NEWS: X3: Terran Conflict news, all in one place for your convenience - 22-10-08

[Turricanion]

in XTM, you could start as terran. Couldnt play the X3: R plot as terran tho.

[Ecthelion]

7: even greater possibility for modders to work with it than X3: R

Related to this is the fact that XTM will essentially be the core game with TC, so mods will be added on top of XTM. So we can finally get DDRS and XTM working together.

[BigBANGtheory]

Simply classifying X3:TC as 'XTM + Mods' is I think being more than a little unfair towards Egosoft. If it was going to plan out like that I doubt they would have bothered to undertake the project.

You'll know for sure in a few weeks.

[Predator02]

So would XTM for TC be X3R+XTM+XTM?

But seriously, there's more then XTM ships in TC.

[Sblade]

Especially if you have a good video card.

Buy a 8800 GTX card. Put highest settings, then run TC. Then come and tell me its XTM+ MODS.


Goes way further. I repeat, if they have used a new engine, it could be called X4

[jordan kirwan]

But i don´t need to use Babelfishy...

how do you know i haven't been learning german

anyway back on topic

afaik TC contains the best features from XTM
i think i read something similar somewhere
imo TC is NOT a glorified mod!
its got loads of stuff that XTM didnt include like bomber ships (M8 )
and the new TM
and apparently unfocused jumps?(just search)

and probably heaps of other stuff that egosoft are keeping quiet about

[UniM]

Some more stuff from the German thread:

http://img356.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... 222ip6.jpg
Terranische Korvette der Katana Klasse
= Terran Katana class corvette

http://img296.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... 893cc2.jpg
Terranischer Träger der Tokyo Klasse, doppelt so groß wie der Argonische Träger!!!
= Terran Tokyo class carrier, double the size of the Argon carrier!!!

http://img398.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... 439sc3.jpg
Katana Korvette und ein Trans Orbital Beschleuniger - So zu sagen ein Sprungtor "light" für Kurzstreckensprünge innerhalb von Sonnensystemen
= Katana corvette and a Trans-Orbital Accelerator, basically a Jumpgate "Light" for short-distance jumps inside of solar systems (I was right, yes! )

Cheers

[Phony]

[how do you know i haven't been learning german

Because your translation was incorrect...

[UniM]

So here is the translation of the German press conference videos that were posted in the Devblog. It makes for some interesting reading I hope, and may answer some more questions.


Part 1

0:37 Bernd (I think that it is he) speaks about the X series in general.

1:16 TC adds a new story, a new universe and lots of new features for people familiar with the previous games.

1:35 More about the X games in general.

1:55 While we have a new story and subplots, the core of the game is still to craft your own experience either as a trader, or through building factories, or through conquering the universe through battle and wiping out whole races.

2:30 And more about the X series. How every part of the series has built up the relationships to Earth and its meaning, and how at the end of X3:R the Earth and the Solar system are for the first time accessible again.

3:40 The Terrans are a new race with their own economy and their own weapons.

3:56 The Earth is very much military orientated. There are two factions: the Secret Service, which has the mission to prevent any future developments of artificial intelligences. And the Military, where one of the game-starts lets you start the game as a lowly soldier.

4:36 TC adds several new missile types. And a new ship class - the missile ship - which is rather vulnerable to certain attacks, but is in turn very powerful against big targets and even swarms of smaller ships. So the game has a lot more strategic depth.

5:38 While I approach the enemy ship, I can already launch long-range missiles at it.

5:50 He fires a big salvo of missiles.

5:59 Ah! He has some flack guns, also a new type of missile weapon [that's what he says], but they are not very effective for anti-missile protection, but there are special weapon systems for defending against large numbers of missiles, which makes the game more strategic than the predecessors, and you can balance more diverse weapon systems against each other.

6:25 If I fly a missile ship then I must watch out that I do not meet the appropriate resistance or prepare myself accordingly if I do.

6:36 I must add that there are now more weapons systems that require ammunition. The previous games had often only energy-weapons, which had relatively little strategic depth. But weapons and ammunition makes things more complicated.

