X3 Guide, A complete Guide to everything

[Apocholypse]

Oh rite,

cheap energy cells and silicon wafers for nothing

Umm.... Are you following my guide?
If you want something more profitable my I sugest you take a look at the capping section assuming your in a Buster. Keep me posted on how your doing and I or somebody else can give you some advise along the way.

[JimmiG]

I've been reading a few guides, yes. One said dealing in arms was supposed to be profitable.

Not sure if capping is my "thing". I'd prefer taking the route of trading and building stuff..unless you can only make a couple of 100k's of credits that way..?

[Apocholypse]

I've been reading a few guides, yes. One said dealing in arms was supposed to be profitable.

Not sure if capping is my "thing". I'd prefer taking the route of trading and building stuff..unless you can only make a couple of 100k's of credits that way..?

Umm.. would you PM me your email address and I'll send you the latest update of my trading run calculator, should be of use to you!

[thorvall]

OK OK .. send up the fireworks!!!! Bring out the band.....

Thorvall has done figured it out.. I now HAVE my Trading System Extensions installed.. and I am making money.. All is good in the Universe once again.

" And the next day the birds came out from Hibernation.. and the leaves placed themselves into large plastic garbage bags...."

Hehe ..

Capt. Thorvall
-----------------
X3 Factories - 0 / Ships 2 / Knowing how to play finely----PRICELESS!

[Inacurate]

Wish there was a search feature, but I understand why it is disabled.

I have read it in the manual, I have read it here, I have read it in many other topics, but yet...I still can't seem to get Targetting down for ANYTHING.

I see red blips on screen, I press Shift+T and nothing happens. Does CAPS Lock *have* to be on, and then simply press 'T' or what?

Also, is there any command for "Select Target under Rectile" or something of the sort? I see nothing in the manual or in-game options as such, and find it hard to believe something so simple and invalueable would be left out.

Oh, yes....since this is my first post, and I have been playing X3 for about...2 hours. I must say...AWESOME GAME!!

*** Edit - I finally figured it out. Press T and it takes a few moments to target item under crosshair, same with Shift + T...amazing no one says that anywhere. I expect it to be immeadiate asis with most games, and if you keep pressing either it never has a chance to finish, lol.

Inac

[Apocholypse]

OK OK .. send up the fireworks!!!! Bring out the band.....

Thorvall has done figured it out.. I now HAVE my Trading System Extensions installed.. and I am making money.. All is good in the Universe once again.

" And the next day the birds came out from Hibernation.. and the leaves placed themselves into large plastic garbage bags...."

Balance has been restored. Thorvall, when you come to planting your first station tell me as I have something for you that will be useful!

[jlehtone]

One could add to the basic Factory Planting section (point some hints.

Have the Trading System Extension. Never leave it.

There are only to moments, when one needs to be in sector for the operation. First, be in comm distance when you initially hail the TL. After that, you can comm it from anywhere, provided you have property in the sector. The second time to be in-sector is when you tell the TL to drop station. Distance is of no importance, but it is nice to see the station's ghost.

It is good to have a station, a ship (like captured one), or satellite in shipyard's sector. You can purchase stations and ships remotely and comm the TL. The only problem with ships is that they take up docking positions. Not an issue with Argon and Teladi Trading Stations.

The Property menu will show when the hired TL has reached its destination. Then it is time to jump in.

Jump out immediately when the station has been built and the TL leaves for home.

Why do I praise OOS management? Lack of collision detection. The autopilot is dangerous. Autopiloted TL is very dangerous. You do not wan't to see either your precious cargo nor your stations to be hurt by it.

The downside of OOS is that you miss the sight of Boron cap ships decimating your hired Mammoth the hard way. 1.3 may fix that.

Advanced Satellite in the destination sector is a good thing too. One can see the orientation of the station before committing build.


I have (almost) two questions:

1) In X2 there was a 20km cube around the TL for station dropping purposes. One had to get the TL within 10km of destination. When I tested mine building in Ore Belt I just had the Mammoth in the sector and all asteroids seemed valid targets, despite of distance. Do the TL really have unlimited drop distance? If so, then one does not need to give the TL any other order than "Fly to sector".

