[Mayhem 3] Renegades v5.4 - 7/2025

[Negmek]

Speaking of which, how does one pick up loot? The looter workers tend to not fly more than one per sector, and doing it manually requires clicking on ship to give the order to collect wares in sector, and then then each ship one by one needs to be unloaded at an outpost. Perhaps courier jobs? but those seems to require even more clicks to sort out.

[TheVillain]

For loot i find my looters are fine...but if there's alot of separate containers in one sector maybe take direct control and go 'collect all wares' under...special i think?
If I'm raiding miners I take a TS with me and start destroying stuff - then set it to 'collect all wares' and when I'm done fly over any easy pickings to help it out. Then tell it to Return Home, and then Drop all Wares when it gets there.


Looters dont seem to want to collect containers they cant fit. I occasionally find 30000+ Waste or Energy Cells just appears in a sector, but no one takes it because they cant fit it all. Maybe a TL in that case would do the trick....?
Looters also struggle sometimes when your In sector, I've seen one flying circles around a container. Leave the sector and it'll grab it.

[Hairless-Ape]

If I kill a pirate base, I generally bring in 2 or 3 standard haulers just before I kill it for loot pickup duty. A lot drops. Just tell them to collect wares in sector.

I believe Automatic Looters purposely avoid picking up waste which is fine, but they don't seem to be doing a very good job otherwise.
Looters use their home-base's Trade Jump range. By default, that's only 4 jumps, so they won't go far unless you change the outposts' trade jump range.
Looters won't loot in enemy sectors.
Looters won't loot in any sector which you don't have a satellite in.
If you black-list a sector they won't go there.
2 Looters will never go after the same sector.
If there are more than 2 pirates, Kha'ak or Xenon in a sector, they won't loot there.
If finished looting a sector, if the looter has >75% free space, it will try to find another sector to loot before going home to unload.
Looters with a transporter device will be far quicker and more efficient at picking up loot.

Looters have undergone a lot of changes over time, and I don't think it's been tested all that well. It would be good to get some specific feedback on observed behavior from people, keeping in mind the information above.
If you see any specific discrepancies, let me know.

[TheVillain]

Hey
So if your open to feedback on the Renegade plot puzzles, I've some thoughts.

Also noticed that stations only drop wares when the player is in sector for the destruction. Pirate or faction stations. Not sure if thats intentional or not but heads up I guess for anyone destroying stations.

Really dig the phanon design.

[Negmek]

> take direct control and go 'collect all wares'

Yeah, and then repeat it for every ship, which takes a BILLION clicks. And then FOR EVERY SHIP do the drop wares... I've got tired enough of this that i ended up making an auto-hotkey script, that automates most of those clicks, but even then it is quite a chore. Though the idea is still good, because it helps with ship/fleet/wing orders, assigning to wings and the dreaded agents jobs screen.

[Hairless-Ape]

Also noticed that stations only drop wares when the player is in sector for the destruction. Pirate or faction stations. Not sure if thats intentional or not but heads up I guess for anyone destroying stations.

There is nothing at all in the code that governs station drops that changes based on the player being in-system or not. I'm not saying your incorrect, but I just don't see it.

[TheVillain]

After creating some fleets and messing about a bit, I can confirm that if the player is not in sector, any station destroyed by any ship does not drop wares.

This includes Pirate Bases destroyed by any faction (including player) and any stations if the relevant setting is enabled in the T file.

[Hairless-Ape]

Yea, this one really threw me off.
Just ran the same test and sure enough, nothing drops if I'm out of sector.

So in the scripts, there is a single one that handles station destruction (!station.signal.killed.xml). This is called automatically just prior to the station actually blowing up.
In here, what happens is the Wares in the Station cargo hold are adjusted in any way the programmer wants, and we assume those cargo amounts are what drops when the station blows.
In the case of Pirate bases, I made sure half of the station wares were present, even if the T-file option for station drops is turned off.
I have verified that even if I'm out of system, the !station.signal.killed.xml script IS still absolutely running and setting the station cargo amounts properly. Note, it just adjusts the amounts in the cargo, nothing more.

The problem is, when the station pops, the cargo doesn't drop.

I've searched all through the code, and I don't see anything in the SCRIPTs that actually govern whether the station drops cargo or not based on player presence.
My guess is that this is built-in behavior of the actual Executable and not done in script. Hector may know more. He's been through this a lot longer and perhaps knows of some hidden place where this is controlled.

If my assumption is correct, and this is built into the executable, I 'could' still force-create wares in space if the player is not present in system, but then you'd have a crap-tons of Wares being created in space all over the universe wherever stations are being blown up, and I just don't know if that's a desirable outcome. I certainly don't remember ever seeing that happen, but it certainly could be done and perhaps is a good thing?

[TheVillain]

Hmm that's is a rabbit hole and a half. I salute you for diving it.

I think it's be cool if they did drop wares, non player factions also scoop loot from what I can recall? If they don't they yeah I can see it getting out control.

