Tips for a beginner?

[Nazo_Darkfire]

A lot of my friends told me that this game in particular was pretty good. Since it was on sale, I decided to purchase it and play it during winter break. Since this is a rather in-depth space/sci-fi sim, I was wondering if any you guys have any good tips for beginners?

[Sketchy]

Several of the people who frequent the forum will say to watch cdrdaves tutorials on Youtube. I personally haven't watched any of them so i can't say how good they are. Based on my preference, I go with doing combat missions (station defence, sector patrol) to start earning money. Try to save up money wherever you can, I would upgrade combat ships only when I had to, such as when multiple Xenon M or bigger start showing up in sector patrols or the Kha'ak Fighters. DO NOT take Assassination missions until you have at least a corvette (M6) and a jumpdrive equipped.

Regarding combat ships, if you want the Commonwealth ships (Not Terrans) go with the Vangaurd variant as they are better combat oriented at the cost of cargo space. Terran ships only have the base model where as the Commonwealth have several models for each fighter craft (Vangaurd, Sentinel [these have higher shields than the base model] and Raider [faster but often weaker shields])

Combat is not the only way to earn money, some people prefer hauling cargo from point A to point B. I personally find this rather boring and set up a Universal Trader to do the hauling for me while I'm off doing other stuff. Setting up a Universal Trader does require some initial money to start as it 500k credits to buy the necessary upgrade (Trade Command Mk III found at Teladi Equipment Docks and Navigation Software) in addition to a ship for the AI to fly.

[CTHOMP]

Play x3tc and go the humble merchant start. You can avoid fighting and just learn the vase game and how it all works. Start building up your trade networks and $$/ships/factories. Once you ha e that established, you can easily afford good combat ships and have fun killing enemies.

As definitely watch the tutorial series.

[Morkonan]

Here's the first of Commander Dave's vids, for reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p73C60btBi8

They're awesome for new players, so watch them all.

Now, as to what your early game goals should be, that's very simple, in my opinion:

1) Get your reputation up with every race so that you can unlock all their sectors and make all of their ships/gear open to you.

You can do that in a number of ways and I don't care how you do it. :) Just do it. Do missions for them, kill bad guys in their sectors, get trade going with them, whatever... The point is that this is an extremely easy to track stat you can work on and while you're working on it, you'll accomplish a great many other things, like exploration, making money, getting equipment, etc. If, for instance, you focus on this, you'll be surprised how much you've accumulated by the time you're done.

That being said, there is no reason why you can't also work on other goals. And, here are the most bestests, goodestest, moar awesomester goals of all for the new player to work towards and to achieve:

2) Acquire Ships- The basics:

A) You want a good, dependable, fighter for yourself. That's going to likely mean an M3 class fighter. It'll be "heavy" with enough capacity for firepower that you can defend yourself and other ships. Get one. I don't care what it is, just so long as it's an M3. I prefer Terran, myself, but that's a whole big ball of string you may not want to deal with, yet. So, an Argon M3 is usually a popular choice. Get one, arm it however you wish, just get one, learn to fight with it, etc.


3) Acquire Ships- Your Trade Fleet

A) You need a region to call home, for awhile. Hopefully, you've built up your rep with a faction so that all of their sectors are open to you and you can buy all of their tech. Hopefully you've also built up a rep with other races, too, at least so you can purchase signficiant tech from them. (Taledi and Argon, specificallly, so you can get trade-related tech to automate your traders.) Now, it's time to build up your trade "Empire." Your goal? You want ten trading freighters. Ten. No more, no less. With these ten, you will be occupying a great deal of time doing "Multiple Manual Remote Trading" by giving them orders to buy stuff "here" and to sell it "there." Your fingers will be flying across the keyboard for quite awhile...

As you trade with these ships, you will be working towards outfitting each of them so that they can eventually be completely automated as Sector Traders, each covering their own region of sectors. You may also wish, after they have trained up, to "promote" a few of them to "Universal Traders." But, that's for after you've gotten a lot of other things done.

B) Once you have a decent number of traders automated (Ten is a good number and is easily achievable, once the credits start rolling in) now is your time to spend some "Fun Money" that will make you a huge pile of credits... You want two unique ships and if you want access to fast, huge, piles of cash anytime you wish, you must have them.

4) Ships: Advanced:

These two ships will you make you the most amount of credits in the fastest time possible. No other single ship in your fleet can make you the legitimate amount of cash, by themselves, these can in the amount of time necessary. (Becoming a "pirate" is possible, but that takes more expense and resources as well as risk. Also, certain game-mechanics can also be exploited to make much more, but we'll leave that alone for now.)

A) A "TP" Class ship. This isn't your run-of-the-mill "Look how I fitted my cargo compartment with a life-support" personnel transport. This is a ship that is specially outfitted to carry passengers in style. The most lucrative, quick, outrageously profitable "VIP Transport" missions can only be obtained with a TP class ship. And, the faster it is, the better, since you'll have to pilot it. Get one, pronto, as the rewards for VIP TP missions are outstanding and they will help you to buy your next, necessary, big purchase..

