[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Joubarbe]

Are you positive that is has anything to do with 3.8d?

EDIT: It's not.
EDIT2: Fixed in 3.8e.

[hephasttus]

You must share your links to the public, access denied.

Roger that for the future, thanks for the quick fix

[hephasttus]

I'm having some quite intense stuttering going on (every 15 seconds using SETA) starting on 3.8c I think. I'm not necessarily blaming 3.8c though.
I have put about 12 hours into this game, and more recently put traders at all my stations. The game is not very old but it is full of action.

I don't really have a lot of ships, but did fill out my 5 stations with agents/traders.
Have 1 fleet idle somewhere and 1 fleet guarding a beacon in the NW corner.

I have a decent rig
ryzen 3900x
1080ti
3600mhz ram

This is using the largest possible galaxy(16x16). Should I go to a smaller galaxy or is this unusual behavior for the mod?

Mayhem 3.8e w/ hectors background and rebalance.
Save + Galaxy : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

I just did a fresh install and tested out a new game before and after, with no hiccups at galaxy start. Seems related to my save.

Edit 1:

I started a new game on a much smaller universe (14x14) and after about 4 hours of gameplay the stuttering kicks in pretty suddenly and hard(Stutter every couple of seconds in SETA)

I just started throwing down factories so maybe something to do with agents? I can't be sure that is the cause, although I'm awfully suspicious about them. Unassigning the agents didn't do anything.

Save/galaxy for second universe (little cleaner of a universe than the first one)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

[Betelgeuse97]

I noticed that some carriers' hangars are unchanged as of 3.8+, such as the Condor (55 ships) and the Polacca (35 ships). Is this intended?

[Joubarbe]

3.8f released!

Fixed the two bugs above. Thanks @hephasttus for the bug report.

[djmidex]

how does autoprice work?

[hephasttus]

I think the AI are getting stuck on the fringes of the sectors when they attempt to attack a target that is far away (IE pirate base, mines)

In sector "Hallow Infinity" you can see a Split Battlegroup that invaded that sector, and that attempted to engage a silicone mine very far away, and they are now stuck idle on the edges of the sector. They have been stuck there for several hours and their claim expired.

In a similar situation I attempted to send a fleet to engage a pirate base, and the fleet simply refused to go that far out, unless I used a "Move To Position" command to get them relatively close, and then commanded them to attack it.

Save + galaxy : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Edit 1: Teleporting them away with cheats didn't help either, they're still immobile.

[Joubarbe]

You can see in the galaxy assets debug menu that the Split Battlegroup is actually fighting the Argon Task Force group nearby. But it's weird, they don't seem to really fight each other, and when I destroy the Task Force, the Splits are still locked on them. I don't know why this is happening, the attack script should break when the target dies, but that doesn't happen.

I would need to reproduce the other bug you mention with the pirate base.

[Betelgeuse97]

With marines gone, is there any use for those spacesuits that pop out from bailed ships?

I'm on a new game again and, for the first time ever, I now have trouble getting money. I'm trying to sell food, but none of the NPC traders are dropping by my station to buy food (I've seen them move food only between their outposts, never anywhere else). How do you make money off trading from traders?

[Joubarbe]

I never had any problem making money. Looters are important, and manual trade run commands as well. Having a police licence can probably help if you're into combat, and early game, taxi and cargo jobs. But most of the time, I make money by looting and selling, and very often I manually sell my stuff to Trading stations.

I like the game without boarding. Astronauts are useless, and get killed by the AI. To me, boarding is exactly the kind of things that ruin X4: many arcade mini/meta games that are not coherent with the high scale of the game. Removing these kind of features highlights even more the core of the game, which, in Mayhem, is mostly crafting and economy. X should be dead serious, like Eve Online. The hard part is, from a developer point of view, to make the serious fun nonetheless; space games are hard to balance for that reason, because in space, there's not much to do. As long as you don't go yourself into the ship, and see things, boarding will only be this menu-based awkward mini-game, and I don't think any hacking features will do better.

