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* HolierThanThou: The Paranid, whose society is ''dominated'' by religion, and who invoke the trope in many of their communications with the player.
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* HolierThanThou: The Paranid, whose society is ''dominated'' by religion, and who invoke the trope in many of their communications with the player. This gets hilarious when Paranid ''pirates'' also attempt to invoke this trope upon you when in battle (see HypocriticalHumor below).
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER launch any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you, even from those firing [[PainfullySlowProjectile Painfully Slow Projectiles]]. Unless you're flying an M1 or M2-class ship, you WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER launch any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you, even from those firing [[PainfullySlowProjectile Painfully Slow Projectiles]]. This is especially true if you're carrying Firestorm or Hammerhead missiles, considering how vastly powerful and slow their warheads are. Unless you're flying an M1 or M2-class ship, you WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
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* HypocriticalHumor: The fact that there are Boron and Paranid pirates in the X-Universe makes this curiously ironic since the Boron are a generally pacifistic race and the Paranids are HolierThanThou ScaryDogmaticAliens who view piracy as sinful. How they turned to piracy can be explained that there are those who've become malcontent and rogue enough to break off from their culture and operate outside the standards of their respective race's living. Made even more hilarious when they taunt you in battle by trying to invoke the name of their Queen/Emperor before attempting to finish you off.
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* HypocriticalHumor: The fact that there are Boron and Paranid pirates in the X-Universe makes this curiously ironic since the Boron are a generally pacifistic race and the Paranids are HolierThanThou ScaryDogmaticAliens who view piracy as sinful. How they turned to piracy can be explained that there are those who've become malcontent and rogue enough to break off from their culture and operate outside the standards of their respective race's living. Made even more hilarious when they [[TheComputerShallTauntYou taunt you in battle battle]] by trying to invoke the name of their Queen/Emperor before attempting to finish you off.
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* HypocriticalHumor: The fact that there are Boron and Paranid pirates in the X-Universe makes this curiously ironic since the Boron are a generally pacifistic race and the Paranids are HolierThanThou ScaryDogmaticAliens who view piracy as sinful. How they turned to piracy can be explained that there are those who've become malcontent and rogue enough to break off from their culture and operate outside the standards of their respective race's living. Made even more hilarious when they taunt you in battle by trying to invoke the name of their Queen/Emperor before attempting to finish you off.
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER launch any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you, even from those firing PainfullySlowProjectiles. Unless you're flying an M1 or M2-class ship, you WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER launch any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you, even from those firing PainfullySlowProjectiles.[[PainfullySlowProjectile Painfully Slow Projectiles]]. Unless you're flying an M1 or M2-class ship, you WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER launch any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you. Unless you're flying an M1 or M2-class ship, you WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER launch any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you.you, even from those firing PainfullySlowProjectiles. Unless you're flying an M1 or M2-class ship, you WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER launch any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you. You WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER launch any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you. You Unless you're flying an M1 or M2-class ship, you WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
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** Amusingly, you can do this to an enemy ship's missiles too when they're ready to launch.
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** Amusingly, you can do this to an enemy ship's missiles missile too when they're ready to launch.
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** Amusingly, you can do this to an enemy ship's missiles too, as long as you be good at keeping your distance while shooting the missile.
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** Amusingly, you can do this to an enemy ship's missiles too, as long as you be good at keeping your distance while shooting the missile.too when they're ready to launch.
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER fire any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you. You WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER fire launch any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you. You WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
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* HoistByHisOwnPetard: NEVER fire any missile that has an area of effect feature in it when an enemy starts shooting at you. You WILL die in the ensuing shockwave if your missile gets shot at.
** Amusingly, you can do this to an enemy ship's missiles too, as long as you be good at keeping your distance while shooting the missile.
** Amusingly, you can do this to an enemy ship's missiles too, as long as you be good at keeping your distance while shooting the missile.
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* GuiltFreeExterminationWar: Operation Final Fury in ''Terran Conflict'' has the player assisting an Argon/Boron/Split alliance to completely wipe out the [[BeePeople Kha'ak]]. By the time ''Albion Prelude'' takes place, the Kha'ak are totally gone - the only signs of their presence are long abandoned ships drifting in space.
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* HumanityIsAdvanced: The Terrans are the only race (aside from the Ancients) who know how to build jump gates without help, and they are the only race to create sentient AI - [[AIIsACrapShoot though that didn't go particularly well]]. Terran ships in the games are some of the most powerful available, combining brutal firepower with speed and good shields, though at the cost of being totally incapable of mounting non-Terran weapons.
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** Also, how the [[AIIsACrapshoot Xenon came into existence]].
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** Also, how the [[AIIsACrapshoot Xenon came into existence]].were conceptualized]].
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** Also, how the [[AIIsACrapshoot Xenon came into existence]].
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** This can thankfully be avoided, however, by commanding your turrets to discriminate certain targets.
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* HummerDinger: The Terran Mani yacht in ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' is stated to be a ''very'' capable warship, but is used primarily as a fashion symbol by wealthy Terran citizens.
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* LevelScaling: A nontraditional example. ''X'' bases the difficulty of mission-related enemies on your Fight rank (simply put, how many kills you have), while mission payouts are modified by your Trade rank.
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* HumanoidAliens: The Teladi and Paranids.
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* HighSpeedHijack: Boarding operations normally take place while the target is not only still maneuvering, but still shooting as well.
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* GoneHorriblyWrong: The jumpdrive test in ''X: Beyond the Frontier''. As the drive charges, you can hear the scientists yelling everything up to and including "Abort the jump test!" Then WHAM! Suddenly you're on the other side of the galaxy with most of your ship's systems shorted out, and to add insult to injury, within a few minutes you're a few thousand credits in debt to the local ProudMerchantRace for making your ship able to fly again.
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* HealingShiv: In ''TC'' and ''AP'', spacesuits are equipped with repair lasers. Mechanically they work by [[ArmorPiercingAttack penetrating shields]] and doing negative damage to the hull. The AI still treats it as a weapon, however, which may make {{Hilarity Ensue|s}} if one uses it against an NPC such as a racial military vessel.
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* JokeCharacter: The OTAS Sirokos in ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude''. It's a 20+ million credit [=M7M=] with two guns and the ability to ''only'' fire Mosquito missiles and Boarding Pods.
** It's a victim of CripplingOverspecialization. It's purpose-built for boarding enemy ships and can carry ten more marines than the other [=M7Ms=]. Works fine for capturing TL-class ships, but since it has no offensive weaponry it can't really do anything else.
** It's a victim of CripplingOverspecialization. It's purpose-built for boarding enemy ships and can carry ten more marines than the other [=M7Ms=]. Works fine for capturing TL-class ships, but since it has no offensive weaponry it can't really do anything else.
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* JokeCharacter: JokeCharacter:
** The OTAS Sirokos in ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude''. It's a 20+ million credit [=M7M=] with two guns and the ability to ''only'' fire Mosquito missiles and Boarding Pods.
** *** It's a victim of CripplingOverspecialization. It's purpose-built for boarding enemy ships and can carry ten more marines than the other [=M7Ms=]. Works fine for capturing TL-class ships, but since it has no offensive weaponry it can't really do anything else.else.
** The Goner Ranger, the only ship in the G0 class. It has no weapons, no missiles, it's slow, cannot dock at capital ships, and has a mediocre cargo bay. And the only way to gain one is to attack the peaceful Goners.
** The OTAS Sirokos in ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude''. It's a 20+ million credit [=M7M=] with two guns and the ability to ''only'' fire Mosquito missiles and Boarding Pods.
** The Goner Ranger, the only ship in the G0 class. It has no weapons, no missiles, it's slow, cannot dock at capital ships, and has a mediocre cargo bay. And the only way to gain one is to attack the peaceful Goners.
