Where am I going wrong X3TC

Spindle60 · Post by **Spindle60** » Thu, 1. Feb 18, 23:04

Hey all, just a question with what I'm sure is a typical newbie post. I've just taken the plunge into my very first X series game X3TC and I'm really struggling. I really liked the spare trader genre so I first read a few guides from this awesome looking community.

First off X3:TC for dummies by Techno
Well written and it got me going but after a couple of hours (a few reloads thanks to autopilot crashes) I kinda ended up flying around in circles in different sectors looking for somewhere to offload ore/energy because all the basic good seem to be at rock bottom prices for hours. Back to the forums I thought.

I then found phoenix-it's X3TC Merchants survival guide V1 which really made sense to me at the time because it dealt with the exact problem I was having, no where to sell my goods and make $$$. So I started a new game followed the guide got started and ended up flying around different sectors for ages looking for missions that gave more than 1 or 2k rewards for returning an abandoned ship.

So where am I going wrong? I understand this game is a few years old now and these awesome guides maybe a bit our of date with patches taking their toll over the years but was hoping someone could help me out. I'm a patient guy, but the game does seem very tedious, I've racked up 2 days game time in each of my attempts to get nowhere.

Timsup2nothin · Post by **Timsup2nothin** » Thu, 1. Feb 18, 23:22

Welcome.

The first thing to know is that it is really easy to wind up flying in circles, but after years of playing I've concluded that it is always a function of not knowing what to do, not a function of the game not giving me anything to do. The second thing to know is that having a narrow target will be frustrating. If you want to trade, period, then you will spend time just waiting to trade.

So, my advice is to set a range of goals. Have a trading goal, even if it is just "find a place to unload this crap even if I just break even." Have an exploration goal, like "add a half dozen systems to my map." Have an equipment goal, like "upgrade this ship to maximum capability." Have a skills goal, like "learn to fight in this ship, including gaining knowledge of what is either beyond its capacity or at the very least beyond mine."

If the path to one goal involves "just waiting," then pursue one of the others while you wait.

fireanddream · Post by **fireanddream** » Fri, 2. Feb 18, 01:02

Never ever ever do manual trading unless you literally are unable to afford a second hand mercury. Even in that case missiles salvaging can be more efficient.

The larger the ship's cargo bay the slower the ship, generally. So buy a second hand TS ship, patch it up and send it to collect/sell minerals from time to time. Beaten by an NPC trader? Big deal, I'll come back in a few minutes.

Meanwhile, you are flying in your personal fast ship to do missions, fight stuff, explore. Get to sectors that offer important ship equipment like Paranid Prime for triplex scanner. Raise their rep till you are able to buy those. Get a jumpdrive, buy a TP, etc. If you haven't got a full set of equiment for personal ships (triplex, jumpdrive, docking computer, trading system extension, freight scanner) get it asap. It will make your game experience much better.

The true value in abandon ship missions lies in their ships, not the mission completion reward. As your rep goes higher and higher more valuable ships will spawn from those missions. Steal/sell them and abort the mission. It's an exploit though.

Timsup2nothin · Post by **Timsup2nothin** » Fri, 2. Feb 18, 01:59

fireanddream wrote: The true value in abandon ship missions lies in their ships, not the mission completion reward. As your rep goes higher and higher more valuable ships will spawn from those missions. Steal/sell them and abort the mission. It's an exploit though.

It is?

fireanddream · Post by **fireanddream** » Fri, 2. Feb 18, 02:04

Timsup2nothin wrote:
It is?

Let's say the universe is not used to a shameless scammer aka the player who will favor a ship of thirty-ish million over a mission reward of 100k.

Paid for my first M7M and marine training tho.

Timsup2nothin · Post by **Timsup2nothin** » Fri, 2. Feb 18, 02:39

fireanddream wrote:
Timsup2nothin wrote:
It is?

Let's say the universe is not used to a shameless scammer aka the player who will favor a ship of thirty-ish million over a mission reward of 100k.

