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* SelfDeprecation: The achievement for getting 2 billion credits in ''X3: Albion Prelude'' is called "It Was About Time" in reference to the fact that the player's bank account had been previously capped at that level to some players' annoyance.
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* SelfDeprecation: The achievement for getting 2 billion credits in ''X3: Albion Prelude'' is called "It Was About Time" Time!" in reference to the fact that the player's bank account had been previously capped at that level to some players' annoyance.
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* SelfDeprecation: The achievement for getting 2 billion credits in ''X3: Albion Prelude'' is called "It's About Time" in reference to the fact that the player's bank account had been previously capped at that level to some players' annoyance.
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* SelfDeprecation: The achievement for getting 2 billion credits in ''X3: Albion Prelude'' is called "It's "It Was About Time" in reference to the fact that the player's bank account had been previously capped at that level to some players' annoyance.
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*** Some of the slowest ships can actually be outrun by a basic passenger car, and that's ''before'' you account for air friction, making you wonder why do the races in the setting even bother with spaceships for gate travel - they could set up a cable/rail/something public transit network, or tow the gates closer together and build a single space station around them.
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*** Some of the slowest ships can actually be outrun by a basic passenger car, and that's ''before'' you account for air friction, making you wonder why do the races in the setting even bother with spaceships for gate travel - they could set up a cable/rail/something public transit network, or tow the gates closer together and build a single space station around them.
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* VideoGameCaringPotential: NPC raids on players' shipping lines have been known to spark a RoaringRampageOfRevenge on the part of the player.
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* VideoGameCaringPotential: NPC raids on players' shipping lines have been known to spark a RoaringRampageOfRevenge on the part of the player. (Granted, there's also a practical aspect to this: a ship that destroyed one of your ships will destroy others.)
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* StrawmanNewsMedia: All of the race specific news sources in ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' have a dose of this, but it's most readily apparent in the Terran and Aldrin news sources, which are essentially Fox News in space. The Terran news source constantly reports on how inferior the Aldrin colonies are, and the Aldrins report that the Aldrin military is the [[BlatantLies most well trained in the universe.]]
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* TakeThat: ''Xtended Terran Conflict'''s in-universe news system has a report on a new cult of Split who believe that "The [[EveOnLine Eve]]" is coming, which will cause the collapse of all governments and cause people to begin to constantly [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder murder and backstab each other]] with no second thought. The newscaster calls it crazy.
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* WeAreAsMayflies: Varies by race. The ''X-Encyclopedia'' says the average Boron's life expectancy is [[InvertedTrope about 35 years]], whereas the average human, whether Argon or Terran, lives to about 110. The Split invert or avert depending on sex: males generally don't live more than 50 years, whereas their womenfolk usually top 80. Played straight with the Teladi, who average 250 years with the record being 400. No word on the Paranid.
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* WeAreAsMayflies: Varies by race. The ''X-Encyclopedia'' says the average Boron's life expectancy is [[InvertedTrope about 35 years]], whereas the average human, whether Argon or Terran, lives to about 110. The Split invert or avert depending on sex: males generally don't live more than 50 years, whereas their womenfolk usually top 80. Played straight with the Teladi, who average 250 years with the record being 400. [[note]]The Teladi are actually [[TheAgeless functionally immortal]], but tend to get tired of life around the middle of their second century and choose to die.[[/note]] No word on the Paranid.
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Based on the encyclopedia, the Paranid aren\'t alien enough to cross the threshold from Humanoid Aliens. The Kha\'ak, however...
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** The [[http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/gfx/22_concept_paranid_01.jpg Paranid]]. They have three eyes, have a crazy religion based on three-dimensionality, have multiple genders, and have four arms.
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** The [[http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/gfx/22_concept_paranid_01.jpg Paranid]]. They Kha'ak are so alien that the Commonwealth races are physically incapable of communicating with them. They're BeePeople that have three eyes, have a crazy religion based on three-dimensionality, have multiple genders, characteristics of both birds and have four arms.insects, are roughly 75 centimeters in size, and communicate by gestures and pheromones.
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***It should be noted that both Terran and Argon military starts are meant for players that want to quickly jump into action, without lengthy buildup. There are additional starting profiles that start with more traditional piss-poor character in crappy ship.
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Trivia bump
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* {{Vaporware}}: What {{Xbox}} port of ''X3: Reunion''? Exactly.
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According to the Encyclopedia, Paranids do \'\'not\'\' have two sets of arms.
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* VertebrateWithExtraLimbs: The Paranid have two sets of arms.
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* VertebrateWithExtraLimbs: The Paranid have two sets {{Vaporware}}: What {{Xbox}} port of arms.''X3: Reunion''? Exactly.
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** The major powers themselves: Argon, Boron, Xenon.
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** AllThereInTheManual rears its ugly head again. The Terrans weren't entirely blameless: they provoked the Argon to their military buildup by deploying a spy network with the intent of influencing their government's future course. If there's one thing the Argon hate above all else, it's outside interference in their way of life.
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* WeAreAsMayflies: Varies by race. The ''X-Encyclopedia'' says the average Boron's life expectancy is [[InvertedTrope about 35 years]], whereas the average human, whether Argon or Terran, lives to about 110. The Split invert or avert depending on sex: males generally don't live more than 50 years, whereas their womenfolk usually top 80. Played straight with the Teladi, who average 250 years with the record being 400. No word on the Paranid.
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* SelfDeprecation: The achievement for getting 2 billion credits in ''X3: Albion Prelude'' is called "It's About Time" in reference to the fact that the player's bank account had been previously capped at that level to some players' annoyance.
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* SpaceIsAnOcean: Normally avoided apart from SpaceFriction and SpaceClouds, but there is the odd quirk that the majority of capital ships have their anticapital guns on the forward and flank batteries, with the flak guns above, below, and astern. Certain forum members also have a tendency to use nautical terms like port and starboard.
