How do you dump contraband? I think I ended up with some space fly and unstable crystals, and I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of them before the Argon station lit me up.
When the cops comm you I’m pretty sure one of the dialogue options will automatically drop your illegal stuff. But in general you should just run from the cops. The reputation hit is mostly temporary and too many of the useful personal inventory items are illegal. They won’t chase you past radar range, so just leave the area until they cool off.
I’m waiting for a sale to pick this up - any hopes for that happening soon?
Steam summer sale most likely.
I got it 30% off at GOG. Don’t know if (1) that’s enough for you or (2) it’s still on.
Thanks. I always forget to look at conversation options.
But you’re probably right that it makes more sense just to beat it. I just didn’t last more than ten seconds once they opened up.
revisited this after getting into discord group for egosoft. finally hit my stride with it and addicted now. Loaded up some mods from Steam workshop and hit 200 hours in game now.
I found a hacking thingy (security decryption something?) and now I can hack terminals. Is that something I should do? Specifically, I’m on the wharf in Argon Prime looking to buy a ship or two. Can I decrease the prices somehow? There are a bunch of different terminals to hack.
Also, I’m thinking of buying three ships:
- Upgrading my main ship from the starter interceptor to a fighter. (i.e. M4 to M3 in the old X3TC parlance
- A mining ship, because why not.
- A dinky scout to do the main mission (though I should check to make sure it can carry the antimatter or whatever it is I need).
I’ve got like 1.5 million after some crystal mining. (Which is kind of soothing, but I wish there were more background music. The background music in X3TC was kinda nice.)
Also, AFAICT you get the same price selling components as they charge for buying them, which is nice.
If you find signal leaks of the Comm variety on stations, you can often pick up missions from unsavory sorts that will pay well to hack station equipment. You can also hack them to have the station jettison its cargo or disabled shields/turrets if it’s something you’re planning on attacking. There are also sometimes data signal leaks on stations that can get you better prices at the station for a number of hours.
Personally I use the first 10 Mil or so I have to buy and outfit mining ships. And place them in the various faction locations I want to be friends with. They make you money and everytime they make a sale you get a reputation boost. Silicon mining is the most stable income. Nividium is great for a quick cash influx, I usually have a single miner doing that and manually sell the cargo once every 15 minutes or so.
Thanks, I’ll probably save my hacking thing for something like that. But I’ve been having issues with signal leaks. I fly around, really close to the station, with short-range scanner mode on, but I can’t really seem to find any “static” that they tell you to listen for. I once found a sputtering electrical discharge thingy that I thought was the same thing that I found in the tutorial, and sat right outside it for a while, but nothing happened. I then got out in my spacesuit and shot it with the repair laser for a while, but then it just went away. Oh well.
Good idea. What kind of mining ship should I get? I noticed they have small and medium ones.
That should have been a leak. You have to get REAL close, like shove your camera into it kind of close. You should see a message saying something like “Decrypting data stream” in the notification window in the bottom left. Honestly, I found hunting down leaks to be a little too time consuming for what they offer so I downloaded the Signal Leak Hunter mod. It will give you a quest marker to a leak once you get close it it which made it less tedious for me.
In terms of miners, I would suggest any of the M-sized mineral miners to start off with.
Question about mods–is there any reason not to get them? Cheevos?
Will they affect an already-started game? (probably depends on the mod)
Is there one that reduces the cost of the hub quest by a factor of 10? … oops, sorry, flashback from X3TC.
Correct, depends on the mod. Most can be enabled during a save but the big overhaul ones like VRO are exceptions.
I’m not sure about achievements but I know that modded games can’t do Ventures which I already ignore anyway. Basically, if you’re logged in you can send AI ships to venture into someone else’s game and sometimes they come back with resources that can be used for cosmetics or something like that? Not something I’ve ever cared about, and I believe there’s even a mod to do those “offline” as well and be simulated instead of being sent into other people’s games.
There are mods regarding the PHQ but thankfully the base version isn’t anywhere near as onerous as the Hub was. Getting to the last tiers of research took a little effort but it didn’t feel too bad to me.
Thanks again!
I actually kind of like the idea of Ventures. I really liked the idea back in Shogun 2 when you could sign up to be dropped in to other people’s single player games in place of the normal battle AI, and I’m sad that more games don’t try to do something similar. Though I understand the game design challenges. Like if I send a freighter into your game, how the heck are you going to notice it out of all the other stuff in the galaxy unless they put a big glowing pink circle around it?
I actually did the full hub quest in X3TC, so I have the bragging rights there, but damn if I didn’t regret it after.
I do think that sorta-multiplayer. Last I looked at them back in the original release they just added cosmetics or something and I just don’t care about those but I looked it up now and apparently you can get exceptional mod components as well, which is kinda nice. I might have to play around with them a bit in my next playthrough.
I never finished The Hub in X3TC but I had a friend who did. You guys are masochists. :)
Thanks both! 30% is good for me but GOG is not a platform I start up often. Would probably want it on Steam and will hold out for the sale. It’s not like my backlog is getting any smaller!
Backlog is always a valid excuse. (What a time we live in…)
OTOH I prefer to do GOG when I can. But individual tastes may vary!
I got a little scout and picked up three antimatter cells so I guess I’m ready for the next part of the main quest. I feel bad for the pilot I hired to fly it, as I have a feeling he’s not going to make it out of this.
I picked up a miner as well and I got it to (automatically) fill up with silicon, which was cool. But then I had to manually tell it to sell at the silicon refinery. I suppose there’s probably a way to do it automatically, so I’ll figure that out. Also, is it worth filling it up with crew? The crew are pretty cheap to hire, but do I have to pay salaries? (It’s not listed anywhere AFAICT.)
I also found a freighter called “Visitor 92” just sitting around doing nothing. I wonder what that’s about.
For your miner, there will be a Behavior panel you can open up (it’s one of the tabs along with the Info panel and that sort of thing). In there you can change its default behavior to Sector Automine and tell it what resource to mine. It will then automatically mine and sell resources, assuming there is a station that buys it in range. As the pilot of the ship gets better, you get access to Expert and Advanced automine functions which allows them to operate in a much larger area.
Crew shouldn’t be terribly important for a mining ship. Service crew help repair hull damage over time while marines are for boarding. They also defend against boarders technically, but the AI won’t try to board your ships.