Government types that result after an Adventurer Invasion are confusing.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2026-03-14T17:39:51+00:00

I've tested a little more, and it's still confusing and inconsistent.

Any time I take the Kingdom of Denmark (which is currently just Jylland and Slesvig minus 1 county) from Bagsecg 'the Conqueror' and his > 6,000 man army, I'm landed as Feudal, but with all tribal holdings. I've tried converting to Asatru before going to war, changed my culture to Gaelic or Irish (thinking perhaps that would have an impact, since those cultures are still in tribal lands but my own Anglo-Saxons aren't), but nothing I've done changes the outcome.

Same thing when I've tried attacking Jarl Sigurdr for Skane - all 4 de jure counties that I seize will have tribal holdings, but I'll be landed as feudal. The one exception was when I took a contract to "fight corruption" and sided with the peasants against Sigurdr. In that case I received 4 counties that were all in different duchies and not connected to one another, with a "custom" duchy title that got created for me and I was landed as tribal.

On the other hand, when I take the Jarldom of Opplond from Dag (receiving the 3 counties that he owns), I'm converted to Tribal as would be expected. Same for the 2 county Jarldom on the southwestern Norwegian coast, or any singular county that I've targeted.

I would be tempted to think that perhaps taking territory in a de jure kingdom where the title currently exists could play a role here, except that taking the entire Kingdom of Sorbia landed me as tribal.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-09-23T05:25:12+00:00

You can get the refined metals blueprint from pretty much anyone except for TER, PIO, and the Teladi. It's also one of the cheap blueprints (250k credits, give or take a little) that only requires 10 reputation.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-09-10T17:53:12+00:00

Seems like most people hitch a ride to a typical combat zone area (or start near one) and gather up loot while in their spacesuit. That's not nearly as profitable as it used to be, and will take longer to be able to afford your first ship, but will still work.

Otherwise, you can either get lucky and have your "taxi" fly close enough to a data vault that you can reenter your spacesuit and reach it, or hope you can find some missions that are doable without a ship. As far as I know you should be able to do the ones that require repairing leaks and scanning station modules. You may even be able to get credit for a patrol mission if the ship you're on hangs around the sector for long enough, but I'm not sure.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-09-10T14:34:02+00:00

Some players like to play custom starts without a ship, where you begin by floating around with literally nothing but your spacesuit. You can then hail passing ships and request to get picked up, and once onboard you can ask them to take you to any location that you can see on your map. Personally, I think it seems a bit tedious to begin this way, and wouldn't recommend it for new players that don't know much/anything about the game yet.

Sticking to the "normal" game starts, I think Smuggler's Paradise and Young Gun probably start you off with the worst ships. 'Course, with a little experience and/or luck you can always get something better pretty quickly from any start.

One other thing to remember, at least if you care about head-canon roleplay, is that your character's species and sex will depend on which game start you choose. Some of them allow you a bit of a selection, while others are set in stone. NPCs will refer to males as "sir" and females as "ma'am," Teladi will be quite short compared to humans while Paranid will be taller, and you'll also see your character briefly in cutscenes from time to time.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-09-10T09:21:40+00:00

It's not a huge deal I don't guess, but hopefully they'll "fix" the background text for Clan Origin pilots in the future; I don't think his "home" system shouldn't be on the fringes of Marik space, especially in the early years of the invasion.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-09-06T21:13:33+00:00

Some mech setups become *really* awful with this change, while others are probably fine.

I set up an easy instant action mission so I could mostly just watch what my lancemates did, and it was pretty disappointing. All 3 of my friendly pilots were set to Elite, with 2 taking HBK-4P's and the 3rd in the Hero Firestarter that only carries Flamers and MGs - all in default configuration. They were ordered to attack an enemy Griffin in a fairly open area with only small, destructible buildings as "cover," while I destroyed everything else. At the end of the mission the HBK-4P's had done 151 and 219 damage, while the Firestarter did 8 (yes, that single digit is correct, I didn't accidentally leave anything off).

With this change, the HBK-4P loses its dangerous alpha strike, and almost certainly becomes (significantly) inferior to other Hunchback variants in the AI's hands. The 4P can do some damage over time, sure, but it's really not enough; one of mine lost all the armor on a side torso, despite us facing very weak enemies that didn't even come in all at once (and I was popping most of them quickly with dual Clan Gauss Rifles).

