History Main / X

* Website/TwitterX, formerly known as Twitter.

* ''VideoGame/{{X 1992}}'', a space combat game on the UsefulNotes/GameBoy.

* The ''VideoGame/{{X}}-Universe'' series, a long-running series of wide open sandbox games.

* ''ComicBook/{{X}}'', a comic book series by Creator/DarkHorseComics.

X can refer to:

* [[Music/XUSBand X]], a punk band.
* ''Manga/{{X 1999}}'', a manga series referred to as ''X'' in Japan.[[note]]renamed to this in America to avoid confusion with an already-existing comic series[[/note]]

* Music/{{X}}, a punk band.

* See ThisTropeIsX
* Tropes that aren't in that index:
** LetXBeTheUnknown
** XMakesAnythingCool

You may also have been looking for the TurnBasedTactics series ''VideoGame/{{X-COM}}''.

* LetXBeTheUnknown
* XMakesAnythingCool

* ''ComicBook/{{X}}, a comic book series by Creator/DarkHorseComics.

* [[VideoGame/{{X}} A long-running series of wide open sandbox games.]]
* [[Music/{{X}} A punk band]]
* Manga/{{X 1999}}, a manga series referred to as X in Japan[[note]]renamed to this in America to avoid confusion with an already-existing comic series[[/note]]
* [[ComicBook/{{X}} A comic book series]] by Creator/DarkHorse

You may also have been looking for the TurnBasedStrategy series ''VideoGame/{{X-COM}}''.

* Manga/{{X 1999}}, a manga series referred to as X in Japan[[note]]renamed to this in America to avoid confusion with an already-existing comic series[[/note]]

* Manga/{{X 1999}}, a manga series referred to as X in Japan[[hottip:*:renamed to this in America to avoid confusion with an already-existing comic series]]

* Manga/{{X1999}}, a manga series referred to as X in Japan[[hottip:*:renamed to this in America to avoid confusion with an already-existing comic series]]

* Manga/{{X1999}}, a manga series referred to as such in Japan[[hottip:*:renamed to this in America to avoid confusion with an already-existing comic series]]

* Manga/{{X1999}}, a manga series referred to as such in Japan[[protip:*:renamed to this in America to avoid confusion with an already-existing comic series]]

* Manga/{{X1999}}, a manga series

* [[Music/{{X}} A punk band]]

[[quoteright:250:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/x3_trope_7723.jpg]]
-> ''TRADE. FIGHT. BUILD. THINK.''

A WideOpenSandbox [[FourX space combat/trading simulator]] series by German developer Egosoft.

The series (the "''X-Universe''") contains:
* ''X: Beyond The Frontier'', (1999)
* ''X: Tension'', (2000, expansion for X: BTF)
* ''X2: The Threat'', (2003)
* ''X3: Reunion'', (2005)
* ''X3: Terran Conflict'' (2008)
* ''X3: Albion Prelude'' (2011); [[DownloadableContent expansion pack]] for ''Terran Conflict''
* ''X: Rebirth'' (2012); reboot of the series (not yet released)

You can just play through the plot, content to stay in your puny little fighter and not straying much farther than your starting sector, or you can create a universe-spanning trading empire, all but controlling the economy and with enough military power to squash all who dare oppose you. You can also do things that you're not really meant to do, such as almost completely wiping out a race from the universe. It takes a hell of a lot of military resources, and it'll probably break the economy unless you supply it with that race's goods yourself, but nobody's actively ''stopping'' you from doing it. The only reason you can't destroy ''everything'' is because the game engine tries to keep the economy balanced and will slowly recreate destroyed stations if need be.

Recently Egosoft announced a revamp of the series via the next main series game, ''X: Rebirth'', due out in 2012. To the fanbase's rather abrupt surprise, they then announced a new "expandalone" game using the ''X3: Terran Conflict'' engine, ''Albion Prelude'', mere days before its surprise release date. Named after the ship that is the focus of ''X: Rebirth'', ''Albion'' adds a Stock Exchange to the game, as well as progressing the story to the massive interstellar war that was brewing by the end of ''X3: Terran Conflict''.

The company has also released a trailer for an animated movie set in the TC-era X-Universe, ''Nautilus''. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlAWC2HSOYM You can watch it here.]] The movie was supposedly based on a fanfic written by one of the forum members, Nuklear-Slug, but it was later revealed to be an April Fools joke.

Last but not least, Egosoft has released [[Literature/{{X}} a number of novels]] set in the X-Universe. To date, only ''Dominion'', ''Rogue'', and ''Farnham's Legend'' have been translated into English.

Not to be confused with ''{{X1999}}'', or ''X'' the Nintendo tank game with the same name.
----
!!Tropes:

* AbusingTheKardashevScaleForFunAndProfit: The Outsiders in the backstory and Encyclopedia are full blown Type [=IVs=], and the Ancients are borderline Type [=IVs=]. DysonSphere and Matroshka Brain civilizations are mentioned, and they fit into the borderline Type [=IIs=]. However, all the races the player actually interacts with are at best high-end Type Is.
* AbusivePrecursors / BenevolentPrecursors : The Ancients ''do'' have theoretically good goals, like doing something about that whole "Heat Death Of The Universe" ''thing'', and they consider the PortalNetwork they built and maintain a gift to the younger races. On the other hand, they've got a nasty habit of thinking about the younger races as one collective group, making them [[WellIntentionedExtremist frighteningly]] willing to toy with other species. Since their most direct method of manipulation involves switching gate pairs in the PortalNetwork, this means that they do things like start interplanetary wars seemingly ForTheLulz, [[YouCantGoHomeAgain separate colony ships from their home planets]], simply lock fleets in deep space with nowhere to go, or [[InferredHolocaust turn off the entire system of interstellar travel]]. On the gripping hand, that bit about shutting down the entire PortalNetwork also came in response to the [[AIIsACrapshoot Xenon terraformers, who have a bad habit of terraforming people out of existance]], [[OhCrap having control of a large portion of the galaxy]].
* TheAestheticsOfTechnology: Terran ships, despite being the most advanced ships, [[http://i.imgur.com/SyPVb.jpg don't look much more advanced than the modern Space Shuttle]] - just a lot more clean and streamlined. The Paranid, the second most advanced race, use [[http://i.imgur.com/VG130.jpg very high-tech looking ships]] with lots of curves and shiny hulls. The Teladi, who buy or reverse engineer all their technology from the other races and use lower tech weaponry, have [[http://i.imgur.com/Z17s7.jpg cobbled-together ships]], though they are usually just as effective as the other race's ships.
* AIIsACrapshoot: The modern-day Xenon are descended from the Terraformers, originally built by the Terrans to terraform worlds. After a badly-written ''software update'' they begin to 'terraform' people, cities, and stations. Eventually they [[spoiler:gained true sentience]]. This is why you bug-check your changes before you implement them, people.
* AliensSpeakingEnglish: All species speak a version of Japanese. TranslationConvention makes them all speak in English (or whichever language your game is set to).
* TheAlliance: The Commonwealth, which includes the 5 main races: The Argon, Boron, Teladi, Paranid, and Split. It functions more like a United Nations, though.
* AllianceMeter: Each race has its own independent status. Argon and Boron are allied, and Split and Paranid are allied, but each side has neutral status to the Teladi and one of the races from each side. Argon hate the Paranid, and Split hate the Boron. Killing hated ships in sectors will give you a reputation bonus, while killing neutral or allied ships will give you a reputation hit to both the victim and the sector owner. Terrans are neutral to everyone in ''Terran Conflict'', but are at war with the Argon in ''Albion Prelude''. It ''is'' possible to ally to every side (besides the Xenon and Kha'ak), including the SpacePirates and Yaki, but you can't do combat missions if you wish to remain neutral or allied - race combat missions will usually feature Pirates or Yaki, and Pirate and Yaki combat missions feature race ships (like protecting a Pirate station from a Boron corvette).
* AllPlanetsAreEarthLike: Averted. A good number of planets in-game look Earth-ish (most likely due to the Terraformers, well, ''terraforming'' them) but plenty look and are described as fairly different -- the Boron homeworld being an aquatic planet with an ammonia-based atmosphere, for example.
** Actually, when the network was first explored by the Terrans, it was noted that there were an unusual amount of worlds that were similar to Earth. They only had small differences (geological differences, etc.), which is why Terraformers were required.
* AllThereInTheManual: The ''X-Encyclopedia'', a 200 page [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin encyclopedia]] on the background of the X-universe, its future (past the games' timeline), and how technology works. It loves to talk about stuff that isn't mentioned in the games at all, like the "Hatikvah Free League", a separate human government, or a species of sentient whales on a hidden Boron planet.
* AlternativeCalendar: The calendar starts at '0' in 2170, twenty-four years after a Terran colony and war fleet is separated from Earth as part of a mass deception to save Earth from the Xenon. They quickly form their own society (the modern-day Argon are their descendants).
** They also inexplicably erase all mention of Earth from their histories.
* ApocalypseHow: Apocalypses of various types are ''all over'' the games and lore.
** Let's start all the way back in the [=2140s=] A.D. The terraformers going nuts resulted in Galactic-level Societal Disruption for the Terrans. Earth came within a hairsbreadth of being rendered uninhabitable.
** The Kha'ak did a system-scale Physical Annihilation of President's End in ''X2: The Threat''. All that's left is rubble and the gates.
** The [[SpaceColdWar Terran Conflict]] turned into a hot war after Saya Kho blew up the Torus Aeternal in ''X3: Albion Prelude'', a Planetary Societal Disruption for Earth. A year later the {{Precursors}} shut down the gate system ([[WildMassGuessing maybe to prevent the younger races from obliterating themselves]]), which likely caused Galactic Societal Collapse.
* ApocalypseWow: The destruction of the Torus Aeternal in ''Albion Prelude'' is shown in [[http://store.steampowered.com/video/201310?snr=1_5_9__400 the opening cinematic]].
* ArbitraryMaximumRange: All weapons have a maximum range, the longest being 8 kilometers on a capital ship cannon. The effective range of most weapons is lower than the listed max range, because at long range the target will usually avoid the {{Painfully Slow Projectile}}s.
* ArmsAndArmorThemeNaming / AnimalMotifs / MythicalMotifs: Some ships in ''X3'' have names of swords. Others use names from Earth mythology or biology. The full list of naming conventions is as follows:
** USC (Terran): Swords for fighters, Japanese cities for capital ships e.g. Cutlass, Tokyo
** ATF (Terran): Norse mythology e.g. Thor, Odin
** Argon (Other humans): Fighters appear unthemed; Greek mythology for capitals (but not those used by Paranid) e.g. Colossus, Minotaur
** Boron: Aquatic organisms e.g. Barracuda, Shark
** OTAS: Greek wind gods and regional winds e.g. Boreas, Venti, Mistral
** Paranid: Greek gods, demigods and heroes e.g. Perseus, Zeus
** Split: Predators e.g. Python, Tiger
** Teladi: Birds e.g. Condor, Falcon
** Terraformers: Hexadecimal numbers e.g. #deca (57,034 in base 10), #cefa (52,986)
** Xenon: Letters e.g. J, L
* ArtificialBrilliance: Rapid-response navy ships in ''Albion Prelude'' will jump around the universe to respond to threats to their installations and ships. They'll also jump away from combat if they start taking too much damage.
* ArtificialStupidity:
** Fatal collisions among NPC ships are commonplace. Fast NPC fighters tend to splat on the station they are attacking after a few minutes of fire. Unwanted self-destruction by launching a missile slower than their ship is also relatively common. Gets elevated to the power of itself if you activate time compression; the AI routines have trouble running 10x faster, and glitch out -- generally in more dramatic ways the faster the ship is. Expect to see fighters zig-zagging all over the place and capital ships ramming stations.
*** The player ship's autopilot appears to use the same lousy programming, leading many members of the community to jokingly dub it the "auto-pillock".
*** [[http://apricotmappingservice.com/autopillok.html Some believe the auto-pillock consists of a gerbil (or lemming) in a box, with a rough sketch of the sector map and a joystick.]]
*** Fighter craft love to smash themselves into capital ships when attacking them. In [[http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=295405 a series of tests]] on the EGOSOFT forums, a player ordered swarms of fighters to attack a weaponless capital ship. Two waves, one of Busters and another of Mambas, suffered 50% losses because they were splatting themselves on the sides of their target.
*** Oddly enough, the auto-pillock is the only thing that mitigates the Aldrin Spitfyre's status as a Game Breaker. This is an M3 heavy fighter [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale capable of topping 450 m/s, has 75 MJ of shielding]], and can mount and fire ''corvette''-grade weapons. The game self-balances by smashing it into things on attack runs.
** The player has a number of well-documented, non-exploit tricks available to him in combat that the AI is evidently not programmed to use, such as strafing and [[MacrossMissileMassacre launching missile barrages from [=M7M=]- and M8-class ships]].
*** The latter behavior is corrected in ''Albion Prelude'' to a rather frightening degree. As long as they can maintain their stores of ammunition, AI missile bombers and frigates will not hesitate to pour long-range ordnance into a sector until everything in it has been purged of life.
** Your trading ships and Universe Traders will [[TooDumbToLive blissfully fly through Xenon and Pirate sectors]] without any regard for their life. Universe Traders will ''sometimes'' jump away when they come under attack, but ''not'' when the enemy is coming towards them - the pilots don't seem to ever notice 3 kilometer long destroyers bearing down on them.
* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: Taken UpToEleven. Not only would the economy not work in RealLife, ''it doesn't work InUniverse either''. The most infamous example is the Terrans, whose economy is perpetually stagnated, with goods sitting in factories unsold. Doesn't help that the Terran stations and sectors are ''massive'' and have a docking corridor that's the size of a Commonwealth station; anything that gets in the way will cause a docking trading ship to avert and restart its docking path. The game's GOD engine (regulates the economy, and what is spawned/removed) also likes to destroy Terran stations because they don't receive their necessary resources, which happens a lot since there will be 3-4 sectors between a technology factory and the ore or food that it needs to run. Terrans fail civil planning forever.
