DAY 2
Whew, that was a close call! Command ordered me off to Nathan's Voyage, and since I'd never informed them that I'd already been there (nor that I'd upgraded my ship to be just a wee bit faster than what they'd given me), I figured I could take as much as a day to show up before anyone would be wondering where I was, particularly with my journey leading via Omicron Lyrae again, and well, my sense of direction just isn't all that good and it's really easy to get turned around in there!

So I ordered Freddy to start doing some sector trading in Omicron Lyrae, and off I went, back in the direction of Tharka's Sun to see what wonders the universe holds beyond that. On my way there, I fought off some pirates at PTNI Headquarters, and 'lo and behold, one of them ditched their Elite rather than dying a heroic death! Much more useful than all those M5s which Command kept inflicting on me. Erm... I hope. It's significantly slower than my Sabre, doesn't have any stronger shields, and can barely carry more cargo. Oh well, I outfitted it anyway, and sent it off to help protect Freddy, figuring I'll find a better use for it later on. (Also, I felt rather proud that in the heat of battle I actually noticed the pirate ditching. The first time that ever happened to me, back during my first day, I didn't, and wastefully blew up a perfectly good ship...)

(Curious encounter while out there: A strange round spaceship with some kind of hull or shielding which made it impervious to having its cargo scanned. Don't entirely know what to make of it.)

Anyway, onward I went, to the sectors beyond Tharka's Sun. I think it was around Thuruk's Beard that I decided I could really use some more firepower. I took My First Rapier off the rather boring guard-duty it was on, upgraded it to its max speed, and sent it off to Saturn to buy me some additional plasma cannons. (I sure love having the credits for impulse buys like that! Later on I also decided to just get a bunch of satellites to see what those are good for...) Somehow it made its way to me far more swiftly than I'd expected (via sectors with strange names like Eighteen Billion and New Income, which I'll have to investigate at my earliest convenience!), and so by the time I was flying around Family Zein, I was blasting ships out of the sky with four blazing cannons. (I also sent My First Rapier back home to buy some more Cannons for itself and my other Rapiers.)

Those cannons sure came in handy when I found myself face to face with a Kha'ak Corvette on an - admittedly, this time they were right! - "Very Hard" patrol mission at Spaceweed Drift. *gulp* Luckily, I have an even better weapon than my cannons, and that is my boundless cunning. I lured the Corvette toward a couple of big Haulers, and while it was busy semi-ineffectively lancing out at them (I think it only managed to destroy one or two), I ran circles around it and - slowly, so slowly! - drained its shields with my cannons. Those Kha'ak obviously aren't too smart, as they never figured it out, and so in just a short bit, I actually could start doing some real damage, until it blew into a million tiny pieces in a very satisfactory explosion. Got a biiiig bonus for that, too, which is always nice on a well-paying mission.

The universe has apparently decreed a minimum number of spaceships for me to take possession of each day, and since the hours were ticking on with me being firmly out of reach of Command, it had no choice but to in short order have three less skilled pilots ditch their M3s (!) for me to take hold off; first a Paranid Persues Vanguard at Teladi Gain, and then both attacking ships on the very same protection mission at Home Of Opportunity, a Nova Raider, and a Falcon with its shields still intact! Niiiice! I'm building up quite a fleet, here! The Falcon's just too slow for my taste, but the other two I'll take a serious look at once I've properly outfitted them. Which, I'm learning, is easier said than done, out there in the middle of nowhere. Getting them some shields was easy, but weapons seem to be in extremely short supply.

Luckily I didn't have the time to get upset about this, as the day was nearing its end very swiftly. My navigation computer claimed to know a shortcut to Nathan's Voyage, so I raced against the clock, onward to Ghinn's Escape (where, I'll admit, I did linger just a wee bit to scan a few asteroids), Thyn's Abyss, and... erm, EEEP! The stupid thing led me straight into Xenon space! Youch, that Xenon J looked scaaaaaary! Good thing a trade convoy of big haulers with navigation computers as stupid as mine had wandered into the sector right before me, so I made a run for it while they were being demolished, and safely exited in the familiar territory of Black Hole Sun, with minutes to spare before the day came to an end.

