X3: Terran Conflict

[ScAvenger001]

Anyone going to get this/already have it? I remember we had a few X3: Reunion players here. It's available on steam now, I'm thinking of getting it.

For those not familiar with the X series, it's basically Privateer except more so. You start off with a medium starfighter and you can trade, fight, pirate, whatever your way to vast riches including owning your own starbases and fleets of capital ships.

It looks like they did a lot of work on the interface, which was my big beef with the first game. They've also made the universe a lot more dynamic, with the factions actually able to properly go to war against one another now.

[CaptCommy]

I'm on the fence so far, as I really like X3 in concept, but couldn't get into it. Was hoping you guys would buy it and review it for me, actually :D

[ScAvenger001]

I'd call you a cheapskate... but honestly I was hoping that same thing :fier:

Still, I really liked X3. You're right that it's hard to get into, but that's why the improved interface caught my attention. From what I've seen on the Egosoft forums, this one even has a built-in encyclopedia to explain how the universe works so you don't have to guess at the economics any more.

[GrosPoisson]

Played X2, and I liked it except for the fact that making money as a fighter/capturer was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it should be. Especially the bounties paid out for blowing up pirates: not only did you have to purchase the license to get rewards, but then the rewards were worthless considering how much damage even a light skirmish could do to your ship when it came time to repair it. Trading was a lot more profitable, but a lot more boring as well.

[pk!]

I like the X series (apart from the annoying unskippable intro to X1) - but I wish they'd used a proper Newtonian physics model with orbits.

And I hate jumpgates as a game/plot device. I'd much prefer something more like the system they had in Frontier:Elite 2 - straightforward movement and timeskip.

I guess proper orbital mechanics is a bit much for the casual gamer (in orbit, slow down to speed up).

Boron corvettes ftw!

[BAS]

I have reunion but I havent played it yet

[ScAvenger001]

Played X2, and I liked it except for the fact that making money as a fighter/capturer was a hell of a lot harder than I thought it should be. Especially the bounties paid out for blowing up pirates: not only did you have to purchase the license to get rewards, but then the rewards were worthless considering how much damage even a light skirmish could do to your ship when it came time to repair it. Trading was a lot more profitable, but a lot more boring as well.

The police license bounties are pretty useless, though I think having a police license makes your faction rank increase faster when you do kill them. Once I got some decent shields I wasn't too worried about having to repair my ship all the time, and I only ever used mosquito missiles as an anti-missile system (with no other missiles in use) so my expenses were really low. Capturing can be really lucrative though, if you manage to snag a more or less intact heavy fighter it could be worth a couple million credits.

In Reunion I got very lucky and managed to salvage a pair of Xenon LXs (arguably the best fighters in the game) right before I went on the missions to recover the Hyperion. Two super fighters and a heavy frigate with two landing bays made for a very potent force.

[Dr Boners]

I played X3 for something like half an hour and could figure out how to move my ship.
Which sucked, because it looks like it'd be my kind of game; pretty space stuff, crazy ship to ship combat, etc

[SWATJester_os]

Is the interface truly improved? Because I had the same problem with X3: couldn't figure out how the controls worked.

[Loké]

I just didn't like the idea of building my own little empire. I wanted to shoot shit.

[ScAvenger001]

So I got Terran Conflict. The default controls are a little peculiar, they make sense from their own perspective but I reset them to the classic setup. That is, left clicking makes you turn toward your cursor, right clicking fires toward your cursor, ctrl fires toward your gunsight. Still, good feature #1 is that there's a tutorial you can take right from the beginning which will show you how things work. Good feature number two is that anyone who has a mission for you has a little icon next to their ship (or station) and that you can ask for and accept missions entirely through the comms system without having to dock at every single station and muddle through the bulletin board looking for jobs.

But for right now I want to tell you a little story about why this game is awesome.

So I'm cruising around Argon space doing a boring little job: some idiot bailed out of a freighter and they want me to go pick it up and return it to the home station. I go find the freighter, pick it up, and tell it to go the rest of the way back home on autopilot because this isn't really a job I feel like I need to attend to personally. Then I cruise around for jobs that sound more interesting, because I've got a high-performance M5 Discoverer Raider that hasn't seen combat yet and I want to break it in a little. The Disco R. is basically a scoutship/interceptor, one of the very fastest ships in the game, but its shields are like paper and it doesn't have a very big energy reserve for its guns, so while you can do a respectable amount of damage you'll probably run out of juice before the other guy runs out of armor unless he's in an M5 himself.

