[TC] PP: Your Hyperion Vanguard in 52 minutes (spoilers)

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glenmcd
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[TC] PP: Your Hyperion Vanguard in 52 minutes (spoilers)

Post by glenmcd » Fri, 22. Apr 11, 10:14

As a personal challenge I've been trying to complete the initial mission in "Poisoned Paranid"
gamestart in under one hour's flying time using TC V3.1 vanilla. After a month of experiments going wrong
I finally got it! 52:25, 39.3M credits and ready to press enter for the prize:

http://www.glenmcd.com/fiftytwominutehv.html

The .sav file is linked in the above page. You're welcome to download if you have a use for it.
Any questions on methods should mostly be answered by examining the personal log (shift-m)
in above .sav file, the pilot info and the schedule below:

[ external image ]
[ external image ]

Schedule:
00:00 - In 74 m/sec Demeter hauler, double-strafe to Patriarchs Conclusion gate at effective speed of 134 m/sec.
04:24 - fly through gate Heavens Assertion to Patriarchs Conclusion. Double-strafe towards EQd.
05:00 (approx) - accept "defend position" mission from station within comms distance of WG to EQd route. Let military complete.
07:41 - dock at PC EQd, sell shields and laser. Buy max engine tuning and rudder opts. Rep increases Split creature to Known Venturer 0%.
Undock, double-strafe to shipyard. On route, military kills pirates,
defend position mission completes and rep increases to Split Friend. Just enough to buy M5 and TP ships.
On route to SY, hire TL and command to shipyard (not used).
10:17 - dock at shipyard. Buy cheapest M5, enter. Sell Demeter hauler. Buy fastest M5 (Jaguar Raider) with SETA,
boost extension, 1MJ shield and 1 x PAC (laser not used). Buy Iguana, spending all remaining credits
on engine tuning and "S" class lasers. Fly Jaguar Raider to Military Outpost, Contorted Dominion. Command Iguana to same.
On route, accept "Supply ship" mission for Iguana. Fly through East gate CD, hold down max speed key (tab)
to immediately re-enter CD. Accept "Supply Ship" mission with CD MOP for Split TP.
And again but swapping back to WG. And then for a Split M5. If you use same gate each time, fewer missions spawn.
Do not complete any at this time.
13:29 - Fly to Bastclaw Prototype, claim, eject lasers and docking computer.
Collect in Jaguar Raider. Command Bastclaw to dock at SY in PC (still not there).
34:00 - with less than a minute to complete after docking, xfer lasers from M5 to Iguana,
complete most urgent supply ship mission but enter ship quickly to retain Iguana.
Again with only seconds before mission lapsed, xfer expensive lasers from Iguana to M5,
complete supply Split M5 mission, enter M5 quickly to retain. Use all available credits to purchase
turbo Mk 1 and expensive lasers, shields etc. The next two supply Split TP missions I had more time for.
Xfer all items M5 to Iguana and complete as above. As Contorted Dominion MOP was now
fresh out of expensive items that I could afford, mission completion reward was now static. Complete as above for each of two remaining.
Account now 10.3M credits.
37:00 - Accept yet another supply Split TP mission and complete as above. Account now 15.1M.
38:27 - Dragon M6 for sale at PC SY. Purchase, sell for 1M profit. Accept "supply ship" mission at CD MOP for Jaguar.
My Jaguar Raider not suitable for this.
40:29 - Dock at SY PC, buy Jaguar "L", enter. Xfer software and turbo to Jaguar. Leave JR there for now.
Fly Jaguar using turbo to CD MOP.
46:10 - Dock at CD MOP, sell all but bare essentials except turbo1, buy turbo MkII for Jaguar. Account now only 300K or so.
Complete mission as above for 20.5M reward. Fly Jaguar using turbo1 to SY PC and dock.
Enter JR, xfer software and turbo1 to JR, leave turbo2 in Jaguar. Sell Jaguar for ~19M. Account now 39.3M cr.
Fly JR to SPP alpha PC and fill up with ECs. Reasons below.
49:02 - Need rep increase with Boron to dock at Queens Harbour TP. MOP Faded Dreams had nothing I could buy,
hence buying ECs at PC. On route PC to FD, I couldn't use turbo else ECs would have been used. JR is okay at 596 m/sec.
Sold/bought ECs at MOP FD a couple of times.
Rep increased from Boron acquaintance 0% to 50%. Just enough to dock at TP. Undocked, used turbo Mk I to get quickly to TP QH.
52:25 - Docked at Trading Port Queens Harbour. Ready to complete mission for HV.

