[AL PLUGIN] Pirate Guild 3: Dynamic AI and Guild System - v1.59 - [2010-07-22]

[JimBadger]

How does this script get on with Improved Races?

[wolfmanpuck]

I used PG last night and this morning and I had a problem with my game freezing after a couple minutes of playing time. im running x3tc with the min. requirements, could my comp just not be up to it or is there a way i can fix this issue?

[yospanky]

How does this script get on with Improved Races?

No problems or conflicts for me thus far. Gives Pirates a chance with the Xenon & Kha'ak invasions.

[geileideeumsetzungnaja]

hello,
i really liek your script, but there seems problems with the german version of x3 tc... i get many ships with names: read text name... or many notifications with <read text name> patrol <area> <read text name>

i dont need a fully german script, could you add the english phares as german, if you show me how i could translate it also

[Hieronymos]

SK,
at the DDTC (DDRS mod for XTC) we're having troubles making the Yaki behave like a regular race; mainly due to rep issues:
even with a v.high Yaki rep, occassionally one'll go red on you, and attack. If you destroy it, others go red, and the situation rapidly snowballs into Yaki rep trashed.

Is there any way that you could extend the rep management part of PG3 to Yaki as well?

[Serial Kicked]

Hi there !

Sorry for this long while without update but, hey, i needed some vacations ^^

Anyway here's the v1.40 of Pirate Guild ! As far as i can tell, it seems bug free (at least without 40rd party plugins installed) but i'm sure someone will spot one i've missed so i won't say something silly like "100% bug free" . It also adds a bunch of features and missions. Sooooo : The basics of the guild system have been included with 3 dynamic missions, generated in realtime, no dull click-me missions: the assassination attempt, the prisonner escape and payback against a specific ship. More will come later. Various player related features have also been added like the name of guild targets will now blink in the sector map if you're a member and various other 'little' things.

There's also a few pure AI new features: Strong PB are now able to build one single "mob boss" with a special AI (that needs improvement), the bounty you may earn for killing them will increase over time. Attacks on freighters will now target ships that are carrying a valuable cargo in priority. A bounty is put on PG ships based on how much loot they made so far. On the other hand the Guild also gives rewards for the destruction of enemy ships in a similar way.

No critical bug found or fixed in this version as the previous one was, well, stable. The only real issue found was a random failure to load or unload the plugin correctly under some circumstances. However (script-talk here) custom signals are now put back as secondary signals as the crash bug issue has been fixed in 1.35. So minor - and mostly invisible to the average player - issues with other scripts (like RRF) are now fixed. Like i said, this version doesn't seems to have any real bug however the new features and the reward/bounty system may unbalance the whole game a bit, reports are more than welcome

Also notice that if you're not using Anarkis Defense System, you will miss some nice features. ADS ensure that PB are well defended and warns the guild member player when a PB is under attack. Version 2.10 (or over) of ADS is needed for those feature to work properly.

For scripters and modders, this is also a good version to start building a custom version of PG filling your needs. The base code, apart from the news system that will be fully rewritten to be included in ECS 2.5, is very stable and won't change much in the next versions.

Oh, native french language added. Oui vous pouvez maintenant utiliser mon joyeux plugin en français (ou belge, suisse ou quebecois, soyons généreux tabernacle). Par contre pas de question en français dans ce topic, merci. Demandez en anglais, envoyez moi un PM (en FR et pour des questions importantes uniquement) ou demandez a un gentil monsieur qui sait sur le forum français. Désolé, n'ayant plus le temps de gérer 36 forums, j'ai du choisir en fonction du nombre de downloads.

As usual read the first 2 posts for download link and full changelog.

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Now, a few answers to the latest posts (sorry if i missed anything, but my online time is kinda limited):

About the download link
For the 3rd - and last - time , IT IS NOT BROKEN, the server is down from time to time so please be patient, try again later. So please, don't spam me with emails and PMs, Thanks !

bump for download link

Don't ever bump anything in my threads (and, as a matter of fact, in the whole board) ... thanks. The more you bump the less you are likely to get an (positive) answer.

How does this script get on with Improved Races?

