Noted, thanks.

That is very cool. I have read that there are UFO's flying about the X universe, but even after hundreds of hours and keeping my eyes peeled, I've yet to have one cross my path. I'm jealous! From what I can gather, I think they are just a neat little Easter egg thingie ES threw in the game as a nod to SCi-Fi lore, and when first spotted by players, many speculated that perhaps following one would lead to a secret UFO base some where in the game...but alas, then has never happened. You can destroy one by attacking it, but can't capped or boarded. Some folks have sent a kestrel to "follow" them, thus discovering and partially mapping new sectors for the player...but sooner or later, the UFO's enter Xenon space and get blasted to atoms, generally the ship following it as well. Congrats on finding one, and getting photographic evidence ;). Who knows, maybe the Robinson family and Dr. Smith are aboard, and they are trying to find Earth, heh heh.

I generally wouldn't recommend a mod for TC, as I really like it as a vanilla playthrough, especially for the first time, but I actually broke down and installed this simple reputation mod, which is awesome for displaying all relations, and even gives you the reputation rank in a number as well, so you don't have to keep referring to a chart or online to figure out exactly how good your rep actually is. See the attached pic for an example. The only other thing I have installed is the free bonus pack as I am sure you have already heard or read about from others (highly recommended, and is signed by ES, and is not really considered a mod any longer).

Just a *note*, since the bonus pack doesn't trigger the game as modded due to this, this little Rep script, is so small, it will not by itself trigger your game as modded, and won't work just by simply installing in the game folder as directed. If you scroll down about 2/3 of the way down on that link I posted, you will see where just that happened to Chiumanfu, and in the next post Yacek directs him to open the games Script Editor in order to enable it. Here's that link. I was at first hesitant to do it, but it worked like a charm. What I did notice, is that I had to try it a couple times, and then restart the game, and voila, it worked. As always, do a back up of your game files first just to be safe, or a mistake is made when installing the script. If per chance, you *have* modded your game already with some other mod, then you won't have to do this, it will work from the get-go.

This little script is awesome for checking your rep with Yaki and pirates, if you curious what level it is at, if you want to buy and trade certain items with them.... that might only be available from then (no spoilers from me here :P).

Carry on Ashwald...those pirates must love your Terran arse right now

btw...the menu pictured is available from the Personal tab at the top left, then"p" pilot status

Thank you, I'll try it if figuring out on what terms I am with the Yaki becomes too much of a pain in the behind. I haven't installed anything other than the bonus pack precisely to keep things vanilla.

DAY 3
--------

So I followed that pirate ship to it's pirate base and they were friendly at first. They even gave me docking permission! Unfortunately that Xenon collaborator had some words with them and before I knew it my permission had been revoked and there were 6 hostile ships heading in my direction, Xenon mostly. Fine. Have it your way! Don't say I didn't try to be nice! I totally tried to be nice but you weren't having it. So I blew them all up, scanned the base and left before anyone could think to send their other 9 docked ships after me.

I continued doing Terran missions after that and I must say they really, really, really like paying in ships instead of credits. Anyway, some strange Xenon ships started popping up, with ridiculous names like #deca.fade, #deca.deaf, #deca.feine and the like. My superiors theorized that these are a new evolutionary branch of Xenon, which is fine and all I suppose if you're a Xenon, but maybe, juuuuust maybe, they should see about evolving their naming senses next. The sooner the better. That's what I thought at the time at least, but these turned out not to be of Xenon origin after all.

As always when it comes to Terran authorities, since their scientists said it's not the Xenon, they tried to blame it on the Argons, then the Split. The usual bullcrap. Thanks to that, I had to sign up for Operation Final Fury so as to gain access to the super well guarded Argon Sector 148 and rescue Terran spies from a base there (thank the stars I was already a Hero of the Federation to the Argons and so they didn't retaliate), fly through sectors bursting at the proverbial seams with Xenon ships and stations so as to drop spy satellites in Split territory, steal a Split freighter to get close to an Elephant and plant a tracking device on it only to have a bunch of #decas come out for my head (thankfully I managed to beam myself back into my own ship and outrun them). And after all that I had to get involved in an all out battle between Terrans and Split in order to capture the pilot of transport ship who was trying to sneak away without getting blown up amidst all the chaos. I captured him just fine of course - and nearly rammed into a pilotless Enhanced Jaquar in the process. I should come back to claim it at some point.

As ordered, I took my prisoner to a military base in the Moon sector. Earth's moon. I was only one gate away from Earth but apparently I "didn't have authorization" to go there. What is even up with all those ridiculous restrictions. >:|

I didn't have much time to grumble about it however, because before I knew it the brass was going nuts over coordinates to a supposedly long lost Terran colony called Aldrin and a supposedly long dead except maybe not so dead thanks to cryogenics scientist with Xenon ties called Winters. They were so excited they gifted me two ships to practice boarding and one of them was a Vidar. A motherfucking Vidar! Now that's what I call payment. Though to be fair, the cutlass they gave me just a short while ago is also quite nice. After all I've gone through today I appreciate the extra shields. But WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY do they always have to come at the cost of reduced speed. Why. I suppose it's still okay at 170m/s but why dammit.

