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Starting out in X3TC

Posted: Tue, 30. May 17, 17:53
by Monkspeed
Hi phoenix

Thanks so much for your guide.

I picked up X1, X2, and X3:R & TC/AP in a GOG sale the other day and today is my very first foray into the X world. I decided to jump head first into X3TC and its's very daunting but just about manageable, your guide especially helps a lot. :D

I've followed what you've said to the letter, so I've sold the freighter and upgraded discoverer. I'm currently docked at the home of light sector but can't find the triplex scanner and also I don't see anyone around with a light bulb or currency symbol, the only guy with a light bulb is the pilot training school in the starting sector and it's just the tutorial. Any tips on finding some lightbulbs and dollar quest givers?

Thanks in advance.
:)

EDIT: Just to add, there was one guy with the red crosshairs but I'm trying to stay clear of combat as per your guide, I'm sure I'd get mashed up in the blink of an eye!

ALSO thanks to egosoft for the great game, I'm enjoying it so far, it has taken me back 25 years like I've just loaded up Frontier on my Amiga 500 for the first time, except without the 3FPS animation :D

Posted: Tue, 30. May 17, 19:01
by jlehtone
Welcome to the X-Universe, pilot! :goner:

First, while it is right and proper to thank authors of useful guides, it still might be more efficient to present the new questions in a new thread. After all, this Guide has not been edited after 2008 and its author has not posted since last September. There is a chance that the Guide is not up to date, for the game has been updated (latest for for X3TC in 2016 and 2017).
<Posts split, original guide thread now linked and new thread retitled. Alan Phipps>


Most Military Outposts do sell Triplex Scanner. The Argons have one just two sectors away from your current location. (I'll let you explore yourself, if you don't mind.)
Spoiler
Show
Arr, go East.
Boron and Paranid races sell Triplex at their Equipment Docks too. Reputation. You need some. They have foul one.


Missions. Generic missions. They are random. Basically, on you entering a sector, stations do recheck whether they have any. Occasionally, if you do linger long, some might appear or expire, but moving from sector to sector feels more effective.

Posted: Tue, 30. May 17, 21:08
by Dreez
Welcome to the best 4X game ever made, and welcome to an awesome, friendly and helpful community.
Don't be afraid to ask questions, there's a wealth of knowledge on these forums and X3 is very hard
in the start for anyone.

Posted: Tue, 30. May 17, 21:58
by Monkspeed
Thanks for the welcomes :)

I managed to find the scanner though for the life of me I can't remember where =\
And funny thing, as soon as I reloaded my game after my initial post, up came the lightbulbs, and all the other icons...

So I've done a few ship retrievals and a few asteroid scans, and a station needed some supplies, so 25k profit so far :D

I should have checked the thread date before reviving an old thread, DOH!
Thanks for making me a new thread.

I shall continue to update and ask lots of dumb questions :D

Posted: Tue, 30. May 17, 22:12
by TTD
not dumb questions...we all had to learn a some stage.
I am recently returned and i can honestlt say that after many years of play, I still found myself learning from newer players.
good luck and ask as much as you like.
you never know, you might discover something I have not found yet.

Welcome to TC!

Posted: Wed, 31. May 17, 02:21
by Bill Huntington
Welcome to TC, Monkspeed. Good choice, TC and AP have a lot of good things that their predecessors didn't.

TC combat is a choice too, even with the Disco you are in. Use your little money to outfit it for combat with IRE and 1 MJ shields and Fight 1 at least. You can head over to Elena and get your Triplex scanner. When the pirates come through there's a lot of battle debris that you can pick up and sell.

I usually pick the Paranid as my targets and start with their TS. Even their M4 is possible and sells for a good price when you cap it. If nothing is up in Elena go two sectors south and cap Paranid civilian ships. They can't fight back, just bail. It usually takes some tries. Use Salvage Insurance or dock at a nearby station. Reload if you don't succeed the first time. Sell your caps at the SY in AP or Cloud SE. Repair them in your Astronaut suit to 100 percent hull for full value.

