So I assume I was correct in my assumption that getting any of the current X games is not worth it if I don't want a game to punch me in the face if I want to have fun within the first 3 hours of starting it?
I honestly want to try the game, I just have the suspicion that I'm going to play it for 3 hours, and then never again.
the entire X series is for masochists, especially in the very beginning because you are either going to scrounge for credits or die horribly trying to fight things, I mean the game can be a lot of fun, I'm actually shocked at how many people are pooing on the series in this thread, but if you can't handle a slow start it might not work out too well for you, I was going to recommend picking up X:R or X:TC but they are running $9.99 and $19.99 so not sure if you would want to put that kind of money on the game if you are iffy about it
I have 54 hours logged into terran conflict, doesn't feel like it thats for sure
So I assume I was correct in my assumption that getting any of the current X games is not worth it if I don't want a game to punch me in the face if I want to have fun within the first 3 hours of starting it?
No, I wouldn't say that.
Get X3:TC, and start off with the Terran start. You get a pretty good combat ship (especially if you install ... uh ... some forum member's ship tweak pack, which starts it off fully tuned).
In the tutorial missions, don't shoot any missiles; they cost a fuckin' boatload in the early game, and the Terran military won't restock you for free. ("Here - blow up this spacejunk container with a missile." "Okay." "Now get the hell out of here." "Uh, hey, I just spent 400k credits destroying a 15c cardboard box ... And I only have 20k in the bank ..." "Go cry to your momma - and go beat up some robots for us." "Asshole.")
Sell the first extra ship they give you (after about 5 or so missions). It's fast as hell, but it comes almost completely unshielded and completely unarmed (and you can't afford Terran guns for awhile yet).
Take some low-level combat missions in nearby space - the story missions will wait for you.
One of the nearby races will let just about anyone buy a sheriff's license, which lets you scan ships for contraband. There's a space corporation that tools around in their sectors of space which is hostile to them (Duke's Transport Company, I think). When one shows up, fly over to it, and convince it to surrender, then take their ship as your first trading vessel. They aren't fantastic, but they aren't bad, either.
X3:TC plays a lot like I would imagine flying in space would actually be. You fly around, talking with station comm officers looking for work, once you find work, you fly around doing said work. Then you either succeed or fail. But there is a lot of "Hum, I'm gonna drift aimlessly for a bit while my escort target jumps through that gate" and "GOD DAMN IT I NEED TO GO WHERE TO GET WHAT?"
The best part of the game is when you've invested...20-30 hours. You've got a station producing passive income, a small fleet of trade ships doing automated trade runs and a combat ship with a jump drive. Getting the jump drive turns them game from
"I'm working as a trader or sheriff" to "I'm going to go here and then there and then over there!"
Advice I can give: If you want to play a combat game were all your trading is done via an automated fleet? There's a bunch of mods that turn the galaxy into a warzone...I'll see if I can post the actual names when I get home. Also, get a corvette or capital ship with lots of turrets. The things may be slow as shit but the more turrets you have, the less painful the flight engine feels. Carriers can just sit still and let flak turrets blow everything up while you launch wave after wave of fighters.
Either way, X3:TC starts to be fun once you have a jump drive and a few stations to manage, once your space empire starts to bloom it's less "nail through dick" and more "I'm going to take on this empire, hold on while I blow up your police fleet!"
I got X3:Reunion while I was on the road as a truck driver. I put a lot of hours into it and then realized that I couldn't deal with being a trucker and playing a space trucker sim at the same time.
Sonar on
I'm building a real pirate ship. Really. Wanna help? Click here!
caffron said: "and cat pee is not a laughing matter"
There's a bunch of mods that turn the galaxy into a warzone...I'll see if I can post the actual names when I get home.
There's really two, if I remember correctly from the 3-4 weeks I spent consuming X3:TC like a crack friend: Imrpoved Races, and Rapid Response Fleets. (They're aggresively abbreviated at the Egosoft mod forums as IR and RRF.)
