text:
Incoming Transmission.
Its Bob.
Bob, what have you got
for me !
fleet has arrived here in Omicron Lyrae. We disassembled the HQ and its
sitting in the TL waiting for you to decide where to rebuild it. I'm
not sure where that is, the universe is so much more dangerous these
I'll find somewhere,
don't worry.
news, the new MT class mini carrier is ready, and the new freighter
and M7M, as are the new shields and gun designs. Get yourself out of
that flying piece of tissue paper and into something with some decent
shielding. A Mule at least, since they can now carry 200mj shields.
Ok, I will.
have reports of derelict ships around the place, I'm uploading the
co-ords to your computer. The new jump software is ready to go, so you
can jump straight to them. Take the new Mini-carrier and give it a test
drive ! We'll be waiting for you here when you get back.
Thanks Bob, see ya soon.
Transmission closed.
Bob Derr, our dependable
Maintenance Chief. Doesn't seem to think much
of my flying ability ! Good man though.
Welcome to the X
Universe and the Terran Conflict.
I'm John (Apricot)
Slice. I'll be talking you through this game, and
this will be a combination of narrative, tutorial and general ramble.
It will jump about a bit from mode to mode, so don't get lost.
I own the Apricot
Mapping Service, my in game entity. If you are using
the Apricot Mapping Service Mod, welcome to my universe ! If not,
welcome anyway, I will be referring to the mod a bit though, so please
don't get confused when I do.
Also, I make no apology
for referring to 3rd party scripts, including
some considered cheats. I use what I use, and its up to you to make
your own judgement and decisions.
According to Egosoft,
more than half the people who have submitted game
stats to their site, have modified games, meaning they are using 3rd
party mods and scripts. As such, I feel that is a validation of the
work that everyone in the scripts and modding forum does to make the
game more FUN for the player. Its up to you if you do or do not modify
the game, and since I do, I'm writing this as I play it, warts and all.
Especially where a script will improve (imo) the playability of the
game, I talk about it. Just ignore anything you do not want to know
For how the Apricot
Mapping Service came into being, see this archive
material. http://forum2.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=1407216.
From this beginning, the AMS came about, and even though at the
beginning of X3TC, we don't appear to be earning our name, it does
describe our philosophy of playing. Friend to all but those who shoot
as us, and explore to the max !
If you chose the AMS
Mod, then fly up close to the MiniCar and transfer
across. Now your in a ship with some shielding that can keep you alive.
Personally, I don't know
why people settle for tissue paper shields,
but hey, if you're the risk your life type, all power to you ! The
ships you start in for all the starts are specifically chosen to give
you a challenge to stay alive early in the game. That's fine if your
new to X, but most of us have been here a long time, and I prefer to
start where I left off, and That's usually flying an M7 or a Carrier.
Up to you. The big thing
about the AMS Mod is that its designed to give
you maximum choice. You make up your mind about what suits your
gameplay. Want to be "balanced" (I've ranted about that in the past),
or want to compensate for a slow computer, poor flying skills or being
a lousy shot ? You choose what shields you want, what gun suits you
best, how fast you make your ships. The ones you start with in the Mod
are all fully upgraded, but its easy to downgrade them. Speed and
rudder can be removed using Cycrows 'cheat' scripts, by entering a
negative value if you really want to.
The Mod starts with you
having top rank with all races except the
Terrans, whom we haven't dealt with yet, and all bad guys. If you
started without the mod, or as anything other than Argon Patriot, your
ranks are varied according to the character you chose. Be real careful
in that case where you go, or some of the races will be shooting at you
for no apparent reason. Pirates, Xenon and Khaak are going to be doing
that anyway.
Anyway, lets get this
story moving.
Derelict Ships.
All X games seem to
start with some, so lets go pick them up. The good
thing about having a carrier with jump capability is we can go get
them, pick them up and not have to worry about baby sitting them to the
nearest shipyard, since we just jump straight there. If your not
playing the mod, then that's what you will have to do.
There are 19 derelict
ships in TC. If your using the mod, or installed
the Jump to Derelict script, then use the nav command to jump to a
random derelict ship. A word of caution though, it was designed by a
software engineer who's never left his keyboard. Use at own risk.
Here is the list of
ships, in the order I found them. Sector, ship
type, co-ordinates x,y,z. (Remember to find 'y', you need to hit the
insert key on the nav map. The standard display is x-z, not x-y.)
Unknown Sector next to
Xenon 534, Falcon Sentinel, -20km, 3km, 2km.
(Wont specify the kms again.)
Hilas Joy, Advanced
Barracuda, -33,1.5,36
Treasure Chest, Buster
Sentinel, -32,-5.4,-33.5
Savage Spur, Enhanced
Pericles, 44.7,9.12,-28
Oracoke's Storm,
Advanced Eclipse, 30.1,-1.5,-8
Gaian Star, Elite,
Vestibule of Creation,
Eclipse, -7,-13.5,37.5
Veil of Delusion,
Blastclaw Prototype, 47.6,3.5,-41.5
Menelaus' Oasis, Skate
Prototype, 38.5,1,32.5
Xenon 101, Scorpion
Raider, 20.1, 0, 61.6
The Vault, Harrier
Sentinel, -18, 0.375, -51.6
Unknown Sector by Unholy
Decent, Pericles Vanguard, 13.7, 17.3, -27
Thr's Deprivation,
Buzzard Hauler, -4.2, -0.058, 62.7
Family Whi, Iguana
Vanguard, 38, 0, 35.5
Depths of Silence, Mako
Raider, 2.34, 0.729, 40.3
LooManckStrat's Legacy,
Mamba, -12, 1.16, -19.3
Akeela's Beacon, Buster
Sentinel, 100, -10, 77.2
Duke's Citadel, Advanced
Perseus, 42.2, -0.250, 31
Menalaus' Frontier,
Toucan Hauler, 43, -7, 35
Some of these ships are
quite valuable, since all are in top condition
and more or less outfitted.
Some will make useful
fleet ships for later in the game, some good
wingmen, some good cannon fodder. Its up to you to decide if you keep
them all, some or none.
A note about carriers,
none of them dock a TS or TP ship. To do this,
get the script Beamdock, which with a Transporter device in the
carrier, allows you to beam ships on and off of almost any size (using
cargo compression technology, which also means, don't be in the ship
being beamed or you end up very small and stuck in the ship for ever
!). The mod comes with this command. Very useful for getting a claimed
ship off the battlefield in a hurry, if you have your carrier in
scanner range but away from the fighting.
A note about claiming.
Any derelict ship (one with no speed, and no
pilot), can be claimed. The X philosophy is to exit your ship, fly up
next to the derelict, claim it, fly back to yours, then give it
instructions. Get the order right, giving it instructions before your
back in your ship can get you run down ! But stuff that ! Who in their
right mind goes spacewalking ? Not moi ! Claim software is the answer.
In the mod of course, installable by script if you don't have the mod.
Available to buy in all good Pirate bases. Technically illegal, but not
detectable by cops. There is an in-game version, but its detectable,
short ranged, and needs another gizmo to make it non-detectable.
Essential which ever you choose. Not cheap, but hey, in the mod, you
get them standard.
To claim with the
software, map it to a hotkey in the game options
section, either on the joystick buttons or keyboard. Target and press.
Easy. If your using the mod, beam it direct to the docking space in the
carrier your flying, and on to the next. If not, then escort it to the
nearest shipyard.
Note about shipyards,
they only dock a few ships, and if yours is
sitting there too long, it will get booted off and then becomes
vulnerable to anyone stupid enough to run it down. So if your going to
keep it, you need to find somewhere to stash it. A good place to
"stash" ships is a sector with very good defenses including M2's, and
then a position about 100km up or down, where nothing goes. This is not
perfect by any means, as Khaak will sometimes spawn that far out, but
usually its safe enough.
Also, if your not
playing the mod or you are but are not going to stick
to using Apricot ships, decide which of these will make the best
personal ship, and go for that first. Safety in speed, shields and
firepower. Remember and choose wisely.
Moving right along. 19
ships, all loaded on my MiniCar, with the
original Elite I started the game in. Jump back to Omicron Lyrae, it
has a shipyard.
SAVE. I cant emphasize
this enough. Save often. Always save the money !
Every time you claim something, save. Every time you complete
something, save. The universe is a dangerous place, and it only takes
an asteroid appearing directly in front of you, or some homicidal blind
trader to hit you when you least expect it, not to mention bad guys
shooting at you, that if you don't save, your likely to find its game
over unexpectedly, and when you restart, things don't go the same and
you don't get the claim or whatever. Take a mission, save, do it, save
again. Give yourself somewhere to go back to if you get killed or just
screw up. And always, always, always, save the money !
Where were we, oh yes,
beam off the 2 freighters, and send them to the
shipyard. Access landed ships, choose one, and broadcast to all of them
to dock at the shipyard. Once they are all off, jump out somewhere.
Then from a safe place in another sector, watch the shipyard and as
they dock, sell them. (Remember to keep anything you do want to keep).
Something else before
you do that,(oops), is keep 3 25mj shields for
later use in missions. Sometimes its useful to keep a spare ship in the
bays, so that you can transfer your jumpdrive and fittings to a claimed
ship so it can jump out, and then you have a spare set on the spare
ship you can transfer back onto yours so you can jump out too. So think
about those things before you sell everything.
Also, oops again, if you
sell the ships, you get about half price on
the fittings, but if you strip the fittings out, and sell them yourself
where ever you can, you can get more for the whole deal. Just more
mucking about.
Anyway, selling the 19
ships and your starting ship, is good for about
50 million credits. Which is well worth the effort of collecting, as
this can start you off in most areas of the game that require some cash
to start. Especially small complexes of stations, or Sector Traders or
a decent personal ship like an M6 or M7, and decent wingmen. Up to you.
The thing about jumping
out is that "out of sector" or "oos", there is
no collision checking, so "the money" gets to the "bank" more safely
when your not there. Always protect the money by not being there when
its moving !
The auto-pilot is a lot
better since its auto-pillok days (That's a
separate and very funny story), but the AP does still slam ships into
stations, it does still collide with gates and especially still crashes
you into other ships occasionally. So when dealing with "the money",
safety first, be oos.
After you get the money,
save again.
Now jump back in and
change ships if your using the mod.
For now, I chose the
Mule. This is a modified Discoverer. Lots of the
new 200mj shields, and carries 4 guns of your choice. Not that fast,
but for this next work, I did supertune it to about 800kph (used
supertune option, then removed some of the speed as 1300 was too fast).
I decided to do the main
plot immediately. After all, I have a kick
arse and take names set of ships already. If you are not using the
Apricot ships, you need to decide what's safe and what's not, for you.
The first few missions of the plot are not too taxing, but then things
get hairy, so I really recommend you ignore any of the plots (there are
5 main ones) until you have a decent ship and know how to fight it. At
the very least, a fully kitted M3/M3+, but more realistically, an M6.
In a furball, the extra turrent's can save you from missiles and take
out some of the pesky M5's.
Terran plot beginning.
If you start as the
Terran, then your ahead of the rest, so ignore the
next bit. Everyone else starts as an X denizen, and the plot for us
begins in Omicron Lyrae.
When you enter Omicron
Lyrae for the first time, you get contacted with
a mission to escort some Terrans. Accept this. If you have already been
offered it and ignored it, it will come back, so hang around until it
does. Obviously for those playing non-Argon characters, to get the
plot, you need to be friendly with the Argon. No point in rocking up
and getting shot before the mission is offered. So you may need to work
on your rep first. In fact, its not a good idea to start any of the
plots if you do not have a good rep with all the races. Terran doesn't
matter so much, as you pick up rep as you do their missions. But you do
need to jump around X space a bit and its not helpful if your fighting
sector defenses while trying to do a mission.
If necessary, use the
cheat to increase your ranks. The mod
automatically gives you this with the Argon Patriot start. Once you
finish the plots, you can always put the ranks back down again if you
want. (Rolls eyes).
So, mission is pretty
easy. You need to talk to someone in the EQ dock
to get it going, fly to an eclipse your told about, a Terran Scabbard
shows up, follow it to the Terran Orbital Defense Station in Heretics
End. You get pirates to deal with in Circle of Labour, usually M5's.
Note about mission
enemies. X has a history of what you take with you
defining what you get. So the higher your combat rank, and the bigger
your ship or fleet with you, the more baddies you get to fight. In the
final mission of X2, the temptation was to take in a carrier with as
many M3's as you had, but all this did was increase the numbers of
enemy ships and their respawn rate making the mission impossible to
complete. All you needed was an M3, or as some did it, an M6 with an M5
for the tricky bit. I've seen some talk in the threads about how
impossible some missions are, and as yet, am not sure if this is a case
in point of going in with too much, or if they are just impossible.
Time will tell, keep reading.
Having said all that,
taking an M5 into most missions is suicide. Don't
even think about it. 75mj of shielding is barely adequate imo. M5
wingmen are just cannon fodder.
While I think of it, the
Nav map has an extra 'section' to it in TC. At
the top of the list, is your ships and stations. Underneath, is a
little section for mission ships and stations. So if your following a
particular ship, or looking for it, it appears in this little section
directly under your ships. Same for mission stations you need to dock
at or talk to someone at. Remember that for later.
When you get to Heretics
End, you get some Xenon. Take them out then
watch the scabbard dock, dock yourself and talk to Erin Lovis about a
job with the Terrans. You can try just comming the station without
docking, I didn't think to try that.
Official Terran
mission 1.
If you started as X
denizen, you need to get yourself now to Uranus to
meet up with Samuel Plinter, for a patrol he will lead.
Follow the yellow brick
road, so to speak. In the pilot section,
missions area, you can click on the mission and activate the guidance
for it, if it isn't already. This highlights where to go by giving you
a gold set of arrows to follow, and gold tints to specific mission
objects such as jump gates to go through, mission stations and mission
So follow the arrow
north into the Asteroid Belt, north again into
Jupiter, then west into Saturn and west again into Uranus.
If you started as
Terran, then your already here and we have just
caught up to you.
Find Plinter's ship,
talk to him, (target his ship and comm, reasonably
closely or it wont connect), then follow him until something happens.
An emergency call comes
in. Some Xenon will turn up. Kill them.
Now, find the Xenon jump
beacon, fly really close to it and your ship
will scan it automatically. Once complete, kill the beacon. Mind out
though, once its identified, everyone will be shooting at it.
Mop up any remaining
A message then comes in
saying several message drones got away, and you
get detailed to intercept.
Fly to Oort Cloud (go
west young man), and then wait for the message
drone to turn up. A cutscene will happen when it does, so you cant miss
Follow the message drone
to its destination. Its pretty fast, in the
300kph range, so if you chose a slower ship, you will get left behind,
just keep after it, even if it gets out of scanner range. Note, triplex
scanners are best, if you haven't got one, your putting shackles on and
making life very difficult for yourself.
You will come across a
Nova and a jump beacon. Watch the Nova blow up
the beacon. Then head east back into Pluto where you join up with
Plinter again.
Next is 3 patrols of
sectors, Pluto, Neptune and Uranus. Kill any Xenon
that turn up, wait for the orders to move sectors before you do.
Once you get ordered to,
dock with the Saturn Research Station and its
mission complete.
Terran Mission 2.
You get ordered to dock
at the Orbital Patrol Base in Asteroid Belt.
Its on your nav map, so jump if you have it. Talk to General
Mishsiajamama. Fly to Mars (follow the arrows) and dock at the
shipyard. Here you take possession of an M5. Doesn't matter if you sell
it or keep it. I told it to go dock with my Carrier.
Back to Asteroid Belt,
and then orders to talk to Mark Jackson in
Heretics end. Jump, don't walk. (Hey, walk if you want to, but why
dawdle when its doing things that pays the bills !)
Talk to Jackson. (By now
you should be getting the hang of this. The
yellow highlights the ship or station, just com and look for 2 blue
dots next to the mission persons name, and chat to that person.)
Chat, wait a bit, more
chat. Finally you get ordered to Scale Plate
Green where Xenon are attacking a convoy. Follow the arrows. A fast
ship makes this less tedious.
Now, Jackson needs a
course in how to effectively communicate orders.
The order is to identify and follow the non-Xenon ship working with the
Xenon to its base, and scan it. Unfortunately if your not listening
very carefully, you miss the station bit and assume he meant scan the
ship. To scan the ship, you have to get very close, and that makes the
pilot jittery and he will jump away. So don't. You need to scan the
station, which means following the ship a good way behind so as not to
frighten him, where ever he goes. If you screw up, the mission restarts
after a wait, in another sector. Ignore the Xenon, just find and follow
the Nova.
Eventually, you follow
the Nova into the Unknown Sector next to PTNI
HQ. Make sure its not in range of your turrent's if you have any at
anytime, you do not want to fire on him. Let him dock at the station
before you approach it. When you get close, it will go red on you, and
may or may not attack you.
Fly up to the station so
close you can peel off the paint (500 meters)
and your ship will automatically scan the station. When complete, the
station launched an Elite after me. If your slower, kill the pirate,
otherwise ignore it. Your choice anyway.
Jump back to Heretics
End, and talk to Jackson again. Mission end.
Terran Mission 3.
Find the Sabre in
Heretics End and talk to the pilot. You are given 3
M5's as wingmen and suggested to form them into a wing. It sounds like
a choice, but the mission wont start until you do. Target each ship and
give it the instruction to join a wing, and select the same wing
designation each time.
Having done that, one
has to wonder why you need wingmen and if my
current ship is adequate for what lies ahead.
I was still flying my
Mule. And against N's and M's, that was fine. But
it Doesn't have the firepower for anything much bigger, not enough
guns, only having 4.
So, I jumped in my
Carrier, beamed out my M7 and changed ships, docking
the Mule with my Carrier.