Mission found: routine patrol, enemies expected in sector, "average" difficulty whatever that means, respectable pay plus bonus for downed enemies. Sweet.

So I cruise around for a little while, waiting for enemies to appear, and eventually they do: a half-squadron of Xenon M5s, plus an M4 medium fighter. If they swarm me, this could be bad, but they seem like they're headed for one of the giant super-transport ships. This is a mixed blessing, since they won't be attacking me and I can pretty much pick them off at will, but I'll have to dodge the big guns from the transport and it might steal some of my kills. Oh well, says I, I guess that's just how it goes. Except I notice the transport isn't firing the big guns it's supposed to have, and it's taking kind of a lot of shield damage considering how heavy its shields are supposed to be. I query it: "Argon Hospital Ship." Shit. I guess I'd better hurry up and sweep up these fighters, huh? Especially since the sector patrol are all the way on the other side of an asteroid field and all the other friendly fighters in the sector have freighters of their own to protect and don't really give a damn about this one.

Still, it's pretty easy. I blast my way through the M5s, and a couple of wandering medium fighters help me deal with the M4, when I notice that there are still an awful lot of red dots on the screen. While I was busy, it seems the Xenons decided to send in another wave of fighters... and then another several waves on top of that. Friendly craft all over the sector are blinking red as they take hits, the sector patrol are scattered across the system fighting for their lives, the heavy fighters of the local Argon Navy picket are clustered around their pet Destroyer, which is itself trying to hunt the small, maneuverable fighters swarming its hull with guns better suited for smashing enemy capital ships. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

Now it's much less easy. I'm still in the fastest ship on the field so I can dodge hits very well, but now I'm in open space and the only target around, so I have to get a lot more mileage out of my dodging abilities. I'm doing pretty well on the whole, though, and I manage to score a couple of kills while moving the battle toward a pair of friendly military heavy fighters to help me out. They oblige me, and begin to fill space with some kind of new flamethrower type gun that I've never seen before (but I know I want one of :fier:). Trouble is, this flamer of theirs is awesomely powerful but not terribly precise, and an overeager navy flier misses the M5 we're both pursuing and burns my poor ship to a crisp: the shields hardly even slow the blast down before failing and I watch in agony as my hull indicator drops down, down, down before finally stopping at 3%, just before the line of death. Shit. Even worse, the massive hull damage I've sustained has ruined my engines, making my ship (whose sole selling point was its blinding speed) somewhat slower than the heavy fighters that are supposedly helping me, to say nothing of the Xenons. The only good news is that the enemy fighters are so immediately concerned by the presence of the military that they pretty much ignore me.

Still, there's not a lot I can do about my situation, considering I'm flying an undershielded wallowing target that's on its last legs. Time for a desperation move: I eject, but rather than trying to swim home on the my suit's pitiful thrusters, I get out my repair laser and start welding for all I'm worth. Take a moment and imagine this situation: here I am, in an spacesuit that might as well not be there for all the armor value it has, trying to glue together the smoking wreckage of my prized Raider, while just beyond my helmet a very serious battle is going on. The "friendly" Novas spew their flames at the Xenon fighters while their rear turrets fill space with green plasma, the Xenons return fire with their teal laser blasts, trying to mass-fire their way through the much heavier shields of their opponents, while in both directions the blue shooting stars of anti-fighter missiles trace their target's movements with deadly precision, sometimes just meters from where I watch, gritting my teeth.

It's really quite beautiful.

Bitching Betty, my onboard computer, doesn't share my sense of aesthetic. "Energy low," she informs me as the power reserves for my repair laser expire and the laser itself fizzles and dies. I check the hull status of my ship: 62%. A lot better than 3%, but still not really combat-ready considering how dependent I am on my speed. I glance at the fight raging beside me. They're still busy with each other. I grit harder and wait for the laser to recharge.

