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X3AP » RF Complex 1
Posted by Roguey on Monday 2nd January, 2012     0 comments

A while back I started X3AP on the Terran Commander start. Since then Ive been exploring and looking for ways to make money. I have made some money, so I started looking at building my first complex in X3AP. However there isnt many safe areas - apart from inner-most Terran sectors. I plan to write a small guide for this start sometime soon, as its a hard start.

In this start there isnt many TL's ships floating around, so I had to buy my own - A Paranid Hercules (a nice and cheap TL that is a great work-horse). You can indeed buy stations from the Terran shipyards, and deploy them.

I took a quick look around, and Megnir took my eye. Its got it own shipyard and some great rocks to place a few mines on. The sector itself seem fairly safe too, no big ships but no enemy spawns there. So I built 2 silicon mines (both L's - M mines are not worthwhile!).

Now my money was down, however a few kill missions later I made to get a enough for a L sized power plant. It built fine, however I had a problem when linking the stations together...

Atm there is a bug with Terran Complex construction kits, however non-Terran kits work fine. The bug is that when you got to link two stations, it doesnt play the little cut scene, nor is the stations linked. However quick jump to a Paranid shipyard, and all 3 stations are now linked:



I know its not much, however its the start of my self sufficient complex.

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November activity round-up
Posted by Roguey on Sunday 20th November, 2011     0 comments

Today (whilst my internet is working), ive been checking to see what activity has been happening on the sites. Here's a little round-up of the site activity.

In general there is a reduction of X3/TC visitors (I guess people are finishing the game and moving onto new things/waiting for Rebirth). Glitches in the game I guess haven't helped.

The hits on the Rebirth site have dropped also (to between 15-30) - however with very little new Rebirth news I can understand why. Ego have introduced a lot of changes, yet very little news - just a few odd forum posts on the official boards. Even from months ago we still only have a few odd pictures/videos.

The forum is doing okay, although its seeing around half the amount of viewers average. I guess this is due to the lower visitors on the other sites. However it seams there are regular visitors.

The PS3 site is getting a few visitors a day (5-15), however in the next few weeks, this will change as the PS3 site is being ported over to a console site, where support for the XBox 360 will be added. This is so me, bozor and Tiger can post news on both the PS3 and XBox (hopefully).

However, the most disappointing statistic is Ammo - Ammo has a very low visitor count. According to Tiger, the whole of the C&C community is struggling - which is a big shame. I can understand why Ammo gets lower visitors than other C&C sites but with really low stats it doesnt encourage me to spend a lot of time on it. I must thank Tiger for all his work on the site. Here's a preview of Ammo's activity:



Is it all doom and gloom? I dont think so. The X3/TC sites are pretty heavy rooted into X community, so whilst the hits may lower I feel they will never zero off. Hopefully Rebirth will kick start a new era but I feel that going to be when its out. If the Rebirth fails, I will probably move to a Guild wars 2 site (I will no doubt be spending a lot of time on it)

The console side of things... well that's a hard area to break into - so many other sites out there fighting over visitors... but if we can offer something unique there, then maybe we do well? The PS3 site is already getting a few visitors a day, so adding an xbox part will surely help. It will be good to have a site with a few people helping with it!

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X3TC » Vanilla madness
Posted by Roguey on Monday 22nd August, 2011     0 comments

Since discovering a flaw in X3TC, ive gone a little nuts making PPC's, then putting them on Orca's for sale. Money is no longer a problem:



The worse bit is that my game is still unmodified - I guess because the flaw is in X3TC then technically its not cheating, nor modding the game: as basically the game has a flaw. If you want to see the flaw, check here.

Oh, btw im going to kill everyone in the X-Universe when my armada gets big enough. I already have 8 Borea's getting ready

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X3TC » Capturing a Atmospheric Lifter made easy
Posted by Roguey on Sunday 14th August, 2011     1 comments

I was floating around Terran space when I noticed the Terran TL - Atmospheric Lifter. It has no guns but 80,000 cargo size, 20k more than the next biggest the Argon Mammoth! This would be great for complex building.

At first I tried to chase after one in my Split Cobra, however the Terran TL has a slightly higher top speed - I couldnt keep up. I noticed the ship travels to the planet (around 450km from the first location), disappears, then a few moments later reappears at around 110km - heading towards the USC Orbital Supply Base.

So the Terran TL starts from 100km'ish away from the USC Orbital Supply Base, then travels to the base, stops, sends out drones, then flies to the planet (450km) then re-starts.

So once the ship has reached the base and sends out its drones, this is the prefect time to board the ship - its a sitting duck, waiting to be claimed by you.

So the first bit it to bring down the shields then hold them down to 1-5%. Many of the Atmospheric Lifters have only around 125MJ worth of shield, which will regenerates very quickly. In boarding ships, you must keep the shields down to 1-5% for the marines until they reach deck 1. I tried a few things, in-which I found a nice little solution: A single phased repeater gun in a turret can hold the shields down long enough for your boarding pods to get to deck 1. If you got another ship, you can park it near the TL (within the 2km range of the PRG), then give its turret (with a single PRG) to attack all enemies. Your other ship will then hold the shields for you once the ship goes hostile from you attacking it. All you need to do is to bring the shields down yourself.

Once your marines get past hull and onto deck 1, you can then cancel the PRG attack and let your marines do their bit. I went a little mad - gonna have to repair my Terran rep with a few kill mission me thinks:

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X3TC » The joining of complexes
Posted by Roguey on Friday 12th August, 2011     0 comments

When you start building your own complex, if like me you keep adding more and more stations until it becomes a messy or so busy its hard to find a place where to add another station.

There is a 20-25km limit of where you can place station away from a HUB, however there is a way to extend your complex even further by joining complexes together.

For example, you make complex 1 have all your mines, then make complex 2 with all your food/bio resources and so on. Then you can link all the complex together to form one giant complex. The only rule for joining complex hubs is that they need to be within 20-25km of each other.

Using this information I have extended my complex to reach nearly across a whole sector:



This has also allowed me to move the doorway from the busy right hand side, to the left - where there arent as many stations. So I can add even more stations.