[Mod] UT CaC v0.20 ( Old Name: Not Another Trader ) - Architect integrated

[UniTrader]

sorry, just confused surface miner and scoop collector.. i refer to them mostly as orecollector and gascollector, their technical names, and not the ones shown ingame. (also english is not my mother language)

also with the current method the Info Panel will reflect this by showing Drones in usage, here a screenie which shows 3 Drones flying around (above the "ed" from "paused", they are surrounded by a green Frame when not in a Menu) and the Info Panel of the Station where currently 16 Drones are used (actually used count doesnt matter, but i have to keep some in reserve or they all will start and return at the same time - i prefer to launch only a part of them with every cycle)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kbht7v9zgj7lg ... 7.png?dl=0

[I3laze]

Your english is perfectly fine so don't worry about that. I was not sure if you meant surface miners or not as you said scoop a few times. At least that is cleared up now

[I3laze]

Hmmm I'm not getting what you have shown in your screen shot. I have your updated mod installed and my drones are stored as drones like the cargo lifters are. I'll empty my plasma storage and see what happens.

Edit: Scoop workers are working from the station, I don't understand why I did not see them before.

I still feel there is a problem with the gas miner ships though. My Hardware station and Cell fab station are low on ion's and my gas miners still just sit there with the wait command. The ore miners for the Hardware station mine continues though.

Edit 2: ok this is where I'm at with the ion miners for the cell fab matrix. At first I left the range set a default for a while and my miners mined the plasma in the same zone, no ion though. I then set another range on slot 2 as Omicron thinking that the miner will mine for ion that way. Still no joy. So last night I added a 3rd range but this time to the zone that contains ions and within 10 minutes the miner is on his way to the zone to mine ion's.

I don't understand why it did not do this when I set range for the whole of Omicron. My problems are obviously the ranges settings.

[YorrickVander]

Found a copy paste error in ut.cac.com.manager.findjob.trade

line 556

Code: Select all

            <add_buy_order object="$entity.ship" trade="$selloffer" amount="$amount" price="$selloffer.unitprice"/>
            <add_sell_order object="$entity.ship" trade="$buyoffer" amount="$amount" price="$selloffer.unitprice"/>

appears to be breaking the expected profit display buy setting both values to purchase price?

[UniTrader]

thx for the look up, the second should be 0 Cr because its only a Ware Transfer to the Homebase, not an actual Trade.. will be fixed for the next version since its nothing crtitical (will sort itself out because i calculate the money already present on the captains account into the money to be transferred for the next Trade)

[I3laze]

Are you going to wait for patch 4 final to release before you release any more updates?

[UniTrader]

does not depend on that, its more about when i am done.. currently at debugging and testing the next feature (automatic equipping of Drones), although i switched today to 4.0 (but i will keep it compatible to the current regular Version)

delay between updates is because i needed something diffrent for a while and also because i usually add a big bunch of functions for the next version and after that test it, which usually results in a very long debug output

so dont hestiate to report things i fix critical stuff usually immediately (like crashes, freezes or broken stuff), but for fixes which dont cause problems i prefer to take my time and include it in the next planned Version (although sometimes i sneak stuff in, for example i prevented my Manager from taking assigned MT Station Logistics Ships in a sneaked update on Sunday )

[I3laze]

Thats good to hear. I'm not sure if I should carry on atm just in case patch 4 needs a game restart, I have a good few mods and some are no longer being updated and I cannot see my save working.

I'll gladly test in my current game for bugs when you release your update in the meantime but I'll not bother expanding my empire.

[iWARR]

Hi, UniTrader

Unfortunately, mod is still unplayable at all, during many versions and in case of different reasons.

There are lot of serious bugs here:

- Your new versions don't affect on existing buggy Managers - it's a big problem, because they all have to be changed (destroyed) on many player stations manually. And Captains too...
- DEBUG script that relaunch main commands doesn't work as expected (no help detected)
- Converting Manager to CAC does the same with Capitan of the subordinated ship. Why? If so, double bugs... Cap have to be killed too, to "make it clear", he-he. I think, it will be better to leave poor Cap as he is, in Vanilla-style (OK, you decide).
- Request function! There is NO WAY to reassign subordinated ship BACK from CAC Manager! Empty Cap to empty space... Again. Poor, poor Captain...
- Debugging trick with actors killing and reassigning the new ones works time to time. Old subordination links still there, for example, completely new actors use an old, non-existent links and break absolutely new orders IN THE MOMENT, WHEN renewed Manager converting to the CAC-style; ship, that now subordinates to Skunk, automatically coming back by obsolete station-link to NEWLY reassigned Manager.
- Overall Manager Converting still buggy: menu "About your Operations Range..." appears empty very often.
- Non-English versions (Russian) have broken text of the all menues and looks in the same style: "...read text bla-bla-bla...". The temporary trick it is cloning your t-files with other proper (local) language names. For example, "0001-l007.xml" and "0001-l007-shortened.xml" for Russian with your English text inside.
- Translation is impossible, because it's something wrong with text encoding, I think. Look at the Format settings; your text uses Unix (0Ah) encoding, while other modders use DOS/Windows (0Dh, 0Ah) or smth. like that.
- CAC-Managers gets stuck. So, NO ANY TRADING, if the rest of fuctions so buggy...

BUT. The idea looks very promising. So, all this space-debugging-opus is for you. And good wishes too.

P.S. Split don't speak English, Split say YES! (C) Sorry about that.

[UniTrader]

Sorry for answering later than other Posts but i didnt want to answer this from the Phone

- Your new versions don't affect on existing buggy Managers - it's a big problem, because they all have to be changed (destroyed) on many player stations manually. And Captains too...

Do you mean existing Vanilla Managers (which are not affected at all - this is intentional because this Script is not rady to replace them completely yet) or do you mean some bugs remain when updating? (i took great care to update all variables during updates, maybe i missed something? also there are very few Scripts running permanently and these are written with the intention that its impossible to lock them up)

- DEBUG script that relaunch main commands doesn't work as expected (no help detected)

What do you expect it to do? it is not a general purpose GO! button but a method to recover if something really Locked up. It does not check if Aborting current Actions is a good idea (like when executing a Trade) and using it frequently may cause other Errors (like the Captain requesting too many orders if you use it when the Manager is currently looking for new Orders)

- Converting Manager to CAC does the same with Capitan of the subordinated ship. Why? If so, double bugs... Cap have to be killed too, to "make it clear", he-he. I think, it will be better to leave poor Cap as he is, in Vanilla-style (OK, you decide).

This is purely intentional. Vanilla Captain does not request any orders From the Manager, my Script does. (and also has an Order Queue, something unknown to the Vanilla Scripts) And it is also written for Captains (they use a similiar dialogue Menu for consistency, but it is not exactly the same as for the Manager), they are not explicitly activated for Captains though but Implicitly by asssinging them to a CAC Manager (dont wanted to waste too many Conversation Slots)
if you dont give my Manager any Ships under his Control he is basically restricted to Mining and Zone Trading (or in other words basically doing nothing)

- Request function! There is NO WAY to reassign subordinated ship BACK from CAC Manager! Empty Cap to empty space... Again. Poor, poor Captain...

Already on my ToDo-List but not a high Priority

- Debugging trick with actors killing and reassigning the new ones works time to time. Old subordination links still there, for example, completely new actors use an old, non-existent links and break absolutely new orders IN THE MOMENT, WHEN renewed Manager converting to the CAC-style; ship, that now subordinates to Skunk, automatically coming back by obsolete station-link to NEWLY reassigned Manager.

As i previously said: subordinate Captains also use a seperate set of Scripts

- Overall Manager Converting still buggy: menu "About your Operations Range..." appears empty very often.

There was a Bug with the Reset functionality which caused this (reset also throws out all made Settings and restores the default ones, but i forgot to restore the List of Ranges)
this has been fixed in the Update on 2nd October - if it already happened you have to do it again to restore
Once again: this is not a General-purpose GO!-Button!!!

- Non-English versions (Russian) have broken text of the all menues and looks in the same style: "...read text bla-bla-bla...". The temporary trick it is cloning your t-files with other proper (local) language names. For example, "0001-l007.xml" and "0001-l007-shortened.xml" for Russian with your English text inside.

ups, forgot to use the trick for the fallback Language File - it should have been enough to remove the Language Suffix from the File name (so its called 0001.xml - not more)
the 0001-l044-shortened is btw unimportant - this file is only for me to find fitting spoken Text more easily, it does not serve any actual function..

