[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Edna]

By the way, what's the point of the Resupply Drone Perk if Jump Drives are no longer a thing?

[Joubarbe]

Missiles. But you've got a point.

[dunderhead327]

Something interesting just happened, which may be a bug.

I have set the option in the t-file to allow my own ships to bail. I found, scanned, and claimed an abandoned Caiman Hauler, then sent it off to collect some wares. It got jumped by a pirate, and bailed. I went back to it, and I was able to scan it again before I reclaimed it!

Unfortunately, I do not have any saves to demonstrate it happening.

[Joubarbe]

Bug, will fix.

[Edna]

I'm now 48 hours in, still playing on Beta 4 H1 since I don't want to eff up my game with a sudden pirate activity influx. I know there is already a useful resource chart but I thought I share mine, too. I made it when I planned out my economy.

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Experiences so far:

I'm still at nine sectors and have used the past 24 ingame hours to build up a little bit of economy, as I would like to get myself self-sufficient as soon as possible. The Split have attacked the Paranids and stole one sector from them. The Paranids generally have weak forces due to the Xenon sectors adjacent to them. They get raided frequently by raiding groups of three M6s and a dozen snubs. Nevertheless they rebuild just fast enough to surive somehow. The Xenon raid groups usually don't manage to get past the sector the Split conquered since the capital assets are still there.

Theoretically, the Split could still expand into the south of their empire, however that would make them border a system I claimed, solely to check whether they would try to expand further. The Paranids have no room left for expansion, leaving them at eight sectors. I see three Boron sectors below the Paranids, but didn't explore that far yet. Every time I go there, I get surprised by Xenons.

It took me a few minutes to figure out how the Agents and Traders work, and I believe I can still optimize a lot of what I have so far. Basically I gave every single station at least one Demeter agent, the outposts one to three, depending on what they need (my Shipyard has agents for Hull, Tubes and Computers, my station factory has them for Oil, Teladianium and Ore and my Equipment Dock has them for Wafers and Crystals - also plus one for sectors with stations that need Waste). Have toyed around with the thresholds, just to see how I can optimize the flight schedules of the agents to not have the factories run out of resources. I'll need to find a way to prevent the Hull Plating Factory from stealing Teladianium from my Station Factory, though.

Negative Events have decreased notably since Hotfix 1, which is pretty good. Maintenance is currently at the level where the taxes of one outpost cover the costs. I also run 3x4 miners, so I hope I'll get some mainenance kits going in the next few ingame days. I already upgraded my player ship M3 with the essentials (1x2 Red Crystals for the Zoom, 1x2 Yellow Crystals for the Docking Computer and 2x2 Blue Crystals for Teleporter and Remote Claimer). I also noticed that AutoDocking now uses the Docking Computer once in range of the station automatically, although if you are flying toward the station with many K distance, the ship will always slow down for a few moments, just to boost up again. I guess it's checking for Quick Dock range?

With the new stations, I'm aiming for the Research Station now. After that I'll try to get some M7s going. In the meantime I'll try to set up two dozens of M3s to destroy the pirate stations in my neighbourhood. After that I'll patch to Hotfix 2.

I'll keep you updated on the Beta 4 playthrough, hoping I can provide some midgame/lategame feedback at some point.


Poor miners are eating literally refined garbage.

Savegame + Galaxy

[Hector0x]

Oh you should try the new pirates soon. They really want to play with you.

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This is the loot dropped from my miners.

[Edna]

I think I'll pass for now. Just had a Xenon raid group in my territory, they really went all those 5+ sectors to say hello to my freighters and leave again.

What I noticed is that the Paranid space feels very empty at all times. All they have left is the Cyclops and the two M7s in one of their sectors. The Split and the Borons (I just explored their region) have many patrols and miners working. Almost no freigther activity, though. I didn't see any company traders, either. I guess I should have checkboxed for more trading stations. The universe feels very empty. The races have more stations than ships, it feels like.

Edit: I really miss Mayhem 2's weapon platforms. I always managed to set up at least one before the first OCV strike.

Edit: By the way, I really like how easy it is to get Agents back to work. Because of the raid, I told all freighters to get back to the closest station, and when the Xenon were gone, I simply used the Agent command to get them back to work. No troubles remembering what the hell each ship was supposed to do.

[Hector0x]

I bet it takes them ages to get a high ship population. If thy start with nothing they have to build the whole economy from scratch to crank their first ships out. Stations can always be placed thanks to the debt system. Probably takes the factions a few ingame days to kickstart. At least the ones who survive.

[Betelgeuse97]

I bet it takes them ages to get a high ship population. If thy start with nothing they have to build the whole economy from scratch to crank their first ships out. Stations can always be placed thanks to the debt system. Probably takes the factions a few ingame days to kickstart. At least the ones who survive.

Indeed they do. I'm 8 in-game hours already in and they expanded quickly in the first 2 hours but now only 1-2 races expand.

Also got question on trading from my outpost as I've not been able to get my trader to sell my desired exports properly (it keeps trying to buy stuff). I'm trying to sell fruits (I set its threshold to 1) as my only good, but upon starting the trader command, my trader tries to buy stuff instead of selling fruits. How do I fix this?

EDIT: There should be an option to delete 1 ware at a time for the traders' menu under logistics in the outpost manager. Right now it's a pain to delete all and then add 1-by-1 again.

EDIT 2: Found a bug with teladianium foundry using up 40 chemicals per cycle when it should be 30 for 1 cycle in a 1:1 ratio. The protein paste factory correctly makes enough for 1 cycle for the C-ration factory. Same applies for Rastar factory unless those factories are intended to not have a 1:1 ratio.

