[Space Sim] X3: Reunion

TsN|Wildchild|xmen · Post by **TsN|Wildchild|xmen** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 4:28 pm

The good part about bailed ships, no one sees them as a threat. If a pilot bails in the middle of a fight, fly away from it if there are more in the area wanting to kill you. Get away from it as a stray shot may destroy it.

It will stay there the entire time and no one will shoot it or claim it, as far as I've seen. I was on a mission and got a pilot to bail and had to jump to three other sectors. I jumped back and it was still there.

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 11:22 pm

I just found the Yaki sector but the Unkown sector before it caused huge lag for me with that large cluster of asteroids. Took me about 30 minutes or so to pass through. When I was done exploring those two sectors I jumped to Brennan's Triumph through the south gate and was greeted with 3 Pirates in my face. I destroyed 2 and captured the Falcon with about a third hull left but there is a catch.

Due to the heavy lag I had prior a graphical glitch emerged again, which only happens after high CPU strian, and my frame rate dropped again just after I got attacked by another group just outside the Pirate base. My shields were going down fast as my ship lined it self up to dock on automatic but they were not going to last long enough. I suddenly remembered I had a docking computer on the ship but then ran into a problem because I didn't know how to activate it. The key mapping is almost completely different from X2 and everything I could think of at first failed.

Entering and moving in menues took several seconds compaired to what would normally be less than a second combined. I tried to open the Pirate Base information menu to see if any new commands were there but all that I could see were colored boxed. I did see something that resembed the very top part of the undock option and chose that. With great relief it was what I was looking for. I suddenly docked with a hair of shields left. It didn't take long to exit the game from there and then come here to post. I need to buy salvage insurence so things like this don't happen any more.

*EDIT*

used a trial converter to get my pictures

Here is the Mammoth being destroyed without a shot fired by me:

Here is a beauty shot of a destroyed gate:

Here is a shot of my Nova on fire after being hit by a missile:

All of these shots were taken on the lowest possible graphical setting but still at max resolution because thats what my monitor works best at.

Spinning Hat · Post by **Spinning Hat** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 12:04 am

Lowest graphical setting? DAMN that looks good.... I can only imagine what it looks like on a High End system....

TsN|Wildchild|xmen · Post by **TsN|Wildchild|xmen** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:58 am

A Khaak Destroyer, the sound this thing makes when it fires its battery is freaking awesome. In the upper left is a Boron Trading Station and in the lower left is another of the THREE destroyers that were giving this sector a hard time.

A short battle shot that wasn't that good. I am trying to capture better battle shots but its hard when your being fired at.

I want to say this is a Teladi Trading Station in v1.3 but I forgot.

The settings are not max for what my moniter can go. but thats because when I go max on my moniter the game can't keep up.

TW when you take a screen shot, hit ALT-H it removes your HUD icons for a cleaner image. My Images is down for maintinence so I can't upload anymore right now but I will in a bit to show a few more shots.

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 9:33 am

I take shots at the spur of the moment almost all of the time. That last shot of yours is the Teladi Trading Station. I have some nice shots of a Pirate Buster and Herrier being shot up by my ships.

TsN|Wildchild|xmen · Post by **TsN|Wildchild|xmen** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 9:37 am

Im sorry your not experiencing the game the way you should TW. I would get frustrated if it did that to me as well.

Of course now that I have my new moniters it is getting a little jerky even with my system.

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 12:01 pm

I am still enjoying the game but I will have to play it differently than I had played X2. I am starting to use my wingmen to scout sectors without me ever entering them but I have to watch them on the map or else everything they see isn't recorded.

The next time I play I will start scouting locations to place factories as then saving up to get them. I wonder if I equiped a mineral scanner on one of my wingmen if they could do asteroid scans for me without me in the system. I think there are some really nice asteroids in Savage Spur that I could build off of. I think I will start off with a wheat farm in or around Argon Prime and build from there.

*EDIT*

Just read something interesting on the X-Forums. Appearently a person hired a TL that had a SSP M onboard it and after he bought and placed his own Ore Mine the TL wouldn't leave thinkng the SPP was his. Sounds like a profitable gift from the AI. Something to look into.

*EDIT*

Some one was able to make a script that hacked the game and opened all possible starting options. No one knows how to open them up without it. One of them is the Khaak start where you are randomly dropped into a sector in a Khaak scout with a couple of wingmen. Pirate bases let you dock and buy goods but no one else will until you earn points with them. I don't know if you can get back to the Khaak sectors eventually and buy Khaak ships but you can capture ships of the other races.

I am thinking about building myself up quickly in my current game and try to figure out how to get that starting option. Maybe you have to beat the game on all three levels, easy, normal, and X-tream. Any way that is something I would like to get legally. It is interesting just thinking about how hard it would be keeping those ships in mint ccondition if there are no shipyards friendly with you.

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:00 am

Just placed a 467000 credit Wheat Farm in Menelaus Fontier, a Boron sector. The idea is to take over the secondary resource demand for Argon Wheat at the Plankton farms (6 within 1 jump) and Stott Mixeries (2 within 1 jump). Also this will become the base to my first Spacefuel Distilery. My logic behind the placement beyond the secondary resourse reason is that Pirate move through Teladi space freely thus allowing me to have a secure site from invassions but still can get the regullar consumer if I can place the complex hub really close to the East Gate.

