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| 25. |
Re: Another tip |
Nov 12, 2005, 18:00 |
Creston |
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Already, I referenced the semi-boredom of wanting to do something else, but needing to stop and manage my one ship. And I am playing this game from a slow, n00b, whacked out perspective.
Well, you never HAVE to stop to manage your remote ship. So it sits in a station somewhere for a few hours, so what? It's not going to die or anything. 
Do what you feel like doing, and when you have some dead time on your hands (when flying across a large sector, for example) remote manage your ship. It doesn't HAVE to constantly be doing something...
For right now, I want to figure out some way to get my cargo ship doing some stuff without me watching it 24/7 while I go play the story for quite a bit.
Here's what I do. I'm flying in my M3. I remote jump my trader into a system. Hit R, hit enter on the trader, scroll down to best buy. Check prices. Any deals? If so, which fab are they at?
Hit C for command console, 1 for Navigation, 2 for dock at station, select sector and station.
Keep flying my M3. Ten minutes or so later, I check R to see where my trader is. Still on its way. Keep flying, cap some pirates, do some scouting, whatever. (mobile mining and BBS missions really need to be fixed soon, they were a HUGE part of what I did during this time). Hit R, hey it landed. Hit enter on trader, hit D for trades. Buy the deals.
Scroll down to best sell, see if anyone wants my stuff, If so, send trader there. If not, jump it to another sector, check best buy and best sell, determine station, tell it to dock there, keep flying.
While it seems involved, I spend probably 20 seconds looking at my remote trader, then do stuff on my own for 10-20-30 minutes, then spend 20 seconds on my trader, and go off again etc.
Even in my limited form, I am at least getting ahead in trading (about 230,000 cr now) and I can only imagine how much easier it gets later on once you have more money to play with, have built stuff up, and know what you are doing
Yeah, it takes money to MAKE money in X. My waepons trader, for example, currently carries over 5 million credits worth of junk that I'm hauling around. Once I finally sell all of it, I'll probably have made about 1.2 million credits profit or so. But you need a lot of cash to be able to do that sort of trading.
Btw, in X3, here's the optimal curve of goods to trade, imo.
Food, plus maybe energy, until you have about 200K.
High tech stuff. Microchips, Quantum tubes, Satellites. Drones. Crystals. Till around 800K - 1 million.
Weapons. Missiles, alpha type weapons etc. once you rank gets high enough (argon Federation Guardian) you can buy all the high end weapons too.
then it really takes off.
Btw, in X2, I was getting kinda bored, and then I placed my first station. Station placement, figuring out where they'd work, and management is a LOT of fun, imo. You can't afford it yet, but you're getting pretty close.
It would be a pain in the butt to implement it, certainly outside the developer's likely reach, but it really needs to expand the story, figure out a multi-player solution, and/or figure out a way to have a more dynamic world (almost a RTS, but let it be turned on/off.)
Well, the first thing it needs is all the fucking CONTENT we were promised. Personally, I don't give a damn about the story, but there is even LESS content now than there was in X2, and that pisses me the fuck off. As for more dynamic stuff, APPARENTLY there are more race wars and such, but I never see them. However, there is now sector in my galaxy that is empty of stations. So they must have been destroyed by SOMEONE...
(annoying too, it was a good sector for trading. Great Trench...)
To be fair, Ego has been good about adding functionality to the game in patches, but they promised a TON of stuff for X3, and so far they've delivered very little.
The HQ thing really pisses me off 
Creston
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| 24. |
Re: Another tip |
Nov 12, 2005, 17:49 |
Creston |
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Ahhh...crap, crap, crap! I was SO looking forward to that feature. I've been using warships or Argon trading docks as my base (Bab5 look-a-like)...oh, that really sucks Creston...
Tell me about it bud
Creston
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| 23. |
Re: Will try to answer everyone's stuff |
Nov 12, 2005, 17:49 |
Creston |
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By the way, you realize there hundreds and hundreds of sectors out there?
let's not exxagerate, about 140 or so
Creston
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| 22. |
Re: Will try to answer everyone's stuff |
Nov 12, 2005, 17:48 |
Creston |
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So, in a great sense, trading really is done manually? My universe-wide trading cartel vision was mis-placed? There really is no way to put sattelites all over the place, let my ship loose in an area, give it boundaries (distance, item, price,) and have it just do its thing?
Without scripting, no...
but I do not see a "Start sector trade" option
Well, you don't have Mark 3 trading software, so yeah
Once you buy that software for the ship, if you go under the Trade menu in the ship's command console, it will have the sector trader and universe trader options.
It does have options to buy/sell wares and a similiar buy best/sell best wares, but it never does anything wen I select them (and they are accepted as inputs by the game, they are not just grayed out.)
I can understand why those options can be confusing. They are only used for when a ship is assigned a homebase (usually one of your own factories), and are then used to buy resources and sell products. Although you CAN, for example, set a ship to your TL as homebase, and have it continuously buy energy with it. But 99% of it is used only to supply fabs and to sell the product of those fabs.
And before you mention it, yes, stand alone, the game is VERY barebones in how it automates things for you, but there will be scripts out soon enough that will do a lot of this stuff.
Heck, 90% of the most advanced options in X3 are community scripts from X2.
Now, as for hating scripts, you won't after you try a few of them. X2 was made 10 times better because of the scripts and they DID automate a lot of stuff for you. I'm not just talking about the trading scripts, but the first patrol scripts finally gave you a sense of security against the Khaak, there was the forerunner to the BPS scripts (which gave FAR more power to the ships you assign to your fabs, let them use jumpdrives, switch assigned cargos on the fly etc), there was the asews warning script, which warned you if a khaak cluster spawned in a sector in which you had a satellite (allowing you to jump in and protect the sector / traderoute from the khaak) etc.
So once the X3 scripting stuff gets going, believe me, the game will be ENORMOUSLY enriched by it.
At least, during the times I want to go do stuff with my buster, I might be able to turn that one and go have fun.
Btw, you can EASILY trade high tech and weapons in your buster. Very easily. They are low volume / low unit / high profit wares, so that works fine.
the trading stations would be buying things below cost or within 300cr of my cost
Trading stations and equipment docks always buy at one price, the average price. ALWAYS. They never vary. If they have 0 in stock, they offer the average price. If they are full of stock, they offer the average price.
To give you an example, the average price on an Alpha Particle Accelerator Cannon is 23,372. The minimum price is 20,100. So buy them at 20,100, then sell them at the equipment dock for average price, and you make 3,272 profit.
Navsats sell , at the minimum, for ~5800 credits in the sat factory, and they sell at the trading station for ~6780.
Now, it's possible that the fabs are currently not full of stock, in which case their price is higher. You have to wait for the stock to become full before they give you the lowest price.
Now, you could also trade silicon, if you want, you can buy that for ~230 at the lowest, and sell it for ~780 at the highest, but it takes a lot longer to look around for a fab that offers the highest prices (and if it does, you can bet an AI trader is already on its way).
Check some other sectors, and some other fabs to see what their prices are. Red Light and Antigone Memorial are good sectors to pick some stuff up.
Weapons are made in abundance in cloudbase southeast.
But, to give you a great example of how much money you can make even buying low and selling at average, a BPPC (you can't buy it yet) can be bought for 638,074, and will then sell for 701, 180. For a ~63K profit. PER GUN.
