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* NothingIsScarier: The unknown sectors. Head into one, get a fair distance from the gate, and just look at how empty it is in there. Think about all the things in the universe, mundane things like SpacePirates, or [[AIIsACrapshoot insane terraforming robots]] or a HordeOfAlienLocusts with point to point jumpdrives that could be jumping in right out of scanner range...hey, why are you running for the gate?
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* RetCon: The ''X-Encyclopedia'' retcons some of the events of the games and some of the backstory - Instead of being a long-forgotten Terran colony, [[spoiler: the Aldrin colony deliberately cut itself off from the X-Universe during the Boron Conflict]]
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* OxygenMeter: Your spacesuit has a two-hour air supply, though checking it requires you to open up the spacesuit's info screen. Two hours is usually plenty of time for you to do whatever you need to, although it's possible to run out if you're trying to patch up a capital ship's hull with the suit's repair laser. Somewhat bizarrely, when your oxygen runs out, you explode.
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forgot the link *bangs head on wall*
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* MileLongShip: [[This thread]] establishes by way of comparison to the 1 km diameter jumpgates that M7 are usually in the neighborhood of 1 km long. M1, M2, and TL are typically somewhere between two and three, with the Valhalla at five.
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* MileLongShip: [[This [[http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=244972 This thread]] establishes by way of comparison to the 1 km diameter jumpgates that M7 are usually in the neighborhood of 1 km long. M1, M2, and TL are typically somewhere between two and three, with the Valhalla at five.
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* MultipleGameOpenings: Starting in ''Reunion''. They differ mainly by starting credits, what ships you have, and what system you start in.[[labelnote:for example:]]''TC's'' "Terran Defender" starts you out in Uranus orbit with an M4 Sabre and 1,000 credits.[[/labelnote]] Some starts have additional features: "Suicidal Squid" is Dead-Is-Dead mode, while "Bankrupt Assassin" has you periodically attacked by small groups of bounty hunters for a while.
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** ''Terran Conflict'' also introduces the M8 bomber, which is essentially the [=M7M=] lite.
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** ''Terran Conflict'' also introduces the M8 bomber, which is essentially the [=M7M=] lite. It fires smaller missiles two at a time and is quite good at eliminating enemy capital ships, though taking out a station may require the entire magazine.
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* MileLongShip: [[This thread]] establishes by way of comparison to the 1 km diameter jumpgates that M7 are usually in the neighborhood of 1 km long. M1, M2, and TL are typically somewhere between two and three, with the Valhalla at five.
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* PlayerHeadquarters: The... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Player Headquarters]], first introduced in ''Reunion''. You gain the Headquarters by doing a sub-plot in each game. The HQ lets you reverse engineer ships (to gain their blueprints), scrap ships (for resources), build ships (from learned blueprints and resources), repair ships (using some resources), and adjust the hue and saturation values for non-Boron ships - allowing you to make pink Split ships[[note]]insert PinkPanther reference[[/note]], or make the flames on your Pirate Nova bright blue. The HQ has a ''massive'' storage bay for storing all your crap, 12 external docking ports for capital ships, 20 external docking ports for freighters and corvettes, and a [[BiggerOnTheInside infinitely large internal docking bay for fighters]], making it an excellent parking location for your unused ships.
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* PlayerHeadquarters: The... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Player Headquarters]], first introduced in ''Reunion''. You gain the Headquarters by doing a sub-plot in each game. The HQ lets you reverse engineer ships (to gain their blueprints), scrap ships (for resources), build ships (from learned blueprints and resources), repair ships (using some resources), and adjust the hue and saturation values for non-Boron ships - allowing you to make pink Split ships[[note]]insert PinkPanther reference[[/note]], or make the flames on your Pirate Nova bright blue. The HQ has a ''massive'' storage bay for storing all your crap, 12 external docking ports for capital ships, 20 external docking ports for freighters and corvettes, and a an [[BiggerOnTheInside infinitely large internal docking bay for fighters]], making it an excellent parking location for your unused ships.
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Zero Context Example. Bringing to discussion
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* RestartAtLevelOne: The {{Player Character}}s of ''X2: The Threat'' and ''X3: Reunion'' are the same guy (Julian Brennan).
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* MacrossMissileMassacre:
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* MacrossMissileMassacre:MacrossMissileMassacre: '''AND HOW!!'''
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* OpeningNarration: ''Terran Conflict's'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6KzJhKVLo opening cinematic]]:
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* OpeningNarration: OpeningNarration:
** ''Reunion'' frames it as a story from an Argon news agency.
** ''Terran Conflict's'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6KzJhKVLo opening cinematic]]:
** ''Reunion'' frames it as a story from an Argon news agency.
** ''Terran Conflict's'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6KzJhKVLo opening cinematic]]:
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** Argon Federation. Kingdom/Queendom of Boron. Godrealm of the Paranid (or Paranid Empire for short). Great Patriarchy of the Split. Teladi Space Company. And that's just the Commonwealth.
** The Terrans have no named government, but their space operations are controlled by the United Space Command, and any operations dealing with AIs are run by the AGI Task Force.
** The Terrans have no named government, but their space operations are controlled by the United Space Command, and any operations dealing with AIs are run by the AGI Task Force.
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** Argon Federation. Kingdom/Queendom of Boron. Godrealm of the Paranid (or Paranid Empire for short). Great Patriarchy of the Split. Teladi Space Company. And that's just the Commonwealth.
** The Terrans have no named government, but their space operations are controlled byTerran State (which is split between the United Space Command, Command and any operations dealing with AIs are run by the AGI Task Force.Force).
** The Terrans have no named government, but their space operations are controlled by
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** Played with ''a la'' ''Series/{{Babylon 5}}'' in recent games. On certain fighters you can see brief puffs of propellant from maneuvering jets when you hit the rudder or whatever.
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** Played with ''a la'' ''Series/{{Babylon 5}}'' ''Series/BabylonFive'' in recent games. On certain fighters you can see brief puffs of propellant from maneuvering jets when you hit the rudder or whatever.
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** The PlayerCharacter tends to end up being this by the end of the game
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* MeaningfulName: Retroactively. FlavorText for the Mars sector, named for the [[RomanMythology Roman god of war]], says that the [[SpaceNavy United Space Command]] is headquartered there.
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* MilitaryMashupMachine: Of the Mobile Factory/Carrier variety. The ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod for ''Terran Conflict'' has the [=M7D=] Drone Frigate class of ships, which will build high-powered combat drones equivalent to a M4-class interceptor. Loses are quickly replaced by building more drones. The frigates are fairly fast, but have [[MobileFactory mediocre shielding and firepower. Other factory ships exist, such as the Goner Aran, a mobile shipyard which can build a wide variety of ships, plus the standard civilian factory ships which produce weapons/shields/ore/energy/crystals/food.]]
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* MilitaryMashupMachine: Of the Mobile Factory/Carrier variety. The ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod for ''Terran Conflict'' has the [=M7D=] Drone Frigate class of ships, which will build high-powered combat drones equivalent to a M4-class interceptor. Loses Losses are quickly replaced by building more drones. The frigates are fairly fast, but have [[MobileFactory mediocre shielding and firepower. Other factory ships exist, such as the Goner Aran, a mobile shipyard which can build a wide variety of ships, plus the standard civilian factory ships which produce weapons/shields/ore/energy/crystals/food.]]]]
* MissionControl: In ''X3: Terran Conflict's'' Terran plot, depending on the mission it's either USC Commander Mark Jackson or ATF General Rai Ishiyama. Operation Final Fury has you under the command of the Split warlord Fjuny t'Scct.
* MissionControl: In ''X3: Terran Conflict's'' Terran plot, depending on the mission it's either USC Commander Mark Jackson or ATF General Rai Ishiyama. Operation Final Fury has you under the command of the Split warlord Fjuny t'Scct.
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* OperationBlank: The names of two plots. Operation Final Fury in ''TC'', a privately funded mercenary effort to drive the Kha'ak the rest of the way out of the Community of Planets. In ''AP'' the Terrans get Operation Loose Ends, a counterintelligence operation to recover stolen Terran weapons data and dossiers of deep-cover operatives from Argon space.
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* MilitaryMashupMachine: The ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod for ''Terran Conflict'' has the [=M7D=] Drone Frigate class of ships, which will build high-powered combat drones equivalent to a M4-class interceptor. Loses are quickly replaced by building more drones. The frigates are fairly fast, but have mediocre shielding and firepower. Other factory ships exist, such as the Goner Aran, a mobile shipyard which can build a wide variety of ships, plus the standard factory ships which produce weapons/shields/ore/energy/crystals/food.
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* MilitaryMashupMachine: Of the Mobile Factory/Carrier variety. The ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod for ''Terran Conflict'' has the [=M7D=] Drone Frigate class of ships, which will build high-powered combat drones equivalent to a M4-class interceptor. Loses are quickly replaced by building more drones. The frigates are fairly fast, but have [[MobileFactory mediocre shielding and firepower. Other factory ships exist, such as the Goner Aran, a mobile shipyard which can build a wide variety of ships, plus the standard civilian factory ships which produce weapons/shields/ore/energy/crystals/food.]]
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* MilitaryMashupMachine: The ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod for ''Terran Conflict'' has the [=M7D=] Drone Frigate class of ships, which will build high-powered combat drones equivalent to a M4-class interceptor. Loses are quickly replaced by building more drones. The frigates are fairly fast, but have mediocre shielding and firepower. Other factory ships exist, such as the Goner Aran, a mobile shipyard which can build a wide variety of ships, plus the standard factory ships which produce weapons/shields/ore/energy/crystals/food.