Somehow, I manage not to eat any of those missiles flying around long enough to finish repairs, and I climb back into the cockpit and jam the throttle forward. I'm not feeling quite as casually invulnerable now as I was before, and I start to wonder when the navy is going to get their shit together and get over here. I get my answer in the worst way possible, as I see more flashes coming from the direction of the navy picket and notice something awful: the red, twin-claw icons of enemy capital ships. What the fuck? This is "average" difficulty? But then I notice something strange about the weapons fire being exchanged and realize the situation is even worse than I'd thought: these aren't Xenon capital ships, part of my mission in this area, and presumably defined by its rules.

These are Khaak, and they're not following any rules at all.

Oh shit.

Khaak, incidentally, have an annoying tendency to outfit their ships with weapons that have no travel time, making them exceedingly hard to dodge and meaning that only well-shielded ships (i.e. not mine) should tangle with them. My support evaporates as the Navy fighters swarm back toward their suddenly outmatched destroyer, facing as it is an opposing destroyer plus a heavy carrier that's disgorging little Khaak fighters as fast its its bays will cycle. I'm very alone now, and while I can take out the last couple of Xenons from this wave without too much trouble, there are still one or two more waves out there.

A few kills later, and one of those waves is on me. Fortunately they seem to have misplaced their M4, or I might be in trouble, but these M5s really have it in for me. As I start to tear into the lead fighters, the ones behind start spamming all of their missiles at me, and a near miss takes me down to 30% hull. This isn't the total disaster of my previous hit, but the situation is still actually worse than that time: I'm still very fast, but no longer fast enough to casually outrun the Xenon fighters or avoid their fire as readily as I'll need, there are no friendly ships in the area to take the heat off me, and these Xenons are angry at me personally. Shit.

Time for another gamble. In front of me, some distance away, is the local trading station, a steel behemoth with no weapons of its own but not readily destroyed by anything short of a capital ship. Its major defining feature is a massive rotating ring that, if I can get there in time, might well shield me from enemy fighters long enough for some repairs that will get me back on my feet. I decide to take the chance and rush toward the station, watching my targetting computer tick down the distance from me to the closest Xenon as my enemies close the gap. I make it just barely in time, sliding around the turn into the ring just as laser fire begins to splash against the station's shields.

The Xenon are very angry. As I start to weld my ship again, Betty informs me of incoming missiles. Not incoming to my ship, incoming to me, the ejected pilot. I close my eyes as the beeping of the incoming missile alarm grows more strident, hoping that none of the Xenons were able to make a down-the-throat shot that would make my hiding behind the ring meaningless. Fortunately none of them were, and even though the repair laser fizzled again with my Raider's hull at only 92%, I decided that was good enough and tore out through the other side of the ring, reentering the fight.

The M5s, having spent their fury uselessly lashing at the trading station, prove no match for me, even with my still-damaged fighter. This is where I discover why their M4s had mysteriously vanished: the hospital ship is once again under fire, this time from enemy ships that I can't readily defeat. Still, with the sector patrol and the navy in a desperate fight against the Khaak, there's nobody else to deal with the problem and an unarmed hospital ship to save.

The M4s can't readily hurt me since my Raider is just too fast for them to track, but I don't really have the firepower to hurt them either. I empty my laser capacitors into one of them, stripping its shields bare, when Betty once again informs me that I'm out of energy. I plink uselessly at his regenerating shields, but there's no other real choice but to wait for my weapons to recharge and hope they're faster at it than his shield generators. We twist and turn, him trying to get a good angle at me while I try to stay out of his way and keep his shields low as I try to come up with a better plan, while his fellow M4 continues to strafe the helpless hospital ship, by now looking pretty shaky.

And then, the Navy's reinforcements finally arrive. A frigate, a beautiful new Argon M7, tears through the northern warpgate, its point defense weapons flashing and its heavier guns spraying blue plasma flak into the M4 I'd been harassing, while a squadron of Novas and Elites come up in its wake. The other M4 barely has time to flinch before he's ripped apart as well, and a handful of surviving M5s that were loitering nearby get flattened as they run into pilots who actually know how to use their flamers properly. At long last, I get a mission complete message: although the Khaak are still menacing the sector, the Xenon invasion has been defeated and my part in this mission is over. I land at a nearby station to read my messages and take a breather. The first message is a debriefing: all in all I got 20 kills, and with my bonuses the mission was worth somewhat more than 30,000 credits. Not bad at all.