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* GameplayAndStoryIntegration: At the end of ''Reunion'', the Terrans destroyed the bulk of the Kha'ak fleet. Kha'ak ships are correspondingly much less common in ''Terran Conflict''. The destruction of the Kha'ak hive nearest to the Commonwealth during the ''TC'' plot Operation Final Fury reduces their spawn rate to almost zero, and by ''Albion Prelude'' the few remaining Kha'ak have apparently died: ''AP'' has no live Kha'ak, and there are Kha'ak derelicts floating around provided you get lucky with the derelict spawning code.
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* HeroTrackingFailure: The AI and the player's ship will blissfully try to shoot down scout craft with anti-capital ship weaponry despite the turrets tracking slower than the scout ship can move.
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* GameplayAndStorySegregation:
** When ships spawn, they do so with a white flash, same as when a player-owned ship uses its jumpdrive. This means that {{NPC}}s seem to possess a point-to-point, gateless jumpdrive. Officially only the Kha'ak have these, and [[AlwaysChaoticEvil they aren't likely to share]].
** In the story, the Terrans' military technology is well in advance of the Commonwealth's, which was why the Argon deemed it necessary to develop AGI warships to fight them. This is not true in gameplay for reasons of CompetitiveBalance: the Terrans have a definite edge in [[LightningBruiser speed, maneuvering, and defenses]], but Commonwealth energy weapons are good enough to compensate.
** When ships spawn, they do so with a white flash, same as when a player-owned ship uses its jumpdrive. This means that {{NPC}}s seem to possess a point-to-point, gateless jumpdrive. Officially only the Kha'ak have these, and [[AlwaysChaoticEvil they aren't likely to share]].
** In the story, the Terrans' military technology is well in advance of the Commonwealth's, which was why the Argon deemed it necessary to develop AGI warships to fight them. This is not true in gameplay for reasons of CompetitiveBalance: the Terrans have a definite edge in [[LightningBruiser speed, maneuvering, and defenses]], but Commonwealth energy weapons are good enough to compensate.
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* HurricaneOfPuns: [[http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=326445 This thread.]]
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Batch-replace of \"Old Ones\" with \"Ancients\". Probably the same word in the original German, but the English version of the X-Encyclopedia uses \"Ancients\" so we\'ll go with that.
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** The Terrans were the first and only race (excluding the Old Ones) to make their own jumpgates [[spoiler: without help]], have the most powerful ships, the most high-tech weapons, and the largest fleet. Which is quite something when you realize that they weren't even a part of the game universe for much of its history, and just basically barged in and started pwning everyone when the Xenon chased them there.
** Humans in general were recognized by the Old Ones as being so intelligent as to pose a threat to their long-term plans. The Old Ones reacted by rearranging the gates near Sol to trap the Terrans in a closed loop of systems with no native intelligent life. [[spoiler:The modern Aldrin region is part of this loop.]] Oddly, it ended up being Earth's accidental creation of the Xenon that derailed their plans. The Old Ones created a second closed loop to contain the Xenon, inadvertently enclosing the Argon, Boron, Paranid, Split, and Teladi as well. So humanity is indirectly responsible for the very ''creation'' of the X-Universe.
** Humans in general were recognized by the Old Ones as being so intelligent as to pose a threat to their long-term plans. The Old Ones reacted by rearranging the gates near Sol to trap the Terrans in a closed loop of systems with no native intelligent life. [[spoiler:The modern Aldrin region is part of this loop.]] Oddly, it ended up being Earth's accidental creation of the Xenon that derailed their plans. The Old Ones created a second closed loop to contain the Xenon, inadvertently enclosing the Argon, Boron, Paranid, Split, and Teladi as well. So humanity is indirectly responsible for the very ''creation'' of the X-Universe.
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** The Terrans were the first and only race (excluding the Old Ones) Ancients) to make their own jumpgates [[spoiler: without help]], have the most powerful ships, the most high-tech weapons, and the largest fleet. Which is quite something when you realize that they weren't even a part of the game universe for much of its history, and just basically barged in and started pwning everyone when the Xenon chased them there.
** Humans in general were recognized by theOld Ones Ancients as being so intelligent as to pose a threat to their long-term plans. The Old Ones Ancients reacted by rearranging the gates near Sol to trap the Terrans in a closed loop of systems with no native intelligent life. [[spoiler:The modern Aldrin region is part of this loop.]] Oddly, it ended up being Earth's accidental creation of the Xenon that derailed their plans. The Old Ones Ancients created a second closed loop to contain the Xenon, inadvertently enclosing the Argon, Boron, Paranid, Split, and Teladi as well. So humanity is indirectly responsible for the very ''creation'' of the X-Universe.
** Humans in general were recognized by the
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* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace: Because of the [[AbusivePrecursors Old Ones' meddling]], which jumpgate goes where has a way of changing seemingly at random (though not during gameplay, thankfully). This occasionally causes (for instance) a Boron fringe sector to become separated from friendly territory and end up hooked to Split space.
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* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace: Because of the [[AbusivePrecursors Old Ones' Ancients' meddling]], which jumpgate goes where has a way of changing seemingly at random (though not during gameplay, thankfully). This occasionally causes (for instance) a Boron fringe sector to become separated from friendly territory and end up hooked to Split space.
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link fix; Advanced Complex Hub
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[[XUniverse/Tropes0ToF Tropes 0-F]] | '''Tropes G-L''' | [[X-Universe/TropesMToR Tropes M-R]] | [[XUniverse/TropesSToZ Tropes S-Z]] | ''VideoGame/XRebirth''
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[[XUniverse/Tropes0ToF Tropes 0-F]] | '''Tropes G-L''' | [[X-Universe/TropesMToR [[XUniverse/TropesMToR Tropes M-R]] | [[XUniverse/TropesSToZ Tropes S-Z]] | ''VideoGame/XRebirth''
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** Another very popular mod is the "X3 Rebalance Mod", which, aside from doing what it says on the tin, adds new ships, new items, new sectors, and much more. The only downside is that, due to compatability issues, you can't play it and ''Albion Prelude's'' main campaign at the same time.
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** Another very popular mod is the "X3 Rebalance Mod", which, aside from doing what it says on the tin, adds new ships, new items, new sectors, and much more. The only downside is that, due to compatability compatibility issues, you can't play it and ''Albion Prelude's'' main campaign at the same time.time.
** Advanced Complex Hub swaps out the default docking hub for factory complexes with one that has two capital ship berths and [[ClownCarBase internal docking]] for fighters.
** Advanced Complex Hub swaps out the default docking hub for factory complexes with one that has two capital ship berths and [[ClownCarBase internal docking]] for fighters.
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[[XUniverse/Tropes0ToF Tropes 0-F]] | '''Tropes G-L''' | [[X-Universe/TropesMToR Tropes M-R]] | [[XUniverse/TropesSToZ Tropes S-Z]] | ''VideoGame/XRebirth''
----
!!! The ''VideoGame/{{X}}'' series through ''Albion Prelude'' provides examples of the following tropes:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:G]]
* GameMod:
** ''And how!'' With the in-game script editor and external modding tools, players can do pretty much anything from simple tweaks and added functionality to new ships and full-blown conversions. Arguably most famous of these is X3's ''Xtended'' mod, which impressed Egosoft so much that several elements (and the modders that developed them) were integrated into ''Terran Conflict'', and Xtended is being remade for ''Terran Conflict''.
** It's worth mentioning that there are at least two mods that attempt to solve one of the game's worst problems: the '''extreme''' slowness of the ships, which is a source of all kinds of bad things. The result is completely different gameplay mechanics: waiting plays a much smaller part, fighting is ''much'' more dynamic and challenging and everything requires significantly less WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief to digest.
** Another very popular mod is the "X3 Rebalance Mod", which, aside from doing what it says on the tin, adds new ships, new items, new sectors, and much more. The only downside is that, due to compatability issues, you can't play it and ''Albion Prelude's'' main campaign at the same time.
