History XUniverse / TropesSToZ

** In a minor case of GameplayAndStorySegregation, {{averted}} in the opening cinematic for ''Terran Conflict''.

** The Prototype Terran weapons built by the Aldrin colony, on the other hand, are [[InvertedTrope actually inferior]] to the mass-produced (and more advanced) versions.

* 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]]

* 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."

* WeakTurretGun
** Lasertowers in ''Terran Conflict''. In theory they can defend locations quite effectively: good range, very small target. In practice their DPS is comparable to heavy fighter lasers, and they traverse so slowly that they often can't target faster ships especially at close range. Couple this with their weak shields (bomber grade at best) and they're only effective in huge numbers, and then only during in-sector combat. They got a major buff in ''X3: Albion Prelude'' to make them useful in their intended role, at the cost of a lengthy setup time that makes them difficult to use in the alternate niche developed in ''TC'': a SuperweaponSurprise for pursuing ships.
** Very, very averted with the turrets attached to the Torus station ringing Earth. Their extreme long range and high damage give them the ability to one-shot a fully shielded destroyer. Which is why the Argon resorted to sabotaging the Torus itself when ''Albion Prelude's'' war broke out.

* 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.
* 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. Equipment docks will buy any kind of missile, shield, or weapon, but will only sell a limited selection of race-specific weapons.

** The ''Xtended Terran Conflict'' mod has tons of shout-outs:
*** 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 [[Literature/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. This is an expansion on the planets in Aldrin and Aldrin 2 in basic ''TC'' being Aldrin and Armstrong.
*** The Galnet News System often has shout outs in its articles. The Mercenary Information Network has a [[{{Wikipedia}} personal appeal]] by founder [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Whales Jim Whales]]. A random article talks about frigate sized ships appearing asteroid fields, spewing out automated distress calls about "[[Videogame/DeadSpace necr---rphs]]" before vanishing. A technical article about the Jump Gate network talks about a conspiracy theory where the [[Franchise/MassEffect jump gates are designed to direct the expansion and innovations of the races so that they can be harvested by an ancient precursor race]].

*** Commonwealth: [[AnimalThemeNaming Insects]] (e.g. Mosquito, Hornet) or weather-related (e.g. Thunderbold, Firestorm).

* 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 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.

** Xenon: Letters e.g. J, L

* ThatsNoMoon: At the start of the main plot of ''Terran Conflict'', a group of Terran fighters patrolling Uranus (among which there's the player) detects some small signals on the gravity radar. Lieutenant Plinter believes them to be pieces of a micrometeor destroyed during the transit in a Trans-Orbital Accelerator. Turns out they're [[AIIsACrapshoot Xenon]] scouts raiding Neptune.

* 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.

* VendorTrash: Most of the ships/weapons/items you sometimes obtain tend to fall under this. Examples include the [[JokeCharacter Teladi Vulture]], any abandoned ship whether or not it was piloted, the Fragmentation Bomb Launcher, any dumbfire missile that isn't the Tornado, [[UnObtanium and Nividium]].

* TheUnpronounceable: The Paranid and Split races have names that sound very unconventional to other races to the point where they can barely make it eligible for pronunciation, more so for the latter race. Examples include Olmanckketslet for a typical Paranid name and the more off-putting Nt'Chuutt for a Split name.

* TheUnpronounceable: Paranid and Split [=NPCs=] have names that sound very unconventional to other races to the point where they can barely make it eligible for pronunciation, more so for the latter race. Examples include Olmanckketslet for a typical Paranid name and the more off-putting Nt'Chuutt for a Split name.

* TheUnpronounceable: Paranid and Split [=NPCs] have names that sound very unconventional to other races to the point where they can barely make it eligible for pronunciation, more so for the latter race. Examples include Olmanckketslet for a typical Paranid name and the more off-putting Nt'Chuutt for a Split name.

* SuperPrototype: "Prototype" ships in ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude'' are almost always 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. In practice, despite their rarity, they actually can be reverse-engineered in the PlayerHeadquarters, contrary to what most players think. The only problem after reverse-engineering these ships is the humongous amount of resources needed to produce a single ship, and depending on the ship, it will take about more than a full day to both reverse-engineer and construct it.

** [[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 horrendously 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.]]

* 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 ([[HypocriticalHumor yes, even the Boron and Paranids]]. Except for the Terrans, who remain vehemently isolationist, and the Xenon/Kha'ak, who both operate as a HiveMind [[OmnicidalManiac bent on destroying anything that isn't them]]).

* UnusableEnemyEquipment: Orbital Weapon Platforms, [[EliteArmy AGI Task Force]] fighter craft, and Kha'ak capital ships cannot be acquired normally by the player; [[GoingDownWithTheShip ATF ships never bail]], and Kha'ak ships and weapon platforms cannot be boarded. Xenon and AGI Task Force capital ships in ''Reunion'' were impossible to capture normally as boarding did not exist at the time.

** 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]]

* WarWasBeginning: ''Terran Conflict's'' opening cinematic tells the roots of the titular SpaceColdWar. ''Albion Prelude's'' cinematic tells how the cold war turned hot.

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Note most of this is AllThereInTheManual: in-game the Argon and Terrans seem like {{Designated Hero}}es and [[DesignatedVillain Villains]] respectively.

* WorkerUnit: [[SpaceTrucker Transport (Small)]] and [[MileLongShip Transport (Large)]] are the basic workers for the [[NGOSuperPower player's empire]] once it's [[AnEntrepreneurIsYou sufficient built-up]]. TS class ships (both the player's and the NPC traders) ferry wares between factories, are the only way to mine [[UnObtanium Nividium]], and are the generally the best way to pick up salvage after a large battle. TL class ships are the only way to [[RidiculouslyFastConstruction build space stations]], though it's possible to hire a NPC TL to construct your stations for you. Both classes of ships can be armed - and with [=TLs=], often decently - so it's possible to turn them into an InstantMilitia if needed.

** Never mind the Enhanced Nova. The Terran start in ''Albion Prelude'' starts you off in a Katana corvette.
*** 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 characters in a crappy ship.

*** 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.

*** 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.