X2 - The Threat

[TimberWolf]

To my understanding the pirates will come to me to get the prodoct. Just last night I cought a Pirate Ship coming out of a SQUASH mine factory. All I have to do is build the plant, supply it and make sure my sector defence don't kill the customers.

*EDIT*
Last night I lead a fleet of captured pirate ships from CEO's Buckzoid to Seizewell to be sold. The fleet contained 10 ships captured in a 3 hour timespan. Some of which had weapons, others shields, software, ect. All in all I now have weapons and shields to equip a Nova or my two Mercurys. To give you an idea of how much I have made from capturing, I started the night with 678cr (I had just started a sector trader) and ended the night with almost 680,000cr. I have not recieved any money from my only station, a SPP in Red Light, or the Sector trader based from it. In fact my station has over 500,000cr in it. Also I captures a Life Support system from one of my Pirate Ships and have now started to pickup the ejected pilots to sell them for 1404cr at their own base as Slaves.

My plans for the money is to just keep stacking it up untill I am ready to set up a factory to produce Spaceweed or Spacefuel, which ever is cheapest, and any supporting factories I need. I hope that I can use another sector trader to operate all thoughs factories instead of having to have two or more frighters for each.

Here is what I am aiming for:
SpaceFuel (Argon)
requires 10 Wheat and 15 E-cells.
18cr per unit of Wheat (180cr) and 9cr per unit of E-cells (135cr).
Total cost per unit of SpaceFuel is 315cr.
Max selling price is 1092cr, at a profit of 777cr.
I don't know how long a cycle is though.

SpaceWeed (Teladi)
requires 8 Swamp Plants and 60 E-cells.
91cr per unit of Swamp Plants (728cr) and 9cr for E-cells (540cr).
Total cost per unit of SpaceWeed is 1268cr.
Max selling price is 4076cr, at a profit of 2808cr.
I don't know how long a cycle is though.

[XMEN Gambit]

Even if you aren't sending your freighters to the pirate base (which was my first thought, admittedly), your factories' supply convoy will be overlapping somewhat with the pirate traders. Potential issue there, as well as the one of having your defenses shoot the customers.

I think you can solve that one by setting pirates to friendly in your hud config. But then you'll have trouble hunting them to capture their ships.

[TimberWolf]

Well, I created a problem last night using my new Nova with Ion-D's. I made the pirate base I was looking into setting up my illeagle industry with red. I then destroyed every ship that came out except two which I captured. I also had Spacefuel and Slaves in my cargo hold with a ship coming to inspect me. I evaided the scan and went to another Pirate base to sell the goods. I am going to be starting a Universal Trader soon and starting another new sector trader. I just have to get my Pirate Ship of spair parts over to my SPP to equip the Mercury with shields and weapons.

All the systems and weapons, excluding the Ion-D's, were captured from Pirate ships. I paid about 1mill credits after all said and done to max it out and still have about 500,000cr left over. Once I get the UT going I then can start the next ST. My Spacefuel plans are on hold for the time being since I have figured it will cost about 2 million credits for the stations alone, then another couple of million for TL's and invintory. But atleast the only thing I would have to buy that I don't produce near by is Energy and there are tons of SPP's around Ceo's Buckzoid.

As for the Pirates, I don't expect them to attack traders carrying Wheat or E-cells. They seem to attack more valuable cargo. Also by setting them as friendly to anything stationed in that sector, as you said, there should be no problem. But If my defenses kill the pirates after they bought the goods, then returned the goods to the factory, I would not loose any money. I have a bigger worry of Khaak jumping into the sector over the Pirates. There is no real sector defence there so I will have to either invest in Laser towers or stay there myself until I can afford a fully armed M6 to patrol the sector.

Got to go to class now, want to type more.

[XMEN Gambit]

I don't expect them to attack traders carrying Wheat or E-cells. They seem to attack more valuable cargo.

Wheat is the input for spacefuel? Makes sense, I know, but I don't remember.