You can rebuild your rep later by taking Paranid missions outside of Paranid space. One place in right there in Split Fire.

Welcome to TC!

Posted: Wed, 31. May 17, 02:48
by ajime
Welcome Monkspeed, this is one of the games you can realize new things even after years of playing. i re-started when i realized i can use -1 to buy ware and a bunch of other things that made playing it more efficient. :headbang:

Posted: Wed, 31. May 17, 12:34
by Monkspeed
Hi all, thanks again for the welcome.

I just took a mission to follow someone and must have got too close ~10km because 3 angry ships appeared and attacked me. They went through me like a hot knife through butter =/

After re-loading I took a mission to deliver a ship but couldn't figure out where this ship was so I googled and apparently I have to buy it so that's out the window too cos I've only got ~25k

So now I'm just flying around trying to do the normal stuff in the guide.

I'm thinking I might become a pirate or a pirate hunter or law enforcer.

Soo what do I need to fight back or at least put up some sort of fight?

At the moment I've got a Discoverer with 2 x 1mj shields and no weapons and that's all...

What's an IRE, fight 1, TS, SY, AP, Cloud SE, and a -1??

See, I told you to look out for the dumb questions!

Thanks in advance
:D

Posted: Wed, 31. May 17, 13:12
by TTD
Soo what do I need to fight back or at least put up some sort of fight?

At the moment I've got a Discoverer with 2 x 1mj shields and no weapons and that's all...

What's an IRE, fight 1, TS, SY, AP, Cloud SE, and a -1??
IRE is the most basic weapon but can be very useful for wearing down shields if you are going for the bail and claim tactic.
It will help defend you against small vessals with similar weapon loadouts.

Fight 1 is the software that gives you a few commands to assist in fighting.

TS is the trader vessals such as the Mercury and Caimen

ap and cloud are just abreviations for sectors such as Albion Prime and Cloudbase Sout East etc

-1 is the number you feed into the console for the quantity of items you want to buy.
This method is a cheat, but works well if you don't mind "legal" cheats in game.
There are others too, which I will let other pilots explain, if you ask.


If you really want to go pirating or pirate bashing, I would upgrade the disco, to give yourself a better chance of survival and when you have enough proffittsss (a Teladi pronounciation), head to the nearest shipyard an buy yourself an M3 class fighter such as the Argon Nova.
There are variations on ship models too.
The S, M and L versions are the same ship but the L has most equipment fitted.

Posted: Wed, 31. May 17, 13:36
by Alan Phipps
This FAQ is quite useful for in-game abbreviations.

Posted: Wed, 31. May 17, 14:22
by Triaxx2
Welcome to Terran Conflict. That brick wall you've already run into is the difficulty curve. Don't worry, as you start the climb, fewer and fewer bricks will land on your head.

So, first things first, some commonly used abbreviations:

IRE= Impulse Ray Emitter
PAC= Particle Accelerator Cannon
HEPT= High Energy Plasma Thrower
IBL= Incendiary Bomb Launcher
PPC= Photon Pulse Cannon
IonD= Ion Disruptor
PBG= Plasma Burst Generator (Space Flame Thrower)
PSG= Phased Shockwave Generator
CLS= Commodity Logistics Software (1=Internal/2=External)

M1=Carrier
M2=Destroyer
M3=Fighter
M3+=Heavy Fighter (Player only distinction, the game does not differentiate, same for all + classes.)
M4=Interceptor
M4+=Heavy Interceptor
M5=Scout
M6=Corvette
M7=Frigate
M7M=Missile Frigate
M8=Bomber
TM=Transport Military (Small Carrier)
TS=Transport Small (Space Semi)
TL=Transport Large (Station Transporting Freighter)
TP=Transport Personnel (For moving people)

Second some useful combat advice.

Speed is life. With a fast ship you can get away from enemies, or catch ones fleeing. Missiles are your friends. Learn them, and you will be vastly more capable of both surviving, and killing. Find areas like Elena's Fortune, two sectors east and two south of Argon Prime, and watch as the local police engage pirates. You're looking to see what ships have what guns. Select a target then press F3, that will let your camera look at the ship. Now you can see where the guns are firing from, and it will give you an idea of where not to be when you're trying to fight that class of ship.

