I really wish I had kept a journal of this game, as if I could remember all the details, I think this would have been a much more interesting story, and I could kind of tell it like a DID story, which I've never tried to do a good story like some of the classics, instead of this generalized 'what happened'.
Usually when I start a game in X3, my ultimate goal is to get friendly with everybody, build up a huge trading empire, Construct a MASSIVE infrastructure to provide anything and everything I could ever need in the game, than start building huge fleets, for my eventual takeover of the galaxy.
Amazing how you feel so much pride when you lower your expectations (and personal limitations) and go for a new strategy.
Since the Terran plot update, I've started a new style of game, for me anyway. Here were my limitations.
-Terran Commander Start
-Stockmarket is fine, no exploiting it though. (Live on Naturals, no Nvidium cheats pretty much)
-I Must always stay highest hatred of Argon.
-(knowing how the Argon plot turns out), once an expected thing in the plot happens, I must turn boron full hated, until than, build zero rep with them.
-Within 1 day, start collecting and training marines (They would be needed)
-Zero stations designed for income. Only 1 supporting complex (this one was SOOO hard for me!!!! I"m used to dozens, if not >100 complexes by lategame).
-Game's only running when I'm at the keyboard. Zero overnight Seta (not that I"d need it, as I have no UT's or complexes selling.
Ultimate Goal: Board a Boreas by any means necessary, outfit it and Destroy the Shipyard in Omicron Lyrae. I"m out to destroy the Main Argon War effort staging area (in warzone sectors of course).
The starting ship is soooo slow. Not a fan of the Katana. Ran missions and got a springblossom asap. Really hate Experimental EMPC's and EMPC's in general, which makes me not a fan of the Springblossom, but it made a great ship to scout out the universe, and especially great for getting past Omicron Lyrae that early in.
I had 8 Marines in the cooker in Empire's Edge by 12 hours in. Took like 8 days to get them all up and running (WAAAAY too long imo). I kept searching for initially 20, but think I had 25ish by the end. Mostly Paranid, but some Split and Teladi too. Learned a valuable lesson, just put them in at normal training, as advanced is expensive, and a huge waste of time.
Once I had Springblossom, my early plans were simple: Make money quickly.
I ran the crap out of missions. Got a really lucky early mission from Paranid to return a Minotaur. Sold it for good cash decently early in. I was lowish rank, I think my fight rank was around Instructor, so trade rank was prob in the same numerical range.
I than went back with enough cash I felt was comfortable to run the Plot. Got the whole schbang knocked out in about 2 play sessions. Could have been one, but I had to spend hours running missions to make money to buy a TL to pick up the HQ.
So by this point, I'm probably about 6 game days in, I had about 20 million to my name, a Terran PHQ aboard a TL parked in Saturn (with no clue where to put it yet), a ton of Marines training, which was eating up a lot of my cash, and a huge Galaxy to explore.
So what should I do now? Well, that Argon are hitting the Warzones pretty good (in fact, there was quite a few times that they controlled all sectors except Jupiter). Let's take this fight to their home turf.
I went Hunting Argons for hours in all sectors in the Argon Prime region. And I don't mean just war ships. I'm playing here by the mentality of "If it's Red, it's Dead". Not so much as a transport survived. I was a true badass in my Springblossom. I felt like I was singlehandedly going to win the War for Earth. This was, of course, until those big, scary Rapid Response Fleets would show up, Minotaurs spamming 100's of missiles at me in a matter of seconds, at which point I would, of course, take the tried and true method of RASLG (Running Away, Screaming Like Girl).
Having time to kill until marines are ready, I moved down into the Paranid region, worked up some rep, than did the same with Teladi and Split, over several play sessions.
Finally, my First 8 marines were ready and I moved back to Argon Space, searching for my first M6 target, a standard Centaur. He was about to have a bad day. I had a TM standing by in Mars with a crew of 3 fighters on board, all carrying jumpdrives, and a hold full of power cells. Capped him with no losses, jumped him out with my jump drive, than I moved to the next sector, called in my TM, and grabbed a fresh jump drive and ecells, and moved along.
Over the next 3 or 4 days I boarded roughly 15 M6's (including about 1 Hyperion Vanguard just for me) and 4 TM's for easy training for some of my marines, since over this time, most of them finished up in the cooker.
I also started my supporting complex. A nice little self sufficient flail and hammer plex, that I built in Pluto. I also ended up setting up my HQ in Uranus. About a day gametime later, the majority of the rest of the troops were ready, and it was time to move up to the big leagues.
I purchased a Cobra from the Split, outfitted it shields I had been collecting since day 2-3 (also storing 2GJ shields, and PPC's and FAA's for my eventual capture of my Borias).
To sum it up, over the next 2-3 hours, I boarded 2 Titans, 2 Colossus', and my Coveted Boreas.
Unfortunately, I hadn't collected enough PPC's to fully outfit the front 3 batteries of the Boreas, but I got enough CIG's to fill a bank, with PPC's in the front and right Banks (which ultimately is all ya really need) and enough FAA's to finish the other 3 sets, mostly from the spoils of the 2 titans.
I repaired it, outfitted what I could, loaded it up with mosquitoes and ecells, and took the ole girl out for a spin. First, It was putting the trusty pandora tunings to use, picking up mostly rudder optimizations, I ended up with a 75.6 m/s Boreas, with a 2.0 rpm turning.
I've spent the last 2 real days of play time hopping warzone to warzone, destroying everything, than hopping out when shields were looking rough (every time due to the obsessive use of missiles by the AI RRF). Otherwise, nothing else was hardly scratching me, I was nearly invincible.
Finally, about an hour ago, I made my go into Omicron Lyrae. I didn't think I'd make it far, but not only did I wipe out every M2, M1, M6, M7, M8 in the sector, but I went to town on the Shipyard.
I got it down to 33% before the RRF came in to utterly Mollest me via missiles. It took me about 5 different reloads at this point to clear the sector again, each time ending in failure. 1 Boreas, even in player hands, loaded with 500 Mosquitoes on Missile Defense just didn't stand a chance vs 2 Minotaurs.
So what can I do: It's time to fight fire with fire. I brought in my Cobra, fired every Hammer I have in Salvos at those Minotaurs, at the Titans, at the Missile Platforms, at the Colossus': NOTHING survived! I wasn't letting these suckers jump away....yet again!
At that point, I frolicked through the Daisy fields in the nice, quiet enemy sector of Omicron Lyrae, poured every ounce of juice my ship's capacitor had, and blew that shipyard to kingdom come!
This was, without a doubt, one of the most fun, worry-free gamestarts I've ever had, all because I removed 90% of the micro management from the game, and just decided to blow shit up!
Total Boardings: 24
Total Flying Time: 12 days, 7 hours and some change.
-Lazerius
