Version 2 Additions
From the V2 readme file within the update patch.
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- <>Bala
Gi
Research missions,
enabling access to Player Headquarters station and new ships (Paranid
Hyperion,
Argon Eclipse, Split Chimera and Paranid Medusa) through a set of
exciting
missions.
- Player Headquarters (see detailed description further below).
- Two new sectors have been added: “Senator’s Badlands” (Yaki) and “Elysium of Light” (Goner).
- Four new missions for the BBS boards have been added (hint: living a Pirate’s life just got more interesting).
- A new
shipclass has been
introduced: the M7. In terms of offensive and defensive capabilities a
ship of
this class is situated between M6 class Cruisers and M2 class
Destroyers. The
Paranid Hyperion is currently the only ship of that class.
- M3 ships have also been improved into M3+ variations with more turrents, bigger cargo spaces and extra speed and shielding.
- The Xenon have upgraded their arsenal as well to counter the new ships designed by Bala Gi Research Inc – now roaming the Universe is the Xenon LX.
- New ware “Software Signature Scrambler” available at Pirate BBS boards. This device can mask the “System Override Software” from Police scans.
- A new weapon can now be found hidden in several sectors: the “Concussion Impulse Generator”. This weapon can be used to force enemy ships off course. Many M3 class vessels as well as capital ships can mount this laser.
- Tug Laser can now be used to tug player-owned ships or ships with no shield – even through gates.
- Mouse cursor toggle behaviour changed: cursor will now return to the setting it was at before you docked at a station. If you manually disable the cursor while docked it will remain disabled until you re-activate it or dock again.
- Input menus have no more restrictions regarding their supported character set. This means special characters like ü, ä, ö or also Cyrillic letters can now be used for names.
- Ships and stations now have a Self Destruct option. Once activated your have 10 seconds to leave the ship/station before it detonates.
- The shockwave of missile impacts now influence ships in the detonation radius.
- The minimum zoom distance for external views has been reduced.
- Yaki ships do now use their ship variants.
- You no longer need to have your CD/DVD in the drive to play X³: Reunion.
- Lasertowers now have increased manoeuvrability.
- Production and repair costs for ships have been slightly reduced (resource requirements for Micro Chips have been lowered).
- Gonerships
can now be produced at the Player
Headquarters station.
Player
Headquarters
From
the V2 readme file within the update patch.
This new station is
the biggest construction you
can build in the game and thus it requires a lot of free space to work
properly, be careful where you put it!
HQ
features:
Any damaged ship docked at the HQ
can be repaired. Damaged
ships are listed in the Station Info and Adjust Station Parameters
menus and in
the latter can be added to, and removed from, the repair queue. Ships
in the
repair queue are repaired in the order shown. You can check the repair
cycle
requirements and ship details by pressing I or O in the Adjust Station
Parameters menu with the ship selected.
Repairs require time, money and resources. All
of these
are proportional to the value of the ship and the amount of hull damage
that it
has. The money must be in the HQ station account and the resources in
the HQ
station storage in order for repair to start. The repair queue is in
strict
order so if a large ship is "blocking" the queue due to lack of
resources, ships further down the queue will not be repaired.
As a rough guide (and it is very rough,
especially for
smaller ships) the total cost of repairing a ship with hull damage of
50%
should be approximately 15-20% of the value of the ship,
including both the
cash cost and the value of the resources used. Remember that the price
of a
ship in a shipyard includes shields and usually weapons even if you buy
the S
model, so remember to deduct these when checking prices.
The time taken to repair a ship is
also proportional to
its value. This should range from a few seconds for a slightly damaged
M5 to
many hours for a badly damaged capital ship.
If the HQ's own hull is damaged then it can be
added to
the repair queue just like a ship.
The HQ can also produce ships. In
order to produce a
particular type of ship a set of blueprints is required. These can be
obtained
by reverse engineering (see below). Once you have blueprints for a ship
type
you can produce as many ships of that type as you like, provided you
have the
money and resources.
Blueprints are listed in the Station Info and
Adjust
Station Parameters menus. You can add an item to the production queue
by
selecting it in the blueprints part of the Adjust Station Parameters
menu, and
you can adjust the number of ships to produce at each point in the
queue using
the usual ware counter controls (left, right, home, end, numpad, etc.).