Paid for my first M7M and marine training tho.

I always just figured that if you weren't supposed to steal them there wouldn't be that bit about reporting the theft. I mean, some programmer put a lot of effort into getting cops to spawn and whatnot. Stealing the ships is just acknowledgement of their hard work.

RainerPrem · Post by **RainerPrem** » Fri, 2. Feb 18, 06:05

Spindle60 wrote:Hey all, just a question with what I'm sure is a typical newbie post. I've just taken the plunge into my very first X series game X3TC and I'm really struggling. I really liked the spare trader genre so I first read a few guides from this awesome looking community.

Hi,

First and foremost: welcome to our community. As you can see from the earlier responses, there are as many different opinions on the game as players.

I have been playing X2, 3* and R for over ten years now and am still learning new things. So

Rule #1: Be patient. You'll need perhaps a hundred hours of playing time before becoming really used to the game.

Rule #2: Save early, save often. In the beginning you'll need to try many things out and notice if they function or not. Don't hesitate to use every exploit once and see if you're comfortable with it. Don't cry over losing ships or creditsss, just get over it.

As for your current situation: It is not necessary to make money fast. You don't have to spend a single credit to keep the game going. So explore a couple of sectors. There'll always be a station paying well for your e-cells.

Look at the missions offered. Most of them give you money for easy tasks. Save, accept, try out. Did it work? Okay, creditsss earned. If not, reload, do something else.

So to answer the question in the header: You are NOT going wrong, you are just experiencing the typical steep learning curve.

cu
Rainer

PS: Do you already know that there are abandoned ships distributed over the universe, which you can just claim and keep or sell? Two of them are TP class - passenger transporters, and one of them is the fastest available in TC. Having this one you can make a lot of money from person transport missions. There are also several M3-class fighters, one of them with the largest cargo space of its class, so you can learn to fight and/or transport wares. Just saying.

Spindle60 · Post by **Spindle60** » Fri, 2. Feb 18, 10:52

Wow, thanks for all the replies, you can always tell how good a game is by the strength of its community.

I'll spend some more time exploring and playing the game in general rather than just going all out on the trader front, see if I can find some of these spare ships.

Oh yeah I learnt about saving often after the 2nd autopilot crash

Cheers!

Timsup2nothin · Post by **Timsup2nothin** » Fri, 2. Feb 18, 18:49

Just a mention...

There are a very few things that the autopilot is really good at, and a whole bunch of things that the autopilot is not very good at, and a few things that the autopilot is absolutely terrible at. Identifying the things on each end is a useful project. Here's some help, if you want it:

Spoiler

Show

I think the autopilot is great for two things.

1) Flying across an open sector, particularly a nebula sector, while doing management stuff. The option is to just point your ship at the distant gate and get about your business. The menus can block the forward view, and it is possible to just run smack into the one asteroid or some unlucky freighter or something. It is also possible to see such things in the edge of the screen and sacrifice whatever you are in the midst of while frantically trying to steer, mostly blindly, away from whatever you saw, or thought you saw. So I usually opt for a "fly through" command.

2) Jumping to some sector using a jump drive in a big ship. The autopilot will connect to traffic control, so a "jump and fly to position" command allows the autopilot to make sure yo won't run face first into someone going into the gate that you are coming out of. Manually controlled jumps can be quicker, since there is no consultation with traffic control or waiting for the gate to be going 'the right way' and 'your turn.'

Among the things that the autopilot is really terrible at is, in my opinion number one, navigating crowded areas. Clusters of rocks are death. The autopilot collision avoidance works like "a close rock, turn, oh no another close rock and I'm turning towards it, turn, oh no, oh no, oh no, splat."

Number two is following another ship. The combination of turning this way to follow and turning that way to avoid collisions gets far too complicated when the other ship is doing its own collision avoidance dance.

fireanddream · Post by **fireanddream** » Sat, 3. Feb 18, 05:29

The autopilot thinks once you turn your ship, you lose all velocity in the old direction.

