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Alright goons I have the next update uploading now, though while waiting for the video to finish editing something terrible happened. I don't know how but all my current saves were lost, and the ones I still had are corrupted. I thought I accidentally disabled a mod but checking the save files I noticed they weren't even for the recent gameplay saves, having a couple tens of millions of bucks under our belt, but instead saves from far earlier when I was barely scraping 10k. So not only am I unable to load the saves cause something happened with the mods, the proper saves are simply gone. So I have 2 videos recorded, counting the one I will be posting when its HD ready, I'll be working in getting back up to speed. I'll be playing without any mods outside of the bonus pack, so this doesn't happen again and to be honest I didn't really use them much anyways. Sorry guys.
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Aug 16, 2014 22:25
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 13:43 |
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What's wrong with just cheating yourself back to where you were in the previous save?
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Aug 16, 2014 23:38
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Leif. posted:What's wrong with just cheating yourself back to where you were in the previous save?
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Aug 17, 2014 00:17
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drat dawge, just cheat back up where you were and offscreen the missions. Honestly, as much as I did play and love the game, the tedium of the mid-game is the worst part. Especially that terrible, terrible capture. That and the complete lack of being able to meaningfully bling out yer ships and do politics at all.
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Aug 17, 2014 00:50
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 http://youtu.be/WyMKIwLBhSwIn this video we begin our empire building, starting with an ore mine to help the Argon help us by supplying the ore they need to build armaments so equipping new ships isn't so god drat frustrating. Then we build something much more lucrative. Re: Cheat back up, honestly we aren't that far ahead, maybe only like 5 missions into the main plot so by the time I edit and commentate over the next video I could be caught up minus a couple million credits. I really do enjoy playing this game so its really not something I mind doing. Million credits difference is this game is a few hours of seta 
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Aug 17, 2014 02:42
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There's a good reason NPC power plants don't require crystals: The economy completely dies when it does. Because crystal fabs take silicon and silicon mines take energy, it's possible (and I guess inevitable eventually) to run out of energy on a silicon mine and silicon in a crystal fab, and have the power plant die and be impossible to get any of them going again.
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Aug 17, 2014 03:17
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Gothsheep posted:There's a good reason NPC power plants don't require crystals: The economy completely dies when it does. Because crystal fabs take silicon and silicon mines take energy, it's possible (and I guess inevitable eventually) to run out of energy on a silicon mine and silicon in a crystal fab, and have the power plant die and be impossible to get any of them going again. Yeah, balancing your crystal fabs, silicon mines and power planets so that they run properly is the hardest part of setting up your own production facilities. Once you do a bit of math and get everything lined up (and hopefully find a 300% sunlight system) its all great but doing that math is a huge pain in the arse without one of the calculators people have made.
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Aug 17, 2014 03:26
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Neruz posted:Yeah, balancing your crystal fabs, silicon mines and power planets so that they run properly is the hardest part of setting up your own production facilities. Once you do a bit of math and get everything lined up (and hopefully find a 300% sunlight system) its all great but doing that math is a huge pain in the arse without one of the calculators people have made. I used to use some Station-Complex building website to figure out exactly how many power plants, crystal fabs and food stations I need to establish the complexes I wanted. I forget what the site is now.
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Aug 17, 2014 03:41
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Yeah the complex calculators were invaluable; made building your own industrial complexes merely difficult instead of borderline impossible.
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Aug 17, 2014 03:51
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This is the calculator that I've used for building my stations. It hasn't screwed me over yet. The power loop though is the most tedious part about making complexes though, cause like a quarter or even a third of your power is used on the food/mine/crystal fab stations.
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Aug 17, 2014 04:14
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Thats why having a 300% sun system (or more, I think there's one system with 500% sunlight and a couple with 400%) is so important. Gotta get max efficiency on those power plants.
