They did the raffle winners. If you’re curious what people got, the list is here.
The silliest ones are the ones that were cheap. Like 12 people won Bad Company 2… if you wanted that game, you could’ve paid $5 for it… twice. Which means not only did you pay that $5 when you had the chance to get a game worth putting on your wishlist, but you ended up wasting what could’ve been a brand new $50 game in your wishlist. 10 copies of a $2.50 Terraria… even worse. Worse still! 5 people got the little $2 BC2 cosmetic dlc pack. $3 Torchlight.
Just bad strategy… if you’re gonna get 10 free games, you might as well get 10 free expensive games you want (including preorders), not a bunch of $2 games you could’ve had.
As long as this got bumped, let me just thank those who recommended Just Cause 2. That game is a hoot and I’ve already wasted way too much time in it just doing stupid shit because I can. I never would have picked it up if it didn’t get plugged in this thread.
No the worst is the $.30 Killing Floor DLC. Not only was it on sale it was also a ticket item. When this started I had reorganized my wishlist from order of games I want to order of games I least want to pay for. I ended up switching it back once I saw that list and realized most of my games weren’t on it.
Another game similar to Just Cause 2 worth checking out is The Saboteur. It’s not quite as wild but you are a resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Paris during WW2. You can do the main storyline missions or go around Paris destroying enemy faculties. As you reclaim parts of the city the textures go from dull black & white to color. You can climb buildings and zip-line between many of them. It also shares the Just Cause 2 save system where you wind up back at a friendly base no matter where you saved. It doesn’t seem to be on Steam though.
I got x3 TC and I really want to get into it, but I can’t get any flow to have fun.
Every mission is one of three scenarios.
1.Patrol around for 40 minutes, see nothing, get called a wuss and make very little money.
2.Patrol around for 40 minutes, finally see a few red bleeps, head for them just to see a police battleship annihilate them, get called a wuss and make very little money.
patrol around for 40 minutes see a few red bleeps, head towards them, hear the missile incoming warning, and find the end game screen before I can get in range.
From what I can tell most guides recommend starting off as a humble trader and just trading between 6 sectors until you have tons of money, then setting up some stations/trade routes/whathaveyou and then once you’re set economically, buying a ship meant for combat and decking it out. I couldn’t work up the nerve to get to the “700k credits just from trading” part done, though.
If you’re into combat and not having luck with patrols you should look for assassinate missions and station protection missions.
Station protection is especially easy as the ships usually aren’t a serious threat to the station and you can always fly away and regenerate your shields while they pound away at the station. Assassination usually has you looking for a single ship that is escorted by fighters a few jumps away. Both of these missions are pretty easy to start with. The final option (though this takes more patience) is to hang out around sectors close to pirate sectors and to attack their ships and try to get them to bail. Once you do you can sell the ships for profit.
Oh I just thought I’d add in TC the easiest way to make money is fighting. In the previous games unless you were really good at capturing ships trading was the easiest way to make money. In TC they really increased the money rewards for doing missions and that changed all of that. A station defense even on the lower levels can net you 100,000 and will likely have a few capturable (is that a word?) ships for extra gravy. Meanwhile being able to do a 100,000 trading run would require a much bigger time investment. After your combat rank goes up a few times you’ll find station protection missions for 1,000,000.
After you get some cash in the bank you should invest in a decent trade ship and MKIII trading software and start up a sector trader that you level up until it is a universe trader. You’ll have to go looking for instructions to do that properly it’s too long to type it all out. A few of those and you’ll have money rolling in while you’re free to fly around and explore the galaxy. Universe traders really are superior to stations in when it comes to free cash. You’ll of course sooner or later want to start building stations just for fun and they will make you buckets of cash if you’ve set them up correctly but they pale compared to universe traders.
See, I chose the Terran Defender start. After a few missions (just enough to get Mars access), I noticed that I could sell my starter ship for about 800k. I bought a Baldric (3000 to 4500 cargo capacity). I explored around and found a few sectors where I could make decent money before the market gets tapped out (e.g. in Scale Plate green you can often buy flowers for 5 and sell them for over 30). I built a medium ore mine in Omicron Lyrae (somewhat profitable), and then later a flower farm farther west in Greater Profit (more profitable). Afterward, I built a sun oil refinery and attached it to the flower farm (significantly more profitable). I found cheapo Baldrics more or less adequate for keeping my facilities serviced.
Using this wiki I decided to make my way to Legend’s Home and bought a Mistral for a much larger cargo capacity (10,000 to 15,000). I also bought a jump drive for it, which has been a godsend. I can now let my sun oil refinery just accumulate stock, and then I periodically stop by, load up, and quickly hop over to Two Grand or Profit Center Alpha and unload around 380,000 credits’ worth of oil in one run. I just bought a new large ore mine in Legend’s Home, but I don’t yet know if that was a waste of money.
I kind of want to get back to doing combat stuff, but I don’t have enough reputation to buy Terran EMP cannons (like the ones on my starter ship). I think I found a work-around for that that will get me a few, though.
Now, if anyone knows how to repair hull damage to a station (that is part of a complex), I’d really like to know. Some jerk pirates attacked my sun oil refinery, and it took like half an hour before the police dealt with them; now my refinery is down to 61% hull strength. It still works, and the lasertower I bought seemed to protect the station from a later attack, but I don’t like leaving it in that state.
Haha that is a good way to make money, thanks. Start the mission, wait for the cops to engage the Novas, and pick off a few gnats and wait for some real money to show up once the novas bite it.
Just wanted to chime in with my comments about Just Cause 2. I only fooled around with it for a bit last night, but I’m calling it super already. No grinding to get decent weapons…you want to use the anti-aircraft gun, here you go. Carry around a huge gatling gun, no prob. Dangle from a helicopter and shoot baddies: expected. It’s hard to play because I’m laughing so much and having so much fun. Great recommendation folks!
I’d like to add that in X3:TC, the Terran plotline (which you can start right away as a Terran Defender) will reward you with millions of credits’ worth of ships, and it’s not that difficult. Seems like a great way to kickstart any factory-building aspirations.