Interesting what people decide to do with their factories. I concentrated on secondary products like soja, wheat, teladianium, stott spices, bogas and nostrop. Built hubs in Queen's Space, Duke's Domain, Trinity Sanctum, Dark Waters, Lucky Planets, Cardinal's Domain, Profit Share, Tharka's Sun and Power Circle. I built a few mines if there was a local shortage, but didn't build any SPPs. X3 R was the game where I built up the largest business empire and largest fleet (played till I got my own TS and several M6s, and of course the all important Hyperion - best ship ever!).

I stayed away from Xenon areas to the 'east' of the map with my factories because it was just too dangerous. Random swarms of xenon were a bit dangerous for me - and I found the protection cost prohibitive.

I think I had about 6 universal traders going, though bizarrely the only way you can figure out how much money they have made it if they got stumped and stopped!

Whatever I fly I like it to be one of the faster ships in its class, so I can either outrun a mob of pursuers or catch up to prey. I think I was flying a Mamba for a while, though the crap shields gave me trouble. I then got myself an LX and flew that for ages, before finally getting my hands on the Hyperion, which, once you get it, is all you need! Since it has massive shield, lotsa guns, is fairly agile and also carries 2 fighters, what more could you want? It can massacre M6s. From memory you can only get it via a mission, so you might want to research how to get it.

I must admit that I never really used the more exotic weapons, mostly just stuck to PACs and HEPTs. HEPTs are useless for killing M5s and fast ships, but good for slow fat targets, of which you will increasingly run into. By the time I got myself M6s+ I had picked up enough weapons to outfit them all and start a large war. I had a whole fat transport full of the weapons I'd scavenged - you can never have enough weapons, and sometimes they are damn hard to find.

I've moved on to X TC, but there are still heaps of things which are the same. Getting a nice big printout of the universe is an excellent idea. And system override software (can claim ships at range without getting into a bloody spacesuit but illegal) and the software signature scrambler to mask it are must haves if you cap lots of ships.

Have fun.