[script] Improved Kha'ak 1.1: Updated June 10, 2008

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How do you rate this script?

Unnecessarily evil...I fear the fear.
14
7%
An optional evil...only for the brave.
22
11%
A necessary evil...the universe should be dangerous.
78
40%
I now know fear...and want it from other races!
34
18%
Nothing to say...just want to see the poll results.
45
23%
 
Total votes: 193

7ate9tin11s
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Post by 7ate9tin11s » Fri, 18. Apr 08, 06:35

Minor bugfix update posted. It also removes a problem where uninstalling IK would reset all invasions in IX.

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narn
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Post by narn » Mon, 21. Apr 08, 20:15

This is a great script with one small problem. I think that the ability they have to jump in system is a little over the top. I'm all for making the universe harder but I think that you should at least be able to get away from them instead of them being able to butt scoot up to you and blow you up in seconds. It goes way to far with the larger ships.

I was wondering if you could either tell me how to disable the khaak's ability to jump around in system or make it another optional feature that the player can choose. If I cant turn off this annoying feature I'm probably just going to shut it off and remove the script from my game. And I don't want to do that because I like everything else the script has to offer.

7ate9tin11s
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Post by 7ate9tin11s » Tue, 22. Apr 08, 06:09

Hmmm...actually I cannot completely turn it off without a major rewrite since it is used for reinforcements entering the sector and as a core component to the AI. However, I could put in a toggle to allow you to choose the minimum jump range that they will use the in-sector jump (Right now the range is 10k). If I allow you to push it to 50k then it will not be used in most sectors and situations besides entry into the sector. Anything greater than 50k could prevent the swarm from arriving in a timely manner. As a word of warning though, messing with the jump range will make them alot easier again. Especially since they do not use formation movement in any way.

I'll see about adding it in and tossing a patch up before I head out of the country tomorrow. Stay tuned :p

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Post by 7ate9tin11s » Tue, 22. Apr 08, 07:06

Looked into the possibility of changing the p2p behavior, but it is integrated too tightly into the fight AI, targetting, overmind, and swarming systems for an easy fix before tomorrow. While it would be very easy to change it so there is no jumping at all it would prevent outside reinforcements and swarming completely. Basically leaving you with Kha'ak which just target one enemy at a time. I'd prefer to do it right so this will have to wait a bit :D . I will try and decouple the oos and is p2p actions so that a simple toggle will work, but it will prolly take until after my trip is finished so I have the time.

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Post by shilhi » Sat, 26. Apr 08, 21:04

ROFL! I just tried it. I jumped into a sector that was taken over, and right when I did that there was a scout at the gate I jumped through.

Both my titans opened up on it and destroyed it, and before I knew it I had over 20 fighters and 2 destroyers shootin me up. :shock:

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Algoran
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Post by Algoran » Mon, 28. Apr 08, 13:27

Hello! First off, great script. Ive been winging about the poor unthreatening khaak for ages :p

I agree with the guy talking about insector jumping however, it is kinda too much and a little frustrating :p They bounce around like bloody ping pong balls sometimes! Changing of the minimum jump range would be good.. and/or the jumpdrive charge time, which i swear is much less than mine :( How is progress with that? :)

Also, a small question - with the swarm calling in khaak from nearby sectors, does that include clusters? Or do they have to be broken before they will respond, because i notice clusters do not use the insector jump thing at all.

I havnt yet seen the khaak advancing across the universe while creating trails of stations... perhaps they take quite a long time to build? They do have firm grasp of the split sector down bottom right next to the khaak sector (XTM), I get instatly vaporized every time i go in there haha. But i havnt seen them advancing, sadly! I want WAR! :D ehehehe...

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X2-Eliah
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Post by X2-Eliah » Mon, 28. Apr 08, 15:05

About the station building, I must add that something feels way off - for instance, I have many sectors with just 2-4 boxes of Nividium (and same amount of other two wares) floating near the centre of sector, with no Kha'ak whatsoever.

