Litecube Universe - X3 Albion Prelude overhaul mod.

[Perkel]

Many of you heard about X3. German "mods will fix it" space game.
Well i have been playing Xtended overhaul mod for it which i praised a lot in past but there is newer one and much more robust and "better" overhaul called. Litecube Universe. And after spending some hours with it, i think this is something that warrants new thread so few people could lose couple hundreds of hours with me. So this is kind of let's play thread and both informative one. I will be playing LU for some time so i can also help people play it if they don't know something.

What is X3 for noobs:
- you fly a spaceship in it
- you can trade
- you can fight
- you can fly any ship you see (even destroyers)
- you can build almost any station you usually buy your stuff from
- you can create whole Fleet of AI controled units who will follow you and make your own wars
- you can have fleet of traders that will run around in galaxy selling either your shit or just trading without you micromanaging it.

So basically it is space empire game where you start from 0 (or choose "better" start) and make your own empire. Problem with X3 vanilla is that it is shit. Meaning that it is fucking boring, AI is fucked that constantly destroys your hard earned ships, economy without mods is fucking micromanaging hell and everything feels "loose". It is great foundation of for game but not great game. It is EVE ONLINE without ONLINE. And Elite with things to do past "get the best ship". So by the end of the game you will be flying some nice ship wing supported by your own fleet, fighting actual wars you only hear about in EVE.

Enter Litecube Universe.
- completely fixed AI, your ships will never collide with themselves so you can fly your "wings" as much as you want.
- shitload of QoL changes that keeps your from micromanaging hell. Station agents that will keep your stations fed, traders, explorers etc. Everything that keeps you away from playing actually game
- performance improvement. X3 tends to shit bed after a while, LU devs made wonders and despite it being even "heavier" than vanilla, AI doesn't clog etc. You can also run game at 10x speed no problems unlike vanilla.
- almost every script in game has been touched by devs. Traders, stations generally everything is much more logical in actions and they are "tight" and as long as you know about system something you don't have this weird "well it doesn't work for some reason"
- There is simply too much to explain, missile defense, dock manager, overhauled wings AI and so on and so forth.
- Two factions that are expansive and with which you will have to wage war (those are aside from your standard factions you can make friends/foe with). Unlike vanilla those factions actually pose threat
- Faction wars. Unlike vanilla if Argons and Terrans go to war, systems can change hands. What is more important systems unfriendly to you are marked with RED text and you can easily see this on map.

So it is basically Elite:Dangerous but unlike Elite game doesn't end when you get top tier space ship. It is space war mate you are after not some Elite like trucking. Which EVE ONLINE comparison also is apt as you will spend a lot of time managing your empire.

 

[Perkel]

What you need:
- X3:Albion Prelude version 3.0+ (latest is 3.3) currently for ~6$ Steam || GOG
- No-steam.exe (LU makes shitload of changes and needs no-steam.exe)
or if you have GOG version remove the file "addon/t/gamestarts.pck" if present.
- Litecube universe (1.7.1)
- Litecube Universe patch (1.7.2)
- Litecube Universe music

Install all of those in order you see above (all are painless quick installators)

 

[Perkel]

ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR NOOBS TO NOT GET LOST IN X3 LU:

- USE SETA all the time with "j". This speeds up game up to 10 times. You don't want to not use it because flying anywhere could literally take you 30minutes and above. If you want to cross whole universe in slow ship you are looking at literally weeks without it. It is hardware you buy so don't forget to rebuy it after you switch ship or buy it before switching.
- Trade Extension - buy it on almost any equipment dock for your ship. It gives you ability to buy/sell with other ships than yours.
- Use your repair laser - You need to eject from ship and then your fire button is repair laser. Buy/find/take ship fix it and sell it is good way to make a lot of money early.

Ship classes matters in this game A LOT you can see it in ship info (or just codenames). There is no way M4 will lose to M5. And M4 will always almost lose to M3 etc.:
combat (from smallest to largest):

- M5 - scout ships, basically for exploration and scouting.
- M4/M4+ - light fighters, can install jumpdrives.
- M3/M3+ - heavy fighters, bunch of them can even take down frigates with proper outfitting. "M8" is just bomber focused M3.

