X3: Terran Conflict

[bhodi]

First things first. It's on sale RIGHT NOW for $10 on Steam (TOO LATE!). This game is SO worth $10 $20 if you can get past the esoteric interface, the annoying way they do some things, and having to install mods to make the base game more fun. It's got one hell of a deep world and you can do a whole lot - it's a lot like dwarf fortress if DF were really pretty. And in space.  DON'T BUY THE GOLD PACK. Just buy Terran Conflict, it includes all previous content plus new missions and a UI revamp. There is NO copy protection - they have removed it with a patch. As such, I feel this game is a steal right now -  (Get it? A steal! HAR HAR HAR).

I have gotten into it pretty recently, (there's an old thread, but I'm not going to Necro it. There's also a steam thread, but I want more visibility for this.

What is it?

X3 was the 3rd part of the long running series X of games based on space flight, exploration, trade, and combat. You can do almost anything in this game, from flying a fighter and hunt down pirates, or be a trader making money and building a trading empire, or you can be a fleet captain commanding capital ships waging war across the galaxy.

If you could think about it in comparison with other games, think of it like Freelancer, only much more detailed on every level. The space flight feels more like a flight sim, the trading is much more detailed. It is also claimed to be EvE Online the single player version. The scale of your ships, the size of your fleets, and the empires you create are on roughly the same scale as EvE. If you're oldschool, you can think of it as Elite for this generation.

If you see a ship in this game, with very few exceptions, you can purchase, command, and fly that ship, including the largest of battleships. Combat can be as small as you in a light fighter dog-fighting a single opponent, to your fleet of battleships and carriers deploying wings of fighters and frigates into massive frays of cannons and missiles flying everywhere. If you're good, you can even force pilots to eject, and you can steal their ships from them for yourself...

The trading in this game is very involved. You can ship goods between stations, or even build your own stations and manufacture goods. You can automate massive trading fleets to earn you money while you're off fighting the good fight. The economy is very alive, and will carry on without you. There are even AI corporations in Terran Conflict that will actively compete.

It's a very large game with a very large scale. Since it is such a large game, there can be a rather steep learning curve, but that's why there's a thread like this.  I'm here to help. Sadly, there is no multiplayer. It's a single player game only.


IF YOU WANT TO PLAY, HERE'S SOME STUFF. I HOPE YOU LIKE READING!


Take everything one slow step at a time. The world around you is patient enough for you to expand slowly. Don't feel like you need to learn the game all at once. There's no hurry to do ANYTHING in this game, take your time, and move at your own pace.

Start as the Terran Defender. You get free ships and somewhat of a tutorial and slow introduction to the game. Don't do custom, don't do humble merchant.

Here's a general order of things you might want to do:

    * Get good enough to stay alive in a dogfight and you can go a long way (hint: be sure to use WASD to strafe). Start out small attacking some of the lighter Pirate ships that are flying alone or in very small groups. Learn when to disengage to keep your shields up and avoid Hull damage. Repairing ships at stations is prohibitively expensive, so use your repair laser, no matter how long it takes, until you can afford to fix things.
    * Learn how to upgrade your ship properly and help keep it in tip-top shape with good weapons that work well for you.
    * Do some station defense missions. Most stations have little icons next to them. The red target is combat missions, go to the "comms" section of the station and find out what they want. If it's a station defense: do it. The ships attacking are focused on the station and not you, so you will not get swarmed, and you can take your time. You can earn a lot of money this way, and get better at fighting.
    * Learn to capture a ship next, it'll be a good source of upgrades and free lumps of cash. Sell anything you get unless it's much better than yours, and you can afford to fix it. Learn how to transfer things between ships, so you can get wares and weapons off of captured ships, or transfer your weapons onto a better ship you have captured. The station defense missions should give you lots of opportunities to do this.
    * Learn to explore, maybe buy yourself a light, REALLY fast ship (The Teladi Kestrel is the perfect choice for this), dock your combat ship somewhere (don't sell it) and go flying around to different sectors. Get to know where places are, places to stay away from, know where the right stations are to get the goods and gear you want. If you want to, map the whole galaxy. This will help later when you start trading, which leads to:
    * Install EST and Learn how AI traders work. There's some good guides out there on how to get started. I personally think you should avoid doing trading yourself because it's REALLY slow. The ships are slow, the process is slow, and while you make a lot of money with relatively low risk... it's SLOW, and NOT FUN, like combat missions are!
    * Learn how to manage a fleet of traders, and keep them running properly. Money will start flowing in quickly. Also, be aware that sometimes they will be destroyed, and there's very little you can do about it. Roll with it, replace the ships and keep going.
    * Buy a TM class ship (like the Argon Magnetar). They're cheap. Get used to using a mobile base a bit, and how to manage your ships with a mobile home base.
    * Buy your first Capital Class ship, one of the TL class Facility deployers and learn how to use Facilities, buying, deploying, and linking them. There's great guides for this as well. Do some station deploy missions with your new TS, they earn you a LOT of money with little investment of time and resources. Don't worry so much about Capital Class combat, because you're not in a position to do so yet with just a TL or TM.
    * Buy an M6 to get a bigger, stronger ship. Get used to fighting in larger ships with turrets as a primary mode of combat.
    * Buy a Destroyer (you will probably have to rep up quite a bit before you can). Learn how to outfit your ship with good weapons and how to use a Capital class ship in combat. There's some great guides for this too.
    * Buy a Carrier - Learn how to use fighters as support weapons and managing a larger fleet, giving fleet orders to other ships and ordering them into combat effectively.
    * Buy more Cap ships, buy a VARIETY of Cap ships, buy lots of facilities and Conquer the Galaxy.


The Terran Single Player campaign gives you a lot of good freebies, and is certainly worth it to complete, even though some of the missions are kind of dumb, and some are a little buggy. Very few of the Terran missions have timers of any kind, so if you want to take a break, then do so.



