Anyone know if there are any differencies, but name and place of recruitment, between mercenaries and marines in X3TC? The manual does not mention anything but then the manual is quite out of date mentioning things that got removed in very early patches, so I find it an untrustworthy source of information.

Things I am interested in are whether they can be trained and such just like marines. I am having a hard time finding marines to hire now that I am actually looking for them...

No, both are basically the same thing (trainable troops used for boarding).

There's a difference in X3AP (not sure if it's in X3TC too, since I never bothered with marines at that point): you can't find purchasable Boron or Paranid marines at any of the races' military outposts, so if you really insist on having yer' "squiddie with a gun" :) you need to go for mercenaries (and Rehabilitation Centers).

If you're not in a hurry you could simply drop a station or two just outside of terran space, and gain a small amount of rep for every baldric that stops by to trade. Just remember to grant terran ships permission to dock (you might also want to ban argon ships, so they don't get in the way).

Doing missions is much faster, of course. Sometimes you can find terran scouts offering jobs deep in commonwealth space.

There's also at least one place in terran space where you can find Xenon ships, but I don't remember if you have to progress with the terran plot to get there...

Ah, I do not have a problem as I am on very friendly terms with the Terrans but was thinking what if as they are not as accessable as the Commonwealth factions. Thanks anyway!

My game progresses :-)

Busy, hands full in the game training marines and stuff I missed the ending of the fifth day so this one is closer to 26 hours than 24h.

Forty-three minutes into the fifth game day I took a break to plan, read up and try out things and also practise my combat a little (and do some real life things too). At one point I then managed to save over my save with one of these where I was trying things out. Three game hours where I lost money and reputation :-( and gained combat rank :-( This bad combo makes things a lot harder for me. I guess I must very strictly avoid combat now as far as possible and look for missions to do for pirates where I do NOT have to fight or piss off any one too much, all to repair my standing with the pirates. Sigh! I REALLY should have heeded my very own advice (a few posts back) to move saves out of the folder as not to mess things up, also to use the keyboard shortcuts more.

Hunting for a Pirate Kestrel to attempt capturing it, I mostly find a lot of pirate Discos and Harriers (other M5s) and when I eventually find a Kestrel, it dies to friendly fire gaaah (dies to another pirate trying to shoot at me). This can wait till later.

Only missions I did this day was two combat missions netting me around 1,000cr and angering the pirates and Yaki so they will harass my assets more. An utter fail in my books. The plots have been on hold too.

Since I decided to aim for all race/main plots and as many corporation plots as I can stand, I feel I need to plan a bit and stop flumming around so much. I will need an income on a completely other level than I have now. Planning factory complexes I quickly realised I realistically ought to aim for open ones (as in needing some resource/s shipped in) to lower the starting capital needed to reachable levels. Still all good complexes I came up with were out of my reach financially when I factor in station transport, starting capital and resources, freighters, tubing and the cost of buying the stations.

Looking into factory building made me wonder, can we tug mines across sectors? It is not like I would want to drag them across several sectors, not enjoying tugging THAT much but sometimes even one sector would help. Can always ship ores in with a TS of course.

Having so many (~100) sectors unexplored is really hindering me now. Of course I could set a suitable M5 to explore for me but it somehow goes against something deep inside me. I want to go look for myself.

Hooray! I got an offer to buy my favourite Mamba, the Vanguard, for 66% off. Now in X3TC there are other M3s that are good but I have fond memories of this one from Reunion. M3s are so fun to fly that I will build up a small fleet of those I like even if I am quick to sell a ship I do not see any use for.

Frustrated at not finding any marines or mercenaries to buy, when I finally wanted them, I kind of bought them indiscriminately, only checking to see they had at least 30 in fighting skill, leading to me having to school most of them a lot. Better marines/mercenaries do cost more to buy but it seems to me that is still cheaper than schooling them the equivalent amount, plus that takes game time and my attention/time. I found a couple of mercenaries in an abandoned ship but these were not any better than the average for sale.

