Protecting satellites

[Eukatae]

I am sick of the Xenon (I assume it's the Xenon) killing my satellites. Does anyone have any tricks to keep them alive? Most sectors I just want one for trade, does parking them well away from gates work?

[Ketraar]

If you are just out for the prices in stations its cheaper (over the long run) to just park a cheap ship in a station. If you need the info on traffic there is not much you can do other than put is as far from path as possible, but wont only work as far as some random patrol having nothing better to target.

MFG

Ketraar

[BDK]

Advanced satellites have a huge range so you can place them well out of harms way. I usually put them in the middle of the map and way up vertically so I can see whats going on and enemies tend to ignore them completely.

Of course sometimes an angry band of pirates will destroy them, however it doesn't take long to jump in and replace them.

Oh and I place adv satellites in all sectors, makes life easy

[Timsup2nothin]

I go with Ketraar. Ship in a station is just as good a trade link and doesn't get blown up.

[Dog G6]

Advanced satellites have a huge range so you can place them well out of harms way. I usually put them in the middle of the map and way up vertically so I can see whats going on and enemies tend to ignore them completely.

Of course sometimes an angry band of pirates will destroy them, however it doesn't take long to jump in and replace them.

Oh and I place adv satellites in all sectors, makes life easy

I use Adv. Sats also. I do the same, placing them at a fair vertical distance from the center of the sector, if you can say such a thing in space. The hard part is that Advanced Satellites are out of stock quite a bit. When they are in stock, though, I can usually buy three or four at once.

I haven't had my satellites attacked yet, though. If you have the Official Bonus Package, you could use the Satellite Early Warning Network.

Here's both the X3AP Bonus Pack and the X3TC Bonus Pack

Hope this helps.

[ApatheticEthic]

I go with Ketraar. Ship in a station is just as good a trade link and doesn't get blown up.

The most expensive an advanced satellite goes for is 15k credits. The cheapest ships will be scouts, which are all above 60k credits. Satellites can be placed far above the ecliptic of sectors and still perform the function of showing prices. They can be laid quickly and easily with a moderately fast corvette. None of my satellites placed in this way have ever been blown up by Xenon.

[ApatheticEthic]

Advanced satellites have a huge range so you can place them well out of harms way. I usually put them in the middle of the map and way up vertically so I can see whats going on and enemies tend to ignore them completely.

Of course sometimes an angry band of pirates will destroy them, however it doesn't take long to jump in and replace them.

Oh and I place adv satellites in all sectors, makes life easy

I use Adv. Sats also. I do the same, placing them at a fair vertical distance from the center of the sector, if you can say such a thing in space. The hard part is that Advanced Satellites are out of stock quite a bit. When they are in stock, though, I can usually buy three or four at once.

I haven't had my satellites attacked yet, though. If you have the Official Bonus Package, you could use the Satellite Early Warning Network.

Here's both the X3AP Bonus Pack and the X3TC Bonus Pack

Hope this helps.

I don't have a big problem getting satellites in my game. It's easiest if you know where the NPCs take them. They usually take the advanced satellites to Military Outposts. I can frequently find about 40 of them in the outpost in Elena's Fortune.

[Dog G6]

Advanced satellites have a huge range so you can place them well out of harms way. I usually put them in the middle of the map and way up vertically so I can see whats going on and enemies tend to ignore them completely.

Of course sometimes an angry band of pirates will destroy them, however it doesn't take long to jump in and replace them.

Oh and I place adv satellites in all sectors, makes life easy

I use Adv. Sats also. I do the same, placing them at a fair vertical distance from the center of the sector, if you can say such a thing in space. The hard part is that Advanced Satellites are out of stock quite a bit. When they are in stock, though, I can usually buy three or four at once.

I haven't had my satellites attacked yet, though. If you have the Official Bonus Package, you could use the Satellite Early Warning Network.

Here's both the X3AP Bonus Pack and the X3TC Bonus Pack

Hope this helps.

I don't have a big problem getting satellites in my game. It's easiest if you know where the NPCs take them. They usually take the advanced satellites to Military Outposts. I can frequently find about 40 of them in the outpost in Elena's Fortune.

Aaaah, sneaky. I'll be sure to use this, thanks.

I probably should have my Discoverer follow ships around when I'm looking for where a certain good is going. That's a very good idea, I've just been doing the plot while I remotely manage my budding corporation though. I'll have to try it later. I guess satellites could also be a way to follow ships, but they would require more management.

This is slightly off-topic, but can you give an AI-controlled ship a Police License and a Cargo Scanner? This would also be good for tracking goods. Or, if you could put a CS on satellites... (can you?) I guess that could be a new mod that someone should make, which they might put in the Bonus Pack. That would be awesome.

