Station Population Beta 2015

[J3ANP3T3R]

Station Population Beta version !


WARNING !

1. only been tested with 3.5.
2. may not work with mods that changes NPC conversation options.
3. limit of NPC per platform not yet tested. try 20 per capital ship.
4. please save your progress before using this mod.




Features

1. Allow hired NPCs to "stay here" in stations and retrieve them with "Come with me" option. currently only include Managers,Defense Officers,Architects,Engineers,Captains,Pilot,Marine Officer,and Specialists. trade NPCs are not included.

2. Allow hired NPCs to "stay here" in player owned capital ships and retrieve them with "Come with me" option. currently only include Managers,Defense Officers,Architects,Engineers,Captains,Pilot,Marine Officer,and Specialists. trade NPCs are not included. in vanilla at some point it did not allow me to replace or remove a captain on my capital ship same with architect, this solves it.

3. Player owned stations is populated based on neutral to friendly factions in the same sector. these NPCs are not permanent and will change every time you enter this zone. you can buy some of their stuffs and even hire some pilot and engineers but these usually comes with low stats ( may adjust in the future anyway they are just there so your stations wont look dead and abandoned). the number of NPCs is currently limited to the number of relation points you have with each faction on the same sector. max relation pts 30 + some bonus .. you can adjust this but i dont know if this will have a massive effect on your performance.

so now if skunk is full of npcs and you see a rare NPC with full stats you can just call your rahanas and empty your NPCs there.





Notes

1. you must first land on a target platform (eg. capital ship dock or station docks ) ... when you are inside, call your hired NPCs onboard the skunk and click on the conversation option "Stay Here". the vanilla option "work here" is still there and will have a different effect than "Stay here". "Stay here" only makes your NPCs stay on that station/ship and not replace whoever is already working there.

2. the station or the ship platform must be player owned.

3. to take back an NPC... either go inside the platform and talk to them or from your ship use remote communications and talk to the npc and click on "Come with me". skunk must have available slots or the NPC bounces back to the station/ship. AGAIN its different from the vanilla option "Come back onboard" or "Work somewhere else" ... if these Vanilla options are available for you then choose them ... "Come with me" is only for when no options to take them back are visible.

4. doesn't work with temporary NPCs like if you bought a Construction Vehicle it comes with an NPC that you dont own. replace that npc.

5. Architects are treated differently. if they are on a CV they must not be busy building and must not have any ships currently assigned to them. otherwise the option "Re-call" or "Come with me" is replaced with whatever the problem is like "CV is building" or "busy coordinating ships"

6. Managers,architects,defence npc,captain,pilot,specialists ( AFAIK npcs that can have subordinates can only be removed from their places if they dont have any subordinates relying on them.


please report any bugs so we can fix them.
also Would appreciate if someone can fix the following.

1. allow the random NPCs to appear with proper uniforms matching their corresponding jobs and not the default civilian clothes.



You can get the full version here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/50pmlyi4hyhr9 ... n.zip?dl=0

or if you only want your stations populated with random npcs.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9t8sc7t6trqfo ... 2.zip?dl=0

or if you only want to be able to leave your npcs in your stations or capital ships get this one.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z4zs680t8p58z ... 1.zip?dl=0

remember not to use all 3. either get the full version or 1 of each.



Edit: This topic stays locked, until the matter described in this post is sorted. X2-Illuminatus

[UniTrader]

LOL i just thought about possibilities how to do this while writing on my current Project of implementing an "Itemtrade Economy" based on Source/Sink Stations rather than generating Amounts and Prices purely random and noticed it may select Player Stations

[J3ANP3T3R]

LOL i just thought about possibilities how to do this while writing on my current Project of implementing an "Itemtrade Economy" based on Source/Sink Stations rather than generating Amounts and Prices purely random and noticed it may select Player Stations

"Itemtrade Economy" sounds interesting. are you going to upload it soon ? what was it that you thought and saw here ?