[Hector0x]

Trade rules are super important.
TLDR: don't define what you want to sell, define what you want to keep!


So far i could identify 2 hidden, but major problems you can run into if you don't make vast use of trade rules.

1) Trader finds a good external trade deal (he checks that he can buy and sell before going for the buy). But once he bought the sell location could already be locked from another trader or agent (doesn't happen very often but it will). When this happens the Trader dumps the bought wares in his outpost so that he can continue with another trade. Here comes the problem: if you don't have a trade rule to sell this stuff again it will forever remain in your outpost. After a couple of such missed deals you will wonder where all your outpost money went. It has now become all these small random stockpiles in your outpost and you don't even notice.

2) most of your loot will simply get stockpiled in dozens of different outposts without you ever making any money from it if you don't have trade rules to sell it

So here is my tip:
- when you get your first outpost, load the 'Complete' Trader rules preset
- add the 4 missing food types (@Joubarbe: might be worth adding them to the default) I believe Chaff might also be missing since patch 3.8 but not sure right now
- if you don't use a mining courier maybe also add some colored crystals stuff too (especially red crystals!). But maybe not the low value colored minerals. Too many different wares could overwhelm your traders because they will try to sell one thing at a time.
- overwrite the default 'Complete' preset with your modified preset (which now includes every possible tradable or lootable ware with import/export at 0)
- load this Complete preset on ALL your outposts with looters or traders. No exceptions!
- do really think about what each outpost actually needs to keep and raise export levels accordingly. Leave everything else at 0 or a low level like 10 if you don't want them to go just to sell 3 looted lasers.
- never delete any ware from your trade rules lists or you will never notice if you outpost holds valuable stuff. Always just use export levels to control what you want to keep


If you do it this way while also having some looters and miners you will soon get a good money situation. This will allow you to even set import levels and buy resources to keep a well oiled economy.

If you sell what NPCs need you will get a perfect money situation. Location matters a lot. I usually have major problems selling anything which is also produced by NPC outposts. Food, Waste and Energy (they all have Solar Panels perk). Trading Stations are often the best bet to sell food. Selling C-Rations to Ore mines is good. And of course the big 4. Crystals, Hull Parts, Quantum Tubes and Computers.

[hephasttus]

You can see in the galaxy assets debug menu that the Split Battlegroup is actually fighting the Argon Task Force group nearby.

I noticed it says that as well, but I watched the sector while they were invading, and from what I observed they were flying towards the silicon mine out in the fringes when they became stuck.

I would need to reproduce the other bug you mention with the pirate base.

This was pretty easily reproduced, I just found a pirate base, teleported to the middle of the sector, and gave the Griffon carrier an "Attack" command and selected the pirate base.

The Griffon flys towards the pirate base, but at about 25 km away from the center of the sector it just cuts its engines out and doesn't move. I suspect this has something in common with the Split Battlegroups behavior.

The Griffon does move sometimes, but then he stops after a little ways, not sure why exactly. It seems like the followers are trying to attack the base though, if you adjust the fleet settings slightly.

Edit: The Griffon continues towards the pirate base as long as the followers are docked, he stops whenever the followers go to engage a target. But this is not exclusive to the pirate base, they are doing this when doing xenon fighting missions as well. So possibly unrelated from the Split Battlegroup issue.

save + galaxy : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing


Edit 2: "Support ships was issuing a docking order too fast, causing them to dock between two targets. Now, if an enemy is nearby (< 20km), they will wait to see what the carrier is doing."

Fighters are still doing this although it feels like it might be better?

[Joubarbe]

Yeah I don't know. Nothing is perfect.

[Betelgeuse97]

I never had any problem making money. Looters are important, and manual trade run commands as well. Having a police licence can probably help if you're into combat, and early game, taxi and cargo jobs. But most of the time, I make money by looting and selling, and very often I manually sell my stuff to Trading stations.