Untested, but from the release topic, It should work. Anything that isn't written by a script newbie (no offense intended here) and that doesn't mess with pirate ships AI and relationship should work just fine. Scripters who want to alter pirate assets have to read the related chapter in the readme.txt file included in my archive. And as those info are available in my documentation, it's better to ask them than to ask me.

I used PG last night and this morning and I had a problem with my game freezing after a couple minutes of playing time. im running x3tc with the min. requirements, could my comp just not be up to it or is there a way i can fix this issue?

I'm under the min req. settings (at least for the CPU) and it works just fine so it's probably not related. The only crash bug issue reported so far was related to PG version below 1.35 and the 'NPC bailing script addon'. This issue was corrected in v1.35. If this it not your issue, please take a look at the readme.txt file included in this version (bug report chapter) and give the needed info (pg version and settings, list of your scripts, latest 30-50 lines of the debug log file) so i can try to track and squash the bug


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@ThisIsHarsh:

Thanks for your various comments on the AI, It's always good to see a happy user About the destroyed M6, yeah you probably missed the show. Out of sector, actions takes much less time than when you're in the sector. It takes one or two realtime minutes for a pirate wing to jump in intercept course, kill the M6 and jump back home when you're not already in the target sector. This is the way the game is made and no one can do anything about it. (as a side note, never stay in SETA mode in your production sector, go in a nice quiet unknown sector instead).

Just saw a big group of Guild fighters, commed them to see what the scoop is and got this message back... I've heard of this infamous 'null' sector before, looks like I'm finally gonna find out where it is!

Hehe, wingmates were unable to retrieve the destination correctly from the wing leader, it has been fixed in 1.40. Enjoy!

Here's a little story about the legendary 'null sector': Notice this is not the case for PG as it's only a text related bug and not an AI engine error, but it may be useful to know that the so-called 'null' sector is known in most buggy scripts and plugins as Kingdom End. KE coordinates are (0,0) on the map, and (0,0) can be equal to 'null' under some circumstances in (badly written) script language.

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@Hieronymos:

Arrrr (with a drunk pirate sounding voice), did you know that you are good at always asking very good questions leading to very complex, non conclusive and totally out of topic answers? ^^ My apologies if some parts of my answers are somewhat too 'scripty' / unreadable.

First things first. So I guess you've now noticed that relationship to the Yaki (and the Pirate) faction(s) works in a very weird way. No matter your (player) base relationship to the faction some ships will spawn red (or blue) no matter what. I've no real explanation about this. I did various tests on the Yakis, pirates and 'legit' races to try to understand the mechanism, with some success:

- As usual if you attack a wingmate, the whole wing will turn red.

- All Pirate and Yaki ships *seems* to work basically (about the f/f setting) like military/police ship from other races. If you attack one of them, others will probably turn red on you later. The issue is that default comms have no "sorry friendly fire, please forgive me" option.

- The main thing I'm currently wondering is: does destroyed ship will respawn with the same F/F settings as before. I know that Pirate Bases in X3R were respawning with the same F/F settings and ware selection. It's easy to see for stations, but for ships i don't know. I guess that ships don't really respawn, they are probably generated out of thin air when the total amount goes below a given amount, but i'm not sure.

- Not tested with Yakis, but i'm pretty sure Pirates and Yakis works in a similar way. Below -10k they will mostly spawn red, over +10k they will mostly spawn blue. And it will be random between those values.

- Only ships created with the game engine (tjob file) are concerned. If you spawn a new Yaki/Pirate ship through script you won't have to bother with relationship as the X-engine will ignore them as long as you disable the ship AI through script.

- (unsure, unlogical according to the script files, but well, it seems to happen most of the time). If your relation is high but the pirate is red he will usually ignore you. But if your relation is bad they will probably attack you when your near enough.

- Yaki ships had a spawning bug in X3R that seems (not really tested as the unreleased YA for X3TC version works in a different way) to be corrected in X3TC. The bug was: if you hijack a game engine produced (tjob) yaki ship to do whatever you want through script, even if you disable ship AI and rebuild, they will respawn and go in Kingdom End (the 'null' sector ^^) to cause mayhem no matter what you do. It was the major bug in Yaki Armada for X3R (and ppl kept yelling at me for this reason).