They're both decent, apparently, although I never tried IR because pretty much every post I read about it was "does ____ work with IR" and the answer always seemed to be "no, it's not compatible with ____". I gave RRF a college try and it's quite cool. Ownership of sectors in the galaxy map will fluctuate as one faction or another exerts itself, and you can easily and frequently stumble upon (or just intentionally warp to) serious faction battles in various sectors.
The frustrating thing is that it's all fairly random and there's no real "rules" that the factions have to follow. The Boron (or whoever) can get the shit kicked out of them and the mod will still sometimes just decide that it needs to spawn a zillion credits worth of Boron ships because there's some shit going down. If you can put the nonsensical "why and how" out of your mind and just play the game with RRF running, it will seriously extend your X3:TC gaming pleasure. But I had a hard time swallowing it, and pined for the "Factions: AI" mod that I mentioned a couple dozen posts ago (I've since remembered what it was to be called) and a dynamic but realistically supply-based faction combat atmosphere.
I'll say again that if that type of mod appears for the new game, or is included even to a tiny extent, I'll be on board a thousand percent.
So I bought X3:TC and I selected the Terran campaign and so far it's pretty cool. There's a lot of neat shit like being able to have the picture-in-picture of things you're targeting and stuff and I actually like the combat in this (I like it simple). So so far it's been good times and I'm glad I picked it up.
My experience with the past X games (X3 and TC) has been thus: install game, install mods, be totally immersed for weeks, get burnt out, game gets updated and breaks all the mods, give up.
That was my exact process with TC, except the game got updated before I got burned out.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Huh, apparently they started developing this in 2007.
It's supposedly a whole new engine and such. I'm excited to see what they have been building all this time.
I just hope that I can earn decent money by combat and mercenary jobs in Rebirth. I think Terran Conflict did this at first, but it might have been patched or changed in some of the worthwhile mods. I'm actually not a big fan of trading. I just want to shoot things with space ships and build up a nice mercenary fleet.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
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BlandlytastefulGruelmasterThe Dark LunchroomRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
So, for the misers out there (namely me) is there any particularly cheap source to find the older games in this series? I started a thread in the technology sub-forum about a stick, too, but I figured people interested in the new one would be good to ask about the old.
As I understand it, you really should just get X3: Terran Conflict and play from there. As frustrating as it can be at times, I've read that it's a vast improvement over every previous entry in the series.
As a disclaimer, it's the only one I've ever played.
As I understand it, you really should just get X3: Terran Conflict and play from there. As frustrating as it can be at times, I've read that it's a vast improvement over every previous entry in the series.
As a disclaimer, it's the only one I've ever played.
I would argue that X3:R is still worthy of a playthrough. Personally there were a lot of things I liked about it more than X3:TC...but I may be the odd man out.
I am kinda surprised so many people here like the big ships. Did they fix the combat aiming that made it so that with sufficient maneuverability you were almost invincible?
Because I recall not having problems starting up X3:R with say, a mamba, and just going and blowing up stations while the police fleets could not touch me.
So I hear this is like EVE, except without douchebags. Did I hear that correctly?
Been looking for something to sate my TIE Fighter and FS2 cravings...
It is like eve without the douchebags. Very much so. In fact after playing it for a while I canceled my Eve subscriptions because I was still able to get my space sim fix in X3:TC, and even do more in a day then I could ever hope to in Eve (like building stations, fortifying systems, waging war on a global level).
You know what? I have Reunion, but I don't thin I ever played TC. How different are they?
Steamlined UI (well, the best UI of the X series thus far), more ships, a better storyline mission set up, better mission acquirement set up, and there are better mods out for it.
Being able to easily find missions alone makes TC better than Reunion. In Reunion, you had to land at every station and hope there was a mission there. In TC, every station has an icon if there is a mission available, and you just comm the station to accept. Definitely makes the early game a lot less irritating, and gives you something active to do late-game when you're saving up for mega-projects (Set up your stations/traders, and then go run delivery/taxi/station delivery missions for moneys).