Turns out, though, I needn't have worried. My contact got himself arrested hours earlier. Probably dodged quite a bullet there; if I'd been in early, they might've arrested me, too! Now I'm off on some other fool's errand to contact yet someone else and clear up this mess. Or, well, that's what my new contact wants me to do. But meanwhile I just got offered a sweet 100k per asteroid, for a total of over 1 million credits if I scan 10 of them over four sectors! Apparently this guy has never met any of the surveyors which sell you whole sectors worth of asteroid data for 50k. I didn't become the Wholesaler I am by letting such deals lie by the wayside. (Yeah, sure, sure, Freddy had something to do with it, too - but who had the smarts to bankroll Freddy, eh?!) The 5.6M credits I have to my name now might seem like a lot, but I have an urge to get into the asteroid mining business, and I suspect I'll have quite some capital expenses to get that properly underway.

I'm sure the Argon won't torture my original contact too much if I take just a couple of hours extra en route...

So every so often, when following the main storyline, game progress gets interrupted by this - for me - silent movie where you see some spaceships appearing. The most recent one was shortly followed by ships communication in which the woman on the other side said something like "I'm sorry for calling you a [something] back there". And that made me realize what I probably should've realized right away, namely that those movies probably should be accompanied by a voice-over or something, and that the way I'm experiencing them isn't the intended way.

Does anyone know anything about this being a known bug (with hopefully also a solution?) on Linux? (Ubuntu 12.04) Or alternatively, is there a fan site somewhere with transcripts for them, or a youtube playlist for them? I don't think they're all that important for the game, but now that I know I'm missing something, I do want to rectify that. :)

EDIT: Never mind on this. The latest scene did have sound, and I also figured out that any other (conversation?) action which can play sound will interrupt things, so that's almost certainly what I suffered from.

I had an extremely frustrating day with this game yesterday; got myself some extra TSs, and the process of trying to outfit them (together with what I already had) all kept going wrong, due to pirates and Xenon on the way (seriously, why does the military just let that Q terrorize an entire sector like that?!), and the horrible user interface of the game when trying to do any kind of serious management. "How many of what shields do I need again, which all weapons are compatible, how far do I need to fly to gather all of that, and just how many windows do I need to click and scroll through in order to find out that information??!"
I try to speed things up by using my larger M4s and M5s to ferry a few things back and forth, but then when they get waylaid en route (and the game never even notifies me that they're under attack, because they're basically just getting one-shotted), I have to go back to a save game, and of course then I forget exactly which orders I had already given at that point, so I miss one or two, and have to go back again because I first should unload everything from this ship to that other ship before sending the first one to get more shields, and... GAAH!

After taking a break for a couple of hours, I finally got things back under control and humming along nicely (mostly by just flying to all the pirate-infested sectors and taking them out myself so that my courier ships had a clear flightpath), with only the single loss of My First Rapier (*sniff!*), but along the way I also lost my achievement of singlehandedly taking down a Xenon P in my Sabre (from a branch where I thought I was doing really good, before I noticed that hey, Freddy was no longer around), and that really smarts.

Got really close to giving up on the game altogether there. (I'm guessing it's the fault of my combat rank getting too high, making all enemies show up in stronger packs?)

That is the case as far as missions are concerned, yes, but otherwise not really. The artificial life spawned pirate, Xenon and Kha'ak ships do not take your combat rank into account.

In any case, though the universe is generally dangerous, I'd avoid lingering near any Xenon sectors... and you should definitely consider switching to an M6 corvette class ship as soon as possible, or at least having one around for emergencies. I'd save up to buy an M7 when I can.

Hostile ships wrecking entire sectors without military intervention from the sector race is not uncommon in TC. The problem was partially solved in AP by introducing RRFs (Rapid Response Fleets) which are universal race-based task forces that jump into any sector where the race's assets are at risk.

This, however, turned out to cause problems with assassinations missions, as it's not all the uncommon in AP to track your target, only to find out he's going to be blown out of the skies by a RRF ship before you can get to him.