I also docked the 3
M5's. In any sort of serious furball, 3 M5's as
wingmen are just cannon fodder, so why waste them ? Your choice.
Patrol Circle of Labour.
Kill Xenon, both waves. Ditto Omicron Lyrae.
Then fly to Treasure
Chest, where you get something different. Theres a
flight of reds in there called 'Decafs'. Easy to kill, so do that.
After, return to
Heretics End and talk to Jackson again.
Terran Mission 4.
Plinter has an escort
for you, so find him and talk to him. Theres a
Scabbard going to Venus and you have the duty. Follow it to Asteroid
Belt and then Mars.
In Mars, you get a
report of a Xenon ship. The next choice is yours, if
you complete the escort, or go get the Xenon. If you continue the
escort, the Xenon will be there when you get back, and you do need to
join that fight. However, by the time you get back, the situation may
not be advantageous for you in terms of what the Terrans still have
around to fight with. If you go in straight off, you have the benefit
of their help at maximum strength.
As it happens, the
scabbard gets home ok without you, so I went off and
took on the Xenon.
There is a jump beacon
here somewhere, if you find it, kill it. I never
found it so I assume someone else did.
Shock number 1. They
have a J. Now I know why I changed ships. I rig
for 8 PPC's, and target the J. Now the Apricot PPC's are slightly less
powerful than normal ones, but fire faster. The PPC also lets you
overpower the 'bullet' by holding down the trigger while it builds,
giving the shot a lot more hitting power. Scalp up 1 J !
If you don't have the
firepower to take on a J, keep well out of its
way. Its guns have a 6km odd range, and if your in an M3 or M4, 1 shot
can kill you. So engage the fighters, and stay clear of the J.
Eventually, a Terran M2 will turn up and make kitty litter out of the
J. Enjoy the show.
Once all Xenon are
accounted for, head to Venus, and catch up with the
scabbard. It may already have docked with the Orbital Defense Station,
if not, wait for it to do so. Then talk to Benthami on the station. End
Lunch Time !
At this point, you don't
have a new mission yet.
Final Fury Mission 1.
Head back to Omicron
Lyrae. There you will find a ship called
At this point, a high
race ranking with nearly everyone is essential,
and the mission your about to do, makes the next set of Terran missions
easier. So think about ranks for a sec, and either do some serious rank
building work, or consult with Cycrows hidden menu.
Comm the Exterminator,
and you get offered a place in the Final Fury
Follow him to Black Hole
On arrival, a big attack
by Xenon commences, including quite a few P's.
The mission now pays C300k+ you will notice, so this is an earner
mission. A huge step up from the Terran missions where they paid in
peanuts and M5's (bigger peanuts).
Clear out the Xenon !
The more you kill, the bigger mission bonus you
get. The P's pay 130k each, so taking all of them out yourself will
push the payout on this mission over the million mark. You need
firepower and balls.
When all the Xenon are
litter, follow Exterminator again, south to
Nathans Voyage, west into the Unknown Sector, and south into Argon
Sector M148.
Dock at the Military
Base (not the Outpost which will be showing red).
End of mission, payday
bigtime if you got the job done.
Final Fury Mission 2.
Take an advanced
satellite into Khaak Sector 931, and drop in the
center of the sector. Then go scan the station. Easy right ? Ummmm.
To get there, shift-J to
get the jump map, then hit K to get the map to
find the Khaak sector for you, which should be highlighted in yellow.
Accept that and you jump in.
Don't Panic. The sector
is heavily red.
Punch f for freight bay,
select the advanced satellite, and eject it,
as fast as you can.
Now hit maximum speed
and go to the station. Try very hard to get there
before anything can catch up with you. If your in a slow ship, rethink
your ship ! Speed helps here. Shielding is good but if you can do this
fast enough, you don't need it.
At the station, you get
a warning to slow down so the scanner will
work, do so, keep moving, keep close to the station, but don't make
yourself a target.
When the scan is
complete, jump out as fast as you can. Anywhere that
comes to hand fastest.
With luck, speed and a
steady hand, you should get out unscathed.
Jump back to Argon M148,
where you get a message asking you to go to
another Khaak sector to retrieve a flight recorder.
Jump there, and the
recorder is shown as a container on the nav map.
If you are not playing
the Apricot Mod, use the ship command to collect
a specific container and then select it, then wait while your ship goes
through the motions of collecting it. Speed here is a pain, as the
faster the ship can go, the more useless this command becomes. However,
the old manual way of picking things up seems to have been tossed out
the cargo bay, so the command will have to do. For some anyway.
If you are playing the
mod or have the Cbeam script installed, press
the cbeam slurp button, and the 3 containers showing will all be beamed
Then get the hell out
before the red becomes nasty.
Jump back to Argon M148,
and its mission over.
Now at this point, there
is a program bug. The Split commander starts
talking before the computer voice is finished, so you don't get to hear
the Split at all.
As it turns out, the
mission is complete, theres no mission for now,
you will get called back when the next mission is ready.
Jump back to Heretics
End, as by this time, the next Terran mission
will be ready.
Terran Mission 5.
Talk to Jackson, who
sends you to the Free Argon Trading Station in
Nathans Voyage. Jump, don't walk.
As you approach the
station, you get commed by Heywood, who tells you
about how the guy your supposed to meet got arrested by the Argon. She
asks you to follow her to Grand Exchange, in snail mode. I said stuff
that, turned on the cheat for the full nav map, jumped straight there,
then turned it off again.
At the Dream Farm Alpha,
you have a chat with a Teladi. He's not happy,
but he wants you to do some dirty work for you before he will help.
Fly to Tears of Greed
(follow the yellow) and in there you will find 4
freighters in the special ships section of the nav map. One of them is
the target and he should be highlighted in yellow.
Target and kill. For
good measure, kill his escorts as well.
Now, the 3 remaining
freighters need to be scanned one by one. As you
do, they should turn red, so kill them.
Back to the Dream Farm
for more Teladi talk. He has set you up a
freight mission in order to get through Argon security.
You need to go to the
shipyard and buy a Vulture. Now for some strange
reason, this shipyard doesn't outfit ships, so this is where the spare
shields come in handy. Transfer to the Vulture, with the shields, and
then supertune it with the handy command in Cycrows menu (I cant be
stuffed flying snails). A jump drive is useful too, so transfer it and
some ecells as well.
Use the best buy key to
find Taladianium, then go there and buy 200.
Now guess what, we are
going back to Argon M148 !
Jump there and then you
will get inspected as you come through the gate
and given clearance to the Military Outpost that was red last time you
were here but is now blue.
At this point its worth
mentioning that this is a multi-racial sector,
and if any of the races don't like you, someone will quickly show up to
kick your arse. And your flying a garbage scow, not your fighter. Hence
the work on the race rankings before starting all this.
Its also worth
mentioning that if you haven't done the first Final Fury
missions yet, then the whole sector will be red to you, as its actually
a restricted space.
Dock with the station to
deliver the goods.
Now, wait for Heywood to
show up and bellow at you.
She and Pearle (the
arrested one) will come flying out of an airlock in
spacesuits. You need to pick them up.
Now, if your using the
Mod, DON'T use Cbeam. It works fine, but the
mission will fail, you get a mission completed message, and That's the
end of the Terran missions for you.
You need to use the
ships command to pick up the suits. Now this of
course brings up a program bug that hasn't been fixed in TC, because if
the suit is too close to the station, the auto-pilot will keep avoiding
the station and never ever be able to pick up the suit. *sigh*. If that
happens, all you can do is go back to the auto-save when you docked at
the station and try again. (What ? You don't have auto-save on ? What
did I say about saving ????).
[Note to self : don't
give up so easy ! Half a day later I find that
the reason there is no open cargo bay doors hotkey is that you don't
need to anymore. You just run the item over and the ship handles the
doors now. Now they tell me !!!]
Once you have both on
board, Heywood will scream at you to get the hell
out of there, so jump to Heretics End and dock with the Station that
Jackson's at. Mission ends.
After a full day of fun
and games, albeit lucrative, its time for
dinner and sleep. Nite nite.
* * *
A new day dawns, ship time anyway.
Here is the story so
far. Found 19 ships, made a lot of credits, met
the Terrans, shot a lot of Xenon, Met a Split and shot more Xenon and
got chased by a lot of Khaak.
Game time : 08:57:47
Credits : 53,101,490
Petty Retailer 7%
Fighter Chief 39%
Terran Marshall of Mars
Operation Final Fury -
Specialist 7%
76 kills, including one
traffic accident.
4 Rapiers, 1 Adv. Disco,
1 Caiman Tanker, 1 Vulture SF.
Jump to the Military
Base in Argon M148.
Final Fury Mission 3.
I gotta laugh. I just
found that when I supertuned the Vulture, I
accidently supertuned the M7 as well. I thought I'd hit a wrong key and
nothing happened, now I've got 760 speed !
I feel the need.....the
need.....for speed !!! (I like it, its staying
that way).
Dock with the Military
Base (again). Straight forward mission, jump
into next door Unknown Sector and scan the roids for high yield ones.
So, jump and scan. Now
the normal way is to target a roid, get into
scanning distance and scan. So a sector full of them takes time. Who
has the patience I ask you, certainly not me. One installs the show all
asteroids script, and lo, jump and hey presto, mission complete.
Only ..... theres more.
They found 3 roids, so
they are sending in a TL to build mines on them,
the job is to keep the TL safe.
TL jumps in. And holey
shit, the sector turns red with Khaak in all
directions and its instant furball with Fighters all over the place and
everything else pecking at you.
Then I get a message
saying to take more care pilot ! Huh ? Where is
the fffffing TL ? Its not there !
New TL jumps in, and
before I can say wtf, its also gone. Wtf ?
Third TL jumps in and I
see this one this time as I'm half way across
the sector now, killing bugs like crazy, and one blink and the TL's
gone and yet another take more care message. *hair beginning to come
So then the Fourth TL
jumps in and this time I finally notice the damn
thing is jumping in by the EAST gate, and I was by the South gate, and
so I put on all speed and hurry over to it.
Ok, now I get the
There are FOUR, count
them, FOUR sodding Khaak Corvettes by the East
gate pounding on everything that comes through.
I switch to PPC's, since
I was using PBE's for fly swotting, but these
are heavy duty bugs and need the big guns !
The first 2 go down, but
That's the end of the TL. I take down the
third bug, and the fifth TL jumps in. By this stage I'm in a total
frenzy and the fourth bug gets the full PPC treatment and ramming for
good measure and I get out of it with bent shields but otherwise no
damage, then theres 2 more corvettes and more bugsplat and
suddenly all that's suddenly left is flies and so I quickly swat the
rest of them.
The TL is still there
and completely intact this time. Phew ! Wipes
sweat from brow. Follows in the wake of the TL and recuperates.
TL builds 2 mines
without incident, and heads off across sector to the
3rd roid.
After a bit, I notice a
lone scout in the distance, so bored shitless
by this stage, I take off after it. Easy swat.
So all of a sudden, the
next wave hits ! Another corvette, more of
everything else. I head off back to the TL and follow along, allowing
the Khaak to close in, but positioning myself so I'm between all of
them and the TL. When almost in range, I put on some speed, target the
corvette, and its on again. This time though, its kitty litter for the
bugs and none of them got past me.
TL gets the 3rd mine
built and its mission over. Hey I yelled, what
about paying me ! Nope. Got a rep increase, but no money. I guess
losing 4 TL's came out of my pay which was supposed to be over 300k.
And that furball could have been a serious drain on funds if I'd lost a
shield for even an instant.
Final total, 30 scouts,
13 interceptors, 16 fighters and 7 corvettes.
Minus 2 Argon and 2 Boron TL's, RIP.
Moral of all this ? If
you don't see the ship your minding, immediately
jump to the next gate and check for it there !
So end of mission, we
will be in touch, piss off for now.
Okey dokey, time for
Terran Mission 6.
Back to docking at the
Orbital Base in the Asteroid Belt. Big
discussion and then Pearle comes aboard.
Heads up, you need cargo
life support for this one. This is standard on
Apricot ships, but otherwise, you need to visit a Pirate base to get
one. You also need 3 satellites and there are none here.
Jump or fly to Family
Zyarth. If your lucky, there are satellites here.
If so, get 3. Drop one anywhere you like, although I tended to cover
the gate I jumped in on one edge and as much of the center as it would
Jump or fly to Family
Ryk and drop another one. Then to Zyarth's
Dominion and drop the 3rd.
Now wait for Pearle to
call you.
After a bit, he does,
and its back to Family Zyarth. In the special
section of the nav, you will get 4 freighters to scan. Do each one. One
of them turns red, so ever so gently attack it since we want to capture
it. If your lucky, he will bail as soon as the hull gets touched, but
if your unlucky he will bail when there is orange peel left and the
last bullet you fire will kill the ship. Guess what I did. Theres a
laugh over the intercom and an assurance that another ship will come
along. I scanned the next one on the list, and get an illegal scan
message, repeated again the next time. Huh ?
I reloaded a save from
immediately before scanning the freighters and
redid it on the basis that the mission was buggered when I destroyed
the ship, the laugh be damned. This time he jumps in the high 80's. Big
relief, save game.
So next step is to claim
the ship. I target and hit the claim button
and its immediately apparent the mission is blown. Wtf ? I reload (see
why I save save save save) and this time listen to what Pearle is
saying and ....he...actually...wants....me... get out of the ship and
claim it MANUALLY ? What sort of dev forces that ? The normal X3 one of
course. Claim software is technically illegal and you're the good guy
so therefore you don't have claims software. Hello, anyone home ???
Salvage is my business, who in their right mind goes space walking to
claim anymore ? *sigh*. Spacewalk, yes. Eject, target ship, fly in
close, watching the claim option for it to light up. It does, halt,
claim, and listen as your told to enter the ship. Not a bloody chance !
Turn around, target my
M7, get myself back aboard asap. Happy now, yes.
Ok, so hull damage.
Mount up a repair laser (standard on Apricot ships
of course), and what, you don't have one ? Sorry, should have heads up
on that one too. Oh well, as long as the hulls not too badly damaged
you can do without, but if need be, you can jump out of your ship
again, and use the suit repair laser. The bad news is, that only space
suits and Apricot ships have repair lasers. Having a good Maintenance
Chief pays off, when putting lasers on ships is as easy as scrapping a
few suits !
Now transfer over your
jumpdrive, ecells, those spare 25mj shields your
carrying and Mr. Pearle. And then transfer yourself.
Send your ship into the
next sector and have it stand by inside the
Now, your looking for an
Elephant. (No, not the elephant you feel like
your flying.). With luck its in scanner range, if not, check SE 'wards.
When you find it, fly
casual ! You want to come up next to it so you
can inspect the paintwork, while Pearle plants a tracking bug. Once
that's on, 5 decafs come after you. Run like hell and jump to the next
sector as fast as you can. Then float across to your ship and
retransfer everything back.
The freighter is now
yours to keep, so stash it somewhere safe.
Next destination is
Ocean of Fantasy, and an Odin you find there. Chat
starts when you get close. You get given a Cutless. If this is better
than what your flying, transfer across to it, otherwise, another ship
to stash somewhere safe. I of course jump my Carrier in and collect
both ships and then jump the Carrier back to Heretics End.
Theres a party been
organized in an Unknown Sector, so jump or fly
there. Its already started when you get there. So in I wade. Split
ships and Terrans and the Split are not enjoying it.
Then, wtf, CTW.(Crash to
Windows). Do you want to send Microsoft a
report ? No. Reload from just inside the sector and CTW. Report ? Still
no. Reboot, reload, and CTW. Report ? No, bugger off ! Log into egosoft
forum and file a bug report. Back to the game, go back a save, reenter
the sector and sit there and do nothing. Eventually the amount of
missiles cluttering the place up tempts me into hitting the cbeam
button, and CTW. No. Reload, reenter, cbeam, CTW. Nonononono. Ah !
Pattern forming.
Reboot, reload, reenter,
sit there and do zip. The Terrans knock off
the Split without any help, and now the real action happens. 4
Freighters sneak past the last of the Split ships and marines board the
tagged Elephant. A lone astronaut flees the captured TL, and your
ordered to pick it up.
In one goes, and lines
up on the astronut. Ship commands, special, wtf,
where is the collect astronaut command and the collect containers
command ? How the hell do you get the astronut without a command to do
I took so long to figure
that out that some Split came along and picked
him up ! The yellow indicator lights up the ship, so I go after it,
fire at it and destroy it, and hey theres my astronut back.
So naturally I ran him
down ! "Cargo bay contains, passenger". NOW you
tell me !!!! In X2 and X3R, you had to open the cargo bay doors before
you could pick up an object. If you didnt, your shields fried it. So no
open cargo bay doors command and I assume you cant pick up anymore,
except by using the ship commands. Doh !
Ok, so objective
achieved, but what does that leave us with ? This
mission has collecting containers and astronauts any way than running
them down disabled. So DO NOT use Cbeam or Abeam for this mission, or
it will be CTW. Its logged as a bug, but I'm not sure what they can do
about it.
Once the mission is
complete, then and only then can you slurp.
Ok, where next ? Moon
Military base. Jump......err, no, wont allow it.
Jump to Asteroid Belt, and then fly the rest of the way. Dock and
mission over, we'll let you know when the next one is ready.
I need a rest ! Another
day, not a dollar in sight, and actually lost a
few credits for all that work !
Guess where next is ?
You guessed it, back to 148 ! I need a DRINK !
Final Fury Mission 4.
Game time 11:43:34
Master Chief 36%
Flight Sergeant 4%
Terran Marshal of Mars
Same ships + Cutlass.
172 kills.
Just as well I didn't
really have a drink.
