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Yes Litecube is a great mod. But I also would recommend some of the Litcube fixes and other mods/scripts for Litecube. That makes the mod even better.
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=380168
Easy answer, playing. LiteCube mod is a total overhaul mod of X3AP, so you can't change so much.
But with LU you can tell he looked at it like "what does this game need, and how can it fulfill this in a way the engine can still handle?"
And the guy still responds on reddit within a day!
I really want to like this mod, lots of awesome ideas and features in it. But the execution is just... terrible. Maybe someone can enlighten me? xD
How much knowledge did you have of the X3 game before starting LU?
Could you elaborate on what you did and what strategy you used?
What starting scenario did you pick?
How did you go about making your first millions?
How did the OCV incursions progress for you and what did you do to stop them/reconquer their sectors?
How big did the rival company grow and did you experience the rival company sending out patrols to take down your assets?
For me for a game, or a playthrough in X3(LU) to be "fun", or enjoyable, or at least worth staring at the screen for, I have to either discover something I "want to do" in the game or be in need of just hanging out in space for the rest of the day.
But if I'm not in the mood, I can't play and I had to learn to read my own mood and plan it a bit in the days ahead in order to be able to play games in general, and X3 is one of the lower threshold ones in those cases as I have knowledge without requiring to think and it can be an escape to just hang about in space watching the world still live without me
So in LU I am at my 3rd or 4th playthrough now with the first one having as goal "learning LU and building an HQ which has the SCHx400 supply chain to build and equip M2+ battleships to be able to stand against the OCV
(I started to get bored once I actually had the production chain somewhat fleshed out in a sector and could crank out M7+ ships like no tomorrow, but this took me a while)
A second playthrough was more focused on trading and experimenting with how much money the mining ships would get me.
After the 3rd playthrough I spend time screwing around in the game seeing if there was stuff I missed, which led me to find an Excelibur which can dock M6 ships
So 4th playthrough, get to an Excalibur and slap it full with M6+ ships and see if those can survive battles without (ab)using missiles
Currently this playthrough is at a stage of having 8 Argon reputatoin of the 10 required, but I do have 3 M7+ ships and just found the renamed Maccana M7C(Hayabusa)
So for me the hundreds of hours spent in this game were figuring out mechanics, learning about this universe, flying endlessly through space, blowing stuff up, getting blown up, countering the OCV, figuring out how to retake sectors, analysing the growth patterns of the rival company, jumping on top of their ships, taking em out and getting the hell out of there before a response fleet shows up
All in a way that doesn't start giving performance issues once growth starts becoming exponantial
Whereas with vanilla X3:AP I would experience the forum trading scripts start being taxy midgame limiting battles
Took the advanced start, because M3 is always nice. Grabbed the Adv. Sats and sold the M5s
Did some missions until i could buy an 1MJ factory, Thats when i had my first WTF moment. a basic TS, 2 million credits? 8 times as much as the factory?
"Oh well" i thought and set it all up, only to meet my second WTF moment, that i need to buy a software now that costs another million credits, just to supply that factory. 3+ million the transport, 260k the factory... something is wrong here xD
So i came to the conclusion that trading is an absolut no-go for making money. Moving on to check out those Saturn Complex Hubs and found that those were pretty cheap and only required rank 4.
Well, goal set. Combat-missioning my way to rank 4 with the terrans and to rank 6 with the split to buy a TL. 99% of the money i made was from bailed ships and dropped loot. i made 20 million alone from selling all those 1mj shields that were just everwhere! xD
Thats also the point when combat started to become REAL boring. Sitting next to an M6 for half an hour before it finally popped, its turrets doing so little damage, ya could have thrown balls made out of paper at the starting mamba, they would have done more damage!
