X3: Terran War Pack

Man do I miss the X2 combat...

First of all: Its a game which has its moments, but its plagued with bugs. There are tons of features that don't work, the asteroid mining for example or the fleet battle control. The autopilot has the tendency to smash your ship against other ships, stations, asteroids or jumpgates, depending on the hull of your ship this means game over for you (NEVER DO THE "DEAD IS DEAD" - game mode!!!!!). Most of the time ure flying from point A to point B with autopilot. This can be either satisfying or (for me it was) endlessly boring. Even with the 10 times faster forward function (called SINZA) it takes you 3-5 minutes to pass a sector meaning a quarter hour of journey to pass several in a row. In this time you can't do nothing at all, u just sit there and stare on your ship flying in one direction. It takes even more time from A to B with the bigger ships. The fighting is heavily unbalanced, since even small ships can destroy mediums easily, depending on the amount and quality of rockets they carry. This means its literally useless to buy a bigger ship then the small ones, since they are a lot slower but can't deal much more damage. Meaning a group of small ships is cheaper, faster and dealing more damage then one medium. But because of the bugged autopilot and the bad fleet control, it doesen't make fun to have a fleet of them. Also: at the point u get the big scale ships, which are capable of holding many smaller ones, there is just a lack of enemies to engage with it. And even if u find some, it's not satisfying at all since they just respawn after being destroyed. Lets say you warp your armada in a Xenon (enemy) sector, you might clean it up, come back a few minutes later, just to see it filled again like it was before. This game is fun in the beginning but it gets more and more annoying the longer u play it.

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I've tried both the military start and the merchant start. The military one worked out okay, providing me with avenues for success. The merchant start, though, rather quickly became quite complicated. I found that the methods for gaining money suddenly reversed at one point. The buyers' prices were near what the sellers' prices started off at, and the seller's prices were near what the buyers' prices started off at. It's quite strange and unrealistic. I could understand the market becoming more of a challenge, but the sellers' prices should always be below the buyers'. It's nonsense. Beyond that, certain stores make little sense. The ones that sell what most players need to advance at an early stage of gameplay are always out of stock. These are things like the 5 MJ shields that are just powerful and cheap enough to be a good purchase or the relay satellites that provide the ability to learn prices in other sectors without traveling there. I managed to find some advice online that stated that the AI merchants are actually waiting at the stores for these products to become available and then buying them immediately. That wouldn't surprise me since everything in this game seems to require huge time sinks. If that's what I need to do to simply play this game, then I'm out. While I'm on the topic of time, I should mention the other problems. I can't find a merchant ship that goes faster than 100 m/s, which is quite slow. Even the expensive ones that are way above my income actually go slower. Also, repairing my ship if it ever gets damaged is either very expensive or takes FOREVER for me to fix. How do these developers expect their games to be widely popular with such a drastic lack of thrill and adventure? Instead, I get to wait through the tedium of travel or repairs. Yay. >.> Even gaining money as a merchant is slow once the market goes upside down. Where's the fun?

Space in X3 is a 22 x 16 board game rectangle. Each sector is about 200 kilometers across. 95% of them the only visual difference is which mono color palette is used, muddy brown or washed out blue. Each sector has a handful of stations and floating factories that after visiting 3 or more sectors start to become a blur of sameness. Travel between sectors can only be done via gates, which despite having existed for some time, are not on your maps, you have to find every single one, and you start out with pitiful scanning range, so you have to hunt quite a while to find gates. In X3 the biggest challenge in space travel is tedium. At starting and mid level the ships you have access to will take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes to cross a zone. You can cut this down by using a time speedup feature, but then you are basically flying blind, activating any menu item will drop you out of sped up time, so you can't be scanning for what you may be looking for. 90% of your time in the first 1/3 of the game is spent chugging slowly across zones, or waiting of your computer to dock or pass through a gate. You can automate docking and or going to a specific station or gate. but there is no way to enter coordinates if you just want to go to an empty area. I have tried 3+ times to get into this game over the years I have owned it. And every one ended up in frustration and boredom. The only way I could play this game is if I could watch movies on the side while waiting to auto dock, auto gate, or travel across a zone. So what can I say that is positive about this game: * It is really an economics and mapping simulator, grognards and spread sheet lovers should enjoy it. * This game is hard to get started in, you really have to be determined and ready for a lot of grinding before the learning and earning curve becomes less steep, if your looking for a major challenge go for it.