* GatlingGood: The [[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?Njk1MTU0NTE OTAS M3 Venti]]. Don't let the fact that it sounds like a coffee fool you: it has dual wing-mounted gatling lasers. [[EverythingsBetterWithSpinning And they even rotate when you fire.]]
* GlassCannon:
** Arguably, some M5 scout ships. Most M5s do not count as they have fairly pitiful guns that restrict them to fighting at most M4 medium fighters if they hope to survive, but a few of them can mount fairly powerful medium missiles, and a [[MacrossMissileMassacre rapid-fire barrage]] of those can be troublesome even for heavy fighters. A couple of others have access to M4- or M3-grade guns, and one (the Kestrel) even has a rear turret. On the other hand, they blow up if their pilot sneezes too hard...
** The [=M7M=] missile frigates and M8 bombers introduced in ''Terran Conflict'' also fall into this category. Missile barrages from these ships can destroy virtually anything, but non-player-owned [=M7Ms=] and M8s are relatively easy to kill (at least from another warship's standpoint) because the AI by default does not use their [[MacrossMissileMassacre greatest advantage]] effectively. Also, [[PointDefenseless they are very sparse in point-defense, and in some cases have none at all]].
** The best defense is a good offense so in ''Albion Prelude'' missile frigates use... more missiles, firing swarms of countermissiles to intercept incoming missiles. While their ammo lasts.
* GlobalCurrency: ''All'' races use [[WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture Credits]], including the paranoid, isolationist Terrans who refuse to use ''any'' technology from the Commonwealth.
* GoodColorsEvilColors: The factions that are generally [[GreyAndGrayMorality treated as good and evil]] tend to follow this trope. The Argon Federation uses gunmetal gray, and the Kingdom of Boron use bright green. The Split Dynasty uses rusty red, and the Paranid Empire uses bluish purple. The neutral Teladi Space Company leaves their ships mostly unpainted, which translates to dark gray and tan. Meanwhile, the unaligned Terrans paint their ships white with black trim, pirates add NoseArt of red flames and paint the ship red, Xenon ships are black, and Kha'ak ships are purple.
* GoodRepublicEvilEmpire: The Argon Federation and the Boron Kingdom are generally considered the good guys, and the Split Dynasty and Paranid Empire are generally considered the bad guys. But there's a lot of gray involved, so this may be a subversion.
** The only thing that really seems to make either side good or evil is that the last time the two sides went to war, the Split and Paranid were the aggressors.
** Subverted by ''Albion Prelude''. The Argon open the war with the 30th-century equivalent of [[WarOnTerror 9/11]], and the Paranid join up with the Terrans.
* GratuitousJapanese: The Argon and Terrans, as Japanese apparently became the primary language of Earth before the series' start according to fluff. The [[spoiler: Aldrin colony]] representatives you meet in the plot sometimes speak phrases in Japanese.
* GreatOffscreenWar: The backstory includes the [[RobotWar Terraformer War]] in the 2140s AD (some of which is shown in the ''Terran Conflict'' opening cinematic), during which [[AIIsACrapshoot insane terraforming robots]] wiped out all of Earth's extrasolar colonies and nearly destroyed Earth, too. A Terran warfleet managed to lure them through a jumpgate, which was then destroyed behind them; this fleet became the Argon race. About 200 years later, we had the [[http://x3wiki.com/index.php/Xenon_Conflict First Xenon Conflict]], where the terraformers reappeared, followed by the [[http://x3wiki.com/index.php/Boron_Campaign Boron Campaign]], a more conventional interstellar war between the various superpowers.
* GreyAndGrayMorality: ''Albion Prelude'''s war. The [[DesignatedVillain Terrans]] are paranoid jerkasses that give a big middle finger to the other races, while the [[DesignatedHero Argon]] use weapons of mass destruction and effectively commit genocide every time they destroy a Terran station.
* GuideDangIt:
** The manual and "flight school" tutorials are nearly useless for anything but the most basic gameplay.
** There's about two dozen derelict ships floating around in ''Terran Conflict''. You ''might'' find them by pure luck (one or two are within Triplex Scanner range of a jumpgate), but finding them all pretty much requires a web search.
** [[spoiler:The Hub plot in ''Terran Conflict''. Nobody InUniverse warns you that you'll need to prepare your trade empire ahead of time in order to finish the Fetch Plot in a reasonable amount of time.]]
[[/folder]]
[[folder:H]]
* HemisphereBias: Averted. The view of Earth from the Torus is centered on Ecuador rather than central Europe.
* HigherTechSpecies: The Terrans (Sol System humans) have far superior technology compared to the other races. The Paranid come in as a close second.
* HighSpeedMissileDodge: Happens regularly, since fighters are often faster and more maneuverable than the missiles chasing them.
** In fact, one of the most effective dogfight tactics is to use missiles as a ''distraction'': you shoot a missile at the target and force him to evade or shoot it down, then make the kill with guns.
* HitScan: Beam weapons, originally a Kha'ak exclusive but since used by other races as well, are supposed to be this. It's only after you look at the technical data that it turns out to be a subversion: the game engine treats beam weapons as ''very'' fast projectile ones. This is normally transparent to the player because the projectiles are invisible, but occasionally -- typically while fighting very fast ships -- it can happen that the beam graphic crosses your target but the projectile isn't there yet, resulting in an irritatingly damage-free enemy.
* HordeOfAlienLocusts: Xenon Terraformers and the Kha'ak hive.
* HolierThanThou: The Paranid, whose society is ''dominated'' by religion, and who invoke the trope in many of their communications with the player.
* HubLevel: The aptly-named Gate Hub in ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude''. Unlocked by doing a painfully long FetchQuest in ''Terran Conflict'' (''Albion Prelude'' has a short FetchQuest), the Hub lets you modify the gate network - it has 3 pairs of gates which you can link to systems. This allows you to link opposite edges of the universe together, making it so that you need just one jump to reach a race's homeworld to their furthest colony.
* HumansAdvanceSwiftly: The Terrans have by far the most advanced technology, the capacity to build jump gates on their own (something only the Precursors could do), yet they've been doing the whole space-flight thing for less time than some of the other races.
* HumansAreAverage: The Argon ship design philosophy can be reasonably described as "jack of all trades, master of none". If you buy an Argon ship, you get a solid, well-rounded performer. The other Commonwealth races tend to focus on one leg of the speed-defense-offense design triangle.
* HumansAreBastards: The Terrans. They're radically isolationist, dislike or outright hate almost all the other races (including their lost colony, the Argon Federation), and they will invade other race's sectors without a worry as they can simply curb stomp the defending navy's ships using their superior technology. The [[DesignatedHero Argon Federation]] is shown to be even ''worse'' than the Terrans in ''Albion Prelude'''s war. An Argon suicide bomber blows up the Torus Aeternal, killing millions instantly, then [[ColonyDrop millions more as the debris rains down on Earth]]. The Terrans retaliate, then the Argon deploy reverse engineered Von Neumann ships (Xenon) against the Solar System. Every Terran station houses ''at least'' tens of thousands of people, so the Argon are committing atrocities with ''every station'' they blow up.
* HumansAreSpecial:
** The Terrans were the first and only race (excluding the Old Ones) to make their own jumpgates [[spoiler: without help]], have the most powerful ships, the most high-tech weapons, and the largest fleet. Which is quite something when you realize that they weren't even a part of the game universe for much of its history, and just basically barged in and started pwning everyone when the Xenon chased them there.
** Humans in general were recognized by the Old Ones as being so intelligent as to pose a threat to their long-term plans. The Old Ones reacted by rearranging the gates near Sol to trap the Terrans in a closed loop of systems with no native intelligent life. [[spoiler:The modern Aldrin region is part of this loop.]] Oddly, it ended up being Earth's accidental creation of the Xenon that derailed their plans. The Old Ones created a second closed loop to contain the Xenon, inadvertently enclosing the Argon, Boron, Paranid, Split, and Teladi as well. So humanity is indirectly responsible for the very ''creation'' of the X-Universe.
