panic-mode (system auction)

[BeavelGuy]

right, im going mad lol. basically i spent a long long time playing X3 (about 40-odd days playing time, although admittedly i wasted a lot of time exploring and looking for sector gates the hard way before realising you could get it all off of spreadsheets ), from the day of release (cant even remember when it was), and ive racked up pretty high reputation with most of the races, and i had just blown all my cash (save for about 80 million) on an enormous 300+ factory weapon and shield production complex, as well as 4 Titans, etc. The aim was to go and take on those Terrans but i never really got round to it before getting bored.

Recently my mate told me about the new patches, new content, etc, so i thought id give it a try. In particularly im interested in winning that auction for the system (which i keep seeing referred to as 'Avarice' here on the forums).

Ive done all the Bala Gi missions, got my HQ waiting in my TL, but i want to save it for when ive sorted out Avarice. Now heres the big problem:

I cant work out how on earth to bid for it, let alone stand a chance of winning it. Im also concerned that the price for it is skyrocketing and im worried that the auction will end before I get the 700-million odd credits people say I will need to buy it.

I have seen the BBS messages in many stations talking about how there is a system up for grabs (doesnt mention a name other than "unknown"), but never gives me an option to bid. Someone somewhere mentioned that you can only bid in the trading station of Avarice, but i cant find the system anywhere. Ive even run around the different unknown sectors looking for one but cant work out which system it will be.

I *did* notice a trading station which wasnt there before in

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the unknown sector between montalaar and new income

which leads me to suspect that this will be the Avarice sector, but i really dont know ive docked at it and checked the bbs boards but it only offers the same messages i get elsewhere.

Can anyone help allay my fears once and for all? Or am i doomed to miss out because I dont have enough credits this far into the game?

[LC_]

thats the place

[BeavelGuy]

well, thats good in a way cuz thats where my pre-patch home system was (has an equipment dock, two titans and an m6 patrolling it, my big complex, etc)... but now im worried that someone else is gona win the auction and claim it lol

[SLeeZeCoRe]

erm, mine never had/or has now, a trading station in it ?

I was told about the auction pretty much as soon as i started my first game, and never heard about it again, and its still just 'unknown sector' about a month into the game

[Alienmoe]

SLeeZe, what version are you running?

I never had it in my game (Got 30 days in) before I put 2.0.0x on. Whether it would appear in that game i dont know, as I started afresh. But in 2.0.0x I've had no problems, the messages start coming in about day 7/8

[A2G]

I recently restarted anothergame I'd been unable to play cause of work commitments etc. (But now i have a broken hand i'm making up for lost time, 5 weeks off work wwwoooooooooooooohoooooooo) But anyway i digress, i'm 4 game days in and the auction has begun, theres no way im gonna have the credits to buy it. SO WHATS GOIN ON WITH PUTTING IT UP SO EARLY IN A GAME???????????????????

[SLeeZeCoRe]

SLeeZe, what version are you running?

I never had it in my game (Got 30 days in) before I put 2.0.0x on. Whether it would appear in that game i dont know, as I started afresh. But in 2.0.0x I've had no problems, the messages start coming in about day 7/8

2.0.02 with Bala Gi all completed, plot finished.

[thoggarth]

To OP

It sounds as though you are on the right track. You have identified hte sector, but no it will be a little time before you can bid. The bulletin boards across the universe provide a little build up first - talk of someone running short of credits and thinking about an auction, the auction starts but you can't bid (where you are) then the sector changes name and you can start bidding. It normally starts at +600m.

Not sure how long it takes, its been stuck on 615m in my 2.0.2 game for ages but I have nowhere near enough cash to join in.

If you don't think you are earning enough at the moment, might be worthwhile selling some ships to get some easy credits? It sounds as though you should be able to generate plenty of cash after buying the sector to buy them back again at a later day despite the loss on the hulls now.

Pre 2.0.2 there was a lot of talk about not docking for 5 hours having won the auction, but not sure if this still applies now? Maybe someone who has managed to buy it could confirm?