2) I thought that Num1,3,7,9 rotate the station before build, while Ins,Num2,4,6,8 translate. For some reason I did not see that happen during the abovementioned mining experiment. I had no satellite, and I am using the X3 default control profile. This is not really a question, for I will figure it out myself. There have been threads about this already.

[Apocholypse]

No there's no distance limit now for TL's. And I think you've already figured out the planting bit, i.e. your right about rotation and translation.

[jlehtone]

No there's no distance limit now for TL's. And I think you've already figured out the planting bit, i.e. your right about rotation and translation.

Kind of sad without limits. Where is the challenge of getting a fleet of TLs near the building site without having them ram anything or anyone before, during, or after the construction party

I just assumed that the planting bit is like in X2. I may or may not have my controls working right. It was not the point of that experiment. I just dropped mines on every roid I had scanned and recorded cycle times. The game will continue from an earlier (pre-hire-Mammoth) save around Xmas at current prediction. My first 1,99M will not be spend on factories I may test that station rotation beforehand, but frankly, the X2 is much more fun just now.

[Apocholypse]

It was not the point of that experiment. I just dropped mines on every roid I had scanned and recorded cycle times.

Ooh... Cycle times, I would really like to get my hands on those, I don't suppose you could type them up and PM them to me... assuming to recorded the resource consumption of each roid or is that always the same?

Yeah that would be so helpful if you could do that jlehtone... Thanks!
(if there are implications then don't stress, but it would be nice )

[jlehtone]

Ooh... Cycle times, I would really like to get my hands on those, I don't suppose you could type them up and PM them to me... assuming to recorded the resource consumption of each roid or is that always the same?

How odd, I seem to have written this and then rewrote it here

Close enough? I did not (foolishly) look up the resource consumption, but it is quite probably a constant of type "X ECells per Y Wafers" or "X ECells per Z Ore". The amount of mineral consumed by a fab in one hour is likely to cost that 900 ECells to mine. (or 2x that for fab M). Does not matter how long it takes.

<Edit>
Did check, 5 and 10 Wafers cost 120 and 240 ECells, respectively. Thus, one Silicon Wafer costs 24 ECells to mine. Ore mine consumes 6 ECells per 1 Ore produced. I had no cash to get any Silicon consumer, but a Weapon component factory consumes 3 Ore in 72 seconds. That is 150 Ore per hour, ie 900 ECells per hour.
</Edit>

Cycle time is really easy to compute from yield. The multiplier is bit tricky. It is there to prevent <60 sec cycles. It can be ignored in most calculations.

I have not yet derived the inverted equation proper. The one that converts yield into "standard factory units". Could probably dig up from ancient X2 threads. Or ask LordSuch. He must know.

<Edit>
Hmm, divide a 'standard' time by the raw cycle time. The 'standard' for Silicon is 96 seconds and for Ore 24 seconds. Multiply by the factory size. The raw cycle time is the one not corrected with multiplier ie can be shorter than 60 seconds.

For example:
Silicon L, yield 64, raw cycle time 37s, 96/37=2,59 standard factories, but since L=5x, it is actually 12,97 factories or 6 Crystal M fabs and 0,97 of a tech fab.
Ore mine, yield 25, raw cycle time 24s (fab spec says 72s), 24/24=1,00.
Thus an Ore mine on yield 25 roid can support exactly 1 tech fab. But really 2 fabs by M mine, or 5 fabs by L mine.
</Edit>

<Edit2>
Ok, I am obviously unclear. I think in terms of X2 mines, while there are none in X3. Again
Ore mine M, yield 25, supports 2 fabs. Ore mine L, yield 25 supports 5 fabs.
Ore mine, yield in range 50-53, M supports 4 fabs, L supports 10 fabs.
Ore mine, yield 18, M supports 1,5 fabs, L supports 3,75 fabs.
</Edit2>

[fireflyry]

Greetings all!

Just a quick post in appreciation to Apocholypse for an amazing guide.

I have only recently signed up to the forum but have been reading and visiting for a couple of months and wanted to say many thanks for the work put into this guide.

