[script] Improved Races (r14 RC2 Available)

[Alkeena]

however, does Terran really hate Argon?

Nah, terrans are xenophobic. The distrust, fear, and hate everyone but themselves.
Well, except for ATF. They don't make an exception for their own race.

They're that way with good reason. They were right on the brink of extinction with the last xenon conflict...A fate that was only narrowly avoided by destroying the Earth gate.

Fastforward a couple hundred years and some little punk opens up a gate right next to Earth while a battle rages with a truly xenophobic (with their own reasons...) and murderous foe...I'd suggest that a little caution might be warranted. Add to that the apparent Argon Involvement at the outset of TC in bringing Xenon fleets back to the solar system and you might be inclined to mistrust your long lost brothers as well.

The Terrans have, I believe, been the closest to utter annihilation out of all the species. Can you really blame them for being protective of the homeworld?

[mr.WHO]

I have a small idea for Hot War, which is adequate to you modularity of mod settings:


====Hot War====
if enabled open a submenu:
*Argon
*Teladi
*Pirate
*Xenon
* etc.
if a species is selected, open another submenu with relations to other race:

for Example Argon:
*Boron: Allies
*Pirate: Hostile
*Paranid: Cold war
*Terran: Neutral
*Teladi: Friendly
*Player: ? -I don't have a specific idea for this, as it could interfere with reputation system. Maybe someone would have an idea how to make a good use of this to enchance vanilla reputation system.
*etc.

In this menu you can switch between: Hostile, Cold War, Neutral, Friendly, allies.


Important: possible small bug, if you use this idea, remember to chain the relations beween two races. I mean, if you go into Argon menu,and select "Teladi - Hostile", then - automaticaly, in Teladi menu, Argon will change to Hostile.

Also, I think that two races that have "Allies" status - should share "hostile" and "Allies" relations automatically.

For example, if you set that Argons are allied to Boron, and then you set that borons are hostile to split, then Argons would become hostile to Split automatically.

I opt for sharing "Allies" status to avoid stupid situations like:
Argons-> allied to Boron, cold war with Teladi.
Borons-> allied to Argons and Teladi.
Then we set tha Teladi are in war with Terran. Borrons that are allied, will switch to war with Terran, with that, Argons will switch to war with Terran despite that they are in Cold war with Teladi.


Relations behavior:

>> Hostile: simple, shoot on sight in any sector owned by base race (I mean If you go into Argon setting, and select: Pirate - hostile, every pirate that enter Argon sector will be hunted), base race will launch regular invasions. Base race might attack selected race in thirdparty territory.


>> Cold War: Race is not in regular war, but any mililitary ship that enter into base race core sector will be fire upon. Race might launch a small fighter invasions into oponents territory - something like specops / intel attacks. Base race might attack selected race in thirdparty territory, but only with small fighter force with M6 max - something like small skirmisches, not intended by goverment, put provoked by line soldiers.

>> Neutral: everyone ignore everyone....everywhere.

>> Friendly: if selected race will be attacked in base race territory, base race will send a help of any kind and size. In thirdspace territory base race might send a small fighter force with/or M6 to help friendly IF the attacker isn't Friendly (if attacker is hostile or cold war it will be attacked, if attacker is alled to base race, then friendly race will become hostile race automatically, so there will be no help. If attacker is neutral - well you se that a stranger you don't know/care attack you friend on a street, you will most likely take a side of friend. IF attacker is friend and attack your other friend then you will try not to jump into battle).

>> Allied: Base race will try to help selected race in every way in any territory.
If selected race will be attacked in thirdspace, base race will come to help.
If selected race territory is attacked, base race might send a fleet to help.
If selected race is attacking a hostile (hostile, NOT cold War attack) base race might also send a help.


Side note:
1) About thirdspace territory actions of any kind. I don't mean a script that actively seek to send any help from base race territory, to thirdspace, to aid /attack selected race. I mean a PASSIVE script, example:
Argons set to be a friendly to Teladi and hostile to Paranid.
Teladi ship is attacked by Paranid in Boron sector. Then the script activate to check if there are any Argon ships in that sector. If yes, then script run a "propability check" (I mean a percentage chance that the Argon ships in this sector will come for aid or attack cold war enemy. % can be hardcoded, for example 20%, OR - you can add another button to set a % by player himself). Such script could be set to activate once per...5 or more minutes, and make it run sector by sector - to reduce CPU load that could be big if the script would check whole universe at once.

