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The Art of Ship Buying?
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RPGDot Forums > X2 / X3

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EverythingXen
Arch-villain
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Joined: 01 Feb 2002
Posts: 4342
The Art of Ship Buying?
   

I've been cruising around the X2 universe for about 10 days now, playing on average two hours a day and I've noticed a few things when buying ships.

1) Ignore hull values.

Seriously. You'd be surprised how much a few extra hull points will jack a ship's price up when compared to other races vessels. Hull points are definitely the least of your concern when purchasing a ship.

Sure, they determine when you go Boom. However.. if something has gotten through your shields, especially on a ships such as fighters which have often 5 times more shields than hull, there's a good chance you're dead in the next three seconds. Even if you aren't, you'll wince as you watch component after component get blown to bits.

Hull is expensive to repair. Roughly 1% of the ship purchase value (less shields and weapons, I believe) per point. That means a Nova which loses 10% of its hull costs the better part of 100k to repair! To me that much money is worth a reload. With higher hull/pricey ships later on you could easily be looking at 400k or more per percentage point of hull repaired.


Anyone notice anything else about what to look for/avoid in a ship?
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Post Tue Mar 02, 2004 6:47 pm
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dteowner
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Joined: 21 Mar 2002
Posts: 7570
Location: Third Hero of Erathia
   

Well, I'm still micromanaging my way thru the "go make money" phase of the game, so my examinations have all been related to the cargo TP and TS classes. Since flying time is wasted time, speed is obviously paramount, although a really fast ship that bulges at the seams after a dozen crystals doesn't really cut it either. Similarly, at this point in my game, money is still a concern. So here's what I came up with. Call it the "dte coefficient".

(max speed)(effective cargo) / (effective cost)

effective cargo
For TP classes, where you automatically start with the max allowable cargo, effective = max. For TS classes, it equals .75max. That multiple is a little arbitrary, but here's where is comes from: the TS starts with 1/2 max and the cost to expand the hold usually got ridiculous about 1/2 way thru the upgrade, meaning 3/4max.
effective cost
TP's come ready to go- it's the list price. For TS's, you have to spend the bucks getting up to 3/4 max capacity. I found that generally cost about 1/4 of the list, so effective cost = 1.25 list price.

With that, most ships came out with surprisingly similar coefficients. Dhruin's Express is a runaway winner (still don't care for that 750 large-sized units hold, though). The rest of the TP's get around 1.35 and the TS's clock in around 1.0.
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Post Tue Mar 02, 2004 10:34 pm
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corwin
On the Razorblade of Life
On the Razorblade of Life




Joined: 10 Jun 2002
Posts: 8376
Location: Australia
   

I agree with dte, that speed and cargo space are important with a transport. That's why I prefer the TP's. Still getting used to the Nova. Found this interesting. I took on a Pirate Orinoco and lost component after component when I tried to attack it manually. Re-loaded and tried again using the auto-attack software. I now own another ship. I also took out 2 'Pirate Ships' using the auto attack. I have an ID and a Beta HEPT, plus the odd missile and a cheap rear laser. Now, if I could only find a few more pirates in the Paranid sector, maybe I could get them to trade with me!! Only found one so far, and a heavily fortified base.
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Post Wed Mar 03, 2004 6:23 am
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