6:54 But this all is optional since all of the previous weapons are still there. And I can enter the heat of battle with the heaviest ships available to me at the time.

Part 2

0:15 I like to show off fight scenes since I can talk more freely then.

0:24 But the game still has also the other aspects of Trade and Build, but it is rather hard to show Trade, which is still an important aspect of the game even if you like to fight a lot. We have a real simulated economy based on supply and demand. And if I start a war for instance, then as ships get destroyed the prices for weapons and other wares get higher. And all of this makes also the Fight aspect more interesting as I am playing no simple one-time missions but live in a universe where everything can happen and where everything has a consequence.

1:24 But besides all that freedom there is also a story being told. And in the previous games integrating such freedom with a linear story has been quite difficult.

1:45 With god mode on he rams the capship and gets stuck in the engine .

2:15 He cheats his ship to be a bit faster and talks about available ship types. That you can also buy big capships like the one shown...

3:07 ... or you can capture them instead with the Boarding Crew. You have to train marines who can theoretically capture even the biggest ships. In reality this can also fail if the marines are not well enough trained or if there are too many enemies. But it is still cheaper to capture a ship than to buy one.

3:44 Back to the story. All of the planets of the Solar system are new to the game. And the new stations are bigger and more detailed than everything we have had so far.

4:19 There are now stations that can have more polygons than an entire sector previously. The military orientated Terrans have entire defence systems around the Solar system to protect against a possible Terraformer attack, which is also the basis of the game - the battle, or rather the fear of the Terrans before the Terraformers.

5:00 He talks about the background of the Xenon.

5:30 The story of TC is based on the fact that the Terrans do not allow any kind of artificial intelligence development while the other races in the X-universe, including the Argon, are not so strict about it. This is the basis for the Terran Conflict.

6:00 Intro.

6:36 Those who have played the previous games may remember some of the scenes here. The story about the Terraformers and the destruction of the Gate to Earth. Now we can show it in more detail than in the first game.

7:47 The Terran storyline is one of four storylines. We do not have a single big story now but a series of plots and the player can choose which of these to play or at what speed. And there are also the generic missions for fighting, trading or transporting with varying difficulties and objectives, several of which can be played at the same time.

Part 3

0:15 Another new feature is the user interface, which is the biggest update to the game that makes all of the new things possible.

0:35 The Earth is the big prize of the Terran main plot. At the beginning of the game the innermost Sol sectors are not accessible even with the Teran Military Pilot start.

1:01 The more missions you accomplish, the more access to the inner systems you get from the Secret Service. That is also one of the new features: restricted access to sectors, with the Earth being the ultimate prize where the Defence Ring around the Earth, representing the paranoid fears of the Terrans before the Terraformers, is also visible.

1:50 The Terran game start begins in the Uranus sector where military missions can be undertaken for the military.

2:05 The UI is new. Currently there is only one active mission but a station is offering a new one. Usually generic missions are displayed via icons but sometimes also plot missions. Notice how despite the 6x time acceleration the game does not get slower.

3:03 The closer I am to the station the more selections I have in the context menu. The light bulb shows a Think mission. Each of the Think, Fight, Trade, Build missions can have different objectives, Fight missions can be an assassination or a freighter escort or something different. I can accept or reject the mission. I accept and have now a new mission objective, and the objective system displays the next location that I have to fly to. The guidance system can only track one mission at a time but I can play them all simultaneously. The yellow marker shows the next mission-critical object. In this case the East gate of the sector, where I have then to find someone or something, Usually generic missions like these take place in the near vicinity so you do not have to fly for hours.

4:55 But the whole UI has been changed which should make the game also more accessible for beginners, which has been criticized in the past about the X games. Partly for to the UI, which is now fully mouse-operable, but you can also use a joystick or keyboard like before. And the controls are also configurable. You can also play in the Classic Mode where the controls are like they were in the previous game. But the mouse-controlled interface is probably the best one for the beginners.

5:50 Another new feature is the possibility to click objects on the screen and to have context menus with different commands.

