Terran Defender start - Econ'ing too soon?

[Kyrros]

So, I start with Terran Defender, as it's at the top of the list, and most sites say it's not a bad start to go with. No problem there.

The threads I've read all say that it's better to start your economy early - as early as feasibly possible.

I've finished the first mission, was rewarded with an extra M5 (which I promtly sold for extra cash) and now, even with max cargo capacity on my starting M4, I'm only looking at 68 'functional' units of space (90 max with some taken up by basic equipment)

I can't access Mercury or Earth for the "passengers in your cargo hold" upgrade, so I can't do ferry missions.

I'm limited to M size cargo or smaller (so no Ore or other more expensive heavier items)

Even with buy low sell high with demanded items like ECs and Water, I'm only netting 900 cr per trip (one way)

I've explored all the Terran space that's available to me (the one's that don't tell me I'm restricted as soon as I jump in) to open up more random mission chances.... trading for an hour or so only put me at 15k... and my first Terran TS trader is still 350k away. I've seen it mentioned doing "return ship" missions until I get a TS, then cancel mission. Will attacking the ensuing "police" hurt my local reputation?

Am I missing something obvious? Am I trying too hard... too early to start Econ? Unrealistic for this particular racial start? Will it hurt me to forget about econ for now and just do more of the current Terran Plotline?

Any advice to get over this rather large first 'hill' in building my economy would be appreciated. All the sources I looked at all talk about larger aspects such as automated traders, LTs, UTs, building which factories where, etc... but I haven't found any information on gettign over that initial "get first TS" hump with the Terrans.

[Total Overkill]

Ooooook.... where to begin.

Firstly, Terran economy is a little whack. The sectors are huge, travel times are long, profit is minimal. There is great opportunity later in your career to profit from these sectors with Stations of your own, supporting the crippled economy. But not starting out, with no credits to your name.

I am unsure how far you are in this career, or how attatched you are to it. So i'll do my best to integrate it into the following. (Hope you like traveling!)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

You are going to need these map.

http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/9783/x3tc30engego.png

http://roguey.co.uk/x3tc/universe/

You will notice on the top right side of the map, the icons, what you are looking for is the FREE SHIP icon. Heres a list of ships

http://eng.x3tc.net/x3_tc_free/freeships.png

(BE SURE TO CROSS REFERENCE SHIP LOCATIONS WITH ROGUEY'S MAP)


Scattered around the universe are SPECIAL abandoned ships (these are NOT return mission ships) you can freely claim/use/dispose of these ships. These ships are largely unique prototypes that cannot be purchased, but can be sold (or even just the equipment on them if you want the ship) for MILLIONS, and is a great starting boost to your character.


The closest ship to you from the terran sectors is the "Buster Sentinel" in "Treasure Chest" this ship is not unique, but my be well armed. Find it, claim it, salvage it. Strip it of weapons and equipment. Command the Buster to the nearest Shipyard, and sell it. Take the weapons and sell them at the nearest Equipment dock/Military base. Depending on what you found on the ship, you should have just made 500,000c easily.

Next order of business, get your ass to Queens Harbor. Your already on the east side of the universe might as well make use of it... (Queens Harbor is on the Far South East of the map).
You will notice 2 Free ship icons near it.

One in "Veil of Delusion" and one in "Menelaus's Oasis" these are the real money maker ships, seeing both + weapons is easily 15 MILLION for you to play around with.
( Suicidal Squid/Dead is Dead mode, starts here... i've had to do it alot >.> )

Complete? Good! Now you have funds to play around with.



... or you could use it to make even more money.

From Queens Harbor, to the west, you will see a Paranid sector called "Perpetual Sin" this sector is an infinite money generator (Nividium Mining, you may want to google it, im only going to give a brief rundown)

You need a few things
- Nav satelite
- Mineral Scanner
- Mining Laser
- TS class trading vessel that can equip the mining laser
- Enough Paranid rep to purchase TS ships.

Fly to Perpetual Sin, scan asteroids, find a Nividium Asteroid.

Once located, call in the Trade vessel. Switch ships to the Trade vessel, use the mining laser on the Nividium asteroid, break it up a couple times into smaller chunks.

Switch back to other ship, drop nav satelite near shattered asteroid. LEAVE SECTOR AND NEVER RETURN

Command TS vessel, Orders, Special, Collect Rocks.

Dukes Citadel, the sector connected to Perpetual Sin has a Shipyard with Paranid Mining vessel (these come auto equipped to collect ore). Buy as many as you can (DO NOT UPGRADE THEM)

Command all the ships to "Follow Nav satelite" in Perpetual Sin

Once they reach the satelite, Command, Orders, Special, Collect Rocks.

