[MOD] Sector Satellites

[iforgotmysocks]

Currently working on an update that ensures that the mod still runs perfectly without influencing game performance even if the player chooses to deploy hundrets of satellites.

Couldn't check up on resource probes yet so they'll be included in the next content update if i find things i can improve.

If you guys have more ideas what sats should offer let me know, there is room for more.

[argon_emperor]

Currently working on an update that ensures that the mod still runs perfectly without influencing game performance even if the player chooses to deploy hundrets of satellites.

Couldn't check up on resource probes yet so they'll be included in the next content update if i find things i can improve.

If you guys have more ideas what sats should offer let me know, there is room for more.

Audio alert with sector name if a hostile XL ship is detected? (like the good old days of SEWN from X3)

[iforgotmysocks]

Currently working on an update that ensures that the mod still runs perfectly without influencing game performance even if the player chooses to deploy hundrets of satellites.

Couldn't check up on resource probes yet so they'll be included in the next content update if i find things i can improve.

If you guys have more ideas what sats should offer let me know, there is room for more.

Audio alert with sector name if a hostile XL ship is detected? (like the good old days of SEWN from X3)

Wow, not a bad idea, i'll put it on my list. Thanks.

[Kadatherion]

Currently working on an update that ensures that the mod still runs perfectly without influencing game performance even if the player chooses to deploy hundrets of satellites.

Couldn't check up on resource probes yet so they'll be included in the next content update if i find things i can improve.

If you guys have more ideas what sats should offer let me know, there is room for more.

Yes, please, I have the feeling having placed an adv satellite (with increased radar range, so it's like there's 3/4 vanilla adv satellites) in every sector is contributing quite a bit at slowing down my map when fully zoomed out. The big hitter is the map itself, which is clearly badly optimized and gives abysmal fps to pretty much everyone, but if we can optimize as much as possible what we throw on top of it, it can only help.

One other thing I was thinking, is the pulling prices feature won't be always needed everywhere for an entire playthrough: once you buy the trading license for a faction, that does the same thing, universe wide real time price pulling for every asset of theirs. Meaning at that point your satellites would be needed only to auto discover newly built stations, them pulling prices becomes redundant. Can't imagine an easy or functional way to adapt to that, though: a universe wide on/off switch for the feature is a no go, as you might still need it for another faction, but doing it on a satellite per satellite basis would be a chore.

[iforgotmysocks]

Yes, please, I have the feeling having placed an adv satellite (with increased radar range, so it's like there's 3/4 vanilla adv satellites) in every sector is contributing quite a bit at slowing down my map when fully zoomed out. The big hitter is the map itself, which is clearly badly optimized and gives abysmal fps to pretty much everyone, but if we can optimize as much as possible what we throw on top of it, it can only help.

Sorry, poor expression of mine. While you shouldn't have issues having a little wider sat range, the changes to my mod are more directed towards ensuring that the impact the mod has on the game is not noticable, even if players go nuts and place hundrets of satellites. ^^

One other thing I was thinking, is the pulling prices feature won't be always needed everywhere for an entire playthrough: once you buy the trading license for a faction, that does the same thing, universe wide real time price pulling for every asset of theirs. Meaning at that point your satellites would be needed only to auto discover newly built stations, them pulling prices becomes redundant. Can't imagine an easy or functional way to adapt to that, though: a universe wide on/off switch for the feature is a no go, as you might still need it for another faction, but doing it on a satellite per satellite basis would be a chore.

No worries there, the license you buy basicly enables the same functionality i use to all stations of a faction. All i do i use it more limited for just the stations that the player actually knows and monitors via satellite. In other words, if you buy the license my satellites ignore that part entirely and are only used to uncover new stations.

