[MOD] [TC/AP] X3 Rebalance Mod (XRM) - Total conversion - v1.29b (23.05.13)

[Slashman]

[Sairaf]

[BlackRain]

I cant get the M7M's to work properly. I read where you give instructions how to fire missiles with them but it is not working.

You said to get them to fire on a station, set the turrets to "attack target" except there is no "attack target" under the turret commands. There is "attack my target" but no "Attack target" There is also "attack enemies" and other options but not the one you specified. I set the turrets to attack enemies and I give the ship the attack target command and it does not fire any missiles at stations.

[Sairaf]

[Reliku]

[Sairaf]

Important

The cause of my crashes may have been the fact that I was using IR, not IR 2.0. I updated and no crashes so far.[/b]

[Slashman]

[swatti]

SUGGESTION DoT-effect to beams. MK2!

I was kinda haunted by Paul saying beams with dot produce lag.
My initial test of huge amount of fighters duking it out with dot-effects in their weapons did not produce noticable lag.
It may indeed be as you said, they fixed it in AP.

I re-did my test with capital ships on busy sector. I cloned my own beam-loaded Cyclops and Megaloldon both ten-fold and gave them to pirates in the middle of Argon/Terran fleet-battle. Saved the game and tested various Dot-effects: NO LAG WAS VISIBLE as long as the effect had somewhat "sane" properties.

The battle itself went somewhat better for the AI when they had the DoT-effect in their weapons.
Without it they simply "swiped" the enemies with their beams doing next to no dmg
WITH the DoT effect they cut down shields much faster and were able to do some decent dmg.

Weapons modded were ION-C, Plasma Beam Cannon and Fusion Beam Cannon.
My "final" setup was about 10-20% less shield dmg and that same amount as a dot. Effect lenght was 1-2s less then the re-fire rate of the weapon.

In my opinion other beams dont need the dot-effect so much as they fire much faster. Only exeption may be the IBL... Cause you know, fire, burns stuff for some time etc... Not tested tho.

So please, if you have time, do some testing. This could have some impressive results for AI beam-usage.

[greypanther]

I have played both TC and AP vannila and never had a crash.
Since using XRM I have had some issues, however feel the benefits from this great mod outweigh the pains; at least for now!

In TC XRM was rock solid for me until the bloody annoying M3 bombers turned up in a sector! Paul offered a fix, ( which is on page 1 and is just one file to replace, ) which partially fixed the problem, but not totaly. I still get crashes, but fewer than before. Paul thinks it is because of the missile boat script.

In AP ( with XRM ) it maybe seems a little smoother, but there is without a doubt an issue with the sounds. I have had one complete lock up on the sound of an explosion, noticed many times that the game hangs for less than a second when its playing certain sounds. I havn't pinned down which sounds and am looking to use a different sound device to see if its that. The main culprit seems to be the cap ship explosion sound.

Last night I also saw the problem others have had in Omicron Lyrae and Circle of Labour. ( XRM + AP ) I had a major slow down in Circle of Labour, whilst the two opposing fleets slugged it out. This even though I have seen much larger battles elsewhere, running smooth as you like. Whats wrong with this sector? The problem in OL was even worse and was an unplayable slide show, even though a battle smaller than the one in CoL! I never had any problems with vannila AP in these sectors!

Thing is I can cope with the TC + XRM problem by quickly cheating out the stupid M3 bombers as I see them. The same may not be the case with AP, the problem may be more wide spread.

This is a shame because the problems seem small, ( though I bet very hard to fix. ) This mod is just amazing in so many ways. When you consider the amount of time Paull and the rest of his team, ( ) have put in on it, it seems ungrateful to critisize it. However I think I may well stop playing AP + XRM and go back to TC + XRM. It runs smoother and doesn't have the annoying war going on!

I am afraid for me AP has been a bit of a disapointment. XRM + TC is better and Egosoft would have been better off getting behind this mod, than producing the flawed war!

[paulwheeler]

The M3 bomber issue that afflicts TC does not cause any issues in AP.

