Ship capping help

[Blinx2510]

Hi guys, a couple nights ago i went travelling and picked up the free nova for obvious reasons but have now left myself with a slight issue. I find myself easily beating enemies now and quite a few of them do end up jumping and leaving me their ships. My problem is i don't really know which are worth keeping so if somebody could help me with a quick guide of which pirate/xenon ships are worth keeping and which i shouldn't really bother with and just sell? Cheers.

[Alan Phipps]

Telling us which X game you are playing (X3:R?) may help you to get better advice. Moving from Tech Sp to Universe (gameplay) forum.

Please note that Tech Sp is for technical problems in running the game.

[Triaxx2]

Some of it doesn't change from game to game. Are you now using more than one ship? Do you intend to? If not, sell everything.

If you do, decide what stats are important and only keep ships with high stats in those areas. For example, I love fast ships, so I always keep Split ships. But I like high volumes of cargo space, so I keep Dolphins and Vultures.

If you can't decide what you like now, that's perfectly understandable. I suggest picking one freighter with the largest hold you can find, and parking it in a station. (Teladi or Argon station can store infinite fighters. All Super Shipyards can store infinite fighters and freighters.) Then send your captured ships there and strip off all the cargo. Eventually you'll have a ship full of weapons and shields worth a LOT of money and enough choice to sate any desire you might have. Then the empty hulls can be sold at a shipyard for spending money.

Certain cargoes from freighters are valuable. Things like Computer Components and Microchips are stupidly valuable. Others like Ore and Silicon are best compacted into a small number of freighters for sale. They're valuable, but massively space intensive.

[ancienthighway]

In general pirate versions of CW ships are of lessor quality, so they should definitely be sold after repairing. That does not include Pirate unique ships which are frequently worth keeping.

Every transport is worth keeping. Whether it's for trade or a warehouse, it can be put to use.

[X2-Illuminatus]

so they should definitely be sold after repairing.

Up to and including X3R, the player had no repair laser in his spacesuit. Thus repairing ships for free wasn't possible and you shouldn't waste money repairing a ship before selling it.

[Bill Huntington]

Capping is a great part of the game, a good way to raise your start up money. In TC/AP, I only cap the M3+ fighters, like Eclipse, Medusa, Chimera, Kea and Skate, once I've worked my way up from a Disco or Harrier. I keep the fighter I want and sell the others. M3+ sells for $3 Mil. Most regular M3s sell for about $1 Mil. Paranid TS have good value. The biggest TS sells for $1 Mil. I generally cap the TS ships I'm going to use and that's it. Rep is the biggest consideration. When I can, I get to license level with all the races, then top step with all the races. At top step, you can do a few caps before you drop a step in rep. Then I do a mission or two to get back to top step. It seems like the rep hit isn't precisely proportional to the value of the target. So three Novas at $1 Mil each has more of a rep hit than 1 $3 Mil Eclipse. So it saves rebuild missions to cap one Eclipse. Their morale doesn't seem any higher. Their weapons can be good, but so can a regular Nova. The PBG is tough whichever ship has it. Anyway, I get Sats up in all of the TC universe and watch for M3+ targets.

I avoid pirates. First, they're tough, usually tougher than my initial ships. Then there's rep. If you have very low pirate rep, they'll attack your traders and stations in the whole TC universe. So I leave pirates and Yaki alone, unless I have to. Then I do missions for them.

I might take one or two Goners early in the game, for $3 Mil each. If you take more, it might slow you done with the Goner plot in TC and using their Goner Temple in AP. If you get too low in rep, then mission to rebuild rep become rare from them. But one or two is okay.

[Triaxx2]

Even in TC, the time investment is barely worth it. Worse in AP.

[Honved]

Even in TC, the time investment is barely worth it. Worse in AP.

In TC, it's often worthwhile early in the game to fix up a bailed M5 for sale, but by the time you move up to M6/M7 class ships, your time is too valuable to waste holding down a repair laser button for 5-10 minutes for a couple of thousand extra credits, when you can make millions on a mission.

I use the "Mobile Repairs" mod, which adds two Repair Laser factories, so you can buy and install RLs on several ship types. It's somewhat "unbalancing" in that repairs end up costing nothing once you buy the expensive lasers, but I find it better than the vanilla alternative of having to pay more than the ship is worth to fix it, or spending 20 minutes or more of real time to patch up a large freighter.

[Cursed Ghost]

hi

try having a look here

http://www.x3wiki.com/index.php/Ships or http://roguey.co.uk/x3ap/ships/

these 2 sites should give you the info you need

as to which is best this is very subjective and depends on a number of different factors for example play style, target, objective etc.

me personally I like ships that are well rounded I also like to dog fight which usually means I'm using short range but highly accurate weapons like PBEs or PBGs and I will general avoid weapons like CIGs/ISRs because there shot speed is to slow there energy drain is to high and there accuracy is insufficient I will also generally avoid slow and un-manoeuvrable ships which means no m7s or above because there to slow there handling is utter garbage and there totally horrendous to fly, I also don't like missiles because either they are to slow and therefore never hit there target or they simply get shot down and never hit there target or they're a horrendously overpowered I win button which spoils the game as there is absolutely no defence against missile barrages which eliminates bombers and missile frigates as well which leave very few ships left

Here are the ships I'd recommend

M5: Valkyrie (combat), Kestrel (recon)
M4+: Solano, Tonbo

M3: Spitfyre, Mamba
M3+: Tenjin, LX, Fenrir, Notus Hauler, Aamon

M6: Springblossom,
M6+: Hyperion, Heavy Centaur Prototype

M7: Tiger, Agamemnon
M7M: Skirnir, Aquilo, Sirokos
M7C: Griffon

M2: Boreas

TS: Baldric, Mistral
TS+: Mistral Super Freighter, Hayabusa

TP: Mani
TM: Zephyrus
TL: Atmospheric Lifter, Albatross

I have personally flown or used most of these ships and have found them to be solid and reliable craft which have served me well but as always it very much depends on your preference, play style etc. hope this helps

with regards to pirate ships just fix em up with a SETA repair and sell em there not worth keeping the one exception to this is the Blastclaw Prototype which is a reasonable starter ship its also a reasonable missile boat when employed in strafing runs against bigger targets using Tornado Missiles or from long range with Wasp and Hammerhead Missiles