[S] Race Patrols v1.43 22/01/09 ; Military logic + less CPU load
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dragonsblade71uk
- Posts: 236
- Joined: Sat, 8. Jul 06, 00:01
dragonsblade:
Is this just one patrol ship that turned hostile on you? The ships are created as standard race ships, so if the race is not hostile, the patrols will not be either, when created. Like any ship, they can turn hostile on you, however, and rarely this can happen without reasonable cause, because of the game logic. Doesn't have to do with this script.
The prime candidate for accidentally getting that is one of your AI patrols ships that has "show as hostile if hostile to me" turned on. At least it was in X3R. This can make ships hostile to a race, and the ships your ship attacks, are turned hostile in turn. It has appeared to to me such a chain reaction started with a collision, usually, and could ruin a X3R savegame. Bottom line, turn "show hostile if hostile to me" OFF for ships you leave patrolling, and do not arm your freighters (their weapons are worthless for anything but pissing others off, anyway).
If it's just one ship, and you can avoid it, it will go away with the next change of guards. Maximum of ten hours. If you destroy the patrol, the assault wing will not target you, unless you have set their race hostile on your personal ship settings, or sufficiently lowered your standing to make the race hostile. Other race ships in the sector (police, border patrol, etc.) might choose to retaliate, however.
Is this just one patrol ship that turned hostile on you? The ships are created as standard race ships, so if the race is not hostile, the patrols will not be either, when created. Like any ship, they can turn hostile on you, however, and rarely this can happen without reasonable cause, because of the game logic. Doesn't have to do with this script.
The prime candidate for accidentally getting that is one of your AI patrols ships that has "show as hostile if hostile to me" turned on. At least it was in X3R. This can make ships hostile to a race, and the ships your ship attacks, are turned hostile in turn. It has appeared to to me such a chain reaction started with a collision, usually, and could ruin a X3R savegame. Bottom line, turn "show hostile if hostile to me" OFF for ships you leave patrolling, and do not arm your freighters (their weapons are worthless for anything but pissing others off, anyway).
If it's just one ship, and you can avoid it, it will go away with the next change of guards. Maximum of ten hours. If you destroy the patrol, the assault wing will not target you, unless you have set their race hostile on your personal ship settings, or sufficiently lowered your standing to make the race hostile. Other race ships in the sector (police, border patrol, etc.) might choose to retaliate, however.
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ThisIsHarsh
- Posts: 1135
- Joined: Sun, 19. Oct 08, 18:46
Perhaps a good idea to change the title of the post? It still says v1.1.ttl wrote:Updated to version 1.2 on 24th Nov 2008. OP modified to include changes.
I *really* like the idea behind this script, but there are a couple of things that bother me (being rather OCD about such things).
The ship names - been mentioned before they don't include the race's name, just like 'Patrol Eclipse'. Also, the weird way some of them are named 'Patrol' and some 'patrol'. Are the ones with lower-case 'p' ones that are changing guard? Perhaps something more along the lines of 'Retiring' or something more descriptive would be good. I suggest using local variables instead of ship names in the scripts.
The beacons. It looks a bit ugly to me when there are loads lying around for a while for no apparent reason. If you really need these then perhaps tone them down a bit?
Can you give any clues as to the path you intend to take this plugin, what sort of features/changes we can expect in the near future?
Oh and one feature suggestion: would be cool to be notified for help requests from the patrols if you have police license. With LV's bounty boost this could be a good way to earn both cash and notoriety.