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* SpaceIsAnOcean: SpaceIsAnOcean:
** Normally avoided apart from SpaceFriction and SpaceClouds, but there is the odd quirk that the majority of capital ships have their anticapital guns on the forward and flank batteries, with the flak guns above, below, and astern. Certain forum members also have a tendency to use nautical terms like port andstarboard.starboard.
** Also avoided in that the Terrans use army ranks for their space forces instead of navy. Kyle Brennan, the PlayerCharacter of ''X: Beyond the Frontier'', holds the rank of {{Major|lyAwesome}}, while ''X3: Terran Conflict's'' Terran plot has you working under the overall command of General Ishiyama.
** Normally avoided apart from SpaceFriction and SpaceClouds, but there is the odd quirk that the majority of capital ships have their anticapital guns on the forward and flank batteries, with the flak guns above, below, and astern. Certain forum members also have a tendency to use nautical terms like port and
** Also avoided in that the Terrans use army ranks for their space forces instead of navy. Kyle Brennan, the PlayerCharacter of ''X: Beyond the Frontier'', holds the rank of {{Major|lyAwesome}}, while ''X3: Terran Conflict's'' Terran plot has you working under the overall command of General Ishiyama.
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* WaveMotionGun: The Boron M7 Thresher can mount ten photon pulse cannons on its FixedForwardFacingWeapon slots. [=PPCs=] are normally mounted only on [=M1s and M2s=]. In OOS combat, this gives the Thresher absurd firepower since weapons energy is not an issue. IS, it's something of a GlassCannon because the [=PPCs=] drain its energy fast, and the Thresher is larger than class average and has weaker-than-average shields.
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* UnexpectedGameplayChange: The starship race course in ''X3: Reunion's'' plot, which in early versions was extremely buggy and difficult.
* UnitedSpaceOfAmerica: Averted. The games describe the Argon government as having a president and a senate, but the ''X-Encyclopedia'' clarifies that said president is the president ''of'' the senate. In other words, he/she is really a prime minister rather than an American-style president.[[note]]This is probably a case of LostInTranslation resulting from the fact that non-English-speaking European countries tend to use the local word for "president" in place of "prime minister".[[/note]]
* UnitedSpaceOfAmerica: Averted. The games describe the Argon government as having a president and a senate, but the ''X-Encyclopedia'' clarifies that said president is the president ''of'' the senate. In other words, he/she is really a prime minister rather than an American-style president.[[note]]This is probably a case of LostInTranslation resulting from the fact that non-English-speaking European countries tend to use the local word for "president" in place of "prime minister".[[/note]]
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* UnexpectedGameplayChange: The starship race course in ''X3: Reunion's'' plot, which in early versions was extremely buggy and difficult.
difficult. As of the final patch, it's still a pain in the ass because the {{NPC}}s are [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard able to fly the course flawlessly every time]].
*UnitedSpaceOfAmerica: Averted. UnitedSpaceOfAmerica: Averted. The games describe the Argon government as having a president and a senate, but the ''X-Encyclopedia'' clarifies that said president is the president ''of'' the senate. senate. In other words, he/she is really a prime minister rather than an American-style president.[[note]]This is probably a case of LostInTranslation resulting from the fact that non-English-speaking European countries tend to use the local word for "president" in place of "prime minister".[[/note]]
*
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* UnitedSpaceOfAmerica: Averted. The games describe the Argon government as having a president and a senate, but the ''X-Encyclopedia'' clarifies that said president is the president ''of'' the senate. In other words, he/she is really a prime minister rather than an American-style president.[[note]]This is probably a case of LostInTranslation resulting from the fact that non-English-speaking European countries tend to use the local word for "president" in place of "prime minister".[[/note]]
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* SaveGameLimits: Until you buy Salvage Insurance, you can only save when docked at stations. Salvage Insurance lets you save anywhere, but each time you save, you use up one Salvage Insurance. The player is also limited to ten save slots (and 3 autosave slots, which are made when you dock at stations).
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* SaveGameLimits: SaveGameLimits / SaveToken: Until you buy Salvage Insurance, you can only save when docked at stations. Salvage Insurance lets you save anywhere, but each time you save, you use up one Salvage Insurance. The player is also limited to ten save slots (and 3 autosave slots, which are made when you dock at stations).
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* SubsystemDamage: Ships with critically damaged hulls will have their on-board cannons, missiles, cargo, and software suites destroyed. Some weapons are designed specifically to do this, such as the Ion Disruptor.
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** 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.
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** 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 ''X2'' and X3 ''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.down.
* TimeSkip: ''X2: The Threat'' takes place 22 years after ''X: Beyond the Frontier''. ''X3: Reunion'' is set a year after ''X2''. ''Terran Conflict'' is three years after ''Reunion''. ''Albion Prelude'' is just over a decade after ''TC''. ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' is a millennium after ''AP''.
* TimeSkip: ''X2: The Threat'' takes place 22 years after ''X: Beyond the Frontier''. ''X3: Reunion'' is set a year after ''X2''. ''Terran Conflict'' is three years after ''Reunion''. ''Albion Prelude'' is just over a decade after ''TC''. ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' is a millennium after ''AP''.
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* SacrificialLamb: In ''Terran Conflict'', Jesan Nadina is a mercenary fighter pilot who brings the player aboard for Operation Final Fury, a privately funded effort to finish off the Kha'ak before they can mount another invasion. He is killed in action offstage two missions into the plot.
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* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Some user-made scripts allow you to bribe enemy ships to make them neutral
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* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Some user-made scripts allow you to bribe enemy ships to make them neutralneutral.
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* SpaceColdWar: ''Terran Conflict''. The Terrans distrust the [[LostColony Argon]], and the Argon fear the Terrans' 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''.
