GOAL: Conquer as much as feasible, become as powerful as a race and as quickly as possible. ~166hours (because cheats) 2018
Setup: X3AP Most recent + Bonus Pack.
Cycrow Plugin Manager (love that dude)
- Hotkey Manager+ ware manager
cheat collection package (my philosophy below)
Improved boarding (transport- used after 1st M2 Cap)
Improved Races 2.0 - required
Global Friend Foe Upgrade - (I did not use, but please for the future I would use)
Anarkis Defense System (ADS) -- required, pretty amazing
Carrier Drone Support Software -- excellent
fleet supply
stock trade keys- early money
free trader-- real easy money, great mod
turbobooster -nice
Hephaistos Corp. Station building service - because 100+factory
no adsign
yaki improvement mod
HQ storage increase+ drasticly reduced RE & build times-need
I started out as the assassin start, though I wanted to be friends with Boron and Argon. It should be a rather difficult start, but I was able to pick up some expensive missiles in the xeon sectors from dead ships and sold them to get a mil or two. Then bought a decent mining trading ship with a jumpdrive (woot). I then found trading, and though I could make money, it took so long to make any real money. However I found Nividium trading exploit online and made 100 mil quickly. Started my free trader fleet, worked on relations, got a decent m3. rise and repeat for some more early money( I needed a lot of money). Got a spaceweed factory up in going in Argon border space (that was a mistake--)(used some cheats to destroy some pesky m2s for a bit)
Then the battle was on to capture my Hyperion. I had one in X3 reunion and lets face it, its the best M6. It was quite hard to get enough drones and ships to bring down the shields and not kill it, but eventually after the many reloads. I capped my first M6. Once I got my first M6 though I started targeting M6 Hyperion all the time and selling them for credits @80% health. Got some more good will factories with boron, argon, teldi. Start mapping out the galaxy with free traders and sats. M6 goodness. I must have cap 30+ M6 ships with my hyperion, no match for my ship.
Got the small missle fab going from one of the start guides. Bought my first M2 ship, probably a Ray. Loved that ship.
Terran relations were fine through most of the game. Started on the plots. Got a M7 cobra. Took a bit to learn the pods. Started some of my bigger factories.
Big missles, some guns, terran weapons.Capped a few M2s. Completed most of the plots, got my HQ. Started my Terran quest to cap ships. Had Fun. There was no Valhalla for the entire game, I never saw one. I looked in all war sectors, I think it might be a bug with one of the mods?- thought the Woden was it for a bit. Spawned in Valhalla to cap.
Got the Arawn eventually, that was annoying with the low health. Also capping a xeon ship for plot is almost as dumb as microchips for x3tc. spawned myself the xeon fighter.
Capped all of the Terran ships I wanted. Tried to like the Kyoto, but nope. I used the Ray when doing some fights, but I mostly stayed in my M6 (BOSS) and brought in M7s.
Started my Mega Factories.
Biggest of which. https://joelbfant.bitbucket.io/x3/x3tco ... ,Argon,S,1
A complex capable of supplying a fleet that would one day take on the paranid.
Started capping Xeon- Lost 60+ marines........ why? they took so long to train
Eventually got the I. REed it and built another. BOSS I . Finshed last plot. War was over with heavy heavy M7 spam. 3 I's at once vs my (BOSS) I is dangerous.
My sector defense was complete with 3 carriors and one M2. ADS
Started up the Wars, quickly realized that without cheats and manually targeting factories, my dreams would not come true. Capture some Xeon sectors.
Beat back some invasions, capture 5 systems and jumped to paranid prime. Destroyed stock station with cheats,. claimed. Enemy ships spawned in there. I said mission complete.
Yep, that is my X3AP story. Learning curve was not that bad, but it was a lot of text menus. Hoping for RTS style late game command in X4.
My ships would also get into fights with other factions and I would have to cheat my way out of wars with my friendly races. Had fun, though my objective was definitely cut short by game restrictions.
Notes: Pteranodon (M2) with PALS are great anti missle, anti fighter-- modern computers can handle them too. M2s with cockpit weapons are great! Could not destroy some stations, random enemy spawn locations.
My ships would not auto target factories....so annoying. CLS and freetraders are amazing. My empire ran on way points and traders. Drones would not auto add to ADS sometimes.
So many account logs. Argon sector M148.. paranid ship.. die already. ( SS- hyperion must have killed it a 100 times)
Yep,see you in the X4 verse eventually.
PS. Why do people preorder? It is crazy. You guys do remember rebirth right. Or EA games. Patience is key.
Useful links:
https://roguey.co.uk/x3ap/ships/ -- great guides, ships, comments.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 22C901518/
wiki for mineral locations.
https://joelbfant.bitbucket.io/x3/x3tcocc.html -- new location for X3AP station cal-- still some bugs.
various websites to track down the mods I needed for this game- lot of the old websites are gone, google archive was buggy.