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{{work}}
[[File:x3_trope_7723.jpg|frame|~~Windows/Macintosh [[
{{quote| ''TRADE. FIGHT. BUILD. THINK.''}}
A [[Wide Open Sandbox]] [[
The series (the "''X-Universe''") contains:
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''X3: Terran Conflict'' has its own wiki [http://www.x3wiki.com here].
Not to be confused with ''[[X
----
=== The X-Universe contains examples of the following tropes: ===
== Tropes 0-C ==
* [[
** ''Terran Conflict'' actually falls right back into the trope a bit: while the core X-'verse sectors are certainly much more variable in their layouts compared to the earlier games, many Terran sectors are flat as a pancake with stations smack dab on the same horizontal plane. Likely due to the fact that Terran stations are ''massive'' compared to even the largest non-Terran station; you'd have trouble fitting a Terran Orbital Patrol base in a smaller Commonwealth sector.
*** In a possible case of [[Truth in Television|Truth In Video Games]], this kind of makes sense as almost all Terran sectors are in the Solar System, and the planets are mostly on the same elliptical plane anyway. By extension, Lagrangian 'points' (stable 'places' which are suitable for constructing stations) tend to trace elliptical orbits on the same plane.
* [[
* [[Abnormal Ammo]]: The Terran [[Wave Motion Gun|Point Singularity Projector]] shoots what are essentially black holes at enemy ships.
* [[Abusing the Kardashev Scale For Fun
* [[Abusive Precursors]] / [[Benevolent Precursors]] : The Ancients ''do'' have theoretically good goals, like doing something about that whole "Heat Death Of The Universe" ''thing'', and they consider the [[Portal Network]] they built and maintain a gift to the younger races. On the other hand, they've got a nasty habit of thinking about the younger races as one collective group, making them [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|frighteningly]] willing to toy with other species. Since their most direct method of manipulation involves switching gate pairs in the [[Portal Network]], this means that they do things like start interplanetary wars seemingly [[For the Lulz]], [[You Can't Go Home Again|separate colony ships from their home planets]], simply lock fleets in deep space with nowhere to go, or [[Inferred Holocaust|turn off the entire system of interstellar travel]]. On the gripping hand, that bit about shutting down the entire [[Portal Network]] also came in response to the [[AI Is a Crapshoot|Xenon terraformers, who have a bad habit of terraforming people out of existance]], [[Oh Crap|having control of a large portion of the galaxy]].
* [[The Aesthetics of Technology]]: Terran ships, despite being the most advanced ships, [http://i.imgur.com/SyPVb.jpg don't look much more advanced than the modern Space Shuttle] - just a lot more clean and streamlined. The Paranid, the second most advanced race, use [http://i.imgur.com/VG130.jpg very high-tech looking ships] with lots of curves and shiny hulls. The Teladi, who buy or reverse engineer all their technology from the other races and use lower tech weaponry, have [http://i.imgur.com/Z17s7.jpg cobbled-together ships], though they are usually just as effective as the other race's ships. The Pirates on the other hand, use scavenged and spot-repaired ships, with their capital ships cobbled together from the hulks of old transporter ships, and it shows when you look at their stats - almost all the Pirate ships have terrible stats compared to the original race's ships. Boron ships ''look'' like they ought to be superior to everything else, but really only excel as transports.
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* [[All Planets Are Earthlike]]: Averted. A good number of planets in-game look Earth-ish (most likely due to the Terraformers, well, ''terraforming'' them) but plenty look and are described as fairly different -- the Boron homeworld being an aquatic planet with an ammonia-based atmosphere, for example.
** Actually, when the network was first explored by the Terrans, it was noted that there were an unusual amount of worlds that were similar to Earth. They only had small differences (geological differences, etc.), which is why Terraformers were required.
* [[All There in the Manual]]: The ''X-Encyclopedia'', a 200 page [[Exactly What It Says
* [[Alternative Calendar]]: The calendar starts at '0' in 2170, twenty-four years after a Terran colony and war fleet is separated from Earth as part of a mass deception to save Earth from the Xenon. They quickly form their own society (the modern-day Argon are their descendants).
** They also erase all mention of Earth from their histories, possibly to prevent anyone from accidentally leading the terraformers back to Earth. By the time of ''<nowiki>X:BtF</nowiki>'', [[Future Imperfect|Earth is a fairy tale]].
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** Your trading ships and Universe Traders will [[Too Dumb to Live|blissfully fly through Xenon and Pirate sectors]] without any regard for their life. Universe Traders will ''sometimes'' jump away when they come under attack, but ''not'' when the enemy is coming towards them - the pilots don't seem to ever notice 3 kilometer long destroyers bearing down on them.
