X3: Terran Conflict $10: It's like privateer/freelancer on steroids.

[Engels]

Ok, this game is frustrating.

The starter mission for Terrans is ridiculous. Jump here, jump there, fine, boring, but doable.

After about an hour of just hopping about and shooting the random enemy, you're asked to follow a pirate to his base and scan 'it' when it has reached its destination. First of all, the writers forgot to mention you're meant to scan -the pirate base-, not the pirate ship you're meant to follow. Oops. If you get too close to the pirate, a non-descript 'anxiety meter' shows up on your bottom left of your fabulously moronic gui and the pirate jumps away. So that took me a bit to figure out that the 'it' in the dialogue did not refer to the pirate ship, but to his base.

Now, after following the pirate at his snail pace (takes about 25 minutes, even with the time acceleration), we get to his pirate base sector. I follow him to his base, without triggering his anxiety respons (about 2.2 km). Then suddenly, a host of pirates launch from the base, and in my attempt to scan the base, blow me to smithereens.

Remember, you can only save  the game when docked, so essentially, that's 30-40 minutes of game play I will have to do over. I have done it twice, with the same result of just being shot out of the sky before I get close enough to scan the pirate base.

Are space sim developers the 'special' crowd of gaming coders? Sorta like obscure unix coders that can't hold a coversation among fellow human long enough before going on a rant about raiserfs partitions?

[Lucas]

Ok, some generic newbie questions/considerations:

- At the very beginning, at least 'til I purchase the three most important trading equipments (Best Buys, Best Selling and Trading System Extension), it's just a matter of manually flying to each Station and taking notes of the prices, writing them down, right? Or, look at the generic info of a station while docked at another and take a look at the stock indicator;

- To get a somewhat good deal, of course it's important that a good you are actually attempting to sell it's integrated in the production cycle of that particular station, right? For example, while the stock might be low, I noticed that "Logistic stations", just to mention them, are pretty average, it's better to head to power plants, water purificators etc;

- Regarding this first playthrough I'm attempting (Terran Defender), I was thinking about mostly following the plot, maybe become somewhat wealthy, probably helping Defence with Smugglers (with the freight scanner tool, life support system and similar) and Pirates, but not really getting into the "multi-sector tycoon" bonanza; I would like to unlock more profiles to see if there are more interesting ones (Yes, I know there is a cheat to unlock them all from the start).

 So,  this is for you guys who have been playing this for long: do you currently have just one save where you are all-ecompassing tycoon emperor of the universe and building on that, or have you tried out many of the proposed storylines, stopping when it ended 'til you found your favourite one? And once you found it, then you decided for a longer, let's say "career game"?

[bhodi]

As for the missions, you can actually pick up and start any mission chains no matter what your start is - the start sets your starting faction rep, your money, and your starting ship. Once you get powerful enough or friendly enough with whatever factions you like, all mission chains have a 'starting' point in the universe that you can use if you've got the rep. For some of the starts, just getting off the ground is tough and where the real challenge lies (bankrupt assassin, for example).

The universe map - know it, love it, I keep it up in a window beside me. Obviously, spoilers abound so if you want to explore and discover the universe for youself, don't use it. You'll still need to explore in-game, since you can't jump to or see any sector you haven't explored yet.  http://eng.x3tc.ru/x3_tc_map/?c=NTc4Nzc5NzMx#1

Turn your time acceleration from 6x to 10x in the game options. This is the first thing that you should do, and it helps make the game less boring.
You can buy "savlage insurance" which lets you save without docking. I use Cycow's cheat to give myself infinite salvage insurance because paying 2k for it early game is crippling and late game it's pittance.


Regarding the terran (and missions in general): Yes, some of them aren't all that clear on what you have to do. It's annoying. Use this walkthrough to help: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=234882

Trading: If you want to manual trade, owning the 'trading system extension' allows you to look at the prices of any station in any sector that you have a ship in (satellites count as a ship, which is why you'll want to build a satellite network), and that you have explored visually (gotten within scanner range of). In the sector screen (.) you can mouse over any station and hit 'u' for it's info. In general, I didn't start trading until I had about 5 million credits - small scale isn't really worth it, do combat missions instead, until you can afford to buy a ship to do autonomous trading.

I made a real thread: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=18544.msg750112, so questions and chatter can go there for greater visibility.

[Yegolev]

raiserfs partitions?

[Engels]

Thanks for the write up, bhodi. I do appreciate you dedicating some time and effort to help people get started in this game.

That said, unfortunately the link to the Terran walkthrough was not helpful; it provides no solution to my current stuckiness, which is getting blown up at a critical point. The walkthrough is rather blase about what to do with the spawn of pirates at the pirate ship, suggesting that sometimes they spawn, sometimes they don't. But they have for the last two times, and that's an hour and a half of my life I'd like back :)

Thanks for the tip on accelerating the time from 6 to 10. Should I decide to come back to this soviet-inspired anthem to useability, that will come in handy.

[Reg]

I succeeded at that quest last night after several failures.  You want to stay away from the base until the ship you're following docks. At that point I got chased around a bit by the pirates but they eventually went away and let me get within 500 meters of the base so I could scan it.  Scanning takes forever. You definitely won't be able to do it while taking damage. Just running away worked well enough though.

[bhodi]

They should spawn once you get near it and/or when the ship docks. When they spawned from the pirate base for me, I stayed just out of firing range, led them away, and then cut in a wide circle past them and scanned the base before they were able to get back. They only travel 200m/s and I think you're at 380 or something. I also was not able to kill the pirates at that point.

[Sky]

The wireless 360 pad works, but not entirely.  The right stick doesn't register.

The forums say to use this: http://xpadder.en.malavida.com/

I haven't messed with it yet, but I do like to have a controller of some sort for driving/flying.

[Vaiti]

This was mentioned in the other X3 thread, but I thought I'd bump this here so no one misses out. X3 is again on sale for 10$ till the end of the week. So in case you missed out on the many other times they have had this on sale for 10$, here is your chance to pick it up.

[achillies000]

Then, install a bunch of mods that make the game more fun (seriously, mods are pretty much requisite). I've played this fucking game for like 30 hours and I feel like I'm just getting started. Make a thread about it and I'll throw you in the right direction since the start of the game is kind of slow and confusing. It's not eve levels of confusing, but it's still "Hi, welcome to the game here's your space ship good luck!" confusing.

[Reg]

There's a real thread about X3 up one level in the main PC gaming forum somewhere. It had  a lot of good info. Search around for it.