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A [[Wide Open Sandbox]] [[4X|space combat/trading simulator]] series by German developer Egosoft.
The series (the "''X-Universe''") contains:
* ''X: Beyond The Frontier'', (1999)
** ''X: Tension'', (2000, expansion for X: BTF)
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Long before the events of the games, Earth built the first jump gate and launched it towards Alpha Centauri. However, in a midflight test, the Earth jump gate locked onto a random gate not built by humans - they had discovered the ''X-Universe'' [[Portal Network|gate system]]. All the planets discovered were totally [[Absent Aliens|absent of intelligent life]] <ref> due to the [[Precursors]] modifying the gate system to keep the Terrans isolated</ref>. Earth built a fleet of self-replicating and self-evolving [[Terraform|Terraformer]] ships to make the worlds habitable for humanity. About a hundred years later, after the mission was complete, Earth sent out a command for the Terraformers to self-destruct. Not long after, the Terraformers show up in force, and begin terraforming ''everything'' in sight. Nathan R.Gunne, a Terran commander, lured the Terraformers past Earth's jump gate into the X-Universe, then destroyed the jump gate behind him to isolate the Terraformers (now dubbed the Xenon) and to save Earth. Gunne crash lands his frigate on Sonra-4, an earth-like world, and begins restarting civilization with his crew. They name themselves the "Argon" after R. Gunne. [[Future Imperfect|Earth has become a fairytale legend]]. The Argon begin exploring the X-Universe, and discover the peaceful [[Fish People|Boron]], the [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Paranid]], the [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|Split]], and the [[Proud Merchant Race|Teladi]]. They also rediscover the [[AI Is a Crapshoot|Xenon]]. The Terrans, completely isolated from the X-Universe, build a ship with the first Jump Drive, to try and reach Alpha Centauri. However, the Jump Drive locks onto the X-Universe and promptly breaks down, stranding the pilot (and protagonist) in the X-Universe and indebted to the Teladi, who helped repair his ship. The Earth pilot, Kyle Brennan, helped prevent the Xenon from blowing up a planet with their M0 Planet Killer in the first game, ''Beyond The Frontier''. A few decades later in ''The Threat'', the [[Horde of Alien Locusts|Kha'ak]] show up and their first act in the universe is to destroy everything in the sector President's End and nearly destroying the planet in Omicron Lyrae. After the Kha'ak planet killer is destroyed, a [[Precursor]] shows up and begins secretly aiding the Paranid in building a jump gate. The Paranid activate their jump gate in Heretic's End -- which links to Earth, right as the Kha'ak are jumping into the sector to try and destroy the Paranid jump gate. The entire Terran Fleet, completely forgotten by the rest of the universe, streams out of the jump gate and [[Curb Stomp Battle|curb stomps the Kha'ak]]. The Terrans establish tentative relations with the other races, but try to remain isolated -- hence the game being named ''Reunion''. ''Terran Conflict'' reunites the long lost {{spoiler|Aldrin}} colony with Earth, destroys the Kha'ak Hive Queen, and sees a [[Space Cold War|rise in tensions between the Argon and the Terrans]]. In ''Albion Prelude'', the cold war [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|goes hot with the destruction]] of Earth's orbital defense station.
You can just play through the plot, content to stay in your puny little fighter and not straying much farther than your starting sector, or you can create a universe-spanning trading empire, all but controlling the economy and with enough military power to squash all who dare oppose you. You can also do things that you're not really meant to do, such as almost completely wiping out a race from the universe. It takes a hell of a lot of military resources, and it'll probably break the economy unless you supply it with that race's goods yourself, but nobody's actively ''stopping'' you from doing it. The only reason you can't destroy ''everything'' is because the game engine tries to keep the economy balanced and will slowly recreate destroyed stations if need be.