Back to your question. PG2 for X3R did get a Pirate Relationship Fix mechanism, but it was tedious, CPU wasting, and buggy (not by itself but it was causing bugs in relation with other game elements). As a matter of fact, most of the updates i made fixed issues related to this mechanism, instead of adding new features to the plugin. It was a waste of time and was not looking realistic at all (at least in my opinion). So I dropped the whole thing in PG3 for X3TC. Pirate ships are now set as blue (or red) ONE time when the plugin starts and the relation is set accordingly, after that the game engine kicks in for the better and the worst. It doesn't go out of control because the player can comm the red pirates to turn them blue and restore its rep by doing missions.

PG3 owned ships (ships that are used by PG bases and spawned through script) are using their own relationship system like the corporations (terracorp and others) using a global variable instead of the standard rep. in X3TC. I'm using custom killed/attacked signals to alter the relationship when a PG ships get attacked/destroyed by the player.

The former PG2 version 'fix" was something like that:

$rel = get notoriety pirate->player
if $rel > 10K
$set = Friend
else if rel < -10k
$set = Foe
else
$set = Neutral
end
$pirate.array = get all pirate ships
$array.cnt = size of array $pirate.array
while $array.cnt
dec $array.cnt
ship = $pirate.array[$array.cnt]
ship -> set relation to race Player : $set
end

if was more or less launched every 1/2 hour. But even if it seems on the first read that it's a fine way to do the trick, I assure you it will cause trouble. Ships attacked by the player apparently turning blue for no reason, other ships spawning the wrong color for a whole hour. Not even speaking of weird issues and conflicts related to signal handling and compatibility with 3rd party scripts.

I don't really known what you are expecting from the yakis (or the pirates) in your X3TC modpack, and i sadly can't contribute this time without a home internet access - too bad as your X3R edition was one the few really good mod ever released - All i can say is: don't expect them to behave properly like the argons or other legit race without major custom scripting. If you really want to add a working 'pirate' faction so the player can interact with, you have 3 options:

- The way of the Jedi ^^ : Use the race1 or race2 slots. Those slots are very nice as they will obey to whatever setting you set through script without any interaction from the game engine. But you'll need a very good scripter to write a spawning AL plugin, custom signals, and default scripts. And you'll have to forget about standard 'c' comms with ships as the game engine won't handle it.

- Forget about the TJOB files, and use an AL plugin to handle the spawn of yaki ships and stations, it requiers a lot of work and a scripter who knows everything about signal handling and default egosoft scripts. But it's still much easier than designing a whole race from scratch.

- Even easier (also way more limited): use my ECS library (available in the PG archive, highly commented library with sample demo script: 'plugin.sk.ecs.*' and 'al.plugin.sk.ecs' files) to handle custom comm. dialogs with the Yakis so you can ask them to make peace instead of going in a spiral of violence.

Cheers,

SK.

[ThisIsHarsh]

Good to see you're back SK! I was worried you had given up on PG. With an already great system and even more potential it would have been a shame if it had been left to stagnate. Definately looking forward to YA.

- Yaki ships had a spawning bug in X3R that seems (not really tested as the unreleased YA for X3TC version works in a different way) to be corrected in X3TC. The bug was: if you hijack a game engine produced (tjob) yaki ship to do whatever you want through script, even if you disable ship AI and rebuild, they will respawn and go in Kingdom End (the 'null' sector ^^) to cause mayhem no matter what you do. It was the major bug in Yaki Armada for X3R (and ppl kept yelling at me for this reason).

In relation this, I thought I should share a couple of headaches I had with the Xenon in my Military Base Response revamp script.

First issue: I created an AL plugin to spawn scouts that would seek out threats. I homebased these scouts at (scripted) Xenon Military Bases. Homebasing causes them, as it turned out, to be respawned by jobs when they are killed. My problem was that I was also respawning them via my AL scripts, so for every one that died, two took their place.

This particular problem probably doesn't apply to you, but maybe this next one does...

Secondly: I found that with the Xenon ships (spawned via jobs, not scripted), and only Xenon ships (compared to main races), simply changing the script they were running would cause them to be respawned by jobs, even though they still existed. This caused a neverending cascade of new Xenon ships. I.e. as they spawned, they were retasked by my AL plugin, so then respawned again, and were retasked, etc. The way I got around this was the 'disable ship rebuild' command. Setting race logic control disabled didn't help, nor did anything else. Seems I finally found a use for that wierd command.

