Playing With Seven Headquarters (in Vanilla X3AP)

[kurush]

to me the stats are pointless...

With stats being pointless and achievements even more so, what's the point of playing vanilla? Sure, a more or less canonic universe makes sense, but then you have to put up with various annoyances such as 25km comm range, not being able to see reputation with some races and multiple other bugs that Egosoft probably considers to be features.

[ConCorDian]

because its a matter of "where does it end"

once you start using the script editor, or cheat engines to give you hard to get ships... it becomes a situation of well whats the harm in just one more.... or saying to yourself "aww bugger it ill give myself the last 100k i need for the upgrade" therefore staying vanilla saves the hastle... dont start you cant go overboard

[Morkonan]

.., but then you have to put up with various annoyances such as 25km comm range, not being able to see reputation with some races and multiple other bugs that Egosoft probably considers to be features.

Well, those are "features."

The 25k comm limit contributes to the illusion of scale for sectors and acts as one of the numerous small goals that contribute to the gaming experience. Yes, having to travel within 25k of the target you wish to communicate with is a "goal." (Usually with little impact, but can be a great deal more if there are hostiles between you and the objective.)

It also prevents the trivialization of sectors, once you get a jump-drive. Otherwise, all you'd have to do is spend your day hopping around the map, checking out all the missions and selecting the ones you wanted, then hop around again. Being able to do that might seem like it'd be very convenient. But, it would actually trivialize all the work gone into building the sectors and populating them. If you had unlimited comm range, sectors would become "Switchboards" for Missions, rather than 3D space you often had to navigate in order to reach a goal.

The hidden reputation helps fuel the "Unknown Factor." You can never be sure what your reputation with the Pirates actually is. When you see a hostile pirate flight, you don't necessarily know if its because of just a random number generator or you've done something to tick off a Pirate faction, in general. Having Unknowns in the game, just so long as it does not directly relate to the player's direct actions in a big way, is necessary in order to give the term "game" some meaning. As the Pirate factions are ancillary to the player's normal gameplay (and provide a bit of enjoyment on the side for some) having them with unknown reputation levels works out fine. If, for instance, the major races had unknown reputation levels, players would quickly become frustrated and would not see the impact their actions had in the game. So, in that case, players need the feedback. But, having a couple of factions that remain "Unknown" adds spice without hurting gameplay.

[ConCorDian]

i dont have anything against being modified, i have done it in the past after i reached a stage of end game where my own role play has basically ended... in AP at the moment i would at least like to keep it unmodified where possible. because there is still the possibility of further updates and so on where i would like to enjoy the game as is... that said modified is still going to end up where i will go in the end.

for example ive downloaded both the XTC and XRM mods for TC, purely because i cannot invision any further plots being added to the game. therefore i have played that now to the stage i dont even take that much time to complete the HUB plot... also i do personally feel that plots aside, AP is the superior sandbox game that i would prefer to role play within. but now im looking for a way to improve TC so that i will still play it, i will probably only do so now via mods though.

[Bothersome]

For people that don't want to go through a difficult challenge of getting 7 player headquarters in X3TC,... My brother offers the following game.

X3TC saved game on Slot #3 -> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/54171727/X03.sav

Game time is 1 day 8 hours with no modified flag for Vanilla X3TC. Headquarters awaits your placement on Orca ships. No tricks this time.

[p00fer]

hmm i found another cloning exploit in TC i didn;t know bout, wonder if its fixed in AP

1.-ship 1 has ware1
2.-ship 1 has instructions to transfer all or most of ware 1 to ship 2
3.-use the freight xchange ui to do the same exploit that you do in Eq docks, press home and wait for the transfer.
4.- press enter and ship 2 now has 2x the original amount of ware 1.

this just happened w.o intending it to and with E-cells, have not tested with other wares, if this wasnt fixed it could be used between a various TLs to jump the HQ around and create as much HQs as needed

[Bothersome]

And that is exactly how most people find exploits, by accident.

Tomorrow, I'm planing on releasing our exploit on this thread.

Your exploit is a different one than ours. But congratulations on finding yet another one.

Well, back to my game.

[ThommoHawk]

^ excellent news.
@ Bothersome, you know? This thread has been the most entertaining I have observed for a while. Some parts had me lol in stitches. I can't help thinking that some members comments here reached a highly agitated point due to your brother having the 'gall' to possess the username 'X3 Master Pro'. I mean how cheeky is that? But honestly, at one stage I was wishing we could all just meet at the space bar for a beer and sort out the little annoyances like the true space-pilots we all are... first round on me everyone


he grabs his coat, duck....

[ThommoHawk]

@ Bothersome: I would just wish to clarify

your downloads are as follows?

save1 = X3AP, save2 = X3AP (not confirmed in your notes about it), save3 = X3TC

is that right? (some members might overlook the TC version as the Title Subject for this whole thread is about AP - I almost started save three in AP so thought I'd mention).

[Bothersome]

That is correct ThommoHawk.

I was reluctant to put it here but it qualified because of it using the same exploit as the first two games.

And now I will post the how-to for this exploit. This thread is about 2 weeks old now. People have had plenty of time to find it for the challenge. No one has come forth and posted they found it, so I will give the answer now...

Spoiler

Show

Use a negative number when "Transfer Freight via Drone".

Yeah, I know it was long and lengthly. Hard to figure out and all. It's only been in the game since TC was released. A basic programming error made only by people in their first year programming class 101, "Handle all input".