** This is an opportunity in disguise. The Terrans are merely waiting for someone (i.e. you) to revitalize their economy by placing in their sectors factories that produce what their stations lack; doing this properly can bring stupid amounts of money to entrepreneur-type players.
*** Even then, there's never enough weapons to go around unless the player builds his own.
** Less well-known is the fact that the Commonwealth will also crash without player intervention. The most common symptom is the removal of both TractorBeam factories in the game (no station buys them, so traders don't trade with them), which forces the player to build and feed an entire SpaceStation for something he only ever needs one of.
* AscendedGlitch: In ''X3: Reunion'', dropping your shields out from your cargo bay then picking them up again would instantly recharge them. Egosoft kept it in ''X3: Terran Conflict'' as it's useless in combat and nobody wants to wait half an hour for their destroyer's shields to recharge.
* AsteroidMiners: Ships can be outfitted with Ore Collectors. Blow up an asteroid with a big missile or a Mobile Drilling System, cut up the chunks into smaller pieces with your weapons, then pick it up. Players can sometimes see AI ships mining asteroids, but it's fairly rare.
* AsteroidThicket: There can be upwards of 40 asteroids (each of which 1-2km in diameter) in a 60 kilometer radius. Most sectors have only a couple asteroids fairly spaced out, but sectors like Savage Spur have several dozen asteroids in a tiny area between the gates; the sector is a death trap for capital ships, more so if SETA is running on 10x.
* AttackDrone: Freighters ''love'' to drop these by the dozens to swarm attacking ships.
** ''Terran Conflict'' has two new types of enhanced drones, and a little squad of them (bought dirt-cheap) could easily kill the biggest ships in the game in less than a minute with almost no casualties.
*** Mostly because it will overwhelm the game's AI, and cause the game to use more system resources. As more AIs are running, the game runs the AI less; i.e. AI destroyers will stop firing constantly, or may plow into an asteroid while shooting.
*** And because NPC capital ships are [[PointDefenseless rarely equipped with weapons capable of hitting them]].
** ''X: Rebirth's'' player ship is armed with drones that can be flown remotely. This is something of a bone of contention among the fans, for reasons explained on the [[YMMV/{{X}} YMMV tab]].
* AwesomeButImpractical: The Cluster Flak Array and Fragmentation Bomb Launcher are [[SpaceIsNoisy loud]] and pretty, but of little use in combat: good luck actually hitting anything with the flak burst. Flak Artillery Arrays and standard fighter lasers are a much better defensive choices for capital ships and freighters, respectively.
** The CFA's only redeeming feature is that in certain vessels it can be combined with the [[LightningGun Ion Disruptor]] to increase the latter's range. (The Ion-D jumps between targets, and can use CFA shrapnel to do so.)
** Missile frigates and bombers fall into this category in the early game. Fielding them requires the player to build up a strong supporting industry to manufacture munitions. Once said industry is built up, however, they jump to AwesomeYetPractical, fully capable of singlehandedly leveling sectors.
** The ATF Valhalla. 14 gigajoules of shielding, 32 [[WaveMotionGun Point Singularity Projectors]], 24 [[MoreDakka Starburst Shockwave Cannons]] ... and it's so wide that it can't fit through gates. Seriously, when it enters a sector, it ''bangs into the gate rim and loses its shields'', reducing the ATF's trump card to a sitting duck. There's a good reason it doesn't spawn in vanilla TC. The behavior is corrected in ''Albion Prelude'', where the Valhalla warps next to a jumpgate, not inside it.
** The Paranid M2 Odysseus and Boron M6+ Heavy Hydra are sometimes ''treated'' like this (notably on the wiki), though they're really only impractical for early and mid-game players: their price tags are quite a bit higher than the rest of their class.
** The Split M2 Python went from AwesomeYetPractical to AwesomeButImpractical between ''Reunion'' and ''Terran Conflict'', as it is now the only destroyer that [[PointDefenseless can't mount flak weapons for point defense]]. It has to rely on either escorts or corvette guns for this.
* BareYourMidriff / FormFittingWardrobe / ImpossiblyLowNeckline / {{Stripperiffic}} (whew!): Saya Kho is frequently depicted as such. [[http://extreme.pcgameshardware.de/attachments/397450d1301531304-spieler-frauen-die-beliebtesten-frauen-charaktere-computerspielen-x3saya.jpg This image]] is on the back of ''X3: Gold Edition''.
* TheBattlestar: The Split M7 Panther, which has a fighter bay rivaling a carrier and a decent number of frigate-sized guns. M1 Carriers also pack a good number of guns behind powerful shields, though they don't have the stamina of M7 or M2.
* BigDumbObject: [[spoiler: The HUB. It's a giant sphere 30 billion kilometers in diameter, it's orbiting a ''massive'' red giant star, it's drawing power straight from the star itself, it can modify the PortalNetwork, and it's unknown who built it.]]
** The [[http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2010/305/8/c/the_torus_aeternal_by_firedragon20-d31xyz7.jpg Torus Aeternal]], a ''massive'' station that wraps entirely around Earth's equator. It houses millions of people, builds most of the Terran's enormous fleet, and has weapons capable of annihilating ''anything'' that dares to get too close.
* BiggerIsBetter: The Terran Kyoto and [=ATF=] Valhalla, the ultra-destroyers introduced in ''Albion Prelude''. They are by far the largest ships in the game, and have huge amounts of weaponry.
** As mentioned in AwesomeButImpractical, the Valhalla is a subversion in ''Terran Conflict'': it's so wide it clips the gate when it enters a sector, stripping it of its shields and rendering it a sitting duck for other capital ships. ''Albion Prelude'' fixed it so it warps next to the gate rather than through it.
* BiggerOnTheInside: Cargo bays, due to quantum compression. Ships not much larger than a modern F-16 jet can fit several dozen people in their cargo bays - which would be about the size of a refrigerator.
* BlackAndGrayMorality: ''Albion Prelude''. After the Terrans begin moving fleets around because of rumors of the Argon developing AGI ships, Saya Kho blows up Earth's Torus Aeternal, killing potentially ''millions'' of people on the Torus alone, with even more from wreckage [[ColonyDrop falling back down onto Earth]]. The Terrans then go on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge against the Argon Federation, who deploy [[TooDumbToLive artificially intelligent ships reverse engineered from the Xenon]]. Some of the Paranid, who normally despise other races, were horrified by this and sided with the Terrans. The year after the Argon butcher millions of Terrans, the [[NiceJobBreakingItHero entire gate system shuts down.]].
* BlindJump: The Unfocused Jumpdrive will randomly generate a sector, and warp the player to it; complete with radio hash and distant visible galaxies off in the distance. It's great for escaping your doom, but you better hope you brought energy cells for the return trip, [[{{Unwinnable}} otherwise you'll be stranded forever]].
** And that is why the random sector always has a crate of cells in it. It may be on the opposite side of a Kha'ak swarm, [[OhCrap or in a cloud of Xenon fighters,]] though.
* BoardingParty: You can recruit and train Marines/captured slaves to board enemy ships, murder the crew, and hack the central computer. When they board, they'll eject from your cargo bay and space walk to the enemy ship, or if you have Board Pods you load them into your missile tubes and fire it at the enemy ship. If the enemy ship has shields when your marines come into contact with it, it will fry them.
* BoringButPractical: Rapid fire, low damage per shot weapons. Capital ships would be better off if [[MoreDakka all their turrets are filled to the brim with anti-fighter weaponry]], rather than using the biggest WaveMotionGun they can carry, even when facing enemies of equal or surpassing size. The only real advantage of capital class weaponry is range, not firepower. Unfortunately, it's next to impossible to hit even a massive, slow-moving target at ranges reserved for these weapons due to their {{Painfully Slow Projectile}}s.