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Egosoft has listened to their consumers and this new game will have a better combat engine. It has been the single largest complaint, if not the only real complaint about the X games. I'd be surprised if they didn't take that cue and engineer something more fun.
Anon the Felon on
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I am kinda surprised so many people here like the big ships. Did they fix the combat aiming that made it so that with sufficient maneuverability you were almost invincible?
Because I recall not having problems starting up X3:R with say, a mamba, and just going and blowing up stations while the police fleets could not touch me.
a mod for what? blowing up stations or fixing the ability of the AI to lead targets who have constantly variable velocity?
Well...the ability to lead the target isn't improved. What is improved is the gun selection and fire discipline. MARS ships will select the best gun for the target it's most likely to hit for the most damage. So you won't see capship guns engaging your M5 unless you're boring straight in on a zero-deflection run. Instead, it'll be using any lighter guns available--or possibly just skipping you to rape the other fighters in the area.
It will also severely dent missile swarms with just the guns. With Goblins, missile swarms are outmoded unless they're fired at point blank range and in massive overwhelming quantities.
I was more talking about the fact that holding down strafe sideways, and downwards while turning the stick puts the ship on a path that no guns can hit (as of Reunion) unless its really slow. Doesn't matter what they're shooting at you with.
Goumindong on
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
At one point Gazz had his script try to deal with that, but I'm not sure that that's still in there since I don't see a reference to it.
Orca on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I was more talking about the fact that holding down strafe sideways, and downwards while turning the stick puts the ship on a path that no guns can hit (as of Reunion) unless its really slow. Doesn't matter what they're shooting at you with.
MARS will teach capships how to swap Flak Artillery Array turrets so that they are on the side you are on.
FAA are hitscan.
Can you say instant death?
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I'm cautiously pessimistic about this. The blurb talks about how it's been prettied up, but making a game pretty was never a problem of Egosoft's.
I'd be happy if they kept the same graphics as TC, and just redid the interface. Keep the complexity. I love the complexity. But please Egosoft, hire a UI guy and, for the love of god, listen to him!
I'm cautiously pessimistic about this. The blurb talks about how it's been prettied up, but making a game pretty was never a problem of Egosoft's.
I'd be happy if they kept the same graphics as TC, and just redid the interface. Keep the complexity. I love the complexity. But please Egosoft, hire a UI guy and, for the love of god, listen to him!
While they have never had a problem making things pretty they have also not really "gone backwards" in terms of UI, ease of use, and ease to get into the game.
I think that the only thing i was disappointed in going from X2 to X3 was the lack of cockpit visuals and that is kinda a weak complaint.
Goumindong on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited April 2011
I would like it if they never again implemented npc spawn only missiles that do ten times the damage any ship in the game can actually take.
Also if their out of sector calculations didn't allow for massively weak ships in sector to be ridiculously overpowered beasts out of sector. I shouldn't lose a billion dollar ship to the equivelant of a xenon fart out of sector when that same ship would be able to sit in sector afk for basically ever and its only possible threat would be the growing pile of detritus surrounding it slowly reaching critical mass.
And of course one of those @#$@#$ missiles getting through.
What I'm trying to say is that they make some really boneheaded decisions.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I guess I should track down the wiki or some FAQs. The sound finally started working (yes, the voice acting is terrible, but the lack of subtitles means I need to have some indication of what is going on), so I spent a few hours while watching B5 trying to fly into Mars.
Didn't work.
But now I'm actually interested in getting into the game.
As suggested, I did the Terran Pilot start, and after a bit they gave me a free scout ship! Which has a slower max speed (but a much higher potential max speed) than my starting vessel for some reason. M/s is the only value governing 'how fast am I going', right?
Yeah, when you sell a ship the price includes any upgrades AND EQUIPMENT on the ship. It's always a good idea to strip a ship entirely before you sell it.