- Translation is impossible, because it's something wrong with text encoding, I think. Look at the Format settings; your text uses Unix (0Ah) encoding, while other modders use DOS/Windows (0Dh, 0Ah) or smth. like that.

Just get a proper Text/XML Editor (Notepad++, xmlcopyedit,...). before parsing xml all CR+LF (Windows style Line Breaks) and CR (Mac style Line Breaks) have to be converted to a single LF (Linux style line breaks) according to specification. so my Files are completely valid - Notepad just dislikes any File which uses another Line Break style than the Windows one..

- CAC-Managers gets stuck. So, NO ANY TRADING, if the rest of fuctions so buggy...

i think my previous Replies should have cleared stuff up.

BUT. The idea looks very promising. So, all this space-debugging-opus is for you. And good wishes too.

think there were just some misunderstandings here how its supposed to work.

This Project aims to rewrite all Script Logic in the Game from scratch and everything should work with a Command Queue.

P.S. Split don't speak English, Split say YES! (C) Sorry about that.

No problem with that
I hope everything is cleaerer now and that the Translator doesnt mess up too much when you use one

[I3laze]

MY manager of a food supplier is telling one of my freighters to buy wheat for some reason. I do not see the logic in it as my factory produces wheat and is 3000 units from being full. To be honest I really struggle for it to sell and is always nearly full, so why on earth the station manager has ordered wheat to be brought Is madness.

Is this a bug or something? Does your script allow for wares to be purchased even though the station produces it?

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... CDA1ED517/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... AC236DC90/

[UniTrader]

i did have a bug like this, but it has been fixed on 4th October..
was not easily noticeable because it only happened when a Ware intended to be Sold got a very high priority (the highest-priority item in the List) but when it happened it strengthened itself because buying wares increased their priority..

could you confirm you have the current Version? or at least make sure you have the latest aiscripts/ut.cac.com.manager.findjob.trade.xml...

[I3laze]

I am using your updated mod yes, and the ut.cac.com.manager.findjob.trade.xml I have is version 1 like the one you have just listed.

I thought your last update was on the 24th October?

[UniTrader]

script Version number is irrelevant because I don't change it unless necessary, like when introducing new blocking actions
can you please check if there is a 'sell' in lines 339 and 444 - just to be safe it's not the bug I already fixed

[iWARR]

Uni, Hello again

When I wrote about bugs, it was not a joke and it was not my misunderstanding, whith all respect...

Our dialog looks like:

iWARR: Ohhh... There are lot of bugs here.
Uni: No, you misunderstood. Now, I show you how it works...

"Don't show me your skills, please" (C) Everybody here knows, how they are
But if mod won't start to do just a little job = mod not works.

Anyway...

- existing buggy Managers - I mean bugs remain when updating manually. A lot of existing buggy Managers.
- DEBUG script - I know it is not a general purpose "GO!" Of course, it's not kind of interest, it's howl of despair
- CAC Manager + CAC Cap - Your explanation about dialogues is clear.
- NO WAY to reassign subordinated ship BACK - This one VERY important thing in many cases (hard to reassign after bugs, big waste of time, what if I want to change general mission for the ship - war/trade/new squad), etc.
- "About your Operations Range..." appears empty very often - It was happen (with NEWLY reassigned Manager and Cap), with version 0.11 (8 Nov, 2015). So... not fixed?
- Broken text - Fixed.
I have translated t-file on Russian (I use AkelPad). File is here: http://ge.tt/2XwCOiR2/v/0?c
I tryed make translation carefully, short but informative. I didn't yet tested deeply how my translation is.
You may ask alexalsp to check it out (If he will be so kind, of course). He made good Russian translations for the number of the mods.
But we have a new problem. Lines from <t id="521" to "526" don't want to go Russian and stay in the game English in some case. It's strange.
- "Show me your skills, please!" - show nothing, just speech. (It's not a joke this time, he-he)
- Main problem: all CAC-Trade Ships are freezed, while Vanilla-Trading works as usual.

Just take a closer look at points I wrote. I beleive your mod will be the best trader, soon. Good luck.

P.S. Split not joking. Split is a tough customer.

[I3laze]

script Version number is irrelevant because I don't change it unless necessary, like when introducing new blocking actions
can you please check if there is a 'sell' in lines 339 and 444 - just to be safe it's not the bug I already fixed

Used the updated version you posted and it seems to have done the trick.

