[Bonus Plugin] Commercial Agent

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Donsja
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Post by Donsja » Thu, 31. Aug 06, 19:20

The others are transporting

yeah got already that one installed.

im gonna send you a new save game.
Take a look at te 1MJ Shield Complex at argon prime
They all are at there maximum lvl, but they dont get any meatsteak cahoonas

johgalt
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Post by johgalt » Sat, 2. Sep 06, 02:39

I have a question. I have several self-sufficient armories composed of over a hundred stations in some cases. this means that they have no primary resources. I realized early on that i would be unable to use the commercial agent with these bases unless i could first get their rank above apprentice while working for a different station. therefore i equipped 10 or so TS ships with prety much every extension in existance and assigned them as commercial reps to bases that did have primary resources. now all of them are freighter pilots, and I tried to assign them to my major armories. i did this by canceling the commercial agent command and changing the ships home base. for some reason when i start up the commercial agent again the ship will, after a period of five minutes or so, revert to its previous home base, and continue with the commercial agent. I also tried the "remove home base" tool from extra ship commands. it did not work either.

any help would be appreciated, thanks.

edit: another question:
is there any particular advantage to using the commercial agent over the station manager? for that matter, is there an yparticular advantage to using the station manager over the commercial agent?
"Who is John Galt?"

jlehtone
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Post by jlehtone » Sat, 2. Sep 06, 07:37

Wasn't there a "Remove ship" command in SM? SM has to release the ship. Then new SM should take control of the ship. Just a guess.
johgalt wrote:is there any particular advantage to using the commercial agent over the station manager? for that matter, is there an yparticular advantage to using the station manager over the commercial agent?
They are different. We just have to figure out the differences, and when those differences are significant on our special cases. Every case is special. So it is up to the needs of your armories, what suits them.

johgalt
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Post by johgalt » Sat, 2. Sep 06, 17:52

yes, there is a 'Station Managet: Remove Ship" command, and it wirks. I have been able to change ships home bases who are running under station manager. However, this is not my problem. My problem is with the Commercial agents. I have not been able to get commercial agents to switch which bases they trade for. Re-assigning the home base works briefly, but it resets itself after a short period of time. I think as soon as it lands at the new home base.
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Anoik
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Post by Anoik » Sun, 3. Sep 06, 10:08

Can i use this script and the Comercial Agent at the same time? will they work together for the ships of one station?

jlehtone
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Post by jlehtone » Sun, 3. Sep 06, 11:55

Anoik wrote:Can i use this script and the Comercial Agent at the same time? will they work together for the ships of one station?
While different, Station Manager and Commercial Agent seem to perform similar tasks. They probably can be both active, but the ships are likely to compete at least as much as traditional Mk1 traders do.

I would advice (without any experience) to keep them on separate stations.

johgalt
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Post by johgalt » Sun, 3. Sep 06, 17:27

well, I know a little about the scripting engine, and what I know leads me to suspect that tehy station manager and commercial agent can function together without any problem. in order for the station manager/commercial agent logic to take into account the activities and cargo of the stations other ships it owuld have to make a call on its home base and ank it for a list of owned ships. to coordinate these ships the script has only to determine the cargo and destination of the other ships. it is for this reason that I believe that the station manager/commercial agent will not care about the actual command of the other owned ships.

conceptualy, these scripts are rather different, because of the rumber of scripts that have would be running. the station manager is a single monolithic script that runs on the station and monitors its resources, products, and designated ships (this could eb a limiting factor of the station manager, if it only coordinates with the assigned ships, but i suspect it coordinates with all owned vessals). this means there is only one instance per station of the script.

on the other hand, teh commercial agent runs on each ship. this means one instance per commercial agent. this also means that the script has no choice but to be aware of all the factories owned ships. the only way to ignore them would be to explicitly check if the ships it is coordinating with are also commercial agents, and i think that is unlikely, as it would be counter productive.

functionaly, the two are quite similar. the only advantage i have found to the commercial agent is that they will not enter sectors owned by races marked as 'foe' in the command console (perhaps a rather large advantage). the station manager has 2 advantages: 1) as far as I can tell, you dont have to pay them, and 2) you dont have to wait for them to train.

there is one major disadvantage to the commercial agents: their home bases can not be switched once they have gained rank. this means that they can never work for any complex you might own that has no primary resources because the starting rank, apprentice, can only buy primary resources, and since there are no primary resources, it can never gain rank to trade anything. since the home base can not be changed, it is impossible to train the ship elswhere and then assign it to another station/complex with a high rank.

allow me to elaborate on teh part about 'can not reassign teh home base.' I can change the home base in the command console, and then start the commercial agent. teh ship will fly to the new home base. somewhere between the time it starts flying home to the new base, and the time it launches from the new base (most likely when it lands and tried for the next command) the home base will revert to the original all on its own, and nothing can be done about it (nothing i hav efound so far anyway).

any help on that problem woud be appreciated,
thanks.
"Who is John Galt?"

Ruut
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Post by Ruut » Sun, 3. Sep 06, 17:49

For commercial agent transfer the high level pilots into a new ship assigned to the new home base, and sell the old ship.

johgalt
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Post by johgalt » Sun, 3. Sep 06, 17:51

what happens if I dont sell the old ship?
"Who is John Galt?"

SieurNewT
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Post by SieurNewT » Sun, 3. Sep 06, 21:03

Hello

I am beginning a new game with mod XFP and all script up to date

what happen is that all my ship just say something that "stopping commercial agent"

they have all possible computor and extension

i have try to add and remove wares, the 3 stations have money so i dont really see what is wrong

Also their is no message, no beep
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Old config AMD 64 3400 1Mo, MSI k8n neo plat, 7800 GS+ Bliss, 2 GB RAM 3200

Ruut
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Post by Ruut » Sun, 3. Sep 06, 22:34

Stopping commercial agent mean your ship is waiting a valid opportunity.
Increase the range of trade in your base and add satellites in all sectors in range and the agent will detect new opportunity.