In any case, once the bosses were sufficiently satisfied that I knew how to deploy marines, I was informed that I'd be part of the forces sent to explore Aldrin. So off I went along with the rest of the 3rd wave. Once there, and while we were all gawking at the view and vaguely familiar technologically stations, a ship came to us for negotiations. Apparently those #deca.feine ships are of Aldrin origin but they lost control of them after being betrayed by Winters? Something like that. I was too busy sightseeing to pay attention. At the end of the day, all I had to do was capture a rogue #deca CPU ship for the Aldrin. Easy peasy! It's only an M1 Carrier after all! So of course I stayed the hell back and let other Terrans take care of the fighting. Once the shields were dealt with I sent in a boarding team, sat back once again, and soon enough reaped the proffitssss.

Said profits turned out to be a new bunch of enemy ships trying to shoot me down. After making short work of those, I was tasked with transporting some Aldrin diplomats to Earth for further negotiations. So I picked them up... powered up my jumpdrive... and... Nothing happened. I didn't have enough energy cells to make the jump and the Aldrin stations wouldn't sell me any. I was stuck there, too far away from the Commonwealth to even attempt flying back the conventional way, and with other Terran ships refusing to accept my distress calls or take over transport duty. So that was that. The Aldrin delegation never reached Earth. They remained in my cargo hold, blissfully unaware of what had transpired, or perhaps fully aware but totally fine with their unexpected vacation.

THE END

Psyche! Like that could ever happen. Who would ever do something like jump to an unknown sector that doesn't have any jumpgates without first making sure they have enough energy cells for the trip back? Well, not this lady, that's for sure. So of course I took those diplomats to Earth. Even took the scenic route there, so they could enjoy seeing the Solar System. I could hear them chatting excitedly all the way to the Earth Torus. The Earth Terrans, apparently being trolls, launched space fireworks saying "Congratulations" the moment I entered their sector. If you're so happy to see me then don't forbid me entry in the first place you wankers! ...and don't think I'll turn a blind eye just because you tried to bribe me with a Claymore! Say what? It comes with shields, weapons and a jumpdrive pre-installed? Well okay. Maybe just a little bit of blind eye.

DAY 4
--------

Okay, Aldrin was nice and everything, but now what? I need a plan. Or rather, I need to make my mind up already. Operation Final Fury? That thing with the Goner Temple? Maybe start a trading business? Find a nice (aka well paying!) corporation that needs stuff done? Decisions, decisions...

But more importantly! Must... resist... upgrading... new ships. 7 million credits don't mean I'm rich.

....

It's technically day 5 right now since I took a little nap before updating this entry.

Bad news first. I underestimated trading, made some bad (or at least not cashable in the short term) investments and I'm now sitting on 4050887 credits. It had all started well. After much deliberation and some advice from a friendly veteran pilot, I decided that on this day, I would not fire a singe shot at anyone and instead focus on passenger transportation. At this point I already had two Scabbards with shields and weaponry thanks to my fellow Terrans (one is stuck in Aldrin though. Oh well.) but I ignored them and instead bought a Boron Angel TP and stuffed it to the fins with physical and software upgrades. Shields too, though I made a deliberate choice not to get any weapons for it, due to the "No fighting today!" thing. My reasoning was that with its XL cargo space it could double as a ship for goods transport if I happened to run into any delicious deals of this sort.

So off I went and started ferrying people here and there. Business was good, I made up the money I paid for it with relative ease. Then I started looking into trading however and that's when things went bad. I discovered that buyers will often hire people on false pretenses, only to spring extra demands on them after they have accepted a job.
Exhibit 1: some will ask for ridiculous amounts of goods to be brought to them in too short a time, but that's okay-ish, since jumpdrives exist. The problem is that the amounts they demand simply won't fit into the cargo hold of one ship and if I go to them with a smaller than asked for quantity, they won't take it so I can't free up the cargo hold and go get the rest of it. They'll just keep whining that it's not enough goods until the time limit is over at which point they'll berate me for not completing the mission and damage my reputation. Except nowhere in the job description does it say that I have to bring ALL the goods in ONE trip. What. The hell.
Exhibit 2: some (like those fuckers over at the Atreus corp) will claim that a job to buy them supplies (missiles in my case) has no time limit, but when I accepted it they suddenly messaged me and demanded I get it all done in 22 minutes. What! The! Hell! I was lucky I already knew of places where I could buy their crap, and even luckier that the factories in question had stock left, but there was no time to look for better prices in other unexplored sectors.