Convoy duty. Only 1
sector, but my favourite one ! *choke*
Jump to East gate this
time of the Unknown Sector just north, and 3
ships to escort, 2 freighters and an Osprey.
Nice quiet beginning.
Then 2 scouts at long range, then a few more.
I watch the pattern
forming as we move SW. A snaking wall starts to
form in red on the scanner.
Ok, party time, target
the nearest Fighter......wait for it.....wait
for it..... select big guns, target......fire.
And all hell breaks
loose. I've no idea of time now I look back on it,
just a constant string of loose groups of Khaak, attacking continuously
as we move south west.
Don't get too far from
the convoy, but target any fighter that comes
close. Speed run, kill, double back. Am I really glad I overclocked
this ship by mistake, as the speed is really important here. Intercept,
kill, double back, select, intercept, kill, double back, catchup the
convoy, select....on and on and on.
Finally a break as we
near the south gate. Watching freighters go
through a gate is like watching grass grow and not quite as exciting.
Finally the first one is
lined up for the jump, and theres a red blip
almost on top of us, a Khaak Cluster. Speed, line up, kill. Stop, go
back to being bored.
First ship is
through........then the second......and now the third,
New orders, theres a
scout heading away, follow it.
It's a damn slow scout
too, so I idle along, feeling like a man being
led to the noose as Khaak slowly ring around me.
Suddenly at scanner edge
in the center of the sector, a Khaak station !
Cant pay attention, a
corvette is almost on me. Turn, target, kill. And
hell breaks loose again as the noose tightens around me. Target, shoot,
on and on, and finally a break and speed towards the station.
When close enough, new
orders, take it out. Surprise Surprise !
At this point I better
explain my gun loadout. The M7 has 8 forward gun
slots and 10 guns in 4 turrent's. I have modified PBE's in all the
turrent's. On the front I have 4 PBE's and 4 modified PPC's. Group 2
has the PPC's and gets used for corvettes and fighters with precision
gunnery, and group 3 has the PBE's for interceptors and scouts. Switch
back and forth depending on target.
Now the main target is
the station. So I pull away for a bit while I
unmount the PBE's and put in 4 more PPC's. Gee I wish the old system of
gun swapping was back (that was a line of icons accross the screen, 2
clicks to select a new gun), as the new hud layout is 50 times slower
to change a gun, and when your being shot at by a hornets nest, speed
is important !
8 PPC's on the front and
switch to group 1 to bring them all online.
Turn toward the Station and start firing at 6km, ease back the speed
until the last second then turn and full speed away. Pot shots at
scouts and fighters and interceptors, not hitting as much as these are
too slow for scouts really, but just keeping them off my back while I
line the station up again and again, until its shields are down, and I
take the risk and drop the speed to almost nothing and keep rapid
firing until the station blows with a lot of satisfaction for me.
Mission complete,
compliment from the boss, and what no money again ?
What is this ? Damn, its still a hornets nest and all the support ships
have pissed off and left me with them. A few minutes later and its
clear enough to think again.
Next mission is for the
Terrans again. It's the commuting in this job
that really gets you down !
Its been a long day, and
not a credit to show for it.
Quick jump into M148,
dock at the Military Base and a nice long sleep.
Terran Plot, Mission 7.
I just knew this was
going to be a bad day.
Woke up with a bad
headache, so started late.
Jumped into Asteroid
Belt and trekked into Mars, wishing I'd stayed in
bed. In retrospect, that would have been the better idea.
Dock at the shipyard
this time, just for a change.
preparation for the coming showdown, we get to play "board the
ship". We get a Scabbard to command, with 10 marines. At least they
called these bozo's marines. By the look of them they couldn't have
boarded a barn with the door open !
Parked a little way away
is a Vidar. Now theres a nice little ship.
Object of the exercise is board and capture it.
Now, approach steadily
in your ship, select guns to take down the
shields only, and open fire. Once the shields are down, order the
Scabbard to board the Vidar. Board command is on the piracy menu (of
course) by the way.
Sit within gun range
while the Scabbard does the business. When the
marines launch, you need to keep the Vidar's shields from regenerating
past 10% or else the shields will fry the marines. I kept 1 PBE active
and bopped it as soon as the shields got past 6 %. Having the shields
showing in percent terms does help too.
Hint : turn your
turrent's off if you don't want unnecessary damage to
the hull.
I sent that crew of
brainless thugs across 3 times, and they failed to
breach the hull every time.
Here is the lowdown on
marines. They have 4 skill types, and 5 levels
for each. The types are Fighting (which this lot were all 2 or 3 stars
at), Hacking, Mechanical and Engineering.
Fighting skills are
gained by action. The rest can be trained at
stations that train them, or on your ship if you get the script.
Hacking is the skill
that gives you control of the ship your trying to
take over. Mechanical is the skill that cuts into the hull and gives
the team access. Engineering skills help to prevent damage to the ship
as its taken. So you really need one of each with a high rating in each
team. Mechanical gets you in, Hacking gets you control as fast as
possible, and Engineering makes sure that the ship survives and as much
of its loot is still intact. The rest are muscle to take down the crew
with and shoot the automated defenses if the ship has any.
In each team, the marine
with the highest skill level in each type is
used for the boarding action to determine what happens.
In the team given for
this exercise, only 1 marine has 2 stars for each
type, although as I said, they are all good at fighting. So when 2
stars consistently fails to break into a ship that is dead in space and
not shooting back, that says a lot about the level of training you need
in the teams to make it work.
I had a look at the
squad, they were all X denizens, and probably
captured by the Terrans and forced into the marine corp. That would
explain their total incompetence. Nothing else does.
After the third attempt,
the Terrans give you the ship anyway, and you
get orders to talk to Jackson in the Moon sector. More snail travel.
A note about the Vidar.
Its apparently the only one you can capture in
the game, so treat it like the unique derelict ships. If you sell it,
its gone for good. If you are playing without Apricot ships, it looks a
good one to keep. Kick arse and take prisoners type. Anyway, stash it
somewhere safe.
A note about the
Scabbard. Its yours, also stash it somewhere safe.
A note about notes. Take
note of them.
Jackson mobilizes the
fleet and everyone jumps to Aldrin.
Finding Aldrin. Its not
on the gate network, so you have to jump there.
The easiest way to find it on the nav map, is press the A key until the
sector is highlighted, going through the A named sectors in alpha order.
Aldrin is a strange
system. You jump in by a beacon in the middle of a
ringed asteroid belt around a moonsized asteroid. So instead of the
middle of the sector being empty, the center is solid and everything
happens around it.
The sector is HUGE. You
don't realize how huge until you zoom in enough
to see ships on the nav map.
First task is checking
out a station. As you approach, Jackson starts
talking, and then a ship detaches from the station and heads to the Tyr
(M2) flagship. I followed it along until it got near the Tyr. At which
point there is a lot of talk going on.
The next thing that
happens is some Xenon attack. 1 LX and the rest
smaller, so I targeted the LX and took that out first, and then just
went after what was left.
This sector is so huge,
I had a substantial lag issue in here,
especially since I'm on a borderline computer, but there is so much in
here, that many will have lag issue even when normally they don't.
There are so many Terran
ships here that you don't really need to do
anything if the lag is bad that you cant anyway. Just sit it out and
let them create some more space dust.
Now the task is
escorting the Tyr (as if it really needs an escort),
and so follow it along. Its target becomes apparent long before its
actually on the scanners. I stopped about 10km away, and let the task
force attack it.
At this point you are
again given control of a Scabbard with marines.
As soon as the shields
come down on the target, send in the marines.
Again, if this is the pride of the Terran special forces, then a
handful of grannies can keep them outside of a straw house,
indefinitely !
Once again, 3 failed
attempts to gain entrance to the target. The
second time, only half of them came back, the other 5 buggered off
somewhere. So the third time, only 5 went in. They announced that
they were approaching the target, and then nothing.
A while later, the other
Scabbard finally moves in, seems to drop off a
single marine and shortly after, the target turns blue and the battle
is over.
What a let down. After a
mission lasting well over 2 hours, most of it
total boredom waiting for something to happen, its suddenly over and
nothing you did made any real difference. Reality in the Xverse.
However, we are not
finished yet. Now we get to drive some locals to
Earth for talks. The ultimate snail journey. Oh joy !
We now have another
Scabbard, and I set it to picking up the marines.
Now of course, the commands for containers and astronuts work again, so
I also slurped all the containers. When the Scabbard is finished, you
need to jump it somewhere safe. By this time, you should be
accumulating a little fleet somewhere where its safe. North east of the
north gate in Heretics End is where my little fleet is growing. Hasn't
been a red dot in there since we started.
Typically, the M7 isn't
allowed to dock at the station to pick up the
dignitaries from. So I jump in a Mule, swap across, dock, undock, dock
with the M7, and then jump to Asteroid Belt.
Then it's a long haul
round to Earth.
At the Moon sector, take
the time to look at both the Moon behind you,
and the Earth ahead. Nice sight. Worth a picture for the snap book.
A ways from the gate
into Earth, I drop back into the Mule, undock and
proceed in a ship I know will dock.
On the other side,
theres a sight for sore eyes. The station is so
huge, it covers the horizon.
WARNING : Do not turn on
the auto-pillok ! If you do, the damn thing
goes crazy, since it cant figure out an approach to the dock. So it
tries to go around it, and the moment you cross a line of lasertowers,
your arse is new mown grass ! Don't do it.
Crank up the speed and
go straight ahead. After a bit, you start
passing station on both sides. On the left you will see a nice sign
saying "Dock >>>>>". Keep going straight. When it looks
like your going to start hitting something, slow right down. Now you
can try the docking computer. If the auto-pillok starts up, cancel it
before you hit anything, and keep going closer. Then try the docking
computer again. It should by now, auto-dock you.
Theres a nice little pep
talk to end with and its Terran Plot Over !
Oh...theres a nice
little surprise waiting for you. Theres a Claymore
sitting in the next docking bay with your name on it. Tell it to go
wherever your stashing your little fleet.
Terran Plot summary :
A nice little plot, not
too hard, not too easy, but boring in parts,
but moves you along. Not much in monetary returns, the Terrans don't
actually pay well.
But you end up with 5
M5's, a Cutlass, 2 Scabbards (with 20 marines
between them), 1 Vidar and a Claymore. The Vidar needs some hull work,
and they all are short on necessary fittings and upgrades.
As a fleet beginning,
That's a good start. The sale value is probably
pretty good if you want the credits instead.
You also get complete
access to the Earth section of the gate network,
and I didn't spot anything in the way of pirate activity in there, so
if you want a safe place to base your trading empire, this could be the
place. I cant say I've tried dropping a station yet, but in theory,
this is about as safe as it gets.
End of Plot status :
53,047,570 credits.
Militant 42%
Terran Marshall of Mars
Flight Sergeant 85%
255 kills including 2
Ships as noted.
Back to M148.
On the way back, I
stopped off at Heretics end. The cargo bay was
getting full and I needed to offload some of it. I've been using Cbeam
all the time and slurping containers every time something gets killed.
Among the load is 17 silicon, 381 ore, 250 meatsteaks and 39 rimes.
Plus a lot of missiles.
I then jumped both
ships, me in my M7 and the Carrier, to Omicron.
There I got the Scabbards out and got both ships training Mechanicals
to level 5. With the cost removed btw - I don't believe in paying for
something that I consider in-house expertise. If you need some story to
justify a script (or modifying someone else's script), make it up. All
that matters is you are true to your vision of the game. In this case,
the ship comes with a holographic drill instructor, so training costs
nothing. That's my story, it makes the script fit my game. I'm happy.
Fury Mission 5.
Then its back to M148.
Death or Glory time !
Jump to Khaak Sector 931
and clean it out, because someone got toasted
there recently.
Standard furball, 1
corvette, rest mainly smaller stuff. Some support,
so not all that trying. When all are dust, its mission complete, no
need to jump home, but I do anyway.
And we get PAID ! I
clocked up about 512k, and now up to 283 kills.
Back to M148 and no
missions for once.
Nearest mission I can comm is to protect
the shipyard for 24k, so I
take it. Bunch of Pirates show up, Falcons and lower, easy kills. Paid
and you get the Argon bounty on kills as well, so got closer to 60k. I
didn't actually check on the exact amount.
About to take another
mission, when the recall arrives.
Final Fury Mission 6.
Convoy duty in the Zone
again. Oh joy.
Jump to the east gate in
the unknown sector, and 6 Borons await. The
standard 2 scouts show up, then 2 clusters jump in close that I take
out without them breaking. Then its on. A group of fighters jump in on
top of us and I manage to take them out quickly. Then I goof and get
lured away like last time, and another group of fighters jump in on the
convoy and I'm too far away to get there in time ! Not a happy Split.
Reload. This time I
decide its time for the big guns and jump in my M2.
PBE's all round, but PPCs in the front. Off we go. Furball. Yikes, I
accidently rammed a mission ship ! Annoyed Split.
Reload. PBE's on the
front, right side and top, on attack my target,
rest on attack enemies. Furball, target leader gone. Unhappy Split.
What is this fighters
with jump drive stuff ? Not a nice tactic
There are some days you
really should not get out of bed and I knew
this was one of them !
* * *
There is nothing like a new day to put a
perspective on things.
Looking back, what does
one say the single biggest question mark was ?
Tactics, stupidity ? Nope, guns. They were not firing !
Ok, why not.
Note to modders : When
you create a new gun, make sure you connect it to
the correct projectile ! No point in making a 6km gun if your
projectile only goes 1km. *sigh*
Which brings up gun mounting as an issue.
In furball's like these
missions, you must be flying a ship that has some flexibility in its
gun choice. The majority of the enemy are fighters, so you need fast
firing quick moving guns with at least a 2km range. The further out you
can kill them, the less shots they can fire at you or anyone else. Its
why I dislike flaks and short range guns, if the enemy are that close,
your fighting a defensive engagement, and those are too easy to lose.
As soon as you meet a
Corvette or higher, you need serious firepower
and you need it at a lot longer range. There is no point pecking away
at a Khaak corvette with say hepts or pacs, because its going to fry
you before you can get its shields down. You need the pacs/pbes etc for
the M5's and M4's, but for M3's and M6's you need PPC's and their like.
Take the bugger out in as few shots as possible. Consequently, you need
a ship that can mount 4 of each type at the same time, so you can
switch back and forth quickly. Carry both, even if your mainly only
using one of them. You never know when you come across something big
you just have to handle yourself. If need be, you load in all of the
biggest you can mount and go in blazing. (Or out as the case may be.)
Anyway, some slight
surgery on the mod, and we are back in business.
Final Fury Mission 6. (Take 4.)
Still chosen to fly the
M2 for this one. See what happens.
Jump in the east gate,
and 4 Teladi already well advanced.
Usual scouts at long
distance but leaving them behind this time. Front
turrent on shoot my target, and the rest on attack enemies. One of the
scouts slides up behind me and dies before I even knew he was there.
Much better !
A cluster jumps in
close, 10km away, so peel off to take it. I've got
my PBE's all round this time and at 6km, they break up the cluster. So
then I find the guns fall silent in the break between target
acquisition. I change to Attack all enemies all round. Poof, no cluster.
5 clusters in all, 1 or
2 at a time, all jumping close in, spread over
the whole distance, but mainly towards the south end. By that time,
there was some heavy duty help around as well, but nothing quite close
enough to protect the convoy. Also 3 corvettes jump in close one at a
time as the last couple of convoy ships are lining up to jump.
Now, interesting thing.
No Fighter groups jumping in this time. Which
actually brings up something. The program adapts as you play. So the
longer you play the better it thinks you are, and the more it throws at
you. This is why some people talk in the forums about impossible odds
that no-one else experiences.
Solution ? Quit for a
break. When you start the game up again, it
reinitializes everything and the mission that was impossible before
becomes relatively easy.
All through the gate,
mission complete. Paid mission too, 53,906,555.
Oh....and theres 800 odd meatsteaks sitting in the cargo hold.
anyone ?
No more missions again, so check the
sector. One of the silicon mines
wants a Drone factory delivered in Wastelands within 2 hours 9 minutes,
for 3,783,750. I can do that.
Dock the TL that's in
Omicron at the Shipyard there, buy a Drone
factory for 2,898,204 and jump it to Wastelands. In the meantime I jump
there myself, and wait for the TL. When it arrives, I transfer across
to it, drop the station on top of the beacon, and its money in the
credit account.
54,792,101. As it happens, you don't need
to be in the
TL, just drop the station on the beacon.
BANG and some expletives. Oops, some
idiot has left a TL parked in the
gate. Hehe. A border patrol goes red, so I com and apologize. Not a
happy border patrol but it goes blue again.
Swap back into the M2,
and jump the TL back to Omicron.
Recall message, so back
into the fray we go. Jump to M148 and dock.
Final Fury Mission 7.
Another convoy. 4 ships.
I jump in the east gate and they are sitting
there like a shag on a rock, doing nothing, going nowhere. Suicidal
Paranid apparently. This continues that way for 15 minutes until I
decide it's a fragged mission and reload.
New convoy, 3 ships, and
these guys are in a hurry. All the way south,
its random combinations of Corvettes, clusters and fighters, all
jumping in about 10km away. SOB. (Standard operational Bullsh*t).
No real problems. End
mission. 54,958,101, Ensign 84%, Warrior 5%, 486
Free again. I jump to
M148 to park the M2. Beam out the M7 and swap
over, its time to park some satellites for future use. I got these a
while back when we were asked to get them for a mission. Instead of
getting only the number for the mission, I bought the lot, so I have 5
At some point in the
near future, I'm going to want to start building
support stations, particularly ecell production. To that end, its
useful to know which shipyard has what stations, and the easiest way is
to put a satellite over them. Since I prefer Argon food, its time to do
an Argon Shipyard crawl !