Doing the Terran start, you're probably going to want to hang onto any cannons that come with the ships you earn. Terran ships are generally great but they only accept expensive Terran parts (unlike ships from other races which range in adaptability from "sorta" all the way to "bolt on WW2 machine guns if you feel like it"); even worse, the Solar System (Terran home territory) is economically retarded and will have serious issues producing anything you'd want to outfit your ships unless you invest significantly into it yourself.
Apparently my roommate had a copy of this stashed away in the "played once and never again" box, which I helpfully liberated the game from. I went with the Terran Pilot first.
The combat/physics engine is... not that great. Maybe KBM isn't the way to go, but with pitch/yaw/strafe movements, on top of a targeting reticle that is free-floating, things got too complex for my taste. So I went with the Humble Merchant route to relive my EVE trucking/mining days.
MUCH better experience. Not having to worry about combat and focusing on just making space-bucks made the game much more enjoyable. However I can't help but feel the in-game economy is pretty wacky. I bought out all the satellites (4 in the entire region...) within a few jumps and kept on wondering why nobody ever restocked. Then I happened upon the satellite factory at the far end of the region... and found it was starved of key ingredients, with no AI traders supplying it. I helpfully deliver a few shiploads of stuff, make money in the process, and discover satellites require computer chips... and the chip factory a short flight down is also starved of ingredients... will it always be this painful trying to buy stuff? Or will I eventually reach a point where I'll be better off building my own factories and setting up my own supply lines?
Akilae on
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Apparently my roommate had a copy of this stashed away in the "played once and never again" box, which I helpfully liberated the game from. I went with the Terran Pilot first.
The combat/physics engine is... not that great. Maybe KBM isn't the way to go, but with pitch/yaw/strafe movements, on top of a targeting reticle that is free-floating, things got too complex for my taste. So I went with the Humble Merchant route to relive my EVE trucking/mining days.
The physics engine is a common complaint (that I've reiterated any number of times).
MUCH better experience. Not having to worry about combat and focusing on just making space-bucks made the game much more enjoyable. However I can't help but feel the in-game economy is pretty wacky. I bought out all the satellites (4 in the entire region...) within a few jumps and kept on wondering why nobody ever restocked. Then I happened upon the satellite factory at the far end of the region... and found it was starved of key ingredients, with no AI traders supplying it. I helpfully deliver a few shiploads of stuff, make money in the process, and discover satellites require computer chips... and the chip factory a short flight down is also starved of ingredients... will it always be this painful trying to buy stuff? Or will I eventually reach a point where I'll be better off building my own factories and setting up my own supply lines?
Those starved supply chains? They're great for setting up automated trader runs or constructing your own factories to supply them. Or you can do as you're doing (early on) and just do them manually; it'll slowly build your credits up.
The economy is a tad wonky, but that wonkyness provides a number of easy ways to make credits in most regions.
On the other hand, if you want to fit out a capship, you're probably going to end up building full on supply lines so you can get enough heavy guns in a semi-reasonable amount of time. Or if you intend to fortify your factory sectors with defensive laser sats.
Posts
the entire X series is for masochists, especially in the very beginning because you are either going to scrounge for credits or die horribly trying to fight things, I mean the game can be a lot of fun, I'm actually shocked at how many people are pooing on the series in this thread, but if you can't handle a slow start it might not work out too well for you, I was going to recommend picking up X:R or X:TC but they are running $9.99 and $19.99 so not sure if you would want to put that kind of money on the game if you are iffy about it
I have 54 hours logged into terran conflict, doesn't feel like it thats for sure
No, I wouldn't say that.
Get X3:TC, and start off with the Terran start. You get a pretty good combat ship (especially if you install ... uh ... some forum member's ship tweak pack, which starts it off fully tuned).
In the tutorial missions, don't shoot any missiles; they cost a fuckin' boatload in the early game, and the Terran military won't restock you for free. ("Here - blow up this spacejunk container with a missile." "Okay." "Now get the hell out of here." "Uh, hey, I just spent 400k credits destroying a 15c cardboard box ... And I only have 20k in the bank ..." "Go cry to your momma - and go beat up some robots for us." "Asshole.")
