[Mod/Patch] X3-Unleashed [RC2] [Aug-06-2010] - X3 Performance gains up to 38%

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Targ Collective
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Post by Targ Collective » Thu, 1. Oct 09, 03:58

Hmm. I can't say I saw any unnamed ships at all - just no ships with civvy icons anymore. ie the Hospital Ship has a TL icon (well, had... a 'coffee related incident' means there is no TL anymore...)

Is this intended behaviour? Far as I'm aware there hasn't been any previous cat/dat jiggery pokery on this install, they numbered once eight and now number nine, with Unleashed the ninth of the bunch.
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Jaga_Telesin
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Post by Jaga_Telesin » Thu, 1. Oct 09, 04:59

The only fields edited in the Jobs.txt were the total quota for the job (flight), and the quota limit per sector. None of the other data on the flights was changed at all. If there was an unintentional change made, it would be due to the XJobs editor, and I cannot believe that Observe would let his code do that.

I've seen some Civilian ships in my game with larger icons, and I see smaller normal ones all the time. My game is about 24 hours old now (in-game play time), and everything seems fine from what I can tell. I'll assume you applied the patch to a game in progress, which wouldn't have changed any of your flights, simply "deactivated" some of them.

If you'd like to PM me with more specifics I can take a look and see if it is expected behavior or not, for your installation.

Targ Collective
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Post by Targ Collective » Thu, 1. Oct 09, 05:04

Okay, what do you need to know? A possible test would be to send you my save file, see if there's an issue there. I think it's more likely I mucked up the implementation somewhere though.

Game in progress, indeed. Seemed a shame to start over when I've just grabbed a shiny new Tiger.

There *are* eight cat/dats in a Vanilla install right? Making yours the ninth if no others have been added?
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Jaga_Telesin
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Post by Jaga_Telesin » Thu, 1. Oct 09, 05:10

Targ Collective wrote:There *are* eight cat/dats in a Vanilla install right? Making yours the ninth if no others have been added?
A vanilla X3:TC install with no other mods, and no Plugin Manager install, and patching to v2.1, leaves you with cat/dat up to 08. v2.5 adds 09, and if you installed the Plugin Manager that would take you +01 as well (it always loads highest). Hopefully you don't have a mod loading via the game's startup UI (where you can choose and activate a mod). Even still, it would have to modify the types/Jobs.txt file to conflict. If that all sounds right, PM me and I'll shoot you my email so you can send me some screens of what you see in game.

The nice thing about the Jobs.txt file is that you absolutely cannot screw up your game permanently with it. They are generally NPC flights that add to the game's immersion and economy.



Edit
: Here's a sector I was just flying through, and what the flights look like (I was off center, so no military near me). It has normal Civilians in it, though I *have* seen civilian flights with the TL/M6/etc icons on them before. Those are intentional, believe it or not.

[ external image ]

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Post by Gothsheep » Fri, 2. Oct 09, 02:02

I have a question.

I have trouble installing mods, so before I break open my computer to try and fix it, I'd like to know how the reduction in civilian traders effects your UTs. Will the profit margins of UTs jump up with the sudden reduction of competition?

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Jaga_Telesin
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Post by Jaga_Telesin » Fri, 2. Oct 09, 07:20

Gothsheep wrote:I have a question.

I have trouble installing mods, so before I break open my computer to try and fix it, I'd like to know how the reduction in civilian traders effects your UTs. Will the profit margins of UTs jump up with the sudden reduction of competition?
I was going to post this earlier today, but our fabulous Internet Provider (Comcast) decided to have their second outage in two days - this one lasted a mere 10 hours. /chuckle

I don't think you'll be seeing *that* much of an increase in profits from trading, since the traders left in the universe after either variation of the mod are still able to fly their trading routes quite well. Here are several screenshots I took of the factories in the middle of the universe, after roughly 1.5 days have elapsed (in-game time, 1 day 9 hours):

(Primary Resources are the stock levels to take note of)


[ external image ][ external image ]
[ external image ][ external image ]
[ external image ][ external image ]


As you can see, most of their Primary Resources are stocked pretty well, and that was less than a day and a half in-game. I have no sector or universe traders running either, so all their stock was sold to them from NPC traders. I still see high-tech end-product shortages, but that's expected until the game gets very established, same as vanilla. From what I can tell, everything is fairly well balanced.

