X3: Terran Conflict

I think Terran Defender is the easiest start because you get showered with very nice gifts (you should look carefully ;).) In mid plot you can pretty much go earn some cash which would make the plot much easier . The sabre you get is also a pretty good ship for a start (m4 still has cardboard armor).

After I played all the standard starts and learned the inner working I wanted something more challenging and did the tormented Teladi and then Poisoned Paranid ( the reward for this was well worth it) I don't think i abused any derelict ships for either plots.

There are a lot of ways to make credits in the beginning of the game so if you need any tips I can probobly list them all . Experienced players usually have a similar standard plan for starting out and know what kind of ships and upgrades to get first. It's generally a good idea to get into somekind of M3 if you want to kill something because an M5 is generally a flying coffin and killing stuff with an M4 is considered an extreme sport.

The classes of ships are not as intuitive . The fighters are M5(scout)

Niseg wrote:

I think Terran Defender is the easiest start because you get showered with very nice gifts (you should look carefully ;).) In mid plot you can pretty much go earn some cash which would make the plot much easier . The sabre you get is also a pretty good ship for a start (m4 still has cardboard armor).

After I played all the standard starts and learned the inner working I wanted something more challenging and did the tormented Teladi and then Poisoned Paranid ( the reward for this was well worth it) I don't think i abused any derelict ships for either plots.

There are a lot of ways to make credits in the beginning of the game so if you need any tips I can probobly list them all . Experienced players usually have a similar standard plan for starting out and know what kind of ships and upgrades to get first. It's generally a good idea to get into somekind of M3 if you want to kill something because an M5 is generally a flying coffin and killing stuff with an M4 is considered an extreme sport.

I loved the game at first, but could never get the hang of making money. Any tips would be appreciated, I'd like to go back to X3, it's still a great looking game.

Running Man wrote:

I loved the game at first, but could never get the hang of making money. Any tips would be appreciated, I'd like to go back to X3, it's still a great looking game.

The easiest way is to immediately run out and start grabbing the most conveniently placed derelict ships. Sell the ones that you won't use, and use that capital to buy yourself a good fighter (for yourself) and a freighter that you then set up as an automated sector/universal trader.

While your sector trader gets going, you then have some options. Usually either start running missions, or capturing pirates and selling their ships. You can really do both. Always check for profitable missions whenever you enter a system, and if none, see if there are any pirates around to capture. Also remember that missions become much more profitable as your rank increases, so it will take some time but you can theoretically make millions just by running missions.

I always felt that getting into building stations and your trading empire is more of a mid to late-game process, since you don't really know what the universe needs or where the danger zones are when you first get started.

I found that one of the best way to get credits early on is scavenging. The universe is very dynamic and the Kha'ak are always stirring up trouble. I know they are nasty and scary but a Kha'ak destroyer can be a blessing (just remember to stay far away from it's cannon range) . What usually happen is that numerous ships fight the Kha'ak and you aren't really taking sides (just be careful not to get close to the reds) from time to time some ship blows up drop some goods . You are generally looking for missiles especially high end ones. After you collect a few you can then go cash them and get some important upgrades.

Usually what most starters do is try to do peaceful missions like asteroid scanning missions in an M5 (preferably Kestrel/discoverer with M size cargo) . The general aim is to get enough money for goodies especially a Jump drive. What you can do while making money is look for deals on used ships. You can then repair(space walk style) and sell them for a profit (or keep them if they are useful). You usually try to get somekind of M3 preferably a Nova Raider and get it armed with some kind of weapon (PACs can do the job). It's generally good to get a jump drive when you can. Before getting a jump drive you can get cargo life support especially if you have a speedy M5 with M cargo . With Cargo life support you can do taxi missions that don't require a TP (have to check the mission text) and those can be lucrative. The other thing you should aim to get is a TM because it makes it easier to do ship recovery missions and you might capture a few ships along the way. The TM is a common starting logistic ship . You should learn how to order ships around and controlling them remotely because you'll do that a lot in the game.

