[SCRIPT] Improved Boarding : V1.23 : 30-06-2010

veryinky · Post by **veryinky** » Mon, 25. Jun 12, 08:34

I'm running AP 2.0, or whatever the most current version is.

The scripts work, but the Boarding Teleporter ware doesn't.

ZA_EMP_BLANK_WARE_CUSTOM20_17 shows up at Split equipment docks.

After testing, I've found that it's in direct conflict with the Slipstream Drive, also by Cycrow. If I disable the Slipstream Drive mod, the Boarding Teleporter shows up, if I disable it, it turns back into the ZA_EMP_BLANK... if I change the load order, Boarding Teleporter shows up but Slipstream Drive turns into a ZA_EMP_BLANK_CUSTOM20_16

Cascinova · Post by **Cascinova** » Wed, 27. Jun 12, 01:08

TouchMyNipple wrote:Does this one work with AP? Says "for wrong game" with the plugin manager

It says that but still lets you install it anyway.

uhulu · Post by **uhulu** » Wed, 4. Jul 12, 22:06

TouchMyNipple wrote:
Does this one work with AP? Says "for wrong game" with the plugin manager

It says that but still lets you install it anyway.

I use it without problems in a modded X3AP game. The main mods are XRM, MARS and FCC.

Now and then I do face the issue with the ZA_EMP_BLANK_WARE_CUSTOM20_17 Ware, but in my game it apparently has to do with the starting up of the scripts, as the ill declared ware turns into the correctly named "Boarding Transporter Extention" some 10 to 20 seconds after the game started.

Vagrant Storm wrote:
Unfortunately...this transporter is pretty much worthless when dealing with capital ships. Save for M1s or perhaps if you've managed to fry away all the weapons of a ship. You cannot expect to sit 500 meters away from a M2 for any length of time. The 1km range must be from midship to mid ship because in a Shrike I need to get in to about 600 meters before I can start the boarding.

That's where I use the newly introduced Argon Phantom or Teladi Bat TPs. With 4x200MJ (Phantom) and 5x200MJ (Bat) of shielding these ships take quite some punishement while being able to carry enaugh marines for the big caps. Of course these TP's cannot take down the shields of the big boys on their own, so the boarding op has to be aided by a good wing of some robust fighter (I prefer Barracuda Sentinels) in cooperation with a wing of a few M6+ to speed up the taking down of the shields.
The tricky part is the approach towards the target ship and the search of a dead angle close enaugh for the bording op. It helps to let the fighter and the M6+ carry on with their job throughout the entire boarding op, for they draw some fire away from your TP while executing the transfer of the marines. Once the meetbags are in the target ship it's best to perform a RSLG maneuver.
Lately I managed to sucessfully board a Brigantine using exactely this approach. Though bastard that was... the Brig has an very good coverage. It took out 4 of the fighters, one of the M6+, wrecked most of my TP's inventory and about 65% of my hull strength.

It took quite a few reloads till the op was sucessfully compleeted.

Some may say, that's not a efficient way of boarding, mabye this is so, but I had my adrenalin kick during that op.

Klord · Post by **Klord** » Thu, 16. Aug 12, 11:05

Hey...I want to disable NPC boarding. Im a rookie at boarding & having a very hard time with defending marines.

In plugin configuration menu...I can see the "improved boarding" section. But theres no option to turn off "NPC boarding".

& I cant find the "Artificial Life" settings options in the config menu...

Somebody please help...thank you..

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Thu, 16. Aug 12, 11:13

Klord wrote:I cant find the "Artificial Life" settings options in the config menu...

Artificial Life settings are on the Gamrplay Menu (press Esc twice).

Klord · Post by **Klord** » Thu, 16. Aug 12, 11:13

Ok I found it...

sorry.
the "NPC boarding" option & "increase marines on NPC ships" options are disabled.

But there are a lot of marines in NPC ships in my X universe. Couple of minuets ago, tried boarding a carrack & It had about 10 marines onboard including 4 three star marines. Is it normal or a result of the script ?

Thank you...

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Thu, 16. Aug 12, 11:15

Normal (vanilla).

Klord · Post by **Klord** » Thu, 16. Aug 12, 11:23

DrBullwinkle wrote:Normal (vanilla).

There comes the "luck" part....hope it will not be many (or any) in next time. Thanks..

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Thu, 16. Aug 12, 11:37

You might find my post about Marine Tips helpful.

(It is near the bottom of Bullwinkle's List if you ever misplace the link).

krnja21 · Post by **krnja21** » Thu, 23. Aug 12, 16:47

can someone please explain to me how to edit the transporter device to increase its range? i mean in detail? thanks in advance

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Thu, 23. Aug 12, 17:59

krnja21 wrote:can someone please explain to me how to edit the transporter device to increase its range?

Madprof gave the details on the previous page.

Or I have already done it for you (and I also fixed a bug to make space walking more reliable):

Improved Boarding (Bullwinkle's Hacked Version)

Silent Marauder · Post by **Silent Marauder** » Sun, 5. May 13, 04:56

I recently upgraded my computer's graphics card and added more memory, so I switched to the 64-bit version of Windows XP in the process. I've reinstalled X3:TC (non-Steam) and patched it up to 3.2 (it was at 2.7 before the upgrade), installed Cycrow's plugin manager and added the Improved Boarding package, which I had been running before. Now, however, it seems broken. My Boarding Transporter Extensions are all ZA_EMP_BLANK_WARE_CUSTOM16_17, with no cargo class, a size of 1, and selling for only ~16 million credits at Split Equipment Docks (when they should be close to 50 million). I haven't been able to find anything out about how to fix this, and I'd really like to not have to start over and wipe out a three-year-old game.

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Sun, 5. May 13, 04:58

Did you close the Plugin Manager before starting the game?