So while I can't give you a direct answer (I'm not even sure if I could design a test for that), the indirect answer is that the NPC traders are keeping things running all by themselves from what I can tell. I'll keep my eyes on other factories in other sectors, though I still expect to see some factories with empty resource stocks. That always happened in vanilla too.

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Jaga_Telesin
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Post by Jaga_Telesin » Sun, 4. Oct 09, 21:02

Some observations I've made in my own game over the last few days:
  1. Terran Military still seems quite numerous, with lots of escorts.
  2. There are some pileups at Terran gates, probably due to the number of military.
  3. Missions work just fine, and even Aldrin is smooth.
  4. Ship populations in Commonwealth sectors are more than adequate, with plenty of variety and distribution.
  5. Factories almost never run out of Primary Resources, with the exception of some that were low on Ore. This seems to be working even better than vanilla currently.
  6. FPS doesn't seem to dip due to CPU needs, though graphic lag is still present with enough stations/ships.
  7. Haven't had as much as 1 autopilok accident, even when using SETA.
I'm going to consider some changes (small reductions and distribution evenness) to Terran military, primarily in an effort to keep their gates free of traffic jams, which helps their economy tremendously. I'm also going to review Ore Trader levels, and possibly bump them up a few ships.

If anyone that has been using Unleashed has suggestions for tweaks, they are welcome to post them.

Edit Almost forgot to mention - the machine I'm currently playing on is a 2.66ghz Q6700. I used to have to overclock it substantially to get good framerates across all of X3:TC. For the benchmarking I did I clocked it back to stock, and have left it that way while playing my personal game. Surprisingly, it feels smoother than it did before, even when it was overclocked. I have no plans to return it to overclocked speeds, since I feel no need to with Unleashed in. Time will tell however, if the game still feels smooth several weeks from now.

Targ Collective
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Post by Targ Collective » Mon, 5. Oct 09, 06:20

Very smooth, a wonderful job.

You keep at it Jaga. If you're not careful the Egosoft guys might just have to include this in a patch, like that turret fix some time ago.
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Jaga_Telesin
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Post by Jaga_Telesin » Wed, 7. Oct 09, 07:04

Targ Collective wrote:Very smooth, a wonderful job.

You keep at it Jaga. If you're not careful the Egosoft guys might just have to include this in a patch, like that turret fix some time ago.
Thanks Targ. :thumb_up: I wouldn't be against Unleashed showing up in the Superbox, if it came to it (as an option of course).


======================================


Update & New Findings: In what seems like my eternal quest now for more detail about flights in X3:TC; their structure, frequency, and metrics... I've run across some very interesting information. The total number of jobs (flights in the form of individual ships) in Terran Conflict is after all, not 7,746 like we thought. This is due in large part to escorts - flights that accompany their leader in a formation (or sub-formation). Most of us guessed that, but I don't think anyone did the research to see where they showed up in a vanilla game, nor by how much they bloated the total number of flights.

I now have detail on that information - as it turns out in a vanilla X3:TC game escorts raise the number of flights to just over 11,600. Granted, some of these dock at their formation leader, but a large portion fly next to them and run collision avoidance routines (in sector), and drain CPU cycles like normal ships the rest of the time. Take a standard, hireable TL for example: by itself it is only one ship with a large collision box, but when you add in that each spawned TL in the universe gets 4 separate wingmen, it changes their numbers quite a bit. In vanilla there were 30 hireable TLs, but now due to adding in wingmen the total # of ships for those TLs is 150 - five times the original (or +400%).

Due to the way I designed the tracking spreadsheet, I know exactly how many wingmen per original flight (leader) are generated, and from what line in the JobWings.txt file. The spreadsheet also has the ability to update itself realtime when a change is made, displaying the impact on both the Wingmen total, and on the total for each different flight job.

