Odds and Ends

[Bill Huntington]

Rep tips:

1. You can gain easy rep by taking station defense missions and letting the local forces kill the attackers. You lose no rep with the ones that are killed. You should check that there local forces available, otherwise this is an easy winner. Sometimes you can get lucky when the attackers are fast and simply crash on the target station.

2. You can get to a Trading Station or Equipment Dock and trade items back and forth to gain rep. That can be a whole level at lower levels or that last few percentage points at higher levels. After a rep gain you have to undock then redock to repeat. You can use available item, even repeating with that item.


Upgrade tactic.

Problem: You have the money and rep to upgrade your ship, if you could include the money that your current ship would bring. But you can't sell the ship that you are actually in.

Solution: Dump stuff you'll want in your new ship, but not too close to the SY. Bail. Dock as an Astronaut in the SY. Dock your current ship. Sell it. Buy upgrade ship. Undock as an Astronaut. Tell the new ship to follow you. Stop it ASAP. Enter new ship. Pick up dumped items and software. (You can dump software too.)


Gate trivia:

You can enter the back side of the Earth Accelerators just like a Jump Gate.

You can deploy a Station through the Gate surface so that it projects to the other side; not to the next sector but within the same sector. You will cause the crash of any ship entering or exiting that gate if you are present in the sector. If there is another gate in the sector, you can enter and exit the sector as you choose. Collisions are turned off if you are OOS.



You can make unlimited $ in TC with Nividium Mining. This feature is limited in AP. The easiest way to use the feature are the small Niv asteroids in Seizewell at (-4.5, -8.5, 17.6). You have a SY in the sector and an Equipment Dock that sells the Ore Collector and Special software, all that you need for ship to collect Niv. Kingdom End has similiar small Niv asteroids but no Ore Collectors for sale. There are a lot of mistakes to make with Niv mining.


In TC at least, going below altitude -10 in Rhy's Desire puts a ship or station in atmospheric conditions leading to continuous shield loss and even hull loss.


Pilots, what are your little tricks and observations?

[Alan Phipps]

When being attacked by a patrol of several fighters that could seriously risk your ship's survival of the dogfight, put all your attack damage (missiles and guns) into the patrol leader to try to kill it as quickly as you can. If you can do that quickly enough, the rest of the patrol *may* just briefly stop in confusion while they work out who is in charge now and what to do next.

That situation provides you with an opportunity to run away, to recharge shields or to go on to cause even more casualties amongst the enemy.

This tactic is even more effective if the leader happens to bail before you have had to do enough damage to destroy it!

[RainerPrem]

Hi,

You can make unlimited $ in TC with Nividium Mining. This feature is limited in AP.

you can make unlimited $ in AP with Nividium you have once mined and put into a freighter. Jump between two sectors with Teladi exchanges and deal in Nividium shares instead of the real material. This is much faster than in TC.

cu
Rainer

[Greenhorn]

Hi players, In ap, want to get nividium, go to ( aladna Hill ) 31.8, 8.08, 27.0, from east gate, go directly north 20-27km distance.

In ap, want to increase your sector-traders training ,give it a Trade Command Software MK3,trading system extension,jumpdrive,best selling /best buy locator and take it to (( empire's edge )).

odds - ovoid slaves/spaceflies/Disintegrator Rifles, as there hard to get.

[Sinxar]

Early game if you need a cash injection look for these missions in pirate sectors:
[ external image ] [ external image ]

You will need a cargo scanner which can be bought at many pirate bases. The best place to take these missions is in "pirate alley" (from Split Fire to Hatikvah's Faith) as there is a lot of through traffic.

The key to these missions is to scan everything, since it is a pirate sector, nobody cares. Everything counts. Not uncommon to get a reward of 10 mil or greater if the sectors are very busy!

[jlehtone]

The Race Response Fleets are more brave than me.

I have rebound the Docking Computer, Jumpdrive, Unfocused Jumpdrive and SETA to easy-to-reach single-keys. (Keyboard and/or stick.)

UFJD needs no target selection; one click is easier in the heat of combat, when the good captain's focus should not be on Gate descriptions.

The bravery of RRF -- is to jump out of combat with more hull damage than yours truly wants to weld.

[palzxc]

Missiles not only have a max speed but an acceleration stat as well.
They always start their flight with the speed of the launcher ship at the time of the launch.
Then they will either accelerate or decelerate at a steady rate until they reach their designated speed.
(In my opinion missiles are wrongly implemented but that's another conversation)

If you are flying a fast ship you can use that feature to make slow missiles go faster for a short while, increasing the chance to land a hit before they are flakked.
This is particularly useful when flying overtuned corvetes as the heaviest missiles (hammerhead) will damage the launcher M3-5.