[Kadatherion]

Sorry, poor expression of mine. While you shouldn't have issues having a little wider sat range, the changes to my mod are more directed towards ensuring that the impact the mod has on the game is not noticable, even if players go nuts and place hundrets of satellites. ^^

Indeed but what I mean is, as satellite coverage already is a cause for severe FPS issues on the map, the less performance hit we add to them with new features, the best. Actually, if you read this report of mine, you'll see that, currently, I'm pretty sure nobody in his right mind can really afford to go nuts and place hundreds of satellites. The map UI will implode their cpus.
I'll have to revert myself to the vanilla radar ranges (and reposition all those satellites, goddamn, I had just finished mapping the galaxy ), otherwise my game would be impossible to play. And we also know now why radar ranges are so short in X4 compared to previous games.

[Depleted]

I have a problem, i installed one of the first versions which was on the nexus then you updated it, i downloaded and installed the update and the game tells me that sectorsatelite mod is missing, disabling sectorsatelites from the ext list doesn't fix the error message either, any ideas on how to remedy this?

[iforgotmysocks]

I have a problem, i installed one of the first versions which was on the nexus then you updated it, i downloaded and installed the update and the game tells me that sectorsatelite mod is missing, disabling sectorsatelites from the ext list doesn't fix the error message either, any ideas on how to remedy this?

If you installed it in ur documents directory, it can't work. Check the installation instructions please.

[Kadatherion]

(Optional) feature request: if possible - and if you find it in line with your ideas for the mod - I'd very much like the adv satellites to be able to discover not only stations but data vaults too. I'm not a big fan of incredibly tedious and well hidden treasure hunts in games, it's ok at the beginning of the game while you are exploring the galaxy and stumble upon the first 7 or 8 of them, but then looking for the other 20 feels like a massive chore. The feature should be optional because of course not all players agree with me, but I believe quite a few would find it very useful. It also wouldn't hurt if it had a system to log their position / highlight it (via quest markers?): their icon is super small and it shows only at fairly close zoom levels, and, guess what: I'm not a fan of pixel hunting either

[iforgotmysocks]

(Optional) feature request: if possible - and if you find it in line with your ideas for the mod - I'd very much like the adv satellites to be able to discover not only stations but data vaults too. I'm not a big fan of incredibly tedious and well hidden treasure hunts in games, it's ok at the beginning of the game while you are exploring the galaxy and stumble upon the first 7 or 8 of them, but then looking for the other 20 feels like a massive chore. The feature should be optional because of course not all players agree with me, but I believe quite a few would find it very useful. It also wouldn't hurt if it had a system to log their position / highlight it (via quest markers?): their icon is super small and it shows only at fairly close zoom levels, and, guess what: I'm not a fan of pixel hunting either

I'd love giving them more features like that but sadly i don't wanna ruin ppls fun who dislike these kind of options. So other than creating a shitton of different files that i'd have to keep track off i currently don't have a way to make it configurable, duo to the mod needing to be packed as cat/dat files in order for it to be usable by a large portion of players that still use windows 7. Once i can find the time to really dig into the lua files and come up with a config menu this won't be a thing. I might make sense to offer 2 versions of the mod tho... one base version and one that has all the additional features, but that's really not a good way to handle this.

[Kadatherion]

Ah, damn, I completely forgot about the .cat thing, indeed that makes it pretty much impossible to just add an on/off config option in the loose - and way more user friendly to access - xml. That's too bad, but absolutely understandable, maintaining different versions of a mod becomes exponentially more troublesome, not just for updates but because of how feedback gets more confused. No biggie, if a better solution doesn't come in the meanwhile, one of these days I might take a peek into your scripts to see if I can manage to do it myself (and for myself only, ofc), if the data vaults aren't considered completely different entities much of the detection logic should already be laid down by you and even if I won't understand everything I might get by with some shameless copypasting

[iforgotmysocks]

Hmm... i have an idea, gotta test tomorrow. I could just upload a "SetOption" Mod that offers the player said choises. That one wouldn't need to be packaged.

[Tanjitsu]

Not too add too many things too your "to do" list but....

