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I'm looking for an inexpensive game to kill some time with here and there, and noticed X3 in the bargain section of my local book/game store. I kind of enjoyed the first installment way back when it came out, but by the time X2 hit the market it lagged so far behind state of the art it was unbearable to play, from stiff animation through wholly lacking info presentation to utterly boring combat and missions. And the horrible, horrible command interface for large starships...

So naturally I am wary of spending even a small amount of money on X3, so I thought I'd ask: is it any good? Has anybody actually played it?

X3 is a very very janky game. But according to those who have more patience than I (dying inexplicably during a tutorial sequence = YAY!) it is an amazingly deep game and is pretty much a single player EVE.

Sounds pretty good actually. I saw the Gold Edition at EB for like, $20? Or something. I was thinking of picking it up myself.

It is... complex. If you can get into it, it apparently is very rewarding. I tried mine for a while, but couldn't get into it, so it is waiting on my games shelf for the day I crave spacey games again.

Single player EvE is a quite accurate description, though.

Prehaps this review will help you...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi8n6uN091E

lol the evil bad guy aliens are really called that? That's fucking funny.

Still, flying around the galaxy shooting people and selling shit sounds like a good time.

If you're thinking about getting it, get the expansion/sequel Terran Conflict. It fixes a good chunk of the problems of X3, although the threadbare story present in both is weaker in XTC.

I got the gold edition, but I don't have a joystick. I used to have a $20 USB joystick I got years ago... which my brother has.

Guess I need to wait a bit to play the game.

Anyone know if the game's economy still glitches out and stagnates, resulting in identical prices everywhere in the galaxy?

I'm not sure if it's dumber to buy x3 at all or buy it when you can't even play it. Maybe it's mercy.

If x3 lived up to any of the development goals it'd be a great game. It doesn't.

PS Los I'm not sure fans consider that a glitch.

Stark wrote:PS Los I'm not sure fans consider that a glitch.

That's terrifying.

Stark wrote:I'm not sure if it's dumber to buy x3 at all or buy it when you can't even play it.

My brother took my joystick without telling me or asking me.

JOYSTICK?

Ok, let's not start that again.

Oh sorry, I misunderstood what you meant.

Never mind him, a Joystick apparently set his family ablaze and raped his home or something.

Stofsk wrote:I got the gold edition, but I don't have a joystick. I used to have a $20 USB joystick I got years ago... which my brother has.

Guess I need to wait a bit to play the game.

A joystick is not required to play the game, the game supports Freelancer mode as well as Wing Commander mode. Freelancer mode is actually easier if you're fighting ships that are more nimble than you are; your fixed guns that will only fire straight ahead while flying with a joystick will follow the cursor in mouse mode. For this reason, I find it more rewarding to use a joystick, since there aren't many flight sim games made these days.

^Well, this may sound like blatant Stark-baiting (it isn't Stark, I swear), but Yatzhee of all people has decided to remedy the lack of fun'n'shooty space games by developing his own indie space game.

His comments on his reasoning for this, as well as his dev efforts, on this Extra Punctuation column and subsequent ones.

When the hell did space-flight games quietly die? Because they certainly didn't quietly stop being fun. The most recent game I'm aware of that had full-control space exploration was X3: Terran Conflict, which suffered from the major problem of this genre: trying to be like Elite. That is, incorporating a whole bunch of incredibly boring trading, technicals and bureaucracy when all I really want to do is fly around in my supersonic rocket ship, kill monsters, and kiss glittery green cheeks.

My theory is that space games died out because they're too easy to make. As mysterious and wonderful as space is, there doesn't seem to be that much in it. Rendering a big ol' cube of bugger-all and some particle effects probably doesn't look too good on a developer's resume.

I disagree with Yahtzee. I went out and bought the game a couple hours after posting the thread (yeah, so most opinions here were actually useless, sorry ) and it delivered what I wanted: Space Capitalism. Then again, I'm crazy - I actually like figuring out cost-per-unit and return on investment rates and buying low/selling high and watching my account grow and then investing the money in shiny new space stations and new ships. I play it with my scientific calculator in hand.

The problem is, I know the game has many flaws, like repetitive missions. The combat is substandard and there's definitely a high fuck-you factor, and an inefficient interface for commanding other ships in your merchant fleet (six clicks through two different menus to tell a ship to go somewhere? Awesome!). One could keep listing the problems, but I still love it for the trading alone. I didn't even touch the plot (oh, yeah, that's another problem: I have no idea how to even do that if I ever wanted to )

Also, for some reason, I can't stop doing side missions, even though they're all five or four similar templates. But they're nearly all time-limited, and the limits are really tight, and I love juggling ships and arranging deliveries in the nick of time!