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moved trope due to rename; extra data
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* NPCRoadblock: Civilian ships are famous for docking at your stations and just sitting there, doing absolutely nothing for several minutes before undocking. This can prevent your own ships from docking, including when the ship is under attack and trying to dock for protection.
** This got so bad that a mod was made whose only purpose is the forced undocking of all ships currently docked to a station.
** This got so bad that a mod was made whose only purpose is the forced undocking of all ships currently docked to a station.
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** The ''X-Encyclopedia'' explains that this came about due to government and civilian overreaction to a major reactor accident aboard an Argon resort station that left the hulk so irradiated it was completely off-limits for 30 years.
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* MajorlyAwesome: Kyle Brennan held this rank in the United Space Command until his little mishap with the Xperimental Shuttle's jumpdrive.
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** The ''Terran Conflict'' 3.0 patch reduced the laser generator capacity of the Terran M1 Tokyo, a carrier that could previously fire its anticapital guns indefinitely.
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** The ''Terran Conflict'' 3.0 patch reduced the laser generator capacity of the Terran M1 Tokyo, a carrier that could previously fire its anticapital guns indefinitely. Nobody really minded because carriers aren't supposed to be able to do that.
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** Similarly, the OTAS M2 Boreas had a shield generator removed in ''AP'', reducing its shields from 10 GJ to 8 GJ for CompetitiveBalance.
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* PlayerHeadquarters: The... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Player Headquarters]], first introduced in ''Reunion''. You gain the Headquarters by doing a sub-plot in each game. The HQ lets you reverse engineer ships (to gain their blueprints), scrap ships (for resources), build ships (from learned blueprints and resources), repair ships (using some resources), and adjust the hue and saturation values for non-Boron ships - allowing you to make pink Split ships, or make the flames on your Pirate Nova bright blue. The HQ has a ''massive'' storage bay for storing all your crap, 12 external docking ports for capital ships, 20 external docking ports for freighters and corvettes, and a [[BiggerOnTheInside infinitely large internal docking bay for fighters]], making it an excellent parking location for your unused ships.
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* PlayerHeadquarters: The... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Player Headquarters]], first introduced in ''Reunion''. You gain the Headquarters by doing a sub-plot in each game. The HQ lets you reverse engineer ships (to gain their blueprints), scrap ships (for resources), build ships (from learned blueprints and resources), repair ships (using some resources), and adjust the hue and saturation values for non-Boron ships - allowing you to make pink Split ships, ships[[note]]insert PinkPanther reference[[/note]], or make the flames on your Pirate Nova bright blue. The HQ has a ''massive'' storage bay for storing all your crap, 12 external docking ports for capital ships, 20 external docking ports for freighters and corvettes, and a [[BiggerOnTheInside infinitely large internal docking bay for fighters]], making it an excellent parking location for your unused ships.
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* PlotArmor: Ships that are critical to the plots are usually indestructible. They'll go down to 93% hull and stop. Likewise the jumpgates are completely indestructible unless the plot specifies otherwise, like when the Kha'ak destroy one of the gates in President's End during ''X2''.
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** This gets brought up a lot, and Egosoft has always said no. Cynics just say they're trying not to alienate ATI fans.
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** This gets brought up a lot, and Egosoft has always said no. Cynics just say they're trying not to alienate ATI fans. However, it's worth pointing out that, although the second game way "The way it's meant to be played" branded, Nividium is not spelled the same as Nvidia, and was also in the first game, released in 1999. The second point especially reduces this to conspiracy theory levels.
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trivia
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* PromotedFanboy: The developers of the X3 ''Xtended'' mod, who were later hired on by Egosoft for ''Terran Conflict''.
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bumped Trivia item
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* ManualMisprint: ''X3: Reunion's'' manual was wrong in almost every way. ''X3: Terran Conflict's'' manual is more accurate, but some images are wrong (Boron ships with an Argon ship for the picture) and it talks about weapons that don't normally exist in the game.
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wrong pothole
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** Not much is known of the Wenendra (a race of SapientCetaceans on one of the Boron planets), but it involves a creator deity. Upon FirstContact, the Boron had some trouble convincing the Wenendra they [[AGodIAmNot weren't that entity]].
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** Not much is known of the Wenendra (a race of SapientCetaceans on one of the Boron planets), but it involves a creator deity. Upon FirstContact, the Boron had some trouble convincing the Wenendra they [[AGodIAmNot [[UnwantedFalseFaith weren't that entity]].
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** The ''X-Encyclopedia'' also adds the Free State of Solara (the Aldrin region), the Hatikvah Free League (an independent human government whose capital is in the sector The Hole), and the Convention of the Herd (the government of the Wenendra, a species of SapientCetaceans under Boron protection).
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** The ''X-Encyclopedia'' also adds the Free State of Solara (the Aldrin region), the Hatikvah Free League (an independent human government whose capital is in the sector The Hole), and the Convention of the Herd (the government of the Wenendra, a species of SapientCetaceans under Boron protection).aforementioned Wenendra).
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** According to the X-Superbox Encyclopedia, the wormholes are only different by using exotic matter to power the wormhole, and by using magnetic forces to flatten the wormhole to allow travel. if those factors didn't occur, it would be the exact same as RealLife's theoretical wormholes.
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** According to the X-Superbox Encyclopedia, the wormholes are only different by using exotic matter to power the wormhole, and by using magnetic forces to flatten the wormhole to allow travel. if those factors didn't occur, it would be the exact same as RealLife's theoretical wormholes. wormholes.
* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: Played with. From the ''X-Encyclopedia'':
** Overall the Argon are into science and logic. About half of them consider themselves "spiritual" but don't believe in any specific deity, while most of the rest are atheists. But since the Argon believe in tolerance of other lifestyles and worldviews, there's no stigma attached to being religious.
** The Boron have no organized religion, nor do they believe in any omnipotent or creator deities. Some believe that after death they will [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence live on in the presence cloud of the Ancients]].
** Averted with the Paranids, whose religion permeates every aspect of their lives. They see themselves as the chosen people of an unknown god they believe to be "the highest expression of spacetime itself within the three visible dimensions." [[StarfishAliens Whatever that means.]]
** The Split commonly view religion as outdated superstitions, and almost none of them still give credence to the "beasts of the sky".
** Not much is known of the Wenendra (a race of SapientCetaceans on one of the Boron planets), but it involves a creator deity. Upon FirstContact, the Boron had some trouble convincing the Wenendra they [[AGodIAmNot weren't that entity]].
** The ''X-Encyclopedia'' gives no information on the Teladi or Terran religion(s), so your guess is as good as ours.
* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: Played with. From the ''X-Encyclopedia'':
** Overall the Argon are into science and logic. About half of them consider themselves "spiritual" but don't believe in any specific deity, while most of the rest are atheists. But since the Argon believe in tolerance of other lifestyles and worldviews, there's no stigma attached to being religious.
** The Boron have no organized religion, nor do they believe in any omnipotent or creator deities. Some believe that after death they will [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence live on in the presence cloud of the Ancients]].
** Averted with the Paranids, whose religion permeates every aspect of their lives. They see themselves as the chosen people of an unknown god they believe to be "the highest expression of spacetime itself within the three visible dimensions." [[StarfishAliens Whatever that means.]]
** The Split commonly view religion as outdated superstitions, and almost none of them still give credence to the "beasts of the sky".
** Not much is known of the Wenendra (a race of SapientCetaceans on one of the Boron planets), but it involves a creator deity. Upon FirstContact, the Boron had some trouble convincing the Wenendra they [[AGodIAmNot weren't that entity]].
** The ''X-Encyclopedia'' gives no information on the Teladi or Terran religion(s), so your guess is as good as ours.
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Batch-replace of \"Old Ones\" with \"Ancients\". Probably the same word in German, but the English version of the X-Encyclopedia uses \"Ancients\" so we\'ll go with that.
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* MechanicalLifeforms: The Xenon [[spoiler:and the tame terraformers of Aldrin]] have become sapient due to the aforementioned MechanicalEvolution. Predating them by 500 million years are the Sohnen, a mechanical species used by the Old Ones as an intermediary to the young races.
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* MechanicalLifeforms: The Xenon [[spoiler:and the tame terraformers of Aldrin]] have become sapient due to the aforementioned MechanicalEvolution. Predating them by 500 million years are the Sohnen, a mechanical species used by the Old Ones Ancients as an intermediary to the young races.
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** Argon Federation. Boron Kingdom. Split Dynasty. Paranid Empire. Teladi Space Company. And that's just the Commonwealth.
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** Argon Federation. Boron Kingdom. Split Dynasty. Kingdom/Queendom of Boron. Godrealm of the Paranid Empire. (or Paranid Empire for short). Great Patriarchy of the Split. Teladi Space Company. And that's just the Commonwealth.
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*** According to the ''X-Encyclopedia'', the Terran government is simply called the Earth State.
** The ''X-Encyclopedia'' also adds the Free State of Solara (the Aldrin region), the Hatikvah Free League (an independent human government whose capital is in the sector The Hole), and the Convention of the Herd (the government of the Wenendra, a species of SapientCetaceans under Boron protection).
