[BONUS Plug-In] Gunnery Crew turret plugin - Version 3.02

[APOLLO13]

At the risk of getting part of my anatomy handed to me on a plate, would it be possible to bring together all posts on this subject under one thread.At the moment we have this thread going plus another on the X- Universe. There are a lot of questions being asked about this plug-in and I am sure Reven would find it easier to keep track of what is going on and answer the questions as they arise if everything was in one location.

[fuzzywuzzy]

So I'll move my idea here!

I have an idea! What if there was an AI-Controlled "Gunner School" that used slaves, meatsteaks, and E-Cells as the main resources, had Slave Gunners as the product? It would need 40 slaves at once (A "class") and would also need 1000 meatsteaks (food), and 15000 E-Cells. It would then produce 40 gunners after a seven day production cycle, costing 4 million each. Since this was a rushed process, the gunners would not be as good as normal gunners with a salary, but would work for free (After all, they are slaves!) I think it's an interesting idea....

[Reven]

I think you have a small error in the link above.
download just the documentation should work.

Thanks for the note. I fixed the original post too.

would it be possible to bring together all posts on this subject under one thread.At the moment we have this thread going plus another on the X- Universe. There are a lot of questions being asked about this plug-in and I am sure Reven would find it easier to keep track of what is going on and answer the questions as they arise if everything was in one location.

Well, if I had my way, there would be 50 threads. All the more popularity for me. Woo hoo! Actually, you're right. Burianek has kindly locked the announcement thread - this one will be the primary resource for this plugin. Good suggestion.

@Stella & poeta: Which readme still says 4500/5000? Both those figures are wrong. The actual number is 1500 without AEGIS and 3000 with it. The maximum cost is 420,000 per hour.

When comparing to the costs in the older versions, you bet, the new costs hurt. When I was looking at the costs in 2.11 while working on version 3, the issues I had to look at were twofold: 1) Were the costs in line with the benefit the player received? 2) Were the costs reasonable within the fictional context of the game? The answer to both questions was a resounding no. I'll give my reasoning for both issues.

Costs vs. Benefit
Let's look at what you got with 2.11:

• Missile immunity.
• Between 1½ and 3 times the effective firepower in an M2.
• Convenience of using area-effect weapons without worrying that they will make a whole sector red.
• Up to ten times the tracking speed in your weapons.
• Blow away almost a whole Khaak cluster in 15 seconds from 20km away. When I originally wrote this command, I thought it would be more show than substance. But after saving a few transports that were under attack by clusters, I realized it can have quite an effect.

Yes, a Ray only costs 45 mil. But a Ray is the one ship that gains the most from this system. How much is it worth to you to triple the combat effectiveness of a ship?

To me, though, the above takes a back seat to:

Cost Realism
The old system had you buy one "ware" that gave you a bunch of crew and had no ongoing costs at all. I've actually written (and managed the projects to write) software that is used on naval vessels. I don't pretend to be a military expert, but I do have some experience with the costs associated with a warship. Even without that sort of experience, a one-time cost that low doesn't pass the common sense test.

The costs associated with maintaining a live crew on a real warship only begin with their salary. You have food, medical, entertainment, initial and ongoing training, lodging, support infrastructure (bathrooms, heating, etc). For a space ship you'd add life support in those support infrastructure costs. Before you write that off as being insignificant, take a look at a modern example. Do some research on how much does it cost to keep a single person on the International Space Station as opposed to maintaining an unmanned communications sattelite?

The AEGIS system gives your ship multi-targeting, rapid weapon switching, and ultra-fast turret tracking capabilities. In real life, the Aegis system is an area air defense package. It is in this plugin too. It won't give you very much of an added benefit against another capital ship. But it sings when you come up against large numbers of enemy fighters. If you are a high combat rank, try this. Take a "Xenon are following me" courier mission. For me, these missions can generate up to 30 Xenon L fighters. In a ship with crew and AEGIS, do a "Missile Assault" command and launch a mosquito at each enemy. They will soon attack you en masse. Save your game now, and make sure you're not using the gunnery crew commands - just the normal turret commands. See how long you last as 30 M3 fighters tear your precious destroyer limb from limb. Do the same in a ship with gunnery crew and AEGIS.

In one respect, you're absolutely right. Compared to 2.11 where the startup costs were light and the ongoing costs were nil, the new version is extremely expensive. You are, of course, welcome to continue to use 2.11. In the end, you are the one who decides whether the old system is fair enough to use without being "cheating". You can always upgrade to version 3 and, because you obviously have scripting enabled, rip out the code that charges money and script in a way to add the AEGIS upgrade. In fact, if you like, I'll make a version of the upgrade script that will automatically add an AEGIS upgrade to every ship that previously had the old "Hired Gunnery Crews" ware.