Recently Egosoft announced a revamp of the series via the next main series game, ''X: Rebirth'', due out in 2012. To the fanbase's rather abrupt surprise, they then announced a new "expandalone" game using the ''X3: Terran Conflict'' engine, ''Albion Prelude'', mere days before its surprise release date. Named after the ship that is the focus of ''X: Rebirth'', ''Albion'' adds a Stock Exchange to the game, as well as progressing the story to the massive interstellar war that was brewing by the end of ''X3: Terran Conflict''.
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** ''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.
* [[4X]]: A rare example played through the first person perspective.
* [[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 and Profit]]: The Outsiders in the backstory and Encyclopedia are full blown Type IVs, and the Ancients are borderline Type IVs. [[Dyson Sphere]] and Matroshka Brain civilizations are mentioned, and they fit into the borderline Type IIs. However, all the races the player actually interacts with are at best high-end Type Is.
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* [[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]].
* [[
* [[Animal Theme Naming]] / [[Arms and Armor Theme Naming]] / [[Location Theme Naming]] / [[Religious and Mythological Theme Naming]]: 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): Swords for fighters, Japanese cities for capital ships e.g. Cutlass, Tokyo
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** The [[Space Cold War|Terran Conflict]] turned into a hot war after Saya Kho blew up the Torus Aeternal in ''X3: Albion Prelude'', a Planetary Societal Disruption for Earth. A year later the [[Precursors]] shut down the gate system ([[Wild Mass Guessing|maybe to prevent the younger races from obliterating themselves]]), which likely caused Galactic Societal Collapse.
* [[Apocalypse Wow]]: The destruction of the Torus Aeternal in ''Albion Prelude'' is shown in [http://store.steampowered.com/video/201310?snr=1_5_9__400 the opening cinematic].
* [[April Fools' Day]]:
** The trailer for ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlAWC2HSOYM Nautilus]'', a fake film set in the ''X-Universe'' about Squiddy McSquid came out on April Fools' Day.
** 2012's April Fools' shows that ''X: Rebirth'' has a [http://www.egosoft.com/news/images/news_2012_03_29_001.jpg Dance Dance Revolution style method of bartering prices]
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* [[Ascended Glitch]]: In ''X3: Reunion'', dropping your shields out from your cargo bay then picking them up again would instantly recharge them. Egosoft kept it in ''X3: Terran Conflict'' as it's useless in combat and nobody wants to wait half an hour for their destroyer's shields to recharge.
** Similarly with the spacesuit's repair beam: entering a ship and leaving it instantly recharges the repair beam's energy, cutting down scratch damage fixes by a large factor.
* [[Asteroid Miners]]: Ships can be outfitted with Ore Collectors. Blow up an asteroid with a big missile or a Mobile Drilling System, cut up the chunks into smaller pieces with your weapons, then pick it up. Players can sometimes see AI ships mining asteroids, but it's fairly rare.
* [[Asteroid Thicket]]: There can be upwards of 40 asteroids (each of which 1-2km in diameter) in a 60 kilometer radius. Most sectors have only a couple asteroids fairly spaced out, but sectors like Savage Spur have several dozen asteroids in a tiny area between the gates; the sector is a death trap for capital ships, more so if SETA is running on 10x.
* [[Attack! Attack! Attack!]]: Xenon and Kha'ak ships will ''never'' retreat from battle, and will blithely throw scout ships to try and kill your destroyers. Pirate and Commonwealth ships will occasionally try and retreat, but by the time they realize "oh god we're all going to die", there is usually only one scout ship left alive.
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*** 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 (video game)/YMMV|YMMV tab]].
* [[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.
** The ATF Valhalla. 14 gigajoules of shielding, 32 [[Wave Motion Gun|Point Singularity Projectors]], 24 [[More Dakka|Starburst Shockwave Cannons]] ... and it's so wide that it can't fit through gates. Seriously, when it enters a sector, it ''bangs into the gate rim and loses its shields'', reducing the ATF's trump card to a sitting duck. There's a good reason it doesn't spawn in vanilla TC. The behavior is corrected in ''Albion Prelude'', where the Valhalla warps next to a jumpgate, not inside it.