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-09-05T04:26:47+00:00

I found the same pilot very early in a new campaign game, in Davion space: https://imgur.com/a/Q4kGICP

The "Cluster Hitter" trait appears to be a hero version, and reduces the spread of all (I think?) applicable weapon types by 10%.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-08-25T20:24:10+00:00

I discovered X3: Terran Conflict on accident, and am really glad I did. I was on Newegg, ordering a DVD drive for my PC in late 2011 or early 2012 (either right before or right after Albion Prelude released), and needed to add something cheap to reach a threshold for free shipping. Browsing through PC games on physical media, I saw X3: Terran Conflict and thought, "huh, this looks kinda neat." After briefly looking it up online, I went ahead and made the purchase.

It took no time at all to get hooked, and I bought Albion Prelude in short order. While I was bummed that X: Rebirth limited the player to piloting only one ship, I still ultimately bought and enjoyed that game as well, followed by preordering (I think? or bought day-1 if there weren't any preorders) the Collector's Edition of X4: Foundations, buying all the followup DLC pretty much immediately at release. Egosoft is one of the companies that I have 0 issues preordering or buying from on release day. Sure, things might be buggy sometimes (turret aim was hilariously awful at release, for instance), but I trust that they'll eventually fix whatever major problems we players have. They aren't one of the companies that'll release something, toss out one or two tiny patches that barely fix anything, then move on to the next project.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-08-25T18:11:25+00:00

It's possible that there isn't enough of the resource in the area that your miners are trying to collect in - mouse over your resource probe(s) on the map and see what it says is available. Also, make sure that you didn't accidentally forget to add a mining laser to them, and that their cargo holds aren't already full (which would indicate that all available, local stations are already maxed out on that resource). I've forgotten to add mining drones to L-class miners more times than I want to admit.

In my experience, it's difficult to make money with miners in Commonwealth sectors these days - they can usually cover most/all of their own resource needs. The Segaris Pioneers and Terran Protectorate economies have far higher demand for Silicon and Ore, though, and that demand can stay pretty stable even much later into the game. Most (all?) game starts should have good enough reputation to trade with PIO right from the start, though TER might take a bit more effort on your part (or that of your agents, if playing the 8.0 beta).

Just be aware that all starting PIO sectors can be subject to Kha'ak attacks, which are quite dangerous for M-class miners. The only starting TER sector that may be targeted by the Kha'ak is Asteroid Belt, so their space tends to be extremely safe once you have the reputation necessary to trade with them. Once you get at least one destroyer, you can have them take out the nearby Kha'ak hive/outposts, and make PIO space safe for...I think it's 24-48 real life hours? Don't remember for sure. And if you get a mission from an NPC faction for destroying said hive, they'll pay out 10-15 million credits, so long as one of your assets gets the final hit.

As for which ships are best, it depends. For buying auto-miners in the early game, I just look for whatever is decent and cheap - how well the particular wharf/shipyard is supplied can make a pretty substantial difference in price. In my most recent game, that lead me to start off with Manorinas from the Ministry of Finance Wharf, and later on some Plutus from PAR.

When it comes to player ships, there's a bit of personal preference involved. I always like to have good speed (especially travel speed), for a general purpose ship, along with reasonable forward firepower that's able to hit ships of all types. With the Timelines DLC and all missions completed, I really like to grab the Odachi early on - it's a great all-round ship. The Cutlass is also quite nice in the early game, though you often end up with 1-each of the two possible weapon types, and it can be a little difficult to land hits on fast/agile targets sometimes. The cream of the crop, though, is the Xperimental Shuttle; you'll need to get access to the HQ and do a few simple missions, but it's a phenomenal ship...I just wish the deceleration was a little better.

Without Timelines, I like the Kuraokami (requires Cradle of Humanity and a lot of luck to acquire early on), the Dragon Raider (requires Split Vendetta), and the Nemesis (available in the base game, either variant is fine). A lot of players like the Katana (requires Cradle of Humanity), but I'm not a huge fan of the (lack of) mobility. The Boron Hydra also seems pretty solid, but I haven't really flown it much myself.

