X2 - The Threat

[XMEN Gambit]

I'm sure you already know this from the forums, TW, but destroying original factories can be economically dangerous because your own factories don't use any "secondary resources." Not that that's a problem if you just hit SPPs...

I made a list of the stuff in President's End when I restarted recently. I thought the information might be useful when I started rebuilding that sector. Here's the list:

• Argon Trading Station
  Beta PPC Forge
  Cahoona Bakery
  Cattle Ranch
  Chip Plant
  Rimes Fact
  Silicon Mine x 3
  SPP
  Wheat Farm

BTW, where's the nearest 25MW shield factory to Argon Prime? I found the 5MW in Elena's Fortune, and 1 and 125 seem to be relatively common.

[TimberWolf]

If I remember correctly the Split have the 25mw plants in Rhonkar's Clouds, Patiarch's Retreat, Njy's Deception, and Akeela's Beacon. The first two are in the main Split sectors, the closest being Rhonkar's Clouds at 12 jumps from Argon Prime. Akeela's Beacon is an Argon sector in the middle of the map and only 10 jumps away from Argon Prime.

25 MW shields are kind of rare because only the Split have the factories to produce them, unlike the others where almost every one has factories to produce them.

Hmm, so that explaines why silicon is in high demand in the Argon sectors, they lost 3 mines. Also that explains the same with Rimes being rare to find. Guess I should look into placing a couple of Silicon mines on the east side of the Argon sectors along with a couple of Rimes facts. I will have to do a little more digging into the economy over there before I start placing things. But I will probably set loops to equip my fleet over there and I know that will take a lot of resources that I currently don't have a way of getting from the locals.

Thanks for the President's End info, that does explain many of the problems in the local economy and gives me a good idea of what to do to support my expansion. When I play tonight I will give the asteroids in the area a good look.

[XMEN Gambit]

Not that you need this anymore, TW, but I seem to have found an excellent formula for planting SPPs, at least early on.

Plant the SPP. Set range ~4 sectors, crystal buy price at just a cred or two above average, and energy selling price at 20. Give it 100-200k for operating funds.
Set one fully-upgraded Mercury to sell the energy, full time.
Set one much smaller ship to buy crystals. I used a Mako and it worked great. Usable cargo space held 30 crystals, which at the avg. price of 1683 works out to around 50k.
Both ships are set to buy or sell "at best price."

I set mine up in Kingdom End this way. The SPP was able to stay in continuous operation with no help from me, with a steadily increasing base of funds and crystal inventory. The small cargo hold on the Mako meant that it could never buy so many crystals that the money would run out. As a bonus, at those prices you'll occasionally get other ships coming in to trade, which can only be good. At any time, you can pull out any funds over that 100-200k creds, and it won't slow the station down a bit.
No sector or universe traders, or jump drives, required.

[TimberWolf]

That info is usefull to me. I have been meaning to replace the Dolphin that I currently have buying crystals for my kingdon end SPP. Next time I am on I will replace it with the Mako and station it on my TL.

BTW I just built 3 more stations last night and got my first Centuar for Sector Patrol (which I didn't name after you because this ship will see no real battle).

My stations are (if I remember):
Red Light - 2 SPP, 1 Crystal Fab, 2 Wheat Farms, 1 Bakery
Ringo Moon - 1 Silicon Mine
Argon Prime - 2 Wheat Farms, 2 Planktin Farms, 1 Stott Mixery, 1 Bakery, 1 Cattle Ranch
Kingdoms End - 1 SPP
Rolks Drift - 2 Wheat Farms

I would have continued but it got late and I have class today then a three day weekend. I havent' moved over too Presidents End yet because I am trying sure up my current positions with sector defense. I am trying to see if the one Centaur will be enough or else I will have to set them in pairs which will become a problem trying to equip them.



This is what it looks like when Lords of Steel jumped out of the sector leaving me behind so it can take the new captured Khaak M3 with 80% hull and my badly damaged Perseus with only 39% hull back to Argon Prime for repairs. I have recently cought up with in after making two stops for energy cells to make the jumps to get there. Glad I equiped all the fighters I have with transporters and Jump drives.