I should know by next week or so if this was a good first step or not. All of Argon sectors had more than enough Wheat farms to supply them and I didn't have enough to buy any other station. The other Hualler that I found at the beginning is now the Energy cell buyer for this station, with the Solar power plants right next door where the other hualler is running as a sector trader at level 7.

I was considering another site to build but didn't see how the Wheat farm could make a living. This other site would be perfect for the Spacefuel Distilery though. Elena's Fortune is where I first thought of building because Argon Trading docks buy Spacefuel (4 within 2 jumps) and Pirate bases (3 within 2 jumps) have high demand for it as well. The catch is that the Spacefuel Distillery costs 2.5 million then another 467000 for the Wheat farm and another 280000 for a complex construction kit. That would cost around 3.3 million credits. Once I get this site going I may change it over to Spaceweed instead which the Teladi will buy and setup the Spacefuel Distilery in Elena's Fortune.

I haven't looked outside of Argon and Boron space for a place to put the Wheat farm. There is a high chance I missed a more profitable situation in Paranid space with one of their own foods. I can still build those later if the AI doesn't fill in those gaps before I have the money and rep to do so. The next place I build will either have to be attacked or have new transports bought or stollen just for it.

*EDIT*

Played some last night and decieded to stake out a Pirate base for a while. Not to long into it I cought a ship leaving th base with space weed still on board. I kept asking it to drop its frieght, which it will do but it still appeared in the invintory. It only had 5 on board but by the time I destroyed it there was over 200 units of Spaceweed floating around. The worst part was all of my fighters combined could only hold about 75-90 units. By the time I got my UT there the local Military had destroyed the rest. But when I sold the stuff to the Teladi trading stations I made about 120000 credits of pure profit. Later on I went to the Pirate sectors and found two more Pirate frieghters but none would eject. The second one kept dropping Crystals, so many that even with my UT I could not gather them all. I sold them to a nearby Solar power plant for a pure profit of 200000 credits. I then stared to off to finish exploring the pirate sectors but ended up in a long and ever growing fight in Brannan's Triumph. I picked up 2 APAC's, 2 AARE's and many missiles. I think I destroyed about 20 or so Pirate ships and some how really ticked off the Pirates so that now all the Pirate bases are red. I got one sector south before I stopped of the night. I have about 750000 credits now compaired to only 130000 credits when I started.

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 4:31 pm

I had my UT dissapear for no appearent reason last night. I reloaded and visited the system he vanished in but at first saw nothing as he came in and did his runs. So I left and less than 30 minutes later he dissapeared again in the same sector. Again I reloaded and this time I staryed in that sector for almost an hour. I was about to leave thinking that my presense had changed the events but a band of Pirates came through from one side and exited the other side with only a quick side stop at a station I know my UT had stopped at before. So I went over to the station after having killed them and at first didn't see anything wrong. But something cought my attention as I was doing the fly by. Quickly turned on target next enemy to find what it was. Those dang Pirates mined the area around the station. And sure enough here comes my UT into the sector heading right for that station through the mine field. I quickly destroyed the field and my UT went on making me money. I lost about 2 hours of gaming to track that little problem down. You may want to keep an eye out for mines if any of your ships vanish for no reason.

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 6:44 pm

Sounds like your ships need a "jettison log" feature so you can go to where they disappeared and see their last five minutes of life, or something like that.

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 2:13 pm

I haven't played X3 for days now. The guys on my floor have been making me play Halo2 with them over the network. Been interesting since I had never touched the X-box before.

Yeah, a black box logging the few minutes before death would help a lot in many cases. It would be even better if it gave an interactive visual log of that time so you can 'sit' in the ship and look around it as its death played out.

I will try and play this coming weekend if I can. The guys on my floor want to play Halo2 every day but my class work won't allow me to play as much as them. Also I want to get out and try some of the new dances I have learned in my Social Dance class.

Spinning Hat · Post by **Spinning Hat** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 12:19 am

I bought X3 last nght, haven't installed it yet, but I read the manual... The grammar is orrible, and the manual is not very well laid out... Ick. Is the game this bad too, or is it just a foreign devs' attempt at localizing the game gone horribly wrong?

TimberWolf · Post by **TimberWolf** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 9:21 am

The manual has a history of being carried over from the prior games and updated. In this case they didn't update it. If you register you game online they have a new one in a pdf format to download.

The company was rushed by the publisher originaly and they are playing catchup right now. The publisher also dropped the ball in some cases where they shiped the game out without a complete set of disks. If you want to complain about the problems then target the publisher because the developers have done nothing but their hardest to make sure the game becomes it's best.

When you do start playing try some of the tutorials first. From there play a couple of the story missions then go venturing off and explore, build, trade, and fight for a while.

Spinning Hat · Post by **Spinning Hat** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 12:05 pm

Ok... I'll post back here with my first impressions after I get it installed and patched.

Spinning Hat · Post by **Spinning Hat** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:34 pm

I played for about an hour, and I don't know that I'm all that impressed. The interface is way too strung out in trying to find things, and the control just doesn't seem right to me... I'm gonna try and tweak some of them in a while, but like when you dock at the temple in the first part after the escort missin, it took 15 minutes to even find where I was supposed to talk to that Noah character.... And the game froze on me too.. not too happy with that... I'll try to play some more later, and hopefully, it will get better.

The premise and everything seems really cool to me, and I like the odea of building an empire based on trade... I'll post more as I play more.