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jimhsu77479
- Posts: 168
- Joined: Sun, 25. Nov 07, 22:39
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but can you make patrol ships respond when important sector stuff (stations in particular) is being attacked? Not too realistic for a NPC M2 attack force to waltz in and destroy half a sector without any response simply because there are no patrol ships around. Ideally the response should also at least match the attacking force (e.g. cap ships against a M2, M6 and fighters against a M6, etc)
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ThisIsHarsh
- Posts: 1135
- Joined: Sun, 19. Oct 08, 18:46
Agreed.jimhsu77479 wrote:Not sure if this has been mentioned, but can you make patrol ships respond when important sector stuff (stations in particular) is being attacked? Not too realistic for a NPC M2 attack force to waltz in and destroy half a sector without any response simply because there are no patrol ships around. Ideally the response should also at least match the attacking force (e.g. cap ships against a M2, M6 and fighters against a M6, etc)
Good ideas there, thanks for the input. Only the first suggestion implemented so far (see title).
The response grows in steps, meaning that an M2 will be met with an assault destroyer, unless the combined lesser forces take it down before that. But yes, some corvettes and fighters will end up making suicide runs to distract the enemy destroyer first. However, the patrols are no less suicidal than the standard militaries.
While the patrols will not respond to stations attacked, per se, there should always be at least one patrol present in the sector, and it will soon find the enemy, and the assaults will start their thing. Only cases when no patrols are present are:
- During an ongoing assault
- The enemies have beaten down the strongest force sent to defend a border sector (this means several cap ships downed)
- The entire race has run out of reserves to send.
In large sectors the patrols can miss a far-lying station being attacked for some time ... but I can't recall ever seeing it happen so that stations would have been destroyed because of that. For now, I have no plans to create for explicit response to stations being attacked, this looks to be alot more complexity for little gain.
The future direction I'm tossing around in my head, what I think the game really needs, is to replace pirates and xenon with a similar logic, only including attack fleets as well. I.e. make an attack wing if reserves are high enough. This would reverse the current idiotic trend that you get attacked more, the more succesfully you fare against pirates/xenon on their home turf. I might never actually get the time/energy to get to this, though.
Back to earth ...
The names ... I never though they would annoy people. Yes, I understand locals would have been the better way around, and it should be easy enough to change. Speaking of which, is there a way to make the computer say e.g. Argon *Military* Eclipse, when targeting the corresponding patrol ship?
The beacons are used to relay position data for the assaults. They could self-destruct once the assault had arrived. Perhaps the Patrol ones could self-destruct, since one of them lingers. During an ongoing assault there's a few lying about, but after the assault cycle finishes, there should only be the "Patrol Beacon". Thus, max beacons around in a sector should be about half a dozen. Personally, I kinda like these for flavor.
The notification suggestion I like a lot. Will look into it, I think it is very easy to send a message whenever an assault is called if player has the police license. I'll restrict it to the second level assaults, i.e. player notified when a frigate is called to the scene.
I could make the wing calling for backup revert to escorting the leader of the heavier asssault when it arrives. This should make for more sensible and less suicidal behavior.
The response grows in steps, meaning that an M2 will be met with an assault destroyer, unless the combined lesser forces take it down before that. But yes, some corvettes and fighters will end up making suicide runs to distract the enemy destroyer first. However, the patrols are no less suicidal than the standard militaries.
While the patrols will not respond to stations attacked, per se, there should always be at least one patrol present in the sector, and it will soon find the enemy, and the assaults will start their thing. Only cases when no patrols are present are:
- During an ongoing assault
- The enemies have beaten down the strongest force sent to defend a border sector (this means several cap ships downed)
- The entire race has run out of reserves to send.
In large sectors the patrols can miss a far-lying station being attacked for some time ... but I can't recall ever seeing it happen so that stations would have been destroyed because of that. For now, I have no plans to create for explicit response to stations being attacked, this looks to be alot more complexity for little gain.
The future direction I'm tossing around in my head, what I think the game really needs, is to replace pirates and xenon with a similar logic, only including attack fleets as well. I.e. make an attack wing if reserves are high enough. This would reverse the current idiotic trend that you get attacked more, the more succesfully you fare against pirates/xenon on their home turf. I might never actually get the time/energy to get to this, though.
Back to earth ...