The other message arrived as I was reading the first one. It came from the original owners of the freighter that I'd sent back to its base on autopilot, saying that it was overdue and they'd reported it stolen, holding me accountable. With a sinking feeling, I undocked from the station and saw that the sector patrol and all those navy ships, still struggling against the Khaak heavies, were now a hostile red with my face on their wanted posters.

Shit.

[CaptCommy]

So, as epic as that was, there's still one question.

Does Terran improve enough to make it worthwhile? Because it kinda sounds like it does. But I need confirmation.

[ScAvenger001]

Where's your line for "worthwhile" and what specific features are you looking for?

Also, there's a new shipyard in Cloudbase South East that is flippin' HUGE. I'm suddenly really excited about getting a capital ship if for no other reason than to see it dock with this monster. In fact, all the new stations are pretty monstrous, the terran stations fill the screen while their docking bays are still far enough away to be only a few pixels big.

[CaptCommy]

Where's your line for "worthwhile" and what specific features are you looking for?

Also, there's a new shipyard in Cloudbase South East that is flippin' HUGE. I'm suddenly really excited about getting a capital ship if for no other reason than to see it dock with this monster. In fact, all the new stations are pretty monstrous, the terran stations fill the screen while their docking bays are still far enough away to be only a few pixels big.

Is it any easier to get into? X3 was annoyingly dense.
Is it easier to go about the average day? I got really annoyed with some of the monotony of X3.

What other changes have been made?

[SWATJester_os]

If Commy is satisfied, I'll probably pick it up.

[Vatek]

I'm not really familiar with Privateer, so I'll go ahead and ask...

Is this pretty similar to Freelancer? Or is the ship-to-ship combat more in-line with EVE?

Scav's epic tale has piqued my interest.

[ScAvenger001]

Is it any easier to get into? X3 was annoyingly dense.
Is it easier to go about the average day? I got really annoyed with some of the monotony of X3.

What other changes have been made?

It's hard for me to speak to how hard it is it get into, since I already knew how to play Reunion. That said, it seems like it's a lot easier to get into. Every starting point you pick has a "flight school" ship that you can ask for a quick tutorial, and the Terran and Argon Patriot starts both immediately offer you a way into the campaign, which (while I haven't beaten it yet) seems to be a lot more action-oriented and better laid out than the blah Reunion campaign. The starting Terran ship seems to be quite the asskicker too, though Terran hardware isn't compatible with the rest of the universe for story reasons.

The menus are a lot less icon-dependent now, too. Instead of sometimes non-intuitive icons (does this button mean "follow that ship" or "dock with that ship" or "talk to that ship" or "blow up that ship"? :o ), there will be an actual menu with actual words like "Autopilot (dock)" or "comms."

I'm not sure quite what you mean by "average day," but if you're talking about how you had to spend a lot of time fooling around flying from station to station to see if they had any missions to offer and could sometimes clear entire sectors without finding anything fun to do, that's definitely been fixed. Stations with missions for you now have an icon next to them in the HUD and the sector map, with the type of icon changing depending on the general category of the mission (red crosshairs for combat missions like the sector patrol in my story, orange credit symbols for economic missions like moving freight or passengers, white lightbulbs for missions that don't really fall into any category like scanning asteroids or covertly keeping an eye on a ship from a safe distance, blue books for story missions). Once you've accepted a mission, mission-critical ships are highlighted in orange with arrows pointing you toward them so you always know for sure what you're supposed to be doing. If you're supposed to be in a different sector, the appropriate gates will be highlighted and so will the appropriate sector in the universe map, so you don't have to fool around with plotting your own courses any more either. Oh, and there are usually about half a dozen missions available in a sector (at least, the populated sectors I've been travelling in so far) so no more driving through a sector with nothing to do, and since you can accept missions via comms rather than having to dock with the stations you don't even really need to go out of your way to get missions.

Of course, you can do all the free-trading and pirate hunting you want on your own time without having to bother with missions at all, if it strikes your fancy.

I'm not really familiar with Privateer, so I'll go ahead and ask...

Is this pretty similar to Freelancer? Or is the ship-to-ship combat more in-line with EVE?

Scav's epic tale has piqued my interest. And I've never played Freelancer or EVE :/

It's very free-form, though. If you want to be a freighter captain, you can do that. All the stations have products they want to sell and resources they want to buy, and the prices change based on the local demand. If you want to get rich quick, bulk goods like Ore and Silicon can have very respectable profit margins, but no matter where you go people will want to buy energy cells.

