You are the leader of a rising empire. You must conquer sectors and exploit the most strategic ones to craft your own ships and stations. Choose which faction is going to be your enemy, defend your assets, be aggressive or get overwhelmed by the pressure. Procedural galaxies and realistic economy.
This is THE mod that you need to fill that gaping void in your heart. It is a comprehensive total conversion mod that takes the vanilla X3 experience, and turns it into something refreshing and fun.
In this mod, you play as a survivor of the Sohen race. You start with a Sanctuary in a remote sector, and are tasked with saving your people, and rebuilding the Sohen presence in the universe.
The gameplay balances around this special Sanctuary station. It is the primary means for which you can (EASILY) build ships, stations, weapons, shields, missiles, etc, as well as research ship blueprints for ship's you've encountered and scanned.
The game mechanics are designed to have you conquer / claim sectors. Each sector you control gets a free new Sanctuary, from which you can build more, build faster, increase your overall research speed, specialize in certain types of production, etc.
I haven't gotten too far in this yet, as I am waiting for the imminent drop of 2.5 before I dive back in (I hear 2.5 will actually contain a storyline!!!!). But of the 3 or 4 very intense days I had played this mod (v2.4.x), I can tell you that this mod is absolutely AMAZING. While the base game itself is the classic space sim you already know and love, the depth and simple convenience that this mod brings seems to very nearly add a refreshing RTS layer.
You NEED this mod. It is more or less the official unofficial expansion to X3 AP.
Bravo, Joubarbe. Thank you.
This 10 is earned big time. Having played X series since before time, I've continually waited and been frustrated with each successive release and X4 was no exception. As a desperate last resort for satisfaction, I tried looking at the X3 mods and decided to give this a try.
What I found was a truly inspired idea made real by the wizardry of panda magic. This mod is what X4 should have been. What "X" lacked was a real sense of purpose and direction without too much constricting how you get there. Mayhem delivers on this and really provides a great overriding imperative that you feel compelled and eager to conquer and experience, but it doesn't force you to do it any particular way. It also changes some of the mechanics of ship and equipment building in an extremely creative and enjoyable way. Playing Mayhem, I really feel like I have a sandbox to experiment with, but one with a set of goals that draws you in and slaps you to awareness. Egosoft seems to think a mindless sandbox with random endless missions is the way to go, but they just don't get it. This is the game I've been waiting for for 15+ years now, and holy crap; it's just a mod. Egosoft, please hire this person and make them your lead script developer.
Joubarbe, keep it coming. You really did something special here.
Adds layers of complexity while at the same time making that complexity easier to manage. Great mod.
great stuff. X3 + Litcube + Mayhem makes a great space 4x
A total overhaul of the game and a welcome one. Since I am the first to review here I will go into some detail. Combat is more tactical, Sector takeover and ownership is seamless and satisfying, a real threat to combat with OCV. So many tweaks and changes I suggest reading first Lit Cubes wiki then the notes here. There is also a good thread dedicated to this mod on Egosoft's forum so check that out as well. Highly recommended.
This is THE mod that you need to fill that gaping void in your heart.
Short:
Mayhem takes the most ambitious gameplay features that X3 always offered but never really put emphasis on and gives them the love they needed to turn it into a game with a very solid early, mid and endgame without getting boring anytime soon. It turns X3 into a First Person RTS without taking away the feeling of X3 we love. You should definitely give it a shot, you won't regret it!
Long:
I've stumbled over Mayhem thanks to a video called "5 Reasons to try X3 Mayhem Mod" by Darth Fiscus/Hector0x. It was posted by someone in the Community Hub of X3 Albion Prelude on Steam, which is literally the best place to advertise mods (other than here, to be honest). At first I chuckled about this guy's strong accent but then decided to stick and watch the video, and boy, I am happy I did that because it convinced me.