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Post by TTD » Fri, 22. Apr 11, 10:37

Good on ya matey !
I might just use this info on my next game :D

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Re: [TC] PP: Your Hyperion Vanguard in 52 minutes (spoilers)

Post by Lelouch » Fri, 22. Apr 11, 11:42

Holy batsmurf.

That reads like a really intense hour.

*bows in awe*

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Post by cj-spartacus » Fri, 22. Apr 11, 11:59

Hat's off to you young sir. Who needs Niv mining when you've got savvy like that!
"Sticking feathers up your butt doesn't make you a chicken." - Tyler Durden

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Post by pjknibbs » Fri, 22. Apr 11, 12:40

Hmmmm. If I'm reading the 34:00 section properly, you did a bunch of return ship missions and somehow managed to retain control of them by switching into them, as well as completing the mission. Seems like a bit of an exploit to me...

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Post by glenmcd » Fri, 22. Apr 11, 13:53

pjknibbs wrote:Hmmmm. If I'm reading the 34:00 section properly, you did a bunch of return ship missions and somehow managed to retain control of them by switching into them, as well as completing the mission. Seems like a bit of an exploit to me...
This is supply ship or deliver ship, depending on the race. You simply give them a particular type of ship that they want and it doesn't matter where you got it from. They pay the reward plus "ship value". "Return abandoned ship" and "return stolen ship" are similar but it's got to be a particular ship. At the completion of these is a ship hand-over. An opportunity of two seconds duration is present in these to retain the ship. Other hand-overs exist, that don't have this: sell ship at shipyard, and claim ship. Yet another is when you buy a ship in space, where you also are given a second or two before the seller strips the ship. If you look carefully at all of these, I think it's pretty difficult to conclude anything other than ES putting these in intentionally. A modern, high spec'd computer needing two seconds of execution time to hand over a ship? Yeah right! Allowing a sale of a ship at a shipyard where you get to keep the ship would be going too far and that's precisely why it happens instantly, with no chance of retaining. With return / deliver / supply ship missions, you only get the opportunity when there's a suitable mission available, and you are sufficiently prepared to make good before time runs out. This is an identical situation to filling a ship with Nividium when it's for "return ship" mission. It's intentional but limited by you having to personally scout around for appropriate missions. Additionally, there seems to be a mechanism in TC where if you hang around the same sector(s), fewer station missions spawn. So while the opportunities are present and they do seem to be quite exploitive, in practise you'll find good reasons for doing other things as well. One of these is that the missions you seek stop spawning in the sector that you keep hitting. The first supply Iguana mission I got after 3 reloads. The last took over 300, spread over multiple RL days. Try this: fly between Patriarchs Conclusion and Contorted Dominion only, checking missions available at MOP PC each time. Make sure that you have never entered Faded Dreams. Do this like 20 times. You'll find that the number of new missions being spawned on each entry to Contorted Dominion diminish. Then, fly through the CD East gate to Faded Dreams (for first time in this gamestart). Return to CD, and you'll find that this time there's a whole bunch of new missions have been spawned. Same sector, same station. You've explored and there's your reward.

Here's the original thread on the retain after handover trick:

http://forum.egosoft.de/viewtopic.php?t=298471

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NUKLEAR-SLUG
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Post by NUKLEAR-SLUG » Fri, 22. Apr 11, 18:50

glenmcd wrote:If you look carefully at all of these, I think it's pretty difficult to conclude anything other than ES putting these in intentionally. A modern, high spec'd computer needing two seconds of execution time to hand over a ship? Yeah right!
I think it's pretty difficult to conclude this is anything other than an attempt to justify an exploit.