Since there is one in
M148, I get the auto-pillok to take me to the
center of the sector, about 10km above center, and drop a satellite
Then the same in
Omicron, Light of Heart, and Argon Prime. By the time
I've finished there, the recall is in, so I jump back to M148 and dock
Final Fury Mission 8.
Death or Glory again,
Khaak Sector 931.
I jump in and find a
couple of M6's being harassed by an entire Carrier
group. Must have been them who called for help.
I caught up with the
Carrier near a very large asteroid, and suddenly
had the worst lag of the game kick in. The PBE's were seriously not
working effectively due to the lag, and the K's were pounding on me
while I was desperately trying to change a few guns to PPC's. Classic
case of being unprepared.
Well the Carrier got
toasted, but I only got 2 PPC's working before it
blew. By that time, I'd done about 8gj in shield energy and was
starting to get seriously worried. Fortunately, when the Carriers
shields went down, the hull was simple.
After that, the lag
improved a lot and the escorts were quickly mopped
End of mission, and got
paid this time about 2mill. 57,841,143, warrior
20%, Commander 12%.
Once the mission
finished, there were still Khaak about, and since they
didn't pay anything to kill, I jumped out to the first sector I could
hit on the map. Turned out to be Grand Exchange. Nothing of interest
there, so on a whim, I jumped to Family Pride.
When a Split asks you if your not afraid
of death in combat, be afraid,
be very afraid ! It read like a simple patrol of the sector I was in.
193k. So I took it.
Next thing a Khaak
Battlegroup jumps in.
I hit the screachies and
sat there for a second, then started madly
changing guns. 8 on the front, and 12 on the left got changed to PPC's.
Then turrent commands for front and left changed to attack my target,
and rear to missile defense.
Then I put some speed on
and targeted the destroyer. By the time I got
there, there had been casualties, so some nice loot to slurp up. Never
forget to slurp your loot, never know what's floating around out there
until you check your cargo hold later one.
Destroyer on the port
bow captain ! I madly slowed down as I was
overshooting as I always tend to do. Let the Khaak slide down the left
side of my ship and the 2 turrent's of PPC's open up and tear it to
sheds. Then its target and shoot the rest of the group, and corvettes
are now less effective because I can hit them harder. Should have done
this ages ago. But I like PBE's.
When this lot are bug
droppings, the golden arrow points around, and
you guessed it, theres a second battlegroup on the other side of the
sector. Same results. Me a lot, bugs zip.
The mission now reads
193,755 + 8,161,829 !
New orders to jump into
Thuruks Pride. I don't recall this being a
multiple sector patrol ! I jump anyway.
Same deal. 2 Khaak
battlegroups. As I jumped in, I could see the
zatting going on in the distance and just headed on in with nothing on
the scanner. Two more major furball's and the sector is clear.
New orders to jump to
Family Zein ???? In I jump, and great relief to
get the mission completed as soon as the jump concludes.
Total payout,
16,897,305. 29 ships killed in the mission. Killing
capital ships is LUCRATIVE ! (Note : The payouts on these missions was
seriously reduced in the 1.4 patch.)
74,877,448, warrior 54%.
The recall came in while
I was dealing with the last battlegroup.
Final Fury Mission 9.
Dock at the M148
Military station as usual, and a harried Split tells
me that the Khaak are attacking. I can see the red dots, including a
capital ship.
Figures. Its kill off
the Khaak capital ships day for me personally.
770k plus bounty.
Undock and straight in,
as they were almost onto the station.
Khaak Carrier group this
time. Same tactics, same result. Getting so
gun happy I'm not even seeing what's actually going on. The explosions
continue when I close my eyes.
77,047,423. Warrior 60%,
Commander 45%, 559 kills.
I stopped the ship and
did some paperwork.
Recall again, and I'm
only 7kms from the station so docking was quick.
Final Fury Mission 10.
The bugs are active
again in the Unknown Sector, but fortunately, no
convoy to deal with. 703k plus bounty.
Sweep and clean !
Another Carrier group
and a lot of mosquitoes buzzing around.
All done, 80,583,779.
Warrior 88%, commander 73%, 625 kills.
No, that was me snoring.
started this morning with some station research. No recall yet, and I
cant be bothered seeking missions.
At some point soon, I
will need to start laying out a complex. I like
to be self sufficient, especially with ecells, and at some point, the
whole combat thing is going to become boring, and at that point one
will need a new income stream.
A closed loop ecell
production complex, largest kind, comes out at
44,714,000 credits. That's for an SPP XL, 2 Cahoona L's, 2 Cattle L's,
5 Crystal Fabs., 1 Silicon Mine and 10 complex kits. All Argon of
course. That's assuming the Silicon Mine is on a high yield roid in the
vicinity of 60. If you are using 32 yield roids, you will need 2 of
them, so an extra mine and complex kit. There are high yield roids
around, it's a matter of finding them in a useful place.
Next consideration for
expanding, for income generation, is booze. 2
Wheat L's, 2 Distillery L's and 4 complex kits is another 13,873,848.
In the right place, which includes it being legal, these can never keep
up with demand and eventually can be expanded to 10 of each, and still
not keep up with demand. In the right place.
Also, add an ore mine on
a high yield roid, with 5 1mj shield
factories, and 6 complex kits for another 9,712,616 and you have a nice
production of shields for the locals to buy. Usually a good seller
At that point, you need
to assess if your producing enough ecells
before adding anything more. But at 68 mill and change, That's a very
nice starting out complex that should supply your own ecell needs, and
bring in tidy profitzzzzz.
Recall, jump and dock.
Final Fury Mission 11.
Convoy duty. 216,750.
Fast group this time, mainly Dragons. Normal
operating procedure, Khaak jump in 8 to 10 kms away, turn and face
them, quick kills, return to convoy. Rinse and repeat.
80,800,529. Assassin 1%,
Commander 97%.
time again. Research into high yield roid positions. The old
standbys are still there I see.
Ore Belt, with multiple
60 yields and plenty of 30's. Antigone Memorial
with its 2 90 Ores and 2 61 Silicon's. In a nice complexable bunch too.
Asteroid Belt has some
nice ones too. Aldrin has plenty, but beware lag
there. Setting up a complex in a lagging sector is a nightmare.
Midnight Star has a 102
Ore, which is the highest I've found, but
probably too high.
Here is the deal with
roid yields. The higher the yield, the faster it
produces whatever dirt it produces, but the more ecells it consumes to
do it.
Never bother with M
mines, it's a waste of a roid. Always use an L
mine. Anything below a yield of 30 is a waste of time. Anything over 80
is a real problem to use, as it consumes ecells at a horrible rate.
60's are great. A 60 produces twice the product of a 30, at about twice
the consumption of ecells, and is pretty good for feeding an XL SPP at
the needed rate, given its got to keep 5 Crystal Fabs happy all the
time. Anything short of a 60 yield, and you will need 2 mines complexed.
While mucking around
looking for roids, I found an Argon shipyard in
Legends Home, so dropped a satellite in there. Theres an Otas Shipyard
in there as well.
Recalled, jump and dock.
Final Fury Mission 12.
Convoy again, slow one,
81,001,779, assassin
18%m 2rd Lieutenant 25%. What kind of command
structure has Commander less than 2nd Lieutenant ???
Got a scare off the end
of this one. The escort was an MT and 2
Barracudas's. Well after the freighters gone through, 1 of the Barra's
docks with the MT and then the MT jumps, the other Barra jumps, and
suddenly I'm left with 1 ship to escort that's already gone !
Fortunately, a short wait later and the Split shows up to say mission
complete. *Phew*
Did some messing about
in the ships command interface while waiting for
the recall this time, just couldn't bothered going anywhere else.
Final Fury Mission 13.
Search and Destroy in
the Unknown Sector. 2,082,500 credits, plus
bounty and rated very hard. Gotta love the yellow arrows. They lead you
down one end of the sector then point you to the exact opposite extreme
of the sector. Hey, I was just up there !
Pretty normal patrol,
the usual Carrier groups, nothing out of the
ordinary for around here.
85,343,279, assassin
27%, 2nd Lieutenant 58%, game time 21:50:49.
Local silicon mine wanted ecells, 25,164
of them. 31 minutes and
511,908 payment.
No problems. The Gunbus
and Camel carry 20,000 each, so beam them out
of the Carrier, jump them to the nearest XL SPP, fill them both up
(they had some spare anyway), jump them to me, transfer to the first
one, dock it, transfer to the other one, dock it, mission complete.
Easy when you have ships on hand with large cargo holds.
85,536,279. Petty
Retailer 31%. Profit of just over 190k for a few
minutes scrabbling around, and I got about 1000 ecells over for my own
To do this without the
Apricot ships, you would need to have had 2 or
3 Superfreighters standing by somewhere with jump drives fitted,
at least 12000 cargo capacity or better each, and known where a decent
supply of ecells was. You jump the freighters to get the ecells, jump
them back to you standing by the delivery station, transfer over, dock
it, undock, transfer, dock, transfer, dock, which should cover the
delivery. The killer is the distance between the gate and the delivery
station, the nearest gate and the ecells, and how fast your ships are.
31 minutes is not a lot of time, but should be doable if your ships are
standing by somewhere and ready to jump. After you finish the delivery,
2 of those ships will need ecells replaced for their jump drives to
work. So you do need to buy more than you need.
Final Fury Mission 14.
Death and Glory again in
Khaak sector 931. 2,247,500 and bounty.
assassin 33%, 2nd Lieutenant 93%.
Just for the hell of it,
I took out the station as well.
Random jump to Menalaus
Oasis. Well it was supposed to be, but I ended
up in the Unknown Sector next door instead. 57 Silicon roid in there,
Jump on
a whim to Scale Plate Green.
Xenon attack
imminent, 1,623,544 to help out. Sign me up.
J's and P's jump in
progressively through the south gate, with support
fighters. Nothing I cant handle these days.
95,898,380, assassin 42%.
You get the drift of the
missions by now ? On average, they have 2
enemy M1 or M2's, with corvettes and fighters. Sometimes in 2 distinct
fleets, sometimes spread out all over the place. The capitals pay 1.5
to 2 mill each, and the corvettes around 150k each. So the more of the
bigger ships you take out, the bigger your pay out in any sector where
bounty is paid. As you can see, I'm steadily earning 4-5 mill for each
such mission, because I'm taking out all the bigger ships myself.
[Note: May have been changed in the 1.4 patch.]
This does vary according
to your ranks, but assassin isn't very high.
The higher your combat rank, the more opposition you get.
Ironically, this works
against you in the Final Fury missions, since at
the lowish rank I am, the missions are already difficult for someone in
an M7. If you are significantly higher in rank when you start, the
numbers of enemy go up significantly. Mind you, so do the potential
payouts for taking them all out.
Final Fury Mission 15.
Death or Glory again.
SOB. 2,267,500 plus bounty.
101,612,820, assassin
48%m Lieutenant 25%.
Passenger Ferry
Jump to Black Hole Sun.
Someone wants passengers
taken to the Silicon Mine Beta in the Unknown
Sector I know so well. 229,180 in 22 minutes. Beam out the Gunbus,
transfer over, dock. Jump to the Unknown Sector, dock at the mine,
mission complete. Ironically, this one said it was very hard and turned
out to be a cakewalk. A few fighters on the way, bu they couldn't catch
me. In a slow badly armed freighter, this might have been hard, but why
take a slow badly armed freighter ? Passengers use cargo space though,
so you might not have the option, as most M6's don't have enough cargo
space to do much of anything in that line of work. Hence why I created
the M6 Heavy Transport in the first place.
Jump back to BHS, and
just before reaching the M2, a Pirate group jump
in, Osprey and Eclipses and support, and so I divert to take them out.
Nice fighting in the Gunbus again. I do miss it sometimes.
Final Fury Mission 16.
Recalled and I jump
directly into the middle of an attack on M148.
2,430,504 to defend the sector. I went straight for the nearest
Carrier, but the lag was terrible, so had little control and just had
to let the turrent's do their own thing. I missed taking out the second
Carrier, there was a M2 over that side of the sector which must have
gotten it while I was bogged down fly swotting.
When they are all dead,
new orders come in, as another battlegroup has
jumped in directly next to the Military Base (and consequently one
irate Split Commander) and your ordered to defend the base. Fortunately
I'm not too far away, so it doesn't take too much damage before I get
there. But there are 2 Destroyers and several corvettes in this
battlegroup, so some damage to the station is inevitable. Beware the
station. The M2's are very close to it, and the last thing you need
right now is to accidently fire on the station as well. If need be,
pull away from the station, and come in at an angle so your firing away
from it. Or get between the station and the Khaak before firing. Not
necessarily easy given how close the M2's are and how much of a hurry
you are in to kill them.
Note : Beware turrent
scripts in situations like this. The scripts tend
to be a lot more likely to hit a station by mistake, and if you turn it
red, you need a pirate base to turn it blue again and the hacking costs
money. The standard game turrent scripts are not very intelligent, but
they are also much less likely to hit a station. The more lag you get,
the more likely a hit too, so if your lagging badly, stay away from
friendly stations.
All done, and a huge
118,724,635. 17 million
payout for a single mission !!!
That's worth a drink to
celebrate, but theres no time. Immediate
recall. I was so close to the station I just hit the autodock without
Final Fury Mission 17.
"Sacrifice your life if
you must" is the order, but the final offensive
is at hand. Jump into Khaak Sector 926 and waste it.
There are 3 Khaak
stations in here, each with 3 Guardians, which seem
to be the Khaak equivalent of Orbital Defense Stations.
The orders are to take
out the Guardians, and then take out the
stations. Plenty of Khaak support craft around so it takes a while.
The last station has to
be done last, and when its gone, you get a huge
congratulations and no pay. Wtf ? Nothing at all !
I guess they thought by
this time you were committed to the cause and
didn't need paying, or else the budget was depleted by that huge payout
the mission before. As it turns out, after all that, one is just ready
to be committed. Bring on the lads in white coats.
Its game time 23:33:33,
and the Terran and Khaak campaigns are now
I'm now Vindicator 17%,
still Lieutenant 25%, so no rank improvement
for the last mission either.
1152 total kills,
including 2 traffic accidents.
This includes : 693
Scouts, 97 Interceptors, 165 Fighters, 45
Corvettes, 13 Clusters (that didn't break up), 11 Guardians, 5
Carriers and 9 Destroyers.
After all the activity
of the last few days, I took a day off !
Time for some
housekeeping. I beamed the M7 and both M6's back to the
Carrier, and then beamed over myself. Then checked each ship for cargo,
and transferred it all to the Carrier. Ships I intend to keep got new
names. Those ships needing upgrades or equipment got added to a list of
what I needed (all the ships from the Terrans need something), and
anything I had already, got put on the appropriate ship. The Vidar had
the most need, being 200mj shields, so I took 5 of them off a Mule.
Leaves it a bit vulnerable, but the Vidar has a bigger need at this
On a
whim, I jumped to Kingdom End. What I was looking for wasn't
there, which gives me info at any rate. More about that later.
A distress call comes in
from some Boron. "Hello I need urgent help".
Now who can resist a Boron in distress ? (No jokes about causing them
distress please !). This ones name is Mahi Ma.
Turns out the Boron has
moron friends who have gone sightseeing in the
Xenon sectors. Will I go find them ? (Their remains I would think).
Well....who can resist a Boron in distress ? (I said no jokes please).
Hub Mission 1.
Fly to Xenon Core 023.
Figures, total other side of the universe.
So I jumped in. Not a
good place to be. And I suddenly realized I was
in the M1, and not the M2. Could be nasty. I started a search pattern,
keeping away from the main Xenon patrols. After doing a full circuit of
the sector, with no 'guidance', I began to think something was wrong.
A that point, I jumped
in the M2, swapped over, jumped the M1 back to
Omicron, and then took out the sector defenses. Why muck around ? Maybe
the poor fools are hiding and wont come out until the defense is gone ?
But no, nothing. "Fly to
....", fly to. I wonder.
Jump to Xenon 598, south
gate, being the entrance to Xenon space if one
was flying the whole way. Ah, guidance arrows. Follow the arrows, but
deviate a bit to take out the sector defense and slurp. Through the
gate into Xenon 627, same thing.
Now the gate to Xenon
Core 023, and hello, what just happened ?
This is NOT 023 ! This
is the inside of a small Dyson Sphere, with what
looks like 6 different gates around the walls. A few Xenon ships in
here, and hey, I capped an L. And shortly after, 2 M's. Claimed them
and beamed them in.
There is some sort of
facility here as well, but the only other thing
showing is a blue dot on the nav.
When I get really close
to the blue dot, which proves to be ship
debris, an automatic log reacts and sends 5 messages from Julian
Gardner. Knowing his reputation, yes, he's the sort of fool that would
go exploring the Xenon sectors. No sign of him though, or anyone with
him, which includes notable Boron, BalaGi.
Mission 2.
Instructions now to go get Mahi Ma. Jump
to Kingdoms End, one stupid
Boron jumps out the airlock and then does everything he can to avoid
being picked up. *sigh*
Jump back to the Unknown
Sector I just found.
Mahi Ma hacks into the
facility and gets docking clearance. So I dock
at what turns out to be some sort of Xenon Hub. Yonder Boron scampers
into the facility and then announces he needs 400 computer components
to get it operational again. 400 ? That's a serious lot of them !
I change into the Mule,
set the M2 to patrol, and jump to Omicron.
There I change into the Gunbus. Now I've got a head start as I have 63
computer components already on the Carrier, having been slurped up at
some point in my travels. See, never pays to sell things too quickly,
never know when you might need them.
Now, there are several
ways of getting that many components. The first
is to go find them. The second is to buy enough microchips and sit in a
computer factory while it makes them, and the third is to buy several
factories and make them yourself. I don't want to do the latter, not
yet, as I'm still putting off building the first complex.
