X3: Terran War Pack

It's so empty of any reason to play it, that I don't even care about it. The autopilot continues to run me into giant rocks and space stations alike, killing me and ending my game. Know what? I don't even care. At least it's exciting!

So when I first started playing, I thought I would immediately fall in love with this game. On paper, it has everything I like: spaceships, grand strategy, logistics/city/factory building, etc. But after perhaps 100 hours the game just feels ok. I guess the problem is there is no real obstacle or sense of achievement. After the slow grind in early game, you finally earned you first heavy fighter, freighter, or a factory, and...the game is over in some sense. You might want to build a trade empire by building mega complexes and swarm the market with your goods, and nothing is stopping you from doing that, literally. The universe doesn't react to you much, and you don't have to react to the universe. No in-game corporations is trying to tear down you new business. You don't have to adjust your plans or devise new strategies at any moment. And the money you earned is just for another complex. I never feel like I actually achieved anything. Also, the jumpdrive makes logistics very simple and uninteresting since you don't have to plan trade routes. (I heard LU mod is good for economic games but unfortunately I don't have the time to try it yet) The combat aspect suffers a similar problem. You can buy and fly ships, from fighters to huge capital ships, and they are somewhat fun to fly, but they don't have much purpose. You can roleplay as mercenary/commander of a faction and wage war against another faction, or fight evil AI or aliens, but without mods, the universe don't care about your actions. Stations you destroyed gets rebuilt and enemy fleet respawns. But at least, there are mods to fix this (such as Improved Races). It's unfortunate, but I cannot recommend this game to people who enjoy grand strategy game, spacesims, citybuilers, or factory games. It has elements of all but feels hollow.

Awful game, AI is terrible the UI is an absolute chore to use. I was expecting the UI to be as intuitive and easy to use as EVE Onlines UI but I was wrong its absolutely atrocious please dont waste your money on this game get SpaceBourne 2 or just play EVE Online instead this game is just straight up bad unless you spend 1000+ hours on youtube learning how to play it.

This game, the Terran Conflict expansion in particular, is regarded as the quintessential space sim. It promises a vast, complex economy, huge fleet battles and an exciting science fiction story. In reality the game is plagued with a myriad frustrations, even after 14 years of patches and updates. The user interface is opaque, the simulated economy is superficial and the combat is paralysed by a dependence on establishing an enormous infrastructure to support even the smallest navies. On top of this the fiction of the game is paper thin, in spite of the beautiful ship designs there's little personality to the people you meet and the game is reduced to a plodding spreadsheet. In the end I gave up after a three or four days of negotiating my way through ill-explained mechanics, game-ruining random encounters and annoying Linux incompatibility issues. I really wanted to enjoy this game but in spite of the enormous effort put into it the promise of the game is barely achieved.

Not really a review but attempt to help other Linux users with current (end 2017) distros like Ubuntu 17.10: If you have problem to launch X3 installed from gog_x3_terran_war_pack_2.4.0.7.sh and it crashes with "./X3TC_config: lib/libz.so.1: version `ZLIB_1.2.9' not found (required by /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpng16.so.16)" while you have zlib1g:i386 installed, you have most likely version 1.2.11 (or newer). Try to add "LD_PRELOAD=/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libz.so.1" before the original X3 run command. Please note that paths are valid for my Kubuntu 17.10 amd64, you may have other path in error and you may need to find your 32bit libz.so.1 first. While there are other ways usually including (dangerous) messing with your libraries, this one is almost painless and hopefully safe (no need to download, compile, remove, link or break anything). No warranty included, it works for me and some others. I'm sorry if you feel that this shouldn't be here, but it seems as best place to improve Linux out of box experience and save other users from possible long hours of searching and trying (damaged systems and so). I sent this to GOG and I expect them to delete this post when they have their own solution, so please pardon me and bear with it until then if it's not useful for you. And on unrelated note, just to mention it - libasound2-data:i386 library may not be available on your system nor needed to run. Don't panic and try without it.