X3 - a surprise for an old Elite nutter.

[El_Cid]

http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3/info_en.php - the main game website.

http://www.thexuniverse.com/ - the website of the Xtended mod for X3.

http://www.thexuniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2720 - thread about installing the Xtended mod.

Ok I loved Elite - played it in it's original form on the BBC microcomputer, and in it's various other forms(as Frontier and FFE) on a variety of platforms. Elite is one of the amazing games of gaming history.

I pretty much hated X(and X-Gold - it had the expansion), which was the first game in this series from a group of germans(the reason I mention this is because it's a clue to the type of game you get).

It took that feeling of a wide open universe with endless possibility that Elite generated so well and made it feel slow and claustrophobic and added annoying aliens, almost jar jar-binks like. That just scared me the hell away.

X2 I played just once - it had improved on my expereince with the first game, but it still didn't have the power to stop me playing Elite. I didn't try any mods for it, but I understand quite alot was achieved with these. I may go back and look at those at some point.

Still for a cool £10 I picked up 'X3 2.0 - Game of the Year 2007 edition' last month and well thats all I've been playing since.

After getting rid of Oblivion I needed something to test out my new graphics card(a nvidia silent 7600GT) on and I wondered if maybe with X3 they had managed to capture Elites charm.

So far it would seem so as I'm only allowing this quick post before getting back to my game. In short if you liked Elite, X3 has finaly made the X games a real contender imho.

Other stuff you may like to know:

I'm pretty comfortable with the whole modding thing, I've taken part in a few efforts and getting Morrowind to work perfectly with around 100 mods means I have no problem about trying any out.

The first link I gave is for the X3 official homepage - the forums are very informative about the game and they also host the download for a rather ambitious mod called the Xtended mod.

The second link is for the site that the authors of the Extended mod setup for their own forums and general X related stuff.

The third link is about how to install the Xtended mod.

So if you are an old Elite fan, not sure about X3 after dissapointment with the earlier games, what are you waiting for? £10+ a free substantial mod = months/years of space gaming ahead.

If you are tired of mainstream 10 hour gaming and want something you'll never experience on a console, X3 could surprise you also?

[Standup]

I played X a bit until i finally got rid of my Win98 box (only about a year ago) but it never really won me over. Tad slow but it mainly because I kept dying on docking that i gave up. I couldn't get it to work reliably with XP so it went to the charity shop.

Looked at X2+3 but it just felt like more of the same with shiny graphics...what's different about X3 that makes it better?

[Hueij]

The real die-hard Eliteers play Oolite of course...

Right On Commander!

[El_Cid]

Oolite is great of course!(and free to boot)

****
Hardware alert! OK I should warn you that X3 really does need decent hardware(if you want the nice graphics). As it is my new Nvidia 7600GT only has 128MB memmory and it could probably do with 256MB to run all parts of the game as smooth as silk. FPS rate is fine(50 fps average) but as the 128MB puts me in the minimum bracket I get occasional 'stickiness'. I got a 2.6ghz system with 2Gig of RAM and the game looks great bar the odd stutter due to the 128MB limit on my GPU. Still if you are good to run Oblivion you will be fine for X3.
*****

As for X3 - well i'm still into it very much, it's german 'hardcoreness' is kind of wearing but it does make you really appreciate the gains you make in game.

If the later Elites(frontier+FFE) had one big flaw(to my mind) it would be the economy or how all the costs of new ships+equipment didn't balance well with the amount of credits you could generate. A few trade runs from game start and you could end up with a top of the range craft to fly. This is not the case at all in X3 - infact making good money is like getting blood out of a stone. So imagine elite combined with one of those german economic simulation type games.

The price is also in X3's favour - new in a shop for £10. Plenty of bang for your buck.

Its not Elite4 mind you(and even Elite4 isn't Elite4 yet!), but this latest version has much more of that Elite feel compared to the first X game for sure.

I played a week or so with the unmodded game first and with the huge Xtended mod I just prefer all the extra ship types it brings to the game(some from the earlier games also), plus extra sectors to visit and extra stuff in general is always good in this type of game I find.

If you get the latest version of the game(game of the year edition 2007 with Bala GI's research missions plus 2007 bonus pack) just be sure to uncheck any mods from the launch menu before playing as the very nice cockpit mod by IMP is sadly not compatible with the Xtended mod.

Good things:

1.Very nice graphics if your system can handle it.
2.More structured role play aspects compared to Elite - eg if you become a Pirate(by doing piratey stuff) you will not be welcome in civilised space!
3.Germanicaly real economic model!
4.Not as fast to progress as in Elite, but not as painfuly slow as in the first X.

