Overtuning ships, repair laser and 2nd HQ in TC vanilla. Exploit howto with pictures)

Rhox · Post by **Rhox** » Sat, 9. Jul 11, 16:46

I've mentioned it before, but as the thread has run on I'll ask again:

Has anybody successfully tried overtuning the cargo capacity? I tried it by reversing the CLS script, but it didn't enhance the cargo cap on my capped P...

best regards,

Rhox

glenmcd · Post by **glenmcd** » Sat, 9. Jul 11, 18:37

Using the described technique and exploring around it a bit I still can't get a super extended cargobay. Once it's to the max it won't go another unit.

There is a way to get infinite engine and rudder overtunes even if your ship is completely maxed out already in all of cargobay, engine tuning and rudder opts. Instead of "winding up" on cargobay extensions, use the software upgrade(s) just below the slider for Rudder Optimisation. At a Teladi EQd, below RO you've got Best Buys Locator and below that Best Selling Price Locator. At a Boron EQd, it's boost extension and below that Fight Command Software Mk I. You need to NOT have these fitted at the time you overtune. You can either temporarily xfer to another ship (perhaps the CLS2 ship) or just eject them before docking. For CLS2, I had a ship permanently docked at the EQd, so I got it to load my HEPTs and 200MJ Shields and then put them back again in a CLS2 loop. If I pretend I'm going to buy the Best Buys Locator, hit right arrow, wait and the cursor will jump up two lines (coz I'm moving two weapons, HEPTs and 200MJ Shields) and overtune the engine by one at a time. If I pretend I'm going to buy the Best Selling Price Locator instead, then I'll be overtuning my rudder instead. Had I only loaded/unloaded one weapon type, I wouldn't be able to get right up to engine tuning, only rudder optimisation.

It's not terribly useful as far as I can see, but you can buy a second and subsequent software upgrades such as duplex scanner. But when you xfer it, you're still left with none. Would have been so nice to stock a few dozen jumpdrives in one ship eh?

Aro · Post by **Aro** » Sat, 9. Jul 11, 20:48

Too bad TS' can't dock at TL's any more, that was so useful... why hello Mr.Falcon Hauler...
Yeah, found something to try this on.

Dycor · Post by **Dycor** » Sat, 9. Jul 11, 20:56

Nice find, proves that the A.I. can be hacked without scripts.

Good for custom vanilla games.

There is simple hacks still to be discovered. Just like I found out you can control The Hub before the total mission was over.

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Sat, 9. Jul 11, 23:04

According to the information I gathered so far for my ship collection thread, a total of 290 ships can be obtained in vanilla game, 2 of which are not reverse engineerable (Xperimental Shuttle and Pirate Ship). There are two users sharing top 1 in the ranking with 288 ships in their blueprint collection right now which actually can resemble the non-patched vanilla game.

My stats were uploaded long before the balance of power missions. I actually had to stop my R/E effort after realizing I'm screwing up the stat I didn't intent to screw

My blueprints include Valhala, Otreus Hauler, and some other ships that are not in vanilla all conjured with a memory editor.

glenmcd · Post by **glenmcd** » Sun, 10. Jul 11, 03:09

kurush you mentioned something above about cloning, but I'm not exactly sure that it's the same that I've just tried successfully. Following is as simplified an example as I could think of:

You have two ships, A and B. You choose some ware that is not in the cargobays of either A or B, and that tends to be first (at top of list) in any xfer menu list. You place one of those wares in ship C. A CLS2 script running on any ship loads/unloads any number of units of this ware into ship A and then reverses the load/unload. If you insert a "fly to station" where station is same this should add a pause if needed (I didn't try that I just hit keys fast). End of waypoint list so this will repeat indefinately.

Place your cursor on any ware in xfer list, hit left or right arrow as appropriate, but wait until the cursor line changes. Depending on which ship has more of that ware, use the appropriate arrow to xfer FROM the ship with fewer wares. Zero wares is fine too. You may need to move all of one ware between ships, in order to support cloning of a ware above or below the line of that ware.