** [[AttackDrone Drone]] [[SpamAttack Spam]] in X3. Beat the enemy by overloading your computer's processor.
* BossInMookClothing: Pirates armed with Plasma Burst Generators, and Xenon fighters armed with Pulsed Beam Emitters. Then there is the dreaded Phased Shockwave Generator in X3:R, which is a Plasma Burst Generator with a 90 degree sphere of doom ahead of the firing ship. Thankfully nerfed to capital ship-only in X3:TC.
** M8 Bombers in ''Albion Prelude''. In ''Terran Conflict'', they were largely free kills because the AI was too dumb to fire the missiles more than once every couple minutes. Between the games, they TookALevelInBadass, and are now capable of wiping out entire sectors under a hailstorm of [[MacrossMissileMassacre spammed station-killing missiles]]
* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: The Argon backstory consists of this.
* CasualInterstellarTravel: Space is pretty damn crowded with (damn annoying) civilian ships.
* CityGuards: The system police like to buzz around and scan ships for illegal goods, and have destroyers to back them up. Due to how GOD works, the police fighter craft tend to be pathetically armed; most of them only have a couple Impulse Ray Emitters, which are the weakest guns in the game, excluding support equipment and Ion Disruptors.
* ColonyDrop: The Terraformers/Xenon bombarded Earth cities from orbit with asteroids and comets when "terraforming" it.
** A variation is used as an actual combat technique by some players, wherein the player builds a SpaceStation ''directly on top of an enemy ship.'' The tactic has earned the moniker "station-bombing."
* CommonplaceRare: Microchips in ''Terran Conflict''. They're everywhere -- weapons, ships, components of all kinds. And yet, good luck finding some in the universe -- there's so much demand, and the production process involves such a convoluted chain of supply, that most chip factories are permanently empty -- the few chips they produce are instantly snatched up by NPC traders. And if you do manage to be faster than the traders, expect to pay ludicrous prices for them.
** Oh, and [[spoiler:you need 75,000 of them for the Hub plot.]]
* CoolGate: Ordinary jumpgates look pretty nifty. Then compare them to the Terran-designed Neptune gate in TC.
* CoolStarship: Hundreds of them!
** [[spoiler: [[http://i.imgur.com/fFoMj.jpg #DECA]] M1, a massive cylindrical Terraformer CPU ship. The nose of the ship is a massive gaping hole, leading to a glowing red interior.]]
** [[http://i.imgur.com/GTkAR.jpg OTAS Boreas M2]], a destroyer looking like something from ''{{Babylon 5}}'', and can outgun basically every ship in the game.
** Argon Elite M4+, an advanced interceptor which is a throwback to the original Argon Elite M3 from ''X: Beyond the Frontier'' and ''X: Tension''.
** [[http://i.imgur.com/wHsBw.jpg Springblossom]] M6, the single most overpowered corvette in the game, which has ridiculously insane stats for a M6. It's effectively a cockpit with some wings and a giant engine strapped onto the back.
** [=X3R=] has the [[http://i.imgur.com/lrXiu.jpg Hyperion]] M7, a one-of-a-kind, class-creating (M7s didn't exist before it) ship that is given to you after you complete a fairly hard mission. Described as a space yacht, it's in reality a very capable crossover between the M6 corvette and large M2 destroyers. As it's very fast and quite well armed, it's capable of swatting standard frigates out of space with little trouble, and can kill destroyers in a one-on-one fight by evading most of their fire. It also looks ''wicked''.
*** The Hyperion returns in X3:TC, and while it had been downgraded to an M6 corvette it is easily the best M6 in the game and is a fan favorite playership. It flies like an M3+ heavy fighter, practically turning on a dime, has top of the line firepower and shields for an M6, has an absolutely gigantic cargo bay (3333 m^3) and is the only M6 in the game that can dock fighter craft. And if you pick a specific game-start you can even get an overtuned Hyperion that flies far faster than you can normally tune a Hyperion to fly; reports of getting overtuned Hyperions with top speeds over 300 m/s are quite common.
** The [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQ7x8K6Yjg&t=1m5s Boron Megalodon]]. Originally in the Xtended Terran Conflict mod, but now part of ''Albion Prelude''
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: A lot of the time it goes the other way (see ArtificialStupidity above), but...
** Boarding operations against Xenon capital ships automatically fail if you have less than (eighteen?) marines remaining when they reach the computer core.
** See the second entry under DeathOfAThousandCuts, below.
** If you stray very far from the allowed approach vector in Earth sector in ''Terran Conflict'', you'll be warned your ship will be destroyed. Continue, and you'll be the subject of a scripted insta-gib, regardless of how much shielding you have. You can't try to destroy the Torus defenses, either: they're invincible.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: ''Prelude'''s adding Stock Markets allows the player to easily become this -- obliterating rival corporate ships in order to reduce the value of their company, to get stocks for cut-rate prices.
* CripplingOverspecialization: Boron missile frigates drop ''all'' point defenses for [[MacrossMissileMassacre more missile launchers]]. This essentially means they have no way to protect themselves from incoming missiles - save for spamming their ''own'' missiles at enemy missiles and hoping they hit.
* CriticalExistenceFailure: Averted in ''X2: The Threat'' and later games. Once the shields go down, the ship starts taking damage to the hull. When hull integrity goes below ~85%, the ship starts to lose speed, and upgrades and weapons randomly break.
* DeathOfAThousandCuts: The only way for a lone fighter to win against a capital ship (without MacrossMissileMassacre, at least) is to hide in a blind spot and shoot its comparatively weak weapons until the target dies. A couple hours later.
** The player risks being on the receiving end of this in Xenon and Kha'ak sectors. Such sectors will spawn enemies without end.
* DeathWorld: Quite a lot of planets with their crust blasted off, leaving behind molten red hellholes.
** Albion in ''Albion Prelude'' takes it to another level, with massive fissures actually penetrating deep into the mantle of the planet.
* DeflectorShields: Every single ship has these, you're dead without them. (Even Goners, the space monks, use them)
** This was quite literal in the games before X2; ships had no hull strength meters in those, so if your shields were gone [[OneHitPointWonder a pea going too fast would kill you instantly]], even if you were in a superheavy transporter.
* DerelictGraveyard: the "President's End" sector, which is full of wrecked stations and ships from a Kha'ak attack. Some other sectors have smaller graveyards.
* DogFightingFurballs: The series of games revolves around this trope. 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.
* DownloadableContent: Normally incorporated into major patches.
** Each game has an add-on bonus pack that adds a number of useful scripts, ranging from smarter AI trading (Commercial Agent, Commodity Logistics Software) to a near-impenetrable missile defense program for Commonwealth vessels (Mosquito Missile Defense).
** ''X3: Reunion'': "The Bala Gi Missions" (part of a patch).
** ''X3: Terran Conflict'':
*** "A New Home": New plot. Added in patch.
*** "Aldrin Expansion": New plot. Added in patch.
*** "HQ plot": New plot. Added in patch.
*** "Balance of Power": New plot. Added in 3.0 patch.
*** "A Place of Sunshine": New sector distributed over {{Steam}}.
*** ''X3: Albion Prelude''. $9.99 (or free for people who own the X-Superbox), requires ''Terran Conflict'' to be installed. Adds in a stock market, improves the UI, and adds some ships from the ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod.
* {{Dronejam}}: 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.
* DysonSphere: [[spoiler::The HUB]]. Follows the Dyson Swarm model, though. [[spoiler::Each is a hollow sphere about 60 kilometers, orbiting a massive red giant star]]
* TheEmpire: Split Dynasty. The Paranid have an actual empire and come pretty close, though.
* EarlyGameHell: ''Reunion'' and previous games were famous from dropping the player into the universe in a crappy ship with next to no credits, upgrades, or weapons. Combat missions are ''painful''.
* EarnYourFun: In ''Reunion'' and previous games, you start with [[WithThisHerring one of the cheapest ships in the game]] and enough cash to make a half decent trading run ''if you're lucky''. You're going to be spending a while grinding for credits and reputation before you can afford anything really cool.
** There's several starts in ''X3: Terran Conflict'' which give you a much better fighter, or trading ship. ''X3: Reunion'' players are stuck with the Buster, [[spoiler: the Kha'ak start]] a couple M5 starts, or a couple of trading starts. The Xtended Terran Conflict mod has a start where you start in a 35 million credit frigate, and another with a 250 million credit station and a 20 million credit large transporter.
** This is easily subverted when the player realizes that the trader start is the best for a fighter character. It gives you a light freighter you're supposed to trade with and a light fighter to defend yourself, but if you sell the freighter you'll get enough money to kit out the fighter and arm it to the teeth. Then you start looking for medium pirate fighters to capture and resell, and before you know it you're sitting in an M3+ superheavy fighter.
* EarthShatteringKaboom: [[spoiler:Supposedly the fate suffered by the Kha'ak homeworld, whose fragments form the Nividium asteroids scattered about.]]