** The targeting computer auto-aims for the center of every ship, and is smart enough to lead its targets. But the [http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?NTg4MDg1NDc Terran M1 Tokyo] (and its base design, the [http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?ODk4MzExMTU TL Mobile Mining Base-Ship]) have a long, narrow primary hull with an offset saucer section about a third of the way from the stern; the geographical center of the ship is in empty space forward of the saucer. This means that if you're attacking from above or below, auto-aimed shots will quite often miss cleanly.
* [[Artistic License Economics]]: Taken [[Up to Eleven]]. Not only would the economy not work in [[Real Life]], ''it doesn't work [[In
** This is an opportunity in disguise. The Terrans are merely waiting for someone (i.e. you) to revitalize their economy by placing in their sectors factories that produce what their stations lack; doing this properly can bring stupid amounts of money to entrepreneur-type players.
*** Even then, there's never enough weapons to go around unless the player builds his own.
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*** Mostly because it will overwhelm the game's AI, and cause the game to use more system resources. As more [[A Is]] are running, the game runs the AI less; i.e. AI destroyers will stop firing constantly, or may plow into an asteroid while shooting.
*** And because NPC capital ships are [[Point Defenseless|rarely equipped with weapons capable of hitting them]].
** ''X: Rebirth's'' player ship is armed with drones that can be flown remotely. This is something of a bone of contention among the fans, for reasons explained on the [[X (
* [[Awesome but Impractical]]:
** Missile frigates and bombers fall into this category in the early game. Fielding them requires the player to build up a strong supporting industry to manufacture munitions. Once said industry is built up, however, they jump to [[Awesome Yet Practical]], fully capable of singlehandedly leveling sectors.
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** As mentioned in [[Awesome but Impractical]], the Valhalla is a subversion in ''Terran Conflict'': it's so wide it clips the gate when it enters a sector, stripping it of its shields and rendering it a sitting duck for other capital ships. ''Albion Prelude'' fixed it so it warps next to the gate rather than through it.
* [[Big No]]: Terran and Argon pilots usually scream "NOOOOO!" when killed.
* [[Bigger
* [[Black and Gray Morality]]: ''Albion Prelude''. After the Terrans begin moving fleets around because of rumors of the Argon developing AGI ships, Saya Kho blows up Earth's Torus Aeternal, killing potentially ''millions'' of people on the Torus alone, with even more from wreckage [[Colony Drop|falling back down onto Earth]]. The Terrans then go on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] against the Argon Federation, who deploy [[Too Dumb to Live|artificially intelligent ships reverse engineered from the Xenon]]. Some of the Paranid, who normally despise other races, were horrified by this and sided with the Terrans. The year after the Argon butcher millions of Terrans, the [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|entire gate system shuts down.]].
* [[Black Box]]: The jumpgates play with this trope. While operation is terribly easy -- push a spaceship in one gate, and it'll pop out the other gate in the pair a few seconds later, no matter how far away -- no one in the Commonwealth understands anything but the lies-to-children version of how they work. While there are a few scientists capable of repairing damaged gates, no one even thinks about trying replication or reconfiguration, and the irregular outages or changes in the system caused by meddling precursors is treated like mystery or even legend where it's not just a natural risk of the gates. The species that actually made the system in the first place not only consider it [[The World Is Not Ready|outside of the range of understanding of the normal races]], they think it's impossible for a species to understand without getting [[Abusing the Kardashev Scale For Fun
* [[Blind Jump]]: The Unfocused Jumpdrive will randomly generate a sector, and warp the player to it; complete with radio hash and distant visible galaxies off in the distance. It's great for escaping your doom, but you better hope you brought energy cells for the return trip, [[Unwinnable|otherwise you'll be stranded forever]].
** And that is why the random sector always has a crate of cells in it. It may be on the opposite side of a Kha'ak swarm, [[Oh Crap|or in a cloud of Xenon fighters,]] though.
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*** {{spoiler|A solution to the must-do [[Escort Mission|Escort Missions]] lies in an exploit: since the game only begins spawning enemies for the mission once the player enters the freighters' sector, ''simply never be in the same sector as the freighters.''}}
* [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: In ''Albion Prelude'', the normally xenophobic and totalitarian Paranid are so disgusted by {{spoiler|the fall of the Torus}} that they ally with the Terrans.
