[X3LU] Small Improvements and Fixes

[Zaitsev]

sounds like a scavengers dream though

LU is a scavenger's dream already, especially with Joubarbe's Satellite Monitoring script. You'll run into rep issues before you run into money issues, unless you're aiming for that 400 XXL SCH right off the bat.

[dizzy]

<back from a 2 weeks vacation>

Very cool stuff people talking about on this thread! I may actually consider doing a disable missile alarm sound mod, but I guess that's not a LU mod but a general X3 & X3AP one. I guess I should fix any known bugs in my mod before that happens, like the outdated freighter script bugs...

[Joelnh]

<back from a 2 weeks vacation>

Very cool stuff people talking about on this thread! I may actually consider doing a disable missile alarm sound mod, but I guess that's not a LU mod but a general X3 & X3AP one. I guess I should fix any known bugs in my mod before that happens, like the outdated freighter script bugs...

you could do both... small tweaks and improvements here and there.
to give yourself a break from the bigger ones.

I am looking into how to change the salvager ships into Phanon.
if they get the ship, they move it to nearest shipyard and sell it. that money gets added to their account.

this gives players a ship we can literally fight to get salvage with and gives phanon the chance to grow faster.

not having much luck yet, since my scripting knowledge is basic.

[ltdan81]

Sweet collection you've made

Is it possible to add an option for direct deposit to go to another station? I was thinking i"ve seen that in another mod somewhere but cant remember where.

[ltdan81]

This is an awesome collection to add to LU.

On the total assets menu, would it be possible to add marines? I believe 8400 credits per skill point is close to what their worth.

Also, ships are listed with their "retail' value... wouldn't the player sell value be more suiting? Same for stations. (maybe note the retail cost in line to make it easier to decide whats worth keeping and what should be sold)
This would give a 'cash out' value which is of what I'm interested knowing.

[JSDD]

minefield script would be cool.

any way laser towers and mines you own can be hidden on the main map ?

... mines are already hidden on the map if there arent yours, lasertowers (as well as any other objects) can be hidden like the aran, using mission director script: <set_hidden object="..." hidden="1"/>

[zanosg]

How about making sectors much more bigger? I know that sectors are huge (2000KM I believe),but all stations, ships and what not are stuck in this tiny space between the gates. Its very unrealistic IMO. Maybe make gates 400-500 KM apart? I know some people would whine about traveling so long but that is real space, its huge. One way to fix this would be to let ships have unlimited speed. They would just take forever to accelerate to that speed. So M2 would take (for example) 50 time longer to reach 200m/s compared to a fighter.

Ideally I would love to see just a dozen of sectors but they would be much much bigger and just have one gate in the middle somewhere (call it a wormhole or something along those lines). Sectors would be so big that you could have enemies in all corners and not ever know it. You would also be able to drop jump beacons close to your stations. This is one thing I miss about x games. When I started playing it (reunion) I spent hours in The Hole sector looking for gates. Space just seemed endless.

[dizzy]

Yeah, I was thinking that a mod like that would completely change the feel of the game, space will again feel large and overwhelming and dangerous, never know what to expect in the far corners of the sector. Setting the maximum speed of ships to very high values but leaving acceleration to be relatively small compared to that (and of course more agile ships accelerate faster) would do the trick. There are things to consider like how that affects the NPC economy (and your own traders and their trade runs) and there are possible solutions with dropping jump beacons close to any station cluster in the sector.

But such a project is a big undertaking and would be very independent of this thread which talks about a minimal set of changes to LU

[Idleking]

I also made a similar suggestion in vucika's remap thread.
He just said 'Litcube increased sector sizes a few patches ago'

[..]
Setting the maximum speed of ships to very high values but leaving acceleration to be relatively small compared to that (and of course more agile ships accelerate faster) would do the trick.
[..]

Oh dear, nope. Nope nope nope. Just nope.
Seriously. I know the integration of Bounce did a whole lot of good for the overall gameplay, but .. nope.
The only thing high speeds and low accelerations would do is to kill every ship flown by the vanilla AP autopillock, ever.
Try sitting in a max. tuned Kestrel and approach an Ore or Silicon mine from the opposite side of the docking clamps and let the Autopilot do the flying.
And we're not even talking about bulkier ships with close to non-existent turn rates here.

I like the idea of higher 'travelling speeds', Freelancer had that implemented with a special engine, rebirth got the highways and I'm sure there are other examples. But I don't think the X3 autopilot could reliably handle that.

[zanosg]

I also made a similar suggestion in vucika's remap thread.
He just said 'Litcube increased sector sizes a few patches ago'

[..]
Setting the maximum speed of ships to very high values but leaving acceleration to be relatively small compared to that (and of course more agile ships accelerate faster) would do the trick.
[..]

Oh dear, nope. Nope nope nope. Just nope.
Seriously. I know the integration of Bounce did a whole lot of good for the overall gameplay, but .. nope.
The only thing high speeds and low accelerations would do is to kill every ship flown by the vanilla AP autopillock, ever.
Try sitting in a max. tuned Kestrel and approach an Ore or Silicon mine from the opposite side of the docking clamps and let the Autopilot do the flying.
And we're not even talking about bulkier ships with close to non-existent turn rates here.