Check in with them every once and a while through the property menu. When their cargobays are full, send them back to the SHIPYARD, and SELL THE SHIP WITH THE CARGO FULL OF NIVIDIUM. (6.7million is a single ship full of nividium)

Repeat as necessary.

[obliviondoll]

If you want to NOT exploit a "free money" walkthrough, do what others I've had recommended for the Terran Defender start - don't rush into the economic side. Build up some funds with combat missions that are a little better suited to your ship.

Going for economy first is a general X series rule of thumb, but it's been toned down quite sharply in the Terran War games (TC and AP). These two games offer much better rewards for combat missions than the rest of the series, making that a more viable way to make money early on. If you have a combat-ready ship, it may be more practical - at least to start with - going for some missions where you're fighting things. Get some money under your belt, then visit a shipyard and pick up a freighter (or some other larger ship). Sure, pick up some cargo when you find it cheap, then offload it when you find somewhere with high demand, but don't make that your primary role straight away.

[aCrimsonMonarch]

Originally posted by Total Overkill:

Ooooook.... where to begin.

Firstly, Terran economy is a little whack. The sectors are huge, travel times are long, profit is minimal. There is great opportunity later in your career to profit from these sectors with Stations of your own, supporting the crippled economy. But not starting out, with no credits to your name.

I am unsure how far you are in this career, or how attatched you are to it. So i'll do my best to integrate it into the following. (Hope you like traveling!)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

You are going to need these map.

http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/9783/x3tc30engego.png

http://roguey.co.uk/x3tc/universe/

You will notice on the top right side of the map, the icons, what you are looking for is the FREE SHIP icon. Heres a list of ships

http://eng.x3tc.net/x3_tc_free/freeships.png

(BE SURE TO CROSS REFERENCE SHIP LOCATIONS WITH ROGUEY'S MAP)


Scattered around the universe are SPECIAL abandoned ships (these are NOT return mission ships) you can freely claim/use/dispose of these ships. These ships are largely unique prototypes that cannot be purchased, but can be sold (or even just the equipment on them if you want the ship) for MILLIONS, and is a great starting boost to your character.


The closest ship to you from the terran sectors is the "Buster Sentinel" in "Treasure Chest" this ship is not unique, but my be well armed. Find it, claim it, salvage it. Strip it of weapons and equipment. Command the Buster to the nearest Shipyard, and sell it. Take the weapons and sell them at the nearest Equipment dock/Military base. Depending on what you found on the ship, you should have just made 500,000c easily.

Next order of business, get your ass to Queens Harbor. Your already on the east side of the universe might as well make use of it... (Queens Harbor is on the Far South East of the map).
You will notice 2 Free ship icons near it.

One in "Veil of Delusion" and one in "Menelaus's Oasis" these are the real money maker ships, seeing both + weapons is easily 15 MILLION for you to play around with.
( Suicidal Squid/Dead is Dead mode, starts here... i've had to do it alot >.> )

Complete? Good! Now you have funds to play around with.



... or you could use it to make even more money.

From Queens Harbor, to the west, you will see a Paranid sector called "Perpetual Sin" this sector is an infinite money generator (Nividium Mining, you may want to google it, im only going to give a brief rundown)

You need a few things
- Nav satelite
- Mineral Scanner
- Mining Laser
- TS class trading vessel that can equip the mining laser
- Enough Paranid rep to purchase TS ships.

Fly to Perpetual Sin, scan asteroids, find a Nividium Asteroid.

Once located, call in the Trade vessel. Switch ships to the Trade vessel, use the mining laser on the Nividium asteroid, break it up a couple times into smaller chunks.

Switch back to other ship, drop nav satelite near shattered asteroid. LEAVE SECTOR AND NEVER RETURN

Command TS vessel, Orders, Special, Collect Rocks.

Dukes Citadel, the sector connected to Perpetual Sin has a Shipyard with Paranid Mining vessel (these come auto equipped to collect ore). Buy as many as you can (DO NOT UPGRADE THEM)

Command all the ships to "Follow Nav satelite" in Perpetual Sin

Once they reach the satelite, Command, Orders, Special, Collect Rocks.

Check in with them every once and a while through the property menu. When their cargobays are full, send them back to the SHIPYARD, and SELL THE SHIP WITH THE CARGO FULL OF NIVIDIUM. (6.7million is a single ship full of nividium)

Repeat as necessary.

