[MOD] XR-utilities pack

[eliseeff]

Name: XR-utilities pack
Version: 1.03
Autor: eliseeff
Requirements: game version 4.0 or higher + Mods Options Menu
Install: Subscribe to the mod on the Steam Workshop page
Uninstall: Unsubscribe from the mod and delete the mod folder
Savegame compatible: YES

XR VR-edition Steam Workshop page

Changelog:

1.00 - Release
1.01 - Fixed not working "Show on map" button in "Find ships for boarding" tool. Fixed UI reload after returning from "Show on map" in "Find slackers" tool. Excluded playerowned shiptraders from "Find slackers" tool (for use with playerowned shipyards mods).
1.02 - From the list of "slackers" excluded "starless" specialists.
1.03 - The “Remove” button in the "Find slackers" menu is made red and is associated with the 'End' hotkey to prevent accidental removes.

Description:

This mod adds several useful options in the Mods Options menu. Call Mods Options menu (Enter-9-3 by default or Enter-6-2 for legacy menu) and expand the XR-utilities pack section:



Now you can choose one of the options.

Common:

In general menu tables you can use the following buttons:

• Change sorting parameter (hotkey '5') - change the parameter for sorting. In the header of the table the current sorting parameter is marked green (or yellow if sorting in reverse order).
• Sort in direct order / Sort in reverse order (hotkey '6') - change the sorting order.

Options:

Find ships for boarding

This menu will help in choosing a ship for boarding.



With the button '3' you can choose either showing all ships or enemies only. By default, enemies are shown.

Keep in mind that the scripts currently lack the ability to check the "capturable" flag. Sorry, guys, but there's nothing I can do about it...

There is a filter. Register is irrelevant. With it, you can filter the ships list by faction (full name*), by ship name, by cluster (full name*), by sector (full name*) or by name of the ware, available on board.

* "Full name" means not that you have to enter it in full, but that you must enter part of the full name, not a short one. For example, in order to filter ships of the Plutarch Mining Corporation faction, you need to enter something like "plut", not "pmc".

One more hint is supported: if you enter a part of the ware name, and then a comma-separated quantity, then only ships that have at least the specified quantity of this ware on board will be filtered.

For example: enter "react,200" or "react, 200" (space is allowed) in filter and you'll see the list of ships, that have at least 200 fusion reactors on board.

Find personnel

Select this option. Now you can see the list of all available types of the personal (their number is indicated in brackets):



Choose the type you want. Now you can see the list of characters:



By default, the list is sorted by the combined skill (indicated in brackets). You can see the individual skills for the character in the selected line in the header. If you are in the same zone with the character - the name of the zone is marked green.

Find specialists:

Select this option. Now you can see the list of all available types of specialists (their number is indicated in brackets):



Choose the type you want. Now you can see the list of specialists:



By default, the list is sorted by distance. Combined skill is indicated in brackets. You can see the individual skills for the character in the selected line in the header.

Find slackers:

By selecting this option, you can see all your employees who do nothing. This may be the marine commanders, mistakenly appointed specialists, fired workers, whom the game did not destroy because of the old bug, but landed on your station...



Please note that you can immediately completely remove a character from the game with the "Remove" button, unless you are in the same room with it.

[bitvoid]

Oh how I wished I had something like this a few weeks ago when I was on a specialist hunting spree for 30 - 40 stations. Great mod from what I see.

Some things I noticed when trying it out:

In the "Find ships for boarding", the show on map/zone map button does not work. I can see and hear it click, but it just doesn't do anything. There is a lua error in the log:

Code: Select all

[General] 469782.70 ======================================
[=ERROR=] 469782.70 Error while executing onEvent script for event: onClick.
Errormessage: [string "extensions/xr_searh_tool/ui/addons/xr_searh_t..."]:144: attempt to call global 'check_som' (a nil value)
[General] 469782.70 ======================================

In the "Find slackers" menu, all my small ship and large ship traders are shown. I'm playing with the New Frontiers mod active so I have my own shipyards. Would be nice to have them excluded

In the "Find slackers" menu, I encountered a lua error. I was using the show on map button on one of my specialists. When closing the map using the back button the whole UI was frozen (had to "reloadui" in the console) and this showed up in the debug log:

Code: Select all

[General] 469749.50 ======================================
[=ERROR=] 469749.50 Error while executing onEvent script for event: showShow_Slackers_Menu.
Errormessage: [string "extensions/xr_searh_tool/ui/addons/xr_searh_t..."]:197: attempt to perform arithmetic on global 'i' (a nil value)
[General] 469749.50 ======================================

I still think this is a great addition to the game. Thank you!

