[Space Sim] X3: Reunion

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

Thats pretty interesting. I think you should ask the admins at the X boards to see if you can put it up there. Maybe it wil ldraw attention to possible servers hosted by players if not... who knows.

[TimberWolf]

I have just read about some players who have found a way to gain race relation points with the Xenon to the point that they no longer attack them. The catch is it will cost some ships and a lot of frieght at first. But apparently once this process has gone long enough these players were able to build stations inside Xenon sector where they are protected from Khaak by the Xenon fleet.

[TimberWolf]

Here is some interesting reading about this one players testing of the new capital ships. His conclusion is that the carriers are more powerful than the Battleships, when they have the right fighters. Read for yourself (no spoilers unless you call ship info a spoiler):

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=100418

[XMEN Gambit]

Carriers SHOULD be more powerful than battleships - with the right fighters. I believe it's been that way since the invention of the aircraft carrier.

The catch is that it's easy to lose a few fighters, then the carrier is, well, not exactly helpless, but certainly poorly armed.

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

I agree. You can have a superior vessle with the correct output and it still be a subservient vessle to another ship. For instance, a battleship is designed for battle plain and simple. It isn't designed as a support unit. Its purely an offensive unit.

However the carrier, while minimally aggressive compared to a battleship, has the facilities to harbor an aggressive force. Fighters, bombers, and crew. (Infantry for R/L purposes not X3) When all that comes to the fray, a seemingly non-threat of a ship will become a huge threat.

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

Ok, I just had a whole paged typed up and lost everything.

1st) To begin, I am not familiar with the X Universe. I had X2 but never could play it beyond the first tutorial. The graphics looks good in X2 form what I could see. X3 is stellar far beyond that.

2nd) Patch it before you play it. You will regret not patching it. Possible it was me but I had horrible issues before patching it.

Now the story of how it all came about, begins.

I took the 6 disks out of the box with eagerness. My wife was at work and the baby was alseep. Time for some spacial mischief. I installed it, which seemed to take an hour. Loaded it up and bam... main screen. No tutorial. What? No tutorial like in X2. Oh well, I hop in and just mess around first.

Started a new game, loaded it up cringing at the hint it wouldn't work like X2. Loaded up but was real gerky and skipped a lot when the video comms came up again. Ok, at least it didn't halt the entire game like in X2. Manageable. Talk with someone known to me from X2 I assume, banter about how worthless my father is and that we will talk about it later. Given first mission. Babysit a bunch of toeheads fresh out of boot. Not the most exclusive job but should be easy.

I go and meet them at the eastern gate and the patrol leader instantly starts kissing my butt, which I tell him immediately to shut it. Jump into the first sector. Game crashes. What!?!

Load it up again and crashes in same spot going through gate. Wonderful. Reboot system. Error, Please connect power cable to your Radeon 9800 please see service manual for details. WTF!?! never seen that before. Rebooted, same thing. Take side of case off, rearange wires so they are not touching the vid card, blow it out with a can-o-air, reboot and loads up fine. Weird. See that there is a patch, install it and run X3. Loads faster, better, cut scenes not gerky, com vids not gerky all in all not bad. The biggest test, the gate.

I approach it with some hesitance, the ship enters ever so slowly and the screen goes black. CRAP!?! I can hear sounds but nothing visually. Then POP! out I come from the gate. Weird but hey it works. I get no visuals when I enter the gate it shuts the screen off, or it goes black.

Did I mention the graphics look great?

A little banter between the new jacks but that makes it seem more real to me. Pirates pop up and I sit back. My mission was to escort and give support but not fight them off. I wait while they all scatter and scream in terror as they were being shot down. Well maybe not scream in terror but I heard it in my speakers. I join the fray and out of the 8 that showed up I killed 6 and helped with number 7.

Patrol leader once again said how great I was. Its true. Jump to the next sector into another awesome display of imagery. Have I said that yet? More pirates jump us and I am again forced to show my air superiority. Destroying once again all but one of them. I think there was 10. Jump to thrid sector and they thank me and are on their way.

