The Hub plot: or why I stopped bothering

[Vector_Gorgoth]

On the whole, X3 is a great game.

But there are some serious deficiencies which make certain aspects of it nigh-unplayable for someone like me. I'm not detail oriented; I don't like micro managing. I HATE tedium and repetitive activities.

So I started the hub plot, after finishing pretty much every other story line which didn't rely on finishing the hub; the initial materials requirements are reasonable -- 500 microchips, okay. I can do that, no problem.

But then I saw the requirements for the later stages and that just stopped me in my tracks, particularly this quote:

If you stay with only 15 chip plants, that's going to be 5000 hours of game time before you're done with the HUB - even at 10x SATA that's about 21 real days.

Okay, that's just idiotic; either there's something wrong with factories, or there's something wrong with the plot. IMO, it's factories; a "factory" should be able to produce truly impressive amounts of materials (HINT: SPACE IS BIG. LIKE, REALLY BIG. STORAGE CAPACITY IS NOT A BIG ISSUE HERE), and what . . . 100 microchips? is NOT impressive.

Sure, if I wanted to spend some enormous amount of time making some ungodly number of chip plants, I could build the simply staggering number of factories it would take to produce the requisite number of chips in a reasonable time (HINT: 21 days REAL TIME is NOT reasonable!), but what's the point?

So break here: everything I'm going to say after this paragraph aside, what is the point with fulfilling this plot? By then I'll have more money than god, and aside from the ability to fab my own ships (big whoop!) I'll be able to make/buy/trade anything I want, and with jumpdrive, it's not like I will PERSONALLY benefit from the hub anyway! So what the hell is the point of this quest? To make it REALLY REALLY REALLY tedious to do the later-on plots which rely on it? It's just INCREDIBLY poorly thought through--most of the poorly thought through design choices in X3 are so irrelevant that I just ignore them (the "impossible" ship retrieval missions, e.g., where the target ship spawns in KoS space, or other such "fun" annoyances), but this is blocking any and all progression in the game. Which means that, beyond this point, it ruins it.

Anyway, back to what I was saying. This (building a big ol' honking mega-chip-producing complex) is assuming the AI will cooperate. I've got the bonus scripts pack installed; what I'm noticing, however, is that they don't really work all that well. I can't just plop down a station, set up a basic route to "load" all the products and unload them somewhere else . . . well, I *can*, but it doesn't reliably work. Ships stop routes for no reason, or fail to start them at all (even when NONE of the target sectors had a single enemy present). Other traders almost never actually sell supplies to my stations, even when I have the buy price way above average (they don't buy from my stations reliably, either, even when the sell price is below average).

I set up a couple dozen different stations of different kinds in different sectors, always accounting for local demand and the availability of supplies; in several cases I made sure every material a given station needed was sold in the same sector, and that all the stations supplying materials were likewise supplied. I also made sure there was a demand for the product being sold.

I'd read that it can take a day or so for the trade AI to "notice" new stations or whatever . . . so I made sure every station had a million or two credits (enough to buy all the supplies it needed to produce all the wares it could hold), set the jumps to a nice high number, made sure everything was correct . . . and 24 hours later, real time, with SETA going 10x the whole time, only about 1/3 of the stations showed any change.

So basically in order to get this damned hub working I'd have to sit here micromanaging a broken system for DAYS, realtime.

That's not a game, that's a job.

If Egosoft wants to pay me $60/hour (my consulting rate at the moment) to grind microchips, that's their business, but otherwise this isn't worth my time. It's not fun and it's not interesting -- it's just like running a real company, only I can't buy a yaht with the proceeds.

If I wanted that nonsense, I'd play WoW; at least I could farm gold for money there.

[Alan Phipps]

<Shrugs> I just played the Hub in the background while I did other things. I used some complexes but not really lots or mega-ones for making the resources, along with some ships collecting them at about average price for storage in bare damaged (but big) captured ship hulks. As I said I was concentrating on other things and was pleasantly surprised now and again when a periodic check told me that I had enough to complete a Hub phase and maybe some spare for trading at a profit or to hoard for ship-building resources for even later on.