If I cannot even remember what my weapons are, no way do I know your abbreviations. However, let me go load up the game (I would be soooo happy if the thing could minimize without crashing)...to find that my Buster has 2x Beta Particle Accelerator Cannons (used for initial damgage) and 2x Beta Impulse Ray Emitter (used to keep the shields down and not really damage hull.)
Oh, hehe
IRE = Impulse Ray Emitter
PAC = Particle Accelerator Cannon
HEPT = High Energy Plasma Thrower
PSG = Phased Shockwave Generator
PBE = Pulsed Beam Emitter
PPC = Photon Pulse Cannon
FAA = Flack Artillery Array
IRE, PAC and HEPT are the fighter weapons, from lowest to most power. You used to be able to fit BHEPTS on an M3, but not anymore, but even AHEPTS are terribly powerful. They're the dark green bolts you see shot at you at times (DODGE THEM). PACS are medium power, they're the sorta turqoise blue bolts. And IREs are the low power lasers you see flying around.
PSGs used to be hideously overpowered, and would kill capships in seconds. Not sure how they are now, they seem more balanced. However, they are area of effect weapons, great for killing khaak, but they WILL make friendly fire kills.
PBEs are new, and I haven't used them yet.
PPCs are capship weapons (M1 and M2, carrier / destroyer class weapons).
FAAs I don't know either.
Ion Disruptors will drain shields rapidly, but will ONLY damage shields. (and have a chance of frying a ship's equipment apparently, but to me that chance seems the same as that of any other weapon).
Mass Drivers are machine guns that ignore shields, but they do require ammo to fire.
2BPACS and 2IRE don't really cap well, I've noticed. Buy 2 more BIRE (ie, Beta-IRE), and use 4BIRE/2BIRE when trying to cap, and only use the PAC/IRE combo when you just want to kill something.
Beta Pacs are pretty powerful, and seem to kill something before it can decide it wants to jump.
Faction should not be an issue, at least not in the Argon areas
Hehe, try buying a Beta HEPT in Cloudbase SE 
but was just curious that the trading was going so much faster than the combat
Well, most of your kills are presumably against pirate harriers and khaak scouts, which are worth almost nothing to your combat ranking.
Capping is still an arcane science to me.
Well, it's not a science. It's plain and simple luck, although I do feel that weapon loadout has a large effect.
If you face 4 ships, the first one has just as much chance to jump as the last one does. So, imo, it doesn't really pay to "Kill three then try to cap the fourth", since you're giving up on 3 potential caps. If you cap the first one, he's out of the picture, and you can focus on the next one.
However, I noticed myself that the 2 BPAC + 2BIRE loadout didn't seem to cap a lot. Try it with 4 or even 6 BIRE.
But in either case, outright rush or proving to the last ship that I am the top dog, it has only happened twice now
Yep, like I said, it's random. If capping was too easy (like it was in X2 1.2), you could make 50 million credits off it in a day, which obviously was deemed inappropriate.
I'll go throug ten combats without a cap, and then cap five in a row.
Or I'll cap every 6th ship I fight.
The only thing I seem to cap with regularity is Falcons, right now. They all fear me.
As I said, these non-battles can drag on for minutes because I am intentionaly pestering and not destroying the ships
Well, I still think capping has a better success rate when you do a HUGE amount of damage in one go, rather than the small peppering type of fire. The latter one works, but it's very stingy in the caps.
However, just blasting away at a ship and sending its hull plummeting seems to work fine for me. Like I said earlier, the first time I tried it in X2, it NEVER worked for me, and I became very dispondent about it, since I was reading all the threads and doing what everyone else was doing.
Once I finally capped a few, I developed my own style, and capped 90 odd novas in space of a few hours.
In X3, I seem to be the Falcon capping guru, but I've yet to cap a single Nova, for example.
Everyone uses their own style. Some people say they still use the X2 : Damage hull to 87%, then drop his shields, let them recharge, drop his shields ad infinitum tactic, and it works for them. It doesn't for me. But I can cap ships now ABOVE 87% hull...
It's really all about what you get comfy with.
Swinging back to the economy, I did notice that my time had just passed the one day mark. Is it true/false that the economy kind of resets itself at that point? Er...not resets, but matures and stabilizes? Could that be why my prices are nowhere near what some of the examples have beeen?
Nah, that's just a rumor. However, the economy goes in ups and downs. It's possible that there's just a large number of traders currently operating in Argon Space, and you're missing out on trades because of them.
This does probably mean, however, that there are not that many in south boron space, and you could make a killing there. If Argon Space isn't doing it for you, go elsewhere.
but is there no way to just have it target what I am pointed at? <T> does not do that for me, although <Shift+T> does turn on the nearest enemy mode thingie. And I have tried this post-patch as well - I am just not sure if this feature is not supported, it really is broken in my game, or there is a different command for it.
It could be that your control scheme is set to a different one, rather than the X classic one. Check Page 13 in your manual for instructions on how to switch the profile back to "Default", then go into the keymappings (from the options / controls menu), and make sure that the Target function is actually MAPPED to something. It works for me, but there were other keys that wouldn't work, so I went through the controls and manually bound a few options to new keys. (For example, the docking computer, the enemy target, the kill speed button etc.)
I still want a better fighting ship!
Well, the M3 is a better fighting ship, but their speed is SO CRAP, I don't know how anyone can really enjoy flying around in them. Unfortunately, you can't buy one yet, so you'll either have to cap one, or find one of the few abandoned ones. Actually, there is one ship that's pretty decent even in speed, I will put it in secret text.
there is a Mamba Raider M3, that goes 200ms and has 1x25MW shield, plus good weaponry, that I flew for quite awhile after I found it. You can't find it in Loomanckstrat's Legacy, in the western part of the sector map, near some asteroids.
Now, be careful, buy some salvage insurance from the Goner Temple in Cloudbase Southwest before you go there, with it you can save your game in space.
Once you see the Mamba on your sector map (having a triplex scanner helps), fly towards it until you're about 7km away. Now start hitting the Target Nearest Enemy Button (shift T).
You will see mines. Fly around the mamba at 7km, and map all the mines, until you've gotten them sorted. Then look for the path in and path out. Mines don't go off until you're really close, but if they do, you're dead. So after mapping the mines and SAVING, slowly move in in your spacesuit, claim the mamba, enter it, then fly out slowly, sticking to the safe lane.
I think you'd enjoy flying that ship, even though I still think 200 is pathetically slow...
would still like tosee a breakdown of ships, even if it was only in a numerical order with no other explanation
Alrighty :
M5 : Scoutship class. Argon Discoverer, Paranid Pegasus, Teladi Harrier, etc. Can still fight, but will generally only have 2-4MJ of shielding, and low weapons, as well as low cargo space. But will fly anywhere from 300-500ms. Can only mount duplex scanner, so even though it's quick, it still sucks for sector scanning, imo.
The Khaak scout is an M5.
M4 : Fighter class. Argon Buster, Boron Mako, Paranid Peracles, etc. Can fight pretty well, mounting pretty decent weaponry, and can have anywhere from 5-20MJ of shielding. Very maneuverable, and has decent speed, around 170-280 or so for the fastest. Supertuned ones can go 300+.
The Khaak Interceptor (rare) is an M4.
M3 : Heavy Fighter. Argon Nova, Split Mamba, Teladi Falcon. Used to be the king ship of X2, now they kinda suck because their speed is pathetic. Ego fucking sucks.