Those are called exploit, Kingdom End also have it too at 0,0 coord

[Cooper]

Well, you don't have to boost Terran Eco doing trading yourself. All you need to do is park one M5 at the station so it will not disappear. Def. stations, shipyards, Torus, Support stations will not disappear, just like other non eco stations (Military bases, trading stations etc.). If you plan using Terran ships, park one M5 at weapon/missile factories. This will keep them from disapearing as well as keeping eco in certain balance. If you plan to cap Skirnir, Ghoul and Shadow missile factories are one of the first you should take care of (there are 1-2 of them). Also if you plan using Terran drones (Keris Factory in Mars sector) land M5 there since this is one of the most difficult stations to spawn, since it needs silicon and there is no silicon mine in Terrran space.

Later, once you have plenty of Crs, you can set up some sector traders.

Don't do defence missions where you fight pirates. With bad pirate rep, Goner plot will be difficult without capital ship M7 or better. Also I do not recommned doing Return stolen ship mission. Return abandoned ship or deliver ship missions are great. Deliver ship mission boosts rep really nicely too. If you keep the ship from return abandoned / stolen ship, local police will go after that ship to destroy it. If you sell it or reverse-eng (with players HQ) they will drop the chase. Use jumpdrive and let them go through Xenon sector ^w^. If you attack them you will lose rep. For return abandoned ship missions I sugest having a fast M5 (Teladi Kestrel) ship with a transporter device, SETA, jumpdrive and some cells. Get to ship, transport jumpdrive, SETA, cells and yourself, order Kestrel to dock at station where you must deliver ship, jump to sector and dock. After you dock transfer SETA, Jumpdrive back to Kestrel (exchange ware). It is a bit of a long road for the first few mil early in the game, but that is similar in reality. Just keep going.

As for better Cr income. Once you have like 20 mil. Build a missile complex and set M5 manualy (Manual Trade run) to go endlessly selling missiles. Build it in a sector with eq dock that does not sell that missile and there are min 2 Solar PP max 2 jumps away.
For example: 5x Dragonfly missile fac, Ore mine L with enough high yeid (min 25 for 5 dragonfly facs), and needed T1 and T2 food facs (like Chelt Space Aquarium and Rastar Rafinery). Use SuperFreighter like Mistral to buy Energy cells and one or two M5s to sell missiles. Missile sell price 1 Cr below average, EC max buy price 15 Cr. You get aprox 700.000 - 800.000 Cr every game hour. And if you sell excess ore you get another little income boost.

Then start creating some Universe traders, but not more than 20 is mostly said but I prefer max 16 of them. All Mistral SF. And don't forget to explore more sectors.

Here you can find complex costs calculator -> http://www.altanetworks.com/x3/x3tcocc.html

[aCrimsonMonarch]

Those cooper love so much to build complex, while i prefer to buy M3 and go nuts with one of the race either boron or argon in pirate sector, go hijack their trader (leave their hull until below 20% and ask surrender, with rank 5 or above in military those trader will soon to eject their ship and ready to claim (fix it with your laser and it isnt take that much time maybe 5 or 10 minutes and you get min. 2 million if you sell) dont hijack corporate because their army will spawn, and if your rank are high enough, they will spawn along with their M1 or M2, while your M3 ship is fodder to them except you drive advance baracuda (borron prototype) which is fast enough to avoid flak cannon (^_^)

[Cooper]

Originally posted by Standings.EMP:

Those cooper love so much to build complex, while i prefer to buy M3 and go nuts with one of the race either boron or argon in pirate sector, go hijack their trader (leave their hull until below 20% and ask surrender, with rank 5 or above in military those trader will soon to eject their ship and ready to claim (fix it with your laser and it isnt take that much time maybe 5 or 10 minutes and you get min. 2 million if you sell) dont hijack corporate because their army will spawn, and if your rank are high enough, they will spawn along with their M1 or M2, while your M3 ship is fodder to them except you drive advance baracuda (borron prototype) which is fast enough to avoid flak cannon (^_^)

That is because I do not like pirating inocent civilians. But I admit, that once I get my marines trained up and M7M I start to cap some capital ships like Skirnir, Tyr, Vali, Boreas or Xenon Q (for OOS sector defence) :P. Building missile complex like this in some decently defended sector will give steady income and you don't have to care too much about it while doing other stuff like plot missions. Build some more in other sectors and you get several if not tenths millions of Cr per hour. I hunt pirates when they dare to attack my TS ships now that I have Griffon and Goner plot behind me. And I got Yaki very angry since they were attacking my ships. I plan to wipe their stations after Treasure Hunt plot *supplying Claymore bomber with Phantoms and Vidar with Wraiths while having devilish grin on face*.

[Peter Pan]

I wish you could use boarding on all ships, rather than just bigger ships.

