X3: Albion Prelude

Overview

X3: Albion Prelude marks the last game to use the engine that's been iterated upon for nearly all of the X franchise's games. It also bridges the story events from X3: Terran Conflict to X: Rebirth focusing on the war between Earth and the rest of the X Universe.

Although a separate game, X3: Albion Prelude uses most of the assets contained in X3: Terran Conflict and as such requires purchase of that game to play for the PC. The Mac version is standalone and does not require X3: Terran Conflict to be purchased. Most, if not all, of the in-game features from X3: Terran Conflict carry over into this game.

Key New Features

• A new plot that engages the player in a power struggle between corporations at a time of war. Including large scale battles that the player can participate in.
• More than 30 new ship designs and stations
• A Stock Exchange has been added allowing players to not only buy and sell stocks/commodities, but also influence prices through their actions in game.
• The game uses the same basic engine as X3: Terran Conflict, however it can now take advantage of hardware improvements made in the past few years. Yielding improved graphical quality.
• Improved UI including charts to visualize economical developments. Interactive spreadsheets.
• Support for head tracking hardware.

X3: Albion Prelude is available for PC on Steam and for Mac on the app store and Deliver2Mac. This game has been automatically added to some Steam collections, such as the X: Superbox, and does not require additional purchase for owners of those collections.

Ship Classes

Combat

• M1: Carriers
  Carriers are capital ships that are able to have smaller classed ships (M3's to M5's) dock in them. This allows easy transportation of a large fleets of fighters to the battlefield.
• M2: Destroyers
  Destroyers are capital ships focused on combat. These ships use turrets (which are usually located on all sides of the ship) to defend itself and attack enemies.
• M3: Fighters
  Fighters are the slowest of the small class combat ships (M3, M4, M5) but also the most powerful.
• M4: Interceptors
  Interceptors are the middle of the road small class combat ships. They are faster than M3's but less powerful.
• M5: Scouts
  Scouts are the fastest of the small class combat ships but this also makes them the least powerful.
• M6: Corvettes
  Corvettes are heavily armored and well armed combat ships that are usually found as escorts for patrols or capital ships.
• M7: Frigates
  Frigates are larger and more powerful than the M6 but much slower. They have a docking bay for several smaller ships that can be used as defense against fighter attacks since they can have trouble with them due to slow maneuverability.
• M8: Bombers
  Bombers use long range missiles to support fleets attacking capital ships or stations.

Transport

• TL: Large Transports
  Large Transports are the only transports capably of carrying the parts needed for building stations. This makes them essential late game for setting up a network of factories and trading posts.
• TM: Military Transports
  Military Transports are tasked with transporting small groups of fighters either to the battlefield or to different sectors for storage.
• TP: Personnel Transports
  Personnel Transports are tasked with the transport of living beings.
• TS: Basic Transports
  Basic Transports are usually used as traders or to supplement factories with resources that are needed to keep it running.

You can see a ship's class when you target them. Every ship has a name as well as a call-sign of sorts which is a mixture of letters and numbers. In the center of this call-sign is the ships designation (ex. M5) which allows you to quickly tell what kind of fight you are getting into.

System Requirements

Windows

• Operating System: Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or higher
• Processor: 2.0 GHz, Pentium 4 or AMD equivalent
• RAM: 1 GB
• Video Card: 256MB
• DirectX: DirectX 9 compatible with Pixel Shader 1.1 support
• HDD Space: 10GB free space

Mac OS X

• Operating System: 10.6.8 or higher
• Processer: Intel CPU, 2.16 GHz or faster
• RAM: 1 GB
• Video Card: GeForce 8600, Radeon X 1600, 256MB
• HDD Space: 7G free space

Patches

Version 2.0

This patch was released 2/25/2012 and contained minor bug fixes and improvements as well new mini-plots for the Player HQ and The Hub. These mini-plots are based off of the original plots in X3: Terran Conflict and allow X3: Albion Prelude players to get the main rewards that were given at the end of the X3: Terran Conflict plots.

The new features and fixes are listed by Egosoft's CBJ in this forum post

New Features and Improvements:

- New mini-plot: The HUB
- New mini-plot: Player HQ and UFJD
- New ships
- New graphs
- Added option to disable war reports
- Megalodon and Xenon I rebalanced and adjusted
- Introduced setup time for new lasertowers
- Made USC Baldric Miner available for purchase
- New sector music tracks in certain sectors
- Prevent purging all marines, so theres always some available
- Improved UI handling of typing repeated letters in text fields
- Improved graph axis display to use round numbers where possible
- Added minimum notoriety requirement for buying Lasertowers.
- Added achievements for new mini-plots
- Added war missions to stats export
- Added new script commands to support new graphs
- Added script command to get complex hangar of factory
- Added missing beacon, drone and mine classes to script editor class list
- Added <set_notoriety> action to Mission Director for setting notoriety between non-player races
- Added {object.realigntime@hub} variable for Mission Director for next available HUB gate realignment
- Added hue/saturation global parameters for "spare" races for use by modders

Fixes:

- Fixed more cases of stuck comms windows
- Fixed formatting of numbers in certain cases
- Fixed issues with missing voice when loading saved game in a different language
- Fixed attacked signal for Sector/Universe Trader
- Fixed weapon switching when going out of sector
- Fixed menu display for Defend Sector command
- Fixed RRF stopping ship commands when it shouldn't
- Fixed emergency jump and 100% shield recharge for RRF ships.
- Fixed duplicate actions when using Force option in Mission Director debug window
- Fixed duplicate events in Mission Director when a variable refers to the player ship
- Fixed changing of current sector background using <alter_sector> in Mission Director