So, i've been playing the hell out of this lately, and it's pretty good. I think I may be hooked. It's also very deep and has a crazy freaking learning curve. I'm going to share my game-to-date for anyone that cares.

I started as a Terran something or other, which is basically a military beginning. You're given a Sabre M4 fighter (the M designations are important... M4 is a medium fighter) and did some tutorial missions. After that, I started following the main terran plotline.

I started in Uranus and blew up some Xenon, which is one of the big bad guys in the game, apparently. They're machines spawned from AI that people stupidly built somewhere. I won't go into the backstory too much. After ridding them of their worthless lives, I flew out to various places, including Pluto, the Oort cloud, then back through Pluto to Uranus to Saturn. I ended up visiting the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter and Mars.

At one point I was gifted an M5 (light scout fighter) but soon realized that they pretty much suck for combat. It wasn't even as fast as my M4, not to mention the smaller cargo bay, less weapons, and crappy shields. So yea, I quickly abandoned that.

The Terran missions took me back to the Asteroid Belt, then to my first gate that took me out into the general universe. From there I followed the quests through numerous sectors and gates, eventually ending in the teladi sector for PTNI headquarters. From there I went to 'unknown sector' when I was repeatedly beaten to death by a horde of pirates and Xenon.

After a few times of that, I said fuckit, turned off that mission, and just kinda played around in PTNI headquarters. I figued out how to pick up missions, how to upgrade my ship, and accidentally caused a pirate to eject from his ship while I was killing him. This lead me to discover the wonders of capping enemy ship. Before this, I was thrilled to make 4k credits. When I capped my first pirate M3 (an Elite... yes... that's the name), I sold it for 60k. I knew then what I wanted to do.

After awhile, I was hunting down Xenon in scale plate green and capping their ships left and right, in addition to the occasional pirate and some weird transport that kept showing up. The teladi now love me since I was ridding their space of scum and I had several million credits from captured fighters. I actually captured an M3 (heavy fighter) that inexplicably still had all its weapons... that sold for 1.3mill alone.

Eventually I decided to buy myself an M3 of my very own and outfitted it with what weapons I could find. I think now have 3 PRGs (a light turret good for small, fast ship) in front, a PRG turret in back (for missile defense), two HEPT (good for slower ships), and the rest are PACs (somewhere inbetween the two). I can drain my power to nothing in a short time, but that's ok, because I kick ass. Or I did, for awhile. After pwning some shit for awhile, I decided to pick up that terran mission.

By this time, I'd figured out how to get my other ships to tag along and protect me, so I headed back in that unknown sector with my Sabre M4 and pwnt those bitches. They never stood a chance. Having completed that, I felt cocky, heading back to the quest giver to pick up the next mission... where I subsequently got my ass handed to me again. A few times.

I'd done a lot of reading by now, and realized that I really ought to do some trading. I'd mostly ignored it up until then, but a trade rank is important so you can build your own little empire. I had about 4 million credits in the bank, so I bought myself a Mercury Supertanker (or something like that). Whereas my m3 had aroudn 140 storage (I think), my new Mercury, after upgrading, has around 14,000.

So now I'm slowly trucking around the universe, hauling cahoonas meatsteaks, energy cells, and whatever else I think I can make a profit on. So far, it's not really going all that great, but that's ok. I also have my M3 and M4 flying around me to protect me from pirates. so far... the pirates barely have time to scream. I actually bought a transporter that lets me teleport from my tanker into either my m3 or m4 whenever I want, so long as they're within 5km. It makes what could be kinda boring much more exciting.

And that is currently my story. If anyone else is looking at picking up this game, let me know and I'll provide some pointers, because the learning curve is pretty freaking rough.

Im a bit further into the game, i have some 90million credits, about 20 or so factories and lots of ships. Essentially i have 5 transport ships that hold 4 M3 class fighters fully loaded whenever i need to defend a station or something. I never deploy them all at once though because that would cause a huge mess and loss of ships due to collisions, 2 or 3 small carriers max. I use one small carrier for my own ends loaded with m5 kestrel which does a speed of 624 or so and i think its the fastest purchasable craft in the game. I use the carrier for jumping to sectors with the jump drive and the kestrel is just too small for hauling energy cells.

