[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

The place to discuss scripting and game modifications for X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

Moderators: Moderators for English X Forum, Scripting / Modding Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
Joubarbe
Posts: 4796
Joined: Tue, 31. Oct 06, 12:11
xr

Post by Joubarbe » Sat, 26. Aug 17, 10:28

VincentTH wrote:
Joubarbe wrote:No they won't :)

If you have a savegame for the bug you described (capturing a sector without claiming it), I'd like to see it. I really don't see how that can happen.
Save game, but hit max speed after the jump (or cancel it), or the Z will kill you

After the station got destroyed, ownership got transferred immediately. I have killed the shipyard right before making this save.
Here's a quick fix.

Xenons are actually conquering the sector for you :) Weird bug... Anyway, now the player cannot be a "conqueror" without using the "claim sector" hotkey. I don't know why it wasn't the case before, probably a remnant of Mayhem 1.

User avatar
Joubarbe
Posts: 4796
Joined: Tue, 31. Oct 06, 12:11
xr

Post by Joubarbe » Sat, 26. Aug 17, 19:20

X4 has something really interesting: the map! Many features I would like to add to Mayhem will never make it, because it's too RTS-oriented. At some point, the only thing you would do is browsing the menus, and I think that X3 is oversaturated with menus and hotkeys. Giving commands via a map is a great idea.

Other than that, X4 will have dynamic universe and expanding factions... I hope it's gonna kill Mayhem :)

Sirrobert
Posts: 1213
Joined: Wed, 21. Aug 13, 13:55
x3ap

Post by Sirrobert » Sat, 26. Aug 17, 20:52

There's new information on X4? I have to see that.

And yes, it's amazing how the one big dream of a mod creator is that his mod is no longer useful, because the function has become vanilla.
It's a really unique desire amongst creators I think.
9 out of 10 voices in my head say I'm crazy. The 10th is singing the music from Tetris

User avatar
Joubarbe
Posts: 4796
Joined: Tue, 31. Oct 06, 12:11
xr

Post by Joubarbe » Sat, 26. Aug 17, 21:02

Yep, check the official website. It was the big revealing day! It won't be released before 2018 though.

myrmidon
Posts: 150
Joined: Mon, 19. Jan 04, 07:15
x3tc

Post by myrmidon » Sun, 27. Aug 17, 01:04

Some X4 musing:

I will buy X4 no matter what because I support their dream.

I am re-installing XR with the Home of Light Expansion just to give them a few $ to get X4 done. But X4 was simply horrible back in the initial release. A lower budget Mass Effect that wished it could be Elite Dangerous and God knows what else. It lasted 2 hours on my system.

The presentation indeed had dynamic universe procession implied...but there was all this "Mass Effect lite" clutter: the incessant "get out of the ship to walk around my cockpit, get out to walk around the station, etc. etc." A huge art/design/budget sink to attempt create an inferior version of what bigger budgeted projects like Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous, your average FPS game, and sci-fi movies create.

But we're not there for that. We want a vastly updated version of our X3 Litcubes/Mayhem "grow into a military CEO" experience. We want a growing empire to manage in a complex sandbox. We want the OCV *coming after us in-sector and no jump drive* feeling. We have a quest/big picture objective that has nothing to do with visiting generic stations and looking out a window at generic manikins walking around.

There's enough XR DNA in the project to give me doubts. We'll still need Joubarbe to come in and some point and mod the place up.

The map looks nice, but is a "sink dev time into building a new menu" trap...what particularly was "wrong" with X3:AP menus? They work great for me. Get the gameplay right first. Just create a right-panel and put proper menu-ing next to the map display. Right-clicking on a moving ship and guiding myself through a complex menu sounds...difficult to engineer properly.


Positives:

Engine looks sweet. Especially the far vistas like the star field and the planets.

Component stations! I likes.

I saw beam weapons: I hope they can incorporate them without making them OP like in Rebel Galaxy.


