[MOD] Better piracy

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Sirilius
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Sirilius » Mon, 27. Apr 20, 09:23

Alberto.Rota wrote:
Sat, 25. Apr 20, 15:22

Yes, people are asking for that on the Steam page too, which is quite sad, since I am very proud of how they sound. :gruebel:

Any particular thing you dislike about it? Maybe I'm able to improve it instead of disabling it altogether.
Sorry for the late reply. It is nice and I’m not sure how you are doing them but either having more options (different voices) or being able to edit the frequency would be nice.

I find them a bit loud and sometimes jarring. As someone who likes to roleplay, having a voice sometimes doesn’t fit the type of character I want. Whether the voice is male or female or if you want to sound teladi/Paranid/split.

Scoob
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Scoob » Mon, 27. Apr 20, 13:25

Erm, perhaps I miss-understood the prior post, but should I be hearing the comments my player character says when Harassing a target? I get the text at the bottom of the screen, but not voice. I did a Split start this time, so perhaps there aren't any lines for Split characters?

Scoob.

Alberto.Rota
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Alberto.Rota » Mon, 27. Apr 20, 13:33

Scoob wrote:
Mon, 27. Apr 20, 13:25
Erm, perhaps I miss-understood the prior post, but should I be hearing the comments my player character says when Harassing a target? I get the text at the bottom of the screen, but not voice. I did a Split start this time, so perhaps there aren't any lines for Split characters?

Scoob.
Make sure you have the latest version of the mod.
Betty (On-Board AI) should tell them, not your character. :wink:

Scoob
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Scoob » Mon, 27. Apr 20, 15:37

Alberto.Rota wrote:
Mon, 27. Apr 20, 13:33
Scoob wrote:
Mon, 27. Apr 20, 13:25
Erm, perhaps I miss-understood the prior post, but should I be hearing the comments my player character says when Harassing a target? I get the text at the bottom of the screen, but not voice. I did a Split start this time, so perhaps there aren't any lines for Split characters?

Scoob.
Make sure you have the latest version of the mod.
Betty (On-Board AI) should tell them, not your character. :wink:
Mod it the latest version, but I get no audio. I'll re-downoad it in case something is broken. That said, while I like the dialogue, I'm not sure I want it in Betty's voice...being a male Split and all lol.

Scoob.

Alberto.Rota
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Alberto.Rota » Mon, 27. Apr 20, 20:02

I've just updated the mod!
- Removed boarding pods orbiting ship when using marines to claim a ship
- Added German translation
- Added French translation

As always, feedback is welcome.

BigGreenThugs
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by BigGreenThugs » Tue, 28. Apr 20, 04:26

Alberto.Rota wrote:
Fri, 10. Apr 20, 17:09
Shuulo wrote:
Fri, 10. Apr 20, 10:56
Nice work! Will this make NPC ships also bail in their own fights without player involvement?
No changes there (Yet), that will end up with the whole universe full of abandoned ships if no clean-up mechanism is provided.
Would it though? :)
I would personally love a mod that did this. If I knew how to make mods I would change it.

Also, regarding having your ships claim abandoned vessels while you are OOS: Only ships with small docks can claim other ships. It was not this way in the beginning but at some point your ai controlled ships without a small dock can't claim ships. At least that's my experience.

Alberto.Rota
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Alberto.Rota » Wed, 29. Apr 20, 21:44

I've just updated the mod!
- When using marines to claim a ship, the boarding pod will use the travel drive
- Improved logic to avoid having boarding pods orbiting ship when using marines to claim a ship

I'm very interested in your opinion of the new behavior/navigation of the boarding pods when used to claim an abandoned ship.
Are they more useful now?
Are they more reliable now?

I wanted them to feel more like this:
https://youtu.be/huBXVQ9JS5g?t=52
https://youtu.be/ZnYLwcnGIMM?t=52
https://youtu.be/DhiJtotZNWk?t=44
https://youtu.be/mfGPMJ8A0QY

The new behavior/navigation does NOT apply to pods used in boarding operations.

Eukatae
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Eukatae » Thu, 30. Apr 20, 04:30

wrong thread

Alberto.Rota
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Alberto.Rota » Sun, 3. May 20, 19:12

I've just updated the mod!
- Improved logic to avoid having boarding pods orbiting ship when using marines to claim a ship

As always, feedback and bug reports are welcome.

