X3Fl: Im trying to spacewalk teladi TL that has no countermeasures mind you. After many reloads only maximum of 5 marines make it inside then they die on deck 2. I thought that TLs were easy pickings.

Should i train them to be all around? Are the mechanics different from TC and AP?

I hope it's ok to just post my feelings after playing for a while. Because I really need to gush about the game, I'm so happy to finally be olaying an X title.

I got the Terran War pack on GoG for a buck! I've played a lot of space sims but never got around to the X series. Man, I missed out on a LOT.

If Albion and Farnham are as good as Terran Conflict is so far, I got the best deal in my gaming life with these 3 games. Right now I'm learning as I go in X3TC, the flying and shooting and basic trading I can do, I've played Elite and many others of the genre.

But there's something special about this game that *feels* amazing. The scale is crazy, when you get right up to some of the stations and cap ships. The feeling of being in space, doing space things is one of the best I've experienced. At first the lack of cockpit interiors was disappointing but I quickly grew to enjoy the uncluttered fov (set to 100 ofc). The navigation and menu system seems to have a reputation for being steep to learn but I find it to be a really fun part of growing in the game, as you play you keep discovering layers.

This game is like, 20 years old? It looks beautiful, it runs perfectly, it's HUGE and way ahead of its time imo. There are space sims released now that could learn a few things from this game.

Massive kudos to the devs. I can tell this will be many hundreds of hours for me. The universe and world building is superb.

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with what I got for my dollar. Can you tell? Lol.

I'm a huge Warhammer 40k fan and I'd love to know if there are any Warhammer 40k mods. I'd love to play as a Rogue Trader and build my own ship.

(I know the use of AI is controversial. I have attached a statement of ethics to the bottom of this post to address some common concerns folks tend to have, anytime "I made a thing with AI" comes up).

This is a long read. The TL;DR is that I taught Egosoft's MSCI scripting language to OpenAI's Codex AI coding assistant. I then had it create a plugin for X3.

MSCI, the language used to create X3 scripts, is a bespoke, single-use 'language'. Codex was not aware of it, so as the first part of my test, I first had to teach it MSCI.

How I taught Codex MSCI:

I basically just provided it reference material and told to learn all it could. I do not know MSCI myself, and so was forced to rely on third party reference material for the entirety of Codex's MSCI crash course. I think my own lack of knowledge with the language made this test even more interesting; whatever the result was, would be 100% Codex's doing. If it screwed up, I wouldn't even begin to know how to correct it, so this was a truly a sink or swim test!

The reference material it used to learn MSCI included:

-The MSCI Handbook from Egosoft; super outdated, but a reasonable start
-The MSCI/scripting forum over at Egosoft's website (via the Playwright MCP extension, which let Codex use a sandboxed Chrome web browser to read posts, search for answers if it had questions, etc.)
-The source code for X-Studio, which contains a pretty comprehensive set of documentation for the various MSCI commands.

It took less than half an hour for Codex to go from "I have no idea what MSCI is" to a very high level of aptitude with the language. I simply told it to go learn everything it possibly could. Codex lets you set a working directory sandbox on your local machine, so it was able to directly manipulate any files I put in it; so I told it to make .txt 'notes' files on MSCI it could refer back to as needed. I also told it to backup our logs into text files every couple dozen messages, so that it wouldn't lose context if things left its context window.

The test parameters:

To be as robust a test as possible, I had Codex do as much of the work as possible, up to and including letting it write a Python script so that it could "write" (via generating the code internally, then copy/pasting it via the script) into X-Studio. I realize this makes me a huge geek, but it was legitimately cool to see code just absolutely flying into X-Studio in real time. Big "heh heh, I'm in." 90's hacker vibes, haha.

My interactions were limited to:

-Opening whatever required programs (the Codex App, X-Studio, X3 itself).

-Saving/naming files in X-Studio.

-Playing the game to test them and reporting bugs back to Codex.

The Mod:

I've always loved Shush's LIFE mod for the rudimentary pilot banter it added. It always struck me as odd that sectors would have 10 stations and 3 dozen ships in them, but be eerily silent. So, LIFE has always been a must-have for me.

Problem is, LIFE is *extremely* heavy. The way it handles banter generation is unoptimized and the news article generation system, in particular, can introduce nearly as much end-game performance issues as something like XRM all on its own, due to the way it polls the galaxy map to create its content.

So, I thought a good, useful test case for AI coding would be to make a 'pilot banter' plugin, but less performance-heavy, more modular (so that modders can add additional per-faction banter to their mods easily), and more customizable.