I thought that maybe, just maybe, Yaki and/or Pirates, may exhibit the same behaviour - especially when I saw the comment you wrote above. Worth bearing in mind.

[7ate9tin11s]

Is there a flag of some kind I can check for to see if Pirate Guild is running on a station? I currently have a reputation modifier and response forces built into improved races which is applied to Pirate bases in r14 and would like to disable it if the guild is installed.

Thanks,

-7ate

[JimBadger]

Ooh, I love it when my favourite scripts co-operate

[yospanky]

Seconded

[ThisIsHarsh]

Would you allow reuse of your communications system scripts in other 3rd party scripts?

If so, perhaps you could provide a seperate spk or just identify the files needed? And even better give some hints on where to start to use these (either as a mini-guide, or just point to one of the ADS scripts that I can use as a template, or something).

I would like to add a points system to my Military Base script, to give the player points with Military Bases when they destroy one of the ships identified by Recon scouts as a threat. Ultimately this would lead to a ranking system and privileges such as allowing the player to call in strikes themselves.

I've been extremely impressed with your comms system (as I've mentioned on several occasions), and think it would fit perfectly with my idea...

[Hieronymos]

Thanks for your detailed and generous response SK. I'll post it at the DDTC mod site (www.xforum.chaos.net.nz) so that Deadly Da and Pelador can see.

We're possibly weeks away from our first RC (release candidate) of DDRS for XTC--called DDTC (Deadly Da's Terran Conflict). Deadly has pretty much cracked the new Mission Director architecture, and is breaking new ground with it in ways vanilla will possibly never ever match, to create really dynamic replayability value. We've also got an amazing new background mod bolted on for eye candy, and Pelador--who's new to the X3 scene, but who's an amazingly gifted and prolific scripter (the next Cycrow?)--has created new industrial Tech tree and added his Drones plugins.

So it's quite accurate to say that DDTC will be considerably superior to DDRS for 3R. And as XTM for TC is perhaps months away from a RC, DDTC will be the only big mod on the scene for a while. We're hoping it will help revitalize interest in the game in general.

As you may have guessed, it's always been my dream to have the Yaki at least as close to a "real race" as you've managed to get the pirates with PG. Since they seem to behave pretty much identically to pirates (with some spawning red no matter how good your Y rep is), I'd assumed that virtually your entire PG3 architecture could be modded for a Yaki solution.

Is this an accurate statement?

Failing that, your generous offer of access to your custom library is extremely kind. Finally, is your English better than your French language skill?

Keep up the excellent work, SK. Your efforts have greatly enhanced the value of X3.

[Rheinlander]

Is there a mirror for this? Every time I download the file it spits out an "unexpected end of archive" error when I open it.

[Serial Kicked]

Happy to see no complains or major bug report related to 1.40 as i'm kinda near to the final release. After that i'll probably go for Yaki Armada and Factions:AI development.

Final version (1.50) will include the following improvements:
- 3 new missions types
- guild ranking
- player owned automated pirate base
- Improved AI for bountyhunters and other other special ships


@ThisIsHarsh:

Good to see you're back SK! I was worried you had given up on PG. With an already great system and even more potential it would have been a shame if it had been left to stagnate. Definately looking forward to YA.

YA should be quickly done, most of the X3 sourcebase is still valid and most of the lib used by PG will be used by the new version. Unlike PG, It probably won't be a "revolution" over the X3R version.

First issue: I created an AL plugin to spawn scouts that would seek out threats. I homebased these scouts at (scripted) Xenon Military Bases. Homebasing causes them, as it turned out, to be respawned by jobs when they are killed. My problem was that I was also respawning them via my AL scripts, so for every one that died, two took their place.

I had the very same issues with my carriers. There is no efficient workaround or magic script command to resolve this (sic), afaik. To handle this, i used a local array on the homebase to manage its ships. It requiers a lot of additional coding. A detailed answer on how to achieve this would take me a few hours. You can find in my anarkis.lib.custowned.* libraries how i did it (use it if you want). However you'll have to write custom returntohomebase scripts.