** The ''X-Encyclopedia'' also adds the Free State of Solara (the Aldrin region), the Hatikvah Free League (an independent human government whose capital is in the sector The Hole), and the Convention of the Herd (the government of the Wenendra, a species of SapientCetaceans under Boron protection).
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* NamedAfterTheirPlanet: Mostly averted. The Boron homeworld is Nishala, and the Teladi homeworld is Ianamus Zura. The Argon capital is Argon Prime, but that's a case of the planet being named after the faction rather than the other way around: the Argon renamed Sonra-4 after their then-leader Nathan R. Gunne. The Terran homeworld is Earth, [[CaptainObvious obviously]]. The Paranid play the trope straight: their homeworld is Paranid Prime. Nobody knows the name of the Kha'ak homeworld, and the Xenon homeworld is technically Earth since they're an entire race of insane terraforming drones first built by the Terrans back in the 22nd century. %% This troper does not have information on the Split.
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* NamedAfterTheirPlanet: Mostly averted. The Boron homeworld is Nishala, and the Teladi homeworld is Ianamus Zura. The Argon capital is Argon Prime, but that's a case of the planet being named after the faction rather than the other way around: the Argon renamed Sonra-4 after their then-leader Nathan R. Gunne. The Terran homeworld is Earth, [[CaptainObvious obviously]]. According to legend the Split are from a world called Hodie, which they apparently destroyed in a nuclear war. The Paranid play the trope straight: their homeworld is Paranid Prime. Nobody knows the name of the Kha'ak homeworld, and the Xenon homeworld is technically Earth since they're an entire race of insane terraforming drones first built by the Terrans back in the 22nd century. %% This troper does not have information on the Split.
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[[XUniverse/Tropes0ToF Tropes 0-F]] | [[XUniverse/TropesGToL Tropes G-L]] | '''Tropes M-R''' | [[XUniverse/TropesSToZ Tropes S-Z]] | ''VideoGame/XRebirth''
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!!! The ''VideoGame/{{X}}'' series through ''Albion Prelude'' provides examples of the following tropes:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:M]]
* MacrossMissileMassacre:
** ''Terran Conflict'' introduces the [=M7M=] missile frigate class. These ships can hold hundreds of missiles and use MacrossMissileMassacre as their only form of attack. They can launch dozens of missiles in a matter of seconds, and the anti-fighter missiles each [[RecursiveAmmo split into 8 sub-missiles]]. They also {{Robotech}} in a spiral pattern. ''And'' they'll go after new targets if the original is destroyed while the missiles are en route.
** The deadliest [=M7M=] of them all is the [=ATF=] Skirnir, which uses the Shadow missile (650k damage per warhead on an ''[[RecursiveAmmo 8-warhead missile]]''). Think MacrossMissileMassacre taken UpToEleven.
*** This typo in the missile data was fixed in ''Albion Prelude'' so the Skirnir actually has to earn its salary.
** ''Terran Conflict'' also introduces the M8 bomber, which is essentially the [=M7M=] lite.
** Since the advent of missile spamming [=M7Ms=] and M8s, the Mosquito Missile Defense script (available in the free Bonus Pack) has become a whole lot more useful. What does it do? Spams even ''more'' missiles at the enemy missiles!
** ''Albion Prelude'' gave the AI the ability to properly use [=M7M=] and M8 ships. This now means that invaders typically jump into a system and immediately get 50 "ALERT: INCOMING MISSILE" warnings. This includes the player. Be very afraid.
** In ''Albion Prelude'' missile frigates got serious with the whole missile thing. Not only can (and will) they MacrossMissileMassacre their enemies before they even get in visual range, they also fire swarms of countermissiles in a Macross Missile Defense to protect themselves and their allies against similiar attacks.
** Even outside of [=M7Ms and M8s=], triple-M is a pretty good tactic. One common use of the Falcon Hauler as a carrier-based fighter is to stuff its cavernous cargo bay with [[RecursiveAmmo Tornado missiles]] and use it as a bomber against capital ships.
* MadLibsDialogue: Hits generic information dialogue hard.
** "The place which you seek is somewhere far behind the NORTH GATE. Good profit!"
** "Attention, today there is a sale in the TOOL SHOP on level THREE. Don't miss the special offers :)"
*** The latter example is possibly justified by it being an actual computer. Betty (the ship's computer) has the same problem.
* MagneticWeapons:
** The Mass Driver, a fighter-class weapon which can bypass shields and damage the ship directly. You will learn to [[GameBreaker fear this weapon]].
** Also in this category is the Gauss Cannon, a Teladi capital ship weapon that fires metal slugs instead of the usual energy disco-balls of doom that other capital ship weapons fire.
** A number of the game's energy weapons use magnets to fire bolts of plasma. The Ion Shard Railgun is a good example.
* ManualMisprint: ''X3: Reunion's'' manual was wrong in almost every way. ''X3: Terran Conflict's'' manual is more accurate, but some images are wrong (Boron ships with an Argon ship for the picture) and it talks about weapons that don't normally exist in the game.
* MasterOfNone: Boron fighters. Pathetic energy reserves, shielding equal to [[FragileSpeedster Split]] ships but with less speed, and very limited weapon selection - ironically, despite their tiny energy reserves, all their race-specific weapons require huge amounts of energy to fire (such as the Ion Disruptor).
** Their size also makes them very good targets for fighter-jock-type players.
* MechanicalEvolution: As the opening cinematic for ''Terran Conflict'' explains, terraformers are examples of a technology called artificial general intelligence, "mechanical minds capable of making themselves more intelligent, and again, and again, recursively forever." The intent was presumably to make the robots capable of adapting to unexpected events during the terraforming process, but somebody fouled up a software patch and they went haywire, turning into the Xenon.
* MechanicalLifeforms: The Xenon [[spoiler:and the tame terraformers of Aldrin]] have become sapient due to the aforementioned MechanicalEvolution. Predating them by 500 million years are the Sohnen, a mechanical species used by the Old Ones as an intermediary to the young races.
* TheMetricSystemIsHereToStay: Played straight for everything except time, which until TC used Teladi time units.
* MightyGlacier:
** Fighters amongst strike craft and Destroyers amongst capital ships, as well as some of their weapons (some capital ship guns fire projectiles that can be ''outrun by scouts'').
** This is also the design motif for the Teladi spaceships, which are horribly slow for their class, but (for the most part) have very strong shields, hulls, and cargo capacity.
*** There is an exception to this rule, though: the Teladi M5 Kestrel is the fastest ship in the game, and likely the most powerful member of the M5 class because of it (mostly on Out of Sector battles, where [[ArtificialStupidity asteroid and ship collisions are disabled]]).
** The Teladi M2 Phoenix gets outran by almost every ship in the game, but soaks up damage like a sponge and carries a massive weapons loadout.
** "Sentinel" ship variants, which mount weaker engines in exchange for massive shield capacity. Taken to the extreme by Teladi Falcon Sentinel M3 fighter, which has the shielding of a corvette and a top speed barely higher than some ''carriers''.
** The M2+ battleships introduced in ''Albion Prelude'' are even slower and more powerful than standard M2 destroyers.
* MobileFactory: ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' has T0 mobile production ships, which can produce a huge variety of wares. There are variants for energy, food, technology (microchips, crystals, etc), ore processing, and military technology (weapons, shields, missiles).
* MookMaker: Drone Frigates in the ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod. They produce their own advanced combat drones on the spot, and manage them like a carrier would manage their fighter wings.
* MoreCriminalsThanTargets: Oddly averted. While there are a ''lot'' of Pirates and Yaki, they are far outnumbered by just the civilian traders of a single race. However, Pirates are usually heavily concentrated in a couple sectors that they own, so in those sectors, they usually outnumber traders 5 to 1 or even higher (like 100:1), in the case of the Pirate home area, Mercenaries' Rift.
* MoreDakka: Certain M6 and many M7 can mount a ridiculous number of flak weapons. One of the most popular loadouts for the otherwise underwhelming Terran Yokohama and ATF Aegir[[note]]Underwhelming because the small Terran weapon selection limits their In-Sector tactics to either [[MacrossMissileMassacre missile spam]] or [[DeathOfAThousandCuts pecking you to death]] with corvette-grade guns.[[/note]] is to put Starburst Shockwave Cannons everywhere possible. OOS, this lets them tear other frigates to shreds in seconds.
* MundaneUtility: The Split Iguana from X2. This TP-class ship (think space bus) can compete with dedicated heavy fighters, in terms of shielding, speed and firepower.
* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: Non-player owned ships have access to what is essentially a point-to-point jumpdrive. Ships in the plot will jump into empty space, and escort missions have swarms of enemy ships warping in scant kilometers away from the ship you're escorting. Player ships are limited to jumping to Jump Gates.
** According to WordOfGod, this is GameplayAndStorySegregation: they decided to use the jumpdrive "flash" for enemies spawning. The official line is that only the Kha'ak have point-to-point jumpdrives, though the Xenon have jump beacons they can use if they know precise coordinates to send it to. The scene during the Terran plot [[spoiler:where the fleet jumps to Aldrin]] involved a reverse-engineered jump beacon, so that technically doesn't count.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:N]]
* NamedAfterTheirPlanet: Mostly averted. The Boron homeworld is Nishala, and the Teladi homeworld is Ianamus Zura. The Argon capital is Argon Prime, but that's a case of the planet being named after the faction rather than the other way around: the Argon renamed Sonra-4 after their then-leader Nathan R. Gunne. The Terran homeworld is Earth, [[CaptainObvious obviously]]. The Paranid play the trope straight: their homeworld is Paranid Prime. Nobody knows the name of the Kha'ak homeworld, and the Xenon homeworld is technically Earth since they're an entire race of insane terraforming drones first built by the Terrans back in the 22nd century. %% This troper does not have information on the Split.
