[Script] TerraCorps Fleet Package

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dminor
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Post by dminor » Sun, 9. Aug 09, 16:06

Hey Valen68. Its playable now. Jumbled is improving the script.
" I'm a Sexy Shoeless GOD of WAR " Belkar

Valen68
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Post by Valen68 » Mon, 10. Aug 09, 02:53

yeah that is what I meant, how close is he to finishing improving the script?

eladan
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Post by eladan » Mon, 10. Aug 09, 13:34

You can never finish improving the script. :)

I'll leave that for jumbled to answer, but it'll depend on when he finds a point that he can sanely clean things up for a stable release.

jumbled
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Post by jumbled » Tue, 11. Aug 09, 12:40

eladan wrote:
jumbled wrote:I'm finding truckloads of small glitches....
There's bound to be, given the mess that the code's in. I'm sure I've introduced my share. You probably will too. :) Good to be finding some to eliminate though.
Oh, I think I've done a bit already... Gotta take more breaks and rest my eyes. :)
The "trouble maker", will now actually cause trouble...
Are you sure you're working on the very latest version? That was something that was broken, but I thought I'd fixed it in the latest version. Of course, I could be going insane.
The copy I was working on had it commented out...dunno if this was supposed to be a new or old copy, but I think it came in the last spk.
I now have one Job script to do all this and the others only need to give orders to "go home". This'll cut huge sections out of the other scripts and make it all so much easier.
Sounds like you're doing everything that I had planned to do... but one better (you're actually doing it. :) ) Sounding good.
Piece by piece it's coming together.

@ Valen68
I think it'll still be a while before I can get enough of it back together to make anything "stable". The patrol scripts are in a shambles after my cpilot patch. The only one I got working is for the FBC, but that's only a temporary fix to change variable names, not an actual upgrade yet. I'm only beginning to get to the point of testing a few of the smaller pieces. Just tonight, I observed as I...um..."lured" a Khaak swarm near a TF fleet as they were resting. The poor sap that did the luring didn't like it too much, but his call for help got the TF leader up and helping out, which got the others going.

@ Eladan
After much pain, I got your new names list incorporated, sorted, cleaned, verified and a few other things... Here's the stats:

3088 first names, 1546 Male, 1542 female
5000 last names.

An example of the longest male name I pulled up is Constantine Hollingsworth, and for the ladies, Wilhelmina Hollingsworth. Better stay away from that family...the time it takes for you to pronounce the name alone is enough to get you killed! :D They seem, so far, to fit inside the data fields, barely... I'll test it a bit more as they rank up. Longest rank is either VAdm or LtCdr (fully spelled out, of course).

If it's alright with everybody, since I'm removing color from the lines in the 8070 file (and subsequently need to change some scripting code to handle it), I think it's easier, rather than try to clean the existing names in the ships of color codes, instead issue new names. I did it here on mine, to try it, and Wow! It sure looks better... No more inbred Drummonds and Underwoods. It looks like an actual society now!

eladan
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Post by eladan » Tue, 11. Aug 09, 14:23

jumbled wrote:The copy I was working on had it commented out...dunno if this was supposed to be a new or old copy, but I think it came in the last spk.
Not sure. May have been another in my fixed-but-not-yet-released pile.
After much pain, I got your new names list incorporated, sorted, cleaned, verified and a few other things...
<shakes head and applauds> That would have taken some effort. Well done.
An example of the longest male name I pulled up is Constantine Hollingsworth, and for the ladies, Wilhelmina Hollingsworth. Better stay away from that family...the time it takes for you to pronounce the name alone is enough to get you killed! :D
:rofl:
I did it here on mine, to try it, and Wow! It sure looks better... No more inbred Drummonds and Underwoods. It looks like an actual society now!
Yeah, I had mine running with the names (before your gender patch torpedoed my effort! :roll:) and it made a huge difference.

jumbled
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Post by jumbled » Thu, 20. Aug 09, 03:02

A little progress report, just to let you know I'm still alive... :)

I've been busy pulling my hair out (what's left of it) trying to make several of these new scripts play nice together. I'm currently working a few kinks out of the new patrol script. It's been completely re-written and giving me problems since Day One, but mostly small stuff, like a variable out of place or a typo somewhere. Ugh. I'm getting closer, though. I'm toying with the script on my FBC since it tends to send ships out more frequently than TF's, though I'm going to allow my trainees a 10-20 min break on occasion (life's hard enough as it is).

