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

[unity100]

Hi people.

Im getting about to building a fleet, but after reading around i saw that there are many ways, and what's valid for X3 AP may not be so valid for XRM. i think.

In AP, i know PHQ can be used to build ships, but they say its cargo space may be too small for building capital ships. It requires a quest to get it in AP, but i think we can buy it outright in xrm.

but shipyards also can be bought in xrm. whats the difference ?

also i heard there was a bug which added the blueprints you bought to your player hq (last station), and due to that if you bought a trade station after phq or something, the blueprint would not work or something.

Anyway long story short, i would like to get advice on going about building my own fleet please.

[Master of the Blade]

Shipyards work pretty much the same way as the PHQ, offering the same functions at a lower cost, but with I think less storage space. Even when you're building your own ships, you can't upgrade their engines or equipment (such as fight software and jumpdrives) without using a race's equipment dock. Bought blueprints go to the last 'HQ' station you built, so don't build an asteroid base or orbital freight dock and then buy some blueprints, because the BPs will go to the base/dock, which are unable to produce ships. Equipment docks and trading stations are, as far as I know, safe.

The great thing about XRM is that every ship has a role, and strengths and weaknesses.

Depending on how much money and resources you can throw into your fleet, a carrier full of fighters is one of the most devastating things in the game, but sustains losses which must be replaced. Destroyers are a bit less powerful, but need much less micromanagement and are cheaper, as well as being less vulnerable than a carrier, whose strength comes from its fighters and are usually weak in direct combat. The heavy destroyers make great flagships, with top of the line defences and weaponry. The Teladi Pteranodon is especially good, and one of the most durable ships in the game, with astounding range and accuracy on its Gauss Cannons.

Frigates are a gamble. They can deal great damage with decent resistance, but larger capitals have a nasty habit of ripping them to shreds (particularly Xenon ones. Dark Matter Beam Cannons HURT) and most of them need to be kept pointed at their enemy to deal good damage, which the AI usually isn't smart enough to do. If you want a frigate, go for something like the ATF Kvasir which has a lot of its firepower in its side turrets, so it can keep hitting enemy capitals regardless of orientation. Flak frigates such as the ATF Snotra, Split Wolf or Argon Cerberus are fighter killing machines, and make great escorts, though are still rather fragile for how big they are, ESPECIALLY the Wolf which is barely tougher than a heavy corvette. Frigates are, on the other hand, great as player ships.
Missile frigates on the other hand can be parked a sector away and allowed to bombard enemies with relative impunity, and if you can provide them with enough missiles they are terrifyingly effective fire support. Worth a look, but need whole factory complexes dedicated to keeping them running.

Corvettes are very useful, particularly the sentinel variants, as they can provide nearly as much firepower as a frigate in a far smaller, more agile hull. I can personally recommend the Dragon Sentinel, which absolutely shreds fighters at the cost of dealing weaker damage to capital ships, and the OTAS Skiron/Paranid Heavy Nemesis which have the turreted firepower to take on frigates quite handily. Depending on how dumb the AI is being, two heavy corvettes will usually beat a heavy frigate such as the Xenon C. Stay away from corvettes with few turreted weapons though, they spend far too much time manoeuvring to get their main guns on target and not enough time actually firing. The Boron Hydra, Paranid Nemesis and Split Dragon are like this, and should probably be avoided.

Bombers are much the same as missile frigates. You can keep them well away from the fighting and let them just blast away, even if the missiles don't get through they kept someone's turrets busy and away from your fighters. Again, they need to be kept supplied using factories. They also need quite a bit of micromanagement, every time I try to use bombers they wander too close to the fighting and get picked off by a corvette or fighter.

For your carriers, a few M5s (maybe 5 or 6) are a cheap way to get scanner coverage around a sector. They die easily, but are replaced just as easily. Send them out about 15-20km above the ecliptic to provide an overview. M4s are too fragile for fleet operations, they don't get much done before dying. M4+ on the other hand tend to offer an excellent balance of price and effectiveness, the Split Asp is a scary dogfighter and the Boron Pike is hilarious when filled with silkworm missiles and given a 95% firing chance.
M3s are more expensive than M4+, but make fewer compromises. They are typically tougher and field more powerful weapons, while still being about as fast as M4+. This comes at double, or more, the cost however. If money isn't a concern, these should be your main class on board carriers, if you don't have tons of money to throw around, go for M4+es.
M3+ are almost as expensive as corvettes, but come with amazing power and versatility. Durable and powerful, a couple of M3+ are usually more than a match for most corvettes. They have large cargo holds for missiles and typically have two turrets, adding both firepower and missile defence. While too expensive to use as a swarm fighter, having 10 or so M3+ in your hangar can be very useful.