Silent Marauder · Post by **Silent Marauder** » Sun, 5. May 13, 09:24

I did. If I leave it open, the ware doesn't appear at all. I can't remember for sure if it was closed the first time I tried loading my game, but I think it was.

Edit: When I activate the Script Editor in-game and look at setup.cycrow.boarding, I see that it's adding the ZA_EMP_BLANK_WARE_CUSTOM16_17 instead of the Boarding Transporter Extension, which actually *is* selectable if I click on that argument and choose Select Ware.

I wonder if, on my last installation, the scripts used a different ware for the Boarding Transporter Extension. But that wouldn't explain why the ZA_EMP ware is showing up at stations and in place of my existing extension on my ship. You'd think one or the other would be correct, but they're both wrong in exactly the same way.

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Sun, 5. May 13, 21:27

ZA_EMP_BLANK_WARE_CUSTOM16_17 should be the correct ware. Only the *name* of the ware is wrong -- the script should work normally, even with the odd name.

The name is in the 9604-L0xx file in your t folder (addon\t for AP). Look at the bottom of the file, on page 350017.

Which version of Improved Boarding are you using? Are you using any major mods that change TWareT (XRM, XTC, etc)?

Silent Marauder · Post by **Silent Marauder** » Mon, 6. May 13, 02:01

The name given in 9604-L044.xml is "Boarding Transporter Extension", and its t tag has an ID of 13423. I'm using v1.22 of Improved Boarding (Jan. 17, 2010), and the only other things I have installed are the Bonus Pack and the Board Stations plugin. I don't have anything else added. Last time, I didn't install the entire Bonus Pack - I left out the Turbo Boosters, I think - but that shouldn't matter, right? Especially since the ware showed up incorrectly even before I remembered to install the Bonus Pack.

I suspect ZA_EMP_BLANK_WARE_CUSTOM16_17 isn't correct, though, because it sells for the wrong price at the equipment dock (16M instead of 49M). If I modify the startup script (in the script editor) to put the Boarding Transporter Extension into the equipment docks instead of the ZA_EMP ware, I see that the BTE has the correct selling price.

Also, while trying to solve this issue, I disabled the plugin and started X3TC, and saw that the boarding commands were still listed in the Interface section of the Controls setup panel. Is this significant?

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Mon, 6. May 13, 02:23

OK, that all sounds good. So it is working now?

I don't really know about XTC.

Also, v1.22 is an old version.

Silent Marauder · Post by **Silent Marauder** » Tue, 7. May 13, 05:29

Findings so far:

* The "Boarding Transporter Extension" isn't functional, despite having the correct name and price. As far as the boarding scripts are concerned, my ZA_EMP is the actual transporter. I can use it to board ships, but I can't use the ware actually named Boarding Transporter Extension.

* The setup script was adding the ZA_EMP ware to the Split EQ Docks.

* The ZA_EMP ware has the wrong price.

* According to the 9604-L044.xml file, the Boarding Transporter Extension has a t-ID of 13423.
According to the EMP's 8899-L044.xml file, t-ID 13423 corresponds to ZA_EMP_BLANK_WARE_CUSTOM18_17. The 16_17 that my transporter turned into has a t-ID of 13403.

* According to LV's EMP used wares table, the 13423 ware (18_17) is supposed to be the correct one.

I'm not sure what happened. It's like the script is half-broken.

If I had some other mod installed on my previous installation, and that somehow caused my ships to have the 16 ware, that wouldn't explain why the 16 ware also ended up in the EQ docks on this installation, nor why the script would recognize it over the actual 18 ware. I checked the script XML files, and the teleporter script specifically checks for the presence of a ware named Boarding Transporter Extension, so it doesn't make any sense why it would recognize one named ZA_EMP_BLANK_WARE_CUSTOM16_17. Nothing in the script seems to refer to a ware ID at all, just a ware name.

I'm going to try uninstalling and reinstalling X3TC. Then I'll patch to 2.7, install the Bonus Pack (minus the Turbo Boosters, like before), install the mod via the Plugin Manager, and see if it works. Then if it does, patch to 3.2 and verify that it still works.

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Tue, 7. May 13, 05:39

Wait... do you have EMP installed? That would be wrong... the Plugin Manager has EMP built-in.

Also, I think that XTC may be tripping you up. According to other reports about custom wares, it appears that XTC includes an older version of EMP. EMP changed a while back, which causes problems with custom wares.

1) First, make sure that XTC does not have a boarding transporter built in. If it does, then do you still want to make Improved Boarding work?

2) If you do still want Improved Boarding, then I have a test version that uses the vanilla Transporter Device in cases in which the Boarding Transporter does not install properly. If you want to try it, then I can post it.

(Also, the scripts *does* refer to the ware id. It *looks* like a name in the Script Editor, but it is really an object handle.)

Silent Marauder · Post by **Silent Marauder** » Tue, 7. May 13, 05:53

I don't have EMP installed separately, no. I was viewing the XML file that LV linked to in his thread for the EMP, using it as a reference. I also don't have any mods other than the Improved Boarding plugin installed - I am not running XTC. I've been calling the game program X3TC, maybe that's the source of the confusion?

It seems that saved games do contain copies of scripts, because when I examine the script file in the "X3 Terran Conflict/scripts" folder, I find that everything looks normal, but when I examine the plugin.boarding.tele script in-game using the Script Editor, it is referencing the ZA_EMP ware. At this point, I think the easiest thing to do would be to modify this script to use the correct ware, then cheat in the correct replacement ware for my existing ZA_EMP ware. What must have happened was that my last installation somehow messed up the ware ID used by the Improved Boarding plugin.

Thanks for the help with diagnosing this.

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[SCRIPT] Improved Boarding : V1.23 : 30-06-2010