Here is the list of ship types from the Manual, from largest to smallest (they are numbered oddly because M6, M7, M8 were added in the later expansion)

M1 = Carrier
M2 = Destroyer
M7 = Frigate
M7M = Missile Frigate
M8 = Bomber
M6 = Corvette
M3+ = Advanced Heavy Fighter
M3 = Heavy Fighter
M4+ = Advanced Medium Fighter
M4 = Medium Fighter
M5 = Light Fighter/Recon

Transports:

TL = Large Transport/Station Deployer (same class as M1/2, can carry 5-15 fighters)
TM = Military Transport (Carries 3-6 fighters, Marines, support ships)
TS = Freight Transport (Sector/Universe Traders)
TP = Transports (Useful for transporting people. Can transport and deploy Marines)

What does an S/M/L mean in the Shipyard?

S = Unequipped. Base model ship with no weapons or shields.
M = Basic equipment - Usually a lighter shield or two, (usually a class below the best that can be equipped). A light set of weapons
L = Fully equipped - full shields and a good set of weaponry

Regardless of S, M, or L, all of the ships base stats are still the same, only equipment is different. An Eclipse M3 S is going to be just as fast as the L version once they're fully upgraded.

If you don't see any M or L for sale but there are 5/10 S for sale, save and reload the game until M and L are for sale if you want to buy them.

Additionally, the base model of a ship can vary depending on the classification:

Raider: Faster, lighter shields, less cargo space.
Vanguard: Slightly faster, equal shields, better energy capacity
Sentinel: Slower, Heavy shields, less cargo
Hauler: Heavier Hull, Larger cargo capacity


Terran Campaign

How do I scan the Pirate Station?

Get within 500m of the station and stop, a "scanning" message should appear. Wait, and it will complete on it's own.

How do I know what ships to smuggler ships to scan?

Mission critical craft are shown at the TOP of the sector list, separate from the regular ships floating around.

Follow the ones at the top of the list and scan them.
They turn red, and are now attackable, kill them (slowly if you want to capture them)
DO NOT scan any of the ships that are in the full list of ships at the bottom of the list. Those are regular innocent people.

How do I capture things?

    * Fly close to the ship you want to capture. 60-100m at least. Make sure not to collide with it, as you will blow it up.
    * Press "Shift+E" to bring up the eject confirmation. Select "Yes"
    * Target the ship by clicking on it. Start moving forward slowly, and keep approaching slowly.
    * At about 50m, with the ship targeted, press "i"
    * As you close to about 40-30m the "Claim" option will appear. Press "Backspace" to stop moving.
    * Select "Claim"
    * If the ship is damaged, pull the trigger to fire your repair beam
    * Repair the ship to full (this can take some time on large ships)


Universe Trader Requirements:
TL, TS, or M3 class ship (probably TM in X3TC (but I don't have that yet)).
The ship MUST NOT be the ship you are flying for this work.
Flight Command Software MkI & MkII
Trading MkIII
1 x 25MJ Shield
(without any of the above only the sector trader option is available)

Sector trade with the software until the trader reaches Level 8 then switch to universe trader.

At level 12 the trader will start using a jumpdrive, however if there isn't one on the ship already apparently the trader will buy one at an inflated price.



Scripts:
First, the giant listing of mods/scripts: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=216690&sid=a23f66cf55389e7ec560202d4c1a2e90 - download the scripts/mods below, here.

Necessary mods:
MARS (makes turrets useful/intelligent, i wouldn't play a ship with turrets without it - INSTALL THIS)
CC Cleaner (for when you build factory complexes, it makes it easy - you can put off installing this thing)

Necessary scripts:
Numeric Race Rank Titles: so I can see what rank at a glance without having to consult charts. INSTALL THIS.
Teladi Information Service (or best buys locator) - this will hunt for any item in all the sectors you know about (or have satellites in for best buys locator). This is needed for equipping ships so you don't have to fly all over the galaxy or hunt for that shield you need. It'll tell you where one is for sale.
EST / CAG / CLS: autonomous traders for general trading, ware delivery, and for your stations
X3TC Cheat Package: What it says. Can do just about anything. It's very useful if you for example shoot a station by accident and want to turn it friendly, or to get past buggy/frustrating missions, stuff like that.
Automated Satellite Network:  Basically, it's EST for explorers. It's not quite as robust, but if you're looking for something in between manually dropping sats in systems one by one either manually or cheating (drop sats in every sector instantly), this script is for you.

The difference between mods and scripts are that scripts you can just unzip into the install directory; mods you have to take the files and rename them into 01.cat/dat or whatever the last number is. It's called installing it as a "fake patch". This is due to software limitations and is a way to get around the "only one mod at a time running" thing.

USEFUL LINKS
TERRAN Walkthrough
A general walkthrough of Terran and beyond (but bad english and also he's using heavy mods so experiences may vary)

UNIVERSE MAP - USE THIS, in another window if possible, once you're used to the game.
GO-TO PLACE FOR ALL SHIP+WEAPON INFO, and it's searchable too!

[bhodi]

Here's generally what I did when I played the game recently, this is a path that lets you see most aspects of the early-mid game, with some tips. It's fairly spoiler free.

Start as Terran Defender.

First, I learned the hotkeys and how to get around: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=96108

Installed the Numeric Race Rank Titles (http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=218742) so I can see what rank at a glance without having to consult charts. DO THIS.

Bought Fight command software mk1 as SOON as I could, so that I could get autoaim (hit k until it says "Autoaim: ON" in the lower left. (instead of SEMI, which just shows the lead reticle). Your guns will auto track to that reticle if it's near the center of the screen. If you're using the mouse, you'll want to swap your mouse2 and ctrl binds (one is normal fire, one is boresight) - only one of them will automatically track with autoaim, one will just fire straight ahead.

I also bought/transferred over a triplex scanner for easier scouting / increased sensor range.