Anyway, the game is huge and pretty but a little light on the story side. I've played most of the X games and they are pretty much the other end of the scale compared to Mass Effect. It is essentially a huge sandbox and you are left with some interesting toys to fiddle around until you get bored.

Yea, you're definitely a bunch further in than me. I wish I had a jump drive.

I read Satis' post a week ago already but I haven't had the urge to comment yet, was too busy being drunk first, then helping out a friend moving, then I got sick. Now I am sick-ish and tied to the house.

Even though a lot of the post (same for what Peltz wrote) could mean just about anything as far as the technical details and talk about the ships etc is concerned, I thought it sounded pretty cool. It reminds me a little of Freelancer, where you start out a crappy little merchant and can gradually work your way up to become a space power. Is there a final goal? I mean, something to reach, or achieve. Or is it mostly a sandbox? That doesn't have to be a bad thing, it works really well for some games (like Silent Hunter).

It's very much like Freelancer, but without the overarcing plot line. There ARE plot lines, but they're secondary to the sandbox nature of the game.

Speaking of which, I completed the Terran plot line. I had some serious difficulties at times, but ended up relying on a walkthrough to help me avoid the big bugs and problems. At one point, I got an M6 Vidor... zomg it rocks. I can take out 2 Kha'ak corvettes and a slew of fighters and win. Freaking awesome. My little M3 would get pwnt by more than a handful of fighters, and a corvette was asking for a harsh death. I also managed to defend a sector against a massive pirate incursion, to the tune of 40-some ships, including M6s, M8s and everything lesser.

For the people confused, military vessels come in many varieties, but they can all be classified using an M rating (and are, in the game). M1-M8. The order doesn't make any sense, though.

M5 - scout fighter... fast, lightweight, very little in the way of shields, hull, weapons, cargo capacity, etc. Shields around 5 megajoules.
M4 - medium fighter ... more weapons, more shield, more hull, slower. shields around 25 megajoules.
M3 - heavy fighter ... more of the same. This was my meat up until I got my Vidor. Shields around 75 megajoules. The first ship that may have turret... mine had a single rear turret I would slave to missile defense. Mine has 8 forward-facing weapons.
M6 - corvette - the first 'capital' ship. Shields around 1 gigajoule. 10 forward-facing weapons, several turrets with more weapons in those. Charge rate on energy weapons much, much faster... I can fire continuously for minutes, whereas I'd run my M3 dry in a couple seconds. Slower than M3s, but not by a huge amount.
M7 - frigate class? Even bigger, slower, more powerful.
M8 - bomber... like a hyped up M3.
M2 - destroyer/battleship. Monsters with 2-4gigajoules of shields and a ridiculous number of really powerful weapons you can't fit on smaller ships.
M1 - carriers ... hold up to 60 fighters (M3-M5).

Anyway, right now I'm cruising around, exploring, blowing crap up. I have a jump drive, so if any of my automated trade ships have problems, I can jump into their sector and handle it.

The M classification dates back to the earlier games and as new models have come around they did their best or were just too lazy to rework the class system.

ah, I suppose that makes sense.

After AFKing overnight with SETA x10 running, I had a total of around 47 Million credits, so I bought myself a Mammoth TL transport and kitted it out, then moved it into PTNI. I also set up several more traders, which are starting to make me some decent cash.

Just today, I decided to dock my Mammoth at a ship yard (that's a bit crazy... the thing's a freaking monster) and bought myself a large solar power plant. I set it up in PTNI off to the side, grabbed a freighter and manually supplied it with the crystals it needed to get started. I've got a freighter doing manual trade runs to supply it with crystals now. I don't really know how this works so well, but at the very least, I now have a factory. It's a good place for me to loot for energy since I love my jump drive so much.

I'm thinking of buying another freighter and stocking up on maybe a half dozen laser towers to scatter about. I don't know yet.

So, still playing this game. I've since increased my factory status significantly.