6:18 I can click every weapon and have information displayed, if I have different weapons or missiles in my hold then I can install them from the menu or make weapon groups, which can be selected with hot-keys.

7:00 Another improvement is in the balancing. In the earlier games there was always a big gap between small and big ships, and that did not appeal to many newcomers who saw the high cost of the bigger ships. Now there are several new ship classes that fill that gap.

8:10 A station is destroyed with artillery, which is a new weapon class.

8:38 I have several ships in this sector, and a new feature is the possibility to control large numbers of ships more effectively. I can give direct commands with the context menus. But now I can also group ships in Wings, which allows me to give commands to entire groups at once.

Part 4

0:20 Let's give some orders to my ships. The ships are shown on the monitors, which gives at times a better overview of battles. The player can play in first person or command battles like a general.

1:15 Another change is in the game-starts. In the previous games you played a Human, as Kyle Brennan, more about him in that book (waves book), and then his son. Each of the games took place at a different time after the previous one, but TC continues directly from X3:Reunion where the Earth gate is open and the Earth sectors are accessible again.

2:10 Now I can play different characters, at the beginning there are five different game starts. The Terran one, an Argon one with typical Argon relations with others. Later more extreme game starts will be unlocked when the plot advances, opening up Split or Paranid starts with the appropriate political relations. As an Argon the Paranid are not your friends, which is not that hard. The other way around, with the Argon as an enemy, the game is somewhat harder. He goes on to talk about how better relations give better access to technologies, like in previous games. And he also compares the game to MMOs and talks about stats uploading.

5:15 If I take and accomplish enough special missions then I can eventually play the Terran plot. Now it is possible to play the plot with each of the game starts.

5:36 This is a new save game with no cheats enabled so I should avoid being shot at or collisions.

6:00 The space station has a generic and a plot mission to offer.

6:30 He talks about ship upgrades like docking computer, remote trading and trading software, salvage insurance.

7:45 The Boarding Crew can also be useful for traders and builders since it gives access to big ships. It requires some time investments. There are special stations that train marines. You can transport marines on normal ships and after a ships shields are down they can be sent out to capture the ship, they will then cut through the hull and fight ... fades into silence.

[Tycow]

Again UniM, thanks for the awesome translation.

The separate factions within the Terran government sounds like it could form some interesting plot twists.

/excited!

[Cardo]

Thanks for the translation UniM

So I would understand from the translation that getting big ships isn't made too easy as I were afraid after reading the blog entries or wherever it was. Instead the move to bigger ships is made easier by creating more medium ship classes if I understood right.
This sounds good

Hmm what start should I use when I finally get it

[UniM]

Thanks for the translation UniM

So I would understand from the translation that getting big ships isn't made too easy as I were afraid after reading the blog entries or wherever it was. Instead the move to bigger ships is made easier by creating more medium ship classes if I understood right.
This sounds good

Hmm what start should I use when I finally get it

Yes, that is how I also understand it. Also, if you look at the Gamestar video in full-screen, you can also see some interesting stuff like M7 class ships or some weapon stats (I also pointed some of it out in one of my previous posts on page 54).

[X2-Eliah]

Quite interesting.. From the pictured post with the Carrier of the Terrans we can safely deduce that there are 2 Terran shiptypes all the way up to capital ships.

And from the translation, if I get this right, we can play on any gamestart and do the main plotline?

[pixel]

I would really like to know how the devs feel they have optimised the gameplay in TC.

I loved the gameplay in X2, I could start out in xtreme, and be up and running with a nice new station in a day or so and then later on rule the universe in my teladi corvette

X3 I find a bit unapproachable, it is very difficult and time consuming advancing initially from xtreme. I know xtreme is meant to be hard, but it has turned into a bit of a grind now, capping is far too difficult and the trading is low profitss. Advancing from nothing was fun in X2. Then of course in the later game making money is not difficult, but the whole station setup is a real chore, designing a station complex requires serious effort outside of the game with resource measurement and flow. The hyperion was added as a clear nod to the gamer like myself who likes the ultimate pay off of being rich in the game - ie ultimate power, but by the time you get it there is not a lot new to do if you already played X2 a lot.

