@ JrK
Butthurt detected. My last comment about cheating was simply advice regarding the best way derive some FUN from the "game",
not a reference to how I played it. I got to the stage where I had three big factory loops and had put in a couple of weeks worth of playtime, hoping something wonderful would happen - it didn't. The third complex was what made me see reason and quit, every AI ship that attempted to navigate the sector, crashed into the complex, I was floating next to the station, AFK, SETA on, waiting for enough funds to procure a new fleet. So, care to enlighten me as to what part of the game I failed to get my teeth into? I didn't think it got much deeper than profitable factory loops, mining operations and fleet combat...
I take it you used a cheat to buy one at the start then? Or did I miss the friendly start up option that gave you a jump drive equipped vessel and a shitload of energy cells? It took me a good many hours of dull grinding and tedious milk runs to get one, during which time the flawed time compression system and stupidly slow transit speeds became mightily apparent.
The whole point is that you activate it when you've got nothing else to do
My whole point was that the entire game is far too fucking slow, it's like they slowed everything down on purpose, then a bit more just to waste everyones time. I wanted to speed up the entire game, pretty much constantly. The fucktarded time accel, that only a german could've thought of, doesn't enable you to do this. It's better than nothing, yes, but that isn't saying much.
the massive stations are only found in the Terran sectors
That may be true, but even the big, standard, X3 stations caused all kinds of pathing problems, a problem they didn't bother to address in TC and compounded with the Terran Stations (which I guess you can buy and deploy anywhere, I never bought Terran). The AI doesn't seem to have advanced since X2, which had modestly sized stations for a reason. But hey big huge stations make for pretty screenshots, and pretty sells! Trying to lead a flying wing near any form of structure (or big ship) is hilarious.
Out of sector (OOS) AI has collision detection turned off for all ships and stations meaning that everything the AI does OOS will not run the risk of dying or being efficient due to crashing
How nice, instead of addressing a problem that's plagued the series since it's inception they brushed it under the carpet, how very progressive! I didn't actually know it stopped ship vs stations, but I'm sure there's a flaw or something because I lost a good number of ships in highly secure sectors due to no, apparent, hostile action. The one thing in common was the systems were cluttered (roids/fabs).
You wouldn't have to micromanage a fleet of 30 traders if you would have bothered to read up on things and buy and install Trade Software MK
:sigh: The universe trader is pretty much a cop out option for dumbfucks who can't get to grips with making profitable factory loops and manually establishing supply chains (or people starting out, which is fair enough). Regardless, they still need a good amount of watching over to make sure they aren't being stupid. There are user scripts that improve this, but it's still a royal pain in the ass. You also still have to outfit every ship manually, you can't just order a batch with a particular setup from a NPC station, or at least I didn't see a way too - dare say someone has made a custom script by now.
I can't say the manual was super helpful but I consider getting to know what does what part of the game.
I agree totally! But I draw a line at having to trawl the internet for a good thirty minutes, reading multiple threads to find what something does (if anything), if it even works, or if it's bugged. It doesn't help that half the new content shipped with TC was community made and as such not well documented by Egosoft, if at all. Example: What the fuck is the point of the "Mobile Mining Base-Ship" it offers no discernable difference to a bog standard Mammoth transporter, so why the deceptive name?
X2 imo is the best in the series, even if the graphics are a bit fugly, it's just a shame it's got the worst interface imaginable. The combat was better (big ships blew apart and left debris), The AI navigation wasn't anywhere near as big an issue, etc.