The other option is to go the trading route .Trading can be lucrative but it usually take a long time. I remember that when I played tormented teladi I had a whole lot of trouble getting cash so i resorted to escort missions (in an M5) hoping I can capture an enemy M5( it worked) . It's kind of risky but if those M5 attack the TS you are escorting you can usually take them down. You can also do base defense missions with the same idea . I wouldn't recommend taking this path if you have other options. Escort mission is the worst because it takes a very long time to finish and you might get attacked by something nasty. Other than that if you want to go fighting you should get the computer 2 module (I don't remember if you need both) so it auto-aims your bore-sight fire (ctrl) .

Other than that if you have a joystick or game pad you might want to get joy2key or something like that .The advantage on the ingame key binding is the fact you can use shift-keying in that app and x3 has a ton of keys .

Some people start automatic traders but I was usually not playing enough to get them to make much profit. Station laying is another option .You don't need a TL because you can hire one and communicate commands to it . Some people build self sufficient complexes but those usually take a lot of money to build. The game is generally about upgrading your fighter and fleet. You should also be aware that as your fighter rank go up you'll see tougher opponents . If you do too many kill missions you may get to a point you won't be able to handle future missions because you'll start seeing more M6s and M7s .

Good stuff guys, thanks. I'll fire it up tonight after football.

Damn. I had no intention of signing up here, or posting in this thread. I assumed that a 4 year old thread, (almost exactly) would long since be dead. But seeing as how it ended up not being, and seeing as how I've read 88 pages of comments, (and feel as though I know you all now) I decided I was honour-bound to tell you all how much I enjoyed it.

I'm another late-comer to X3:TC. A long-time Elite and Vega Strike fan, I'm surprised how long it took me to hear about this, but when I found an old copy, I decided to give it a go, already knowing pretty much how these open space-sims worked. Did a bit of research, and went modified right from the start...(Pirate Guild + Yaki Armada + a few tweaks and custom starts.)

Started straight in the custom game, (didn't know there weren't any plots for it), planning an existence of piracy but never quite getting there. Got up to 40 million still flying an M3 (although I had a Boa and a couple fighters stashed in an unknown sector) (and co-incidentally enough usually making the Boron my victims even before I stumbled on this thread), before an ill-chosen mod corrupted my saves.

Rather than go back to an earlier campaign (Only 30 million), I decided to try a custom start as a Pirate captain, which gave me a Pirate Marauder, and a few ships. (Plots enabled.) With the Pirate Guild plug-in I was all set to be a pirate...except I still haven't quite managed. My M6 and the 2 fighters I kept from the start, (sold the others) are stashed in a Pirate Base, and I'm tooling around in a capped Yaki Tenjin.

I like a lot of the Split ships, so gonna max out my rep with them, and the Split Strong Arm Corp, and then I will make either the Boron or the Paranid or both sorry that I found this game.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for the amusing ride through this thread. I enjoyed it, and this is a great game.

Carry on.

--Avatar

Welcome! Be sure to kill some Borons!

Stele wrote:

Welcome! Be sure to kill some Borons! ;)

What he said!

Death To The Boron! May their waters recede eternally.

Hahaha, thanks guys.

--A

Eh, I haven't even got the energy to fight anymore, not since Grubber wore down my resistance and impregnated me with his Meatsteak Cahoona.

Hello Avatar, glad you have enjoyed the thread!

So I downloaded Albion Prelude, got out my joystick, and it was a teensy bit sticky. I got out some alcohol swabs to clean it off, and the alcohol must attack the rubber or plastic or something because now it is a lot sticky :(.

I am thinking about taking some of my wife's nail polish and going over the sticky regions to cover it up. Does anyone have a better idea?

I've always just used plain water to clean off gamepads through the years.

Yonder wrote:

got out my joystick, and it was a teensy bit sticky. I got out some alcohol swabs to clean it off ... now it is a lot sticky :(.

