Will building up Pirate and Yaki economies make them more powerful factions?

[soulmata]

The topic explains mostly what I'm after, but I'll explain in more detail.

I'm going to pick up X3TC again. The last time I played, I took over the Unknown Sector adjacent to PTNI Headquarters, and built all my stuff in there. I also became friendly with the local pirates, and I built many stations for them. Their stations generally went unused, but over time they started actually getting regular traffic.

That gave me an idea.

If I spend the effort in boosting the Yaki and Pirate economies, specifically through making sure their local trading needs are satisfied and doing my best to build them all the stations they need, whether by their request or by my manual intervention in identifying what they need, what will be the long-term effects of a stronger economy? Specifically, I want to know:

1) If Pirates and Yaki have a stronger economy, will they become a stronger faction with more regular patrols, more aggressive behavior, et cetera?

2) If Pirates and Yaki have many more stations to their name (via build station missions), will they have more ships out there in the wild, hopefully attacking other factions? Will they field more capital ships? Will they attack other sectors with more than a tiny handful of fighters and perhaps a single corvette?

3) Or, if the above answers aren't yes, does a stronger economy solely mean better trading opportunities?

[Nanook]

Short answer = long answer = no.

Sorry.

[soulmata]

That's too bad.

I'll swing this thread another direction then. The whole point of that idea was to give myself a good end-game challenge. I have another idea instead. What if I were to, say, re-align a bunch of Xenon sector gates to all dump into my sector. Might that generate a constant stream of fun?


Lastly, I don't know much about the "eternal war" going on AP. Is it such that, provided you have the hardware, you can take and control sectors permanently? Or is it more like TC, where even if you destroy everything in a sector, the game will eventually re-make the original faction stations?

[bizbag]

That's too bad.

I'll swing this thread another direction then. The whole point of that idea was to give myself a good end-game challenge. I have another idea instead. What if I were to, say, re-align a bunch of Xenon sector gates to all dump into my sector. Might that generate a constant stream of fun?


Lastly, I don't know much about the "eternal war" going on AP. Is it such that, provided you have the hardware, you can take and control sectors permanently? Or is it more like TC, where even if you destroy everything in a sector, the game will eventually re-make the original faction stations?

The second part. It was a good idea that the game just couldn't really make manifest. It basically just turned the area into a Mandatory Blacklist region.. and made getting a few Argon factories only sold in Omicron Lyrae a pain to get.

[willyshop]

Yes, you'll get quite a few Xenon popping their heads in.

The stations will respawn, but that's in some way part of the challenge of holding the sector.

I'm pretty sure as the war goes on, the stations in a Heretics End andCircle of Labour do switch owners.

Another good challenge is to wipe out an entire race. That can take a very large fleet, especially if you try to keep them out. (still building my fleet to that end myself. I don't intend to stay friend of priest duke forever.)

[Bill Huntington]

Having a pirate area with lots of stations they own is a good idea, and worth the time to build up, with build missions they request. If you cap some good pirate ships, then you can just pop in there, take some missions, and keep your pirate rep high.

Having your stations in Weaver's lets you build IBLs and extra Spacefuel which you can sell in your own stations elsewhere. Not too many customers survive the experience in Yaki space.

The Xenon can provide some excellent diversion in TC. Taking and holding X472 can be done, and you can still play a normal game. Regular attacks on Xenon Core 023 gives you excellent TC combat. Clearing and holding all the Xenon sectors is quite a challenge, but becomes all consuming. In any case, do not destoy the last Xenon SY in Core 023. They go into spawning overdrive in every single Xenon sector and don't stop.

[Berserkenstein]

2) If Pirates and Yaki have many more stations to their name (via build station missions), will they have more ships out there in the wild, hopefully attacking other factions? Will they field more capital ships? Will they attack other sectors with more than a tiny handful of fighters and perhaps a single corvette?

If you do a lot of build missions for the yaki, they won't get any more powerful. There is however a benefit to building the yaki economy. The yaki don't have there own trade ships and they blow up any trade ships that attempt to trade with yaki stations. This allows you to build a bunch of stations and if you set some of your own trade ships to trade with them, all of the potential profits are yours.

[Imgran]

Indeed, and if you count Savage Spur, which might as well be a Yaki border system, that's 4 whole sectors where you are the lion's share of the economy. It adds up quickly if you develop all of them carefully with an eye towards multiple tiers of trading. I've got 2 sectors (WT and SS) already fully set up as system trading zones with plenty of room to grow, and I'm working on OS.

And all 4 of those sectors are really good sources of minerals too -- Senator's Badlands less so, but still suitable for some mobile mining. The other three have ulimited potential. With jump-enabled export traders and a large squad of mobile miners in each of the sectors you can make a fair profit pretty quickly. A large mining export complex in Savage Spur with freighters mining both there and in all 3 other sectors and set up right with a large export radius and jump enabled export freighters running constantly can make a ton of money very quickly for the cost of one Ore mine, one Silicon mine, a Complex Hub, and the freighters Being in a Yaki territory, I use Chokaros for the export freighters, they're fast and agile, and it's a role where lower capacity freighters have advantages since they get stuck less often and make more trips. I borrow from my OTAS obsession to use MSF's for the actual mining.

Actually considered making the process easy by connecting Legend's Home and Yaki territory with the Xenon Hub, but after 2 minutes thinking about it, the Bad Idea Alarm finally sounded.

I don't understand exactly why the Yaki bothered with the Ryu though. It's basically a slightly slower, barely higher capacity Split Elephant and it's not like they're exactly in a position to make proper use of it. They can only dock at one station after all. It's like they exist only to be boarded by....

.... oh. Right.

[Hrodeth]

Why has no one mentioned mods to the OP?

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=244949

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=267009

[Imgran]

Why has no one mentioned mods to the OP?

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=244949

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=267009

Because the moderators are a little stuffy about bringing up mods outside the Scripts and Mods forum, even just conversationally for comparison's sake, and even when they're relevant to the conversation. It's a bit odd, but it's the way it's done here so people try not to rock the boat too hard. I guess it is better than everyone and their grandmother pimping their own favorite mods all the time.