I did terran missions until I got the to the missions with the 3 ships, formed the wing and such to get past that part, then transferred the guns from those 3 ships and sold them. You need to transfer the guns before you sell them because you don't have the rep to buy any terran weaponry. Any 'quest ships' show up in a different grouping in the sector map, so be aware of that - they are above the other normal ships in the sector - a different/separate group on the right.

I decided to explore the galaxy, get some rep, and buy a jumpdrive. This is a must. A jumpdrive lets you jump to any of the N/S/E/W gates of any sector for an amount energy cells. Unfortunately, it is fairly far away from the Terran start. Legend's home is the nearest sector with a jumpdrive, so you basically go 'south' out of terran space, then west, then north into the blue (argon) sectors and curl around to it. The two 'closest' sectors are Home of Light and Legend's Home (both argon). The only dangerous sector is Xenox Sector 347 - just run through it as fast as you can, avoiding combat. Use the nav software 1 double-click on sector map (while SETA of course) to skirt combat and get through the jumpgates.

In every sector I went through, I explored the rough center and uncovered all the jumpgates and most of the stations (if you're anal you can explore until you uncover ALL the stations, going by how many are listed on the universe map. Note the count may be a bit off, as that is the count at the start of the game (and stations can be blown up or new ones can be created as your game progresses).

If you have nav software 1, you can just double click on the sector map and your ship will travel there, and you can just stay in SETA. It's pretty fast. I checked each station with a bullseye icon (combat mission) to see if it's a 'defend the station' mission. These missions are terrific because the ships aren't targeting you, they are targeting the station, so you don't get overwhelmed. I do this in each sector/race until I get rank 4 with them while working my way about, enough to buy a security license (allows me to scan without rep loss and also you get bounty/cash for each enemy ship destroyed in any race's sector).

I also try to capture a few ships for cash (M3, don't bother with M4/M5, and M6 can't be captured). You can capture a ship by shooting it until the guy talks to you - he'll say something like 'ship is yours, don't kill me' and then eject at the end of his speech (if you didn't accidentally blow his ship up while he was talking). Sometimes they don't eject, there is a chance per hull damage (I go down to one gun when they are in hull so I don't do too much damage, you can do this with right clicking on the guns change to group 2, hit number 2, there you go). For each ship, get within 100m or so, hit ctrl-e to eject from your ship, you're a spacesuit. Navigate close to their ship, right click, claim. Then, point your spacesuit gun (repair laser) at the ship, hold the fire button down.. go get some coffee. This is essentially free money. Later, you can tell the ship to limp to a shipyard and repair it but early game it's cheaper to just repair it with your laser. This is supposed to be a last resort, so it can take a long time (10m+) if you capture freighters or larger craft, but you can easily get a quick cash infusion as an M3 sells for 1.5-3 million credits. Once it's repaired, hop back in your ship, the new ship will show in your 'r' menu, or you can click on it - tell it to go and dock at the nearest shipyard and carry on (from the r menu, left click on the ship, hit c for command console). Make sure it's not flying through any hostile sectors or it can get destroyed - chances are it has no shields. Whenever it gets to the shipyard you can just click on it in the r menu, hit d (trade) and then sell it for cash. You can sell any ship at any shipyard.

So, I gradually make my way to legend's home, doing defense missions (or patrol missions, but those are more dangerous as they will all be going after your ship). I get there, dock at OTAS HQ, buy a jump drive, head north, buy some energy cells at a XL solar plant, and jump around the galaxy a bit, get a feel for some stuff. I continue exploring, flying around, getting my rep and income up, doing any station defense missions I come across.

Once I have 5m or so, I set up an auto trader with EST. It costs about 1.5 million per automated trader and it makes it's money back in about 5 hours (much less since you're SETAing everywhere all the time). I gradually do more missions, get some cash, make a few more traders, go back and do the terran missions.

Buy a TM class ship (argon magnetar) and buy a few explorers and equip them with jumpdrives so I have them, the magnetar is cheap (400k-ish?) and can be your general storage repository. I get used to commanding ships I'm not piloting, used to trading amongst ships I own, and get used to operating out of a mobile base (it'll hold your M3 and several scouts, 4 ships total I think). Jumpdrives are annoying since you can only have one (you can't carry 2 and bring one to a newly bought ship). You can just use ships in your TL and offload jumpdrives off them to your new ships if needed. Make sure you turn on 'autojump' and with judicious use of the 'follow me' command and a hold full of energy cells, your TL ship is only 30 seconds from you, anywhere you go. I bind "transfer freight between ships" to a key because I use it a lot. You'll probably want a docking computer as docking on your TL is annoying, docking computers are easiest - hit ctrl-d within 2k and bam you're there.

Also, outfit a fast scout and switch between them depending on what you're doing. Use this website if you want to browse ships:

http://eng.x3tc.ru/x3_tc_ships/

Then, I go back and do more terran missions. Eventually, they'll give you a cutlass, so I transfer all my guns back onto that, keep doing missions until Aldrin is open. (including the annoying freighter one, the easiest way to survive after planting the tracking device is to have equipped the thing with a jump drive and jump away as soon as it's planted - easiest way to do this is to have your magnetar with an extra jumpdrive in a scoutship as I describe above, transfer it over)

I keep doing terran missions until you get a Vidar - the thing kicks ass, but there's an even better ship a bit farther ahead. Downside: you need terran rep for it. So, do missions in "heretic's end" that involve STAYING in the sector (so patrol or defense missions). It takes a while, so just do some stuff and check it every once in a while. If you haven't already, now is the time to install the MARS mod so your turrets are intelligent (they will autoswap weapons in your cargo hold, will only fire when they have a good chance at hitting something, and won't shoot at stations by accident - MARS is awesome)

So, I tool around in my vidar, do missions until the Aldrin sector opens up. It's laggy, yes, it's annoying, yes, and it also has the best M6 ship in the game, the Springblossom. It is basically a vidar that goes 380m/s - as fast as a M4. It's borderline cheating as it's so much better than any other M6 in the game but well it's in the base game so there you go. You'll need about 10 mil to buy and outfit it. So, I explore Aldrin, find a shipyard, buy a Springblossom and prototype EMPC (the guns) to go with it. If I have high enough rep, you should buy 3 or 4 prototype starburst cannons as well (everything is sold in aldrin, and only in aldrin). If you don't have the rep, the empc will serve you OK until you can get it. Keep doing heretic's end missions until you get the rep for starburst.