* [[Everything's Better
** Many ship models have spinning components, just because. Some (like on the OTAS M2 Boreas) are justified by looking like sensor dishes, or by being an engine turbine in the case of the Boron Megalodon.
* [[Explosions in Space]]: Capital ships create a giant white fireball and a large shockwave when blown to bits. It has no discernible effect on any craft passing by.
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* [[Game Mod]]: ''And how!'' With the in-game script editor and external modding tools, players can do pretty much anything from simple tweaks and added functionality to new ships and full-blown conversions. Arguably most famous of these is X3's ''Xtended'' mod, which impressed Egosoft so much that several elements (and the modders that developed them) were integrated into ''Terran Conflict'', and Xtended is being remade for ''Terran Conflict''.
** It's worth mentioning that there are at least two mods that attempt to solve one of the game's worst problems: the '''extreme''' slowness of the ships, which is a source of all kinds of bad things. The result is completely different gameplay mechanics: waiting plays a much smaller part, fighting is ''much'' more dynamic and challenging and everything requires significantly less [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]] to digest.
* [[Gatling Good]]: The [http://eng.x3tc.ru/screenshot/ship.php?Njk1MTU0NTE OTAS M3 Venti]. Don't let the fact that it sounds like a coffee fool you: it has dual wing-mounted gatling lasers. [[Everything's Better
* [[Glass Cannon]]: arguably, some M5 scout ships. Most M5s do not count as they have fairly pitiful guns that restrict them to fighting at most M4 medium fighters if they hope to survive, but a few of them can mount fairly powerful medium missiles, and a [[Macross Missile Massacre|rapid-fire barrage]] of those can be troublesome even for heavy fighters. On the other hand, they blow up if their pilot sneezes too hard...
** The M7M missile frigates and M8 bombers introduced in ''Terran Conflict'' also fall into this category. Missile barrages from these ships can destroy virtually anything, but non-player-owned M7Ms and M8s are relatively easy to kill (at least from another warship's standpoint) because the AI by default does not use their [[Macross Missile Massacre|greatest advantage]] effectively. Also, [[Point Defenseless|they are very sparse in point-defense, and in some cases have none at all]].
** The best defense is a good offense so in ''Albion Prelude'' missile frigates use... more missiles, firing swarms of countermissiles to intercept incoming missiles. While their ammo lasts.
* [[Global Currency]]: ''All'' races use [[We Will Spend Credits in
* [[Good Republic, Evil Empire]]: The Argon Federation and the Boron Kingdom are generally considered the good guys, and the Split Dynasty and Paranid Empire are generally considered the bad guys. But there's a lot of gray involved, so this may be a subversion.
** The only thing that really seems to make either side good or evil is that the last time the two sides went to war, the Split and Paranid were the aggressors.
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* [[Guide Dang It]]: The manual and "flight school" tutorials are nearly useless for anything but the most basic gameplay.
** There's about two dozen derelict ships floating around in ''Terran Conflict''. You ''might'' find them by pure luck (one or two are within Triplex Scanner range of a jumpgate), but finding them all pretty much requires a web search.
** {{spoiler|The Hub plot in ''Terran Conflict''. Nobody [[In
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* [[Humans Are Special]]: The Terrans were the first and only race (excluding the ancients) to make their own jumpgates {{spoiler|without help}}, have the most powerful ships, the most high-tech weapons, and the largest fleet. Which is quite something when you realize that they weren't even a part of the game universe for much of its history, and just basically barged in and started pwning everyone when the Xenon chased them there.
** The Argon are the only race without an easily defined [[Planet of Hats|Hat]].
* [[Humans
* [[Hyperspace Lanes]]: ''Rebirth'' has "highways", which function similar to the trade lanes in ''[[Freelancer]]'', allowing you to get between close locations in a system, while Jump Gates are used to get between systems.
* [[Hyperspeed Escape]]: Played straight, at least for the player. The jumpdrive is very useful for this.
** Also potentially subverted: there is a ten-second delay while the jumpdrive charges, not including the time it takes you to pick a destination. That's ten-plus seconds for the enemy to kill you anyway. And then there's the potential for [[Tele Frag]] as you exit a gate at the end of the jump.
** The Unfocused Jumpdrive plays it straight ''and'' subverts it simultaneously. On the one hand, the UFJD is faster to bug out ([[Blind Jump|no need to pick a destination]]). On the other hand, when you "return to the known universe", you'll be right back in the same position you left from, and any enemies will still be in the sector. Though it does give you an opportunity to recharge your shields.
