SOLD!

illum, you're forgetting that I was one of the few who said Freelancer's control scheme stunk and one of the many who said that it was very, very shallow.

From what I've been reading, it sounds like this game is a broken mess that was rushed out the door with many features that were not implemented. Looks like a pass to me.

Edit: Let me amend that so it doesn't sound like I'm drowning in haterade. Someone, presumably the publisher, ordered the game out as is. As it sits, there are features that haven't been implemented and bugs aplenty, but fortunately Egosoft is trying to fix it all (next patch due in mid-November). That said, if you know you're getting a partially completed game that like Morrowind in that vein, it may be worth the look if you want to save the F.E.A.R.s and Civ IVs for another day, and at 40 bucks a shot, it may be worth getting just to explore and tool around in for awhile. Maybe.

Heh, better than a fountain of ass.
Now erase that image from your mind

I went to Target to buy some TV on DVD but walked out with X3 instead. So, I've spent about 15 hours with this game and have some thoughts to share. For background, I did play X2 but never finished it. After buying a corvette and setting up some factories, I had a hard drive problem and lost my X2 save games. I decided it was too much work to make it that far again.

System: Homebuilt Athlon 2.8 GHz, 784MB RAM, Radeon 9550 256MB Video card.
WinXP SP2 for games (and Ubuntu Linux 5.10 for serious work)

The Good:
- The best improvement over X2 is the control and menu scheme. Everything is very customizable and the menus are much more transparent and easy to use than they were before. I am flying using a dual analog stick controller and it works very well. You can map two commands to each button one for tapping it and one for holding it down. So I have 14 commands mapped to 8 buttons, not counting the pitch, yaw and roll. More than enough for combat.
- Since the menus are transparent, you can fly and use them at the same time. (Except for in combat of course).
- Better starting equipment. You start with a medium fighter (Argon Buster) with decent shields and weapons, the time acceleration device, a duplex scanner, an upgraded engine and rudders and the max size cargo bay. And if you play the plot missions, you'll get a free jumpdrive fairly quickly.
- Very pretty graphics. Lots o' details like the firing of little jets that correct for inertial effects as you fly. Excellent ship detail and massive stations.
- More planets. Some systems have planets you can fly very close to. You can even fly into the atmosphere and burn up. (Not good, but cool)
- More interesting and varied plot missions. For the first few missions, you don't need to buy a better ship to be able to complete the next mission, like in X2. Also the missions aren't all of the: fly here, kill this variety. Again, I'm not too far into the plot yet.
- More banter between wingmen during plot missions. This helps maintain the illusion that they aren't just AIs. (X2 may have had this too, I don't remember)
- You can start (in non-plot mode) as an explorer, trader or pirate with the appropriate ship and reputation established already.
- Voice acting is generally okay, not great but okay.
- Good, unobtrusive ambient music (but not as good as Civ 4).
- The same dynamic economy and universe as present before.

The Bad:
- 85MB patch already. I didn't try to play without it, so I can't say how much it may have helped.
- Long load times. (1 min 5 sec to load a saved game). This is frustrating when you die, it takes a minute (literally) to load the game menu and then another minute to reload a saved game.
- No progress bar for loading, so if you're paranoid, you might worry that your system has locked up (until you get used to it).
- No tutorial (despite it being advertised in the manual repeatedly)
- Not easy to make $$. It takes a _lot_ of time to save up for new ships or equipment. This is just like X2.
- Not all of the videos have good lip syncing.
- No new ships at the start, there are probably new models to find later in the game but you'll still be piloting the same old models to begin. Also, the only new ship upgrade is a cloaking device (that I haven't gotten to play with yet)
- When you're just hopping around trying to make money, the game feels SLOW.

The Ugly:
- My system completely shut off many times (>10) when I was flying through jumpgates with time acceleration enabled. It didn't just crash to the desktop, it powered off completely. Perhaps related to ...
- Starforce. This is the 1st game that I've installed that had this. If I had known more about it (starforce) before I bought the game, I wouldn't have. When I uninstall X3 I plan on getting rid of Starforce too and won't buy another game that has it. (It's hella uncool, as I'm sure you all know).

