[X3AP] Rare ships, pandora crates & other questions

[Le Boron Chétif]

Hi everyone ,

After years of post-X3TC inactivity, I felt a sudden craving to get back into the X-Universe, so got my hands on Albion Prelude. After close to 500 hours in the game (and almost as many browsing this forum and other online resources), a few questions remain that I'm hoping some lingering old-timers can help me with... Here goes :

1) Rare M3's : I have never encountered either the Skate Prototype nor the Susanowa Prototype (i.e. they're not even listed in my encyclopedia), but I am very much looking forward to add them to my collection. Can they be found at all in AP??

2) Nova Prototype : I regularly stumble upon Argon Hi-Tech Traders, and shot down a few while trying to cap them. Turns out their morale is always in the 20+ and no amount of PBE or ID can get them to bail, even with a highish combat rank... Is it a matter of blowing them up until they hopefully respawn with lower morale, or should I just give up on them?

3) Speed & rudder optimisation 'pandora' crates found in UFJD sectors : can anyone confirm what the probability is to find either of those crates? I read several empirical data points on this in different threads, but never an exact number based on the game source code.

4) Stilll on UFJD pandora crates : I'm building up a Griffon as my new player ship and got 9 such crates so far (6 x rudder and 3 x speed). Unlike each of the original 8 pandora crates scattered across the universe (which I overtuned my Hyperion with), the UFJD-found ones appear to always give the same bonus : ~7 m/s speed, and ~0.2 RPM. At least on an M7. So my question is : does this bonus vary per ship class (e.g. would it be a higher incremental bonus if I were to take those crates with an M6 or M3, and lower with an M2 or M1)? I know I can just try for myself with a different ship, but just finding a single crate takes hours..!

5) Combat rank : Are there any figures on how many points are credited towards the next rank per destroyed ship class? I'd like to take a shot at X-Trem but I understand it's a looooong way to go, so would like to know whether it's more easily achieved by destroying capital ships, or swarms of fighters (for instance by leaving my ship in front of a Xenon shipyard that'll continuously spawn fighters)...

I know these are very nitty-gritty questions but since they haven't been answered anywhere else (at least not in a language I speak!), I hope there is some value in revisiting them.

Thanks in advance!

[Bill Huntington]

I was one rank away from X-treme rank but I didn't finish because it was the same old same old. I was killing Xenon capitals twenty in a session in Xenon Core 023, jump out, jump back, rinse and repeat. It demands your complete attention but you can do it.

First you blow up all the Xenon SY except one. Then you kill every Xenon capital in every Xenon sector. You save the one SY you want. Then the big boys all spawn from the last SY so they're all in same sector. After the first time they spawn one by one so you can take them in succession quite nicely.

Fighters and Q usually spawn in Xenon space though they can use the SY. The capitals are what you need to game points to your goal.

Warning: Don't kill the last SY. Of course most of you will try it but save first. With no SY the Xenon go into spawning overdrive in every Xenon sector. And they're mad so they coming pouring out on missions of destruction. Everywhere. I didn't wait around to see if they stop at their usual sector limits.

[fireanddream]

The susanowa prototype is not in the game, period. :/

In my game the only M3s that have a prototype variant present in the universe are Barracuda, Blastclaw and Nova. The others you have to get by claiming the abandoned ships spawned in the beginning of the game. You might not even get any.

As for the nova prototypes, I'm sure it's just a matter of RNG. If you don't plan on reloading, hitting the ship until it has 2% hull and ionD it for a full hour could work. I guess.

I think pandora crates have a small chance (2%) to spawn, the speed one being rarer, in UFJD sectors. Always more than 50km away from the center. May I ask how you find 9 already? Seems like a hustle to me.

Yeah, you get one engine tuning/rudder optimization per crate I guess. How much speed/steering your ship ends up getting is tied to the ship.

I think a guy posted somewhere his object destroyed record upon reaching Xtreme. It's like 350 M1s, 300 M2s, 1.5k M3s, etc. I have the same goal but won't surprise myself if I end up giving up on the two Xtreme achievement.

There's nothing I hate more than grinding. Except RNG, of course.

[Le Boron Chétif]

Thanks for the replies already!

Warning: Don't kill the last SY. Of course most of you will try it but save first. With no SY the Xenon go into spawning overdrive in every Xenon sector. And they're mad so they coming pouring out on missions of destruction. Everywhere. I didn't wait around to see if they stop at their usual sector limits.

Yup, I experienced that already... The migrations were quite fun to manage actually
But what bothers me is that cleaning the entirety of Xenon sectors in one go only hardly brought me up from Battlemaster to Conqueror. As in, 4 killed Q's < 1% gain. What I did notice though, is that my score increases slightly faster when I kill P/PX's and their fighter escorts. In other words, the number of ships destroyed seems more important than the type of ships destroyed - which is what I'm hoping someone can validate with some science!

The susanowa prototype is not in the game, period. :/

Thanks for confirming. It's disappointing to know that my collection will be forever incomplete

May I ask how you find 9 already? Seems like a hustle to me.

You're dead right, it is very tedious (like many other things in the game to be fair!) So far, I've spent about 4 hours to get those 9 crates. The thing that encouraged me is that I started off super lucky and found the 3 first crates in less than 30 min. But of course it didn't last. Also, the whole search has been longer than it could if I didn't insist on staying vanilla... Even though I'm not against an element of cheating, as my process suggests :

1) Save game
2) UFJD
3) Save game on another slot
4) Run 'reveal wares' script (don't have the exact name at hand but can retrieve it)
5a) If any nice crate present in the sector (spped, rudder or even PALC), write down coordinates, reload the second save and get the crate. UFJD back to known universe and repeat from step 1.
5b) If no crate in the sector, reload from step 1 and keep going... Note that the 5 steps together take just over a minute if you're focused.