Checking for completion of a delivery mission is not a system critical processing thread so there's no reason Egosoft couldn't have designed it with a 2000ms sleep time to reduce CPU workload. It's clear the intent of the game mechanic was for the ship to be removed from your control, you're abusing that mechanic, therefore this an exploit.

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Post by TTD » Fri, 22. Apr 11, 19:12

ssshhhuushhh :lol:

"Exploits" seem to get fixed in updates.
Not all of them,admittedly. :)

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Post by glenmcd » Sat, 23. Apr 11, 06:56

NUKLEAR-SLUG wrote:
glenmcd wrote:If you look carefully at all of these, I think it's pretty difficult to conclude anything other than ES putting these in intentionally. A modern, high spec'd computer needing two seconds of execution time to hand over a ship? Yeah right!
I think it's pretty difficult to conclude this is anything other than an attempt to justify an exploit.

Checking for completion of a delivery mission is not a system critical processing thread so there's no reason Egosoft couldn't have designed it with a 2000ms sleep time to reduce CPU workload. It's clear the intent of the game mechanic was for the ship to be removed from your control, you're abusing that mechanic, therefore this an exploit.
You've done many excellent posts here and I feel privileged to have you respond here. I think the entire subject of "exploits" deserves a seperate thread, possibly in off topic. I don't believe that individual players should come into this argument as they're not the ones responsible for putting the exploit into TC. Egosoft: yes, they provided the game and can rightly be associated with what is possible in the game. If a player feels that others should justify to them how they play, then their expectations exceed practicality. Players do play in ways that suit them. It's a fact, so get used to it. Most of the time you don't get to know about it. If you do, it may be for one of several reasons:
1. They consider that there is something in TC that ES should do something about, and the only way to get it explored and ultimately actioned is to demonstrate how it can cause the game to become unbalanced. If Egosoft don't know then how can they ever be expected to "fix" it?? An exploit that is reported directly to ES by one player only is less likely to be taken seriously by ES than an exploit that has already been duplicated and explored by many players. If forum moderators allow players to be bullied for doing so, we all suffer.
2. They have found some aspect of TC that Egosoft built into the game that until now was not discovered and shared here. This is a sandpit, and it's been proven many times over the years since release, that ES buried in the sand many things that were not easily discovered within the first week after release. This gives the game longevity, both for existing players and future.

There are several things that I personally consider TC would be better without. It would be rude of me (and futile) to attempt to impose these views on any other player. Purely for the purpose of example:
1. Capturing ships through boarding. Either you love it or you hate it. I don't love it. Maybe one day I will?
2. Selling abandoned ships. Recognised by many as a major cause of unbalancing game starts, once you know where they are. Until then it's an exciting part of the discovery phase. There are many solutions that ES could implement, but the only one currently available is self imposed restrictions.
3. Nividium mining with a fleet of 1,000 ships. The steps needed to work it were each intentional by ES. I was excited when I first discovered this, and I'm guessing others were too. After the novelty wears off, why bother?
4. Gate punching. By this I mean hanging around a gate which is within comms distance of several stations. It takes only seconds to fly out and then back into the sector. Each time you do it, new station missions spawn. You can accept up to 24 missions for supplying wares (ECs are easiest to find), make a single shipment of same to station, and complete all 24 missions within seconds after entering the ship at station. This can result in massive rep increases (3 to 4 levels), huge payouts and without necessarly increasing trading rank at all. This can be performed indefinately, although as usual rank increases become harder to achieve. This was a fun discovery for me, and I'm still exploring it. But I can see the day when I wish it wasn't there.