On the other hand, there are ways to mitigate the costs:

• Don't fit out live crews to all your ships. Ships that act in OoS combat don't need them. Turret scripts don't do a thing for you during OoS combat.
• Don't run your ship at Action Stations continuously. You don't see real warships running around with the crew at combat readiness all the time. Besides crew fatigue, the reason is that it costs too much. Only use the gunnery crew commands when you are going into serious combat.

I get the money I paid credited back. Big Deal. Do I also get back all the money I paid for weapons that are now useless? Imagine you buy a car for £10,000. Six months later, they bring out a new version, and, not only does it cost nearly 30 times more, they forceably remove your old one, whether you like it or not.

Now that's not really fair. The comparison isn't the same. First of all, the weapons you bought can still be used in the new gunnery crews commands. And if you end up not running gunnery crews commands on as many ships now, those weapons can be sold at no loss to you. As far as the ware getting deleted, it's not an in-character "upgrade". In the context of the game, you're not losing anything. It's a behind-the-scenes switch in the way things work. If it was actually as you suggest, I wouldn't have written the upgrade code to credit you back your money. The reason I did that was because I was changing the way the system worked and essentially retroactively changing the way the universe operated. Secondly, nothing forcible was done. The costs in the new version of the plugin were disclosed, as was the fact that the upgrade script was deleting the old ware that was no longer used. I'm not forcing anything on anyone. I thought I was being nice in offering the upgrade script to make things easier for people. The offer still stands, though, to make a script that will give you the crew and AEGIS in this upgrade script.

I hope that answers peoples' concerns over the costs. If I have overlooked something, or if anyone feels I've overstated anything, please point it out.

[Reven]

Sorry for multiple posts. Someone made a great suggestion in the announcement thread I'd like to copy here:

I have an idea! What if there was an AI-Controlled "Gunner School" that used slaves, meatsteaks, and E-Cells as the main resources, had Slave Gunners as the product? It would need 40 slaves at once (A "class") and would also need 1000 meatsteaks (food), and 15000 E-Cells. It would then produce 40 gunners after a seven day production cycle, costing 4 million each. Since this was a rushed process, the gunners would not be as good as normal gunners with a salary, but would work for free (After all, they are slaves!) I think it's an interesting idea....

This is a very, very, VERY good idea. Perhaps as the other races see the benefits to the Argon, they will offer their own gunnery crew trained from conscripts (slaves).

[Shanjaq]

I second that, it's a fantastic idea! Those slaves can finally be put to use!

[stella]

Reven:

Fair enough.

Even though I object to the price increase, I can see your justification. My main bugbear, is the salaries, which are, I feel, out of whack, compared to other wares in the X-Universe. Even at 420,000 credits per hour (iirc, the documentation says an extra 3000 credits per hour for AEGIS, which is how I got my figure), it's steep.

I don't claim to understand the costing of military personnel in the real world, but this isn't the real world.

As for removing the "salaries" part of the script, having been a programmer myself for about 20 years, I'm more than reticent to go hacking about in someone else's code without their express permission.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. Would have been nice to see those mass drivers in action, though

[Cullen]

I tried out the Action Stations command on my Osprey turrets during an XI mission and they were awesome. Took a while to hunt down the 9 crew I needed for the turrets mind. I'm not looking forward to getting the crew together for my new shiny Oddy!

Oh and what are these Resupply Tender ships I see running about the place? I've scanned a few and they seem to be almost exclusively carrying mass driver ammo and moquito missiles. Are they restocking the AI capital ships? If so that's very cool!

[KarlHemmings]

I tried out the Action Stations command on my Osprey turrets during an XI mission and they were awesome. Took a while to hunt down the 9 crew I needed for the turrets mind. I'm not looking forward to getting the crew together for my new shiny Oddy!

Oh and what are these Resupply Tender ships I see running about the place? I've scanned a few and they seem to be almost exclusively carrying mass driver ammo and moquito missiles. Are they restocking the AI capital ships? If so that's very cool!

Not got my crew together yet - finding them in ones and twos - but I had noticed the tenders. I might have to help prop up the local markets with putting in additional supply factories.....

[APOLLO13]

Reven wrote

Yes, a Ray only costs 45 mil. But a Ray is the one ship that gains the most from this system. How much is it worth to you to triple the combat effectiveness of a ship?

I know its early days yet and ppl will be crewing their fav ships. But is the Ray + Gunnery crew the best combo? If not which is? It would be useful to evaluate the possibilities b4 shelling out my hard earned Credits.

[cynric]

I don't think the ray is especially good for the gunnery script.

How do you put a full complement of PPC, HEPT, PSG, IOND + crew + EC in that tiny cargo bay?

[Carl Sumner]

I second that, it's a fantastic idea! Those slaves can finally be put to use!

Yea! And then they can revolt and take over your ship and fly it off on their own!

With you as a prisoner...

Maybe that's how they handle save game problems in the Return? You get captured and sold into slavery?

[fuzzywuzzy]

Woohoo! Someone really likes my ideas! Here's another one that Xenon_Pimp started but he can't post here so I will.

