[SCRIPT] NPC Bailing Addon v1.7.8 [2010-09-21]

strude · Post by **strude** » Sun, 25. Jul 10, 05:43

Would it be possible to change the bail range percentage range for big ships? I like to have it enabled, but I'd like to set it way lower, like 1 or 2 percent. At the moment 10 percent is the lowest range. I would like it to be an extremely unlikely to find a big ship bailed, but I don't want it to be impossible.

Failing an official change to the script, can you tell me if it's possible and what script to change to get the results I want manually?

Jaga_Telesin · Post by **Jaga_Telesin** » Sun, 25. Jul 10, 06:17

strude wrote:Would it be possible to change the bail range percentage range for big ships? I like to have it enabled, but I'd like to set it way lower, like 1 or 2 percent. At the moment 10 percent is the lowest range. I would like it to be an extremely unlikely to find a big ship bailed, but I don't want it to be impossible.

Failing an official change to the script, can you tell me if it's possible and what script to change to get the results I want manually?

I asked for this as well a while back, got no reply on it. Figured it was low on the priority list. Too bad too, since the thrill of capping a big ship is second to none, when it is a rare event.

Wintersdark · Post by **Wintersdark** » Sun, 25. Jul 10, 07:53

The bail rate percentage isn't a direct chance to bail, it's the point of hull damage at which the ship will start taking morale tests to bail. This is why there is a perception that everything bails or nothing does. At high percentages (say, 60%) ships start taking morale tests early, so often fail them sooner and bail with a larger chunk of hull remaining. At a lower rate, they start taking morale tests once they are at very low hull levels and thus bail with only 1-5% hull remaining.

Then, shots still en route impact and destroy the newly empty ship.

This effect is particularly pronounced with big ships in a vanilla-shipstat game (wierdly fragile hulls+powerful, slow weapons)

At 10%, even if the ship fails one of it's first tests and bails at, say, 9%, shots in the air are *certain* to destroy it.

Requiemfang · Post by **Requiemfang** » Sun, 25. Jul 10, 09:05

correct, which is why you hardly see any m1 or m2's bailing. In order to get those you got to be extremely lucky. I've seen several m7's and m7m's but also those are rare to bail as well. If they do bail... there is a likely chance the empty ship as Winter has said will be destroyed by any other shots on there way towards the ship before the crew bailed out.

strude · Post by **strude** » Sun, 25. Jul 10, 09:08

Do shot in transit even exist OOS? Or does this not cause bails when OOS?

Jaga_Telesin · Post by **Jaga_Telesin** » Sun, 25. Jul 10, 09:44

Hate to say it, but I saw quite a few M1/M2 that had been abandoned in large fights in the last game I played. So many, that if I went and then claimed them it ruined my sense of fun - unlimited power and/or money.

That was the reason I was asking for less pronounced bailing on huge ships. Direct experience with seeing far too many.

Wintersdark · Post by **Wintersdark** » Sun, 25. Jul 10, 09:47

It can cause bails oos, and there are no "shots in transit"; but missiles still function that way. Also, NPC salvagers tend to get to them before you even know about them.

To put it this way:

I run 60% bailing on small and large ships. I'm 168hrs of (real, non seta) playtime, I've entered a sector to find a bailed large ship just hanging around maybe half a dozen times, and that's including TL's and m6's.

It does happen in large fleet combat reasonably frequently, but I also run SRM which doubles ship hull points. Those wmajor battle bails though virtually always get smoked by stray shots and missiles

I like what it does for combat actually. Abadly crippled ship evacuates, drifting empty in space for a few more minutes until the remaining missiles, now unhindered by defensive turret/drone fire, swoop in for the kill.

logician · Post by **logician** » Sat, 7. Aug 10, 20:10

Balancing Chance-based calculations in computer games is quite a task, but considering that most popular X3TC mods alter gameplay or combat behaviour, any chance-based operation in a script can produce strange & potentially unwanted effects.

For that reason, I would love to see this feature being adjustable from 0-100% myself.

@ strude & Jaga_Telesin
there..now there's 3 of us, but is the author is still around & reading this?

-Logician

cdr · Post by **cdr** » Sat, 14. Aug 10, 02:53

All im getting is a "NPCBailingAddon-V1.6.4-11.09.2009.man"

where do i get the spk file from please ?

Requiemfang · Post by **Requiemfang** » Sat, 14. Aug 10, 03:21

the download link of course...

Troubleshooter11 · Post by **Troubleshooter11** » Sat, 14. Aug 10, 03:58

Requiemfang wrote:the download link of course...

What he means is the file he downloaded was not a .spk file but a .man

You will have to rename the .man file into .spk yourself. That should work.

Requiemfang · Post by **Requiemfang** » Sat, 14. Aug 10, 04:11

lol weird... when I download it it's always SPK format

Noric · Post by **Noric** » Tue, 31. Aug 10, 11:12

Just a question: if I use the bioscanner the bravado should appear where you usually get "mission completed" message? I mean, not in the diary but directly on screen?
I ask this because I don't find the bravado in either of those places.

ThisIsHarsh · Post by **ThisIsHarsh** » Tue, 31. Aug 10, 17:24

Yeah apologies everybody. Way back I disabled the bravado Bioscanner thingy, though I can't quite remember why, it was a while ago.

I've made some minor changes to this plugin and I will add back the Bioscanner bravado functionality (and make it optional via the menu).

Does anyone have any other requests to include in the next version?