* {{Nerf}}:
** The Split M2 Raptor was among the best destroyers in ''X3: Reunion''. In ''Terran Conflict'', its ability to mount flak weapons was removed, reducing it to using comparatively ineffective corvette guns for fighter defense.
** The ''Terran Conflict'' 3.0 patch reduced the laser generator capacity of the Terran M1 Tokyo, a carrier that could previously fire its anticapital guns indefinitely.
** The M7 Panther's laser generators were weakened in ''Albion Prelude'' to compensate for it having by far the largest fighter capacity of any M7.
* NGOSuperpower: Pirates and Yaki as of ''Terran Conflict'' have access to capital ships (and lots of them), despite having no government and no central organization. The corporations also have their own navies - OTAS in particular fields two to three of their [[GameBreaker Boreas]] destroyers, several dozen transporter ships, swarms of fighters, and multiple frigates.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: When the Argon Federation is closing in on Sol System with their swarms of reverse engineered Xenon fighters, about to subjugate the Terrans, the jump gate system ''completely'' shuts down, isolating every system.
* NintendoHard / NoDamageRun: Dead-Is-Dead mode. If you die, the game will ''delete your save game''. This includes when the game is a bastard and [[TeleFrag teleports a capital ship onto your tiny fighter]] when you come out a jumpgate. It's hard enough that ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude'' each offer an achievement for completing all the storylines in [=DiD=] mode.
* NoFairCheating:
** Using any kind of mods or scripts brands your save with an unremovable ***modified*** tag to keep you informed of this circumstance. Given the amount of bugs in the games (and the fact that a lot of the mods are plain cool), players tend not to care about it.
** If you fail to complete a "Retrieve derelict ship" mission in [=X3TC=] and you still have the ship in your possesion, a squad of police heavy fighters or pirates will warp in, blow the ship to bits and then warp out. It's thus impossible to make any use of the ship except for selling it first.
*** Not true: the cops aren't invincible, so you can actually destroy them. There's a way to do it that will avoid reputation hits; it requires a spare jumpdrive and a good supply of energy cells. You see, the SpacePolice will only spawn once. See the trick in EnemyMine above, or failing that, jump it to one side of a Xenon sector, wait for the police to spawn, and jump it to the sector on the other side of the Xenon sector. The police will follow and be attacked by the Xenon. On the off chance they survive, jump the ship back to the first sector.
* NoPlotNoProblem: Though there is an over-arching narrative to the games, a lot of the replay value comes from the sandbox mode where you pick your starting circumstances and are dropped into the universe to run amok.
* NoSuchThingAsAlienPopCulture: ''In Terran Conflict'': A blink-and-you'll-miss-it aversion. Randomly-picked flavor text for some {{Fetch Quest}}s and bits of junk carried by certain NPC ships point to alien sports and advertising, among other things. ''Reunion'' had the Bulletin Board System, you'd get bits of news and culture in it (along with missions).
* NoseArt: ''X2: The Threat'' allows you to import an image file from your computer that would be applied as nose art to all your ships and stations. It could be a pin-up, a coat of arms, whatever. (GameSpot's reviewer used a character from ''TheSimpsons''.)
* NuclearWeaponsTaboo: Partial: while nuclear ''weapons'' are fine, "large scale" nuclear ''reactors'' aren't, and stations and ships are forced to purchase energy cells produced at ''solar power plants'' in order to manufacture goods or use jumpdrives. "Large scale" apparently doesn't include battleship reactors with outputs capable of razing planet surfaces, strangely.
** It leads to a bit of FridgeLogic when the player wonders how exactly does a spaceship generate enough energy to run all of its systems, but needs separately provided energy cells for the jumpdrive.
* NukeEm: Terran "Hammerhead" missiles are nuclear-tipped according to flavor text. A single Hammerhead can kill an entire wing of small ships in loose formation, and will one-shot any M6 except the ATF Vali. Several of the other heavy missiles are also nuclear.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:O]]
* ObviousBeta: The games tend to ship with a plethora of bugs, from annoying to game breaking. ''Reunion'' suffered from this in its plot (which was often impossible to complete), and ''Terran Conflict'' was a massive system hog for several months after release.
* OldSchoolDogfighting:
** Played down to the letter. A character in the later parts of the game who flies into a Xenon sector to duke it out can bring in a few battleships and carriers, as well as combat drones, resulting in hundreds of ships battling, and dozens of dogfights going on at once.
** Crazy furballs happen when the player is flying a slow ship and going against a faster one. For some reason, attacking ships seem to only fly at their maximum speed; as weapons are forward-firing, they tend do come at you guns blazing, then overshoot, turn back and repeat as long as necessary -- god forbid they'd slow down and try to get on your tail. Flying a faster ship, or going against slower ones, makes dogfighting a lot more interesting.
** Played with ''a la'' ''Series/{{Babylon 5}}'' in recent games. On certain fighters you can see brief puffs of propellant from maneuvering jets when you hit the rudder or whatever.
* OmnicidalManiac: The Xenon.
* OneFederationLimit:
** Argon Federation. Boron Kingdom. Split Dynasty. Paranid Empire. Teladi Space Company. And that's just the Commonwealth.
** The Terrans have no named government, but their space operations are controlled by the United Space Command, and any operations dealing with AIs are run by the AGI Task Force.
* OneHitPointWonder: Any ship in ''X: Beyond the Frontier'' and ''X: Tension'', once stripped of its shields, will be blown away by its pilot sneezing.
* [[OneProductPlanet One Product System]]: Mostly averted, but some systems specialize in producing only one or two types of goods. Asteroid Belt in ''Terran Conflict'' mostly produces just different types of minerals, for example.
* OneNationUnderCopyright: The Teladi Space Company. Their entire race is organized like one MegaCorp. The head honcho, the Chairman (his name is Ceo at the time of the games), and business and smaller companies are arranged like subsidies or divisions. However, they employ an actual police force and a proper military.
* OneStatToRuleThemAll: Battles you partake in are varied, frantic and involve quite a bit of tactics. However, Out-Of-Sector battles, which happen in sectors you are not in, are simulated under a different set of rules, and they usually boil down to shield capacity in first place and (large) numbers in second.
* TheOneTrueSequence / SequenceBreaking: In ''Terran Conflict'', the intended order to complete the plotlines is "Terran Plot" → "Operation Final Fury" → "Goner Plot" → "Hub Plot" → "HQ Plot" → "Aldrin Expansion" → "Treasure Hunt" → "New Home Plot" → "Balance of Power". Though none of the individual plots allow for internal sequence breaking (i.e. you can't skip missions), it is very easy to complete certain plots out of order. Players have reported finishing the Goner Plot before the Terran Plot, and the Aldrin Expansion only requires you to have completed the first half of the Hub plot.
* OneWorldOrder: Present in the games (aside from the Terrans and Argon; same race, but they had several hundred years' separation), but the ''X-Encyclopedia'' describes how there are other factions, like the human Hatikvah Free League.
* OnlySixFaces: {{NPC}}s' faces are picked at random from a list of about five possibilities per faction.
* OpeningNarration: ''Terran Conflict's'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6KzJhKVLo opening cinematic]]:
--> "Almost a millennium has passed since the last great plague of humankind had been wiped out from the solar system and its precious blue pearl planet Earth.\\
"It was a plague so dangerous, a threat so grave, that it spread throughout the infinity of space and eternity of time almost effortlessly to infest the stars. It spread its pestilence to civilizations unknown, devastated the galaxy as if it was just an ordinary body made of flesh and bone falling prey to a mindless virus.\\
"And in a sense it was really a virus, a virus created by humankind. One made with the best of intentions, but a virus nevertheless.\\
"[[GreyGoo Von Neumann probes]], self-replicating machines, Terraformers, Xenon, even the Enemy of God. But at its core, it was really only one thing.\\
"[[AIIsACrapshoot Artificial general intelligence]], or AGI. Mechanical minds capable of making themselves even more intelligent, and then again, and again. Recursively forever. The greatest threat to biological life that ever existed throughout the whole universe. The Terraformers were cast out of the solar system by sheer luck, just barely, with billions upon billions dead in their wake. The Earth Jumpgate was dismantled, legislation was put in place never to allow AGI to be created again, ever.\\
"Humankind never forgot the lesson of AGI, never ventured to try out this concept once more, not in a thousand years, but then it was discovered that species from outside the solar system thought differently. The plague of AGI was being released on the universe once more. Again perhaps with the best of intentions and again however, with the deadliest of results. The government of Earth had to intervene, even if it meant [[SpaceColdWar cold war]], even if it meant a cold war between brothers, and intervene Earth did.\\
"This escalating conflict would be given a name by historians. [[TitleDrop Terran Conflict]]."
* OrangeBlueContrast: The cover for ''X3: Reunion''.
* OurWormholesAreDifferent: All the races depend on the LostTechnology Jump Gates scattered around the universe to get around. [[spoiler: They occasionally ''disconnect'', separating colonies for hundreds of years, until they reconnect (if ever).]]