[UniTrader]

on how to add NPCs to Player Stations

[J3ANP3T3R]

on how to add NPCs to Player Stations

when i posted this idea on the forum YorricVander mentioned there was a guy who created the same but his NPCs are having problems with older saved game versions. i expect some future issues with my version as well but i think we all wanted to have NPCs on player stations ? . kinda weird why they were not added in the first place. its like having a huge station run by only 3 people and have a huge capital ship run by 3 people. i guess in the future.... AI rules

[YorrickVander]

Aye, populate player stations mod (now hidden on steam) was based on 5 Star Ship and Station Crew AND NPCs on player stations by Strigil. http://www.nexusmods.com/xrebirth/mods/320/?

The mods use cue actors to populate the stations and while I'm aware that ES changed things with cue actors around patch 2.20 I still don't know why only some people have issues with the mod

EDIT I see your version uses platform actors. You might well not see the same issues.

[J3ANP3T3R]

Aye, populate player stations mod (now hidden on steam) was based on 5 Star Ship and Station Crew AND NPCs on player stations by Strigil. http://www.nexusmods.com/xrebirth/mods/320/?

The mods use cue actors to populate the stations and while I'm aware that ES changed things with cue actors around patch 2.20 I still don't know why only some people have issues with the mod

EDIT I see your version uses platform actors. You might well not see the same issues.

Yorric i just now realized why you created the side bar menu shortcut for betty 2015. because i did ask you for something like it and i was so dumb not realizing why the ui for betty. i was actually wondering if i can get a menu(actually a window ! stupid me) similar to a window popup when you check what inventory items you have... or a window popup showing all the npcs on skunk. sort of like a basic window that accepts a list of texts or objects and place them on a window list. and you can just select from the list and it will return the selected value.

[J3ANP3T3R]

this is the sample code i got from the vanilla.

<create_platform_actor name="$architect" group="argon.pilot" type="entitytype.architect" dockingbay="$dock.component">

<owner exact="faction.player" />
</create_platform_actor>

i cant seem to substitute 'argon.pilot' in group="argon.pilot" with a variable like $jobtype ... it would not accept it. my target is to create a random type of NPC but with matching appearances. i wanted for the random NPC if an architect would look like the one with a strange hat xD . instead im stuck with default civilian looking npcs. so i ended up removing the architect,managers etc from the randomly spawned npcs and only allow traders and a pilot and engineer.

[YorrickVander]

oh sorry mate, I may have been a bit vague on that point. YAT 1.2 contains my lua for doing that - 2 versions, 1 for pass and return selected string (pass list, return list member) and one for passing and returning lists of ship objects. They were made a fair time before the ui code was released and don't have properly working back functionality if they get used in sequence. Feel free to use them, or pm me if you want to cobble something new/better together.

[J3ANP3T3R]

oh sorry mate, I may have been a bit vague on that point. YAT 1.2 contains my lua for doing that - 2 versions, 1 for pass and return selected string (pass list, return list member) and one for passing and returning lists of ship objects. They were made a fair time before the ui code was released and don't have properly working back functionality if they get used in sequence. Feel free to use them, or pm me if you want to cobble something new/better together.

no problem mate. totally not your fault. my English is struggling and i may have made a different request than what i really wanted. i was hoping for a "universal list" window where it can accept anything you throw at it. as long as it is an array of objects or a basic array of strings. sadly, im struggling with md and aiscripts let alone lua. i dont understand lua :/

[J3ANP3T3R]

Guys i have a question..

how do you check for the maximum number of npcs that can be physically added to a certain platform. on skunk i think it was numfreeactorslots.

on other ships its also numfreeactorslots = Number of free actor slots on landing platform (component must be a dockingbay)" type="integer"

or
freemissionactorslot = true iff there is a free mission actor slot on the landing platform (component must be a dockingbay)


i think i already tried these and it didn't work.