Please note that if you gate-punch, you'll experience massive framerate drops and matching decrease in play-ability, particularly in fights. Framerate drops due to mounting CPU loading happens any time you fly through a gate (any gate, jumpdrive included). Gate-punching simply makes the association bleedingly obvious. Start a new game, or fly through less gates. Neither a good solution, but unless/until there's a 3.2 fix for this that's just how it is.

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Post by zyriel » Sat, 23. Apr 11, 07:16

just wondering how your foresighting skills are at so high level ?
or you just used save/load cheat to predict which ship deliver missions will be given ?

Cheating => Knowingly exploiting the bug(s)

anyways cheat or not the 52 minutes is nice time man
btw i did use save/load trick at getting better Hyperion for reward
didnt feel like doing it all over again like 50 times just to get bit faster ship :)

but other than that i do not cheat in the game
its way too easy anyways

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Post by kurush » Sat, 23. Apr 11, 10:19

There are oversights in the game mechanics implementations (i.e. infinite Nvidium mining, the way missions are spawned, etc) and there are just plain bugs. If the second group is fair game, it makes me a proud owner of ~500+ PALC cannons obtained via a ware duplication exploit. Clearly, it was not the developers intent :)
From this perspective, selling a ship loaded with Nvidium is a game feature which is OK to use. Tricking the game somehow so that it doesn't take the ship you are supposed to deliver but still pays you for the mission surely looks like a bug. If exploiting bugs is OK, I would think a ware duplication exploit can produce even better time. After all you just need to ships with a decent cargo hold, an EC delivery mission and one item of some expensive ware that shows below EC in the cargo hold.

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Post by NUKLEAR-SLUG » Sat, 23. Apr 11, 12:04

glenmcd wrote:I don't believe that individual players should come into this argument as they're not the ones responsible for putting the exploit into TC. Egosoft: yes, they provided the game and can rightly be associated with what is possible in the game. If a player feels that others should justify to them how they play, then their expectations exceed practicality. Players do play in ways that suit them. It's a fact, so get used to it. Most of the time you don't get to know about it. If you do, it may be for one of several reasons:
1. They consider that there is something in TC that ES should do something about, and the only way to get it explored and ultimately actioned is to demonstrate how it can cause the game to become unbalanced. If Egosoft don't know then how can they ever be expected to "fix" it?? An exploit that is reported directly to ES by one player only is less likely to be taken seriously by ES than an exploit that has already been duplicated and explored by many players. If forum moderators allow players to be bullied for doing so, we all suffer.
2. They have found some aspect of TC that Egosoft built into the game that until now was not discovered and shared here. This is a sandpit, and it's been proven many times over the years since release, that ES buried in the sand many things that were not easily discovered within the first week after release. This gives the game longevity, both for existing players and future.
I'm not quite sure you quite grasp the definition of 'exploit' in this instance.

The game mechanic in this example is clear, your task is to bring a ship of specified designation to a specified location at which point the ship is removed from your control and your reward is paid to you. The fact that by quickly mashing a few keys you can break this intentional transition does not mean in any way that it was specifically designed that way.

What you are trying to argue is that some Egosoft dev specifically sat down and coded conditions such that if you perform a certain button-mashing action within 2 secs then you get a free gift when the reality is if you were meant to be given the option to perform that action then it would have been very clearly coded that way and displayed to the player as such.

TC is a complicated piece of software and there are a lot of interactions between various aspects of it such that it's impractical for the devs to test every possibility. All the devs can do is design the individual game mechanics and test their functionality in context. Provided each game mechanic works in context then that can be called 'working as intended'. It's the players that will ultimately stress test the bejeezus out of them tho and if, as in this case, there is way to break one of those game mechanics then that's how exploits will be discovered.

There are any number of known mechanic-breaking exploits for TC, this is just one more. Congrats for finding one if you like, but ultimately don't kid yourself it's anything more than that.

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Post by Flozem » Sat, 23. Apr 11, 17:11

Lol - you cheat... still - I tried it soon after your posted this, but I guess I'm just too slow.

Anyway - I'm not a speed-player I just like to have some fun in my game...