Sell the first extra ship they give you (after about 5 or so missions). It's fast as hell, but it comes almost completely unshielded and completely unarmed (and you can't afford Terran guns for awhile yet).
Take some low-level combat missions in nearby space - the story missions will wait for you.
One of the nearby races will let just about anyone buy a sheriff's license, which lets you scan ships for contraband. There's a space corporation that tools around in their sectors of space which is hostile to them (Duke's Transport Company, I think). When one shows up, fly over to it, and convince it to surrender, then take their ship as your first trading vessel. They aren't fantastic, but they aren't bad, either.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
The best part of the game is when you've invested...20-30 hours. You've got a station producing passive income, a small fleet of trade ships doing automated trade runs and a combat ship with a jump drive. Getting the jump drive turns them game from
"I'm working as a trader or sheriff" to "I'm going to go here and then there and then over there!"
Advice I can give: If you want to play a combat game were all your trading is done via an automated fleet? There's a bunch of mods that turn the galaxy into a warzone...I'll see if I can post the actual names when I get home. Also, get a corvette or capital ship with lots of turrets. The things may be slow as shit but the more turrets you have, the less painful the flight engine feels. Carriers can just sit still and let flak turrets blow everything up while you launch wave after wave of fighters.
Either way, X3:TC starts to be fun once you have a jump drive and a few stations to manage, once your space empire starts to bloom it's less "nail through dick" and more "I'm going to take on this empire, hold on while I blow up your police fleet!"
caffron said: "and cat pee is not a laughing matter"
There's really two, if I remember correctly from the 3-4 weeks I spent consuming X3:TC like a crack friend: Imrpoved Races, and Rapid Response Fleets. (They're aggresively abbreviated at the Egosoft mod forums as IR and RRF.)
They're both decent, apparently, although I never tried IR because pretty much every post I read about it was "does ____ work with IR" and the answer always seemed to be "no, it's not compatible with ____". I gave RRF a college try and it's quite cool. Ownership of sectors in the galaxy map will fluctuate as one faction or another exerts itself, and you can easily and frequently stumble upon (or just intentionally warp to) serious faction battles in various sectors.
The frustrating thing is that it's all fairly random and there's no real "rules" that the factions have to follow. The Boron (or whoever) can get the shit kicked out of them and the mod will still sometimes just decide that it needs to spawn a zillion credits worth of Boron ships because there's some shit going down. If you can put the nonsensical "why and how" out of your mind and just play the game with RRF running, it will seriously extend your X3:TC gaming pleasure. But I had a hard time swallowing it, and pined for the "Factions: AI" mod that I mentioned a couple dozen posts ago (I've since remembered what it was to be called) and a dynamic but realistically supply-based faction combat atmosphere.
I'll say again that if that type of mod appears for the new game, or is included even to a tiny extent, I'll be on board a thousand percent.
ohhhhhh nooo
kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
It's supposedly a whole new engine and such. I'm excited to see what they have been building all this time.
As a disclaimer, it's the only one I've ever played.
Been looking for something to sate my TIE Fighter and FS2 cravings...
It won't sate your TIE fighter or FS2 cravings--the combat is nowhere near as fast-paced, satisfying, or entertining--but it is an enormous universe.
Consider it like Space Oblivion.
I would argue that X3:R is still worthy of a playthrough. Personally there were a lot of things I liked about it more than X3:TC...but I may be the odd man out.
Because I recall not having problems starting up X3:R with say, a mamba, and just going and blowing up stations while the police fleets could not touch me.
It is like eve without the douchebags. Very much so. In fact after playing it for a while I canceled my Eve subscriptions because I was still able to get my space sim fix in X3:TC, and even do more in a day then I could ever hope to in Eve (like building stations, fortifying systems, waging war on a global level).
Steamlined UI (well, the best UI of the X series thus far), more ships, a better storyline mission set up, better mission acquirement set up, and there are better mods out for it.
There's a mod for that.