2) About Cold War attack script - again, I would like to make it as passive as possible to reduce CPU load. Such cold war strike would enable by spawning small strike force in cold war race Core sector and set to attack anything or attack specific station / capship and jump away. I opt for core sector because of Cold War race behavior ( attack in core, ignore in border), if attack would occure in border sector, then it would require another script that would enable "check sector for CW invaders". The point 1) serch script would work, but let say:
In Paranid border sector, "thirdspace search" script just started. Then Argon CW strike jump in and attack. Because the script just passed, the Argons wil roam unopposed for next 5 minutes, till the script run again.
In core sector, they will be shot upon without any additiona script.

[Yacek]

I have a small idea for Hot War...

very good idea

[7ate9tin11s]

I have a small idea for Hot War...

Most of this is already in the new version with the hot war editor:
Hot war summary
[ external image ]
Terran Editor
[ external image ]

I do not want to alter the major friend/foe relations between races since it can break quests and mess up trading. I think Cycrows cheats will let you do that if needed though.

/Yes, it still needs a bit of polish

[Life Bringer]

Do you think will be possible with hot war enabled to have any race (argon, boron etc) allied together against xenon or kha'ak?

[kelmen]

questions:

1. does Xenon and Khaak fighter each other as well?
2. Will AI force claim Unknown Sector?
3. if I/Race claim all Xenon sectors, does this mean Xenon is game over. how about if this happened to Khaak and other race?

[7ate9tin11s]

Do you think will be possible with hot war enabled to have any race (argon, boron etc) allied together against xenon or kha'ak?

The hot war editor only lists changeable relations, in normal x3tc the Argon and Boron will attack the Xenon and Kha'ak on sight and will even try to invade and take their sectors.

1. does Xenon and Khaak fighter each other as well?
2. Will AI force claim Unknown Sector?
3. if I/Race claim all Xenon sectors, does this mean Xenon is game over. how about if this happened to Khaak and other race?

1. Yes, it is fun to watch and the Kha'ak usually win with even forces.

2. Xenon and Kha'ak will always claim unknown sectors. Other races can, but only if there is no enemy sector to attack. For example, the Yaki will take Savage Spur, but the Paranid will prefer to attack Cloudbase South-West instead of Savage Spur. I chose this way to emphasize that the sector is unknown and unreported to the main races, but the Xenon scan with machine efficiency and the Kha'ak just pop up anywhere.

3. Basically no, but for different reasons:
Xenon - The base x3tc job engine will always spawn Xenon is sectors that were originally owned by the Xenon. However, if you take out all the Xenon stations it will end all IX activity.
Kha'ak - In r13 or before the Kha'ak are the same way as the Xenon so killing all Kha'ak stations stops IK. In r14, whenever I release it, the Kha'ak use bases as forward attack posts and there is no way to beat them completely, they will continue to spawn bases and try to take sectors forever.
Vanilla Races - Vanilla races have the same problem as the Xenon and Kha'ak in that their ships are controlled by the jobs engine and will continue to respawn in their original sectors even if it is now owned by you. However, unlike the Xenon and Kha'ak you do cause a special event by taking over the last sector owned by a race. Strangely it is a positive event and not a negative, I must have been sick that day or something .

If you use a mod which prevents military respawns you could probably completely take out a race, but I do not know of any mods which do that (Please note that having no forces of a race in the universe could cause strange IR behavior too!)

[djrygar]

*Player: ? -I don't have a specific idea for this, as it could interfere with reputation system. Maybe someone would have an idea how to make a good use of this to enchance vanilla reputation system.
*etc.

I had this idea:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 44#3015144

I think, not hard to do and would be awesome with Hot War

[Grizzlor]

Khaak carrier spawned in Light of Heart and killed my Panther and all its fighters. I didn't get any notifications, and the message log just said "your [ship] was destroyed in sector Light of Heart" instead of the expected "your [ship] was destroyed in sector Light of Heart by Khaak Carrier"

what's up with that?

[djrygar]

"Split assault forces assembled in Family Nji to attack Split in Scale Plate Green"

huh ? Im getting messages like this from time to time (hot war disabled)

Why Split cleared Scale Plate of Xenons in the first place? This is teladi sector, so teladi should do it.

[da_pro]

I got Kha'ak everywhere, every fith sector has at least a M6 some even 3 or more Kha'ak M2. Improved Kha'ak on normal, P2P off because its way to OP (Kha'ak are already stronger then the rest due to Kyons).
Should'nt they thake over sectors one by one? Or is this some sort of galactic invasion?

