[X3LU] Small Improvements and Fixes

[dizzy]

(This is some of my first ever X3 scripting work so please be gentle)

I love LU and playing it I found a few (very small) issues that in my opinion can make it even better. There are very small/simple changes so they should work fine but make a backup of your saves before using them. I'll update the list here as I add them.

Installation

1. Install LU, version 1.7.0 or higher. WARNING For earlier LU versions use the earlier versions of the pack (found on the nexusmods page).
2. Download the installer and run it. Select which components/changes you want. Install inside the X3 game directory (where you have x3ap_n.exe).

Alternatively you can download the zip file version and (manually) install from there.

Changes

NOTE: some of these changes have been available in separate archives too but I only support their latest versions as included in the installer.

• Player corporation name setting
  I have extended the Player Console to make it possible to set your own corporation name, then every time LU tries to automatically name a ship it will prefix it with your corporation name. It tries to be smart and for ship names that already contain the homebase, it will strip out the corporation name from the homebase for building the ship name so it doesn't show twice. I find that this helps with the roleplaying and game immersion.
  
  For example, if you set your corporation name to "Acme" it will name your ships like this:
  • Acme UT 003 Caiman Adv
  • Acme ST 002 Mercury SF
  • Acme SA Headquarters 001 Snotra -- homebased to Acme Headquarters
  • Acme FR 1st Fleet HQ 003 Snotra -- homebased to Acme 1st Fleet HQ an OTAS Starliner Equipment Dock
  NOTE: The ships aren't automatically renamed globally after you change your corporation name. You have to trigger the LU autorenaming somehow (say if you stop a SA and restart it).
  
  This feature is a bit more intrusive, it seems to work fine in my game but I may not have tested all usecases, let me know if you encounter any problems.
• Collect Lasertowers Command
  New Special ship command for collecting all lasertowers in a sector, similar to how "Collect wares in sector" works. Requires Transporter Device. Good when paired with the "Ring of Fire" deployment command.

TODO

• Configurable prefix for autorenamed ships -- made obsolete by the player corporation name feature
• Universal sun intensity information (similar to the Asteroids page)

Obsolete Files

• Ship Compendium OTAS Reputation Check Fix
  OBSOLETE: This has been fixed in LU 1.4.8. Please update to latest LU version and don't use this file.
  
  This should fix the Ship Compendium from always showing OTAS ships as "white" (available for purchase) when in fact the required Argon reputation would not allow to. It was confusing and it made this otherwise awesome tool a tiny bit less useful.
  
  Download: link
• Access the Template Manager and MLCC console from the Player Console
  X3AP (+LU) already requires us to assign and remember many hotkeys so I try to reduce them where possible. As I don't think I ever need to access the Template Manager or the MLCC Console quickly in the midst of battle, this change adds them to the Player Console. You can still assign and use their hotkeys if you want.
• Extended ship blueprint information
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  When the ship licenses page shows that my HQ has capacity only for 1 or 0 ships of some type, I hate having to go through every ware in my HQ and in the blueprint and compare them one by one until I find which ware is the limiting factor. So I changed the blueprint information page (the one displayed when you select a ship from the ship licenses page) to display the HQ capacity to build that ship for each ware. So now you can directly see which ware is limiting you.
  
  Also, I have made another small change to the ship licenses page but one that I find very useful. When you click on the "Dockware Manager" (to open the HQ Dockware Manager) from the license page, when you exited it it did not go back to the license page so I changed it to go back to the license page. This way it's easier to setup your HQ dockware capacities based on the requirements of a certain blueprint by making it faster to go back and forth between the HQ dockware page and the detailed blueprint information.
• Blueprint manager
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  When you start having lots of blueprints (especially some of which you purchased accidentally) it becomes a bit annoying seeing all those irrelevant blueprints in the LU ship licenses page or in the HQ build interface. I added a new "Blueprint manager", a window that can be opened from the LU licenses page and allows you to move your HQ blueprints to a separate, "archived", set of licenses. This way you can easily clean the HQ blueprints and if you change your mind just use the "Blueprint manager" to move them back to the HQ.
  
  NOTE: if you install this it also includes the Extended ship blueprint information change described above.
  