* EasterEgg: While flying around in ''Terran Conflict'' you may come across a ship called Unknown Object. It's a small M3 fighter in the shape of a UFO. According to the wiki, it's a remnant of a "Xenon Unknown Object" from ''Reunion''.
* EasyLogistics: Hyper-averted. Your ships ''will'' run out of ammunition, ''will'' run out of jumpdrive fuel, and they ''will'' run out of missiles.
** Played straight with actual spaceship fuel. No one ever needs to refuel, though the ships clearly don't have any ReactionlessDrive and leave behind an exhaust trail.
** The actual commodity known as "space fuel", is, in fact, an illegal alcoholic drink. A new player may easily be stalked by the police for accidentally salvaging it from a destroyed pirate ship without knowing.
* EliteMooks: The Terran [=AGI=] Task Force. They used their own unique, [[LightningBruiser very powerful]] ships. Once you piss them off, they will ''never'' forgive the player.
* EnergyBall: Several of the game's EnergyWeapons fire spheroidal shots. The most obvious of these are the frigate-grade Incendiary Bomb Launcher and the destroyer-scale Photon Pulse Cannon.
* EnergyWeapons: The vast majority of them, from the short-range, rapid-fire, very weak Impulse Ray Emitter up to the battleship-shredding, {{Painfully Slow Projectile}}s of the Photon Pulse Cannon.
* {{Epigraph}}: Every gamestart of every game has a quote from a famous scientist, author or politician somewhat related to the game.
* AnEntrepreneurIsYou: One of the main points of the game is building your own economic empire, with dozens of trading ships and hundreds of orbital factories.
* EscortMission: From HELL. The amount of opponents that spawn during missions varies with your combat ratings but the escortees remain painfully slow and barely shielded cargo freighters which go down to any interceptor and fighter in a matter of seconds. The attackers seem to appear indefinitely in fixed time intervals, so it's easy to end up having to fight a swarm of 10-15 fighters every 20 kilometers -- if you're lucky, as the AI certainly seems to take its time to pass through gates and dock to stations. To add insult to injury, [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption sometimes the freighters break formation and fly in separate directions.]] Once you have a high combat rank, the AI will start spawning in ''battleships'' at regular intervals to try and kill the freighters.
** After the first couple of such missions, most players learn not to accept them unless there is no other choice, [[spoiler:as with the hiring missions for some of the corporations and one of the plots.]]
*** [[spoiler:A solution to the must-do {{Escort Mission}}s lies in an exploit: since the game only begins spawning enemies for the mission once the player enters the freighters' sector, ''simply never be in the same sector as the freighters.'']]
* EverythingsBetterWithSpinning: One forum member discovered that corkscrewing, or flying in a spiral by putting his joystick to the stops on all three axes, was a pretty effective evasive maneuver in a fighter. He was even able to survive a mob of Kha'ak fighters in a Split Mamba Vanguard.
** Many ship models have spinning components, just because. Some (like on the OTAS M2 Boreas) are justified by looking like sensor dishes, or by being an engine turbine in the case of the Boron Megalodon.
* ExplosionsInSpace: Capital ships create a giant white fireball and a large shockwave when blown to bits. It has no discernible effect on any craft passing by.
** While lacking the large shockwave effect, stations also produce massive explosions when destroyed; particularly big or important ones, such as Xenon Shipyards, produce fireballs ''several times'' as massive, easily topping fifteen to twenty kilometers in size. Most also leave debris behind, which disappears after a couple game-days.
%%Yes, Yaki ships do LOOK like Paranid ships, but a lot of them HANDLE like Split ships (Tenjin's practically a Chimera with a different paint job). How's this for a compromise?
* FactionCalculus: As explained in terms of the armor triangle (speed-defense-offense):
** Argon ships are balanced, making them also a case of HumansAreAverage. Argon vessels make solid, well-rounded performers, but some will stress that there are generally better options depending on your flying style.
** Boron ships are balanced, but generally reduce speed and shielding for more cargo space. This makes them great at MacrossMissileMassacre, but fairly underwhelming in close combat.
*** Possibly FridgeBrilliance when you consider that the Boron are pacifist, and only maintain a military for self-defense (read as "because of the Split").
** Paranid ships are balanced, but reduce cargo space for firepower.
** Pirate ships have poor stats (worse in every regard to the race ships they're based on), but their ships typically offer a huge variety in compatible weapons and often can use fairly large weapons.
** Split ships are {{Fragile Speedster}}s, fast with increased firepower at the expense of shielding. Note that their frigates do not follow this pattern and are arguably the most dependable well-rounded performers in their class.
** [[{{Yakuza}} Yaki]] ships generally imitate Paranid ships in handling and looks, but some (notably the Tenjin) follow the Split example.
** Teladi ships are {{Mighty Glacier}}s, slow but durable with respectable firepower. They have increased cargo space for greater [[MemeticMutation profitsss]].
** Terran and ATF ships trade some firepower (limited weapon selection and somewhat lower damage output) for [[LightningBruiser speed and shielding]]. But they definitely aren't slouches on any leg of the armor triangle, which causes some to regard them as {{Game Breaker}}s.
* FeaturelessProtagonist: ''Terran Conflict'' only ever addresses the player as "pilot" or "captain". You have the option to rename your pilot, but it never has any effect on gameplay.
* TheFederation: Argon Federation and Boron Kingdom.
** The Terrans may also qualify, but their xenophobia might also make them a subversion.
* FetchQuest: One category of side missions requires you to collect cargo from another station and deliver it to the client. Another requires you to obtain a crapload of cargo from wherever you can get it and deliver it to the client.
** The [[spoiler:Hub plot]] takes it UpToEleven. It's an entire Fetch ''Plot''.
* [[FishPeople Squid People]]: The Boron.
* FlechetteStorm: The Fragmentation Bomb Launcher use fletchettes to damage targets.
** [[AwesomeButImpractical It tries to, anyway.]] The flechettes rarely actually hit anything.
* FlyingSaucer: Players can sometimes see the stereotypical flying saucer [=UFO=] (labeled "Unknown Object") zipping quickly between sectors, as an EasterEgg. The flying saucer is very useful for exploring the universe -- order one of your scout ships to follow it as the saucer makes its rounds through the gate system, and they'll quickly uncover most of the universe.
* FragileSpeedster: Scout craft, which while anywhere from two to several times faster than any other ship will explode with so much as a sneer from heavier fighters. Split ships as a whole also fit the type, as they concentrate on speed and firepower rather than heavy shielding. Boron ships also have weakened shields and higher speed, but not as extreme as the Split ships.
** The two fastest ships in the game, Starburst and Arrow, aren't even ''meant'' to fight -- they are completely unarmed. They have shields, but they might as well not -- good luck hitting something this tiny going at 1000+kph.
** Some Split ships, by fluff, weren't even designed with shields in mind. The design team clean forgot about it and later had to be retrofitted. Starburst and Arrow, rather than being fighters, are supposed to be used for racing.
** "Raider" ship variants. Shield capacity has been reduced in exchange for more powerful engines and better weapon energy generators.
* FrickinLaserBeams: Kyon Emitters, as well as the developer-disabled Phased Array Laser/Plasma Beam/Tri-Beam Laser/Fusion Beam Cannons.
** Disabled because they would instant-kill any enemy (and the player too). Kyons were nerfed from X2 onwards for that reason.
** Kyons are laser beams in appearance only. Apparently the game engine can't handle actual beams, so the Kyon Emitters are in fact projectile-based weapons with beam graphics and very fast, invisible projectiles. This is sometimes noticeable when targeting fast ships, as the beam looks as if it hit, but the ship takes no damage as the projectile(s) missed.
* FrictionlessReentry: Averted, surprisingly enough. Planets in the games aren't just backdrops, but physical objects with atmospheres and all, and you can actually reach them in a ship if they're not on the other side of the InvisibleWall.[[hottip:*:Though it takes a while; see SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale below.]] However, ships in the X-Universe are not meant for atmospheric flight, and will burn up. The planet in Split Fire has gotten some notoriety for this, as the atmosphere starts about 1 kilometer behind one of the jumpgates.
* 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''.
** Usually without a lot of sense. They are just cooler-looking ships (better meshes than Xtended mod) thrown in. Many rant about their "unbalancing effect".
*** Cooler-looking ships are a good reason to mod all by themselves. And the game has always been unbalanced -- Xenon M3+, anyone?
**** I'll see your Xenon LX and raise you an ATF Skirnir.
* 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. 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]].