Can mount most fighter weapons, and will generally have a rear turret. Have anywhere from 25-75MJ of shielding, although the Falcon Sentinel can mount a whopping 2x125MJ shields (but then only goes 75ms ).
You can generally take these into a battle and come out alive, no matter the odds.
The Khaak Fighter is an M3.
M6 : Corvette class. Was ultra cool in X2, has been brutally fucking nerfed. They now travel at a max of <80ms, which makes them utterly utterly utterly fucking useless, and I seriously want to inflict pain on some German developers. They have several 125MJ shields, as well as multiple turrets.
In X2, they couldn't dock anywhere though, so they were annoying to have as a personal ship, but everyone used them with sector patrol scripts to keep the khaak away from their transports. The Argon Centaur became known as the King of OOS (Out of Sector) combat, efficiently raping even the largest khaak clusters.
However, in X2, the fastest M6 went 312ms. The fastest now goes 80ms...
To make up for its lack of docking, the M6 could carry a single M5 class ship, but it can't in X3 anymore. However, people now report that the Corvette can dock to all stations by itself, making it better to fly. If it weren't for that idiot speed.
M2 : Destroyer class capship. Argon Titan, Paranid Odysseus etc. Lots of shields and lots and lots of guns. Nuff said. Owning one was the pimp in X2, until you flew it around and realised that you could kill the entire universe in it. Never any real need for one, besides actually HAVING it.
Despite promises made by the german fuckers, there still is absolutely no reason to own a single one of these, besides the fact that it's cool.
M1 : Carrier class vessel. Argon Colossus, Teladi Phoenix etc. Heavy heavy shielding, far fewer turrets (still double that of a corvette) and a ~150 ship docking bay.
Even less purpose than a destroyer, and only idiots ever bought one in X2.
TL : The Daddy of All Ships in X2, Argon Mammoth etc, it could do everything. Transport your own stations, it worked as a poor man's carrier (cost about a third), had humongous cargo space, could dock trader class ships, had great shields, several turrets.
In short, it was the jack of all trades, but it did all those trades better than most everything else. Less use to own one now, since mobile mining is dead, and you can't dock TS class ships (traders) to it anymore.
TS : The cargo traders. Teladi Vulture, Argon Mercury, etc. Better cargo space in X3, slightly slower, but not by much. The only ship that genuinely improved.
TP : Personell carriers. Argon Express, Boron Manta etc. Once Ego nerfed the Boron Manta from carrying XL Cargo, nobody ever bought these anymore, and they are the most useless class of ships ever invented in a spacegame. They now cost three times as much, fly twice as slow, have 100 small cargo space, can mount shitty weapons, hardly any shields, and one wonders why the fuck they are even in there.
That's about it
*pant pant*
Creston
Edit : Scared by you saying the Buster is the best ship
Well, for ME the M4 class probably is. You have to understand where I'm coming from. I'm immortal when it comes to combat in X3. Seriously. I happily take on 6 Novas in an M4. So for me, the added weapons and shields isn't all that important. but SPEED is. I HATE crawling through sectors. So with the M3s being so speed nerfed (the Split Mamba Raider I described above being the exception, I flew it for quite some time), I'd rather have an M4 myself.
However, the Buster is probably the CRAPPIEST M4 around. I'd much rather have a faster M4, but they do have very minimal shielding.
Btw, I remember Ego also promised that we'd have unique ships to fly in X3. Again bullshit.
This comment was edited on Nov 12, 18:08. |
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| 20. |
Re: Will try to answer everyone's stuff |
Nov 12, 2005, 17:09 |
Luthier |
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Ultimately, I am stuck with a sector/universal trader - that is the closest to my vision? Even for that...how do I start it? I believe that my cargo ship has all the software you listed, barring the third-level trading software (I spotted it at the Teladi equipment dock, but going price was 524,000cr - much, much more than I have,) but I do not see a "Start sector trade" option.
That option is enabled precisely by that 500K trader software you do not have.
With 200,000 it's really going to take you forever to earn any money. Sell your fighter, and fly in your transport for a little while; soon enough you'll have plenty of money to buy many more fighters. As an alternative, there are some derelict ships laying around the universe; the closest two sell for almost 1.5 mil. You can find their location at the official forums, if you want to lose the element of surprise.
After that, go from sector to sector, and check your best buy list. If you see something that's significantly below average - not like 3-4 cr for an energy cell, but more like a few hundred, up to a thousand - buy the entire stock, and sell to the highest bidder in the same sector. Repeat.
By the way, you realize there hundreds and hundreds of sectors out there? You can traverse through the majority of them without having to fight any pirates. You'll see them, but if you stick to the major traffic lanes they won't get close. Don't get stuck in the dozen sectors around Argon Prime.
By the way, do read up on the official forums. I just got the game a few days ago, and until I read through the entire collection here:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=100641
I had absolutely NO idea where to even start.
This comment was edited on Nov 12, 17:10. |
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| 19. |
Re: Another tip |
Nov 12, 2005, 16:39 |
Rigs |
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Just read that Ego decided, in all its wisdom, to can the HQ building from X3.
Ahhh...crap, crap, crap! I was SO looking forward to that feature. I've been using warships or Argon trading docks as my base (Bab5 look-a-like)...oh, that really sucks Creston...
Wondering why the beta ran smooth as glass but the final creeps along like a slideshow,
=-Rigs-=
'My penis is like a Delorean; when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're gonna see some serious sh|t.' |
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| 'Now, we gave you a promise and we are bound by that promise and damn you for asking for it! And damn me for agreeing to it! And damn all of us to hell, because that is exactly where we're going!' |
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| 18. |
Re: Another tip |
Nov 12, 2005, 15:51 |
Ray Marden |
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I do have to wonder about that.
Already, I referenced the semi-boredom of wanting to do something else, but needing to stop and manage my one ship. And I am playing this game from a slow, n00b, whacked out perspective.
For right now, I want to figure out some way to get my cargo ship doing some stuff without me watching it 24/7 while I go play the story for quite a bit. But even when the story is done, it will put me right back at trading.
Even in my limited form, I am at least getting ahead in trading (about 230,000 cr now) and I can only imagine how much easier it gets later on once you have more money to play with, have built stuff up, and know what you are doing. It is definitely a "sandbox" type game for me, but I suspect it is not all that large of one...
And it has to be really tiny for somebody like you!
It would be a pain in the butt to implement it, certainly outside the developer's likely reach, but it really needs to expand the story, figure out a multi-player solution, and/or figure out a way to have a more dynamic world (almost a RTS, but let it be turned on/off.)
Wondering where I go to find a secret ship/crate/item/whatever,
Ray
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http://users.ign.com/collection/RayMarden
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=ray_marden
http://www.livejournal.com/users/raymarden/
I love you, mom. |
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| 17. |
Re: Will try to answer everyone's stuff |
Nov 12, 2005, 15:45 |
Ray Marden |
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TANK YUUS MEESTOR KRESHTON! 
So, in summary:
So, in a great sense, trading really is done manually? My universe-wide trading cartel vision was mis-placed? There really is no way to put sattelites all over the place, let my ship loose in an area, give it boundaries (distance, item, price,) and have it just do its thing?
