You might want to rethink about using this function, it will slowly chip away your ranks (fighting IIRC)

And whoever will be the lucky one, do yourself a favour and install the community patch, called bonus-packet or something like that, it will make live easier and is not cheating ;)

Not really... I mean as long as you end up liking the game, it won't seem like a chore. And I leave the length/content of the posts up to you entirely - so if you don't want to write novels, you don't have to.

No problem there. In fact it took me close to 10 months to get to my seventh game day, as I have a lot of other things to take care of in my life on a daily basis.

I'm willing to stretch the rules for you a bit to the point that you only need to post 7 updates overall if you decide the game is not really for you - so you don't have to spend 7 actual in-game days. Even if that will be the case, you can describe your frustrations and why you didn't like the game.

If that's fine with you let me know and I'll add you to the list :).

It will indeed very, very slowly erode your ranks. However if you only use it to speed up portions of gameplay (when you're moving in a slow ship across large sectors for example), it won't have a visible effect as you still will be gaining rank based on your economical activities and/or skirmishes.

If you mean SETA, that's not why it happens. Trade and combat ranks start to decay automatically if you leave the game idle for a certain amount of time (of course it just happens more quickly with time acceleration activated).

And letting combat rank decay has some advantages if you're feeling the game is getting too hard.

SETA, yes. Forgotten the name. And no, according to some observation it can diminish quite quickly. With not using SETA, I never observed it at all. One guy (over at EGOSOFT) did a night run on SETA and was wondering why his ranks went down. And it seemed so higher your ranks, so worth.

Just trying to think off, what the combat rank effects again.....can't remember in the moment....

And unfortunate it does not effect your relations with other races (evilgrin) (or shall I say fortunate ;) )

IIRC correctly manual trading did produce more in ranks, or?

They official site says combat rank decays by 2% for every hour passed without *any kind* of user imput. Should be easy enough to test if you have the time. :)

The main thing is that it affects the number and type of ships that spawn in (random) combat missions. It might get to the point where even simple missions such as sector recons start spawning Xenon capital ships, and that's not very fun if you're not prepared for it.

The problem might not be the time, but rather starting it up and not doing anything ;)

Oh yes, those missions. Reminds me of one mission, were I had to hunt a bigger ship. He was so unfortunate to spawn in an asteroid field (evilgrin). Man that was an easy hunt, I didn't even had the chance to shoot at him once.

I think it is time to play it again ;)

Manual trading will give you a more substantial increase in the economic rank, however all trade operations, including automated ones, as well as stock market exchanges in X3:AP, will increase your rank.

Sounds entirely fair.
I, of course, live in hope that I'll end up loving the game, and will never make use of that option. :)

NOT IN - just wanted to thank you for your generosity +1

Bottom line is that you shouldn't be worried about using SETA if you're actively playing, it doesn't erode your rank unless you go AFK for a while (at 10x speed that's 6 minutes).

ok, maybe that did come over incorrectly ;)

What I wanted to say, When I play, I hardly ever have time to use SETA, as most of the time there is something to check, giving orders or similar.

Like in the beginning: You took over your first ships, what do you do? Manual trading, so checking prices and so on.
Later you still need to adjust trade-routes/stations and so on. I hardly have ever time for SETA and even implementing the trading scripts takes its time ;)

For newbies: This is all optional!!!!

Exactly...like everyone, I use the SETA all the time, even well into the game now. I've yet to notice *any* decrease in my combat rank yet (unfortunately, lol). Granted, the longest duration I have it running is a few to several minutes while sometimes repairing larger ships. I think the longest was probably about 20 minutes SETA-repairing the elusive Aran a bit, to get the hull up to snuff for boarding with my marines...and even then, no change to my combat rank at all. So as you said, I think this mostly pertains to those who set the SETA and go AFK for extended periods of time. On the flip side, if you have traders operating, and your own stations trading with other races as well, this will increase your trade rank as WinterSnowfall pointed out. Personally, I have no desire to to do that, as generally speaking, if there is something I am waiting to "happen", and it's going to take a while....I'd just as soon use that time working on another plot line, doing some missions, setting up more satellites in sectors, capping/boarding ships, station building...you name it, there's plenty to keep you occupied.

I was simply replying to this: because to me it read like "time acceleration is something to avoid whenever possible". It's totally fine if you don't like using it, I'm not here to tell you how you should play. I simply pointed out that the side effect you mentioned is not caused by SETA itself, but by leaving the game idle. :)

Actually, I think early game is when I use SETA the most. :P You know, what with having only a couple of ships to manage and not much to do other than waiting for them to finish their trading run. At this stage jumpdrives are not yet an option and cargos are very slow in this game, so... there's really a lot of time to kill.

ok, just misunderstanding, I just wanted to warn prior before he/she might get upset ;)

REALLY????ok, maybe different approach ;). I use this spare time to hunt . Trying to capture a few more ships and similar. hence no time and has the nice side affect to unlock better ships/weapons to buy at least for the 'current' sector.

I prefer this approach, gives you quicker more ships, means more trading, more profit. Especially hunting with your MK5 better ships ;)

And finally capturing your first MK4 or better :-O

Bumping this in the hope more people will sign up...

Or even if you don't want to sign up, just spread the word please.

As a Teladi would say: "You make no sense, you give up profitsssssssssss!"