* HumansAreWarriors: The Argon are better at it than the ''Split'', the actual {{proud warrior race guy}}s of the setting. Possibly this is precisely ''because'' they don't view warfare as a quest for glory.
* HumansAreWhite: There's exactly two non-Caucasian Argon NPC portraits in ''X3'', both of which are AmbiguouslyBrown.
* HumansByAnyOtherName: The Argon, being a LostColony of the Terrans.
* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace: Because of the [[AbusivePrecursors Old Ones' meddling]], which jumpgate goes where has a way of changing seemingly at random (though not during gameplay, thankfully). This occasionally causes (for instance) a Boron fringe sector to become separated from friendly territory and end up hooked to Split space.
* HyperspeedAmbush: Late-game players often fortify jumpgates leading to enemy territory (typically Xenon) so they can colonize the sector in relative peace. There's not much that can get through a trio of Osaka destroyers acting in tandem. If the destroyers are accompanied by a gaggle of cheap fighters or lasertowers (as ArtificialStupidity-abusing decoys), the sector is impenetrable.
* HyperspeedEscape:
** Played straight, at least for the player. The jumpdrive is very useful for this. Also potentially subverted: there is a ten-second delay while the jumpdrive charges, not including the time it takes you to pick a destination. That's ten-plus seconds for the enemy to kill you anyway. And then there's the potential for TeleFrag as you exit a gate at the end of the jump.
** The Unfocused Jumpdrive plays it straight ''and'' subverts it simultaneously. On the one hand, the UFJD is faster to bug out ([[BlindJump no need to pick a destination]]). On the other hand, when you "return to the known universe", you'll be right back in the same position you left from, and any enemies will still be in the sector. Though it does give you an opportunity to recharge your shields.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:I]]
* InferredHolocaust: After the events of ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3: Albion Prelude]]''. The {{Precursors}} shut down the entire PortalNetwork to contain the [[AIIsACrapshoot incredibly aggressive Xenon terraformer AI]]. Doing so on a small scale in the past has actually been a good solution to bad problems, but this means not only will the [[FiveRaces younger species]] be incapable of traveling or communicating with each other or their own colony planets, they won't even know where the other sectors ''actually are'' to ''try'' and contact each other for years. Many sectors have nothing but manned manufacturing plants, most of which aren't self-sustaining, and even many planetary sectors rely heavily on trade.
** The shutdown is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you have the above. On the other hand, it also had the byproduct of stopping the Argon/Terran war in its tracks, which at this rate was going to end in one of the two sides being completely wiped out. Speaking of which, the faction that comes off best would be the Terrans. A, over two thirds of their sectors are in the Solar System, and they've got non-jumpgate technology for intrasystem travel. B, they ''do'' know where their other main sector is in space, and can reach it using jumpdrives. As for the other factions, [[{{Planetville}} planets are not villages]]. Aldrin survived 800 years with no contact with the outside world whatsoever, and it's just an airless rock. The [[OneProductPlanet One Product Sectors]] are screwed, but the ones with inhabited planets should be all right.
* InfiniteStockForSale:
** Averted. All stations have a limit to how much of a given ware they can stock. For instance, a station may be able to stock tens of thousands of units of energy cells, but only sixteen particle accelerator cannons.
** Averted to an {{egregious}} extent with Terran weapons in ''Terran Conflict'': stations can only stock ''two'' of each gun. This is thankfully fixed in ''Albion Prelude''.
* InfiniteSupplies: All ships have infinite fuel for their engines and weapons, and infinite food. The only things that run out are Energy Cells (from using the Jump Drive) and ammunition for bullet based weapons. The description for the Teladi Geochen in ''Albion Prelude'' however, mentions that it has a spacious cargo bay for food supplies on long voyages.
* InfinityPlusOneSword: The Springblossom corvette. It requires the completion of the Terran Conflict main plot, good Terran rank, ~20million credits for the corvette (more expensive than some of the station-transporting [=TL=] ships), and then hunting down the factories that produce the weapons for the ship (in a sector some 800 kilometers wide, with a huge asteroid blocking traffic through the center), then (usually) supplying the factories with the goods necessary to produce it because the sector has a pitiful amount of traders for its size. Once you've done all that, you've got what is effectively the best frigate, or best ship in the entire game. Crazy top speed (it outruns some scout ships!), crazy firepower, and a huge cargo bay equivalent to some transporter ships. The only time you'll ever need to use anything else is for some luxury taxi missions -- it has enough cargo space to carry enough ammo to kill destroyer class ships if you can wedge it into their blind spot.
* InformedEquipment: When you fit a gun to a slot on a ship, a cannon appears in a corresponding spot on the ship's model. It looks exactly the same no matter what gun you put there. Other equipment doesn't even do that much.
* InherentlyFunnyWords: ''{{X-Play}}'' had oh so much fun with "Kha'ak".
* InsignificantLittleBluePlanet: The only people who really care about Earth are the Terrans. It's not much use for player characters either, since A) it's so deep in Sol that it takes forever to get there from a jumpgate, and B) the Torus defenses destroy anything you try to build there. Though the Torus is useful for putting jumpdrives on ships bought from the shipyard orbiting the Moon.
* InSpaceEveryoneCanSeeYourFace: Averted. Spacesuits have opaque, reflective visors.
* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons: The ''XTM'' mod for ''Reunion'' and the ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod for ''Terran Conflict'' adds the Shivan Dragon, which is a dragon that breathes in space, shoots lasers from its mouth, and attacks everything in sight.
* InstantDeathRadius: Phased Shockwave Generators on Paranid capital ships. Small range (about 1 kilometer), but they effectively instantly kill any fighter that gets inside the 1 kilometer bubble of doom.
* IntrepidMerchant / ProudMerchantRace: The Teladi, whose society is borderline-obsessively mercantile in nature. Also includes the player with dangerous travels for a handful of credits on the earlier stages and then vast trading empires to build on the endgame.
* InvisibleWall: Sectors are spherical, and there is an invisible barrier at the edge (which is ~4,000 kilometers out). Most evident in the [[spoiler:Hub]] sector, where you can slip behind the gates, see out of the [[spoiler:Hub]], and butt up against an Invisible Waist High Fence.
* ISOStandardHumanSpaceship: Argon, Teladi, and Terran ships.
* ItsUpToYou: The player is effectively the only thing preventing the Terran economy and the tiny Pirate and Yaki economies from collapsing.
* IWantMyJetpack: [[http://www.argonopedia.org/wiki/Timeline According to the backstory]], by 2011 quantum computers dominate the computing market, and nanotechnology is nearing practical use. Check back in 2022 to see whether [[JapanTakesOverTheWorld Japanese becomes the favored language of science]], and whether or not a grad student in Tokyo blundered into the principles behind building jumpgates.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:J]]
* JackOfAllStats:
** Interceptors amongst strike craft, as well as Argon ship designs as a whole. The Terran ships are the upscale version of the JackOfAllStats; they're very fast, very well shielded, have high cargo capacity, and very powerful. The only downside to Terran ships are their limited weapon selection, especially frustrating on fighters and frigates, and the scarcity of their weapons.
** "Hauler" ship variants straddle the line between this and MightyGlacier. They trade off some gun power for a larger cargo bay and sometimes tougher shields. Particularly with the Falcon Hauler, said larger cargo bay often allows players to rig them as missile boats.
* JapanTakesOverTheWorld: Its language did, at least.
* JokeCharacter: The OTAS Sirokos in ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude''. It's a 20+ million credit [=M7M=] with two guns and the ability to ''only'' fire Mosquito missiles and Boarding Pods.