I now feel I did wrong to start the marine training already. I think I should have built my first factory complex first. This thing costs money and takes a lot of time. What I would really love is to be able to board a TL but for that I would need either 85 mechanical skill for all marines or one of those ships that takes boarding pods (they cost twice as much as a TL...) and 50 mechanical skill for all marines. I will have to start with easier targets, also as to train the fighting skill of the marines.

Trade rank 17 *
Combat rank 6 *
Argon +6 (L)
Boron +5 (L)
Split +4
Paranid +4
Teladi +5 (L)
Goner +4
ATF +3
Terran +4
A capital (L) after the race if I have a police license for them.
* if bottom rank = 0

Assets:
20 marines, all with at least one star in each skill, in schooling now, later moving to training them
14 ships: 2 x TM. 5 X TS. 2 x TP. 1 x M5. 2 x M4. 2 x M3.
8 Adv sats in use <---I love these <3 They make life a lot easier
STILL no factories or other stations. I was saving up for a complex but then the marines ate into the budget.

PS. "squiddie with a gun" :) is part of my platoon

Pictures are marine training and the pilot stats

Nope. What you can do is move asteroids or already built mines within the same sector by using tractor beams, which is useful for bringing mines closer to other stations and/or jumpgates, or in complex building.

Yeah, I think I forgot to mention that. Training marines up to a decent level takes A LOT of money and a reasonable amount of time. Training time requirements get really unreasonable when you try to upgrade any skill past 4 stars.

I can see it now, squiddie boarding a ship, blasting the hatches, stepping in, being shot at and saying "Boron do not understand. We are at peace!" :P.

Slightly frustrated as I have neither time nor energy for X3 but I will return a.s.a.p.

I AM BACK with yet another report on my slow progress in X3:Terran Conflict. Here are a few words about game day 6. Sorry for the long delay!

Brant Kert speaking:
After a nasty disease that had me spending time in a hospital ship I'm back in business now. While recuperating I scouted the ship out, thinking of how one would go about boarding and stealing a ship like that... as I really need a TL class of ship in my growing fleet. Now for the moral question: Would that just be too low of me, even if I transferred the patients somewhere safe after taking over the ship?

Day begins where I left the last day with focus on marine training.

Clang-BOOM! Thank you auto-PILLOCK, there went an hour and a half of game time. The auto-pilot sure has problems with fast ships.

A boring day, not much happening. Having bought some ammo in the hope of selling it for profit, I find that they are hard to sell, as in next to no-one buys them. The in-game info, much improved since Reunion, tells me of a single station that buys it. Nifty thing that.

Equipping and fitting out part of those of my ships I intend to keep for use.

Why this: A powerful medium sized Kha'ak fleet appeared in a friendly sector and started shooting everything and everyone. The defence fleet arrives in system and just flies through?!?!?!?! After some time the Kha'aks are down to a single destroyer, but since there is no-one capable of taking it out it keeps smashing up stations and ships all around the central area of the system. I guess that as a player one dares not build anything expensive even a little bit more before being capable of killing such enemies yourself.

As much as I like being in control and remote managing my merchant fleet, doing so takes away a lot of time from doing other things, so I guess I should look into automating them soon, probably during game day 7.

I feel my marines are getting to the point where I can start training them by actually using them for their intended use: boarding operations :-)
What would be a good TP for boarding (yes yes, I know a TP is not the optimal ship for the task) in X3TC? Not too slow and able to take a bit of a beating.

My purse is slowly climbing back up from the low dip the marine training costs caused me with under 5 million credits to my name at one point.

No plot advanced at all today as I have concentrated on exploring the world, trading, and training my marines. Kind of surprising how I have only visted 140 sectors yet; the game world sure is huge. No ships shot down today. No missions done at all.