Once you have the Springblossom, it'll last you a good long time. I focus on getting my rep up for each race, getting more traders until I have a decent amount of cash. I do the 'fatal fury' mission chain starting in Omicron Lyrae (it's one of those "mission ships" I was talking about, he'll be in a different group, called "exterminator"). I alternate between the fatal fury chain and the Goner plot (starting in Elysium of Light).

Once those two are done, I tool around some more, earning cash, Getting a high boron rep especially, until I can start a quest line in the sector Kingdom's End. This quest line (and where it takes you, and what you get) is so great I'm not going to spoil it here. It's a good entrance into the 'larger' X3 universe, though.

I'll do part 2 of this in a bit - creating stations, getting your first capital ship, storming and boarding larger ships, creating complexes, doing large scale combat with fleets and wings of fighters, etc.. I'm actually only slightly ahead of everything I wrote above.




My EST Guide

Initial cost per trader is about 1.5 million. (650k for mistral, 100k jumpdrive, 500k ESTmk3, plus tuning) Break even point on EST automated traders is about 6 hours. You don't need a base of operations or to own a factory. That's a different script.

Approximate set up time is about 15 minutes per 5 ships with appropriate use of SETA. You should do as much as you can / are willing to afford. You can buy them by the 10s.

Speed is the most important stat, followed by cargo bay. Most of their trades will be 2k-3k cargo, no more. Mistral TS are the best ships, since everyone has argon rep, they are the fastest @ 130 m/s, and they hold 4k cargo (2nd best is either split caiman (124 m/s, 3500 cargo) or terran baldric (110 m/s, 4500 cargo), both of which are inferior IMO.

1) Download and install the EST script.
2) purchase 5 REGULAR Mistral TS (not superfreighters) from Legend's Home, OTAS HQ - L class. If there are no L, reload your game until there are.
3) Equip them with a jumpdrive, triplex scanner
4) Put them all in a wing together (max of 5 ships per wing for proper docking)
5) For each wing, Turn on Autojump, minimum of 0 jumps
6) Tell the wing to dock one sector north at Akeela's Beacon, XL solar plant, Buy them each 1-2k solar cells (cargo/stocks permitting)
7) If you have a lot of ships, the next nearest solar plants are in Aladna Hill (there are 2). Send max of 1 wing to each plant.
8) Tell the wing to dock @ Red Light, Argon Equipment Dock (they should jump automatically)
9) Buy engine tuning for each, or engine+cargo+rudder if you have a load of cash
10) Buy Flight command mk1, Flight command mk2, trade mk2, navigation software mk1 for each
11) Tell the wing to dock next door at Home of Light, Terracorp HQ
12) Buy Trade Command Software mk3, SETA (because it's cheap and you never know if you might need to take command) for each
13) Remove all ships from wings
14) Go into EST (Ship command->Trade->Economy and Supply Trader)
15) EST -> "starting sector" as desired. (This will also become home sector)
16) EST -> Jumpdrive Settings -> Jumpdrive ON, minimum jump 1
17) EST -> Automatic Naming -> Configure automatic naming, Variant 6
18) THEN, EST -> Start EST (In this order; you can't set the stuff after you start EST or the settings don't stick). Repeat steaps 14-18 for each ship.

If done properly, EST will think for a minute and you'll see your ships jump to their home sectors and start trading. Watch your owned ship pane and make sure that all ships have left Terracorp HQ after about 30 seconds on SETA.
* To restart EST, you need to select command NONE, then "Start EST". You can't 'restart' EST by simply starting it again.
* If EST is grayed out, they are too near a station or gate. DOCK them and restart EST. (Or you didn't buy the prereq software)
* Watch that they have automatically renamed themselves. If any didn't, re-configure and restart EST.
* If any are slowboating (Destination is far away from Home of Light) Jump them manually and restart EST.
* If they aren't moving anywhere and just say "EST on standby", you picked a poor starting sector - they can't find any trades. Change their starting sector.

They should be at different home sectors so they can level up faster and in parallel (there are 5 "levels", the higher the more jumps away and the smarter deals they find), and the first 2 levels suck so you want them to level through those as fast as possible.

Good Initial Home Sectors:
Ore Belt
Empire's Edge
Shores of Infinity
Light of Heart
Omicron Lyrae
Paranid Prime
Seizewell
Spring of Belief
Tkr's Deprivation
Barren Shores

Basically, for home sectors you are looking for raw materials in that sector (Solar/Ore/Silicon) and then plants that take those raw materials one sector away - this lets your trader level up very quickly since the first thing he does is empty out the raw materials and put them in the trading station the center of the sector, which gets him a level, and then the next thing he does is refill the stations that use those raw materials in the sectors around it.

This jumpstarts the EST to where he can start to use jumpdrivers to get around and will go from there - at this level, the spacing is fairly important so your traders don't step on each other's toes. A satellite network is also helpful, the more sectors you have sats in the better trades it will find.

You give them nav and flight command software since if you have it, EST will fight and run for itself - this GREATLY increases their survivability - they will jump away from combat and use combat drones automatically.

Over time, they may get "stuck", especially after running from combat - you may have to repair them automatically and restart EST. It's very rare for a Mistral to get destroyed - they can generally outrun ships long enough to jump away. Just look at your owned ships every once in a while and make sure none of them say "Idle" or "EST is waiting..." for any length of time.

