[SCRIPT] Group Management System

[povljr]

as a quicknote: I just want to say that the more I read through these threads forums and tutrials the more respect I have for you people who script mod and help those of us who don't (yet).
YOU GUYS DO A GREAT JOB!

Problem:
I'm getting readtext names on my ships.

I DL'd the XAI group management system and used cycrows installer.
if i select a ship
enter command menu "c"
go to general "5"
setup goup "1''
the first prompt is for fleet name / input string
whatever I type, (after the remaining prompt)s all the names of grouped ships become "readtext 7211-1000"
the only exception is when I use the special cases of
"-l" "-d" ect.
in these cases "%s(%s)%s%s" is the name of the ship

can anyone help me out?

One other question, what's the diffenece between fleet and group name?
Or are they the same?

FOLLOW UP:
okay. Problem solved. Moggy you were right. As it turns out I was using the group management system packaged with "Ultimate Cammand Pack" and this version is older. DL'ing and installing the newest one did the trick thanks again.

[John Buford]

It is fleet number and group name. Fleet numer is to differ bewtween sqaudrons in a unified task and the name is your personal preference. For Example "Rogue (group name) 1 (Fleet number) Nova V. (ship type generated automatically) lead (leader of the group)".

No idea about the random text you get.

[jlehtone]

whatever I type, (after the remaining prompt)s all the names of grouped ships become "readtext 7211-1000"

Missing the language file? Without that, the engine cannot convert variable "7211-1000" into proper string value. Without string value, the rest of the string formatting is naturally fubar.

[moggy2]

are you sure you're using the latest version available?

[John Buford]

I have installed the latest version (3.1.7 got the aknowledgment message after installation, deinstalled the older version pirior to this) but still encounter the same problem.

Ships that have been assigned to a group cannot be reassigned to a new group even id the GMS command button is manually deactivated. The setup group command does not recognize them as "free" ships. If you make them follow a ship in space the name of the new group is correctly shown, but they do not behave as if memebers of the group (no refueling, not accepting the group command "group attack target of leader" or automatically switching to "protect leader")

[jlehtone]

I tried to reasign novas that were already in another squad to a new big squad but I cannot get this to work. It is as if an old flag on the ships still asigns them to their former groups and it is not deleted when i make the new group.

But ... a ship can only be added into a group if it is not already busy doing something else, like being member of some group. They should be removed from the previous group first. You can remove single ships from a group by issuing"Setup Group" on them and setting "-u1" as fleet name. Manually stopping GMS just interrupts the script, and a script cannot do cleanup when interrupted. That is why the variables stay, and "Setup Group" looks at those variables.

I chose the "Group Attack Target.." command,

That command sets the followers of the Lead to attack the target of the Lead. When Lead picks up a target, whole group (or as many as you designed) will attack. Thus, you need to give the Lead an attack command to see any action. A group with 5--9 members with followers set 50/50 to Protect Lead/Attack Target of Lead is very efficient.

[John Buford]

You can remove single ships from a group by issuing"Setup Group" on them and setting "-u1" as fleet name. Manually stopping GMS just interrupts the script, and a script cannot do cleanup when interrupted. That is why the variables stay, and "Setup Group" looks at those variables.

This is exactly what I was looking for. This is not written in the readme or the description on the xaicorp site is it? Or have I been blind? I knew that some remnant script parts kept me from creating new groups out of already assigned ships but I was not aware of the -u1 name for stopping these. Thanks, I'll check that out asap.

That command sets the followers of the Lead to attack the target of the Lead. When Lead picks up a target, whole group (or as many as you designed) will attack. Thus, you need to give the Lead an attack command to see any action. A group with 5--9 members with followers set 50/50 to Protect Lead/Attack Target of Lead is very efficient.

Yap, I know that, I only put the the command as an example. You see if you do not delete the old group correctly as you kindly described above, the ships will not accept new group orders, no matter what you tell them to do. YOu can manually assign them new orders like follow, but they will not refuel or react to group commands and/or hotkeys.

Edit: Ok I AM blind, it was in the readme all along and I just did not recognize the conncetion between my problem and the line there. To think I am bugging Doc. Xai for like two weeks now with this. Very sorry bout that.

[jlehtone]

This is not written in the readme or the description on the xaicorp site is it?

The '-u1' was added in version 1.6 (included readme does tell it), and behaviour of '-u' changed around there as well.

There are still couple known bugs, but I hope Dr. X has time for them.