I like the game without boarding. Astronauts are useless, and get killed by the AI. To me, boarding is exactly the kind of things that ruin X4: many arcade mini/meta games that are not coherent with the high scale of the game. Removing these kind of features highlights even more the core of the game, which, in Mayhem, is mostly crafting and economy. X should be dead serious, like Eve Online. The hard part is, from a developer point of view, to make the serious fun nonetheless; space games are hard to balance for that reason, because in space, there's not much to do. As long as you don't go yourself into the ship, and see things, boarding will only be this menu-based awkward mini-game, and I don't think any hacking features will do better.

I think everything should have a use. I'm thinking of these:

- Back in early Mayhem 2, it was possible to drop off astronauts at your station and make them become people. This feature could be brought back (of course without the ability to relocate population).
- "Prisoner of War" mission or prisoner transport system similar to taxi. Some factions will want prisoners of a certain faction to be delivered to them and will pay you money or rep points for giving them prisoners of some faction (e.g. Boron faction wants Teladi prisoners because Boron and Teladi are at war with each other).

EDIT: Another question. With automatic pricing, what trade rank would I need to get them to buy my stuff? Also, does rep rank affect NPC traders that want to visit my stations?

[paperb0y]

Can you please take a look at my save and galaxy? Traders never export wares from outposts. I'm at a loss at this point and can't figure out what the issue is.

Thanks in advance

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

[Joubarbe]

Can you please take a look at my save and galaxy? Traders never export wares from outposts. I'm at a loss at this point and can't figure out what the issue is.
...

Indeed there is a problem. The Trader is looking at a better price when trying to sell wares from your Outposts, but all your Outposts have automatic pricing on, and the price is set at the maximum. In the next version, Traders will ignore the price set to the Outpost (this behaviour only makes sense when dealing with external trades). In the meantime, just put your price at the minimum and deactivate automatic pricing.

[Betelgeuse97]

Not sure if this is intended, but I notice that even capital ships are trying to "flank" enemies when they normally shouldn't. I modified the t-file to disable additional maneuvers for fighters (the value is set to 0 by default for capital ships and default to 1 for fighters), but I still see both try to "flank" enemies. This often puts fleets out of position in fights when they get picked off 1-by-1 when they're trying to "flank."

Save + galaxy: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... ZGOfduljn6

[Joubarbe]

It's not the same manoeuvre, and it's better like that. I've spent a considerable amount of time making these ships move in combat, and capital ships are more effective when moving around instead of keeping still.

[Hector0x]

Traders will ignore the price set to the Outpost (this behaviour only makes sense when dealing with external trades). In the meantime, just put your price at the minimum and deactivate automatic pricing.

This was not a bug. More of a user error. (edit: just realized its also activated on outposts on default, wtf? All this time i didn't notice) Wouldn't it be better to disable the option for Autopricing on Outposts instead? I can't think of any scenario where Autopricing would be useful for outposts (their cargospace is too large). And players seem to think it somehow improves their trading because its called "Automatic".

Manual price adjustments have many uses. You can attract NPC traders with slightly lower than average prices. You can focus on only buying cheap from full NPC factories and make your Traders ignore trading stations and other outposts where the price would be higher. Please don't take all of this out of the game by making Traders ignore prices.



@paperb0y: Keep in mind that if you now use minimum pricing that yes, selling will be very easy and NPC Traders will like to come to your outposts. But later when you might want to buy stuff, no NPC Trader will come and your own Traders won't find any locations to buy at all. You really shouldn't mess with the default pricing on your outposts too much. It can break everything.

[paperb0y]

Indeed there is a problem. The Trader is looking at a better price when trying to sell wares from your Outposts, but all your Outposts have automatic pricing on, and the price is set at the maximum. In the next version, Traders will ignore the price set to the Outpost (this behaviour only makes sense when dealing with external trades). In the meantime, just put your price at the minimum and deactivate automatic pricing.

Ah I understand now. I thought automatic pricing meant it was truly automatic, but instead just maximizes potential for fulfilling import needs.

Maybe as an alternative, have 2 presets: “Export pricing” and “import pricing” that sets prices at 1 below average and 1 above average or maximum respectively. Or leave automatic and it sets prices at 1 below average for every ware that has stock > import threshold, else max price.