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* SpaceColdWar: ''Terran Conflict''. The Terrans distrust the [[LostColony Argon]], and the Argon fear the Terrans' extremely advanced technology. [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge Goes hot]] when the Argon blow up the jewel of the Solar System, Earth's [[BigDumbObject Torus Aeternal]] Aeternal]], in ''Albion Prelude''.
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** Teladi fighters are basically bluish slabs of metal with wings ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NDA5NjM3MDc M3 Falcon Hauler]]), while the capitals are frequently likened to [[UsedFuture "flying junkyards"]] ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NDAxNDAwOTk M1 Condor]]).
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** Teladi fighters are basically bluish slabs of metal with stubby wings ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NDA5NjM3MDc M3 Falcon Hauler]]), while the capitals are frequently likened to [[UsedFuture "flying junkyards"]] ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NDAxNDAwOTk M1 Condor]]).
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* VideogameCrueltyPotential:
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* VideogameCrueltyPotential:VideoGameCaringPotential: NPC raids on players' shipping lines have been known to spark a RoaringRampageOfRevenge on the part of the player.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential:
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential:
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* {{Yakuza}}: The Yaki are heavily based off of them.
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* {{Yakuza}}: The Yaki are heavily based off of them.them in-universe.
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* {{Yakuza}}: The Yaki are heavily based off of them.
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*** Not legally, anyway. Sometimes [=TLs=] labeled "Terran Ice Miner" have ice mines in the hold. Capture the ship, and you've got a mine.
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*** 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.
*** 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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*** 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=]).(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, According to the ''X-Encyclopedia'', Kyle Brennan did eventually return to Earth, and almost immediately enters a SpaceColdWar with tried to work towards improved diplomatic relations between the rest Terrans and Community of the X-Universe. And then in ''Albion Prelude'', his associate Saya Kho blows up the Torus Aeternal, putting another nail in the coffin.Planets. It didn't help much.
***
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* SapientCetaceans: The ''X-Encyclopedia'' mentions a sapient whale race on one of the Boron planets.
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* SapientCetaceans: The ''X-Encyclopedia'' mentions the Wenendra, a sapient whale race on one of the Boron planets.planets. Its location is a state secret for said cetaceans' protection.
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* UnwantedFalseFaith: During FirstContact the Wenendra thought the Boron were at least affiliated with their creator deity, due largely to the Boron being {{sufficiently advanced|aliens}} compared to the primitive Wenendra. The Boron had some trouble convincing them this wasn't the case.
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Batch-replace of \"Old Ones\" with \"Ancients\". Probably the same word in German, but the English version of the X-Encyclopedia uses \"Ancients\" so we\'ll go with that.
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* ShaggyDogStory: Arguably the Terran Conflict. As the Argon start The Big Push into Sol, the Old Ones shut down the whole gate network to corral the Xenon, leaving everyone in the known universe trapped where they are.
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* ShaggyDogStory: Arguably the Terran Conflict. As the Argon start The Big Push into Sol, the Old Ones Ancients shut down the whole gate network to corral the Xenon, leaving everyone in the known universe trapped where they are.
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* StandardSciFiHistory: The X-Universe has gone through The Cycle of Empire twice. In both cases, the Decline and Fall was due to somebody creating artificial general intelligence. The first time around, the Terrans nearly destroyed themselves, only surviving because the commander of their space navy lured the terraformers through the Earth jumpgate, which was destroyed behind them. The survivors of said commander's fleet created a new civilization in the X-Universe, the Argon Federation. In the 2940s, under threat from Earth, the Argon created AGI warships and unleashed them on the Terrans, sparking an interstellar war that forced the Community of Planets the Argon were a part of to divert the military forces holding the terraformers (now called the Xenon) at bay. The Xenon went out of control, forcing the Old Ones to shut down the jumpgate system. This caused [[ApocalypseHow Galactic/Societal Collapse]]. ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' is set during the Interregnum about a thousand years later.
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* StandardSciFiHistory: The X-Universe has gone through The Cycle of Empire twice. In both cases, the Decline and Fall was due to somebody creating artificial general intelligence. The first time around, the Terrans nearly destroyed themselves, only surviving because the commander of their space navy lured the terraformers through the Earth jumpgate, which was destroyed behind them. The survivors of said commander's fleet created a new civilization in the X-Universe, the Argon Federation. In the 2940s, under threat from Earth, the Argon created AGI warships and unleashed them on the Terrans, sparking an interstellar war that forced the Community of Planets the Argon were a part of to divert the military forces holding the terraformers (now called the Xenon) at bay. The Xenon went out of control, forcing the Old Ones Ancients to shut down the jumpgate system. This caused [[ApocalypseHow Galactic/Societal Collapse]]. ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' is set during the Interregnum about a thousand years later.
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* StandardSciFiHistory: The X-Universe has gone through The Cycle of Empire twice. In both cases, the Decline and Fall was due to somebody creating artificial general intelligence. The first time around, the Terrans nearly destroyed themselves, only surviving because the commander of their space navy lured the terraformers through the Earth jumpgate, which was destroyed behind them. The survivors of said commander's fleet created a new civilization in the X-Universe, the Argon Federation. In the 2940s, under threat from Earth, the Argon created AGI warships and unleashed them on the Terrans, sparking an interstellar war that forced the Community of Planets the Argon were a part of to divert the military forces holding the terraformers (now called the Xenon) at bay. The Xenon went out of control, forcing the Old Ones to shut down the jumpgate system. This caused [[ApocalypseHow Galactic/Societal Collapse]]. ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' is set during the Interregnum about a thousand years later.