Finally, I'll add that having Boron Ion Cannons can be very, very useful. An ion frigate or two, or even a Ray or Megalodon set to fire ion cannons at enemy capital ships can prevent them from firing a shot due to the energy drain effect, and the shield damage they deal is immense. Against Xenon and Kha'ak this is vital, as both races' capitals mount more than average anticapital weaponry and will defeat any other race's capital craft in single combat if not suppressed. (Again, Dark Matter Beam Cannons HURT!)

Edit: didn't set out to write a wall o' text, it just kinda turned into one. Sorry.

[Barleyman]

I was saying a while ago XRM is not necessarily fun to start from scratch as the universe is very hostile, basic trading opportunities cost arm and a leg and so on. So getting money is a real chore, basically major income comes from bounties and caps, not trade.

I've been playing "vanilla" AP with TC plots and some other mods not changing gameplay much. I have to say I like many things XRM did for fighting ships. Missiles are fairly limp in vanilla and some M3+ ships are way too slow. On the other hand, many corvettes can run down most M3 fighters so the balance here is tweaked for someone who already got corvette for personal ship.

What I think is off that 1st the universe is veeery hostile AND everyone picks on you and yours personally. This means even with improved trading scripts you're going to lose a lot of traders. Then we add the fact that trade wares and jump drives are hideously expensive. So it's difficulty piled on top of hardship built on adversity.

Some people wrote they just let NPCs do the trading and run their factories with slim enough margins to attract traders. I'm sure that's viable _if_ you have a healthy nest egg to get the industry going. To sum it up, with vanilla AP you can generate healthy income with reasonable effort from scratch without "cheating" on stock market. On the other hand things get pretty easy when you have half a dozen universe traders running. They're easy to turn into full dozen or more if you were so inclined. Nobody forces you to do that of course and it'd get boring. But it's nice to get spending money accumulating you don't have to shoestring every minor investment. All in all a bit too easy if you know what you're doing from previous X games.

XRM seems to make getting started too difficult. I'm sure it's more fun when you have a business empire to support it but even so the break-even point on universe traders or commercial agents is fairly damn steep. I don't think the point of "build your sandbox commercial empire" game should be to make profits as hard to achieve as possible. Even if wares (mk3 trader, jumpdrive) cost the same as in vanilla, all of your ships being public enemy number #1 to every bad guy sure would keep you from getting complacent.

Best possible world would allow tweaking some variables like ware costs, whether everyone hates your ships and how often you get invasions in core sectors.

[builder680]

Hey Barleyman,

I do agree with you that XRM makes getting started pretty tough, though personally that's one of about a zillion reasons I like it!

Anyhow I wanted to mention that picking the "Advanced Start" gets you going pretty decent as you start in the M6 Vidar, can sell off your M3, M4, a couple M5's and the TP if you wish, plus you have 2 TS with Trade MkIII + JD on them already (just gotta train their pilots up, I'd use Power Circle or other smallish sector with SPP's and factories for fast levelling). Basically you get the Terran plot rewards right away (handy in AP especially).

In this way you can get going pretty quick and start on bigger things

[unity100]

Shipyards work pretty much the same way as the PHQ, offering the same functions at a lower cost, but with I think less storage space. Even when you're building your own ships, you can't upgrade their engines or equipment (such as fight software and jumpdrives) without using a race's equipment dock. Bought blueprints go to the last 'HQ' station you built, so don't build an asteroid base or orbital freight dock and then buy some blueprints, because the BPs will go to the base/dock, which are unable to produce ships. Equipment docks and trading stations are, as far as I know, safe.

great important piece of info. ty.

what i understood from rest of the info you posted, i have a few things to understand clearer :

..................