Think an afterburner equipped Terran corvete, or a Hyperion armed with wraiths, shooting them at an M2 or M1 at a close range, preferably top or bottom.

Even better, during combat missions, when the RRF are pounding on a hostile M2s or M1s, hold on to your missiles until the target's hull is really low.
Then shoot a wraith, or other torpedo class heavy duty missile at a close-range-high-speed pass and steal the kill!

For that to work well enough you will need to be aware of the target's hull points at the remaining hull percentage.
For example, a Xenon K has 6,000,000 hull points at a 100% integrity, which means that at 20% hull integrity (1,200,000 hit points) a wraith ( 8 x 125,000 = 1,000,000) would not finish her off but a hammerhead (1,250,000) would do just fine at stealing the kill.

[Jimmy C]

Bored of the Load Screen's pictures? Transfer your own screenshots into X3TC or X3AP's loadscr folder for more variety!

X3TC: x3 terran conflict\loadscr\

X3AP: x3 terran conflict\addon\loadscr\

For screenshots, open the Screenshots app in Steam for the game, choose "Show on Disk" for the shots on your machine and copy into the loadscr folder.

You probably also need to rename the pics to loadscrnnnnn.jpg following the pattern of the other pics names.

[RAVEN.myst]

(Dark) Hearts and (devious) Minds
=====================

Players may sometimes, for whatever reason, decide that they don't want to be at odds with the pirates (be it to facilitate undisturbed universal trading, to pursue profits in the illicit markets, or for some other purpose.) Sometimes, however, there are those stubborn last few pirate ships that simply refuse to play nice no matter how many missions you do for them, no matter how many stations you build for them. However, there are methods for changing the minds of such recalcitrant reprobates.


General info:
--------------
The pirate faction is both monolithic AND fragmented, meaning that while they share global solidarity (they typically won't attack each other), they are not a single entity, but rather divided into several "sub-factions" or perhaps "clans" that are determined by location, and which are not shown explicitly anywhere (in vanilla.) The main centres are Hatikvah's Faith (based at Anarchy Port), LooManck Strat's Legacy (Anarchy Port), and Gaian Star (TC: Pirate Base, AP: Prate Stock Exchange.) Duke's Buccaneers (based in the sector known as Lasting Vengeance in AP) may also be such a "clan", possibly in charge of Vestibule of Creation and Veil of Delusion, but I am not sure. When currying favour with pirates, you need to understand that if you make nice with any of those, you will gain reputation (not explicitly shown in-game) with that particular splinter, and over time you may get a much smaller benefit rippling out to the others. This means that to make peace with all the pirates, you will need to make efforts in all three (or four) of those regions. But often, that will still not be enough for those last few red-marked hotheads....

Terran Conflict
-----------------
In X3TC, once you are confident that a particular pirate ship (or more likely, group of ships) ought to be getting along with you, the way to try to sway them is to use the freight scanner on them. For some reason, this is likely to turn them blue - maybe it makes them realise that, just like them, you have a freight scanner and you're not afraid to use it, and cargo privacy laws don't concern you. Or perhaps it's just the universal pirate greeting. Often, you will see the whole ship group that your target is a member of, suddenly accepting you. Sometimes, however, it won't work and you will have to try a different member of that group; finding the flight leader doesn't seem to be necessary (I recently scanned an angry Galleon to no avail, then I tried it on one of the Kestrels accompanying, and the Galleon and both Kestrels became chummy.) The change of demeanour takes a few seconds to happen, so be patient, and be CAREFUL: you may need to dodge a few shots, and be sure that your turrets won't be returning any incoming fire, or that will undo your efforts.

Albion Prelude
----------------
In X3AP, the method is completely different. Again, we are assuming that you are confident that the ship/s in question should already be friendly but isn't. The way to force the game to update this variable is to view that red ship from a different sector, which means you'll need some presence in that sector - a satellite will do, or another of your ships in that sector will usually do just as well. Bear in mind that this method updates the relationship attitude, so if you have annoyed the pirates lately, doing this may turn blue ones red. This method works not just on pirates, but is also a simple way to fix those annoying lasertowers that stay red after you have made friends with the faction that owns them; simply drop a satellite in that sector, leave the sector, then look into it - this last is important, as the update will ONLY happen when you actively look into the sector from OoS. This method also works on temporarily annoyed police forces, or those that are red to you and don't offer an apology dialogue option, and may sometimes work on rapid response ships, too.