Not so good/or not quite Elite stuff:

1.Still has those silly races(wobbly head aliens etc), which can detract from the emerssion some times(but you dont have to talk to them mostly).
2.Not clear stats and information for ship types - no elite type preview in shipyards with ALL the information available on one screen. e.g Hull strength is not accessible in the default ship info screen
3.Fixed ship speeds(ie not 'real' space flight like in elite)
4.dubious Auto pilot(very much like Elite!), especially bad at piloting the really fast ship classes.
5.Fixed amount of sectors(the mod does add many more).
6.Can't land on Planets(but you can burn up in their atmosphere!).

Elite4 should be THE space game if it ever gets made, but in the meantime X3 has atleast improved the X series to a great degree.

EDIT: (I had to cut my post short last night)

I'll talk a bit more about the roleplay aspect of X3 just to make it clearer.

In Elite you could of course roleplay in many ways, but often it was very much out of the game world - you just found yourself making up the story as you played(I think some guy did a great thread about this a few years back here?).

In X3 they have provided in-game elements to better realize your role play. Say you want to be a merchant, in Elite you would just get a big fat slow spaceship and trade. You can do the same in X3 but you are also able to build space stations to create wealth or market opportunities. You can also control remotely a vast fleet of craft that you can give commands to(go to X sector and trade X amount of goods etc).

Pirates are an actual faction, and you can become one if you take to attacking ships+space stations in other factions space. They have their own bases and goods to trade.

So X3 gives you some in-game mechanics for these type of role play situations.

I've found myself becoming a bent cop in X3, kind of by accident. I got a good enough reputation with one of the races and bought myself a police license - thinking that as the odd pirate I would meet would attack me sometimes I could earn a few more credits when taking them out(without a police license you just get a reputation boost).

Now with that Police badge I can also legaly scan other ships(in the zones i have jurisdiction) just as the police and customs ships do to you in game. And as it happened I did it once on a merchant ship and the guy had a large stash of illegal liquor, which he promptly dropped. So I kind of picked it up and made a huge profit when i sold it on the black market. Money is hard to generate so it seemed rude to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The risk I run is that even as a Police license holder I can get scaned - so if any other police/customs ships had found that liquor in my possesion I would have had my license revoked and taken a larger reputation hit with that race.

Still a little light bulb went on after that event and I've decided the role play value of being a bent cop is quite fun for now(plus the money is good!).

While X3 will always have the enormous shadow of Elite hanging over it, and it doesn't just do Elite with much better graphics, I think Egosoft have finally got the overall balance right. Its still needs some working on before it can really challange for the title of best space opera, but compared to the first game(and my very brief attempt at the second), X3 has managed to grab my attention.

Now all I need to do is find a way to make good legal money and get back on the straight and narrow before my luck runs out!

[El_Cid]

As this thing has been brought up in the MTW kingdoms thread, I thought I should just let people know that in the latest version of X3(2.0 upwards) they got rid of the starforce copy protection.......glad I only got interested in the game so late!

In fact you dont even need the cd/dvd in the drive when you play it. So kudos to whomever managed to sort that out.

And it's still a slower game than Elite(limited speed up time options etc), but that is the german hardcorness part of the game, and if you don't come to it expecting a fast paced game it won't dissapoint fans of Elite. It really looks and sounds beautiful compared to other elite-u-likes! I find myself flying around admiring the nebulae backdrops etc.

If they ever come up with a way to visit the planets, well I think Elite4(when it gets made...come on David Braben!) will have some serious competition

[Proteus_MST]

Well, you can at least adjust your SETA (via settings) so that it gives you 10x instead of "just" 6x time compression.

But all in all IMHO it doesn´t mattter as from early on you´ve got the chance to acquire a jump drive, which lets you jump from one system to another within seconds (as long as you´ve got enough eCells).

A very big bonus (especially compared to the earlier parts) IMHO is also, that (with the bonus pack) you have the necessary tools to manage your many stations without having to do too much micromanagement.

But I agree, it would be very nice to be able to visit planets. From the systems info you know that there are millions of inhabitants on the planets of each sector and from the announcements you know that "the shuttle to the planet surface start in a few minutes" but in contrast to the many NPCs you never have a chance to rteally board such a shuttle (although at least you have to chance to enter the planets atmosphere and then die a fiery death )

Well, maybe X4 gives us spaceports on planets
(although egosoft says that the upcoming patch to V. 2.5 will contain a big surprise, I doubt that it will be the chance to land on planets)

[El_Cid]

Yeah SETA becomes vital, and I don't notice any performance issues when using it in 10x mode as opposed to the default 6x speed up. Still Frontier has a much more useful time compresion mode.

For example I found a nice little semi-legal trade option in teladi space; buy spaceweed for around 1000 per unit at this teladi bliss factory, then jump to the next sector in split territory where they pay 4000 per unit at the local trade station. Still the limit is 40 units(all the split station will buy), and it takes a long time for that amount to be used up.

So I keep my Iguana docked(with the 50-60 odd units of spaceweed) and then jump in my M5 and sit in space watching my docked ship and looking at the trade stations stock screen to see when they need more spaceweed. Even on 10x SETA you can wait for a longtime(around an hour in realtime) untill you can shift all your stock.