So I start looking at
Argon sectors looking for computer factories.
Omicron had a factory with 134, good start. But no-where else around
has any, but I notice from the best buys, that some of the Trading
Stations stock them.
I jump to Cloud Base
South West, which is one place in the universe you
do not want to jump a capital ship into while your there. Its so jam
packed with asteroids that navigation for anything big is a serious
From there I jump into
each Argon sector and check for computer
stations and the trading bases. By the time I've covered all the core
Argon sectors, I'm nearly to target, but theres no more. However, there
was some microchips so I go get them, and take them to a computer
factory and shortly after selling it some ecells as well, I have my 400
computer components. In the meantime while the last were made, I jumped
in a Mule with some replacement ecells and jump the Mule back to the
Jump back to the Unknown
Sector, and dock at the Hub. Transfer the
computer components over, and now we have full access to the facility.
Now he wants 500
This is difficult. I've
already seen there are none to be had.
First jump to Omicron,
as chips need meatstakes and silicon to produce
and I have both I can see a factory.
Jump to Nathans Voyage
as it has a chip factory.
And jump straight into a
Xenon attack. Worse, a K jumps in directly
behind me and damn near collides with me. I turn on it and take it out
as fast as I can, being so close I'm not sure any of its guns can even
bear on me. Whatever reason, it doesn't get a shot off at me.
Not only Xenon, but
pirates as well, and suddenly I have a Nova cap
turned blue. I slurp the bailed pilot and keep on after the Xenons.
When the furball dies down, I claim the Nova, and repair its hull while
the Carrier jumps in, beam it onto the carrier and jump it out again.
Another Q jumps in at
that moment, so another furball starts up. When
that's over, I dock at the chip factory, transfer over some ecells,
silicon and meatsteaks and it starts making chips. (Steak and chips,
The factory starts
lighting up like a christmas tree, so I undock and
find another Q on top of me, and the place full of Xenon again. I take
out the Q, then find a quiet spot and jump in the M7, transfer over,
and send the Gunbus back to the chip factory. But it takes a while to
dock, as Xenon keep interrupting it, and I have to pick them off its
When the place is again
quiet and the last container is slurped, I find
that I have over a 1000 units of massom powder on board. What to do
with it ? A small digression into Slit space by jumping into Family
Zyarth, where I still have a satellite, and sell it at the trading
station using the Mule that is still docked to the M7. Then I notice 2
chip factories, one of which has some, so I dock there and buy them,
and stock it up as well.
This is going to take a
long time ! Chip factories are slow producers,
making 2 at a time.
118,351,005 and making
chips 4 at a time. This is not fun.
Time to
bite the bullet and make that complex.
Complex building 101.
There are 4 sizes of
stations. Unlettered, which produce at a standard
rate, M which produce at twice the standard rate, L which product at 5
times the standard rate and XL which produce at 10 times the standard
Most armaments, shields
and hard goods factories are standard ones. All
food and mines, including spaceweed and Spacefuel, come in M and L
sizes. Solar Power Plants come in M up to XL sizes and Crystal Fabs
only come in M size.
The most important thing
is to make sure you are buying stations that
are compatible, size wise. For example, Cattle Ranches make meat for
Cahoona Bakeries. So if the Cahoona Bakery is an L, and the Cattle
Ranch is an M, the Cahoona Bakery is going to be running short of
resources all the time.
Its even more important
with SPP's.
Now, from X2, came the
term "closed loop". This is where each factory
makes for the next one around the loop, so that the final product is
made solely from what is made by your own factories, and thus costs you
nothing to make, except for the investment in the factories themselves
and the ships to get the goods moved where needed.
In X3, the ships were
replaced by piping as stations became joined into
complexes, with a single complex hub for docking. TC continues with
this theme.
A "closed loop complex"
is a complex where everything is produced in
the complex.
An SPP closed loop
complex contains an SPP, secondary food, primary
food, silicon and crystal fabs. The silicon feeds the fabs, the fabs
produce crystals, the SPP uses the crystals to produce ecells, which
get used to power all the stations, the secondary food is used by the
primary food and the primary food is used by the fabs. To get it going,
you need a primary infusion of a lot of ecells (in which case ecell
production will occur last), or a good quantity of crystals (in which
case ecells get produced first).
Food varies according to
the race you buy the stations from. If you mix
races stations, you may have to double up on food, as each race only
eats its own food.
To make a closed loop
complex for microchips, and I don't do any other
kind myself as I cant be bothered mucking around with ships darting
around fetching stuff and crashing into things every time they cross a
sector I'm in, one needs a good sized SPP loop, and extra silicon. I'm
thinking 5 microchip factories, and the excess in meatsteaks from the
SPP should be enough to cater for them too.
In deciding where to
build your complex, you need to take a few things
into account. Does the sector have the high yield roids to support a
big complex ? Does the race owning the sector think anything you want
to make is illegal ? Is there a primary market close at hand for the
product you will make, and any overproduction of the secondary
resources ?
The primary need at this
point is microchips, but once we have 500, you
cant just turn the stations off, they will keep making them. Therefore
we do need a local market. The Argon, as I already know, need
Microchips for all their computer components factories, and the local
market didn't have any microchips, so core Argon space is a good place.
Antigone Memorial has
both ore and silicon high yield roids, within
complexing distance so they don't need to be moved.
Decision made. Jump to
Antigone Memorial, west gate.
Jump the TL to Legends
Home, being the best place for Argon stations.
Now, most TL's will carry 2 or 3 stations and a couple of complex kits
at most. So in making a large complex, you will need to continuously
jump it back and forth between the growing complex and which ever
Shipyard your buying from. The Apricot TL uses compression technology
much more efficiently and can store a lot more stations, so I wont need
to do this.
Spend money time ! I buy
a Silicon Mine L, 3 Cahoona Bakeries L, 3
Cattle Ranches L, 1 SPP XL, 5 Crystal Fab M, 5 Chip Plants, 1 Ore L, 1
1mj Shield factory, and 19 Complex construction kits.
I also bought 2 Wheat
farms L and 2 Distillery L's and complex kits.
WARNING : Argon
Whiskey is now illegal in Argon Space. In X3R, it was
legal to make it and sell it, just illegal to carry it, but in TC, its
now illegal to make it. So whatever you do, do NOT drop a distillery in
Argon Space, or any other of the Races Space. If you do, Capital ships
will turn up to destroy the station. If your station is in a complex,
you suddenly wont have a complex and anything stored on the hub, like
ships, will be destroyed too. You then have the cost of replacing all
of the complex kits and redoing all the joining.
Jump the TL to AM south
gate and move it a little away from the gate.
SAVE. Cant stress this
too much. Building a complex the first time has
all sorts of things that can go wrong, and its best to save often, so
you can reload and do it again if you screw up. The more often you
save, the less you have to redo, but if you use more than 10 saves, it
might be best to copy them to a safe place, before you start
overwriting them, just in case you decide to go back and start again
from the beginning.
On the TL's command
menu, special commands has the Drop Station
command. Press that, and select the Silicon Mine.
Your nav map pops up,
with a list of the roids. Choose one of the 2
Silicon roids with the 61 yield (or the highest yield Silicon roid you
have available if your somewhere else). Watch the cut scene of the TL
and the new factory.
Now do the same with the
Ore Mine, on one of the 90 yield Ore roids.
As it happens, these 2
stations are about as far apart as we need to
get with the complex, and too far away to actually join, as the join
distance is 20km in any direction from the hub.
A hub is created with
the first join, and can be positioned anywhere
within that 20km radius of both stations, 3 dimensionally. This is the
docking place for all ships, and the only reference point that shows up
on the nav map.
Now we need to drop the
stations. The biggest of the lot is the SPP XL,
so select that on the TL.
The nav map pops up, and
you will see a green flashing icon of the
station appear on the map somewhere near your TL. DON'T press enter at
this point, or you will drop the station where you don't want it.
Press the Insert key.
This shifts the map into X-Y mode and gives you
height of the sector. 8,2,4,6 on your numeric keypad give you
positioning ability, so press the 8 or 2 to get the icon to line up
with one of the existing mines. I like to build a complex all in a
single plane, and I do it along the Y axis. The 2 roids are slightly
off, but you can select a midpoint.
Press Insert again to
return to X-Z mode. Now use the 8 key to push the
icon up the nav map until its around the mines. Press the Home key once
to zoom the map in, and then move the icon around into the biggest
blank space among the asteroids. Where it will crash into something
else, the icon will jump about. While you are doing this, a ghost image
of the station is moving about in space, but its hard to see through
the nav map. If you get your ship in the right place, you can see
exactly where the station is, but not always.
At this level of zoom,
which varies according to how big the sector is,
and AM is pretty small, normal stations can have the icons just
touching and not be too close together. Mines need a bit more space. If
you get the stations too close together, their shields grind on each
other and if you spend enough time in sector, eventually the stations
rubbing will explode along with the hub. Space out too much, and its
much harder to join them.
Find a place where the
station seems happy, and press enter to drop it,
and watch the cut scene.
Keep doing this with all
the stations. I made a neat row of stations
from the Silicon roid along to adjacent the Ore roid, then filled in
around the Ore roid, then around the silicon roid, and then in between.
Theres a few roids in there that make it tricky in the middle. But I
mainly got everything lined up in 3 rows. A few things are a bit close,
but seem ok.
Don't worry about big
bangs, That's just minor roids being destroyed as
the stations are built. As long as the station isn't rubbing a roid,
your safe.
Now for joining. Theres
an art to making complexes span big distances,
and its all to do with the placement of hubs.
In the TL, select a
Complex Construction Kit, and on the nav map,
select the silicon mine. The nav map pops up again, and this time,
select a station on the south side towards the center, to join it to,
or the one furthest away it will reach.
The nav map pops up
again, and this time it has a station hub icon. Hit
Insert to go into Y mode, and move the hub icon up or down about 7 to
10km above or below the plane of the complex stations. The reason for
this is so that your hub is well away from anything that may obstruct
docking with it. In this case, it needs to be well away from the other
roids as well as your stations, but not so far that nothing will join
with it because its to far away. Press Insert again, and now position
the hub icon about in line with the west gate, a little right of center
of the block of stations, and press enter. Cut scene of hub.
Do the same with the Ore
roid, and a station around the center, making
a second hub, also in line with the west gate, but on the left side of
center. The hubs need to be close enough to join, but far enough away
so that all the stations can join with one of them.
Once its placed, save,
then start joining all the stations to one of
the 2 hubs, selecting the hub first, then a station. You will notice
that not all the stations will be joinable to each hub, which is why we
made 2 of them. As you do, look at the cut scenes of the hubs, and
choose which one has the better access to it as this is the one we will
When only the 2 hubs are
left, select the hub you want to keep first
and join the other one to it. After the cut scene you should have a
single hub, stuck out from your complex, easy to dock at without
hitting anything.
If by any chance this is
not the case, you can move the hub by adding
more stations, making a new hub for the new stations, then joining the
hubs again choosing the new one first.
Its vitally important to
get the hub free of obstructions. When you are
in the sector, any ships trying to dock will hit anything that is
around the dock and explode. The tubes themselves are a traffic menace
and its best to only have a single tube rising straight up to the dock,
than have the dock somewhere in the mess of tubes.
Also the docking ports
are always on the south side of the hub, so
having the hub in the north of the sector makes access for ships easier.
If your hub has
asteroids around it at its height, has a station at the
same height to the south of it, or is near a gate, then the chances are
you just created a ship destroyer. It does not matter if you never go
in that sector again, but you rarely get that luxury, and in this case,
the complex will grow.
I cant stress enough
that the hub must we well clear of any
obstruction, and preferably with a clear unobstructed lane from each
Congratulations, you
have spaghetti and meatballs ! Your first complex.
First thing to do now is
save again, then rename your complex. Now jump
yourself out of the sector, which by now is probably lagging badly.
Press R and open up the
complex in your properties list.
The list in
U-information, will show you the products it makes, and the
resources its producing to make them, with the time of each cycle for
each factory.
The whole thing blinks
yellow, because as yet, it cant start making
If you have any silicon,
crystals or meatsteaks (primary food), then
jump them in and load onto the complex hub. Crystals will get things
started, as will ecells if you have spare, and cahoonas allow the fabs
to start as soon as they have ecells and silicon, which needs ecells.
Dock a freighter to the
complex hub, make the hub its homebase.
Transfer some credits to the hub, (say half a mill) and then send the
freighter off to buy ware for best price, ecells. Before you do, set
the number of jumps for the complex to zero (for now) (using the d
command), since there are ecells in AM.
The freighter will keep
buying ecells while you monitor, and should be
stopped once the SPP is making enough to keep ahead of demand. (If the
sector your in has crystals in it, or nearby, you can buy crystals
instead, but this is the high cost option.)
I'm concentrating on a
complex that achieves a few objectives, not just
the microchips, so if all you want at this point is the chips, then
ignore the ore and shields. They will only suck up ecells and take a
bit longer for the complex to become functional. (As in, do not drop
them, or even buy them, until you want them.)
On the complex hub,
press D. Set the jumps to zero (if you haven't
yet), races to trade to yes, Intermediate product trading to None.
Monitor the credit usage, as you may need to add a lot more before it
settles down. Intermediate products are crystals and food, that are
used by other products. Ecells are also an intermediate product. If you
allow them to be sold, you can run out and the whole complex grinds to
a halt. If you allow them to be bought, your wasting credits on
something your making anyway.
Also in this menu, set
the price of microchips to maximum, since for
now, we do not want to sell them. If you did other products like I did,
set them to Average (shown) minus 1, so that traders will start to come
and buy them. This does take a while, so don't fret if it doesn't
happen immediately. As long as traders can make 1 profit, they will
come and buy, assuming there is a local market for what your selling.
When the SPP is
producing happily, stop the freighter, and tell it to
sell for best price, Ore instead. The ore mine will overproduce, so
it's a source of income. Set the hub to a jump range of 4. Any more and
the freighter will go into pirate areas, which is dangerous. In any
case, using a freighter like the Mistral is best, since it carries some
teeth. The further the jumps you allow, the longer it takes to sell,
and the more likely your ship will suffer some sort of demise.
The ships I left at chip
plants have chips to buy, but the plants have
now stopped producing again. Buy what's there and jump them to the Hub,
and then move them onto the ship you want to deliver them on. Leave it
there at the hub.
23,075,269 + 837,020.
The latter is the hub, making credits from ore
sales. (500k of that was left in there for expense money).
Now we need some sector
I sent the Vidar,
Cutlass and Claymore to the EQ dock in Omicron for
upgrades. Then sent the Claymore to Venus for missiles, and the Vidar
down to the M2 to collect some compatible guns I'd slurped at some
stage, then sent it and the Cutlass to AM to defend the complex hub.
The Claymore will join them when it gets a load of missiles.
I also sold the Nova.
The Nova covered the cost of the upgrades.There
is a point where adding stations to a complex overloads its logistics.
I added a Silicon mine to the 2nd 61 yield roid, and that did it. The
ecell count started declining with every cycle.
So I had to add an SPP L
and 3 more Fabs. So had the TL move to the
Omicron shipyard, buy the stations and kits, and jump to AM.
Before jumping there
myself, for safeties sake, I had the sector
defenses and traders dock. Any sector with a lot of piping is a death
trap for fighters and freighters when your insystem.
Once jumped in, I added
the stations to the complex, then changed the
prices on the products again. Every time you add a station to a
complex, all the prices are reset, so don't forget or suddenly your
sales stop, or you start selling what you wanted to keep.
1,386,162 + 1,602,934.
As you can see, complex building is expensive
when you do a big one all at once. 100 chips collected so far.
Jump back to Omicron and
change into the Carrier. Activate the sector
defense in AM again and get the freighters moving.
The Claymore has arrived
at its destination while I was mucking around
with stations, and the station is dry of missiles. Run it to the next
place stocking its missiles, and that too is dry. I also notice that I
don't have the rank to buy them anyway. Pretty useless ship, with a
single 2 gun turrent and no missiles available. For the moment, I jump
it to AM to join the other 2 as sector defense, although its about as
useful as a freighter. Maybe it will get lucky.
drained the account, its time to fill it up again, so I jump to
Home of Light and dock at the Terracorp Headquarters.
Terracorp HQ is
a very useful place. It doesn't look it until you dock.
What it does not show from the outside is what it buys, and that is all
missiles and most guns. It does not buy drones, ammunition or
It does have limits on
how much it will buy of each product at a time,
but it's a bottomless pit. So if you have 100 of something they buy in
20s, you just sell them 20, 5 times.
By the time I've sold
everything they will buy, I've got a respectable
total in the account again.
19,338,342 + 2,789,755.
About 18 million worth of picked up oddments on
various battlefields and that still leaves an assortment of stuff in
the cargo hold.
Checked the complex, and
now its very short on meatsteaks. So I jumped
in another Cahoona Bakery and Cattle Ranch, and then changed the prices
again. Its still only adequate, but no longer holding other things up.
While there, I
transferred the complex credits to the ship account. It
doesn't need any anymore, so the account can be emptied from time to
19,708,852 + 217,660.
Jump to
M148. Its time to think about using those marines, especially
as I have time waiting for chips to cook.
Boarding 102.
Both Military bases in
M148 stock docking pods. The docking pod is a
far better way of landing troops, because it has the speed of an M5. It
gets them to target very quickly, which means the shields only need to
be down as long as it takes them to get in the hull. Pods are single
use only, so best to stock up with a few of them.
The bases carry 2 each.
But they are made on demand at the base, so if
you shuttle between the 2 bases, you can basically buy as many as you
want. I get 8.
19,062,004 + 384,870.
I jump to Loomanstrats
Legacy looking for a pirate to board. And yes,
theres a Galleon near the pirate base.