I think a guy posted somewhere his object destroyed record upon reaching Xtreme. It's like 350 M1s, 300 M2s, 1.5k M3s, etc. I have the same goal but won't surprise myself if I end up giving up on the two Xtreme achievement.

I read a post about achieving Combat X-Trem the lazy way - all you need to do is clean a Xenon sector in an M2 except for the shipyard, place your ship in front of it (out of shooting range) and let it spawn fighters at you. Activate SETA and stick to periods of 5'45 minutes to avoid inactivity stat decrease... Fun, fun, fun!

At least, I'm really close to Trading X-Trem so I should have one of the two.

[Jimmy C]

If you play Terran, one of the missions spawns several Nova Prototypes to fly around an Argon sector you need to visit. They hang around for the rest of the game, so you can try to capture them after the mission.

[jlehtone]

5.
@fireanddream: A post like this?

User fud collected a table of points a long time ago for X3R. Hard to find now and doesn't have X3AP values.

To reach Xtreme you do need 1'000'000 points. That is 300'000 points after reaching Hero. One percentage after Hero requires thus 3'000 points.

You can easily make a script that displays your current numeric Fight Rank. Show-kill-show and you will know the points yielded by that kill.


4. Each ship type has base (untuned) speed and rudder values. Each unit of tuning adds 10% of the base. A crate can contain one or more units. I have not found crates in UFJD yet.

[Le Boron Chétif]

Thanks jlehtone, great to know about the % gain for each crate.

They do pop regularly in UFJD (I got another rudder one again just this morning) though I can't imagine how I'd find them without the script. Interestingly though, they all seem to be restricted to a single unit, at least thus far.

[fireanddream]

Thanks jlehtone, great to know about the % gain for each crate.

They do pop regularly in UFJD (I got another rudder one again just this morning) though I can't imagine how I'd find them without the script. Interestingly though, they all seem to be restricted to a single unit, at least thus far.

Can you confirm that they only spawn really off center? If that's the case I'm just not gonna attempt it.

I'm going for the steam achievements so 100% vanilla.

[Le Boron Chétif]

Can you confirm that they only spawn really off center? If that's the case I'm just not gonna attempt it.

I'm going for the steam achievements so 100% vanilla.

I confirm they're off grid, sometimes over 100km from the center. But note that the process I posted earlier ensures your game remains vanilla, despite using a script in each UJFD sector. You basically save before you launch the script - and upon finding the crate's coordinates, you reload the unmodified save, and so on.

I've also heard of players who'd use M5's to map the UFJD sector and drop satellites, but to me that sounds way longer and not 100% accurate either.

[SirNukes]

The crate spawning logic is in director/3.08 Sector Management.xml. Always 1 tuning per crate, though 1-3 PALCs. 1% for engine, 2% for rudder, 3% for PALC spawning.

Here is the code if you are curious. SS_WARE_TECH213 is engine, SS_WARE_TECH246 is rudder, sector size is 30 to 120 km.

Code: Select all

<do_any>
  <create_crate chance="1" invincible="1">
    <position x="0" y="0" z="0" min="({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}+({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}/20))km" max="({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}+({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}/3))km"/>
    <sector sector="UFJD Sector"/>
    <ware typename="SS_WARE_TECH213" exact="1"/>
  </create_crate>
  <create_crate chance="3" invincible="1" secret="1">
    <position x="0" y="0" z="0" min="({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}+({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}/20))km" max="({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}+({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}/3))km"/>
    <sector sector="UFJD Sector"/>
    <ware typename="SS_WARE_TECH246" exact="1"/>
  </create_crate>
  <create_crate chance="2" invincible="1">
    <position x="0" y="0" z="0" min="({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}+({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}/20))km" max="({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}+({sector.size.km@UFJD Sector}/3))km"/>
    <sector sector="UFJD Sector"/>
    <ware typename="SS_LASER_PAL" min="1" max="3"/>
  </create_crate>
  <set_value chance="95" name="this.temp" exact="42"/>
</do_any>

[Le Boron Chétif]

Awesome, just what I was looking for SirNukes, thanks a bunch!

[Alan Phipps]

Of course if you know how to reliably find and replicate examples of unique ships and how to continue to find more tunings, etc through the 'temporary' use of 3rd party scripts, then conceptually they have ceased to be 'rare'.

[Le Boron Chétif]

Well, several of the rare ships I coveted turn out to not be in the game at all, so in their case 'rare' remains an understatement!

As for the tunings, I guess I wouldn't go through all these efforts if the Griffon came out of the shipyard with a built in speed of 200m/s

[Jimmy D]

Minor spoiler for one of the AP Plots.

Spoiler

Show

If you want to remain unmodified, during the Shady Business plot, you get a detector.

If you jump into UFJD sectors during the missions when the detector is active, it'll detect the nearest crate, usually energy, but collect them and if there are any Pandora crates you'll get to them. Very occasionally the Pandora crate is the closest one too.

Unfortunately I don't know any way of getting the detector if you've already completed that plot.

[Le Boron Chétif]

Nice tip, Jimmy D, thanks! Good thing I haven't even started the plot yet

[Jimmy D]

Oh, also, fair warning, it's only during that plot that it works. Once you finish it you'll lose access to it.