You'll need to babysit EST for the first bit, as there will be roaming pirates you'll need to destroy to clear the trade lanes. The easiest way to do this is to have autojump set on your current ship, wait for the noise that says a ship is under attack, then hit R, find the one with the ! icon, click on it, autopilot to. That'll jump you to the sector
under attack.


Something to add to the crap above, that I haven't integrated in yet:

Add Exclusions. I've run a lot of ESTs, and know where they mostly get destroyed. The biggest danger zone is the area of Getsu Fune though Ocean of Fantasy. It tends to have Q patrols which can catch ESTs right when they jump in. Other good exclusion sectors are Scale Plate Green, Black Hole Sun, Thyn's Abyss, Zyarth's Dominion, and Grand Exchange. Exclude these sectors and your ESTs will last longer.

There's a better way to make all the config changes. Change ONE of your EST ships, set jumpdrive on, your sector exclusions, automatic naming, then go into data, save the data in slot one. Then, for each one of your ships, you can load that saved data, change the starting sector, and you're good to go. I need to get a few more traders and try this out, but it should work.

EST/CAG/CLS training is based on flight time, not profits or cargo delivered or anything like that, so the easiest possible way of training new pilots is to put them on CLS and have them fly back and forth between two stations in safe sectors until they can use the jumpdrive. then you just switch them over to EST and they shouldn't need any babysitting unless one of them runs out of ecells and gets stuck somewhere.

[Lucas]

 

Yes, well, you have to enjoy reading to appreciate this game, ok :D

Thanks Bhodi for these tips!

[Malakili]

Ok, I didn't read all of that I'll admit, but I have a question.  Does this game have joystick support?

[bhodi]

Yes. Also, you can play with KB+Mouse.

[Lantyssa]

Yes, well, you have to enjoy reading to appreciate this game, ok :D

It is a tough game to get started in.  For a first-time player it is a long read, but helpful.  It'll take a while to get a hang of things even being given explicit instructions on what to do.

It is totally worth it.

A few quick tips:

On sector maps -- Keep an eye out for ships listed as the base type without any racial modifiers.  There are abandoned ships scattered throughout the galaxy waiting for someone to claim.  Rare, but a great find.  Triplex scanners help a lot here.

Police Licenses -- When friendly enough with a race (exact rank depends on each), buy a police license for that race.  You can now legally scan cargo, and will get bounties for pirates and khaak kills in their space.  Early in the game it is extremely helpful to making a bit of coin if you are doing combat at all.

On capturing ships -- When you get the comm chatter about them giving up the ship it will also turn blue.  Sometimes this takes a second and if you are heavy on the guns you will destroy your newly acquired ship.  If you can beat a ship down quickly, you may want to easy off when you get close to see if they will bail.  The faster you strip them, the more likely it is to happen.  They are much more likely to surrender if you destroy all their shields or weapons (the components themselves, not just knock them down so they can regenerate), but the trade-off is less salvage.

Piracy -- If you don't mind having a bad rep, you can steal ships or even cargo.  Do it in a border or unowned sector and be picky about which races you hit unless you want to be KoS to everything.  Freighters will often drop all their goods in the hopes you will take them and let the ship escape.  Capture a freighter or two and store it in-sector.  When a ship drops cargo then order yours to pick up all the cargo.  (Certain flight command modules allow them to do this automatically.)

[Murgos]

I played a lot of this over the summer.  I got to a little past where Bhodi is, I have a fleet of traders, several light combat vessels a couple of M6's an M7 Shrike and also a moderately sized alcohol/space-weed complex.

I'll chip in with any advice but Bhodi covered most of the basics.

[Ceryse]

I picked this up a couple days ago from Steam () and I want to like it. I really want to like it. Damn if the game doesn't make it hard, however, for a new player without much (recent) experience in anything approaching the genre and with shit reaction time for keyboard hotkeys (old injuries suck).

I started with the Terran Defender route, and with several of the suggested scripts installed (only things like EST, MARS and such not installed; as they were well beyond influencing what I'd be doing early on). One of the worst UIs I've ever used. Ever. Clunky and quite often I'd find it hard to remember where to go for certain things. So much of it is the very meaning of non-intuitive. Admittingly, if I wasn't pathetic on hotkeys it'd be less of an issue. The game could really benefit from an actual tutorial/easy mode or a combat pause for new players to be able to get their bearings.

I do wish there was an easier way to track targets as they zoom on by me in our dog-fights that generally just degenerate into me and another ship flying at one another while I try to strafe out of the way of fire from other ships, until I and my target fly past one another and I try to find my target again to do it over.

Might be because I'm horrible at shooting (9% accuracy rating  ) with anything other than mouse-based movement. That or I just suck; a completely plausible, if not certain, aspect of it all.

I also wish there was a true cock-pit view. Might only be an issue with my current ship class (M4), but I dislike that view as it gives me no real feeling of my ship itself and how it relates, spacially, with everything else. And the exterior views are very.. clunky, even with moving the camera.

All this said; getting the Cheat script was a godsend. Using the insurance mode (infinite saves!), infinite weapon energy mode (as I couldn't hit the broad side of a station at times), and God Mode (this for giving myself combat tutorials, essentially).

Scanning the pirate base mission was actually fun for me, though, counter to what others have been saying. When it launched fighters I found it.. a challenge and reasonable at that, in trying to scan the station while avoiding getting blown to pieces by hugging the station at moderate velocity. Key for me was even if scanning got interrupted it would pick up where it left off when you got back in range. So I'd just fly around the station, hugging it as close as I dared, using the station to shield me long enough to regenerate shielding from when I'd get hit.

Of course, I got blown up after I'd finished scanning and flew towards the gate and failed to out-run the pirate ships.

I figure I'll put in the rest of the noted scripts/mods and keep giving it a try until I get over the learning curve. Such as reading the radar correctly; I can fail at the simplest things sometimes.