[Scott C.]

Yep. That factoid doesn't take existing x-verse production into account.... Doesn't matter though. Quick set up, and you don't have to do anything except align gates for the most part. CAGs are the easiest/quickest, I think.

It's worth doin' at least once, dude.

[jlehtone]

But then I saw the requirements for the later stages and that just stopped me in my tracks, particularly this quote ...

Does not match the current requirements.

21 days and 9 hours ingame time from start of game (about a year in real time). That is when I recently completed the Hub. There was some micromanagement, but most of it was of "fire and forget" type. The bonuspack scripts did operate flawlessly.

The NPC Free Traders are likely to fail to transport anything efficiently (except the ones short on weed and whisky). The CAG and CLS, when their details are set right, are steady workhorses.


Most, who build a "big honking mega-chip-producing complex", mean a self-sufficient complex. Self-sufficient complexes do not use AI; they are self-sufficient.

[TTD]

The first time I did the Hub Plot, it took me six weeks.
That was by not knowing in advance what was required.

The original plot requirements were much higher than of now.

Knowing in advance what you need can help you plan ahead and get the wheels in place.
Having at least one unit of each of the requirements in the Hub,or using the bonus pack to list the ware, set the prices high enough to atract the npc traders.
I even had corporations delivering to me.
set up CAGs.
set up a few factoies.
use the set-and-forget methods to reduce micro-management.
Doing this allows you to just play the game while the hub plot completes itself.

One player holds the record for completing the Hub plot in well less than a week.

[Vector_Gorgoth]

The first time I did the Hub Plot, it took me six weeks.
That was by not knowing in advance what was required.

The original plot requirements were much higher than of now.

Knowing in advance what you need can help you plan ahead and get the wheels in place.
Having at least one unit of each of the requirements in the Hub,or using the bonus pack to list the ware, set the prices high enough to atract the npc traders.
I even had corporations delivering to me.
set up CAGs.
set up a few factoies.
use the set-and-forget methods to reduce micro-management.
Doing this allows you to just play the game while the hub plot completes itself.

One player holds the record for completing the Hub plot in well less than a week.

That's encouraging. Perhaps if someone could give me the correct requirements (or better yet, update the wiki) I'd appreciate it.

It might also revitalise my interest in playing XC:TC, because it was a huge disappointment to hit up against that issue.

Hub requirements not withstanding, this is probably the best game I've run into in years.

21 days and 9 hours ingame time from start of game (about a year in real time). That is when I recently completed the Hub. There was some micromanagement, but most of it was of "fire and forget" type. The bonuspack scripts did operate flawlessly.

Good for you.

The NPC Free Traders are likely to fail to transport anything efficiently (except the ones short on weed and whisky). The CAG and CLS, when their details are set right, are steady workhorses.

It's probably a per-game issue; I did notice an earlier game seemed more "responsive" in terms of trade than the one where I did the most playing. That still doesn't constitute "reliable".

I spent probably 12+ hours trying to get those scripts to work, and using every fix and looking into every potential hang-up I could find documented anywhere in any thread discussing the issue. None of them worked, and most of the time my intrepid traders spent long hours in "CLS on standby".

Most, who build a "big honking mega-chip-producing complex", mean a self-sufficient complex. Self-sufficient complexes do not use AI; they are self-sufficient.

Yeah, I tend to think of the term 'complex' in the more general term, forgetting it's used in a specific way by X3 players.

[X-Tie]

To be honest, I prefer the fact that the HUB plot is so long to complete, rather than having it pretty much hand-delivered in X3:AP... The satisfaction of FINALLY finishing it, and also getting the PHQ, is much greater than that of the easily-obtained AP plot reward.

[Lyth]

When TC first came out I did the Hub plot with no factories at all, just using mammoths and traders/mobile miners to stockpile the goods from NPC stations, it only took me a month.

The hub plot in TC is one of those things you don't really appreciate until afterwards how rewarding it is. At the risk of being pelted and flamed I was always sad they reduced the requirements.