Also by setting them as friendly to anything stationed in that sector, as you said, there should be no problem.

It's not per sector, I think. I think you set it by station/ship, though, which should be good enough - you'll just have to remember to set each station and tower that you want do to business with pirates as pirate-friendly. But then, if the pirates attack your station/defenses/freighters, do they get off scot-free or will the things defend themselves? I dunno.

Will an M6 be enough?

[TimberWolf]

I looked up on http://argonopedia.ppcis.org/ what the requirements were for Spacefuel and Spaceweed. This is also how I came to choose Spacefuel because it only requires 2 things to operate and that one Wheat farm alone can supply it. Now I just need to find where they sell the station.

As for the defence, if a unit is attacked by a friendly then that unit will consider that race enemy. Many players have fallen pray to this when they see their race relations dropping only to find out that a stray shot hit one of their M6's and it went on a rampage in that sectore destroying all ships.

I know have my first ever UT going. He has stocked my SPP with 1mill credits and has given me almost a quarter of a million. I am in the stages of setting up a new ST to level up. Once I get three of those going I should be racking in the credits. I have begun looking into an M6 for sector defence in Red Light even though no real trouble is there. Once I get 3 or 4 M6's then I will save up for adding more stations to my control.

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

I still can't get the damn game working. I wil ltry with the new one coming out.

Oh well, looks and sounds like fun.

[TimberWolf]

What problems are you having? Does it load up at all or does it fail to run correctly?

[Wildchild]

Sorry, had to reregister to log back in. (can someone fix that btw?)

Anyway, Timberwolf the issue I am having is this. Everytime I get a com signal from someone, where their face appears on the HUD and they start talking. My system damn near lags out.

It happens in the training mode, and happens within the first 3 minutes of the beginning of the game. Where you have to call into the station to get permission to dock. As soon as their happy little face appears on my screen... lagged out.

It shouldn't be my PC. Hell my PC should be good enough to slap the game in the face and make itself work. General specs, I am not at home so can't give specifics.

3.2gig Intel
2Gig of DDR pc 3200
Radeon 9800 Pro 256
Audigy 2 sound

Anything else that might help? The people over at the X2 boards wer elike, don;t know what the problem is, to bad for you. They were extremly unhelpful.

[TimberWolf]

Have you updated your drivers and the game? (just covering the basics)

I know when I was looking into the game they said to turn Antialiasing off on your videocard and let the game handle it. It was stressed in a couple of places as being a major cause of problems. Check to see if that could be it. I will look more into this after work and class tonight.

[Wildchild]

Hmmm wonder how I turn it off on my card? If I do that wont it change how it affects other games I play? Especially BF2 which is such a graphics whore.

[TimberWolf]

I don't know about your but on mine I was able to set it so that the game decided if it was on or not. For me I went under NVIDIA settings then to Performance and Quality. There I was able to select Application Controled. If you have that option then select that. You can also turn Antialaliasing off on or off on the X2 window that pops up where you can select graphic settings and to choose to play. But note if you have it turned on for the card that over rides what you have choosen on the X2 settings so make sure you have changed the settings for your video card first.

I would first try having Antialaliasing off on X2 and see if it works. If it does then try with it switched back on at the X2 window, not on the video card settings. If it works then the problem is solved. If not then we will have to look for another possiblility.

[XMEN Gambit]

I wouldn't think that AA would be killing the comms.

Do the voices play OK during the cinematics?

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

Honestly Gam... I don't remember. I would try to load it up here in a second if I have time before work.

[TimberWolf]

I am loving the UT. Just wish my ST would level up faster. Once I get the ST leveled up into a compatent UT then I will start two new ST's. I only plan on having 4 UT's or else I risk phasing the AI TL's out of existence.

I am at the point in the game where I have to get the LFL from the Parinid. From there I basicly go into some major battles and the ore belt mission. So basicly I have almost cought up to where my other game is but with only one station and almost just as much money coming in per hour. I am starting to consider skipping my first M6 to save up for an M2 to work on my combat rank faster with mass Xenon killings in Sector 597.

