With the online maps/guides, you'll have a rough idea of where to go, and chasing down all of the abandoned ships gives you an excuse to explore the galaxy. The last is actually a pretty good way to go about things. So a couple of the outs are to choose one of the game starts that gives you a better ship and equipment (I think there's one that does this), or a pile of cash, use some kind of cheat-mod to give yourself a better ship/more money, or use the online guides/maps to find the various abandoned ships and salvage them. The game also models damage to vehicle components, so getting trashed after a fight is REALLY EXPENSIVE, and so can be pretty frustrating - a vicious cycle of "need more money to get a better ship.got trashed in a fight.can't afford to fix everything.can't fight for more money.can't get a better ship." The ship you start with sucks, and you spend a lot of time running away (or trying to) because you're fairly outgunned. The one downside, is the learning curve is more like a discontinuity, followed by something pretty steep. X3 is really quite entertaining, even if you don't go supercrazy like some of the people out there who're into building ginormous super-space-station megacomplexes that essentially print money. I just want to either play a space ship game where I can make things or a submarine game where I can sink things, all while wasting large amounts of time. I'm not looking for anything to increase difficulty or the like. I think I had one that gave details about the war (over the radio?) and one that gave details about the ships I'd sunk (reported missing or something? I forget, it's been awhile). And I remember that there were some good mods, if anybody knows any, let me know. I remember there being a really good submarine sim enthusiasts website that had some great tutorials, if somebody could link that I'd really appreciate it. I tried Silent Hunter 3, and played it a bit.
Bonus points if you've got a big printable key-guide, since I have the Steam version and thus no manual I can hold.
If you've got any newbie guides for the vanilla game, lemme know. I haven't been able to get into X3 before, but I really want to give it a shot. I don't want to hear about any other games please, I want to play one of those two, and I already own them. So help me pick between Silent Hunter 3 or X3. I'm in the mood for something to steal time from me (when I'm not working it away).