As for ships, i am intending to manufacture them. Either in PHQ or shipyard. Therefore i dont think it would be possible to ramp up a fleet which will be composed of a lot of different varieties in each class from different races - it would be too complicated to create the manufacturing operation needed to manufacture them, their arms and also supply those factories.

So i think ill be choosing ONE race and their stuff. Like;

- Teladi stuff, materials and weapons and shields supplied by the factory network and manufactured by PHQ/Shipyard

OR, maybe

- Xenon stuff i can capture and reverse engineer, and then manufacture from PHQ. of course this will require me to be able to manufacture Xenon weapons, shields etc too. I dont know if i can do that.

.......................

As for composition, im not going carrier route at all - too much hassle methinks. Ill be producing M6, M7 and M1s in various proportions. these should be enough i think. if not enough in numbers, i can just ramp up the production.

I modified the game and made missile damage 10% for all missiles. so missiles are not so big a threat.

.....................


For OOS combat, isnt it better to have the best and strongest weapons with most numbers on ships ? For this you are saying Sentinel variants are good for corvetttes, am i right ?

[Master of the Blade]

Sentinel corvettes are as a rule generally better - the AI does not get on well with ships that have low manoeuvrability and forward weapons, so the mostly turreted weapons on sentinel M6es tends to let them keep firing more reliably than any other M6. That they have a naturally high overall gun count making them good OOS is just a bonus.

EDIT: If you want to go one race only, Teladi capitals are very good but I find their fighters and corvettes lacking, while their frigates are mediocre.

Boron get the Ion Cannon, which I can't stress enough as an incredible weapon, and can use PPCs to deal actual damage. Their frigates are specialty (2 carrier frigates, the Sturgeon ion-only frigate and the merely decent Thresher) and their corvettes are decent at best.

Split have awesome corvettes and fighters, but their capitals tend to lack durability.

Paranid are excellent across the board, but their capital weapons lack range. I'd say go for paranid if you're limiting yourself to one race. The Nemesis Sentinel is kinda bad, but the H.Nemesis is great at anticapital support work.

Argon are another good bet, well balanced fleet. The Heavy Centaur and Centaur Sentinel are a pair of excellent corvettes that complement each other well.

Terrans and ATF are both very powerful, and share weapon compatibilities. Between them, there's a very solid ship in every class.

If you can get hold of Xenon stuff, their capitals and corvettes are brutal, but you'll have to rely on bartering to get hold of weapons, which is a pain in the arse.

[unity100]

If you can get hold of Xenon stuff, their capitals and corvettes are brutal, but you'll have to rely on bartering to get hold of weapons, which is a pain in the arse.

holy cow !!!

i read a script to reverse engineer and produce any weapon/ware in PHQ existed ?

[KRM398]

Been playing fir a while now, things are going good, did find a few odd things like: theres a message drone in one sector,,south of black hole sun, no message, just a floating drone, why? No clue..lol Also capped a Yaki Senchi M7M never had one before, no M7M at all...can see why, theres little to no missiles available, searched the universe found 3 stations, one running two sitting waiting on ecells...every time I check..for a whole day rt while I did repairs on the Senchi...now have a freighter running full time to black hole sun selling ecells to the station there making hammer torpedoes..and every time they make a dozen they sell them and not to the argon station next door. Need a different freighter there, this one can not buy the missiles so I'm producing them for others...oh well. Found 2 more in slit space making flairs and hammers....surprise....flails are not swarm missiles, they are a single small missile doing 19k in damage...its basically a silkworm. The 'Barrage' part doesn't come from the missile at all but from launching them from 5-6 tubes at once, one per tube...when you can find enough to use this way.

I shut down every tube on my ship, set the chances of launch to 0 and run them manually, and sparingly, since having a corvette running looking to gather missiles I had 25 hammers and 12 flairs at once...so far, best load out.Might not be worth owning one of these without owning a station just to make missiles for it. But its fun to play with, has 2 gun turrets too, and have killed a few fighters that way. Have a corvette wingman for now...will need lots of help if I'm going to use this as a command ship and do missions with my wing.

[unity100]

Can anyone advise me a good sector to choose as home sector to pop up all the factories and PHQ ?

i am thinking of waging war with split.

[Cedric_FP]

Blue Horizon.