Secondly: I found that with the Xenon ships (spawned via jobs, not scripted), and only Xenon ships (compared to main races), simply changing the script they were running would cause them to be respawned by jobs, even though they still existed. This caused a neverending cascade of new Xenon ships. I.e. as they spawned, they were retasked by my AL plugin, so then respawned again, and were retasked, etc. The way I got around this was the 'disable ship rebuild' command. Setting race logic control disabled didn't help, nor did anything else. Seems I finally found a use for that wierd command.
thought that maybe, just maybe, Yaki and/or Pirates, may exhibit the same behaviour - especially when I saw the comment you wrote above. Worth bearing in mind.

Well I don't know, keeping track of Pirate ships is hard and I don't have such issue as I only use ships spawned by my script itself. Still, thanks for the info about this command. At least there's a use for it, as an habit i use both commands on every ship i spawn/use. "race logic" is used on scriptspawned ships. If you don't use this command, the ship will automatically starts a default script after a while.


@7ate9tin11s:

Is there a flag of some kind I can check for to see if Pirate Guild is running on a station? I currently have a reputation modifier and response forces built into improved races which is applied to Pirate bases in r14 and would like to disable it if the guild is installed.

Like written in the readme.txt every game object (including stations) used by PG has the local variable anarkis.pirate set to [TRUE]. As a matter of fact, every pirate base (not factory, base only) is used by PG when installed.

By the way, reputation to the pirate faction in general is not really used by the guild (well default game settings applies). Dunno if it's useful for your, but relationship to the guild itself is located in a global array variable anarkis.pirate.plugin at index 11 (see anarkis.setup.init script file). You can also check this global to see if PG is enabled or not, at index 2.


@ThisIsHarsh:

Would you allow reuse of your communications system scripts in other 3rd party scripts?

All my scripts are now open source (unlike X3R) so you can use, alter and copy whatever part of my scripts, libs, plugins for free non commercial projects, as long as proper credits are included.

If so, perhaps you could provide a seperate spk or just identify the files needed? And even better give some hints on where to start to use these (either as a mini-guide, or just point to one of the ADS scripts that I can use as a template, or something).

ECS is using those files:
- al.plugin.sk.ecs
- plugin.sk.ecs.*

There's a demo script (dummy.*) included and the sourcecode is heavily commented (read the register, unregister, callscript).

As a matter of fact, i am currently writing the guide you're asking for. It will basically explains the PG architecture, how to write addons for it, how to use ADS and ECS efficiently, and various scripting tips i've accumulated over the years.

btw i can't use spk, my code is too modular with several layers of libraries for the tool to handle (very short explanation, it's more complicated, but the effect is the same).

I've been extremely impressed with your comms system (as I've mentioned on several occasions), and think it would fit perfectly with my idea...

Thanks, but you shouldn't be ECS is a big word for what is basically a shortcut system allowing various scripts to use the same key for different functions. Most of the work itself is handled by the script using ECS. Btw i'm on the way of finalizing ECS 2.5 that will be a huge improvement. It will directly include the news system (used by PG) alongs with various other features.


@Hieronymos:

As you may have guessed, it's always been my dream to have the Yaki at least as close to a "real race" as you've managed to get the pirates with PG. Since they seem to behave pretty much identically to pirates (with some spawning red no matter how good your Y rep is), I'd assumed that virtually your entire PG3 architecture could be modded for a Yaki solution.

Is this an accurate statement?

Yes it is, PG, with some modifications could be used by any race, or sub faction. As a matter of fact i'm working on an AL plugin/lib that could be used and moddded to handle any race or faction according to various paramaters set by the user. Including features like sector takeover, basic diplomacy, military operations, police operation and basic trading. However i've to restart from scratch after this *$#@! HDD crash. And i have to admit that i'm reluctant to do so right now, you'll have to wait a while for any public alpha release.

Failing that, your generous offer of access to your custom library is extremely kind. Finally, is your English better than your French language skill?

Errr, it's probably the same as long as you don't ask me to 'speak' english, grammar is good, accent ain't. If you're asking me this because i don't post in the french board anymore, that's because i've no time for this as i already have to hijack a friend's computer to post here, and as everyone has -at least should have- learned english at school in my country it shouldn't be a problem (yeah i know i'm dreaming).


Cheers,

SK.