[eliseeff]

Some things I noticed when trying it out

Thank you for detail bugreport!

I will try to make corrections in the near future.

[eliseeff]

Updated to version 1.01

In the "Find ships for boarding", the show on map/zone map button does not work.

Fixed

In the "Find slackers" menu, I encountered a lua error. I was using the show on map button on one of my specialists. When closing the map using the back button the whole UI was frozen (had to "reloadui" in the console) and this showed up in the debug log:
...

Fixed

In the "Find slackers" menu, all my small ship and large ship traders are shown. I'm playing with the New Frontiers mod active so I have my own shipyards. Would be nice to have them excluded

I made changes, but I can’t check it myself yet. Please check and report if it works in version 1.01.

And thanks again for details in your report! This helped to quickly find the causes of bugs.

[bitvoid]

That was a quick fix, thank you very much

I can confirm that "Find slackers" does not show the ship traders any more and also the 2 other issues are solved.

Now that the "Find slackers" list was a bit more managable, I think I found another potential problem with it, but it may be specific to the stations the New Frontier mod introduces.

Some stations in NF have production chain on their production modules. The products in the chain do not always require the same specialist or give the same bonuses for them. For example one station that produces ship parts (a new ware introduced in the mod) has 2 kinds of production modules.

Module 1 cycles through 2 products, one requiring a "specialistsurfacesystems" and one requiring a "specialistpowersupply" but giving no production bonus on the specialist.

Module 2 cycles through 2 products as well (actually 2 different production methods of the same product), the first requiring a "specialistpowersupply" and the second also requiring "specialistpowersupply" but giving no production bonus (like module 1).

It seems to me now, that a specialist is considered a slacker when none of the current productions require the specialist or give no bonus to it, but not accounting for the other products that may be produced by the production chain of the module.

Short version: production modules can produce more than one product. Each product they produce can have a different specialist and specialist production bonus. Currently "Find slackers" only seems to check the product the module is currently producing, therefore classifying some specialists as slackers that would actually be needed by other products produced by the module later.

Should you decide to have a look at this I'd be happy to give you more information if what I wrote isn't clear.

Thank you again for this really useful mod

Edit: Oh and one small UX thing you may consider. I happened to remove multiple of my specialists already due to muscle memory because the lower action 4 is usually something like "Details" or similar. IMO it would be better to swap the Remove and Show on map actions.

[eliseeff]

I can confirm that "Find slackers" does not show the ship traders any more and also the 2 other issues are solved.

Thank you for the confirmation!

Oh and one small UX thing you may consider. I happened to remove multiple of my specialists already due to muscle memory because the lower action 4 is usually something like "Details" or similar. IMO it would be better to swap the Remove and Show on map actions.

I understood the problem. Swap these two keys is not a solution. There will be the same situation with the removal instead of calling the map. We have to do it somehow differently.

I'll think about it until tomorrow, OK?

Module 1 cycles through 2 products, one requiring a "specialistsurfacesystems" and one requiring a "specialistpowersupply" but giving no production bonus on the specialist.

Module 2 cycles through 2 products as well (actually 2 different production methods of the same product), the first requiring a "specialistpowersupply" and the second also requiring "specialistpowersupply" but giving no production bonus (like module 1).

This is the reason.

Unfortunately, I can do nothing about it. Catching the "slackers" is a non-trivial task. I just had to define them precisely by the production bonus. Without this, the utility will not work.

P.S. This is a very bad decision - to combine productions, requiring different specialists, in one production module.

[bitvoid]

I'll think about it until tomorrow, OK?

Sure! Take all the time you need, I'm not in a hurry

Unfortunately, I can do nothing about it. Catching the "slackers" is a non-trivial task. I just had to define them precisely by the production bonus. Without this, the utility will not work.

I may have not explained it good enough then, because both specialists do contribute a bonus to the production, but not for all products of the production modules. Anyway, now I'm intrigued and will try to fix this in the lua since I also can test this quite easily. Would you be open for accepting a change there?

[eliseeff]

Would you be open for accepting a change there?

If it does not break the work with the vanilla game - of course!

[eliseeff]

...

Updated to version 1.02.

Check, please, how things are now with specialists on stations from New Frontiers. It seems to me that if we solve this problem, the second problem will also go away, since specialists which are a pity to remove will not be shown.

[bitvoid]

Check, please, how things are now with specialists on stations from New Frontiers. It seems to me that if we solve this problem, the second problem will also go away, since specialists which are a pity to remove will not be shown.