Nobody said it's a perfect game :), but it does get better as you get better at it.

That's hopeful, then. Means it was just bad luck, and having wiped out these pockets of M3s lurking along the trade lanes, my ships should enjoy smooth sailing for a while again.

From the prices for those I've seen, I have a ways to go yet with saving up; and that's from before I think about the cost of outfitting them. Need to get those TSs up and running first to scale up my profit making! :)

Well, it depends. Make sure there aren't any pirate bases crossing your trade lanes, otherwise you'll always bump into pirate ships. They are set to perform regular trade and patrol runs between pirate stations (they usually pick the closest base to their home base in order to send convoys).

If you can't avoid them - the pirate bases I mean -, you could also destroy them (though they do regenerate after several game days). But something tells me you need to build up your strength before you have that option :).

Okay, yes, getting your un-shielded, unprotected ships to a station to get outfitted can be dangerous and frustrating early on. Firstly, is a great resource for checking out that new ship you acquired (or are thinking of acquiring), and want to investigate out it's stats for outfitting. Secondly, if you have the credits, I would also recommend picking up a nice [url=http://x3wiki.com/index.php/TM]TM if you don't have one already. It can hanger some of your smaller ships that you have equipped with jump-drives, shields, e-cells, systems, ect..(like a portable storage container) This allows you to fly your TM in to the sector with the newly acquired ship(s), and at the very least, transfer a jump-drive and some e-cells to it (have a transporter on your TM, or you'll have to dock them all at a nearby station), then send your new ship off to where you want, to finish outfitting it. You can then "replace" the jump-drive and whatever other systems you transferred from your TM to the new ship, directly from one or more of the ships you have anchored in the hangers on your TM. Jump your TM to a station and replenish the systems you transferred to your new acquisition(s), and you're good to go again. I used the Boa as it had the best speed for this need.

As WS mentioned...sounds like you're ready to graduate to a corvette class ship now, especially considering your higher flight rank. Don't give up, you're doing great!

I avoid slow TSs for trading. The faster ones survive longer and get more trading done even with a bit smaller cargo bays.

A used M6 might be affordable BUT equipping them is not as cheap as equipping an M3.

DAY 3
I got bad news earlier today, when I was visiting the asteroid belt.

Why was I all the way back in the asteroid belt, you ask? Well, there were just too many Xenon popping up in Black Hole Sun and Scale Plate Green, and sometimes moving on to Treasure Chest and Nyana's Hideout, so I figured I shouldn't let my sector traders roam beyond Omicron Lyrae. Given that the profit opportunities between Heretic's End and Omicron Lyrae aren't that good, and since I had to be in Heretic'd End anyway to drop off my barely-tortured rescued contact (he's such a crybaby!), I figured that having the Asteroid Belt and beyond as a secondary market for selling things would make sense, and then of course it helps to have some satellites around. Aaanyway, so there I was, taking on some missions because I was a bit cash-strapped after outfitting my new fleet of Freddy-wannabees, when I get a message informing me that my aunt has died (we were never that close, but still quite a shock, that) and I've been made Senator in her place!

...

I mean, I just don't even! These people?! Have they never even heard of democracy?? I mean, sure, democracy can go horribly wrong, too, as history has amply proven, but I still had to speak very sternly to them. Luckily they saw sense, and decided to just give me a new honorary title ("Guardian of Earth", can you believe it?!) and a statue for singlehandedly saving democracy. (Yeah, as if I cared about that! I just didn't want to be trapped in a boring desk job pushing numbers back and forth in a spreadsheet, when I could be here in my trusty Sabre, seeing the wonders of the universe and making mad cash while at it!)

So, anyway, I fled Terran space as swiftly as possible after that. (Sadly not before Command foisted the crybaby on me. For some reason they want him along to drop some satellites in economically totally uninteresting sectors, but I'm just keeping him in the dark in the cargohold, and so far he hasn't really noticed yet that we're nowhere near where we should be.) I acquired myself a very nice Gladiator while defending a random space station, and a bunch of missiles for it on a later defense mission. Don't really know yet what to do with an M8, since obviously it's totally awful with defending against fighters (as proven beyond a shade by me easily defeating these things in my Sabre), but maybe they'll prove useful when I want to tear down a pirate space station or two later on? For now I've just set it to guard my Silicon complex.