  WARNING: This script obviously messes up with your HQ blueprints, make a backup of your games before you start using it and report any issues. Also, it's not supported by LU Export/Import so before you do an E/I make sure to move all archived blueprints back to the HQ otherwise you WILL lose those.
• MLCC more target options
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  As I started to build a fleet and setting it up with MLCC I quickly encounter an issue: the MLCC escort tasks allow to assign that one type of ships can escort a single class of escorted ships. So I can setup all my Setantas to escort all M7s (including M7Ms and M7 light carriers) but once I started to acquire M1/M2s they would be ignored by the Setantas. One option is to add different types of M6s to my MLCC docks and assign each type a different type to be escorted but I don't really like any other M6 plus I would need to provide the headquarters with new laser types than what the Setantas use.
  
  So I added an additional Escort target option "Capital Ships" and by using it you can configure your MLCC Escort tasks to protect any huge ships (M7, M7M, M1, M2). Existing MLCC code logic will automatically allocate the available escort ships equally to each escorted ship.
  
  I also added the "Corvettes" target for Assault/Carrier/Bomber targets so you can have a task like this configured to attack only M6 ships.
• Fixed 'Security' ships show/hide toggle for carried ships
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  The show/hide toggles for UT/ST ships and ships assigned to a MLCC are very useful to remove the property window clutter once you get to a certain empire size. However, the show/hide toggle seems broken with ships homebased to a MLCC carrier. This is a very simple change that fixes that issue.
• Display total per-sector asteroid yield and remove refresh stuttering
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  This extends the existing Player Console -> Asteroids window to display total per-sector yield. In practice, with Saturn Complex Hubs, I found I care much more of total sector yields than of individual asteroid yields. The per-asteroid yields are still there.
  
  I also changed the code to not update the Asteroids page automatically every second. This was introducing stuttering in my game when almost every other LU window I can think of doesn't introduce stuttering and is uber fast. Anyway, by making this change now the Asteroids page won't be refreshed with real-time data if you just stare at it. You have to either change one search option in it or just close/reopen it.
• MLCC Assist Screen Selection Save
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  This makes the MLCC Assist screen save the current selection so next time you open it, it will remember the ship types selection from last time. I found this to be very useful in my game where for 90% of the sorties I do not need to call upon the M7Ms with their expensive and overpowerful torpedoes.
• Revelation Patrol Groups
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  Originally, the OCV ships that are defending an OCV sector, would try to intercept any invading ship independently, resulting in ships reaching their target in the order of how fast they were making it possible to take down a large OCV defending fleet with a much weaker force. I changed this behavior so that all OCV ships try to escort the next larger class of ships up until M2s and only the M2s will try to intercept the invading enemy. You are now forced to battle against whole M2 + escort ships battle groups to defeat an OCV sector.
  
  NOTE: because of their relatively slow speed, it's possible to draw out the M2s (and accompanying escort ships) away from the OCV station and then attack and destroy the OCV station before they can come back. I will fix this issue in an update to this script so that at least one battle group is always kept to defend the OCV station.
• Revelation Attack All Enemies
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  This fixes the OCV defensive logic to not ignore lasertowers/satellites installed by the player or the other races. Having a player satellite in an OCV sector is indeed very useful but unrealistic for the OCV to completely ignore these.
  
  NOTE: This automatically includes the Revelation Patrol Groups change.
• Better Capital Ship Attack Run
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  This changes the code used when capital ships (ships without main lasers) try to intercept/attack another ship in-sector. The original code uses the "move to position" command to place the capital ship at the side of the enemy to fire its broadside weapons, however, the "move to position" command doesn't take a timeout so if the enemy is killed or moves around, the capital ship is still slowly moving towards the position it was told to go to. This can result in the capital ship being "stuck" moving in that direction for minutes.
  
  I added a new library script that simulates "move to position" with a timeout. I've tested it extensively and it seems to significantly improves on this problem but there still are times (usually when doing collision avoidance) when a capital ship may be "stuck" trying to maneuver for some time.
• Better MLCC Assist Jump Positioning
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  This changes the way ships are layed out in space when jumping in a MLCC Assist sortie (if the player has a jumpbeacon and selects the jump to beacon option). Previously ships would try to find a random position on the plane in front of the player where they wouldn't be too close to each other. The check for how close the ship was to other ships was very limited (only considered ships at maximum 2km from the potential random position) and so for very large ships (M2+) this would miss out on ships that may still be too close (a Cyclops needs about 3km free space around it). Then, when issuing the MLCC Go order, these large ships would waste the first 10-15 minutes trying to manouver to get away from being so close to other ships.
  