Ships
in the production queue are produced in the order shown, and where
multiple
ships of the same type are listed in the queue they will be produced
one at a
time. You can check the production cycle requirements and ship details
by
pressing I or O in the Adjust Station Parameters menu with the
blueprint or
production queue item selected.
As with repairs, production requires time, money
and
resources, and these are proportional to the value of the ship. Again,
the
money must be in the HQ station account and the resources in the HQ
station
storage in order for production to start. The production queue is also
in
strict order so if a large ship is "blocking" the queue due to lack
of resources, ships further down the queue will not be
produced.
Ships produced by the HQ will have no
shields or
weapons, and no additional equipment other than what is built-in for
that class
(e.g. life support for a TP).
The time taken to produce a ship is also
proportional to
its value. This ranges from a few minutes for an M5 to many, many hours
for a
capital ship.
3. Reverse engineering
Reverse engineering is a means by which to
obtain
blueprints for a ship so that you can produce more of them. The HQ's
engineers
and robots are highly skilled and can reverse engineer any ship given
to them.
Reverse engineering destroys the ship being reverse engineered, right
at the
start of the process, and at the end of the process the ship type is
added to
the list of available blueprints ready for production.
Any ship docked at the HQ can be added to the
reverse
engineering queue, apart from the player ship, ships for which the HQ
already
has blueprints, and ships of the same type as the ship currently being
reverse
engineered. It is possible to add multiple ships of the same type to
the
reverse engineering queue but as soon as reverse engineering starts on
the
first one of a given type any others of that type in the queue will be
removed.
Ships can also be removed from the reverse engineering queue as long as
work
has not yet started on them. As usual, you can check the reverse
engineering
cycle requirements and ship details by pressing I or O in the Adjust
Station
Parameters menu with the ship selected.
Reverse engineering requires only time and the
ship. As
previously mentioned, the cost of reverse engineering a ship is simply
the
destruction of the ship itself. The time taken to reverse engineer a
ship
should be the same as the time taken to produce it once the blueprints
have
been obtained. Note that you can reverse engineer a damaged ship as
long as it
isn't the ship that is currently being repaired (being further down the
repair queue
is fine). Note also that any equipment or cargo on board a ship that is
reverse
engineered will be destroyed if it is not removed before the process
starts.
An additional new feature of the HQ is the Spray Shop. The Spray Shop allows you to slightly adjust the colour scheme used in your ships. It does this by changing the hue (colour) and saturation (intensity of that colour) of the "paintwork" on certain panels on a given ship. The panels that are affected by this are defined in the ship model and cannot be changed. They will also vary from ship to ship. Boron ships cannot be re-sprayed at all due to their unusual hull materials, and so will not be listed in the Spray Shop ship list. You can re-spray any ship docked at your HQ at no cost.
To
use the Spray Shop feature you need to go to the Adjust Station
Parameters
option in the station menu. From there, scroll down to the Spray Shop
section
and you will see all of your ships, apart from the Boron-designed ones,
that
are docked at the HQ. To move a ship into the Spray Shop simply
highlight the
ship in the list and hit Enter. You will then see three additional
options
underneath that ship. You can adjust the Hue and Saturation in the same
way as
any other menu slider, using the left and right cursor keys, the Home
and End
keys, or by typing in a step size using the numeric keypad. When you
hit enter
after changing either of these values, your ship is immediately
re-sprayed
using the selected value. The third option allows you to restore the
original
paintwork of the ship. Note that this will restore the standard
paintwork of
the ship as defined for the race who designed it, which may differ from
the
colour that you had for it previously.
New 'Hidden' Stuff
By Jakesnake5
http://forum3.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=160358
Starburst Ship - Freedoms Reach - (1128, 36181, 43285)
15 Wildfire FF Missiles - Heretics End - (25706, 17845, 32345)
Containers of the new Concussion Impulse Generator (this is a shock cannon).
