X3: Terran Conflict

[Sir T]

Egosoft has released what will be the last game in the X series, a stand alone expansion to X3:Reunion with a wholly redone interface and with a hell of a lot of changes, new storyline etc etc

So far its playing pretty well. Anyone familiar with the X games will feel right at home pretty quickly. One big change, you no longer have to dock to get missions. Instead they have an Icon over them and you just communicate with them and someone tell you that got has pissed him off and go kill it, or something. Another is that you can organize your ships into wings and command them as one, which is really nice

One major change. The universe is a lot lot LOT more dangerous. Instead of the odd enemy fighter flying about, You see small fleets tracking back and forth, complete with small capital ships. 6 hours in I was in a system and suddenly realized that there were an AWFUL lot of red jots appearing. Oh yes, a Kha'ak Invasion... And All I had was a heavy fighter and a couple of light fighters... I left with haste. Also you start far from where you get jump drives so you are forced to fly around manually, goddang it

Bad things. The missions are buggy. For instance, combat ones are based on your combat rating, and if you are good at dogfighting (like I am) and you rack up high grade kills solo, all of a sudden you can be fighting stuff that needs a fleet of your own to face off. And if you don't you can have multiple waves of it coming in while you are struggling with wave one. I have seen people complain that a sector became a no go area after it filled with enemies that proceeded to tear everything apart. The snag is that you are offered a range of mission dificulties so that can happen if you accept a mission thats "hard" for you... *eep* I've decided to part the combat and build up my trading fleet for the moment, and that's working fine. Also the game throws a wobbly when you accept missions in one ship and complete them in another. And some of the story missions are screwy.

Its fun. I'm enjoying it. It looks fantastic even with the graphic settings right down. It needs a few patches to iron out the annoying mission bugs, but the universe is bloody dangerous now. Scarily so actually. You actually need to build a fleet to progress though the plot and protect what you have. Even the Pirates have have heavy crap like Destroyers now(!) that you can capture with boarding pods and marines(!!) I can certainly recommend it if you liked the other X games, and it has the potential so far to be be the best X game yet.

[Lantyssa]

I heard you can choose where to start in X3:TC.  Any of the options include a female pilot?

I've been playing a lot of X3 lately, but I'm sticking to O'ren Rock because of that.  Starting out was a huge pain with her.  Things are pretty good now, but I wish I could do some of the plot missions.

[Jade Falcon]

X2 introduced me to the wonderful world of starforce,are they using it again this time?or did they find something that wrecks my house after it finishes with my computer?

It's a shame I loved the X2 series but I'm not going through that again if it still has it I'll wait till they patch it out down the road.

[Lantyssa]

X3 dumped Starforce with their 2.0 patch and release of Bela Gi's missions.  I haven't heard about this in regards to TC, however it is available through Steam, so I'm guessing it's not an issue.

[Sir T]

Yeah they dropped Starforce years ago. Get the expanded X3:R and it wont have it.

Yes there are female start choices, but your gender does not effect much. Its not true you can chose where to start but you have 4 starting condition choices (Terran Defender, Argon patriot, Trader and Bankrupt Assassin) that all start in different parts of the X universe. As you progress through the game/plot you can unlock about 12 other start conditions each with their own start locations. (personally I think the one that has you in a passenger liner lost in one of the Xenon core systems would be kind of fun... O_O)

[Stormwaltz]

Yeah they dropped Starforce years ago. Get the expanded X3:R and it wont have it.

And the Steam version of X3 never used Starforce. I asked before I bought.

Actually, X3 was what got me using Steam, a year after signing up for it.

[Lantyssa]

Yes there are female start choices, but your gender does not effect much. Its not true you can chose where to start but you have 4 starting condition choices (Terran Defender, Argon patriot, Trader and Bankrupt Assassin) that all start in different parts of the X universe. As you progress through the game/plot you can unlock about 12 other start conditions each with their own start locations. (personally I think the one that has you in a passenger liner lost in one of the Xenon core systems would be kind of fun... O_O)

It's a little thing, but I don't like playing male characters.  I know, extra assets required, blah, blah, blah, but the option often makes enough of an aesthetic difference to me to affect my enjoyment of the game.  And it does affect my buying choice if it's a game I'm only midly interested in -- I never bought Fable I for instance.

Glad to see, O'ren is back.  Is the game completely stand-alone?  If I get it, will my existing X3 games be usuable in the TC universe?  (I'll go read up, but don't know how good their forums are.)

[Sir T]

Its a completely stand alonegame. I haven't tried loading my old X3 saves into it, but I'm fairly certain they would be incompatible.

[bhodi]

I was about to get this and the previous game, the x3 pack, having never played X-anything, when something caught my eye.

On the right hand side:

Title: X3: Terran Conflict
Genre: Strategy, Simulation
Developer: Egosoft
Publisher: Egosoft
Release Date: Oct 16, 2008
Languages: English, French, German, Italian (text only)
3rd-party DRM: TAGES™
5 machine activation limit

Fuck you very much.

[apocrypha]

They're saying the 5-activation limit will be removed in about a year.

Explanation of tages
There are two versions of the tages protection system. One is the disk based protection which requires a DVD to be in the drive while you play and the other is an online activation process.

We can not release the game without tages entirely on Steam because that would destroy the whole point of using a virtual machine to protect the game from cracking. However I fully believe that the game activation should be limited not by Tages but by Steam because I like this system. For that reason we set the number of possible activations (different machines) pretty high by default already (5) and also allow further activations if they are needed.

At the same time we always completely remove any DRM about a year after the release of our games through later updates. All of our older X games are now available without any copyprotection because I hate it when an old game could basically still run but can not be used anymore because of the DRM.


So I hope this sounds fair to you?

-Bernd Lehahn, EGOSOFT

Of course it's still pointless. There's torrents of a clonedvd out already and a cracked release won't be far behind. Copy protection does not work and pisses legit purchasers off, duh!

[Sir T]

You can believe them. X3:R has no copy protection now.

[bhodi]

Yeah, well, I'll look them up in a year, once the DRM is removed. Being on steam should be DRM enough.

If I remember.

[Sir T]

Well you can always get the Xtended Mod from www.thexuniverse.com. X:TC borrows a hell of a lot from that mod.

[Murgos]

I'm going to have a rough time after I finish Fable II in deciding if I am going for X:TC or Fallout 3.  I kind of really want to fly around the X universe again, buy a destroyer and a couple of frigates and blow some shit up.

[Lantyssa]

I'd go with Fallout 3 first.  Give Egosoft a bit of time for a patch, as they always need it the first go 'round.