I'm fairly confident the new move pilot script works...that is to say it isn't crashing or causing any "obvious" disorders. I'm also seeing favorable returns from the new Return to Base script.

On a side note, I'd like some opinions... I'm going to try giving my cpilots the ability to auto-upgrade their ships, probably based on rank, with higher weapons and missiles, if such upgrades are possible on their ships (and not "inherited" from the previous occupant of the same ship).

Case in point... Let's say you put a new cadet into a new M5. I want the FBC to have a config option to select which wares should come standard on all ships (you need the Fight Mk2, but I'm also thinking of a user menu to select from other wares, like Nav software, other fight software, Special Cmd, docking computer, jumpdrive, etc.). A cpilot will do the checking when it docks for it's rest period to alleviate the extra processing from the FBC or TF list of duties.

Then, a cpilot will auto-equip guns, and maybe missiles, based on rank... A cadet might only be allowed IREs and maybe an APAC. Higher ranks might allow PACs, HEPTs, PBEs and such. Ultimately, you might get, as an example, a Cpt. in a M3 decked out with the best the ship can handle. If you move him out to another ship, I would prefer to have the old ship stay that way for the next guy (let him re-equip again, so you don't have to, according to the specific needs of the new ship).

So, what I need to do is rate the laser weapons according to power in an ascending scale for both fighter and big ship levels. IREs would go first, of course, then PACs and HEPTs, but you also have mass drivers, PBEs, PSGs (never trust an NPC with an area effect gun :o ), etc. I have a tentative list I'm playing with, and I spent last night running around in a Terran Thor with AEMP, and later BPBE guns, to see how it works (I like those PBEs, they shoot fast and strip shields quickly, scaring the bejesus out of the pilots).

Any ideas?

Of course, all this depends on the FBC and/or TF having access to a "store" of guns and such, meaning either (in the case of an FBC) either a station able to stockpile equipment, or a tender to do the work. And in the case of a TF, it might either need to hold it internally, or else make use of a merchant ship to make deliveries (kinda like the pizza delivery guy, you order out and he delivers in 30 mins or less, assuming he doesn't fly through Xenon territory :o ).

dminor
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Post by dminor » Thu, 20. Aug 09, 06:01

If i could request an off/on switch for that. Besides the mandatory training M5's and M4's, My M3+'s come to the FBC fully equipped as the last ship most cadets will need ( barring a few exceptions).

Will i have to rethink my practise of reassigning my trouble makers back to M'5s after graduation.


Keeping a EQ or TD stocked is something I'd like control over. Automated rearming of missiles and ammo would be a godsend.
" I'm a Sexy Shoeless GOD of WAR " Belkar

eladan
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Post by eladan » Thu, 20. Aug 09, 06:41

Ordering weapons by power isn't easy, particularly when you consider that their OOS performance can differ from their IS performance, as well as that NPC use of the various weapons is... suboptimal. It's not really a path I'd recommend, to be honest.

jumbled
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Post by jumbled » Sun, 23. Aug 09, 08:19

dminor wrote:If i could request an off/on switch for that. Besides the mandatory training M5's and M4's, My M3+'s come to the FBC fully equipped as the last ship most cadets will need ( barring a few exceptions).
All my ships go to the FBC and TF pre-configured, also, but it's becoming a bit of a pain lately. Of course, there would be a switch to turn this on/off. What about other wares, like the Fight, Mav, and Special software, Jumpdrives, scanners, etc.?
dminor wrote:Keeping a EQ or TD stocked is something I'd like control over. Automated rearming of missiles and ammo would be a godsend.
I use a PHQ for my FBC and a CAG ship to re-supply it (works great). I set which items to keep in stock and how much space to allocate to them. I haven't actually used the FBC tender ship for a long time (I need to start work on it, though, to bring it up to date). I have to also keep in mind some people may not have either a EQ or TD, or the PHQ (if, for instance, they're early in the game), so the tender will need to take care of things.