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Aug 17, 2014 04:19
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Leal posted:This is the calculator that I've used for building my stations. It hasn't screwed me over yet. The power loop though is the most tedious part about making complexes though, cause like a quarter or even a third of your power is used on the food/mine/crystal fab stations. That, and apparently it's like 50 million to set up. In my own game I'm running ~10 level 10+ freighters that are mostly 90+ m/s speed, and still have only around 5 million credits. And have to still work on upgrading some of my smaller cargo holds. As well as grab another M3 or two to round out my fighters. Of course, whether I've been playing in the most efficient manner or not... (something like 2 or 3 days playtime at the moment. I forget exactly)
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Aug 17, 2014 07:33
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Veloxyll posted:That, and apparently it's like 50 million to set up. In my own game I'm running ~10 level 10+ freighters that are mostly 90+ m/s speed, and still have only around 5 million credits. And have to still work on upgrading some of my smaller cargo holds. As well as grab another M3 or two to round out my fighters. Complexes aren't great for that early-to-midgame cash. They require a massive investment to really get started, since a power plant requires crystals, crystal fabs require silicon and food, and silicon mines and food production require energy. I tend to set up a lot of traders early on to generate a steady income. Usually about to the tune of 25-ish. More than that and I find they start to trip over each other a bit too much. If you can pull it off, early-game piracy is also a nice way to earn a few million pretty quickly. I'm sure Leal is going to do a video on piracy at some point, so I won't get into it too much here, but there's some low-risk stuff you can do without too much of an investment that can generate some quick cash. EDIT: By 'piracy' I mean capturing enemy ships, not stealing cargo from freighters. Though that can be profitable too.
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Aug 17, 2014 12:13
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Midgame with complexes you want to find systems that have most of a supply chain complete and are missing one step; supply the missing step and you'll start making bank from the indie traders. Find the right sectors and you can make a huge amount of money this way.
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Aug 17, 2014 12:22
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Gothsheep posted:If you can pull it off, early-game piracy is also a nice way to earn a few million pretty quickly. I'm sure Leal is going to do a video on piracy at some point, so I won't get into it too much here, but there's some low-risk stuff you can do without too much of an investment that can generate some quick cash. I actually had 6 marines with >75 combat rank and was leveling them up for a combat overview update  Neruz posted:Midgame with complexes you want to find systems that have most of a supply chain complete and are missing one step; supply the missing step and you'll start making bank from the indie traders. Find the right sectors and you can make a huge amount of money this way. Yeah Aladna Hill is great for an ore mine cause there is 2 solar plants in the sector and like 8 or so factories that need ore, and thats not looking at legends home which has a few ore needing factories along with akeela's beacon. A cattle ranch and cahoona complex is also a good investment there to supply the stations with food. Same with argon sector m148.
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Aug 17, 2014 18:09
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You're not a true miner until every asteroid in Ore Belt is occupied and then tubed up for a massive ore complex. I think they took out a majority of the asteroids in AP though.
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Aug 17, 2014 18:20
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Lunethex posted:You're not a true miner until every asteroid in Ore Belt is occupied and then tubed up for a massive ore complex. They did, I think there is only a single asteroid there in AP. When I first went in there I thought I installed something wrong cause of how empty it was.
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Aug 17, 2014 18:58
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Lunethex posted:You're not a true miner until every asteroid in Ore Belt is occupied and then tubed up for a massive ore complex. And here I thought I was hotshit for getting a single one set up along with a basic little factory. I hovered between a few million credits and broke for most of my game. Even, cheating in some equipment I couldn't get because the economy collapsed without me doing anything.
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Aug 17, 2014 19:04
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RBA Starblade posted:And here I thought I was hotshit for getting a single one set up along with a basic little factory. I hovered between a few million credits and broke for most of my game. Even, cheating in some equipment I couldn't get because the economy collapsed without me doing anything. That's the reason NPC Power Plants don't require any primary resources at all. There will always be energy cells to sell, and as long as there are energy cells, you can always jumpstart the rest of the production. You can also make some decent midgame money by setting up a local factory that fills a niche. Like, say, if all the weapon factories in a sector are always out of ore, you can set up just a lone ore-mine. If you set it to buy at one credit higher than average, sell at one credit below average, and allow NPC traders to do business there, they will come and keep buying and selling. You can also set up production loops without resorting to complexes by using trade ships. You can, say, set up a mine in a system with an NPC Solar Power Plant, and then put two freighters on it, and tell one freighter to do nothing but go to that SSP whenever the price drops to 12, and buy up all it's got, and then have the other set to go and sell ore at any station buying for the maximum. That turns a profit pretty effectively without much overhead.