[Snafu_X3]

You can make unlimited $ in TC with Nividium Mining.

It's time-consuming farming in TC as there are only 3 (? I think) stations that'll take more than 8 units of Nv at a time: your HUB, PTNM HQ in Ore Belt & PTNM HQ in it's eponymous sector; all the other stations will only take 8 at a time if they take any at all

Filling stripped hulks with Nv then selling them off to shipyards is (to me) pushing things too far towards 'exploit'..

For the rest, see my wiki entries on generic missions (link in sig) but regardless, good call to palzxc on the missile velocity vs acceleration trick: that's a new one to me.. ditto RAVEN's notes on the various pirate splinter factions

Sinxar: the key is to target the freight scan missions to the most valuable ship/eqpt. This usually means lots of high-tech cargo or high-tech weps (ie capships) as the full value of the ship's eqpt+cargo is evaluated in these missions, rather than just its cargo. You won't lose any rep simply by scanning a ship in pirate space, so it's a good money-maker & pirate rep-builder mission to take early on while you're not hostile with anyone. You can even scan pirate capships if you find any

[RAVEN.myst]

The Highwayman Code
===============
A primer on affirmative shopping (aka "piracy")
---------------------------------------

Many players think of 'piracy' as "blowing up ships and picking through the wreckage", but there's more to it, a far better option. Yes, shooting at a ship until it goes BOOM will often result in something left floating around awaiting recovery/clean-up (hey, all you're doing is cleaning up after that litterbug that was inconsiderate enough to scatter itself across the sector, right?), the quantity and quality of the loot will be very limited in the first place, and further so by your fight rank - which means that in the early game the best that you can hope for is a missile, or a bunch of ECs or agricultural produce that you may not even be able to carry (and worth little even then!) However, the entrepreneurial alternative shopper knows that it's actually about getting the transport pilot to understand just what a good idea it would be to part with some (or most, or all!) of his/her valuables. The procedure is precise, but very simple.

WHAT you need:
- A freight scanner: this is non-negotiable, as without this your odds of a successful "persuasion" drop to just about zero.
- A ship with a substantial cargo hold can be very useful - a TM is ideal for its toughness, speed, and ability to host you in your fighter, and so is highly recommended.
- The desire to have what the other guy has.

WHO is your target:
Any freighter or even a fighter-based trader/transporter is a valid target. Ideally, you will want to target weapons dealers, military supply transports, and tech traders - these are the guys that carry the most valuable cargoes. You will mostly be looking at TS, TM, and TP ships. It is not uncommon to knock over a shipment of flak artillery arrays, photon pulse cannons, or capital-grade shields, and walk away with several million credits after a few minutes of "work". Right, now that I have your attention...
In a broader sense, you will need to pick an enemy faction, as your depredations will not make you popular with them, unless you are prepared to grind for reputation repair in-between "shopping trips". Personally, I like to play on one of the ethno-political feuds in the game, so I might, for instance, align with Argon and go after Paranid weapons dealers (just doing my part for the war effort!) or vice versa, or likewise with Split and Boron.

WHERE do you pounce:
You will want to haunt a heavily trafficked area traversed by weapons shipments. One prime spot for such is Hatikvah's Faith, where weapons shipments of all races pass through, it being something of a crossroads, and outside any sovereign jurisdiction - it's quite possible to be kept so busy here with passing trade that it's hard to keep up with collecting all the dropped loot. There are several other good locations, some of them in sovereign space, in which cases that will be a factor influencing target selection.
Whoever you pick as your "supplier" race is not going to take kindly to your attentions no matter where you are at the time, but there are other factors - does pissing them off make someone else happy? If so, you can double up and supply yourself AND build rep with you benefactors' enemy. For example, let's say you choose to be a Duke's Buccaneer of sorts - a good place to operate is Third Redemption, as there is a lot of passing traffic here, and by attacking Argon vessels you get approving nods from the Paranids.

