X3:TC The lazy way to X-TREME

So, being the OCD person that I am about games, I decided to go for all X3:TC Steam achievements. A couple of the hardest achievement to get are the two X-TREME achievements, one for trading and the other for combat. After spending hours clearing out Xenon and Kha'ak sectors for hours (talk about boring!), I figured there had to be a better way. So I'm going to share my super lazy way to raise rank. (If you also want to work on X-TREME trading at the same time, see bottom note.)

Things you will need:

• Out of game
• A timer of some sort, set to 5.5 minutes. I used my cell phone. Use an alarm sound that is not annoying, because you will be hearing it a lot.
• Something to do for hours. A good TV series, some movies, a blog to write, some homework to do, etc.
• In-game
• Osaka
• Max shields (6x 2GJ)
• All SSCs, except a few PSPs (I used 4 in front.)
• 2000 or so Wraith missiles (optional)
• A Xenon sector with a shipyard. In my game, it was Xenon Core 023.

The process:

1. Park yourself just outside of SSC range from the docking exit on the station. (It looks like a little shoe, sticking off the spherical station.). I parked sideways to the station.
2. Set turrets that are able to directly attack the station to Attack Fighters so they don't attack it. Set all others to Attack Enemies.
3. Save and start your timer.
4. Turn on SETA.
5. AFK or whatever you want to do.
6. When alarm goes off, turn off SETA, and start over at Step 3.

Here's what happens:

The shipyard will continually spawn fighters (L's, M's, and N's). Your Osaka/SSCs will chew them up and raise your rank. SETA will speed up the process dramatically. However, after 60 minutes (or 6 minutes on 10x SETA), your combat rank will start to decay. So you must do something in-game every 6 minutes (the timer is set to 5:30 to give you time to respond). This will raise rank very quickly at first, but at Hero rank, it takes over a cycle (6 minutes) to get 1% rank increase. It might not be the quickest way, but it was the most acceptable way for me.

Sometimes, a fighter will get stuck trying to undock (autopilot lol), and he will keep hitting the station until he dies. If you are close enough to be able to shoot at him while he's stuck in the dock, you will just hit the station over and over until you blow it up. Being as the station is key to this lazy method, avoid this!

Sometimes, a Q patrol will spawn in sector or jump in through the gate and head straight for you. The Osaka with 4 PSPs fitted should be able to take care of that even if you are AFK without getting damaged into hull. If you are watching, all the better; fire a couple of volleys of Wraiths at it to help.

Sometimes, the shipyard will seem to stop spawning fighters. Then if you look at the landed ships in the shipyard, there may be 70+ ships waiting in station. You can either wait it out, and the shipyard will eventually spew out a ton of fighters at once. Or you can jump out of the system, which will cause most of the ships to launch, then jump back in. With possibly multiple M2s, M1s, and at least half-a-dozen Qs being typically backed up in station, it makes for an interesting fight. Then just reposition yourself back near the station and continue as normal.

Trading

There's no reason not to work on X-TREME trading at the same time. To do this, make sure you setup some factories with CAGs or CLS2 routes before-hand. The key to making progress toward the trading achievement is to make sure that your SHIPS are making the profit. Your station selling illicit goods to visiting patrons isn't going to do anything toward the achievement, no matter how profitable. Your ships have to buy below average and sell above average to gain trade rank. The more difference off average, the more progress. So using CLS2/CAG to both buy below and sell above is double-dipping. :) If you neglected to setup some stations beforehand, you can remotely buy, outfit, and setup some CLS2 freighters while sitting outside the Xenon shipyard.

X3:TC Best Player Ship

So I admit that I like to min-max things a bit when I play games. This tends to involve some research to find the "best" thing for a particular purpose. In my quest to discover the best player ship, the first ship I came across is the Springblossom. It is an amazing ship. What's not to love about 360m/s top speed?

However, after completing a play-through with the Springblossom and doing a little more research, I have discovered a better ship: The overtuned Hyperion, only available from the Poisoned Paranid start (which is only available after completing the Tormented Teladi start mission (which is only available after achieving a certain trade rank with another start)). You can also get the Hyperion through boarding with any type of start, but it's the slower variety with only 169m/s max speed. The overtuned variant can have 230+m/s max speed, which is Good Enough(tm) speed for a player ship, especially with bonus pack turbo boost.

While losing speed over the Aldrin SB, the Hyperion gains so much utility for the player. Here are some pain points that I came across with using the SB and how the Hyperion solves them.

Station Building
When building stations with mines, I always had to jump into a separate ship to tow mines. This is an extra hassle that the Hype removes, because unlike the SB, it can mount a tractor beam. Goodbye tow-truck Dragon.

Exploration
I typically keep 1 docked Kestrel outfitted for Exploration and Asteroid Scanning. In TC, there's really no faster ship for exploration.

Claimed Ships
I lieu of having a 2nd extra jump drive, I typically leave one of my docking bays empty in case I get a bailed fighter or Claim My Ship mission for a fighter. Fighters often either can't use a jump drive or don't have enough cargo to jump to the destination, so transporting them directly in my ship is faster.

For non-fighter ships which are claimed, I have a spare Jump Drive on my exploration Kestrel.