Meanwhile i also did see 2 frighters and found 1 station of the Phanon guys. The weapons are so weak, you cant even destroy a TS with 8 HEPT before it jumps away. D: ( Also, another problem i found with this damn slow firing rate is that the inaccuracy hurts alot. so i practicly never fired at something until i was below 700 meters to make sure all bullets hit. )
Eventually i took my Elephant, bought my first Saturn Hub 10x or something for Ecells. Placed it and suddenly i had a moneyprinter. So i bought more, placed more etc. at game-time day 2, the OCV was just about finishing conquering the first sector. I did some raids on Phanons home sector, destroying a few fighters here and there.
Eventually i just sat down, hit SETA, let money build up, place another Hub and then send hundreds upon hundreds of M3 in an endless stream of death and destruction against the OCV which was now getting to the 3. sector i believe, and watched many, many green blips delete the red blips on the map. I simply couldn't be bothered to fight anymore, its so incredible boring. Its just waiting until the enemy finally turns into fireworks. The weapons just do way too little damage and fire WAY too slow to be effective in AI hands.
Sounds like you have a semi solid understanding of the game and what you are looking for, but didn't manage to align both to get an enjoyable experience, possible because of Litcube's design decisions or your own choices.
Trading is something that I launched differently: opposed to selling some of the faster trading ships I found abondened, I send em to a Teladi Shipyard, slap Trading software on them and start up Sector Traders/Universe traders once they have enough experience from ST
which got me to the point of "I can just SETA or do whatever I want and money rolls in"
But being able to look at a problem and think of self sustaining solutions which can be attained quickly isn't a very common skill even in "real life", so I hope you are at least aware of your abilities in that area and how that might be a wall for enjoyment in some games, at least it is for me
I suppose you read the FAQ?
https://code.google.com/p/litcubesuniverse/wiki/03_FAQ#How_does_LU_compare_to_the_vanilla_game?
"How does LU compare to the vanilla game?"
Enemies are tougher, but can still be defeated through skillful flying. It is reasonably well-balanced that way (so far)."
"How does In-Sector (IS) combat compare to vanilla?"
"You'll find the IS battles in LU to be "bigger". The fights last longer, especially between larger ships, and there's usually more ships involved.
You could be minding your own business in a sector, and a pirate patrol of an M7, a few M6, and a giant wing of fighters wants your cargo.
So be aware of that."
Not being able to easily down an M6+/M7 with an M3+ seemed to be one of the explicit choices made and I adjusted to them, I didn't really experience them as good or bad so far.
I know missiles can still be insane, even on Trading ships allowing jump in hit-and-run tactics against even the OCV M2+ ships, so I screwed around with them in playthrough one, but then tried to "challenge myself" I suppose by not using missiles any more
I shifted the values when I looked at battles: 1 Xenon M7 coming in for a patrol mission?
I'm "noping the ♥♥♥♥ out" if I'm flying something smaller/not fully equipped
which is a feeling that became rare in vanilla AP for me, which then encouraged me to keep playing, get something better and blow it out of the sky
Looking at a sector map watching streams of blips fly into each other,
yeah that's not my thing/enjoyable for me either
Watching the bigger battles take place "In Sector" or finding things that I actually want to do is.
You mentioned being able to have a TL and 10x station by day 2,
which sounds like you used almost 0 SETA
or indeed became very efficient in your "Let's do this as efficient as possible, in as little time as possible, with as little resources as possible" strategy
(makes me wonder if life sucks for you if you can't find people around you who can understand/keep up with this
your last paragraph sounds like my experience with the education system)
I wrote a bunch of stuff in response to your posts, not entirely sure what my point with em was or if they still have enough structure, but I think it was to understand you a bit which I now do think I do for now
I hope some of what I wrote was at least enough to still your boredom for another minute,
or might help you think about looking at games/problems like this in a way that you can retain the enjoyment even in the long run
There are scripts on the forum that fix some of the issues that vanilla LU still has, 1 of the factors I believe is OCV expanding at LU's intended rate
LU's scripts thread: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=380168
Tweaks and fixes script: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=376568
============================================================
Revelation Patrol Groups
Originally, the OCV ships that are defending an OCV sector, would try to intercept any invading ship independently, resulting in ships reaching their target in the order of how fast they were making it possible to take down a large OCV defending fleet with a much weaker force. I changed this behavior so that all OCV ships try to escort the next larger class of ships up until M2s and only the M2s will try to intercept the invading enemy. You are now forced to battle against whole M2 + escort ships battle groups to defeat an OCV sector.