PeZook Space Corp, we specialize in doing the impossible!

Losonti Tokash wrote:Anyone know if the game's economy still glitches out and stagnates, resulting in identical prices everywhere in the galaxy?

Didn't happen to me yet.

PeZook wrote:I didn't even touch the plot (oh, yeah, that's another problem: I have no idea how to even do that if I ever wanted to )

In addition to the Build/Think/Fight/Trade (or whatever the names are) mission icons, there's a fifth icon for story missions that looks like a blue book. If you start as the Terran Defender, you're involved in the Terran plot right away and don't have to do anything special. If you chose one of the other starts, you have to do some non-obvious things to access the various plots (The HUB plot is given to you while traveling through a random Boron sector; the Terran plot starts in Terran space, which is pretty far from where the other starts place you; one of the plots is only available after visiting X sectors; some are only available once you achieve a certain rank with that race).

Here is a good link outlining how to get to the plots: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=234882

PeZook wrote:I disagree with Yahtzee.

Don't worry, it's not a capital punishment to do so.

Oh, for an X3-lite experience I would recommend Freelancer. It's an easy to play space game, with a decent single player campaign, and some gorgeous space environments (I love flying through the Badlands). It has many flaws, of course, but for those to whom X3 is a bit overkill, it might do the trick. Still, stay away from Mods that add Star Wars ships, they will break your heart (and crash the game).

Freelancer also has pretty good characters and a nice SP story, which is something X3 lacks. In Freelancer you are happy to see some characters again, in X3...meh.

houser2112 wrote: Here is a good link outlining how to get to the plots: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=234882

Hmm...do these work for Custom, too? I'm playing Custom and I visited all of these places save Sol, and no blue books for me...

I've also noticed other differences, like no Mobile Drilling System factories anywhere...I had to start my own to mine Nvidium (heh, what a name...).

PeZook wrote:Hmm...do these work for Custom, too? I'm playing Custom and I visited all of these places save Sol, and no blue books for me...

I've also noticed other differences, like no Mobile Drilling System factories anywhere...I had to start my own to mine Nvidium (heh, what a name...).

I've only played as the Terran Defender so far myself, so I can't comment on how the Custom start plays. Custom may start you out with lower race ranks than Terran, so that may be the reason.

http://eng.x3tc.ru/ is another good resource for the game. According to that site, there are about a half dozen places where you can buy MDSFs, some in Paranid space, some in Teladi space.

I just started a new games as a Terran Defender, and it's true: not only are all the plots disabled, but entire sectors of the economy are missing on Custom for...some reason. Of course, the manual doesn't mention it at all that there are no mobile drilling rig factories or squash mine factories anywhere

Of course on the other hand, that means that a mobile drilling rig factory sets you up for life (~33 thousand to make one rig, 72 thousand and change to sell it at any equipment dock) since you become a monopolist...

Oh,also? Terrans suck. Their sectors are gigantic for some reason (thus, it takes forever to fly anywhere in Sol), all their wares except energy cells are completely different and unsellable in the wider X universe and you can't buy any new Terran stations at their shipyards. Yay!

At least they have really powerful fighters and guns, and it was a nice change not to start with a basic Buster that falls apart when touched slightly and 1000 credits that can buy you one meal at Space McDonald's

PeZook wrote:I just started a new games as a Terran Defender, and it's true: not only are all the plots disabled, but entire sectors of the economy are missing on Custom for...some reason. Of course, the manual doesn't mention it at all that there are no mobile drilling rig factories or squash mine factories anywhere

Of course on the other hand, that means that a mobile drilling rig factory sets you up for life (~33 thousand to make one rig, 72 thousand and change to sell it at any equipment dock) since you become a monopolist...

Oh,also? Terrans suck. Their sectors are gigantic for some reason (thus, it takes forever to fly anywhere in Sol), all their wares except energy cells are completely different and unsellable in the wider X universe and you can't buy any new Terran stations at their shipyards. Yay!

At least they have really powerful fighters and guns, and it was a nice change not to start with a basic Buster that falls apart when touched slightly and 1000 credits that can buy you one meal at Space McDonald's

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

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. 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%). 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.

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.

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.