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Drewgamer
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Drewgamer » Sun, 3. May 20, 20:54

Alberto.Rota wrote:
Sun, 3. May 20, 19:12
I've just updated the mod!
- Improved logic to avoid having boarding pods orbiting ship when using marines to claim a ship

As always, feedback and bug reports are welcome.
Thanks for more updates!
Have you looked into preventing other factions from interfering with boarding actions? (assuming you still want to do this)

I'm thinking temporary rep boost would be the best (least invasive) way of accomplishing this, but I'm far from an expert on scripting :P

Code: Select all

<do_if value="$Target.owner != faction.argon and $Target.owner.relationto{faction.argon} lt faction.argon.friend.min and faction.argon.relationto.{faction.player} ge faction.argon.friend.min">
	<set_relation_boost object="$Target" faction="faction.argon" value="faction.argon.friend.min"/>
</do_if>
Check out my mod Crystal Rarities

Scoob
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Scoob » Mon, 4. May 20, 23:21

Hi,

The last ship I captured, a Behemoth Vanguard, a few days ago, I only just got around to looking at and I've updated the mod since.

Basically, at the end of last month, I boarded the ship and assigned one of the Marines as the new Captain. I then sent it, and my Marine carrying ship Buffalo, to dock at my HQ. Loading the game this evening - now with the latest version of Better Piracy - I ordered the Buffalo to transfer the Marines back from the Behemoth. However, the moment I did this, the Behemoth went yellow (rather than green) on the Map, and now only shows on the Object List view, and not the Property Owned view. I can still order it around just fine though.

Getting on the ship myself, I look at the Captain (an Ex-Marine) and while he shows green, his faction is "Teladi Company" not me. Yet I can still re-assign him and order him around as if he is mine. If I pilot the ship myself, the Behemoth goes Green on the map and is once again shown in my Property Owned list. Get out of the Pilots station, letting the Captain take over again, and the ship goes Yellow once more.

If I unassign the Captain - so there's no captain and an "assign Captain" mission is generated, the ship goes yellow again. I'm about to try assigning a NEW Captain I just hired...

... The ships remains yellow and the new Captain shows as Teladi Company, just like the old one did.

I can still use this ship, but something is a bit broken here. Any ideas what might have caused this? It's a totally new one for me.

Edit: I examined the Save and it appears the ship has applied a "Disguise" as Teladi. It was an SCA ship, but obviously fully revealed as SCA when I captured it, but it's tried to disguise its self again the moment I transfer the Marines off. I may save-edit to try to fix it.

Edit 2: I made a post about it in the main forum here It did resolve its self in the end, I describe how in that thread. Random vanilla gremlin I expect, rather than linked to your mod. Thought it worth sharing here though, just in case :)

Scoob.

Alberto.Rota
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Alberto.Rota » Thu, 7. May 20, 20:17

Drewgamer wrote:
Sun, 3. May 20, 20:54
Have you looked into preventing other factions from interfering with boarding actions? (assuming you still want to do this)
Thank you for the snippet.

Yes, this is something I have in mind, but not in the short term.
My short-term/mid-term goals are:
  1. Make ships in the player wing to ->SMARTLY<- participate in harass operations (Do not kill the target, keep the shields low, bonus pressure build-up, etc.)
  2. Allow player to instruct his/her own NPC ships to conduct a harass operation ->WITHOUT<- player intervention. (Like "Atack" but with the goal of capping an S/M sized ship)
  3. Create a new default behavior that will allow player-owned NPC ships to start harass operations by ->THEMSELVES<- against specific targets in a sector (Like "Patrol" but with the goal of capping an S/M sized ship of specific faction/size/model)
Then I will jump to the boarding side of things (L/XL sized ships), I have some ideas about how to do it, but I'm always open to new ideas.
I don't really like it now... it is just not interactive at all, not "player-centric".

In X-Rebirth it was much more dynamic, you actually helped your small insertion team by scanning areas of the ship to provide intel, hack systems to gain control of some areas of the ship, destroying targets to divert enemy forces, etc.
I cared about them, I leveled them up, we worked together in order to be able to assault bigger ships together!

But in foundations... I just fill 2 or 3 Split Boa's with fresh nameless recruits (I do NOT care about them at all), destroy engines and turrets of the target (The only good part), launch all the marines (At almost max hull), and wait (Since I can't do anything to make the difference)... 100% success rate, I don't even care about getting the marines back, it's much easier and cheaper to just add another recruit-filled Boa to the operation than moving them back to their respective ships in order to level them up.

Any idea?
Last edited by Alberto.Rota on Fri, 8. May 20, 06:22, edited 1 time in total.

Alberto.Rota
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Alberto.Rota » Thu, 7. May 20, 20:19

Scoob wrote:
Mon, 4. May 20, 23:21
Random vanilla gremlin I expect, rather than linked to your mod.
Yes, I haven't changed anything about boarding (Yet), so that should be a Vanilla related bug.