[John Buford]

Yes indeed, I am much humbled. To my defense it is not directly correlated to awkward group behaviour but written in the lower section as if it was a bonus feature. Once you pointed me to it it all became clear.

But a "real" bug is if you give any ship out of a group a manual order (like attack this target) it will "break" this ship out of the group aswell and you would have to -u1 and reasign it aswell. Doesn't matter, I am happy because I can now reassign so many ships this night.

[jlehtone]

But a "real" bug is if you give any ship out of a group a manual order (like attack this target) it will "break" this ship out of the group aswell

When a manual order given to any member of the group completes, the ship reverts to "None", and after a short delay (looks like up to minute) the GMS running in the aux slot will replace that with the default command (Protect or "Attack target of lead" for member and "Attack All" for the lead). Naturally, if the manual command is one of those "infinites", like "Standby", "Collect Wares in sector", etc, then this obviously cannot happen. That works fine.

There is a bug that is the Lead of the group dies, its (automatic) successor has wrong default command.

[John Buford]

Ok that does it. I am reinstalling, I must have some serious gremlin infestation in my installation. Thanks for being patient with me.

[John Buford]

After installing the latest version of this script everything works as intended and I am a happy camper! I love this script, I think it is one of the most useful ones out there.

What I'd really wish for was a functionality that every configuration of the leading ship was copied to the group memebers. So you could equip the leader with desired weapons/upgrades/commands/homebase and inventory, then create a group and all following ships will become a "clone" of the leading ship. Right now I am doing this manually (quipping a full carrier squadron takes forever and is very repetative). I am not scared using my ships in battles moneywise, but I fear the work involved in replacing their equipment .

[jlehtone]

Try the FSUP, another great product from XaiCorp. It can equip the fleet quite easily. Only the tunings need manual ship by ship attention.

Homebase setting gets copied from Lead to escorts on Setup Group.

[wanderer]

Hello moggy2,

on page 1 of the this thread:

...but can you assign a group to like, all docked ships for instance?

When setting up a group you specify how many ships from the pool of docked ships to become members of the group. You could set this number to the number of ships docked and it'd add all of them.

I have 10 ships (M3 and M3+) on a raptor carrier. All set the carrier as homebase. Now I want to assign them into a group. Herby I chose on the carrier the command setup group.
I name it 'BG', set '1' as Fleet number, '11' as ship count, and 'ship' as selection.

Now the carrier gets renamed 'BG1 ...' this is correct. Also it now have an active task GMS running. But the docked ships - none and nothing.

So question how to assign the 10 landed ships to the group?

Also, I have 2 M6 escorting the carrier, with other homebases. This ships I didn't wan't to asssign to the group.

Question: Howe to do it?

It seems not working. I had a look inside the code 'plugin.Xai.grp.gms.setupGrp.core'. And there I didn't found anything about landed ships.

regards

[moggy2]

Hello moggy2,

on page 1 of the this thread:

...but can you assign a group to like, all docked ships for instance?

When setting up a group you specify how many ships from the pool of docked ships to become members of the group. You could set this number to the number of ships docked and it'd add all of them.

I have 10 ships (M3 and M3+) on a raptor carrier. All set the carrier as homebase. Now I want to assign them into a group. Herby I chose on the carrier the command setup group.
I name it 'BG', set '1' as Fleet number, '11' as ship count, and 'ship' as selection.

Now the carrier gets renamed 'BG1 ...' this is correct. Also it now have an active task GMS running. But the docked ships - none and nothing.

So question how to assign the 10 landed ships to the group?

Also, I have 2 M6 escorting the carrier, with other homebases. This ships I didn't wan't to asssign to the group.

Question: Howe to do it?

It seems not working. I had a look inside the code 'plugin.Xai.grp.gms.setupGrp.core'. And there I didn't found anything about landed ships.

regards

That's not quite how it works.
To create a group out of the M3's and M3+ run the setup command on one of the fighter's, not the carrier.

if you want one group including the carrier then you'll have to order the fighters to launch and follow the carrier. To select just the M3 and M3+ you'll need to use the class filter when running the command.

[t-master]

is there any ability to select the ships for an group on your own
and not through choosing only a filter and the script selects the fighters?

[jlehtone]

Set the ships you want to follow the leader first. Then create group.