Overall, this game is very similar to X2, just prettier and with a much nicer interface and better controls IMO. If you didn't like all of the trading and factory / fleet building and management in X2 you won't find anything different here. If you do like it, I think there are many, many hours to be sunk into it. (15 hours in and I don't think I've made even 10% progress). We'll see how long it holds my interest. If you're okay with starforce and are interested in this game, I would still recommend waiting until the price drops more.

And Ilium, the manual here was only 86 pages and left out much of the background info present in the X2 manual. But it does have some nice, detailed FAQs on combat and trading.

Ya know after georob's review I'd seriously consider trying this game if not for that f'n Starforce protection.

X2 had it. But I agree with you. I am interested in this game, but I am not buying it on principle.

--Edit--
In fact, I think I'm going to go over to their website right now and see if I can find a place to post my gripe.

Yeah, I guess I forgot about that. I didn't know it was on my computer at the time though. It was your posting this thread, MoonDragon, that made me google it. The starforce website forums are kind of funny, they have 2 PR drone moderators who pretty much say the same things to everyone who posts a complaint. And they get super pissed off whenever anyone comes close to calling starforce malware.

But back on topic. I mentioned above that there wasn't a lot of new equipment or ships but I may have been a little off. Many of the ships have 'tanker' or 'hauler' variants, which means that they have more cargo room I think. Also there are new guns (including the Khaak lasers) and missile types.

Some of the most lucrative missions you can take at the beginning are shuttling folks around (usually pays 2000-3000) or doing special cargo runs, such as collecting X number of a specific item for a station. You can find these missions in the bulletin boards at the space stations. They are randomly generated and in my opinion, don't come around often enough. Plus if you're at a station and it doesn't have any good missions, you'll need to fly to another one for another chance.

As for trading, energy cells are always safe to buy, but you make very little money from them. A good trade run I've found that nets more is buying swamp plants from a Dream Farm in CEOs Buckzoid and then selling them to bliss farms in Profit Share or Greater Profit. You can often pick them up for <160 and sell them for >250. Buying Space Fuel (liquor) and selling it to some pirate systems can make some good money too, but if you're scanned you'll have to fight or flee and your reputation takes a hit. Note that pirate bases in some places (I think those in Split or Paranid sectors) offer a lot more for it.

One of the first things I recommend you buy is more shields. 5MJ shields cost ~20k but are definitely worth it; hull damage is super expensive to repair. Weapons are expensive enough that you're better off waiting a while.

Part of the fun is exploring but here's a link to a map (without hidden sectors displayed) for X2; as far as I can tell, this map is pretty good for X3 also.
http://www.hrh1000.com/x2/pics/X2MapUnspoiled200.jpg

A really lucrative trick I just figured out is stealing pirate ships. If you're confident with your fighting abilities and spot a lone pirate (lone is key) you can get his ship. To do this just attack him until his shields are gone and then hold back. Only attack again to keep his shields at zero; eventually he'll eject and you can go out in your spacesuit and get the ship. If it's in really good shape you might consider adding it to your fleet but most the time it's a wreck. Even then you can sell it at a shipyard for 50,000 or more.

Market info isn't easy to get at first. You can buy a device at the Argon equipment dock that lets you see the prices at stations without docking for ~9000. You can also but Best Buy and Best Sell devices from the Teladi but these cost ~26000 a piece.If you don't have these add-ons, you can target a factory and then look at the info screen for it. It won't tell you the prices but it will show how much is on the station. If you see that it has a lot of it's end product, you can probably buy it at a good price. If the factory has very little of a product it needs (i.e. beef for the meatsteak cahoona plants) you can expect to get a good price for it. All of this checking is a little tedious and random though, which is why you'll want to find better ways to profit.

I plan on buying a TS class ship when I can afford it. Once you get one of these you can make a lot of money trading ore. (If it works like it did in X2).

If I come across any other good tips or strategies, I'll put them up.