So if you're going 1000m/s at a rock and your ship is 200m from it, it doesn't really matter what kind of avoiding action autopilot does, the ship is going to crash anyway.

Timsup2nothin · Post by **Timsup2nothin** » Sat, 3. Feb 18, 09:02

fireanddream wrote:The autopilot thinks once you turn your ship, you lose all velocity in the old direction.

So if you're going 1000m/s at a rock and your ship is 200m from it, it doesn't really matter what kind of avoiding action autopilot does, the ship is going to crash anyway.

Well, yeah. In theory the autopilot wouldn't have gotten you into that mess to begin with though...unless it was turning away from some other mess and turned into that one. The autopilot does not function well in a crowd.

Hemmingfish · Post by **Hemmingfish** » Sat, 3. Feb 18, 15:30

Timsup2nothin wrote:Just a mention...

There are a very few things that the autopilot is really good at, and a whole bunch of things that the autopilot is not very good at, and a few things that the autopilot is absolutely terrible at. Identifying the things on each end is a useful project. Here's some help, if you want it:

It's also really good at docking, I've never been splatted while auto docking which means it has a better track record than manually docking. I couldn't live without my shift-D.

jlehtone · Post by **jlehtone** » Sat, 3. Feb 18, 15:39

For docking you have manual, autopilot, and the Docking computer (essentially a teleport).

There are station-ship combinations, where manual undocking is a suicide; unavoidable collision. In those the cases the autopilot is the only way to leave the station (with that ship).

Timsup2nothin · Post by **Timsup2nothin** » Sun, 4. Feb 18, 06:38

jlehtone wrote:For docking you have manual, autopilot, and the Docking computer (essentially a teleport).

There are station-ship combinations, where manual undocking is a suicide; unavoidable collision. In those the cases the autopilot is the only way to leave the station (with that ship).

This reminds me of a recent adventure in lameness. I took a mission to deliver some travelers to a pirate base. Since this is a new person's thread we'll just leave out the sector, but the base is way out in BFE and there's an anarchy port right next door, which I expected would be hostile. What I didn't expect was a good ten laser towers that were also hostile.

So here I am out in the boondocks in a TP and I can't get within three clicks of the pirate base. Being the highly experienced pilot that I am, I jump my favorite M5 into a nearby sector that shall also remain nameless and grab the docking computer that I hadn't yet equipped all my personal ships with because it was still early in the game, then jump that sucker to me...correctly calculating that it could get within transporter range just in time for me to auto-dock at the pirate base and beat the deadline.

Aaaaaaand there I am docked at the pirate base, having autodocked myself into range of the laser towers.

Joe McCracken · Post by **Joe McCracken** » Sun, 4. Feb 18, 06:48

Aaaaaaand there I am docked at the pirate base, having autodocked myself into range of the laser towers. Embarassed

LOL! I have done that SO many times!! Got to be fast and use that jump drive!

jlehtone · Post by **jlehtone** » Sun, 4. Feb 18, 11:14

Joe McCracken wrote:
Aaaaaaand there I am docked at the pirate base, having autodocked myself into range of the laser towers.
LOL! I have done that SO many times!! Got to be fast and use that jump drive!

There is difference between autopiloted jump and manual jump: the autopilot stops the ship while the jumpdrive is charging, but if you start jump manually, then you can keep moving and turning to the end. Lets make it two differences: the autopilot refuses to activate if you are still next to a Station.

You can thus choose between (A) fly to the open and be sitting duck for several seconds, (B) initiate jump the moment the clamps detach, or (C) just dash out, preferably keep the Station as cover and use the Strafe Drive for extra dodging and velocity. (Every ship and spacesuit has Strafe Drive.)

There is also (D) sufficient number of Tomahawks, but that is for later game.

The name of the sector that has the Pirate Base ...
The race military hates Pirates. They hunt and destroy all that they find. That includes Pirate stations, even when the stations are in Pirate sectors. As result, Pirate Bases are frequently demolished. Those Bases do respawn after a while, but in random sector. In other words, Bases do "move around".