- M6 - Corvette - heavy firepower weak against a bunch of M3s outfitted as bombers. Station busters.
- M7/M7C - Frigate - eats corvettes for breakfast, M7C is small carrier.
- M2/M2+ - Destroyer - the heaviest ones
- M1 - Carriers

other:
- TS - "T"ransport "S"hip. Your backbone of trading
- ST - "S"tation "T"ransport. You hire them when you want to build stations.

So basicallly if you have M5 and you see M3 don't think that you have a chance. Even if it is without weapons its shields will be so good that you will spend hours trying to get past them. If you have lone M3 don't ever think about attacking M6 (corvette)

- Ships classes matter the most but equipment also means much ! You think that you won because you bought yourself used M3 ? Think again sunshine. Used M3 can go for 500k but properly outfitted M3 is like 5-7MLN. Same goes for bigger ships. Just because you managed to get by and finally after hours and hours playing you get yourself Corvette for 20MLN you will need probably spend another 20MLN to outfit it or it will go down into toiled even with couple M3s.
- Auto-trading - This require Trading Software MK3 which is sold on few stations (not all of them) and 500K. You will have option to trade "ST" sector trading and your AI dude will start from lvl1 where he won't be able to even use jumpdrive (until lvl12) and he will gradual improve and change to UT (universe trader) making you big cash. They level up by earned profit.
- Building Stations - You need first be friend of some faction, then you need to hire ST like Mamoth (in argon space) to go to shipyard (comm --> go to shipyard). Once ST in in shipyard then you can buy station and then you tell Mamoth to move it toward sector of your chosing, then once is there you can tell it to unload it.
- Opportunities - There are various missions you can do. Patrol/kill. build stations, buy used ship/transport people, scan asteroids. And they are color coded with icon near station if there is person offering you such opportunity. Mind you that scaning asteroids requires mineral scaner(easy to get) while transporting people requires some cargo and cargo life support system (hard to get)
- Factions:
- Argons/Terrans - Divorced humans who have fight.
- Split - Vulcans
- Teladi - Jews
- Boron - Cluthu bros
- Paranid - friends of Vulcans, 3eyed 11 different genders.

- Xenon - Your AI overlords everyone is scared off.
- Various corporations
- Yaki/Kha'k - Pirates

Each faction has their own strengths and weaknesses. Terrans overall have best ships but they have spat with most of factions and their ships cost a lot more, Argons are jack of all trades and their ships are the same, Teladi are traders so their trading ships pack extra cargo, Split are Vulcans so firepower for them is key, Borons have coolest looking squid like ships while paranids have cheapest ships outside of pirates.

 

[Perkel]

20 hours in:

- 3xM5s focused on exploration (i am in one of them), 2 of those explore and scan asteroids automatically with Explorer software.
- 4xTS, two cheaper "mercury" one expensive "nexus" and one extra expensive nexus super-freighter.
- 3 stations, 2 mines (silicon and ore) and Firefly missile production complex consiting of 4 factories making Firefly missiles because in LU early missiles are very expensive like 16k a pop.
- 1 M3 i found nearly destroyed and repaired though i lack money for now to outfit it.
- 2 TSes are AI controled, 1 Universe Trader and 1 Station Agent for Firefly missile factory complex.

Had already close encounter with one of two big factions where TandiTech corporation basically jumped out near my position with corvette and like 10 m4/m3. I barely managed to escape with about 75% health on my poor M5. So right now with my new M3 Nova i am thinking about forming a wing and buying light carrier so in such emergencies i could just himp with my light carrier (he holds about 3 small ships) and provide me escort in dire circumstances.

My main income for now are 2 traders i operate manually and Firefly production complex which basically sells those missiles like hot cakes. Probably in future i will add at least 4 more factories to it (which will make it 8) though i will need then at least 1 more TS to fed it with ore, energy and meatstakes cahoonas. Mercury UT is about 3mln in red because of all equipment and bad deal he made on crystals which basically cleared out my balance for a while. Other one is station agent so he mostly buys resources for my missile factory.

I am also considering bying fast M4 to outfit it also with Explorer tech and make it automatically set up satelite network in every explored sector, though as it is slow i will need to outfit it some scuffles or even provide escort.

With above said i also think that i should build Advanced Sattelite factory. I want to set up satelite network in box shape so 4xAdvanced sattelites per sector which will cost a lot and after i will set up network they will sell to general market without issue.