Mission Running
Cargo space is also a benefit not to be under-estimated for mission running... especially those missions that want you to transport things like Radioactive Waste or Entertainment Chips.

Long Range Death
The Hype can use Wraith missiles, and an assortment of other missile types to fit the situation. The Springy can only use Poltergeist and Spectre, the latter of which can't be player-produced. I suppose that is not much of a problem, since I have often not been able to kill ships with Spectres, being as they fire one at a time and some ships can shoot them all down. Poltergeists are also pretty slow vs M5s. My particularly disappointing experience was when doing the Balance of Power plot and defending a transport. I tried with the Springy many times, and could never destroy the fighters before they reached and blew up the transport. The Poltergeists would mostly loop around behind their target and trail it for a while before catching up. With no other missile options in the SB, I ended up having to jump in my Cobra and Flail everything to death.

Combat
Just from a personal preference standpoint, the Springy has never felt quite right to me. It behaves kindof like a forklift with a jet engine. The vast majority of my deaths have been collisions in the Springy, both undocking / scraping stations and trying to strafe larger ships. This is why I am okay with giving up some of the SB's speed for the other benefits.

Although the Springy mounts PMAMLs, a pretty powerful weapon, I found them a bit difficult to use. Against smaller ships, the projectile is too slow to be able to land hits consistently while the opponent is not heading in a straight line. Against larger ships, by the time I got into firing range, the SB was taking a pretty good pounding. Approaching at the correct angle and doing strafe runs minimizes the damage, but the ship is so fast that window of opportunity to fire is pretty small in order to avoid collisions. Slowing down is an option, but I often use Tab and Backspace to control speed. :) The main thing I was able to kill with the PMAMLs were other M6s, by strafing from longer distances. I could kill some M2s, as long as their missile defense wasn't that great, and I had enough Spectres. The cargo space is a limiting factor there.

The PSSCs on the Springblossom are categorically awesome. Fighters pretty much melt, and I often find myself not getting a chance to fire on them directly for the turrets killing them. So I will definitely miss that about the Springy.

Another obvious battle advantage for the Hype are the two docked fighters.

Summing Up

So, for future play-throughs, I'm going to do Poisoned Paranid to get that overtuned Hyperion. It seems to me that Egosoft must have designed the Hype to be the player ship. No other ship has its combination of capabilities.

Now if they just had a better version of the Cobra with more cargo space...

X3:TC Lessons Learned

Wish I'd known about the game sooner
The game is deep and immensely satisfying, and I wish I'd know about it sooner! At first, I was afraid I made a mistake in buying it because it seemed hopelessly complicated. But I watched some of CmrDave's tutorial videos, then started to discover parts of the game on my own, and eventually found it staggeringly fun. I can also play it like a simulation game and choose to leave it running, letting my empire take care of itself while I sleep or go on a date with the wife.

Download the Bonus Pack
The bonus pack is signed by the X3 developer, Egosoft, so it does not mark your game as modified. It adds some amazing functionality, and I wouldn't play X3 without it. (I tried at first, and I regretted it!) I'll just briefly mention the CLS/CAGs in the Bonus Pack below:

CLS1 = the Trade -> "Start internal commodity logistics" command, from the Commodity Logistics Mk1 software
CLS2 = the Trade -> "Start external commodity logistics" command, from the Commodity Logistics Mk2 software
CAG = the Trade -> "Start commercial representation" command

Like everything in the X3, these take some experimentation to setup just right, but their functionality is game-changing. I use CLS2 extensively for resupply and one-off deliveries. I use CAGs for most of my money-making and station/complex maintenance.

Setup stations early
I thought UTs were great when I first started using them, but little did I know that stations/complexes with CAGs are even better! Complexes in high-sec space are solid and safe money-makers, and you can totally set and forget them (with a CAG or CLS freighter). They make great storage dumps for energy or other resources they consume. You can add stations onto a complex later, and deactivate individual stations. Thus you can repurpose your station over time. Complexes are valuable in many dimensions (e.g. docking, resupply from excess resources), not just for profit. I don't use STs/UTs at all now.

Start training marines early
Even if you don't do much ship capturing, you need marines for some plots and special ships. Marine training takes ages, so start early. Every time you find a station with marines, look for any that have 3+ stars in fighting, buy them, and start them training. Everything but fighting is trainable, so the only important factor for purchasing them is fighting. Keep training them until they are 5 stars in everything else. Eventually, you will need them. I would recommend collecting up to 20 5-star marines over time. This happens to be the amount an M7M holds.

Put complex hubs near gates
This makes it quick for CAGs and resupply ships to dock at the complex. My first complex was built 150km+ from the nearest gate to avoid pirate traffic, and I had to assign it a lot of extra CAGs because each ship was spending more time flying to it than making me money. And then the game spawns pirates to attack your station anyway if you use afk SETA.

Notice that I said "near" gates, not on top of gates. And notice that I said the complex hub, which you can place a little bit away from the stations. With the latest (huge) stations that I build, I have the hub within 20-25km of the gate, but the bulk of the stations are out of the field of normal view. I do this by placing 10 or 20 of the stations pretty far apart and in a line going up out of view. Then the rest of the stations are layered above that. This is a more advanced technique that takes some practice, because the complex hubs don't always get placed where you tell them. So make sure you save before you start!