[YorrickVander]

I used this :

Code: Select all

<find_dock_location multiple="true" name="$DockingBay" container="$PlayerStations.{$i}"/>
					<do_all exact="$DockingBay.count" counter="$j" >
						<do_all min="1" max="$DockingBay.{$j}.numfreeactorslots" counter="$k" >
							<get_factions_by_relation relation="dock" faction="faction.player" result="$factions"/>

personally I never got the bugged convos in my own save games, only those from other people sent to me for testing. Since any place you will get an npc to talk to is also a dock location, this covers it

[J3ANP3T3R]

I used this :

Code: Select all

<find_dock_location multiple="true" name="$DockingBay" container="$PlayerStations.{$i}"/>
					<do_all exact="$DockingBay.count" counter="$j" >
						<do_all min="1" max="$DockingBay.{$j}.numfreeactorslots" counter="$k" >
							<get_factions_by_relation relation="dock" faction="faction.player" result="$factions"/>

personally I never got the bugged convos in my own save games, only those from other people sent to me for testing. Since any place you will get an npc to talk to is also a dock location, this covers it

but there was no bugged convo in the mod. its just that i wanted to add additional security where the mod will check if there is an extra space on the platform to put the NPC on. numfreeactorslots did not work for me as i tested this on a capital ship it will still tell me a max of 3 npcs when if forced you can actually drop more than 10 npcs on a capital ship. just not sure how more though

[Vim Razz]

Is there any particular reason that this isn't two separate mods?

[J3ANP3T3R]

Is there any particular reason that this isn't two separate mods?

hello ! thank you for your question. which would that be ? populating the station or the ship ? or allowing npcs to stay in platforms ? i decided to have them all together as one because they all have something to do with populating platforms.

[palm911]

HI , great idea , i am with VIM.

there should be 2 mods :

1 complete , populate with NPC PL station)
2, leave Player npc in PLayer stations


i wonder how many npcs can live in a single station?

thanks m8t.

[J3ANP3T3R]

HI , great idea , i am with VIM.

there should be 2 mods :

1 complete , populate with NPC PL station)
2, leave Player npc in PLayer stations


i wonder how many npcs can live in a single station?

thanks m8t.

hello and thank you for your feedback ... can you give more clarity on how the mod should be separated ? did you mean a separate mod that allows NPC to be removed from player owned stations ? and a separate mod that allows them to be placed in stations ? why the need to separate the mods ? and by the way, the part to remove player owned npc from platforms would be useless if the mod to add them there in the first place is removed.

[Vim Razz]

@ J3ANP3T3R,

Splitting things up where possible just makes it easier for people to mix and match mods to suit their games.

Station NPCs and employee functions may be similar in the sense that they both involve stations, but they use very different game resources and have completely different compatibility requirements.

[J3ANP3T3R]

@ J3ANP3T3R,

Splitting things up where possible just makes it easier for people to mix and match mods to suit their games.

Station NPCs and employee functions may be similar in the sense that they both involve stations, but they use very different game resources and have completely different compatibility requirements.

im sorry but i dont understand. which should be separated from the original mod ? and which do you mean use different game resources ?

thank you for your feedback

[palm911]

hi,

From your own description : split #1 and #2 from #3. 2 different mods,

one will use hired NPC , and allow player to populate their stations, with the HIRED NPCs.

the other mod , should allow NPC (non hired NPC to populate the station)

(those changes will be welcome)

Features

1. Allow hired NPCs to "stay here" in stations and retrieve them with "Come with me" option. currently only include Managers,Defense Officers,Architects,Engineers,Captains,Pilot,Marine Officer,and Specialists. trade NPCs are not included.

2. Allow hired NPCs to "stay here" in player owned capital ships and retrieve them with "Come with me" option. currently only include Managers,Defense Officers,Architects,Engineers,Captains,Pilot,Marine Officer,and Specialists. trade NPCs are not included. in vanilla at some point it did not allow me to replace or remove a captain on my capital ship same with architect, this solves it.

3. Player owned stations is populated based on neutral to friendly factions in the same sector. these NPCs are not permanent and will change every time you enter this zone. you can buy some of their stuffs and even hire some pilot and engineers but these usually comes with low stats ( may adjust in the future anyway they are just there so your stations wont look dead and abandoned). the number of NPCs is currently limited to the number of relation points you have with each faction on the same sector. max relation pts 30 + some bonus .. you can adjust this but i dont know if this will have a massive effect on your performance.