[Rheikon]

Hi SK, I can not seem to get in good with the guild. Whenever I go to a base it is always red even at friend. They tell me to pay fines over and over. Even with no other ships, so I know I am not attacking them elsewhere. Sometimes it will go blue for a few seconds then back to red and asking for fine payment. Is there something else I need to be aware of?

I am using it with Improved Races and 7ate mentioned earlier something about relations, maybe that is messing with it. Other than that I have no mods that do anything with pirates.

Thanks.

[Hieronymos]

Have been betatesting DDTC mod's first RC, and running PG3 in the background for more color, and to see it in action.

Very impressive! The pirates are using a good mix of vanilla and modded ships, and after 1.5 game-day, are pretty well established militarily. The DDTC missions usually spawn bad guys as "pirates", so my pirate rep is totally in the toilet..but it allows me to more readily ID the masses of guild ships.

The guild ships are also exceptionally well armed--a good selection of IonD's, MD's, PBE's, PBG's and missles to make any guild wing challenging to fight. Which is just how it should be! I've taken on 2 guild wings so far..and unlike with a comparable wing of vanilla fighters, I've lost wingmen, and had to reload multiple times! Excellent!

My only problem so far is not being able to figure out how to make ADS work for a wing I'd stationed at my trading station..Will go to the ADS thread for a solution.

Keep up the excellent work SK!

[yospanky]

Just curious, if you haven't already, could you put this into the superbox or are you waiting to make a final release? Nice work btw!

[Serial Kicked]

Hi SK, I can not seem to get in good with the guild. Whenever I go to a base it is always red even at friend. They tell me to pay fines over and over. Even with no other ships, so I know I am not attacking them elsewhere. Sometimes it will go blue for a few seconds then back to red and asking for fine payment. Is there something else I need to be aware of?

I am using it with Improved Races and 7ate mentioned earlier something about relations, maybe that is messing with it.

As the Improved Races authors asked me about relationship issues with his plugin, yes i guess it came from it. I can't do much about it on my side, plugins messing with the pirate relationship aren't usually compatible except if they respect a few guidelines available in my readme. So all i can tell you is to wait for a new version of Improved Races that will probably come in a few weeks.

@Hieronymos:

Good to see that PG3 is working fine with mods as it has been designed to do so. (as a side note, PG1 for X2 was originally designed for the Terradine mod).

The guild ships are also exceptionally well armed--a good selection of IonD's, MD's, PBE's, PBG's and missles to make any guild wing challenging to fight. Which is just how it should be! I've taken on 2 guild wings so far..and unlike with a comparable wing of vanilla fighters, I've lost wingmen, and had to reload multiple times! Excellent!

Yes i kinda like my weapon equipement library. As far as i can tell it should also works fine if weapons are modded.

@yospanky:

Just curious, if you haven't already, could you put this into the superbox or are you waiting to make a final release? Nice work btw!

This version can be labelled as 'final', next updates will only add minor corrections and additions. I've been asked to put PG in the "SuperBox" and i've given my agreement even if i'm somewhat reluctant to give my work to a commercial project.


Cheers,
SK.

[Hieronymos]

SK,
Any plans to revitalize Yaki Armada? *he asks hopefully, wiping the drool from his chin*

[Serial Kicked]

Version 1.50 has been released !

Here's what is probably the final large update of Pirate Guild. It includes new guild related missions and a new improved AI for bounty hunters. The news system has been reworked using ECS 2.5 Newsfeed feature, GUI is improved and some new articles have been added.

This version can be considered as 'Final'. Most, if not all, bugs have been removed. All the features i wanted in are included, and the code is solid. I've quickly tested it with the new X3TC 2.5 Patch, and it seems to works just fine (even a bit better, performances seems to be increased).

However updates may be released from time to time to add new missions and features. Oh, and I have a new webhost, so you should be able to download the files without issues.


Important Upgrade Note

If you're upgrading from a previous version you'll need to do the following:
1. Disable BOTH Pirate Guild and Extended Communication System in your AL menu
2. Save your game and exit
3. Unzip in your X3 folder
4. Run game, load your savegame
5. Enable ECS: Extended Communications in your AL menu
6. Enable Pirate Guild in your AL menu

You'll have to set your ECS hotkey again.