If you want to be a fighter pilot, you can do that. Piracy (and, of course, the occasional Xenon or Khaak invasion) is a fact of life, and there's always something to shoot at. Freighters will hire you as convoy escorts, stations will ask for your help in repelling pirate raids, the sector patrol always needs more gunslingers, and you can always take on some of the pirate sectors yourself and see what you can salvage from your kills. Or if that doesn't strike your fancy, turn pirate yourself and make your living salvaging other peoples' cargoes, turning their ships to your own purposes, and selling the pilots into slavery.

Eventually, you can buy your own stations and build an economic empire, or buy (or even steal, now that they've added marine boarding parties to the game) your own capital ships and become a navy unto yourself. I haven't gotten that far in TC, but one of the most fun games of Reunion I ever played, I spent a lot of my time clearing out pirate sectors with my frigate and a pair of customized heavy fighters.

[BS87]

That story was epic, and made me want to buy this game. But, is the flight part like using a joystick or WASD or soemthing, or is it "point and go here" like EvE cause that would really stink. Do you directly control the ship ala flight sim, or is it "tell ship to go here it does"?

[ScAvenger001]

Either, but mostly direct control. There is joystick support, I myself use a mouse just because that's my preference (WASD controls thrusters: up, down, left, and right, handy for dodging incoming fire without turning away from your target or for fine maneuvers with ships that have a lot of inertia). It's easier to just toggle between ship controls and cursor mode using the mouse anyway rather than shifting from mouse to controller every time I need to fiddle with something.

It's possible to let the computer do your fighting for you, but that's mostly only useful for big ships. I can imagine letting the autopilot handle the fighting while I manage my fighter wings in the sensor screen Homeworld-style if I'm driving a capital ship, but if I'm in the cockpit of anything smaller than a corvette I'm probably better off controlling it myself.

[SWATJester_os]

How does the capital ship combat work? Turret based? How do you target with it?

[ScAvenger001]

I haven't gotten that far in the game myself, but I can tell you how it works in Reunion.

In short, yes, turrets. You can order the turrets to attack your current target, to attack all hostiles, to protect the ship (attacking prioritized based on who is shooting at you, in other words) and missile defense, and maybe some others that I've forgotten. You can also take direct control of the turrets and leave steering the ship up to the autopilot. I think it might also be possible to slave the turrets to the forward position and have them act as another set of forward guns, but don't hold me to that. Sub-capital ships (frigates and corvettes, as well as most heavy fighters) tend to have both turrets and forward guns, though dogfighting in a frigate is a strange experience (I preferred to launch in my fighter and let the AI handle the frigate for me).

[SWATJester_os]

I bought this on steam but I can't figure out how to get my mouse as primary flight control.

[BS87]

One other question.. Does this game have an "end" or can you still do stuff after you "win"?

[ScAvenger001]

I bought this on steam but I can't figure out how to get my mouse as primary flight control. Did you talk to the flight school ship? He explains most of this.

By default, holding the left mouse button changes the cursor to "steer" mode and the right mouse button will fire toward the cursor, with ctrl firing toward the reticle (this is useful because the cursor-fire overrides the auto-aiming upgrade once you purchase it, while firing toward the reticle does not). Spacebar toggles between cursor steering mode so you don't have to hold down the left mouse button all the time.

You can also toggke "classic" steering mode, which steers by mouse motion rather than toward a cursor and fires with the left mouse button. By default it's shift+n to do this, I rebound it to the right mouse button since that's what I'm used to from Reunion.

Does that help? Also, which start did you use?

One other question.. Does this game have an "end" or can you still do stuff after you "win"?

You can do stuff for as long as you want. You can even ignore the campaign entirely if it suits you and just do your own thing. The game is pretty much a sandbox with a campaign integrated into it, they're not separate game modes.

[BS87]

Awesome, but once you finish the campaign, can you keep going or is it just "over" IE nomore big raids.

[ScAvenger001]

You can keep going as much as you want. The story I posted wasn't from the campaign, it was just me pulling a random patrol mission, and the Khaak weren't even part of that, they showed up on their own. I also recently saw a Paranid task force pick a fight with the Argon border patrol, so it'd definitely a lively universe. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the big raids and the campaign aren't really tied to each other.

