[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

Hector0x · Post by **Hector0x** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 15:02

myrmidon wrote:Some questions for fellow commanders:

1. Never built Orbital Weapons Platforms before. Do players feel that a new OWP has a good set of ranged guns already installed (for its size/expense) to perform the "area denial/draw fire/survive long enough for help to arrive" function? Or is it better to research/build the cost-equivalent ships? (I assume OWPs are already armed, once built)

2. In the first 24 game hours...how much of the galaxy do you feel compelled to place advanced satellites in? I keep wanted to map as much as I can reach due to the sweet loot/ships available for salvage. I have about 50% of the non-pirate/Xenon galaxy in view of advanced satellites.

I sometimes wonder if I'm wasting time and effort since I manually order the satellites placed *exactly* where I want them. I spend a great deal of time on mapping and local/remote sat-dropping.

1. Same here. Haven't found the time to play recently. I believe the OWPs are totally worth it, because you don't need ship resources to build them.
2. After playing a great deal of LU over the last years i've come to the conclusion that
a) you aren't missing too many opportunities by having a fairly small sat net. There is always stuff to do and if you'd see all the gameworld you would miss many of the events anyway while you're busy. After a certain point you also don't want to monitor the galaxy as frequently as before. The visible situations may not be the best in the universe, but you can get your hands full anytime
b) A good half of the gameworld is pretty unspectacular in terms of rep boosting combat opportunities or loot. Just get sats in some "hot" sectors like Black Hole Sun or Heretics End. Then some in those you have trade partners and you are good to go straight into the midgame.
c)Placing sats manually outside the enemy detection range is slow and fiddling as hell, but totally worth it in the long run.

hanuland · Post by **hanuland** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 15:35

If you tune in sanctuary the ship you have picked up, the ship is set to overspeed. ex) my heavy dragon has 196.2 m/s instead 170 m/s.
Actually, I want to hide this fact privately, but it is unbalanced and I think it is against the purpose of Mayhem. I really hope that joubarbe intended this.

Joubarbe · Post by **Joubarbe** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 16:10

hanuland wrote:If you tune in sanctuary the ship you have picked up, the ship is set to overspeed. ex) my heavy dragon has 196.2 m/s instead 170 m/s.
Actually, I want to hide this fact privately, but it is unbalanced and I think it is against the purpose of Mayhem. I really hope that joubarbe intended this.

No that's a bug. Will be fixed.

Sirrobert · Post by **Sirrobert** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 16:15

Hector0x wrote:c)Placing sats manually outside the enemy detection range is slow and fiddling as hell, but totally worth it in the long run.

When it comes to manually placing satellites everywhere, I usually have a remote control Kestrel run around with nav.software.
Just tell it to go to coordinates 0,100k,0
Come back a minute later, drop sat, move to next sector.

kolimbo · Post by **kolimbo** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 16:31

Joubarbe wrote:
hanuland wrote:If you tune in sanctuary the ship you have picked up, the ship is set to overspeed. ex) my heavy dragon has 196.2 m/s instead 170 m/s.
Actually, I want to hide this fact privately, but it is unbalanced and I think it is against the purpose of Mayhem. I really hope that joubarbe intended this.
No that's a bug. Will be fixed.

Weird, only happens to a few ships. It also doesn't correctly apply the split rank 8 bonus.

Oh well. I'm just happy that capped ships don't randomly get instructions from their race anymore.

myrmidon · Post by **myrmidon** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 16:43

Thanks for the replies/feedback about sats...and I like the idea of coordinate placement.

I still feel an overwhelming compulsion to personally tell my ships to sats in the best sectors where possible *exactly* where I want that sat (Menelaus Paradise, Ceo's Doubt, my top two but there are many more I would feel blind without knowing what is going on) but I have some new thinking to try out based on player feedback.

I also really like how the new unarmed OWP represents a different way to "grow" the empire.

"Gotta get big guns for my OWP...how can I do this...and is it more important than..."

kolimbo · Post by **kolimbo** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 18:10

If you want to keep your sats without having to redeploy them every time a hostile ship goes into the sector, you need to fly quite far away from the center so that it is out of their sensor range. This usually means I don't deploy sats with anything other than my playership and I tend to do them slowly.

Thankfully, sats are not nearly as important in mayhem as they are in LU (since UTs are almost worthless in this mod).

Joubarbe · Post by **Joubarbe** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 19:18

"UTs are almost worthless in this mod"

Meeeeeeeeeehh, I disagree. I think they are important for giving you a continuous flow of reputation, balancing the natural loss.

Hector0x · Post by **Hector0x** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 19:31

And don't forget the Goners.

Sirrobert · Post by **Sirrobert** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 19:55

myrmidon wrote:Thanks for the replies/feedback about sats...and I like the idea of coordinate placement.

I still feel an overwhelming compulsion to personally tell my ships to sats in the best sectors where possible *exactly* where I want that sat (Menelaus Paradise, Ceo's Doubt, my top two but there are many more I would feel blind without knowing what is going on) but I have some new thinking to try out based on player feedback.

I also really like how the new unarmed OWP represents a different way to "grow" the empire.