Learn to use your strafe drive, with the WASD keys, and you can actually dodge quite a lot of enemy fire, which is essential to small ships and useful even in large ships. But mostly the trick is picking your target. You can actually fight and defeat an M3 in your M5, but it's pretty hard if you don't get the right one. Attacking say a Split Mamba is a lot easier than a Nova, since the Mamba does not have a turret, so you can get behind it, and stay there and slowly wear it down. Doing the same to a Nova doesn't work, because the turret on the Nova will kill you long before you can wear it down to bail/explode. You'd have to manage to stay beneath it, as it's maneuvering to shoot at you, which requires both the strafe drive and management of the normal engines, plus good mouse skills to keep shooting at the target. Suffice to say it's a bit of an advanced trick.

Look for pirate ships, like Elite's and Busters are a good place to start with. Elite's have turrets, but they tend to be equipped with IRE's which you can shrug off a bit. Just be advised, Pirate ships, those with pirate markings instead of the default gray/other race color, are actually different ships. For example, while the Nova Raider is very, very fast, the Pirate Nova Raider is not. The same with Elite's and Busters.

Posted: Wed, 31. May 17, 14:30
by hisazul
http://www.x3wiki.com/index.php/Main_Page - the wiki, for fast spoiled answers to where, what and how much.

I would not recommend pirating when you are new to the series. It comes with serious reprecautions. Even if you are enemy to just few of the normally friendly races it will be very painful to simply move about and you may end up loosing access to some of the ship equipment that adds functionality. Pirate playstyle is fun but requires knowing game well enough, it is also a much slower slog since you can't buy majority of things and have to acquire them by force.

Stick to the plot missions when you are just starting out. Majority of guides are listed in the sticky right here in X trilogy sub-forum. https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=162408

Also the official FAQ - https://www.egosoft.com/support/faq/index_en.php

Navigating in FAQ to TC/AP -> Missions will allow you get get the general idea on where and how to start various plots. - https://www.egosoft.com/support/faq/ind ... a9705def42

Posted: Wed, 31. May 17, 15:12
by Honved
The basic Impulse Ray Emitter (IRE) can be hard to come by in the Argon Prime vicinity after the first couple of hours. The Equipment Docks have a few at the start, but they're all snapped up by the "economy" after some period of time, so unless you buy them almost immediately, you're probably in for a long search.

The Discoverer can ONLY equip IREs (and a few types of missiles), so the considerably more potent (and energy-hungry) PACs won't fit. The Boron (with one enclave to the North of you) have a factory, I believe, otherwise you're looking at a hike of at least 5-10 sectors to get them.

Once equipped, and with a couple of engine tunings to bring your speed up closer to the maximum, you can take "Defend Station" missions, which are close to free money. Even if you can't kill the attackers, the local police will eventually show up and do the job for you (and you get paid for it), while the spawned attackers won't have anywhere near enough firepower to actually penetrate the shields on a station while you're still at low Fighting rank. The enemies on these missions will generally only attack you if you shoot at their personal ship, or if you're on really bad terms with their faction, and with a bit of luck (or several reloads) you may be able to get one of them to bail.

If that occurs, you can fly up fairly close, abandon ship, fly your spacesuit up close to the derelict (within around 30-40 meters) and claim it. Then you can use your spacesuit's Repair Laser to fix it back up to full hull condition (just shoot it), and sell it or replace your Disco if it's a better ship. Note that if you try to repair the ship before you claim it, the ship THINKS it's under attack (the Repair Laser is still classed as a weapon, so repairing "friendly" ships that you don't own may get you killed), and the auto-pilot will fly it some distance away (or else run into you). Note that a Fujin (or any of the Fujin variants) will be able to utilize either PACs or IREs (or switch between a pair of each), and like the Disco will be able to carry or equip Medium sized cargo items such as a Triplex Scanner, Cargo Life Support, or other goodies. Some M5 and even some M4 class fighters can only carry Small cargo.