** According to the X-Superbox Encyclopedia, the wormholes are only different by using exotic matter to power the wormhole, and by using magnetic forces to flatten the wormhole to allow travel. if those factors didn't occur, it would be the exact same as RealLife's theoretical wormholes.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:P]]
* PacifistRun: Possible in all the games, if you skip the plot. Some players go for an all-out "Cannot kill any enemy, at all", others go with "My other ships can kill enemies", or "I will only kill enemies required by the plot lines". The goal for these is to keep your combat rank at "Harmless" -- getting one kill will bring the combat rank up, and it takes a long time for it to go back down to Harmless.
* PainfullySlowProjectile: Capital ship weapons. Special mention goes out to the Terrans' Point Singularity Projector, which is incredibly easy to avoid in almost any ship.
* PassThroughTheRings: the very first game, [=X-BtF=], has you do that in the opening intro, to test your ship's systems. Also, several missions in [=X3R=] and [=X3TC=] have you racing against other [[strike:targets]] ships; you do not technically fly through rings, but you do have to pass through arbitrarily placed checkpoints.
* PerfectPacifistPeople: Subverted with the Goners. They're normally {{Actual Pacifist}}s espousing peaceful coexistence, and their ships don't have any weapons mounts at all, in contrast to every other ship in the game apart from cargo drones. If pressed hard enough as a society, however, they ''will'' fight back with lethal force: the climax of the Goner plot in ''TC'' consists of [[spoiler:smuggling a bomb onto a SpacePirate station whose denizens have been beating the crap out of the supply lines to the new Goner Temple]].
* PhotoprotoneutronTorpedo: Several weapons in the series (particularly the later games) fit this. Ion Disruptor, Ion Pulse Generator, Ion Cannon, Ion Shard Railgun, and Photon Pulse Cannon. Oh, and the Kha'ak use kyon emitters, which fire a fictitious particle. The names are normally fairly justified by FlavorText; for instance, the ISR "fires ionised 'shards' of super-heated plasma, which are then accelerated to high speeds using magnets."
* PlanarShockwave: Some of the larger explosion graphics use this.
* PlanetOfHats: One of the series' major criticisms is its poor job of fleshing out characters and races.
** Boron: Peace-loving space hippies
** Teladi: [[ProudMerchantRace Profit-crazed]] {{lizard folk}}
** Paranid: HolierThanThou [[ScaryDogmaticAliens religious extremists]]
** Split: ProudWarriorRace
** Terran: Xenophobic paranoid isolationists
** Goner: Jehovah's Witnesses [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]-]
** Yaki: {{Yakuza}} [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]-]
*** BilingualBonus: The faction name actually means "many yakuza" in Japanese.
** Xenon: [[AIIsACrapshoot Insane robots]]
** Kha'ak: Trying to kill anything that isn't Kha'ak?[[note]]Nobody's ever managed to talk to them. Or if they did, they didn't live to tell about it. All we know is that they seem to be a hive mind and that they have an affinity for nividium.[[/note]]
* PlanetTerra: In ''X3'', humans from the Sol System are referred to as "Terrans", but the planet is still called Earth.
* PlayerHeadquarters: The... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Player Headquarters]], first introduced in ''Reunion''. You gain the Headquarters by doing a sub-plot in each game. The HQ lets you reverse engineer ships (to gain their blueprints), scrap ships (for resources), build ships (from learned blueprints and resources), repair ships (using some resources), and adjust the hue and saturation values for non-Boron ships - allowing you to make pink Split ships, or make the flames on your Pirate Nova bright blue. The HQ has a ''massive'' storage bay for storing all your crap, 12 external docking ports for capital ships, 20 external docking ports for freighters and corvettes, and a [[BiggerOnTheInside infinitely large internal docking bay for fighters]], making it an excellent parking location for your unused ships.
* PlayerMooks: Any player-owned ship other than the one physically piloted by the player. You can give them named pilots by activating certain scripts (whereupon a name is generated based on the owner of the sector the ship is in), but you never interact with them at any deeper level than the command console.
* PortalNetwork: The only way to get around the universe is by using jumpgates or a jumpdrive (which teleports you to a jumpgate of your choice).
* PointDefenseless:
** Partially averted. Most ships (even some fighters) have at least one turret theoretically capable of shooting down incoming missiles. Some get through, some don't, depending on the loadout of the ship in question.
** With the bonus pack scripts in X3, it may be almost completely averted ... for player-owned ships. One of the scripts in question is "Mosquito Missile Defense," which uses the fast, accurate, very weak Mosquito Missile to automatically intercept incoming missiles and [[AttackDrone fighter drones]]. It doesn't work on ships that can't equip Mosquito Missiles, however, making it annoyingly useless to the Terrans in ''Terran Conflict'' - in ''Albion Prelude'', ''every'' ship in the game can fire Mosquito Missiles.
** The Split M2 Python, one of the best destroyers in ''Reunion'', became this in ''Terran Conflict'' because its ability to mount Flak Artillery Arrays was removed. It now has to rely on comparatively ineffective corvette weapons for fighter defense.
* PoliceAreUseless: They and the Border Control ships seem to exist mainly to attack the player after friendly fire incidents, or when the player keeps a ship he's supposed to return as part of a mission.
* PrivateMilitaryContractors: The Split Strong Arms. All the corporations maintain warships, but the Strong Arms are the only ones for whom they're not just for protecting their own supply chains.
* {{Privateer}}: The governments of the Commonwealth offer "police licenses", which act like letters of marque. You're paid a preset bounty for destroying {{space pirate}}s, [[AIIsACrapshoot Xenon]], and [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Kha'ak]], and destroying neutrals or allies costs you the license.
* ProductPlacement: Nividium; aside from being extremely valuable, it's also a considerable plot point for X2 and X3.
** This gets brought up a lot, and Egosoft has always said no. Cynics just say they're trying not to alienate ATI fans.
* PromotedFanboy: The developers of the X3 ''Xtended'' mod, who were later hired on by Egosoft for ''Terran Conflict''.
* ProperlyParanoid: The Terrans are deathly afraid of artificially intelligent ships, because their own Terraformer ships were [[ColonyDrop throwing asteroids at Earth because of a programming error.]]
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The Split race is basically a clone of the Klingons.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Q]]
* QuicksandBox: ''X: Beyond the Frontier'' through ''X3: Reunion'' hit this hit pretty hard. ''X3: Terran Conflict'' is a bit better at giving the player a goal.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:R]]
* RammingAlwaysWorks:
** Ramming is the fastest way to kill enemies; just make sure you have more shields than they do. (Though you REALLY shouldn't do it at full speed, unless the target ship is a lot smaller than your ship.)
** Actually, as long as you don't try to ram anything ''too'' big, the faster you're going, the less damage you take. In X2, a kitted out Split heavy transport could crush a Paranid battleship without taking a scratch.
** Ramming has also the pleasant side effect of not angering the local sector police (unless you take too long to kill the target), a must if you need to eliminate a "friendly" ship without nuking the entire sector.
** Inverted in the case of M5 scouts, wherein it is the fastest way to kill ''yourself''. In particular, ''never'' fly a fully upgraded Kestrel on autopilot, as the ship is actually too fast for the AI. The "auto-pillock" is all but guaranteed to splatter you all over the vicinity.
* RandomNumberGod: Worshiping it is a RunningGag on the forums.
* RandomlyGeneratedLevels: The Unfocused Jumpdrive warps the player into a randomly generated sector, which typically includes asteroids, a random background, random sun(s) color/brightness, and a few squads of Xenon or Kha'ak enemies. The player may also find a critically damaged Aran TL.
* RealTrailerFakeMovie: ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlAWC2HSOYM Nautilus]]''.
* RecursiveAmmo: A wide variety of missiles, from the strictly fighter-to-fighter Wasp on up to the sector-obliterating Shadow, have multiple warheads. There's even a few ''unguided'' multiple-warhead missiles, although only one is actually of any use.
* RedAlert: The game is pretty decent about it. Once hostile ships come within about ten kilometers, you get a single beep, then the background music switches to the battle soundtrack.
* RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver: Split ships use rust red armor panels with gray/black backgrounds. Xenon ships are pitch black and gray with glowing red internals.
* RegeneratingShieldStaticHealth: Shields are held in the cargo bay and will regenerate constantly. Hull is non-regenerating, and once the hull reaches zero hitpoints, the ship will be destroyed.
* ReportingNames: A [[JustifiedTrope justification]] for Earth-derived ArmsAndArmorThemeNaming of nonhuman-built ships. The Boron M1 Shark is unpronounceable in the original Boron, but the word used for it translates to "cartilaginous fish with lots of sharp teeth". Likewise, the Paranid M4 Pericles was probably named for a Paranid whose career paralleled that of the Athenian Pericles.
* RestartAtLevelOne: The {{Player Character}}s of ''X2: The Threat'' and ''X3: Reunion'' are the same guy (Julian Brennan).
* RidiculouslyFastConstruction:
** '''HYPER''' averted. If you decided to build a ship at the PlayerHeadquarters instead of buying it, you have to wait as your headquarters puts it together. Capital ships like the Argon Colossus can take ''twenty hours'' in ''real time'' to build.
** Played straight for building stations. They basically pop fully-formed out of your TL's cargo hold. Which enables the [[ColonyDrop station-bombing]] combat trick.
* RingWorldPlanet: The Torus. Also, one forum member built a space station complex around the Aldrin planetoid for fun.