Oh, I hadn't told you about that yet?! Yeah, I'm a true Financier now, and I bankrolled both an Ore mine and a Silicon Mine + Crystal Fab complex over near Midnight Star (since I'd scouted a 102-yield Ore asteroid over there, which just seemed to rich to not exploit, plus they had a bunch of facilities already available). Not really certain yet that this setup is actually making me a whole lot of money, but oh well, if not, I can just ship all that ore over to the Goners for their temple.

Anyway, while keeping an eye on how this station business is developing, I decided to see what all Interworld had to offer, flew on through the next gate, and before I knew it, I found myself over in Paranid space. Doing a bunch of missions there, now, since they seem quite mad for asteroid data, and I - of course - am more than happy to supply them with it.

DAY 4
I have a theory! Alien mindcontrol parasites have gained access to Command, and are busy mind-wiping every single one of them! It's the only possible explanation for the absolutely bizarre orders they're giving me, or the lack of awareness they're showing.

I've barely been flying around in my Cutlass for 6 hours - haven't even yet had a chance to stock up on new Spectre missiles - and already they're giving me not just a Scabbard, but also a frickin' Vidar, and now they're wanting me to go on a mission to board one of the most important military targets in the history of humanity, while I didn't even complete a single training exercise on how to board a ship.

And let me tell you, that training: Brrrr! I had recurring nightmares about it - like dozens of times in a single night - before the training commenced. First, I "forgot" that you could only board a ship when its shields were down, and then when I finally made my dream-self remember, the AI of the Scabbard was malfunctioning, so it flew straight into the Vidar half a dozen times before the Marines had even reached it, leaving that Vidar so battered that the fighting after boarding ended up destroying it completely. And then the actual boarding! Dozens upon dozens of Marines died brutal deaths on my watch. Oh gods, I can still hear their screams! And when it wasn't the AI malfunctioning, in other dreams the marine squad just wasn't communicating at all, with half of them successfully drilling through the hull, while the other half ran away, screaming like sissies that they couldn't manage to get through. So, yeah, nope - I'm opting out of this part of the curriculum. If Command wants any boarding to happen, they can send someone who is experienced in it, rather than this rookie-me.

And then of course, after I failed to show up for training, they just gave me that Vidar! Pffft! But I'm still not going to show up for their silly mission to the moon. Nuh-uh! Definitely not with this ship completely under-equipped. It doesn't even come with a transporter, let alone a kitchen sink! So I'm sending it off to make itself presentable, while I head off to break in my Cutlass a bit more thoroughly.

Besides, I have more important things to do! The Goners are totally relying on me to bring them Ore and Teladinium and everything! And if you think that these stations of mine can supply themselves once they've been properly set up... forget about it! There's constant snags in the supply chain, so I have to ferry over extra supplies from who knows where...

I'm currently saving up for an extra Solar Power Plant, since I figured that a bunch of extra Telaxian Wheat Farms in Black Hole Sun would be a good way to make profit, given the insane amount of Cahoona Bakeries they have around there - but of course, I don't want to compete with those very same bakeries for energy cells.

What else is new? Oh yeah, I got myself two extra M8 bombers (still don't really know what to do with them), and of course this Cutlass which I've mentioned. Apparently Command didn't trust my trusty Sabre to finish the job, after it was good enough to deploy satellites all over. (Yeah, I ended up doing that after all - the crybaby finally wisened up...)

And, well, I do have to admit that I had some trouble taking out M6s in my Sabre, while the Cutlass does that job admirably. Unfortunately it's slow as molasses - I keep having to hope that M5s will be stupid enough to come near me, rather than being able to mostly pace them - but I do like letting my turrets do most of the boring shooting.