I go after it, take out
the escorts first then go for the shields of
the Galleon. And suddenly its dust. Oops.
Lets run that again.
Save, reload, take out the escorts. Turn the
turrent's off except for the front turrent, lower its shields, fire the
pod, and ......the front turrent kills the Galleon. Reload, ditto, use
the rear turrent to bring down the shields, fire the pod, dust. Huh ?
The rear turrent did not have a bead on the target, and still, it
killed the target after the pod was fired.
Reload, get out the M7,
ditto the escort, take down the shields, fire
the pod, and the turrent's kill the ship.
Conclusion : The only
ships supposed to be able to fire a boarding pod
is the M7M, M6 and selected TP's. In order to stop people from modding
ships to use the Pod, the devs have built in that any active turrent on
a non-standard boarding ship will fire on and destroy the target.
Doesn't matter if the turrent cant actually fire in that direction, it
fires anyway !
Which explains the M7M
and the TP's, which have no forward firing guns.
Reload from the save
after galleon dust and jump into Mi Tons Refuge,
and find a Brigatine by the south gate.
I move well away from
it, and beam out my M7 and my M7M. I shift to the
M7 and go take out the escort, and lower its shields. Then race back
and swap into the M7M, which has Ion disrupters in the rear turrent.
Run back to the Brigatine, and race past so it cant get a bead on me,
and allow the Ions to bring its shields back down so I can fire a pod
at it. Except the shields don't come down, and I'm getting hammered.
The Ions are either not firing or totally ineffective on shields on cap
I go back to the M7,
swap everything over, turn off the turrent's and
go back. I fit an ion to the 4 group, and start firing it at the
Brigatine when in range, and it's a bit like pissing on a house fire
for all the effect it has. Drop that out, go back to 4 PBE's. Drop its
shields and do a bit more hull damage, get close and fire off the pod.
Then get out of range asap.
The Marines, all fully
trained, break in, I hear the running commentary
of the takeover and suddenly I own a Brigatine with absolutely nothing
on it. I transfer over a few shields and a jumpdrive and ecells, and
jump it to AM for safe keeping. At some point, its worth fixing up.
I lost 2 marines taking
Overall, the M7M looks
dead useless. If you don't have a missile load
for it, its basically defenseless and as a ship for boarding
operations, you don't want to be in it. Like the TP's, it's a remote
vessel for boarding, useless for bringing down shields and keeping them
down long enough for troops to get in. I wont be using mine for
boarding, but may consider using it as a bomber. The rate I pick up
missiles, I can keep it stocked up, but its real use is probably as a
sector defense. Without missiles, its pretty useless.
All Apricot ships can
fire Pods though, as long as you turn off the
turrent's first.
Still in the M7, I did a
run around the sectors in that region looking
for Pirates. I found a few fighter groups and capped a Blastclaw, but
not much else. Loaded the cap on the Carrier and moved north.
In Napilios Memorial, I
found an assassination mission for 6,921,665
with 11 minutes to do it, in Dannas Chance. The target was in a big
group of Pirates, so identified him, targeted and blew him away before
he knew he was targeted. He was flying an M6 in a group of 4 of them,
with fighter escorts. The group wasn't much of a challenge.
25,983,669 + 2,511,092.
200 chips done.
Feeling bored, I jumped
into Xenon 101.
Nice old furball, took
the shields down and did some damage to a J, and
then left it alone for later. When everything else close was dust, I
took its shields down again, and sent over a pod. They got inside, up 2
decks and got wasted by the defenses. Obviously needed more than 5
marines, and I didn't scan it first to see if it had internal defenses
or marines. Makes note to do that next time.
So I'm down to 12
marines now, with only 1 capture. Just for good
measure and a bit of payback, I took out the shipyard, then cleared the
At the end, I was even
more bored, and still more than half the chips I
need are still to be made. *sigh*
Jump to M148 and buy
another 8 marines, 2 boarding pods and the 2
advanced sats that are sitting there doing nothing. Start the new
marines training.
Its 1-12:36, 25,468,340
+ 3,164,463 credits and 230 chips made.
Petty Retailer 50%,
Warlord 36% and 1439 kills.
I jumped the carrier to
AM and topped up its ecells from the complex
using a mule. Just a suspicion the Hub will need some, so laying in the
stores since the complex now has spares.
I also then jumped the
Mule to M148 to top up my M7 with ecells and
take back some beef I'd picked up. On its way back, I got it to stop in
the middle of AM and drop one of the sats I just got, giving me
complete coverage of that sector now.
patrol in the Hub sector, so I jumped in and dealt with them. The
M2 undoubtably would have taken them, but such is OOS fighting, it was
losing shields that IS fighting it would not have.
OOS by the way is Out Of
Sector, ie, your not there.
IS is in sector, or you
are there.
The way the game is
designed, these are very important to combat. When
you are in the sector, the combat is much more realistic.
When you are OOS, the
combat is a set of mathematical equations.
Basically speaking, the enemies are weighed up and then applied against
each other. Biggest shield last longest, but biggest guns hit harder.
So it comes down to what's loaded on your ship and what its facing. For
example, a single M2 with PPC's all round will kill a ship each time it
fires in OOS combat, but if its facing 6 ships, then each 'round' sees
them hit the M2 with their heaviest guns, and while they wont kill it,
cumulatively, they will damage it, as each 'round' they lose another
ship. The M2 only fires at a single ship, where in IS it might be
firing at several at once.
Loading your ships has
to be done on the basis of if they will mainly
fight oos, or is. If oos, you always put on the heaviest gun it can
mount. IS, you put on the gun that will kill the ships it will mostly
In OOS, PPC's beat
HEPTS. So in a 1 to 1 clash with equal shields, the
ship with PPC's will win over the ship with HEPTS. (All other things
being equal.)
But in IS, PPC's have a
really hard time hitting an M5, and so enough
M5's with light guns can still take down any PPC loaded ship, as long
as they can cumulatively hit it faster than the shields recharge.
So even if your M2 is
facing M5's, it can take damage, and enough of
them can kill it. This is more likely in OOS, since they all get to hit
at once, where in IS, the shields get a chance to regenerate as ships
move about.
OOS combat is all
mathematical, and has little to do with reality.
Hence me jumping in and
taking them out myself.
The other issue with IS
is of course collision avoidance, or lack
thereof. Anything that moves in the sector your in, is vulnerable to
the auto-pillok, especially the bigger ships. So out I jump as soon as
the xenon are toast, so my M2 wont collide with anything.
Also, there are issues
with avoidance IS by your own ships trying to
fire on something else. The larger your target, the more likely the
auto-pillok on your ships will try to avoid the target before it is in
range of the ships guns and so it will never actually fire on the
target. Alternately, the AP may get it get it wrong and your ship will
simply collide with the target. The joys of wingmen !
Which brings up another
issue. DON'T DON'T DON'T dock or undock a
capital ship with The Hub, while you are IS. The auto-pillok cannot
handle it. The hub looks great but as a dock, its not well designed,
and its non-standard, so the normal dock/undock ship action is actually
terminal for big ships. They will collide and explode, particularly
undocking. So be elsewhere when you do this. For that matter, docking
any capital ship M7 and above should be done while oos, if your not on
it or you are and do not have a docking computer on board.
At this point, I'm
totally bored with combat. It usually happens to me
at some point, and the plot missions so far dictated a lot of fighting.
But now it has no real purpose, its boring. Many people just keep
fighting because that's the game to them and the ultimate goal is being
Xtreme Combat ranked, but that's not me.
I actually like to sit
and watch my complex tick over !
While I do, I do little
things. Like load the Apricot Sirokos with
slurped missiles and attach it to the defense wing with 100% fire
orders. It's a good way of wasting missiles, but it might actually keep
the other ships alive if it kills enemies before they get in range. And
I can always go slurp some more to top it up at any time.
250 chips, half way
there. Silicon is building up, so I set the Caiman
we capped to selling silicon for best price. Looking at the landed
ships list, it appears Boron weapons dealers are buying all the 1mj
shields as fast as they can be produced.
At this point, there are
2 options that a lot of people will think of.
the program run for a long period without you, and doing this
with Seta on.
I actually think running
the program without you being there is like
sleeping. While you sleep, the world keeps doing things, so the X3
universe should also. So in 24 hours of game time, 8-12 hours of it,
should be without you interacting with the game.
The devs don't agree.
They believe you should be hands on all the time,
and that real pilots never sleep.
So, they built in a
penalty. When the program detects that there has
been no player interaction for a specified period, it starts decreasing
your combat and trading ranks. Trading rank decrease may not be
noticeable, because if you have stations or ST/UT traders operating,
then your commerce will increase your trade rank faster than the
inactivity will decrease it. But your combat rank will drop, and
continue to drop as long as the program is left without interaction.
Now personally, I don't
pay any attention to combat rank (other than
documenting it here). Combat rank defines the enemies you will face in
missions, number, type of ships etc, and it defines how much you get
paid. The higher your rank, the more you get against you, and the
bigger and better their ships are. But you get paid more for taking
them out.
So if your combat rank
drops enough, your payments go down, and the
ships you face will grow weaker than you were getting.
Which of course, belies
the stupidity of combat rank. Your rank should
be based solely on your ability, ship and kills, and not be reduced by
anything. Its silly to suggest that doing no killing for a whole game
day, reduces your ability to kill, but in the eyes of the 'missions',
it does exactly that.
And yes, even with
constant interaction, if you go long enough without
a kill, your combat rank will drop.
The next issue then is
Seta. Seta slows down the players ship in a way
that allows the rest of the universe to appear to speed up. So normal
time passes for the player, but everything in the universe around
speeds up and goes faster at the speed you set up in the game options,
default being 6 times faster.
The effect of seta is to
allow game time to pass faster, so if your
waiting for chips to be made, putting seta on will get it done faster,
and so less waiting. This is a constant argument on the forums, where
many people believe this to be cheating. My view is that it's a
legitimate part of the game, especially when you are playing a Trading
Mogul game where combat is to be avoided, and there is nothing much to
do while your complexes make enough credits for the next expansion
However, you have to
read the fine print. The devs really don't like
you doing this, and so in addition to the non-interaction penalty, they
also built in some nasty surprises.
Somewhere in the program
code, is a little test for how long Seta has
been running. Since Seta use by definition is non-interactive, because
as soon as you interact, Seta is turned off, then while seta is on,
your ranks are being reduced. BUT, at some point, your assets start
being attacked as well.
Most people who report
using long periods of seta, also report losing
their Universe and Sector traders as well. Its not uncommon for people
to have a 50%, or more, attrition rate on UT traders. Particularly any
lone ship, seems to be targeted for destruction. But also, its possible
to come back to the game and find your complex hub is destroyed and
even a number of the stations are gone.
Even without seta, the
longer you go without interacting, the more
likely you will hear "One of your ships is under attack, xxxxxx), and
if your not there to jump in and save it, theres a good chance it will
be destroyed.
If your UT is not
destroyed, you may come back and find it was cowering
in some station most of the time you were away and so earning nothing.
Or worse, it was cowering in a station that the God-engine subsequently
destroyed and was destroyed along with it.
The longer you run Seta
for, the more vulnerable your assets seem to
So if you choose to run
seta for long periods, or simply leave the
program running at normal speed for long periods, save first before you
leave, and be prepared to have lost something when you get back. Also
be prepared to find the loss is too high to pay, and a reload is
necessary, losing the entire time you were gone.
While making chips, I've
actually been sitting in front of the computer
letting it run itself, reading a book, with the sector music playing in
the background and an ear out for warning announcements. I leave the
complex info up, and periodically move chips to the Gunbus. Sometimes
have seta on, sometimes not.
So fast
forward to 1-19:00 and 500 chips are now complete and on the
Gunbus ready to deliver. 24,828,692 + 10,867,157. The drop in ship
credits is misleading, as that was the effect of transferring ecells
from the complex to the Carrier earlier. The Mule had to buy them from
the complex same as any other ship, and this lowered the player account
and raised the complex account. There is no money lost, just moved.
Change the price of
chips to avg - 1, so npc ships can now buy them.
Jump the Gunbus to the
Hub in the Unknown Sector, dock it, then jump in
myself and also dock. Then transfer the chips to the hub, 250 at a
Hub 3.
Maha Mi has stuff to say
after that and then asks you to repair 3
capacitors with your suit repair laser. So undock, target the first and
fly to it, eject, get into range of the capacitor and fire your laser
until its hull is repaired. Get back in your ship, go to the next,
repeat, then repeat. Just be careful of Xenon, since they still have
access to this sector.
Fly back into com range
of the Hub and talk to Maha Mi again.
You now get 2 tasks to
do, but 3 appear on the mission list.
The first task is to
realign the working gate pair. This will
effectively stop the xenon from getting in, because your moving these
gates somewhere else. However, as you get told, this is permanent, so
choose wisely where to move them to. With the Hub targeted, there will
be a Gate realignment option available. Select the gate you want to
'redirect'. It takes about 2 minutes to complete, and during that time,
I had Xenon jumping in to deal with, and in fact capped an N and
repaired its hull.
I selected the south
gate of Antigone Memorial, so joining the Hub
sector with where my complex is. Its also a fairly busy jump gate with
a lot of Argon and Boron ships going through. So the other side of it
is The Hole north gate.
The next task is a bit
of a shock. Deliver 150,000 Teladianium.
But on the mission list,
theres a worse one : Deliver 450,000 Ore.
The whole point of this
is obviously to ensure you are building a
pretty big complex. And that the full hub isn't available to you until
well into the game. Nothing for it, but to get on with it.
First I transferred all
credits to the ship account.
Now, there are 3 ways of
doing this. You can send ships out to buy
Telad and Ore, you can make it yourself, or you can get some on the
Hub, then offer an above average price for it and let the npc ships
bring it to you.
All of them cost credits.
I jumped the TL to
Siezewell and docked it at the shipyard. Then bought
5 Teladianium foundry's and complex kits. Then jumped it to Legend's
Home, and loaded on 4 Ore mine L's and 2 Silicon mine L's and kits.
Then jumped it to AM and docked all the small ships there for safety.
Then followed myself. 23,550,007.
I added all but the
Silicon mines to the complex, and then rechanged
the prices, putting the Telad on max. Then jumped out again, and reset
the defenses.
I didn't add the silicon
mines because I first want to monitor the
ecell production, as I suspect its again not enough. And yes, sure
enough its now slowly decreasing again, although being in the 70k
range, it will take a while to run out.
I set a Mule to running
Telad from the complex to the TL, being as the
Mule can actually dock, and the TL had more than enough room for all
the Telad I need, which means I can dock it at the Hub and transfer it
all in one go. Not really necessary, but hey, I like delivering in one
go. Also set another mule to do the same with Ore. Once the Telad is
delivered, I'll switch the Mules to running Ore direct to the Hub. In
the meantime, the complex is using the whole ore stock of the sector to
produce it for me, while we first wait for and deliver the Telad.
Just got to keep my eye
on the ecells. At some point, and especially
before I can complete the complex by adding the 2 silicon mines, I'll
probably have to add another SPP L loop. So need to ensure I have the
credits for that when I need them.
The other thing to do is
start thinking about Mobile Mining. That's
such a huge lot of ore, that just waiting for it to be produced is
going to take a really long time. Unless one was to complex most of Ore
Belt that is and I don't even want to go in there for lag reasons.
Mobile Mining will take a bit of pondering. In X2 it was hugely useful.
In X3, it was totally useless. The next step while waiting for Telad to
be produced is to see what they have done with it in TC.
Mobile Mining Options.
Manual mobile mining
requires you to be in a TS capable of mounting a
Mining gun. Theres only 3 or so that can do this. You also need an Ore
Collector fitted.
The procedure goes like
this. Find a sector filled with the smaller
chunky asteroids, that do not show up on the nav map. Target one. Fire
the mining gun at it (at very close range) until it breaks up. Target
each piece, and see if it is collectable. If not, fire at it to break
it up further. Target the next piece. And so on until all the roids
around you are collectable. Then collect them as you would a container
or Astronaut by running them down.
Easy in theory. In
practice, you end up destroying more than you will
collect, and if you hit anything still big enough, it could destroy you.
So, you can use an M5
and small guns to break up the roids, then jump
out and give a TS with an Ore Collector, collect orders on the mess
left behind. Then get it out of the way, while you jump back in and
break more. Don't get a TS to collect dirt while you are IS, as it will
collide with the first uncollectable roid and explode. Murphy's Law.
All in all though, its
long hard work for very little, since the act of
breaking up the roids inevitably destroys too many of them.
The next option is "Mine
Minerals" on the Special Menu, assuming you
have special software 1 installed on a ship with a mining gun and ore
collector. You tell it a sector to mine, what to mine, and a station to
deliver it to (your complex ?).
I set the Camel that was
on patrol, to Mine Minerals instead,
specifying Ore. At least, it will clean up AM a bit, and make it less
of a traffic hazard. Cloud Base South West, Kingdom End and Ore Belt
are all good sectors to mine this way, CBSW especially as it's a
nightmare to navigate in anything big.
The other alternative is
a script called Prospector. It needs a TL, TS
or M6, Fight 1 & 2, Ore Collector, Mineral Scanner, Mobile Drilling
System in a turrent, Nav 1, Special 1 and optionally a Jumpdrive and
Transporter. It has a lot of options, and you pay a pilot to mine for
you, and what he can do grows as he gains experience.
still watching my complex, and ecells are going down again. So I
need to put another SPP L, with its supply stations into the complex.
That reduces me to
1,529,217 + 3,581,902.
Having done that, its
not enough. The balance of the complex is off,
too many stations needing ecells and the supply cannot quite keep up.
There is now a slow decline, and eventually, it will grind to a halt.
