[3.2/2.5 MOD] X3TC Naval Shuffle 1.3.3.3/1.1: Now reasonably AP compatable

Aquitaine · Post by **Aquitaine** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 19:02

Isn't an anti-fighter M8 essentially an M6?

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 19:40

Considering that M6s can now use Flails and Ghouls, pretty much, yeah.

EDIT: Good lord.

I just started up an Argon Patriot game to do some tests on higher PAC/HEPT/CIG speeds (which I've got a feeling aren't going to work) and not even two seconds after the game emerged from its setup script-induced pause a ****-ton of Kha'ak ships jumped right into the middle of the sector.

Perhaps I should take this as some kind of message?

EDIT: Well, having Kha'ak Invasion enabled certainely didn't help. Though of the 100+ sectors they could've popped into right at the start of the game, they had to pop into mine.

lamoyja · Post by **lamoyja** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 20:36

Well, they are Kha'ak.

Did you change anything with the kha'ak aggression?

Dear god I can't hold a serious conversation while talking about Kha'ak. I'm just going to let a better man try to figure out whats going on.

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 21:45

Sorenson wrote:Considering that M6s can now use Flails and Ghouls,

Zuh? I seriously hope that you have something planned for Missile Frigates so that they don't become completely useless then. Cause if you're giving everything that can carry marines boarding pods, and M6s the capability to launch Flails/Ghouls, they're suddenly becoming an epic waste of money.

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 22:30

Shadow_Wolf33 wrote:
Sorenson wrote:Considering that M6s can now use Flails and Ghouls,
Zuh? I seriously hope that you have something planned for Missile Frigates so that they don't become completely useless then. Cause if you're giving everything that can carry marines boarding pods, and M6s the capability to launch Flails/Ghouls, they're suddenly becoming an epic waste of money.

16 missile tubes sure don't seem a waste to me. Plus I've cranked up the cooldown times for the heavy capship torpedoes - after the tweaking I've given missiles over the last few days, Firestorms and Hammerheads now take 20 seconds between shots, and Hammers and Shadows are now 15. An M6 can use Flails and Ghouls to deal with peskier fighters its guns might be too slow to hit, and anti-capship torpedoes to deal with things it's hideously outgunned by, but full-on missile frigates are the only things capable of launching mass ordinance. Just try taking a Flail'd M6 into a Kha'ak sector invasion fleet and tell me afterwards that missile frigates aree a waste with a straight face.

In other news, after getting permission from Amurph and whats-his-name currently running the ATF Shipyard script I've managed to replicate and optomize it to make a nice little somethin' to make it possible to buy Terran stations straight off the bat. Now I just have to get word back from Nividium for a base to make beam forges functional with.

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 22:34

If you can manage to balance all that and keep it all fair then you sir have a gift.

One thing I recall hearing about Terran factories is that the player is unable to link them into complexes, that might make the factory end of things a bit difficult to work with. Just thought I would mention that so it didn't interfere with anything.

Oh, and as a side note wishlist item....How about some sweet sweet Vallhalla action that's usable as a main command ship? That would definitely be sweet if you could get that big behemoth to work right.

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 22:52

I thought about enabling the Valhalla for sale, but the problem is that its sheer girth makes using it IS almost impossible - it can't dock without taking itself (or the dock) out in a giant fireball and it's so massive and slow even after the mod upgrades that it's going to be one gigantic hazard.

As for the terran station linkability, I've toyed with the idea of changing the models and scenes of the offenders to those that're known to comply, and a few of them have to be updated to their patched versions anyway (Fusion Beam forges, for example).

EDIT:

Shadow_Wolf33 wrote:If you can manage to balance all that and keep it all fair then you sir have a gift.

Not really, since my collective plans for missiles can be summed as "nerf". As long as fighters stop spawning with capital ship torpedoes I'll be happy.

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 23:01

Sorenson wrote:I thought about enabling the Valhalla for sale, but the problem is that its sheer girth makes using it IS almost impossible - it can't dock without taking itself (or the dock) out in a giant fireball and it's so massive and slow even after the mod upgrades that it's going to be one gigantic hazard.