Also, in one sector there is a whole lot of it (about 20-25 boxes of Nividium (same for other 2), and finally just 3 destroyers remained there, and after a while they were gone, probably jumped out, no station, no nothing.

So, something is wrong with the station making script, it looks like it might be interrupted or irregarded at all.. weird stuff.

(On normal mode, XTM)

7ate9tin11s
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Post by 7ate9tin11s » Thu, 1. May 08, 07:33

Alright I am back from my trip to Korea (I got to see the Olympic torch :lol: ). I will start working on IK to get it balanced properly with IX and tune the station building routines a bit more. I will also rework the p2p jumping system and make it an option since it is a bit nasty (It merely takes a tiny bit of hull damage to prevent any jumping though, use a mass driver and they can no longer catch up to you :roll: ).

As for the bouncing around like pingpong balls and not needing 10 seconds to jump:
1. Once every 10 seconds to a minute (Depending on swarm size and difficulty) the overmind will calculate the best courses of action in the sector. If a ship is suffering from low shields but can still jump it will make a defensive jump to help the shields recharge. There is part of your ping-ponging. The other half of the ping-ponging is that the overmind will decide upon a swarm target and members of the swarm will jump to it if it is too far away.
2. The jump time depends on the difficulty level you choose ;)

My main concern with the removal of the p2p jumping is that the Kha'ak will no longer be as improved. I have an evil idea to add that will have them be still unique though...but that you will find out in due time. :twisted:

Anyone have other nasty behaviors that should be added? Toss them into the thread or PM them to me if you fear being hunted down and killed by those that have to deal with your idea :roll:

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Algoran
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Post by Algoran » Thu, 1. May 08, 15:20

7ate9tin11s wrote:Alright I am back from my trip to Korea (I got to see the Olympic torch).


Ooh, cool :D
7ate9tin11s wrote: As for the bouncing around like pingpong balls and not needing 10 seconds to jump:
1. Once every 10 seconds to a minute (Depending on swarm size and difficulty) the overmind will calculate the best courses of action in the sector. If a ship is suffering from low shields but can still jump it will make a defensive jump to help the shields recharge. There is part of your ping-ponging. The other half of the ping-ponging is that the overmind will decide upon a swarm target and members of the swarm will jump to it if it is too far away.
2. The jump time depends on the difficulty level you choose ;)


Ahuh, cool makes sense! This was with the older version i realize now, no jump charge time :p I did have a rather amusing/frustrating situation at one point though with a khaak carrier, it was jumping to various positions around me very quickly, so it was getting shots off then jumping again before my lasers could reach it :roll: Clever i guess, but i wonder what he was thinking while he was doing that :p

7ate9tin11s wrote: My main concern with the removal of the p2p jumping is that the Kha'ak will no longer be as improved. I have an evil idea to add that will have them be still unique though...but that you will find out in due time.
Indeed well i wouldnt want it removed completely, just toned down :D
7ate9tin11s wrote: Anyone have other nasty behaviors that should be added? Toss them into the thread or PM them to me if you fear being hunted down and killed by those that have to deal with your idea
Ooh, I get to suggest how to improve the khaak? What fun! :D They really were such a cool, scary alien race in X2. Made me sad to see how much they suck now, so Ive increased the kyon damage and sheild capacity of all my khaak :D

But, scriptwise... something that springs to mind: Cluster spawn positions, would it be possible to change them? They are very often miles outside of the normal shipping lanes, and they appear to be blind and stuipid, so they just wander around in circles, never meeting anyone, never being split up and never contributing to the SWARM! That might be a mod rather than script... I dunno lol

Actually this script is so great i cant think of anything else right now! Probably will later.. Im gonna take a keen interest in it regardless :khaak:

7ate9tin11s
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Post by 7ate9tin11s » Fri, 2. May 08, 03:43

But, scriptwise... something that springs to mind: Cluster spawn positions, would it be possible to change them? They are very often miles outside of the normal shipping lanes, and they appear to be blind and stuipid, so they just wander around in circles, never meeting anyone, never being split up and never contributing to the SWARM! That might be a mod rather than script... I dunno lol
...strangely, I just finished making extra clusters spawn randomly around the universe last night...in range of doing damage...and they start swarming immediately... 8)

I also fixed the station creation problem by putting a soft-cap on swarm calls when a sector contains station building materials, bumped up the revenge rates significantly, and put in basic limits on p2p jumps. Not yet fully tested though so you will have to wait till early next week for testing and balancing against IX. I also figured out the problem with IX overwhelming the universe faster than IK, They have more sectors and no delay timer for capturing sectors so they will get more sectors, of course :roll: .