** It's a victim of CripplingOverspecialization. It's purpose-built for boarding enemy ships and can carry ten more marines than the other [=M7Ms=]. Works fine for capturing TL-class ships, but since it has no offensive weaponry it can't really do anything else.
* JustifiedTutorial:
** ''X: Beyond the Frontier'' integrates the tutorial into Kyle Brennan's assignment to put the Xperimental Shuttle through its paces. Then the jumpdrive goes haywire and starts the plot.
** ''Terran Conflict'' averts it with the flight school tutorial, but plays it straight with the initial Terran plot, which is effectively one long tutorial.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:K]]
* KilledOffForReal:
** If you play Dead-Is-Dead mode, the ''player'' gets KilledOffForReal if he dies. (The game deletes your save.)
** Jesan Nadina, an Argon mercenary in ''Terran Conflict'' who recruits the PlayerCharacter for Operation Final Fury. He is then KIA offstage two missions into said plot.
* KillItWithFire:
** The Plasma Burst Generator, a rare pirate-only weapon that can be fit on nearly every M3 and M6 in the game. Does AOE Damage, meaning that it will hit every area of space in a cone in front of it -- and almost always, the target ship will be big enough to count as being in several "spaces" at once, meaning they're going to take [[GameBreaker obscene]] amounts of damage -- especially if they're one of the bigger (carrier, battleship) size ships. The only weapon to get a unique achievement -- "Turn up the Heat."
** The Pirates also have the rare Incendiary Bomb Launcher, a frigate / capital ship weapon. It functions like the other capital ship weapons, except the projectiles are on fire (in space).
* KillSat:
** Lasertowers. In ''Terran Conflict'' they're next to useless against anything bigger than fighters, especially in Out-Of-Sector combat, but they got a massive buff in ''Albion Prelude'' making them very effective defenses against larger ships.
** Orbital Defense Platforms, which are stationary "ships" armed with a ton of capital-ship weapons and a huge payload of missiles to spam at anything outside gun range.
** The Torus Aeternal in ''Terran Conflict'' is something of an inversion ''a la'' ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'s'' Super MAC orbitals. It guards Earth from all attackers with defensive weapons that can one-shot an M2.
* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter:
** Sort of. Though the vast majority of weapons in the X-Universe are either energy- or explosive-based, the few kinetic weapons in the games usually have a feature that offsets having to stock ammunition. The strictly fighter-scale Mass Driver goes through shields, for instance.
** Their chief advantage is that they don't drain the ship's energy reserves when fired. This grants ammo-using ships greater staying power in combat ... at least until their ammo runs out.
** The Gauss cannon is ''very'' popular for player-piloted Teladi M7 Shrikes because it can be mounted to the flank turrets, enabling it to duplicate the Panther's feat of taking on multiple heavy capitals. In ''Albion Prelude'', Gauss Cannons got a major buff in that all ships have higher amounts of hull hitpoints -- the Gauss Cannon has the highest damage per second against hull, whereas the other capital ship weapons have most of their damage devoted to killing shields -- useful in previous games, not so much in ''Prelude''.
* TheKingdom: [[AllThereInTheManual According to the X3TC manual]], the Boron Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy akin to Great Britain in RealLife (i.e. Queen Atreus is a figurehead, with the real power in the hands of elected officials). Otherwise it fits the trope pretty much perfectly: it is generally considered good-aligned, controls the fewest sectors (among the Commonwealth races, anyway), and is constantly under threat from [[TheEmpire the Split]]. They're also the only people to develop ion weapons.
** Oh, and [[EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses it has a princess, too]].
* KnowWhenToFoldEm:
** Mostly averted. [[SuicidalOverconfidence Usually the AI will continue fighting even if the battle is hopeless.]] But every once in a while, you'll encounter a foe that runs away from overwhelming force, such as the last M5 survivor of a pirate fighter squadron fleeing at top speed from an oncoming player-piloted frigate.
** Also averted in the case of the "Surrender" option in dialogue with other ships (as in telling the other guy to surrender). It appears to do exactly nothing.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:L]]
* LadyNotAppearingInThisGame: [[http://extreme.pcgameshardware.de/attachments/397450d1301531304-spieler-frauen-die-beliebtesten-frauen-charaktere-computerspielen-x3saya.jpg This image of Saya Kho]] is on the back of the ''X3: Gold Edition'' box. She appears from the neck up in ''Reunion'' and not at all in ''Terran Conflict''.
* LampshadeHanging: ''Albion Prelude'' lampshades the ''Terran Conflict's'' HUB plot and its insane requirements -- the scientists you transport to the HUB note that Mahi Ma filled the cargo hold with thousands upon thousands of microchips -- from the [[spoiler: 75000 microchip requirement]] in ''TC'''s plot. Afterwards, several crates of microchips are left floating around the HUB.
* LaserSight: Some ship mounted weapons have tiny laser sights mounted on them - however, unlike most videogame laser sights, they do ''not'' project a laser onto the target, and they fade out within a meter of the gun.
* LightningBruiser:
** Terran ships, [=OTAS=] ships, and certain Split ships.
*** [=AGI=] Task Force ships, which are even more powerful than standard Terran ships.
** "Vanguard" ship variants. They offer higher speed, weapon generators, and sometimes higher shields than "standard" ships, at the cost of some cargo space and being more expensive.
* LightningGun: The Ion Disruptor.
* LimitedSpecialCollectorsUltimateEdition: The ''X-Superbox''. It contains very high-quality versions of the game's soundtrack, 3 fan-made soundtracks, the [[AllThereInTheManual X-Encyclopedia]], and every ''X-Universe'' game made - when ''Albion Prelude'' came out, owners of the Superbox got the normally $9.99 expansion pack for free.
* LivingShip: Boron ships look the part with their wrinkled hulls and ribs which resemble gills, but it's never stated one way or another whether they're grown, built, or some combination of the above.
** They're grown around an artificial skeleton. (Flavor text for Royal Boron Shipyards.)
* LizardFolk: The Teladi.
* LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading: Sectors with loads of player assets (Large factory complexes, and fleets) tend to cause loading times to be 2 to 5 times longer than a regular sector (which is generally around 5 seconds to a minute, depending on your PC).
* [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters Loads And Loads Of Ships]]: There's well over one hundred ships, and that's before you get into the individual variants for each ship.
* LostColony:
** The entire Argon race was created when a Terran fleet sealed itself in the X-universe gate system to protect Earth from the Xenon. The fleet's crews settled on Argon Prime, (named after their leader, Nathan R. Gunne) and slowly phased out all references to Earth, causing Earth's existance to become a fairy tale.
** The [[spoiler: Aldrin colony is one of Earth's original colonies, before the Xenon went crazy. It's separate from the X-universe gate system. The Terrans believed it was destroyed when the Xenon started attacking everything, though Aldrin is reunited with the Terrans at the end of the Terran plot in ''X3: Terran Conflict''.]]
* LuckBasedMission:
** "Return Stolen Ship" involves an NPC asking the player to capture a ship stolen by a third party. Sheer probability dictates that the ship in question will be one that must be captured by making the pilot bail out (as opposed to one that can be boarded and captured) ... which is a completely random (and fairly rare) event.
** Also in this category are corporate missions that require you to make a delivery of missiles. In many cases, at least one will be a missile that does not appear in the game's market, and is only available as random drops from destroyed enemies.
[[/folder]]
----
----
!!! The ''VideoGame/{{X}}'' series through ''Albion Prelude'' provides examples of the following tropes:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:G]]
* GameMod:
** ''And how!'' With the in-game script editor and external modding tools, players can do pretty much anything from simple tweaks and added functionality to new ships and full-blown conversions. Arguably most famous of these is X3's ''Xtended'' mod, which impressed Egosoft so much that several elements (and the modders that developed them) were integrated into ''Terran Conflict'', and Xtended is being remade for ''Terran Conflict''.