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link fix
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[[XUniverse/Tropes0ToF]] | [[XUniverse/TropesGToL Tropes G-L]] | [[XUniverse/TropesMToR Tropes M-R]] | '''Tropes S-Z''' | ''VideoGame/XRebirth''
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[[XUniverse/Tropes0ToF]] | [[XUniverse/TropesGToL Tropes G-L]] | [[XUniverse/TropesMToR Tropes M-R]] | '''Tropes S-Z''' | ''VideoGame/XRebirth''
----
!!! The ''VideoGame/{{X}}'' series through ''Albion Prelude'' provides examples of the following tropes:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:S]]
* SapientCetaceans: The ''X-Encyclopedia'' mentions a sapient whale race on one of the Boron planets.
* SapientShip: Terraformer CPU ships.
* SaveGameLimits: Until you buy Salvage Insurance, you can only save when docked at stations. Salvage Insurance lets you save anywhere, but each time you save, you use up one Salvage Insurance. The player is also limited to ten save slots (and 3 autosave slots, which are made when you dock at stations).
* 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[[note]]650 meters or thereabouts[[/note]] 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.
** Even scripted plot missions follow no clear difficulty slope. A combat mission with a supporting NPC squad against a pack of heavy fighters and a frigate can be easily followed by a "patrol" mission on your lonesome against several heavy carriers. And then it's back to killing fighter squads again.
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale:
** [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfDistance Distance/Velocity]]: 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, making you wonder why do the races in the setting even bother with spaceships for gate travel - they could set up a cable/rail/something public transit network, or tow the gates closer together and build a single space station around them.
*** Oh, and your ability to hail other ships and stations is cut off abruptly at 25 kilometers.
** [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfEnergy Energy]]: Shipboard 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''.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: High reputation with a race lets you get away with an absurd amount of murders. You can capture their flagship, murder the crew, then sell the fighter pilots into slavery, and you'll often take only a minor reputation hit unless you started slaughtering everything ''else'' in the sector.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Some user-made scripts allow you to bribe enemy ships to make them neutral
* 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.
** Never mind the Enhanced Nova. The Terran start in ''Albion Prelude'' starts you off in a Katana corvette.
* ShaggyDogStory: Arguably the Terran Conflict. As the Argon start The Big Push into Sol, the Old Ones shut down the whole gate network to corral the Xenon, leaving everyone in the known universe trapped where they are.
* 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]].
** Almost all of the Aldrin sectors are named after the Apollo program astronauts - (Buzz) Aldrin, (Neil) Armstrong, (Pete) Conrad, (Dick) Gordon, (Alan) Bean.
** The ''X3: Albion Prelude'' achievement for forcing another pilot to eject is [[SpaceIsCold "It's Cold Outside"]]. This may be a ''Series/RedDwarf'' reference.
* SinkTheLifeboats: The AI will shoot at the player if he ejected from his ship, and tries to spacewalk to safety. In ''Xtended Terran Conflict'', the player can shoot down the escape pods that flee from destroyed capital ships and corvettes, though you don't accomplish much [[ForTheEvulz of value by doing it.]]
* 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. The nebulae have no effect on your ship's sensors.
* SpaceColdWar: ''Terran Conflict''. The Terrans distrust the [[LostColony Argon]], and the Argon fear the Terrans' 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.
* SpaceIsAnOcean: Normally avoided apart from SpaceFriction and SpaceClouds, but there is the odd quirk that the majority of capital ships have their anticapital guns on the forward and flank batteries, with the flak guns above, below, and astern. Certain forum members also have a tendency to use nautical terms like port and starboard.
* 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 cinematic for ''Terran Conflict''.
* SpaceMadness: Flavor text for the Oort Cloud in ''Terran Conflict'' mentions that those who work there sometimes fall victim to "Oort's Curse", a madness with no known cause or cure.
* 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. Except that in the game there is no difference between all of them beyond the name. None. 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.
* SpecialEffectBranding: Every faction that builds ships does it differently.
** Argon fighters look vaguely like diesel punk fighter jets ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?MzM1MjI3NQ M3 Nova]]), while the capital ships are gray and boxy ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?MjgwMzIwMw M1 Colossus]]).
** Boron ships are bright green and organic-looking, resembling fanciful sea creatures ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?MzY1NzExMzE M7 Thresher]]).
** Paranid ships are grayish purple with lots of sweeping curves ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?MjI4NDQzMzE M1 Zeus]]).
** Split ships are rusty red with lots of sharp edges and flat panels ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?ODEzMjA0OTk M7 Panther]]).
** Teladi fighters are basically bluish slabs of metal with wings ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NDA5NjM3MDc M3 Falcon Hauler]]), while the capitals are frequently likened to [[UsedFuture "flying junkyards"]] ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NDAxNDAwOTk M1 Condor]]).
** Terran fighters resemble space shuttles ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NTk2MzIxNTU M3+ Cutlass]]), while the capital ships are big, white, boxy contraptions ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NTkwODMwODM M2 Osaka]]).
** ATF ships tend to be spiky and angular, with lots of silvery gray ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NTQ5NjUwNDM M1 Odin]]).
** Kha'ak fighters are purple and pyramid-shaped ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NjcwNDQ2Mjc M4 Interceptor]]), while the capitals resemble giant insects ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NjYyMjEwMTk M1 Carrier]]).
** Xenon ships are gray and boxy with SpikesOfVillainy ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NDY0NTQ0Mjc M1 K]]).
* SpikesOfVillainy: Xenon capital ships typically have dozens of spike-like antennas scattered across the surface of the black and red hull. Split capital ships also have a large mass of spike-like antenna mounted on the nose of the ship.
* SpiritualSuccessor: The series has been described as one to ''VideoGame/{{Elite}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Privateer}}''.
* SplashDamageAbuse: AreaOfEffect weapons deal damage based on how many of their damage "squares" touch enemy ships. In other words, larger ships take exponentially more damage than a small ship. As such, capital ships take [[GameBreaker absurd amounts of damage]] from Phased Shockwave Generators. The good news is, [=PSG=] are strictly short-range weapons (as well as capital-only from ''Terran Conflict'' on), so unless the player is at the controls of the PSG-armed ship, a ship with dedicated anticapital guns ([=PSPs or PPCs=] can keep them at arm's length long enough for this trope not to matter.