The names ... I never though they would annoy people. Yes, I understand locals would have been the better way around, and it should be easy enough to change. Speaking of which, is there a way to make the computer say e.g. Argon *Military* Eclipse, when targeting the corresponding patrol ship?
The beacons are used to relay position data for the assaults. They could self-destruct once the assault had arrived. Perhaps the Patrol ones could self-destruct, since one of them lingers. During an ongoing assault there's a few lying about, but after the assault cycle finishes, there should only be the "Patrol Beacon". Thus, max beacons around in a sector should be about half a dozen. Personally, I kinda like these for flavor.
The notification suggestion I like a lot. Will look into it, I think it is very easy to send a message whenever an assault is called if player has the police license. I'll restrict it to the second level assaults, i.e. player notified when a frigate is called to the scene.
I could make the wing calling for backup revert to escorting the leader of the heavier asssault when it arrives. This should make for more sensible and less suicidal behavior.
OOZ: thanks for the info. Looks like there's a typo in the name of the old version, "Race Patrol", instead of "Race Patrols". Will keep the correct plural version for future versions. Please remove old version manually.
Also: It's still unknown exactly how the patrols would respond to race skirmishes. This might require further complexity of the scanning for enemies scripts.
Also: It's still unknown exactly how the patrols would respond to race skirmishes. This might require further complexity of the scanning for enemies scripts.
Last edited by ttl on Tue, 25. Nov 08, 02:29, edited 1 time in total.
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jimhsu77479
- Posts: 168
- Joined: Sun, 25. Nov 07, 22:39
I brought that up because this is what happened:
Sector - Njy's deception (Split border)
Invader - Boron Ray + Thresher + fighters
Patrol - One mamba
-Boron ray enters system, mamba somewhere in far corner
-Engages and destroys a rastar refinery, heavily damages a trading port, and sits there for ~10 minutes - no resistance at all
-Mamba is non-hostile towards invaders (i.e. does not turn towards the attacking fleet)
-Several minutes later, it just happens to cross paths with the invasion fleet, gets blown up by flak, and finally assault triggers.
Possibility is that it's not registering the invading fleet as hostile (even after its attacked the station).
Script is very effective when hostile (pirate/yaki/khaak/xenon) ships appear - response time is at most a few min.
Sector - Njy's deception (Split border)
Invader - Boron Ray + Thresher + fighters
Patrol - One mamba
-Boron ray enters system, mamba somewhere in far corner
-Engages and destroys a rastar refinery, heavily damages a trading port, and sits there for ~10 minutes - no resistance at all
-Mamba is non-hostile towards invaders (i.e. does not turn towards the attacking fleet)
-Several minutes later, it just happens to cross paths with the invasion fleet, gets blown up by flak, and finally assault triggers.
Possibility is that it's not registering the invading fleet as hostile (even after its attacked the station).
Script is very effective when hostile (pirate/yaki/khaak/xenon) ships appear - response time is at most a few min.
Last edited by jimhsu77479 on Tue, 25. Nov 08, 02:33, edited 1 time in total.
Yes, the skirmishes. Since Boron are not hostile to Split per default, the patrol doesn't recognize them as such. I'm using a simple "find hostiles" command in the script, for the patrol to scan for targets. Gah! Need to figure out a way around this. Ideas appreciated. Perhaps I can look for ships this ship is hostile to, as well as ships that are hostile to this ship? How to make that happen easiest?
Did the assaults correctly wipe out the invaders, in the end?
Did the assaults correctly wipe out the invaders, in the end?
Last edited by ttl on Tue, 25. Nov 08, 02:35, edited 1 time in total.
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jimhsu77479
- Posts: 168
- Joined: Sun, 25. Nov 07, 22:39
They actually survived and went on to family njy .. but yes a python or something did spawn before the invasion fleet left.
A possible idea is to run a task on "important assets" of a race, something like "get attacker" if shields < threshold or is hostile, followed by "get race" which feeds into the assault fleet spawning script.
