[Info] GoD rebuilding stations and asteroids

[Gazz]

I ran some tests today on how and when stations respawn.

I only tested equipment docks.

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Method of destruction:
1. laser/missile fire
2. destroy with explosion
3. destroy without explosion

These give identical results.

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Respawn location

My script built a station of identical type in the exact same spot after the original was destroyed.

Wreckage or not - sometimes the newly rebuilt station appeared in the old spot, completely overlapping the one built by my script, sometimes in another.
Seems to be just plain random with GoD ignoring anything the player has built.

Note: GoD only builds in preset spots, and never "chooses" a completely new one.

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Respawn time.

Stations respawned that many hours after destruction:
7,88 h
8,98 h
12,37 h
15,81 h
16,59 h
20,92 h
(Test aborted at 60 hours)

The order does not correspond to the order they were destroyed in.

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Disabling GoD respawn

$Station -> disable ship rebuild

before destroying a station (in any way)
and GoD will not respawn it.

That also works for asteroids that would normally respawn if blown up and/or harvested.

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Keywords god respawn spawn build rebuild station stations asteroid asteroids

[jlehtone]

Ok, how do you explain:

Xenon Taxi K shoots a Shipyard (obviously in sector). Debris. No build of other stations in-place by player. After the delay, Shipyard respawns in the other side of sector. Has occurred twice, vanilla.

[Gazz]

That's easy to explain. I didn't have enough data (but at least I said so =) and made a false assumption.
At around 30 samples statistics start to make any kind of sense and I had 3. =)

Still some useful data in there. I needed it for a specific project but maybe it can dispell some misconceptions about how/when GoD builds.
When you're messing with stations you have to know how GoD will react to that in the long run and it's quite difficult to find good info on that.

[eladan]

disable ship rebuild = [TRUE]

Damn. That works on stations? (Particularly docks?)

Idle thought: I Wonder if setting it false for an ordinary station that you script in makes GoD add it to its spawnable list?

Good info Gazz - why couldn't you have done this a year or two ago?

[silenced]

since it will be pretty much the same in terran conflict: right in time

[jlehtone]

Btw, is it correct to call these "GoD"? I thought that the auto-respawn of ships/docks/rocks is an ancient engine, while the Global Decision engine (GoD) for toggling NPC Factories on/off first saw action on X3:R v1.3.

[Gazz]

Interesting historical question.
Are you sure that Ancient Engine is still working as a separate entity or has become a subroutine of what we call GoD?

why couldn't you have done this a year or two ago? :)

Heh. Because *I* didn't need it back then. Why didn't you do it? =P
Just a watcher script and a few hours of SETA on another box.
Well, and I tested a total of 12 different scenarios for how stations could potentially be destroyed and respawn...
Didn't care for any surprises later on...

Idle thought: I Wonder if setting it false for an ordinary station that you script in makes GoD add it to its spawnable list?

Sorry, that was a typo. The syntax is:
$Station -> disable ship rebuild
therefore... forget it.

[eladan]

Heh. Because *I* didn't need it back then. Why didn't you do it? =P

Well, I did do some investigation at one point, but I wasn't smart(?) enough to try out the ship rebuild command on a station for its potential to stop the station respawning. That takes a special kind of genius.

$Station -> disable ship rebuild
therefore... forget it.

Drat - looked it up, and you're right. On a quick look, can't see any likely commands to reverse it...