That is when I made The Mistakes. I wanted to do the Goner mission for the temple supplies, but at that point I was suspicious. What if the Goners also tried to screw me over after I accepted their job? I already knew what they needed from the last time I had turned them down, so after making sure they still hadn't made any progress, I figured I'd prepare for the job before accepting. I fully upgraded the freighters I already owned (mistake! Right here!) and send them out to hunt for ore and silicon wafers while I continued doing taxi services. But it turned out that they weren't big enough to get all the materials. So I bought and fully upgraded two more (another mistake!), and finally I could procure the goods. But at this point I was down to 2 million credits. And when I took all ships back to the Elysium of Light it turned out that no, the Goners don't randomly impose time limits after you've taken the job and to top it off.... they're perfectly happy to receive their building materials a few at a time, thank you very much. Fuck's sake! I wasted my credits for nothing!

The good news is that all the VIP transports I've been doing have improved my standing with some of the races and with the pirates as well (the regular ones). After taking some of their people to random pirate bases, I got offered station hacking services which I used to turn a few other pirate facilities from hostile to neutral. Next thing I knew, they no longer showed up as Foes in my command console.

The Goners want to hire me to bring them even more ridiculous amounts of materials for their temple but I've had enough of trading for now and I'm really itching to shoot at something. There's this Boron called Mahi Ma who wants me to find some friends of his that got lost in Xenon space, but my insticts are telling me I'll be getting way over my head into something fishy. Maybe it's Mahi Ma's way of addressing me, I don't know. For now I'll go blast some Kha'ak with the Argons.

For now, just upgrade the ones you plan on flying in. You're right, 7 million credits isn't a fortune, but you're still far from being poor. I'd seek some economic opportunities and build up a steady cash flow to cover future ship upgrade costs - if you think it's expensive now, wait till you get M2s and M1s.

DAY 5
--------

Not much to say today, except the Kha'ak are tough. I dropped the satellite in their sector like I was asked, scanned the base it directed me to and jumped back to civilized space with zero shields and 32% hull strength. Luckily all my ship upgrades survived the ordeal. When I returned to Argon Sector 148 to report, I was told that the guy who had recruited me was killed and I had to go to another heavily guarded Kha'ak sector to gather whatever was left of him.

I didn't do any gathering. I did however waste 120 energy cells getting there, scouting the place and returning. As expected, the number of roaming enemies was "too fucking many, minus 3 after my visit". I'll have to see how many missiles I can fit in the cargo hold before trying again. But since the mere thought of going all the way to Terran space to search for poltergeist missiles was enough to make me groan audibly, I spent the rest of the day meditating, er.... I mean, providing transportation services.

It was quite lucrative. :3

I believe it was this part of FF that prompted me to go back to Aldrin and purchase a Springblossom. Probably overall, my favorite ship in the game. I still use it often,tooling around taking care of business, even though I can fly around in anything I want. It's speed also helps to make Terran space "smaller", if you know what I mean. Carry on pilot, that is all.

Ah, so there is a shipyard somewhere in Aldrin after all! I'll definitely go back then when I've gathered some more money, since who knows how expensive the ship will be.

Yes there is (two shipyards actually, IIRC)...bring credits, but it's not as bad as you might think. Biggest pain in the arse is running around Aldrin collecting the *Prototype* versions of the weapons to fill up the weapon slots (and equipping all these can run up the credit bill a bit), which can only be found in Aldrin as well (at least, that's the only place I ever found them), but I found the Springblossom so awesome to play with, it was worth the effort. You can experiment with the weapons, but I have found the PSSC's all around make the Springblossom a beast for the player, although, with all turrets set to automatic fire, can drain down energy as bit sometimes. I found mounting PMAL's in the main front turrets (for your enjoyment of blasting vermin from the sectors) helps that a lot, because they are ammo based, and the ammo for them can be found/purchased many places in the universe, not just Aldrin or Terran space, even though the Launcher's themselves are still "Prototype" weapons.

Yeah, the Springblossom is smooth sailing, but I use a Hyperion loaded with a Pirate Kestrel (which, if I remember correctly, is the fasted armed ship in vanilla) to get around fast, but I guess it's a matter of personal preference.

I've yet to cap a Hyperion, but I have heard they make an awesome player ship also (many think it's better then the Springblossom I've read). I have a Kestrel that I use to map sectors & asteriods (remotely)...it's a great little ship! [Can't load one on my Springblossom :((( ] I believe there is a X3TC/AP starting scenario that can be unlocked, and it involves obtaining a souped-up Hyperion? I may just have to give that a try in the future.

Fast ships are really useful in many missions but many ships are useful if you use their good points to your advantage.

I run into a a Hyperion Vanguard just the other day actually in, I don't remember exactly, but it was either Duke's Vision or Emperor's Wisdom. Really cool looking ship. Tried to capture it with my Cutlass, ten scout ships and a TP and got my ass handed to me. SIx times! Sometimes tthe local police would come over to assist, not that the Hyperion needed the help. I blame my lack of missiles (TOTALLY nothing to do with my skills as a pilot nooooooope :P). I guess if this ship eventually wanders into an unpopulated sector I might try again. Not sure if I should include this in the diary though, since I ended up reloading a save from before getting all those scout ships.