[X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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fig
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[X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

Post by fig » Sat, 2. May 20, 15:17

Today is the day.

It's taken 109 game days but I've got there: 100% Xtreme combat & trade, and 100% maximum race ranks. You can't get the Goner rank to 100%, there is no way to do it, but I've done the rest. I'm super-happy that it's all over now, but it was a lot of fun. I am wondering if I should upload my game stats now, or wait a bit longer until I've finished the rest of my game goals? I've still got things to do, and I think I'll keep playing a little bit longer. Maybe, I'll finish at 115 game days or so. At least that's what I'm thinking of doing.

Image


My thoughts about the experience:

I think that when they were writing X2, the developers (and testers) got the balance of everything just right. Moving up through the fight levels takes time, and it takes increasingly longer to level up at each step. Eventually, the only way to keep your combat rank going up is to kill Xenon and Khaak capital ships, and kill lots of them. You can see your progress with every kill though, and the goal is always in sight.

Getting to Xtreme trade takes far longer, and I'm sure that it would be impossible without the trick of selling weapons to equipment docks that don't stock them. That way, you can build hundreds of weapons forges and have somewhere to sell the weapons they produce. That, along with the addition of somewhat over-powered player ships (namely the pegasus and the Xenon K) kept me playing until I made it to the Xtreme trade rank. The strafe drive is another thing that gives the player an unfair advantage, but without it, and the pegasus, the K and the equipment dock trick, X2 wouldn't be half as much fun.

After I had got to Xtreme combat and trade, I did think about whether it would be possible to get the race ranks to 100%. It's a lot lot harder than getting to Xtreme trader though. At high level, the only two missions that make any difference to the race ranks are XI missions and assassinations. Assassinations give you a lot more than XI missions but it's still very slow going. Once you get to the top tier with a race, it takes roughly between 10 and 20 assassinations for that race to get a further 1% increase. So, to get to 100% for all the races, you need to complete thousands of assassination missions!

Thankfully, assassination missions pay better than all the other missions, with the exception of XIs, so they are worth doing. They are fun too. At Xtreme level, assassination missions spawn an M2 and M6 escorts. The M2s are basically all the same, but the M6s have personality. The Split Dragons go down fast, but they have enough fire power to hurt you, if you are not careful. They are also the only M6s that are a significant threat to your freighters. The dragons often go after your other ships, and it's annoying as hell. The Paranid M6s are not as dangerous as the dragons, but they dodge and weave away from your fire far more than any of the others, so they take the longest to get rid of. Every time one of their pilots says "Now feel the heat of Paranid weapons", I almost burst out laughing. If they had actually brought Paranid weapons with them, I might have been worried! The Hydras are a bit strange, and they are a little bit hard to kill (although not as hard as the Nemeses) because they tend to get quite close, so you have to make sure that you keep your distance to stop them from ramming into you. The Ospreys are tough as anything, but they are so slow that you can get two (or even three) of your K's turrets to lock on to them. Their extra 125MW shield makes no difference when you can hit them with that much firepower. Like the dragons, they have enough fire power of their own to hurt you though, if you're not careful. You can sometimes lock three turrets onto Centaurs too, but that doesn't usually happen. They are more often than not dead before all the turrets can lock on. The Centaurs are cannon-fodder, and have no redeeming qualities! I'm extra happy when an assassination mission is for an Argon target: the mission is super-easy and usually over very quickly. You can do the assassinations OOS too, and I usually do if the target spawns in a different sector. You still get the same reputation points for the kill. You need to watch the combat though, otherwise there's a much larger chance of losing one of your ships.I've found that two Ks work well for doing this. If you make sure they are attacking together, and at least one of them is targeting the M2, it works just fine. With the Teladi, you'll need both Ks attacking the M2, and even then you can still lose a destroyer occassionally (but it doesn't happen very often). Just make sure you save before the start of the fight. You have to micro it a bit as well: once the M2 dies, you'll need to re-issue the attack order, otherwise your Ks will just sit there and let the M6s destroy them.