In the past I finished playing X3 Albion Prelude with most of the story lines, just to find myself at a point where actions are just there for fun, they don't matter though. I then later played Litcube's Universe which gave the game a nice shake-up, adding cool new features like more complex mobile mining, Saturn Complexes and all that. So that gave me another few hundred hours of fun. That being said, the two main goals in Litcube's Universe are pretty stale - fighting the Phanon Corp. is more annoying than a challenge, as they attack you only there where it hurts. Setting up a defense was pretty unsatisfying as there rarely was a good way of protecting weak assets. It gave me X2 The Threat flashbacks, as the Khaak behaved similarly and were just an annoyance instead of a challenge, especially in early game. The other goal was beating the OCV, which basically forced you to just amass hilarious numbers of ships and each battle would be horribly painful in management of losses.
And here comes Joubarbe's Mayhem mod and removes any remaining flaws of vanilla and Litcube's Universe. It gives a solid midgame and endgame experience. How so?
- Actual Empires
Mayhem finally manages to make actions have consequences in almost all cases. All races can go to war with another. Apart from home sectors, everything can be lost, for good. And you have your own empire with your own diplomacy. You actually get encouraged to go to war with two races to receive benefits for your empire from it. You can claim sectors, you can lose sectors and you need to defend what you build up. Most importantly: You can't build anything in sectors that aren't yours! So creating and expanding your own empire is HEAVILY encouraged. This is one of the aspects that turn this game into a strategy game.
- Optimization of previous features
In Vanilla and partially Litcube's, using the SETA to skip time was never really punished. AFKing like that was a scummy way of letting the stocks go up and down or your traders and miners do their job while you were watching porn on the other monitor. Mayhem actually punishes you for not playing the game actively and gives you enough stuff to do to not make you feel like the SETA was actually ever needed. Skip 24 hours in SETA and your empire will have a BAD TIME competing with the growing threat. Literally.
Boarding is now extremely convenient and fun, thanks to teleporting marines instead of launching them into space and losing half of them on the way. The RPG-like dungeon-crawling text logs are pretty entertaining and you can name your marines, growing attached to them. Losing one of them will actually matter to you, if you care. Boarding also now has a nice equipment system and offers more than just boarding ships.
Litcube's mining system was nice, but it introduced new resources that didn't matter. They were just loot. Now they matter. In fact, many resources of Mayhem have their individual roles in your empire, meaning aquiring credits is no longer the only thing you need to care for. This is the first time X3 took a hint from modern gameplay methodic: If there is only one currency, the player will do exactly the one thing that is most efficient to acquire it. If there are multiple resources to aquire in different ways, the player will do different things to get these resources, each in the most efficient way. That prevents the player from getting bored from grinding the same activities over and over again.
- Plots
There are multiple plots that make you do multiple things. There is a lot of secrecy to it. The Perk system of your station encourages you to progress in all plots offered to get the best perks to individualize your stations.
- Customization
As mentioned above, there are perks for your so called Sanctuary stations, the central station of a sector. These are fun, extremely useful and make you think twice about which system to develop into what. You need to focus on certain things, especially in the early and mid game.
- Piracy and Bartering
These are an actual thing now, and especially bartering will help you greatly.
Hell, I could write even more.
To make it short : THE BEST 4X game I've ever played with a focus on management.
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Start off with 1 corvette and 1 freighter, carrying all the hopes of your people.
- Explore quickly to gather information
- Buy food to survive
- Find abandonned broken ships, analyse them to research the blueprint and then build them at your starting sanctuary (at the cost of Ore, ship components, Silicon Wafers, and time - you can't buy ships from AI shipyards, only random deals from companies!)
- Sell these abandonned ships to AI shipyard for money.
- Build your first energy cell factory : you can sell for easy money and that will fuel all your stations and ships
- Buy Satellites (and other resources) from local merchants
- Explore enough on your own, or get good M5 blueprint, start building a few of them and explore the whole universe + drop satellites (some won't come back...)
- Meet factions waging war at one another. Scan their damaged ships for blueprints !!
