[X3TC] How I made enough to buy my first M6

[Wedge598]

Quick intro on myself: I'm a former player of X2 and a long time fan of the genre having played everything from Privateer to Freelancer. I recently dove back into this series with the Terran Conflict version of the game. Much of it was pretty familiar to me even though it had been quite a few years since I played X2. At the same time it felt like a new experience and I wanted to share my triumphs and pitfalls with other new players.

My goal early on was to be a explorer/trader first and slowly work into some combat. So I started with the Argon Merchant begining. This gave me a transporter and just enough money to buy a few energy cells to sell for a profit.

At the early stage I used my Mercury to sell Energy cells by buying them a 12-13 and selling for 18-20. After just a few trade runs I had enough money to start selling ore. I tried to buy it around 50 and sell for 150-200. Occasionally I settled for anything over 100 just so I didn't waste time driving around.

Once I had a few hundred thousand in my bank I started to take advantage of NPCs and stations that were selling used ships. This turned out to be a big advantage early on as you could occasionally make a killing by buying a ship for cheap and selling it for profit (or keeping it as I often did). You need to pay attention to the hull damage and selling price as you can get taken for a ride. If you buy a small M5-M3 class ship with hull damage you can usually get it for cheap and them make the repair yourself with your hand laser (just exit the ship and left click on it to repair it). Once repaired the selling price will increase greatly. I bought a M4 Buster for about 60,000 once and repaired it to selling it for 400,000. Be aware that hand repairing a transporter will take you a long time if the hull damage is great and the profits aren't necessarily worth the time. But I did obtain 5 transporters by buying them used.

Once I had a few transporters I took to the skies in my M5 (you start with one buy I obtained a really nice Fujin that I still like to use). While crusing in my M5 I manually directed my Transporters buy buying a trading system extention and explored the universe. It's good to max out your M5 speed so make a quick escape if necessary.

One of your first things you should consider for your M5 is a mineral scanner. This can make you some decent money as you can occasionally find an asteroid scanning job which nets you good cash. I once found a job which paid over 100,000 per scan. With 10 asteriods to scan I netted well over a million dollars. Be sure you have a fast ship as some of time limits on these jobs can make them tight.

If you have a M5 with a good cargo hold (70 or better). You should also look for a pirate base so you can buy a cargo bay life support system. With this you can transport people which means you can take jobs to shuttle people around for good money. After doing a few of these for cheap you'll start to get offers of 500,000 or more to make a delivery. These jobs go really fast but you need a fast ship to make some of the time limits. Occasionally you'll take a job and the person will refuse to get on board because they want to be taken in a TP ship. Just abort those missions and look for another. Don't be afriad if the mission says "Very Hard", this is usually based on the time limit being very short. If you have a fast enough ship you can still get it done. Although you may need a jumpdrive to do some of them. Doing this mission type along with the asteriod scans I was able to amass millions in just a few hours.

All the while I was buying used transporters and outfitting them to trade. Once I had a million dollars I started to outfit the transporters with Trade Command software Mk3 so I could set them off as Sector Traders and let them go about business on their own. I worked this so I never had to manage more than two transporters by hand. As of this writing I have 6 all set up to trade as Sector Traders.

Avoid ship retrieval missions as this can take a long time and often you need a jumpdrive to get the ship back in time. I had to buy a jumpdrive and transporter device so I could get the very slow ship back before the time runs out.

Avoid spy missions too as these tend to have enemies that you need to deal with. Very tough with an M5 and these tend to take a long time.

Early on it's also going to be really tough to complete delivery missions as well. It's best to stick to the Scanning Asteriod and Taxi missions.

Even though I make it sound like a cakewalk, make no mistake, it'll still take you several days (48+) hours of playing just to start to make enough money to think about buying a 10,000,000 M6 ship. If you simply grind on the scanning and taxi missions you can probably get there sooner but by building up a trading force you can get a steady income going so you don't have to continue grinding the missions once you get the M6.

I hope that helps someone. Feel free to correct me or ask questions.

[Triaxx2]

Awesome. The early parts can be among the most fun. After a while the game starts to slow down and have both a more measured pace, but also tends to be less interesting when you can simply slaughter any opposition.

[cobra mk2]

You never said what M6 you bought!

I'm currently in the exact same part of the game except it's a DID game so it takes a little longer. i'm currently at 5 1/2 million credits and saving up for an M6.

I'm not sure what one to go for. As it's a DID i may go for one with the most shielding which would be a change for me as i usually go with the Split designs. In this game however, the Split have been provoking me with unexcusable acts of terrorism so my plan for further down the road is to utterly wipe them from existence (hey they started it!)

In the meantime however i have started a 'no-trade with Split' part to my game. I can still fly Split ships and use them but i wont buy from a Split Factory or Shipyard.

So that means im going to be flying some new ships in the future even though i've been playing the game since it launched and i'm looking forward to it! but i must make sure i make the right purchase as i won't be able to change my mind if i don't like it.

[Wedge598]

Yeah, sorry I did forget to mention the M6. I bought the Argon Centaur. I actually like that design quite a bit but it also happens to be the cheapest one in the general area I've unlocked.

[cobra mk2]

The Argon ships are always a nice balanced design.

I meant to say in my post that instead of using a jumpdrive to do return ship missions, you could buy a 'TM' class ship and use it to carry the ship back to its factory. It saves on a lot of messing about with jumpdrives and repairing hulls!

[Wedge598]

Good point on the ship retrieval missions. I do have a transporter now but the mission I had trouble with involved returning a TL class ship so I had to transfer a jump drive to it. I also tried one of the stolen ship missions but couldn't get the pilot to bail. She was of a race I'm friendly with and would just speak of peace when I asked her to surrender. I tried shooting her but she wanted to go down with the ship. Are some those just not possible? Would a SOS help?

[Triaxx2]

Those big ship return missions only need you get the ship close and it will mark the mission completed.

It's generally considered that Stolen Ship missions are impossible until you're hunting boardable ships.

[StarSword]

My first M6 this time around was a Centaur I picked up used at a shipyard for somewhere around 300,000. I promptly patched it up with a repair laser and flipped it for 7 million.