Sup GOG!,

While GOG doesn't sell the game and Steam does, I just go ask it here because most people are really friendly (a + too GOG!).

Steam is selling the X3 War Pack for 10 Euros. The sale will end in 21 hours and well I am really interested in getting a game like X3.

I would just like to know if there are people here who have it and can tell me a bit about it. I really like the concept that you can start your own company and such!

Its great if you like business sims and Elite. But not so great if you are into just shooting stuff. I loved it, played hundreds of hours, built up an ecnomic empire, went to fight a bit with my capital ship fleet. But the game requires alot of effort, nothing braindead for in between.

It is a good game, but be warned, it is also incredibly time consuming. Starting your company, and making it profitable will take a lot of time and effort. But if you have the time to spend, and the idea of the game appeals to you, then it will most likely be worth your money.

The X series, from what I've played of it, kinda remind me of my problems with grand strategy games. You start off very weak, and your few units are very special because they are so few in number and you can devote your personal attention to them, but as you expand you get more and more units and the personality of the game wears off as it turns into inevitable micromanagement.

Same as in X, you start with a small weak ship, you can pretty much get your ass kicked by anything, you have to be cautious, and you have to scrounge for whatever debris and resources you find floating around, and it's the most fun part of the game. But once you buy a Fighter (or steal one hell) you can take on anything short of a capital ship, and inevitably the game turns into management as you build factories to build more ships to do the job for you, but are increasingly annoyed because of how stupid they are and you just wish you could do the job yourself.

It's a great game, you can play it for months:). The main story is usually a bit short, but the sandbox part is really good. It's like Freelancer on steroids. You can play it as you want. You can fight your way to millions or you can trade up yourself the same. You can build a huge trade empire, and the micromanagement can be cut down with some mods if you're willing to have a *modified* tag on your savegames, and if you don't care about steam stats. 10 euros for the x3 pack is ok-ish, but it was like 6.5 2-3 days ago on gamersgate.

It's a great series, with a massive scale and also a massive learning curve... you can approach it in many ways, focusing more on the management side or more on the space flight and combat, as you see fit.

Since the whole War Pack is not heavily discounted at the moment, my advice is to take only X3 Terran Conflict for just 4 euros... if you end up liking the game, you are going to sink hundreds of hours on that alone; in the meantime, i'm sure you'll find a 75% deal on Albion Prelude (which is more of the same) in the next months, as they already did that in the past.

Will this also mean that when I get Ablion that I have to restart my save game because it isn't compatible in some way?

The plots are mutually exclusive as far as i know so, yes, if you want to experience both, you have to start a new game each time.

I think however that you can have more than one game running, so as long as you keep your save games separated, you can still play you previous empire in TC while you start a new one in AP

Albion Prelude is superior. Get that one instead, its an expansion pack turned into a full release with better optimization and gameplay.

Steam highlights that you need X3: TC too run AP.

Keep crossing my fingers that the series makes it on GOG at some point.

The third installment in the series is one of the few games that I'd pay full price for on release (already played the second one to death).

Is it really superior now? Because the added ship models aside - the only things different from TC were the stock exchange, which was nothing more than a money cheat and the war sectors+task forces, which were nothing more than a nuisance. Then fewer storylines and add the typical bug-ridden state of Egosoft's games directly after release where AP was no different.

I personally reverted straight back to TC.

TC has no stock exchange where I can buy goods and sell them for a higher price like in EVE Online ?

TC has normal trading of cargo - either directly via docking your ship to a station or long distance via micromanaging other ships to transfer cargo.

AP added stock exchanges as new stations where you could buy stocks/equities of specific companies or goods and their value increases and decreases based on factors of the local economy of the sectors where the exchange is located.
(So essentially you could get a freighter with rare goods to the system - buy the corresponding stocks of it cheap - send the freighter outside of the range of this exchange and sell the stock for enormous profits --> essentially a money cheat)

Well I bought TC for now. I didn't want to spend 10 euros and then come to the conclusion that i don't like the game and such.

But I do hope ill enjoy it :)