Given that wingmen have bloated the flights for TC by around 4,100, I'm going to give them the attention they deserve and see if they can't be trimmed down in certain areas. A large number of them relate to the military, which while obvious at first glance, really means that they are unused flights for most of the game, and ripe for culling in appropriate ways. Others relate to things like those hireable TLs, and could easily come down a bit without significant loss of effectiveness.

As a sidenote - due to the metrics testing I did I found out a direct relation between # of resources (ships, stations, etc) and savegame size. Seems obvious yes, but the good news is that trimming total flights back creates smaller (and quicker) savegames.

Lastly, I'm considering adding in another version of Unleashed - one that directly lowers numbers for Military flights in the universe by a substantial amount. This version is specifically for games that utilize scripts like Race Response Fleets, Improved Races, etc.. where the script adds in it's own military. I'm doing this because I finally realized just how many ships they can add (I think at last count IR added around 8k+ with fighters/caps turned on). Hopefully this can help alleviate the impact these great scripts give us, and let us run them with little slowdown.

Edit: Update to numbers due to recursive spreadsheet math.

Cpt.Shaper
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Post by Cpt.Shaper » Thu, 8. Oct 09, 13:06

Hi guys,
I`m new to X3TC (played some X2 in the past). What I don't know about is this: "Knowledge of Fake Patch installation"

...I guess from the help text that comes with the download file it's quite simple. but I'm not sure about it (don't have the possibility to try it out because my X3tc copy is still on it's way)

So any hint on this topic would be really appreciated :)

russbo
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Post by russbo » Thu, 8. Oct 09, 19:06

There are .cat and .dat files in the main terran conflict directory; these are numbered. Generally the first eight belong to the game, if it is patched (recent patches add cat and dat files).

Mods can be added by renaming them to the next higher number, and putting them into the main directory. So, unleasedmod.cat and unleashedmod.dat should be renamed to 09.cat and 09.dat, and placed in the main game directory, if, the game already has cat and dat files up to number 8. If you want to add another false patch, the next one will be 10.dat and 10.cat.

You have to have a 0 before the digit, if it is a single number; 9.cat will not work; 09.cat will.

Cycrow's plug in manager should be run after you add these false patches, as it creates its own cat and dat files, always listed as the highest number, so if you have 1 through 10 cat and dat files, cycrows plug in installer will create 11.cat and 11.dat. then you can run the game.

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Post by ThisIsHarsh » Thu, 8. Oct 09, 20:59

russbo wrote:There are .cat and .dat files in the main terran conflict directory; these are numbered. Generally the first eight belong to the game, if it is patched (recent patches add cat and dat files).

Mods can be added by renaming them to the next higher number, and putting them into the main directory. So, unleasedmod.cat and unleashedmod.dat should be renamed to 09.cat and 09.dat, and placed in the main game directory, if, the game already has cat and dat files up to number 8. If you want to add another false patch, the next one will be 10.dat and 10.cat.

You have to have a 0 before the digit, if it is a single number; 9.cat will not work; 09.cat will.

Cycrow's plug in manager should be run after you add these false patches, as it creates its own cat and dat files, always listed as the highest number, so if you have 1 through 10 cat and dat files, cycrows plug in installer will create 11.cat and 11.dat. then you can run the game.
OR you could package the mod as a spk file. Name the mod to 01.cat/01.dat, add to spk package. Then the plugin manager will automatically rename when you install.

Sooo many mods and scripts I have to package myself because too few people realise the power of the awesome plugin manager.
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Jaga_Telesin
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Post by Jaga_Telesin » Thu, 8. Oct 09, 21:09

Perhaps for the Release Candidate (RC) version I will also add in .spk files for people to use. But for myself during development of four separate packages now (instead of just two), it helps to be able to quickly swap out a cat/dat pair.

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Litcube
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Post by Litcube » Fri, 9. Oct 09, 06:57

Reporting in,

Playing for a few hours now. I've modified the jobs by removing all Aldrin flights (I've removed plot sectors in my Universe). Home of Light used to run like a pig. Now it's really, really smooth. Anyone can remove and hack at a jobs file (we've been saying it's a source of performance problems for a while), but you've articulated this into something people can *trust*, which is saying a lot. Awesome work.