I did notice that none of the pirates bailed out. They all fought to the death. They dropped no cargo and none of them bailed, which I found disappointing as I want to see how claiming ships works.

I begin flying around this new sector testing the manueverability of my ship. It's a nice little junker I called Vintage Glory. I don't have specifics on it but it has an auto targeting feature that is awesome. Alls to do some nice dog fighting while still hitting the enemy and not getting hit. It's not standard on all ships but is on the starting ship which does make the introduction to X3 a little easier to manage if your new to the series.

I get a call from a monk friend who is in the sector to dock with his temple station. I turn 20 degrees to the left and see the station in question, not far. I begin my trip. I get there and dock, save the game and banter with its occupants a little. Accept the mission to be a gunner for a transport, easy task.

Undock and push my ship from the station and then get transported away. Leaving Vintage Glory behind. I better be able to get her back. I liked the old car smell she had. I test my skills agaisnt some fighter drones which are really no match, no real ttest at all and we begin our aruous journey of transporting an ancient crystal.

On the way, we obviously get atatcked by some pirates, while they are not very much a skilled threat if you don't pay attention to you energy usage you will be hurting. Jump through two sectors, the second one being the coolest so far. Some green nebula gas fills the entire sector. did I mention the graphics are superb?

Get to our destintion which on planet side. Land, spoiler not here, take off again, spoiler not here, hop up into space. End of second mission, sort of.

The third mission, which I wont detail here is a pain in the ass. You have an escort wingman of sorts, who leaves you behind if you don't keep up with her. After finishing a mission I want to save and get some supplies in my new ship, which I never check to see if it was the Vintage Glory or not. I dock at a station and watch her as she jumps away using the South Gate in the sector. No big deal. I finish up and follow her. Enter the sector and she is gone, no where to be found.

I ask around for the sector where we were supposed to be going and the tell me through a gate that is so far away it doesn't show up on my scanner. So I spend 45 minutes try to find it and when I do, I pop into another sector where she is gone. After searching for another 30 minutes I gave up. I loaded the old save, did the second mission again and followed her instead of saving. we jumped through three gates which I have no bearing due to some ship transports being in the way when we exited the gate. The ship went all screwy. we jumped into a secotr and got attacked by 20 pirates. She wasn't firing so I didn't and got hosed. Needless to say I thin kI will cheat a bit and try to find the location of the place we need ot go so I can find her.

This game is so vast to me, never played any of the X series, that it seems to big.

I did get to hop out and fly around in my flight suit, but my visopr malfunctioned and I was floating blind until I hit an asteroid. Tried it again and was hit by a passing ship, gave up on space hopping. So, tonight I will log in and try vainly to find my escort and finish this mission.

All in all, it is fun, but it needs a joystick. And the BBS system is as outdated as it would be today. Needs to be organized.

[TimberWolf]

LOL.

Yeah, patch before playing is a must. The patches they have released have made the game a lot better, even though I still dont have it.

They no longer have a video between gates, so it is ment to be black.

Your starting ship is the Argon Buster, which is a lot better than the Discoverer you started with in X2. Also all of the fighters got major overhauls and are a lot more pwerful.

I look forward to hearing more about your experiences in X3. Keep me drooling for my own copy.

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

It is definately entertaining.

The good news is tonight my wife will be Walmart sitting for an XBox360 so as soon as the baby hits the pillow. X3 here I come. The background music is good but it defaultys really freaking loud. I recommend turning it down to about 15% so you can still hear it, but it sounds like an onboard radio in the ship in the background.

I will totally keep you up to date.

[XMEN Gambit]

I'm glad you're at least able to play the darned thing after all the trouble as you had with X2.

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

no doubt!

[Spinning Hat]

I almost bought X3 the other day when I was at Target, it was $39.99, but my son couldn't pick between SW Battlefront II or X3, so I didn't get either. .. He liked the volcano on the box of SW, but liked the girl on the box of X3.. (atta boy, only 5, and checkin' out the girls, even if they're only imaginary.. ) .. I may have to get this next week...