Probably before I have enough to add the extra stations to keep it
It's a little hard to
judge, but I suspect there is not quite enough
meatsteaks being produced to keep the crystal fabs at full production,
and so not enough crystals to keep the SPP's at full production. At a
guess, I'd say it needs another cattle, cahoona, 1 or 2 fabs, and
probably another SPP L with a cattle/cahoona/3fabs. All that is over 25
mills worth, and not a happening thing at the moment.
and the first 5000 telad is ready. 145,000 to go.
At this point I took a
chainsaw to the script running this plot.
I guess I can understand
the reasoning of where this is going.
Ultimately, the player ends up with an HQ capable of building ships, by
the time you finish the next main plot. What this plot is doing is
forcing you to put together the industry to supply your HQ with
materials to build your own ships. And consequently making you become a
trading enterprise in spite of the fact that the majority of players
prefer to just fight and not trade. But if you want your Hub, you first
have to think about trade and then build a huge trading empire, to get
Fair enough. Yank,
I've done two
alternative scripts. A Very Easy Plot that means you can
gather the resources needed very quickly. And a Medium Plot for those
who do want to make it harder, but not take a century to achieve. Your
choice if you continue with the vanilla plot, or use a cut down
version. If you go for the cutdowns, you are stuck delivering whatever
task your up to, but the new version will be used for the next mission
So at this point, I
scripted in 150,000 Telad into my Apricot TL (in 3
goes), docked it at the Hub and transferred it over.
Hub 4.
Note : The following requirements vary
from patch to patch, these are for v2.1.
You then get asked to
deliver Ore. (450,000).(In brackets being what
the vanilla plot asks for).
When you have delivered
the Ore, Mahi Ma continues making repairs and
you need to wait to be contacted again.
At this point I put a
satelite in the Hub sector, so I had coverage of
the whole sector all the time.
Next you need to deliver
Nividium. (500).
Then Crystals.
(250,000). (At a guess, if you mined most of Ore Belt
for the ore earlier, and added in 100 fabs now, you might have the
crystals ready for christmas in about 5 years. *sigh*)
When you do deliver the
Crystals, Mahi Ma suddenly realizes he needs
some help. So you need to jump to Priests Pity and talk to a Paranid
called Otmanckstras. After he gives you the standard Paranid insult, he
further insults you by demanding credits. (15 mill.)
When you pay him by
comming him again, dock at the Trading Dock, and
then take him to the Hub.
Once at the Hub, Mahi Ma
then ask for a delivery of Silicon. (400,000).
Safety Tip : Never
undock with your joystick throttle full on !
When you deliver the
Silicon, you will be asked for another lot of
Microchips. (75,000). (Given how long it took to make the last lot of
500, one could realistically expect to be senile before you finish
delivering these.)
Once you deliver the
chips, the work is finished and the other 2 gate
pairs are ready to be assigned.
Mahi Ma wants a lift
back to Kingdom's End, and when that's done, the
Plot is complete.
The only outstanding
thing for me at this point, is deciding which
gates to assign the hub gates too. One should choose the 2 gates that
deliver a good stream of traffic through them, that cover all the major
races, and effectively join your production facilities to the entire
universe. Happy choosing.
There is a wait
before setting the last gate pair.
One of things you can do
with gathering all these resources, is to
deliver 1 of each product to the Hub, set the price to average plus 1
(or anything up to max), and wait for the npc's to deliver it for you.
However, this isn't
going to happen if what you need, isn't being
produced, because the stations don't have some critical resource.
Especially Microchips.
Universe Traders.
Now, something I haven't
tried in TC but used in X3R a lot, is Universe
Traders. The advantage of these is they are a 'fire and forget' tool,
that after a while can cover the entire universe, and jump all over to
make a profit selling everything.
These can help in two
ways. First, they supply those missing resources
to the stations that are not producing. Second, they will sell to your
Hub and in effect, they will be out there buying what you need for you.
The higher the price you set on the Hub, the faster they will gather it
for you.
To Universe Trade, you
need a TS with Trade 3 software, Fight 1 &
2, at least one of the largest shield the ship mounts (usually 25mj),
and as large a cargo bay as you can afford.
A pilot is assigned, and
he learns from experience. He needs to be set
to Sector Trade until he gets to level 8, after which you set him to
Universe Trade. After a few more levels, he will begin to use the
jumpdrive, and by the time he is level 25, he will be jumping
everywhere. He learns by cargo carried, so the bigger the cargo bay,
the faster he learns. If a jumpdrive is not fitted, the pilot will buy
one himself. Likewise cargo extensions and defense drones. And will
keep himself topped up with ecells. Once set going as a UT, you need
only worry about them when they get attacked. If you use Seta a lot,
you can expect them to be attacked quite often. They will run out of
trades in some sectors. The best sector to set them in is one with lots
of ecells and many stations wanting them. However, once they all have
their ecell quota, and everything else deliverable has been delivered,
the Sector trader will stop. You will need to reassign it somewhere
else until it can begin Universe trading.
There is a script for
making more ships UT capable. With this script,
most ships can be used that will dock with normal stations and
complexes, allowing modded ships to be used where the mod gives them
far more cargo space than normal. Ie, Apricot ships, and especially the
Camel and Gunbus M6's which were designed as Heavy Freighters.
The more UT's you have
running, the faster the universe starts
producing, and the faster (in theory) they should bring in whatever you
want. Make sure you remove any product you don't want the hub to buy,
or set them to minimum so nothing will want to sell them to you. You do
need to keep the Hub stocked up with credits to allow it to buy.
But this is still a long
period course of action. Even a dozen UT's are
going to take a long time to deliver what is asked for.
Still, at least its an
option if you have the credits. And even a few
of these, will bring in big bucks over time, and increase your trading
If you homebase your
UT's to the hub, they will use the credits in the
hub to trade with. This makes that account a bit volatile, going up and
down as they buy and sell, but the profit goes into the Hub, giving it
the credits to buy the resource your trying to deliver. Enough UT's
will finance the Hubs buying indefinately.
complex is not doing very well at this point, and I've let it run
the ecells down too far.
I bought another Cattle
L, Cahoona L and Fab, but it is still not
stable for ecells.
I remembered I hadn't
yet sold that Blastclaw I capped, so I sent it
down to the nearest shipyard, and sold it for about 12 Mill. No idea
why, but very welcome.
I've also noticed that
the complex is almost up to its maximum in Ore.
So I've stopped the ship selling ore, and transfered some excess ore
back onto the complex. Very shortly after, the mines stop producing.
Now this is reducing the
call on ecells and should give it a chance to
stabilize. However, its still slowly going down. I transfer 15,000
ecells back to the complex that I had in storage for ship use, to give
me more time to solve this.
Its still not making
enough crystals to keep the SPP's fully producing.
I've still got those
Xenon caps as well, so I repair the hulls and sell
them. And theres some guns scattered around the M1, M2 and M7, so I
collect those as well and send them to Terracorp.
Now I've got enough to
buy 2 SPP M's, 3 Fabs, 1 Cattle L and 1 Cahoona
By the time these are
added to the complex, its almost out of ecells
again. But after jumping out again, I spend some quiet time just
watching the complex functioning.
And it seems to now be
holding its own. Crystals is still very low, but
the SPP's are now producing to capacity without any hold ups. And
slowly the ecell count begins to rise.
The complex now has
1xSPP XL, 2xSPP L, 2xSPP M, 7xCattle L, 7x Cahoona
L, 5xOre L, 4xSilicon L and 14xFab. 42 stations and 41 complex kits.
And that in no way is sufficient to supply the Hub Plot requirements,
and in this configuration, will not add a single Crystal to the Hub.
But its now ticking over
very very nicely.
So, why did I add 2 SPP
M's the last time ?
All the SPP sizes
produce at about the same rate, but each size
produces a different amount of ecells in that cycle time. The larger
the size, the more resources it needs on hand to start the cycle, and
the more likely that it will be delayed from starting the next cycle by
a momentary shortage of Crystals. So while the XL produces the most by
far, it also needs the most Crystals on hand to begin a cycle, and is
the most likely to be delayed from starting a new cycle. Any delays in
a finely balanced complex, can be disasterous, because the moment you
run out of ecells, everything stops.
This more or less
applies to all stations. And it is why most stations
are not available above an L size. The XL stations simply need too many
resources on hand to get producing without delays.
This especially applies
to Crystal Fabs. They come in an M size only
for a very good reason, and that is that the M is the most efficient
size for them. Any delays in producing crystals can mean your SPP's
stop working for enough periods to cause you a serious problem. The
more Silicon, Meatsteaks and ecells a Fab needs to get started, the
more likely there will be a serious delay in producing Crystals, which
delays your SPP's.
I tried XL Fabs in X3R
once and found them extremely difficult to get
processing the first cycle, and basically had to be seriously
overproducing Silicon, Meatsteaks and Ecells to keep them running
non-stop. After that exercise, I went back to using the M ones, even
though the station count is a major pain in a large complex.
So, problem solved, at
least for now. Also a large stock of Ore that
can now be sold.
Fury Additional.
I have not been checking
ranks for a while, but for some reason, I'm
now Fury Captain 25%. So something I've been taking out recently has
added to my Fury rank. I did figure out why my Fury rank wasnt as high
as it might have been. I was targetting K's and J's first, and fighters
after. Apparently if you leave the J's, they keep respawning fighters
and so some of the missions can go on for a very long time and where
they are in sectors where bounty is paid, they can clock up a very
large payout. The longer you fight and the more you take out the higher
your rank goes. So doing it capital ships first actually lowered how
much I would make, and how high my rank would get.
Hub Additional.
Anyway, back to the Hub.
I connected the Hub gates to the north gate in
Thurok's Beard. This is a nexus point between Argon, Split and Teladi
territory, with Boron presence as well. So now my Hub has a good stream
of traffic through it, and only the Paranid and Terrans are missing.
Next one maybe should be a Teladi-Paranid nexus, as Teladi are under
represented so far. It wasnt long before I had a Split M2 and support
around one gate, and a Boron M2 and support around the other. Not at
all sure why Boron battlegroups are staking out the end of Teladi space.
Looking for something to
do, I thought I'd check out the Goner Temple
in Cloud Base South West. Only when I got there, there wasnt a Goner
Temple there. Looking up the encyclopedia, the only listing for the
Goner is Elysium of Light. Since I'm still tootling around in a Mule, I
jump back to the Hub first to transfer to my M7. Then on to Elysium.
Jumping in there, I find
no temple there either. The Goner appear to be
under hard times at the moment, like everyone else.
Goner 1.
Theres a Goner Ozias
here with a mission symbal so I fly up to it.
Theres a Osamu Avens who wants to talk.
Mission : Deliver 2000
Ore. Take one of the ships selling ore for the
complex, jump it back to the complex, load up with ore, jump it here,
change ship, fly to about 3km of Ozias, and its autodelivered.
Deliver 200 Silicon.
Back to M7, swap ships, jump the Ore carrier back
to complex, transfer over 200 silicon (took a little while to make, as
the complex is only just being supplied enough), jump back, change
ships, nose up to Ozias, autodelivered.
Which was actually when
I noticed they were paid missions, but not how
Goner 2.
Next talk to Jani Hall
on one of the stations. He also wants 2000 Ore
and then 1,200 Telad. Change back to M7, send the Ore carrier back to
the complex, load up with both (if yours wont fit enough, make several
trips, or use several ships), jump back, change ships, deliver to Ozias.
To be contacted.
Dock at the Teladianium
Foundry M in Bright Profit and talk to Jako
Rider. He has 625 Telad Pannelling to be delivered to the Ozias. 265,394
Jump to Bright Profit
and dock. Goods autotransfered, order to deliver,
but no chat. Jump back to Elysium. RV with Ozias. Mission complete.
Note : At this point, it
occured to me that flying these cargo runs
might have resulted in being attacked somewhere en route, but as I
always say, jumping's quicker !
Goner 4.
Talk to Hall. Deliver 3
X Argon TS to SPP M alpha. The destination
shows up in the guidance, not the orders. 20,000 plus the cost of the
I've got a sat in
Omicron, so call up the Shipyard, buy 3 Mercury
Tankers S, don't bother outfitting them, and give them orders to dock
at the SPP. To speed it up a bit, I supertuned them.
As each docks, you get a
message with a "turn them over" bar, click to
do so. When all 3 are docked and turned over, mission is complete.
Next, talk to Avens on
the Ozias.
Goner 5.
You are asked to build a
Telad. Foundry in Elysium. 2,639,414 payment
with a 1 hour 50 minutes time limit.
Jump the TL to PTNI
Headquarters. Buy foundry M (they did not specify
which size to get)for 325,008, jump it Elysium, drop the station right
on top of the navigation beacon and your done. Jump the TL home again.
Easy money !
Goner 6.
Orders to fly to
Wastelands and protect the Goner Truelight Seeker
which is under attack.
Jumped into Wastelands
west gate. No sign, but follow the arrows. Its
about half way accross the sector and is under attack. Its best not to
dawdle about getting there. I have a fast ship, but I did something
else before jumping and by the time I got into firing range, the Seeker
had already lost shields. Took out the attackers as fast as possible.
Don't look for caps, just shoot to kill.
Now, also in there was a
squadron of Xenon. Ignore them if you get
them, ignore everything except whats attacking the Seeker.
As soon as the last one
is toast, you get ordered to Bright Profit to
protect a Telad foundry. I jumped in there, flew to the foundry but
there wasnt actually anything there to shoot at.
When close to the
foundry, new orders come in to jump to Company
Strength and protect a Goner Mercury Tanker. As I get there, a whole
heap of Pirate Syndicate Discos appear. These are followed by Busters
and Harriers, then by several Centaurs. All jumping in the West gate.
Things got to the point I was just shooting them as they came through
the gate. Getting Teladi bounties as well.
At some point I figured
out I'd lost sight of the Mercury and it wasnt
on my navmap. So I jumped through the west gate, and found more M6's on
the other side. I kept killing them until I ran out, at which time the
mission completed message came through. I'm still not sure what
happened to the Mercury.
In the meantime, the
Truelight Seeker has been captured by the Pirates,
so you jump to Midnight Star east gate to start looking for it so you
can capture it back.
Needless to say, you now
need to be in a ship that can send boarding
marines, and preferably one with boarding pods and fully trained
Before doing anything
else, I loaded up the Pod into the missile tube.
Nothing at Midnight Star
east gate, and the arrows point through it, so
turn and jump back. Nothing on the other side and the arrows point to
the gate to Grand Exchange. Speed over there and jump through.
The Truelight Seeker
shows up as blue, surounded by a sea of red. I
counted at least 8 Pirate M6's, but I must admit I lost count, and
there could have been more.
Fortunately, the Seeker
is indestructable, since at some point I
collided with it and got stuck inside it. (M7 stuck inside an M6, now
theres a mental picture !). Eventually I got out, and it sat there with
no shields and 93% hull.
So I fired off the
boarding pod. No problems for the marines, and soon
the ship is captured.
At which point I get an
immediate new mission, and am pretty narked
that I don't get my marines back !
Hall who was on the
Seeker the last time we saw it, isnt now. Jump to
Merchant Haven to look for him on a Blastclaw owned by one Hurtis
Tertasobas Yoganis IV. (Paranid of course.)
Theres a time limit to
find the ship, but the arrows make this simple.
Once found, your told
that Hall isnt on the ship, so ordered to follow
the Blastclaw back to base, then get the Meeting Details (not told
This begins a slow trawl
through 3 sectors, so get yourself positioned
to follow about 12 km away and then go get some refreshments. At this
point, I sent my M7M to M148 for new marines and started them training.
Now, I'd left a good
margin, being about 18km behind, well within
triplex range, and going just a tad slower, and suddenly I get a
message that I've lost him (huh ?). I close up a bit to around 12 km,
and he jumps into Maelstrom. I put on speed and jump after him, and
once I'm through, I'm about 7km behind now.
At which point I get a
message saying he's been spotted in Maelstrom,
and then another one saying I'm too close he might spot me.
Which kindof suggests
that 10km is too close and 18km is too far away,
so I tried keeping about 12km from that point.
Dawdling along accross
Maelstrom, the scanner starts picking up groups
of red and blue pirates, but nothing particularly close. Just fly
casual but don't look like your flying casual. As long as you don't get
battle music, your fine.
Eventually, target jumps
through the west gate. I did a save here just
in case. At which point, some red pirates jump in and I'm forced to
take them out, before jumping.
12.5 km behind still and
heading for the west gate again. At this
point, I picked up a red well SW, and decided to head north. So I
turned to a NW direction, added some speed and moved to a position
parallel to the target and about 12.5 km north of it.
And just as well I did.
In quick succession, I got 5 different pirate
groups on the scanner, all traveling the west-east corridor, or south
of it. Although once past, several of these groups turned back, as if
they were patrolling.
Nothing bothered with me
until nearing the gate, a Caravel freighter
and its escorts decided to take a shot at me, so I had a bit of a
furball that delayed me to just under 18km away, but I got back to a
closer range in time to hold the mission together.
Mr. The IVth Paranid,
didnt seem to notice anything and continued on
and jumped.
At this point I get a
message to meet a Boron named Humi Wi in Ocean of
Fantasy. It will have to wait.
Target jumps without
incident, and I'm lining up on the gate when a new
group of reds jump in. These are Xenon ! Take them out !
Jump into Gaian Star and
right into a Xenon P. So I start taking it out.
This is interrupted by a
cutscene of Hall in his space suit and orders
to pick him up.
Finish the P. Hall isnt
on scanner, but the arrows show where he is,
and its well SW in the sector. By the time your half way there, a
Pirate base pops up on the scanner, with a sea of red around it, and
him. This sector has 2 pirate bases. One in the center, thats blue, and
the one near Hall thats red.