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* [[Big No]]: Terran and Argon pilots usually scream "NOOOOO!" when killed.
* [[Bigger on the Inside]]: Cargo bays, due to quantum compression. Ships not much larger than a modern F-16 jet can fit several dozen people in their cargo bays - which would be about the size of a refrigerator.
* [[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 and Profit|a few points higher on the Kardashev scale]]. Then the [[Humans Are Special|Terran humans get involved]], and not only get the theory down and create a new gate on their own, but also create a Jumpdrive that's a ''separate'' Black Box to everyone else in the setting.
* [[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.
* [[Boarding Party]]: You can recruit and train Marines/captured slaves to board enemy ships, murder the crew, and hack the central computer. When they board, they'll eject from your cargo bay and space walk to the enemy ship, or if you have Board Pods you load them into your missile tubes and fire it at the enemy ship. If the enemy ship has shields when your marines come into contact with it, it will fry them.
* [[Boring but Practical]]: Rapid fire, low damage per shot weapons. Capital ships would be better off if [[More Dakka|all their turrets are filled to the brim with anti-fighter weaponry]], rather than using the biggest [[Wave Motion Gun]] they can carry, even when facing enemies of equal or surpassing size. The only real advantage of capital class weaponry is range, not firepower. Unfortunately, it's next to impossible to hit even a massive, slow-moving target at ranges reserved for these weapons due to their [[Painfully-Slow Projectile|Painfully Slow Projectiles]].
** Most of the race-neutral weapons like High Energy Plasma Throwers, Particle Accelerator Cannons, and Photon Pulse Cannons are all boring, but practical due to how common they are (There's over a dozen PPC factores in the game, but only 3-5 factories for Phased Shockwave Generators, for example).
** [[Attack Drone|Drone]] [[Spam Attack|Spam]] in X3. Beat the enemy by overloading your computer's processor.
* [[Boss in Mook Clothing]]: Pirates armed with Plasma Burst Generators, and Xenon fighters armed with Pulsed Beam Emitters. Then there is the dreaded Phased Shockwave Generator in X3:R, which is a Plasma Burst Generator with a 90 degree sphere of doom ahead of the firing ship. Thankfully nerfed to capital ship-only in X3:TC.
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* [[Colony Drop]]: The Terraformers/Xenon bombarded Earth cities from orbit with asteroids and comets when "terraforming" it.
** A variation is used as an actual combat technique by some players, wherein the player builds a [[Space Station]] ''directly on top of an enemy ship.'' The tactic has earned the moniker "station-bombing."
** The destruction of the Torus Aeternal caused millions (if not billions) of tons of deorbiting debris to rain down on Earth.
* [[Commonplace Rare]]: Microchips in ''Terran Conflict''. They're everywhere -- weapons, ships, components of all kinds. And yet, good luck finding some in the universe -- there's so much demand, and the production process involves such a convoluted chain of supply, that most chip factories are permanently empty -- the few chips they produce are instantly snatched up by NPC traders. And if you do manage to be faster than the traders, expect to pay ludicrous prices for them.
** Oh, and {{spoiler|you need 75,000 of them for the Hub plot.}}
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** If you stray very far from the allowed approach vector in Earth sector in ''Terran Conflict'', you'll be warned your ship will be destroyed. Continue, and you'll be the subject of a scripted insta-gib, regardless of how much shielding you have. You can't try to destroy the Torus defenses, either: they're invincible.
* [[The Computer Is a Lying Bastard]]: With one exception, every time ''X3: Terran Conflict'' tells you you need to board a ship with marines during a plot mission, it's lying. The first boarding target will be given to you for free if you wait a while, the second one will get boarded by [[NPC|NPCs]] if you wait a while and the third time you can just eject in your spacesuit and claim the target like an abandoned ship. This is significant, as training marines to the point where they could actually capture anything is a very expensive and time-consuming process, far beyond the scope of anything in the campaign missions.