NOTE: because of their relatively slow speed, it's possible to draw out the M2s (and accompanying escort ships) away from the OCV station and then attack and destroy the OCV station before they can come back. I will fix this issue in an update to this script so that at least one battle group is always kept to defend the OCV station.
Revelation Attack All Enemies
This fixes the OCV defensive logic to not ignore lasertowers/satellites installed by the player or the other races. Having a player satellite in an OCV sector is indeed very useful but unrealistic for the OCV to completely ignore these.
NOTE: This automatically includes the Revelation Patrol Groups change.
============================================================
I am experienced Alpha/Beta tester and know some stuff about gamedesign. And this mod just doesn't seem to know what it wants to be and goes from one extreme to another. If i play a new game, i dont just think " Hey, thats fun! " i think " The devs put that rock / wall / etc there to teach the player how to jump. how well did the dev teach him other gameplay things? " and such things, i look at the very heart of the design on a game / mod.
And what i have seen so far from this one, is... pretty bad. As said, trading and building single stations has been made absolutely useless by increasing the prices of TS by 1500% !! But without increasing their cargo or money-generating ability. On the other hand you got those Saturn Hubs which are basicly infinite-money cheats. They are even more effective and easier to set up then the infinite-nividium mining in Vanilla.
Then, as already said a few times. Combat is kinda the same way. Longer battles, yush. Bigger? maybe. More dangerous? HELL NO! The most powerfull weapon in LU is just as powerfull as the PAC vanilla. Imagine equipping your Walhalla with Particle Accellerators everywhere. Those are the most powerfull guns in this mod. And they miss, ALOT.
Longer combat is not a bad thing, especially if you take vanilla TC capital combat. But this isn't longer combat. This is " I set my M2 to attack all targets and meanwhile i watch all Lord of the Rings AND Star Wars Movies. " -Level.... Or you use missiles. the Rapier missile has already twice as much DPS as the PPC. ( Also, this low rate of fire and damage is very, very unrealistic. ) The way the weapons are designed, it takes skill completely out of the equation, makes " strafing " completely overpowered and the AI helpless.
For some weapons i can not even find a reason why they exist. The HEPT and FBL are practicly the same weapon. The EBC and PRG are the same aswell. The PPC and PSP are practicly identical aswell. No " Unique-ness " like in Vanilla with the ID, PBE, HEPT vs EMPC... You no longer have choices on how to equip your fighter or battleship.
From a gamedesign perspective, this mod is a complete mess. Tossed in some X, some Star Wars ( especially sounds ) , rounding it up with some EVE ( urgh..).... Its just a pile of rubbish that doesnt know what it wants to be. And thats maybe why i just cant get into this mod. The player is completely overpowered from the start, especially if he knows what he is doing.
Well, Long text is Long. Short version is probably, Very good ideas, very bad execution. Terrible balance. Unless you like seeing very big numbers in your bank-account, you won't have much fun with this mod i guess.
Thank you for the insights and experiences from your perspective.
It sounds like you look at this from the perspective of a speedrunner, at least that's how it makes sense to me, and it is always interesting for me to learn from those people, as it is now from you.
I do still sometimes have fun with this mod and don't see it like you do yet, although I am probably running to the end of what I can get form it too in a lot of ways.
But I do have other areas where I experience similar frustrations, so hopefully you can find something else that can entertain you.
Also, there is still the Dead is Dead mode to beat!
If you ever feel like trying something out together or having a random dutch guy assist you in something like Space Engineers to spar about ship design and build stuff, I'd be up for it.
Hallo Dutchie. Altijd fijn om een andere Nederlander te ontmoeten die X speelt. ;)
lamzak :P