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Drewgamer
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Drewgamer » Thu, 7. May 20, 22:17

Alberto.Rota wrote:
Thu, 7. May 20, 20:17
[...]
In X-Rebirth it was much more dynamic, you actually helped your small insertion team by scanning areas of the ship to provide intel, hack systems to gain control of some areas of the ship, destroying targets to divert enemy forces, etc.
I cared about them, I leveled them up, we worked together in order to be able to assault bigger ships together!

But in foundations... I just fill 2 or 3 Split Boa's with fresh nameless recruits (I do NOT care about them at all), destroy engines and turrets of the target (The only good part), launch all the marines (At almost max hull), and wait (Since I can't do anything to make the difference)... 100% success rate, I don't even care about getting the marines back, it's much easier and cheaper to just add another recruit-filled Boa to the operation than moving them back to their respective ships in order to level them up.

Any idea?
So, it's definitely possible to code boarding in X4 to be similar to Rebirth , but it would probably be a LOT of work.

As for making you care more about your marines, I'm not 100% sure. Some ideas (just spit-balling):
1) Make Boarding attempts VERY deadly for lower level marines, especially when the ideal conditions aren't met for boarding.
2) Make it so low-level Marines have a higher chance of destroying/disabling components (maybe even a chance of critical fails completely destroying the ship?)
Check out my mod Crystal Rarities

Alberto.Rota
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Alberto.Rota » Fri, 8. May 20, 10:31

Drewgamer wrote:
Thu, 7. May 20, 22:17
As for making you care more about your marines, I'm not 100% sure. Some ideas (just spit-balling):
1) Make Boarding attempts VERY deadly for lower level marines, especially when the ideal conditions aren't met for boarding.
2) Make it so low-level Marines have a higher chance of destroying/disabling components (maybe even a chance of critical fails completely destroying the ship?)
I'm not yet sure about how to achieve it... I think that it will need a major overhaul.

I first thought about some similar solutions, but the main problem of your points is that both of them are just a credit sink:
1) Marines dying left and right will just make me buy more of them, not to care more about them, if my 5* elite marine can still randomly die boarding an L freighter without me being able to do anything about it... Why to level it up? It is easier just to buy more rookies.
2) Breaking components/weapons/shields is, yet again, just money, not fun or engaging, just a money sink.

My main problem with the marines (Further than the UI pain of moving marines forward and backward) is that I just can't care about 100 (5 Boas with 20 marines per ship) anonymous, cheap, faceless, expandable marines that are going to randomly die without me being able to make anything to change it, for me, they are just numbers, "Boarding strength" vs "Defense strength", that's all, no empathy nor willingness to train/protect/retrieve them once the operation has ended, I just leave them on that ship and forget about them forever.