Vengefully
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Post by Vengefully » Sun, 3. Sep 06, 23:11

Hi.

Now business:

I got this small complex in The Wall making 1mj shields and mosquito and silkworm missiles. I got two traders suposedly bringing in the necessary resources but I got this issue that while one is getting like Ore (for example), the other is trying to bring in the same resource.
Once one actually buys the resource the other just changes its command to "Return to Home base" and once the ship gets home its start going for another (usually diferent) resource. The problem is that the other ship (the one that bought the Ore), gets home, puts the resource in-base and goes after the EXACT same resource the other ship is going for. I've tried to use the proibited ware command but it didnt even worked.
So: loop, script issue or did I did something wrong???

Any ideas? I'm fairly new at this Complex and trading thing since I only have this Complex and its traders, a Ore mine (you know...) and a trader for it on station manager(that works ok but since its only one...) and two Universe traders.

The only "mods" or scripts that I have is the Bonus Pack. Yep just the one.

Edited: Removed a question already answered above. My bad.
Last edited by Vengefully on Sun, 3. Sep 06, 23:19, edited 1 time in total.
Nope, its wrong. The blue one. Crap...

SieurNewT
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Post by SieurNewT » Sun, 3. Sep 06, 23:18

thanks for your reply so i put the max jump range and the best price for the product, waited 1 hours and still no change :(
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Ruut
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Post by Ruut » Mon, 4. Sep 06, 05:55

Vengefully wrote: The problem is that the other ship (the one that bought the Ore), gets home, puts the resource in-base and goes after the EXACT same resource the other ship is going for. I've tried to use the proibited ware command but it didnt even worked.
So: loop, script issue or did I did something wrong???
No it's normal.
It's only at lvl 20 they don't go to the same destination.
You can solve this problem in using ship with different speed.
The slowest will try a different opportunity at low LvL. After 3 or 4 run for nothing.

jlehtone
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Post by jlehtone » Mon, 4. Sep 06, 08:18

Ruut wrote:No it's normal.
It's only at lvl 20 they don't go to the same destination.
Not lvl 20, CA/CLS does not have that many. Courier.

Could one ship do sufficient job? At least it would level up quicker.

And the "prohibit ware" ought to work. Both ships have to prohibit the wares the other is supposed to haul.

Ruut
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Post by Ruut » Mon, 4. Sep 06, 16:54

Yes i have 1 representative per complex and many mk3 for money.

JohnathanB
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Post by JohnathanB » Wed, 6. Sep 06, 16:02

Is there a readme file somewhere? I've got a few questions about the Commercial Agent that I can't seem to find help with.

First, is it necessary to buy and equip each ship with a trading system extension in order for them to promote? Was the problem with the pilots not being able to be reassigned without selling off their old ships fixed/addressed? Is there any benefit to outfitting them with best buys/selling locators? Finally, did I understand correctly that you have to equip them with a duplex AND a triplex scanner in order for them to use a jumpdrive?

I do apologize in advance if any of the above questions were answered somewhere, I looked around and couldn’t find clarification.

BlackRazor
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Post by BlackRazor » Wed, 6. Sep 06, 16:22

JohnathanB wrote:Is there a readme file somewhere? I've got a few questions about the Commercial Agent that I can't seem to find help with.

First, is it necessary to buy and equip each ship with a trading system extension in order for them to promote? Was the problem with the pilots not being able to be reassigned without selling off their old ships fixed/addressed? Is there any benefit to outfitting them with best buys/selling locators? Finally, did I understand correctly that you have to equip them with a duplex AND a triplex scanner in order for them to use a jumpdrive?

I do apologize in advance if any of the above questions were answered somewhere, I looked around and couldn’t find clarification.
The readme is installed when you install the bonus pack, it even creates a shortcut in the start menu to read the docs. If you can't find the shortcut you should be able to find the readme in the "description" folder inside the main X3 folder.
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Geggo
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Post by Geggo » Thu, 7. Sep 06, 16:37

johgalt wrote: there is one major disadvantage to the commercial agents: their home bases can not be switched once they have gained rank. this means that they can never work for any complex you might own that has no primary resources because the starting rank, apprentice, can only buy primary resources, and since there are no primary resources, it can never gain rank to trade anything. since the home base can not be changed, it is impossible to train the ship elswhere and then assign it to another station/complex with a high rank.
Now there's no way that can be true... unless that was changed with the last update of bonuspack. (3.01.02)

I had trained 2 Com agents in different complexes to rank of Freighter Pilot 2nd and then moved both of them to third complex (SPP loop producing energy), I jumped both to the complex, set homebase, cleared their operating and archievements data (command codes 1 0 0 and 1 1 0) and after setting all the required settings thru the command codes they have now been up and running for nearly a day.(selling only excess energy from a closed loop and they HAVE NOT returned to their previous homes).

JohnathanB
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Post by JohnathanB » Thu, 7. Sep 06, 17:46

Thanks for the info, Blackrazor. I did get a lot out of the readme, but now that I have more knowledge, I have more questions…

I tried to use some of the numeric input commands starting with something simple like the 000 command to get the statistics. Nothing happened. I don’t know if I’m not punching the command in correctly or I just don’t know where to go read the message. I punched it in exactly like above, “000” with no spaces, and…nothing.

What am I doing wrong?

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