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X3: Reunion

X3: Reunion is a very,
very deep space sim game. You know it's deep, because the first
thing the game does when you run it is tie your hands behind your
back, tie rocks to your feet, and throw you in the
marianas trench.

The user interface, umm, leaves something to be desired. It's great
that the game lets you create your own armadas or trading empires or
whatever, but it could still be way, way easier to use.

Therefore, here's a list of stuff that Wasn't Obvious To Me (tm).

General Resources


Controlling Other Ships


In the quickstart game, you start out with two ships. What a
wonderful idea: let's make a game setting "easier" by giving you
twice as much complexity to deal with. In most games, controlling a
second ship is impossible, so let's make things easy on the player
by making them do it right from the start. Wheee!

So, how the hell do you control your second ship? Menu (enter by
default) -> Property.

You'll then get a list of ships. Pick the one you're not in (the
one that doesn't have *(Player)* in the location). You'll get a
teensy-weensy, unresizable, window with a bunch of command sets in
it. To move the thing, around, you want "command console". You can
use that to pretty much do whatever auto-docking you'd do if you
were local to the ship. For example, to get the shipped docked at
the equipment yard in Argon Prime:

Command Console -> Navigation -> Dock At ... -> Select Argon Prime
-> Argon Equipment Dock

It'll now automatically fly there from wherever it is. Neat, huh?

Of course, if pirates catch it on the way, it'll go boom, but you
can't have everything can you?

Not Being Totally Bored By Trading


I like (manual) trading as a way to make money in space sim games.
In X3, however, the long flight times (even with SETA) mean my first
instinct was to keep a book by my desk. If you need to be
entertained while you're playing a game,
You're Doing It Wrong.

The solution, once you get a second ship anyways (the QuickStart
starts you with one) is to remote control the trading ship. Get it
some decent shields and a weapon. Set the turrets to protect ship
(from the ship management console; Menu -> Ship -> Details, I
think). Then get in your fighter ship and go capturing pirates or
whatever while you remote manage the trade ship through its trading
runs! Just check where it is every once in a while, and use the
"fly to sector" and "dock at" commands a lot.

The next step up from this is to install Trade Command Mk3 and have
the ship do its own trading, but that's a lot less hands on. Having
both a fighter and a trader to manage should keep you busy.

Moving Things Between Ships


This is actually in the manual, but not obviously. Dock the ships
at the same space station. Station -> Ship -> Freight Exchange.

The Best Buy And Best Sell Interface


So you've got the best buy and best sell locators on your ship, and
you wish to be a Merchant Of Renown (tm). Hoo-rah. Now, how the
hell do you use them?

You can actually use them on remote ships, which is pretty handy;
Menu -> Property -> pick ship -> scroll to the bottom, look for the
best buy and best sell buttons. Good for finding prices in places
you aren't. I gather satellites can do that too.

But for the ship you're on, the easiest way to get to them is Menu
-> Navigation (!?) -> Best Buy/Best Sell. Why it's there, I have no
idea.

The meaning of the columns isn't exactly staggeringly obivous,
either; I had to ask the forums.

In Best Buy:

  • MinCr is the minimum it can be bought for in this sector.
  • Location is the place in this sector where the MinCr can be had.
  • Quantity is how much they have.
  • AvgCr is always the average price of the item across the whole universe. Wares in X3 have a fixed price range.


In Best Sell:

  • MaxCr is the maximum it can be sold for in this sector.
  • Location is the place in this sector where the MaxCr can be had.
  • Quantity is how much they have.
  • AvgCr is exactly the same as the best buy interface.


This means that the game keeps no record of what you bought an item
for, which is rather lame if you ask me.

If you want to be sure to make a profit, then, always pay less than
AvgCr and always sell for at least AvgCr.

The Freight Window, Volume, And Cargo Class


V is Volume. TC is Trading Cargo Class.

The X3 FAQ TLA answer
has some information on cargo clasess and volumes.

On the forums, jlehtone answered thusly:

Each ware has volume and cargo class. For example, one unit of
ECells requires one unit of cargospace, while one beta PPC gun
requires 100 cargospace units. That is the volume of ware. That
determines how many units of some ware you can carry in your ship.

Each ware has a cargo class too, and so do ships. S, M, L, XL, ST. A
ship that has cargo class L can load wares of classes S, M, and L,
but not the XL or ST. Only Station Construction Kits are of ST, and
they need a TL (Transport Large) class ship (although some M1 or M2
might have the ST cargoclass).

TS (Transport Small) class ships have carco class XL, so they can
haul all tradeable wares. Ore and Silicon Wafers do require a XL
ship.

Some ship upgrades do have a cargo class requirement too. For
example, Triplex Scanner requires M, so most M5 ships cannot have
one. However, all "M5 Raider" variants have builtin Triplex scanner.

My additions:

A ship's ware transport class is listed in Menu -> Ship -> Details.

Where To Get Things


Note that in the interests of not being spoilery, I don't list which races make these stations or where to find them. You can get some of that sort of information at Roguey's Site.

Shields


All can be found at equipment docks if you're lucky.

  • 25 MJ: Medium Shield Production Complex
  • 125 MJ: Medium Shield Production Complex
  • 1 GJ: Heavy Shield Production Complex
  • 10 GJ: Heavy Shield Production Complex

Missles


Most (all?) can be found at equipment docks if you're lucky.

  • IR (image recognition) missles: Silkworm, Mosquito: Image Recognition Production Complex
  • Hornet Missle, Typhon Torpedo: High Yield Production Complex

weapons

  • Ion Disruptor, Mass Driver, Mass Driver Ammo: Special Weapons Production Complex

Misc

  • Fighter Drones: Drone Factory

Bonus Pack


Get the bonus
pack
; it's a bunch of extra utility scripts. It is t3h awesomes.

Making Mobile Mining Work


Mobile mining won't work unless you're not in the ship. This is not
clear from the manual. The manual does tell you how to pick
which mineral to mine for, though, so don't be a dork like me and
post to the forums asking how. :P

As an aside, I've tried manual mining in X3; it kinda sucks.
Collecting rocks by hand is very hard, and the built-in collect
rocks script is rather moronic. Also, it's not really obvious, at
least to me, which rocks are collectible by visual inspection.

Manual Trade Commands == Good


Manual Trade Commands' Best Buy and Best Sell work in any adjacent
sectors you have a satellite in. This is sweet.


Created by rlpowell. Last Modification: Friday 29 of August, 2008 18:22:12 GMT-0000 by rlpowell.