EDIT: OK, on reading some comments above, seperating the bail factor for huge and big ships, rather than having a combined value, sounds popular.

djrygar · Post by **djrygar** » Tue, 31. Aug 10, 18:10

2 things;
there seems to be lack of resolution in bailing factor of big/huge ships

putting this to 20% results in huge ships laying around ready to take - obvious game breaker (maybe not breaker, makes things too easy and boring)

but 10% - no ships at all. Haven't seen even one since setting it to this value, even after 12 game days (and playing with x4 hulls, so they had chance to bail I think). So I guess 12-15% could make it right.

Mars drones. When enabled for AI, they keep repairing bailed ships. I have seen this at least once, some time ago, but maybe you fixed that already - havent had many chances to observe.

aside from those glitches - this thing is very nice and adds a lot to gameplay.

RyuKazuha · Post by **RyuKazuha** » Tue, 31. Aug 10, 18:40

You disabled the Scanner for some bug or ctd reasons.

I also would like to adjust big and huge ships seperately, even though I've only encountered one bailed TM until now.

I currently use normal bailingrate at 90%, cause I like to see pilots bail, we
rather then fight to the death for no apparent reason. Big Ship/Huge Ship at 20.

It would be kinda cool if not only one pilot would leave M7 and up, but kind of a little crew (10-20?).

ThisIsHarsh · Post by **ThisIsHarsh** » Tue, 31. Aug 10, 19:00

djrygar wrote:there seems to be lack of resolution in bailing factor of big/huge ships

putting this to 20% results in huge ships laying around ready to take - obvious game breaker (maybe not breaker, makes things too easy and boring)

but 10% - no ships at all. Haven't seen even one since setting it to this value, even after 12 game days (and playing with x4 hulls, so they had chance to bail I think). So I guess 12-15% could make it right.

Hmm, this is interesting. It must have to do with capital ships all having very high morale values (except TLs). I'll perhaps have to do some more rigourous testing to see the effect of various values.

djrygar wrote:Mars drones. When enabled for AI, they keep repairing bailed ships. I have seen this at least once, some time ago, but maybe you fixed that already - havent had many chances to observe.

Hmm. I think this is more a problem with MARS - there is obviously no check to see if the ship has changed race. I'm not sure what to do about this. It actually sounds pretty cool that the poor fellas continue to tend to their 'dead' mother

.

RyuKazuha wrote:You disabled the Scanner for some bug or ctd reasons.

Well at least I had a legit reason. A bit harsh someone else remembers when I have no memory whatsoever, and it's my own script!

RyuKazuha wrote:It would be kinda cool if not only one pilot would leave M7 and up, but kind of a little crew (10-20?).

Larger ships should already bail multiple astronauts, does this not happen for any large ships?

djrygar · Post by **djrygar** » Tue, 31. Aug 10, 20:55

ThisIsHarsh wrote: Hmm, this is interesting. It must have to do with capital ships all having very high morale values (except TLs). I'll perhaps have to do some more rigourous testing to see the effect of various values.

I also use Cycrow's script that adds AI salvagers. This may be also a reason, but I doubt it. since I use 20% for small ships (this works just perfect for fighters) I have set salvager to 30 or 40 minutes as response time (quite long). I not only use x4 hull but also weaker missiles, so they should not do so much mess OOS as usual

--
off topic;
I spent more time investigating your finding with signal_changedsector and found reason for this behaviour.
Well, signal triggers because they really jump in

from famous null sector, that is why they have nice jump-flash effect when they appear.

Besides removing jobs-generated ships, I am employing it also to remove Khaak figters that jump on playership in Khaak sectors (those bastards are not from jobs, but spawned directly by engine - that's my guess at least). Since they have to be removed instantaneously, I had to do some checks and noticed, that if you dont use any =wait or more expensive command, you can catch this guy even before he jumps in!

Wintersdark · Post by **Wintersdark** » Thu, 2. Sep 10, 03:44

djrygar wrote: Besides removing jobs-generated ships, I am employing it also to remove Khaak figters that jump on playership in Khaak sectors (those bastards are not from jobs, but spawned directly by engine - that's my guess at least). Since they have to be removed instantaneously, I had to do some checks and noticed, that if you dont use any =wait or more expensive command, you can catch this guy even before he jumps in!

Wait.... you've found a way to prevent the playership Khaak spawning? Well, not prevent, but remove them the instant they spawn? Now THAT is a script I'd be interested in. It's a very, very annoying "feature" of the game engine.

More on topic:

I too would love to see separate bailing rates for big/huge ships, and a better way to control bailing overall.

As has been discussed, with the current setup you often run into cases of zounds of bailed big ships or none at all, it's difficult to get fine grained control unless you've got a setup like djrygar's with very strong hulls and weaker missiles.

Personally, I like to see:

Fighters bail pretty regularly - seems plausible to me, and the actual credit value is fairly limited when they are heavily damaged; also, it's very easy to destroy the fighters as they bail.

Big ships bailing occasionally - This is the most important part of the script for me. I definitely want to see M6's and such bailing. Not as often as fighters, but they certainly should.

Huge ships bailing rarely - While I'm a big fan of people working to save themselves, if there are piles of derelict destroyers and carriers floating about things get out of hand quickly.

Currently, though, as I said it's very difficult to get big/huge ship bailing set up well. Always seems to be lots or none.

* Also, I've never seen more than one crewman bail from a ship, regardless of size.

djrygar · Post by **djrygar** » Thu, 2. Sep 10, 05:22

Wintersdark wrote: Wait.... you've found a way to prevent the playership Khaak spawning? Well, not prevent, but remove them the instant they spawn? Now THAT is a script I'd be interested in. It's a very, very annoying "feature" of the game engine.

its already included in IR 15.02

they are basicaly unnoticeable (they are killed after about 10-12 miliseconds) if not for short (also few ms) beep of ship computer. but i included wav file that fixes it

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

[SCRIPT] NPC Bailing Addon v1.7.8 [2010-09-21]