I am not looking forward to the battle in Nyana's Hideout. In my other game that was when I first used an M6 to win or else I usually was destroyed by the swarms. I need to learn how to use the missiles correctly. These are things I need to figure out while I am playing tonight or else I may put myself into a bad position like in my other game. Such as if I can't clear out Ore Belt fast enough I may loose the frieghters servicing my SPP in Red Light.

Got to go to my last class of the week, Physics 131 Lecture.

*EDIT*

I now have over 5million credits. About 1 million was earned through selling captured ships, 0.25 million through captured goods and slaves, 0.25 million from assasination missions, and about 1.75 million from my UT and ST, the rest from last time I played.

My first assasination mission ended suddenly in a fluke. I am in a Nova with 2 GHEPTs in the fround that I can switch with 2 Ion-Disruptures. I go out there and hit the Osprey with the Ion-Ds, which in turn starts hitting the fighter escorts. I start picking off the fighters, with the first one surrendering his ship to me. Once the others are destroyed I start using the Ion-D's to bring its shields to zero. Now this is my second try and I had learned that I can't take his shields out any other way nor can I shoot with one Ion'D and one GHEPT to damage him because of the shields. So in desperation, and just to see what it would be like, I launched the 60 or so Fighter Droids I just took off my captured ships in that sector.

One would think those little weapons on them would do nothing but in fact they were doing a good bit of hull damage as I kept the shields down. In a panic the Osprey turned suddenly into me and I quickly used my strafe drive to only bounce off of it. This impact took out a quarter of the Ospreys hull, only costing me half of my shields. I continued to keep the shields down, granted my Ion-Ds also hit my Fighter Droids from time to time. The Osprey was now just below the half way mark when he tries to run me over again. I hit the strafe drive in a futal attempt to get out of his way. For the second time he did a glancing hit and but this time he exploded, bringing my shields down to a quarter. Now I was sitting there baffled at how it died so quickly while about 40 or so Fighter Droids still swarmed around me. I then start issuing orders to them to standby so I can pick them up and reuse them again. I get about 17 on board, need to find some other way to get them besides telling them individually to stop and then grab them. The rest all die from old age, Fighter Droids have limited batterie life.

My second assasination mission went the same way except I got no fighters captured and this time the Dragon did not run into me. But sadly to say I no longer have any fighter droids as the last one died from the dieing shots of the Dragon. True heros. Up until last night I had thought Fighter Droids to be worthless but now my opinion has changed. Also I was able to get an Elliptic Projector off one of my captured ships. I would never buy it unless you really are a stickler for having thinks at a specific point in space. All it does in put a grid on the horizontal plain and guide lines between gates that goes from the center.

I have been to 79 sectors, sold 20 slaves, destroyed 107 Pirate Ships, been through 389 gates, ect. I just found this information in the game under the menu you bring up when you press "p". If you use the "page up" and "pafe down" keys it moves the top part where you can see how many shots you have fired, your accuracy, how many missiles you fired, how effective those missiles have been, your favorite ship (not sure how they calculate that), what ships you have destroyed and more. Nice little area to look around on those long trips.

[TimberWolf]

Wildchild, just found this on the X2 FAQs:

This is normally the result of a problem with sound drivers or audio codecs. If the driver or codec has a problem with the speech then this can happen.

The solution is normally to simply update your sound drivers and/or replacing your audio codecs. Quite often replacing the audio codecs actually means removing a codec pack that you have previously installed, as some of these codec packs install codecs that override the standard Windows Media Audio codec that is used by the game. Some software, such as Adobe Premiere, also installs alternative codecs that can interfere with the game.

Link: http://www.egosoft.com/support/faq/faq_ ... &version=4

Granted it is the answer to the game bombing when being communicated to but what you described sounds similar.