Too late for Avarice?

[stooper88]

I've had X3 since July and have been playing on and off since. I love the game but unfortunately don't get very much time to play it

Currently I'm 5days 2hrs into my game and I've just learned about the Avarice sector. Now I'm heartbroken. As I don't get much time to play and it's taken me 6mos RL to get where I am now, I dont want to start over. But is it possible to save up enough credits at this point in the timeline to still have a shot of winning the auction?

I just captured a PNR and was so excited, but I cringe at the thought of starting over from scratch. I have roughly 811k cr right now, 2 level 10 STs and 1 level 6 ST. Also have a handful of captured Pirate Falcons, Novas, Busters, etc. that I might be willing to part with but would prefer to keep.

I suppose some might not see any reason to be bothered by Avarice, but I was really hoping I'd be able to play X3 and try out all the experiences it had to offer. Until now I wasn't in any hurry and thought I could play completely open-endedly. But I never knew about Avarice til now.

Appreciate everyone's thoughts. Thanks.

[tanner1ie]

You might get some change from 800 million!

[Kryten]

13 days in and its still up for grabs, only 450 mill to go

I've been told you get to around day 25 so you should have plenty of time if you don't seta when it'l not earn you lots of credits. UTs seem the quickest option as complex's tend to take a long time to start making a turnover. My first complex which has 4 booze factories has only made 120 mil so far, I've just set up an 8 booze fab complex but its taking a long time to get up to optimal running speed, darn energy shortages

There's also Nividium Mining which can kickstart some major expansion projects.

In the end unless you invest in trade you probably won't make it.

[teladianium]

you can do it with combat but trading in parallel will help as well. I've only ever done small complexes so can't really comment on that.

I'd go down the combat route - XI missions at high combat rank, clearing out Xenon sectors with a M2 and collecting loot and capped ships, and assassination missions at high combat rank will all pull in lots of credits.

[ivak]

Obviously you are a good pilot, so my advice is: go and capture an LX, then nail some Xenon capital ships and grab their weapons. With some hard work it's possible to raise these 615M within a couple of game days. You'll need a fast freighter, though, to extract the loot from Xenon sectors, so my suggestion is to part with all those crappy fighters and buy or cap a Cayman.

Happy hunting.

i.

[esd]

I'm almost 18 game days in and the auction's still there. I wish it would just end as I've no intention of spending that much money on a trading station, and the two BBS articles are taking up valuable room that could hold missions!

[stooper88]

You might get some change from 800 million!

sorry for the confusion. I only have 800 thousand at the moment (i.e. less than 1 million)

Thanks for all the responses. So far the poll is dead even in all choices 2 + 2 + 2... I guess I'll try to plan on the nvidium mobile mining strat to kickstart a UT fleet. Then, in parallel, work up some gains from combat.

Just trying to get a feel for how much cashflow I need to be producing by what timeframe in order to have a shot. Some threads indicate having at least until day 25, others have mentioned having only up to 10 days after when the bbs entry appears. Even now, if I take best case scenario and assume I have 20 days, I'd need to average 30+ million/day ~ 1.3m /hr.

<fingers crossed>

[kotekzot]

start with nividium mining. i got 4mil for selling 500 units (2 asteroids with yield 8 and 10) of nividium inside a mercury (400k worth). after you get enough money start making a closed cycle space fuel complex in ore belt (best location due to a pirate base and a great deal of asteroids to get your silicon from). you can throw in some space weed production in later, as to not flood the market with your whiskey.

here's my closed cycle space fuel and space weed complex (i call it space vice complex):
wheat farm l x2
space fuel distillery x2
dream farm l x2
bliss place l x2
silicon mine l (x64)
crystal fab m x6
cattle ranch l x2
cattle ranch m
cahoona bakery l x2
cahoona bakery m
solar power plant xl

total cost: 72,3mil
total income: 1mil/hour

protip: if you set the price of your space vice to 1 credit below the average price you won't need to bother with transortation - pirates will take care of it. if you have a police license you can scan them after they've bought your stuff, kill them and get it back. although it's more profitable to sell it yourself, you'll lose a lot of ships to the very same pirates.

note: i put 1 extra crystal fab because a solar power plant draws slightly more crystals than the same-sized crystal fab produces. if you can put up with delivering an occasional batch of crystals to your station you can remove 1 of each:
crystal fab m
cattle ranch m
cahoona bakery m

with this baby running i'm getting filthy rich and am grateful to the developers for an opportunity to waste some of that extra cash on a personal sector.

also, you can get a lot of money from repelling xenon invasions. if you have hyperion you can just ram their capital ships and guarantee yourself 5mil per invasion even if you don't bother with the fighters. 15-20 mil per invasion is an easy thing to do at warlord military rank.