[bhodi]

Definitely get the fight command software mk 1, that will autoaim and lead your current target if it's near the middle of your screen. I consider it completely required for combat, trying to hit the damn ships is nearly impossible without it.

There is a cockpit mod, listed on the big mods page, but I've never used it.

The larger ships obscure the lower part of your screen as if you're on a bridge, and when you get a ship with turrets, MARS does all the aiming for you there - sounds like you'll have a better time with larger ships. I know that I do.

[Ceryse]

Mmm, interesting. I'd looked at one of the lists detailing what the various Softwares seemed to do (and what commands they add), but I guess I missed the impact fight command software would have. I'll definitely grab it. Makes me shake my head, though at the difference the two styles of movement have for me, or why someone would use bore-sight fire control over the default right click method.

I'll look forward to trying out some bigger ships when I can; though I have to admit part of what attracts me to these sorts of game is the lone ship, pre-commerical/fleet power parts of the games. But the game holds such.. depth that I'm hoping to find that enjoyable if the rank/difficulty aspect doesn't kick me in the ass too many times later on.

I shudder to think of trying to learn this game without the recommended script/mod list and other such pointers; its very unfriendly in its design. On the other hand, its made me appreciate some of the other games I bought recently on Steam all that much more, due to their almost moronic simplicity (especially comparatively).

[Murgos]

One tactic for dogfighting, that seems counter-intuitive, is that slower is generally better. If your guns have a range on 1 klick and you close on your target at 1 kps, well that's not a lot of time on target.

Slowing down (you will have to experiment and see what works for you but 200ish is good for me) makes your life much easier.

[Lantyssa]

Try out the different races' ships, too, when you can.  They can fly a lot differently due to speed, acceleration, and turning rates, not to mention weapon and shield capacity.

[Ceryse]

I've switched over to the classic controls for dog fighting and seen a big increase in my accuracy, especially with the Fight MK1 software and proper Auto Aim.

My remaining issue in dogfights is.. missiles. For instance, I restarted my game to deal with a.. big mistake a made in my last go around. On my way to the pirate base mission I come across 2 M4 Pirate Elites, while I'm still in the starter M4 Sabre with speed/turning tunings upgraded and the default two laser weapons and maxed out shield capacity (bought the remaining 5 MJ shield to hit maximum shield capacity) the Fight MK1 software for better auto aim. I can destroy both Elites with relative ease; taking only about 14% shield damage from normal fire.

Then their missiles hit and I die. I've tried it several times and for all the strafing and direction changes I can muster (at my max 275 m/s speed) and I can only delay the inevitable to where I get hit with the first missile shortly before destroying the second Elite. It rocks me and I then die a few seconds later when a second missile slams home.

I have MARS, and even have Gremlins with Auto Missile Defense on; but since I have no turrets that's a moot point, I believe. Any tips on dealing with missiles until I can get a ship with turrets? I can't seem to shake them for all that long, even when I try to delay and use the second Elite as a shield of sorts to buy time and try to target the missiles (which I usually only succeed at doing right before impact regardless). I have a couple Poltergeists left myself and try to launch them early to take out one of the Elites, or at least hasten its demise and hoping to see fewer missiles launched against me, but it hasn't seemed to help much.

[Murgos]

You need to have combat drones in your cargo for MARS to launch goblins.  You can fire your missiles at the incoming missiles if you can get them targeted (this is what the low end really fast missiles are best at) and it may be worth while for you to target their missiles as they are launched rather than as they are about to impact.  Even better, if you can target and hit their missiles as they launch you they will explode and do damage to the ship that launched them.

Other than that I find I can usually out turn missiles long enough to shoot them.  Eventually, you will have a ship with turrets and massive shields and then missiles will be someone else's problem.

One more tip would be to just go check out some other parts of the galaxy for a little while and come back to this after the local defense forces have nailed the pirates.

Edit:  Oh, yeah.  If they are actual pirates and not story pirates then you probably don't have to fight them at all.  Just cruise on by, you know fly casual.  Early in the game you won't have hurt your pirate faction much and they won't be your enemies, they just show up as red on your HUD by default (you can change that).

[Ceryse]

Yeah, they were just pirate-pirates; not plot related. They were just in one of the systems I was passing through to get towards the Nova you have to follow for the pirate base mission. I think it was merely a case of high end missiles, though; they were faster than me, and a single missile was reducing me to about 8% hull strength after going through full shields. Also found my issue with the goblins; I'd kinda forgotten to pick up energy cells; I already had the Keris drones.

By the time I got back to the system with the two pirates they were dying to a group of six Argon fighters; and took four with them.

Taking out the fighters the pirate base spawns, however, with Goblins? Cakewalk, and so cheap . Launched remaining two poltergeists at one, sick Goblins on another; mop up rest. MARS became my favourite add-on at that moment. Just hit the mission with the 3 M5s are given to you so probably going to go explore for a bit now; get a Jumpdrive and make money since I'm nearly broke. Game does grow on you once you start to overcome the initial 'wtf?' learning curve.

[Murgos]

The Terran stuff is, OMGWTF! overpriced.  I suggest getting to Legend's Home and doing a couple of missions there to get your faction up and then, when there is a Solano L on the market selling your Terran fighter and guns and picking one up.  Equip it with 6 PAC's (trust me you want PAC's over it's other guns) and upgrade it fully and with as many accouterments as you can think you will need (you may need to get two jumps over to Light of Heart for some things).  This should still leave you with enough cash to pick up a freighter, or even a Troop Carrier, either of which should greatly expand your playing options and that little Argon Area around Legend's Home is a great place to get your feet wet.

[bhodi]

I ended up just capturing a M3 to deal with my early game money problems. Initially, I didn't sell my guns since they give you a cutlass without guns, and you have to transfer them over. And later, a Vidar which is a terrific ship but again, without guns.