* [[FishPeople Squid People]]: The Boron.
* 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 dropped in favor of Earth time units.
*** The XTC Mod (Xtended for Terran Conflict) brought it back again.
* StarfishAliens:
** The [[http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/gfx/22_concept_boron.jpg Boron]]. They're aquatic, squid-like aliens whose home planet has an atmosphere of ammonia.
** The [[http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/gfx/22_concept_paranid_01.jpg Paranid]]. They have three eyes, have a crazy religion based on three-dimensionality, have multiple genders, and have four arms.
* 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.
** Saya Kho's destruction of the Torus - the colossal ring station around the entirety of Earth - in Albion Prelude intro may arguably fall into this category from a political standpoint. The Argon and Terrans are locked into a cold war with localized conflicts. The Torus was a hybrid military and civilian installation, providing defence for Earth, but it did not threaten Argon interests directly. Blowing it up constitutes something between Hiroshima bombing and 9/11 in space, as it had a staggeringly high casualty rate among both military and civilian personnel, not to mention those killed by debris falling to Earth. Naturally, this incident became the spark for a full scale war. Saya Kho is previously portrayed in the series as a reasonable person and is said to show remorse for the deed (she could evacuate the Torus in time but chose not to), but no justification is provided for her deed.
* 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.
* SuicidalOverconfidence: any ship will attack you if you shoot it, even if you're in a superheavy prototype fighter and they're a tiny scout craft whose weapons caress your armor more than they hurt it. This can scale up to hilarious levels, with light fighters attacking your ''capital ship''.
* 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). Their rarity and power are usually handwaved as being too costly for mass production.
* SuperweaponSurprise:
** The [[http://x3wiki.com/index.php/Boron_Campaign Boron Campaign]], the first time the Commonwealth governments had a full-scale war. The Split invaded Boron space and pushed the squids all the way back to their homeworld Kingdom End. Then the Argon, needing a new ally after having a falling-out with the Paranid, came to the aid of the Boron, throwing most of their fleet at the Split and driving them back.
** By the time of the games, the Boron have become respectably badass by necessity. It's not uncommon to see a Split strike force enter a Boron sector and promptly get shredded.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:T]]
* 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.
* ThemeNaming: Some ships in ''X3'' have names of swords. Others use names from Earth mythology, biology, or geography. The full list of naming conventions is as follows:
** USC (Terran): [[ArmsAndArmorThemeNaming Swords for fighters]], [[LocationThemeNaming Japanese cities for capital ships]] e.g. Cutlass, Tokyo
** ATF (Terran): [[ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming Norse mythology]] e.g. Thor, Odin
** Argon (Other humans): Fighters appear unthemed; [[ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming Greek mythology]] for capitals (but not those used by Paranid) e.g. Colossus, Minotaur; {{Stellar Name}}s for some ships (e.g. Eclipse, Magnetar)
** Boron: [[AnimalThemeNaming Aquatic organisms]] e.g. Barracuda, Shark
** OTAS: [[ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming Greek wind gods and regional winds]] e.g. Boreas, Venti, Mistral
** Paranid: [[ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming Greek gods, demigods and heroes]] e.g. Perseus, Zeus
** Split: [[AnimalThemeNaming Predators]] e.g. Python, Tiger
** Teladi: [[AnimalThemeNaming Birds]] e.g. Condor, Falcon
** Terraformers: [[NumericalThemeNaming Hexadecimal numbers]] e.g. #deca (57,034 in base 10), #cefa (52,986)
** Xenon: Letters e.g. J, L
* TheTheocracy: The Paranid Empire is ruled by one Priest-Emperor Xaar, with each Paranid settlement having its own priest-duke.
* 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 Terrans' 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).
* TryAndFollow: A decent pilot with a small enough ship can invoke this trope. Simply fly through tight gaps in space stations (the bigger the station, the better), or (if the opportunity presents itself) make like Han Solo in ''TheEmpireStrikesBack'' and fly through an AsteroidThicket. The AI's collision avoidance software will force your pursuers to give the obstacles a wider berth, while you open the gap.
* 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.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:U]]
* UnexpectedGameplayChange: The starship race course in ''X3: Reunion's'' plot, which in early versions was extremely buggy and difficult.
* {{Unobtainium}}:
** Nividium is a valuable mineral mined from certain asteroids (rumored to be fragments of the Kha'ak homeworld). What the {{NPC}}s use it for is unclear.
** Teladianium is a ceramic used mainly in structural components.
* 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...
[[/folder]]
[[folder:V]]
* VertebrateWithExtraLimbs: The Paranid have two sets of arms.
* 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.
** A [[http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=319635 work-in-progress script]] allows you to utilize slaves for a variety of useful tasks, like ship repair. When they repair the ship, you eject the suited-up slaves into space, and they start repairing your ship with repair lasers - sometimes they'll break away and try to escape, and you can just slaughter them or kill them. You can extort slaves for money in exchange for their freedom - or you can just extort them, promising them freedom, [[ILied then keep them anyways]]
* 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."
* VideoGameLongRunners: Counting the currently unreleased ''X: Rebirth'', seven games spanning fourteen years.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:W]]
* TheWarOfEarthlyAggression: Averted or inverted. The Terran Conflict starts as a SpaceColdWar between the Terrans and the Commonwealth. Then the Argon blow up the Torus, making it actually a War of ''Argon'' Aggression.
* WarWasBeginning: ''Terran Conflict's'' opening cinematic tells the roots of the titular SpaceColdWar. ''Albion Prelude's'' cinematic tells how the cold war turned hot.
