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
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