Install MARS and let the AI use it.
Well...the ability to lead the target isn't improved. What is improved is the gun selection and fire discipline. MARS ships will select the best gun for the target it's most likely to hit for the most damage. So you won't see capship guns engaging your M5 unless you're boring straight in on a zero-deflection run. Instead, it'll be using any lighter guns available--or possibly just skipping you to rape the other fighters in the area.
It will also severely dent missile swarms with just the guns. With Goblins, missile swarms are outmoded unless they're fired at point blank range and in massive overwhelming quantities.
I dunno if there's a newer version up, but a quick google pulled this up: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=217470
MARS will teach capships how to swap Flak Artillery Array turrets so that they are on the side you are on.
FAA are hitscan.
Can you say instant death?
I'd be happy if they kept the same graphics as TC, and just redid the interface. Keep the complexity. I love the complexity. But please Egosoft, hire a UI guy and, for the love of god, listen to him!
Just lost an hour of progress because X3TC crashed
While they have never had a problem making things pretty they have also not really "gone backwards" in terms of UI, ease of use, and ease to get into the game.
I think that the only thing i was disappointed in going from X2 to X3 was the lack of cockpit visuals and that is kinda a weak complaint.
Also if their out of sector calculations didn't allow for massively weak ships in sector to be ridiculously overpowered beasts out of sector. I shouldn't lose a billion dollar ship to the equivelant of a xenon fart out of sector when that same ship would be able to sit in sector afk for basically ever and its only possible threat would be the growing pile of detritus surrounding it slowly reaching critical mass.
And of course one of those @#$@#$ missiles getting through.
What I'm trying to say is that they make some really boneheaded decisions.
Didn't work.
But now I'm actually interested in getting into the game.
As suggested, I did the Terran Pilot start, and after a bit they gave me a free scout ship! Which has a slower max speed (but a much higher potential max speed) than my starting vessel for some reason. M/s is the only value governing 'how fast am I going', right?
Soo many questions
Steam: CavilatRest
I may have already spent some money upgrading the speed. Don't remember when my last non-auto save was. Will the price I get for it go up accordingly?
Doing the Terran start, you're probably going to want to hang onto any cannons that come with the ships you earn. Terran ships are generally great but they only accept expensive Terran parts (unlike ships from other races which range in adaptability from "sorta" all the way to "bolt on WW2 machine guns if you feel like it"); even worse, the Solar System (Terran home territory) is economically retarded and will have serious issues producing anything you'd want to outfit your ships unless you invest significantly into it yourself.
/\
The combat/physics engine is... not that great. Maybe KBM isn't the way to go, but with pitch/yaw/strafe movements, on top of a targeting reticle that is free-floating, things got too complex for my taste. So I went with the Humble Merchant route to relive my EVE trucking/mining days.
MUCH better experience. Not having to worry about combat and focusing on just making space-bucks made the game much more enjoyable. However I can't help but feel the in-game economy is pretty wacky. I bought out all the satellites (4 in the entire region...) within a few jumps and kept on wondering why nobody ever restocked. Then I happened upon the satellite factory at the far end of the region... and found it was starved of key ingredients, with no AI traders supplying it. I helpfully deliver a few shiploads of stuff, make money in the process, and discover satellites require computer chips... and the chip factory a short flight down is also starved of ingredients... will it always be this painful trying to buy stuff? Or will I eventually reach a point where I'll be better off building my own factories and setting up my own supply lines?
The physics engine is a common complaint (that I've reiterated any number of times).
Those starved supply chains? They're great for setting up automated trader runs or constructing your own factories to supply them. Or you can do as you're doing (early on) and just do them manually; it'll slowly build your credits up.
The economy is a tad wonky, but that wonkyness provides a number of easy ways to make credits in most regions.
On the other hand, if you want to fit out a capship, you're probably going to end up building full on supply lines so you can get enough heavy guns in a semi-reasonable amount of time. Or if you intend to fortify your factory sectors with defensive laser sats.