Even though getting the 100% race ranks was the main goal of my game, I'm not finished yet. Over the last year or so, I've made a few other goals that I want to complete. Those are going to take some time too. I won't add any more new goals though, I want to play X3 and X4 now, so I can't let my X2 game take too much longer...
Last edited by fig on Sat, 2. May 20, 18:29, edited 3 times in total.

Alan Phipps
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Re: [X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

Post by Alan Phipps » Sat, 2. May 20, 16:03

Well done, and if you are uploading stats then all done in vanilla too. :)
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Re: [X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

Post by jlehtone » Sat, 2. May 20, 16:42

Well done.
fig wrote:
Sat, 2. May 20, 15:17
Even though getting the 100% race ranks was the main goal of my game, I'm not finished yet. Over the last year or so, I've made a few other goals that I want to complete. Those are going to take some time too.
I know that feeling. What an evil plan they had, letting us invent our own goals. :lol:
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fig
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Re: [X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

Post by fig » Sun, 3. May 20, 12:13

Thanks guys. I have uploaded my stats now. I'll upload them again when I finally stop playing.

One of the biggest bugs in X2 is that the game not only gives you ludicrous rewards for completing Xenon invasion missions, it sometimes keeps spawning them until you accept one. This little feature has made me the richest man in the X2 universe! :D

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Re: [X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

Post by jlehtone » Sun, 3. May 20, 16:38

One thing is the difference of what the reward is said to be and what is actually added to your account. Significant, but nothing to worry about. There is no IRS to check your books. :wink:


An idea of XI is that when a mission becomes available, it can be seen on every BBS of every station within short range (3 jumps?) from the threatened sector. This is logical; the call for help should be wide and open.

IIRC, that part was semi-ok. In X3R, before version 2.0, this definitely had a variant bug: once the message was added to BBS, it did not expire for a long time and not by accepting the mission on another station.
See where that gets you? You see the XI mission. You don't take it, but visit every BBS in the region. Now many stations have that mission. You take one and complete it. You take the next and complete it. ...
If a long time passes and untaken mission is still on a BBS, the game moved to "next mission". Say, you had seen a message about XI on BHS. You wait, then take it. By now there is "active invasion", but it is in Getsu Fune. You get to fight (in GF) and get the reward, but you are thanked for saving BHS.
All that was fixed in X3R 2.0.


Back to X2. The worst bug in XI.
You dock and visit BBS. You don't take it and don't undock either. The BBS replicates the mission message. Rapidly and endlessly. I bet that in no time that BBS has more messages than it can store and that there is no overflow guard. A CTD would be nice. Silent corruption of your game (next save) is not.
After discovering that, I started to undock immediately, when seeing XI mission. That stops the replication. Then it is possible to redock safely, or better yet fly to optimal station for accepting the mission (i.e. next to the Xenon jump-point).


X3AP has a slight bug too, probably due to how the Mission Director (MD) acts. You get "hard XI". In X3AP the Xenon enter from Gate. It is possible to wipe out first batch before the next Capital ship jumps in. (Gates are bad, okay?) The concludes that the mission is now complete. I've had some 3 K/J pop in after the "All clear, thanks!".

fig wrote:
Sat, 2. May 20, 15:17
So, to get to 100% for all the races, you need to complete thousands of assassination missions!
I see from your stats that your math is good. 8)
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Re: [X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

Post by fig » Sun, 3. May 20, 17:27

Now many stations have that mission. You take one and complete it. You take the next and complete it. ...
I'm currently trying to clear a whole load of these. I didn't do it on purpose, but I've somehow got myself about 10 stations with 5 XI missions each. It's going to take a while to clear them!