____


But I need to see more about what the empire would look like...much more.

Is X4 just mostly XR with a dynamic universe, updated engine, and cool map?

I will give the latest XR a replay tonight to give it another chance...

Nefasi
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun, 21. Sep 14, 05:23
x3tc

Post by Nefasi » Sun, 27. Aug 17, 07:33

Joubarbe wrote:Thanks for the feedback. I finally decided to limited this behavior to player ships. I'll include that change into 2.2.0.

Project size is 1 people per minute. 100 people and a project size of 100 means 1 minute of work.
Question about project size. Say you got 100 people working on Chaff with a project size of 24 (or aroundabouts, just an example). Does that mean you will produce 1 chaff every minute, or 4.17 chaff every minute? Or is the overproduction wasted? If its wasted, when do the calculations happen (to better optimize sanctuary production)

If I'm building a ship, and then i tell the sanctuary to also build lasers, missiles, and shields all at the same time, will the speed of the ship production be slowed as the people divert their production among the 4 different projects?

User avatar
Joubarbe
Posts: 4796
Joined: Tue, 31. Oct 06, 12:11
xr

Post by Joubarbe » Sun, 27. Aug 17, 09:30

If you build Chaffs in loop, I think the over production is wasted. Take a look at Mayhem.Monitor.Shipyard.Player.

All productions are at the same speed, no matter how many parallel tasks you have.

User avatar
Hector0x
Posts: 994
Joined: Mon, 18. Nov 13, 18:03
x3tc

Post by Hector0x » Sun, 27. Aug 17, 11:08

Sirrobert wrote:And yes, it's amazing how the one big dream of a mod creator is that his mod is no longer useful, because the function has become vanilla.
Egosoft is concentrating on the unique features of their game series and that is a good thing. But i think there will be massive shackles on the dynamic universe and ship building part. With no spawning there would be no way out for the NPC economy if the last transport ship gets destroyed. The territores will most likely only change on a very limited degree with big economic safe havens for each faction. So my bet is that we will need pandas, or at least modders to make something like Mayhem for X4 too. :D

myrmidon wrote:We have a quest/big picture objective that has nothing to do with visiting generic stations and looking out a window at generic manikins walking around.
Well spoken. I can think of 3 reasons why you would walk on stations:
1. Doing presumably "cool" stuff like hacking the station, exploring, looting; immersion, you feeling small and as part of the gameworld > Granted, but you do it once and you do it twice. Then it is just a waste of time and too much production effort from the developer. Egosoft wanted to have catchy stuff they can write in XRs feature list. A "Han Solo" experience with a charismatic protagonist, who can smalltalk and haggle. But they haven't thought about the actual gameplay and if this is even fun to play for extended periods of time. I think the smalltalk minigame was coded in 3 hours before releasing 1.0 because they simply forgot they needed to abstract the rhetoric skills into a time based minigame or everyone would simply take the best dialogue option
In the X4 presentation Egosoft also said they plan to make smaller, "unique" station parts like appartments you can only visit as part of a mission. This would indeed be a better approach.
2. there will be a trade area or trader NPCs and hirelings on stations > Egosoft patched in a mobile phone for XR to get rid of this tedium = enough said
3. switching ships = same as 1. It's boring if you have to jog to the neighboring docking bay. They said they are going reintroduce something like the Transporter Device (teleportation) so this also gets redundant.