Ok, that's all good and well, but HOW:
The method itself is simplicity itself:
- Find a suitable "candidate", as per the notes above.
- If it is already hostile to you, deal with any escorts.
- Scan its cargo. At this point, the transport may release its drones. If your target is not yet hostile to you, neither are its drones, so you can decide whether it's not worth continuing (if the cargo is crap, for example), or whether to engage immediately, or wait for the drones to expire (this last option is only for the very patient - it takes a while and will likely have you following your target to another sector - so the haul had better be worth it!) If the target is already hostile then so are its drones, and you react accordingly. This cargo scan is essential - not only does it tell you what's there, but it also makes the freighter pilot more amenable to persuasion (I guess now they know that you know what they're carrying, and "these are not the mass drivers you are looking for" is not going to fly.)
- Decide whether this is cargo you want. If it's not valuable enough, it may be simpler to just move on - merchants will not follow you at first (with the exception of hostile TMs), so if you haven't whipped out your... "credit card" yet, then you can move on without consequence - and as a bonus, no reputation is lost yet (in case that's relevant.)
- If the cargo is worthwhile, then first deal with escorts unless you have already done so. Shoot the freighter until its shields are quite damaged, then hail the ship and suggest that they are overloaded and might do better if they jettison some of that unwieldy mass. (At this point, you will take a substantial reputation hit - for some reason, the factions take a dim view of dynamic businessmen who push the envelope...) Whether the pilot cooperates depends on some sort of morale check, perhaps similar to the bailing check but MUCH more likely to succeed. And, if at first you don't succeed... well, you know the rest. In fact, that applies even if you DO succeed - you can keep demanding cargo to be dropped (occasionally tapping on their shields, so that they don't lose sight of the gravity of the situation) until there's nothing more to be jettisoned (installed equipment will never be jettisoned, only cargo.)
- Denouement: it's up to you whether to be a principled pilferer and let the vict-... SUPPLIER go with an apology (this may only work if your race relations are still good enough), or whether you are a callous cutthroat who reneges on the implicit contract of a mugging by killing the victim even after it gave up its swag (perhaps in the hope that you end up getting the ship, too!)

This sort of play can be both lucrative and entertaining, without feeling "exploity" (even when you hit the jackpot and find yourself a shipment of PPCs or 1GJ/2GJ shields to intercept). The amount of challenge can vary, as some TS freighters fly without escorts, while on the other hand a TM can, in addition to its own resilience, also be home to up to four fighters, potentially even Novas packing flamethrowers, in which case you may be in for one helluva fight!

In addition to collecting loot to sell, it's entirely viable to equip your own ships gratis in this manner. Here are examples of commonly encountered wares:
- IREs (in large numbers, sometimes 100s at a time)
- PACs (often dozens at a time)
- MDs (usually 2-4)
- IonDs (typically 1-2 at a time)
- various missiles, some useful some less so, in varying numbers (you usually won't be able to pick up an entire Mosquito shipment, unless you have a TS along for such work)
- 1MJ shields (by the truckload)
- MD ammo (by the truckload)

Less common but more lucrative:
- PPCs (up to 4?)
- FAAs (up to 4 or 5?)
- GCs (up to 4?)
- EBCs
- 1GJ shields (up to ~6?)
- 2GJ shields (2-4?)
- 200MJ shields (several)
- 25MJ shields (several+)
- Just about any other gun, depending on how common it is. Some are shipped very rarely or perhaps even never.

Very occasionally, you may find a military supply transporter carrying NavSats or AdvSats - however, these will never be dropped, so the only way to acquire them is if the target abandons ship.

With a combination of the above method and ship captures, it is entirely possible to play a game where even your ship equipment (including command softwares and jumpdrives etc) is acquired "second hand" (I say this from experience - ship upgrading was done at an Anarchy Port, no ship equipment was bought from any non-pirate source; unfortunately, you will still have to SELL to non-pirates, as not everything can be fenced at pirate bases and anarchy ports; one possible workaround is to pack for-sale items into captured ships and sell them to the Yaki shipyard, but this is tedious.)

Happy hunting (and I mean that in the truest sense of the word!)

EDIT:

Spoiler

Show

Incidentally, in the X3AP sector-acquisition plot's mission where you are required to get some Black Crystals from the Pirate Salvage Crews in Maelstrom/Mercenaries Rift, this is actually what the quest-giver is referring to when she talks about "persuading the pirates to give up the crystals" - and this method works perfectly there, in that only a single Caravel needs to be dealt with in order to get all 5 (in fact, you can get 20 from one Caravel!) of the required crystals.

[Gold Dragon]

Filling stripped hulks with Nv then selling them off to shipyards is (to me) pushing things too far towards 'exploit'..

Perhaps. But it is working as designed, and I'm not sure how one would put a cap on that without breaking the design....

[RAVEN.myst]

Filling stripped hulks with Nv then selling them off to shipyards is (to me) pushing things too far towards 'exploit'..

Perhaps. But it is working as designed, and I'm not sure how one would put a cap on that without breaking the design....