As for missiles and MD ammo, that's definitely something we can do. The MD ammo shouldn't be too hard to figure out (there's only one kind), but missiles are another thing. I doubt we'd want to code in the full assortment for NPC pilots, so which ones would you normally use? And how many at a time? Keeping in mind some fighters aren't much on the cargo space, and if you want to keep EC's on hand, that's something else.

Besides, do NPC ships actually use missiles OOS? I've had mine equipped for a long time but never see the numbers go down if I'm OOS. If I'm IS, I see little blue missile trails flying all over the place, though!
eladan wrote:Ordering weapons by power isn't easy, particularly when you consider that their OOS performance can differ from their IS performance, as well as that NPC use of the various weapons is... suboptimal. It's not really a path I'd recommend, to be honest.
Well, for now, then, I'll put the idea of guns on the back burner till I can figure something out, or if it's worth the effort at all (would be interesting to see how cpilots might deck out their ships, tho :) ).

As an alternative to that, I think XTM does give an option for a carrier to auto-equip ships based on a "template" ship in the hanger. I've been meaning to give this a try, but been too busy micro-managing everything else so far. :oops: Also, last night, I had to get a break from coding and actually get a little "play time" in. So I led a large group of cpilot ships into a XTM Khaak sector that's nestled away in a corner. We blew up an M1, capped an M2 (using BSE) and killed lots of little ships, but had to get out when the other 5 or 6 M2's started closing in. :o

I have things set up so they can follow me in cpilot "escort" mode, or go out on patrol in cpilot "patrol" mode (I'm using the vanilla patrol scripts, so far, to get the multi-sector part going, until I get mine up and running). I still need to plug in some xp gain for the actual patrol duty, but they are at least getting kill points from it.

Back to XTM stuff, several cool XTM items might be useful, if anyone uses them. There's a "machine shop" you can install in a carrier or, apparently, a station (at least, I think I saw an option to have it installed on a station...), to have it auto-repair docked ships. I'm thinking of giving my pilots the ability to check for it and activate it on docking if they need repair, as opposed to the current "fly to some repair dock and beep the player who probably won't notice you for 6 hours".

Which brings me to one of my current "undecided" issues, is how to go about having cpilots repair their ship, or make them wait for the player to find them. The FBC repair script does it automatically (sending them to a specified SY) using station money, but there's no such thing for a TF. And you can't "auto-repair" if you are using a PHQ, which needs user interaction to repair ships.

Another thought... Some XTM ships have special features, like the Argon Griffon with M4 class fighter drones (I was using one of those last night...manually...during my attack on the Khaak), or maybe the Otas Custodian (group shield regen) and the Otas HCF (capture frigate, to cap other ships using troops).

Does anyone else use these, and would it be useful to have cpilots try to make use of their features? The drone frigate definitely proved itself to me last night, I'll tell you! I killed a couple of Khaak frigates with it, and those things usually rip me to shreds! :o

eladan
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Post by eladan » Sun, 23. Aug 09, 17:41

jumbled wrote:Besides, do NPC ships actually use missiles OOS?
They should, yes.
As an alternative to that, I think XTM does give an option for a carrier to auto-equip ships based on a "template" ship in the hanger.
Yep, something like that would be nice, and reduce some of the tedious micromanagement.
Which brings me to one of my current "undecided" issues, is how to go about having cpilots repair their ship, or make them wait for the player to find them. The FBC repair script does it automatically (sending them to a specified SY) using station money, but there's no such thing for a TF. And you can't "auto-repair" if you are using a PHQ, which needs user interaction to repair ships.
Could do the same thing as the FBC (doesn't the TF send ships for repair?) and simply take the money out of the player account.