[SWATJester_os]

Did you talk to the flight school ship? He explains most of this.

By default, holding the left mouse button changes the cursor to "steer" mode and the right mouse button will fire toward the cursor, with ctrl firing toward the reticle (this is useful because the cursor-fire overrides the auto-aiming upgrade once you purchase it, while firing toward the reticle does not). Spacebar toggles between cursor steering mode so you don't have to hold down the left mouse button all the time.

You can also toggke "classic" steering mode, which steers by mouse motion rather than toward a cursor and fires with the left mouse button. By default it's shift+n to do this, I rebound it to the right mouse button since that's what I'm used to from Reunion.

Does that help? Also, which start did you use?


Yeah I talked to him, but I couldn't figure out any of the key commands cause Steam doesn't show you a manual, and he expected me to know how to do certain things.

I think the Shift N thing was more what I'm thinking about. I want to move my mouse like a joystick, and then still have the WSAD buttons to strafe with. BTW if I do that, is there a way for me to temporarily disable mouse-flight mode? i.e. press control and you can use the mouse normally to select menu items?

[ScAvenger001]

Yeah I talked to him, but I couldn't figure out any of the key commands cause Steam doesn't show you a manual, and he expected me to know how to do certain things. Steam's got a manual. Right click TC, "view player manual." Oddly it opens it in a web page, but it looks like there's also a local copy in steam's x3tc folder. And, of course, you can always ask me.

I think the Shift N thing was more what I'm thinking about. I want to move my mouse like a joystick, and then still have the WSAD buttons to strafe with. BTW if I do that, is there a way for me to temporarily disable mouse-flight mode? i.e. press control and you can use the mouse normally to select menu items? Yeah, press Shift N again :p But that's a nuisance, so now you know why I rebound it to right click. It's something you'll be using a lot.

[SWATJester_os]

What does right click do normally?

[ScAvenger001]

By default, right click fires toward the cursor... I think.

[SWATJester_os]

Ok how do I repair? I just shot down like 6 Xenon fighters, but now I'm down to 3% hull. I'm docked at an orbital repair base in Pluto.

Also, I looted some Poltergeist missiles somehow and they're AWESOME, but I only have 3, how do I get more?

Also, how do I avoid enemy missiles?

[ScAvenger001]

Ok how do I repair? I just shot down like 6 Xenon fighters, but now I'm down to 3% hull. I'm docked at an orbital repair base in Pluto. Well, you can buy repairs at shipyards (I've never tried it at a repair base, but maybe there too) but it'll be expensive, especially if you're only at 3% hull. I wouldn't really recommend it unless you're very rich.

The cheapskate way to do the repairs takes some time, but is free: eject (shift+e), then while you're in your space suit, shoot at the fighter you just ejected from. What you're firing is the repair laser, and after a while your ship will be good as new. Make sure you're well away from traffic areas and docking bays or you might get run over while you're welding. At least you're not trying to do it in the middle of a battle, right?

Also, I looted some Poltergeist missiles somehow and they're AWESOME, but I only have 3, how do I get more? Missiles are for sale at equipment docks, military bases, and appropriate missile factories (Terran swarm factories in this case, iirc). They'll also be expensive though, especially the poltergeists. It may also be that you're not allowed to buy them until your faction rank is higher, since most factions try to avoid selling heavy weaponry to people unless they really like them.

TBH, your best bet might be to try and get nearby friendlies killed and pick up any geists they drop. For my part, I generally don't use missiles much except for well into the game when I own my own missile factories or else when I'm hanging onto the odd heavy antishipping torpedo for emergencies. They're just too expensive otherwise.

Also, how do I avoid enemy missiles?This depends on the ship you're in. If you're in an M3, depending on the model, you might have a rear turret you can set to anti-missile duty, and your shields are probably strong enough to just shrug off the hit anyway. In an M5 like my Discoverer Raider, you might be able to simply outrun the missiles, and then turn and shoot them down from a safe distance (this is one of the reasons I love the Raider so much in spite of its other failings). From the sounds of it, though, you did the Terran start and you're probably in a Saber M4. My advice is to try shooting the missiles down as fast as you can. You should also look into upgrading your shields, since I think the default Saber can mount one more shield generator.