So let's say that you placed your cursor on ECs, hit end, and because the ship with the ECs is on the left, you hit right arrow but not enter yet. The cursor moves up or down because of CLS2 xfers. Now your cursor is on the line for PPCs. You have only one PPC, and it's in the ship on the right. While the cursor is on PPC, you hit enter. The menu remembers that it needs to "transfer" 4,000 items, only it's confused as to what, so it creates 4,000 PPCs out of thin air, and puts them into the ship on the right. I was able to start with a single unit of any two wares and fill any ship with both/either in little time with no outlay.

Is this how you completed the hub in half an hour?

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Sun, 10. Jul 11, 06:15

Is this how you completed the hub in half an hour?

I actually didn't complete it in half an hour. I just realized that it is possible and will probably do it in steam DID one day

I only cloned the last 17K of microchips and the method you described is what I used.

dubnium · Post by **dubnium** » Sun, 10. Jul 11, 07:01

Nanook wrote:
kurush wrote:
Nanook wrote:
So, what's worse, an 'honest cheat' who uses scripts, or a sneaky one who uses these kinds of exploits.
"Honest" cheat plays by the rules, we are trying to fight the system Admittedly, the entire concept of *modified* games is a bit misplaced in a game that is designed to be modified (as some people say here).
Misplaced fight. The 'modified' tag is not there to indicate cheating, it's there to help tech support when there are problems. It's just some people's perceptions of modified games that make them think modified = cheating. In fact, modified ≠ cheating, modified = enhancing.

Shame enhancing the game deteriorates its other aspects, such as the leaderboards and steam achievements, eh?

Hubert99 · Post by **Hubert99** » Sun, 10. Jul 11, 10:34

Heck ... strange result. My freshly capped Hyperion had 1300ish cargo bay extensions ... so using this trick it gets overtuned to ~12,000 m/s ... and that naturally does not work, I think there is a hard coded speed cap for ships or smthg.

Where can I get a Hyperion without engine tunings ? ... I know. I'll just reverse engineer one. It will take a while, though.

Hubert99 · Post by **Hubert99** » Sun, 10. Jul 11, 10:39

Aro wrote:Too bad TS' can't dock at TL's any more, that was so useful... why hello Mr.Falcon Hauler...
Yeah, found something to try this on.

Lol, don't temp me ! Think of an army of Falcon Sentinels, overtuned to mamba'ish speeds. I can see how this can be gamebreaking if overdone. On the other hand it brings a bit of a fresh air. Now I don't need to fly my Hyperion all the time. I can have a Heavy Centaur Prototype as player ship ... (guess cargospace will be lacking still)
Or using CMOD, the Centaur, what can still dock a fighter.

Question, will Turbo Boost still work on these ships ? I don't see why it could not, but did anyone test it ?

Rhox · Post by **Rhox** » Sun, 10. Jul 11, 14:17

Hubert99 wrote:Question, will Turbo Boost still work on these ships ? I don't see why it could not, but did anyone test it ?

I have one installed on my now overtuned Aran, but I didn't test it yet. However, there really is no reason why it shouldn't work, even if you overtune ships extremely, they're still "normal" ships for the Booster. I don't think there is a routine in it saying "No, dam it! Look at how overtuned that ship is! Why should i make it faster?"

best regards,

Rhox

deca.death · Post by **deca.death** » Sun, 10. Jul 11, 14:18

.

It works normally.

My 185m/s centaur goes like 360

TBV · Post by **TBV** » Sun, 10. Jul 11, 17:23

Just a bit of a caution.

I've been having problems with the game crashing on overtuned ships.
After a bit of testing it does seem like a good idea to stay within the
Turbobooster max speed. I haven't had any problems if I stick to this.

