Noob question, ship point of viewing.

[pinkbunny]

I am sorry if this question has been asked before. I searched for it, however, the phrasing of the question is a little odd.

I am currently playing X2. I feel I should play it before X3. I have earned enough money to buy some larger ships, build a fleet. I have a question about combat with a fleet.

When in combat, do I have to stay in the POV of my main ship? Or any ship at all? Is there any way to make the orders, zoom out, and watch the action?

I assume the answer is, "no." Is this also the case for X3? Are you unable to have a birds-eye view of the combat?

[Morkonan]

I can only speak in regards to what knowledge I have of X3:Terran Conflict, but what you can do is target different ships in your fleet, use the F1 key to switch to a view of them, then use the external camera controls, especially the + and - keys for zoom, and then zoom out from the battle. The bigger the ship you have targeted, the larger the zoom radius.

But, no, there's no free-flying camera you can use to view the battle in X3TC, that I know of. Though, I suppose, you could create some cheap ships, target those and use the view commands, but the enemy will likely destroy them.

Edit-Add: Note: If I am flying a large ship with turrets, especially ones dedicated to flak, I will often zoom out and get a third-person view when encountering a swarm of fighters. This way, I can keep my flak turret's field of fire positioned correction towards the largest grouping of fighters .

[vtecem]

Been way too long since I've played X2 and its uninstalled so I can't verify. But in X3(all) you can use F1 to change to any of your turrets, F2 to go to an external view, and F3 to go to an external view of your target.

Of course you can use +/- to zoom in and out along with the numpad keys to rotate.

Pretty sure this all worked in X2 as well, because I remember using at least the F2 variant.

[Master of the Blade]

All view changing hotkeys are the same in X2 and X3. So, to get a better view of the action from a long way away, you can target one of the combatants, press F3 and zoom out as suggested. You can also remotely pilot one ship directly if you have its cockpit view in one of your monitors (F4 switches monitors on IIRC and you'll have to navigate the ship in question's info menus to actually get the cockpit view into a monitor.