There is another mod popped up [MOD] Trade Receiver Satellite
viewtopic.php?f=181&t=408055

Might be worth seeing if you can encompass other possible versions of the satellite in the AI's deploy options.
The 2 mods seem like they could work well together.

[iforgotmysocks]

Ehm ya... i already took a look. Without trying to be mean, i'm not quite sure why this mod exists, as one satellite per sector isn't exactly an issue when it comes to performance. And since tradeships uncover all that space anyway, it really doesn't make sense. He basicly took my script, cut out 2/3rd of the functionallity, removed the radar range of the detection probe that i created, renamed alot and added it as a ware that can be equipped. I... just don't get it. ^^

Especially since Faction trade licenses offer the same functionality for all factions stations, which makes the lategame argument kinda pointless and is the most efficient way to keep up performance if you don't want any vision.

But i'm not gonna stand in the way of other modders... creativity. ^^

[Depleted]

This mod while great sounding causes huge performance issues and it renders the map unusable.
A better alternative is the trader receiver satellite mod, no performance issues and it does the same thing, plus it doesnt make the map become unusable.

[Requiemfang]

This mod while great sounding causes huge performance issues and it renders the map unusable.
A better alternative is the trader receiver satellite mod, no performance issues and it does the same thing, plus it doesnt make the map become unusable.

The Trade Receiver Sat mod is basically a simpler version of this mod, as stated above your post by this mod's author.

[iforgotmysocks]

This mod while great sounding causes huge performance issues and it renders the map unusable.
A better alternative is the trader receiver satellite mod, no performance issues and it does the same thing, plus it doesnt make the map become unusable.

It doesn't render the map unusable at all, are you joking? The mod you named is missing alot of features this mod applies and the ripp off of my mod can be replaced by the simple faction trading license, that gives the player subscriptions to every station of a faction without the need of satellites that don't grant any vision. Satellites are used for early trade, exploration and keeping vision on important locations, Faction trade subscriptions are used for lategame trading.

[Kadatherion]

It's not the mod, it's the satellites themselves. They are a huge hit to performance on the already heavily bugged and unoptimized map UI, once you have one adv satellite in every sector the hit is very relevant. If you also have increased radar range (or more satellites around) it gets worse and worse. It's an issue with the game that only Egosoft can fix. The stripped version of this mod doesn't cause that for the very fact its satellites have no radar range (which makes it kinda pointless, as it doesn't discover anything and just works as a local trade license that you could buy and forget about it, but to each his own).

[Requiemfang]

There is also a draw back to the racial/faction trade passes, loose standing = you loose that license? basically you loose the use of the trade network for that particular faction. Then there's another thing, if you have a faction with very bad standing towards you, I recall this happening back in X3 when I had a sat network galaxy wide, red factions actively sought out and destroyed any player assets in their sectors so there goes your sat.

[Kadatherion]

There is also a draw back to the racial/faction trade passes, loose standing = you loose that license? basically you loose the use of the trade network for that particular faction. Then there's another thing, if you have a faction with very bad standing towards you, I recall this happening back in X3 when I had a sat network galaxy wide, red factions actively sought out and destroyed any player assets in their sectors so there goes your sat.

I guess so, Xenons and/or pirates did for sure blow up a few of my satellites (BTW, no log notification of the destroyed asset, you have to keep looking yourself if your satellites are all still there... sigh), so they indeed are valid targets and I guess main factions will target them as well if they become your enemies. Of course, being able to have satellite coverage comparable with what we could have in X3 would be best for most situations, but unfortunately right now that ghastly map UI is severely limiting us. Funny thing is: ok, they might be kinda broken atm, but when you're not on the map all those hundreds npcs trading, flying around and doing their things, have a very low performance impact. That's a first for X games, that would always tend to slow to a crawl because of their cpu load. But then you open the map, and a few icons to draw drag you into fps hell.