I strongly suggest the cargo space requirement for the crew be dropped. Yes, completely dropped. The crew doesn't live in the cargo hold! These ships are huge compared to transports, and the modest cargo bays can't be further expanded with cargo bay extensions. I take this to mean that the rest of the ship contains crew quarters and bathrooms and kitchens and other stuff. Thus, crew space is ALREADY included on these ships, and the crew lives there, not taking up space in the freight hold. Are the crew pitching tents in the cargo hold and cooking 'round campfires?

Reven, pls reconsider the cargo space requirement. It's silly, IMO. How can a Ray equip IONs + PPCs, + gunnery crew, and then have ecells to do jumps? Yeah, it'll jump about like a sick toad full of lead shot.

For 54 million I expect my M2 to have the rest of that huge ship volume utilized.

Yeah, if you look at a M2, you can see many small windows. And there's all those empty chairs in the cockpit...... I know that a cargo bay has no windows, let alone chairs!

It does make sense! In a real battleship, they do NOT put the crew in the cargo hold!

[frymaster]

don't know from a balance POV, and more importantly I don't even know if it's POSSIBLE to change this without a patch, but as the gunners take up almost 500 cargo space, this gives the odi the jump range of a ray (just about do-able) and completely hamstrings the ray

[fuzzywuzzy]

It could be like upgrades, they don't take up space.

[Tecnofreak]

It is a serious flaw that it takes so much cargo space when it isnt even cargo.

[Burianek]

It would be pretty simple mod to make slaves / military personnel take up no cargo space, but that kind of presents it's own issues right?
Can you imagine a disco flying around carrying 10,000 slaves?
So then the solution seems to be to have limits to how many crew each ship can carry, kind of like the way engine tunings are handled.
But then you're asking for a serious code rewrite.
Probably not going to happen.
People as cargo is a decent (not perfect) approximation of the space they take up in a ship.
Maybe you can think of the cargo room as all of their personal effects that have to be carted around.
(I know I took a huge suitcase with me on my last vacation)

[Greyhawk1]

This thread seems more active than others on this. I'm not running this mod because I think its just completely unrealistic. In my mind its based on early 20th century thinking and not on what is almost certain in a future like the X universe has.

I seriously doubt that *any* large ship in the X universe needs any more than a handful of crew for the weapons systems. Almost all systems will be fully automatic. Speculating wildly I would say that a ship like the Argon Titan would need an outside maximum of 15 people to man its gunnery system.

Thats 5 gunners and 10 support. All the gunners would do is sit in a control centre with 360 degree FOV around the ship and control the turrets from there. For convenience sake you can manually go to the turrets if you really really want to.

Saying that installing an Aegis system costs 54 million is way OTT. Thats like, what? The cost of 230 solar power plants! . To fully equip with gunners and equipment an Argon Titan would cost something like 135 to 140 million credits - or the cost of 20 Argon Centaurs (probably more than are actually in the game!)

I would recommend toning down the costs to fit within the general milieu of the x-universe myself. Just a suggestion mind.

[Kailric]

This thread seems more active than others on this. I'm not running this mod because I think its just completely unrealistic. In my mind its based on early 20th century thinking and not on what is almost certain in a future like the X universe has.

I seriously doubt that *any* large ship in the X universe needs any more than a handful of crew for the weapons systems. Almost all systems will be fully automatic. Speculating wildly I would say that a ship like the Argon Titan would need an outside maximum of 15 people to man its gunnery system.

Thats 5 gunners and 10 support. All the gunners would do is sit in a control centre with 360 degree FOV around the ship and control the turrets from there. For convenience sake you can manually go to the turrets if you really really want to.

Saying that installing an Aegis system costs 54 million is way OTT. Thats like, what? The cost of 230 solar power plants! . To fully equip with gunners and equipment an Argon Titan would cost something like 135 to 140 million credits - or the cost of 20 Argon Centaurs (probably more than are actually in the game!)

I would recommend toning down the costs to fit within the general milieu of the x-universe myself. Just a suggestion mind.

Handful of crew?? What happens when your shields are dropping faster than you can say "quick Jump us the heck out of here" and then your hull starts getting torn apart and suddenly a blast from a PPC breaches your forward bow and kills your "handfull" of crew? Then what? If you ask me there would be hundreds of crew members. Who is gonna be makeing the repairs or takeing over the turrents on manual when they get damaged? The AI? I don't think so...unless it is a smart as the xenon and when it gets that smart it just gonna want to do what it wants to anyway. So you have to keep the AI smart enough to do what you want it to do, but dumb enough to have to have you there to do it...so yeah... there will be bunches and bunches of crew members.

[3iff]

So, when you're in your M2 in the pre-aegis script days, how many crew are on your ship??

What if you capture a Xenon K, how many crew are on that??

...not even a handful!

[The_Abyss]

If you don't like the idea of crew - you might have missed this which offers an alternative.