I'm probably going to spawn one in my current universe, capture it and use it as my own personal floating headquarters. The trick is not to think of it as a regular M1/M2 but to treat it more like a 'Death Star' type entity, such that it doesn't dock with things...things dock with IT!

Also helps to be using the Advanced Jumpdrive mod, so that it doesn't need to muck around with using jumpgates.

Aquitaine · Post by **Aquitaine** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 23:27

Can the Valhalla dock with the PHQ? Perhaps you could just add Valhalla blueprints to the PHQ rather than adding it to shipyards?

I hate just spawning ships but I love the idea of the Valhalla. Never used it though.

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 23:54

Nope, just blows up like usual. Though considering that it's bigger than the PHQ, I've got half a mind to give it some limited construction capabilities, fighters and the like.

EDIT:

Shadow_Wolf33 wrote:I'm probably going to spawn one in my current universe, capture it and use it as my own personal floating headquarters. The trick is not to think of it as a regular M1/M2 but to treat it more like a 'Death Star' type entity, such that it doesn't dock with things...things dock with IT!

To be honest, though, after filling out the leftover turrets like Geekey asked for, it really isn't a good ship to use - it's got 2 gigs of shielding on the Tyr and twice the hull, but the Tyr's got superior broadsides with 16 guns versus the Valhalla's 12 and can roll twice as fast to let the other broadside in on the fun as well, and it's more than twice as fast as the Valhalla to boot.

Shadow_Wolf33 · Post by **Shadow_Wolf33** » Sat, 6. Feb 10, 23:58

Sorenson wrote:Nope, just blows up like usual. Though considering that it's bigger than the PHQ, I've got half a mind to give it some limited construction capabilities, fighters and the like.

I vote that the Goner Aran be given the 'mobile ship construction' treatment, given that it was able to do that in the past.

Vallhalla shouldn't be getting docked to ANYTHING, as far as how it is used, it should be essentially the X3 version of the Death Star in terms of how it is handled....giant floating behemoth of electric death. Fix the turret tracking problems on it, the ships docking to IT oddities, tell people to use it with the advanced jumpdrive mod, and call it a day.

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Sun, 7. Feb 10, 02:23

Huh. Well, I got good news and weird news.

The good news is that it's looking to be as easy as pie to fix the Terran stations that crash when you try to join them to a complex. I replaced the scene files for the Food Preperation facilities with those of the patched Water Purification Plants, and they hook up without a hitch. I'll start going through the patched stations to get a good idea of what'll be best to fix the old ones with, and hopefully by the update after tomorrow's they'll all be fixed.

EDIT: Hmmm, not so easy now that I've had further time to mess with it. The problem seems that even some of the patched station models bork things up when you try to complex them. Given the relatively small number of weapons, foodstuffs and missiles that the Terrans use what I might t do is determine which ones are safe and then use those exclusively per type. Besides which, some of those just look nasty, like EMPC forges.

EDIT: A-ha. The buggery patched model is that for the MAML forge, USC Small Station C Scene, and it's identical to those used by several other stations as well, including Spectre Missile factories which also cause CTDs when complexing them. I'm going to have to swap the whole lot out.

EDIT: Or perhaps not. The cheat suite's seems to be ordering stuff strangely on the Create Station menu.

The wierd news is, you know all those big domey stations that include the Water Purification ones? I thought those would be the patched ones, but it turns out they ain't - the patched ones're actually smaller and look like they'd fit in the center of the big domey ones. So why did Egosoft leave the flawed domey ones in place instead of simply replacing them with two minutes in a half-decent XML editor? In any case, I'm going to go and do just that - I won't be giving folks false impressions, no sir!

Aquitaine · Post by **Aquitaine** » Sun, 7. Feb 10, 21:26

I dunno, I think some 'official' use (within the confines of this mod) could be found for both the Aran and the Valhalla. The Aran seems to me more like a mobile PHQ - not something you'd ever take into battle. It'd be quite something if the Aran could actually function in this manner, but that's probably not possible.

The Valhalla, on the other hand, seems like it could fill the 'death star' role - mostly equipped with anti-fighter guns and perhaps one big, forward-facing anti-cap gun, and thus not something you'd want in the midst of a fleet battle but on the edges of one.