Ultimately, I am stuck with a sector/universal trader - that is the closest to my vision? Even for that...how do I start it? I believe that my cargo ship has all the software you listed, barring the third-level trading software (I spotted it at the Teladi equipment dock, but going price was 524,000cr - much, much more than I have,) but I do not see a "Start sector trade" option. It does have options to buy/sell wares and a similiar buy best/sell best wares, but it never does anything wen I select them (and they are accepted as inputs by the game, they are not just grayed out.) So...still missing some software thing, I have the wrong ship level, or...something else is going on. I see/realize now that my plan is unrealistic (barring scripts, which I hate,) but the sector/universtal trader is as close as I can get. At least, during the times I want to go do stuff with my buster, I might be able to turn that one and go have fun.
I did not look at anything in any extensive detail, I got sidetracked by wonky Gun :), but my prices were not coming up anywhere near what the aforementioned examples ahve been. I do have 200K cr right now so I can see how I can make a slightly larger amount of money at aslightly faster pace if I can find a 500cr - 1K cr price difference, but I did not see an immediate one. I checked out about a half of Argon sectors, but nothing was coming up - the trading stations would be buying things below cost or within 300cr of my cost. And this was across multiple sectors; it still seems like my crappy energy company (at least 4cr price difference, 3K cargo, 12K cr profit) was doing fairly well, especially for (usually) just being one sector away from the purchase/sale.
If I cannot even remember what my weapons are, no way do I know your abbreviations. However, let me go load up the game (I would be soooo happy if the thing could minimize without crashing)...to find that my Buster has 2x Beta Particle Accelerator Cannons (used for initial damgage) and 2x Beta Impulse Ray Emitter (used to keep the shields down and not really damage hull.)
Faction should not be an issue, at least not in the Argon areas. They are my highest faction and I do have a police badge for two or three other factions.
I have no problem with it taking a long time to level, but was just curious that the trading was going so much faster than the combat, especially given that I am combat first and trading second. :)
Capping is still an arcane science to me. Maybe you can look at my weapons and realize they do not cause a sufficient threat level (regardless of their affect) and what not...but neither scenario seems to really work for me. That poor Falcon I had only gave up at 4% hull (and that is getting the hull down to 4% with 2xBIRE - takes awhile.) And it does not seem to be an outright damage thing - I willy only try to cap a ship when it is by itself. So, if there are four ships, I will blow up three of them in no time flat (pausing for a moment now and then to see if they ever jump) and then go work over the last, fourth one as a potential cap. But in either case, outright rush or proving to the last ship that I am the top dog, it has only happened twice now.  Alas, I had to sell off my Falcon; severely damaged and actually not worth the money to repair it (would have lost money.) Again, it is not that I want to get into the used ship business, but the occasional boost to my bottom line would be nice, much less an additional cargo ship.
I do not think the damage is crazy, at least not when trying to cap. I switched out the other 2xBPAC I started out with, that was overkill, and have the combination I listed above. Even then...I only use the 2xBPAC at the very start to wipe out their shields, immediately swtiching my weapons grouping to 2xBIRE or a combination of one BPAC and one BIRE. As I said, these non-battles can drag on for minutes because I am intentionaly pestering and not destroying the ships. I do wish I could comm the pirate ships and tell them to eject. :)]s
Swinging back to the economy, I did notice that my time had just passed the one day mark. Is it true/false that the economy kind of resets itself at that point? Er...not resets, but matures and stabilizes? Could that be why my prices are nowhere near what some of the examples have beeen?
Ok...is something wrong with my game or am I not explaining the targetting thing properly? I want to, with the joystick, swing my ship towards a within-rang shipe/base/whatever and press a key to have the system targer whatever is in my sights. I do know I can click on stuff with the mouse, I do know I can use <Page Up>/<Page Down> to cycle through stuff, and I have used the <T> key to make items from the sub-menues (sector map) my target, but is there no way to just have it target what I am pointed at? <T> does not do that for me, although <Shift+T> does turn on the nearest enemy mode thingie. And I have tried this post-patch as well - I am just not sure if this feature is not supported, it really is broken in my game, or there is a different command for it.
I never bothered with AA, I am quite used to the DX9+ games running quite slow with it. It is fine at 1280x960 and all other settings at maximum, but I may test it out at some point.
I still want a better fighting ship! I can mess up any single ship, no doubt, but my single buster does have a hard time against heavier stuff like Falcons and what not, especially in groups. My max speed does not seem that great (175?) so I am looking for something with a bit more shielding/weaponry (and power to...er...power it) and/or something with comparable weapons and shielding, but faster. I am not using X2 tacticts!  I do not think I ever traded a single thing in X2, opting to just follow through the story for quite a bit. I am too much of an ignorant n00b to have/know tacticts. :)
I would still like tosee a breakdown of ships, even if it was only in a numerical order with no other explanation. I mean...I go to a shipyard and, other than inspecting and trying to compare some stuff, I have no idea what is what. That all drives me crazy given the wide range of ships. Did I just miss something? Is there a way to see a ship's "M" rating? Yeah, yeah, I know there is a wide range even within each ship class, but that would at least give me an initial way to categorize them.
Man, I hate ramblers! Hee hee!
Scared by you saying the Buster is the best ship :(,
Ray
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http://users.ign.com/collection/RayMarden
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=ray_marden
http://www.livejournal.com/users/raymarden/
I love you, mom. |
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| 16. |
Re: Another tip |
Nov 12, 2005, 15:26 |
Creston |
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Most ships tend to only have one or two missiles, so if they use them, they won't drop them. Also, the drop itself is a chance thing, same as the cap. Sometimes they drop it, sometimes they don't. Same as what a ship has left in equipment after you cap it. This is totally random, and has nothing to do with how often you've shot it etc.
Just read that Ego decided, in all its wisdom, to can the HQ building from X3. There's hardly anything left. No wonder I'm already getting bored...
Creston
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| 15. |
Re: Another tip |
Nov 12, 2005, 14:41 |
Ray Marden |
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Pfft, I will take anything that is free.
That is another strange thing I was wondering, though. When I had no idea what I was doing and just blew stuff up, some of my earlier kills did drop some missles and, not knowing what to do, I just ignored them. However, I have not seen a drop for probably the last...sixty or so kills. Of coure, I am guessing that is due to my fighting (whittling these ships down, trying to cap one, but blowing up every damn thing on them) more than anything else.
I will still try a M3. I want stronger shields than the Buster has.
Wanting to "bling" my ships :D,
Ray
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http://users.ign.com/collection/RayMarden
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=ray_marden
http://www.livejournal.com/users/raymarden/
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| 14. |
Another tip |
Nov 12, 2005, 13:35 |
Creston |
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Which objective is that, Dan?
Ray, when you're fighting pirates, after you've killed them, hit your sector map and scroll ALL THE WAY down on the list. Most likely, you will see several missiles lying around. Scoop up all the Silkworm, Aurora and Tempest missiles you see, as well as any Unknown Objects. (just fly over them, and hit O to open your cargo bay just before you hit them)
Silkworms sell for 5K, Auroras for 2K, Tempest for 13K and Uknowns for 26K. This can get quite lucrative. Typically when I dock at an equipment dock, I sell about 150K worth of missiles that I just scooped up, and it takes like 5 minutes or so to do that.
Don't bother with the crappy missiles, like mosquitos or dragonfly, as they aren't really worth your time.
Creston
This comment was edited on Nov 12, 13:49. |
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| 12. |
Will try to answer everyone's stuff |
Nov 12, 2005, 12:56 |
Creston |
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in one go, will probably get terribly long
And when I returned to Argon Prime, everything was red to me, which was a bit of an eye opener lol.