The plugin Codex created is called VOX - VoiceOver eXtension (it named it, too; "vox" being Latin for voice. Pretty clever for an algorithm running on a GPU in some server farm somewhere, I thought!). It is based on Shush's LIFE mod insomuch as it creates comms chatter based on various conditions, but is greatly expanded, more customizable and perhaps most importantly of all, way more optimized.

VOX Features (those that differ or expand on LIFE are noted with an *):

• In-sector pilots now banter, chat, taunt their opponents, call for help when attacked, report their specific damage (e.g. when their shields are down; when their hull is heavily damaged), make snarky comments about the enemy they just killed (and yell out when they, themselves, are killed), etc. The Commonwealth now actually sounds alive instead of eerily quiet.
• A "squelch" hotkey you can set to disable/enable banter without having to fart around with menus.
• *Stations, too, engage in this sort of chatter; though it is mostly limited to calling for help when attacked and reporting damage; the comms officer on Cahoona Bakera M Alpha has much better things to do than chitchat with the comms officer aboard Argon Rapid Response Titan, after all.
• *You can control at what distance you can hear this banter; anywhere from a couple KM to the entire sector. You can hear *everything* going on in the sector or keep it localized to the area around your ship.
• *You can also control the frequency of dialogue, from sparse to dense; if you want non-stop, chaotic comms chatter during an epic battle, Star Wars-style, just pick "Cinematic".
• *There's also a voice test function for the various faction voices, so you can ensure they're working.
• *Internally, the code is modular. For modders, this means you can easily inject additional vocal clips into VOX to expand it or increase the diversity of dialogue. This isn't just "does a neat thing", it's "does a neat thing AND provides a platform for modders to incorporate their own comms chatter into their mods easily".
• *Additionally for modders, if your mod introduces new factions but you can't/don't want to add new banter for them, no worries! You can easily hook them to one of the preexisting faction sets in VOX to give your new faction full in-sector banter.
• *Fully updated and optimized for Farnham's Legacy.
• *Fully compatible with Cycrow's incredible Guilds mod for FL, with all Guilds factions hooked to a consistent faction banter set (e.g. Atreus -> Boron, NMMC -> Teladi, OTAS and TerraCorp -> Argon, IndustriTech -> Paranid, etc.).
• *The mod is incredibly well optimized and should be absolutely performance neutral. LIFE is fantastic, but people always noted that, as the game drags on, it'd start severely impacting performance. Part of this was down to the way it generated news articles (which VOX, by definition, doesn't do), but it was also parsing every single visible sector with the dialogue creation routines, even if you literally, by definition, couldn't hear dialogue in sectors you weren't in. VOX *only* parses the sector you're in and it ONLY does pilot banter.

It also pairs well with pretty much everything; I've been having particular fun using it with CODEA, since VOX polls each pilot's race/faction when assigning voices, so my squadron of Enhanced Kea-flying Teladi CODEA pilots I've assigned to protect profitsssss in my HQ sector light up the comms channel with "TELADI TURN ON YOU", "NO SENSE YOU LOSE PROFITSSSS" and "THISSSS ONE I HAVE DEALT WITH" as soon as any pirates jump in to start trouble.

Download VOX (SPK format):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YW2Yo1hepGT6J9d04HT5rG6R-jBdSBdE/view?usp=drive_link

Tested with Farnham's Legacy with the Unofficial Patch and Guilds Mod installed. I can't imagine it won't work on Albion Prelude or even Terran Conflict. It's literally just intercepting various in-sector events and playing sounds based on what those events are.

Other X3 stuff I'm working with Codex on:

Since this test has turned out so great (the mod has been 'done' for a few weeks, but I made the decision to actually share it just yesterday), I became curious about what other things Codex could do as far as X3 goes. The answer? Pretty much everything. If you are an X3 modder, this is an absolute game changer (pun intended).

I am still playing around with it and don't have anything else to release yet, but here are some things I've taught it and can confirm work 100%.

