X3AP Terran rep has my game stuck

[Masterbagger]

Spoilers from the shady business plot ahead.

Spoiler

Show

I am trying to do shady business but my argon military start has made it impossible. I started the plot because advice from this board said doing it would repair my Terran reputation. I can't proceed with it because the Terrans won't trade with me and I can't get the wares necessary to progress. It's taken almost a month of play to get to this point and I don't want to give up my unmodified game or cheat to make it happen.

I've tried camping out near the Xenon sector gate in Segaris but ships rarely come through it. I've actually lost more rep destroying Terran patrols than I gained from killing the handful of Xenon. I have my player HQ set to offer max price for matter/antimatter warheads but no npc's have brought me any yet. I don't know how to proceed.

Please advise.

[Jimmy C]

First, check your Terran rep. Is it rock bottom? Hopefully, you're not on "shoot on sight" level yet. If you are, I have no idea how you're supposed to fix that.
Assuming you're not, go to your ship's control panel and set Terran and ATF to Friend. Then go to Global Commands and change the FF settings there too and transmit to all your ships. If things are bad enough, it won't prevent you from getting shot, but at least you and your ships won't shoot first.
Go to the Terran War sectors, Heretic's End, Asteroid Belt and Jupiter, and kill some Argon ships, using the fewest attacks possible. Ram fighters with corvettes, shoot corvettes with Firestorms.
After each attack, check if your ranking percentage has improved. If it has, there's hope for you yet. After a few kills, some of the Argons in the sector will turn hostile on you. Now would be a good time to bug out and go look for Argon missions to repair your Argon ranking. Then, go back to the war sectors and repeat. Eventually, you'll manage to get out of the negative ranks.
Even at -2 rank, you can get missions at border sectors. But most Terran border sectors are behind Core sectors which are... troublesome to pass through at negative ranks.
Good luck. I raised my Terran ranking before starting Shady Business.

[Masterbagger]

I was afraid that firing on my allies was going to be the only option available to me. I thought about it and decided that no, there is no way I'm going to throw away weeks of effort even if I spent most of the time learning how to X3. Mostly I just don't want to drop all those satellites again.

I already blasted a flight of busters with surprise hornet missiles and it felt good in a maniacal kind of way. I'm going to get a meatsteak cahoona heated up and a bottle of space fuel, set my favorite low yield sidearm down on the desk and get cracking with some fratricide. Terrans respect a backstabber it seems.

[Gersidi]

Your ally rep wont go down that much. Anyways, just take an m3 and continually fly through the light of heart/argon prime gate until you see combat missions. Accept all kill and defend station missions (those you can complete afk). Within 2 hours you will be max rep.

[DiArmada]

no worries.
I had lowest possible standings with Terran.
that rank dropped to about 60%, so they really hated my guts.

Spoiler

Show

I guess you refer to the quest for hull plating?
if you make one of your HUB gates go to Terran sectors, they'll start passing through the HUB.
it'll take not much time before a ship will pass through carrying a few on board.
once you have a few, bring them to the HUB and set price to max.
the HUB requires credits and should be set to trade with NPC's.
after that the Terrans, who hate you so much, will gladly sell stuff to you.

[Monkeyfister]

Have you done the HUB Plot? There is an opportunity to repair Rep there.
In Shady Business, there is a part where you need to kill a lot of Capital Ships (Armistice). Choose Terran Space to do it.

If you miss those opportunities, you'll be doing a lot of waiting, and grinding.

ETA: Never tried DiArmada's idea. Worth a try.

[Monkeyfister]

DiArmada, did you kill the Terrans in the hub, or let the argons do it for you, and scoop up the loot?

[DiArmada]

DiArmada, did you kill the Terrans in the hub?

yes, I killed them myself.
isn't the HUB plot one of the early storyline missions in AP?
it was way faster then in TC, that's for sure.

[Monkeyfister]

Generally Hub plot runs between Albion Prelude plot, and Shady Business. Sorta kinda.

Gotta finish AP plot to start it.

[Masterbagger]

It's done.

Spoiler

Show

I can point out now that Shady Business does nothing to ease raising reputation. By the time you can fight Xenon in Terran sectors it doesn't matter because you have to grind a high rep level to get to that point.

[Nanook]

I'm currently working on the Shady Business plot in my latest AP game. For the hull plating,

Spoiler

Show

when needed, you should get an offer from the Split at the Strong Arms HQ to supply it 'free of charge'.

If not, you can still get some by raiding Terran sectors, looking for freighters carrying it.

Raiding also works for the

Spoiler

Show

M/AM warheads they'll ask you for later.

There's no need to be on good terms with the Terrans for any of that plot, AFAIK.