That said, my X3AP game has two suspicious "situations":

Very early on I did build a weapon Forge for a Pirate client. The Station is in Pirate sector and is clearly owned by a Pirate. As said, the race military does take interest. For several ingame weeks now Argon Cerberus, two Paranid Deimos, and their escorts have been camping around that Forge. The Forges shield is down, and it has taken some hull damage, but no further.

I have made deliveries to that Forge, but frankly, being in sector is unnerving.

The second case is more recent. A Pirate Base has "moved" into a Pirate sector. Lone Argon Cerberus was attacking it. Shields of Base down, hull at exactly 93%. Book example of an object set to be indestructible (a feature that is used to protect plot objects), but this Base is not part of any plot.

A lone M7 stuck in Pirate sector. Was there a book titled "How to train your Marines"?

fireanddream · Post by **fireanddream** » Sun, 4. Feb 18, 16:51

Sometimes ships stop attacking (pirate assets?) Oos.

I've seen the exact some problem. Three groups of race patrols attacking a pirate anarchy port but stop all hostile act once I jump out. I have a sat there, they stop dead in the water.

jlehtone · Post by **jlehtone** » Sun, 4. Feb 18, 17:30

fireanddream wrote:Sometimes ships stop attacking (pirate assets?) Oos.

I've seen the exact some problem. Three groups of race patrols attacking a pirate anarchy port but stop all hostile act once I jump out. I have a sat there, they stop dead in the water.

A very good point about an another part of the game mechanics: IS vs OOS.

In sector (IS) we are personally there and see what happens, millisecond by millisecond. If a ship has turrets and is near "enemy", then those turrets will fire even though the ship does not actually run any "attack station" command. We, the observers, might mistake the fire from turrets as intentional attempt by the ship to attack a target. (The turret crews do have intention, unbeknownst to their captain.)

Out of sector (OOS) is all the other sectors than the one you are in. In them things are different. Ship positions are updated only twice per minute. (Once every 5 seconds, if you do look at that remote sector.) Guns do not fire individual bullets, nor consume energy. Ships do not have individual turrets either; all their installed guns are counted together.

Therefore, a ship that is ordered to stay on station does so, but lacking order to attack will apparently do nothing.

SirNukes · Post by **SirNukes** » Sun, 4. Feb 18, 19:36

jlehtone wrote:Out of sector (OOS) is all the other sectors than the one you are in. In them things are different. Ship positions are updated only twice per minute. (Once every 5 seconds, if you do look at that remote sector.)

The unwatched OOS update period is 1 minute. I used to think it was 30 seconds as well (and passed along some of that misinformation, having heard it elsewhere), but testing OOS combat a while back revealed the 1 minute intervals.

However, there are another couple quirks related to combat. OOS will update when you first look at a sector, and then on ~5 second intervals afterward. Movement distances are scaled by time elapsed, but combat damage is not. This means that you can rapidly open/close the sector view (eg. by bringing up some ship's info repeatedly) to trigger additional combat rounds and speed up combat resolution. It also means that an unwatched sector will carry out combat rounds at around 1/12 the rate of a watched sector, 1/~200 the rate of a watch-spammed sector (depending on how fast you press the buttons). Shields regenerate at normal rate in all situations, so in some situations a ship carrying out attacks in an unwatched sector will not be able to break the shields on the target.

An example application of this knowledge: when you get a message about a trader being attacked, one of the worst things you can do is to open up the sector view on that trader, since it will give its attackers a free round of combat damage that would otherwise have been delayed for a minute while the trader tried to jump or escape.

fireanddream · Post by **fireanddream** » Sun, 4. Feb 18, 20:03

Wow that's really useful information here, does movement updates once every 1 min too? I sometimes order my ships to go idle (to get them undock) and immediately dock again. It doesn't feel like they take 6 seconds to dock?

And while we are at it, does anyone knoes if equipment breakage happens to non player ships IS?

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Where am I going wrong X3TC

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