I am thinking about taking some of my wife's nail polish and going over the sticky regions to cover it up. Does anyone have a better idea?

Oh Yonder, you so crazy.

Thanks for the welcome Yonder.

I gotta get out of this M3...took a "Recover Stolen Ship" mission last night and it turned out to be a Split Tiger. Naturally didn't get that one in the M3.

Reloaded, and switched to my new Dragon to re-try, but need a better load-out for it...didn't even get through the Tiger's shields before it fried me.

--A

The X-Tended 2.0 mod was recently released for those interested. Been waiting on it for a while, myself.

http://www.thexuniverse.com/threads/...

Big patch for Albion Prelude today. I wish they would just release Rebirth already.

I put patch notes in the AP thread, although I know people talk about it here sometimes too.

Stele wrote:
The X3: Albion Prelude 3.0 - Shady Business update is available starting TODAY on Steam.

NEW FEATURES:
---------------
- Controller mode to play the X3 games on a big screen TV for the first time
- The “Shady Business” plot
- The “Corporation Troubles” plot
- The “Breaking Grounds” plot
- New sectors, new gamestarts and new generic missions
- Largest X Universe so far

Thanks, Stele. That makes me want to go reinstall the game this weekend. How is controllers mode?

Same here. I ordered an Xbox controller for X3, but struggled to get any kind of traction (stopped short of the duct tape, Zero. Guess I'm not hardcore enough.)

I'm definitely in if they can get that right.

How is controllers mode?

Yeah, very curious about this too -- when I played X3:TC a few summers ago I had to rig up a ridiculous setup with open source controller drivers and duct tape, and ultimately it was sort of crap. The chance to play with good, official controller support has me inches away from hitting the checkout button in Steam.

I plugged in a controller, fired up X3:AP, and jumped into a Xenon sector just so I could give you guys a report.

The loading screens in X3:AP now have an overlay showing the default mapping for controllers, but for those of you who don't have the game or otherwise haven't seen it, yaw and pitch are assigned to the right stick, and strafe drive to the left stick.

Throttle control felt weird to me, since I'm used to using a joystick with a dedicated widget for that, but I guess it's basically like racing games: hold left trigger to speed up, release it to gradually slow back to zero, or hit left bumper to rapidly decrease speed and/or go into reverse. Pressing the left stick will let you set a speed which your ship will keep.

The controls felt pretty good to me; I was able to shoot down a few fighters before I got too close to an I (the uber-M2 that AP adds to the Xenon navy) and jumped out with a fraction of my shields remaining.

I too just used the controller for the first time. It felt good, but my biggest beef was targeting. You'd think important commands like target closest enemy and such would be easy to map, but noooope. Other than that though, it felt good in combat. I'm honestly surprised.

Ok, question. I started to make some traction in the Merchant start, figuring out a few things when my fighter was destroyed. I wasn't that far along so I figured I'd restart the game and get a running start this time. So I did. Only when I park my merchant at an ore facility, it has the same numbers of my previous game where I bought a ton of ore and it's price skyrocketed. So I check out the other places. Same deal. Even the ore factory I sell them to isn't buying any more ore. Are these numbers static for the rest of the game? Do I have to branch out immediately?

It takes a while after starting a new game for the economy to get revved up.

Let the Solar Power Plants build up some inventory, then focus on selling energy cells to mines for your first several trade runs. Things will pick up gradually.

The numbers aren't static, a factory will gradually consume its resources and produce its products. The price is simple, a linear relationship between how much that particular station has stood at that instant, but it's good enough to get the necessary gameplay elements. T
Trading Stations and Equipment Docks always sell their wares for the middle price point, regardless of their stockpile. When you buy your own factories you set your own constant price.

When a game starts up, even though part of the game start is supposed to be propagating the economy to get it to settle down a bit, as mb mentioned it's still not in a very steady state. I believe this is actually partially intentional, to provide some volatility for experienced players to take advantage of on restarts.

