[X3TC] Advice for a newbie please

[KeithMcRae]

Hi all

I bought the Steam bundle a while ago, started playing Reunion and loved it. I had a few factories, a couple of UTs, my empire was growing well. Then my hard drive decided it was time to become a doorstop and lost my saves.

Now I've started TC, the Humble Merchant start. I quite enjoy trading and I fly/dock my ship manually, but I also like reducing Pirates to their component atoms. I'm in a bit of a quandary now in that I have 5 million credits and a hankering to buy a Nova Vanguard and go discovering/capping and doing defend/kill missions. I've read that the story line missions take into account your combat rating and the later missions can be impossible if you are too high. Is this true? Should I rather invest my cash in some factories and build my empire before arming myself to the teeth and doing the story? Will I miss anything if I don't do the story?

Thoughts and advice much appreciated.

Cheers
Keith

[pjknibbs]

I think *all* combat missions, not just the storyline ones, scale up a little bit too fast if you rely entirely on them for your income--so don't rely entirely on them for income! Have traders going, break up the combat bits with personal trading, do non-combat missions, etc.

[KeithMcRae]

Thanks for the advice, I reckon I'll carry on being a 'humble merchant' then and sink my cash into factories before going the combat route.

Cheers
Keith

[ajax34i]

Some people don't do any combat at all in order to have the easiest missions in the end; I think that's a bit of a waste. You can have quite a few fights and kills and you'll be ok in the later missions.

It's only a problem if you maximize your combat rank or get it really high, before you even start the missions.

And it's a problem because:

1. The game lets you kill a bigger ship with your smaller one, if you're good, but is realistic enough that you can only go one size bigger, really. It's not like Freelancer or Freespace or the Star Wars games where you're in a tiny snub fighter taking out Star Destroyer after Star Destroyer. Big ships have flak here and anti-fighter escorts, and they will eat you up if you try that.

2. So as your combat rank increases, and the game starts bringing capital ship enemies to continue to challenge your fighting skills, it's expected that you bring some capital ships of your own to the fight. You can have as many ships as you want, so if you're high rank you're expected to have capital ships + escorts set up, and many people do build their own fleets.

3. But if you don't supplement your income with trading, factories, etc., you won't really have the money to build a fleet. There's not much loot when you destroy ships; you need to either try to capture them, or pirate their cargo and sell it, to make enough money to even keep up with the repairs your own ship will need, not to mention replenishing ammo and missiles.

So as pjknibbs said, do everything so that you progress not just with combat rank and trade rank, but also gather some money, get on good standings with some of the empires so they let you buy ships, and take time to build and arm a fleet of your own.

The various plots ramp up in difficulty relatively fast, and it is expected that you pause the plot in order to gather more money or build a better fleet. The plots don't have timers even if you've already started them, and so you can delay them as needed.

[KeithMcRae]

Factories and trading it is then! It hasn't taken me too long to get 5 mill, I think about 2 days gaming just trading ore & silicon wafers around Argon/Boron/Split space supplemented with buying weapons/missiles from overstocked factories and selling them at equipment docks.
It's quite a buzz jumping into a system to find a missile factory with a full stock at rock bottom prices and wondering if I'm gonna get to it before some other merchant

Thanks

[hisazul]

Factories and trading it is then! It hasn't taken me too long to get 5 mill, I think about 2 days gaming just trading ore & silicon wafers around Argon/Boron/Split space supplemented with buying weapons/missiles from overstocked factories and selling them at equipment docks.
It's quite a buzz jumping into a system to find a missile factory with a full stock at rock bottom prices and wondering if I'm gonna get to it before some other merchant

Thanks

Don't be afraid of combat ranks... both combat and trading ranks affect all missions in their categories. Combat affects enemies/fighting and rewards for it while trading rank affects difficulty of trading missions and the like and their pay off. So yes you can get to the point where an easy transport mission pays millions and a defend station pays a few dozen millions.

But the thing is... when these missions become too hard for you. You have options of decreasing both your combat and trading rank. You loose about ~2% every in-game hour without user input. Leaving game at 10x SETA for a while and you can get rid of combat ranks... trading ranks would require stopping some traders here and there to mitigate what they generate versus decrease. Granted most people won't bother ever reducing their trade rank as there is little purpose in it(some trade missions are inherently difficult because of the resource in question being scarce or downright rarity).

[Nanook]

...I've read that the story line missions take into account your combat rating and the later missions can be impossible if you are too high. Is this true?...

Simply put, no. You just have to match force with force. The increase in enemies with combat rank is meant as an adjustment for your potential rise in power, too. So you just need to bring more to the party when your combat rank is higher. And that shouldn't be a problem if your increase in combat rank correlates with your increase in assets.

Where you can get into trouble is if you go on a killing spree and don't gain anything from it, like going into a pirate or Xenon sector and just killing everything in sight. There's very little monetary gain in doing so since no one is paying you to do it. If you like doing that, it's fine as long as you have a trade empire going in the background that allows you to buy more and bigger ships as needed.

Just so you know, a lot of players actually try to max out their combat rank before doing the plots so that they can enjoy huge fleet battles, which don't occur if your combat rank is low.

[KeithMcRae]

@hisazul & @Nanook

Thanks for the info, this is a truly awesome game! I think I'll just stop worrying about doing something "wrong" or messing up and just see what happens. I'll keep lots of backups - or just start a new game

Thanks again.

[Nanook]

@hisazul & @Nanook

Thanks for the info, this is a truly awesome game! I think I'll just stop worrying about doing something "wrong" or messing up and just see what happens....

That's the spirit! It's really what the X games are all about. That, and lots of save points.

[Orion1632]

I did the TC plot twice ages ago, first time I rushed into the plot and did the combat missions in a small ship, and the 2nd time I built up my forces before getting into the plot and bought a fleet of M2's M7's and flew an M7M with a hold full of missiles.

It was easier with the added fire power.

[CBlackrose]

@hisazul & @Nanook

That's the spirit! It's really what the X games are all about. That, and lots of save points.

Learned that save point lesson today after spending an hour repairing a Corvette I found, hitting f12 to take a screen shot of it and the game immediately CTD'ing on me…