Once I discovered the springblossom, however, I agree - you won't really need those again. However, instead of buying a solano, a M4, for 400k, you might as well go for one step up a Nova, a M3 - it's only 1.6 mil.

[Murgos]

However, instead of buying a solano, a M4, for 400k, you might as well go for one step up a Nova, a M3 - it's only 1.6 mil.

1.6 mil is a lot in the initial stages of the game.  The guns on the ship they give you are worth 350k each.  So, in 5 minutes, you can go from an M4 with 20k shields and 2 guns to an m4 with 75k shields and 6 (more effective) guns.

After that?  Sure go ahead and cap a Nova (or not if you don't want to go pirate) but your life will be much easier with the Solano until then.  There is also no point to hanging onto the Terran guns because later, once you have accumulated some cash, you can just buy as many as you need.

[Kail]

Okay, I feel unimaginably stupid now, but whatever.  I have no idea how to do anything in this game.

I've tried as both a custom game and a merchant guy (since that one said it was the easiest, in as much as I can tell what the subjective difficulty labels mean) and in both of them I start up, get some tutorial on how to move forwards and backwards, and maybe shoot some crates (merchant game hangs here because I don't have any guns on my starting ship).  Then the tutorial ends and I do... what?   I have no idea.  Do I buy and sell stuff at the stations (and I don't know how to do this or what to buy if I did)?  Do I get missions (tried one of these, where the guy gave me twelve minutes to deliver a ship, took me eight minutes to waddle my ass over to his station and once I got there I couldn't figure out how I could get this cargo and didn't think I could haul it to another system in three minutes anyway, so I assume they're for once I'm already established doing whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing)?  Do I just fly around and stumble on to stuff that's happening (like in Fallout 3 or Oblivion)?  I checked out the list of how my game should go, and "learn to dogfight" seems cool and all, but the only way I can see to do that would be to start firing on cops or something... what am I missing?

[Murgos]

Do the Terran Start it has the only thing even resembling a useful tutorial.  The Custom and Merchant starts work but are worthless.  The difficulty ratings were made by a diseased monkey, pay them no mind.

[Ceryse]

I haven't managed to pick up my Jump Drive yet, as I'm still in Ceo's Doubt; spent most of last night doing the Terran mission where you fight the Xenon around Mars. Between a few crashes and the J liking to drop in within ~6 km of me.. it was interesting. Finally ended up beating it, and working on the J without a Terran M2 for support was a tad exhilarating (no M2 because it jumped in, and due to the location of the J it seemed to get hung up on the Jump gate and collision detection). Bobbing and weaving along the hull of a J and trying to not get blown up/smack into it was probably the most fun I'd had yet in the game. Killed it (though I didn't get credit for the kill, for some reason) with about 9% hull left - which meant getting to know the repair laser.

I think I'm doing okay financially; sitting around 400k with almost every upgrade and system on my Sabre. Also have an Advanced Discoverer, a Rapier worth about 130k, a Buster I salvaged and two Yaki Fujin Raiders that I picked up from my first 'Defend the Station' mission before bed last night, all docked waiting for me to decide which to sell. By the time I get to my Jumpdrive, I should be good.

Kail, as someone who just started playing/learning this game, start as a Terran Defender. Do the Flight School "mission" that is prompted as soon as you start playing. From there, do Terran plot missions for awhile. It'll teach you certain aspects of the game decently.

Trading is simple enough, manually. When at a station go to the Trade section and to buy you click the bar near the bottom of the window to add/remove things. Its a bit of a clunky interface, but that pervades X3 (whomever designed their UI should never work on games again). Make sure to get the upgrades for tuning your ship (speed, rudder, cargo, etc) by filling the bar blue with them selected. Also aim to pick up software; trading, navigation, Fight Mk1/MK2, Triplex Scanners, at a minimum when you can afford them.

In learning to dogfight you'll come across hostiles in the Terran plot that start off fairly easy. Main advice I can give for dogfighting would be to try out the different styles of controlling your ship (classic, mouse) and see which one works for you. That and getting Fight Mk1 for full auto aim assistance and learning how to properly strafe in combat were the main things for me. That and learning to run for a short while to recharge shields/weapon energy.

You'll probably want to do some light reading on this game, through its forums, the handbook, etc., as since getting the game on the 29th I've done about 6-9 hours of just reading about how things work (a lot of that was stuff I havn't even reached yet, though, like universal traders, player owned stations and such). Just remember that the game is in no rush; take as long as you need in-game to do things unless there's a timer. I'd avoid doing missions other than plot ones until you get a wing of fighters to dock/sell. As after that you should have a fairly upgraded starter ship that you can have a much better chance of completing the missions (although the nly Mission I've done thus far has been station defense).

[Reg]

I'm at about the same spot as you guys. What I did was that when I got to the Terran mission where they gave me the 3 ships to act as my wingmen I transferred two of their guns to my saber - making me much more powerful and then sold the third gun for about 300,000 giving me an actual cash cushion.  I then stripped the 3 rapiers of everything useful that my Saber needed. Doing that got me all kinds wonderful software upgrades that made my life much, much easier.

Building up human reputation takes absolutely forever. The Argons actually like me better than the humans do at this point. I've got about 800k now but that's still not enough money for a serious ship upgrade or even to start real trading.

[Yegolev]

So, don't start off with the merchant.

[bhodi]

Yeah. Just do terran defender start. The merchant actually starts with two ships, one for trading one for combat, but you probably aren't well versed in switching between them and managing multiple ships.

Building up human rep is quite difficult until midgame and I wouldn't try too hard on it. The easiest thing to do is build up other reps, build your combat rep up, and wait until they start throwing corvettes at you during missions. Then, just go to heretic's end and do defense / patrol missions - because you get terran rep for ships destroyed in a terran sector, and larger ships give you more rep, you can very quickly build the needed terran rep in only a few missions instead of the dozen that you'd need near the start of the game flying in a M4.