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Tenlar Scarflame
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Post by Tenlar Scarflame » Fri, 2. May 08, 08:23

Well, it happened. Brennan's Triumph has fallen to the bug-eyed bastards. :khaak: one destroyer, one carrier, two clusters on a rampage.

I tried my best to beat them back, but my current arsenal only stands at a total of 13 fighters, not counting CAG escorts. Good enough to smoke the carrier, not quite enough to drag down the destroyer. And the little green blips go black pretty much immediately when the cluster swarms show up. I most assuredly will be reloading from last save. :roll:

Sucks for me, because my Fuel production base is in Olmancketslat's Treaty, just north. Business will be bad for a while. And the RRF authorities won't be intervening. Not likely that the pirates will be able to put a stop to the madness either.

I'm liking this. :twisted:
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7ate9tin11s
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Post by 7ate9tin11s » Fri, 2. May 08, 10:32

Better hurry before they get a station and start summoning in more, especially before the upcoming upgrade to version 0.9 early next week: :khaak: + :fg: = :skull: + :rant:

:lol: :lol:

In other news...

I've began putting together a general improved races script to counter the increased dangers of the universe. I will be making it completely compatible with RRF, but it will be able to protect and assault the universe on its own. Some current and future items include:
1. Job-based ships (Anti-fighter, anti-cap, long-range support, etc)
2. Racial cargo drops like in IX, including seeker mines and maybe even Fallen's toybox (if I can get it working right you will know what it is ;) ) :twisted:
3. Racial behaviors in combat, weapons, tactics, etc.
4. NPC Ring of Fire usage (may be offense or defense depending on racial tactics!)
5. Optional mode to keep ships out of the universe until they are needed. Increasing framerates .
6. Optional open warfare mode where the races will act upon their alliances and take neighboring sectors from their enemies :D .
7. Optional Sector Recovery: If a sector was taken by someone they will try to take it back using a token system like the Xenon do in IX.
8. A base of operations: The local shipyard (Pirate base for pirates) is the command center for that area of space and will manage all connected core and border sectors. Take out the shipyard and that sector of space is disrupted until a new one is built. Trying to keep a shipyard sector can be difficult as well since other shipyards of that race will react in quite seriously to the loss :roll: .

I'm also thinking of making a quick set of commands so you can apply any of the jobs to your player ships to help you in combat (Perhaps with a non-p2p jumping swarm combat routine too!). For example, you could set a ship to use anti-fighter ai and it will ignore big ships unless there were no little ships left. An anti-fighter ship would also use more missiles and any available cargo-drops like the npc's.

Deathwalker1701
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Post by Deathwalker1701 » Fri, 2. May 08, 14:19

It all sounds very good looking forward to it all :) :) :) :)

7ate9tin11s
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Post by 7ate9tin11s » Mon, 5. May 08, 04:31

Version 0.9 Released

New Stuff
Point to Point Jump Options - The point to point(p2p) jumping of the Kha'ak while in-sector can be adjusted. While the minimum jump range defaults to 10k you can also choose 40k, 80k, or entirely disabled. While it may seem to be a good idea to use a higher jump range, the Kha'ak like to jump and it just means they will find a target further away and jump to it instead of something close. Note: I recommend bumping up the difficulty a level if you disable p2p jumping.