I've got a large ore mine (sitting on a 50 yield asteroid in an unknown sector), a silicon mine (on a 25 yield asteroid in the same sector as my factory complex), and then a factory complex of ridiculous proportions. It's currently 19 connected factories:

Advanced drone factory - for mk2 drones for my ships and freighters
flak artillery array forge - to make flaks for my bigger ships
high energy plasma thrower forge - to make weapons for my medium ships
iron shard railgun forge - for variety for my medium ships
phased repeater gun forge - for anti-fighter weapons, all ships
200MJ shield forge - for my larger ships
25MJ shield forge - for my medium ships and fighters
tempest missile factory - because it's a badass missile that most of my ships can use
tomahawk missile factory - for my commonwealth m8 bombers
factories to make components for the above:
crystal fab, bofu chemical lab, cahoona bakery, raster refinery, sun oil refinery, bio gas factory, cattle ranch, chelt space aquarium. flower farm, solar power plant

I'm thinking of adding more top tier stuff... with all those precursor factories, I can add almost anything with little difficulty.

As far as ships, my Vidar is still my primary ship. I have 3 other M6s (two Ospreys I captured and a Centaur I bought at a steal for 200k), a total of 3 M8s, a bunch of transports, and an assload of traders. I recently picked up 10 Mercury Super Freighter XLs... turned 1 into my personal freighter (I use it to take care of my factory input needs) and the rest are plugging away at sector trading until they level up to universal trader.

My complex has about 25 mill in it, the two mines around 1.5 mill, and I have 150 mill or so in the bank. I'm definitely considering picking up an M7, or maybe an M7 missile boat for boarding pods. Not entirely sure.

From a mission perspective, i'd beaten the terran plot as outlined above. I've now completed the goner plot. I went a big chunk into the final fury line, but got frustrated after spending 30 minutes scanning asteroids. I'll head back to that eventually.

BTw, I blew up my first M2. I was in my vidar doing on of the last missions for the goners. I'd done it before and got beat up by an M7 and M2, so I picked up a bunch of Wraith missiles. Since you can't make them, I had to sit in Terran space and supply the factory with components... very time consuming, but I managed to build up 26. Then when I did the mission again and that M2 started heading toward me, I lit his ass up with I think 6 of those missiles. Boom... no more M2. I'm amazed he didn't at least try to shoot them down, but they're swarm missiles, so even that's not so effective. I'm sure I could've owned him in any case. Missiles are freaking awesome.

hehe...all of those are actually just various hum drum components, from foods to oils to various other hum-drum stuff.

However, you can get drugs, too. You can set up a 'space fuel' distillery, 'space fuel' being slang for some sort of illegal Whiskey or something. You can also make Space Weed. Yea... guess what that's about? It's even possible to trade in slaves, if that's your thing.

I'm having a hard time believing you're not into drug trafficking or slave trade. Maybe the payoff isn't good enough?

I decided to be a law-abiding citizen, though space weed is actually legal in Teladi space. This happens to be where my main production complex is, so I'm tempted to add the factories needed to produce it... I know you need a Bliss Place to grow the swamp plant, then there's the actual space weed refinery or whatever it's called, and I think you need another factory as well. Still, with the cash reserves I have, it'll be no problem setting that up.

*edit*
adding a link to a video of my Mammoth transport.

I'm in my nova raider, which is an M3 heavy fighter. The ship I'm flying around is my Mammoth, which is a very expensive ship capable of taking factory kits and setting them up. It's also got a crazy amount of space for cargo, plus room in its hangar deck for a total of 5 fighters. At the end of the video I dock. I speed up time using the SETA drive, in case you wonder how everything speeds up intermittently.

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Satisx3tc_mahShip.wmv

That actually looks a lot better than I imagined. Mmmm. If you fly towards a planet, can you actually fly towards the surface and see stuff or do you just press a 'dock' button once you're in its proximity? That's a dealbreaker for me.

No, you will be incinerated if you try to approach a planet. The ships are incapable of entering atmosphere.

oh, hehe, never tried. Most of the graphics aren't bad. the little animations when you're talking to another pilot are absolutely horrific, but that's such a small thing it's pretty easy to overlook. Maybe I'll vid a battle at some point.