There isn't anything worth buying from the terrans, anyway - it's all about the aldrin stuff (springblossom or spitfyre)

[Ceryse]

Free ships are also nice; although I couldn't get a couple pirates to bail on their M3 Novas and such, I picked up a Derelict in.. Duke's Citadel. Its real close to a jump gate (why I found it); Advanced Perseus. Paranid M3; 8 gun slots, 4x25k shields, 190ish cargo, low 200s for speed.. and a rear turret. Going to have to do some reading to try and figure out a decent weapon load-out for the eight gun slots beyond a few PACs, and what to put in the turret slot (though MARS might simply swap what's there automatically as it crunches numbers, if I have better stuff for certain situations?).

Sent my starter Sabre packing to dock in Legend's Home with its Jump Drive, as I'm trying to get all my spare ships in one spot, and I don't want to sell my starter ship for silly nostalgic reasons. So far I'm liking the Adv. Perseus.. and it looks like a space penguin, sorta.

Should be easier to go through the M6's my combat rank has been making me face on missions with it, though, than my Sabre, which would often have most of its shields torn through before I'd destroy the M6.

Once I get a Jump Drive on it, I might go hunting for more derelicts, since I can't find many station defense missions in my travels.

[Yegolev]

The merchant actually starts with two ships,

I'd like to jump off from this and mention how retarded it is to have a tutorial on firing weaponry that doesn't notice you are flying a ship without weapons.

[bhodi]

I'd like to jump off from this and mention how retarded it is to have a tutorial on firing weaponry that doesn't notice you are flying a ship without weapons.

Yeah. It's very much a sandbox game, and only recently (current expansion) have they even put a token effort into tutorials or missions.

Going to have to do some reading to try and figure out a decent weapon load-out for the eight gun slots beyond a few PACs, and what to put in the turret slot (though MARS might simply swap what's there automatically as it crunches numbers, if I have better stuff for certain situations?).

MARS will automatically swap guns into your turrets from your cargo as needed. I'd buy one IRE and one PAC for the turret. I suggest "MARS offense" unless you're trying to sneak past pirates without attracting attention. MARS defense will only fire on ships that you've already hit, or that have hit you already, which isn't all that useful when you're getting swarmed.

Best way to check guns is online.. Search for your ship and then click on Properties of compatible lasers.

In general, the guns with ammo are the most powerful and useful, but well, they've got ammo. Guns with ammo have the additional benefit of freeing up your energy for your other guns, which is good since you run dry burning shields of larger craft. If you have a 'base' ship, TM class, like a magnetar, you can store extra ammo there. Ammo size is pretty small, you can lug tens of thousands of rounds around with you and still have room for energy cells for your jumpdrive. HEPTs are a great weapon, but they are hard to get - I believe you can only get them from pirate stations. They are the giant space flamethrowers. EBCs are good, PACs are good.

[Ceryse]

Yeah, I saw the link to that site early on; its a gold mine for information and quick comparisons. I'd just put off weapon comparisons and researching the varying strengths/weaknesses of weapon types due to it being a non-issue with the Sabre. I wish I could buy certain ATF ships, though (such as the Thor).

I'm going to need a few more missions to properly out-fit my new Adv. Perseus and get my first traders going before I even think about picking up and out-fitting a TM, in spite of how handy one would be.

[Ghambit]

Is there no dynamic MP campaign?

[Murgos]

Is there no dynamic MP campaign?

Really?

[Reg]

I got a Magnetar dirt cheap doing one of those lightbulb missions.  It only had 60 percent hull and had no equipment but it only cost me 30,000. Seemed like a good deal.  I can give it a jump drive, load in my smaller fighting ships and jump us all to Legend`s Home to get everyone outfitted with one, right?

[bhodi]

I got a Magnetar dirt cheap doing one of those lightbulb missions.  It only had 60 percent hull and had no equipment but it only cost me 30,000. Seemed like a good deal.  I can give it a jump drive, load in my smaller fighting ships and jump us all to Legend`s Home to get everyone outfitted with one, right?

Exactly. In my opinion, that's it's primary purpose. And it's still relatively cheap - 400k or so.

Remember that legend's home is missing some stuff; all you can buy there is a jumpdrive and rudder/cargo/engine optimizations. I actually like Home of Light best for equipping crap.

You can go one sector south to terracorp to buy a tractor beam (I haven't mentioned it but it lets you swap ships and trade cargo between two ships you own within 4k range without having to dock if one of the ships has one), and you can go one sector west to Red Light's space equipment dock to buy all the software you'd ever want. I do that in the EST thing in the second post.

[Lantyssa]

I like basing out of Light of Heart to the southeast of the base Terran sectors.  It is near a bunch of different races and the pirate sectors for even more fun.  (Really I work in Hatikvah's Faith with LoH being my safe ship base.)  I only discovered it because of the bankrupt assassin, but prefer it.  Human space is so boring.

[Sir T]

I quit this game way back because My combat rank skyrocketed so fast I was facing swarms of corvettes in an M4 pretty damn fast. Have they slowed that down. Also I enjoy slowly building up a mercantile empire of factories, and the fact that missions were the best easy cash just kind of sucked the fun out of it. Capping those M8 bombers was easy as well and those were a good 2 million in the bank, which left me with a "why bother going through the effort of trading/station building" feeling. And of course the fact that the Freaking Xenon are growing a brain and using the good guns (cant remember the name) is a pain as I like to dogfight and cant dodge their shots at all  Also, the changes they made to the ships over X3:R annoyed me

I'm thinking of starting it anew though as really it's more enjoyable than EVE, and X:3R and X:TC the only other games that scratches that itch. You miss the multiplayer angle, but really, who need internet people anyway 

What are the new decent mods, patches and expansions that I would need? (yeah I know you probably have said this but I haven't been paying attention since release)

[Reg]

Go back to the top of the thread. Bhodi gives a list of the must have mods in the first couple of messages.