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Post by glenmcd » Mon, 25. Apr 11, 17:01

Thanks to all for replies. So it looks like the thing with retaining a ship after mission completion wasn't generally known, but this bug:
glenmcd wrote:Framerate drops due to mounting CPU loading happens any time you fly through a gate (any gate, jumpdrive included).
was well known already? As pointed out above, yet another exploit is nothing to be celebrated, but surely unreasonably low framerates would be of interest to most game players, whether they understand the technical reasons for it or not??

Although there was an earlier thread on this subject, this is a far more detailed and recent one:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=299831

If this wasn't generally known about, why has noone attempted to duplicate it? Come on guys, give something back. Or show me where this has been covered before. Thanks!!

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Post by VincentTH » Mon, 25. Apr 11, 21:38

glenmcd wrote:Thanks to all for replies. So it looks like the thing with retaining a ship after mission completion wasn't generally known, but this bug:
glenmcd wrote:Framerate drops due to mounting CPU loading happens any time you fly through a gate (any gate, jumpdrive included).
was well known already? As pointed out above, yet another exploit is nothing to be celebrated, but surely unreasonably low framerates would be of interest to most game players, whether they understand the technical reasons for it or not??

Although there was an earlier thread on this subject, this is a far more detailed and recent one:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=299831

If this wasn't generally known about, why has noone attempted to duplicate it? Come on guys, give something back. Or show me where this has been covered before. Thanks!!
Sorry, but this is indeed an exploit. You have taken advantage of a bug in the game. Whether or not this bug has been fixed or that whether anyone has found the exploit is not the issue.

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Post by opi79 » Sat, 30. Apr 11, 19:41

the exploit only works at 3.0 and up patch i treid in 2.5 and the ship stays in the control of the computer

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Post by nponoBegHuk » Wed, 4. May 11, 05:34

opi79 wrote:the exploit only works at 3.0 and up patch i treid in 2.5 and the ship stays in the control of the computer
Spoiler
Show
Ship stays in the control of the computer but as long as you are inside of it you can issue "Freight Exchange" with your other docked ships, transfer your EBCs back, then change ship and forget about the hull, your job here is done:

http://img.imgur.com/PaLoi.jpg

Paying your hub chip complex within a single supply TS mission = priceless.
Thanks for sharing.
Fast sector selection on the Universe Map | Rock locations for Mobile/OOS mining | Botting for max speed Hyperion | Complete list of ship sources | Capturing smaller ships

My current ship collection:
11 out of 11 *retired* ships found
17 out of 17 *unique* ships found
9 out of 9 *limited* ships found
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Post by opi79 » Wed, 4. May 11, 15:42

even if u are in ship u cant make the "Freight Exchange" command in 2.5
i didnt cheack if the ship stays in ur control in patch 2.6 or 2.7
but in 2.5 the ship transfer to the computer and even if ur in ship u cant make Freight Exchange
in 3.0 and up the ship stays in ur control that if ur fast

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Post by ObadiahtheSlim » Wed, 4. May 11, 17:45

You guys are confusing cheating with exploiting.

Exploiting is taking advantage of in game mechanics or bugs in a way not intended by the developer. (infinite nividium Mining, weapon cloning)

Cheating is using an outside program to manipulate the game in some way (memory editors) or using commands that are specifically marked as cheat codes (game editor). Cheating can also be defined as breaking the rules of a competition (using an M6 in a competition to kill Xenon Qs in a fighter).

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Post by zyriel » Mon, 30. May 11, 12:38

ObadiahtheSlim wrote:You guys are confusing cheating with exploiting.

Exploiting is taking advantage of in game mechanics or bugs in a way not intended by the developer. (infinite nividium Mining, weapon cloning)

Cheating is using an outside program to manipulate the game in some way (memory editors) or using commands that are specifically marked as cheat codes (game editor). Cheating can also be defined as breaking the rules of a competition (using an M6 in a competition to kill Xenon Qs in a fighter).
you are wrong

knowingly abusing a bug is cheating

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