Easy to calculater - 4x the number of steps to get from min stock-speed
to max stock speed. For Vidar - takes 10 steps to get from 64m/s to 128m/s,
so 40 steps is 320m/s - turbo max speed.

Anyone else notice similar?

glenmcd · Post by **glenmcd** » Mon, 11. Jul 11, 00:11

TBV wrote:Anyone else notice similar?

I had problems but only at gates, and only when really pushing the limits.
Like 1400 m/sec on a Hyperion Vanguard with ~3000 turbo.
That was with TShips adjustments, but I can't imagine that this "adjustment" would bring about completely different results.

Apart from the two crashes I had on approaching a gate, my ship for the first time went straight through the gate without leaving sector without use of SETA. No big deal and if in autopilot it will keep retrying anyways. Having a much faster ship places more pressure on maintaining a decent framerate. When I'm using a bunch of the best performance mods and framerate is keeping above 100, I haven't had either problem.

A tip for fine adjustments:
temporarily remove (xfer/eject) the software upgrade that is just below rudder optimisation. right arrow when on it, and cursor will jump up to rudder opt. adjust it as needed. If you wait a bit longer, it will jump up further to engine tuning. Other than providing single unit tuning, this method can also be used on a ship that's already maxed out whereas the original method can't. Still use CLS2 as per orig.

Capt_Newbie · Post by **Capt_Newbie** » Mon, 11. Jul 11, 04:28

I tried this, but because all I could find was CLS1, it didn't work so well...

Where is CLS2 available?

glenmcd · Post by **glenmcd** » Mon, 11. Jul 11, 04:31

Capt_Newbie wrote:I tried this, but because all I could find was CLS1, it didn't work so well...

Where is CLS2 available?

Should be available at exactly the same stations as CLS1. Argon Equipment Docks, some Argon trading ports (Herrons Nebula being the best to choose).
Full name is Commodity Logistics Software Mk II.

Aro · Post by **Aro** » Mon, 11. Jul 11, 06:01

So finally tried this out on steam 3.1.1.

The cls was sometimes slow to transfer or decided not to at times.
Cargo bay did not over extend. Tried on a falcon, so wanted a fake ts.

Item duplication for nearly anything (hmm...) does work. Really easy too.

Overtuning doesn't really break anything. The duplication is absurd.

saco3 · Post by **saco3** » Mon, 11. Jul 11, 06:11

Same here, it worked for speed and rudder but I could't extend the cargo bay for some reason no matter how many times I tried.

Guess steam version is a little different.

kurush · Post by **kurush** » Mon, 11. Jul 11, 07:35

saco3 wrote:Guess steam version is a little different.

No, it looks like I posted an unverified fact. Apparently, cargo cannot be expanded.

glenmcd · Post by **glenmcd** » Mon, 11. Jul 11, 07:39

Aro wrote:The cls was sometimes slow to transfer or decided not to at times.

This seems to be due to certain events following others too quickly. At least that's what I experienced in the way that I did it. It is highly dependant on how you setup your CLS2 waypoint list. I did everything using two ships docked at EQd. To duplicate, buy one mozzie, buy one mozzie, buy one mozzie, sell one mozzie, sell one mozzie, sell one mozzie. It will repeat this, giving you enough time to do stuff. It still won't be like clockwork, but you will get regularly opportunities to do stuff without waiting too long and without having it swap back before you get enter fully pressed. With the tuning I also used the duplicate CLS2 waypoints in order to make it happen at a pace I could keep up with - and actually see happening. Load 1 mozzie, load 1 mozzie etc.

Aro wrote:The duplication is absurd.