BBS Notifications - By popular demand GalNet has began providing public notices of Kha'ak swarm activity around the universe. These notices can be found on the BBS of any station and will strive to give you the most important details about the engagement happening in the sector. Please be aware that the notices from pirate sectors are provided by rumor and may be inaccurate.

Extra Kha'ak - Depending on difficulty level the script will now generate and activate extra clusters around the universe randomly. Only normal vanilla clusters are used and no capital ships will be spawned by this script. Any capital ships were spawned by the game.

BBS Message Examples
Galaxy Network - Kha'ak Watch
Level 7 Kha'ak Swarm Advisory for Argon Prime
This is an emergency warning bulletin from Argon Prime. A level 7 Kha'ak swarm is currently active in this sector and overmind activity has been confirmed. The largest ship presently known to be a part of this swarm is a Kha'ak Carrier, smaller vessels and trade ships should bypass this sector where possible. Assistance with these invaders will be noted on your personal record and those with a police license will receive standard compensation.
Galaxy Network - Kha'ak Watch
The Fall of Kao's Mistake
It is our regretful duty to report the loss of Kao's Mistake. The sector was swiftly overwhelmed by the Kha'ak and it has been confirmed that all defenders and stations have been destroyed. Recent unmanned probes have confirmed that a level 5 swarm still patrols the sector and actively engages any vessel that enters the sector. The probes have also located what appears to be construction materials in the sector and, upon examination, experts have concluded that the Kha'ak have about 35 percent of the materials needed to construct an assault station. The assistance of all races and ships is requested to disrupt the station building activities and retake the sector. The raw Nvidium and other materials used in Kha'ak station building will left for the victor to sell.

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Tenlar Scarflame
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Post by Tenlar Scarflame » Mon, 5. May 08, 17:54

Looks good. So setting the maximum jump distance means that in smaller sectors the simply won't jump? Unless they're way out of the way of course.

In other news, I was actually able to sink a Carrier's shields down to about 1/8 using Concussion cannons on my PNR- apparently they have quite a low energy drain and do enough damage to keep that bar going steadily downward.
Then, of course, the Destroyer jumped in and smoked me in a few seconds, but I thought that would be a useful tidbit :roll:
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Improvement suggestion

Post by Randon » Mon, 5. May 08, 18:02

Man I really love this script, so as you asked here are some suggestions how to make the Khaak even more tougher oponent :)

- first some more balance to the game - I had the settings on normal, which made my universe together with improved Xenon a reall hell so I was forced to switch the sector take over off untill I will have some defense prepared. This lead me to an idea if that would be possible to lets say balance the script like asking whether it should start immediatelly - like when you already have some ships and defense, or whether it should start "in line" with the "growing power" of the player - this way if you start a new game you will be ready when they come :)

- and a suggestion for Khaak improvements - I play this together with XTM and some other scripts increasing the hostility of AI - Pirate improved behaviour, Improved Xenon and Xenon migrations; I dont know whether its a bug or not, but in some cases the Khaaks and Xenons allow me to align with their capital ship and let me to shoot it down without any increased defense - it would be good if they woul have something like a protection swarm that would just protect the capital ships

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Post by 7ate9tin11s » Tue, 6. May 08, 06:28

@Randon

Yeah, I realize this is more of a late-game script and not really appropriate until you have, at least, a good size fleet of M3's. This is one reason that the improved mods start 'off' instead of 'on' ;) . Until there is a decent way for the AI to handle IX and IK I will be leaving the default to off and when the player feels they are ready they can turn them on.

The idea about a defensive swarm is a good one and I have thought of it in the past. However, my view is that the Kha'ak don't care about individuals and the loss of one is like someone cutting one of your hairs to the overmind. The Xenon also do not care about individuals because they are all the same program. If I ever get it finished my planned improved races will be making use of this to varying degrees depending on how much individual lives are worth to the races.

@everyone

Kha'ak invader mode is 70% complete at this time. You can activate invader mode if the Kha'ak are friendly to you and it will cause the following effects:
1. When you enter a sector the overmind will automatically start swarming in that sector, if possible. Also the sector you start in will automatically get a decent swarm to help you get a foothold in the universe (and you get 5 salvage insurance!). The rest of the universe gets no free swarm and you must rely on the overmind to gather ships from close sectors.

