So far this seems like a decent 'plex I have come up with and I can afford it with margin.

Sector BEEEP (in case someone does not want to know)
Micro chip complex:

chip plant x15
silicone mine x3 (61; 61; 26)(There is also one unutilised 'roid with a mere 6 sil')
SPP XL x1
SPP M x1
crystal fab L x3
processed food plant L x6
raw food plant L x6
plex c kits x34
---
produce per hour:
150 microchips
96 crystals
3107 extra E-cells

"Problem:" There are some juicy ore containing 'roids (2x90) in the sector that would be lovely to add, so...

Alternative:

chip plant x13 (2 less)
ore mine L x2 (90; 90)
silicone mine x3 (61; 61; 26)(There is also one unutilised 'roid with a mere 6 sil')
SPP XL x1
SPP L x1
crystal fab L x3
crystal fab M x1
processed food plant L x6
raw food plant L x6
plex c kits x35
---
produce per hour:
130 microchips
5143 ore
15 crystals
28 extra E-cells

Two less chip plants, added in two ore mines instead BUT if and when I want those ores for anything but selling or delivering to the Hub, there is no energy to spare for another factory.

Thoughts? (Except maybe I should play some easier game than this if I cannot use my brain.)

Unfortunately I can't help you there :). I don't have any complexes and probably won't ever build one (though believe me I've tried in the past).

While the idea behind complexes is not a bad one at all, the way it's implemented in the X3 series is a long way from how I'd like to see it done. Sticking to individual stations has worked in my case so far, but then again I don't have absurd plot missions to worry about :).

Combat experiences

I make good use of the 4 differrent weapon groups and usually have 2-3 different guns installed on the same ship quickly changing between them with the number keys. There is a silly bug where the ship computer tells me that I am in or out of range of my target but uses the group 1 or the gun with the longest range, did not bother to check which one, instead of the weapon group I now have selected that might have much shorter range.

I just managed to make a nice Pirate Nova Raider bail at ~45% hull thus completing a protect station mission. While moving closer to the ship in order to claim it my own ---- WHAM! A Banshee missile hits it. Someone had been firing lots of those at the poor pirate from 25km away and it took a while for the missiles to arrive. There went my juicy 1.5M+ loot :-(

Picture: I had given up on this one ever bailing and just wanted to see if I could get its hull under 50hp when it bailed at 1% hull. Not sure whether to be happy or not to have to repair it but it did have some equipment intact so not too bad.

It's happened to me as well, more times than I can count :). In my case it's usually a Tomahawk missile (aka instadeath), launched some 40km away by a stray M8 guarding the sector. Granted M8s are much more frequent in X3AP, as there's tons of them that are part of rapid response fleets.

But I've learned my lesson and now, the first thing I do after I see a ship's pilot bail is to go around guns at the ready checking my gravidar for any incoming missiles.

Yeah, I told myself to do just that in the future. I would have had a handful of seconds time (enough) to to shoot them down in this case but just did not think of watching out for missiles.

The 'collect wares in sector' command works only if you have the Special command Mk 1 installed AND the ship is class M5/M4/M3/TS/TP not anything else, especially not TM even it seemed perfect for the job.

Themken.......
That is written in the readme (of the bonuspack) :D

And for TM, they don't trade wares.....;)

I guess I should have read the readme.... but it only took me an hour to find the answer. I still think the ship is small enough that it could be used for it but whatever. A TM is a nice trader of weapons and such as some of them are fast and have a lot more shield than TSs, M3s and most TPs.

And I have done something stupid again:
I have a TM doing double duty (not a good idea here) as a deliverer of jumpdrives, transporter devices, cargo life support systems and such that are not found everywhere and going around looking for marines/mercenaries with high combat skill. I had been lucky and found one with 85 fighting skill and a busy hour later I decided to transfer my Cargo life support system to one of the fighters docked in my TM and buy a new one for the TM... Instant death for the amazing marine :-( You must not for a single second have no CLSS installed in a ship that has people onboard, be it marines, slaves, passengers. Learn from this! Lucky it was only one and not trained yet. There are at least two working ways I could have used to achieve what I wanted, both involve not docking the TM to the pirate station but stopping next to it, then either send in teh fighter to buy the equipment or spacing the marine to pick it up afterwards. They survive fine in their space suits for a few minutes.

Off to buy another ship for running around looking for marines.

... and, fun fact, if you have a Transporter Device aboard your can also beam them in from 5 km away after a boarding operation (regardless of the outcome).

I would not use anything other than a TP for that... and remember, TPs have the capability (in AP) of storing 40 marines in their cargo holds (10 in TC), as opposed to TMs which can only carry 8 (5 in TC).

Yes, most practical, a must have device on a lot of ships.

Yes and since TPs have built in cargo life support system, it cannot be removed and my silly idiot move above cannot be repeated.

Has anyone else encountered a weird save bug in the latest version of X3: Terran Conflict? In version 3.4, every time the save is reloaded the controller profile is wiped out? I've made a post about it here.

Sorry, I do not use those controllers. I do not even use my joystick for the X3 games. A typical thing where using Egosoft's forum will help you a lot more.

I thought I should update my game since it was a couple of versions old so I downloaded The Terran War pack and installed it on top of my old installation and now the game suffers these terrible jerks every few seconds :-( Fraps shows half-decent F/s otherwise but for these jarring bottom spikes. Suggestions what to do? Remove it completly and reinstall and install the mods again? Reinstall just the mods again? Something else? Maybe the game wants even more RAM now? In that case I am in deep. Combat is just not doable as it is now.

EDIT: Seems Windows 10 was to blame to 80%; the program cannot keep itself from doing things while I game making it unsuitable for gaming. It also restarted itself WITHOUT MY EXPLICIT PERMISSION resulting in me losing 1½h of work, so it is not suitable for work either. That was not even gaming related at all. The resting 20%....I just turned the last settings down to rock bottom :-( Game is playable again. I suggest something newer than a ten years old computer if you want to play.

Yeah, that's not bad advice. Not that I was having issues on my old GeForce 540M, but since I got a brand new laptop with a 1050Ti, I'm expecting butter-smooth sector-wide capital ship battles.

Just haven't yet gotten around to building my fleet again to test that theory (I've started a brand new game where i vowed not to splurge on offshore investments and maximize profits, then military task forces. The Xenons must fall!).

P.S.: And yeah, Windows 10 is really good at doing stuff behind your back, when you least want it to...