Something that will help you with that is the auto-aim feature. If you don't have it already, buy the Fight Command Software 1, and you'll be able to use its aiming assist. The status of the aiming assist is listed in the bottom left corner, near the weapons panel. By default it says "semi", you want to turn it to "on." Press "k" to toggle it. When the target lead indicator is near your reticle, it'll start to blink blue, and your guns will automatically track toward it with pretty good accuracy. This is very handy when spraying fire at missiles, and will improve your accuracy in general.

Now, there's one other nearly sure-fire way to avoid missiles, but it's something that I've only tried in Reunion, so don't blame me if it doesn't work in X3TC. The first thing you need is the Fight II software (this is expensive), and the second thing is a stockpile of Mosquito missiles (these are cheap). This will enable the Missile Defense Mosquito system, where your ship will automatically fire 'skeeters at incoming missiles. These are very very effective. In Reunion, after enough battles to get nearly 5000 kills, I think I'd been hit by about 10 missiles, and almost all of them were because I ran out of skeeters for point defense. The reason I'm ambivalent about this approach is because I'm not sure it'll work for you. It's my recollection that the Fight II upgrade is about 30k credits and has a fairly high faction rank requirement, so if you buy it on my word alone and it doesn't work you'll probably be broke. Also, I don't think mosquito missiles are for sale in Terran space, so you'll have to go hunting for them, and it's entirely possible that the MDM system is simply incompatible with Terran ships, which may not be able to mount skeeters at all.

Still, it's something to keep in mind. I'll get back to you after I've tried it myself.

[SWATJester_os]

Where is the repair option in the base? I couldn't even find it?

[ScAvenger001]

It's under the trading menu, it should be right at the top.

[SWATJester_os]

Screenshot? I can't find it.

[ScAvenger001]

I don't have a damaged ship handy, sorry. I'll try later if I think of it.

Still, you should be able to find it easily if you try trading with a shipyard. iirc it's highlighted green at the top of the list.

[ScAvenger001]

Screenshot:

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g38/ScAvenger001/x3screen00026.jpg

[ScAvenger001]

Hey, demo.

http://www.egosoft.com/download/x3tc/demos_en.php

[CaptCommy]

As happy as I am there's a demo, FUCK I'm busy. Finals are next week, got tons of work to do, and the Left 4 Dead beta starts today, GoW 2 comes tomorrow, and now this.

Why must everyone release everything at the same god damned time?

[PsychoMantis]

I had a lot of fun in X3 and I still remember the completely miraculous way I managed to get my first M3 in a swarmed Xenon sector. I've no idea how I pulled it off but the thing bailed and the K and P cap ships had pulled away from me leaving a shiny rampant AI overlord ship for me to take.

I even built a few factories, though I will never build an ore mine again after all my couriers decided to slam head first into an asteroid again and again and again.

If I liked X3 and was able to overcome the horrid learning curve, will I like this game? I hope this thing fixes the atrocious command structure of X3. If this game actually overcomes the original issues of shitty campaign and AI I might just fork over forty dollars for it.

[Moe_Rahn]

good feature #1 is that there's a tutorial you can take right from the beginning which will show you how things work.
holy fucking shit i'm all but sold

i bought x3 a long time ago but could never get into it because it started out with the game basically dropping you in the middle of outer space and being like "have fun figuring everything out faggot"

[Pltcl Sniper]

I Just got the demo its just seem like one long movie I hit escape and it just closed to desktop after telling me where to buy it.. From the video alone it seem really fun.

[ScAvenger001]

I had a lot of fun in X3 and I still remember the completely miraculous way I managed to get my first M3 in a swarmed Xenon sector. I've no idea how I pulled it off but the thing bailed and the K and P cap ships had pulled away from me leaving a shiny rampant AI overlord ship for me to take.

I even built a few factories, though I will never build an ore mine again after all my couriers decided to slam head first into an asteroid again and again and again. Hah, yeah, I remember having that problem too. Part of the trick is that when you're not in the sector with them the AI is allowed to abstract things a little more and it can just cheat its way onto the docking ports.

