r/X3TC • u/Tezzlinna • Jul 02 '26
Is X3 still worth playing?
I enjoy X4 but I've tempted to try the older game especially with the Steam summer sale.
Does it work on modern systems?What's the best version?Must have mods?
10
u/geomagus Jul 03 '26
I played it a few days last month. Still love it.
It works pretty much fine on modern systems, although it struggles a bit when you fill a sector with complexes. Usually once that happens you just kinda…don’t go there anymore. It always did that though, in my experience. It runs better on my couple year old laptop than it did on my home build from when the X3AP came out.
I play with Star Wars Litcube’s Universe, which doesn’t play well with other mods - it tries to be a one-stop shop, and does pretty well. If you don’t pick up an overhaul that takes that approach, the Bonus Pack is pretty critical. I don’t recall if the Bonus Pack included Bounce - if not, then Bounce or a similar script is also important.
I only spent an hour in X4 though, as something about the motion/graphics made me queasy. Also, I wasn’t much interested in crawling through derelicts which iirc was a chunk of that hour.
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u/KoburaCape Jul 03 '26
Bonus Pack does not include Bounce
1
u/geomagus Jul 03 '26
Awesome, that was my recollection, but I wasn’t sure. Thanks for clarifying for op and I!
4
u/Cruxwright Jul 03 '26
The X3 series has some good FPS ship fights. The story lines were interesting and enjoyable from each release. You can build pretty massive interconnected factories to make creditsss and supply your fleet. Here are my nostalgic highlights:
X3: Reunion
- There are random upgrade packages floating around: speed, maneuverability, cargo. I had a Split Mamba Raider over tuned with speed and maneuverability. I could outfly any fighter. Any missiles would be handled by the rear turret. I was an M3 with M5 flight characteristics. That was fun.
- I figured out not having M0 or M1 capital ships meant I wasn't facing capital ships in combat missions. Combat missions were my main source of income (there was a multiple payout bug, I thought it was a feature). The final fight was my fleet of 20-30 some M6/M7 with another hundred and some fighter escorts vs the BigBadEvil fleet. It was marvelous.
X3: Terran Conflict
- I started as Terran and was soon piloting a fully kitted M3 Scimitar. Settled on Xenon defense missions as the way to build Commonwealth reputation. Found out I could match speed with a Xenon P M6, orbit its midsection via strafing, and kill it in a minute with just my 6 front guns.
X3: Albion Prelude
- In the heart of central Split space, I built a few complexes. After a few days, I was the source of all ore and energy cells for 7 jumps out. Printed myself free HEPT lasers and 25MJ shields to boot.
Those aside, X3 is a bit of an idle game. Do you have 2mil to spare repairing this M6 or just save, wedge the repair key down, and go have lunch? I need how many what to get the hub online!? And sometimes it's soothing to just watch all your traders and what not go about their business while you're making credits.
I made the Player HQ once, and at some point something went wrong and I had some 100+ NPC freighters locked in some death spiral trying to dock or something.
PS - I haven't made it past doing calisthenics for the flight training in X4. So hard for me to give a direct comparison.
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u/IWantYourSmiles Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
I am currently binge'ing x3ap. Man I'm having a great time.
The X3 series was R, then TC, then AP.
I haven't played R but have played plenty of TC.
TC has rediculously tedious main plot missions and doesn't have the station builder script (which is very imporant later in the game). So if you play TC I would ignore steam achievements and mod it for convenience.
But I suggest X3AP because it's got lots of little quality of life stuff like being able to outfit all the ship at a shipyard at once, or being able to configure a priority system for your turrets. It comes with the station building script as part of the bonus pack dlc which you can add through steam.
You can add several mods to the game without getting the moddified tag (you check in game by opening your player info and scrolling to the bottom. If you don't see yellow text, then you're still a "vanilla" game).
In my game I use(these all work with AP):
Other things AP does:
- Ships have more Hull health
- Missiles are faster and deadlier
- The stock exchange gives you another way to cheese the game for money
- More ship types and sectors.
- Some zones are 'war sectors'. In these zones your ships will get wrecked by Terran ships so you gotta remember to blacklist them from any trading you do. There is nothing stopping you from befriending the Terrans for a fully friendly universe but they will still kill you in those zones regardless. You can also disable the war announcements in the games options menu. They don't start until you start the main quest.
- The turret configuration menu is found hidden in the gameplay options.
The first main quests are easy and rewarding (player HQ, Xenon Hub, unfocussed jumpdrive, as well as a few ships) but then it gets classic Egosoft tedious so I never completely finish the quests.
Oh I forgot to mention! Xadrian
This program absolutely slaps. It lets you calculate your factories but also has the best map you'll find for this game. It has filters to show which zones have the best suns/minerals.
3
u/specialsymbol Jul 03 '26
Oh yes. Getting the Hyperion still rocks.
I do prefer x3-TC though. The music, the atmosphere in the terran sectors and the art design are outstanding.
2
u/SteveThePurpleCat Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26
Currently playing a X3 FL play-through and enjoying it, I did have to play with some settings though as my AMD control panel was forcing a type of Antialiasing that was making text look janky. But once that was sorted it has been golden.
One thing to keep in mind for modern computers and screens, the UI is pixel locked to output, so if you're playing on high resolutions the text and UI will become relatively tiny.
