X3: Terran Conflict

[Turjan]

I can't speak specifically to X3, but based on X2, you're not going to play this game for the story.

Definitely not. I didn't play any of the earlier incarnations of the game, but I heard that the X2 story was much more elaborate. You can play the main plot in one afternoon, and it's just a sequence of missions. You could even say it's kind of a tutorial.

Then again, one of the plots (the game has 8 so far, some of them quite short) is an incredible grind, and it's the prerequisite of the "Players's Headquarters" plot. After three weeks, I finished that one with an overnight unattended SETA session. Of course, you can always mod the game, and I don't play without mods anymore.

@Alrik: Stuff like getting the Hub to work or obtaining the PHQ and being able to reverse engineer non-buyable ships are some of the goals D'Artagnan mentioned. These goals are very MMOG-like.

 

[Tragos]

X2 story was bit intense and you only needed a M3 at the very end , i didn't like it since all i got was a surplus click on my jump drive

Of course you can always built an empire first and then go do the missions letting your fleet grind for you .

 

[DArtagnan]

X2 story was bit intense and you only needed a M3 at the very end , i didn't like it since all i got was a surplus click on my jump drive

Of course you can always built an empire first and then go do the missions letting your fleet grind for you .

What would you do while the fleet grinds, then?

 

[Tragos]

What would you do while the fleet grinds, then?

Switch to an outside camera and enjoy the strength of my empire .
There are very few games where you can start as a penniless bum flying inside an "one fart to kill" space bucket and you can grow big enough to trash everything in your way .

 

[DArtagnan]

Switch to an outside camera and enjoy the strength of my empire .
There are very few games where you can start as a penniless bum flying inside an "one fart to kill" space bucket and you can grow big enough to trash everything in your way .

Sounds pretty great, if you're into that

Thanks for confirming my idea of what the game is about!

 

[Tragos]

Sounds pretty great, if you're into that

Thanks for confirming my idea of what the game is about!

Not all games are for everyone , it just happens that inside the X universe you can do whatever you like and there is no hand holding & no (significant) story to speak of

 

[DArtagnan]

Not all games are for everyone , it just happens that inside the X universe you can do whatever you like and there is no hand holding & no (significant) story to speak of

I'm sorry, but it really doesn't sound like I can do anything I like in the game. But I'm glad you're enjoying it

 

[Zloth]

For how much of those 100+ hours do you actually have to be present though? I heard that… once you have your factories up and running, and well defended, you can just leave the game running all day to build up your resources.

That's one of the trade-offs for having a 'sandbox' style game. Just like a real sandbox, you've got to figure out your own goals and how you are going to get to them. If you think it would be fun to build up some massive defenses then run the game in 10x mode for 20 hours until your next gaming session then you can go ahead and do it. If you would rather keep on top of things and continue to economically exploit sector after sector, then don't. Or you could go in between and get all that stuff set up then ignore it while you run off with a big capital ship and some escorts to eradicate the Xenon from the universe. You've got to do what's fun for you. That involves knowing what's fun for you and being willing to follow that path even if you find another path that earns money faster.

 

[cutterjohn]

I like the economy, and there really is plenty of exploration unless you've played earlier X games as a good deal of the sectors are pretty much the same.

Anyways, I picked up X3TC last January/Dec IIRC but never really played for any length until recently. It seems to be the easiest X game to date, although I'm abusing the hell out of Nividium mining in Queen's End ATM IIRC.

Played it alot for a while then bought Evochron Legends when gamersgate had a good sale. EL is getting better, but it's not up to X series or Universal Combat yet. Some nice new features added:
being able to own multiple ships, but you have to store them, up to 5 IIRC excepting the one that you're actually using ATM. Some crafting. MUCH improved graphics. WEAK quest. So-so combat(better than X, but not as good as UC). BEST online MP. Economy/trading sucks, worse than UC's gimped trading.

Still ends up boring as ——all in the end though. Maybe the next one will hit the magic combo button.

JDR13 you might like this game as there are some hidden areas/systems to find, and he apparently included the Solar system which is DIFFICULT to get to. Might want to wait for another sale though.

Anyways got tired of EL, didn't go back to X3TC ATM, need to practice combat in X3TC. (Actually have X3R and X2 installed as well…) So, I re-installed Demise: Rise of the Ku'Tan and have been playing that this week. (E-mailed Decklin about 1.03 Pharoah Production upgrade(I have the original Artifact Entertainment CD release), and found 1.03 doesn't work on Vista but he said to wait for Ascension which should be out later this year at a pretty good deal… He hasn't posted publicly AFAICT what was in the email so that's about all I'll say ATM.)