[Gnavpot]

total cost: 72,3mil
total income: 1mil/hour

I can understand why big self-sustaining complexes can be attractive in the late game as they need less microing. But in the beginning of the game? Come on.

Your complex will pay itself back in 72 hours.

A carefully placed food factory will typically pay itself back in 15-25 hours, including the investment in freighters and raw materials.

As an example, a Rastar Refinery L costs around 2.5 mil. It needs one CAG, cost 500k. The CAG will fill the factory 80% with ecells and chelts meat, cost 350k. It will earn 200k/hour or more. That is a payback time of 17 hours.

So for a fraction of the investment in your complex, 1 million/hour is possible.

[kotekzot]

i like lazy solutions, so i can concentrate on battles. besides, that's a huge complex, one could get a small closed cycle complex running for about 20mil and expand it gradually.

by the way, i put this whole complex together on game day 5, with money from assasination missions, xenon invasions and an open cycle space vice complex.

could've done it faster if i didn't waste 40mil on getting headquarters.

[stooper88]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I have to go out of town today but can't wait to try out these ideas next week. Sounds like it's gonna need some work. I don't have PHQ, M7, or M2 But you guys have given me hope I'll follow up once I've squeezed in some time with X3 again.

Avarice here I come!

PS Good luck Kryten

[Szakalot]

u wont need PHQ and M2 to clear out the sectors. Check out balagi's requirments, meet them (by selling fighers for example) and finish the missions until u get the M7. Dont sell it of course, its more than enough to get rid of xenon cap ships in whatever numbers, finishing any assasination or XI that may come, best way to get rich pretty fast. And, above all, M7 has plenty of cargo space for that '15 GPPC' ull get from time to time out of the x cap ship. And 15GPPC = 15 mil, thats a quick way to get ur hand on big money:)

[Mars Mug]

From game start I had about 2 Billion credits by the time Averice became available, but that’s simply because I have played the game several times now and knew the locations of containers and ships which gave my early play a big boost. I soon got to the point of being able to clear Xenon sectors and trading in dropped GPPC etc. made me a lot of credits very quickly, plus a rapid rise in both combat and trade ranks.

[Capt_Newbie]

Okay, newbie question (natch): What's the big deal about owning a sector anyway? Cos it means you're the leur..?

[wyvern11]

like esd said in later game you will wish the bbs-ad to go away.

the discussion in german forum ended like that in 2.0.x the sector will only be sold to someone else, if you you *have* the quids for a while but do not step in to buy.

there are two ways to get rich very quickly from 800.000
- massive mobile mining, see
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=189338
- massive free trading with Tradesoft-Mk3 / EST:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=181320

i used the latter. started as explorer with a disco. took me 16 hours to buy my first freighter. started more and more EST (about a hundred?). they earned like 180.000.000 in about 54 hours (you'll read this in the mining thread as well)

[Nanook]

...Some threads indicate having at least until day 25, others have mentioned having only up to 10 days after when the bbs entry appears.

Just to set your mind at ease, you can't even bid on it until day 10. After that, you have a couple of 'weeks' to raise the cash.

Even now, if I take best case scenario and assume I have 20 days, I'd need to average 30+ million/day ~ 1.3m /hr.

<fingers crossed>

Even though I think the whole endeavour is pointless and a waste of money, I did get Avarice once, just to say I did. Like you, I didn't have much money at the start. But it took me only 3 days to earn the winning bid of 615 million. I did it by cycling through the various Xenon sectors, killing K's and J's for their GPPC's and other weapons, as well as the occasional L and LX capture. I used the M7 from the Bala Gi missions, which I'd just completed. At the time, I had only one station (required to do Bala Gi), and no ST/UT's (don't use 'em). So all my earnings came from combat. So yeah, you can easily earn enough to win the Avarice bid within the time limit.