Greetings to all, few recommendations required...

[deca.death]

.
.
Up now I've played vanilla, but it seemes that my game suffers rare and seemingly unresolveable technical difficulties (you could find my post in "technical support" here, if you encountered something similar or have something to add, any input will be appreciated - you could comment there not here, just to be on topic)

Now since problem occurs in certain sectors with lot of my own stations and ships, i thought that starting anew with more oriented combat marauder style with just a few assets could actually be more playable.

So here is what I had in mind... Two solutions

one

Add several essential (and as stable as possible) mods, mars turrets/combat system, improved races and maybe cockpits. I always liked cockpits. Maybe some mod to remove fog and improve performance. mods for buildings and complexes probably wont be necessary. What would you recommend of essential stuff no game should be without. We'll try to keep number of mods reasonably low due to stability issues.

two

Install some complete overhaul mod that changes everything. I dont play this game for very long and frankly I'm not tired of it yet so I would give an advantage to mods closer to original game but if there is some really great and stable mod I'll reconsider. Let the first demand here be stability, performance and good integration. Mod could be fabulous but it's no good if you cant play it, or at least play it without technical frustration.


what would you recommend?

TIA

[Joe McCracken]

I use the Bailing add-on. Also the Board Stations script. Both are stable and I have no issues with 'em.

[Litcube]

.
Now since problem occurs in certain sectors with lot of my own stations and ships, i thought that starting anew with more oriented combat marauder style with just a few assets could actually be more playable.

Before you do that, read my response to your tech support request.

[Triaxx2]

Install Lucike's script Collection. You'll never look back. Bailing Add-On is also awesome. Cycrow's cheat script is also very helpful in dealing with problems.

Oh, and look around, there's a mod here to remove the billboards, which massively decreases a lot of the lag in pre-populated sectors.

[kotorone1]

CMOD 4, SRM and TOA-Gates which is in the terran revitalization project. Also instal IR. Nothing is more fun the 20 Zs trying to take GE with 50 PPCs/ship

[boogieman335]

I am going to respond in this thread because if you are already having problems, modding the game will only open you up to more things to trouble shoot. I don't know if this will help because I haven't monkeyed around much with Windows 7 but I know that in Vista you could use the forceenable command using DOS to make the OS use more ram. This maybe possible in Windows 7 also. I had the same problems running the game under Vista and I found those settings in a tweak guide for vista and it enabled the OS to use more ram and cleared up the problem. Later I just set up my laptop to dual boot with XP and now I run the game in XP without those problems. I travel all the time for my job so I play more on my laptop than at home, but my home system
is only an older hyperthreading system with an ATI 1650 AGP video card and I can play on it with no slowdowns,slideshows or any stuttering. Lite Cube is correct in that this problem is more likely caused by the way your OS is doling out the ram to the game.

[deca.death]

my problems seem to be pretty narrow and very specific. sometimes i can play for days without any problem and then i come into clogged sector and boom. also when i hit new start, there are never problems no matter what sector i fly in. i also believe litcube might be right, i'm just sooo not into another reinstalation, although i believe it will be unavoidable.

[Litcube]

my problems seem to be pretty narrow and very specific. sometimes i can play for days without any problem and then i come into clogged sector and boom. also when i hit new start, there are never problems no matter what sector i fly in. i also believe litcube might be right, i'm just sooo not into another reinstalation, although i believe it will be unavoidable.

If I posted screen shots of a 300 ship battle with my FPS showing, would that inspire you?

[deca.death]

If I posted screen shots of a 300 ship battle with my FPS showing, would that inspire you?

hey, i can have 300 ships in battle!!
but only if of a same type

[Litcube]

Either both windows 64 and 6 gigs of ram or neither, my friend. 32 bit can't even use 3 gigs.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Either both windows 64 and 6 gigs of ram or neither, my friend. 32 bit can't even use 3 gigs.

Technically incorrect I am afraid...

A 32-bit OS can use upto 4GB of RAM but you will lose a portion of the 4GB physical address space to memory mapped hardware such as graphics cards and certain pieces of motherboard hardware. Amount of usable memory will vary from system to system (will typically vary between 2GB and 3.5GB) but putting 4GB or 6GB in a given system may offer other benefits such as the use of dual or triple channel memory acceess.

[Litcube]

If I posted screen shots of a 300 ship battle with my FPS showing, would that inspire you?

hey, i can have 300 ships in battle!!
but only if of a same type

Hah. It's a relieving feeling when you're able to throw anything you want in a sector and not have to worry.

[deca.death]

Hah. It's a relieving feeling when you're able to throw anything you want in a sector and not have to worry.

i know, i know. hopefully will be able to do it soon. i know about 64bit AND extra ram, don't worry. you have answer in "support" btw.

[deca.death]

.
.
thank you all for suggestions. my original game was somehow (barely) revived but i plan on my alter ego buccaneer career since the beginning, same with mods, so things got in no way canceled, merely postponed.

this is what i concluded by now. bare in mind that i'm completely new to modding and if you notice some terrible technical mistake i'm about to make, warn me, please : )

first of all, if i got this right, i do need this:

-Plugin Manager Lite : V1.30
-Community Configuration Menu

than mods. these BIG mods sound great:
(btw, no cheats, no NPC bailings, no easy boarding)

-Ship Rebalance Mod:Continued
-Combat Mod 4
-ImprovedRaces R15.22
-MARS Fire Control
-Pirate Guild 3: Dynamic AI and Guild System /improved pirates for pirate game and player


now here are smaller mods, not so important but would be great to have...

-Immersive environments /more beautiful galaxy
-Abandoned Ship Spawner v82 /randomized abandoned ships
-Universe Explorers v2.4.0 /pilots for hire to explore
-Flat Galaxy Map / Square Galaxy Map


and finally, performance upgrade mods /bug patches

-X3-Unleashed [RC2] [Aug-06-2010] - fewer sector trafic, X3 Performance gains up to 38%
-No Fog 2.5 comp Fake Patch
-Improved Combat Frame Rate
-Unofficial bug (player) fixes 2.7comp * updated 12 Jun*


questions:
-will mod manager inform me of possible mod conficts?
-are cockpits in SRM equally good (same?) as ones in standalone mods?
-is number of mods too much? what would you throw out?
-if you have bad experience with some of these mods OR maybe you know of mod that does same thing even better OR you know some mods are redundant- please say

thank you

[Cycrow]

questions:
-will mod manager inform me of possible mod conficts?

Not all conflicts are easily detectable, however, if you have multiple mods as fake patches, it will flag up any that have the same files in when u install it

also if u switch it to advanced mode, you can also check conflicts between installed mods and lists the files that conflict with each other