Having speed, I blew
through the pirates around the pirate base, and
went straight for picking up the suit. If you do that, I recommend you
jump as soon as you have him, as whats coming after you is nasty !
I stayed to fight of
course. By the time there was only toast left, the
station was down to less than normal hull. The temptation was great to
take it out, but no, orders say take Hall back to Elysium. So I did. At
about 5km from the Ozias, he transfers over and its mission complete.
Note : Your standing
with the Pirates will affect your ability to do
this mission. If you have been seeking them out and killing randomly,
or taking a lot of kill Pirate missions, then your standing with them
will be very low, and so you may find all pirate ships are red. In this
case, the mission becomes very difficult to complete, since you will
have to fight you way to the target, and will face M6's, M7's and M8's.
Possibly even an M2 or M1. On the other hand, if you have been playing
a pirate game or doing lots of missions for the Pirates, then your
ranking with them will be better and so you may not get any reds at all.
Goner 7.
Orders to go back to the
Pirate station and take it out. So jump to
Gaian Star.
Immediately you jump in,
theres a stop order and please talk to Hall
who is now on a Goner Heavy M6 in sector. Well I say immediately but I
had time to half kill a pirate I found at the gate. I figured the stop
order didnt include that pirate so I killed him anyway.
Apparently there is a
Terran agent on the Pirate base, and we need to
extract him before taking out the base.
So to get the Pirates
freindly enough to dock we need to take them
something they want.
Deliver 35 Spaceweed to
the Pirate base. Getting the weed isnt too
difficult. The other pirate base will likely have some, and if not, the
nearest Teladi sector with a Bliss Place will have.
Once you have the weed,
theres the minor problem of the pirate base
being red and not believing you if you com them and tell them you have
an urgent delivery for them.
So fly to the other
Pirate base, staying well clear of any red pirates,
since if you shoot them that close to a pirate base, it may turn that
base red as well, com and look for someone offering to hack stations in
the vicinity. Pay whatever he asks, making sure you get the right
station hacked, and you can now dock.
Deliver the 35 Spaceweed.
Then deliver 60 Squash
Once done, the agent
comes aboard, you scedadle out of it, cutscene of
the base blowing up, and then Jump back to the Ozias in Elysium. At
about 4km, the agent beams over, and its mission complete, Plot
complete, and a place in Goner history books.
Remember we got a Boron
invitation ?
Jump to Ocean of
Fantasy. Talk to Humi Wi on a Boron Ray. BalaGi is now
declared missing (remember he went with Julien Brennen and you found
their ship wreckage in the Hub) and the Yaki have been taking
Ordered to Menelaus
Paradise. You jump into a whole heap of Yaki, and
need to take them out.
Back to the Boron Ray in
Ocean of Fantasy, about 5km away to get the
next orders.
Jump to Cloud Base South
West and talk to a Tomes Brano.
Goner 8.
Just before jumping, I
get a message from the Goners saying they are
giving me the Truelight Seeker. Its sitting in a factory in Elysium,
with nothing on it. I got a jump drive and ecells to it and jumped it
to dock at the Hub.
Jump into CBSW south
gate. Tomes is on an Argon Cerberus.
Orders to scout
Ocracoke's Storm and take out any enhanced ships you
I jump into the north
gate. Theres a few Yaki in here, all blue, 1 with
enhanced in its name, and another a prototype. Theres also a station in
here I cant target.
When I get within a few
kms of the station, looks like a Military Base,
it turns red and orders come through to return to CBSW. No need to
shoot anything.
Back to CBSW and talk to
Tomes again. Prelude to an attack and theres a
minefield around that Base, please go and take it out.
Jump to Ocracoke's Storm
south gate, right by the base, and theres a
whole heap of mines on the nav map now.
However, you cannot
target them, and they wont show up using find
nearest enemy.
All you can do is follow
the guidance arrows until you run them down.
That means you need a ship with sufficient shielding that mines wont be
a problem. I did shoot a few by manually guessing where they were, but
its complete hit or miss and mostly miss. Just run them down as fast as
you can.
When most are gone, the
fleet jumps in, and you get orders to take out
the base. No problems for me, but if you not able to, then protect the
capital ships that jump in so they can.
When the base is toast,
you get told that Humi Wi wants to talk to you
again in Kingdom End, so jump to the KE south gate.
Some Boron scientists
have been captured by the Yaki and need rescuing.
First we need to dock at
the Military Outpost in Atreus' Clouds.
Bugger. Too slow out of
the gate, and another traffic accident. Slurp.
Orders to fly to the
Pirate Base in Olmancketlot's Treaty and prepare
to protect the Boron scientists as they escape.
I jumped to the North
gate, flew towards the Base, taking out any reds
on the way and at about 4km from the Base, you get told some scientists
did escape.
Then your ordered back
to Kingdom End.
The Yaki have located
BalaGi's Command Ship. Its an Orca with registration TLNS-43.
Now, ironically, since
in the order I did the plots, this mission is the last main plot
mission, and its also got to be the worst put together mission of the
lot. Remember trying to board the Xenon ship in Aldrin. Sigh now and
get it over with.
The voice over says we
must not let the Yaki capture BalaGi's ship. I've no idea why, because
you cant stop it.
The most important thing
here is to ignore the voice instructions, ignore the mission briefing
which says nothing anyway, and once we get going, only follow the
guidance arrows.
However, the guidance is
well and truly broken to start with.
First thing, find the
Orca. If you don't have any guidance to leave Kingdom End, then the
Orca is still there. Locating it is not difficult with a triplex
scanner. You will find it does not have a pilot, but is slowly
meandering around the sector. You cannot claim it, and you cannot board
it, so not worth trying.
Note : If all the ships
in the sector disappear, don't panic, its just that you went too high
or too low. Gave me a real shock it did !
Hub 6.
While waiting for
something to happen in the expectation that some Yaki was going to show
up and steal the ship, I connected my 3rd gate pair in the Hub. I chose
the south gate of Trinity Sanctum, which joins Paranid and Teladi
space. And sure enough, my Hub is now full of all species except Terran.
HQ 4a.
Nothing continues to
happen in Kingdom End. And it can continue that way indefinitely it
The voice over mentioned
Shore of Infinity and Light Water. The former is on the way to the
latter by direct flight.
Jump into the west gate
of Shore of Infinity.
This should generate a
voice over that says that the Orca has been located in a different
sector captured by the Yaki, and the mission briefing should now
specify Kingdom End and the arrows point to it.
If you jump into Light
Water first, the mission appears to break, so don't go there, unless by
some chance your still being guided there.
Jump back to Kingdom End
and re-find the Orca. It should now be in the Mission part of the nav
list, and be red. Once you have found it, the mission should change to
board the Orca.
Boarding pods do not
work (you lose your marines and they don't even get started), remote
control of a boarding ship does not work. You have to be on the ship
that will do the boarding, and it has to be a ship capable of boarding.
I tried an M7M and it would not work. In the end, I used a Scabbard TP
from the Terran Plot.
The problem with Kingdom
End is that its full of roids, stations and ships. It is almost
impossible for the auto-pillok to get a line up on an Orca at the best
of times, but in Kingdom End it seems to be impossible. I had 2 Boron
capital ships pounding on the Orca (invincible), plus a whole heap of
fighters, and the AP on the Scabbard gave me a great view of the guns
firing on both capital ships as we scraped the paint off going past.
The first 10 marines
launched as I was about to give up, and then got left behind, as their
suits were too slow to catch the Orca.
I had to get another 10
marines brought to me. This time, the auto-pillok sat 4km behind the
Orca and did nothing at all for 10 minutes except follow it.
In sheer desperation, I
used Cycrow's autoboard script hotkey instead. This involves some
balls, since you aim directly at the nose of the Orca, get as close as
you are prepared to play chicken with it, and then hit the launch
marines hotkey and then speed away.
This worked, the marines
hit the hull, and the Orca jumped out.
So.....The Borons lost a
capital ship in the process, the sector is filled with angry Borons,
and I have 20 marines spread accross the sector.
While I am picking up
the first 10 marines, I get the message that the Orca has been spotted
in The Hole. (This could I gather be almost any random sector).
Once I have manually
picked up 10 marines, I transfer them to the M7 the second group came
off, transfer to the M7 myself, jump to The Hole west gate, and then
instruct the Scabbard to collect the rest of the Marines. Collect
marines command is best used OOS. Being in the ship using the command
can be hair raising, especially if you use seta, especially in Kingdom
End. Its also quicker OOS, as the ship does not have to worry about
colliding with anything.
When the marines have
been collected, jump it after you.
By the time that's done,
you should have found the Orca and removed its shields again.
The difference now is
that The Hole does not have a defense force. So this time you have to
take care of the shields yourself, and the Orca only has 2 targets to
aim at. You and you.
Switch to the Scabbard
again. Give the M7 attack shields Orca command, and it will now happily
play misquito and keep the shields down. But beware, if your using a
ship with weak shields, it may not last long.
I again used the AP for
boarding, and again, it sat about 3km behind the Orca doing nothing but
follow it, in a sector with nothing at all nearby. Something seriously
wrong with the auto-boarding.
By this stage, I was in
serious danger, as the Orca was firing on me, and the Scabbard shields
were going down 3% for each gun hit and 60% for each missile hit. I was
using the restore hull and shields cheat at this point while swearing
at the auto-pillok to get on with it.
Again in total disgust,
I turned the pillok off, and did a hotkey launch of the marines. They
went straight to the Orca, and went straight in. After the usual sound
effects, the ship is mine, except for the last 2 missiles still on
their way to me. For a ship with only 6 missiles on board, the mission
obviously makes them unlimited.
Once the ship is yours,
you get the usual end of plot thankyous.
The plot reward is in
the cargo hold of the Orca. I renamed the ship, installed a jump drive
and ecells and then jumped it to the Hub. Then jumped the Scabbard in
as well, had them RV and swapped the marines back to the Scabbard, then
docked it at the Hub.
My suggestion then is to
drop the Headquarters somewhere in the Hub sector, where it does not
obstruct traffic, and is below the gates level so you can easily jump
in and dock from any direction.
Once you have your HQ
deployed, dock all your ships there and have a party.
The HQ has 2 main uses.
First as a Player
Headquarters, where you can dock all your ships safely. It docks 8
capital ships, 16 freighters/M6 size, and unlimited fighters. It
becomes an ideal place to send capped ships to wait for you to want to
do anything with them. It repairs ships if you give it resources. I
will reverse engineer any ship in the game and allow you to build it.
And it has a spray shop if you want to give your ships all the same
colour scheme. It makes an ideal base for ship fitout.
But it is also useful as
a Superstore. It has a single large cargo bay, with no restrictions on
how much of anything can be stored there. (The bay is small by my
expectations, so there is a mod out to greatly increase the cargo
space. However, the mod must be installed before you drop the station
to get the increase in space.) As such, this is a perfect place to
store all the stuff you slurp up. At average price minus 1, all the
basic stuff will sell itself. It's a good place to put any oversupply
of secondary resources from your complexes, where you do not want to
sell them from the complex itself. Some stuff wont sell from there, but
that is good because it makes a great place to store all the stuff you
don't want to sell, and do not want to have to carry around in a ship.
At some point in almost
every game I play, I end up with 2 HQ's. One is my base where npc ships
are not allowed to dock. The other is a Superstore for selling
everything I don't want.
Aldrin Plot.
You get a message from Craig Armston of the Terran Resource Evaluation
Commission asking you to dock at the Orbital Patrol Base in Asteroid
Mission 1.
Use the unfocussed jump drive to scout for valuable or abundant
minerals. Pays 20k + resource worth. No time limit. You will need a
Mineral Scanner before you start.
Scan 8 asteroids. Khaak nearby, including a lot of corvettes. Run
around the asteroids as they are targetted by the mission arrows, and
scan each one when you come in range. Target roid, click I, then when
'scan' lights up, click 'scan'. Done. Move on.
A slow ship needs to be able to fight M6's. A fast ship may not need to
fight at all.
Once all are scanned, you are asked to mine and deliver 100 Nvidium.
When you have mined your Nvidium, engage jump drive and it will
automatically take you back to the Asteroid Belt. Dock to complete the
mission. The Nvidium is taken off the ship automatically.
Mission 2.
Fly to the Earth Torus to meet Gen. Don Hammond of the ATF. You will
need a jumpdrive as the mission will take you to Aldrin.
Follow the yellow arrows.
When you get to the Torus, remember, DON'T use the autopilot !
Deliver a data storage device to Lt. Jake Griffith at Aldrin Energy
production Base XL epsilon. 30K.
Undock and jump to Aldrin.
The destination is 283 km away (or thereabouts), highlighted by the
yellow arrows, so click your mouse on it to target it, then fly to it.
Mission 3.
Take Griffith to the USC Orbital Supply Base in sector Aldrin 2 in
orbit of the planet Armstrong. Pays 20k.
If your using a larger ship that could not dock with the station you
just left, make sure you remember which ship you leave Griffith in !
Fly to the trans-orbital accelerator for Aldrin 2.
Dock the ship carrying Griffith at the Supply Base.
Mission 4.
Fly to the Gate, following the guidance arrows. It's a normal gate, but
as yet not connected to anywhere.
Patrol Aldrin 2. Pays 750,221 plus. Xenon targets.
When all Xenon are chip dust, you will be told to fly to Terran Unknown
Sector 1, through the gate.
This is a Xenon sector with capital ships and jumping J's. What you get
will depend on your ranks, but go in here in something that can take on
a lot of enemies.
The actual mission is to scan 8 asteroids, following the arrows. But
there is good credits in taking out the Xenon first. I was paid an
extra 4.5 Million.
Once you have scanned all the asteroids, it's a good place to save.
Next, escort the highlighted ship, Terran Science Ship Katana, to an
unknown object.
When the object has been picked up, there is a cutscene.
Now fly to Terran Unknown Sector 2.
After transition, there are 2 quick cutscenes, then your ordered to fly
to the Terran Tyr, back through the gate. Before I could do so, a Khaak
fleet jumped in. Your choice if you take them on, or get out. You don't
get paid extra though.
At about 7km from the Tyr, you get orders to wait for new orders. Don't
go anywhere, it wont be long to wait.
Mission 5.
Recon of Perpetual Sin, for evidence of super weapon use or a destroyed
Khaak stronghold.
Jump to Perpetual Sin south gate. Mission is to find evidence of the
Khaak. There is ship debris in the distance. Looks like an old Titan.
And another. Your looking not for ship debris, but an unknown object.
When you get within a few km of one of them, you get told to scan it.
Go up to about 500 meters, and you will hear "scanning........scan
complete". You then get a new message.
Mission 6.
Deliver a Nemesis to the Teladi Trading Station in Spaceweed Grove. Buy
one from a Paranid Shipyard and get it to the Trading Station. You get
the value of it back when its delivered. If your not flying it
yourself, dock ahead of it first, so you are on the station when it
When the Nemesis, you get a message and are asked to turn over the
Nemesis. Click on "Your Nemesis" to deliver it.
You then get 2 messages, one from the Paranid, and the other from
Tasks complete for now. Just wait for the next message.
Mission 7.
Time to shoot some Paranid ! The mission is to run interference while
some Terran captives of the Paranid are rescued. 20k pay.
Fly to Unknown Sector by Unholy Descent. On entering the sector,
everything Paranid is red. Take out all Paranid objects.
When the last is gone, you get asked to escort a Terran Yokohama which
is going to board a prison transport. Follow it until its boarding is
complete. They leave the Paranid crew floating in space, so its up to
you what you want to do with them.
Mission 8.
Fly to Terran Unknown Sector 3. I didnt get any guidance, so I jumped
to Terran Unknown Sector 1, and the guidance then showed up with a new
East Gate. Fly through that.
Search the sector. You will find a Boron Angel TP, piloted by BalaGi
somewhere there. Fly close and you get a message to escort the Angel to
Aldrin 2. A Xenon J and K jumped in almost on top of us, in TUS1. Then
a second group of J, P's and fighters. This will vary of course
according to your combat rank. A speed of more than 94 is needed to
keep up, and decent firepower to protect the Angel.
When the Angel jumps into Aldrin 2, the mission is complete. No further
mission is offered immediately.
Mission 9.
Repel Xenon in TUS3. Jump into TUS3. Go to the aid of the mining base
ship. Take out the Xenon patrol.
Tow the Mining Base ship to Aldrin 2. You will need a ship that can
mount a Tractor beam in the rear turrent, and of course, a tractor
beam. There was a Khaak Battle group by the west gate in TUS1, so you
will need to deal with whatever enemy you find there before you get the
tow anywhere near there.
Once you get it inside the gate in Aldrin 2, tow it towards the Base.
After a couple of km, you will get a message from Griffin. The Mining
ship is now yours.
Mission 10.
Dock at the Orbital Patrol Base in Asteroid Belt for new orders.
Transport a Glowing Crystal to the Gate Production Complex in Neptune.
A fast ships helps here.
Fly to within 5km of the Gate complex, and you will get a new message.
Now jump to Kingdom End to talk to BalaGi on the Royal Boron Trading
Station. When in range, com. Next, dock at the Trading Station to pick
up BalaGi.
Transport BalaGi to your Hub in the Unknown Sector.
Connect the hub to Terran Unknown Sector 1 and Terran Unknown Sector 2.
Before you do, I recommend you ensure you do not strand your own ships
using the hub in other sectors, thus endangering them when they try to
fly home the long way.
Fly into TUS2. Find an inactive Gate. Its about 60km away. Should be
visible to your naked eye, if you look around a bit. Fly up close to
the gate. You get a new message and then a cutscene.
The gate is connected to Neptune automatically and the Plot is complete.
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© 2006, 2007, 2008 by Timothy Ellis aka Apricotslice.