* WeBuyAnything / WeSellEverything: Averted. Each station will only buy the resources for the products they manufacture, and will only sell these products (and that is if the owner allows trade for the station). Trade Stations are slightly more permisive, as they will buy and sell for the average price all wares in their stock list; the list varies greatly between host races and slightly between the stations of a given race.
* 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.
** And then you can usually prevent an encounter with the police by opening a comm channel with them and [[EasilyForgiven blaming the weapons' targetting system]]. Thankfully, stations gone hostile from friendly fire while you are protecting them become friendly after completing the mission.
* 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.
* WordSaladTitle: ''X3: Albion Prelude''. "Albion" refers to the player ship of ''X: Rebirth'', the ''Albion Skunk'', while ''Prelude'' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: a prelude to the gate system shutdown that gave the dev team an excuse to do a major timeskip.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:X]]
* XMeetsY: Gameplay is typically described as "''{{Freelancer}}'' [[note]]You actually pilot your ship, emphasis on side missions, silly physics[[/note]] meets ''EVEOnline'' [[note]]being able to pilot any ship in the game, emphasis on the economy, SceneryPorn[[/note]] meets ''VideoGame/{{Elite}}''[[note]]WideOpenSandbox trading and combat.[[/note]]" -- though the ''X-Universe'' series predates both ''{{Freelancer}}'' and ''EVEOnline''.
* 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.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Y]]
* 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.
** The ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod takes place in an entirely new gate system -- the only preexisting sector is Aldrin. The Terrans allow races to send their ships into the gate system, but they refuse to let them go ''back'' to the original gate network. As such, every ship in the new gate system can't go home again.
* YouRequireMoreVespeneGas: Wares can be broadly defined into Energy, Minerals, Bio, Food, Tech, Military (weapons, shields). There is also Secondary factories. Each race has their own unique Bio, Food, and Secondary wares, which are used by their own stations. Some Tech and Military factories are race-exclusive.
** Energy is made by Solar Power Plants, which have no ware requirements to build Energy Cells (Except for player power plants, which need Crystals). All stations require energy cells.
** Minerals (Ore, Silicon) are mined by breaking up asteroids and picking up the debris, or by placing a mining station on them. They only require Energy to work. Ice and Nividium asteroids are also present, but Ice is only used by the Terrans, and neither type has mining stations available to the player.
** Bio (Meat, wheat, etc) are used only by Food and Secondary factories. They only require Energy to work.
** Secondary factories (Warheads, food spices, etc) are usually not essential to the economy except for a few Tech factories. They need Energy and Bio to work.
** Food (Space burgers, [=MREs=], etc) requires Energy and Bio.
** Tech (microchips, crystals, etc) requires Energy, Food, and Minerals. Some require a Secondary resource in place of Food.
** Military (lasers, missiles, food) requires Energy, Food, and Minerals. Military equipment is bought by Equipment Docks or installed on ships.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Z]]
* ZergRush: Common Xenon and Kha'ak tactic. The Khaak Cluster is a self-contained ZergRush; upon approaching it breaks into about a dozen scout ships and a heavy fighter.
[[/folder]]
----
----
!!! The ''VideoGame/{{X}}'' series through ''Albion Prelude'' provides examples of the following tropes:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:S]]
* SapientCetaceans: The ''X-Encyclopedia'' mentions a sapient whale race on one of the Boron planets.
* SapientShip: Terraformer CPU ships.
* SaveGameLimits: Until you buy Salvage Insurance, you can only save when docked at stations. Salvage Insurance lets you save anywhere, but each time you save, you use up one Salvage Insurance. The player is also limited to ten save slots (and 3 autosave slots, which are made when you dock at stations).
* 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[[note]]650 meters or thereabouts[[/note]] 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.
** Even scripted plot missions follow no clear difficulty slope. A combat mission with a supporting NPC squad against a pack of heavy fighters and a frigate can be easily followed by a "patrol" mission on your lonesome against several heavy carriers. And then it's back to killing fighter squads again.
* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale:
** [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfDistance Distance/Velocity]]: 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, making you wonder why do the races in the setting even bother with spaceships for gate travel - they could set up a cable/rail/something public transit network, or tow the gates closer together and build a single space station around them.
*** Oh, and your ability to hail other ships and stations is cut off abruptly at 25 kilometers.
** [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfEnergy Energy]]: Shipboard 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''.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: High reputation with a race lets you get away with an absurd amount of murders. You can capture their flagship, murder the crew, then sell the fighter pilots into slavery, and you'll often take only a minor reputation hit unless you started slaughtering everything ''else'' in the sector.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Some user-made scripts allow you to bribe enemy ships to make them neutral
* 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.
** Never mind the Enhanced Nova. The Terran start in ''Albion Prelude'' starts you off in a Katana corvette.
* ShaggyDogStory: Arguably the Terran Conflict. As the Argon start The Big Push into Sol, the Old Ones shut down the whole gate network to corral the Xenon, leaving everyone in the known universe trapped where they are.
* 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]].
** Almost all of the Aldrin sectors are named after the Apollo program astronauts - (Buzz) Aldrin, (Neil) Armstrong, (Pete) Conrad, (Dick) Gordon, (Alan) Bean.
** The ''X3: Albion Prelude'' achievement for forcing another pilot to eject is [[SpaceIsCold "It's Cold Outside"]]. This may be a ''Series/RedDwarf'' reference.
* SinkTheLifeboats: The AI will shoot at the player if he ejected from his ship, and tries to spacewalk to safety. In ''Xtended Terran Conflict'', the player can shoot down the escape pods that flee from destroyed capital ships and corvettes, though you don't accomplish much [[ForTheEvulz of value by doing it.]]
* 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. The nebulae have no effect on your ship's sensors.
* SpaceColdWar: ''Terran Conflict''. The Terrans distrust the [[LostColony Argon]], and the Argon fear the Terrans' 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.