"Gotta get big guns for my OWP...how can I do this...and is it more important than..."

You can personally tell your ships where to drop the sats without being in the same sector.
This game is about delegation after all.

myrmidon · Post by **myrmidon** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 20:49

Typo I meant to say "tell my ships to *place* sats"...so yup I delegate big time, and drop sats to the far corners via remote controlled ships. These sats almost never get shot down until the mid-game when I'm dropping them into enemy sectors when hunting or when I've declared a new enemy.

A small fleet of UTs are quite useful actually in Mayhem...but I was convinced by others that using them was against the flavor of the mod. UTs automatically raise rep, and they make a steady amount of automatic money...whereas reaping takes manual check/command by the player every single time...since I have to check the sector for safety and enough goodies, then order the reaper. Blacklist dangerous sectors and the UTs are fairly safe...at least up to the mid-game which is as far as I've come in recent Mayhem versions...

But no UTs for me in Mayhem.

Sirrobert · Post by **Sirrobert** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 22:17

Why in the corners? Just 100km above the center (or below, if there is a station 40km above the center). No ship ever gets there

Joubarbe · Post by **Joubarbe** » Tue, 18. Jul 17, 23:04

*Panda not happy with sneaky tricks*

Jonzac · Post by **Jonzac** » Wed, 19. Jul 17, 00:40

Joubarbe wrote:*Panda not happy with sneaky tricks*

Muuuuwwwwhhhhhaawwwwwww

Hector0x · Post by **Hector0x** » Wed, 19. Jul 17, 09:28

Psssshht, or he will implement a script which destroys the sats up there.

The Cuban Nightmare · Post by **The Cuban Nightmare** » Wed, 19. Jul 17, 11:13

Joubarbe wrote:Hey Choucrouteman,

I sell most of the stuff I gather, scan and capture bailed ships (M3 is top priority, because I must be able to kill some TS ASAP), do some trading for reputation, gather food, conquer my first sector before the first invasion and accomplish easy company missions.

I do not make any enemies during this time, but I do so once the first wave of invasions is launched.

Building two small OWPs has been a top priority; maybe a mistake...

However, I've only started this game start once for a serious game (3 days now), and I would do otherwise if I had to restart (especially concerning my research priorities: miners and TM sooner I guess; and I would specialize my sectors right from the start).

So how do you build your sectors and fleet over time? I find that expansion is very slow because I need sectors to build logistics chains, but you can't defend those sectors until you have ships and equipment. You can buy equipment from the teladi, but the sheer amount of stuff needed to get an empire running is daunting.

I'd be curious to see how your sectors are structured - I had one for station production and one for ship production, but that's as far as I ever got on 2.7.

Any tips you would share for building up that initial fleet? My plan is as follows:

-build food plant and SPP (fuel with crystals and then buy upgrade for crystal less fabrication from another mod)
-try to earn some cash and set up loop production station goods so I can expand
-claim an unknown sector and build a ship building loop
-try to build a mining fleet
-pray I don't get invaded since I don't have the resources to defend myself from larger force

Joubarbe · Post by **Joubarbe** » Wed, 19. Jul 17, 11:34

It seems your only problem is having wrong priorities. Energy Cells can be bought everywhere and that really shouldn't be your top priority. Recycling ships give you a lot of weapons and building dozens of M3 shouldn't be a problem. Keep in mind that 2.1.0 does a lot of fine tuning (read the changelog, 2.07 is very far from it...).

The Cuban Nightmare · Post by **The Cuban Nightmare** » Wed, 19. Jul 17, 11:45

Joubarbe wrote:It seems your only problem is having wrong priorities. Energy Cells can be bought everywhere and that really shouldn't be your top priority. Recycling ships give you a lot of weapons and building dozens of M3 shouldn't be a problem. Keep in mind that 2.1.0 does a lot of fine tuning (read the changelog, 2.07 is very far from it...).

Thanks and I read the change logs a few times. My main concern was having something self sufficient since logistics software is expensive at the beginning and building a freighter force is slow.

I had always been hesitant to use a fighter force since they tend to get destroyed so quickly. Is it safe to say you focus on grabbing bailed ships to get started? It's usually the transition to building large ships that trips me up and boarding always seems to end up being the answer.

Joubarbe · Post by **Joubarbe** » Wed, 19. Jul 17, 13:26

Well this game is slow. I wanted it to make it faster with previous versions, but it doesn't work. At day 1, I had 4 TM fully loaded with M3s, 4 M6 and I think a good 20 TS (freighters, agents and UTs). Of course, this is not a reference; you can build a lot less military ships in that timespan and still survive the first OCV wave.
I capture bailed ships from time to time, but that's not my main focus.

If you didn't play since 2.07, I invite you to start another game

The Cuban Nightmare · Post by **The Cuban Nightmare** » Wed, 19. Jul 17, 14:09

Just started a new game with just the M4 and the missions make a big difference. I got a fully loaded Kea from stealing and have just claimed US Epsilon. I'm going to start building up from here and I think things should be more manageable. It does feel like the first round of ships will be built with purchased goods, but we'll see. When does the first OCV wave arrive and how frequent are they?

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[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b