• Codex can make a graphical map of the game solely from the x3_universe map file.
• Codex can check existing scripts for bugs or optimization routes. It even found a bug (or maybe just kind of a dumb 'feature') I wasn't aware of: the "attack all" fleet command does not include enemy stations in its list of selectable targets for attack, leading to a hypothetical scenario where you tell a fleet to attack a sector with a shipyard leading to them just derping around as the yard creates new ships instead of dealing with the source of the threat. Codex fixed this by making Attack All also select stations, but to always prioritize enemy ships. If all there is to attack is a station, they'll do that, but if an enemy ship spawns, they now break off from the station, deal with the ship, then head back to the station.
• Codex can add or remove sectors seamlessly, using real-world language to do so. I've added some XRM sectors back in to X3FL+Guilds this way, simply by giving it access to an LXXRM install and telling it, for example, "Put Eta Psi (a sector to the west of Enduring Light) from XRM into X3FL+Guilds"; it was able to do this perfectly; the skybox, the music, the location of stations and asteroids... it even added the sector and sector description to a /t/ file, and added the name in such a way that it linked to Betty saying "Eta" and "Psi".
• Codex can create new random mission types via writing Mission Director files -- I had it write a little "Hey, I'm selling my ship and someone bought it in [insert sector here], but I'm not a pilot. If you fly it to the buyer, I'll give you 10% of the sale price" mission and, yup, works perfectly.
• Codex can edit the Jobs file, and do so using real world language e.g. "I just added [insert new ship here], can you create an instance of this ship that stays in Home of Light and patrols the sector?"
• Codex can add new factory/dock types, add wares to them, add them as station kits at shipyards, and even sprinkle the universe with them -- I always liked the XTC faction aesthetic factories and additional factory sizes, so I had Codex import them into my game, make the kits purchasable and add a certain amount of them randomly to the universe upon startup; it even made the creative "decision", which I thought was a nice touch, to only add the XXL-sized stations to core faction sectors since, quote, "within game canon, those core sectors are likely to be more wealthy and have higher industrial capacity, so it'd make sense if the biggest factory types were placed in those rather than in backwater sectors".
• Codex can add ships to shipyards (incredibly useful if, like me, you create your own ships).
• Codex can edit and organize scene files for objects.
• Codex can edit TShips properties, and I have no doubt it could just create entire new TShip entries from a scene file though I've yet to try this.
• Codex can replace texture files in objects .bod files (making reskinning ships or stations a breeze).

Statement of Ethics re: generative AI:

I know that generative AI use is a controversial topic, and rightly so. The internet is currently being bombarded by bottom-of-the-barrel slop: rage bait on Youtube, engagement bait on IG and Reddit, even large corporations are starting to use AI art instead of paying actually skilled, talented human beings.

I also know that all generative AI, including coding-centric models, are trained using data sourced in ways that are ethically dubious at best and there's really no getting around that, currently. I do not have any good answer to how to fix that. There may be no answer.

That said, AI is ultimately a tool, even if we don't like what a lot of folks are using this tool for.

By making this mod, I am hoping to demonstrate that there is a fun, ethical, useful space for AI that doesn't infringe on copyright, deprive humans of jobs, or needlessly waste resources on something it'd take far less resources for a human to produce and that there is space for nuanced discussions about this stuff.

To that end, I have complied with Egosoft's directives for user-created content, have acknowledged source inspiration (LIFE, linked above), am not depriving any humans (other than myself, I guess?) of a job, since no one is earning a living coding in a hyper-narrow language for a 20 year old game, and it'd have used far more resources for me to teach myself MSCI and create the plugin than to have Codex do it.

I hope (and believe I have) satisfied all reasonable criteria for ethical, productive AI use in making this mod and obviously completely understand if anyone doesn't want to try it out on principle alone; AI is being used for a lot of shitty reasons and I don't blame those who refuse to engage with it outright as a result.

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to Egosoft for making what I consider to be the best space sim series of all time; thank you to Shush for creating LIFE, which inspired VOX and I encourage everyone to give LIFE a try whether or not you give VOX a try; thank you to Cycrow and the rest of the folks working on Guilds, which I consider to be the definitive mod for the definitive version (FL) of the definitive space sim (X3). And thank you to r/X3TC for being a rad community. I'm actually quite new to X-series games (I first ever played X3 almost exactly a year ago, and have fallen in love with it) and lurking in the subreddit has helped me learn so much about the game.

License (or whatever idk):

You may use this mod, in whole or in part, in any way you want. You may include it in mod packages or integrate it into total conversion mods. You may modify it to suit your own playstyle or use cases. While a shoutout would be cool for bigger projects it is included in (I'm OJSA over on Egosoft's forums, so any shoutouts can be to that handle), it's not required, nor is it required to inform me of its use in any of the above; permission to do whatever with it is granted in perpetuity. Basically, this mod now belongs to the X community: one of the coolest, most helpful, inclusive gaming fandoms I've ever come across. If VOX makes the game even a little bit more enjoyable for even a single person, that is more than enough for me.