  I made 2 main changes to this code:
  • it will try to find ships that may be too close to the current ship at a larger distance (fixing the M2+ issue described above)
  • it will try to position ships on a "spiral" pattern, in front of the player ship, instead of randomly trying to find a position (I love how well/organized that looks, try it out with lots of M6s!)
• Ware Capacity Percentage Calculation Fix
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  When storing certain wares (ex. Energy Cells) in very large quantities (over 24mil units or so), the ware percentage calculation (to determine the percent of the ware relative to the Dockware Manager capacity setting) overflows 32 bit integers and you get a negative percentage value. This happens in 3 places that I am aware of and that this should fix:
  • Dockware Manager display, only a cosmetic issue
  • Freighter command script, this results in many problems with the ship logic, documented in the change README file
  • Dock Agent command script, similar issues as with the Freighter script
• Drop Wares Command
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  New Trade ship command to drop all unused wares carried by a player ship when docked at a player dock. The ship will drop everything except installed wares or any wares needed to satisfy the ship resupply settings.
  
  After using a TL with the "Collect wares in sector" command to clear whole sectors, I prefer to just drop everything at my HQ where I already have Dock Agents that will sell anything not needed by the HQ instead of docking at a NPC equipment dock and using the "Sell Spare Equipment" command.
• Higher Direct Deposit Limit
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  Very simple change, increases the Direct Deposit station command upper threshold limit to 1000 (from 100) millions. I found the 100 millions limit very small in late game.
• Total Asset Value
  OBSOLETE: This feature is included in LU 1.6.0. Please update to latest LU version.
  
  This adds new option to the Player Console menu to compute the total player asset valuation. It currently includes:
  • player account
  • station wares and station accounts
  • player ship values and ship wares/equipment/upgrades
  • Saturn Complex Hub installed factories

[dizzy]

Changelog

(I'll only list here the packages that have seen any updates since their initial release)

Better capital ship attack runs

• Version 1.3
  • Fixed another bug introduced by v1.1 cleanups, bug results in capital ships getting stuck in following victims that have left the sector, as long as the player ship remains in the same sector as the capital ship affected by the bug
• Version 1.2
  • Fixed problem introduced by 1.1 where capital ships would fly away from their targets
• Version 1.1
  • Fixed some small issues present in the vanilla code
  • Improved the attack run logic by not allowing a capital ship trying to close in on an enemy to "idle", at least not until it gets to the target distance

Player corporation name setting

• Version 1.1
  • Fixed show/hide toggle for ships prefixed with the corporation name.
• Version 1.2
  • Updated the Player Console to include the changes from LU 1.6.0
• Version 1.3
  • Updated the Player Console to include the changes from LU 1.7.0

Blueprint manager

• Version 1.1
  • Renamed "Saved blueprints" to "Archived blueprints", it better describes what is happening.
• Version 1.2
  • Updated the Blueprint Manager menu to use Litcube's Dynamic Menu System. It doesn't flash now when clicking on items and it looks and feels like a native menu.

Percentage Calculation Fix

• Version 1.1
  • Rebased on the LU 1.5.2 version of the Freighter script, this avoids introducing regressions in the Freighter logic from LU 1.4.7

Total asset value

• Version 0.9
  • Added reporting for owned stock market shares
  • Hide empty sections in the report

[Idleking]

Oooooh, these look neat. While you're at the blueprints, can you add an option to remove blueprints?
Never going to build that Buster anyway...

[Sabrina Bergin]

Why remove a blue print ?

[dizzy]

Yeah, I actually thought about an option to manage/remove blueprints too but it does feel like something that Litcube would never add to his game and my general hope with these changes is that they eventually get integrated in the official game.

The reason why I'd like to remove blueprints is to make dealing with them easier, I only need a few of them at a time (for certain periods in the game) and having to see them all (some I accidentally bought) is annoying. But permanently removing sounds a bit scary. So I think if I'm going to add a secondary blueprint store system (separate from storing them in your HQ). Like this:
- in the blueprint licenses page you can add/move blueprints from the "main" set to a "secondary" set
- only the "main" set of blueprints will show on the HQ built-in build commands and so on (so you only care to build those)
- however, you don't permanently lose the blueprints moved to the "secondary" set, you can move them back to the "main" set at any time

This should allow to both only keep a small number of blueprints on the HQ to not have to browse many by default but also you don't lose them.

I'll look at doing something like this :)

[dizzy]

Added the "Blueprint manager", seems to work really nice.