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: The Terrans in ''Albion Prelude''. After the Torus Aeternal (a massive station wrapping around the Earth) is blown up by Saya Kho, they deploy their entire battlefleet to attack the Argon Federation.
* RobotWar: The Terraformer War, the First and Second Xenon Conflicts, and the constant low-level warfare against the Xenon. The Argon/Terran war probably takes the cake, though.
* {{Roboteching}}: Missiles are launched towards the bow from ventrally-mounted tubes (or flank-mounted tubes in the case of [=M7Ms=]) and immediately curve off after their target. This leads to spectacular visuals of swirling streams of fire when using swarm missiles.
* RubberForeheadAliens: The Split. In the games, they have red skin, tall and narrow heads, and large eyes that are very close together, but otherwise they are fairly human-like. [[http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/gfx/22_concept_split_male.jpg Concept]] [[http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/gfx/22_concept_split_female.jpg art]] makes them look like space elves.
[[/folder]]
----
----
!!! The ''VideoGame/{{X}}'' series through ''Albion Prelude'' provides examples of the following tropes:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:M]]
* MacrossMissileMassacre:
** ''Terran Conflict'' introduces the [=M7M=] missile frigate class. These ships can hold hundreds of missiles and use MacrossMissileMassacre as their only form of attack. They can launch dozens of missiles in a matter of seconds, and the anti-fighter missiles each [[RecursiveAmmo split into 8 sub-missiles]]. They also {{Robotech}} in a spiral pattern. ''And'' they'll go after new targets if the original is destroyed while the missiles are en route.
** The deadliest [=M7M=] of them all is the [=ATF=] Skirnir, which uses the Shadow missile (650k damage per warhead on an ''[[RecursiveAmmo 8-warhead missile]]''). Think MacrossMissileMassacre taken UpToEleven.
*** This typo in the missile data was fixed in ''Albion Prelude'' so the Skirnir actually has to earn its salary.
** ''Terran Conflict'' also introduces the M8 bomber, which is essentially the [=M7M=] lite.
** Since the advent of missile spamming [=M7Ms=] and M8s, the Mosquito Missile Defense script (available in the free Bonus Pack) has become a whole lot more useful. What does it do? Spams even ''more'' missiles at the enemy missiles!
** ''Albion Prelude'' gave the AI the ability to properly use [=M7M=] and M8 ships. This now means that invaders typically jump into a system and immediately get 50 "ALERT: INCOMING MISSILE" warnings. This includes the player. Be very afraid.
** In ''Albion Prelude'' missile frigates got serious with the whole missile thing. Not only can (and will) they MacrossMissileMassacre their enemies before they even get in visual range, they also fire swarms of countermissiles in a Macross Missile Defense to protect themselves and their allies against similiar attacks.
** Even outside of [=M7Ms and M8s=], triple-M is a pretty good tactic. One common use of the Falcon Hauler as a carrier-based fighter is to stuff its cavernous cargo bay with [[RecursiveAmmo Tornado missiles]] and use it as a bomber against capital ships.
* MadLibsDialogue: Hits generic information dialogue hard.
** "The place which you seek is somewhere far behind the NORTH GATE. Good profit!"
** "Attention, today there is a sale in the TOOL SHOP on level THREE. Don't miss the special offers :)"
*** The latter example is possibly justified by it being an actual computer. Betty (the ship's computer) has the same problem.
* MagneticWeapons:
** The Mass Driver, a fighter-class weapon which can bypass shields and damage the ship directly. You will learn to [[GameBreaker fear this weapon]].
** Also in this category is the Gauss Cannon, a Teladi capital ship weapon that fires metal slugs instead of the usual energy disco-balls of doom that other capital ship weapons fire.
** A number of the game's energy weapons use magnets to fire bolts of plasma. The Ion Shard Railgun is a good example.
* ManualMisprint: ''X3: Reunion's'' manual was wrong in almost every way. ''X3: Terran Conflict's'' manual is more accurate, but some images are wrong (Boron ships with an Argon ship for the picture) and it talks about weapons that don't normally exist in the game.
* MasterOfNone: Boron fighters. Pathetic energy reserves, shielding equal to [[FragileSpeedster Split]] ships but with less speed, and very limited weapon selection - ironically, despite their tiny energy reserves, all their race-specific weapons require huge amounts of energy to fire (such as the Ion Disruptor).
** Their size also makes them very good targets for fighter-jock-type players.
* MechanicalEvolution: As the opening cinematic for ''Terran Conflict'' explains, terraformers are examples of a technology called artificial general intelligence, "mechanical minds capable of making themselves more intelligent, and again, and again, recursively forever." The intent was presumably to make the robots capable of adapting to unexpected events during the terraforming process, but somebody fouled up a software patch and they went haywire, turning into the Xenon.
* MechanicalLifeforms: The Xenon [[spoiler:and the tame terraformers of Aldrin]] have become sapient due to the aforementioned MechanicalEvolution. Predating them by 500 million years are the Sohnen, a mechanical species used by the Old Ones as an intermediary to the young races.
* TheMetricSystemIsHereToStay: Played straight for everything except time, which until TC used Teladi time units.
* MightyGlacier:
** Fighters amongst strike craft and Destroyers amongst capital ships, as well as some of their weapons (some capital ship guns fire projectiles that can be ''outrun by scouts'').
** This is also the design motif for the Teladi spaceships, which are horribly slow for their class, but (for the most part) have very strong shields, hulls, and cargo capacity.
*** There is an exception to this rule, though: the Teladi M5 Kestrel is the fastest ship in the game, and likely the most powerful member of the M5 class because of it (mostly on Out of Sector battles, where [[ArtificialStupidity asteroid and ship collisions are disabled]]).
** The Teladi M2 Phoenix gets outran by almost every ship in the game, but soaks up damage like a sponge and carries a massive weapons loadout.
** "Sentinel" ship variants, which mount weaker engines in exchange for massive shield capacity. Taken to the extreme by Teladi Falcon Sentinel M3 fighter, which has the shielding of a corvette and a top speed barely higher than some ''carriers''.
** The M2+ battleships introduced in ''Albion Prelude'' are even slower and more powerful than standard M2 destroyers.
* MobileFactory: ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' has T0 mobile production ships, which can produce a huge variety of wares. There are variants for energy, food, technology (microchips, crystals, etc), ore processing, and military technology (weapons, shields, missiles).
* MookMaker: Drone Frigates in the ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod. They produce their own advanced combat drones on the spot, and manage them like a carrier would manage their fighter wings.
* MoreCriminalsThanTargets: Oddly averted. While there are a ''lot'' of Pirates and Yaki, they are far outnumbered by just the civilian traders of a single race. However, Pirates are usually heavily concentrated in a couple sectors that they own, so in those sectors, they usually outnumber traders 5 to 1 or even higher (like 100:1), in the case of the Pirate home area, Mercenaries' Rift.
* MoreDakka: Certain M6 and many M7 can mount a ridiculous number of flak weapons. One of the most popular loadouts for the otherwise underwhelming Terran Yokohama and ATF Aegir[[note]]Underwhelming because the small Terran weapon selection limits their In-Sector tactics to either [[MacrossMissileMassacre missile spam]] or [[DeathOfAThousandCuts pecking you to death]] with corvette-grade guns.[[/note]] is to put Starburst Shockwave Cannons everywhere possible. OOS, this lets them tear other frigates to shreds in seconds.
* MundaneUtility: The Split Iguana from X2. This TP-class ship (think space bus) can compete with dedicated heavy fighters, in terms of shielding, speed and firepower.
* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: Non-player owned ships have access to what is essentially a point-to-point jumpdrive. Ships in the plot will jump into empty space, and escort missions have swarms of enemy ships warping in scant kilometers away from the ship you're escorting. Player ships are limited to jumping to Jump Gates.
** According to WordOfGod, this is GameplayAndStorySegregation: they decided to use the jumpdrive "flash" for enemies spawning. The official line is that only the Kha'ak have point-to-point jumpdrives, though the Xenon have jump beacons they can use if they know precise coordinates to send it to. The scene during the Terran plot [[spoiler:where the fleet jumps to Aldrin]] involved a reverse-engineered jump beacon, so that technically doesn't count.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:N]]
* NamedAfterTheirPlanet: Mostly averted. The Boron homeworld is Nishala, and the Teladi homeworld is Ianamus Zura. The Argon capital is Argon Prime, but that's a case of the planet being named after the faction rather than the other way around: the Argon renamed Sonra-4 after their then-leader Nathan R. Gunne. The Terran homeworld is Earth, [[CaptainObvious obviously]]. The Paranid play the trope straight: their homeworld is Paranid Prime. Nobody knows the name of the Kha'ak homeworld, and the Xenon homeworld is technically Earth since they're an entire race of insane terraforming drones first built by the Terrans back in the 22nd century. %% This troper does not have information on the Split.
* {{Nerf}}:
** The Split M2 Raptor was among the best destroyers in ''X3: Reunion''. In ''Terran Conflict'', its ability to mount flak weapons was removed, reducing it to using comparatively ineffective corvette guns for fighter defense.
** The ''Terran Conflict'' 3.0 patch reduced the laser generator capacity of the Terran M1 Tokyo, a carrier that could previously fire its anticapital guns indefinitely.
** The M7 Panther's laser generators were weakened in ''Albion Prelude'' to compensate for it having by far the largest fighter capacity of any M7.