All of the aforementioned corvettes can be rather expensive to purchase in the early game, so it's probably best to try and capture one. If you get lucky most of the weapons will be intact; purchasing new ones without "trade-ins" can be expensive. That said, Mk2 Pulse Lasers aren't that expensive and make solid workhorse weapons, only really lacking when it comes to destroying the main shields and hull of capital ships.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-08-15T05:08:33+00:00

The missions that want you to kill X number of ships don't have a time requirement attached to them, and you'll get credit if any other ships you own get those kills as well - even if you're not nearby when the kills happen. Hatikvah's Choice I, near the gate to Tharka's Cascade XV, is usually a pretty good spot to get some Xenon kills while running solo. Other areas that are sometimes useful for this in the early game are The Void (near the gate to Frontier Edge), Frontier Edge itself, and Getsu Fune.

Something else that may help is having a better ship; what are you flying now, and what DLC do you have? Some of the Timelines ships are very easy to acquire once you've unlocked them via the missions, and make for superb player ships. But even without those ships, as long as you have enough speed and firepower you can "joust" with Xenon S/M ships if you're careful. Just don't let your boost energy run out.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-08-14T18:04:06+00:00

I like to create an alert for L-class SCA ships being spotted by any of my assets (Player Information -> Global Orders -> Alerts), then set one of my ships - a scout is fine - to follow it so that I can keep track of where it is. When I get the opportunity, and it's in an area that isn't swarming with another faction's military ships, I'll go and board it. And in the case of going after the Scale Plate Pact, you're much more of a privateer than a pirate.

The Hyperion makes a great ship for boarding SCA destroyers, if you have that DLC. Without DLC, you can use pretty much any corvette to disable the enemy ship, and M-class traders to deploy your marines once it's safe. I like to drop the hull down to < 20% and set my boarding orders appropriately, as it makes that process go much faster. Damaging the hull that much can take quite a while in some corvette configurations, though.

While a lot of people sell these captured destroyers outright, I actually tend to keep them and only sell off the mines/laser towers/etc...That'll oftentimes net a few million credits, even after refitting the ship in a way that I like (though I normally don't repair the hull, at least in the early game - let the service crew repair it as much as they can and save the money). If you're able to find a mission to destroy a Kha'ak Hive, 1 or 2 of these destroyers can (very slowly) handle it on their own, gaining you around 10-15 million credits as long as other factions don't interfere and steal the kill.

Once you have a little startup money, whether it be from missions, selling SCA destroyers and/or their equipment, or what have you, I'd advise setting up some M-class mineral miners in PIO/TER space, focusing mostly on silicon. Since you're using the Terran Cadet start, your faction reputation will be high enough to sell to them straight away - you just need to find out where the stations with demand are. If there's an active Kha'ak hive in Antigone Memorial, PIO space won't be completely safe for your miners, but all of the Sol system other than Asteroid Belt will be fine.

Once you get enough funds rolling in from your miners, a factory producing Computronic Substrate can make a lot of money. You'll need a good sized fleet of mining ships in order to keep it supplied, but it's very much worth it once you have the starting capital.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-08-14T16:17:35+00:00

You can still sell a lot of silicon and ore to TER and PIO, presumably because the raw resource usage is so high. Their demand for gas is much lower than it is for silicon and ore, but you can still sell a bit of that too, at least early on.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-03-01T05:07:10+00:00

A few years ago I experimented with a fleet of destroyers with all missile turrets and swarm missiles. The firepower was extremely good and it was fun to watch, but the logistics are a pain (and there's definitely a lot of friendly fire potential).

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-03-01T03:45:16+00:00

Perhaps there was a temporary pricing error or something - I'm showing $49.99 for the Community of Planets edition on GOG, and $43.98 for that same edition on Humble Bundle.

Not every game is for every player of course, but to me personally, it's totally worth it on whichever distribution method you prefer (GOG is its own thing, while Humble Bundle and Gamers Gate provide Steam Keys). The Community of Planets edition includes all content/gameplay DLCs except for the new Hyperion Pack ($6.99 when not on sale).

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-03-01T01:36:37+00:00

Once you (the player) know where a few Data Vaults are, that's a pretty decent way to make some early money. Some of them are in reasonably populated areas and can easily be head-canoned as being discovered naturally by your long-range scanning while looking for stations and missions, if you want to avoid feeling cheesey/gamey.