I never played with the X-tended mod for X3R - how did they handle purchasing/building the Valhalla and the Aran, if they couldn't dock with anything?

Master of the Blade · Post by **Master of the Blade** » Sun, 7. Feb 10, 21:31

The XTM valhalla was a far less wide model than the one in TC, and it looked far better- more like a mega-tyr than that abomination we have now. The Aran can still dock at stations, can't it?
And as for the functionality they had, I think that was all script-controlled. IIRC, the XTM valhalla didn't have any special features other than truly, utterly overwhelming firepower and P2P jumping, which is easy for an experienced scripter. The Aran and its shipbuilding capabilities were awesome, but I bet they were a pain to script.
(This is from an entirely uninformed view- I couldn't script to save my life.)

lamoyja · Post by **lamoyja** » Sun, 7. Feb 10, 22:45

Did you make changes to tbackgrounds? I had to delete it from your .cat file so another one of my mods wouldn't collide with yours. (the no sector fog one)

Sorenson · Post by **Sorenson** » Mon, 8. Feb 10, 00:55

Yup. I suppose it don't matter which TBackgrounds you use if you're concerned with removing fog, though, as the NS one does the same thing as that stand-alone defogger.

EDIT: You folks are re-reading the OP with each new release, right? 'cause it's not just a quick relink job at the top I'm doing, this sucker's getting updated and filled out with each new installment.

EDIT: I've not checked it directly since I usually start a new game after I do X amount of tinkering in the .pcks, but inbetween the universe changes and the ship stat changes and all that other stuff I've done this time around you're probably not going to be able to get the full effect of the mod by loading from a previous version's save. I know Shadow Wolf tried this with a 1>2 upgrade and ran into a whole buncha' messes. As I've said in the OP and several times before, this is a beta and should be treated as such, including all the cheating and debugging you can shake a script at.

Aquitaine · Post by **Aquitaine** » Mon, 8. Feb 10, 00:58

If I remove version 2 and install version 3, would that invalidate saves made with v2?

je_la_d · Post by **je_la_d** » Mon, 8. Feb 10, 01:49

So just a funny story for you as I download beta 3 ....

Auto-pilot used to be good to me.. however, after installing beta 2, I was trucking along at 412m/s,(with seta on 1000% in my terran sabre) through scale plate green doing a mission... I had forgotten to save for about an hour or so ... Anyways, I see an asteroid ahead, and the Autopilot stops the ship for 2 - 3 seconds, flips straight up, then flips back to the original direction and rams me full speed into the asteroid. I can't help but think the added speed had something to do with it

... not complaining, just a funny story.

Anyways, I love this mod... don't know why Egosoft didn't do this stuff before instead of using the same old ship speeds from 20 years back... (atleast I think thats how the storyline goes...) Seems like spaceships would be similiar to cars, 20 years go by and all the sudden the avg Joe's little budget car does 120mph instead of 85mph...

Tahlmorra · Post by **Tahlmorra** » Mon, 8. Feb 10, 02:09

Just wanted to say VERY nice mod. I have been really enjoying the increased ship speed. Took my elite at a group of 12 Ns and the way they flew past me in a cloud, electric bold chaingun rounds reaching out to blot me from the sky was reminiscent of when the jedi starfighters fly through a cloud of vulture droids at the beginning of episode three. Needless to say, it was epic.

Can't wait to see a larger battle.

Edit: Note to self: stay away from the front end of a paranid M6 (I think it was an M6) Face-fulls of flak are painful...

lamoyja · Post by **lamoyja** » Mon, 8. Feb 10, 02:16

I figured you had removed the fog in yours as well. But I like being without the space particles.

I mean seriously... how much dust is flying around in space that I'd be able to see a constant flux of particles fly by?

I like the other changes quite a bit so far, been putzing around with the new build though, started with the goner start, and I'm messing around with the a 7ate9 explorer mod at the moment so I haven't entered into a serious new game yet. (always save off your old saves before starting a new campaign...

)

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[3.2/2.5 MOD] X3TC Naval Shuffle 1.3.3.3/1.1: Now reasonably AP compatable