LU vs SWLU vs Mayhem: which should I pick?

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DaRookie
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LU vs SWLU vs Mayhem: which should I pick?

Post by DaRookie » Thu, 22. Oct 20, 16:48

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear X-Fans,

I am currently on holidays, lying by the pool and thinking about how to handle my recent X-itch after I am back home.

I do have x4 which I have been playing after in was released in 2018 but shelved it after few hours since it felt quite incomplete. I came back after 3.3 release and purchased Split Vendetta and added some mods. The game is great, but still feels incomplete somehow. I do enjoy it, but it feels like I should wait for the next expansion to thoroughly enjoy it.

Now I am thinking about starting a new X3 game but with a total overhaul mod. Now my actual question is. Which one
should I choose?

Here is my short list:
1)Litcube... I have never played it, everyone seems to love it. I don’t like the fact that it has a fake economy (after playing X4). But my main Rival, the Phanom Corp actually does have actual economy and overall it sounds like a fun concept.

2) SWLU... I love Star Wars and that in LU universe sounds like a perfect combo. BUT, what I still don’t understand is how far the immersion goes. Does the mod simply make SW ships buyable and adds some sectors where the SW factions have their shipyards but leaves all the other vanilla sectors and factions, or does it actually replace all of the vanilla factions with SW stuff and let’s them fight each other for space?

3) Mayhem 3.... sounds like an very interesting concept but also like I should play litcube first before jumping into Mayhem 3.

What do you think about my thoughts? :)

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Hector0x
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Re: LU vs SWLU vs Mayhem: which should I pick?

Post by Hector0x » Fri, 23. Oct 20, 08:45

It depends a lot on what you personally like :)
And i would even consider Mayhem 2.

LU has the most freedom of all mods in this list. You can play small and ignore or even disable the "big" enemies like Phanon. There aren't any major restrictions for you. It's feels the most like a true sandbox.
Playing LU can be a bit shallow, because there are no story missions and the universe doesn't change much. Certain factions send patrols to fight each other, but this has no impact. Really almost the only allure is your huge rise to power. From just 1 tiny ship to massive fleets. Dogfighting has its limits and you need to build a huge economy and huge fleets if you want to "beat the game". How you do this is up to you, but you are basically just grinding for credits and then stack up more and more factories up to the thousands. Your economy gets artificially big, but you kind of need it to match the power of a foe with OP ships which respawn quite frequently. You can't do much against them until you got these massive fleets for a series of final battles. 90% of your playthrough will be buildup and credit grind. Once you figure out the best ways to grind credits, you tend to focus on these methods to make faster progress. Go for LU if you want to safely build an empire your own way and without many surprises.

SWLU is LU with Star Wars ships. But you also get other additions like (artificial) warzones, hidden goodies and better flavored gamestarts. There is a submod Galaxy in Chaos which changes the map to SW sectors and a submod for faction wars and sector takeover (improved races). But this is implemented in a "hacky" way. It is not part of the core balancing.
Go for SWLU if you like to play LU with SW content. If this is not immersion breaking for you, then there is no way to choose standart LU. I believe it also has more bugfixing. (SWLU is the only mod i didn't play myself)

Mayhem is empire building with a lot of restrictions and in a dynamic environment. Your freedom gets limited a lot and you can't really play small. Many features are locked behind, or depend on empire building.
At the same time empire building scales back in quantity. Less factories, slightly smaller fleets in general. You're not multiplying the same factories all over. There are subgoals and strategic considerations with sacrifices.you have to make.

Your economy is more complex since you need various resources instead of just credits. You can't link stations, so all goods have to be moved physically.

A real gamechanger is a hard factory limit for each sector. This is what slowly drives you into conflict with others.

Faction wars are integrated natively and change the universe over time.

Go for Mayhem if you like more varied empire building with surprises and challenges on the way.


Mayhem 3 takes your standart jumpdrive away. Your movement is heavily restricted. Logistics and warfare are impacted a lot from this (more complicated) The economy is simplified, but for the first time actually connected to shipbuilding for every faction. And it's harder to manage without universal jumpdrives on your freighters. A main allure of Mayhem 3 is that NPC's play by the same rules as you and their fleet construction can be impacted with the economy.

Go for Mayhem 3 if you want the most strategic experience. But only if you don't mind very complex logistics and low mobility.
If you still want to be able to jump around the univere and have more interesting "early game action stuff", consider Mayhem 2. I don't think you need LU experience, as many commands and concepts are vastly different. You'd have to relearn most things again.

Cronos988
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Re: LU vs SWLU vs Mayhem: which should I pick?

Post by Cronos988 » Fri, 23. Oct 20, 10:22

It might be worth noting that Mayhem 3 is fairly structured for an X game. While there is a lot to learn, you won't have to deal with all strategic aspects from the start, and the game reacts to your development.

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Hairless-Ape
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Re: LU vs SWLU vs Mayhem: which should I pick?

Post by Hairless-Ape » Tue, 12. Jan 21, 00:59

I played Mayhem V2 extensively and really enjoyed it.
I've continued with Mayhem V3 and have restarted many times now trying to figure out how to optimize the settings etc.., but overall I've come to the conclusion that I simply think the author went the wrong way with it. It's a brutally slow awkward start in V3 and aspects from V2 I loved were "simplified" out of the game. I think some of the V3 features and fixes are very nice, but the framework for the game and how you build your empire changed dramatically in the wrong way.
I'd highly recommend trying Mayhem V2 first and of course, you can go to V3, but don't assume it's better.
Out of my mind. Back in 5 minutes.

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Edna
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Re: LU vs SWLU vs Mayhem: which should I pick?

Post by Edna » Wed, 24. Feb 21, 18:13

I play vanilla, LU, Mayhem 2 and Mayhem 3 whenever I need certain itches to be scratched.

- Vanilla has the Suicide Squid challenge I really love. Stock Market abuse, stealing loot from the Argon/Terran battlefields, and generally voice-acted quests as well as the hub.

- LU has fun mobile mining and Saturn Complex Hubs and nice mods like the bounty hunter thingy and older mods by Joubarbe like XRM (I really, really, really love that one). Scaling up from little to big is really fun in LU.

- Mayhem V2 has a very fun set of game mechanics and feels very alive and cozy due to using the vanilla map and the omicron channel. Scaling from one ship to a big empire that has to deal with OCV is fun, although there are some unpolished things like the universe getting very cramped with abandoned ships after three days and boarding being generally the most convenient way of getting capital ships because once you got a good team of marines, you can get any ship. Even though, that is fun, too! V2 is not necessarily well balanced but fun! FUN!!

- Mayhem V3 has come a looooong way and got really polished. Universe generation, everything dynamic, everything will be different every time you launch a new game, continuous bugfixes and updates, very simplified economy, rebalanced combat stats, planetary terraforming (make the best out of your sector stats!), pirate contracts so they are on your side... it is great and I'd love to waste another bunch of weeks in it!

I'm still hoping for a mix of the best features of all three mods at some point in the distant feature, when X4 is polished, Star Citizen released and we got world peace. :)
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