With a bit higher faction standing and higher Fight rank, you may start to see an occasional ship with a yellow "cent" symbol near the gate when you enter a sector. That usually means that the pilot is willing to sell the ship. If the condition is low enough (barely over 50%), the price may be close to free, otherwise a nearly undamaged used ship may sell for well above the normal list price for a new one. I've picked up M3 fighters for under 100K, fixed them up, and resold them for well over a million credits. Be aware that a TS (Transport, Small) has a lot more hull points than a fighter, and a badly damaged one may take a Looooooong time to repair, more time than your spacesuit has oxygen.

There's a whole lot more to this game than first meets the eye, and you'll be learning way more tricks and methods to cope with your ever-expanding role in the game, from a mere fighter pilot to a fleet commander and mega-industrial-complex magnate with a vast fleet of commercial freighters working in the background. Learning to automate and assign tasks will be an ever-increasing part of the job, and those long, tedious treks across sectors will eventually be fully utilized in managing your empire.

Enjoy.

Posted: Thu, 1. Jun 17, 03:39
by Snafu_X3
Welcome to TC Pilot! Check the Wiki (sigged) for useful advice WRT missions!

Posted: Thu, 1. Jun 17, 05:53
by RainerPrem
Monkspeed wrote:Hi all, thanks again for the welcome.

I just took a mission to follow someone and must have got too close ~10km because 3 angry ships appeared and attacked me. They went through me like a hot knife through butter =/

After re-loading I took a mission to deliver a ship but couldn't figure out where this ship was so I googled and apparently I have to buy it so that's out the window too cos I've only got ~25k

So now I'm just flying around trying to do the normal stuff in the guide.

I'm thinking I might become a pirate or a pirate hunter or law enforcer.

Soo what do I need to fight back or at least put up some sort of fight?

At the moment I've got a Discoverer with 2 x 1mj shields and no weapons and that's all...

What's an IRE, fight 1, TS, SY, AP, Cloud SE, and a -1??

See, I told you to look out for the dumb questions!

Thanks in advance
:D
Buy a handful of wasps. That should be enough to kill those nasty guys.

cu
Rainer

Posted: Thu, 1. Jun 17, 10:23
by Monkspeed
Thanks for all the advice.

can I replace the 1mj shields with something better?

Posted: Thu, 1. Jun 17, 11:28
by BRANCA
High, speed.

You can find information of your ship by pressing Y-information.
you will see alls specs of your current ship.
compatable shields, weapons etc.

hth,

branca

Posted: Thu, 1. Jun 17, 13:56
by Monkspeed
So far today has been very unproductive.

After arming myself with some fireflies and thinking I was now akin to Iceman and Maverick from Top Gun, I attempted to follow someone again and when the baddie appeared I thought "I'm gonna get you sukka" but turns out fireflies don't track so while I was discussing international relations with the baddie the other guy got away (again)... Reload.

Afterwards, I armed myself with some dragonflies and did a return stolen ship mission, found the ship and comm'd the pilot and they politely declined, so I launched a dragonfly and obliterated the ship by accident then the owner sent me a message telling me how annoyed they were... Reload

Then I decided to claim the Toucan hauler in Menelaus' Frontier, when I boarded I was like a kid in a sweet shop when I saw the cargo which included a 25mj shield so I ejected it and transferred back to my Discoverer and picked it up, only it didn't equip my new toy so I figured it needed more power than my ship can handle so I ejected it and transferred back to the hauler and tried to pick the shield up but it was like piloting a whale through the eye of a needle and I smashed my discoverer up by accident, *sigh* Reload.

Being Monkspeed today FTL.
:(

EDIT:

Soo, what's a decent missile I can afford?
I'm still trying to find IRE that Honved mentioned.
Where can I find a life support system so I can do some passenger missions?
Should I sell the Toucan Hauler or??

Posted: Thu, 1. Jun 17, 15:58
by Honved
The problem with missiles is that they're expensive to buy, a lot more expensive than what you'll earn by using them at your low Fight rank.