* [[Inferred Holocaust]]: After the events of ''[[X (
** The shutdown is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you have the above. On the other hand, it also had the byproduct of stopping the Argon/Terran war in its tracks, which at this rate was going to end in one of the two sides being completely wiped out. Speaking of which, the faction that comes off best would be the Terrans. A, over two thirds of their sectors are in the Solar System, and they've got non-jumpgate technology for intrasystem travel. B, they ''do'' know where their other main sector is in space, and can reach it using jumpdrives. As for the other factions, [[Planetville|planets are not villages]]. Aldrin survived 800 years with no contact with the outside world whatsoever, and it's just an airless rock. The [[One Product Planet|One Product Sectors]] are screwed, but the ones with inhabited planets should be all right.
* [[Infinite Stock for Sale]]: Averted. All stations have a limit to how much of a given ware they can stock. For instance, a station may be able to stock tens of thousands of units of energy cells, but only sixteen particle accelerator cannons.
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* [[Killed Off for Real]]: If you play Dead-Is-Dead mode, the ''player'' gets [[Killed Off for Real]] if he dies. (The game deletes your save.)
** Jesan Nadina, an Argon mercenary in ''Terran Conflict'' who recruits the [[Player Character]] for Operation Final Fury. He is then KIA offstage two missions into said plot.
* [[Kill It
** The Pirates also have the rare Incendiary Bomb Launcher, a frigate / capital ship weapon. It functions like the other capital ship weapons, except the projectiles are on fire (in space).
* [[Kill Sat]]: Lasertowers. In ''Terran Conflict'' they're next to useless against anything bigger than fighters, especially in Out-Of-Sector combat, but they got a massive buff in ''Albion Prelude'' making them very effective defenses against larger ships.
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** The Gauss cannon is ''very'' popular for player-piloted Teladi M7 Shrikes, because it can be mounted to the flank turrets, enabling it to duplicate the Panther's feat of taking on multiple heavy capitals. In ''Albion Prelude'', Gauss Cannons got a major buff in that all ships have higher amounts of hull hitpoints - the Gauss Cannon has the highest damage per second against hull, whereas the other capital ship weapons have most of their damage devoted to killing shields - useful in previous games, not so much in ''Prelude''.
* [[The Kingdom]]: [[All There in the Manual|According to the X3TC manual]], the Boron Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy akin to Great Britain in [[Real Life]] (i.e. Queen Atreus is a figurehead, with the real power in the hands of elected officials). Otherwise it fits the trope pretty much perfectly: it is generally considered good-aligned, controls the fewest sectors (among the Commonwealth races, anyway), and is constantly under threat from [[The Empire|the Split]]. They're also the only people to develop ion weapons.
** Oh, and [[Everything's Better
* [[Know When to Fold'Em]]: Mostly averted. [[Suicidal Overconfidence|Usually the AI will continue fighting even if the battle is hopeless.]] But every once in a while, you'll encounter a foe that runs away from overwhelming force, such as the last M5 survivor of a pirate fighter squadron fleeing at top speed from an oncoming player-piloted frigate.
** Also averted in the case of the "Surrender" option in dialogue with other ships (as in telling the other guy to surrender). It appears to do exactly nothing.
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* [[No Endor Holocaust]]: Averted in ''Albion Prelude''. The game mentions that debris from the Torus killed millions.
* [[No Plot, No Problem]]: Though there is an over-arching narrative to the games, a lot of the replay value comes from the sandbox mode where you pick your starting circumstances and are dropped into the universe to run amok.
* [[No Such Thing
* [[Nose Art]]: ''X2: The Threat'' allows you to import an image file from your computer that would be applied as nose art to all your ships and stations. It could be a pin-up, a coat of arms, whatever. ([[Game Spot]]'s reviewer used a character from ''[[The Simpsons]]''.)
* [[Nuclear Weapons Taboo]]: Partial: while nuclear ''weapons'' are fine, "large scale" nuclear ''reactors'' aren't, and stations and ships are forced to purchase energy cells produced at ''solar power plants'' in order to manufacture goods or use jumpdrives. "Large scale" apparently doesn't include battleship reactors with outputs capable of razing planet surfaces, strangely.
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** Kha'ak: Trying to kill anything that isn't Kha'ak?<ref>Nobody's ever managed to talk to them. Or if they did, they didn't live to tell about it. All we know is that they seem to be a hive mind and that they have an affinity for nividium.</ref>
* [[Planet Terra]]: In ''X3'', humans from the Sol System are referred to as "Terrans", but the planet is still called Earth.