[Sn4kemaster]

Hi Paul, back after a break.... playing and loving this mod again, been trying new weapons and ships this time rnd and thought I'd share some observations I've made...loving the fact that the Kyoto can internally dock and launch M6 ships but even though it is simply massive ship it can only dock 12 vehicles maybe this could be made to 18 or 24? Just seems lacking at the moment....

Been really trying to use beam weapons loving the Boron Ion cannon and Argon plasma beam cannon....in fact a Tempest with Ion cannon upfront, plasma beam on the left/right and palc everywhere else is a truly powerful ship......after much trail have found this is easily the best layout for this ship and a all beam layout matches its state of the art and technological description

On the other hand I've found the Paranid Tri beam is a bit useless to be fair......doesn't seem to have any real use....and certainly does not feel like an alternative to the PSG for a cap ship...needs to do more damage and drain energy so it's more like the Argon/Boron equivalent....stuck 36 tri beams on a Proteus but failed every time to defeat a Braggi I cheated in, but say a Atlas/Tempest/Megalodon equipped with there beam weapons would be able to gain the upper hand!

The Terran fusion beam does feel weighty but think if you swapped the reduce speed ability for the energy draining ability then it would be more of an alternative to the standard PSP....anyway the high tech Terran/ATF feel like they need a energy daring beam weapon anyway

Anyway keep up the good work ))

[cjm3fl]

Can anyone advise me a good sector to choose as home sector to pop up all the factories and PHQ ? .

You might want to look into a couple empty sectors and connect them via your HUB(s) gates.

My computer is older yet not too bad but when I add too many factories/complexes to any one sector, and go there personally, my game tends to stutter a little.

I like the "dead end" sectors for this kind of set-up myself.
Set up your missile complexes in one, weapons and shields in another, and place your PHQ and some kind of storage docks (equipment docks, asteroid bases, etc.) in a third.

Two connected "unclaimed" sectors might be good for a shipyard and the resource complexes needed ship building.

[imperium3]

Now that I've been playing for a while, here's a little feedback:

-Something seems off about the Polacca TL. It's inferior to the other Terran TLs in almost every way except for its large hangar, and yet it costs about about three times as much. Is there something special about it that I've missed?

-Lasertowers are now horribly overpowered. I just watched three pirate LTs obliterate a Kha'ak carrier without breaking a sweat. Is this really intended? It seems weird for something smaller than most fighters to take on capital ships so easily. On a related note, the Treasure Hunt plot wants me to destroy six of them and I'm not sure how I'll manage that...

-With all the Mk1 ships out there, why no Mk1 Xenon in X101? Or were the models not ported?

Loving the mod otherwise - cracking work!

Edit: Oh, and a question (before I get to building). Does the XRM include tubeless complexes or similar, or is that something I'll have to add myself? Can't afford laggy sectors with those Kha'ak TMs floating around...

[unity100]

Can anyone advise me a good sector to choose as home sector to pop up all the factories and PHQ ? .

You might want to look into a couple empty sectors and connect them via your HUB(s) gates.

My computer is older yet not too bad but when I add too many factories/complexes to any one sector, and go there personally, my game tends to stutter a little.

I like the "dead end" sectors for this kind of set-up myself.
Set up your missile complexes in one, weapons and shields in another, and place your PHQ and some kind of storage docks (equipment docks, asteroid bases, etc.) in a third.

Two connected "unclaimed" sectors might be good for a shipyard and the resource complexes needed ship building.

im not intending to create complexes. instead i will place the factories in a spaced manner and make as many (as much as necessary) TPs to cycle whatever they need in a neverending fashion. i dont think this will introduce too much lag if i choose a sector which does not put too much on the gpu/cpu.

.....................

on another sidenote as a general question to everyone :

is there a point to putting a trading dock or equipment dock in a busy area and trying to sell your wares through that dock in XRM ?

[humbrol2]

after some time in game i noticed the jonferco shipyard in redlight is gone,, nowhere to buy trade ships in the argon areas aside from there?