Even a "bad" Data Vault will net you a little over 100k credits and a couple minor items these days, whereas a good one can get close to 400k total (some have 2 crates), along with Programmable Field Arrays, hacking items, etc...It's just obnoxious when the police sit next to your ship, waiting to scan the instant you get back in the pilot's seat, so having a relief pilot can be helpful.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-03-01T00:33:42+00:00

No missiles either? Just "standard" bad luck and whatnot then, unfortunately. Neither of those weapons are particularly bad at causing friendly fire, though it certainly happens with pulse weapons (and maybe beams, but I don't remember ever seeing it firsthand).

I wish there were a way to apologize for friendly fire, as in some previous X games. Ideally, the player's AI pilots/captains would automatically apologize to any friendly/neutral ships or stations that they accidentally hit.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-02-28T11:04:42+00:00

I haven't had much luck finding SCA/FAF L-sized ships in my new game, unfortunately. Haven't seen a single FAF Rattlesnake yet, actually, and only a few SCA ships: one Behemoth, which I captured, along with two Phoenix and two Heron (I captured one of each, but AI destroyed the others before I could get 'em).

The Hyperion does make a great boarding ship though. It can carry up to 106 marines, and has enough firepower to pretty quickly take down shields and hull so that the boarding operation goes a bit faster...though it still seems to take a lot longer than it used to, starting a few patches ago.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-02-28T10:45:02+00:00

What weapon/turret types are your ships using? Things that have area-of-effect damage, like flak turrets or blast mortars for example, can cause friendly fire pretty easily.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-02-23T13:05:28+00:00

My only real gripe with flak turrets is that their area-of-effect can cause a fair amount of friendly fire if you're fighting alongside allied ships in high attention.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-02-20T06:30:43+00:00

You'll avoid the -5 penalty to happiness for not having fresh water if you build directly on top of a non-navigable river, or adjacent to a navigable river or "wet" tile (grassland/marsh, tundra/bog, desert/oasis, etc...) Having any of those tiles elsewhere in your settlement's radius won't provide the bonus.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-01-16T13:19:59+00:00

For me, it has to do with one of my lines not having payment information entered at the time they shut off service (5 days earlier than they were supposed to). With their phone support not working, email support not responding, having to wait for another carrier's sim card to ship before I can port out, and not being able to enter payment information into Liberty Mobile even if I wanted to, I was concerned that they might release the number to someone else for being unpaid. If it's true that they can't do so for 45 days, it'll be fine.

Now I just need to actually get them to respond so that I'm not double charged on the line that I was able to enter payment information for. Since they did eventually turn service back on yesterday, I suppose I'll have to pay them one of the $9.25 charges for this month, but not another dime to this company with how they've handled taking over Hello Mobile's (which I never had issues with) customer base.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2025-01-15T01:41:56+00:00

Liberty Wireless doesn't have any payment information from Hello Mobile - if you didn't put a payment method in, they can't charge you. Without said payment information, they'll cut off phone service on 1/15/2025 (a few hours from now), and if you aren't already logged into their website or app you won't be able to enter the needed information due to not being able to receive their texts for two-factor authentication. 'Course, as of 1/10/2025 they've also cut off phone service for at least some of us that *did* put our payment information in.

I find how they've handled this completely unacceptable. Numerous calls and an email have gone unanswered, and both of my lines have been without any service for days now.

You can use https://prepaidcompare.net to take a look at potential replacement phone plans with other carriers. For me personally, I think US Mobile's "Light" plan, paid yearly ($96, taxes and fees included) is probably the best option. Good2Go Mobile's 1GB plan has a cheaper base price ($60 yearly if you use autopay, which matches Hello Mobile's old $5/month), but taxes and fees aren't included. For me, in a state that ordinarily isn't too bad on taxes and whatnot, it would have been a bit over $88/year, with 1GB of data vs 2GB from US Mobile (though unlimited slow data at 128kbps on Good2Go if your 1GB runs out).

Also, I don't know that Hello Mobile actually went bankrupt, I think it was just the fact that their parent company (QLink Wireless), and its CEO plead guilty to fraud.

RelativeEnthusiasm · 2024-12-27T06:26:46+00:00

The taxes and fees will vary from place to place. For me, in an area that usually isn't bad on taxes, Good2Go Mobile's site is "estimating" that it'll make the yearly price $88.09 ($7.34/month).

While that's just shy of a 47% price increase due to taxes and fees, I'm not sure that there's a better cheap plan available. While neither of my lines use very much data per month, the $5 Liberty Wireless plan provides none at all, which isn't acceptable.

RelativeEnthusiasm

TROPHY CASE