Made a script that counted ships in the Universe.

[ external image ]

Terran still seems a little heavy, Kh'ak a little light.

If I wanted to see more Pirate patrols, which jobs would you recommend increasing?

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Post by Solomon Short » Fri, 9. Oct 09, 08:04

ThisIsHarsh wrote:OR you could package the mod as a spk file. Name the mod to 01.cat/01.dat, add to spk package. Then the plugin manager will automatically rename when you install.

Sooo many mods and scripts I have to package myself because too few people realise the power of the awesome plugin manager.
Thank you, I wasn't aware of this, I had created all my FakePatch SPKs with FakePatch numbered where I want it. :-)

Cpt.Shaper
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Post by Cpt.Shaper » Fri, 9. Oct 09, 14:23

Thank's for help, russbo and Thisisharsh! I'll follow those instructions.
:thumb_up:

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Jaga_Telesin
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Post by Jaga_Telesin » Fri, 9. Oct 09, 18:55

Litcube wrote:Reporting in,

Playing for a few hours now. I've modified the jobs by removing all Aldrin flights (I've removed plot sectors in my Universe). Home of Light used to run like a pig. Now it's really, really smooth. Anyone can remove and hack at a jobs file (we've been saying it's a source of performance problems for a while), but you've articulated this into something people can *trust*, which is saying a lot. Awesome work.

Made a script that counted ships in the Universe.

-snip-

Terran still seems a little heavy, Kh'ak a little light.

If I wanted to see more Pirate patrols, which jobs would you recommend increasing?
Thanks for the feedback Litcube, always helpful to get confirmation it is working as designed. :D Terran is still overpopulated, but that was known (I've seen more than one pileup at their gates), and is on the block for RC1. I'm also bumping up the hireable TLs in the universe a tad - they dropped to 50% of original and are going back to 75%.

Kha'ak could easily be increased in number, though a large part of their existence in vanilla comes through missions. They were the "hostile that got trimmed to 85%", so I'll review your findings and possibly return them to 100%. They were one of the larger original flights that I decided to trim purely based on overall population, but now that I have a firm grasp on flights+wingmen, I can return them to vanilla numbers and not have the mod suffer at all.

It is interesting to note that your script only returned 1 Kha'ak, since there should be quite a few more in the universe than that. Might want to re-check that section of how it works to verify.

As to pirates and pirate patrols, you'll be interested in the following jobs:
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2111
  • 2112
  • 2113
  • 2114
  • 2115
  • 2116
  • 2117
  • 2118
  • 2119
  • 2122
  • 2123
  • 2501
  • 2502
  • 2505
  • 2506
Increasing any or all will bump up non-Cap Ship Pirate levels. If you want to give them significantly more power, raise their Cap Ship flight numbers (2120 & 2121).

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Litcube
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Post by Litcube » Fri, 9. Oct 09, 18:59

Thanks, Jaga.

Also, the only thing you should extract from my Kha'ak numbers are that that's the actual number of Kha'ak in the Universe that aren't in the Kha'ak sectors. As I mentioned, I had removed plot sectors.

It might be expected behaviour that without those sectors, there are no Kha'al flights. FYI.

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Litcube
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Post by Litcube » Sun, 11. Oct 09, 00:20

Reporting in,

I've put some good time into my game now, and have found some dip in production.

There's a medium production plant in Cloud Base South-East, for example, that hasn't produced any 25 MJ shields in some time. I've ran some scripts to search the Universe for ore traders, and the nearest one is on the East side of the Universe several sectors away.

Plutarch trades ore with 6 or 7 ships, and Argon is the only other mineral transporter.

ThisIsHarsh
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Post by ThisIsHarsh » Sun, 11. Oct 09, 02:52

Just a quick note on the khaak ship numbers. I believe khaak numbers increase as your fight rank increases, as do pirate numbers. At least I'm sure it used to be this way. I believe 7ate can attest to this fact with his reported issues in Improved Races, where he has to spawn in extra Khaak to make up the numbers.

I have no idea on any more detail that this, its just something I've read about from time to time... but something to bear in mind when adjusting the khaak/pirate flights.
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