Damn straight! Yesterday in a test I made 2B in around one game hour (from Humble Merchant start). Once I had the setup going it took about 10 key presses in 10 seconds to make yet another 2B. Selling the EBCs takes a bit longer but not overly so. Two TSs or TLs permanently docked at EQd, one of which is running CLS2. A few key strokes and TL #2 is full of EBCs. Buy 10 TSs at a time at shipyard, and use batch dock at station command to move all 10 to the EQd. With each TS, xfer EBCs to fill cargobay. Do for each TS docked, refilling TL (a dozen keystrokes) as necessary. Do a batch command so all docked TSs fly to shipyard. The remainder will then dock and be ready for filling. When you need credits, sell a full TS that is docked at shipyard for another 1.5B. With the Xenon hub, dock two TLs. Use CLS2 in both, but a completely different waypoint list in each. The #1 TL toggles the menus, the #2 TL is contually feeding its cargo to the hub. With a little more effort put into the #2 TL waypoint list, you can use a dozen docked TS's as additional buffers. The hub accepts far slower than the exploit produces so this gives you time to refill your glass. By the time you finish that beer it will be time to change to the next required hub item. With factory resources you need two ships. If you use the advanced hub (vanilla compatible) then you can dock two TLs but that's probably overkill. Like the hub usage, use CLS2 in each, with the #2 TL feeding resources to your factory.

I agree with those above that this is in the "huge" category as exploits go. Not that X hasn't seem them before, but if Egosoft really are not bringing out an update to this series, it doesn't look good for long term vanilla competition which in turn could impact sales.

When something like this is publicised, it's quite easy to conclude that those involved have done a huge disservice. 2008 to 2010, I was engrossed in "Tiger Woods PGA Tour" which received an update each year. The EA Sports forums banned the posting of anything that could be interpreted as cheating. Meanwhile, there were some really horrendous cheats going on for years, one of which was skewing global competition results for at least two years. I was denied many wins because of this. Towards the end of the second year, I got to find out this particular cheat by accident while I was trying to work out ways of improving my game. The exploit didn't make it any easier to win a one-on-one live competition round. But if you didn't like the way the game was going (like fifteen strokes behind your opponent), you could press the "void game" cheat button and nothing would be recorded at all. So you need never lose a game. To your opponent, it would look like you dropped off the internet. I PMd a few guys including the lead designer, and next year when the new version came out there was a change. No, they didn't close the exploit. They publicised their knowledge of the exploit, how it was effecting competition, and that anyone caught using it would be dealt with. Many game (non golf) leaderboards are skewed by cheats, and it's only when you learn of the exploits and how easy they are to use without detection, that you realize that to punish those that expose the exploits is in the long term counter productive. An exploit that is being used but hasn't been made fully public is of no interest to the publishing company. They wouldn't care less who is on the top of the leaderboards. We all paid for the game and that's all that counts, at least to the marketing guys and there's no doubt that they are the ones calling the highest level shots and not the devs. Initially most of us will be excited on hearing about a new, massive exploit. Some now and probably all later will be upset that it's happening, but when the devs bring out the fixed version, it's better than ever. Not only fair competition in this version, but justified confidence in its fairness for this version, and to some degree the next. I felt before that TC deserved one more update. I think this one surely must tip the scales. It's not only leaderboards that are effected. It's the very positive chat and comradery that is happening on these forums. The challenge of TC brings us together. Such a massive exploit pretty much destroys the challenge and hence has the potential for destroying useful and entertaining discussion.

If you think that forums are frequented by only a very small percentage of game players, think again. Through an unintended exposure of their database over the internet, I got to learn that around 20% of all players registered to play online with one particular (huge) game development company had created at least one post on that company's forums. 6% had done two posts. 3% had done three. If 20% had posted at least once, it seems reasonable that there's at least that number that read the forums but haven't posted at all yet. How many people that you talk to would be pursuaded to purchase (or not to purchase) a game based on your experience with it? You're not alone.

As long as there is confidence that the latest (and the next) massive exploit will be fixed with some urgency, it feels reasonable just to go forward and ignore it, because we don't have to learn to live permanently with it. Sadly with TC, we may have to do just that.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Overtuning ships, repair laser and 2nd HQ in TC vanilla. Exploit howto with pictures)