Pacifying the HoL West Gate Xenons

[exogenesis]

Reason for this post is a partly a mild gripe about speed of OOZ repair of Xenon weapon platforms (/asteroids/Matrix),
think it's been mentioned before by someone recently-ish.

Since quite a lot of NPC trading traffic insists on going right up to Faraway, before returning to their 'real route',
(seems erroneous pathing, but wondering if it's an intentional quirk ?)
I thought I'd try safe-ifying the whole map.

Turns out it's quite easy with a few destroyers per zone, when Skunk is IZ.
But something drastically different happens when OOZ, & all destroyers get rapidly killed soon after the Skunk leaves zone.

Currently I've had to (eventually) place 54 Arwans, 21 Fulmekrons & 18 K's on the northern route
to just-about keep most of the Xenon installations suppressed, lost a few ships on the way though.

[ external image ]

So I got to build stations right up to thenorth of Faraway, which was part of the idea, & it was 'fun',
but feeling that particularly the dinky Xenon weapon platforms shouldn't be able to get the better of a mini destroyer fleet.

Guess it's all to do with OOZ calculations / turn-based damage...versus live shooting damage ?

[Simoom]

Dang.

Actually the issue isn't so much OOZ combat damage calculation, but has to do with the fact that station hulls are indestructible... except your ship captains don't know that.

Oftentimes patrol ships will be stuck attacking a station that has already been "destroyed", while taking fire from another enemy object (they won't switch target, since their current target hasn't been "destroyed" yet).

One experiment you can try is instead of issuing a general patrol or "attack enemy" order, issue each ship to attack a separate weapon platform/station. I suspect that will make a difference.

Alternatively you could check out my mod and wreck all those Xenon stations permanently... but be warned... no way to restore them at this time...

[donzi]

The issue with patrols/attack all sticking on stationary target(s) can be a bother IZ too from what I have seen occur in maelstrom.

[exogenesis]

Aye, they lock on forever regardless of IZ/OOZ due to indestructible-ness.

The destroyer commands are a mixture of:
Station Defense (attacks nearest Xenon installation & locks on),
Attack Target (about half),
but none are Patrol Zone (since these tend to wander off eventually).

Attack Enemy Target is indeed helping,
what doesn't help is the 'flee' from attack mechanism,
which usually means at any given time a few to several destroyers will be absent, & the rest can get clobbered (Skunk OOZ).

Just have to keep piling them in, until there's little chance of not being enough present to do the job....

[Simoom]

I made some alterations to the NPC-station-wrecking routine in my mod which may be of interstate to you.

My script now "pseudo-wrecks" the NPC station (destroy the crew and all surface elements, making it defenseless), then sets the coverowner to "Ownerless" (the "coverowner" functions essentially the same to an actual owner change, except the "trueowner" faction was not touched, so if you choose to restore the disabled station at a later time, it can be returned to its original faction easily).

Setting the coverowner to "Ownerless" is the key part here - because it will prevent the disabled station from being registered as an enemy to your patrol ships. This frees them to do more important things... like actually patrolling the sector.

Probably the closest thing to a fix for the limitations in Ego's capship scripts, for the time being.

[exogenesis]

Thanks, that sounds very good, so I thought I try it, given I've pretty much come to the 'end' of Vanilla
(at least without mega frustration).

edit:
after trying it and feeling a bit like I cheated too much, then going back to vanilla and finding any progress comletely impossible,
I've finally justified 'auto-destructing' all the West Gate Xenon installations to myself.
After all it was a huge effort getting all those destroyers built & they easily took them all out in-zone.

So now I've got a bit more life in XR, not stuck on trying to deal with the 'indestructible stations' problem.

Good work with the mod, has certainly helped me,
although gotta try & keep my hands off some of the more 'real cheat' things

[Simoom]

...may be I should troll and impose a chance for the cat disco ball to spawn when a player tries to cheat.