I suspect once I get a handle on remote trade this kind of thing will become easier, but if dealing with this particular situation I don't think I would ever set up an automatic trade route as the merchandise is an illegal good in Split space - so i'm bound to get caught out.

Some other SETA settings(25x,50x?) would have been useful for these kind of situations.

One of the main differences with Elite(frontier onwards) is the way ships are used. In Elite you could almost always find the exact perfect ship. One that had performance and trade possibility. I suppose as you were limited to only one ship at a time, they had to make them more multi-purpose? I nearly always ended up in an Asp.

In X3 you really have to have atleast two ships to enjoy the game - one for trade and one for combat. I've not yet come across a ship that does both well enough to become the only ship I need. As it is I currently have a Paranid Demeter(mining version) as my main trade vessle(4000+ untis cargo capacity) which has two Boron Mako's as escourt ships to protect it.

Then I have the Iguana vanguard(TP) which I use for illegal smuggling runs as it is pretty fast(186 m/s) which has an M5 as it's escourt, mostly to sit in SETA time compression while waiting for a trade opportunity. Combat is a last resort for these guys - they run and use their speed whenever they can.

It would be very awesome if they make landing on planets part of a patch!!! but I think you may be right in that it is unlikely. I had been wondering what they were hinting at also.

Thinking about landing on the planets I know it would be possible within the engine. I was quite surprised when I found out you could enter the atmosphere of a planet, I had thought they were just backdrop eye candy. But they must have co-ordinates in the game, so in theory could be made to be landed on.

The trick would be the transition, as it is when jumping from one sector to another you just get that blank screen(like you black out or something?) while it loads in the information.

You couldn't really do that with the planets, but you could cover up the loading process by having a section of turbulance. Use a simple and low-cost graphic filler while the planet loads into memmory - big thick clouds and the screen bumping around untill the information had been loaded. Something like that. It would be alot of extra work to create the planetside mind you!

Still I guess Elite4 may have the advantage here, if it goes with tradition it will just use clever maths to make a continous universe. There was/is something amazing about landing on a planet and taking off, all without any loading!

I'm off to carry on my X3 journey - I've got over 1 million in the bank and have my sights set on a new ship, or maybe it's time to think about investing in a station? I'm going to need alot more money whichever it is

[El_Cid]

A quick update:

If you use the XTM mod(and why wouldn't you?)and a story/plot based game - you need to enable the Terran race in the game by going into the menu options and clicking on the Al menu option.

I spent a long time searching for the gate that wasn't there! luckily you can do this at any point in your game, then just dock at a factory/space station and it should activate the terran sectors. The Earth looks amazing btw

[LDiCesare]

I loved Elite, tried X2 and still think of axing the cd or doing something nasty with it (just hated the graphics - I was unable to find out where I was supposed to land on the *** base). I'm currently playing Space Rangers2, where the view is top down, but it's an addicting game. Have you played this and how does X3 compare to it?

[El_Cid]

I've been trying to find a copy of Space Rangers2 in the uk for a good long while. Amazon just has the first game and it's really the second I want to try out. So I can't compare really.

Still from what I've heard/read about it I would say SR2 is probably more innovative, mixing more play styles etc. X3 maybe is more open ended, but is not really the new Elite.

I found it much more engaging than X(and X2 for the brief try I gave it) - still it remains pretty slow paced. I think the series suffers from not trying to impliment a real newtonian physics model, or in comparison to the original Elite by not having enough dangerous sectors to visit.

X3 is really a trading game first and foremost - you can look for danger and more excitement, but if you mind your business and keep to non pirate/nasty alien sectors you will find it much quieter than any of the Elite series.

Still playing it as of now, and enjoying the extra Xtened mod stuff(like Terran sectors and some cool space craft).

But if you have really tried X+X2 and just hated them, then it's difficult to say if enough will have changed for you. It's still pretty slow, and less epic feeling than the good old Elite games imho.

Still I found the latest version for £10(GOTY 2.0 version) and so far it's given me plenty of game for that money so far.

[LDiCesare]

SR2 can be bought on totalgaming.net if you want to try it.
It's really a great game, including for trading. But bad for your sleep.

[Standup]

There's one UK ebay at the moment (monday)

here.

[El_Cid]

Did it(SR2) ever get a proper release in the uk? I don't remember seeing it in the stores, but I often come across the first game. oh well I got plenty to get on with in X3 for now. So SR2 can wait - hey it might be SR3 by the time I get around to it, and hopefuly it will include the 2 previous games

I've had a break from X3 for a few days, time to let it sink in a bit so I could revisit the older Elites(and Oolite) and i'm not sure yet what this will prove

[Standup]

Bought X3 GOTY edition as one of those 3 for 2 offers.

Do i need the patch 1.0 to 2.0? Otherwise it seems to have most of the downloads on the official webpage.

Now X3, The Witcher or finish Planescape?

[Unspeakable Horror]

Planescape of course.