You should however play the game anyway you wish too, no-one is going to think less of you if you just go to the S&M section and give yourself those resources to complete the plot with a script. The game is meant to be fun, don't stress over it, play it anyway you choose.

[TTD]

If you want the challenge, Apricot slice and dilpikle have scripts to reset rquirements to original list .

There are advantages to The Hub.
It can be used as a mobile trading station...
if you want more of a certain goods,then realign the gates to sectors where they are more readily available.
If you want to sell more the reset to where they are needed.

It also rdeces the jumpfuel required to rech extreme locations etc.
Thus "shrinking" the universe.

[Silverbox]

I felt the same when I came up against this - the solution - follow this link to apricotslice's script to make the requirements much more do-able. You don't even need to build any stations!
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=226623

[NUKLEAR-SLUG]

There's nothing wrong with having a long term plot line like the Hub that you can drop into and out of as you see fit while you go off and do other things, missions, other plotlines etc.. Think of it as a stretch goal for long term players. That's fine.

I will agree with you 100% however that locking other plotlines like the PHQ behind the hub plot was a very poor gameplay decision and one that should have been rectified a long time ago.

[jlehtone]

I spent probably 12+ hours trying to get those scripts to work, and using every fix and looking into every potential hang-up I could find documented anywhere in any thread discussing the issue. None of them worked, and most of the time my intrepid traders spent long hours in "CLS on standby".

The player -- Lucike -- who wrote the CAG and CLS scripts, was fond of micromanaging.

The scripts are an "intelligent and configurable" alternative to the Trade Mk1 and Mk2 scripts. Those basic trade options are extremely simple (although they were yet simpler back in X2 -- X3TC was a huge leap for them). Since CAG and CLS are much more complex, they can achieve more, but complexity and configurability greatly increase the number of different scenarios, where something unexpected can happen.


"CLS on standby". Was that CLS1 or CLS2? What was the ship supposed to do?

[Rapier]

But then I saw the requirements for the later stages and that just stopped me in my tracks, particularly this quote:

If you stay with only 15 chip plants, that's going to be 5000 hours of game time before you're done with the HUB - even at 10x SATA that's about 21 real days.

This does not compute: 5000 hours for 75000 microchips is 15 chips an hour; for 15 factories, that's a production rate of one per hour. From memory, the actual production rate is 10 per hour, or ten times faster than that sum, i.e. 15 factories = 500 hours. Still a lot, but not so ridiculous.

For me, the biggest buzz I got from completing a plot was from the hub. It's not for everyone, but the diversity of this game is one of its great strengths.

[TTD]

I will agree with you 100% however that locking other plotlines like the PHQ behind the hub plot was a very poor gameplay decision and one that should have been rectified a long time ago.

Good to see you still around here.

Dilpickle resolved the problem,iirc it was his script that made the PHQ Plot available upon reaching a certain rank.

edit...thanks for clarification Nanook.
That is what I meant.
Edited for clarity.

[Nanook]

Not the PHQ itself, just the plot. This is how Egosoft should've done it themselves.

[hsung]

I didn't complete the Hub ( opened 3 jump gates) despite playing for 1 to 2 years or more. So I hope to complete it in X3AP with less demanding requirements ... Do you have to complete it before starting the Shady Business?

[TTD]

The new plots require hub,PHQ amd UFJD,

But as you mention,these are easier to aquire in AP.

[DiArmada]

what might have been handy is a L version of a chip plant.
like the Crystal fabs which are available in M and L versions.
that would make building a complex easier.

[Hrodeth]

OP - You may enjoy Albion Prelude more. The plots are shorter, engaging, and provide rewards faster.

Or you can go a step further and jump into mods. Honestly I think everyone should experience the original epic TC Hub and PHQ plots to really appreciate how far the game has come. They force you to learn industry and teach you how to play in a really rewarding fashion.

[TTD]

L size Crystal Plants were added to the game.
Tthat is why they are listed further down. Before that,we had to make do with Medium size,making our complexes somewhat bigger.