I like the idea of higher 'travelling speeds', Freelancer had that implemented with a special engine, rebirth got the highways and I'm sure there are other examples. But I don't think the X3 autopilot could reliably handle that.

If a ship sees a station in its radar have it slow down enough to reasonable speeds so that it can dock properly. Thats all. If it flies at 5000KM/h and crashes into the station so be it. I would love the game to mimic the real space like that. As I have said, to me these gates and tiny patches of space between them are just very unrealistic. I know I can fly my ship around as much as I want but there is simply nothing out there but empty space.

[Joelnh]

I am going to try to tweak auction station.
so that instead of the station being destroyed, it changes ownership to the sector owner.

Oh, and if you want big sectors, the terran ones are big as well as having huge stations. I try to avoid them for that reason.

[Idleking]

Oh dear, in my more or less alcohol induced sleep deprived state I've been when I wrote that, I seem to have missed some aspects I initially wanted to add to my previous post

I totally like the idea of having bigger sectors and faster ships (M2s with ~30 m/s anyone *yawn*).
I just think it doesn't work with how the vanilla autopilot flys ships in its current state.

[zanosg]

Oh dear, in my more or less alcohol induced sleep deprived state I've been when I wrote that, I seem to have missed some aspects I initially wanted to add to my previous post

I totally like the idea of having bigger sectors and faster ships (M2s with ~30 m/s anyone *yawn*).
I just think it doesn't work with how the vanilla autopilot flys ships in its current state.

lol awesome

[ltdan81]

The improved ship placement for MLCC assist is absolutely amazing...
*tip* keeping the formation setting on your ships to "the shield" keeps escorts in their relative postilion instead of maneuvering around for five minutes after giving the go code.

In my fleet I have 9 Marauders which always form a perfect circle in front of me, they are equipped with 8 IBL main guns... this results in the proverbial death ray that will nearly insta-kill M2's... add to that a circle of Atlas's around them and all the M8's and M6's grouped perfectly in the middle...

^^^ That setup will kill an OCV T in about 10 seconds when called in at about 20 - 15km

I am having one small issue though and I'm not sure if it's cause with these scripts or if it's a vanilla bug, so I'll mention it here first.
MLCC is ingoring config settings for interceptions, I have tried everything I can think of and it still insists on sending an Atlas aftter a Xenon N! Lol
Also it seems to prefer my Aquatas which I don't want sent, while ignoring my Macannas which are setup for destroying fighters (PSG's mounted on main and front turrets)
After running through the configurations, I've called all ships to an assit, issued the retreat and restock commands hoping that would force updates, but it hasn't worked.

[dizzy]

The improved ship placement for MLCC assist is absolutely amazing...
*tip* keeping the formation setting on your ships to "the shield" keeps escorts in their relative postilion instead of maneuvering around for five minutes after giving the go code.

In my fleet I have 9 Marauders which always form a perfect circle in front of me, they are equipped with 8 IBL main guns... this results in the proverbial death ray that will nearly insta-kill M2's... add to that a circle of Atlas's around them and all the M8's and M6's grouped perfectly in the middle...

^^^ That setup will kill an OCV T in about 10 seconds when called in at about 20 - 15km

Thanks for the feedback! I loved developing that change, when I placed 100 M6s in a perfect disc for the first time, it just looked so awesome, almost felt like filming it.

I am having one small issue though and I'm not sure if it's cause with these scripts or if it's a vanilla bug, so I'll mention it here first.
MLCC is ingoring config settings for interceptions, I have tried everything I can think of and it still insists on sending an Atlas aftter a Xenon N! Lol
Also it seems to prefer my Aquatas which I don't want sent, while ignoring my Macannas which are setup for destroying fighters (PSG's mounted on main and front turrets)
After running through the configurations, I've called all ships to an assit, issued the retreat and restock commands hoping that would force updates, but it hasn't worked.

I too always had issues with MLCC interceptions that I didn't actually try to use them a lot but I think there's a very small chance for those issues to be related to my changes because I haven't changed the interception scripts (most of my MLCC changes are about the assault script and the configuration script to add some additional target options for attack/bombing tasks). Never spent time investigating the Interception issues, otherwise I would have written a fix or two

[dizzy]

Updated Small Improvements and Fixes to r4 with the long promised Freighter regression fix for the Percentage calculation fix and some updates to the Total asset value report.

[BlackArchon]

Hi memeics,

I just used the r4 installer and it still lists "Total asset value v0.8 (*beta*)" and "Percentage calculation fix... v1.0". So is the installer really updated?

[dizzy]

yeah, they should be, I just forget to update the texts in the installer... too long time since I made a build heh. Thanks for letting me know, updating the texts now.

EDIT: Replaced the installer with one that has the fixed installation texts.

[BlackArchon]

Thank you!

[BlackArchon]

Hm, is that a problem that looks familiar? I'm running the latest version 4 of your scripts from this thread and LU 1.5.2.

http://imgur.com/VH6RESX

Currently my HQ has 78,031 units of Ore and my Ore SCH has 181,359 units of it.

Edit:
This was probably related to me restarting the freighter command while it had already its cargo bay full of another ware and was on its way home to my HQ. I did this because I wanted the freighter to update its name (after I renamed my HQ).