B) A "TL", preferably a Split Elephant. Why a "TL?" With a TL and good rep, you can make millions on Station missions, installing stations. You can make this cash quickly, easily, and virtually at will if you just look for a station mission. AND, you can do these missions quickly, since you can do them almost entirely remotely. And, why a "Split Elephant?" It's the cheapest, fastest, TL there is. It can't carry many stations at one time, but you'll most likely just be doing one Station mission at a time, anyway, so there's no problem there. Plus, it can house some fighters for you so you can have a nice "mothership" you can call home for awhile or that can carry a defending force with it, just in case.

A word of caution about TLs and Station Missions:

1) NEVER be in-sector when your TL is undocking from anything. Seriously, just don't. This is easy and not as difficult as it sounds. Why not be in the sector or actually piloting it when it undocks? TLs are huge, the biggest ships there are. (Except for one) When the Player is in a sector, collsions for all ships/objects in that sector are "turned on." Some stations are notorious for causing collisions with TLs when they undock and, since they can't be easily destroyed, your TL is likely to get crumpled and destroyed if collisions are turned on. So, just avoid that, whenever you can.

2) When you receive a Station mission, don't leave to go to the sector yet. Instead, track down where that sector is and look for the beacon that has been placed. Highlight it and then write down the three coordinates. This is critical! There is a bug, likely caused by collision detection being turned on, that will force the beacon to move once you "physcially" enter the sector, sometimes, and if it does, you won't know where to really, truly, place the station, since the mission cares only about the coordinates, not the actual beacon. So, once in the appropriate sector, always, always, always, place the station manually by entering the coordinates by hand instead of just clicking on the beacon. (I have no idea if this bug has been fixed, but I don't risk it, anyway. :) ) As long as you place the station on the original coordinates, you will complete the mission and get paid a LOT of money relative to the tiny bit of effort you had to put into it. It doesn't matter if the new station intersects with an asteroid or another station, either, and ends up blowing up - You will get paid!

5) Now that you have gotten your reptuation up with all the races, have some automated traders, have a TP and and TL to help you make piles of money on special missions, you're ready for.... whatever else you want to do. Most people will either have started setting up their own stations or station complexes, by this point. But, some prefer other routes and it's up to you to decide what you want to do.


A word on the "Story Missions." There are several Story Missions that are a chain of missions that lead you through... a story. At the end, they'll have unique and powerful rewards. You can start on these missions at any time and do them as you wish, depending upon the mission. (Some sub-missions have obvious time limits and restrictions, of course.) But, it's worth noting that all of them will eventually come to the point where they will have certain requirements, like you having a certain type of ship or being able to supply/purchase certain amounts of goods. Many missions will obviously involve combat and you may need additional combat ships to help you. In other words - It will help tremendously if you already have a good, stable, income and a collection of assets available to you, already, before you get deeply involved in some of the tougher story misssions.

PS - Don't be hesitant to look up information, elsewhere, especially on Egosoft's forum and websites dedicated to X3TC. Also, there are plenty of apps and tools available to you to help you make decisions and learn more about the game. Lastly, there are a huge number of mods for the game, but be sure you read through their instructions, make sure they're compatible with the version you're running and know what it is they actuall do, all of which requires you to have some degree of familiariarity with the game.

Edit-Add: A note on "Combat Missions" - Combat missions are fun and easy to do, at first. The easiest are the "Station Defense" missions, at first, since stations have shields and aren't likely to be easily destroyed by a bunch of wimpy M5s... But, all "Combat" missions "scale" with difficulty depending upon your "Fight Rank." The higher your Fight Rank, the more challenging the opponents you will face.

Also, some of the other missions, especially some Story Missions, will scale in difficulty with your "Fight Rank." So, if you're working on a Combat mission or a Story mission and you have a high Fight Rank, be prepared to be handling very difficult opponents. And, if you don't have the assets and econmy to support fielding your own combat fleet? Well, you're going to get pwnd....hard, in some missions.

So, it's best to do Combat Missions sparingly, once you get to a certain level where they have difficult opponents, and then start upgrading your capabilites so you can take tougher ones with ease instead of just focusing on doing them all the time. Just beware - Some of the Story Missions are nearly impossible to do with extremely high Fight Rank scores. Be aware of your Fight Rank and how it impacts "scaling difficulty" combat of all sorts.

[Sketchy]

Adding somethings from the post above to include my experiences and what I've learned.

The 'Deploy Station' missions you find will end up damaging the economy as the game removes an already existing from the universe to accomodate the new one as it has a limit on how many NPC stations there can be.

Regarding combat rank and story missions, only a couple have given me trouble from my higher combat rank, but only when I'm in a smaller ship. I actually hold off on doing some of them just so I can get a bigger ship to get paid more; such as starting the Operation Final Fury plot line.

As far as VIP transport goes, I don't know that they're the fastest way to get money but only because of Assassination missions once you get a big enough ship. A high combat rank assassination can pay a large amount (almost 15 mil in my current run.)