All in all the first person gameplay with bland environments, terribly voiced and ugly NPCs is a time eating, performance draining, visually flawed dead end for Egosoft. It's a walking simulator that weakens and distracts from the core gameplay. But they already went on this path with XR and won't back down now. ES could have had so much (even fan made) unique content if they'd went for a 2D adventure like art style for landing on stations and planets. The walking part also seems to be what the people want. If ES dropped this or made it 2D they'd shout "downgrading! This isn't the 90s anymore!" and sales would drop. It's just sad. I hope for mods to skip this walking part altogether.
myrmidon wrote:The map looks nice, but is a "sink dev time into building a new menu" trap...what particularly was "wrong" with X3:AP menus?
After faction ai and the promise of getting rid of spawning equipment, ships and stations this is the third big feature in my opinion. Multi selection, seeing waypoints of ships. Map filters, drag and drop interaction... This is just great.
I'm used to the controls of X3. But looking at it unprejudiced i have to admit it feels like a convoluted mess. And an unnecessary one too. Sadly Mayhem cannot fix these menus.

User avatar
Joubarbe
Posts: 4796
Joined: Tue, 31. Oct 06, 12:11
xr

Post by Joubarbe » Sun, 27. Aug 17, 12:08

Hector0x wrote:So my bet is that we will need pandas, or at least modders to make something like Mayhem for X4 too.
The more advanced a game is the more difficult it is to make it moddable. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that we won't be able to modify X4 as much as X3. There's no magic; at some point you need a proper IDE, and a proper language. For instance, AI War 2 modding capabilities will be very powerful because you'll have access to dev tools and be able to code in C#. Without X-Studio and some access to hardcoded stuff, I doubt it will be as powerful as we hope.

If X3 menus were moddable, I would have get rid of many commands to make centralized menus instead, with smarter ships.

Anyway, there's still many deep changes I want to bring to Mayhem. To name a few: Sanctuary perks, faction aggressiveness, diplomacy, dynamic specialization.

Shepp
Posts: 196
Joined: Fri, 20. Feb 04, 22:20
x3ap

Post by Shepp » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 01:29

Is there a printable list anywhere that shows the resource costs for various ships/weapons/ components for Mayhem?

User avatar
Joubarbe
Posts: 4796
Joined: Tue, 31. Oct 06, 12:11
xr

Post by Joubarbe » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 08:12

No, not that I know of. But if you have the average price of a ware, you can easily find its equivalence in resources. I did not manually set the prices, so it shouldn't be hard to get a list from a script.

lostProfitssssArrgh
Posts: 161
Joined: Tue, 22. Aug 17, 13:14

Post by lostProfitssssArrgh » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 13:28

I have a question about MLCC:

My MLCC carrier and its Starliner Dock are in Y Gamma, but the carrier insists on dropping damaged fighters at my Sanctuary in Y Alpha. I've checked home base and MLCC settings, everything points to Y-Gamma...

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Thanks,
LPA

Sirrobert
Posts: 1213
Joined: Wed, 21. Aug 13, 13:55
x3ap

Post by Sirrobert » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 14:42

lostProfitssssArrgh wrote:I have a question about MLCC:

My MLCC carrier and its Starliner Dock are in Y Gamma, but the carrier insists on dropping damaged fighters at my Sanctuary in Y Alpha. I've checked home base and MLCC settings, everything points to Y-Gamma...

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Thanks,
LPA
Why would you want damaged fighters dropped of at a dock? It can't repair them. Only your sanctuary can repair fighters.
Also I don't think MLCC capital docks can even dock fighters. And if they can, it's only a few docking arms meant for transport ships.

For the settings, it drops the fighters off at the same place it picks up new fighters. Which makes sense, since that's where they are built (or repaired)
9 out of 10 voices in my head say I'm crazy. The 10th is singing the music from Tetris

lostProfitssssArrgh
Posts: 161
Joined: Tue, 22. Aug 17, 13:14

Post by lostProfitssssArrgh » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 15:07

@ Sirrobert
Looks like I didn't describe the problem clearly. There is a sanctuary in Y-Gamma (how could there not be since mayhem 2.1.0?), but the carrier drops the damaged ships at another sanctuary in Y-Alpha.

