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[Burnt Pies]

in TC, Missile Defence meant it prioritised missiles, but also shot at secondary targets. It also halved fire rate. Protect Ship I think means it'll only fire if the ship's been fired on, while attack enemies means it'll go for any enemy in range. The anti-missile options aren't much use if you have Missile Defence Mosquito installed (From the bonus pack), as the Mozzies do the job far better anyway.

I run MARS defence, usually. XRM makes all missiles much nastier, and I favour ATF/Terran ships, which can't fire Mozzies, so having some sort of advanced Anti-Missile option is practically mandatory.

[Lord Snow]

They really don't drop much, but salvage can still be useful. It's the massive engagements that really pay off. Missiles are the most common drop, and some of them fetch a nice price. Cleaning up after a battle between factions can give you a nice monetary boost early in the game.

Once in a rare while you might find a nice expensive weapon too.

Drops are rare since I believe that only things in the cargo hold can be dropped. So to get a weapon, the enemy ship has to have it in its cargo bay, and not equipped. This is why missiles are by far the most common drop, since the cargo bay is the only place they can be.

No and no... also, o god, no.

You're not meant to blow stuff up hoping for "ph4t l00t".

How to make cash:

Remove shields, tickle the hull down. A freighter is very likely to give up his freight in hopes of buying free of your attention.
Pick up the cargo with a freighter of your own; whatever fighting craft you use will most like not have enough space.

Continuous tickling may lead to the pilot bailing out in an attempt to save his life by giving up his ship.
Fly close to the ship, exit your own (shift+e, confirm), fly within 30m, target the abandoned ship, press i and "claim".

Abandoned ships may be anywhere from empty to combat ready.
Large craft may require marine induced takeover.
Mods can make capping easier, harder, more reliable, and there are modules to allow claiming from within the safety of your own ship and at larger range.

Now, if you destroy ships, you generally lose most if not everything aboard to the explosion.
A couple missiles are left behind commonly, but the big stuff usually gets blown to bits.
However, you may be lucky and have them leave behind full sets of turrets and similar goodies.
Not as good as capturing the ship, and very infrequent, but depending on the weapons aboard this can be worth millions as well.

[Lightning4]

No and no... also, o god, no.

You're not meant to blow stuff up hoping for "ph4t l00t".

...

I never said it was a lucrative business for you to be doing, you missed my point. Just not a bad way to start off an early game, if you happen across a large battle between factions, like Argon vs Paranid, Boron vs Split, Xenon vs Anyone... those will leave a ton of collectable debris that you can scavenge up and sell for a quick profit. Often their targeting is indiscriminate, they'll blow up freighters, civilians, anything that gets nearby, so you can have a mix of missiles, cargo, and other things laying around. Even a small engagement between those factions will leave a fair bit lying around.

Throughout the game, it's just a little supplementary income from blowing things up, and trust me, you'll be blowing things up even if you intend to capture them. Fighters are stubborn bastards that refuse to bail when you actually want them to, and marine capping is not really the kind of thing you do in a combat situation. Trust me, I've tried it.

I agree, though, nowhere near worth the cost of the ship itself. Not an actual source of income, even missions will be worth more after a short time playing.

_{although I do know a place where you could probably live off of salvage...}

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Xenon Sector 347. Traders always love to go through there all the time.

[Jacob/Lee]

How do I make certain members of races stop hating me when they want my head?

I was escorting a freighter for a mission through an Argon sector. Out of nowhere, Xenon charge after the freighter. It just so happened there were a LOT of fighters and escorts nearby. Cue massive orgy of weapons fire, including my turrets. My turrets, being the inaccurate, unreliable fucks they are ended up blowing up a bunch of my allies. This cost me my Argon police license, a whole rank of relation and caused a lot of Argon police/military to attack me. I hauled ass out when the freighter exploded as my own freighter was being attacked by the police. It was lost. I enter Argon Prime and I STILL have enemies. One was one of the police units in the battle, the other was ARGON ONE. I have no idea how to make them friendly again and they'll likely attack any of my freighters they see.

[Blaze]

Did you try hailing them and apologizing?

Seriously.

[Jacob/Lee]

Did you try hailing them and apologizing?

Seriously.

I tried it with a few of the royally pissed off police forces in the system, "GET BENT, WEEDHEAD!" when it first happened. When I tried it today, though, Argon One took my apology, as did a bunch of other military units.

[Kanil]

Every time I start to have fun with X3 it inevitably cockslaps me and wastes an hour of my time.

Doesn't help that the game is slower than Morrowind, either.

[Blaze]

The X3 engine is solely based on a single core, so it generally runs like a Teladi TL on most multi-core computers.

There are quite a few performance mods out there though. I recommend the one that gets rid of civilian ships.

[Kanil]

Not computer speed, but the pace of gameplay. It takes forever to get anywhere, and if you fuck up and have to get there twice it's that much more miserable.

[Blaze]

Well if you use the standard "Custom" start like I do you get 1 buster, 2 IREs, and that's it. You could always try a different start.

Oh, and the trader starts are ALWAYS better if you want to be more combat oriented.

[Jacob/Lee]

Is it possible to view how much money a specific trader has made/spent? I'm trying to pick out profitable places to trade but I have 4 sector traders working and I can't keep track of everything being bought and sold.

[Kanil]

Well if you use the standard "Custom" start like I do you get 1 buster, 2 IREs, and that's it. You could always try a different start.

Oh, and the trader starts are ALWAYS better if you want to be more combat oriented.

That won't make the ships fly twice as fast/sectors half as small or make SETA deactivate every time I do something.

Although it's reasonably tolerable until you fuck something up, then you want to cry in the corner.

[Blaze]

Turn up the SETA to 10, since the original is 6, it's a noticeable difference.

If you have a ship capable of holding XL cargo, mining is a very profitable endeavor if done right. Ore and Silicon are surprisingly profitable if traded in large amounts.

[GreatJustice]

One problem with the X series is that the beginning has a tendency to get incredibly grindy and boring. The space battles are awesome, but the lack of much in the way of non-economic activity means that all you can do is make more money to make more money to make more money until you have a fleet of capital ships and can go around pillaging things for fun.

[Shades]

If you have a ship capable of holding XL cargo, mining is a very profitable endeavor if done right. Ore and Silicon are surprisingly profitable if traded in large amounts.

Alternatively mine nividumn and sell the ships. Although I've only tried that in TC not sure if it works in prelude. Make shocking amounts of money in a very small space of time doing that.