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Post by jumbled » Tue, 25. Aug 09, 01:38

eladan wrote:
jumbled wrote:Besides, do NPC ships actually use missiles OOS?
They should, yes.
Maybe you need to have them "installed"? I'm noticing many times I put missiles in a ship but forget to hit the install button in the freight menu. Or is that only for the player's use? When IS, I see my ships fire missiles whether installed or not. I even saw one guy switch from silkworms to wasps for one ship he was fighting. Probably a result of Fight Mk3.
As an alternative to that, I think XTM does give an option for a carrier to auto-equip ships based on a "template" ship in the hanger.
Yep, something like that would be nice, and reduce some of the tedious micromanagement.
I tried it out on my XTM carrier and it works (though you need to be sure you have enough supply on the ship for the process to finish :oops: ). I'd hate to have to "re-invent" this just for us, but it does seem useful. Perhaps, if you like the idea of using a "template" ship, we could modify my idea of cpilots outfitting their own based on this, rather than choosing their own set?

The template in XTM needs a ship name prefixed with a $ in front for the process to work. We could borrow on this and set up a ship docked to an FBC (or TF carrier). The FBC would "ignore" this ship (it doesn't need to be homebased, just docked) and other cpilots can check for it if they need a refit. They would then use equipment either on the station or a tender ship. This would work only in the case the cpilot ship matched the same type as the template ship (i.e. Nova to Nova, Perseus to Perseus, etc.).

Discarded gear would go back on the station (if there's room for it) or the tender. The player would need to pay attention to be sure there is either space on the station to put this stuff, or else have a tender with enough room. The tender would probably also have to pay attention to inventory and sell any excess to keep the numbers under control.

This is easy to control, too (no need for on/off switches). If you don't want the feature, simply don't put a ship with a name starting with a $ into your station.
Which brings me to one of my current "undecided" issues, is how to go about having cpilots repair their ship, or make them wait for the player to find them. The FBC repair script does it automatically (sending them to a specified SY) using station money, but there's no such thing for a TF. And you can't "auto-repair" if you are using a PHQ, which needs user interaction to repair ships.
Could do the same thing as the FBC (doesn't the TF send ships for repair?) and simply take the money out of the player account.
The TF script simply used a lib function to "send to a repair dock" and then beep the player about it. Using the XTM machine shop would be a nice alternative, or else to have it not just send to a repair dock, but also to do the repair like the FBC does. But what if the player is running a game with everyone an enemy (playing a pirate, for instance), and there may not be any friendly docks to fly to? ;) Also, if the TF is in a far corner and no docks within a "reasonable" jump range and lots of potentially dangerous sectors in-between? :twisted:

dminor
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Post by dminor » Tue, 25. Aug 09, 04:56

The repair oprion is another I would like an on/off for. In the past i used Cycrows Capitol Ship Crews for repairs. Very effective when no one in the universe likes you. Multiple options would be the best.

go to repair dock(all, race, or this one here)
Go to HQ
Go to homebase,
" I'm a Sexy Shoeless GOD of WAR " Belkar

jumbled
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Post by jumbled » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 12:51

dminor wrote:The repair oprion is another I would like an on/off for. In the past i used Cycrows Capitol Ship Crews for repairs. Very effective when no one in the universe likes you. Multiple options would be the best.
I'll see what I can do. I'm still working my way around to that one. I think the machine shop idea is very specific to an XTM install and pretty much only serves one purpose, so either you use it, or you don't, depending on what else you might have going on. That's a simple solution if you want to "turn it off".

As for having the ships go to a repair dock or the PHQ, here's how I would probably arrange it in order of preference: PHQ (or XTM player station with a machine shop installed), or a TF leader with a machine shop feature (if you can show me how to test for the Capitol Ship Crew scripts, I'll consider that, as well). Next would be a "friendly" NPC dock, if one exists within a certain jump range. Certainly, the PHQ or user repair option would be cheaper, though it may require user involvement to make it work. I could then incorporate a switch in a config menu to have ships try to auto-repair (if such an option is possible depending on what features you have installed).