I guess you could use ships with CSs to scan ships repeatedly in a sector, then use satellites to follow them. (Another mod idea: bookmarking specific ships so you can track them. Although, I guess you could use their ID, but it would still be easier to have a "Track Ship" command that worked in conjunction with your satellites and ships which happen to be in the areas that the target ship travels.)

[Timsup2nothin]

I go with Ketraar. Ship in a station is just as good a trade link and doesn't get blown up.

The most expensive an advanced satellite goes for is 15k credits. The cheapest ships will be scouts, which are all above 60k credits. Satellites can be placed far above the ecliptic of sectors and still perform the function of showing prices. They can be laid quickly and easily with a moderately fast corvette. None of my satellites placed in this way have ever been blown up by Xenon.

Wellllll....the cheapest ship is one you don't have to pay for.

I usually put a battered hulk in the trading station, add CLS software and set it to sell at average price everything the trading station stocks. Then whenever I somehow...er...just happen across...yeah, that's it...goods of whatever sort my salvage ships just dock, transfer it to my 'agent' and the goods get stuffed into the trading station as fast as they get used up. It gets my salvage crews back in operation much faster than looking for places to sell and it tends to buffer my reputation a bit. Of course with my sterling character I don't really need that...

[ApatheticEthic]

Advanced satellites have a huge range so you can place them well out of harms way. I usually put them in the middle of the map and way up vertically so I can see whats going on and enemies tend to ignore them completely.

Of course sometimes an angry band of pirates will destroy them, however it doesn't take long to jump in and replace them.

Oh and I place adv satellites in all sectors, makes life easy

I use Adv. Sats also. I do the same, placing them at a fair vertical distance from the center of the sector, if you can say such a thing in space. The hard part is that Advanced Satellites are out of stock quite a bit. When they are in stock, though, I can usually buy three or four at once.

I haven't had my satellites attacked yet, though. If you have the Official Bonus Package, you could use the Satellite Early Warning Network.

Here's both the X3AP Bonus Pack and the X3TC Bonus Pack

Hope this helps.

I don't have a big problem getting satellites in my game. It's easiest if you know where the NPCs take them. They usually take the advanced satellites to Military Outposts. I can frequently find about 40 of them in the outpost in Elena's Fortune.

Aaaah, sneaky. I'll be sure to use this, thanks.

I probably should have my Discoverer follow ships around when I'm looking for where a certain good is going. That's a very good idea, I've just been doing the plot while I remotely manage my budding corporation though. I'll have to try it later. I guess satellites could also be a way to follow ships, but they would require more management.

This is slightly off-topic, but can you give an AI-controlled ship a Police License and a Cargo Scanner? This would also be good for tracking goods. Or, if you could put a CS on satellites... (can you?) I guess that could be a new mod that someone should make, which they might put in the Bonus Pack. That would be awesome.

I guess you could use ships with CSs to scan ships repeatedly in a sector, then use satellites to follow them. (Another mod idea: bookmarking specific ships so you can track them. Although, I guess you could use their ID, but it would still be easier to have a "Track Ship" command that worked in conjunction with your satellites and ships which happen to be in the areas that the target ship travels.)

If I remember right, I just looked at the ships information and it showed the destination. I'll have a look again in a second.

Edit: Yep. It shows the ships destination clear as day when looking at the ship information. I'm not sure if you can scan ships remotely, but you can definitely see their destinations. I suppose you could watch the factories that produce the goods you're interested in. If an energy transporter is seen docking at a power plant, you should be able to infer where it's selling it's goods. I learned this when I got annoyed that a freighter bought all of the satellites I had wanted. I looked and saw that it's destination was a military outpost. Sure enough, they're stocking the outpost with satellites.

[ApatheticEthic]

I go with Ketraar. Ship in a station is just as good a trade link and doesn't get blown up.

The most expensive an advanced satellite goes for is 15k credits. The cheapest ships will be scouts, which are all above 60k credits. Satellites can be placed far above the ecliptic of sectors and still perform the function of showing prices. They can be laid quickly and easily with a moderately fast corvette. None of my satellites placed in this way have ever been blown up by Xenon.

Wellllll....the cheapest ship is one you don't have to pay for.

I usually put a battered hulk in the trading station, add CLS software and set it to sell at average price everything the trading station stocks. Then whenever I somehow...er...just happen across...yeah, that's it...goods of whatever sort my salvage ships just dock, transfer it to my 'agent' and the goods get stuffed into the trading station as fast as they get used up. It gets my salvage crews back in operation much faster than looking for places to sell and it tends to buffer my reputation a bit. Of course with my sterling character I don't really need that...

