Campaign missions feel kinda cheat-y

[Stoned Santa]

So I started as anonymous argon and made my way to building an ore mine by selling picked up cargo containers (mainly missiles, like hammerhead) left after battles and occasionally capturing small ships, then out of boredom decided to aid argon with the war and got Centaur on like the second mission. That's 9 million worth in credits, I got it almost effortlessly. That's... too easy? Like if it was not for that mission, I would have to earn that money by figuring out my way to do it and grinding, like trading / doing missions / etc.. Centaur is a very powerful ship too, and they give it to you fully equipped. So basically, I started as a nobody and got that ship for barely even doing anything? Just feel like I cheated...

[Grumpy]

Well if it was much harder many people would just leave it and not play the game. If you ever decide to play Litcube you will find M7s and M2s floating around with 0% hull. Thats when you push CTRL down with something heavy and walk away for few hours.

[Irrehaare]

I'm really sorry to be the one to tell you this...
Centaur is not a powerfull ship. An avarage M6, which means that 4 properly equipped M3s will change it into dust very quickly (very, very quickly if they will use rockets).

If you aim for building a trade empire (huge production and a net of your own trade stations) and commanding massive fleet (which would include wings of heavy centaurs on simple patrol duty), then this one M6 isn't much ;) It is the only such situation in the plots, you won't get anything bigger.

It's just the way this game works, there are slow ways (what you did with salvaging), quick ways (knowing what plots to do and what missions to look for) and feeling cheaty ways (people talk about stock exchange, about how to easy it is, so I'm not trading in it to not spoil the fun).

[Stoned Santa]

I mean it's powerful enough to make millions off of space station defense and assasination missions, you could destroy a carrack or xenon Q on it, if you dodge all the shots successfully. Multiple M3s (esp ones with flamethrowers) are definitely scary, but against big ships it's fairly strong.

[Plays In Traffic]

You start with just as good a ship on Terran Commander & you can very quickly get a much better ship on Poisoned Paranid. Unholy Trader gives you a super-rare M3 but its not that cool till you can deploy M1's full of them.

[Stoned Santa]

Yeah, but I'm not talking about those starts, when I started with an M3 I saved up to buy a Cerberus just by capturing and selling ships. Either Argon or Terran starts. Starting as a complete nobody is a bit more interesting.

[Irrehaare]

Originally posted by Plays In Traffic:

Unholy Trader gives you a super-rare M3 but its not that cool till you can deploy M1's full of them.

You don't need whole M1 of them, since they can use M6 class missiles... 10 of them loaded with Typhoons will be scary.

Originally posted by Stoned Santa:

I mean it's powerful enough to make millions off of space station defense and assasination missions, you could destroy a carrack or xenon Q on it, if you dodge all the shots successfully. Multiple M3s (esp ones with flamethrowers) are definitely scary, but against big ships it's fairly strong.

Yea, but this way of making millions is still slow ;)
EDIT: ...and it ruins relations with pirates :P

[Stoned Santa]

Relatively slow? My ore mine is merely generating 100k / hr, or so. So it's fast compared to that :D

[Plays In Traffic]

And with Anonymous Argon just go to Herron's Nebula and run space fuel to the free argon trading station in that sector(it buys space fuel max price). You'll be able buy a good M3 or an ok M6 real fast.

[Stoned Santa]

Selling drugs/nividium/beer is not the character i'm roleplaying :D

[Irrehaare]

Yes, slow. For example:
There is a mod that upgrades UTs - rewrites their behaviour to make them more efficient. So they trade efficiently. A 25lvl trader with this mod makes about 500k per hour (assuming 10rep with every nation). Which means that from 20 of them you get 10mil/h. A pocket money ;)

Another example, vanilla this time:
A reasonable energy loop costs about 100 milion.
With it, your mine doesn't have to buy anything.
It would give you 2-3 times more cash per hour with that.
Or you could add more factories, make 1mj shields and mosquitos.
LOTS of money, trust me.
http://grangegame.co.uk/x3tcocc.html
Go and do the math ;)

[Stoned Santa]

20 of traders is a mess to manage? like esp when they get damaged, they won't repair themselves, and might lose equipment?

[Irrehaare]

Mod I mentioned also fixes that, high level guys resupply themselves with drones, and in case of attack send them and jump away. Sometimes one of them sends you a message like "too much damage, tell me what to do" or "i couldn't sell stuff, please help!" but very seldom and it's ain't much of a problem to fix.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=314455

[Plays In Traffic]

CLS/CAG/ST/UT will auto-repair at high enough level. Also pretty sure you don't lose equipment OoS, atleast I never have.

[Stoned Santa]

I've had some of my ship components shot off after receiving enough damage... maybe doesn't happen to non-directly-controlled ships, I just assumed it happens to all ships.

[Plays In Traffic]

Oh it happens IS all the time even if its not your player ship, but never had it happen OoS.