option to both buy /and/ sell wares is available only to a manager with 5* management skill; this restriction is shown in a tooltip
   
   As noted above, the first stage of the Warehouse may store, and therefore trade, only Container class wares. Until the Warehouse is extended with further storage modules, Bulk, Energy or Liquid wares will be greyed out within the initial "Add Trade Wares" menu.

By installing the new Economic Analytics Software Mk1 you will be able to see and visualize different parts of the universe economy. You can choose to look into an individual station or the economy for an entire solar system.



Usage

1. Open any map, for example the zone map (enter-4-4).
   
2. Choose the station or change to a desired zoom level.
   
3. Click on the statistics icon on the middle top.
   
4. Select the wares, time span and statistics type

Statistic types

• Trade Offer Prices
  
• Trade Offer Amounts
  
• Storage Levels
  
• Management Accounts (only available for player owned stations)

Time span

• Last hour
  
• Last day
  
• Last week

The new Trade Deals menu matches buy offers with sell offers and shows the most profitable deals accessible to you. The deals can easily be sorted by ware type, range, investments or profit. To open the menu press (enter-6-2).

It is very easy to use, simply select the deal and the trade ship you want to use. Click 'next', approve the amount to buy and the approve the amount to sell.

Multi-selection
It is now possible to select multiple objects in the property owned menu. This enables you to send broadcast commands to a selection of ships. It also means that you can assign multiple ships to a new commander or have them join your squad in an easy and fast way.

The new "Fly to" command replaces the old "Fly to zone". The advantage is that you can pick the exact position (x and z coordinates) on the map.

Improved AI behaviour

• Enemy combat ships using boost
  
• Configurable Patrol behaviours with specific routes (NPCs)
  
• Improved existing "Plunder" behaviours
  
• Retreat and Evade behaviours
  
• NPC doing more player-like actions in general (like hacking stations)

Most of of these behaviours are also affected by the skills of the pilot or captain. There will now also be a log book entry if one of the player ships flees.

In 4.0, a new difficulty level is introduced. It is mainly for advanced players who want an even greater challenge. When playing on this difficulty level, you deal less damage to enemies and at the same time the enemies deal more damage to you. Also, you will more often face enemies, which are usually in greater numbers than before.