[MOD] [TC/AP] X3 Rebalance Mod (XRM) - Total conversion - v1.30d (02.12.13)

[only-one-jack@hotmail.com]

The merchant is really really boring in XRM, you seriously need to tweak that. By answering "Fight for your money" You are just forcing people to play how you want the game to be. I do pretty much enjoy trading in X3 but it is a pita in my current XRM game.

Part of the intent of this mod is to make the universe less friendly so it can be harder to start as a trader as a side effect. I find if I start around Argon Prime it is more than safe enough for some early trading. Still you will have to start to defend your fleet or you will have losses. or build a hardy fleet that can defend itself (gets expensive though). if fighting isn't your thing running is always an option to jump freighters are a beautiful thing.

as far as the cost of things going up I think you have to look at the bigger picture. yes things cost more but there is more money to be made to. keep an eye open for missions you can deliver with your ship. Many of those jobs pay big bucks for easy to get wares.

I've never done much bartering but I suppose if you know your prices there's money to be made.

I hope you give XRM another chance because it is worth it after you made your money trading and are ready to start building your fleet.

personally I like the humble merchant start it gives a good freighter and a m5 for me to put around in looking for jobs and good prices. I never fly the freighter my self I fly 1-3 remotely so that I can roll around looking a big score to invest my earnings in and have a chance to make it big.

On my last new start I bought a used eclipse for 1.5 mil at 70% hull. quick once over with repair laser and sold it for 3.2 mil. so there's money out there to be made but you got to go looking for it.

update: just bought a used nova vanguard for 55k guess what my profits will be on it . just saying the money is out there you just have to be looking for it.

[Keridos]

And to top it off: I wanted to build a station so i ordered a Cargo ship for it in red light. shortly before it docked it was shot down by Paranid ships. I guess that is not AP vanilla mechanics, is it?

And: Any tutorial to how to barter?

Paranid and Argon are enemys, so ofcourse they shoot down an argon ship


PS: Use CLS if you want to set up easy and cheap traders. Or build a station. An ore mine on a good astroid will make you a fortune

I love how the luxury items really are luxury, rather than stuf you put on every damn ship you have

I do now have an ore mine at an 51 ore asteroid in ore belt. It does not really produce that much credits, what did I do wrong?

[only-one-jack@hotmail.com]

I do now have an ore mine at an 51 ore asteroid in ore belt. It does not really produce that much credits, what did I do wrong?

It will make you good money if you can keep it pumping. However like all stations its slow to trickle in and for the first few hours after paying to stock up on energy ext. it always seems like you just keep putting more money into it.

That's why I diversify

[Keridos]

HM, is there a good way to earn extra money with a buster? I need a lot of money for my UTs soonish and my 3 transport ships with the CLS are not really making that much money atm. Only have a discoverer right now, but I guess i could make some money by switching it to a buster and getting a police license?

[only-one-jack@hotmail.com]

HM, is there a good way to earn extra money with a buster? I need a lot of money for my UTs soonish and my 3 transport ships with the CLS are not really making that much money atm. Only have a discoverer right now, but I guess i could make some money by switching it to a buster and getting a police license?

depends on what kind of things you are looking to do combat one option. but discoverer is accepable for picking up missiles from border sectors. or my favorite easy money is just buying ships on the cheap and fixin them up. just made 1 mill on a nova. you just gota know what ships sell for.

[InFlamesForEver]

HM, is there a good way to earn extra money with a buster? I need a lot of money for my UTs soonish and my 3 transport ships with the CLS are not really making that much money atm. Only have a discoverer right now, but I guess i could make some money by switching it to a buster and getting a police license?

Rather than buy a ship I'd suggest waiting for a used ship, then you get it for a much cheaper price and you'd probably get a lot more than you originally needed. I only buy capital ships, because getting them early on is much easier if you buy them, but I never buy M7's and lower because you can find them for cheap or get them from a mission.

[Marucins]

Hi

Has anyone installed XRM for OSX - Steam?


When you turn "New Game" and indicating example Argon anarchist, ATF Veteran... the game crashing.


Clean X3AP + Manual Installation of the guide.
I did not add anything more.

[cjm3fl]

A little late with this...

I'm just going to pop in here and ask if anyone's had trouble with getting randomly insta-killed by friendly capitals with itchy heavy missile launch fingers?

The following has happened more than once:

I engage a small group of pirate/xenon/other hostile M5s, M4s, and maybe 1 or 2 M3s in my Nova Vanguard. I kill around 2 or 3 and I have a good chance of winning the dogfight. Suddenly, everyone, including I, the enemies, any nearby trading ships, and any participating police/military fighters, die.

Usually this was because a friendly M2 had launched a heavy missile at one of the enemies from the other end of the sector at the start of the fight.

I've had the same issue...it nearly always turns out to be an M7M, M8, or a group of M3B's (or a combination of these) outside of my scanner range that are "helping" by firing on the enemy.

The missiles are usually 'proximity' warhead ones meaning even a near-by detonation causes damage. Sometimes they are 'swarm' missiles' meaning there are several of the little buggers heading my way.

Once my combat activity is complete, I switch all turrets to 'missile only' and move out of the "combat area". (I'm usually in a M6 or M7 at this point in my game.)

But I do loss some Laser Towers that I have deployed around Jump Gates via RoF (Ring of Fire) script, even if they are deployed in "stealth mode".