Another benefit is the extra cargo space, which means I can shuttle around entire platoons of passengers - even if I now am cutting it mightily close to get them to their destination in time.

Anyway, once I've completed a few more missions and bought my Solar Power Plant, I expect mad cash to be rolling in, so that I can then go finish outfitting all my ships - including buying a whole bunch of Spectre missiles for myself, so I can then go save one of my Mercury Super Freighters which is holed up in a Cattle Ranch in Nyana's Hideout with a Xenon Q on its doorstep. No idea why the Argon are just letting that Q terrorize the sector, or why that Q had it out for my freighter, but either way, I just won't stand for it!

Nice going. Having spent lots of time learning and practising boarding I know all too well how frustrating it can be. You need marines with 17+ mechanical skill to board an M6 unless using boarding pods, then 10 suffices (higher levels if target has hull polarising).

DAY 5
Those Goners... *shakes his head in sad disbelief* Let me tell you, they're lucky I stumbled across them. So totally helpless! First they wanted a bunch of construction materials, and since they were willing to offer quite a premium on top of the regular market prices, I was more than happy to become their preferred supplier. But then they wanted to get into shipping themselves, and well, since I didn't yet have the staff on hand to properly manage a large fleet to keep bringing them what all they needed, I figured I might as well supply them with those ships.

Everything would've been just fine if it'd ended there, but suddenly they're getting illusions of grandeur and wanting to produce their own Teladianium, so I had to go build them their very own foundry. (This is why they invented subcontractors; I let the Teladi do all the hard work, and pocketed a nice bonus myself, and since I was hiring them anyway, I also let them drop off a second Solar Power Plant for me. (A second one? Ayup! I'll fill you in about all that later!)) But then suddenly they send their head priest flying around the galaxy without adequate protection, and so I have to go rescue him, and then a bunch of their supply ships are in trouble. (What were they even thinking making their way all the way over to Bright Profit??! Did, or did I not just build them their very own Teladianium Foundry right on their doorstep, so that they won't need to venture so far to get everything they need for their temple?? Seriously... *rolls eyes*)

And of course, no sooner have I rescued all those ships of theirs, or that very same head priest in his inadequate M6 gets abducted, so I have to go chase him all across the universe in order to rescue him. (And let me tell you, I was seriously worried about the guy! Had nightmares for days about needing to send in my completely useless marines to cut a way into his ship and them failing again and again to do that - luckily reality, once I'd dispatched all the escort ships, was that the pirates abandoned the ship without anyone aboard and I could just hop over to claim it myself (but those nightmares were the trigger for me to finally go and send my Marines on expensive training courses; no idea what Earth Command was thinking completely neglecting their education like that!)) It's also a good thing I had finished equipping my Vidar, so I could have it jump in and help me deal with the hordes of pirates which had totally unreasonable grudges against me for unknown reasons. I don't like flying that ship myself at all, but it does come in handy for occassions like that.

Anyway, I've now returned head priest guy back to his temple (which is coming along nicely due to my help!) - and in return he handed me his ship. Something about a "total loss"? Whatever, I happen to know a guy who's handy with a welding torch, as well as a reliable dump for 200MJ shields, so with a fresh coat of paint, I'm sure I can get it looking good as new again.

He also wants me to take care of the pirate problem once and for all, and I've been itching to give my M8s a workout, so I'm seriously considering it!

But that'll definitely be something for another day, as I've been sorely neglecting my business empire throughout all this. Sure, working remotely is all the rage these days, and I've been putting in my hours, but good staff is hard to find, and some personal oversight definitely helps with making things run smoothly.