Senators Badlands - (-1.5, 11.5, 8.9) - (location varies because of rock, use ADV Sat to locate)
Merchant Haven - (0, 50, 0)
Light Water - (7.9, -5.2, -13.6)
Black Hole Sun - (12.7, 4, -7.8)
Priest Pity - (31, 5, 26.7)
Bala Gi's Joy - (-35, -8.6, -37.5)
Unknown Sector (by Patriarch's Retreat) - (-39.4, 8.9, 1)
Cloud Base North West - (32, -35.5, -25.6)
Xenon Sector 597 - (-62.5, -17.2, 22.7)
The New Ships
By Giskard
http://www.respawn.co.uk/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7&forum=9
The M3+ Fighter.
These are basically souped up M3s with more Cargo space and more turrets. They do not actually carry better weapons but are generally better shielded. Some make better patrol craft because of the extra speed and shielding as a result.
The M7.
This is a one off Ship available only by doing the Balagi Mission. It can be reverse engineered at the HQ and then you can build as many as you want of these. The M7 makes excellent patrol ship, even if it are expensive and it should be treated as a M2 with few shields in regard to the damage the M7 can do to other ships of all sizes. When fitting this ship out, its best to follow the M2 guidelines since it is a smaller M2 that can dock at freighter bays.
Bala Gi Missions Walkthrough
http://www.respawn.co.uk/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=11&forum=9
Balagi Missions. Addon Mission for X3 2.0
The Balagi missions give you 2 gifts but it is an expensive mission to do and will take a long time to complete. It may not start right away in your game if you do not have the good reputation with Borons, Split, Argons and Paranid. You also need 5 Million in the bank and all Mission specific stations must exist. Usually there is a SPP L in grand exchange that is missing but this will eventually be replaced by the God engine and the mission will start.
Once the mission starts you will be asked to go to Kingdom End shipyard. You will be asked to look in to some sort of "weirdness" happening in Rolks Fates. I will not hand it to you on a plate but I will tell you to make sure you have a mineral scanner on your ship. After the scan you will be too busy to notice the log entry thats made in your personal log. Check it when you get time.
Back at Kingdom End Shipyard you will be asked to deliver some new fighter designs for the Split and Paranid M3+ fighters. All you need to do here is fly to Paranid Prime Shipyard and Family Pride Shipyard then back to Kingdom End. But since your flying around anyway, I recommend you buy a tractor beam and an Advanced Satelite at this point. You will need them later. Also notice the new fighters are available for sale at those shipyards and that also the Argon Prime Shipyard also sells a new M3+ after this point too.
Upon your return to the Kingdom End shipyard you will find the guy who had the blue prints for your HQ has gone missing in a brand new M7. You will be asked to find him. In the process you will be asked to perform certain tasks for individuals before they will disclose any information to you. One task is to place the Advanced Satelite in the center of a specific Xenon Sector below Scale Plate Green. Make sure you place the Advanced Satelite at the very center of that sector.
The other tasks you will have no problems with but take a fighter for this stage anyway, you will need it.
Once you finally arrive at the SPP L in Grand Exchange you will be told the mission guy went to an unknown sector a few sectors south of Grand Exchange. So you will need to do a little searching once you reach the pirate sector in the south to find the WEST gate. There are actually 2 Unknown sectors beyond the west gate and you need to be in the one to the south. In the very bottom South East corner of that second unknown sector there are some asteriods and hidden amongst these are a few surprised for the player.
Getting the M7 back to the Grand Exhange Shipyard requires you to tow it back with the Tractor Beam, Interworlds Equipement Dock has one on sale once this part of the mission starts. The mission recommends you use an M6. I am recommend you avoid the Osprey. Its Tractor Beam Mounts at the rear turret but the rear turret is not in the rear at all. This makes lining the tractor beam up a painful process.
Bewarned, sometimes the M7 will ram you after you jump through a gate, so as soon as the jump is complete pull up. Eventually your speed will drop to zero until the M7 finishes its jump. When it does, it may miss you if you do this.
Ideally, you should have 1 M6, 1 M1 (for the surprise) and some fighter protection for this, if you want to get the most out of the mission. If you do not, then just use an M6. But I should warn you, this mission is great for fleet owners who have a game were pirates dominate the Universe rather than Xenon or Khaak. X3s primary bad guys differ from game to game so you may not have a lot of pirates in your game. I do so this part of the mission was lots of fun.