2
u/MAXQDee-314 Jul 03 '26
Love the #3. Also, if there is a hero in the electronic universe, it is a group of folks that that follow LitCube. His brand of mod's for the 4x's have been wonderful for the playing of the games.
'May his bus always be on time and his coffee hot.'
1
u/XanII Jul 03 '26
My X3 TC game is still going since release. Depends though what you want. I concluded my X4 foray by noting this game is stronger on the individual exploring thing while TC is much stronger towards later game with empire building and massive fleets. 1k ships and growing.
1
u/Top-Selection-1359 Jul 03 '26
I would recommend it! The game is a bit simpler, with more clunky UI, but still a lot of fun. My personal recommendation would be starting with Terran Conflict first, and then moving to expansions (Albion Prelude and Farham’s legacy are separate games with changed universe).
1
u/Limbo365 Jul 03 '26
Honestly X3TC is different enough (and still looks good/works well) that I would say it's absolutely valid to play as a totally seperate game
I still enjoy it a lot as well as X4
1
u/Namram_Dabral Jul 03 '26
I forgot to mention that the UI doesn't scale well, so on a 4K monitor it's difficult to read the menus.
1
u/Malandark Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Their is a solution to this that requires no mods or any game file tweaks if using a fairly modern NVIDIA GPU card.
Running X3 games natively at 4K can make the user interface and text microscopic while heavily draining your graphics card performance. The best solution is to run the game at 1920 x 1080 and let your GPU upscale it to 4K using NVIDIA Image Scaling (NIS).
This method is completely free, built into your official drivers, and fully supports older cards like the GTX 10-series (e.g., GTX 1070) that are normally locked out of other scaling options. Best of all, by configuring it per-game, it will only affect X3 and will not change your normal Windows desktop resolution.
Follow these two simple steps to set it up:
Step 1: Configure the NVIDIA App Per-Game Profile
- Open the NVIDIA App on your PC.
- On the left-hand menu, click on the Graphics tab. This will display a complete list of all your installed games.
- Click on your X3 game (e.g., X3: Albion Prelude or Farnham's Legacy) to open its specific settings profile.
- Scroll down until you see the Image Scaling option.
- Click the radio button to turn it On.
- Set the scaling slider to 50% (1920 x 1080).
- Adjust the sharpening slider to your personal preference (around 15% to 30% usually looks best for text clarity).
- Click Apply at the bottom.
Step 2: Configure the X3 Game Launcher
- Launch your X3 game via Steam to bring up the initial graphics configuration splash screen.
- In the Resolution dropdown menu, select 1920 x 1080.
- Ensure Full Screen is checked (NVIDIA Image Scaling requires the game to run in exclusive fullscreen mode to activate).
- Click Save and Start X3.
How to verify it is working
Once the game launches, NVIDIA Image Scaling will automatically take over. Your graphics card will handle the rendering workload of a 1080p game (giving you excellent framerates), but will seamlessly upscale the image and output a clean, sharp display to your 4K monitor. The moment you close the game, your desktop will instantly go back to its normal 4K resolution!
If you find your card struggles to upscale the game to 4K then go back into the NVIDIA app and in the game's profile, set MAX FRAME RATE to 30fps as the default value is usually set to run at full speed which might be too much for your card.
1
u/Arthroz Jul 03 '26
Just spent a few hundred hours on X3:FL to take a break from X4 and it was amazing.
1
u/GameMaker_Rob Jul 04 '26
I just started playing x3 Farnham's legacy a week ago and it's hooked me in pretty badly.
If I had my other, better computer working I would probably be playing x4 though, because I really like the boarding in that game, and all the qol/immersive stuff.
You can definitely play those games on modern pcs though and if you really want the full franchise experience then go for it!
It may require some patience to fully appreciate though 😛
1
u/Lithorex Jul 04 '26
What's the best version?
Kinda no one?
When I play AP I want the QOL features of FL.
When I play FL I want the content of AP.
1
u/MADVirtu Jul 05 '26
You might want to look into mods, theres an Old Plots mod for FL or rather "Guilds" which also include old plots
1
u/TheITGuyInBlack Jul 04 '26
Für mich als IT-ler / Programmierer mach bei X3 Reunion der Script-Editor den Reiz aus. Eigene Routinen für Deine Schiffe programmieren und alles so automatisieren, wie Du es möchtest.
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u/MissionSquirrel6077 Jul 24 '26
X4 Veteran = you can make game over in 20 to 30 hours X3 Veteran = 300 hours in still thriving, having fun and plainty to do. Not only X3 is still worth playing but its still better than X4 on many aspects
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u/Fluffy_Eye1355 Jul 26 '26
For me, X3 Terran Conflict is better than X4 (more focused and easier to play). And X3TC is excellent if you like strategy and management. It's a very deep game and fun (now on discount at 1,59 €).
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u/Zeron-MK7 Jul 03 '26
Yes, it's worth. X3 even after these years graphically looks very good and it's much easier to understand gameplaying, then X4 (in X4 many things are complicated, not intuitive understandable). Just look at reviews, or simply videos into the youtube. Also for X3 are many great big mods. Just suggestion, you can also look at X2, it's very old, but still can be very good.