When using the Capitol Ship Crews, do you need to run a cmd on the mothership to set them to work, or is it automatic after you dock the ship? Would you WANT the cpilots to do this themselves, or simply beep you when they're ready and wait for you to get around to them? Previously, as I think I mentioned, the old FBC script did it automatically, but the TF version just sent the ship to an NPC dock and beeped the player. Often, I was too busy with other things and the cpilot would sit there for hours waiting for me. Eventually, I think the TF leader got impatient and pulled the pilot back into service, even though the ship could barely fly. :o

On other matters, I think I have the patrol script working, finally, without any more problems (at least it's not crashing any more :D ), and also the script to arrange the flight groups into different sizes (was having some trouble with it lately until I found I missed a line or two in a critical area...heh).

I need to get back to the TF scripts again, now that I have some stability in these other pieces to work with, and get my TFs back up and running. The pirates are getting bolder lately and need someone to teach them a lesson! ;)

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Post by jubjuby3 » Tue, 1. Sep 09, 13:17

Quick question, just to make sure i can't really speed up this process much

as it is, i have one task force (patrolling the 3 yaki pirate sectors) now this is quite alright, pilots eventually level up, i bring in a few new m4s from paranid prime every now and again, job done, but my question was, is there some sort of "successful" way to use the combat tour of duty? just it seems, if i leave them on combat tours in safe sectors, they never level up, if i put them on more of a border sector with occasional pirate activity, they decide that 3 M5s can take on a nova and all subsequently get turned back into star stuff, am i missing some sort of "quick" way to get these pilots up to at least ships that can deal out a bit of damage, or is the task force in safe sectors with very occasional pirate spawns the way to go about it?
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dminor
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Post by dminor » Wed, 2. Sep 09, 03:35

I don't send my cpt's out on combat patrol till they have graduated from the FBC. And they don't go out in anything but a m3/m3+. The big thing with them is EXp or flight time in Cpat's. 4 Cpat's lock down Farhams Legend for the most part. This is the only part that I micro manage myself. Making sure my 'Born Leaders' etc are leaders. 'Trouble makers are the only trait that goes back into M5's, and saved up for TFL's. So if they want to Att a M1/2 its no big loss :roll:


@I'll pm Cycrow if you clarify what information you need.
" I'm a Sexy Shoeless GOD of WAR " Belkar

Valen68
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Post by Valen68 » Thu, 10. Sep 09, 17:10

Hey Jumble, looking forward to see your efforts at work! ;)

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script recognition

Post by Melquart » Sat, 12. Sep 09, 17:51

Hi,

Sorry for the slightly off topic but I have encountered a problem with this script. My game does nor recognize it as it is not in the AL menu, although, I have installed it using Cycrow's script installer. Could anyone lend me a hand with this? I have other scripts running which are recognized by the game.



Thank you.

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Post by dminor » Sat, 12. Sep 09, 22:25

I'll try

Have you changed your player name to "thereshallbewings"? Saved and reloaded, to activate the script editor?
" I'm a Sexy Shoeless GOD of WAR " Belkar

eladan
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Post by eladan » Sun, 13. Sep 09, 06:03

It might seem logical that TCP would have an entry in the AL menu, but the current release doesn't. It needs a special type of script to create such an entry, which hasn't yet been used in TCP (although WIP AL plugins exist and future versions of TCP will likely contain AL entries)

Other than lack of an AL entry, is there any reason that you don't think it's working? The script doesn't actually change much until certain conditions are met, assuming that this is the first time the script has been installed in your game. For new games with the current script, you need to find a BBS message from a Terracorp Officer at Terracorps HQ in Home of Light, and that will kick things off.

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Post by Melquart » Sun, 13. Sep 09, 12:07

Yes, it was the only source of worry that I could not find the entry among the other ones under the AL menu.
Thank you for the response. I will check the Terracorp HQ out.

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