[KRM398]

In my previous post about the flail barrage missile doing 19k damage I was wrong, and I'll admit it.....it does 13k damage just checked it today, and if I get into a fight where large numbers of ships are around, I leave...lol so trying to carry 100 missiles for battles isnt worth it to me, and have 3 freighters running for ecells and other resources trying to keep 3 missile stations going...manged to have 40 flails and 40 hammers at once...just 1 time, but made it through that way. The turret on the back of the Senchi M7M comes in real handy...with 3 hepts and a frag bomb launcher in it...can do a patrol of 5 pirates without using a missile...if I'm careful.

[Yacek]

If you can get hold of Xenon stuff, their capitals and corvettes are brutal, but you'll have to rely on bartering to get hold of weapons, which is a pain in the arse.

Strong Arms Weapons Dealer XL will allow you to buy any weapon, also Xenon.
The XRM you can not only buy weapons Kha'ak.

[paulwheeler]

Hi Paul, back after a break.... playing and loving this mod again, been trying new weapons and ships this time rnd and thought I'd share some observations I've made...loving the fact that the Kyoto can internally dock and launch M6 ships but even though it is simply massive ship it can only dock 12 vehicles maybe this could be made to 18 or 24? Just seems lacking at the moment....

Been really trying to use beam weapons loving the Boron Ion cannon and Argon plasma beam cannon....in fact a Tempest with Ion cannon upfront, plasma beam on the left/right and palc everywhere else is a truly powerful ship......after much trail have found this is easily the best layout for this ship and a all beam layout matches its state of the art and technological description

On the other hand I've found the Paranid Tri beam is a bit useless to be fair......doesn't seem to have any real use....and certainly does not feel like an alternative to the PSG for a cap ship...needs to do more damage and drain energy so it's more like the Argon/Boron equivalent....stuck 36 tri beams on a Proteus but failed every time to defeat a Braggi I cheated in, but say a Atlas/Tempest/Megalodon equipped with there beam weapons would be able to gain the upper hand!

The Terran fusion beam does feel weighty but think if you swapped the reduce speed ability for the energy draining ability then it would be more of an alternative to the standard PSP....anyway the high tech Terran/ATF feel like they need a energy daring beam weapon anyway

Anyway keep up the good work ))

The main reason for the FBC and TBC not draining shields is to differentiate them from Boron tech. In my mind I can justify the Argon beam having Boron shield draining tech. I think though that the other beams need to have other advantages.

The FBC is the most powerful weapon in the game - you just have to keep it on target and the Tri-beam is deadly against smaller ships, including Corvettes. Its beam is only slightly longer than the PALC and it does much more damage. Think of the Tri-beam as a medium weapon rather than capital ship weapon - many frigates can mount it.

[paulwheeler]

Now that I've been playing for a while, here's a little feedback:

-Something seems off about the Polacca TL. It's inferior to the other Terran TLs in almost every way except for its large hangar, and yet it costs about about three times as much. Is there something special about it that I've missed?

Its supposed to be a generic TL with nothing special - I'll check the price, it should be the cheapest.

-Lasertowers are now horribly overpowered. I just watched three pirate LTs obliterate a Kha'ak carrier without breaking a sweat. Is this really intended? It seems weird for something smaller than most fighters to take on capital ships so easily. On a related note, the Treasure Hunt plot wants me to destroy six of them and I'm not sure how I'll manage that...

It frustrated me that lasertowers were pointless in vanilla. Their stats had not changed since at least X2 (I've never played X:BTF), whereas most ships have much more firepower than they did then and more shielding. They are supposed to be point defenses for stations. I really wanted to be able to increase the price, but unfortunately the X3 resources calculations and dock storage mechanisms prevent that.

-With all the Mk1 ships out there, why no Mk1 Xenon in X101? Or were the models not ported?

They were ported, but I couldn't justify why Xenon would be using old tech. They are sentient machines - all old tech would surely be upgraded or destroyed - plus the models were so, so poor.

Loving the mod otherwise - cracking work!

Edit: Oh, and a question (before I get to building). Does the XRM include tubeless complexes or similar, or is that something I'll have to add myself? Can't afford laggy sectors with those Kha'ak TMs floating around...

Nope it doesn't, but the tubeless mod available here is fully compatible.

[Sn4kemaster]

Paul another thing I've noticed is Cadius gave the Tempest model a perfectly good fighter landing bay and 2 launch tubes.....so why have you got it's fighters to dock on its belly?