Tricky, that one - I agree with Snafu for the most part: for instance, why would a second-hand ship dealer necessarily be interested in buying up a massive shipment of a valuable (expensive) but almost unsellable mineral? And do this over and over... On the other hand, selling a ship to a pirate faction (only the Yaki have a shipyard in vanilla, unfortunately) with some stolen guns and ammo on board does make sense, especially as the price you get paid is well below market (which makes sense when fencing hot goods.) Personally, I think [well, not anymore, as you'll soon see, heheh] that the trade-in should apply to upgrades, equipment, and installed/installable weapons, shields, and munitions, but not to economic wares. But that, too, is too absolute and restrictive - because what about the once-off deal you strike with a fixer on a station, who has agreed to take a shipment of, say, soja beans or whatever, off your hands, and you deliver it wrapped in an obsoleted freighter which you are compensated for? The ship is then not even being sold to the shipyard itself per se. From a role-play perspective, that's not only valid but quite fun and even creative. And if a once-off can be envisioned, why not an ongoing supply contract, where a customer has contracted the player to provide ongoing supply of a particular ware, perhaps for a special project in the case of an "exotic" one such as nividium.

Personally, though, I avoid exploity things like the nividium packaged-sale method, mostly because it makes the game too quick and easy - I tried it out once, some years ago, and that game is memorable in being the most unsatisfying one ever, bar none. Within hours I had a fleet of mining freighters in what is now Distant Clouds (I think - it's in the SE corner of the map, near Q's Harbour and Retribution) collecting the infinite rocks from one of the NV-roids there, being collected by a CLS2 on a loop that then delivered it to TL - then, once the TL was full, I'd sell it and buy the next one! TLs, FFS! Not even freighters. Can you imagine how much you get for an Orca filled to bursting with nividium? I can't even remember, except that it was mind-boggling. Soon, with the number of mining ships I had (which I was growing very rapidly from the proceeds of the operation) I was selling off such an Orca every couple of hours, and able to buy anything I wanted, which ultimately served to cheapen every complex I built, every destroyer I outfitted, every carrier I filled up with fighters, because they were so effortless to acquire - to me, that's very boring, it's the equivalent of an infinite-money cheat (admittedly with a little more work involved, though, than just typing in a code or something.)

However, being a single-player, non-competitive game, what constitutes "cheating" is left to the player's own personal boundaries Snafu and I may find it distasteful or dubious, but someone else may find it helpful and convenient (though, imo, the human race may be heading toward conveniencing itself to extinction - but that's another story for another day! ) I may not agree with it working as intended the way it is, but it's exactly this sort of flexibility that is the thing I praise the most in the X games: the fact that the games are able to accommodate the player's imagination.

[Jimmy C]

If you're ever raiding a Xenon sector, hitting a Xenon station (or Shipyard too) with a shot will cause all the Xenon ships in the sector to stop moving. They'll still attack, they just won't move.
To be effective and of use to you, the attack should be rapid fire, long ranged and preferably from a turret, so you can still point your main guns at another target.
I first saw this effect with PALCs and they remain the best way for me to take advantage of it. PSG can also pull it off, but it's so short ranged, you can hardly move to go after another target without breaking off the attack on the station. Anything else just doesn't hit often enough to cause the ships to actually halt.

[Sinxar]

Keep an eye out for M6's being sold docked at shipyards. They are a good source of pre-trained marines!

Sometimes it is apparently easier to get ripped off than to sell your ship at the shipyard.

[ external image ]

Hmm, just a bit over half hull. Well I can't refuse a cheap Centaur.

[ external image ]

Not sure how much space fuel this guy had but it had to be a lot to just give away 2.8 million credits to some random stranger.

[Gold Dragon]

[snip]

[snip]

[long-winded snip]

I said it was Working As Intended.

I never said it was logical. (Or Non-cheaty)

Also, I don't deal in Nvidium unless it is needed for a mission, so.....

[RAVEN.myst]

Also, I don't deal in Nvidium unless it is needed for a mission

Ditto

As for "Working As Intended" - you know that for a fact? A dev told you as much? Or is it an assumption (albeit a reasonable one - otherwise, that behaviour may have been patched out...)?

Regardless, whether truly "WAI" or not, and despite how logical or not, and how "cheaty" or not it is, I have to admit (as mentioned in my earlier post) that it DOES provide personal role-playing possibilities (to justify using the exploit, but still...) I think that, given the option, I prefer it to be the way it is - I don't have to use it if I don't want to, after all