 

[NotAGolfer]

So ... are you already tired of that Excel spreadsheet charme and this thread is dead before it really started?
Or are you maybe one of the rare specimens around here with an actual real life job?

I bought and installed X3 TC and AP too btw, but I won't add any major overhaul mods for now, the last time I played X3 was about a decade ago and I don't remember much. TC and AP both seem to have very weak stories even compared to X3 Reunion but whatever, these games were never about the main story anyway.

 

[Perkel]

So ... are you already tired of that Excel spreadsheet charme and this thread is dead before it really started?
Or are you maybe one of the rare specimens around here with an actual real life job?

Yeah job that is one thing. Other one is that my best friend called me just after i made this thread and said he gets married and made me dude who organizes stag night. Since then i don't have time for almost anything.
I did play few hours but it is too litle for an update. I will update it though, that is 100% sure.

I bought and installed X3 TC and AP too btw, but I won't add any major overhaul mods for now, the last time I played X3 was about a decade ago and I don't remember much. TC and AP both seem to have very weak stories even compared to X3 Reunion but whatever, these games were never about the main story anyway.

You might as well uninstall it then. X3 without mods is all but-hurt no fun. Just plain AI will drive you crazy when your hard earned destroyer will just crash into jump gate and explode for no fucking reason and that is looooong after you will driven crazy by micromanagement of your stations and traders. Wanna fly your own fighter wing ? Not in vanilla because those fighter will crash in almost any fight into enemy for no fucking reason. Want to build 8 stations producing one type of missiles ? Nope in vanilla you have to make 8 separate stations and supply 8 separate stations. In overhaul you have construction kit and you can join those stations. There are coutless improvements people made to gameplay over last 10 years.

Install Litecube and play Litecube period as sandbox game.

Only thing "better" vanilla has over overhaul mods is story but story in X3 games is joke to begin with and there is a good reason why those overhaul mods remove story missions (because they are fucking dumb and not fun)

 

[lefthandblack]

I tried this one out a couple of months ago based on your recommendation in another thread. It's got some stuff that's really nice but overall it changed the combat too much for my liking. I started modding out what I disliked about the combat, but eventually asked myself "Why?" as I've probably played thousands of hours in the X games already and I'm kinda over it at this point.
If I'm still alive in ten years when X4 is finished and reasonably bug free I'll try that.

 

[NotAGolfer]

You might as well uninstall it then. X3 without mods is all but-hurt no fun. Just plain AI will drive you crazy when your hard earned destroyer will just crash into jump gate and explode for no fucking reason and that is looooong after you will driven crazy by micromanagement of your stations and traders. Wanna fly your own fighter wing ? Not in vanilla because those fighter will crash in almost any fight into enemy for no fucking reason. Want to build 8 stations producing one type of missiles ? Nope in vanilla you have to make 8 separate stations and supply 8 separate stations. In overhaul you have construction kit and you can join those stations. There are coutless improvements people made to gameplay over last 10 years.

Install Litecube and play Litecube period as sandbox game.

Only thing "better" vanilla has over overhaul mods is story but story in X3 games is joke to begin with and there is a good reason why those overhaul mods remove story missions (because they are fucking dumb and not fun)

Ok, but skimming over the Litecube wiki and other sources gave me the impression that I better be gud at playing X3 or else the new enemy factions will make short work of me and my hard earned property. As I said, I last played X3 about ten years ago, so I'm at the very beginning again.
Or is there an option to lower AI aggression/difficulty without editing dozens of entries in some mod related config files?
Because I hate doing that. Gimme ingame options or at least choices in the installer.
I don't wanna balance that stuff on my own, overhauling the game wasn't my idea to begin with, so if some modder wants to "fix it" then he should just do that instead of making every parameter customizable.

 

[Perkel]

Nah mate, those 2 factions (corpo and xenon) aren't that expansive. IT will take you 200-300 hours before they will start to actually have some impact on you but by that time you will have some destroyer or two.

Also X3 isn't EVE. You don't need 100 hours to learn basic stuff. Few hours and you will be rolling. Those few hours are nothing compared to full gameplay you will get out of this.

