Fav start

[Red-Spot]

Just wondering what start people like to play when not going for achievements like DiD.

I find myself always, when possible, returning to the 'humble merchant' start. Allowing me to choose on the spot if I want to start as trader, explorer, 'minor combatant' or any combination of. Also, I favor the Argon, have done so in every campaign I played since X2 and probably will be doing so since the Terrans are dumb, as expected

[Cycrow]

personally i prefer working my way up from nothing, so i do the Suicidal Squid start (and disabled DiD).
Its one of the harder starts, starting with one of the worst ships thats useless at pretty much everything

[AleksMain]

I prefer starts named 'hard' and 'pretty hard', because they give us some challenge.

I have described some of them in the following topics:
Poisoned Paranid start scenario (X3:Albion Prelude)
Tormented Teladi start scenario

Here is one of my earlier beginnings:
X3 TC V2.71 Argon Patriot start

[nponoBegHuk]

Poisoned Paranid for me, Overtuned Hyperion botting included.

After finishing TC game I will try the Kha'ak start in Reunion, as well as Steam DiD in AP for achievements.

[Timsup2nothin]

I usually go with 'Nostalgic Argon.' Starts out with uniformly neutral rep settings so can be worked into an alliance or a war with anyone, and is in my opinion the weakest possible starting ship so there's never a feeling of having "head started" anything.

[Le Boron Chétif]

I'm more of a Humble Merchant too myself. Ever since X2, I've settled for fewer but longer play-throughs in which I basically end up building and collecting everything there's to own, and as you pointed out, HM is a good balanced start for that.

The harder starts do sound appealing though, for the thrilling first few days of struggle... Though once you become rich & powerful enough you have no choice but to revisit things you've already done before. Or perhaps I just don't RP hard enough.

[Red-Spot]

I find HM to be hard enough depending on how you play it
Can still remember very well I reached the east side of the Uni in my halfbaked Disco with just 1 shield and no weapons, took a follow mission. Tried to outrun the incoming Disco for 5 sectors before he finally got the better of me .. awesome

[Honved]

My favorite starts are generally either Humble Merchant or else Pious Paranid, which give you similar situations from opposite perspectives. In either case, I generally end up on decent terms with both races.

My third favorite would be Poisoned Paranid, which isn't really that difficult once you figure out how to strafe-drive out of the initial sector without getting killed. Once out, you can trade with Split/Boron or whoever, and I generally make my way to Argon space and do the main plot for a while. By the time that gets wrapped up, I've generally got more than enough cash to pay off the medical bill and collect the over-tuned Hippie Van, as well as the Advanced Perseus Prototype waiting along with it. At that point, I usually fly the Perseus (if I'm not already flying the non-over-tuned abandoned one) and stash the Hyperion as a trophy.

[jlehtone]

Ever since X2, I've settled for fewer but longer play-throughs

The extreme version of that is that there is exactly one playthrough for each game.
Then, by definition there is no "favourite"* but "the one and only"** start.


* "Favourite" is something you like more that the other that you have experienced. Isn't it odd to state that "this is my favourite life", if you live only once?

** Parallel question is how to choose the one and only? For the record:
X2: Did not know anything about the games -- with plot
X3R: Extreme, for it had the "plot"
Xbtf: choices, choices
XT: skip
Rebirth: skip
X3TC: Goner
X3AP: Nostalgic
X4: not yet