My idea is as follows (A lot of things need to be refined, this is just a rough idea.):
Before boarding starts:
  1. Scrap/Disable vanilla boarding (I don't like it and I see no way of easily fixing my problems with it)
  2. Disable vanilla bailing on L/XL ships, making "Harass operations" the only way to soften a target. (No more capital ships with just 1 or 2 crew members inside ready to be boarded)
  3. Marines are only used as defensive forces, kind of "Red-shirts" (Star Trek) or "Stormtroopers"/"Battle droids" (Star wars).
  4. Only specific, specialized ships will be able to initiate/perform a boarding operation and only one of those ships can participate, something like the "Vaygr Infiltrator Frigate" (Homeworld 2), lightly shielded, lightly armed, relatively quick.
  5. Boarding experience will be tracked on that ships as a whole, not in any of their individuals, that should keep you attached to it, since you can name, customize, paint, mod, command and protect a ship, but not a marine.
  6. This ships will have boarding bots (How they get/Generate/Have them is not yet clear), remotely controlled by the on-board crew, kind of "Surrogates" (Surrogates 2009 film), "Sovereign ships" (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) or "Boarding drones" (FTL)
  7. You can only start a boarding operation if the experience of the "Infiltrator ship" is bigger than the "Defense strength" of the target, that together with points 2, 4 and 5 will generate a progression and attachment to your ship.
    • First you can only board "Low pilot morale", "lightly/poorly crewed", "non-military", "pre-harassed" targets (And most likely fail, but "Failure is the mother of success")
    • Your "Infiltrator ship" will learn something after every operation, even failed ones, being able to start operations vs harder targets, that should encourage you to really protect and care about it ;)
  8. Target ship needs to be fully disabled (That means no engines nor turrets left) before starting.
Boarding operation:
  1. The "Infiltrator ship" needs to be extremely close to the target for the whole operation (Under 1km maybe)
    • Lore: Transmission range to control the boarding drones is only reliable at short range.
    • More distance will reduce boarding effectiveness, to the point where you don't advance but defenders do defend.
  2. Target shields need to be very low for the whole operation (Under 5% maybe)
    • Lore: Shields scramble communication with the boarding drones.
    • Higher shield % will reduce boarding effectiveness, to the point where you don't advance but defenders do defend.
  3. During the operation, the defenders will try to scramble the connection between the "Infiltrator ship" and the "Boarding drones" (Strength scale with defender "Service crew" Engineering skill, the frequency with overall morale)
    • Lore: ECM warfare and hacking is a thing, and you are using REMOTELY controlled killing machines.
    • Data leaks will appear around the ship, you better scan (Counter) them ASAP.
    • Each active "Data leak" will reduce boarding effectiveness, to the point where you don't advance but defenders do defend.
  4. During the operation, the defenders will try to flee to cut the connection between the "Infiltrator ship" and the "Boarding drones" (Frequency scale with defender "Pilot" Piloting skill)
    • Lore: "All power to the engines!".
    • All engines get repaired to 100% hull and the ship boosts off to gain some distance, destroy them again or point 1 will be a problem.
  5. During the operation, the defenders will try to boost their shields to cut the connection between the "Infiltrator ship" and the "Boarding drones" (Strength scale with defender "Service crew" Engineering skill, the frequency with overall morale)
    • Lore: "All power to the shields!".
    • Target shields get instantly boosted by some % (Depending on Engineering skill), lower them again, or point 2 will be a problem.
  6. During the operation, the defenders will try to destroy your "Infiltrator ship" (Strength scale with defender "Service crew" Engineering skill, the frequency with overall morale)
    • Lore: "All power to the weapons!".
    • Some turrets get repaired to some % (Depending on Engineering skill), and immediately target your "Infiltrator ship", you better deal with them ASAP.
  7. During the operation, the defenders will try to destroy your "Boarding drones" (Strength scale with defender "Marine" Boarding skill)
    • Lore: You are trying to kill them, they are trying to kill you.
    • Defender marines will defend the ship trying to destroy your "Boarding drones", their success is determined by their Boarding skill, your "Infiltration ship" experience, and how well you are dealing with the previous points.
  8. During the operation, the defenders might try to bail out of the ship (Scale with defender Morale skill)
    • Lore: They are brave, but not stupid, if the battle is lost, they will flee.
    • Defenders will consider using scape pods, depending on both their morale and how well/fast you are dealing with their defense attempts (Scan data-leaks, re-destroy turrets, shields, and engines, etc.)
I think that that's all, it's a lot of work, that's why I want to finish the "Harass" before starting with it.

leoriq
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by leoriq » Fri, 8. May 20, 14:42

Alberto.Rota wrote:
Thu, 7. May 20, 20:17
In X-Rebirth it was much more dynamic, you actually helped your small insertion team by scanning areas of the ship to provide intel, hack systems to gain control of some areas of the ship, destroying targets to divert enemy forces, etc.
I cared about them, I leveled them up, we worked together in order to be able to assault bigger ships together!
Yeah, I remember repeatedly boarding ten Fulmekrons just for the fun of it, boarding process in XR was very enjoyable
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Alberto.Rota
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Alberto.Rota » Sun, 10. May 20, 10:55

I've just updated the mod
Create your own pirate gang.
Subordinates of the ship you are piloting will smartly participate in the "Harass operation", helping you while avoiding killing the target.
Tip: Use ships with a lot of shields and prefer high-shield/low-hull damage weapons for maximum effectiveness.

As always, feedback and bug reports are welcome!

Alberto.Rota
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Alberto.Rota » Sun, 10. May 20, 11:34

I've also posted the mod on Nexus, I do NOT use Nexus, so please let me know if I screwed it up at some point:

kmunoz
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by kmunoz » Sun, 10. May 20, 16:13

Alberto.Rota wrote:
Sun, 10. May 20, 10:55
I've just updated the mod
Create your own pirate gang.
Subordinates of the ship you are piloting will smartly participate in the "Harass operation", helping you while avoiding killing the target.
Tip: Use ships with a lot of shields and prefer high-shield/low-hull damage weapons for maximum effectiveness.

As always, feedback and bug reports are welcome!
Welp, I've just turned your mod back on. ;) This is what I was waiting for - not having to disassemble my fleet or make them stay in a corner.
Let's Play Poorly! - Suboptimal X4 Playthroughs

Alberto.Rota
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Re: [MOD] Better piracy

Post by Alberto.Rota » Sun, 10. May 20, 19:06

kmunoz wrote:
Sun, 10. May 20, 16:13
This is what I was waiting for - not having to disassemble my fleet or make them stay in a corner.
Glad to hear that! Let me know if you like how it works now, even if everything is alright, is good to know ;)

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