I looked at the XtendedMod code trying to see how did they manage to get the ship build time for a blueprint (as I remember they did display it) and I found some very complicated code that seems to compute the ship build time so I guess there is no MSCI way to get it from the engine, sad :(

EDIT: I updated the "Blueprint manager" (to v1.1) so that it calls the saved licenses as "Archived" instead of just "Saved" as I find that to be a better English word for what actually happens. If you already installed v1.0 the code should automatically upgrade a global variable (that was also renamed) so everything should still work or you could go back to a save before you started using v1.0 since I released it just 30 minutes ago! :)

[dizzy]

Added, "MLCC Escort Task for Capital Ships". I like not having to add many different types of the same class of ships just to be able to assign them different escort classes.

[dizzy]

Added fix for show/hide toggle of Wing Sec ships (ships homebased to MLCC carriers) and updated the Player Corporation Name archive to fix show/hide toggle in general for ships with the corporation name prefix.

[dizzy]

Added Display total per-sector asteroid yield and remove refresh stuttering. Now the Asteroids page is even more useful :)

[dizzy]

Updated the Blueprint Manager to use Litcube's Dynamic Menu System, it behaves now almost like a hardcoded menu.

[Litcube]

Updated the Blueprint Manager to use Litcube's Dynamic Menu System, it behaves now almost like a hardcoded menu.

Well done, you're probably the first to do that.

An idea: LU has a script command along the lines of "get amount of resources for blue print x for ware y" or something like that. Try using that with the ware SETA, and see if that returns the time. It's just a hunch.

[dizzy]

Thanks, unfortunately it appears that "$Required = get blueprint resources required: shiptype= $ShipType ware= {Singularity Engine Time Accelerator}" always returns 0 for any $ShipType I tried (for ships that I have blueprints for).

BTW, I'm thinking of changing the HK.ShowBlueprints menu to use the Dynamic Menu System, the menu flashing when selecting a ship to display the per ware HQ cargo is too "glaring" now

[karabAs]

Please, check download links for "Access the Template Manager and MLCC console from the Player Console" and "Extended ship blueprint information"

Thanks.

[dizzy]

oh wtf, what is going on does wikisend change the files on existing links or something?

Damn it, need to find another hosting solution. Anyway, for the "extended blueprint information" you can use the blueprint manager download which includes that change too.

Thanks for letting me know, I'm going to verify every link now and remove those broken and try to find an alternative host.

EDIT: Uploaded everything to NexusMods and updated the links.

[Hector0x]

hi memeics,

great work so far. Could you somehow disable MLCC renaming of ships that get MLCC orders? I understand, that this won't make it in an official release for obvious reasons.
But it's the first time in X3, that i own a fleet of cap ships and naming them would help a lot with roleplaying.
I think it happens, when they return to their MLCC homebase. Maybe the code segment could be skipped somehow. Plz understand, that I don't know anything about this and how far your possibilities reach.

[dizzy]

Sure, I can look into that.

Note that I added the "Player Corporation Name" feature which you can use to set the name of your organization/corporation (for example I use "Umbrella" for my corporation name, you could use HDF for "Hector0x Defence Force"). Once set, that will be automatically added as a prefix to all LU named ships (UT/ST/DA/SA/FR and MLCC Security ships). This helps with roleplaying an organization.

But if that doesn't fit your needs, I can definitely find the code that names the MLCC assigned ships and skip like you said. Once you start developing a large MLCC fleet you will want to hide those ships from being shown on the property page and LU has a feature to do that but it will only work if your ships are named starting with "Security", so keep that in mind.

In general, I think LU could use some more options to control how the renaming is done for all these ships. My "player corporation name" feature is a simple attempt at it, a more complex thing would allow one to decide for each type of the above automatically named ships:
- if you want to have it named automatically or not
- the pattern used for naming (including colours)

So then you have completely control over the automated naming. You could even change the colours used for the automatically named ships.

[Hector0x]

A prefix is fine, but i prefer unique names. At least for the big ships (AP "Resilience", USC "Arya Stark", etc.)


An independent initiative against the ocv offers sanctuary for defected captains and all who disagree with the Omycron coalitions petty efforts to stop our greatest nemesis.

People need idols and heroes need names. Ships from all navies join our cause!

[dizzy]

Added MLCC Assist Selection Save and Revelation Patrol Groups.

[Valtarien]

The work you're doing here is fantastic! Thank you! These all seem to be in the spirit of LU, and I use all of them without issue.

[dizzy]

Yay, I have one user! Thanks, let me know if you run into any issues.