AP uses a completely different set of scripts for missile boats. Personally, I've not had any stability problems with AP.

As for sounds, the capital ship explosion is quite a bit longer than vanilla, and only about a second longer than the CMod3 explosion sound. However, its the not changed since the initial release of XRM - in fact the only sounds that have changed since the initial release are the sounds for the M/AML and IPG. While the explosion sound is longer, its much shorter than several vanilla sounds and really shouldn't be the cause of any problems.

That said - have a look through the tech support board. X3 has always been plagued with sound issues affecting performance and stability. I've not experienced it myself, but then I'm using a very expensive professional studio sound card (M-Audio Delta 1010). Its certainly worth reading through the issues others have had - usually related to driver or codec problems.

The job scripts that the XRM war ships are running are very simple modifications to the default patrol scripts. They are not at all taxing to the system, so I don't think the actual war is a problem - its more likely the sheer number of ships with the associated bullets, missiles and trails. There were never battles this big in TC. I really don't want to start reducing numbers as its unfair on those who don't have performance issues.

Omycron Lyrae may be a problem due to the fog in that sector (which has always caused issues with performance, even in vanilla). You could try the No Fog mod and see if it helps. Also in XRM you have the huge shipyard model in Omycron Lyrae which is more resource hungry than the standard shipyard model.

You have to remember that you may not have noticed performance issues in vanilla simply because there were far, far less ships on the screen at once and less going on in the universe, which would mean less for your rig to do and thus mask any underlying problems.

One thing I am going to do which may or may not help is convert all remaining jpg textures to dds (its mostly textures that have been inherited from X2). I've no idea if it will make much difference to those with issues, but its worth a try. I'll have the trail textures converted for 1.20, but it may take a few versions to complete as there are a lot of textures to convert.

If you do go back to TC, can you try running without MDMk2 for a while and see if its this that is conflicting with the missile boat script and report back?

[Mizuchi]

[greypanther]

Well, thanks for the reply guys!

In fact I removed the offending codecs about two weeks after first visiting these boards!

I will indeed try a different sound card, may even invest in a super duper one!

You missed my point Paul, I already stated that I had seen MUCH larger battles, in part created by me, in other sectors without any problems. At all.
The issue seems to me the way that the different factors work together. Maybe the war + XRM = problems? Could there be an issue between XRM and the way AP deals witht the war? Grasping at straws there I know!

You made me think of something there though that I had forgotten. When I upgraded to 3.2 TC, I had issues in several sectors, where there were battles involving beam weapons; namely the Khaak. This was only in the foggy sectors, and was in fact made worse by the no fog mod. I rolled back to 3.1 and end of the problems. I recal 3.2 altered the way draw distances are dealt with? AP is based around 3.2 isn't it?
Therefore I am left wondering if something Egosoft between 3.1 and 3.2 is the problem, is it causing clashes with some mods?

I will try later with removing the no fog mod from AP and as you suggest the the MMD mk2. I will report back soonest.

Whatever you do, do not make too many changes to XRM, it is so near to perfect and you could spoil it if you go too far.
In fact you can create really big battles with the chaet scripts in TC and using Xenon sectors; extremely big in fact! No problems there, but I will check again. There again I am using 3.1 TC, which again makes me feel the fault is within the change from 3.1 to 3.2. Did Egosoft fix something that wasn't broken for modded users?

[Ragemaster9999]

Cursed Fog and horrible station models!! Oh how I LOATH you.

The simple solution is to just avoid Omicron LYrae and Circle of Labor like the plague, especially if theres a fleet battle going down. I have kicked other hornets nest elsewhere and have had 0 problems with big battles, but your right those systems do naturally suck for performance.

At the end of the day, you have to realize, that the underlying engine technology is old and in some ways, feels cobbled together from whatever spare parts Egosoft may or may not have had access to during development. While I love X3 to death and there is many things it does right... Being optimized is not one of those merits. Hopefully something Rebirth will address.

In the meantime, we have to make do with what we got.

[nap_rz]

what is that "modified" word/pic below paul's username?

[Ragemaster9999]