** The one exception is {{spoiler|the Orca you have to capture during the HQ plot}}. That one actually ''does'' require you to board it.
* [[Cool Gate]]: Ordinary jumpgates look pretty nifty. Then compare them to the Terran-designed Neptune gate in TC.
* [[Cool Starship]]: Hundreds of them!
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* [[Easter Egg]]: While flying around in ''Terran Conflict'' you may come across a ship called Unknown Object. It's a small M3 fighter in the shape of a UFO. According to the wiki, it's a remnant of a "Xenon Unknown Object" from ''Reunion''.
* [[Easy Logistics]]: Hyper-averted. Your ships ''will'' run out of ammunition, ''will'' run out of jumpdrive fuel, and they ''will'' run out of missiles.
** Played straight with actual spaceship fuel. No one ever needs to refuel, though the ships clearly don't have any [[Reactionless Drive]] and leave behind an exhaust trail.
** The actual commodity known as "space fuel", is, in fact, an illegal alcoholic drink. A new player may easily be stalked by the police for accidentally salvaging it from a destroyed pirate ship without knowing.
* [[Elite Mooks]]: The Terran AGI Task Force. They used their own unique, [[Lightning Bruiser|very powerful]] ships. Once you piss them off, they will ''never'' forgive the player.
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* [[Invisible Wall]]: Sectors are spherical, and there is an invisible barrier at the edge (which is ~4,000 kilometers out). Most evident in the {{spoiler|Hub}} sector, where you can slip behind the gates, see out of the {{spoiler|Hub}}, and butt up against an Invisible Waist High Fence.
* [[ISO Standard Human Spaceship]]: Argon, Teladi, and Terran ships.
* [[It's Up to You]]: The player is effectively the only thing preventing the Terran economy and the tiny Pirate and Yaki economies from collapsing.
* [[Jack of All Stats]]: Interceptors amongst strike craft, as well as Argon ship designs as a whole. The Terran ships are the upscale version of the [[Jack of All Stats]]; they're very fast, very well shielded, have high cargo capacity, and very powerful. The only downside to Terran ships are their limited weapon selection, especially frustrating on fighters and frigates, and the scarcity of their weapons.
** "Hauler" ship variants straddle the line between this and [[Mighty Glacier]]. They trade off some gun power for a larger cargo bay and sometimes tougher shields. Particularly with the Falcon Hauler, said larger cargo bay often allows players to rig them as missile boats.
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* [[Laser Sight]]: Some ship mounted weapons have tiny laser sights mounted on them - however, unlike most videogame laser sights, they do ''not'' project a laser onto the target, and they fade out within a meter of the gun.
* [[Lethal Lava Land]]: Quite a lot of planets with their crust blasted off, leaving behind molten red hellholes.
** Albion in ''Albion Prelude'' takes it to another level, with massive fissures actually penetrating deep into the mantle of the planet.
* [[Lightning Bruiser]]:
** Terran ships, OTAS ships, and certain Split ships.
*** AGI Task Force ships, which are even more powerful than standard Terran ships.
** "Vanguard" ship variants. They offer higher speed, weapon generators, and sometimes higher shields than "standard" ships, at the cost of some cargo space and being more expensive.
* [[Lightning Gun]]: The Ion Disruptor.
* [[Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition]]: The ''X-Superbox''. It contains very high-quality versions of the game's soundtrack, 3 fan-made soundtracks, the [[All There in the Manual|X-Encyclopedia]], and every ''X-Universe'' game made - when ''Albion Prelude'' came out, owners of the Superbox got the normally $9.99 expansion pack for free.
* [[Living Ship]]: Boron ships look the part with their wrinkled hulls and ribs which resemble gills, but it's never stated one way or another whether they're grown, built, or some combination of the above.
** They're grown around an artificial skeleton. (Flavor text for Royal Boron Shipyards.)
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** In ''Albion Prelude'' missile frigates got serious with the whole missile thing. Not only can (and will) they [[Macross Missile Massacre]] their enemies before they even get in visual range, they also fire swarms of countermissiles in a Macross Missile Defense to protect themselves and their allies against similiar attacks.