2. When all ships and stations in a sector are destroyed a random ship from the swarm will be given to you for your next conquest. You will also get 2 salvage insurances for clearing a sector.

3. All of your Kha'ak ships will automatically be fully equipped with a jumpdrive, various tunings, scanners, missiles and a transporter device. Energy cells will be added slowly to your cargo bays to a max range of 5 sectors jumped or the capacity of the cargo bay.

4. Difficulty modes still work, but are reversed. If you set the mode to insane it will be quite easy to take over the universe, while easy mode will make life more difficult for you.

I'm enjoying testing this so far, but I keep accidentally killing scouts and losing rep then...boom. I may have to make your rep increase from taking sectors too :D . Look forward to it! It is a whole new game experience :twisted:

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Post by 7ate9tin11s » Fri, 9. May 08, 06:14

Version 1.0 Released!

This version fixed a few minor bugs and added one, very fun, new feature:

Kha'ak Invasion Mode
If you are friendly with the Kha'ak through the use of a custom start you can use Kha'ak invasion mode. In this mode your goal is to destroy the universe with the assistance of the IK overmind. Here is the introduction that you are given when invasion mode is activated from your AL menu:
Improved Kha'ak - 7ate9tin11s

Welcome to the Kha'ak invasion mode of my Improved Kha'ak scripts! A few little pointers to keep in mind:

1. While helping the Kha'ak take over the universe the difficulty modes are reversed. So if you have the difficulty set to insane it will be a very easy game for you while easy will be harder. I personally suggest hard mode, but I am not the best dogfighter in the universe.

2. When you enter a sector the overmind will automatically start swarming in that sector, if possible. Also the sector you start in will automatically get a decent swarm to help you get a foothold in the universe (and you get 5 salvage insurance!). For the rest of the universe the overmind may send a scout to you to start swarming in a sector, but otherwise no new ships will be created.

3. When all ships and stations in a sector are destroyed a random ship from the swarm will be given to you for your next conquest. You will also get 2 salvage insurances for clearing a sector.

4. All of your Kha'ak ships will automatically be fully equipped with a jumpdrive, various tunings, scanners, missiles and a transporter device. Energy cells will be added slowly to your cargo bays to a max range of 5 sectors jumped or the capacity of the cargo bay.

5. At this time you and your ships cannot use p2p jumping, but this may be added later. Until then I suggest using any of the other available p2p jump scripts. As a positive note though, you have the only Kha'ak ships that can jump with hull damage!

6. Be very careful when using missiles and weapons, there is no way to increase your rep via script with the Kha'ak so if you lose too much rep you will become their enemy and invasion mode will end.

Within the next minute you will receive your first transmission from the overmind and your invasion will begin. Lastly, and most important of all, enjoy your universe!
Then you receive your 'free' swarm and the following message begins your career of destruction!
Kha'ak Overmind

Listen to me, my children. For I am the overmind and your place is to serve me. Life abounds in this feeble universe, life that should not exist. I have chosen :khaak: to begin the invasion in Argon Prime and my eye will be ever upon them. Go now! Spread our cleansing beams to the smallest planet, the least asteroid, the most insignificant life!

:khaak:, I speak to you alone now. For each sector you conquer a participating ship will be given unto you for your future conquests. Whether Destroyer or Scout it will merely be at my whim. Go now and bring glory to my name! May the universe no fear in the name of the Kha'ak and in the name of :khaak:!
Have fun! I know I did in testing :D

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X2-Eliah
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Post by X2-Eliah » Fri, 9. May 08, 06:28

Is it possible to turn this thing on/off?

Because I think some people would like to play Kha'ak invader as a tough start but get friendly with everyone, not annihilate everyone..

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Post by Sandalpocalypse » Fri, 9. May 08, 09:38

Presumably -
Here is the introduction that you are given when invasion mode is activated from your AL menu:

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