[ProwlerPC]

There's those two ships near Queens Harbour, yes. But I'm also pretty sure that there's Nvidium nearby that's not in a Paranid system. I'm doing Suicidal Squid atm trying to get a good start and not dieing but as soon as I can I'll see if it's in the Unknown system near Menalaus's Oasis or if it's the pirate system below Faded Dreams. I'm pretty sure one of them has that stuff. Lol, though, I gotta restart it again.... It'll feel great getting survivor one day.

[mtgiualar]

Originally posted by ProwlerPC:

TI'm doing Suicidal Squid atm trying to get a good start and not dieing

I highly recommend selecting another start, Suicidal Squid takes a significant amount of knowledge of the game in order to actually succeed, and considering Suicidal Squid is DiD, once you die, its basically over because most of the time you won't be willing to restart from a few game hours back because of death by an uncontrollable jumpgate accident.

[ProwlerPC]

Yeah I know a fair amount of the game and where things are but it's been quite awhile since I played and this is the first time I got the game from Steam. I've never done DiD mode before so I figured I'd just jump right into it. I like Boron ships and happen to know the area a bit. But lol what a start it gives you. Disco scout, no guns, 1mj shield, 2 units of illegal booze to bring to the pirates and 1000 credits. I rofl'd. But still I know where the Skate Prototype is and the Blastclaw Prototype is. Queen's Harbour provides jump drives and drones, if I recall that shipyard has the most Boron ships. Nvidium nearby. It's all kinds of goodness, but yeah it's been awhile and I've made many mistakes that didn't involve dieing causing me to restart over and over since DiD is quite unforgiving. I want the achievement though. Also I'm bummed out that I start hostile with Paranid right from the start. Something I gotta work on.

[ProwlerPC]

As for the Terran missions, I think of the whole thing as a combat tutorial up to M3's, maybe even an M6 if you feel like grinding. But it can be done in an M3. Couple spots are a bit tough and you aggro them and pull em away till you can pick em off one by one. Following a pirate for a handful of systems at 40kmh is annoying... The humble merchant was the start I prefered as the manual walks you by the hand for the begining runs. I might go back to do those. Depends if I do well with Suicidal Squid and knock off a bunch of steam achievements.

edit add: I'll toss in now that you can go to the menu and turn off the DiD mode and still do Suicidal Squid. But I want the achievement =P

[aCrimsonMonarch]

Originally posted by ProwlerPC:

As for the Terran missions, I think of the whole thing as a combat tutorial up to M3's, maybe even an M6 if you feel like grinding. But it can be done in an M3. Couple spots are a bit tough and you aggro them and pull em away till you can pick em off one by one. Following a pirate for a handful of systems at 40kmh is annoying... The humble merchant was the start I prefered as the manual walks you by the hand for the begining runs. I might go back to do those. Depends if I do well with Suicidal Squid and knock off a bunch of steam achievements.

edit add: I'll toss in now that you can go to the menu and turn off the DiD mode and still do Suicidal Squid. But I want the achievement =P

If you want play PLOT (most game called it QUEST) play Terran first, before "Fury PLOT", it is a bit spolier if i tell you the reason here, but i just can say u dont want one of the station become hostile to you forever dont you ?

Learn basic how to collect resource, because one of the plot ask you to do so, but you can skip all of the plot but the consequence you cant have a HQ and own a sector (yea sector by your name not taking from others)

[ProwlerPC]

Cool, good to know. Isn't there a bridge mission to begin the terran quests in the Lyrae system for the non terran start? I know for the Argon guys that are asking for my help right now I'll need to fix my rep with Paranid first since their ships will be present. I do want the Vidar, I suppose. Hmmmm hard to say, I am grinding achievements afterall before hopping onto AP. Well no matter what I knew I had to stop and refresh myself on making complexes anyways before commiting to something in my DiD game and screwing up (I'm kinda forgetting, sorta, or second guesing myself). I'll be able to buy my first TS soon even though I chose not to sell the Blastclaw and Skate prototypes. Atreus will give me another Skate P as well. Decent beginnings of a Hvy wing. But yeah I'm realizing some trial and error is in my near future so I'll probably run myself through a safer game to remind myself how to construct an efficient complex. Thanks for the reminder of owning a sector, which will also take time and consideration depending on the economy and where I want to setup.

[obliviondoll]

Every beginning has some kind of bridge that lets you link into the terran quests. But you can access them more immediately and easily from the terran defender start.

[aCrimsonMonarch]

Just do not let your military rank too high before Fury Plot, because it is almost impossible to defeat Kha'ak army full of M2 and M1. Sorry for spoiler. Except you have your own M2 and M1