[UniTrader]

@I3laze

good to hear

@iWARR
well, everything you said in your first post could have been caused by basically not assigning Ships to the Manager (he cannt create Stuff from nothing )

existing buggy Managers - I mean bugs remain when updating manually. A lot of existing buggy Managers.

can you explain what is bugged? the Information that they are bugged or that there are a lot of them doesnt help me resolving this.. is it possibly the aforementoined Range issue?
a Log whis tells me what the Manager is doing would be more helpful
(activate logfile in the Game by passing it the parameter "-logfile debuglog.txt" and activate debug loging on a buggy Manager in the Debug Menu ( 6 - 3 ), you will then find the Log file right next to your Savegame Folder - dont forget to deactivate when done because i made it very verbose and it could make it difficult finding other bugs using the logfile if left running)

DEBUG script - I know it is not a general purpose "GO!" Of course, it's not kind of interest, it's howl of despair

well, it only can help with lockups with Orders.. but to my knowledge i have not yet created a Situation where this Button would be necesary.. will therefore made unavailable in the next Version (instead i will change the base script in such a way that all Orders are terminated after a certain time so the kind of lock-ups this is intended to resolve will clear themselves after a while)
If the Ship has not received any Orders yet it wont help because it will simply request new ones and wait till it receives them. Also if you are not satisfied with the Orders given it is unlikely they will change because there is no random factor involved when the Manager looks for Orders/Trades. Even worse for the Manager: if he is currently looking through possible Trades he will take a while (1-5 seconds depending on skill for each Range and each ware checked), and if you try to force him he will abort looking for Orders till and start anew only the Ship requests new ones (which happens every 10 Minutes if the Manager didnt give out any Orders)

NO WAY to reassign subordinated ship BACK - This one VERY important thing in many cases (hard to reassign after bugs, big waste of time, what if I want to change general mission for the ship - war/trade/new squad), etc.
- "About your Operations Range..." appears empty very often - It was happen (with NEWLY reassigned Manager and Cap), with version 0.11 (8 Nov, 2015). So... not fixed?

as already stated: somewhere on my ToDo-List, but i dont consider it high priority compared to the other stuff i want to add in the near future (automatic restocking of Drones, implementing usage of fight Ships/Scripts for Partols/Escorts

Broken text - Fixed.
I have translated t-file on Russian (I use AkelPad). File is here: http://ge.tt/2XwCOiR2/v/0?c
I tryed make translation carefully, short but informative. I didn't yet tested deeply how my translation is.
You may ask alexalsp to check it out (If he will be so kind, of course). He made good Russian translations for the number of the mods.
But we have a new problem. Lines from <t id="521" to "526" don't want to go Russian and stay in the game English in some case. It's strange.

thank you, will add it to the repo immediately
regarding non-translated Text: could be because its still hard-coded to the Script. i have externalized the Text only recently (its easier to structure the Dialogue Trees when you see the purpose of each button immediately ) and there could have been a few places where i missed changing hard coded Text to language file references.. will change this asap ofc

"Show me your skills, please!" - show nothing, just speech. (It's not a joke this time, he-he)

Is this possible that you do this via remote-comm and use the Big Screen in middle Console? just noticed i havent covered this case (forgot to change the View to rotate to the Monitor)

Main problem: all CAC-Trade Ships are freezed, while Vanilla-Trading works as usual.

as said initially: a Log would be very helpful..
also do you know enough Trade Offers to cover the related Stations needs? Vanilla Trading Scripts magically know them all, but i dont want to do it that way.. i take the known status of them into account

Just take a closer look at points I wrote. I beleive your mod will be the best trader, soon. Good luck.

well, to be honest i dont aim to make the best Trader but to implement a full-fledged Fleet Managment Managing Stations just seemed a good starting Point for me because it would give the Fight Ships something useful to do (Escorting and Patrolling based on actual needs), and is also a good testing ground for the Order Queues which i want to use extensively - the Captains and Managers already use these internally (more noticeable with the Captains where you can give a few direct Orders even if he works for a Manager and already has a Job)

[UniTrader]

ok, short in-between report:

Drone Restocking now basically works in my Development Version (although the restocking is done a bit crude because my intention is that the Engineer is responsible for it - but for now the Captain or Manager will check if restocking is necesary or not and i wrote the script for this to just work, not to be elegant or something)
But when testing this I found a Bug in the Traderun-Script which makes multiple stacked buy orders impossible (Money is transferred back to the Manager on a completed buy Order, which was a crude fix that the Money was automatically transferred to the Player for some reason) - so basically i have to add a proper calculation how much money the Captain still needs to avoid these and the next Version is basically ready.
Also this will probably be the last Version focussing only on Station Trade, because with that you have to give the Manager only 3 things to run a Station without further input: (lots of) Money, a Range where he can buy/mine Ressources, Drones, Fuel and sell Products, and a few Ships with apporiate Cargo bay (there is no need to equip them with Drones, as they will be bought automatically, but it may consume a big portion of the Managers initial Budget) - at least my recent Test run worked out this way (manager initially consumed 50 Million to get everything running, but now "produces" Money ) - the Version after the next one will probably the one which finally implements Fight Ships
On the other hand i have noticed that i can hugely improve the Internal command Structure by merging the Managers and Captains Main Loop and let their Behavior differ via a Config Variable which defines the Script where they get new Orders in case they have none left (this may also reduce the delay when the Manager found Trades for the Captain and the Captain actually starting the Trade Runs but not entirely sure), but this is mostly an internal change which you probably wont notice at all... so i wonder if i should make this change now or delay it for the Battle Ships update...

[Aloid]

Uni, the more you do to make stations work by themselves the better. Your work has already made XR much more enjoyable for me... thank you...


Bring it on!

[iWARR]

Hi, Uni

Found some bugs:

- "Restart Main Script" makes Operations Range menu empty. That's why Manager/Cap become broken.
- Found that all my Stations overloaded with fuel (150 000 - 350 000). Note, that I don't use fuel at all, because I use mod "no Jump Fuel for Player Ships". And all my Caps have NO-refuel setting. Usually, my ships make jumps immediately at any time without any fuel onboard.
So, I delete corresponding lines in the save-file (erase fuel), but then I noticed, that ship goes for fuel again. I can't stop it through Cap's Menu: if I delete all tasks, this order appears again.
- Found English text in the reports (have to be Russian, I guess?)
- Found errors in debugging log txt-file:

Code: Select all

[=ERROR=] Error loading MD file extensions\UTItemtradeOverhaul-master\md\GenericMissions.xml: Ignoring root node 'diff' in XML file 'extensions\UTItemtradeOverhaul-master\md\GenericMissions.xml'.

Code: Select all

[=ERROR=] Error loading MD file extensions\UTItemtradeOverhaul-master\md\NPC_Itemtrader.xml: Ignoring root node 'diff' in XML file 'extensions\UTItemtradeOverhaul-master\md\NPC_Itemtrader.xml'.

Code: Select all

[General] ======================================
[=ERROR=] Error in MD cue md.UT_CAC_Manager.Comm_Settings<inst:567d4>: Property lookup failed: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range
* Expression: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range
[General] ======================================
[General] ======================================
[=ERROR=] Error in MD cue md.UT_CAC_Manager.Comm_Settings<inst:567d4>: Evaluated value 'null' is not of type list
* Expression: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range
[General] ======================================
[General] ======================================
[=ERROR=] Error in MD cue md.UT_CAC_Manager.Comm_Settings<inst:567d4>: Property lookup failed: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range_h
* Expression: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range_h
[General] ======================================
[General] ======================================
[=ERROR=] Error in MD cue md.UT_CAC_Manager.Comm_Settings<inst:567d4>: Evaluated value 'null' is not of type list
* Expression: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range_h
[General] ======================================
[General] ======================================
[=ERROR=] Error in MD cue md.UT_CAC_Manager.Comm_Settings<inst:567d4>: Property lookup failed: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range_j
* Expression: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range_j
[General] ======================================
[General] ======================================
[=ERROR=] Error in MD cue md.UT_CAC_Manager.Comm_Settings<inst:567d4>: Evaluated value 'null' is not of type list
* Expression: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range_j
[General] ======================================
[General] ======================================
[=ERROR=] Error in MD cue md.UT_CAC_Manager.Comm_Settings<inst:567d4>: Property lookup failed: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range
* Expression: $actor.$ut_cac_settings.$range.count
[General] ======================================

...plus several almost same blocks like this one

i have noticed that i can hugely improve the Internal command Structure

Better, do it first.