Apparently you need to contact one of the ships and say you're sorry. Seriously.
Ray,
1) The Best Buy / Best Sell works for any sector you are looking at in which you have a presence. By that I mean, in which you have something that belongs to you. This can be you yourself, a ship, or even a satellite (which is why many advanced traders will put satellites in trade heavy sectors, so they can monitor the flow of goods in that sector).
If you hit the 5 and 6 keys while in your own ship, you will see the best buy and best sell prices in the sector YOU are in. If you wish to see it for other sectors, hit the R key (for your property list), hit enter on the ship / satellite / whatever that's in the sector you want to watch, and scroll down to the best buy / best sell selection. (the shortcuts don't work here, this is a bug.)
Best Buy will always show you what's available in the sector, but best sell shows you what the ship you are looking at has for sale, and ONLY that. I believe with satellites it shows what you have in your OWN ship's cargobay.
So if you're trying to check the best sell price for silicon in a different sector through one of your own ships there, you can't unless that ship has silicon in its cargo bay.
You CAN if you'd have a satellite there.
Really the best way to get a grip on this is to just fiddle with it.
2) You CAN actually make pretty good profits in argon prime. Buy satellites from the satellite factory (NOT the advanced ones, the normal ones) when they are showing a 1000 credit profit, you can buy 80 of them, and sell 40 right there to the trading station in argon prime. That's 40K profit.
You can buy more satellites in Red Light (West, South from Argon Prime), as well as fighter drones, and I believe Mass Driver ammunition.
You can sell fighter drones to trading stations, and mass driver ammo to equipment docks (in Argon space, there are docks in Argon Prime, Red Light, Cloudbase South East, Antigone Memorial and Three Worlds, which are all within 2 sectors of Argon Prime).
Go North from Argon Prime to Herron's Nebula, buy space fuel from the space fuel distillery, and sell to the trading station in that same sector. Take ONLY as much as the station will buy, since it's an illegal product.
Just do this a few times (you can try trading in low level missiles too, sell them to equipment docks) to get the hang of it, then expand into Boron space, which is north and northeast of argon space. Or at least part of it is.)
3) Is there any way to regulate this transaction?
If you mean automate it, no, not really, unless you're into writing scripts. It's not even that hard a script to write, to be honest, but Ego wanted to avoid having the game play itself. (Ie, Dungeon Siege Syndrome) Especially with having a SETA, it'd be terribly easy to just set up a trader, hit SETA, go to bed, and the next day you have 20 million credits.
Energy really is no longer a worthy trade, imo. They've cut the price range too much, and it's no longer required by all fabs (since most complexes now have an SPP built in). Personally, I've stopped trading from minimum price to maximum price. Ie, I no longer buy stuff at minimum, then haul it around for ages looking for that >>> avg price to make a max killing.
I now buy at minimum price, then sell at average price to trading stations and equipment docks. In fact, I'm currently working on a galactic trading loop as an arms dealer which I think will make around 15 million credits per go (although it would take about 5 hours to complete or so.)
However, you don't HAVE to sit there and watch the trader go. Just check in on him every now and then, and if he's docked somewhere, you either need to buy or sell something, then send him on his way somewhere else, while you go do more interesting things in your M4 Buster. It takes a bit of time to get the hang of remote trading, but once you do it takes almost no attention and makes nice money. I finally learned how to do this in X3. (I always traded manually in X2.)
Try to see if you can buy some low level weapons (AIRE, BIRE, APAC) and low level missiles, and start selling those. Alternatively, trade in high tech goods. Crystals, Quantum Tubes, Microchips etc. Microchips are easy to trade, you can do so even in your Buster.
If you have very little money, trade some food. Buy Argnu Beef in CB SW and ... Ringo Moon I believe, and sell wherever they want it.
Don't trade energy, it's just not worth it. Imo.
If you find you cannot buy low level weapons or high tech stuff yet, make sure to do at least the second mission, this should boost your rankings with the argon enough.
am just staring at that status screen way too much, taking me away from the "fun" bits, and limiting the scope of what I can do.
X can feel that way, yeah. There were days in X2 where I did almost nothing besides work on my status screen, managing my empire. However, if you don't FEEL like doing this, then don't.
or does trading break down to either doing it all manually or just letting the "kids" loose and seeing what happens? Even in that last scenario, surely there has to be some way to restrict it?
Well... Yes and no. A Universe Trader, once he gets above level 12, really isn't a "kid". He's actually pretty damn clever, and will make more money trading than you can. But other than that, yeah, I'm afraid it's just you doing the work.
Now, like I said, you can script the trading behavior, and there were some monstrous trading scripts for X2 (which made literally millions of credits per hour), but I honestly find those too easy. They cost nothing to set up, made millions of credits, used jumpdrives, stocked up on energy themselves, would use fighter drones to ward off enemies, would jump away if they got in danger, and would go to a shipyard to repair themselves.
All for free. Sure, the MK3 universe trader that's included does all this stuff too, but it costs 500K to buy, and takes awhile before it gets to that level.
The scripts were there straight away. If you want it that easy, I don't understand why people don't just add 5 million credits to their account every hour, and save themselves the hassle.
You could google for some of the old X2 scripts, I'm sure they'd still work in X3, since the engine is pretty much the same.
But having the satellites does let YOU monitor the eb and flow of profit opportunities in the galaxy, but yes, that takes a long time and would require you to stare at that screen forever. Unless you do the weapons trader to the equipment docks thing, I'd just find a corner of the galaxy to work in, and focus on that. I never looked beyond the NW corner of the galaxy in my X2 trades.
5) would it not be smarter to save up for and aim for another cargo ship?
Absolutely. Provided you can handle multiple cargo ships by yourself ofcourse. Cargo Bay Extensions are only valuable up to a certain point. After that it's really diminishing returns. Let's put it this way, if you start having to pay 200.000 credits for 100 cargo space, calculate how long it would take you just to earn that 200.000 credits back with that extra 100 space. (well, not that long with dealing weapons, but you get the point.)
I typically buy about half cargo bay expansions, and ignore the rest, until I have so much money that I get bored with it, and then I upgrade ships to max. But yes, it is definitely a waste.
I mean...is there a ship that can expand its cargo bay an additional 20,000 slots?
No, the max is 4000 slots, I believe. But yes, it's an exponential function, and gets ridiculously expensive. My buddy calculated the formula once, but my math sucks. It's bad though.
and I presume this AI unit is a completely different leveling scheme than my own trading rating, correct?
Yes, he will have his own level. In fact, if you buy two universe traders, they will each have their own level.
No doubt, I am still a n00b in the trading world, I bow before the might Creston, but my trading has been "promoted" something like...eight times now.
It's David Braben's Elite Syndrome, where advancement is an exponential function. Your first 12 levels come within half an hour. But believe me, to get from Capitalist to Mogul, will require about half a BILLION credits worth a profits, or something like that. Fighting rank is even more absurd. I know guys who killed 2000 Khaak Destroyers just to get from Combat Ace 2nd grade to Combat Ace 1st grade... :(
Now, as for combat, how in the heck do I cap ships?
Capping has changed quite a bit from X2. It's no longer tied to getting the ship below 87% hull, and then dropping his shields, letting them recharge, dropping them again etc.
It's become REALLY a matter of selecting your weapons. Firing at a ship with 1 AIRE for an hour has as much chance of capping them as just firing with your full load of weapons.
