Is X3 any good?

[PeZook]

Those prices you quote for factories seem ridiculously low. Are you sure you didn't mean to say "million" instead of "thousand"?

That's for the product, not the factory: a mobile mining system costs about 33 thousand to make at the factory (in materials) and can be sold for circa 72 thousand.

Best thing? They're bought at equipment docks, which are exempt from the supply/demand system. Makes for some great, stable cash flow.

The Terran sectors are large, but they don't have a monopoly on such, and at least they're "square". I've found sectors that are so huge that the zoomed out map can't display all of the jump gates at once, and one sector in particular where the North and West jump gates were practically on top of each other in the NW corner, and placed similarly for the South and East gates.

Yeah, but the problem is that they're all huge, and the space stations are gigantic, too: it takes at least twice as long for the autopilot to dock than everywhere else.

I really like their aestethics for some reason, though.

Regarding the time to fly around, are you aware of the SETA ship upgrade, and the ability to buy engine tuning upgrades at various stations? The Sabre the Terrans start you out with comes with SETA (mine did, anyway), and you can set the % that time is accelerated while using it in one of the menus (default is 600%).

Dude...I think I'd kill myself if I had to fly around without SETA. It sometimes takes 5 minutes to cross a sector even with 10x compression, if I had to "play" (it hardly could be called that...) for an hour just to cross a single sector...well, the game would quickly find itself up for sale

I think every starting ship has SETA, anyway.

There were times when I had to hop in another ship that didn't have it, and the game is painfully tedious without it. It's bad enough with a fighter, imagine doing it with a slow as fuck freighter.

Duh. Personally, I think it shouldn't be a purchaseable upgrade at all, just a game feature.

When you say you can't buy Terran stations from shipyards, are they just not available, or are they available, but you can't buy them? If a ware is in red, that means there is something preventing you from buying it. It might be too large for your hold, or you aren't high enough rank to buy it from them.

No, no Terran shipyard has their stations on the product list. No big loss, though, since all their products save energy cells are unique to Sol and can't be sold anywhere else, anyway.

The Terrans are the Apple of the X Universe. The hardware is good, but proprietary. You can only equip Terran ships with Terran weapons, and Terran weapons can only be equipped on Terran ships.

I think you can trade the guns in Commonwealth equipment docks, though. But it's hardly possible to make a profit (PROFIT! ) this way.

And I don't really mind the fact they're propertiary, since they're so goddamned powerful. Your basic starting Sabre pretty much outclasses every other M4 in the game, and can throw it down against two M3s with a good chance of winning. Install four guns on it, and, well...

[houser2112]

Yeah, but the problem is that they're all huge, and the space stations are gigantic, too: it takes at least twice as long for the autopilot to dock than everywhere else.

Get a Docking Computer. Then, you can approach to <5km, hit ctrl+D, and instantly dock. It's saved my ass when you're completing a taxi mission close to the time limit.

Duh. Personally, I think it shouldn't be a purchaseable upgrade at all, just a game feature.

It was at the moment that I hopped in that non-SETA freighter that I realized it wasn't a game feature. It costs pocket change to equip, so it's not like cost is a consideration.

And I don't really mind the fact they're propertiary, since they're so goddamned powerful. Your basic starting Sabre pretty much outclasses every other M4 in the game, and can throw it down against two M3s with a good chance of winning. Install four guns on it, and, well...

They certainly do. The only times I've used anything other than the starting Sabre (which outclasses even other Sabres, since I think other Sabres can only mount 4x5MJ shields to the starter's 5) is because the Sabre can't carry enough energy cells to jump to non-gate-linked sectors and back, which is required for the Final Fury missions.

That is, until I completed the Treasure Hunt mission series. The reward for which is the Terran Experimental Shuttle. It's an "M3". I put that in quotes because besides being beefier, better protected (1x200MJ), and better armed (6xEMPC) than an M4 Sabre, which you'd expect from an M3, it's also faster (321 vs 275, fully upgraded). The only thing it's not strictly better than the Sabre at is acceleration, which is only marginally worse, and that's only an issue when you first undock, so that's not really that bad.