Trade rank 18 * <--only one up since last report
Combat rank 6 *
Argon +6 (L)
Boron +5 (L)
Split +5 <-- friendly enough to get that last (L), just need to reach Split space
Paranid +5 (L)
Teladi +5 (L)
Goner +4
ATF +3
Terran +4
A capital (L) after the race if I have a police license for them. Only lacking one for Split now as the Terrans and Goners do not sell licenses.

* if bottom rank = 0

Assets:
20 marines, in schooling now, soon moving to training them in actual boardings
20 ships: 2 x TM. 9 X TS. 2 x TP. 1 x M5. 2 x M4. 4 x M3.
17 Adv sats in use <--MOOORE, I need MORE. Never enough of these
STILL no factories or other stations... This is getting silly. If it was not for me needing a big industry to complete a certain plot (yeah yeah, The Hub plot of course) I could just skip building anything if I wanted to but that would limit me in some ways other than not realistically being able to finish some plots.

Pictures are my marines listed and my pilot stats

It is good to see you are still making progress. I have found my automated traders require little attention and work quite well. I am not sure if you can blacklist sectors in TC, but I found that blacklisting all the sectors next to Xenon sectors, and all the pirate sectors reduced the number of attacks on my traders quite markedly.

If you must use a TP for boarding then the best options in TC would be the Terran Scabbard or the Boron Angel. I suggest targeting the Yaki in Ocracoke's Storm, it worked well for me - and good luck.

I want to try boarding the hard way :-) but I am sure I will want to move to an M7M, such as a Sirokos, rather sooner than later. Not having anywhere near enough funds to purchase an M7M is also a suitable incentive to try it the hard way.

In a week I will have some time off so should be able to play a bit more then.

Arrrrgh! Lost a freighter (byebye 1.4Mcr ) again, just as I was about to get enough money for a factory complex. I guess I need to check my ships' orders again and read up on the proper ways to set them up. TSs (freighters) should attempt an emergency jump away if attacked but one missile hit big enough and it is all over. A pity all I know is it was a pirate M3, not how it was killed. Of course some losses along the way are to be expected in a violent game.

Once you build up your fleet, you'll be able to set up regular sector patrols or even convoy escorts for potentially dangerous routes. Even then you'll occasionally have to drop what you're doing every now and then in order to deal with an unexpected pirate attack... and don't even get me started on the xenon and the problems they can cause :).

Yeah, that's rough....I am running a dozen traders now, and started building complexes, to help supplement my economy even more as I am beginning the HUB plot (X3TC, like you), and want to have a decent income to help support that. I assume you have downloaded the free bonus pack from ES, correct? It's a must have! If so, when setting up your traders, make sure to purchase one that has at least 1 turret (Mistral Super Freighters have two, with 2 guns in each, for a total of 4....my fav all around TS). With the bonus pack, you can set your turrets all to "Missile Defense" when you have both Flight Command Software 1 & 2 installed (not sure which enables this, but having them both is good anyway). Also you can put about 35 to 40 Mosquito missiles in your freight bay, and go to the Command Console->Additional Ship Commands, and set this to "Missile Defense Mosquito". While you're at it, go back to Advance-> Weapons-> and set Mosquito missiles to re-supply at 35. These options will greatly help the survivability of your traders. I do this with all my Traders, CAG, and CLS ships. As WinterSnowfall said though, Xenon, and even Kha'ak can still overwhelm your ships, if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time....so it's good to have a reaction force available...even if it's just you, lol.

Yup, you can :)

Ahhh, good to hear. Just fyi, the bonus package makes automating and running stations and complexes *so much* easier due to being able to use Commercial Agents and CLS's (actually will be using these a lot shortly for just transferring goods and wares between stations and plexes, and eventually the HUB). I can't imagine the constant pain-in-the-arse micro-managing that would be needed without them. Anyway, just my two cents. Enjoy reading your diary :)