 

[Perkel]

TIP:
X3 despite being "excel heavy" when you play as empire is surprisingly great with gamepad. I made this video back when i played X-tended with x360 pad. Now i have PS4 pad and thanks to DS4windows you can fully map touchpad which gives you extra 8 mappable buttons (4 buttons + 4 swipes). And X3 supports fully holding buttons so for example if you want sector map you can just press select but if you want galaxy map you can just hold select. Same with other UI. Game supports also autotargeting (firing mode "k") on keyboard so you only need to dogfight instead of swirling with mouse. Though it needs some proper remaping because dafault one sucks.

Which also mean if you have hotas or something or joystick etc you can easily map everything as you want.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Controller usage might indeed be viable. I managed to map the most important keys on the XBox 360 Wireless controller, will see how it plays using that.
Auto-aiming is a bit popamole but cursor aiming wasn't that sophisticated either so I'm fine with that.

I had a few problems configuring that controller though. For example the bumpers (LB & RB) don't do what I want them to do. I put weapon fire on RB because that button doesn't recognize hold RB as a different command for some reason (which is fine for weapon fire), and it doesn't let me remap the LB which is some sort of throttle or something. I have to keep it pressed to move, deactivating the throttle doesn't change that, neither the launcher option nor the ingame one. Odd. Using other buttons to change speed also works though so I just ignore the LB for now.

That new music coming with Litcube is pretty lit btw.


And I'm gonna ignore that incorrect exe detected warning for now. Someone in some forum mentioned back in december last year that this is because Litcube is older than the most recent AP patch.

Another thing that really bugged me was that incredibly tiny font when using high resolutions. So I downloaded this and put that f folder inside the TC game folder. Helped a lot. Still tiny though so I also changed the resolution back to 1600x900. It's playable now although the letters are slightly too big for the UI spaces they are supposed to fit in. But just barely.

 

[NotAGolfer]

One big issue I'm having right now is that NPC traders seem to be much better than in X3 Reunion. I didn't find many trading opportunities so far (Argon space) and the ones I found attracted NPC traders very fast. Didn't help that I wanted to start with an M5 to work my way up from scratch.

Most forum advice I can find tells me to search for abandoned ships to earn the money for my first sector trader. But salvaging ships outside of missions is a feature I don't like that much, in fact I'd disable it immediately if I knew how.
Because I don't feel like I achieved anything by claiming an abandoned ship and selling it for profit. Feels like cheating (especially with the ridiculously high ship prices in LU) so why not just add the same amount of credits via ingame console?
I much prefered the way it was handled in the Vanilla game, ship bailing only under direct player fire. Might have been not that realistic but at least you had to do something to earn these freebies.
... Is there a single modder of a large overhaul out there that gets the very simple fact that realism isn't the main goal you want to achieve in a fucking computer game? How about favoring rewarding gameplay mechanics when in doubt instead of breaking the early game just to get more realism?

Seems to me like early game in Litcube is fucked up and no fun at all. Either that or I'm doing something wrong (no, I won't search for abandoned ships, fuck off).
Will try doing missions for now, let's see if I can find some asteroid scanning ones or similar easy stuff.

edit:
I have a better idea. I'll try Mayhem on top of Litcube. Seems like that mod has a much better early game, at least from what I read so far.

 

[mikaelis]

Perkel I can see you have a cockpit, which were not present in vanilla X3. Is it added with this overhaul, or you installed one on top of that? (if so, which one?)

 

[Perkel]

Perkel I can see you have a cockpit, which were not present in vanilla X3. Is it added with this overhaul, or you installed one on top of that? (if so, which one?)

mod:

LINK

and here you have all mods for Litecube:

LINK

 

[Perkel]

I had a few problems configuring that controller though. For example the bumpers (LB & RB) don't do what I want them to do. I put weapon fire on RB because that button doesn't recognize hold RB as a different command for some reason (which is fine for weapon fire), and it doesn't let me remap the LB which is some sort of throttle or something. I have to keep it pressed to move, deactivating the throttle doesn't change that, neither the launcher option nor the ingame one. Odd. Using other buttons to change speed also works though so I just ignore the LB for now.

LB/RB ? Maybe you mean Triggers ?

Hint: Litecube uses older version so you either way should make separate game folder with LU and leave X3ap alone in steam/gog folder untouched. So Load up vanilla game, you will notice that you will have few additional options like ability to map triggers to buttons but you need to first switch it in that left most menu when you select controls. Once you set up as you like your controls. Save presset.