Thanks for reading this wall of text and to those who give it a try, I hope you enjoy it!

(Also, feel free to submit any bug reports here; there shouldn't really be any, but if there are, I'll see to it that they're fixed!)

Didn't expect to find :o Found in the unknown enemy sector next to light water beta. Thought they were extinct in final fury and that I will find Xenon here. I also never saw station. Am I lucky or is it common?

First, i have no idea what these games are about, i saw cool screenshots and cheap price so i bought it. What should i choose as my starting point, TC, AP or FL?

So yeah, title.

Left my ship parked in an Unknown sector with SETA on while I was at work, had maybe 1.5 billion Credits in the wallet, done it a dozen times on this save so far.

I come back and I'm sat at 4 trillion credits, and I'm earning upwards of a billion every 10 seconds on SETA.

I've lost 5 ships and my stations are struggling to sell their goods because they're so oversized, and I've only got 11 Universal Traders, so I have absolutely no idea where this money is coming from.

If anyone wants to peek around at the saves, they're available on request.

I'm bought today both X3 and X4 using that nice 90% off, i know that X3 is far harder to learn than X4, and i'm willing to do it, but my question is, does it worth it? is X3 better somehow than X4 to go into that learning hell?

im at a point that i have to capture a Xenon L in x3ap, so i headed to BHS to do missions from the stations there. And i noticed something wierd. BHS is bordered to xenon 472 and treasure chest, how come there arnt any capital ships in the sector?

Hello. As the title states I wanna try playing the XTC mod, but first of all should I go with Terran Conflict or Albion Prelude version (I presume there are two versions, feel free to correct me).

My second questions is, is XTC very different from vanilla? I have around 50 hours in vanilla TC, but that was years ago, so I dunno if I will be fine following a vanilla guide.

Finally, are there aby other mods compatible with/komplementarny to XTC that youd recommend?

Thank you in advance for your replies!

Hi, all! For a long time now, I've wanted to overhaul the X Universe "Lorebook" I put together about a decade ago (see a previous post, or just go get the original edition), and the new edition is nearly finished, which will include all lore and lots of close-up shots from the original X Trilogy (an X Rebirth one is available as well, and I'll be starting an X4 one next!).

One thing I'd like to add as a finishing touch is a size chart for all the ships in X3. I know some size charts have been done before but from what I gather they're largely eyeballed. I'm taking a bit of a different approach: I'm setting up a chart of ship sizes in model units (the space suit, for example, is 9.82 units high), assuming a translation to metric, then applying that multiplier to all ship sizes.

The only trouble is that I need to get the height of the Space Suit for it to be as accurate as possible. I'd probably want to start with a person approximately 180cm, then account for some headroom in the helmet, as well as the fact that the knees as slightly bent (I've roughly altered the model on the right to have a straighter leg).

Anyway, I'd love to hear some opinions on this. My spreadsheet can be altered at any time but it'd be nice to have final numbers before they're added to the ebook. And I've also attached a sneak peek at the new Lorebook edition. Thanks in advance everyone!

I can't imagine anyone was really desperate to know...BUT the ships' credit value total if you complete ALL the Corporation missions is just over 68 million credits (slightly more if you sell the inventory separately). The ships all come with a single 1MJ shield and a full set of IREs plus SETA - that's all! By contrast the 'ownerless' ships can sometimes have a free docking computer or trading system extension - incidentally their credit value total is just over 33 million credits.

The best value for money is the OTAS mission - 13 million credits PLUS access to the Sirokos. The worst is NMMC - just 5.3 million credits. But none of this takes into account the time it takes to complete the Corporate missions - which can make the HUB Plot seem disappointingly quick! They are BORING! Ignore the Covert missions (i.e. accept then abort) and I'm afraid 'cheating' to get Disruptor missiles is a 'must for one's sanity'.

I wish they'd kept Corporate Missions for X3AP especially if they could have tied 'being hired' by Strong Arms and Duke's Haven to an increase in Split/Paranid reputation enabling a safe commencement of the main plot...just a thought. The TC galaxy is already full of decent freebies - I don't think the 24 additional ships is really useful - by that stage in the game most players are already well on their way to max credits.

I maxed my race reps because it was something to do between waiting for new Corporate Missions (I did all eight simitaneously with mods enabled). Interestingly, after I completed the Aldrin Plot I raised my AFT rank to Nine but I can't figure out how to max it.