Below is my "MPB STBuilder" TL which is an Argon Mammoth. I currently spend more time on it than anything else because of all the station construtions and buying of ships to support them:



Here is my Khaak M3 with a Nova escort going through Ore Belt:

[XMEN Gambit]

About those Centaurs... According to my homemade quick-reference sheet, the Centaur is the only M6-class ship (or smaller) that can be fitted with a PPC. Did you take that into account when weighing the merits of the Centaur vs. other M6? How does the PPC measure up?

(I have a weakness for the PPC acronym. It was my favorite weapon in MechWarrior.)

[TimberWolf]

I don't believe the Centaur can hold a PPC. I know the Dragon can in its forward mount. Also the Nemises is the only M6 that can mount Gamma PSG's.

PPC's are actually weaker than High Energy Plasma Throwers (HEPTs) btu their range is between 3 and 5 km compaired to under 2 km for any other weapon. I like the sound of PPC but they are not as powerful as they should be. I also played a little MW3, bought MW4 but never really got into it.

For information I usually check Argonpedia, which for the most part is accurate but I have found that their player levels are not in the propper order at the top.

Follow this link to see the ships:
http://argonopedia.ppcis.org/ships.php? ... 93611349df

[XMEN Gambit]

I have that the Dragon can mount a PSC, but not a PSG, and that a Centaur can have a PPC but not a PSG. Not that I've ever owned one to verify.

The PPC was the MechWarrior very-long-range beam weapon. That's why I liked it. Closer in, the regular lasers were the way to go, but I liked to shoot the legs off approaching mechs when they were miles away.

[XMEN Iceman]

Ok, I can get this at www.half.com for $11.00

How steep is the learning curve? Will I enjoy it?

[TimberWolf]

There is a steep learning curve at first. Flight is simple until you add in the strafe drive later on. The hardest part is learning the economy and where certain goods are located. I would reconment trying out a couple of the simulations before starting the game just to get a feel for how combat works. Beyond that it is just trial and error.

If you like Space sims, earning money, killing things, conquering the universe, building an armada, and the cleaning the universe to fill as you see fit, then yes you are going to enjoy it. You should do the story game so that you can get the free stuff from it in the beginning to help you out, unless you really want a challange then you should start on the X-treame setting. That way you start in a really slow Discoverer with basicly nothing on it and almost nothing to buy goods to sell for profit.

As for MW, I loved doing that to Gambit. I ticked off some of the wrong people when I played MW3 online a couple of times because I would overload my mech, forgot what it was, and use jump jets to get high and out of the way to snipe from. I would over heat my mech just to eliminate the enemy in one shot. The next time I am home I may look into reinstalling it again and play some over the christmas break.

Just got done playing and setting up stations in Presidents End. I now have 26 stations and 71 ships under my control. I have taken your idea Gambit and lukily I had a captured barracuda docked on the other side of the universe waiting to have something done to it. Originally I was going to take its weapons and scrap it because there was little hull left but I just repaired it and refitted it and sent it on its marry way. Presidents end currently has a power loop and the factories to produce GHEPT which I will use to equip new M6's. I just need to build more stations to produce 25MW shields and 125MW shields. I have found asteroids in ajoining sectors to help supply ore and silicon for these.

I also have a fully armed Khaak M3 now and another one that currently has one weapon. I had captured another M3 tonight and it still had all of its weapons on it. Now I can kill pirates in one pass instead of two or three. I have lost a couple of my transports from Presidents End and have replaced them with newly aquired Pirate ships from the pirate sectors. I am currently trying to stock up on pirate ships because I know I will be loosing more transports unil I can get more M6's into the area.

[XMEN Gambit]

Ice, the game is basically just a universe simulation, obviously derived from the Elite- and Privateer-style gameplay. Then it tacks on a plot which includes the startlingly original concept of invasion by an unknown alien race (Khaak)!

I didn't think the learning curve was too bad, though it did take me a while to really understand what was going on.

You need to like building things with only a little hand-holding. I'm playing my second game now, but a problem I had in my first game was trying to go through the plot too fast. Gotta take your time and build up your resources before you can do a really good job. One of your advisors tells you this, but I had severely underestimated the amount of resources he was talking about the first time.