- Find and scan good TS, research its blueprint. It will be the heart of your rising economy.
- Build more factories in your sector, to provide for your shipyard or to sell for money.
----- looks like a normal X3 quickstart?
Yes! But THEN the world of MAYHEM unveils all its possibilities and features !
- You're not alone... you are chased and attacked periodically by a growing threat... you HAVE to expand your economy and build ships to defend yourself !
- Claim, own and defend your sectors. You can only build stations in sectors you own.
- You'll need a lot of resources to build ships, weapons, and shields, so you'll need to build a lot of factories and mines !
- No more cheaty biggy 100000 yield rocky asteroid or SCH factory ! If you want it big, you need MANY factories and mines (end-product complexes available to build directly, no need to connect stations and stuff, SIMPLE!)
- Fortunately, Mayhem provide the BEST logistics tools to handle all these supply chains : Station Agents and Dock Agents.
Configure everything the way you like and your 100's of freighters will act accordingly. Just hide them and forget about them. They'll tell you if something's wrong !!!
- Specialize your sectors for best use of sector perks and easier logistics
- Build ships to defend yourself and attack your ennemies to take over their good sectors. You won't need 1 ship, not 10, not 50, but HUNDREDS of small and big Fighters launched by Carriers protected by Corvettes and Destroyers...
- Mass production tools : "I want 20 fighters and 3 corvettes and a Carrier." "OK, starting production whenever materials are available. They'll join the assigned fleet when they are built and equipped"
- Equip and configure 1 ship the way you like. Then create a template to use for all the new ships you build !
- Organise your ships into fleets and only give orders to the Fleet Leader, or use MLCC.
- Basically EVERYTHING is ready to be scaled up to empire level. Almost no micromanagement.
- New marines boarding, and more surprises...storyline !
- Diplomacy tools to make use of allies or get intel from enemies. Dynamic factions : they will take over sectors.
- Xenons and all Pirates factions are like a normal faction, just a bit more aggressive ! They'll build and expand.
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I'm forgetting half the features of this mod... it's so deep ! Dozens of hours sunk into it without realizing, and now I jut want to restart a new game...
Mod actively supported (and still new features coming) by its Developper, who is always available and answers on the egosoft forum.
While Litcube turned a flawed but still fun X3AP into a perfected sandbox featuring some of the largest and most visually-stunning space battles in gaming, Mayhem basically turns LU into an infinitely-better game entirely. It might take a few tries before you know what you are doing and how to manage your threat level, but Mayhem is the most fun you can have playing an Egosoft game ever.
Mayhem puts you in an ever-increasing arms race with the OCV, similar to the Long War 2 mod for XCOM 2. You need to scrap together whatever ships you can salvage and use your ragtag band of ships to keep your core sectors safe as you slowly expand. Once you start to get your empire going, you can start to build a professional fleet using uniform, robust ships that you produce using well-designed supply lines. Eventually, you will expand to a point where the only way to obtain more territory is to conquer the other factions, in which it is time to declare war. You can bring in allied factions to help, launch a multi-front attack to divert the battle groups, or get creative in other ways to bring down an empire. Now you will need to juggle both the OCV and your new enemies who will start attacking your sectors as well. Meanwhile, there are overall story objectives to follow and ship blueprints to obtain.
Each playthrough of Mayhem is also unique, with different ships being viable each time due to robustness. Your favorite ship may not be viable at all, and you will need to find new favorites to run your empire. Asteroid resources and sector capacity is also randomized, making different sectors more or less valuable each run so you will probably set up in different areas each time you play. The behavior of NPC factions is also not scripted to happen in specific ways, so who you go to war with and when you do will depend on the situation. One time when I played, the Argon Federation went on a universe-wide conquest and owned half the map. My ultimate goal became growing strong enough and unite the remaining factions against the Argon and to wage a universe-scale war to bring down the Federation, which is actually possible in Mayhem due to how sectors can be taken over.
Mayhem is good. Play it.
SUch great