Yes, it IS random. There is no surefire way to cap something. However, I found that using 4BIREs worked well on capping super class freighters, and two BIREs worked well on capping pirates.
Currently I am flying a Nova, and I'm using 2AHEPTs and 2APACs. And I'm capping Pirate Falcons by the dozens. At one point I had about 12 falcons streaming back to the shipyard. That loadout also works very well for capping teladi freighters, btw. I've capped about 10 or so of those, one of which was worth a cool 1.2 million
However, don't try to cap. I've done that in X2, where it worked (capped about 90 Novas in Antigone Memorial in space of three hours, ridiculous really), but it doesn't seem to in X3. The guy either jumps or he doesn't. Shoot at him in slow bursts, but keep shooting. If he jumps, great, if he doesn't, oh well. Kill him and move on.
I never make a cap when I'm trying, and always when I'm not trying. I took on a group of 8 pirates to repair my teladi race ranking (they didn't like me capping 10 of their freighters, and killing 20 more), and capped four of the blighters. NOOOOO I NEED YOU TO DIE!!!!
Hehe
As noted, I am near one-hundred kills now so I do not think it is unrealistic to think/hope that at least a second mob would have jumped ship by now.
It's probably just your weapon loadout. What are you using? You don't want to OVERDO it on the damage. In my 2AHEPT, 2BPAC, 2BIRE Mamba, I never capped anything. Too much damage in one go.
Oh, btw, Khaak ships don't jump. They did in X2 1.4, but I believe that was taken out. I've killed about 700 khaak, and none of them ever jumped. It could be that they've finally fixed the bug where you have to be a certain RANK before they will jump. Not sure on that.
It is mostly my capping woes, figuring out how I target items within my reticle (playing with the joystick - I know I can just click the game thing with the mouse,) any trading pointers , I realize the speed-matching (combat) is a combat upgrade, and then if there is any way to have SETA not break when I touch the keyboard, my fully realizing that puts me at increased risk of being blown up.
Target items is T, or Shift T for enemies. The "E" from the manual doesn't work. Ego can't write manuals for shit.
Trading pointers as above, that should get you started. I'm working on my weapons trader documents, I have the entire universe mapped out and indexed with weapon fabs, equipment docks and what they all buy, now I just need to calculate the best route between all of them so that it's the shortest flight distance and the best trade off between races (since they all love each other's weapons.)
Once I have that done I'll post it on Ego's forum and link to it here.
I will go check out the performance increase. I have been playing 1152x864 just fine with all stuff set to high (sans AA, obviously,) and it would be neato freato to bump up to 1280x960.
Why sans AA? I've got AA on at 1280x1024 and it runs like silk. And I think your system is pretty much on par with mine.
I think you've got all your issues from the other thread sorted, but if not, let me know
Creston
Edit : Ray - capping ships is really the only way to get big cash fast, unless you already have a functioning trade empire.. which you wont until you have millions of dollars spent on it
Nah, I don't agree. Capping works well, but so does trading. You just need to know what to trade, and you need to change your mindset from X2, where you bought for absolute minimum and sold near absolute maximum. That's VERY hard to do in X3.
However, buying at a minimum and selling at average to equipment docks and trading stations makes you millions of profits, and avoids interference from the AI (who generally trade more fab to fab, since they don't want to sell for average price), although apparently that got tweaked a bit in 1.21
Just write down some products from some trading station and eq docks, then fly around finding them, buy them for <<< avg, and sell them to the trading station.
Like I said above, fighter drones, navsats and mass driver ammo, as well as low level weapons and missiles, are absolute goldmines. You can easily make a million credits in a few hours just selling those.
Hey, capping works, I have nothing against it, I cap a lot myself (accidentally mostly), but trading is a LOT more powerful in X3 this time, because of all the stuff you can sell.
what you want to try to do is keep the hull at 75% at least, or preferably higher... just let the shields go back up and then keep bringing them down
This is no longer necessary. That's how it worked in X2, but in X3 it seems that the rate of shield decay is no longer the overriding factor in determining if a pilot jumps or not. Rate of damage seems to be far more important. I've had traders with shields down, 80% hull, wouldn't jump, i kept peppering him with 2BIRES, and he jumped once he reached 50% hull. Never let him recharge his shields.
Also, I've capped ships now with more than 87% hull. I capped a falcon at 90, another falcon at what LOOKED like 95-100%, but I failed to notice his escorts, and so got zapped when I spacesuited over , and I've capped a Super Freighter at 88%.
Btw, Ray, the first time I tried capping in X2, it drove me nuts, it NEVER worked. I read a thousand posts, followed all their advice, and couldn't cap anything for like ten hours. And then all of a sudden they started jumping, and I capped over 150 novas in a week.
So don't get disheartened.
Alright...is the capping primarily based on racial ships and not pirate ships ships? And I presume I cannot capture the cock ships?
No, racial ships or pirates will jump about equally, I've found.
AFAIK you can't capture khaaks right now, but not sure if that's just because of combat rank, or because EGO took it out again.
(I believe the Falcon out-classes my crappy Buster?)
A falcon's an M3, Buster is an M4. But the Falcon is a super sucky ship for combat, since it's slow as dirt. I'm Death on Falcons, I cap them more than anything else. 2AHEPTS and 2APACS is like magic against them. I think I cap around 70% of all Falcons I engage.
Finally, I just got tired and kept the energy pea shooters going non-stop and whittled away his hull (which takes awhile for a Falcon and only two energy-draining lasers.) The pirate did finally jump out, but only when the ship was at 5% or so health. At least I have a new ship, presumably one better than my Buster, but I can only imagine how long, how much, it will take to repair all that, much less completely re-equip it as I presume I ended up blasting everything to hell.
Yeah, see? Don't bother with that shield recharge crap, it just doesn't work anymore, imo. Just keep shooting him. If he jumps great, if he doesn't, byebye.
As for that Falcon, just sell it, and get yourself some better weapons for the money. It will cost you half a million to fix the thing, and it sucks for combat anyways.
So same thing - am I doing something wrong or is it my overall choice of ships? I can understand pirates being a little more aggressive, but that is kind of ridiculous. When I am bored from whittling down your ship, it is probably time to jump out and give to to me, damn it!
Just your tactics, I think. You're using X2 tactics. Don't bother, just keep shooting him.
Hey, I have over 40 caps by now, and I'm not even trying, so I must be doing SOMETHING right
And how far do I have to let my reputation go? Can I cap two or three ships and just have them unwilling to trade with me or will they attack me on sight once I cap just one ship?
If your ranking falls to : Known Antagonist, Confirmed Adversary, Mercantile Rebel, Family Outcast or Tainted Wanderer, you will be attacked on sight in a race's CORE sectors (check universe map, it says in sector description if it's core or border).
I assume border sectors won't let you dock if you go one lower.
Personally, I'd say dink your ratings until you're ALMOST at that list I was above, then stop. This way you can still go to their core sectors, and kill some pirates and khaak, and get your rating fixed. I let myself fall to Mercantile Rebel 2% or so, and it took me a LONG time to get the teladi to let me fly in their core sectors again. (not that I really care to, but I don't want my universe trader to get whacked if he happens to go to a teladi core sector, and yes, that WILL happen.)