---

But I might have found the problem:

Lib.Cmd.MLCC.S.Retreat.xml line 18:

Code: Select all

$HQ = $MLCCDock-> get local variable: name='mayhem_repairSanctuary'
skip if $HQ-> exists
$HQ = find station in galaxy: startsector=[Legend's Home] class or type={*** UNDEFINED *** (SS_DOCK_SANCTUARY)} race=[Player] flags=[Find.Nearest] refobj=[THIS] serial=null max.jumps=100
It turns out my MLCC Starliner dock has no local variables for some reason... So the carrier goes to find the sanctuary nearest to Legend's Home (as per the code) which turns out to be in Y-Alpha in my case. On a side note : maybe the search code should start at the MLCC dock sector instead of Legend's Home..?

I'll add the local var to my MLCC dock by hand and keep an eye out for why the Starliner didn't have any local vars in the first place.

More info when available,
LPA

EDIT : typo the(re) is a scanctuary in Y-gamma

hanuland
Posts: 138
Joined: Tue, 27. Oct 15, 00:26
x4

Post by hanuland » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 15:14

lostProfitssssArrgh wrote:Does anyone know what could be causing this?
It is not the theme of Mayhem. Originally a unique feature of LUV. And this is a very necessary feature. All damaged vessels, as well as fighters, are intended to automatically go to HQ with the highest priority for repair.

lostProfitssssArrgh
Posts: 161
Joined: Tue, 22. Aug 17, 13:14

Post by lostProfitssssArrgh » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 15:20

More on the MLCC dock problem:

I was looking at Mayhem.BuildStation.xml

line 144:

Code: Select all

if ($type == {Argon OTAS McCallum Equipment Dock} OR $type == {Argon OTAS Starliner Equipment Dock}) AND $owner == [Player]

= $station-> call script 'Lib.Cmd.InstallMLCC' : Install=[TRUE]

end
So I open open Lib.Cmd.InstallMLCC.xml and take a look. Neither of those two scripts mention the local var 'mayhem_repairSanctuary'.

I'll keep looking...

lostProfitssssArrgh
Posts: 161
Joined: Tue, 22. Aug 17, 13:14

Post by lostProfitssssArrgh » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 15:33

Bumping because I'm a big dumb455...

I had to go through the code to find out that there is an option to specify which sanctuary the MLCC ships should go to for repairs. :headbang:

I can't tell if I actually changed this myself or if it defaulted to Y-Alpha.

My apologies for the mess,
LPA



UPDATE : I ran a 'search in files' for the string "mayhem_repairSanctuary". It is only mentioned in Lib.Cmd.MLCC.S.Retreat.xml and Menu.DWM.SM.xml...

In conclusion : the default behavior IS to set the repair sanctuary to the one nearest to Legend's Home.

VincentTH
Posts: 6626
Joined: Wed, 6. Nov 02, 20:31
x4

Post by VincentTH » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 17:56

@JOubarbe

Thanks for the fix. Weird bug eh?

Minor workaround for someone:

I took over Split Fire and could not build any stations. The error said there were hostile ships in the sector. After scratching my head for quite some times, I figured that those "hostile ships" were those navigation beacons that the pirates left behind, although they showed up as blue icon (i.e. non-hostile).

The workaround is to destroy them all.

Hope this helps someone!!!!!

User avatar
Joubarbe
Posts: 4796
Joined: Tue, 31. Oct 06, 12:11
xr

Post by Joubarbe » Mon, 28. Aug 17, 18:11

I'll fix that as well. You're a bug magnet :)

mib666007
Posts: 78
Joined: Fri, 27. Jan 12, 04:32
x3tc

Post by mib666007 » Fri, 1. Sep 17, 22:36

SO I did the "from scratch" start. Claimed a sector(Unknown Sector Omega), the one I used in a game many patches before. Before I knew it, Argon was killing my base with a fleet. Do they attack me at neutral reputation? Also how do I see my "threat level"?

Post Reply

Return to “X³: Terran Conflict / Albion Prelude - Scripts and Modding”