Load up LU, load up preset.

IMHO i have set boost extension on Dpad UP and acceleration/deceleration with square and triangle. Trigger is speed but needs to be constantly pressed.

So basically when i fly around i use just DpadUP and to stop deceleration. In combat on other hand due to how enemy loses speed as it is damaged i use Trigger instead to modify my speed on the fly.

 

[NotAGolfer]

Yes, I meant triggers, not bumbers, thx. But it doesn't matter anyway, I really want that cursor aim so back to mouse + keyboard it is.

And I removed Litcube for now and went back to Albion Prelude just using the "official" bonus pack and Litcube's Bounce script (I know it's an outdated version and the one in LU is better) and Immersive environments on top of that.

I don't want the early game trading grind, half of the random mission types and the main story removed, and although real AI competition sounds like fun I wanna play through the vanilla game first before deciding what exactly needs improving. That Commonwealth - Terran war already seems like a decent enough playground for my late game fleets, and I'm not sure if I would even have fun competing with an AI empire. Sounds too much like a 4X game to me and that first person perspective and those irredeemably shitty layers of menus inside menus inside menus they call an UI don't really work for that. Might be more fun for me if I keep it at a space sim plus basic economy simulation level.

I will avoid the stock exchange btw, that stuff is an even more retarded exploit than abandoned ship salvaging + NPC vs NPC ship bailing.

Maybe I'll try Litcube again when I'm bored with the vanilla game, but I first have to rediscover that one for myself.

 

[Perkel]

Since there is no good sci-fi on horizon i went back to X3:LT.

Started with M5 and around 20k in credits
Sold my weapons for 100k because trying to fight with m5 is really bad idea.
Bought mineral scanner and exploration software and engine upgrade so i can do around 350
Running around Argon sectors on autopilot scanning sectors in search of stations.
Found around 3 missions to scan asteroids did them and got around 60k for them.
Noticed M4-Buster Vanguard pilot was trying to sell his piece of junk only at 50% hp.
Bought it for 90k
Found another one, M4-Buster Sentinel was sitting in shipyard to be sold for around 70k.
Got two of them to my position, wiped out repair laser and started to repair them.

Now i own my ship with shields, and two busters one of which is completely bare and other one had 1mj shield instead of 5mj so almost bare as well. I will probably sell them which should allow me to get around 300k.
Once i will get that money i will try to look for someone selling trading ship or M4 with some equipment, their prices vary a lot. I saw once buster for 1500000cr probably fitted by top gear.


edit:

Well traded them and suprisingly they went for almost 800k
Now with that kind of cash i can look for trading ship

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Many of you heard about X3. German "mods will fix it" space game.
Well i have been playing Xtended overhaul mod for it which i praised a lot in past but there is newer one and much more robust and "better" overhaul called. Litecube Universe. And after spending some hours with it, i think this is something that warrants new thread so few people could lose couple hundreds of hours with me. So this is kind of let's play thread and both informative one. I will be playing LU for some time so i can also help people play it if they don't know something.

What is X3 for noobs:
- you fly a spaceship in it
- you can trade
- you can fight
- you can fly any ship you see (even destroyers)
- you can build almost any station you usually buy your stuff from
- you can create whole Fleet of AI controled units who will follow you and make your own wars
- you can have fleet of traders that will run around in galaxy selling either your shit or just trading without you micromanaging it.

So basically it is space empire game where you start from 0 (or choose "better" start) and make your own empire. Problem with X3 vanilla is that it is shit. Meaning that it is fucking boring, AI is fucked that constantly destroys your hard earned ships, economy without mods is fucking micromanaging hell and everything feels "loose". It is great foundation of for game but not great game. It is EVE ONLINE without ONLINE. And Elite with things to do past "get the best ship". So by the end of the game you will be flying some nice ship wing supported by your own fleet, fighting actual wars you only hear about in EVE.