* GlobalCurrency: ''All'' races use [[WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture Credits]], including the paranoid, isolationist Terrans who refuse to use ''any'' technology from the Commonwealth.
* 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.
* 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.
* GuideDangIt: The manual and "flight school" tutorials are nearly useless for anything but the most basic gameplay.
* 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 Khaak 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.
* 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.
** Emphatically averted in the case of the forum members. The Egosoft board is arguably the most noob-friendly forum on the whole Internet. Which is good, considering the games' near-vertical learning curve.
* HumansAreSpecial: The Terrans were the first and only race (excluding the 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.
** The Argon are the only race without an easily defined [[PlanetOfHats Hat]].
* HumansByAnyOtherName: The Argon, being a LostColony of the Terrans.
* HyperspaceLanes: ''Rebirth'' has "highways", which function similar to the trade lanes in ''{{Freelancer}}'', allowing you to get between close locations in a system, while Jump Gates are used to get between systems.
* 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.
* 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.
* IntrepidMerchant / ProudMerchantRace: The Teladi, whose society is borderline-obsessively mercantile in nature. Also includes the player what with the vast trading empires they can build.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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'' may qualify (it's technically a SpaceStation), as its defensive weapons 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
** ''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.
* 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.
* 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.
** Both manuals are also [[GuideDangIt supremely unhelpful for anything but the most basic gameplay]].
* 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.
* TheMetricSystemIsHereToStay: Played straight.
* 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.
** 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''.
* 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.
* 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[[hottip:*: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.]] 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.
* NintendoHard: 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.
* NoEndorHolocaust: Averted in ''Albion Prelude''. The game mentions that debris from the Torus killed millions.
* 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).
* 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.
* OldSchoolDogfighting: Played down to the letter.
** This happens 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.
* 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.
* OneWorldOrder: Present in the games (aside from the Terrans and Argon; same race, but they had a couple hundred years separation), but the ''X-Encyclopedia'' describes how there are other factions, like the human Hatikvah Free League.
* 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.
* 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 Terran's 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.
* 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?[[hottip:*: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.]]
* PlanetTerra: In ''X3'', humans from the Sol System are referred to as "Terrans", but the planet is still called Earth.
* 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.
** 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.
* {{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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* SapientShip: Terraformer CPU ships.
* SaveScumming: Almost a requirement when attempting to board enemy capital ships. Especially Xenon ships, where TheComputerIsACheatingBastard -- to the point where there is an achievement for capturing a Xenon frigate, something that people spend ''hours'' training their marines for.
* SceneryPorn: Massive planets, huge stations, sleek spaceships... let's face it: the latest installments are ''Crysis'' [[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE]]. Taken UpToEleven in ''X: Rebirth''.
* SchizophrenicDifficulty: The "Difficulty" shown on mission menus is based on your combat rank, and often seems completely random. At higher level combat ranks, an {{escort mission}} with a difficulty of "Easy" might end up spawning dozens of enemy frigates to kill a single freighter. Said freighter will outrun your own capital ships, forcing you into corvettes or fast frigates instead of a proper destroyer needed to deal with the swarms of enemies.
** Yet another reason why players avoid {{escort mission}}s like the plague.
** In-Sector versus Out-Of-Sector combat. To save on processing power, OOS reduces combat to ships taking turns firing a single, point-blank[[hottip:*:650 meters or thereabouts]] volley from all guns at once at a single target. All other variables (area-of-effect, weapons recharge, and so on) are taken out of the equation. This skews combat in favor of {{Wave Motion Gun}}s to the point where recommended loadouts are often drastically different for IS and OOS.
*** OOS is also skewed in favor of weight of numbers, to the point where [[http://x3wiki.com/index.php/Simulation_modeling a mob of M5 Jaguars can kill an M2 Python with about 20% casualties]], something that ArtificialStupidity makes impossible IS.
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: In all the games, maps are at most hundreds of kilometers across (I'm looking at ''you'', Sol System). But the ships are so slow that they actually require a TimeDilation device to cross them in a reasonable amount of time. Unless the kilometer was redefined at some point, this suggests spaceships in the game are far, far slower than they have any right to be -- [[FridgeLogic raising the interesting question of how any of the spacefaring races actually managed to become spacefaring races when they don't seem to have any ships that come anywhere near escape velocity for a planet with a mass similar to Earth.]]
** Some of the slowest ships can actually be outrun by a basic passenger car, and that's ''before'' you account for air friction.
** Oh, and your ability to hail other ships and stations is cut off abruptly at 25 kilometers.
** The games also feature an energy example: their weapons and shields are much weaker than anything in a sci-fi setting has a right to be. Most transport ships and fighters as of ''Terran Conflict'' have no more than about 100 megajoules of shielding. Burning a gallon of gasoline releases about 130 MJ. There is, of course, a difference between releasing 130 MJ over the course of burning a gallon of gasoline, and releasing it all at once, but the point remains.
*** The most powerful weapon in the game, the nuclear-tipped Hammerhead missile, releases 1.2 gigajoules (enough to destroy fighter swarms and all but one M6). By contrast, Little Boy, the nuclear fission bomb that demolished Hiroshima in 1945, released somewhere between 54 and 75 ''tera''joules (at least 45,000 times more). The major powers of the X-Universe would lose to ''modern-day Earth''.
* SelfImposedChallenge: Experienced players often set these for themselves. They range from "I'm only allowed to use one faction's ships" to {{Pacifist Run}}s to going to war with a faction to wipe them out.
** Nuklear-Slug wrote a thread about the exploits of Squiddy [=McSquid=], a Boron playthrough whose SelfImposedChallenge was to fly his starting ship deep into Terran space, then set the self-destruct and eject. He then floated his way to a shipyard to buy himself a new ship and started from there.
** [[Tropers/StarSword StarSword]] made it a goal to build an impenetrable blockade against all Xenon sectors, a strategy that involved devoting a considerable percentage of his [[MemeticMutation profitsss]] to the construction and equipment of Osaka destroyers.
** Spaceweed Adict wrote a thread chronicling a war he waged against the Terrans. He succeeded in taking and holding every sector save Earth, where {{the computer is a cheating bastard}}.
* SequelDifficultyDrop: The "main" game start in each game has gotten progressively easier (or less EarnYourFun, depending on who you talk to). ''Beyond the Frontier'' starts you off in a painfully slow ship with no weapons or shields, ''The Threat'' starts you off in an upgraded Argon Discoverer scout ship, ''Reunion'' starts you off in a somewhat upgraded Argon Buster interceptor ship, ''Terran Conflict'' starts you off in either a Terran Sabre interceptor or an Argon Elite advanced interceptor. ''Albion Prelude'' starts you off in an Argon Enhanced Nova, and gives you a free 16 million credit corvette within the first hour of the plot.
* ShinyLookingSpaceships: The Paranid ships are basically flying mirrors, and the Terran ships are blindingly white, more so if you have Glow/Bloom enabled in the options.
* ShortTitles: A single character! As such, the series is usually called the ''{{X-Universe}}'', or the name of the latest numbered version (X3).
* ShoutOut:
** The ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod has tons of shout-outs in sector descriptions:
*** One Teladi sector mentions how the capital city on a planet is made largely of recycled ship hulls, and travel is done through [[RevelationSpace cable cars that use arms to swing between different cables.]] Another describes the ring around a planet in the background as being made up of thousands of small space stations, called the [[ThePrefect Rust Belt]].
* SnipeHunt: New players are often recommended to find the elusive UFO base, the source of the [=UFOs=] that players sometimes see flying around at high speeds. The UFO base allegedly sells every ware in the game (and especially the ones ''not'' in the game) and all ships at dirt cheap prices.
* SpaceBattle: ''Ohh, maaan.'' Despite frequent cases of ArtificialStupidity, the games feature some spectacular fights. Special mention to the Battle of Aldrin (end of the Terran plot), Operation Final Fury, and the Aldrin Expansion in TC.
* SpaceClouds: ''Very'' dense nebulae show up in many sectors - in some sectors, visibility is less than 10 kilometers. ''Albion Prelude'' gets rid of most of the visibility restrictions on nebulae, instead making it an atmospheric effect that doesn't limit your vision.
* SpaceColdWar: ''Terran Conflict''. The Terrans distrust the [[LostColony Argon]], and the Argon fear the Terran's extremely advanced technology. [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge Goes hot]] when the Argon blow up the jewel of the Solar System, Earth's [[BigDumbObject Torus Aeternal]] in ''Albion Prelude''.
* SpaceElves: The Goners are an odd version of Type II, being biologically human but otherwise largely fitting the trope. In particular, they insist that the Argon are not originally from the planet in the sector Brennan's Triumph, or from their current capital Argon Prime. They're mainly viewed as nutty, but harmless (the official Argon line is that Earth is a myth) ... until the events of ''X: Beyond the Frontier'', when a test pilot from Earth becomes stranded in the X-Universe.
* SpaceFlecks: In X3, which also features a variation in which star flecks are accompanied by region-themed clumps of other stuff, such as red nebula gas.
* SpaceFighter: All the races have their own set of Space Fighters. They have good speed, decent cargo bay, and can operate autonomously without the need for refueling or pilot rest. Most of the game starts have you start out in a fighter of some sort. Space Fighters come in several flavors:
** M3+ Heavy Fighter: Like the M3, but slower with more guns and shields.
** M3 Fighters: The most well rounded and arguably the most useful. They have good cargo capacity, mediocre speed, good firepower, and good protection, with the ability to mount jumpdrives.
** M4+ Heavy Interceptors: Like M4s, but with a bit more firepower at the cost of speed. Bridges the gap between the M3 and M4
** M4 Interceptors: Midway point between M3s and M5s. They don't have much firepower, but they have good speed and can mount jumpdrives.
** M5 Scouts: Pathetic firepower and shielding, but ridiculously fast top speeds. Only a few are capable of mounting jumpdrives.
* SpaceFriction: The universe has the viscosity of maple syrup.
** Most Boron sectors also have the visibility of maple syrup.
* SpaceIsCold: ''Albion Prelude'' has a {{Steam}} achievement titled "It's Cold Outside" for forcing another pilot to eject.
* SpaceIsNoisy: Weapons and explosions make noise (and a lot of it, too).
** In a minor case of GameplayAndStorySegregation, {{averted}} in the opening cinematics for ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude''. Special mention to the Torus blowing up in ''[=X3AP=]'', an ApocalypseWow which takes place in utter silence apart from mournful music.
* SpaceMines: In several flavors. [=SQUASH=] mines are your standard explosive mines, Ion mines deal damage only to shields, Tracker Mines... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin track stuff]], and Matter/Antimatter mines are like SQUASH mines but with more boom. One of the most effective tactics with mines is to get a huge swarm of enemies chasing you, drop all the mines, and order one of the mines to self-destruct. Big bada boom.
* SpacePolice: All the main races have Border Patrol and Police ships. They buzz about, scanning ships for contraband, and they harass pirates (and loose terribly, because they have peashooter weapons.)
* SpacePirates: Swarms of them, and they have ''space flamethrowers.'' The Pirates paint up their ships with spiffy flame paint jobs and graffiti, then start slapping on all sorts of weapons on them, such as the aforementioned flamethrower. Some of their communication portraits even have the stereotypical eye-patch. Composed of all the races (except for Terran).
* SpaceStation: Loads and loads of them. There's mines, factories, solar power plants, military bases, shipyards, and warehouses, to name a few. And the player can build and own most of them.
** They're the only thing in any of the games that the player can actually land at. Which sort of justifies the fact that none of the ships can reach escape velocity (as mentioned above).
* SpaceWhale: Well, space ''flies'', actually. Think golden insectoid EnergyBeings which communicate through ''[[SpaceIsNoisy birdsong]].''
** ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' adds several new life forms; a Space Dragon, a space rock-eating beetle thing, and space jellyfish that feed on energy cells.
* SpamAttack: [[AttackDrone Fighter drone]] swarms. The player gathers hundreds or thousands of fighter drones into a freighter, flies into a enemy sector, drops every one of them into space and orders ''all'' of them to attack enemy capital ships. For the enemy, this counts as an almost-instant game over.
* SpareBodyParts: Paranid have from 1 to 4 eyes (this even determines status and rank in their culture). Many of the Paranid the player talks to have 4 eyes in the communications video, however.
* SquishyWizard: M8 Bombers and [=M7M=] Missile Frigates. Both have mediocre/bad amounts of shielding (for their size), mediocre speed, and pathetic point defenses (Boron [=M7M=]s don't have ''any'' point defenses). However, both have the amazing ability to put out hundreds (or in the case of the frigate, ''thousands'') of missiles which can easily wipe out sectors.
* SssssnakeTalk: The Teladi, full stop.
* StalkingMission: One of the optional, randomly generated missions that players can take in ''Terran Conflict''. A few pop up during the game plots, but they're usually mercifully short.
* StandardSciFiFleet: Scouts, Interceptors, Fighters, Corvettes, Frigates, Bombers, Destroyers, Carriers, and 4 different types of freighters (SpaceTrucker, Space Yacht, giant freighter that can carry entire stations, and freighters with most of the cargo bay ripped out fighter docking ports).
* StandardTimeUnits: Time is measured in Sezuras (1.7 seconds) Mizuras (96 Sezuras; 2 minutes and 43 seconds) Stazuras (96 Mizuras; 4 hours and 21 minutes) Tazuras (7 Stazuras; 1.27 days) Wozuras (7 Tazuras; 8.89 days) Mazuras (7 Wozuras; 62.23 days) and Jazuras (8 Mazuras; 1.36 years). Many players [[InternetBackdraft did not like this]], so X3: ''Reunion'' has a ratio to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) units used in RealLife.
** In ''Terran Conflict'', the "-zura" based system was DummiedOut in favor of Earth time units.
*** The XTC Mod (Xtended for Terran Conflict) brought it back again.
* StarfishAliens: The Boron. They're aquatic, squid-like aliens whose home planet has an atmosphere of ammonia.
* StupidSacrifice: Your wingman at the end of ''X2: The Threat'', who rams the Kha'ak doomsday weapon to destroy it. All well and good, except that his kamikaze run doesn't seem quite as noble when you've got three capital ships, laden with multiple {{Wave Motion Gun}}s and entire squadrons of fighters, sitting in firing range.
** Or, y'know, if it wasn't actually possible to remotely control any ship you own even while extra-vehicular. Sure, by all means send your ship to its destruction, but there's nothing in the rules that states you have to be ''in'' the damn thing, y'know.
* SubspaceOrHyperspace: Many ships make use of "subspace compression" to store vast amounts of stuff in relatively tiny spaces. Special life-support units can make it possible to store living creatures in this manner (otherwise the compression is instantly fatal), but it's nevertheless quite unpleasant.
* SuperPrototype: "Prototype" ships in ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude'' are superior in almost every way to the standard production models. They can only be gained by capturing them, or by doing plots (such as the Corporation missions).
* TechnologyMarchesOn: RealLife example for ''X3''. During the first half of the 2000s, CPU processing power (the main limitation on the game engine) was jumping upwards rapidly, and apart from graphics the ''X3'' engine had barely been updated since its original incarnation in ''X: Beyond the Frontier''. If the trend of increasing processing power within a single core had continued, we'd have no problems with more player assets slowing games. Then the industry standard changed to increasing computer speed by way of multiple cores in a single CPU, cores that were often slower individually than the single cores the ''X3'' engine worked best on. To make matters worse, the engine is 32-bit, meaning it can't take advantage of more than about 3 GB of RAM. These two factors make the restart point for an all-plots-finished ''Terran Conflict'' player not "whenever I get bored", but "whenever my installation becomes nearly unplayable".