* NGOSuperpower: Pirates and Yaki as of ''Terran Conflict'' have access to capital ships (and lots of them), despite having no government and no central organization. The corporations also have their own navies - OTAS in particular fields two to three of their [[GameBreaker Boreas]] destroyers, several dozen transporter ships, swarms of fighters, and multiple frigates.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: When the Argon Federation is closing in on Sol System with their swarms of reverse engineered Xenon fighters, about to subjugate the Terrans, the jump gate system ''completely'' shuts down, isolating every system.
* NintendoHard / NoDamageRun: Dead-Is-Dead mode. If you die, the game will ''delete your save game''. This includes when the game is a bastard and [[TeleFrag teleports a capital ship onto your tiny fighter]] when you come out a jumpgate. It's hard enough that ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude'' each offer an achievement for completing all the storylines in [=DiD=] mode.
* NoFairCheating:
** Using any kind of mods or scripts brands your save with an unremovable ***modified*** tag to keep you informed of this circumstance. Given the amount of bugs in the games (and the fact that a lot of the mods are plain cool), players tend not to care about it.
** If you fail to complete a "Retrieve derelict ship" mission in [=X3TC=] and you still have the ship in your possesion, a squad of police heavy fighters or pirates will warp in, blow the ship to bits and then warp out. It's thus impossible to make any use of the ship except for selling it first.
*** Not true: the cops aren't invincible, so you can actually destroy them. There's a way to do it that will avoid reputation hits; it requires a spare jumpdrive and a good supply of energy cells. You see, the SpacePolice will only spawn once. See the trick in EnemyMine above, or failing that, jump it to one side of a Xenon sector, wait for the police to spawn, and jump it to the sector on the other side of the Xenon sector. The police will follow and be attacked by the Xenon. On the off chance they survive, jump the ship back to the first sector.
* NoPlotNoProblem: Though there is an over-arching narrative to the games, a lot of the replay value comes from the sandbox mode where you pick your starting circumstances and are dropped into the universe to run amok.
* NoSuchThingAsAlienPopCulture: ''In Terran Conflict'': A blink-and-you'll-miss-it aversion. Randomly-picked flavor text for some {{Fetch Quest}}s and bits of junk carried by certain NPC ships point to alien sports and advertising, among other things. ''Reunion'' had the Bulletin Board System, you'd get bits of news and culture in it (along with missions).
* NoseArt: ''X2: The Threat'' allows you to import an image file from your computer that would be applied as nose art to all your ships and stations. It could be a pin-up, a coat of arms, whatever. (GameSpot's reviewer used a character from ''TheSimpsons''.)
* NuclearWeaponsTaboo: Partial: while nuclear ''weapons'' are fine, "large scale" nuclear ''reactors'' aren't, and stations and ships are forced to purchase energy cells produced at ''solar power plants'' in order to manufacture goods or use jumpdrives. "Large scale" apparently doesn't include battleship reactors with outputs capable of razing planet surfaces, strangely.
** It leads to a bit of FridgeLogic when the player wonders how exactly does a spaceship generate enough energy to run all of its systems, but needs separately provided energy cells for the jumpdrive.
* NukeEm: Terran "Hammerhead" missiles are nuclear-tipped according to flavor text. A single Hammerhead can kill an entire wing of small ships in loose formation, and will one-shot any M6 except the ATF Vali. Several of the other heavy missiles are also nuclear.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:O]]
* ObviousBeta: The games tend to ship with a plethora of bugs, from annoying to game breaking. ''Reunion'' suffered from this in its plot (which was often impossible to complete), and ''Terran Conflict'' was a massive system hog for several months after release.
* OldSchoolDogfighting:
** Played down to the letter. A character in the later parts of the game who flies into a Xenon sector to duke it out can bring in a few battleships and carriers, as well as combat drones, resulting in hundreds of ships battling, and dozens of dogfights going on at once.
** Crazy furballs happen when the player is flying a slow ship and going against a faster one. For some reason, attacking ships seem to only fly at their maximum speed; as weapons are forward-firing, they tend do come at you guns blazing, then overshoot, turn back and repeat as long as necessary -- god forbid they'd slow down and try to get on your tail. Flying a faster ship, or going against slower ones, makes dogfighting a lot more interesting.
** Played with ''a la'' ''Series/{{Babylon 5}}'' in recent games. On certain fighters you can see brief puffs of propellant from maneuvering jets when you hit the rudder or whatever.
* OmnicidalManiac: The Xenon.
* OneFederationLimit:
** Argon Federation. Boron Kingdom. Split Dynasty. Paranid Empire. Teladi Space Company. And that's just the Commonwealth.
** The Terrans have no named government, but their space operations are controlled by the United Space Command, and any operations dealing with AIs are run by the AGI Task Force.
* OneHitPointWonder: Any ship in ''X: Beyond the Frontier'' and ''X: Tension'', once stripped of its shields, will be blown away by its pilot sneezing.
* [[OneProductPlanet One Product System]]: Mostly averted, but some systems specialize in producing only one or two types of goods. Asteroid Belt in ''Terran Conflict'' mostly produces just different types of minerals, for example.
* OneNationUnderCopyright: The Teladi Space Company. Their entire race is organized like one MegaCorp. The head honcho, the Chairman (his name is Ceo at the time of the games), and business and smaller companies are arranged like subsidies or divisions. However, they employ an actual police force and a proper military.
* OneStatToRuleThemAll: Battles you partake in are varied, frantic and involve quite a bit of tactics. However, Out-Of-Sector battles, which happen in sectors you are not in, are simulated under a different set of rules, and they usually boil down to shield capacity in first place and (large) numbers in second.
* TheOneTrueSequence / SequenceBreaking: In ''Terran Conflict'', the intended order to complete the plotlines is "Terran Plot" → "Operation Final Fury" → "Goner Plot" → "Hub Plot" → "HQ Plot" → "Aldrin Expansion" → "Treasure Hunt" → "New Home Plot" → "Balance of Power". Though none of the individual plots allow for internal sequence breaking (i.e. you can't skip missions), it is very easy to complete certain plots out of order. Players have reported finishing the Goner Plot before the Terran Plot, and the Aldrin Expansion only requires you to have completed the first half of the Hub plot.
* OneWorldOrder: Present in the games (aside from the Terrans and Argon; same race, but they had several hundred years' separation), but the ''X-Encyclopedia'' describes how there are other factions, like the human Hatikvah Free League.
* OnlySixFaces: {{NPC}}s' faces are picked at random from a list of about five possibilities per faction.
* OpeningNarration: ''Terran Conflict's'' [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6KzJhKVLo opening cinematic]]:
--> "Almost a millennium has passed since the last great plague of humankind had been wiped out from the solar system and its precious blue pearl planet Earth.\\
"It was a plague so dangerous, a threat so grave, that it spread throughout the infinity of space and eternity of time almost effortlessly to infest the stars. It spread its pestilence to civilizations unknown, devastated the galaxy as if it was just an ordinary body made of flesh and bone falling prey to a mindless virus.\\
"And in a sense it was really a virus, a virus created by humankind. One made with the best of intentions, but a virus nevertheless.\\
"[[GreyGoo Von Neumann probes]], self-replicating machines, Terraformers, Xenon, even the Enemy of God. But at its core, it was really only one thing.\\
"[[AIIsACrapshoot Artificial general intelligence]], or AGI. Mechanical minds capable of making themselves even more intelligent, and then again, and again. Recursively forever. The greatest threat to biological life that ever existed throughout the whole universe. The Terraformers were cast out of the solar system by sheer luck, just barely, with billions upon billions dead in their wake. The Earth Jumpgate was dismantled, legislation was put in place never to allow AGI to be created again, ever.\\
"Humankind never forgot the lesson of AGI, never ventured to try out this concept once more, not in a thousand years, but then it was discovered that species from outside the solar system thought differently. The plague of AGI was being released on the universe once more. Again perhaps with the best of intentions and again however, with the deadliest of results. The government of Earth had to intervene, even if it meant [[SpaceColdWar cold war]], even if it meant a cold war between brothers, and intervene Earth did.\\
"This escalating conflict would be given a name by historians. [[TitleDrop Terran Conflict]]."
* OrangeBlueContrast: The cover for ''X3: Reunion''.
* OurWormholesAreDifferent: All the races depend on the LostTechnology Jump Gates scattered around the universe to get around. [[spoiler: They occasionally ''disconnect'', separating colonies for hundreds of years, until they reconnect (if ever).]]
** According to the X-Superbox Encyclopedia, the wormholes are only different by using exotic matter to power the wormhole, and by using magnetic forces to flatten the wormhole to allow travel. if those factors didn't occur, it would be the exact same as RealLife's theoretical wormholes.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:P]]
* PacifistRun: Possible in all the games, if you skip the plot. Some players go for an all-out "Cannot kill any enemy, at all", others go with "My other ships can kill enemies", or "I will only kill enemies required by the plot lines". The goal for these is to keep your combat rank at "Harmless" -- getting one kill will bring the combat rank up, and it takes a long time for it to go back down to Harmless.
* PainfullySlowProjectile: Capital ship weapons. Special mention goes out to the Terrans' Point Singularity Projector, which is incredibly easy to avoid in almost any ship.
* PassThroughTheRings: the very first game, [=X-BtF=], has you do that in the opening intro, to test your ship's systems. Also, several missions in [=X3R=] and [=X3TC=] have you racing against other [[strike:targets]] ships; you do not technically fly through rings, but you do have to pass through arbitrarily placed checkpoints.
