I’ve given up on trading in X3: Reunion as a means of obtaining the much-needed Mercury trade freighter. It’s far too slow and far too tedious to earn money through trading with my starting ship, the Argon Buster. The Mercury will cost me around 200,00 credits and right now, on average, I’m getting about 700 credits profit per trading run with the Buster.

I intend to spend the next few sessions trying pirate-hunting instead. Capturing pirate ships is apparently an excellent way of making money in X3. To do this, you have to take out a pirate ship’s shields and then lightly pepper its hull. There’s a chance that the pilot will eject at that point. When that happens, you simply take over the captured ship’s computer and order it to dock at the nearest shipyard in order to sell it.

That sounds easy enough.

Unfortunately, the more lucrative targets are also tough to take down.
Continued…

After hours of wandering looking for profitable ventures and/or combat encounters, I managed to hit pay dirt in X3: Reunion. I had a grand total of 8,000 credits to my name then so I was in Argon space making yet another dull Energy Cell run in my starting ship, the Argon Buster.

Three bogies showed up on my radar. Screw these trading runs, I thought, let’s get some starfighting done.
Continued…