Thanks for the update. Sadly it doesn't solve the problem completely but it changes something else I noticed when trying to figure this one out. I have a couple of specialists with 0 stars (yes, I hired some quality staff it appears ...) which were listed in the slackers list. After the change those are not listed any more, though I'm wondering if they should be listed since they don't give any production bonus.

Regarding the other problem nothing changed. Consider the following station:

Code: Select all

Station:
  Production Modules:
  - Name: Module I
    Productions:
    - Product: Ware 1
      Specialist: Specialist A
    - Product: Ware 2
      Specialist: Specialist B

While "Module I" is producing "Ware 1", "Specialist B" would be considered a slacker. While "Module I" is producing "Ware 2", "Specialist A" would be considered a slacker. This seems to be the core of the issue.

I was looking around in the lua a bit but it appears, that only the specialist and efficiency of the currently producing ware is available. So I'm not sure if this can even be solved at all.

Edit: I'm giving up. I tried many things but the data about all specialists needed for all products of a station does not seem to be accessible in lua. It would be so much easier if something like <get_production_specialist_types name="$Specialists" object="$Object"/> that we have in MD were available.

[eliseeff]

Updated to v1.03.

1.03 - The “Remove” button in the "Find slackers" menu is made red and is associated with the 'End' hotkey to prevent accidental removal.
..................................................................................................................................................................................................

Thanks for the update. Sadly it doesn't solve the problem completely...

Unfortunately, I cannot do anything more with this. Multiple specialists for one module is a really bad idea.

... but it changes something else I noticed when trying to figure this one out. I have a couple of specialists with 0 stars (yes, I hired some quality staff it appears ...) which were listed in the slackers list. After the change those are not listed any more, though I'm wondering if they should be listed since they don't give any production bonus.

Starless specialists are not slackers. You can improve their skills with seminars without reassigning them.

Edit: I'm giving up. I tried many things but the data about all specialists needed for all products of a station does not seem to be accessible in lua. It would be so much easier if something like <get_production_specialist_types name="$Specialists" object="$Object"/> that we have in MD were available.

get_production_specialist_types only gives out a list of suitable types of specialists, but does not give out a list of actually appointed NPCs.

In the russian variant of the description of this mod I published this picture. It shows an Agricultural Engineer on the Soy Bean Farm, who is a suitable specialist, but was not correctly appointed because of some bug.

If I hadn’t done this mod, I would have never noticed...

P.S. And once again, thank you for bug reports!

[bitvoid]

1.03 - The “Remove” button in the "Find slackers" menu is made red and is associated with the 'End' hotkey to prevent accidental removal.

Thank you, that will make it much harder to accidentially remove them

Unfortunately, I cannot do anything more with this. Multiple specialists for one module is a really bad idea.

I understand, it seems we just don't have enough data available to identify slackers over multiple products of the same production module with different specialists. Thank you for taking the time looking into this. It's probably such a niche problem that most users of this mod would not see it.

Starless specialists are not slackers. You can improve their skills with seminars without reassigning them.

Yes, this is exactly what I did when I saw them.

In the russian variant of the description of this mod I published this picture. It shows an Agricultural Engineer on the Soy Bean Farm, who is a suitable specialist, but was not correctly appointed because of some bug.

Oh I think I had something similar once. I somehow managed to assign 2 defense officers to one of my stations. Only one of them was working though. When I tried to recall the extra one to the Skunk, he simply disappeared ...

Huge thanks again for creating this mod. I'm very certain that the next time I'll have to go specialist hunting I'll be very glad I have it

[AR_Starfighter]

Can you make it available as direct download? No steam account. 'File Town' is good. Google drive i'v used before.

[alexalsp]

Can you make it available as direct download? No steam account. 'File Town' is good. Google drive i'v used before.

https/yadi.sk/d/4zNiAe7zClluLQ

[AR_Starfighter]

https://yadi.sk/d/4zNiAe7zClluLQ

xr_searh_tool_v1.03.7z XR_Utilities?

[alexalsp]

https://yadi.sk/d/4zNiAe7zClluLQ

xr_searh_tool_v1.03.7z XR_Utilities?

Yes.


XR-utilities pack

Mods options

[AR_Starfighter]

Thanks. It's really handy without cheating. I would have to do it the hard way. This just makes it much quicker.




MODS:

Reward fix
Silent menus
Autodock Repair (handy for out in the middle nowhere, you can go to a friendly ship for repairs.)

Only one download verified for each. ?? Must be Egosoft. Still stuck on my next mod. Some variable scope error. Two modders in PM don't know how to fix it.