Zenith said:
I played X3: Reunion.
It was awful, and I am sooooooo desperate for a space game. The terrible interface with so many redundant layers in it. I know the focus is on trade but it's such a slow plodding game. Even with mods and "rewarding" myself with 200,000 credits every time I completed a mission (it's either that or spend months stealing ships to raise enough cash for 1 corvette) it just wasn't fun. Even creating the equivalent of a "skirmish mode" by spawning a fleet and warping it in to an enemy sector wasn't fun. Not enough resources were put into combat to make it feel good. The controls just feel off and you can't feel any feedback from your weapons hitting the enemy.
and it's such a shame as the ships have such good art design, even if the alien races that pilot them don't.
You usually start out with a really crappy ship, with few upgrades.
It's a slow game in the start, as soon as you've made a million credit and can afford a jump-drive, the game will be a different beast after that.
The interface and the combat controls in 'X3 - Terran Conflict' is better than Reunion, but probably not for everyone. :-/
In X2 I didn't manage to steer for myself, had to buy a few combat-upgrades so I could survive fights, fired my lasers with mouse, and then turned on the autopilot, to steer towards the enemies..
It were horrible, but I managed, until I could afford the big ships with the big missiles, etc.
X3 Reunion it were abit better, here I could actually control my own ship, it became good in Terran Conflict, here I suck with missiles tough, and are good with lasers.
Terran Defender is a good start for plot-mission, here you get a tiny combat-fighter, and gradually get's better ships.
They can only use Terran weapons, but they're laser-weapons are pretty good.
Terran Space suck abit tough, so get out to the other races asap.
In fighting, there are three different laser firing-configurations now, for aiding you now, I think you change with the K button on your keyboard, if I recall correct.
You can set the boresight Automatic, semi-automatic or off for target-solution.
One of them ought to suit you.
The thing about X3 is that you increase in fight-level, trade-level and similar.
You can also buy your own space-stations if fighting isn't your thing, and earn money that way.
The mod with 200k for each of your missions might sound great if you're playing for 30 minutes, after that it's not much. :-/
Do a few space-station defend-missions and your race-relation will increase.
I allways play vanilla-game (unmodded), If I run a patrol mission, over 3 sectors, I might be informed that I will gain 2-4 million credits for the mission.
If I have a police license, and a destroyer or carrier jumps in and i kill it, it's a extra half million credits.
So earning 8 million on a 20 minute mission, isn't that hard now.
Also for your corvette-problem, you don't have to return ships, even tough you say so. When people asks you to bring back a ship for them.
You'd be amazed at what people leaves abandoned, and ask you to return. Especially when they won't tell you what kind of ship you're going to pick up..
Sure, you'll get a police-force after you, whenever you don't return it on time.
But if you're not strong enough to fight it off, you can perhaps transfer a jump-drive and jump to the other side of the universe, and work at that side for a while.
And the poor police task-force will most likely try to cross a Xenon-sector or something like that, and never be seen again.