For example, even though my Delexian Wheat Farms in Black Hole Sun have been a great success due to the Solar Power Plant (L!) I built nearby - and the fleet of ships I tasked with shuttling supplies back and forth (that's one thing I learned from my early Complex Hub and Ore Mine; "build it and they will come" does not hold in outer space; consumers are so lazy nowadays, you really need to bring your goods right to their front-door for them to become interested) - ...err, where was I? Oh yes, even though my wheat farms are doing good, the Cahoona Bakeries to which they're delivering obviously are being run by incompetents, and so have trouble finding a market for those delicious meatsteaks of theirs. And meanwhile my Solar Power Plant has some trouble finding a ready source of Crystals. (I've even had to institute a regular trade run from over in Midnight Star!) So while my staff can notice these issues, it's really up to me to solve both problems in one go, namely by setting up another Silicon Mine + Crystal Fab complex! And meanwhile, over in Midnight Star, I noticed the availability of Meatsteaks was going down. Apparently I was being too efficient with sucking up the output of the solar plants there, starving the wheat farms (and various mines) over in Belt of Aguilar off their supplies. No real problem for me, I figured, except that without wheat, there's no meatsteaks. So yeah, that's where that Teladi power plant came in; that's supplying all the minor industries in Belt of Aguilar, now. At, I should say, quite a hefty premium for the trouble they've put me through!

I've barely been able to keep up with equipping my ever-growing fleet of Mercuries. Bought half a dozen of them just a couple of hours ago (for future needs), and had to scour the entire solar system for enough of a supply of compatible shields. Luckily they don't need much in the way of weapons, so very soon they'll be fully up and running.

Oh, and guess what?! Way back at the start of the day, I was getting the Goners some Teladianium over in Bright Profit, and after I'd loaded that into my Vulture Hauler for shipping back, I decided I'd go and explore and see what that part of the galaxy had to offer. I ended up in Queen's Harbour, where the Atreus company was totally selling Jumpdrives, exactly like the one the Terrans had just reverse-engineered and installed into my Vidar! I scooped up one for myself, and have been shuttling more copies of the same back and forth with my Discoverer Raider. So now my Sector Traders and my Scabbard also have them. Definitely makes all these taxi service missions a lot easier.

I figure that ere too long, I'll go see what my marines are capable of now that they've had some proper Argon training, rather than this wimpy lack of education the Terrans bestowed upon them.

Nice job...you're coming along nicely. Enjoying the humor you inject into your journal. Most importantly, it shows you are enjoying the game. While the Truelight Seeker makes a nice little trophy prize, I never found it that useful compared to other ships, but IIRC, it can mount any weapon in the game, so makes a pretty cool testing platform.

Regarding your marines, one small piece of advice...during your travels, try to snag any marines you find (military outposts mostly) with high fighting skills, generally I only purchase 3 stars and higher. That attribute you can't *pay* to raise during training, only gets increased after experience during successful boarding ops. All the other attributes can be raised during training with plenty of credits and time. Cherry picking those higher rated space marines during your travels will help a lot in the future when you start some boarding activity, which can be a bit frustrating and bring a tear to the eye (if you haven't found out all ready) when your precious troopers start dropping like flies. I think at some point, Egosoft made the whole boarding operation tougher, because when I started researching online why I was having such a rough go of it, I found older threads on the interwebs with many players taking ships with just 5 or 6 troopers (well trained, but still) and no loses at all. That has never happened to me, even when boarding *abandoned* ships during "return ship" missions in an attempt to train up my troopers fight skills. Sooooo, something changed, lol

Just for the record, I don't have a problem with it being difficult to take a ship with boarding, but I found it exceedingly hilarious that abandoned ships had troopers *hidden* on them capable of killing off some of my well trained marines.

Thanks. :) And, erm... mostly! There've been some exceedingly frustrating times during this game (mostly due to losing hours of gameplay), and mission design could seriously have used just a leeeetle more polish. (For example, the syndicate ship I was following got stuck at the gate out of Maelstrom (really just bumping incessantly against its edge!), and only got unstuck once I left the sector, giving me the choice between coming too close, or getting too far away from it.) But yeah, outside of such complaints about the plot missions, I do love the empire building aspect of the game, and the actual challenge it presents. Smooth learning curve this ain't!

Hrm. What I take away from that is mostly that I'm now even less interested in doing a lot of boarding operations than I was already. Will have to see if I can just avoid them altogether...

I looked into that already, but the Argon don't seem to have any 25MJ shield factories, and I'm not quite up to the point where I can diversify my holdings that much, yet.