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* 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.

* 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.

** 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.

** As mentioned in AwesomeButImpractical, the Valhalla is a subversion: it's so wide it clips the gate (in ''Terran Conflict'') when it enters a sector, stripping it of its shields and rendering it a sitting duck for other capital ships.

: 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.

** 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 to close.

* 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, and is constantly under threat from [[TheEmpire the Split]].

* 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 (in space) and scorch marks from welding, despite being bought brand-new from a shipyard...

* EasterEgg: In Terran Conflict, while flying around 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 X3:Reunion.

* FlyingSaucer: Players can sometimes see the stereotypical flying saurce [=UFO=] (labeled "Unknown Object") zipping quickly between sectors, as an easter egg. 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.

* 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.

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: Mostly averted. 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.

* YouCantGoHomeAgain: Played straight for Terran test pilot Julian 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, Julian 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.

** Your trading ships and Universe Traders will blissfully fly through [[TooDumbToLive 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.

* TheAestheticsOfTechnology: Terran ships, despite being the most advanced ships, don't look much more advanced than the modern Space Shuttle - just a lot more clean. The Paranid, the second most advanced race, use 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 cobbled-together ships, though they are usually just as effective as the other race's ships.

** 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.

** As mentioned in AwesomeButImpractical, the Valhalla is a subversion: 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.