* SpaceIsAnOcean: Normally avoided apart from SpaceFriction and SpaceClouds, but there is the odd quirk that the majority of capital ships have their anticapital guns on the forward and flank batteries, with the flak guns above, below, and astern. Certain forum members also have a tendency to use nautical terms like port and starboard.
* 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 cinematic for ''Terran Conflict''.
* SpaceMadness: Flavor text for the Oort Cloud in ''Terran Conflict'' mentions that those who work there sometimes fall victim to "Oort's Curse", a madness with no known cause or cure.
* 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. Except that in the game there is no difference between all of them beyond the name. None. 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.
* SpecialEffectBranding: Every faction that builds ships does it differently.
** Argon fighters look vaguely like diesel punk fighter jets ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?MzM1MjI3NQ M3 Nova]]), while the capital ships are gray and boxy ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?MjgwMzIwMw M1 Colossus]]).
** Boron ships are bright green and organic-looking, resembling fanciful sea creatures ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?MzY1NzExMzE M7 Thresher]]).
** Paranid ships are grayish purple with lots of sweeping curves ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?MjI4NDQzMzE M1 Zeus]]).
** Split ships are rusty red with lots of sharp edges and flat panels ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?ODEzMjA0OTk M7 Panther]]).
** Teladi fighters are basically bluish slabs of metal with wings ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NDA5NjM3MDc M3 Falcon Hauler]]), while the capitals are frequently likened to [[UsedFuture "flying junkyards"]] ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NDAxNDAwOTk M1 Condor]]).
** Terran fighters resemble space shuttles ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NTk2MzIxNTU M3+ Cutlass]]), while the capital ships are big, white, boxy contraptions ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NTkwODMwODM M2 Osaka]]).
** ATF ships tend to be spiky and angular, with lots of silvery gray ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NTQ5NjUwNDM M1 Odin]]).
** Kha'ak fighters are purple and pyramid-shaped ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NjcwNDQ2Mjc M4 Interceptor]]), while the capitals resemble giant insects ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NjYyMjEwMTk M1 Carrier]]).
** Xenon ships are gray and boxy with SpikesOfVillainy ([[http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NDY0NTQ0Mjc M1 K]]).
* SpikesOfVillainy: Xenon capital ships typically have dozens of spike-like antennas scattered across the surface of the black and red hull. Split capital ships also have a large mass of spike-like antenna mounted on the nose of the ship.
* SpiritualSuccessor: The series has been described as one to ''VideoGame/{{Elite}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Privateer}}''.
* SplashDamageAbuse: AreaOfEffect weapons deal damage based on how many of their damage "squares" touch enemy ships. In other words, larger ships take exponentially more damage than a small ship. As such, capital ships take [[GameBreaker absurd amounts of damage]] from Phased Shockwave Generators. The good news is, [=PSG=] are strictly short-range weapons (as well as capital-only from ''Terran Conflict'' on), so unless the player is at the controls of the PSG-armed ship, a ship with dedicated anticapital guns ([=PSPs or PPCs=] can keep them at arm's length long enough for this trope not to matter.
* [[FishPeople Squid People]]: The Boron.
* 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 dropped in favor of Earth time units.
*** The XTC Mod (Xtended for Terran Conflict) brought it back again.
* StarfishAliens:
** The [[http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/gfx/22_concept_boron.jpg Boron]]. They're aquatic, squid-like aliens whose home planet has an atmosphere of ammonia.
** The [[http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/gfx/22_concept_paranid_01.jpg Paranid]]. They have three eyes, have a crazy religion based on three-dimensionality, have multiple genders, and have four arms.
* 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.
** Saya Kho's destruction of the Torus - the colossal ring station around the entirety of Earth - in Albion Prelude intro may arguably fall into this category from a political standpoint. The Argon and Terrans are locked into a cold war with localized conflicts. The Torus was a hybrid military and civilian installation, providing defence for Earth, but it did not threaten Argon interests directly. Blowing it up constitutes something between Hiroshima bombing and 9/11 in space, as it had a staggeringly high casualty rate among both military and civilian personnel, not to mention those killed by debris falling to Earth. Naturally, this incident became the spark for a full scale war. Saya Kho is previously portrayed in the series as a reasonable person and is said to show remorse for the deed (she could evacuate the Torus in time but chose not to), but no justification is provided for her deed.
* 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.
* SuicidalOverconfidence: any ship will attack you if you shoot it, even if you're in a superheavy prototype fighter and they're a tiny scout craft whose weapons caress your armor more than they hurt it. This can scale up to hilarious levels, with light fighters attacking your ''capital ship''.
* 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). Their rarity and power are usually handwaved as being too costly for mass production.
* SuperweaponSurprise:
** The [[http://x3wiki.com/index.php/Boron_Campaign Boron Campaign]], the first time the Commonwealth governments had a full-scale war. The Split invaded Boron space and pushed the squids all the way back to their homeworld Kingdom End. Then the Argon, needing a new ally after having a falling-out with the Paranid, came to the aid of the Boron, throwing most of their fleet at the Split and driving them back.
** By the time of the games, the Boron have become respectably badass by necessity. It's not uncommon to see a Split strike force enter a Boron sector and promptly get shredded.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:T]]
* 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.