** It's worth mentioning that there are at least two mods that attempt to solve one of the game's worst problems: the '''extreme''' slowness of the ships, which is a source of all kinds of bad things. The result is completely different gameplay mechanics: waiting plays a much smaller part, fighting is ''much'' more dynamic and challenging and everything requires significantly less WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief to digest.
** Another very popular mod is the "X3 Rebalance Mod", which, aside from doing what it says on the tin, adds new ships, new items, new sectors, and much more. The only downside is that, due to compatability issues, you can't play it and ''Albion Prelude's'' main campaign at the same time.
* GatlingGood: The [[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?Njk1MTU0NTE OTAS M3 Venti]]. Don't let the fact that it sounds like a coffee fool you: it has dual wing-mounted gatling lasers. [[EverythingsBetterWithSpinning And they even rotate when you fire.]]
* GlassCannon:
** Arguably, some M5 scout ships. Most M5s do not count as they have fairly pitiful guns that restrict them to fighting at most M4 medium fighters if they hope to survive, but a few of them can mount fairly powerful medium missiles, and a [[MacrossMissileMassacre rapid-fire barrage]] of those can be troublesome even for heavy fighters. A couple of others have access to M4- or M3-grade guns, and one (the Kestrel) even has a rear turret. On the other hand, they blow up if their pilot sneezes too hard...
** The [=M7M=] missile frigates and M8 bombers introduced in ''Terran Conflict'' also fall into this category. Missile barrages from these ships can destroy virtually anything, but non-player-owned [=M7Ms=] and M8s are relatively easy to kill (at least from another warship's standpoint) because the AI by default does not use their [[MacrossMissileMassacre greatest advantage]] effectively. Also, [[PointDefenseless they are very sparse in point-defense, and in some cases have none at all]].
** The best defense is a good offense so in ''Albion Prelude'' missile frigates use... more missiles, firing swarms of countermissiles to intercept incoming missiles. While their ammo lasts.
* GlobalCurrency: ''All'' races use [[WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture Credits]], including the paranoid, isolationist Terrans who refuse to use ''any'' technology from the Commonwealth.
* GoodColorsEvilColors: The factions that are generally [[GreyAndGrayMorality treated as good and evil]] tend to follow this trope. The Argon Federation uses gunmetal gray, and the Kingdom of Boron use bright green. The Split Dynasty uses rusty red, and the Paranid Empire uses bluish purple. The neutral Teladi Space Company leaves their ships mostly unpainted, which translates to dark gray and tan. Meanwhile, the unaligned Terrans paint their ships white with black trim, pirates add NoseArt of red flames and paint the ship red, Xenon ships are black, and Kha'ak ships are purple.
* GoodRepublicEvilEmpire: The Argon Federation and the Boron Kingdom are generally considered the good guys, and the Split Dynasty and Paranid Empire are generally considered the bad guys. But there's a lot of gray involved, so this may be a subversion.
** The only thing that really seems to make either side good or evil is that the last time the two sides went to war, the Split and Paranid were the aggressors.
** Subverted by ''Albion Prelude''. The Argon open the war with the 30th-century equivalent of [[WarOnTerror 9/11]], and the Paranid join up with the Terrans.
* GratuitousJapanese: The Argon and Terrans, as Japanese apparently became the primary language of Earth before the series' start according to fluff. The [[spoiler: Aldrin colony]] representatives you meet in the plot sometimes speak phrases in Japanese.
* GreatOffscreenWar: The backstory includes the [[RobotWar Terraformer War]] in the 2140s AD (some of which is shown in the ''Terran Conflict'' opening cinematic), during which [[AIIsACrapshoot insane terraforming robots]] wiped out all of Earth's extrasolar colonies and nearly destroyed Earth, too. A Terran warfleet managed to lure them through a jumpgate, which was then destroyed behind them; this fleet became the Argon race. About 200 years later, we had the [[http://x3wiki.com/index.php/Xenon_Conflict First Xenon Conflict]], where the terraformers reappeared, followed by the [[http://x3wiki.com/index.php/Boron_Campaign Boron Campaign]], a more conventional interstellar war between the various superpowers.
* GreyAndGrayMorality: ''Albion Prelude'''s war. The [[DesignatedVillain Terrans]] are paranoid jerkasses that give a big middle finger to the other races, while the [[DesignatedHero Argon]] use weapons of mass destruction and effectively commit genocide every time they destroy a Terran station.
* GuideDangIt:
** The manual and "flight school" tutorials are nearly useless for anything but the most basic gameplay.
** There's about two dozen derelict ships floating around in ''Terran Conflict''. You ''might'' find them by pure luck (one or two are within Triplex Scanner range of a jumpgate), but finding them all pretty much requires a web search.
** [[spoiler:The Hub plot in ''Terran Conflict''. Nobody InUniverse warns you that you'll need to prepare your trade empire ahead of time in order to finish the Fetch Plot in a reasonable amount of time.]]
[[/folder]]
[[folder:H]]
* HemisphereBias: Averted. The view of Earth from the Torus is centered on Ecuador rather than central Europe.
* HigherTechSpecies: The Terrans (Sol System humans) have far superior technology compared to the other races. The Paranid come in as a close second.
* HighSpeedMissileDodge: Happens regularly, since fighters are often faster and more maneuverable than the missiles chasing them.
** In fact, one of the most effective dogfight tactics is to use missiles as a ''distraction'': you shoot a missile at the target and force him to evade or shoot it down, then make the kill with guns.
* HitScan: Beam weapons, originally a Kha'ak exclusive but since used by other races as well, are supposed to be this. It's only after you look at the technical data that it turns out to be a subversion: the game engine treats beam weapons as ''very'' fast projectile ones. This is normally transparent to the player because the projectiles are invisible, but occasionally -- typically while fighting very fast ships -- it can happen that the beam graphic crosses your target but the projectile isn't there yet, resulting in an irritatingly damage-free enemy.
* HordeOfAlienLocusts: Xenon Terraformers and the Kha'ak hive.
* HolierThanThou: The Paranid, whose society is ''dominated'' by religion, and who invoke the trope in many of their communications with the player.
* HubLevel: The aptly-named Gate Hub in ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude''. Unlocked by doing a painfully long FetchQuest in ''Terran Conflict'' (''Albion Prelude'' has a short FetchQuest), the Hub lets you modify the gate network - it has 3 pairs of gates which you can link to systems. This allows you to link opposite edges of the universe together, making it so that you need just one jump to reach a race's homeworld to their furthest colony.
* HumansAdvanceSwiftly: The Terrans have by far the most advanced technology, the capacity to build jump gates on their own (something only the Precursors could do), yet they've been doing the whole space-flight thing for less time than some of the other races.
* HumansAreAverage: The Argon ship design philosophy can be reasonably described as "jack of all trades, master of none". If you buy an Argon ship, you get a solid, well-rounded performer. The other Commonwealth races tend to focus on one leg of the speed-defense-offense design triangle.
* HumansAreBastards: The Terrans. They're radically isolationist, dislike or outright hate almost all the other races (including their lost colony, the Argon Federation), and they will invade other race's sectors without a worry as they can simply curb stomp the defending navy's ships using their superior technology. The [[DesignatedHero Argon Federation]] is shown to be even ''worse'' than the Terrans in ''Albion Prelude'''s war. An Argon suicide bomber blows up the Torus Aeternal, killing millions instantly, then [[ColonyDrop millions more as the debris rains down on Earth]]. The Terrans retaliate, then the Argon deploy reverse engineered Von Neumann ships (Xenon) against the Solar System. Every Terran station houses ''at least'' tens of thousands of people, so the Argon are committing atrocities with ''every station'' they blow up.
* HumansAreSpecial:
** The Terrans were the first and only race (excluding the Old Ones) to make their own jumpgates [[spoiler: without help]], have the most powerful ships, the most high-tech weapons, and the largest fleet. Which is quite something when you realize that they weren't even a part of the game universe for much of its history, and just basically barged in and started pwning everyone when the Xenon chased them there.