* [[Player Headquarters]]: The... [[Exactly What It Says
* [[Player Mooks]]: Any player-owned ship other than the one physically piloted by the player. You can give them named pilots by activating certain scripts (whereupon a name is generated based on the owner of the sector the ship is in), but you never interact with them at any deeper level than the command console.
* [[Portal Network]]: The only way to get around the universe is by using jumpgates or a jumpdrive (which teleports you to a jumpgate of your choice).
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** Inverted in the case of M5 scouts, wherein it is the fastest way to kill ''yourself''. In particular, ''never'' fly a fully upgraded Kestrel on autopilot, as the ship is actually too fast for the AI. The "auto-pillock" is all but guaranteed to splatter you all over the vicinity.
* [[Random Number God]]: Worshiping it is a [[Running Gag]] on the forums.
* [[Real Trailer, Fake Movie]]: ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlAWC2HSOYM Nautilus]''.
* [[Recursive Ammo]]: A wide variety of missiles, from the strictly fighter-to-fighter Wasp on up to the sector-obliterating Shadow, have multiple warheads. There's even a few ''unguided'' multiple-warhead missiles, although only one is actually of any use.
* [[Red and Black
* [[Regenerating Shield Static Health]]: Shields are held in the cargo bay and will regenerate constantly. Hull is non-regenerating, and once the hull reaches zero hitpoints, the ship will be destroyed.
* [[Reporting Names]]: A [[Justified Trope|justification]] for Earth-derived [[Arms and Armor Theme Naming]] of nonhuman-built ships. The Boron M1 Shark is unpronounceable in the original Boron, but the word used for it translates to "cartilaginous fish with lots of sharp teeth". Likewise, the Paranid M4 Pericles was probably named for a Paranid whose career paralleled that of the Athenian Pericles.
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** In a minor case of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]], [[Averted]] in the opening cinematics for ''Terran Conflict'' and ''Albion Prelude''. Special mention to the Torus blowing up in ''X3AP'', an [[Apocalypse Wow]] which takes place in utter silence apart from mournful music.
* [[Space Madness]]: 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.
* [[Space Mines]]: In several flavors. SQUASH mines are your standard explosive mines, Ion mines deal damage only to shields, Tracker Mines... [[Exactly What It Says
* [[Space Police]]: 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.)
* [[Space Pirates]]: 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).
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* [[Spare Body Parts]]: 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.
* [[Spikes of Villainy]]: 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.
* [[Spiritual Successor]]: The series has been described as one to ''[[
* [[Splash Damage Abuse]]: [[Area of Effect]] 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 [[Game Breaker|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.
* [[Fish People|Squid People]]: The Boron.
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* [[Video Game Long Runners]]: Counting the currently unreleased ''X: Rebirth'', seven games spanning fourteen years.
* [[We Buy Anything]] / [[We Sell Everything]]: 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.
* [[We Will Spend Credits in
* [[What the Hell, Player?]]: 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:
{{quote| '''Computer announcer:''' Fighter ships from the Argon Federation are now being launched. They have orders to kill.}}
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** And then you can usually prevent an encounter with the police by opening a comm channel with them and [[Easily Forgiven|blaming the weapons' targetting system]]. Thankfully, stations gone hostile from friendly fire while you are protecting them become friendly after completing the mission.
* [[Wide Open Sandbox]]: ''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.
* [[Word Salad Title]]: ''X3: Albion Prelude''. "Albion" refers to the player ship of ''X: Rebirth'', the ''Albion Skunk'', while ''Prelude'' is [[Exactly What It Says
== Tropes X-Z ==
* [[X Meets Y]]: Gameplay is typically described as "''[[Freelancer]]'' <ref> You actually pilot your ship, emphasis on side missions, silly physics</ref> meets ''[[Eve Online]]'' <ref> being able to pilot any ship in the game, emphasis on the economy, [[Scenery Porn]]</ref> meets ''[[
* [[Xtreme Kool Letterz]]: 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.
* [[You Can't Go Home Again]]: Played straight for Terran test pilot Kyle Brennan (the [[Player Character]]) in ''X: Beyond the Frontier''. He is stranded in the X-Universe after the prototype gateless jumpdrive on the [[Xtreme Kool Letterz|Xperimental Shuttle]] goes haywire.
** In ''X3: Reunion'', three games and several dozen years later, the Solar System is reconnected to the X-Universe's [[Portal Network]] 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-[[We Will Spend Credits in
*** At worst, He Still Can't Go Home Again, because Earth's government consists of xenophobic paranoids, and almost immediately enters a [[Space Cold War]] 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.
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