Great work.

[Apocholypse]

[jlehtone]

Edited previous message.

[Apocholypse]

Edited previous message.

Your think your statistics are wrong, a 25 yeild ore can support 5 tech fabs not one. 52 can support ten. It's the same with energy, tech fabs consume nothing at all, an XL can support 84 tech fabs!

[jlehtone]

Your think your statistics are wrong, a 25 yeild ore can support 5 tech fabs not one. 52 can support ten. It's the same with energy, tech fabs consume nothing at all, an XL can support 84 tech fabs!

There is never anything wrong in statistics

It is just my way of representing them that is odd

Ore mine on yield 25 roid can support exactly 1 tech fab. But really 2 fabs by M mine, or 5 fabs by L mine.

That is hypotethical Ore mine. The real M and L support 2 and 5. The multiplication by the mine size thingy.

All the worlds ore roids with yields 50, 51, 52, and 53 do - due to rounding - support exactly 2(*mine size) fabs.


I do not get your point on energy. I did test-built Weapons Component Factory. It did require ECells, Rimes, and Ore. Rimes fab most probably requires ECells and Wheat. Wheat requires ECells. What do you mean by tech fabs consuming nothing at all? To me it looks like the Warhead production effectively consumes 4*15=60 ECells per minute (=Fab+Rimes+Wheat+Ore). Again, Rimes and Wheat come either in M or L packages, but if there is only one WeapCompFab, then they sit idle 50% or 80% of the time, so the consumption value is real.

Besides, wasn't the base energy production rate 276 ECells in 118 seconds? That is 1403 ECells per minute in XL SPP. More than 1395=93*15. So 93 standard units for sure. That requires 10 standard units of crystals (eg 5*M), 10 units of Food (2*L), 10 units of Bio (2*L) and 10 units of Wafers ( 1*L-mine on 50+ yield or 2*L-mine on 25+ yield) to be self-sufficient. Thus, 40 out of 93 units of energy are consumed in the production of the energy. The rest (53) can be used for factories. The Weapon Component Factory above effectively consumes 4 units. I count 13 weapon/shield/tech fabs there and one Teladianium Foundry. That includes 13 standard units of Ore/Silicon too. For example, if the while complex has been build around one Ore mine L (51) and one Silicon mine L (64), it will have 10 Ore-based production lines and 3 Silicon-based production lines. However, it will be 0,03 standard factory units short on Silicon

[jlehtone]

Just to confirm my observation:

I was not able to rotate a mine while I was building it.

However, I was able to rotate and translate a normal station.

Just me, a feature, or a pre-next-patch feature?

[thorvall]

OK OK .. send up the fireworks!!!! Bring out the band.....

Thorvall has done figured it out.. I now HAVE my Trading System Extensions installed.. and I am making money.. All is good in the Universe once again.

" And the next day the birds came out from Hibernation.. and the leaves placed themselves into large plastic garbage bags...."

Balance has been restored. Thorvall, when you come to planting your first station tell me as I have something for you that will be useful!

Thanx Apocholypse, I will do that.

Thorvall

[Apocholypse]

Ore mine on yield 25 roid can support exactly 1 tech fab. But really 2 fabs by M mine, or 5 fabs by L mine.

Wrong I see what you done though, however, it's an Ore Mine M, in X3, which means it's double the size. Everything in X3 has been sized up, except.... High Tech Fabs Thus, one M, can actually support 2 fabs not 1. And an L supports 10 fabs, not 5. To prove this point, I have 6 PPC's which use only one ore mine!

[jlehtone]

Wrong I see what you done though, however, it's an Ore Mine M, in X3, which means it's double the size. Everything in X3 has been sized up, except.... High Tech Fabs Thus, one M, can actually support 2 fabs not 1. And an L supports 10 fabs, not 5. To prove this point, I have 6 PPC's which use only one ore mine!

I need more conclusive proof How about telling the yield or at least the cycle time of that Ore mine L, the cycle time of your ?PPC and how many Ore does one cycle consume. Would be nice to know how many ECells a PPC forge consumes in one cycle too.

I do not mind if you win, but you better make it decisive and fool-proof