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

I didn't get to play it last night. The wife had to stay at Target all night until 8am this morning to get the damn XBox360 for my son. So I had to get some sleep since the baby usually gets up. Which she didn't, lucky me. But I will tonight. The deep space fragging will commence.

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

Well I have onl.y played for about 34 minutes total and have found I enjoy the game thus far.

I will put some shots up here sometime tonight when I get a chance. But I wil lsay this. On the third mission I was able to cap two ships. Almost had four but a military ship came by and shot them before I could cap them. I was actually in my suit for the last one about 60 meters away. You need ot be 30 meters to claim it.

Ill put shots up of my budding fleet thus far.

I do need to figure out how to repair the damn things though. One is so badly damaged that it can only fly at 12 km. Took a long time to get five sectors to a docking station to hole up.

Oh an the special paint jobs, are pirate ships. They all have weird color schemes. Which I now have a well I dont know what they are although I think one I capped is a buster. We wil lsee.

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

Ok, had a few issues tonight, but that is what saving is for right?

Here are a few shots of the Three Amigos, or Triple Threat as I am calling them now.

The list of ships so far is as follows.

Vintage Glory: Argon Buster - Starting ship - Far Right

Stolen Glory: 1st Capped Ship - Argon Buster Pirate - Far Left

Broken Arrow: 2nd Capped Ship - Teladi Falcon Pirate - Middle

I just need to figure out how to fix them. How to gain enough money to fix my ship. My hull is at 44%. The other Buster is at 56%, and the Falcon is at 13%. I need to figure out either how to sell the falcon to repair my two busters. I would cap more ships to repair them, but I can't figure out how to sell them. I've been to two ship yards so far and no one is buying, no shipyard or equipment dock will buy or repair. SO I don't know what the hell I am going to do.

I have some other screen shots but I have to convert them to JPEG before i can put them up for you to see. I'll convert them in a day or two. But for the meantime, here is the beginning to my armada.

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

A little stint into Wildchild's forming Armada, to be renamed after five ships.

I just finished my third mission. I am sorry it took so long but I have been trying to perfect my capping so I had to restart a lot. If I didn't have to have restarted due to: running to the derelect ships in my spacesuit and dying, dying getting shot while trying to cap the ship, forgetting to save after capping a new ship. I would be up to probably 8 or 9 ships now in all various forms of needed repair.

I actually capped one ship and didn't damage the hull. I wanted that ship real bad but made the mistake of jumping to another sector to finish the mission, only to come back and it was gone. I am coming to the conclusion that it is not the amount of damage you do but the agressiveness and accuracy you do it with. If you hit with every shot they seem to jump much faster and more often. I actually had two pilots jump in the same fight back to back on the same strafing run. I hit them both headon and did enough scary damage to ge them to bailout. Which I promtly run them over as my cargo space is left for energy crystals at the moment. Jump drive is the stuff when it works.

I flew into two sectors that were dead so far. I jumped in and everything was dead, destroyed. Only a handfull of ships are in the system and they are making a beeline for the jump gates and don't want to talk to you. The second one I jumped into was in pirate held territory. I jumped in and saw one pirate so I figured I would get some capping practice in. I see a few friendly ships fly by so I don't feel to much worry. I start engaging him and realize that literally on the other side of the planet is a dame fleet of pirate busters and something that looekd to be a station but could very well have been a larger carrier or capital ship. I didn't last long at all. I tried to run but you can't dodge missles or fire when SETA is active so I dodged until I blew up.

I have been accused of blowing up a military discover while undocking from a space station. Which led to my quick demize as everything in the sector immediately hated me. I undocked and began backing out. (I am trying to go for the full effect and doing things by the numbers. Manually dock, backout of the docking lane, etc) Well I backed out and heard a BOOM!!!?! then something along the lines of cruimminals will not be tolerated in Argone Prime. And I was vaporized before I could turn around.

Thats it for now, wife is calling me to bed. More tomorrow I hope.