[Kraz]

Hey guys,

I've installed several of the Xai corp. scripts such as the Fleet Support Software and all of the GMS scripts, and I see the equipment for sale and the added menu commands for a few; however, I only see the Group: Attack/protect commands under 'General Commands'. I can't for the life of me figure out how to create a group. It sounds silly and I feel rather stupid, but I've read through the Ego forums on the script and on the Xai Corp site (including the readme) and it just says "run the command on the lead ship..." So my question is: where in the command menu and what parameters need to be met to see the group management commands?

I see the Mosquito Missile defence commands under Additional Ship Commands, but that's it. I have enabled the script editor. I unzipped all of the GMS scripts into my X3 dir per the installation instructions - have I overlooked something? Does this script need the EMP to work correctly?

Thanks,

Kraz

EDIT: Dr. Xai responded in the Xai Corp forums. Thanks anyway!

EDIT2: Sorry, here is some additional info - problem is not resolved yet. It seems there may be a clash with another script, so here is a list of what I'm running if anyone has any insight:

Explorer Software
Missile Defense Mosquito
GCO
GMS
FixAttackCommand
Gcc
Ghk
Fleet Support Ship

The Callback Cockpit Mod

Under the General Commands section of one of my busters, set as a wingman with FightMK2 software installed I see :
1 Group: Attack...
2 Group: Attack All
3 Group: Protect...

Under Additional Ship Commands (both one and two) I see:

1 None
2 Weapon System: Missile Defense mosquito
3 Weapon System: Missile Defense mosquito convoy insight:

[Central]

Hello moggy2,
Great work with your Group Management System.
i would like to show you some ideas i have worked out.
first of all i have to say that i'm german, so i apologize for maby bad english.
now:

i have some more new and adjusted commands in addition to the existing "Setup Group command" and so on.

1. setup group (groupname, groupnumber, shipcount, shiptype)
2. remove ship from group (any member-ship of a group)
3. append ship to group (any ship)
4. disband group (any member-ship or the leader of a group)
5. choose new group leader (any member-ship of a group)
6. select group (any member-ship or the leader of a group)
7. add group to Selection (any member-ship or the leader of a group)

not a command:
8-13. assign hotkey 1-6 to Selection (no arguments needed)

I think the command-names are self-explanatory but i explain them just to be shure.

1. setup group
original script but without the assignation of a hotkey
this means that the groups are defined, they have a name and a groupnumber but no hotkey yet (im not shure if the combination of group-name and -number should be indexed, so that there are no duplicates)

2. remove ship form group
this command expects you to select any ship which is assigned to a group
(maybe you should get an error-message if it's not)
it removes the ship from its current group

3. append ship to group
(im not quite shure if this command is useful because then you an add ships of different shiptypes to groups)
this command expects you to select any ship A and any ship B which is memer or leader of a group. from ship B you will get the groupnumber to which ship A will be appended.
if the ship A is alredy member of a group it will be removed from this group and assigned to the new one.
if the ship A is leader of a group the two groups will be joined.

4. disband group
this command expects you to select any ship which is member or leader of a group. the whole group will be disbanded

5. choose new group leader
expects you to select any ship which is member (not leader) of a group.
the selected ship will be the new group leader (don’t know how your script reacts when the group leader is killed)
If the old leader is still alive he will get demoted to member of the group

6. select group
this command expects you to select any ship which is member or leader of a group.
this is not like selecting a group by pressing a hotkey, but more like selecting a couple of ships with the mouse like it is in strategy-games.
with this command the last selection gets lost and you select a new group.
(for instance you have selected group 1. now you select group 2, finally you have only selected only group 2)

7 add group to selection
this command expects you to select any ship which is member or leader of a group.
same as before but here you add a group to the current selection, this means that you have selected more than one group.
(for instance you have selected group 1. now you select group 2, finally you have selected group 1 AND 2. maybe next time you select group 4 with this command, then you have selected groups 1, 2 and 4)

8-13 assign hotkey 1-6 to selection
now the intention of the commands 6 and 7 is as follows:
if you have one or more groups selected you can now give them a shortcut so that you can select them by pressing the shortcut next time.
I think that makes it easier to change hotkeys for the groups.
For instance you can select groups 1 and 3 (with command 7) then giving them the shortcut 1 (by command
you can select for example groups 2 and 4 (also with command 7) then giving them for example shortcut 3 (by command 10)
So you can change shortcuts without having to change the groups.

hope you like my ideas.

[jlehtone]

@Central: Command slots tend to be a precious commodity. But some of those ideas are, IMO, interesting.