* PerfectPacifistPeople: Subverted with the Goners. They're normally {{Actual Pacifist}}s espousing peaceful coexistence, and their ships don't have any weapons mounts at all, in contrast to every other ship in the game apart from cargo drones. If pressed hard enough as a society, however, they ''will'' fight back with lethal force: the climax of the Goner plot in ''TC'' consists of [[spoiler:smuggling a bomb onto a SpacePirate station whose denizens have been beating the crap out of the supply lines to the new Goner Temple]].
* PhotoprotoneutronTorpedo: Several weapons in the series (particularly the later games) fit this. Ion Disruptor, Ion Pulse Generator, Ion Cannon, Ion Shard Railgun, and Photon Pulse Cannon. Oh, and the Kha'ak use kyon emitters, which fire a fictitious particle. The names are normally fairly justified by FlavorText; for instance, the ISR "fires ionised 'shards' of super-heated plasma, which are then accelerated to high speeds using magnets."
* PlanarShockwave: Some of the larger explosion graphics use this.
* PlanetOfHats: One of the series' major criticisms is its poor job of fleshing out characters and races.
** Boron: Peace-loving space hippies
** Teladi: [[ProudMerchantRace Profit-crazed]] {{lizard folk}}
** Paranid: HolierThanThou [[ScaryDogmaticAliens religious extremists]]
** Split: ProudWarriorRace
** Terran: Xenophobic paranoid isolationists
** Goner: Jehovah's Witnesses [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]-]
** Yaki: {{Yakuza}} [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]-]
*** BilingualBonus: The faction name actually means "many yakuza" in Japanese.
** Xenon: [[AIIsACrapshoot Insane robots]]
** Kha'ak: Trying to kill anything that isn't Kha'ak?[[note]]Nobody's ever managed to talk to them. Or if they did, they didn't live to tell about it. All we know is that they seem to be a hive mind and that they have an affinity for nividium.[[/note]]
* PlanetTerra: In ''X3'', humans from the Sol System are referred to as "Terrans", but the planet is still called Earth.
* PlayerHeadquarters: The... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Player Headquarters]], first introduced in ''Reunion''. You gain the Headquarters by doing a sub-plot in each game. The HQ lets you reverse engineer ships (to gain their blueprints), scrap ships (for resources), build ships (from learned blueprints and resources), repair ships (using some resources), and adjust the hue and saturation values for non-Boron ships - allowing you to make pink Split ships, or make the flames on your Pirate Nova bright blue. The HQ has a ''massive'' storage bay for storing all your crap, 12 external docking ports for capital ships, 20 external docking ports for freighters and corvettes, and a [[BiggerOnTheInside infinitely large internal docking bay for fighters]], making it an excellent parking location for your unused ships.
* PlayerMooks: Any player-owned ship other than the one physically piloted by the player. You can give them named pilots by activating certain scripts (whereupon a name is generated based on the owner of the sector the ship is in), but you never interact with them at any deeper level than the command console.
* PortalNetwork: The only way to get around the universe is by using jumpgates or a jumpdrive (which teleports you to a jumpgate of your choice).
* PointDefenseless:
** Partially averted. Most ships (even some fighters) have at least one turret theoretically capable of shooting down incoming missiles. Some get through, some don't, depending on the loadout of the ship in question.
** With the bonus pack scripts in X3, it may be almost completely averted ... for player-owned ships. One of the scripts in question is "Mosquito Missile Defense," which uses the fast, accurate, very weak Mosquito Missile to automatically intercept incoming missiles and [[AttackDrone fighter drones]]. It doesn't work on ships that can't equip Mosquito Missiles, however, making it annoyingly useless to the Terrans in ''Terran Conflict'' - in ''Albion Prelude'', ''every'' ship in the game can fire Mosquito Missiles.
** The Split M2 Python, one of the best destroyers in ''Reunion'', became this in ''Terran Conflict'' because its ability to mount Flak Artillery Arrays was removed. It now has to rely on comparatively ineffective corvette weapons for fighter defense.
* PoliceAreUseless: They and the Border Control ships seem to exist mainly to attack the player after friendly fire incidents, or when the player keeps a ship he's supposed to return as part of a mission.
* PrivateMilitaryContractors: The Split Strong Arms. All the corporations maintain warships, but the Strong Arms are the only ones for whom they're not just for protecting their own supply chains.
* {{Privateer}}: The governments of the Commonwealth offer "police licenses", which act like letters of marque. You're paid a preset bounty for destroying {{space pirate}}s, [[AIIsACrapshoot Xenon]], and [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Kha'ak]], and destroying neutrals or allies costs you the license.
* ProductPlacement: Nividium; aside from being extremely valuable, it's also a considerable plot point for X2 and X3.
** This gets brought up a lot, and Egosoft has always said no. Cynics just say they're trying not to alienate ATI fans.
* PromotedFanboy: The developers of the X3 ''Xtended'' mod, who were later hired on by Egosoft for ''Terran Conflict''.
* ProperlyParanoid: The Terrans are deathly afraid of artificially intelligent ships, because their own Terraformer ships were [[ColonyDrop throwing asteroids at Earth because of a programming error.]]
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The Split race is basically a clone of the Klingons.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Q]]
* QuicksandBox: ''X: Beyond the Frontier'' through ''X3: Reunion'' hit this hit pretty hard. ''X3: Terran Conflict'' is a bit better at giving the player a goal.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:R]]
* RammingAlwaysWorks:
** Ramming is the fastest way to kill enemies; just make sure you have more shields than they do. (Though you REALLY shouldn't do it at full speed, unless the target ship is a lot smaller than your ship.)
** Actually, as long as you don't try to ram anything ''too'' big, the faster you're going, the less damage you take. In X2, a kitted out Split heavy transport could crush a Paranid battleship without taking a scratch.
** Ramming has also the pleasant side effect of not angering the local sector police (unless you take too long to kill the target), a must if you need to eliminate a "friendly" ship without nuking the entire sector.
** Inverted in the case of M5 scouts, wherein it is the fastest way to kill ''yourself''. In particular, ''never'' fly a fully upgraded Kestrel on autopilot, as the ship is actually too fast for the AI. The "auto-pillock" is all but guaranteed to splatter you all over the vicinity.
* RandomNumberGod: Worshiping it is a RunningGag on the forums.
* RandomlyGeneratedLevels: The Unfocused Jumpdrive warps the player into a randomly generated sector, which typically includes asteroids, a random background, random sun(s) color/brightness, and a few squads of Xenon or Kha'ak enemies. The player may also find a critically damaged Aran TL.
* RealTrailerFakeMovie: ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlAWC2HSOYM Nautilus]]''.
* RecursiveAmmo: A wide variety of missiles, from the strictly fighter-to-fighter Wasp on up to the sector-obliterating Shadow, have multiple warheads. There's even a few ''unguided'' multiple-warhead missiles, although only one is actually of any use.
* RedAlert: The game is pretty decent about it. Once hostile ships come within about ten kilometers, you get a single beep, then the background music switches to the battle soundtrack.
* RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver: Split ships use rust red armor panels with gray/black backgrounds. Xenon ships are pitch black and gray with glowing red internals.
* RegeneratingShieldStaticHealth: Shields are held in the cargo bay and will regenerate constantly. Hull is non-regenerating, and once the hull reaches zero hitpoints, the ship will be destroyed.
* ReportingNames: A [[JustifiedTrope justification]] for Earth-derived ArmsAndArmorThemeNaming of nonhuman-built ships. The Boron M1 Shark is unpronounceable in the original Boron, but the word used for it translates to "cartilaginous fish with lots of sharp teeth". Likewise, the Paranid M4 Pericles was probably named for a Paranid whose career paralleled that of the Athenian Pericles.
* RestartAtLevelOne: The {{Player Character}}s of ''X2: The Threat'' and ''X3: Reunion'' are the same guy (Julian Brennan).
* RidiculouslyFastConstruction:
** '''HYPER''' averted. If you decided to build a ship at the PlayerHeadquarters instead of buying it, you have to wait as your headquarters puts it together. Capital ships like the Argon Colossus can take ''twenty hours'' in ''real time'' to build.
** Played straight for building stations. They basically pop fully-formed out of your TL's cargo hold. Which enables the [[ColonyDrop station-bombing]] combat trick.
* RingWorldPlanet: The Torus. Also, one forum member built a space station complex around the Aldrin planetoid for fun.
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: The Terrans in ''Albion Prelude''. After the Torus Aeternal (a massive station wrapping around the Earth) is blown up by Saya Kho, they deploy their entire battlefleet to attack the Argon Federation.
* RobotWar: The Terraformer War, the First and Second Xenon Conflicts, and the constant low-level warfare against the Xenon. The Argon/Terran war probably takes the cake, though.
* {{Roboteching}}: Missiles are launched towards the bow from ventrally-mounted tubes (or flank-mounted tubes in the case of [=M7Ms=]) and immediately curve off after their target. This leads to spectacular visuals of swirling streams of fire when using swarm missiles.
* RubberForeheadAliens: The Split. In the games, they have red skin, tall and narrow heads, and large eyes that are very close together, but otherwise they are fairly human-like. [[http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/gfx/22_concept_split_male.jpg Concept]] [[http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/gfx/22_concept_split_female.jpg art]] makes them look like space elves.
[[/folder]]
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