On another tangent, why does combat rank scale so slowly? I have gained one meager combat level, but my trading reputation is already "Retailer
Exponential curves.. We all hate 'em :(
Lastly, is there a good breakdown (good, better, best) of ships? For being essentially "new" to the universe, I really am not sure what would be a decent upgrade (or even just capping ) path for me to take. The manual just list a few "M" classes of ships, but there are obviously a ton of different ships in the game...
Well, Ego completely nerfed the M3 class in speed, and I mean brutally nerfed. They fly so slow it's just agony. What in fuck's name they were smoking when they decided this, I have no fucking idea.
I captured a supertuned Nova that I'm flying now, and it's still slow as hell. Pretty soon I'm just going to supertune my ships myself (with a script) and get rid of this slow as shit idiocy.
Overall I'd say that the M4 (ie the buster) is now the best ship, simply because of it's speed, but an M3 will give you a lot more leeway in battle because of increased shielding and better weapons.
In X2, the M3 was king. in X3, I'd say the M4 is, because of speed. In fact, you might even make a case for the M5.
The M3s need a speed boost, but Ego seems not to care.
M6 and capships are now so slow they've become utterly useless :(
(the Split Dragon, which went 312ms in X2, now goes 80ms :( )
This comment was edited on Nov 12, 13:31. |
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| 11. |
Re: Dear lord... |
Nov 12, 2005, 07:18 |
The Half Elf |
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Finished the Game Yesterday and sorta dissapointed. I was really hoping for more closure/questions answered then left with the Halo 2/Half Life 2 type ending. Not to mention it was extremly short. And when I returned to Argon Prime, everything was red to me, which was a bit of an eye opener lol.
The new patch is nice, fixed it so I could actually see the ending as there was a bug that turned all textures black.
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| 10. |
Re: Dear lord... |
Nov 12, 2005, 04:53 |
Sixis |
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Ray, here's what you need to do, you don't have enough firepower to be a pirate yet and you don't have enough money to create a trading fleet:
1. Sell the Buster (your starting fighter) for cash at the shipyard. The cash in pocket now will allow you to start trading in items with real profits.
2. Buy fighter drones (3100c each) and navigation satellites (5700c each) from full factories.
3. Sell the drones at trading stations for 4000c and the satellites for 6900c.
Capping is random, either the pirate ejects or he doesn't, in my experience about 1 in 10 ejects (although it sometimes feels like 1 in 100). I have found trading (especially a trade fleet) MUCH more profitable than capping. But if you must cap, go to the pirate base north of the north jump gate in Ore Belt. Killing these pirates gives you Argon faction, which will be very helpful when you want to buy that M3 Nova.
Seeding nav sats was an excellent idea, you will have one in every sector pretty soon, but its expensive, and before you do anything in this game you need to have AT LEAST 1 million credits.
Cargo bay expansion is pretty expensive, I just buy additional ships (usually Argon mercury, and not even the big kind, the small and fast and cheap kind). Trading in high-end weapons takes very little cargo room and makes more money than you would believe.
I have 15 million credits or so now (mostly invested in my trading fleet, I call them the Queng Ho!) but now I'm actually kinda pissed with the game, even with this patch. The station management system is FUBAR and my first capital ship was a disaster. I see no reason to do anything more than let my traders run on SETA time and buy more M3's...
On WoW - Sixis - 60 Paladin of Azure Brigade (Garona) |
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| 9. |
Re: No subject |
Nov 12, 2005, 04:42 |
Ray Marden |
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Alright...is the capping primarily based on racial ships and not pirate ships ships? And I presume I cannot capture the cock ships?
I generally have some type of positive standing with most races (again, playing universal cop) with maybe a few at neutral. I have been attacking solely pirate/cock ships.
Having said that, I just managed to finally get a new ship, albeit the hard way. A lone pirate (Teladi) Falcon jumped into Atreus Clouds and I just spent, gosh, a good five minutes just attacking him. I got within about 500m of him and just let loose, damaging his hull somewhat and making sure I could keep up speed with him (I believe the Falcon out-classes my crappy Buster?) But same thing...using my pea shooter energy-draining weapons (not the two main, damaging lasers I have,) I drained his shields a good fifteen times.
Finally, I just got tired and kept the energy pea shooters going non-stop and whittled away his hull (which takes awhile for a Falcon and only two energy-draining lasers.) The pirate did finally jump out, but only when the ship was at 5% or so health. At least I have a new ship, presumably one better than my Buster, but I can only imagine how long, how much, it will take to repair all that, much less completely re-equip it as I presume I ended up blasting everything to hell.
So same thing - am I doing something wrong or is it my overall choice of ships? I can understand pirates being a little more aggressive, but that is kind of ridiculous. When I am bored from whittling down your ship, it is probably time to jump out and give to to me, damn it! 
And how far do I have to let my reputation go? Can I cap two or three ships and just have them unwilling to trade with me or will they attack me on sight once I cap just one ship?
On another tangent, why does combat rank scale so slowly? I have gained one meager combat level, but my trading reputation is already "Retailer." I am not expecting to climb either ladder quickly, especially not with my n00b ways, but it does seem a little wonky. Even more so since, as I understand it, the game is much more trading heavy than it is combat heavy.
Lastly, is there a good breakdown (good, better, best) of ships? For being essentially "new" to the universe, I really am not sure what would be a decent upgrade (or even just capping :D) path for me to take. The manual just list a few "M" classes of ships, but there are obviously a ton of different ships in the game...
Who sells the high end combat software? To match speed and all that?
Afraid to know how long it will take my new ship to reach a yard :(,
Ray
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http://users.ign.com/collection/RayMarden
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=ray_marden
http://www.livejournal.com/users/raymarden/
I love you, mom. |
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| 8. |
No subject |
Nov 12, 2005, 04:15 |
space captain |
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Ray - capping ships is really the only way to get big cash fast, unless you already have a functioning trade empire.. which you wont until you have millions of dollars spent on it
all you do is pick a race or two that you are willing to have completely bad relations with for a very long time - having 2 racial enemies isnt really a big deal, and once you get super rich you can just buy better rep or send out automated drone ships to kill pirates in their sectors and build it that way
anyhow, once you have selected your prey - find a sector of one of your ally races that has a shipyard in it. then, just scan for ships of your prey races - once you have them targeted, close in and follow them for a while, match their speed and get a perfect target lock on them - then open up with all you have until their shields are gone... at this point they may have jumped already, to make sure, just keep hitting "i" to see if it has a pilot... keep them with no shields - if you are able to destroy a ships shields they will almost always jump... what you want to try to do is keep the hull at 75% at least, or preferably higher... just let the shields go back up and then keep bringing them down
sometimes you may have to just let em go if they wont give up their ship... the trick is to strike very hard, very fast
i just started a new game and have capped 4 ships as well as finding one intact just floating in the void of one sector.. Im up to 700k now.. with 4 beta particle cannons and 3 5MJ shields on my buster - im still saving up to get a nova or something like that
once you have an actual fighter ship you can cap ALOT easier... then you can get rich and retire to a peaceful trading lifestyle if thats your thing
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music from space captain:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/6/errantways_music.htm
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/4/invisibleacropolis_music.htm |
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| 7. |
Re: Dear lord... |
Nov 12, 2005, 02:42 |
Ray Marden |
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I was so about the stop playing the game, my nearly being unable to read anything due to the tooltip glitches not only blocking my view, but growing in number, too!!!
