Crew presentation order (GUI) QoL and Pandora's box

[donzi]

To begin with, as we all know there is a lot of repetative actions required to play.. A small part of that which has always puzzled me is how the slots for working crew are something of a 'Pro Tip' required thing to have consistent order of NPC to help ease the repatative work.

Anyhow, I wanted to see if perhaps there is some tool or maybe a mod that can do housekeeping?

Before coming back to the forum I went ahead and reorganized all my structures assigned primary NPC (Manager, Def. Ofc, Capt, Eng., Spc.) so problem is solved for now. Saves a bit of time in the end considering how much in/out of the details display I do.

During this process I discovered a persistent issue which I thought was solved. I noticed that one of my Stromvok assigned as an escort showed crew out of the order I specified for all the rest. Come to discover the ship is owner="canteran" (..still, and didn't match my search criteria in the editor so missed it.)

Background on that ship is such:

1. ordered it from DV.GT.4 BTO and didn't bother to feed lacking scanning array to get it done since it was a mistake, I intended to order a Sucellus.
2. a day or more later I guess a Scaldis finally covered the resources and the ship was completed.
3. I gathered up some crew along with a new captain and ordered the ship to refuel while I flew the skunk to Fervid Corona to meet up.
4. <CR> 7-1, told cpt to go work on the Stromvok, ship went from green to blue and the ROC Stromvok begain puttering around.. (!)

..so reload, did a few combinations of sending crew from the skunk back room, all the same result. I then docked on the Stromvok and told the cpt to work and it stayed green once I undocked and I was apparently okay now. Odd situation that I have not seen before that I can remember, but figured the in-game work-around was a cure.

Gist of it is, this ship AFAIK came out of the BTO as mine, but never had owner changed to player. I have no idea how that can happen but that's what it is. I am in control a ship which has owner="cantaren" in it's properties.

I have been storing all my saves since starting so I am going to load up the last game I have where that ship is still in production and investigate. AFAIK there isn't any thing I could have done in game to create this anomoly. All the NPC I hired and assigned to this Stromvok are owned by player, so basically a mystery to me.

After I investigate the ship production completion again I'm just going to edit the owner I guess. No chance I'm going to regress back to that stage of the game for that ship if it organically comes out as player owned... or I'll just sell it and try again. Of the array of ships I have captured and bought nothing like this has happened so.. perhaps this is a known bug?

Vanilla XR 4.30 (254587) w/o any of the owned DLC active.

PS: yes, it would be nice if the game would consistently arrange the NPC on stations and ships for us without need of a disciplined assignment approach or editing.

FYI: in case anyone wants to adjust the crew order like I did, it's easy but somewhat time consuming. I can't offer exact ins/outs of just using discipline in NPC assignment, but am going to explore that so I can assign/reassign and maintain the NPC listing order I want. (note: architect will always be last, game design..)

This is using simple RegEx but plain text search can get you where you need to be okay too. A simple editor may not offer the option to search multiple strings with space in/around them in the target. If that is the case then just search for something like component class="ship_<wildcard>" or just go for owner="player"

1. load the raw .xml saved game in an editor
2. search for:

Code: Select all

 component class=\"ship.*owner=\"player\"
..or
component class=\"station.*owner=\"player\"
..then (if you want, or just scroll down until you find them)
connection connection="npcconnection"

3. Within the <connections> ..lines.. </connections> will be the NPC sections
which can be moved up/down as you wish. The order shown on the station or
ship will display in the order arranged here.

EG: the entity type="..." will provide you with their job. Below is a specialist for a station, but the others would be just as telling.

Code: Select all

<connections>
<connection connection="npcconnection">
<component class="npc" macro="character_ar_female_engineer_macro" connection="commandroomslot" name="Ashunty Gilharno" owner="player" page="10104" id="[0x3270]">
<listeners>
<listener listener="[0x3266]" event="killed"/>
</listeners>
<offset>
<position x="84.614" y="100.472" z="-185.047"/>
<rotation yaw="-109.39243" roll="5.25728"/>
</offset>
<skills visible="1">
<skill type="boarding" value="3"/>
<skill type="combat" value="2"/>
<skill type="engineering" value="5"/>
<skill type="leadership" value="1"/>
<skill type="management" value="2"/>
<skill type="navigation" value="2"/>
<skill type="science" value="3"/>
</skills>
<entity type="specialistpowerstorage" control="1" customconversation="1"/>
<account id="[0x3d]" amount="1147625761"/>
<npcseed bodyparts="4171865416" bonescales="1074764669" morphtargetweights="1299302597"/>
</component>
</connection>
...
</connections>

You want to move the each entire npcconnection group up/down as you desire within the <connections>..</connections> space that surrounds them. EG:

Code: Select all

<connection connection="npcconnection">
...engineer data
</connection>
<connection connection="npcconnection">
...commander data
</connection>
<connection connection="npcconnection">
...defence officer data
</connection>

..to for instance

Code: Select all

<connection connection="npcconnection">
...commander data
</connection>
<connection connection="npcconnection">
...defence officer data
</connection>
<connection connection="npcconnection">
...engineer data
</connection>

This editing will not break anything if done without error nor flag as modified etc that I am aware of.. harmless.

[donzi]

Well, I loaded the save while the Stromvok was still in production. I was in the Skunk in OL with a capture target just before deploying marines.

I went ahead and wrapped that up and maybe 10 minutes after the capture completed I was alerted by the BTO Shipyard the Stromvok was completed.

While it was undocking I hailed them and removed them from my squad and gave them orders to refuel.

I then remote hired captain, engineer and defense officer in the OL zone where the capture was.

I ordered the captured ship to join my squad and flew off in the skunk to the waiting Stromvok.

Once at the Stromvok, I used 7-1 and assigned the new NPC to the waiting ship it turned from green to blue since it became an ROC Stromvok as it did before.


I can provide a bread-crumb trail of saves encompassing the issue if anyone would like to investigate.

The actions I described in taking command of a new ship are common in my playing XR these past weeks. The only thing not common is that I waited until NPC provide the final resources for the ship being built.

It almost seems like the ship was assigned ownership by the faction which provided the final batch of resources, but I hve no idea where ROC would get scanning array themselves. JSS or HOA Scaldis I assume would be the only non-player source.. so seems like the Stromvok just went to the BTO faction. Pure speculation of course, but I welcome any other eyes on this.