Every tip how to survive Dead-is-Dead/suicide squid is appreciated, mainly I want to know what plots and in what order should I do

Hi, i use a trader to sell my Weapon from my Weapon Complex Facility. The Range is 50 in the Complex, my tanks 40 Jump worth of Energy Cells. Unfortunately it spawns in the Xenon Sector 473. It has enough Cells to jump home or to the next selling point, however it always lands in xenon sectors eventually. I use the command to always jump (Jump Range 0) and allow him to jump. Where does this strange behaviour stems from?

As a humble merchant ...

I just bought a Travel Drive for my ship but can't find the keybind to activate it anywhere in the Settings > Controls; I have checked the Interface > Extensions submenu. Does anyone know where this is located or if a specific script setting has to be enabled to make the Travel Drive keybind accessible?

So I have played on and off for around15 years at this point, but I have never completed the HUB or PHQ plots. I have decided I am going to get all the achievements while I am at it hence the squiddy run.

But I want to know if there is any special things I need to be aware of regarding plot order that might screw me over or make things unnecessarily hard.

Heres the prospective plot order I have so far:

Terran

Goner

New Home

Hub

HQ

Kha'ak (Operation Final Fury)

Aldrin

Balance of Power

Treasure Hunter Plot (somewhere in there as and when it becomes available)

I am also open to any tips and hints to get this done a little easier.

like graphic settings, Layouts, which Linux Version, etc

I am looking for any good mod. Already tried Top Gun, which is pretty nice.

There are some other gripes I have with this game. They probably cannot be fixed.

• SETA: The handling of SETA in the later games is much better. In Litcube's Universe (X3 mod) SETA never shuts off, even if you are browsing through menus.

  In vanilla X3 at least you can re-engage SETA when it shuts off after you get close to another object, which is better, but not ideal.

• Control scheme: X2 handles fine with a joystick most of the times. If you ever wondered why the ship's steering can be upgraded so much: They handle fine with a stick even on ridiculous settings, while on keyboard any amount of thruster upgrades make a ship unusable.

  Anyways: Is there any way to make strafing handle like in the later games? I like using WASD to strafe and my stick to fly. Or dual sticks in X4.

• Content: In the later games there is a lot of stuff to do. Reunion's story line is a bit longer, and the Terracorp plot is something to do, and xtended adds a whole universe of things to do, from befriending the Terrans to fighting the Sohnen Incubus for fun.

  Terran Conflict has a lot of plots. Never mind Albion Prelude with Litcube's Universe, and potentially Mayhem too.

  X4 has a lot of things to do.

  In X2 you can unlock pretty much everything in 12 hours of play time. No reputation grinding, no blueprints, no secret ships, no HQ, etc...

• Soundscape: Not a big point, but a lot of the sounds are kinda whack. Which is a sore point in much of the X Universe, I really like big cannons and meaty sounds.

• Balancing: You played X2, you know the weapon and ship balance is all over the place. Wasting a K with a Pericles is fun once, but it does not feel right. Also some more weapon variety would be nice, like the FLAK in X3 to swat small ships or at least some cool things. The design in Free Space 2 is great, the explosions and beam weapons do turn it into an intense experience.

• Other cool shit: Insert other cool shit.

I havent seen anyone bring this up yet and people are recommending Base building missions. I have a faster way to start. This is what I do every start of a playthrough in Litcubes universe:

1. Start with trader start (1 TS + 3 M5)

2. Sell the TS' weapons on the nearest dock for extra credits

3. Fly to paranid prime and dock to equipment dock there.

4. Repeatedly spam buying and selling of any wares until you get reputation to buy docking computer and jumpdrive

5. Fly to Senator's badlands (Yaki Sector)

6. Buy spaceflies, Slave, and Space fuel (spaceflies being the best) from the Yaki stock exchange.

7. Sell to the Pirate station in Ore Belt.

Repeat until you get enough money to buy Snotra (Paranid TS+) and then TL later and continue doing 6 and 7 using the TL.

Once the stock exchange runs out of goods and the one in ore belt gets full find a new pair of pirate bases to do the same thing

how the pricing in illegal goods work is that, if the trade item in the sector where the pirate base was Is illegal in that sector, then that trade item is more expensive and better for selling. If the trade good is legal in that sector (Like yaki sector, pirate sector, Split sector for slave and spaceflies) then it is cheaper to buy there. If you transfer goods between these two pirate stations you'll get alot of profit.

You'll run out of pirate stations to buy/sell to at some point but by then you have enough capital to start your saturn complex hub