PS I forgot how RRF worked but it handled these situations admirably. I loved it when accidental fire between some fighters escalated into a capital ship armada that cleaned out the whole system ... oh the memories.
A possible idea is to run a task on "important assets" of a race, something like "get attacker" if shields < threshold or is hostile, followed by "get race" which feeds into the assault fleet spawning script.
PS I forgot how RRF worked but it handled these situations admirably. I loved it when accidental fire between some fighters escalated into a capital ship armada that cleaned out the whole system ... oh the memories.
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ThisIsHarsh
- Posts: 1135
- Joined: Sun, 19. Oct 08, 18:46
Forgot a suggestion. It would be good if the assault ships jumped in docked to a TM (initially, then M7, M1). Even better create loaded TM (or other carrier) at nearest military base (there's a script command to find it), load it with jumpdrive and ecells and have it 'properly' jump into the sector...
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paulms1980
- Posts: 933
- Joined: Fri, 5. Mar 04, 17:23
paulms: You can have several mods installed as fake patches. They won't overlap as long as they mod different files. Thus you can run the mod here with any other mod that doesn't modify the Jobs file. Just follow the install instructions: name the mod files one higher number than the highest that is there.
In regard to Race Response Fleets, I never liked the massive and overbearing power of the response fleets, not to mention the increased CPU load. But it's a beautifully done script, if you're into that. I felt it created too massive conflicts too easily, and kept race sectors too safe, to the point of it being totally pointless for the player to defend his own assets. Which this is at a risk of doing, too. Using both (once RRF gets ported) can have unexpected consequences, as RRF at least used to hook to any capital ships flying about, thus totally breaking the logic of the assault ships, when it interlopes on one. If this can be prevented, with say a local variable on the ships, I can make this combatible with RRF, but we cross that bridge when we get there.
As for using carriers at military bases, it's possible, but not entirely simple. If I have that kind of time and will to put to this, instead of neat tricks like carriers (the ships still come in and do their job), I'd rather focus into assault logics, to do what I can to improve the hostile aspects of the Xverse. It's a fair suggestion, however, thank you.
Running scripts on every single station and then calling in assaults is unecessarily complicated. It is a way to tell invasion ships to the patrols, but it's horribly complicated, and potentially unreliable, at that. There has got to be a simpler way.
In regard to Race Response Fleets, I never liked the massive and overbearing power of the response fleets, not to mention the increased CPU load. But it's a beautifully done script, if you're into that. I felt it created too massive conflicts too easily, and kept race sectors too safe, to the point of it being totally pointless for the player to defend his own assets. Which this is at a risk of doing, too. Using both (once RRF gets ported) can have unexpected consequences, as RRF at least used to hook to any capital ships flying about, thus totally breaking the logic of the assault ships, when it interlopes on one. If this can be prevented, with say a local variable on the ships, I can make this combatible with RRF, but we cross that bridge when we get there.
As for using carriers at military bases, it's possible, but not entirely simple. If I have that kind of time and will to put to this, instead of neat tricks like carriers (the ships still come in and do their job), I'd rather focus into assault logics, to do what I can to improve the hostile aspects of the Xverse. It's a fair suggestion, however, thank you.
Running scripts on every single station and then calling in assaults is unecessarily complicated. It is a way to tell invasion ships to the patrols, but it's horribly complicated, and potentially unreliable, at that. There has got to be a simpler way.
Version 1.3 out. See OP for changes.
Next in line, the notifications to player. That will make this need a page file.
Before that, though, I'd need some feedback on how it turns out with the invasions. Please tell me how you see the patrols behave, when race vs. race invasions happen (Argon vs. Paranid and/or Split vs. Boron). Will they assault the invaders, and call for backup, as they should?
Next in line, the notifications to player. That will make this need a page file.
Before that, though, I'd need some feedback on how it turns out with the invasions. Please tell me how you see the patrols behave, when race vs. race invasions happen (Argon vs. Paranid and/or Split vs. Boron). Will they assault the invaders, and call for backup, as they should?