I haven't worked up the courage to visit a Xenon sector yet, even though I just upgraded to an M3 Nova Raider (trivially slower than my old Buster Vanguard with twice the firepower and five times the shielding. I bought it used for 630k credits, not bad at all for a ship that costs about 3 million new). The pirates have gotten hardcore, though: lots and lots of new ship types, and they even managed to come up with a couple of capital ships and a whole slew of M3+ fighters somehow, plus they don't surrender nearly so much (I've gotten a few hundred kills so far and only four or five captures, though maybe I'm unlucky or maybe ships that show up for missions don't surrender easily, though one of the captures was a nearly-intact M8 heavy bomber that sold for around 5 million credits). Recently in Bala Gi's Joy I had to make an end-run around what turned out to be a pirate carrier. It spent the whole time launching long range missiles at me until I got close, and then it scrambled its fighters to chase me.

Shit. Oh yes, I ran away from that one.

If I liked X3 and was able to overcome the horrid learning curve, will I like this game? I hope this thing fixes the atrocious command structure of X3. If this game actually overcomes the original issues of shitty campaign and AI I might just fork over forty dollars for it. If you've passed the learning curve, you should have a lot of fun right from the start. The command structure is a lot better, since clicking a ship will open up a menu that includes some general commands (attack all, attack my target, follow me, etc) so you don't have to go hunting around in the command console unless there's something specific or unusual you want to do. Also, you can organize ships into wings and order the wing around, so instead of having to click five or six times per ship you want to order you can usually get away with two or three clicks for a whole squadron.

The campaign seems to be a lot better than Reunion, too. Reunion tried to be creative, but usually it turned out to be a lot of nonsense: "I have to defend these badly-armed transports, so obviously the best thing to do is abandon my M3+ Ultimate Asskicker Vanguard and take personal command of the transport's popgun turrets, hur hur". I haven't seen any of that in TC, though I've only gotten a couple of missions into the campaign since I decided that the campaign would probably be even more awesome if I were backed up by a fleet of warships and a few hundred million credits instead of just me and my little M4 Saber. At least the campaign in TC gives you some actual rewards for doing stuff, usually in the form of free ships.

I can't really speak for the AI, since right now I've only got two ships: my personal fighter and a freighter that I'm controlling remotely. I've seen some improvements in the combat AI, like some ships seem to be a bit more missile-happy when they're outclassed. I did find an irritating bug in the convoy defense mission, though: the freighters you're escorting will tend to loiter around the jumpgate rather than going through until you've gone first, which is an awkward proposition when you're surrounded by pirates.

I Just got the demo its just seem like one long movie I hit escape and it just closed to desktop after telling me where to buy it.. From the video alone it seem really fun.

:huh: Well, now that I look at it, it says rolling demo, maybe "one long movie" is what they meant by that? I don't know, I haven't tried it.

[Loké]

Silly question: been lurking this thread for a while; how easy is it to get cash together? I recall with reunion that I got dumped with a fighter that seemed to be unable to outrun missiles (and have no anti missile defence so the second I got one on me I was fucked) cost way too much to repair and very few ways to make any money, so I was unable to enjoy all the nice shiny toys I could see in the shop windows. Or anything, really.

[ScAvenger001]

Hmm. It's been my opinion that going into a serious fight without a fully upgraded fighter is suicide, so in Reunion the very first thing I always did was sell my starting Buster and use the proceeds to buy and outfit a Discoverer, since a properly upgraded scout ship is still a better bet than a vanilla medium fighter, and cheaper to repair to boot. That last part matters less now that you can do your own repairs, though.

Anyway, if you take the Terran start in TC, you start off pretty much flat broke, but at least the starting Saber isn't a flaming piece of crap like the un-upgraded Buster you're used to from Reunion. You can probably tackle the starting combat missions without too much trouble with your Saber and then use the proceeds to buy the upgrades you'll need for tougher, more lucrative missions. I can't say for sure, of course, since I took the Humble Merchant start: still flat broke, but with a freighter and a Discoverer (which I sold to buy cargo for my transport).

The trick is that mission rewards (and difficulty) are tied to your rank, either as a fighter or as a merchant, and ranks go up a lot faster in TC. I was recently proclaimed Hero of the Federation by the Argon, something I never achieved in Reunion even after playing for about five times as long. I also just took a station defense mission that paid 2.5 million credits, and have about 9.5 million in the bank. If I start saving up now I might be able to afford that frigate I've had my eye on soon, and be able to fill out the rest of a fighter squadron to go with it.

[SWATJester_os]

I just want a frigate.