While true, you can't forget that time is also a valuable commodity. Maybe you can use those hulks, but you're eventually going to run into the problem that you don't need hulks in every sector where you need coverage. Nor would it be easy or cheap to just go out and acquire 10 or so hulks when you find yourself needing coverage of a certain cluster. It takes a while to put about 10 satellites, but it doesn't take much less time to acquire ten hulks. Even then, you have to order the hulks to go to the destination. Good luck with that if you got those ships out in the middle of nowhere or far from your destination.

[Timsup2nothin]

I go with Ketraar. Ship in a station is just as good a trade link and doesn't get blown up.

The most expensive an advanced satellite goes for is 15k credits. The cheapest ships will be scouts, which are all above 60k credits. Satellites can be placed far above the ecliptic of sectors and still perform the function of showing prices. They can be laid quickly and easily with a moderately fast corvette. None of my satellites placed in this way have ever been blown up by Xenon.

Wellllll....the cheapest ship is one you don't have to pay for.

I usually put a battered hulk in the trading station, add CLS software and set it to sell at average price everything the trading station stocks. Then whenever I somehow...er...just happen across...yeah, that's it...goods of whatever sort my salvage ships just dock, transfer it to my 'agent' and the goods get stuffed into the trading station as fast as they get used up. It gets my salvage crews back in operation much faster than looking for places to sell and it tends to buffer my reputation a bit. Of course with my sterling character I don't really need that...

While true, you can't forget that time is also a valuable commodity. Maybe you can use those hulks, but you're eventually going to run into the problem that you don't need hulks in every sector where you need coverage. Nor would it be easy or cheap to just go out and acquire 10 or so hulks when you find yourself needing coverage of a certain cluster. It takes a while to put about 10 satellites, but it doesn't take much less time to acquire ten hulks. Even then, you have to order the hulks to go to the destination. Good luck with that if you got those ships out in the middle of nowhere or far from your destination.

Tow Truck. Magnetar jumps in, hits them with a jumpdrive and cells, pulls the spare jump drive out of the 'locker' (disco renamed 'jump drive locker' that never leaves the magnetar) and jumps after them, reclaims the drive and unused cells. If I'm hunting hulks it's usually jumped back in sector faster than I can get the next jumper. They probably wouldn't make sense if they were just replacing sats, but they serve the added function of selling off salvage.

I have a curious question by the way...why do you feel like you 'need coverage'? I'm always looking around at stuff, but really I'm only interested in what is going on in sectors where I am 'doing business', and I have assets in those sectors anyway so I wouldn't need a sat or a hulk.

[ApatheticEthic]

I go with Ketraar. Ship in a station is just as good a trade link and doesn't get blown up.

The most expensive an advanced satellite goes for is 15k credits. The cheapest ships will be scouts, which are all above 60k credits. Satellites can be placed far above the ecliptic of sectors and still perform the function of showing prices. They can be laid quickly and easily with a moderately fast corvette. None of my satellites placed in this way have ever been blown up by Xenon.

Wellllll....the cheapest ship is one you don't have to pay for.

I usually put a battered hulk in the trading station, add CLS software and set it to sell at average price everything the trading station stocks. Then whenever I somehow...er...just happen across...yeah, that's it...goods of whatever sort my salvage ships just dock, transfer it to my 'agent' and the goods get stuffed into the trading station as fast as they get used up. It gets my salvage crews back in operation much faster than looking for places to sell and it tends to buffer my reputation a bit. Of course with my sterling character I don't really need that...

While true, you can't forget that time is also a valuable commodity. Maybe you can use those hulks, but you're eventually going to run into the problem that you don't need hulks in every sector where you need coverage. Nor would it be easy or cheap to just go out and acquire 10 or so hulks when you find yourself needing coverage of a certain cluster. It takes a while to put about 10 satellites, but it doesn't take much less time to acquire ten hulks. Even then, you have to order the hulks to go to the destination. Good luck with that if you got those ships out in the middle of nowhere or far from your destination.

Tow Truck. Magnetar jumps in, hits them with a jumpdrive and cells, pulls the spare jump drive out of the 'locker' (disco renamed 'jump drive locker' that never leaves the magnetar) and jumps after them, reclaims the drive and unused cells. If I'm hunting hulks it's usually jumped back in sector faster than I can get the next jumper. They probably wouldn't make sense if they were just replacing sats, but they serve the added function of selling off salvage.