** Humans in general were recognized by the Old Ones as being so intelligent as to pose a threat to their long-term plans. The Old Ones reacted by rearranging the gates near Sol to trap the Terrans in a closed loop of systems with no native intelligent life. [[spoiler:The modern Aldrin region is part of this loop.]] Oddly, it ended up being Earth's accidental creation of the Xenon that derailed their plans. The Old Ones created a second closed loop to contain the Xenon, inadvertently enclosing the Argon, Boron, Paranid, Split, and Teladi as well. So humanity is indirectly responsible for the very ''creation'' of the X-Universe.
* HumansAreWarriors: The Argon are better at it than the ''Split'', the actual {{proud warrior race guy}}s of the setting. Possibly this is precisely ''because'' they don't view warfare as a quest for glory.
* HumansAreWhite: There's exactly two non-Caucasian Argon NPC portraits in ''X3'', both of which are AmbiguouslyBrown.
* HumansByAnyOtherName: The Argon, being a LostColony of the Terrans.
* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace: Because of the [[AbusivePrecursors Old Ones' meddling]], which jumpgate goes where has a way of changing seemingly at random (though not during gameplay, thankfully). This occasionally causes (for instance) a Boron fringe sector to become separated from friendly territory and end up hooked to Split space.
* HyperspeedAmbush: Late-game players often fortify jumpgates leading to enemy territory (typically Xenon) so they can colonize the sector in relative peace. There's not much that can get through a trio of Osaka destroyers acting in tandem. If the destroyers are accompanied by a gaggle of cheap fighters or lasertowers (as ArtificialStupidity-abusing decoys), the sector is impenetrable.
* HyperspeedEscape:
** Played straight, at least for the player. The jumpdrive is very useful for this. Also potentially subverted: there is a ten-second delay while the jumpdrive charges, not including the time it takes you to pick a destination. That's ten-plus seconds for the enemy to kill you anyway. And then there's the potential for TeleFrag as you exit a gate at the end of the jump.
** The Unfocused Jumpdrive plays it straight ''and'' subverts it simultaneously. On the one hand, the UFJD is faster to bug out ([[BlindJump no need to pick a destination]]). On the other hand, when you "return to the known universe", you'll be right back in the same position you left from, and any enemies will still be in the sector. Though it does give you an opportunity to recharge your shields.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:I]]
* InferredHolocaust: After the events of ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3: Albion Prelude]]''. The {{Precursors}} shut down the entire PortalNetwork to contain the [[AIIsACrapshoot incredibly aggressive Xenon terraformer AI]]. Doing so on a small scale in the past has actually been a good solution to bad problems, but this means not only will the [[FiveRaces younger species]] be incapable of traveling or communicating with each other or their own colony planets, they won't even know where the other sectors ''actually are'' to ''try'' and contact each other for years. Many sectors have nothing but manned manufacturing plants, most of which aren't self-sustaining, and even many planetary sectors rely heavily on trade.
** The shutdown is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you have the above. On the other hand, it also had the byproduct of stopping the Argon/Terran war in its tracks, which at this rate was going to end in one of the two sides being completely wiped out. Speaking of which, the faction that comes off best would be the Terrans. A, over two thirds of their sectors are in the Solar System, and they've got non-jumpgate technology for intrasystem travel. B, they ''do'' know where their other main sector is in space, and can reach it using jumpdrives. As for the other factions, [[{{Planetville}} planets are not villages]]. Aldrin survived 800 years with no contact with the outside world whatsoever, and it's just an airless rock. The [[OneProductPlanet One Product Sectors]] are screwed, but the ones with inhabited planets should be all right.
* InfiniteStockForSale:
** Averted. All stations have a limit to how much of a given ware they can stock. For instance, a station may be able to stock tens of thousands of units of energy cells, but only sixteen particle accelerator cannons.
** Averted to an {{egregious}} extent with Terran weapons in ''Terran Conflict'': stations can only stock ''two'' of each gun. This is thankfully fixed in ''Albion Prelude''.
* InfiniteSupplies: All ships have infinite fuel for their engines and weapons, and infinite food. The only things that run out are Energy Cells (from using the Jump Drive) and ammunition for bullet based weapons. The description for the Teladi Geochen in ''Albion Prelude'' however, mentions that it has a spacious cargo bay for food supplies on long voyages.
* InfinityPlusOneSword: The Springblossom corvette. It requires the completion of the Terran Conflict main plot, good Terran rank, ~20million credits for the corvette (more expensive than some of the station-transporting [=TL=] ships), and then hunting down the factories that produce the weapons for the ship (in a sector some 800 kilometers wide, with a huge asteroid blocking traffic through the center), then (usually) supplying the factories with the goods necessary to produce it because the sector has a pitiful amount of traders for its size. Once you've done all that, you've got what is effectively the best frigate, or best ship in the entire game. Crazy top speed (it outruns some scout ships!), crazy firepower, and a huge cargo bay equivalent to some transporter ships. The only time you'll ever need to use anything else is for some luxury taxi missions -- it has enough cargo space to carry enough ammo to kill destroyer class ships if you can wedge it into their blind spot.
* InformedEquipment: When you fit a gun to a slot on a ship, a cannon appears in a corresponding spot on the ship's model. It looks exactly the same no matter what gun you put there. Other equipment doesn't even do that much.
* InherentlyFunnyWords: ''{{X-Play}}'' had oh so much fun with "Kha'ak".
* InsignificantLittleBluePlanet: The only people who really care about Earth are the Terrans. It's not much use for player characters either, since A) it's so deep in Sol that it takes forever to get there from a jumpgate, and B) the Torus defenses destroy anything you try to build there. Though the Torus is useful for putting jumpdrives on ships bought from the shipyard orbiting the Moon.
* InSpaceEveryoneCanSeeYourFace: Averted. Spacesuits have opaque, reflective visors.
* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons: The ''XTM'' mod for ''Reunion'' and the ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod for ''Terran Conflict'' adds the Shivan Dragon, which is a dragon that breathes in space, shoots lasers from its mouth, and attacks everything in sight.
* InstantDeathRadius: Phased Shockwave Generators on Paranid capital ships. Small range (about 1 kilometer), but they effectively instantly kill any fighter that gets inside the 1 kilometer bubble of doom.
* IntrepidMerchant / ProudMerchantRace: The Teladi, whose society is borderline-obsessively mercantile in nature. Also includes the player with dangerous travels for a handful of credits on the earlier stages and then vast trading empires to build on the endgame.
* InvisibleWall: Sectors are spherical, and there is an invisible barrier at the edge (which is ~4,000 kilometers out). Most evident in the [[spoiler:Hub]] sector, where you can slip behind the gates, see out of the [[spoiler:Hub]], and butt up against an Invisible Waist High Fence.
* ISOStandardHumanSpaceship: Argon, Teladi, and Terran ships.
* ItsUpToYou: The player is effectively the only thing preventing the Terran economy and the tiny Pirate and Yaki economies from collapsing.
* IWantMyJetpack: [[http://www.argonopedia.org/wiki/Timeline According to the backstory]], by 2011 quantum computers dominate the computing market, and nanotechnology is nearing practical use. Check back in 2022 to see whether [[JapanTakesOverTheWorld Japanese becomes the favored language of science]], and whether or not a grad student in Tokyo blundered into the principles behind building jumpgates.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:J]]
* JackOfAllStats:
** Interceptors amongst strike craft, as well as Argon ship designs as a whole. The Terran ships are the upscale version of the JackOfAllStats; they're very fast, very well shielded, have high cargo capacity, and very powerful. The only downside to Terran ships are their limited weapon selection, especially frustrating on fighters and frigates, and the scarcity of their weapons.