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Aug 17, 2014 23:25
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I wanna cheat, but I still want cheevos... So you're sitting around thinking "Man, I really wish there was a quick way to make money in this game but I don't want to be locked out of my cheevos!" Not a problem, I have ya covered! First buy a TS and equip it with any kind of laser (the impulse ray emitters work just fine), equip it with an ore collector and a special command software. Go to Kingdom End and go to the coordinates x0 y0 z1.5k, or around where our mercury and satellite is:  There will be a few asteroids about, they don't show up on the map and they can't be scanned. Blow them up! Not too much though, just break them down till you can pick them up, if you ram it it wasn't blown up enough. Then jump out of the sector and command your TS to "collect rocks in sector" and wait. He'll pick up nvidium, possibly ore as well if you blew those up, but its the nvidium we want. Now as an aside I know in Terran Conflict, at least for me, you didn't need to blow up the asteroids. You could just command your ships to move to that area and do the collect rocks command and they'll get basically infinite nvidium. It seems to have been changed in AP though, every now and then the ships stop getting the nvidium and I have to fly into the sector and blow up the asteroids. In this case what you could do is wait till your ships were topped off with nvidium, dock them at the nearby shipyard and buy a dolphin super freighter XL, transfer the nvidium to the freighter then sell the freighter. Normally you can sell like 4 nvidium to stations that would buy them, but if you put them all in a ship and sell the ship all the nvidium will be added to the ship's worth netting you millions of credits. But this isn't TC is it? AP has the stock exchange, the Teladi exchange in PTNI Headquarters covers a sector where nvidium is a resource and thus you can buy stocks for it. Thing is the stock exchange is even MORE exploitable then the Yaki's cause the way the game calculates supply and demand is that just having the resource be in the sector, even if it was say in your ship's hold, will count towards the supply. The max demand of nvidium is 12 for this stock exchange, and I don't believe nvidium is ever gathered or sold by NPCs so its totally in the player's control.  This is after we fly into a nearby teladi sector with exactly 12 nvidium, putting the index at the cheapest it'll go. Lets buy all the stocks and then just send our ship back out of the sector.  371.5k profit. Now just cause the max demand is 12 doesn't mean we can't overflow the market,where the index shoots above 100. Stocks are a straight 1:1 in the supply it seems, cause when I came back with 370 nvidium and bought them at their cheapest price then left...   And yeah, we can literally make almost 6 million every minute by just flying a ship with nvidium inside of a sector that is covered by that stock exchange, buying the stocks, then sending the ship out of the sectors covered by that exchange and selling the stocks back. Enter east warpgate, buy, enter west warpgate, sell.
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Aug 18, 2014 04:10
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Is it any wonder that 'builds an economic empire' is a standard part of every X universe protagonist's plans when it is so easy to make so much money?
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Aug 18, 2014 04:18
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Good god. I know in TC Nividum mining was a great path to profit, but there wasn't anything that crazy. What I'm used to is, you blow up an astroid with nvidium in it, and then set a couple of freighters to collect the resources in sector, and harvest nvidium. You can assign a TL near them as their home, and set them to go back and fill up the TL when they get full. As long as you aren't in the sector, the destroyed, collectable resources won't ever vanish, so you can harvest them endlessly.
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Aug 18, 2014 04:52
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Yeah I swore in TC it was as simple as sending a ship there and telling it to get rocks, but in AP I have to occasionally fly into the sector and blow up some more of the asteroids. What is kinda annoying is that there are also ore asteroids around, there is no way to actually know what is in the asteroid until after you blow them up. But its not like I'm losing any of the nvidium doing the stock market trick
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Aug 18, 2014 18:13
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Even if you don't want to exploit the Nvidium, the Teladi stock exchange is still the easiest way to make fast money in the game. Just let the index tell you when to buy or sell.