The big exception to the whole "factories consume/produce their "resources/products" is if they are grid locked. A factory that is full of its products won't consume its resources, and a factory too low on its Primary Resources (secondary resources are meaningless) won't produce its products.

For a trader like yourself the best way to be profitable is to ensure that that doesn't happen in your areas of interests. You get lots of money for buying sui lie and selling so high, but the even more important benefit is just to keep the economy itself moving to keep things circulating and make sure there is always money to be made. Once you have the money to start getting into stations you should have a couple ideas for where some products are especially necessary.

Did you guys know that you can check stock amounts in the sector map? And that you can get trading software that tells you the best buying and selling spots in the sector? Because its 2014 and I just found out. Who'dathunk this game was so deep? Did you guys and gals know this game was deep?

edit* I've discovered my purpose in this game. I will build a massive fleet and begin the Democratic Order of Planets. Our flagship will be The Nimbus. And I will run my fleet the sexiest way I can. Stop exploding you cowards!

Update!

Ok. I've found all 19 derelict ships and sold none of them. I own 2 Universe traders. I own 1 Sector trader that will soon be a Universe trader. I own a Wheat Complex in Ringo Moons. I'm sitting on 15 million credits. Do you guys and gals have any tips on where to start building factories? I don't need a specific guide, but a few suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Grenn wrote:

I own a Wheat Complex in Ringo Moons. I'm sitting on 15 million credits. Do you guys and gals have any tips on where to start building factories? I don't need a specific guide, but a few suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Two of the first factories I typically build in a new game are a 1 MJ Shield within a few jumps of Argon Prime, and an Advanced Satellite in the neighborhood of Cardinal's Domain.

Those regions should have lots of NPC factories producing the raw materials, and there'll be high demand for both products. The shields will mostly get sold to Equipment Docks; for the satellites, NPC merchant ships will pay a fair bit more than stations will, so you can inflate your selling price, tell your ships assigned to that station not to sell, and turn on trading with NPC's. Advanced Satellites are also really useful and hard to buy in quantity, so building up a supply for yourself isn't a bad idea.

If you aren't using it yet, I highly recommend the Commercial Agent script which is in the Bonus Pack.

And if you're planning on building a combat fleet, there are a lot of things that are much easier to make yourself than to buy in sufficient quantity from NPC stations. Your favorite missile types, shields and big guns for capital ships, that sort of thing, and the big guns in particular take a while to build.

As you are flying around you should check up on factories, you will frequently find severe shortages of intermediate or basic goods, ECells, ore, and food are the big ones to watch out for. Keep in mind that chronic surpluses can indicate that the next factory in that chain has a shortage of something else and is locked. Filling those sorts of holes scattered around is a good use of factories.

For a longer term strategy, do this especially in regards to the needs of done factories that make your favorite weapons/missiles/shields. They can have quite a production time, the best way to make sure you can outfit craft in 15 hours is to make sure those favorites have healthy supply chains now.

OK since Elite Dangerous isn't out I figured I'd pull this off the pile. I got nowhere with it the first 2 times I tried.

Went back into Terran Defender start, went mouse and keyboard since the xbox controller didn't feel right. Managed to actually get somewhere until I got kerbstomped by 5 ships launched from that pirate base you're supposed to scan. That took about 10 tries to get past: At first wondering if how I was supposed to beat them, then wondering if they were launching because I messed something up, then trying to dodge them all while circling the base scanning, then trying to kill them again, then finally settling on a "draw them off, kill a couple, then circle back to scan the pirate base before legging it" strategy.

This game really doesn't hold your hand.

The scriptiness of the Terran Defender start seems at odds with the freeform nature of the game and I think it's not the way to get into the game, despite what I'd been advised. I'm going to restart with a Humble Merchant start and nibble my way through some beginners' guides until it clicks.

Terran Defender is nice because if you follow the story it awards you with several free ships, and does ease you into most of the systems of the game through the scripted missions.