I never saw the auction pre 2.0.2 but it started almost as soon as I updated.

[Alienmoe]

@ Zengaze

Well, I've been thinking the same thing, then I played around with some numbers I'd seen on the forum and pulled from merrocs calculator.

First, a few assumptions:
1 - The First point you can bid is 00:00 on day 10
2 - The bid price is 615Mil
3 - You can place your bid for 5 days.
3 - You started on quickstart, with no mods or scripts running.

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So first things first. Get in the Merc and make a Mil. This should take less than 8 hours. With that Mil you can put Mk3 on the Merc and go exploring with your Buster. Or alternativly you can get Mk3 and a second Merc to continue manual trading in, whilst selling the buster. Either way you should get back to a Mil in maybe 5 hours, and have a UT flying around.

Repeat until you have a fleet of 30 UTs.

Whilst building this trade fleet I recomend finding the Starburst, selling the Buster, and exploring the enitire universe - More space for your UTs to find deals.

If you've been keeping an eye on things, buying more traders as soon as there are sufficient credits to afford them, and keep the rest of the fleet running trades then you should hit 30 UTs by day 6. Each of them bringing in over 150k an hour - 4.5mil an hour combined by the time they're all Lvl 25.

After this its simple. When you hit 90Mil build a self sufficient Fuel or Weed Plex. It'll have paid itself off by day 9 and be adding over 1Mil to your hourly profits, at which point you build a second Fuel-plex

So now you'll have 4.5Mil an hour coming in from UTs and over 2Mil from a couple Fuel-plex.

At the start of day 10 you'll probably have over 50Mil in your account. You'll also have around 6.5Mil an hour rolling in. Assuming day 15 is the deadline you can build a third weed or fuel fab.

The maths bit

If you start on day 10 with 0 Credits:

615(price of avarice first bid)/5(days you have until you cant bid) = 123 - The number of millions you need to make per day.

123/24 = 5.125 - The number of millions you need to make per hour.

So thats my current plan for winning Avarice. Hope it helps you find a way.

[BeavelGuy]

nice! and thanks a lot for the posts guys, my fears have been allayed yeah the illegal substances really do rake in the cash. i have, er, 6ish weed/fuel complexes as well as the stuff i posted above, i didnt realise how much game time i would actually have to earn the money (hence the title, panicked a bit when i saw that the auction was running)

time to do some serious trading

[A2G]

@ Aliemoe, nice piece of strategy there.

I started as an explorer with just the disco for company, gotta couple of UT's runnin and a sil mine with a rep, 9 mil odd in the bank that i was just about to use to buy a Centaur with, when this auction pops up, now i gotta decide if i wanna put that off and focus on Avarice for a lotta game hours. Jeeeeeeeessssssssshhhh, really want that sector , but for it to come up so early means really focusing on raking in the credits, which was not my primary objective this time round.

X= frustrating complex dilemmas or intersting decisions,= one game different perspectives= life

[Arseface]

I got Averice on day 10 The auction message appeared on about day 6 and I got the option to bid a while after. I left it several days then bid the 615M when I had the cash. I had to rebid 675M, and then got a message telling me I'd won

As for making money: The one thing you should bear in mind is that you should never have money sitting in your account. Whilever you're spending everything you own, your capacity to generate funds will be growing exponentially.

The other thing to remember is that the big bucks are in combat. Capturing and selling ships, and getting weapons. You need a trade fleet and stations to get you cash in the background, but combat will get you the big cash injections you will need to build these things quickly without sitting around twiddling your thumbs or using SETA.

If I were to start the game again my strategy would be this:

Start the game with plot enabled (for rank boosts etc)

Go get the starburst, ditch the Buster and save the cash for now

Go find the two (or more?) 'free' TS ships that are sitting around reasonably close to argon space

Go down to the sector 2 south of Maelstroem, and get the Nova that's sitting there. Use the cash from the Buster to buy HEPTs and 25MW shields

Go kill pirates. Capture falcons (easy enough and ~500K per capture depending on the condition) and buy trade mk3 for the TSs and more shields / weapons for the nova.