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Aug 18, 2014 20:24
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Yeah AP altered the out of system calculations a bit and it now keeps track of chunked asteroids which it didn't in TC so after a bit your out of system freighters will have finished picking up all the asteroid bits and will need you to make some more. I think there's like a mining laser you can get which when stuck on a ship with the right software upgrades allows you to tell it to 'mine asteroids' or something and it will cruise around by itself doing the asteroid shuffle, but that might have been a mod. I don't think I ever played this game without like a dozen interface and quality of life mods running.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:22
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There is the Mobile Drilling Rig in base. And the ore collection module. I was pondering whether I should set up some mining ships, not that ores seem particularly rare most of the time.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:59
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Neruz posted:Yeah AP altered the out of system calculations a bit and it now keeps track of chunked asteroids which it didn't in TC so after a bit your out of system freighters will have finished picking up all the asteroid bits and will need you to make some more. The problem with that is that they'll collect all asteroids, not just the nividium you want.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:13
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Gothsheep posted:The problem with that is that they'll collect all asteroids, not just the nividium you want. I do not see how this is a problem. Everything can be sold.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:15
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Neruz posted:I do not see how this is a problem. Everything can be sold. Alternate thread title: X3 Albion Prelude - Everything can be sold. Just put a teleporter or some freight drones on another freighter, and use the power of teamwork to keep mining while you sell everything. And suddenly you'll have all the money. I've been cruising around exploring, and went from 2M credits to 15 without touching my traders. My Split Caiman super XLs are fab. Cheaper than Drakes to fully kit out, and they still do something like 90 m/s with 11k tons in the hold. If only the AI could make use of docking computers. I COULD use OTAS ones, but gotta go fast!
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Aug 19, 2014 02:44
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So all these stations you're building. Is it assumed they're just totally run robotically or are there actual staff?
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Aug 19, 2014 07:59
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Well, I haven't thrown together stations yet. But all my tradeships do seem to be automated. Since you get a software package, not an "Independent Trade Captain" Even if it has names and titles. I guess there's some sort of wage payment involved though. But it could just as easily be consumable materials, since there are only 3-10 people to ring up on a given station, ussually.
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Aug 19, 2014 08:03
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Glazius posted:So all these stations you're building. Factories that aren't solar power plants, mines or food producing factories require a food of some sort I guess to feed the workers. You could argue that the food making facilities eat their own product (you guys will eat raw beef and you'll LIKE IT) but I guess miners and solar plant workers are expected to bring food from home. Don't think its really explained in game.
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Aug 19, 2014 08:22
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It is unclear whether you are just in charge of a bunch of AIs or if station packs contain real people as well.
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Aug 19, 2014 08:27
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Neruz posted:It is unclear whether you are just in charge of a bunch of AIs or if station packs contain real people as well. People definitely live inside NPC stations though. Because you can call them up and talk to them. All you can really do is ask them for directions, though. That's also how you get missions. If a station has a mission icon, you call it up, look for the person with the mission, and then they'll give it to you.
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Aug 19, 2014 08:58
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Gothsheep posted:People definitely live inside NPC stations though. Because you can call them up and talk to them. All you can really do is ask them for directions, though. That's also how you get missions. If a station has a mission icon, you call it up, look for the person with the mission, and then they'll give it to you. I am so glad you can just hang up on missions rather htan having to actively click no. It makes me feel better with CERTAIN missions. This, by the way, is what jumping INTO one of those fights on the gates looks like.  And with slightly more accurate IFF Also Lens Flare Veloxyll fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 10:38
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Welp, sorry mines of fortune, You're the home of a drug and guns empire now. Makin' hooch, Missiles, and Space weed in a big rear end complex.
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Aug 19, 2014 21:24
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Enough missiles can take over the galaxy
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Aug 20, 2014 00:20
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Alavaria posted:Enough missiles can take over the galaxy Or destroy it at least.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:27
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Neruz posted:Or destroy it at least. That's step one anyway.
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Aug 20, 2014 14:01
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 13:43 |
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step 1: Missile boats to cleanse a sector. Step 2: rebuild it as you require step 3: ??? Step 4: PROFIT!
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Aug 21, 2014 01:04
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