** The latter point in time even happens occasionally ''before'' the player finishes all the plots.
** The change in industry trend has prompted Egosoft to build a new game engine from the ground up for ''X: Rebirth'', one that is multicore- and 64-bit-compatible. This also gave them an excuse to advance the timeline by a thousand years.
* TeleFrag: Ships travel between different sectors of space through jumpgates. Jumpgates are two-way, meaning that ships both enter and leave sectors from them. Meaning, you can use your jumpdrive to jump to a distant sector for a mission... right as a five-kilometer-long vessel is entering the jumpgate's event horizon (where you are). The Terran sectors in ''X3: Terran Conflict'' are notorious for this, as they have very active military patrols which fly between the smaller Terran gates very often.
** The solution to this problem is using the autopilot to fly through gates whenever feasible (obviously this is not a good idea when under attack). The game features a "traffic light" system at each gate pair, and only the player has the ability to run a red, so to speak. The autopilot always waits for the light to turn green.
* TeleportersAndTransporters: A couple different varieties. The PortalNetwork allows interstellar travel. Meanwhile, ships can be equipped with a Transporter Device that allows you to transfer people and cargo from one ship to another (provided they're no more than five kilometers apart) without needing to dock both ships at a station.
* TeleportSpam: Possible in the ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod for... Terran Conflict. Battleships / Motherships (M2+) mount Point-To-Point jumpdrives, which lets them jump anywhere in a sector after 10 seconds of charging. This allows players with enough energy cells to jump in circles around enemy ships, whittling them down while taking almost no damage.
* TimeDilation: Every ship can mount a "Singularity Engine Time Accelerator" which can speed up the flow of time up to 10x, depending on the game settings. Activating the device at high settings is heavy on the CPU and tends to cause ArtificialStupidity.
** In in-game lore, malfunctioning SETA drives can supposedly crank up the effect to several ''thousand'' times normal speed: back in the days of X2 and X3 when stations had bulletin boards that featured news articles, one story covered a pilot who lost a ''year's'' worth of time when his SETA device went haywire and took several hours for him to shut down.
* TookALevelInBadass: Each race's military in ''Albion Prelude''. In previous games, they'd sort of ignore the player unless he got very close to them. In ''Albion'', they'll jump around the universe to respond to threats to their space. If you jump into a Split system and start blasting civilian ships and the stations, they'll send ships to kill you. The more damage you cause, the more likely they'll send something big to kill you, like a destroyer, or in the Terran's case, the [=ATF=] Valhalla or [=USC=] Kyoto.
* TooDumbToLive: Ships generally take the shortest route to their destination. Even if said route lies directly through a Xenon sector and they don't have a jumpdrive to hop over it with.
* TractorBeam: In ''X3: Reunion'' and later games, tractor beams are a player-usable weapon, used mainly for towing ships and moving stations around. In a symptom of those games' [[ArtisticLicenseEconomics broken economy]], the factories that create them sometimes disappear before the player can buy one, forcing one to build a factory for an item the player only ever needs one of.
** Interestingly, tractor beams are programmed to be incapable of locking onto non-player-owned objects. This is mainly to prevent the obvious exploit where the player drags enemy vessels into stationary objects like asteroids.
*** This restriction can be [[GameMod modded out]].
* TranslationConvention: All the races speak in a version of Japanese (it's backwards), but the player hears them as English (or whatever language they have selected).
* [[{{Two-DSpace}} 2-D Space]]: Played straight in the first two games -- most ships, planets, and stations are laid out on a two-d plane. Averted and repeatedly lampshaded in the third game.
** ''Terran Conflict'' actually falls right back into the trope a bit: while the core X-'verse sectors are certainly much more variable in their layouts compared to the earlier games, many Terran sectors are flat as a pancake with stations smack dab on the same horizontal plane. Likely due to the fact that Terran stations are ''massive'' compared to even the largest non-Terran station; you'd have trouble fitting a Terran Orbital Patrol base in a smaller Commonwealth sector.
*** In a possible case of [[TruthInTelevision Truth In Video Games]], this kind of makes sense as almost all Terran sectors are in the Solar System, and the planets are mostly on the same elliptical plane anyway. By extension, Lagrangian 'points' (stable 'places' which are suitable for constructing stations) tend to trace elliptical orbits on the same plane.
* TwentyBearAsses: One category of missions for the corporations randomly picks up to three types of missiles for you to deliver to them. About half the possible missiles are only available as random drops from destroyed ships.
* UnexpectedGameplayChange: The starship race course in ''X3: Reunion's'' plot, which in early versions was extremely buggy and difficult.
* UsedFuture: Many of the Teladi and Pirate capital ships ships as well as some Pirate stations are crude and worn-down in appearance, and some look like random bits and bobs and ship hulls were duct-taped together. (In the case of most pirate ships and stations, they actually ''are''.) Argon fighters use this to a lesser extent, as most of them have rust spots ([[ArtisticLicenseChemistry in space]]) and scorch marks from welding, despite being bought brand-new from a shipyard...
* VideogameCrueltyPotential: {{Lampshaded}} by Mahi Ma at the end of the [[spoiler:Hub plot. Said BigDumbObject lets players link up to three gate pairs at their discretion, which lets them shorten the voyage between major regions of their trade empire. It also lets them give four Xenon sectors free passage to a populated area.]]
** If another pilot ejects from his ship (whether because you bought it from him, or because a he offered his ship in exchange for you not finishing him off), they'll start floating towards the nearest {{space station}} in their spacesuits. You have the choice of leaving them alone, using them for target practice, or scooping them into your cargo bay and enslaving them at pirate bases.
* VideogameFlamethrowersSuck: Very, very averted. The Plasma Burst Generator is a strictly short-range weapon, but range is everything that separates your target from a quick, crispy death.
** Or as one forum member rather succinctly put it, "OMGWTFBBQ."
* WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture: The Teladi backed the creation of the unified currency between the Commonwealth races. Prior to that each race used its own currency. The Terrans presumably changed to credits between the events of ''X3: Reunion'' and ''X3: Terran Conflict''.
* WhatTheHellPlayer: Hit non-hostile ships or stations enough times (whether accidentally or on purpose) and the sector police will warn you that if you keep it up, they'll attack. Continue, and you may get a message that sounds something like this:
--> '''Computer announcer:''' Fighter ships from the Argon Federation are now being launched. They have orders to kill.
:: The station or ship will turn hostile and the sector police will attack. This becomes fairly annoying during station defense missions, where friendly fire to the station you're protecting is a constant hazard.
* WideOpenSandbox: ''Very'' wide open. So much so that the devs included options to disable the plot altogether, so the players can have their fun merely by interacting with the open universe. The ''X'' series is practically the very definition of this trope.
* XtremeKoolLetterz: The 'X' stands for "Xperimental Shuttle," which was the name of your ship in the first game.
** Many human names are recognizably modified from present-day names. One example from ''Terran Conflict'' is Jesan Nadina, whose first name appears derived from "Jason".
** Torus '''''Ae'''''ternal. 'Nuff said.
* YouCantGoHomeAgain: Played straight for Terran test pilot Kyle Brennan (the PlayerCharacter) in ''X: Beyond the Frontier''. He is stranded in the X-Universe after the prototype gateless jumpdrive on the [[XtremeKoolLetterz Xperimental Shuttle]] goes haywire.
** In ''X3: Reunion'', three games and several dozen years later, the Solar System is reconnected to the X-Universe's PortalNetwork at the end of the main plot. By this time, Kyle Brennan has a grown son in the X-Universe, is a war hero, and is the head of a multibillion-[[WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture credit]] company ([=TerraCorp=]). At best, he'd likely be a StrangerInAFamiliarLand.
*** At worst, He Still Can't Go Home Again, because Earth's government consists of xenophobic paranoids, and almost immediately enters a SpaceColdWar with the rest of the X-Universe. And then in ''Albion Prelude'', his associate Saya Kho blows up the Torus Aeternal, putting another nail in the coffin.
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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.

*** ''X3: Albion Prelude''. $9.99 (or free for people who own the X-Superbox), requires ''Terran Conflict'' to be installed.