[paulwheeler]

Hi

Has anyone installed XRM for OSX - Steam?


When you turn "New Game" and indicating example Argon anarchist, ATF Veteran... the game crashing.


Clean X3AP + Manual Installation of the guide.
I did not add anything more.

I had a report of this before - it was caused by OSX not supporting the image format that the gamestart images are in. I will try and get this fixed. See this post and the post below it for more information: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 19#4064519


In the meantime, I believe its only the XRM added starts that cause this, so if you select a vanilla start for now, it should function OK.

Alternatively, if you open the XRM part 2 cat/dat in X3 Editor 2, delete the images with a ".pck" file extension in "addon\L\true". These are the offending gamestart images and should stop the crashes - DO NOT DELETE "gamestarts.pck".

[Marucins]

paulwheeler, thanks a lot.

I delete the images (*.pck).

It works!

[Keridos]

I did find a really fast way to earn money: The corporation stock market, just buy shares when their index is 99/100, then wait a few minutes, and if the index decreases (price rises) just sell them again. Made about 60m credits in a few hours of playing that way (had around 3m when I started).

[lolol]

So can i play on both sides now? How exactly does this work? Is the argon sides campaign still comparable to the original AP Argon campaign? Or is it completely custom with a own story/etc.?

Thanks

Awesome mod. One of the best ever made for a game!!

[InFlamesForEver]

So can i play on both sides now? How exactly does this work? Is the argon sides campaign still comparable to the original AP Argon campaign? Or is it completely custom with a own story/etc.?

You cannot play the main Argon AP plot due to the XRM having its own custom war. You can however still play teh HQ and HUB plots and the Terran plot and the plots released with AP version 3.0.

[lolol]

Thanks.

Is there a way to enable the original AP Plot? Because i have never played that & want to play it with your mod.

Or is your replacement war similar to the campaign?

[InFlamesForEver]

The replacement war is not similar to the campaign. You can however win the replacement war.

If you want to play the main AP plot then you'll have to revert back to vanilla I'm afraid.

[gamble999]

Loving your mod so far, still getting used to not having some ships where they were before, but I'll get the hang of it.

I have a problem that is infuriating me since yesterday. When I try to go to Argon Prime through a jumpgate (not jumping) I get a somewhat black screen (we all know that in the transition between sectors a screen is always displayed, but not interelly black) and nothing else happens. I tried waiting it out, but lost patience at the 25 minutes mark, the game simply stopped right there.

What could be the cause of this error?

[paulwheeler]

Assuming that the XRM is correctly installed and you get no problems elsewhere in the universe...

That is a common issue that people have had in vanilla as well as modded games. I had this issue in vanilla X3 Reunion for the sector Menelaus' Paradise. Occasionally a sector becomes unstable to the point where trying to enter it causes a crash. I've seen no explanation for it. This issue usually corrects itself over time, so I suggest just avoid that sector for a few game hours and try again. Alternatively, you could try using the cheat scripts to kill all ships in that sector remotely - no idea if this will work as it might be a station that is causing the problem.

Of course, if there is a problem with your XRM install, you may also get a crash like this, but it would not be limited to one sector.

[paulwheeler]

Thanks.

Is there a way to enable the original AP Plot? Because i have never played that & want to play it with your mod.

Or is your replacement war similar to the campaign?

You cannot play the main Argon AP plot due to the XRM having its own custom war.

Actually, the main reasons I removed the AP plot are:

1 - player response to the plot when AP was released was poor. Most people said the plot was not up to Egosoft's usual standards.

2 - the vanilla war was extremely static, with war ships being generated out of thin air when the player enters the actual war sector (the XRM spawns them out of thin air, but at least I made some attempt to hide it deep in a race's territory in the staging areas with the ships traveling to where they need to be) and limited to that sector only (the XRM war is across many different sectors and has certain random elements to it). Again, player response to the vanilla war was "how do we remove it?".

3 - it meant decimating many sectors in the map - I'd reached a good balance with the XRM economy and I really didn't want to simply remove the stations in the war sectors with no thought for how it would affect things long term (in the XRM war the only sector that tends to get decimated is Circle of Labour). The XRM AP map has every sector and station that appears in the XRM TC map.

4 - I didn't want to remove the sectors that vanilla AP removed (Family Zyarth for example), but I had no idea if leaving them in would impact on the plot. At the time I was rushing to get the XRM compatible with AP and I didn't have time to play the plot.

So I decided to script my own war that was a bit more fluid and that could actually be won with player interaction. Originally, I'd hoped the AP plot would still work, but after, I think, the second mission, where you are told to participate in the war, the plot never resumes if the war is inactive. So I had no choice but to disable the AP Argon plot. As the general consensus was that the plot was a waste of time, I didn't think it would be a problem.

So in order to play the Argon AP plot with the XRM you'd have to either activate the vanilla war, which means removing the XRM war and removing most of the stations in the war sectors with the consequence of possibly messing up the XRM economy balance, or rewrite the plot so that it doesn't wait for war objectives to be completed before continuing. Rewriting the plot is probably fairly straight forward, but it needs someone with plenty of time on their hands to go through all the code and test it.

[lolol]

Thanks.

I am playing the Vanilla war right now & then i am going to play with XRM

[Keridos]

Since the personal headquarters plot is from the vanilla argon plot. Are you not able to get it?
Or are the headquarters sold in the faction shipyards a replacement for that?