I have several Military Fleets camping in the universe. They are just standing still and do not respond on enemeys until they are directly attacked. E.g. there is a argon Titan with a wing of 15 Fighters in Trantor. I also found a huge boron fleet (3 M2, 1 M7, 5 M6) camping in a boron coresector. Is this normal?

Also the vanilla races are very slow in responding to a threat or taking over sectors. No jumpdrive usage by them.

Also the Counterstrikes displayed in the IR menu are weird. It says that a Terran Katana is leading a force in moon sector but there are no enemys in this sector (it belonged to the terrans all the time). OFF counterstrikes are displayed in argon military sector. Should they not jump to Kha'ak territory?

[Grizzlor]

I have several Military Fleets camping in the universe. They are just standing still and do not respond on enemeys until they are directly attacked. E.g. there is a argon Titan with a wing of 15 Fighters in Trantor. I also found a huge boron fleet (3 M2, 1 M7, 5 M6) camping in a boron coresector. Is this normal?

I have the same problem with tons of guardian and response fleets just sitting around doing nothing. I was having CPU issues (laggy SETA) so I started turning stuff off to see what would happen, and now with all features disabled and having run Clean Universe twice over the course of ~3 hours, all those fleets are still sitting in core sectors doing nothing.

it's like the script lost ownership of them somehow so they do nothing and are immune to Clean Universe.

[7ate9tin11s]

Most likely you did not install the required AL Libraries, I have put a check in the new version but there is no way for me to remove the old ships without the possible killing of unrelated ships.

As for the new version, the Xenon are giving me a little trouble, but I have tracked down the problem and should have a release version up in a bit

/Testing testing testing...

[7ate9tin11s]

Not the official release, this is Release Candidate 2 for r14. I have not found anymore bugs but the difficulty seems a bit rough. Please give me some feedback

Download:
SPK: http://www.filefront.com/14521535/Impro ... %20r14.spk
Zip: http://www.filefront.com/14521539/Impro ... %20r14.zip

Those upgrading from RC1 to RC2 need to run a reinstall from the menu to activate all changes.

r14 Major Changes
New Kha'ak AI!
Invasion Method
The Kha'ak have began to deploy forward assault bases throughout the universe. These bases are built outside of normal (unmodded) sensor range and appear to have several dangerous capabilities including:
1. They are armed with launchers for the newly discovered Fang class torpedo.
2. Rapidly building...or spawning...smaller Kha'ak fighter craft.
3. Combining smaller Kha'ak craft into larger capital ships
4. Building and deploying deadly new Kha'ak guardians around the sector.
5. Emitting a stealth field which hide both the base and nearby friendly ships from recon drone sensors
6. Acting as a jump beacon to bring in Kha'ak response forces

Thankfully the number of forward bases the Kha'ak can field appears to be limited and base deployed Kha'ak have unique behaviors which helps to identify sectors where a base may be hiding. Finding the bases is a bit troublesome though

New Ship Behavior
Kha'ak ships have been seen acting a bit differently and they seem to have undergone some technological upgrades. Primarily we have seen:
1. When destroyed IR Kha'ak ships now break apart into their constituent fighter components. A destroyer may break apart into a corvette or two and several smaller fighters, while a fighter may break into a scout. Finishing off a Kha'ak swarm is messy business.
2. The Kha'ak p2p jumping technology has changed quite a bit. While you are in the same sector you will see the Kha'ak ship flash out of existence and your computer will generate several jump traces to help you see where the destination will be and the time it will take. If you get lucky you can destroy the ship in transit too! Your boardcomputer will warn you if you appear to be the target of a p2p jump as well.
3. Kha'ak Carriers no longer carry fighters, they carry and generate the deadly Fang class torpedo. Carriers have also been seen to act as missile screens and will protect themselves and nearby Kha'ak from missiles.
4. Kha'ak Guardians, the immobile spheroid ships, have been seen blockading gates and protecting Kha'ak stations. They both defend Kha'ak forces from missiles and launch flurries of Thorn missiles at enemy ships. While guardians are relatively weak, they break apart into a somewhat dangerous swarm of ships when destroyed so be prepared!