So, this is not a moan, the fact that I have been playing the X games for years, all of them on CDs on the shelf behind me (two copies of X2 so I could play the american version on its early release!), shows I love the games.

I just think that it would be great if TC was more user friendly than X3, not in terms of interface, though I am looking with interest at the new interface, but in terms of actual gameplay.

Setting up stations any easier?

Is trading a bit more rewarding?

Has capping been made a bit more fun? ie do you have a better chance of capping? post 1.3 I just gave up as it was so repetitive reloading save games....

Have genuinely new facets been added to the game. New races and ships are fun, but don't add anything really new. The new fleet commands for wings look very promising, but are they a chore or are they simple to use?

Has egosoft done anything to streamline the incredibly confusing array of add on scripts that all seem to do the same thing slightly differently and dont have any description or guide in game? eg coomodity trader etc

Ultimately has effort been put into making this amzing series of simulations more FUN?

Thanks

[Rapier]

I think these are the kind of things the developer blog is supposed to be answering. i.e. merged.

[X2-Eliah]

Interesting.. I always found X3 to be the more easiest of the two..

Are you sure you are not just using X2 tactics/ways on an X3 game?
Since you do mention reloading and low capping, and small trading income, well.. Do not reload just to cap one ship, kill it and move on. About the small income, start some UTs and the income should be quite large. Stations also work quite differently..

And a personal mater - I hardly doubt making the game into a one-day struggle, then ruling the universe can be called an improvement.. Some players want to have a little thing called longevity in a game too, you know..

Furthermore, for you fun may be into the ruling the universe thing, fun for others may be in struggling in a trader ship for weeks, for some else fun is in the massive fleets of capital ships (not one teladi corvette, as you say).

[pjknibbs]

X3 I find a bit unapproachable, it is very difficult and time consuming advancing initially from xtreme. I know xtreme is meant to be hard, but it has turned into a bit of a grind now, capping is far too difficult and the trading is low profitss.

I disagree; I never had a problem advancing from X-Treme in X3--in fact, I found it EASIER to make money in X3 than in X2! That's doing a pretty exclusively combat-based start, too--I never trade manually if I can help it. (Having said that, trading is arguably easier from X3 X-Treme than it was in X2, simply because the ship you start with is much more valuable--sell the Buster, get a Mercury, and you still have a fair bit of float to start your career. That simply wasn't possible with the crappy Discoverer you started with in X2).

[damador]

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4

found it on other forum so it seems real

[Edit: Picture links edited by blueshadow]

[UniM]

Quite interesting.. From the pictured post with the Carrier of the Terrans we can safely deduce that there are 2 Terran shiptypes all the way up to capital ships.

And from the translation, if I get this right, we can play on any gamestart and do the main plotline?

Yes, that is how I understood it. There are apparently four main storylines, with the Terran one being the culmination of the story (although they may also be all parallel, but he talked mostly about the Terran one so I could not deduce anything more definite). And the player can choose which storylines he/she wishes to play, and the story is enabled in all of the storylines.


Also from the German thread:

Original from Cherry
I have a question that you could actually answer now, are the intermission sequences during the flight through a gate back again?

CaptProton
Yes

So it would seem that there are indeed animated scenes during gate travel now.

[jlehtone]

X3 I find a bit unapproachable, it is very difficult and time consuming advancing initially from xtreme. I know xtreme is meant to be hard, but it has turned into a bit of a grind now, capping is far too difficult and the trading is low profitss.

When the 2.5 patch added the playerstats, I was able to get the list of how long I've used different ships (the "favorite ship" table, but a bit broken). There were ~15 hours with Buster (the Xtreme starting vessel), then ~15 hours with Jaguar Vanguard (exploring, ship bought with selling scavenged Hammerhead etc), and after that Mamba Raider. No trade, essentially no capturing, and not really feeling a "grind" either. X2 was much slower, but it was also the first introduction to the series. Learning curve and all, objective comparison is not so trivial. But overall, credits are very easy in X3R.