Enter Litecube Universe.
- completely fixed AI, your ships will never collide with themselves so you can fly your "wings" as much as you want.
- shitload of QoL changes that keeps your from micromanaging hell. Station agents that will keep your stations fed, traders, explorers etc. Everything that keeps you away from playing actually game
- performance improvement. X3 tends to shit bed after a while, LU devs made wonders and despite it being even "heavier" than vanilla, AI doesn't clog etc. You can also run game at 10x speed no problems unlike vanilla.
- almost every script in game has been touched by devs. Traders, stations generally everything is much more logical in actions and they are "tight" and as long as you know about system something you don't have this weird "well it doesn't work for some reason"
- There is simply too much to explain, missile defense, dock manager, overhauled wings AI and so on and so forth.
- Two factions that are expansive and with which you will have to wage war (those are aside from your standard factions you can make friends/foe with). Unlike vanilla those factions actually pose threat
- Faction wars. Unlike vanilla if Argons and Terrans go to war, systems can change hands. What is more important systems unfriendly to you are marked with RED text and you can easily see this on map.

So it is basically Elite:Dangerous but unlike Elite game doesn't end when you get top tier space ship. It is space war mate you are after not some Elite like trucking. Which EVE ONLINE comparison also is apt as you will spend a lot of time managing your empire.

Very appealing. Right now I'm lookign for a good sci fi survival sandbox. I've looked at everything I can think of, and most of it's early access on Steam.

A few of them that interested me:
Empyrion - Galactic Survival
Outpost Zero
StarMade
Planet Explorers
Grav
Eden Star
Osiris: New Dawn
Rebel Galaxy (traditional space sim)
Evochron: Legacy (traditional space sim mostly, but it's one of the very best)
Avorion (traditional space sim w/ some x-series features and expansive ship/station design)
Dual Universe (still in very early development; it's not even on Steam yet)
Starpoint Gemini Warlords (one of the best mount & blade space sims, but still comes up short)
Starsector (very nice 2d space sim 4x, but it's more of a game/rpg than sim, and the mod support is still being worked on)
Star Nomad 2 (a lot like Starsector, but weak modding, no fleets and more rogue-like)

None of them can quite do what I became familiar with in X2. I was playing that 10 years ago. One thing that made it so powerful was the modding. The simulation and game were great, but without modding it was very limited and the game itself didn't last long. I think Avorion, Empyrion - Galactic Survival, Starsector and Starmade come closest to what I'm looking for, but again, they're restricted compared to x2 and x3, and neither do they have the strong modding capability. They do some thigns better, and their graphics can be very good, and for some gamers they have exactly what they're looking for, but for me it's a different outcome.

x4: Rebirth looks like it's just a bad game and still a buggy mess even now. X4: Foundations looks a lot more like an x-series game, and complimented with first-person ship/station, but it's still essentially early in development because Egosoft can never releease a full game without years of patches and DLCs. The result is the only "completed" x-series game that's still somewhat modern is X3/AP. With mods it still looks good and it has the very best of everything I'm looking for, just about ANYWHERE I've looked.

This is why it's hard to stay away from the x-series. Almost nobody, maybe nobody, has replicated both the simulation, the game and the modding support. You can maybe find something comparable in Fallout 4 or Kenshi or something else, maybe, but it'll be nearly impossible to find a space sim. It stands alone.

Anyway that's why I'm looking at your thread with interest because x3/AP is still relevant in 2019. I'd like somebody to prove me wrong because my 4-core processor (i admit i was cheap on this one) and gtx 1660 and 16gb ram and soon to be m2 ssd would like a newer game to exploit them.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

This explains fairly well how I feel about X3/AP w/ mods:
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198041262195/recommended/235960/

X4: Foundations IS very good, with immense potential to be the next flagship, and does already have a lot of promise, and its mods are steadily maturing:


Here's a more negative impression of X4: Foundations (quite normal, given it was jsut released 6 months ago):


Personally, I think walking around on the station or the ship would have tremendous immersion too. Moreso, I think the reason they partially trashed the earlier codebase was because they wanted to have first-person in ship and station, but to do it they needed to shrink the universe. This is why they reduced the number of sectors (*), and potentially why they added highways and made other changes. What you typically see in these kinds of games is a tradeoff between what happens locally and what happens in the universe. Typically if a lot is happening locally--err locally simulated--then a lot has to be abstracted--err estimated--in the universe. An example is the game Reassembly. It has a large universe, but only the area around the player is actually simulated. It would be impossible to simulate the entire universe with a playable framerate. If the itnent was to make the game more like a 4x, then there'd have to be a lot of tradeoffs made. Local physics would have to be reduced a lot. This might impact the way hte game is played, and be a detriment ot its current players. It's also possible they could estimate hte rest of the universe whilst also processing the local simulation, but they haven't chosen to, and likely this is because htey don't want to get caught in the trap of having to compromise between the two. At least the player CAN set a variable to determine the size of the simulation area, but it's very restricted, even on the best cpus.