I'm guessing that if you reached the Toucan, that you either didn't find any IREs at the Boron Military Base several Boron sectors to the South of you, adjacent to "The Hole", or else didn't find the base, and didn't spot the factory in a sector somewhere in between?

There may occasionally be IREs (and Triplex Scanners, etc.) for sale at the Argon military base toward the far end of Elena's Fortune, around 2 sectors due East of Argon Prime. Incidentally, that borders on two Pirate sectors and is therefore a fairly good place to find and pick up occasional salvage after a battle. Missiles are more economical to use if you can get them for free, although I sell most of the ones I collect. The Disco makes a good remote "picker-upper" or "gopher" (go 'fer this, go 'fer that) after you migrate to a larger ship, because it's got good speed, decent cargo capacity for an M5, and the ability to handle "M" sized cargo.

The Discoverer, like most M5 class ships (there are a few exceptions) can ONLY mount 1Mj shields, although it can mount several. Other fighters will be able to mount more or less (often less). Note that the game often removes stations that aren't actively producing, so some "important" factories producing essential items (like 25Mj shields) may vanish quickly in your particular campaign. Locating specific items can be a major hurdle, or not.

The Toucan includes one nice item: a built-in (you can't transfer it) Cargo Life Support (CLS) module, so you can use it to do "Transport" missions for passengers. The Boron sell CLS at a couple of locations, and most Pirate bases sell it; in most games I end up collecting it from a bailed ship. Putting CLS on your Disco will allow you to do "taxi" runs ("I need a ride"), but if the mission-giver requests "transport", passengers plural, or "suitable for my status", it requires a TP (Transport, Passenger) class ship like the Toucan. Whether you use or sell the Toucan is your call. If doing the "Humble Merchant" start, I usually keep both the TS (Transport, Small) Mercury and the M5 Discoverer, so I can do cargo runs with the TS to earn credits, while I explore with the M5 if I have the Trade Extension software package to allow remote trades and visible prices without docking there myself. A TP will also do fairly respectable sized cargo runs, but can't carry XL size cargo such as Ore or Silicon.

The items I consider "indispensable" at the start are: a decent scanner, Trade Extension software, and a couple of IREs, so my initial focus is to obtain the IREs on day one, before they vanish, then work on the software and scanner. A mineral scanner is another nice item to have, and allows you to take "Scan Asteroid" missions, which not only pay you to explore, but are almost always with mission givers of other races, boosting your relations with those races. The Trade Extension software on your own ship will allow you to do remote trading by using a second ship (or 50+ other ships), but at some point you'll want to automate your remote traders to avoid the micromanagement tedium. Meanwhile, you can set your second and third ships to your upper left and right camera views for quick access.

BTW - if the ship designations seem convoluted and unintuitive, it's because it's a kludged system. Originally, there were M1 and M2 class capital ships, and M3-M5 class fighters. In later X series games, classes M6-M8 were added, in between the others in size, so they're not in any sort of logical order.

Posted: Thu, 1. Jun 17, 17:16
by jlehtone
Monkspeed wrote:Should I sell the Toucan Hauler or??
Ask yourself:
  • What do you gain/lose by using a ship?
  • What do you gain/lose by selling a ship?
Some ships are not on sale anywhere. Even if they were, buying a new costs more than selling it back yields.

With a ship you can do things, and you can still sell it later.

By selling a ship you get credits. You do wan't to buy Impulse Ray Emitters now. Is it the lack of credits that stops you from doing so? No.


:gruebel: In your first post you were following the Merchant's Guide. The one that focuses on everything but the FIGHT. Now you are preparing for a fight? Changing the focus is okay; just wondering.


Return Stolen Ship is nigh impossible; the chance that the thief bails is not rational.
Return [Abandoned] Ship is easy, except that without JumpDrive time runs out.

Teladi might sell Cargo Lifesupport in some station.


Did someone mention that in the ingame Encyclopedia (Pilot / Advanced / ...) you can see descriptions of items that you have seen? E.g. for IRE, which (seen) stations trade them.