** "Hauler" ship variants straddle the line between this and MightyGlacier. They trade off some gun power for a larger cargo bay and sometimes tougher shields. Particularly with the Falcon Hauler, said larger cargo bay often allows players to rig them as missile boats.
* JapanTakesOverTheWorld: Its language did, at least.
* JokeCharacter: The OTAS Sirokos in ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude''. It's a 20+ million credit [=M7M=] with two guns and the ability to ''only'' fire Mosquito missiles and Boarding Pods.
** It's a victim of CripplingOverspecialization. It's purpose-built for boarding enemy ships and can carry ten more marines than the other [=M7Ms=]. Works fine for capturing TL-class ships, but since it has no offensive weaponry it can't really do anything else.
* JustifiedTutorial:
** ''X: Beyond the Frontier'' integrates the tutorial into Kyle Brennan's assignment to put the Xperimental Shuttle through its paces. Then the jumpdrive goes haywire and starts the plot.
** ''Terran Conflict'' averts it with the flight school tutorial, but plays it straight with the initial Terran plot, which is effectively one long tutorial.
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[[folder:K]]
* KilledOffForReal:
** If you play Dead-Is-Dead mode, the ''player'' gets KilledOffForReal if he dies. (The game deletes your save.)
** Jesan Nadina, an Argon mercenary in ''Terran Conflict'' who recruits the PlayerCharacter for Operation Final Fury. He is then KIA offstage two missions into said plot.
* KillItWithFire:
** The Plasma Burst Generator, a rare pirate-only weapon that can be fit on nearly every M3 and M6 in the game. Does AOE Damage, meaning that it will hit every area of space in a cone in front of it -- and almost always, the target ship will be big enough to count as being in several "spaces" at once, meaning they're going to take [[GameBreaker obscene]] amounts of damage -- especially if they're one of the bigger (carrier, battleship) size ships. The only weapon to get a unique achievement -- "Turn up the Heat."
** The Pirates also have the rare Incendiary Bomb Launcher, a frigate / capital ship weapon. It functions like the other capital ship weapons, except the projectiles are on fire (in space).
* KillSat:
** Lasertowers. In ''Terran Conflict'' they're next to useless against anything bigger than fighters, especially in Out-Of-Sector combat, but they got a massive buff in ''Albion Prelude'' making them very effective defenses against larger ships.
** Orbital Defense Platforms, which are stationary "ships" armed with a ton of capital-ship weapons and a huge payload of missiles to spam at anything outside gun range.
** The Torus Aeternal in ''Terran Conflict'' is something of an inversion ''a la'' ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'s'' Super MAC orbitals. It guards Earth from all attackers with defensive weapons that can one-shot an M2.
* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter:
** Sort of. Though the vast majority of weapons in the X-Universe are either energy- or explosive-based, the few kinetic weapons in the games usually have a feature that offsets having to stock ammunition. The strictly fighter-scale Mass Driver goes through shields, for instance.
** Their chief advantage is that they don't drain the ship's energy reserves when fired. This grants ammo-using ships greater staying power in combat ... at least until their ammo runs out.
** The Gauss cannon is ''very'' popular for player-piloted Teladi M7 Shrikes because it can be mounted to the flank turrets, enabling it to duplicate the Panther's feat of taking on multiple heavy capitals. In ''Albion Prelude'', Gauss Cannons got a major buff in that all ships have higher amounts of hull hitpoints -- the Gauss Cannon has the highest damage per second against hull, whereas the other capital ship weapons have most of their damage devoted to killing shields -- useful in previous games, not so much in ''Prelude''.
* TheKingdom: [[AllThereInTheManual According to the X3TC manual]], the Boron Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy akin to Great Britain in RealLife (i.e. Queen Atreus is a figurehead, with the real power in the hands of elected officials). Otherwise it fits the trope pretty much perfectly: it is generally considered good-aligned, controls the fewest sectors (among the Commonwealth races, anyway), and is constantly under threat from [[TheEmpire the Split]]. They're also the only people to develop ion weapons.
** Oh, and [[EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses it has a princess, too]].
* KnowWhenToFoldEm:
** Mostly averted. [[SuicidalOverconfidence Usually the AI will continue fighting even if the battle is hopeless.]] But every once in a while, you'll encounter a foe that runs away from overwhelming force, such as the last M5 survivor of a pirate fighter squadron fleeing at top speed from an oncoming player-piloted frigate.
** Also averted in the case of the "Surrender" option in dialogue with other ships (as in telling the other guy to surrender). It appears to do exactly nothing.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:L]]
* LadyNotAppearingInThisGame: [[http://extreme.pcgameshardware.de/attachments/397450d1301531304-spieler-frauen-die-beliebtesten-frauen-charaktere-computerspielen-x3saya.jpg This image of Saya Kho]] is on the back of the ''X3: Gold Edition'' box. She appears from the neck up in ''Reunion'' and not at all in ''Terran Conflict''.
* LampshadeHanging: ''Albion Prelude'' lampshades the ''Terran Conflict's'' HUB plot and its insane requirements -- the scientists you transport to the HUB note that Mahi Ma filled the cargo hold with thousands upon thousands of microchips -- from the [[spoiler: 75000 microchip requirement]] in ''TC'''s plot. Afterwards, several crates of microchips are left floating around the HUB.
* LaserSight: Some ship mounted weapons have tiny laser sights mounted on them - however, unlike most videogame laser sights, they do ''not'' project a laser onto the target, and they fade out within a meter of the gun.
* LightningBruiser:
** Terran ships, [=OTAS=] ships, and certain Split ships.
*** [=AGI=] Task Force ships, which are even more powerful than standard Terran ships.
** "Vanguard" ship variants. They offer higher speed, weapon generators, and sometimes higher shields than "standard" ships, at the cost of some cargo space and being more expensive.
* LightningGun: The Ion Disruptor.
* LimitedSpecialCollectorsUltimateEdition: The ''X-Superbox''. It contains very high-quality versions of the game's soundtrack, 3 fan-made soundtracks, the [[AllThereInTheManual X-Encyclopedia]], and every ''X-Universe'' game made - when ''Albion Prelude'' came out, owners of the Superbox got the normally $9.99 expansion pack for free.
* LivingShip: Boron ships look the part with their wrinkled hulls and ribs which resemble gills, but it's never stated one way or another whether they're grown, built, or some combination of the above.
** They're grown around an artificial skeleton. (Flavor text for Royal Boron Shipyards.)
* LizardFolk: The Teladi.
* LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading: Sectors with loads of player assets (Large factory complexes, and fleets) tend to cause loading times to be 2 to 5 times longer than a regular sector (which is generally around 5 seconds to a minute, depending on your PC).
* [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters Loads And Loads Of Ships]]: There's well over one hundred ships, and that's before you get into the individual variants for each ship.
* LostColony:
** The entire Argon race was created when a Terran fleet sealed itself in the X-universe gate system to protect Earth from the Xenon. The fleet's crews settled on Argon Prime, (named after their leader, Nathan R. Gunne) and slowly phased out all references to Earth, causing Earth's existance to become a fairy tale.
** The [[spoiler: Aldrin colony is one of Earth's original colonies, before the Xenon went crazy. It's separate from the X-universe gate system. The Terrans believed it was destroyed when the Xenon started attacking everything, though Aldrin is reunited with the Terrans at the end of the Terran plot in ''X3: Terran Conflict''.]]
* LuckBasedMission:
** "Return Stolen Ship" involves an NPC asking the player to capture a ship stolen by a third party. Sheer probability dictates that the ship in question will be one that must be captured by making the pilot bail out (as opposed to one that can be boarded and captured) ... which is a completely random (and fairly rare) event.
** Also in this category are corporate missions that require you to make a delivery of missiles. In many cases, at least one will be a missile that does not appear in the game's market, and is only available as random drops from destroyed enemies.
[[/folder]]
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