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Re: [X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

Post by fig » Sun, 3. May 20, 17:42

I see from your stats that your math is good.
It comes from checking your stats after every assassination mission, hoping that you'd get that 1% gain with the kill!
Each mission has two races: one for the supplier of the mission and one for the target (e.g. The paranid want you to kill a Boron). It's not obvious to me which race gets the reputation boost for the kill. It feels like it's picked randomly, or perhaps you actually get a reputation boost with both of them. I don't know. The only thing I do know is that your reputation with other races isn't affected, or, if it is, it's only a very small drop or gain.

The devs made a mistake with the math at the end. At the highest race rank, there is no 99%: it jumps from 98% to 100%. They must have rounded 99% up to 100% or something, because going from 98% to 100% only took the same time amount of time as 97% to 98% (and all the other 1% gains).

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Jimmyjamjohnson42
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Re: [X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

Post by Jimmyjamjohnson42 » Fri, 8. May 20, 13:43

Wow congratulations!
with that many credits i cant even imagine the amount of factories, traders and fighters you have in your command!
I play X2 a lot, possibly too much.
800 hours and counting :P

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Re: [X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

Post by jlehtone » Fri, 8. May 20, 20:48

Jimmyjamjohnson42 wrote:
Fri, 8. May 20, 13:43
with that many credits i cant even imagine the amount of factories, traders and fighters you have in your command!
fig's entry in https://www.egosoft.com/games/x2/statistics_en.php says: 2776 stations and 5965 ships

(Can't remember whether Satellites or Fighter Drones count as ships too.)

If you refer to 1 billion with "that many credits" -- those ships, stations, (and wares) are worth 84 billion ...
A trueblood Teladi would be irritated by a billion credits laying idle: Reinvest quickly, for more profitsss!!! :teladi:
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Re: [X2] Full house (100% Xtreme and 100% race ranks)

Post by fig » Sun, 10. May 20, 13:07

2776 stations and 5965 ships
The stations are scattered around the universe, but...

Red light is my energy and crystal production facility. I have two TLs that are used to collect the E-cells and crystals (two TS ships pick them up from the stations and deliver them to the TLs) . The TLs are parked next to the East gate, so I can easily transfer the E-cells and crystals to another TL when I need them for something. This is really useful when you start building in a new sector. Barren shores is an energy and silicon production facility. Much the same as in red light, there is a TL at one of the gates that collects the excess silicon. This comes in handy to get crystal fabs started too.

Ghinn's Escape and Home of Opportunity are my main weapons production facilities (GHEPTs, BPPC, GPPC and 125MW shields). These all get delivered to a TL in Hila's Joy. Xenon Ks that I capture are sent there and equipped.
Wastelands, Mi Ton's Refuge, one of the Unkown Enemy Sectors, and a few other sectors, also produce weapons that I collect and sell for profits.

My trading fleet is mostly Spilt Scorpions and Caimans. I figure that the faster ships are the best ones, although I lose too many Scorpions to Khaak Scouts and the M6s from assassination missions. I'm thinking of using Mambas instead of Scorpions in future, they might be more robust and they are not much slower than the Scorpions. I have about 30-40 UTs too and these are all home based to a TL. This is important because when they stop trading (due to damage, or Khaak clusters appearing), you don't want to be looking through the log to find out where they are.

My war fleet consists of 600 dragons and 470 Xenon Ks. The goal is to make that 600 Ks and give each of them a dragon as escort. I try to have two of the Ks in each sector, either on patrol or set to attack all enemies. This is to keep the Khaak at bay and for doing assassinations OOS. Most of the others don't do very much, except for guarding Black Hole Sun and Thynn's Abyss. They are handy when I find XI missions, 20-30 Ks are fantastic for doing Xenon invasion missions OOS! At some point I'm going to put about 100 of them in X472 and see if that will work to quickly clear up the Xenon when the ship yard re-spawns. I'd been dealing with the shipyard re-spawn myself, but I think I'd like to have that automated too now!

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