The interface is not intuitive (though I've seen far worse), the physics are marginal at best (again, seen worse), the voice acting is average to poor, and if you want a fast-paced action-packed game this ain't it. But there is a lot of action if you want it, and some even if you don't. Most importantly, though, the game is a lot of fun if you like trading up from squat to owning a fleet and a trade empire, and having to defend it from hostiles.

[TimberWolf]

I beat the game last night. Got tired of doing nothing but building stations, and waiting for my one HEPT fab to finish its first round of production. So I continued on the story thinking I was a good distance from the end but it wasn't so. I finished a run into a Khaak sector and then had to do the big battle at the end which I have read was murder for many. But I jumped in with my Titan and laid waste to most of the enemy fleet and was attacking the M0. Then for the little things I had to do I launched in my Khaak M3. All and all, the final battle took about 30 minutes to complete.

Next time I play I am going to visit that Khaak sector with my Titan and Mammoth and try to capture as many of their ships as possible. I will also have to fight their destroyers for the first "real" time (when you see the final battle you will understand why I say this). I haven't looked at the pics I took yet, I may post a couple later if they don't give away the story.

[TimberWolf]

hmph, no good pics at all. And what I do have reveal parts of the plot so no postings of them.

As for the Khaak sector, RUN LIKE HELL!!!!! For the plot I had jumped in and jumped out, no problem. I went in with my Titan and meandered around, killing all the fighters that attacked me. It was great at first because the Khaak keep spawning around you allowing you to have a never ending battle. But then one of the Khaak M2's cought up to me and the end. Crap. I couldn't even get enough shots to bring his shields down to a half by the time he destroyed me.

Ok, I thought maybe it was just because he got the first shot and was pointed at me. So I tried again and was able to stick to his side for a good bit before he got in front of me and begin to peg me with his aft turret. Crap again! I had his shields down past half but his weapons are so powerful that it still mopped my butt up as if I was butter and it had a flame thrower!

Ok, try number three. There are some very nice sized asteroids out there. Maybe I can get behind one and hit it by suprise. Again it comes up, again I get its side for a while but it speeds by to hit me with its aft turrets. Then in a stroke of tactical intellegence I launch in one of my fighters. The thought was the Khaak M2 was busy destroying my Titan so I should be able to hit it with BPSG's without worry. I wasn't out no more than 10 secons before my shields drop, everything comes up destroyed and "The End" comes floating up onto my screen. CRAP!

I have to figure out how to beat their butts so I can clear out the sector. I want a higher combat rank so I can capture the Xenon capital ships. Shoot, I thought I was doing so well, having beaten the Xenon repeatedly, finished the plot, making lots of money, and not having any problems with Khaak clusters since I started putting sector defenders in. On the bright side, I still destroyed their station in that sector even though I couldn't beat their capital ships.

Here is what one of their M2's looks like:

[XMEN Iceman]

That is an evil looking ship. Can you build up your resources again and get a 2nd Titan? Have a pair go in and try it out.

[XMEN Gambit]

Eek. I'm skeered.

How about another race's equivalent of the Titan? Any hope there?

[TimberWolf]

I have enough to by a second Titan already but I don't have the weapons and shields for it yet. I was actually looking into buying either a Split Python or a Teladi Phoenix. The Python faster than the Titan by almost a factor of 2, but can only carry one fighter. The Phoenix has the most shields out of all the M2's and can carry 5 fighters. I plan on getting one of those two, but need to go about looking for the PPC's and 125 MW shields again.

I wish it didn't take so long to produce your own, it takes a couple of days just to produce one GHEPT and I need 2 of those and 2 BHEPT (which I currently don't have the fab to produce) to equip just one Centuar. So currently I am in the position that I have plenty of money to spend but there are not enough weapons to equip the ships I want.

I won't be able to play all weekend long since I am leaving my computer at my dorm as I return home. So if there is going to be any playing it will have to be sunday night when I get back. Going to have to take my TL around and buy out every equipment dock and factory of their weapons to equip my ships.