By the way, you can use your own ship, a single ship, or a station to perform this exploit. It can copy any ware as long as you have 1 of that ware. You only need space to hold the new quantity.

It surprises me nobody else found this exploit (that I know of). It is only the simplest, most powerful, and easiest to perform, found so far.

Enjoy.

[Vayde]

Thanks for ending the riddle Bothersome, your post indicates that a simple freight drone can hold something as large as a station as long as you use a negative number for the amount of wares to transfer.

Is my assumption correct?

[Morkonan]

Nicely done!

[kurush]

hmm i found another cloning exploit in TC i didn;t know bout, wonder if its fixed in AP

This sounds like the father of CLS2 exploit, discovered originally for ware delivery missions where it is most obvious. Sadly, it can only give you regular wares and the only useful application that wouldn't qualify like plain cheating is cloning of PALC. I wonder if the EQ overtune exploit still alive in TC 3.2? Definitely fixed in AP.

A basic programming error made only by people in their first year programming class 101, "Handle all input".

Says somebody who probably didn't write any usable code in his lifetime... Considering the sorry state of all those legacy tools that scripters have to use with X3, it is amazing that we are getting a functional product at all.
With the actual exploit revealed, I'm now wondering if bothersome brothers™ will manage to remain as entertaining as they were without it

[p00fer]

wow, just poofed 30 Lt's this way, for it to work with ST youd need 2 TLs i guess since i cant get them to appear in the menu between the TL and my ship or the freight drone for that matter

This sounds like the father of CLS2 exploit, discovered originally for ware delivery missions where it is most obvious. Sadly, it can only give you regular wares and the only useful application that wouldn't qualify like plain cheating is cloning of PALC. I wonder if the EQ overtune exploit still alive in TC 3.2? Definitely fixed in AP.

yes it still works in 3.2,

[ThommoHawk]

Kudos to Bothersome, and X3 Master Pro: I was at some stage tempted to offer $100* just for you to keep this a secret forever just so I could sit back and be further entertained by some impatient and rather frustrated probing/prodding that was going on here on by some (you know who you are folks ). Myself, I would never have worked that one out. i have never used a freight drone...

still not sure I understand all the minus number bit but that is a start for me...

To be honest I am just as impressed by the CAG setup and the neat, precise way everything is working.... if not more so...

Anyhow imo you were absolutely entitled to do this your way, thanks and cheers.

*as an iou atm unfortunately.

[DHSkully]

Oh dear Oh dear Oh dear!!! There seems to be 244 Point Singularity Projectors in my Mamoth OOOPS!!! was going to be 500 as a test but the size of the item only allows 244 with the other bits in the hold. That was from 1 in my Hyp, transfered to Mamoth. On a side note I tried it a total of 6 times with Missiles ect to a Drake and the Frieght Drone count goes up with each transfer. So I have 7 Drones now not 1

[p00fer]

definetly explains the supereasy start, get 1 hammerhead, (vol is 1), super clone it, has 2 bill in 10 mins....takes longer to sell the whole thing...

[Bothersome]

Kudos to Bothersome, and X3 Master Pro: I was at some stage tempted to offer $100* just for you to keep this a secret forever just so I could sit back and be further entertained by some impatient and rather frustrated probing/prodding that was going on here on by some (you know who you are folks ).
___

To be honest I am just as impressed by the CAG setup and the neat, precise way everything is working.... if not more so...

Anyhow imo you were absolutely entitled to do this your way, thanks and cheers.

Thanks for the kind words. It would have had to been released eventually to proove that I was not full of BS and that it did actually exist. I was just hoping someone else could find it and post it here instead of me providing the answer.

And just as you pointed out above, the exploit is nothing in accomplishment compared to what is offered in game #1. And even in game #2, there is a unique challenge offered to the community that is not offered in any of the standard starts. Now that everyone knows the exploit, it will be interesting if others will create starts that have something unique about their games.

I wonder if any apologies will come from those that were insinuating that I was lying about it's existence?

This is probably the most interesting thread on the forum right now, but as some other poster would say, there's "nothing to see here." Who laughing now?

[ConCorDian]

since it is yourself that has posted it i will congradulate you and as i said i would i will appologise...

for any comments i have made that made out you were cheating in some way to achieve this i am sorry...

and thank you for the exploit...

[GeminiFire]

@Bothersome Brothers

Kudos on the exploit and one of the most entertaining "Dangling Carrot" threads I have ever seen on here...

We all take our "X Worlds" seriously, some more serious than others...

I have been a long-time player, but never advanced my game enough to see a PHQ, UFJD, ARAN and a lovely collection of Major Ships to experiment with. Thank you for SAVE1 & SAVE2...

SAVE2 is a nice clean start, with a major jump forward, almost too fast.
I realize that the Infrastructure required to support even 1 PHQ is massive, but usually sorted by the Quest Requirements. I have yet to study SAVE1, but i am very interested in techniques at that scale, and many have commented on the structure. Looking forward to learning quite a bit.... KUDOS to both....

Can you help me with one little thing? SAVE2 starts in an Unknown Sector with no Gates that I have been able to find. Ergo, I cannot find my way back after i jump out. There are several PHQ's in that sector storage.
I realize that there are 3 PHQ in storage a Legends Home, and that will probably be enough to start an advanced game.

Anyway Thanx for the entertainment and the Savegames to study...

GF