Once you get the M7 back to the Pirate sector, 3 Teladi will turn up and demand you turn the M7 over to them. But if your game is anything like mine, you will already be too busy fighting pirates to even notice those guys. They will be just another red dot to shoot at. So continue on to Grand Exchange towing the M7. The M7s towing line will grow longer each time you pass a jump gate. But to complete the mission you will need it to be a normal lenght, so detach the towing beam, and require a lock once you reach Grand Enchange to fix this.
Once you dock you will recieve the M7 as a Gift, it will be repaired for you but will lack lots of basic equipement. You will need to send it to Interworlds or Blackhole Sun's Equipement Dock to be fitted out so it can jump back to friendly sectors. You might also want to assign it an escort for protection.
Back at the Kingdom End Equipement Dock you will be given one of the new M3+ ships as a gift. I found this ship appears in Kingdom End or docked at the Shipyard. You will have a choice 3 new M3s, any one of either the Split, Argon or Paranid versions can be chosen.
Now you need to buy an Argon Trading Station and deliver it to Kingdom Ends shipyard and finally you need to gather some goods and deliver those to the shipyard too. I will not spoil this part for you other than to say the Bonus scripts contain a Collect Rocks command that make this part much easier.
You will need a Ore collector, a Mineral scanner and Mining laser to complete this part.
Once done you will be given your HQ. If you noticed the little surprise left in the Unknown sector and realised the cost of repairing them is a little too high. You might be interested to know that the HQ can reverse engineer ships and the amount of damage is not taken in to account. So now you know why I said you needed an M1 for that part of the mission. You can have those surprises dock at your M1 and save you a lot of messing around later. You can then use those ships as your first templates for new ships at your HQ. There is one surprise that cannot dock with your M1, for that you might want to transfer the equipement from one of your M1s fighters and jump it back to safety.
Using the Player HQ
By Giskard
http://www.respawn.co.uk/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=13&forum=9
The player HQ can build, repair or repaint your ships. It is better to think of it as a shipyard for that reason. The current feature list basically make it a Shipyard rather than a true HQ. In order to use it effectively you must find ways around specific problems which I will outline below and offer solutions too. You may find better or cheaper solutions that cut back on the amount of macro management the HQ requires.
The player HQ is not a Trading Station or Equipment Dock and should not be treated at such. It has more in common with a warehouse than those two stations. You can easily set up auto supply of an HQ just like any Trading station but unlike Trading stations the player HQ will keep on gathering goods until its full of those goods. EG you can fill it up with 4000 ore and leave no room for the 20 Microchips you need. Which may sound good, but it is not. Once it is full, it will not accept any more goods. Since the player HQ can build and repair ships from templates and since the goods each ship needs changes, this means that you may end up having to remove goods before you can add goods you need to build a specific ship. Nor is it a good idea to store weapons at the HQ for the same reason.
So Auto Resupply is a bad idea for the HQ. The HQs resupply must be handled manually if you are to avoid filling it up with the most commonly available ware from near by sectors.
To get around this, I recommend you purchase 1 Equipement Dock and 1 Trading Station. Have the trading station gather the goods for the HQ and just send a ship to collect the goods from that Trading Station when you decide to build or repair a ship. Since the trading station is not actually selling anything, you will be able to assign all 10 freighters from an Argon Trading Station to the job of buying the goods that are needed.
Some common goods that seem to be used by a lot of ships include.
Ore (Requires a Freighter)
Silicon (Requires a Freighter)
Energy Cells (Requires a Freighter)
Quantum Tubes (Use a Fighter)
Microchips (Use a Fighter)
Computer components (Use a Fighter)
The top 3 are common and are usually the items that will fill up your HQ quickly.
The Equipement Dock is used to store weapons for fitting out your new ships, since those items take up space at your HQ and will on their own completely fill the HQ and prevent you from building anything if you let them. After a ship is built, just send it to the HQ for refitting.
The average cost of a ship is 75% when you build it your self excluding materials. When you factor in material costs you may or may not make a profit building ships. The time to build ships is a lenghty one so the HQ is not really a practical method of making money.
The HQ is a unique Station and you only get it once. The Self destruct option on this station does work but if you use it, you will lose your HQ and will not be able to get a replacement.