History XUniverse / TropesGToL

* [[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.

* GameBreakingBug: ''Albion Prelude'' had an issue turn up after a patch that came to be known as the [[FanNickname "Billion Barracuda Bug,"]] wherein the game would spawn race military fighters meant to be attached to a rapid response fleet. Except they would simply float in space, and instead of having a couple dozen there would be hundreds or thousands, sucking down CPU cycles and rendering the sector a slideshow if you were in-sector. The only way to get rid of them was to manually kill them or add a stopgap script a modder wrote, whereby players could delete them. The bug got fixed in version 2.5.3.

* HumansAreMorons: The Terrans are responsible for the creation of the Xenon thanks to a buggy software update and their [[WhatAnIdiot callously impatience-induced stupidity]] for not troubleshooting the problems before implementing it on the Terraformers. Their full-blown xenophobia towards all other races stems from this incident. If anyone is to blame for rampant, out-of-control AI ships roaming around the galaxy, it's the Terrans, every single ounce of it.

* LizardFolk[=/=]TheReptilians: The Teladi, an oviparous reptilian species.

* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons: The ''XTM'' mod for ''Reunion'' and the ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod for ''Terran Conflict'' adds the Shivan Dragon, which is a dragon that breathes in space, shoots lasers from its mouth, and attacks everything in sight.

* HitScan: Beam weapons, originally a Kha'ak exclusive but since used by other races as well, are supposed to be this. It's only after you look at the technical data that it turns out to be a subversion: the game engine treats beam weapons as ''very'' fast projectile ones. This is normally transparent to the player because the projectiles are invisible, but occasionally -- typically while fighting very fast ships -- it can happen that the beam graphic crosses your target but the projectile isn't there yet, resulting in an irritatingly damage-free enemy.

** The Teladi Vulture. Despite being a [[StoneWall Teladi]] ship, it has crappy shields. When compared to other freighters, it's slow and has a mediocre cargo bay. The only two reasons anyone would take it over a [[PointDefenceless Boron Dolphin]] is that it's dirt cheap (the cheapest TS, in fact, and thus easy to finance), or for the rear turret which is highly useless because the Vulture lacks the energy to fire the single-weapon turret for more than a couple seconds.

* TheGoodKingdom: [[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]].

* 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.]]

* IntrepidMerchant / ProudMerchantRace: The Teladi, whose society is borderline-obsessively mercantile in nature. Also includes the player with dangerous travels for a handful of credits on the earlier stages and then vast trading empires to build on the endgame.

* 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]].

** In the story, the Terrans' military technology is well in advance of the Commonwealth's, which was why the Argon deemed it necessary to develop AGI warships to fight them. This is not true in gameplay for reasons of CompetitiveBalance: the Terrans have a definite edge in [[LightningBruiser speed, maneuvering, and defenses]], but Commonwealth energy weapons are good enough to compensate. Ironically, Terran/[=ATF=] fighters and frigates in gameplay have a [[CripplingOverspecialization painfully limited gun and missile arsenal and their guns are rather particularly ineffective compared to their Commonwealth and Xenon counterparts]]; in a straight capital-to-capital battle, the Terrans/[=AGI=] Task Force would win soundly except for their frigates ([[GameBreaker albeit the Skirnir takes an emphatic exception to that]]). In a space fighter dogfight, the Commonwealth and Xenon would win due to their better variety of weaponry and numerical advantage. [[Franchise/StarWars Does this remind you of anything?]]

** In the story, the Terrans' military technology is well in advance of the Commonwealth's, which was why the Argon deemed it necessary to develop AGI warships to fight them. This is not true in gameplay for reasons of CompetitiveBalance: the Terrans have a definite edge in [[LightningBruiser speed, maneuvering, and defenses]], but Commonwealth energy weapons are good enough to compensate. Ironically, Terran/[=ATF=] fighters and frigates in gameplay have a painfully limited gun and missile arsenal and their guns are rather particularly ineffective compared to their Commonwealth and Xenon counterparts; in a straight capital-to-capital battle, the Terrans/[=AGI=] Task Force would win soundly except for their frigates ([[GameBreaker albeit the Skirnir takes an emphatic exception to that]]). In a space fighter dogfight, the Commonwealth and Xenon would win due to their better variety of weaponry and numerical advantage. [[Franchise/StarWars Does this remind you of anything?]]

* HarderThanHard: ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' allows the player to enable the XTREME difficultly mode in-game, which is irreversible. It will remove all jump drives from space stations (making so only Kha'ak and Superdestroyer ships can jump), removes anything larger than a fighter from shipyards (forcing you to rely on [[LuckBasedMission luck]], then eventually [[BoardingParty boarding]] to capture corvettes and capital ships), and removes all [[SaveToken Salvage Insurance]] from the game ([[SavePoint forcing you to save at space stations]]). It also [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard massively increases the firepower, speed, and number of enemy ships]].

** Subverted by ''Albion Prelude''. The Argon open the war with the 30th-century equivalent of [[WarOnTerror 9/11]], and the Paranid join up with the Terrans.

* HardCodedHostility: Played straight with the [[RobotWar Xenon]] and [[BeePeople Kha'ak]]. The Xenon are artificially intelligent terraforming drones that [[AIIsACrapshoot went haywire centuries ago due to a badly coded software patch]] and now seek to "terraform" biological life out of existence, while the Kha'ak are [[StarfishAliens so thoroughly alien]] that the Community of Planets races are simply unable to communicate with them. Subverted with the [[SpacePirates Pirates]] and {{Yak|uza}}i, whom it's possible for the player to turn friendly (although not completely in the Pirates' case because, well, they're pirates).

* HemisphereBias: Averted. The view of Earth from the Torus is centered on Ecuador rather than central Europe. (A minor case of ShownTheirWork, as the Torus is built above the Equator, which runs through South America, but not Europe or North America.)

** Averted in the [[BlindJump Unfocused]] [[RandomlyGeneratedLevel Sectors]] without sun, as they never have planets. Inside those, the only thing visible are the lights of the ships, be them yours or those blood-red or purple lit of random enemies. Even with a giant galaxy blasting white the screen, the best they produce is a weak reflection on the metal of your hull.

* HumansAreWhite: There's exactly two non-Caucasian Argon NPC portraits in ''X3'', both of which are AmbiguouslyBrown. Averted with the Terrans in ''Terran Conflict'''s plot, with Commander Jackson and his aide.

* 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. Or remotely order your fleet of M2's to sally forth from your player headquarters to the location you jumped from and clear out the sector.

* InfiniteStockForSale:
** Averted. All stations have a limit to how much of a given ware they can stock. For instance, a station may be able to stock tens of thousands of units of energy cells, but only sixteen particle accelerator cannons.
** Averted to an {{egregious}} extent with Terran weapons in ''Terran Conflict'': stations can only stock ''two'' of each gun. This is thankfully fixed in ''Albion Prelude''.
** Played straight with Equipment Docks in ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' (with an AL settings enabled); equipment docks (and Pirate Bases) will stock an infinite amount of that race's weapons (plus common pool weapons, for the Commonwealth races), to make it [[EasyLogistics less of a nightmare when mass-equipping ships]].

* InSpaceEveryoneCanSeeYourFace: Averted. Spacesuits have opaque, reflective visors.

* 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.