(*) Albion Prelude had 232 sectors. X4: Foundations has roughly 47, or 59 playable areas. it's true hte sectors have more things in them in X4: Foundations, but I suspect the lower number of sectors is intentionally a result of attempting to lower the universe processing in favor of the local. There might be other examples too, and some of it won't be obviousl

 

[laclongquan]

Reporting for the potential legend thread but most likely will die before second page.

 

[Yosharian]

I once tried to play Terran Conflict but gave up about 51 hours in... ok that seems like an odd statement, but... well, I could have spent 500 hours in it, but I got kinda bored/stuck/overwhelmed, I guess. Should I give this a go? I own Albion Prelude but never tried it.

 

[Chippy]

Litcube's Universe has been updated to run with the Star Wars mod. I expect it's awesome, but I haven't tried it yet as it needs WIN10.

I'm currently playing the Battlestar Galactica Mod...and I'm kinda enjoying it more than the original Star Wars mod. And I've only done the first mission. It's already clear that this is more story driven. And the ships are fucking awesome.

I need to play around a bit further, as I tried the third mission - not too much of a spoiler as it's in the mod description - as you're tasked with reassembling the fleet after their FTL jump went haywire. So the first ship I jump to is in the middle of a pirate sector and I have to board it to reclaim it from the pirates. Now if any of you know anything about noarding in X3, you know this isn't taken lightly...

I suppose they counldn't have used the soundtrack for copyright reasons. But they've got the dialogue in there. The writing was written by a human. And I think it's a better place to start for a beginner to X3 because you can just focus on colonial ships and not get overwhelmed by the other races + choices. Colonial weapons are fugging powerful too.

The only downside is you've gotta get the bounce mod working. Technically you don't, but this is essential in my view as in the vanilla game you can lose 2/3rds or more of a fleet with the fighters just smashing into capital ships. My notes on getting that mod working are as follows:

Copy mod script files into AP script addon folder.
Rename x2 files (.dat and security file -cat-) as a patch: go to game directory, check numbers, use next number for each mod file.
Run script editor in game by changing pilot name to Thereshallbewings
Run Z.Wall script as per mod instructions
Open log08389.txt generated by running the script (in PC documents folder) and rename it to an xml file under open office writer before placing in T folder.

It's a bit of sodding around, but it's worth it. I know there are two battlestars in the mod, and I thik there's a third.

 

[Joggerino]

Personally, I think walking around on the station or the ship would have tremendous immersion too. Moreso, I think the reason they partially trashed the earlier codebase was because they wanted to have first-person in ship and station, but to do it they needed to shrink the universe. This is why they reduced the number of sectors (*), and potentially why they added highways and made other changes. What you typically see in these kinds of games is a tradeoff between what happens locally and what happens in the universe. Typically if a lot is happening locally--err locally simulated--then a lot has to be abstracted--err estimated--in the universe. An example is the game Reassembly. It has a large universe, but only the area around the player is actually simulated. It would be impossible to simulate the entire universe with a playable framerate. If the itnent was to make the game more like a 4x, then there'd have to be a lot of tradeoffs made. Local physics would have to be reduced a lot. This might impact the way hte game is played, and be a detriment ot its current players. It's also possible they could estimate hte rest of the universe whilst also processing the local simulation, but they haven't chosen to, and likely this is because htey don't want to get caught in the trap of having to compromise between the two. At least the player CAN set a variable to determine the size of the simulation area, but it's very restricted, even on the best cpus.

(*) Albion Prelude had 232 sectors. X4: Foundations has roughly 47, or 59 playable areas. it's true hte sectors have more things in them in X4: Foundations, but I suspect the lower number of sectors is intentionally a result of attempting to lower the universe processing in favor of the local. There might be other examples too, and some of it won't be obviousl

They also cut out the universe traders, your own traders can only scan up to 5 jump gates.

 

[Matador]

Perkel Do you recommended this mod or the released in steam Free community DLC X3: Farnham's Legacy?
Or maybe just start with X4?

I played X3 a lot of years ago and interested in coming back. Consider me a noob though.