For trading:
1. I clearly do not understand how the best buy/sell stuff works. Is it only used for within a specific sector? Granted, I am only really hiding out in the Argon area for now (because my one freight ship can be safe with no weapons or protection :D,) but any sector-specific profit seems...meager, at best.
2. I do believe that I have all the available upgrades, barring the ore scanner, ship scanner, and, having just learned about it, the third-level trading software.
3. But...how do I control the universal trader aspect? Right now, I am being a total, lazy n00b with trading. I only have the starter trasnport ship and my starter fighter. While my fighter goes around messing up pirates or cocks :o, I have my transport ship buying power in Power Circle (12cr-15cr) and then dumping it in Three Worlds (19cr-20cr.) I have no doubt that is a whack trading practice :D, but my cargo ship is "safe" in the ARgon worlds, the distance is minimal (helping negate the meager profit margin,) and it lets me do somet trading whle I putz around in my ship. But...is there any way to regulate that? As I covered in my older, Creston-ignored <cry> X3 post, I hate the keyboard/mouse split between controls, but I hate staring at my quipement screen more, awaiting my cargo ship's arrival at either location. Is there any way to regulate this transaction? Or, learning a way to do this, to expand it to the other worlds, but keeping it within the scope of the Argo worlds? I hope that I am being really stupid and missing something, but it seems like...I am just staring at that status screen way too much, taking me away from the "fun" bits, and limiting the scope of what I can do.
4. Further, probably insanely, I actually satellite-d nearly one-third of the universe so that I could manually get information on sectors. But...I was kind of hoping I could tie them all together and get this massive universe-wide (but always under my set restrictions) trading scheme going with that. Basically, am I missing something truly profound...or does trading break down to either doing it all manually or just letting the "kids" loose and seeing what happens? Even in that last scenario, surely there has to be some way to restrict it?
5. On the low end (IE my sh33t starting cargo ship,) why would I want to expand my cargo bay? I mean, duh, it give me more room, but I think it will take something like 200,000cr to expand my cargo bay another 1,000 units. In the long, long run I can see every piece of space being extremely valuable, but that seems ridiculous on the low end. if I had 200,000cr right now (halfway there, actually,) would it not be smarter to save up for and aim for another cargo ship? I mean, 200,000cr for an additional 1,000 slots.....or paying something like 400,000cr (or less) for a ship that has 3,000 cargo slots. Given that I am in no major rush to start trading, currently looking at just trying to understand it, that does not seem to add up. And if this is at the low end, what the heck are the high end ships like? I mean...is there a ship that can expand its cargo bay an additional 20,000 slots? Good god, I do not even want to know what the cose of that comes out to...
Well, I will look into the "sector trader" thing, but that does seem to limit my profit substantially and I presume this AI unit is a completely different leveling scheme than my own trading rating, correct? No doubt, I am still a n00b in the trading world, I bow before the might Creston, but my trading has been "promoted" something like...eight times now.
Now, as for combat, how in the heck do I cap ships? I understand the idea in other games, I read about people doing it, and I always thought there was some special trick to it because it never happened to me...except for one, totally random time. I am still in my starting ghetto ship, limiting what all I can take on/out, but I have killed close to one-hundred ships, all pirate or cock, and nothing seems to be happening. Just yesterday night, I took in four pirate ships, I intentionally destroyed three outright, and did my best to capture the fourt. I used only my energy weapons on that one (really slow, really weak damage, takes forever to damage the hull,) and I managed to blow the bastar up without him ever jumping ship. And, yeah, I would just take out the shield and wait...or take out the shields and just tap him once or twice on the hill and wait...and nada. Literally, I spent some fifteen-plus minutes just toying around with this guy and nothing ever happened. I am very pro-combat and I enjoy the idea of paying universal cop, this seems like a very lucrative thing (for my play style and pace,) but other than that one, freakish time, I was to the point of thinking they would never ever even jump ship. Again, I have be a clueless n00b and missing something here... As noted, I am near one-hundred kills now so I do not think it is unrealistic to think/hope that at least a second mob would have jumped ship by now.
This is my old post...
http://tinyurl.com/9klj4
...but I think most of it has been resolved now. It is mostly my capping woes, figuring out how I target items within my reticle (playing with the joystick - I know I can just click the game thing with the mouse,) any trading pointers :), I realize the speed-matching (combat) is a combat upgrade, and then if there is any way to have SETA not break when I touch the keyboard, my fully realizing that puts me at increased risk of being blown up.
I will go check out the performance increase. I have been playing 1152x864 just fine with all stuff set to high (sans AA, obviously,) and it would be neato freato to bump up to 1280x960.
Edit: All I have right now is the buster, the 3K unit cargo ship, and coming up on 150,000cr. Can I just say how nice it is to actually see my game now, without four $%#%$ glitchy tooltip icons on it? And the performance has definitely improved. It ran fine before, but now it runs "good," even in a place like Argon Prime.
Having Gun, having X3 - off to play X3 :),
Ray
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http://users.ign.com/collection/RayMarden
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=ray_marden
http://www.livejournal.com/users/raymarden/
I love you, mom.
This comment was edited on Nov 12, 04:48. |
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| 6. |
Re: Dear lord... |
Nov 12, 2005, 01:44 |
Creston |
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...let this fix some of the bajillion bugs and CLEAR MY FREAKING SCREEN OF MY - NOW FOUR TOTAL - TOOLTIP GLITCHES!
It does.
Oh...and make Creston stop dodging my questions!
Sorry Ray
I can't check bluesnews at work anymore, and I usually don't have a lot of time when I'm home, so I no longer have the time to check all the threads. What's up?
Having no idea how to set my freight ship to auto-trade between setors,
Only a Universe Trader can do that (automatically anyways). You will need to buy trading software mark 1, 2 and 3 for your ship. Also, you'll want to put fight mark 1 and 2, and special command mark 1 on there. Probably a jump drive as well.
Go to the Trade command in the ship's command console, and select "Start Sector Trader."
This will assign an AI trader to the ship, and he will begin trading in the sector of your choice. At first, he's pretty damn stupid, but he grows in "levels" as he makes profit, and gets more and more clever.
Once he's reached level 8 (this can take awhile, btw), you can give him the option, in the same trade menu, to start Universe Trader, at which point he will finally begin trading between sectors.
It will take him until level 12 before he starts using the jumpdrive, but after that he really takes off. He'll be level 25 before you know it, at which point he brings in probably around 5 million credits a day or so, depending a bit on circumstances.
In my last X2 game, I had 5 universe traders, and I made about the same money as I ever did with about 50 fabs.
So they're there, you just need to work on them. I don't really use them anymore as they are too easy. It takes a bit of time to set them up, and some initial money (about a million credits or so, the mark 3 trader is 500K), but once they're going, they make so much money it's insane.
But, to each his own ofcourse. If you have more questions, either put them here for now, or email me at home. Creston at cox dot net.
Creston
Edit : you can't start a universe trader straight off the bat. He has to gain levels as a sector trader first.
As for the performance upgrades, they seem pretty decent. Ofcourse, my system was already running the game silky smooth, so it's hard to see, but I see a lot of promising posts about performance, and I DO notice it running smoother. I upped my resolution by a bit, left all options on high, and it still runs silky sweet.
As for the game still not being in stores, order from gogamer.com. Enligh = bunch of useless fucking cunts, and I hope this fiasco puts them out of business. If you can't even get a fucking game into the stores, you have no business being a fucking publisher.
This comment was edited on Nov 12, 01:48. |
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