Do the plot missions, fairly quickly. You should have enough money from the UTs to cover any required expenses in the plot line
When you're done and the paranid are friends with you again, you should have sufficient race rank to do the bala gi missions

Do the bala gi, and get the Hyperion. Kit it out with PSGs and *go kill some xenon* The drops of gamma PPCs and beta flaks will net you up to 50M per sector you clear, and will give you a good reason to get good with handling a larger ship.

Spend the money you make on more UTs, and factories. I agree that spacefuel and spaceweed are the best startup facs, but once you have more money find the good silicon rocks and churn out quantum tubes, microchips and computer components. Also whatever weapons and shields are needed locally.

I'd continue like this until you have around 30 UTs and 7 or 8 XL factory complexes. By then you will have a massive earning power, and can simply sit back and watch your cash grow in time for the auction. Shouldn't take more than a day - less if you go scavenging for xenon weapon drops to top it off. When the auction is done, you will have a great base to build up a massive fleet and do whatever you want to.

Oh, and regularly jump round all the sectors that border xenon space (except nopilios' memorial) to check for xenon invasions. And never pass up an assasination mission.

Formula for victory right there

[Atkara]

I don't want to start a new thread for this so, I'm posting it here.

I'm on game day 21 and the bid is currently at the stage of 600mil, with the BBS saying that "the contest isn't over yet".

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After poking into the messages, I found that this is supposed to be the 3rd stage of the auction quest (5 stages in total)

While the bid invitation isn't offered widely anymore, I came across it twice 2-3 game days before while searching for entirely different things.

My question is:

After which exact game day the bid invitation COMPLETELY vanishes from the BBS boards?

[nNemethon]

[scribble, scribble, note, note, note. TY!]

Always handy to find better ways to do things as I just seem to do everything arsed-about. (no pun intended A.F. ) The problem with being Gemini is that I can never make up my mind and I get distracted easily. (no I don't, yes I do, no I don't, yes - oohhh lookit that... Weeeee)

About sums my game up.

[jlehtone]

That German thread seems to have validated guesses. (Don't ask me what they say. I cannot read that language. )

[Atkara]

Thanks bro, I'll try to figure out what they say (if I manage to remember some of the german I used to speak in the far past...)

[Nomadski]

Hmph, ive only just learned of this auction thingy and it loks like im going to have to start a game all over again seeing as it took me 3 or 4 days just to really get started (never played x games before). Making only about .5 milion per hour from my UTs atm so ill never get enough by game day 10/15.

Its a bit silly putting something like this in based on such a short timescale (ok to the experts its not short, but to a lot of players asking for 675 million after 10 days is a little extreme). It would have been far better to trigger the messages starting when the player has ammassed a certain amoutn of profit (therefore would be aware and can increase profits with enough warning).

Done so much i dont want to go back tho...

[Atkara]

Me either. After a week of raiding the Xenon sectors like there's no tomorrow, I got a Python, a captured/restored LX (keeping it as sample), a Mammoth holding my HQ inside and 830mil in bank. I'm not restarting for the bid, no matter what...

[JMCorp]

Hmph, ive only just learned of this auction thingy and it loks like im going to have to start a game all over again seeing as it took me 3 or 4 days just to really get started (never played x games before). Making only about .5 milion per hour from my UTs atm so ill never get enough by game day 10/15.

Its a bit silly putting something like this in based on such a short timescale (ok to the experts its not short, but to a lot of players asking for 675 million after 10 days is a little extreme). It would have been far better to trigger the messages starting when the player has ammassed a certain amoutn of profit (therefore would be aware and can increase profits with enough warning).

Done so much i dont want to go back tho...

actually you have as much time as you want

start game at 1.4 version. play the game at your leisure until you have the required funds in the bank. upgrade to 2.0, you're guaranteed to get the sector

[Jaxom01]

I am translating the German Thread as it may be very useful here ...