[Hector0x]

There is a small nuisance during invading factions when other enemies like xenon or pirates enter the sector. My fleet won't just let them pass and mind there own buisness. They pull off from destroying stations and try to go after the arrivals. Even if they're just in transit. I have to give explicit individual attack orders against stations to prevent this and make progress on the invasion. Afterwards i need to rejoin all ships individually with many clicks in the fleet menu. I don't have any suggestion how to change this because i would want this behaviour if an enemy came to fight me.
The best fix that comes to mind is a button to make all ships rejoin the fleet. Maybe right clicking on the commander in fleet settings?
It probably gets less of a problem if you bring more ships. But i don't have a big fleet yet and need every laser pointed against these stations right now.

Also got question on trading from my outpost as I've not been able to get my trader to sell my desired exports properly (it keeps trying to buy stuff). I'm trying to sell fruits (I set its threshold to 1) as my only good, but upon starting the trader command, my trader tries to buy stuff instead of selling fruits. How do I fix this?

Set import thresholds to 0 and your traders will never buy these wares for your outpost. If he is still going to buy something he wants to trade between NPC stations for money. You can now set an external trade budget for each external trade. If you lower this all the way down to 0,- your traders should only care about selling your fruits. Make sure there even is an outpost which would buy fruit nearby. Check it's station information. They tend to only buy up to 8.333 units. It looks like this:

There should be an option to delete 1 ware at a time for the traders' menu under logistics in the outpost manager. Right now it's a pain to delete all and then add 1-by-1 again.

There already is. Switch to delete mode.

[JunTheGoon]

Hi, trying out Mayhem for the first time. Need to purchase a police liscense as required for Ascension but can't seem to find any Trading Stations anywhere. Thanks for any help.

[Joubarbe]

There is a small nuisance...

What happens if you set the followers scanning range at 0?

[Hector0x]

What happens if you set the followers scanning range at 0?

Good idea! I got the sector by now, so i will try next time. But first i have to take care of the pirate base in my hood and consolidate a bit. Fill new factory slots, finally place some beacons and setup the sector's logistics.


Personally i like the pirate scaling. It may be a bit tough right now but we are in beta and i suppose there is or will be a t-file option to influence their strength. The main impact of these spawns is that you have to build a military earlier than ever before. You can't landgrab like crazy and only ever invest in your economy. Just a few sectors of yours are enough to raise the standart pirate raiding party size up to half a dozen ships. Then you basically need something like 4 escort M3 per trader/agent if they tend to operate near pirate hunting grounds. Anything less you needn't even start to escort your traders.

Location matters a lot. I have many friendly areas to my north, west and south. Pirates and Xenon never get through there to me. They target others or get mopped up by faction forces. Most threats come in from the east in my game. You can't muster enough defenders for all your civilian ships at once so you have to seal your sectors as a whole by guarding certain strategic entry points with fleets. Once you have 2 or 3 times more ships than a usual raiding party you can deny them access to your land. You don't take any losses this way and it also nets a ton of reputation. But speed is king in Mayhem 3. Pirates often have fast fighter variants. They go straight after your freighters. If you can't catch them you can't protect anything.
You need military ships very early now. And because of research times, maintenance costs and speed requirements i see fighters as the only viable early game defense force. They are more difficult to control and i know some people don't like them. For me it's ok because it's my strategy anyway, but overall this may be a bit too much hassle for the average player on current settings. If he wants to build up quite peacefully straight to bigger ships like M6 he has to stay in one or two sectors or pirates get too stronk. Just my 50 cents.

Going after the nearby pirate base is a nice strategic operation for the player. Blackbeard bugged and tormented you endlessly which gives you a real incentive to come after him. Pirates actually behave like pirates now. They mostly avoid hard fights and go straight into hurting economies. That's why you hate them even more. You have to find your individual point in time and methods of dealing with them (i hope the bases don't respawn shortly afterwards). Its risky to leave your home undefended. But you can't ignore them for ever. You have to launch a big attack on them.

Good job on this dilemma.

[Joubarbe]

(i hope the bases don't respawn shortly afterwards).

Sometimes I don't answer the most obvious questions that players ask themselves, but as a developer, I don't (and I should). So this answer is going to the encyclopedia: no, pirate bases never respawn. Once they're dead, they're dead. The game would be impossible otherwise.

[XenonArchitect7]

Hey, I just destroyed a pirate base in one of my sectors (I built the outpost in hotfix 1 when pirate bases weren't active). Destroying it made my sector an unknown sector despite me still operating in it. I'm not sure what consequences this will have on the game.

[XenonArchitect7]

Actually, nevermind. It seems to have corrected itself. I just looked again and the sector is a player sector again. I have another pirate base giving me trouble in a sector I am going to claim. I'll claim it first before destroying the base again to see if I can reproduce it.

[Joubarbe]

Remember your bug report about a Boron sector still being unknown? I suspect it's the same bug. My fix was too regularly check in the outpost task if its sector was of the same race. That's why it took sometimes in your game to fix itself. But I'll look into it again, as I may be able to fix the source of the problem.

[XenonArchitect7]

That makes sense, your regular check is probably what restored sector ownership.

Also, I recommend that everyone set all AI races to be at forced war with each other on the Mayhem map generator. Everyone is friends with everyone in my game, and all wars have stopped quite early on Mod isn't living up to its name like this...

[Joubarbe]

You mean there's a truce? It's just temporary. But if it really stopped, it shouldn't.

[XenonArchitect7]

I left everyone as dynamic. There were a few takeovers in the really early game, but now the ministry of war shows all races as neutral twoards each other, a few truces, and some are even friends. So nothing is really happening in my game as I slowly just sit there and grow my empire. Likely just bad luck, I'm sure some wars will start eventually. But it's been peace for quite a while now.