** Even outside of M7Ms and M8s, triple-M is a pretty good tactic. One common use of the Falcon Hauler as a ]carrier-based fighter is to stuff its cavernous cargo bay with [[Recursive Ammo|Tornado missiles]] and use it as a bomber against capital ships.
* [[Mad Libs Dialogue]]: Hits generic information dialogue hard.
** "The place which you seek is somewhere far behind the NORTH GATE. Good profit!"
** "Attention, today there is a sale in the TOOL SHOP on level THREE. Don't miss the special offers :)"
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* [[One Nation Under Copyright]]: The Teladi Space Company. Their entire race is organized like one [[Mega Corp]]. The head honcho, the Chairman (his name is Ceo at the time of the games), and business and smaller companies are arranged like subsidies or divisions. However, they employ an actual police force and a proper military.
* [[One Stat to Rule Them All]]: Battles you partake in are varied, frantic and involve quite a bit of tactics. However, Out-Of-Sector battles, which happen in sectors you are not in, are simulated under a different set of rules, and they usually boil down to shield capacity in first place and (large) numbers in second.
* [[One World Order]]: Present in the games (aside from the Terrans and Argon; same race, but they had a couple hundred years separation), but the ''X-Encyclopedia'' describes how there are other factions, like the human Hatikvah Free League.
* [[Opening Narration]]: ''Terran Conflict's'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6KzJhKVLo opening cinematic]:
{{quote|"Almost a millennium has passed since the last great plague of humankind had been wiped out from the solar system and its precious blue pearl planet Earth.
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* [[Orange-Blue Contrast]]: The cover for ''X3: Reunion''.
* [[Our Wormholes Are Different]]: All the races depend on the [[Lost Technology]] Jump Gates scattered around the universe to get around. {{spoiler|They occasionally ''disconnect'', separating colonies for hundreds of years, until they reconnect (if ever).}}
** According to the X-Superbox Encyclopedia, the wormholes are only different by using exotic matter to power the wormhole, and by using magnetic forces to flatten the wormhole to allow travel. if those factors didn't occur, it would be the exact same as [[Real Life]]'s theoretical wormholes.
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* [[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.
* [[Restart At Level One]]: The [[Player Character|Player Characters]] of ''X2: The Threat'' and ''X3: Reunion'' are the same guy (Julian Brennan).
* [[Ridiculously-Fast Construction]]: '''HYPER''' averted. If you decided to build a ship instead of buying it, you have to wait as your headquarters puts it together. Capital ships like the Argon Colossus can take ''twenty hours'' in ''real time'' to build.
** Played straight for building stations. They basically pop fully-formed out of your TL's cargo hold. Which enables the [[Colony Drop|station-bombing]] combat trick.
* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: The Terrans in ''Albion Prelude''. After the Torus Aeternal (a massive station wrapping around the Earth) is blown up by Saya Kho, they deploy their entire battlefleet to attack the Argon Federation.
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* [[Space Is Noisy]]: Weapons and explosions make noise (and a lot of it, too).
** 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 on the Tin|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.
* [[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.)
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** 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).
* [[Space Whale]]: Well, space ''flies'', actually. Think golden insectoid [[Energy Beings]] which communicate through ''[[Space Is Noisy|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.
* [[Spam Attack]]: [[Attack Drone|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.
* [[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.
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** In ''Terran Conflict'', the "-zura" based system was [[Dummied Out]] in favor of Earth time units.
*** The XTC Mod (Xtended for Terran Conflict) brought it back again.
* [[Starfish Aliens]]:
** 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.
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* [[Tele Frag]]: 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.
* [[Teleporters and Transporters]]: A couple different varieties. The [[Portal Network]] 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.
* [[Teleport Spam]]: 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.
* [[Time Dilation]]: 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 [[Artificial Stupidity]].
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== 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 ''[[
* [[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".
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