Well, my performance has smoothed out, but I have an AMD 3200+ with an X800 card and a gig of RAM. It will use more RAM if you have it. I'm running at 1024x768x32, no AA, but texture stuff working. I can't speak to what a lower system would do. Maybe check the game website and see what folks are saying.

I'm more and more pleased with this game. I can just drop into the game, do a run for ten or 15 minutes, and go off to do other stuff, and still get something accomplished. I've not triggered the story yet (because I did not understand how to talk to other ships at the start), but I think tonight I'll go back to the starting sector and do that. In the meantime, I've made some money trading. There seems to be no penalty for not starting the story right off the bat, and the manual states that's one way to go.

Despite the warts and such, the fact that I can start the game without being shot up is a huge change from X2, and it's obviously a labor of love. I like the way the mouse menus work; even flying around, I can pull up order screens without interfering with my flight or losing track of things. That's a very immersive touch. If the patch adds in the functionality they left out, I'll be in trading heaven.

Geo, is a payoff of 500cr for a short trading run a good take at the start of the game? I found a run picking up batteries at a solar plant in a sector loaded with asteroids; I run through a gate and drop off at a High Energy Plasma weapons plant. I can carry 96 batteries at a profit of 5 each, for maybe 5 or ten minutes work.

Is that good, or should I look for better? I was going to run it a few times to see how the market changes with time.

How's the combat in X3? I played X1 a fair bit, and just mucked around the universe trading without actually ever getting into a fight, mostly because the combat didn't seem great. I heard that X2 fights consisted mostly of the AI ships trying to ram you.

Combat in X3 seems a little easier, but maybe that's because of the better controls. Ships don't try to ram you as far as I can tell. They seem to try to set up a head on collision course and open up on you. The AI pilots, IMO, aren't very good but if they have superior weapons and shields they can still own you.

A combat tip for engaging groups is to engage the mosr maneuverable (sp?) ships first. Even though scout ships have some of the lightest weapons, when you're attacking a heavy fighter you're pretty much going to have to match the speed and maneuverability of it, so if there are still scout ships around they'll have an easy time targeting you. If you have the money for it, it usually only takes 2-4 missiles to kill a scout ship which is worth it when you want to thin numbers quickly.

The swamp plant run is s buying swamp plants from a Dream Farm in the sector CEOs Buckzoid and then selling them to Bliss Farms in Profit Share or Greater Profit. Most of the time, the dream farm has a lot of stock so you can pick them up cheap (<160 each) and the bliss farms have very little, so you can sell them for >250 (90+ credits of profit per plant). Bliss farms make space weed, which isn't very profitable to trade and is illegal anyway.

To get another ship home you can target it and then bring up the info menu (I think) where you can access the ships command console. From there you choose the navigation sub-menu and can order the ship to fly to a particular sector or even to dock at a particular station. Before you can do this you have to claim the ship. Do this by ejecting and then piloting your spacesuit close to the abandoned ship, target it and bring up the info menu again where there will be a 'claim' icon.

I usually take control of the abandoned ship myself since it is damaged and more vulnerable, then order my good ship to dock at a shipyard where I rendevous with it and decide whether to keep my claim or sell it. You can also switch between ships to pilot if you're both docked at the same station.

I haven't seen the AI go after an abandoned ship yet but I don't give them much time to try. ^_^

i tried the X2 demo whiched helped me decide not to even think about buying X2 .

maybe in 10 years i'll try it again and see if i like it .

Man, there's an awful lot of flying around to be done to figure out the world and the market.

I felt like resurrecting this thread... Posting on the merits of X3 as a sandbox game the other day gave me the urge to play it again. I was still at work so I went to check out what was new with the game. I found that they recently released a new patch that allows you to play without the disc, which is nice. Whats better is that this allows you to install the game without Starforce ever touching your system as long as you install the patch before you run the game for the first time. The Steam version released a little while ago also is starforceless.

I know Starforce was holding some people back so now you have some options for something new to play during the winter lull... The learning curve is still completely vertical but there's a game worth playing behind it.