Kha'ak Fang Torpedo
The Fang torpedo is a smart, self contained Kha'ak weapon system built into the chassis of a scout-class fighter. Like a Tempest missile it will change targets if the original target is destroyed. It also uses an unstable reactor core which continually increases output causing the torpedo to increase in speed as time goes by. Unlike normal missiles the Fang can detonate in several ways depending on the situation:
1. When destroyed the Fang emits a small explosion that is only a threat to nearby small fighter craft. Much like a standard anti-matter mine.
2. In single-target mode the Fang will self destruct on a collision course bathing a ship in an antimatter inferno. This causes heavy damage to the targeted craft along with significant area damage that is dangerous to lethal for all fighter craft. When single targeting a fighter craft the torpedo will decrease the single target damage to increase the area damage range.
3. When the torpedo senses a swarm of small craft it will decompose into a swarm of missiles to take out smaller drone and m5 craft swarms.
4. When area damage would kill too many allies, or it just feels like it, the fang can focus its energies into generating an emp burst which will damage shields, weapon system energy, and even temporarily freeze a ships conventional engine.

New Xenon AI!
Researchers have recently noted the Xenon are acting quite differently and have termed this these new activities as the 'genocide ai'. Instead of defending their sectors the Xenon are holding back small response forces while focusing on taking new sectors as quickly as possible. There are no more 'invasions' floods of ships have been seen pouring out of gates throughout the commonwealth. Ship behavior seems to be nearly the same, but the Xenon carriers have begun to mimic commonwealth carrier behavior with the smarter fighter targeting and missile defenses.

New Options
Universal
1. Hot War Editor - The hot war editor can be found in the primary menu screen when hot war is enabled. This will let you shift the race relations of neutral and nearly neutral races so they will be friends or foes in the hot war system. This will also let you change the way races view you if you are nearly neutral with them, very useful so you can start the terran quests as most starts have you being a neutral, but hot war enemy, of the terrans.
2. Smarter Carriers - Codea light if you know of that mod. Carriers will send fighters out in relation to their targets strength and will have active missile defenses.
3. Rewards - You can set the magnitude of the rewards given for killing IR ships or even turn them off. Note that reputation rewards will be given for the original owner of a sector. So if you kill the Split in a sector that used to be Boron you will gain rep with the Boron, lose rep with the Split and get paid for it! The rewards are also given when any of your ships makes the kills, even when not in your sector. Non-IR ships will not give rewards.

Xenon
1. Genocide Limiter Base - This is a technical option that changes the base number of ships IX should expect to see in the universe. The default of 500 is good for x3tc, but you may have to move it up or down for custom universes or the presence of other scripts/mods which change the number of Xenon in the universe.
2.Ignore Reduced Fighters - This will let the Xenon ignore the reduced fighters universal option so they will build fighters while the vanilla races will not.

r14 RC2 Changes
1. Removed debug message from Xenon stations
2. Improved Xenon ship building randomization
3. Slowed down Kha'ak ship production
4. Lowered Kha'ak response force pool
5. Standard pirate bases now have response forces like Anarchy ports
6. Recon drones have a 5% chance to pierce Kha'ak cloaking field
7. Due to their fear of the Kha'ak, other races will use larger counterstrike forces against them

[Corn Chex]

Nothing there!

[7ate9tin11s]

Nothing there!

Hmmm...odd they show in my files but not in the public view...ok fixed by using a different host.

[@fon]

New Xenon AI!
Researchers have recently noted the Xenon are acting quite differently and have termed this these new activities as the 'genocide ai'. Instead of defending their sectors the Xenon are holding back small response forces while focusing on taking new sectors as quickly as possible. There are no more 'invasions' floods of ships have been seen pouring out of gates throughout the commonwealth. Ship behavior seems to be nearly the same, but the Xenon carriers have begun to mimic commonwealth carrier behavior with the smarter fighter targeting and missile defenses.

Is this new Xenon AI different from the previous versions? Or it's an option(because of the Genocide AI name)

[7ate9tin11s]

Is this new Xenon AI different from the previous versions? Or it's an option(because of the Genocide AI name)

It is the finalized version of the previous genocide ai beta, and not optional

[djrygar]

OMG OMG! thank you!!!!!!

I checked everyday for R14 and there it is. Alleluja!
Saturday! Double alleluja!


but wait.. what will happen now to my weapon complex in Grand Exchange?... I've chosen worst place for building ;D Damn..

[imperium3]

but wait.. what will happen now to my weapon complex in Grand Exchange?... I've chosen worst place for building ;D Damn..

Top tip: Don't build your complexes next door to a Xenon sector. Put them far far away, then they'll get destroyed by Khaak instead

@7ate

Hurrah!!!! Just out of interest what does the genocide ai actually do? Send invasion fleets which carry on from sector to sector until they are stopped is what it seems to be...

And by the way, if you don't mind I'll take a look at the source code for those Fangs. I've been trying to get Disruptor missiles to work "properly" for ages but never figured it out.