History XUniverse / TropesMToR

* PompousPoliticalPundit: ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' adds news services for each race. The Terran version, Terran Morning News, is a satire of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} as a whole and Radio/GlennBeck's and Alex Jones's shows in particular, what with rampant paranoia, conspiracy theories, and subtle or not-so-subtle discrimination (Muslims in post-9/11 Fox News have been replaced by Aldrinites in Terran Morning News, for example).

* ObviousBeta: The games tend to ship with a plethora of bugs, from annoying to game breaking. ''Reunion'' suffered from this in its plot (which was often impossible to complete), and ''Terran Conflict'' was a massive system hog for several months after release.

* OlderThanTheyLook: Delilah Shiratori, the Terran mission giver in X4, looks to be somewhere in her forties. Then X3: Farnham's Legend came out and it's revealed she was active prior to the Jump Gate shutdown ''forty years prior''.

* OlderThanTheyLook: Delilah Shiratori, the Terran mission giver in X4, looks to be somewhere in her forties. Then X3: Farnham's Legend came out and it's revealed she was active prior to the Jump Gate shutdown *forty years prior*.

** The deadliest [=M7M=] of them all is the [=ATF=] Skirnir, which uses the Shadow missile (755k damage per warhead on an ''[[RecursiveAmmo 8-warhead missile]]''). Think MacrossMissileMassacre taken UpToEleven.

** Goner: Jehovah's Witnesses [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]-]
** Yaki: {{Yakuza}} [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE!]]-]

* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: The literature and encyclopedia are probably an example of One Big Lie: ships follow Newtonian/Einsteinian physics apart from spacetime manipulation tech, which allows for tractor beams, artificial wormholes (the gates and jumpdrive), certain weapons (particularly the phased shockwave generator and point singularity projector), and for ships' cargo bays to be BiggerOnTheInside. Gameplay is significantly softer given the RuleOfCool space physics.

** The Mercenary Information Network has a [[Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} personal appeal]] by founder [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Whales Jim Whales]].

* TheOneTrueSequence / SequenceBreaking: In ''Terran Conflict'', the intended order to complete the plotlines is "Terran Plot" → "Operation Final Fury" → "Goner Plot" → "Hub Plot" → "HQ Plot" → "Aldrin Expansion" → "Treasure Hunt" → "New Home Plot" → "Balance of Power". Though none of the individual plots allow for internal sequence breaking (i.e. you can't skip missions), it is very easy to complete certain plots out of order. Players have reported finishing the Goner Plot before the Terran Plot, and the Aldrin Expansion only requires you to have completed the first half of the Hub plot.

--> "Almost a millennium has passed since the last great plague of humankind had been wiped out from the solar system and its precious blue pearl planet Earth.\\

* OmnicidalManiac: The Xenon and the Kha'ak.

* OneGenderRace: {{Justified|Trope}}. The Teladi ''do'' have males, but they nearly all still live on the homeworld because the Teladi discovered early in their space age that unfertilized eggs would always hatch females.

* 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.

** During the Terran-Argon ColdWar in ''Terran Conflict'' Argon loyalist Saya Kho attempted to remove some of the Terran technological advantage by [[DisproportionateRetribution sabotaging and destroying Earth's Torus Aeternal]], a gigantic artificial ring around Earth that functioned as a military shipyard and defense station among other things, which killed tens of millions of soldiers and civilians. This kicks off the plot of ''Albion Prelude,'' with Terra responding by escalating the cold war into a [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar very, very hot war]], which forced the Commonwealth races to choose sides since most of them were between the Terrans and the Argon. All the internal fighting meant [[IgnoredEnemy nobody was dealing with the Xenon,]] who spread out of control and forced the Ancients to shut down the jump gate network. This led to the total collapse of the Argon Federation (and every other Commonwealth government) between ''Albion Prelude'' and ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' without seriously affecting the Terrans, who didn't use jumpgates anyway.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: When the Argon Federation is closing in on Sol System with their swarms of reverse engineered Xenon fighters, about to subjugate the Terrans, the jump gate system ''completely'' shuts down, isolating every system.

[[folder:Q]]
* QuicksandBox: ''X: Beyond the Frontier'' through ''X3: Reunion'' hit this hit pretty hard. ''X3: Terran Conflict'' is a bit better at giving the player a goal and plenty of things to do.
[[/folder]]

* PompousPoliticalPundit: ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' adds news services for each race. The Terran version, Terran Morning News, is a satire of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} as a whole and Radio/GlennBeck's and Radio/AlexJones's shows in particular, what with rampant paranoia, conspiracy theories, and subtle or not-so-subtle discrimination (Muslims in post-9/11 Fox News have been replaced by Aldrinites in Terran Morning News, for example).

** The Mercenary Information Network has a [[{{Wikipedia}} personal appeal]] by founder [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Whales Jim Whales]].

* PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny: ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' has a remote sector, called the "Glorious People's Republic", which is a brutal dictatorship where the citizens have almost no knowledge of life elsewhere. The sector also has effectively no industry. [[NorthKorea Sound familiar]]?

** The Pirate Blastclaw Prototype is another vessel that can be used for triple-M, thanks to its 650-capacity cargo hold, second only to the Enhanced version of the Teladi Kea for having the biggest cargo capacity of any non-capital vessel. Unlike the Enhanced Kea, the Blastclaw Prototype has much better performance all around and can be used as a multi-role vessel, whether as a missile gunboat, or a well-armed trading craft.

** Even outside of [=M7Ms and M8s=], triple-M is a pretty good tactic. One common use of the Falcon Hauler as a carrier-based fighter is to stuff its cavernous cargo bay with [[RecursiveAmmo Tornado missiles]] and use it as a bomber against capital ships.

* PlayerHeadquarters: The... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Player Headquarters]], first introduced in ''Reunion''. You gain the Headquarters by doing a sub-plot in each game. The HQ lets you reverse engineer ships (to gain their blueprints), scrap ships (for resources), build ships (from learned blueprints and resources), repair ships (using some resources), and adjust the hue and saturation values for non-Boron ships - allowing you to make pink Split ships[[note]]insert PinkPanther reference[[/note]], or make the flames on your Pirate Nova bright blue. The HQ has a ''massive'' storage bay for storing all your crap, 12 external docking ports for capital ships, 20 external docking ports for freighters and corvettes, and an [[BiggerOnTheInside infinitely large internal docking bay for fighters]], making it an excellent parking location for your unused ships.