[EDIT]
Now that I'm thinking of it, I was already doing pretty well in combat so I was actually at the point of deciding what stations to blow my billions on before it overflowed the magic c. 2.4B credit number... (You can get around this by dumping extra cash on stations, it's just you as the character that are limited to a signed(WTF?!) 32b number max "on your character".) Need to find a nice safe sector to destroy the economy in since I'm not high enough ranked(fighting) to buy the really nice cap ships(Terran) that I want... up to a station transport and 2 M6s plus misc. capped M3s, M4s, and M5s. OH, and a small carrier, military transport IIRC and 8 or so sector traders and 3 Universe Traders.

Don't feel like tackling a complex yet though...
[/EDIT]

Darkstar One: I picked up that one in a sale, found it easy and well, meh overall. Combat was fairly easy, trading boring, storyline boring, but the graphics were nice but not enough to keep me playing it and leaving it installed.

 

[Tragos]

EL is a good game , IIRC the developer is 1 guy . I hate the combat but exploration rocks . I have 3 games of Evochron world (i think those are all) and it looks like the game improves with leaps.

Darkstar One the supposed "Freelancer done right" is an abomination , i got it on "Ascaron collection" for 20€ ( together with Sacred Gold & Port of Call) few years ago.

Yeah X3 is very tough to get too, too many freaking buttons and commands .

 

[Zloth]

Hehe, yeah, that's why I've been sticking with X3:TC - more mouse support, less memorizing of keyboard shortcuts.

Darkstar One wasn't an abomination! It was a so-so space shooter. Come to think of it, it was the last space shooter I ever played. Where did all those games go?? I guess we can't have them because there's no cover system in them... <sigh>

P.S. Another new version of X3 came out a few days back. Mostly bug fixes. It should run smoother on 64-bit machines now.

 

[Tragos]

New games came out after DS1 but they just didn't make it , for example Rogue Universe , Tarr chronicles, Space Siege and some Russian titles .

When you jump into a sector that only has 1 trade station 1 research station and 1 asteroid things are becoming a bit disappointing , when ALL systems are like that then the game just sucks so yes DS1 was an abomination ; we have played much more complex games 15 years ago!
I remember visiting DS1 official site , biggest thread was the one where the (on average) 12 year old gamers were sending save games to admin so he could play the turret mission for them LOL .

 

[Zloth]

Ugh, I remember those turret missions. Not so fun. But flying through the insides of big astriods was fun!

 

[cutterjohn]

You can do that(fly in big —- asteroids) in Evochron games as well, or at least Renegades and Legends…

BTW: Evochron Mercenary is coming out this fall with a new engine and what sounds like a whole bunch of improvements that I, for one, am happy to see, especially the improved quest system(buh-bye stupid beacon "quest").

Might just buy this one as soon as it comes out… more gfx improvements too, but still alot of recycled models from earlier games in the screenshots…

[EDIT]
For the uberlazy, here's a link to his ... er ... subsite...
http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmercenary/index.htm

Expecting a Fall '10 release apparently, and from the screenshots it looks like it's well along which would explain the lack of a new Evochron game in the last 1y or so.

Hopefully he went C++ this time and used one of the available OSS or cheapish engines... also hoping for some actual functional scriptability...
[/EDIT]

 

[Tragos]

New Evochron game looks nice, too bad realistic physics make combat a real bitch to master .
Thanks for the info

 

[Zloth]

Realistic physics? <drool>

X3:TC version 3 just came out with another new major plot. The game is one week shy of being two years old and they keep handing us free stuff!

 

[Tragos]

Cool news..

I saw they are also plan to release a box with all X games in !!!

I so much want to fly the prototype again

 

[Zloth]

That would be the Superbox (trailer on YouTube). Every X game ever all bundled up into one game box, plus a load of fan content. There must be 2000 hours of gameplay in there. Slow gameplay for sure but still...

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Received the newsletter today, too.

 

[Zloth]

The Superbox itself doesn't have me all that excited, really. I got X3:TC back in January 2008 and Steam gave me a free copy of X3:Reunion. I still haven't played it at all because I'm still not done with X3:TC!

What is exciting, though, is that this is the last thing they are likely to sell in the X series. Egosoft has been working on some other sort of space game for a few years now. There was talk about it being an MMO of some kind, but that talk died down. And that, folks, is the entire sum of public knowledge about this new game.

But now, for all economical intents and purposes, X is done. It's about time to tell us about Y.