* ThemeNaming: Some ships in ''X3'' have names of swords. Others use names from Earth mythology, biology, or geography. The full list of naming conventions is as follows:
** USC (Terran): [[ArmsAndArmorThemeNaming Swords for fighters]], [[LocationThemeNaming Japanese cities for capital ships]] e.g. Cutlass, Tokyo
** ATF (Terran): [[ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming Norse mythology]] e.g. Thor, Odin
** Argon (Other humans): Fighters appear unthemed; [[ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming Greek mythology]] for capitals (but not those used by Paranid) e.g. Colossus, Minotaur; {{Stellar Name}}s for some ships (e.g. Eclipse, Magnetar)
** Boron: [[AnimalThemeNaming Aquatic organisms]] e.g. Barracuda, Shark
** OTAS: [[ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming Greek wind gods and regional winds]] e.g. Boreas, Venti, Mistral
** Paranid: [[ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming Greek gods, demigods and heroes]] e.g. Perseus, Zeus
** Split: [[AnimalThemeNaming Predators]] e.g. Python, Tiger
** Teladi: [[AnimalThemeNaming Birds]] e.g. Condor, Falcon
** Terraformers: [[NumericalThemeNaming Hexadecimal numbers]] e.g. #deca (57,034 in base 10), #cefa (52,986)
** Xenon: Letters e.g. J, L
* TheTheocracy: The Paranid Empire is ruled by one Priest-Emperor Xaar, with each Paranid settlement having its own priest-duke.
* 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 Terrans' 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).
* TryAndFollow: A decent pilot with a small enough ship can invoke this trope. Simply fly through tight gaps in space stations (the bigger the station, the better), or (if the opportunity presents itself) make like Han Solo in ''TheEmpireStrikesBack'' and fly through an AsteroidThicket. The AI's collision avoidance software will force your pursuers to give the obstacles a wider berth, while you open the gap.
* 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.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:U]]
* UnexpectedGameplayChange: The starship race course in ''X3: Reunion's'' plot, which in early versions was extremely buggy and difficult.
* {{Unobtainium}}:
** Nividium is a valuable mineral mined from certain asteroids (rumored to be fragments of the Kha'ak homeworld). What the {{NPC}}s use it for is unclear.
** Teladianium is a ceramic used mainly in structural components.
* 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...
[[/folder]]
[[folder:V]]
* VertebrateWithExtraLimbs: The Paranid have two sets of arms.
* 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.
** A [[http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=319635 work-in-progress script]] allows you to utilize slaves for a variety of useful tasks, like ship repair. When they repair the ship, you eject the suited-up slaves into space, and they start repairing your ship with repair lasers - sometimes they'll break away and try to escape, and you can just slaughter them or kill them. You can extort slaves for money in exchange for their freedom - or you can just extort them, promising them freedom, [[ILied then keep them anyways]]
* 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."
* VideoGameLongRunners: Counting the currently unreleased ''X: Rebirth'', seven games spanning fourteen years.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:W]]
* TheWarOfEarthlyAggression: Averted or inverted. The Terran Conflict starts as a SpaceColdWar between the Terrans and the Commonwealth. Then the Argon blow up the Torus, making it actually a War of ''Argon'' Aggression.
* WarWasBeginning: ''Terran Conflict's'' opening cinematic tells the roots of the titular SpaceColdWar. ''Albion Prelude's'' cinematic tells how the cold war turned hot.
* WeBuyAnything / WeSellEverything: Averted. Each station will only buy the resources for the products they manufacture, and will only sell these products (and that is if the owner allows trade for the station). Trade Stations are slightly more permisive, as they will buy and sell for the average price all wares in their stock list; the list varies greatly between host races and slightly between the stations of a given race.
* 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.
** And then you can usually prevent an encounter with the police by opening a comm channel with them and [[EasilyForgiven blaming the weapons' targetting system]]. Thankfully, stations gone hostile from friendly fire while you are protecting them become friendly after completing the mission.
* 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.
* WordSaladTitle: ''X3: Albion Prelude''. "Albion" refers to the player ship of ''X: Rebirth'', the ''Albion Skunk'', while ''Prelude'' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: a prelude to the gate system shutdown that gave the dev team an excuse to do a major timeskip.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:X]]
* XMeetsY: Gameplay is typically described as "''{{Freelancer}}'' [[note]]You actually pilot your ship, emphasis on side missions, silly physics[[/note]] meets ''EVEOnline'' [[note]]being able to pilot any ship in the game, emphasis on the economy, SceneryPorn[[/note]] meets ''VideoGame/{{Elite}}''[[note]]WideOpenSandbox trading and combat.[[/note]]" -- though the ''X-Universe'' series predates both ''{{Freelancer}}'' and ''EVEOnline''.
* 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.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Y]]
* 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.
** The ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod takes place in an entirely new gate system -- the only preexisting sector is Aldrin. The Terrans allow races to send their ships into the gate system, but they refuse to let them go ''back'' to the original gate network. As such, every ship in the new gate system can't go home again.
* YouRequireMoreVespeneGas: Wares can be broadly defined into Energy, Minerals, Bio, Food, Tech, Military (weapons, shields). There is also Secondary factories. Each race has their own unique Bio, Food, and Secondary wares, which are used by their own stations. Some Tech and Military factories are race-exclusive.
** Energy is made by Solar Power Plants, which have no ware requirements to build Energy Cells (Except for player power plants, which need Crystals). All stations require energy cells.
** Minerals (Ore, Silicon) are mined by breaking up asteroids and picking up the debris, or by placing a mining station on them. They only require Energy to work. Ice and Nividium asteroids are also present, but Ice is only used by the Terrans, and neither type has mining stations available to the player.
** Bio (Meat, wheat, etc) are used only by Food and Secondary factories. They only require Energy to work.
** Secondary factories (Warheads, food spices, etc) are usually not essential to the economy except for a few Tech factories. They need Energy and Bio to work.
** Food (Space burgers, [=MREs=], etc) requires Energy and Bio.
** Tech (microchips, crystals, etc) requires Energy, Food, and Minerals. Some require a Secondary resource in place of Food.
** Military (lasers, missiles, food) requires Energy, Food, and Minerals. Military equipment is bought by Equipment Docks or installed on ships.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Z]]
* ZergRush: Common Xenon and Kha'ak tactic. The Khaak Cluster is a self-contained ZergRush; upon approaching it breaks into about a dozen scout ships and a heavy fighter.
[[/folder]]
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