I have a curious question by the way...why do you feel like you 'need coverage'? I'm always looking around at stuff, but really I'm only interested in what is going on in sectors where I am 'doing business', and I have assets in those sectors anyway so I wouldn't need a sat or a hulk.

Occasionally, I need to outfit fighters, buy some missiles, or get some other piece of equipment that I don't produce myself. I don't always have lots of complexes producing equipment for me, so it's very helpful to know which place has energy cells for restocking on the go, where to buy some weapons, or just looking up how much of a good a certain region is getting. With satellites in place, it helps me make my trading decisions and maybe keep an eye on sectors. My operations tend to concentrate on controlling the market in one region first and slowly expanding to others. Having satellites gives me insight into how foreign markets work and it streamlines my planning. The stock market can show me the production of goods, but it won't tell me how a market is really doing.

[Timsup2nothin]

Occasionally, I need to outfit fighters, buy some missiles, or get some other piece of equipment that I don't produce myself. I don't always have lots of complexes producing equipment for me, so it's very helpful to know which place has energy cells for restocking on the go, where to buy some weapons, or just looking up how much of a good a certain region is getting. With satellites in place, it helps me make my trading decisions and maybe keep an eye on sectors. My operations tend to concentrate on controlling the market in one region first and slowly expanding to others. Having satellites gives me insight into how foreign markets work and it streamlines my planning. The stock market can show me the production of goods, but it won't tell me how a market is really doing.

Ah. I also tend to dominate an area and then consider expanding into neighboring areas, but I fling so many CLS traders about that the neighboring areas are pretty well lit before I have to make any decisions about them. My trading networks choke out the 'independent' CLS guys, so they get pushed ahead.

I certainly understand the occasional need for supplies also. I very seldom actually produce anything, since I find that nearly all goods in the universe are overproduced, so I have to find and buy whatever I need. Usually though I limit myself to ships that can be equipped within the region I have under control, where I just skim off anything I need from my weapons trading operations.

[Aragosnat]

I go with Ketraar. Ship in a station is just as good a trade link and doesn't get blown up.

Till the station goes boom along with it.

[Timsup2nothin]

I go with Ketraar. Ship in a station is just as good a trade link and doesn't get blown up.

Till the station goes boom along with it.

True enough. Hate it when that happens, particularly because you don't get any 'you're ship is under attack' warning, the ship's just gone.

[ApatheticEthic]

In X3ap this doesn't happen so often because of racial response fleets and the fact that trading stations have a lasertower to defend them(not sure if all do, but I remember of lot of them do). You still get invasions from other races though.

[Ketraar]

But that is one in a million, sectors where this is a true possibility are very rare in TC/AP (not counting war sectors as they are special anyway).

Obviously if you want to build or track traffic Adv. Sats are a must (dont even bother using the normal ones its a waist of credits). But to keep track of prices and stocks a docked ship is the cheapest solution in the long run.

MFG

Ketraar

[ApatheticEthic]

But that is one in a million, sectors where this is a true possibility are very rare in TC/AP (not counting war sectors as they are special anyway).

Obviously if you want to build or track traffic Adv. Sats are a must (dont even bother using the normal ones its a waist of credits). But to keep track of prices and stocks a docked ship is the cheapest solution in the long run.

MFG

Ketraar

Ships are only the cheapest solution when satellites get blown up. When placed correctly, this never happens. Advanced satellites are 16 thousand credits at most, but the average price is around 13 thousand. At that price you could have two satellites blow up, buy a third, and still be ahead if you consider the price of a scout ship. If there's a place where a player can buy a ship for just 12 thousand credits, then I would concede that ships are cheaper. However, I've never seen those prices and certainly never in the numbers that I buy satellites in.

You could steal the ships, but that's not free. If you're capping ships, then there's a cost to the time spent. Additionally, any stolen ships can be repaired and sold for more than the cost of a satellite, meaning that you are taking a loss if you use it over a satellite. You could have sold the ships, bought a satellite, and still came ahead in credits. If you are even more credit conscious, you could presumably use a nav satellite, which only costs about 7 thousand credits, cheaper than any ship you could possibly buy.

[Timsup2nothin]

You could steal the ships, but that's not free. If you're capping ships, then there's a cost to the time spent. Additionally, any stolen ships can be repaired and sold for more than the cost of a satellite, meaning that you are taking a loss if you use it over a satellite.

Amusing juxtaposition. The observation about the time investment in capping ships next to the analysis of the additional credits available from repairing the capped ships.

For the record, I think the biggest selling point of stashing ships in stations is that it is a good use for them that does not involve repairing them first. The time involved in capping them is MUCH more amusingly spent than blasting them with a repair laser.