One issue I've found when scooping wares from destroyed stations (pirate/renegade plot/outposts tend to produce this, smaller factories don't) is some of the ware containers are too big for any looter to pick up - they sometimes do it anyway when forced but then they'll pick up whatever % they can fit, and the rest is deleted. Which can be annoying when it's 21000 energy cells, and they only scoop 800 and delete the rest.

I _think_ some old salvage scripts used to handle it a bit better but I should go look if that claim is correct, or if the script even exists anymore.

[gorg123]

Hello!
Loving the mod so far, incredibly fun.
I was wondering if I could get help on a particular problem I encountered/caused in this mod, I am at a stage where I have to give the phanon two sectors to shut off the maelstrom, I gave one of them naturally as it was abandoned, the other one was held by paranids. To make the request short I fooled around with the cheat menu so that the paranids would lose that sector without me having to declare war for it and now the phanon have two sectors they needed and nothing has happened after.

I realise I might have broken something there so I ask is it possible to debug this some way, fire off a flag that completes the mission ('Machine revolution' in the journal) or should I just start over?

[Hector0x]

I realise I might have broken something there so I ask is it possible to debug this some way, fire off a flag that completes the mission ('Machine revolution' in the journal) or should I just start over?

This should be fixable. To set the flag correctly either Phanon needs to conquer the sector itself (invasion claim + building an Outpost) or the sector is player owned you can transfers ownership from the 'Transfer Sector' menu in the player console.

If you know your way around scripting you can also set the missing flag like this (which shouldn't cause any issues)

Code: Select all

set global variable: name='phanonPlotstage' value='maelstrom'

[gorg123]

Thank you for the suggestions Hector0x, unfortunately the sector ownership route is gone for me as for some reason I cannot gift any sector to Phanon anymore, their faction name dissapeared off the list, could try to do an invasion claim again but that did not work either. So I only have the scripting option to attempt.

Been years since I did some scripts in x3 going to have to relearn haha.

[Hector0x]

hm, strange. There are no more than 5 potential reasons why Phanon would not be listed there.

1) when you didn't get the first Phanon message yet (plotstage = null)
2) you got the message but before delivering the black crystal (plotstage = 'crystal')
3) Phanon got wiped out ('dead')
4) You joined the OCV which made Phanon your enemy ('playerJoinedOCV')
5) You completed the Phanon quest, aka they own the 2 sectors they asked for ('maelstrom')

If its not 1-4 then it seems like you actually triggered 5 but somehow it bugged out.

Edit:
if 5 is the case but it just didn't work then you could do this to fix your savegame:

ingame script editor: create this new script and run it

Code: Select all

set global variable: name='phanonPlotstage' value='expansion'
return null

Then gift those 2 sectors to Phanon and the event would attempt to trigger again. Given just that final quest part broke and you actually received the message about those 2 quest sectors before and the game also correctly set them up before.

[gorg123]

Thank you for further guidance, caught up on the scripting and I have tried what you suggested and the problem persists, I have probably broken the whole quest irreparably haha.

Found a script in that long list in the editor that I assume should initialise after gifting the sectors where the phanon shut down the maelstrom and give you their sectors, kind of a roundabout way to fix this and anticlimactic but at least I know not what to do on another playthrough.

[VoidSoul]

Such impossible quests start to appear on second ingame day. v3.0
Screenshot

Is there an option tu turn off default missile loadout for big ships on creation? It's makes me mad to offload every ship and reconfigure to what i actually want.

[Hairless-Ape]

I think those quests are built into the Mission Editor and not anything in the scripting work that comprises Mayhem. I looked into the Mission Editor once a while back and to be honest, there's just no good reference material for it. I'm sure Cycrow probably knows how to go about it, but there just wasn't enough info that I could find to figure it out. Normally that would probably be a good mission, but when Hector removed the weapons etc.. from trade stations, it inadvertently made some of those missions unworkable. It's just a mission though, and you can find others.

I don't believe there's any option to completely turn off the default missile loadout for big ships, although I thought the game still allowed you to customize your ship and save it's template and then build the template. This 'should' preserve the missile loadout you want, but it's not something I have tested out. I haven't used the template system since Hector forced all ships to use optimal loadout defaults. If you're looking to just remove the default missile loadout on new capital ships completely, that's probably a 1 line change, but I'm not sure other players would appreciate removing those missiles. I also customize my missile loadout every single time on those large ships, but I'm not sure I'd just want to have all new ships come without any.

[VoidSoul]

Well... the problem with missions is most of them are broken. All new provision missions ask now weapons, you can't farm those. Defend missions always spawn loaded with m3s m2, m7 and couple m6s regardless of your fleet size in system and they never cross the gate, you can't farm them without endgame fleet. Patrol missions always spawn 4 packs of three M3s regardless of your fleet size in system, they only useful at the very beginning, too weak later. So only prospecting and exploration are ok. Bate... even in zero hour they were end game fun, with 1 Tobosaku and 10 LX compliment i had to fight 10 capitals with hordes of fighters, now probably they are broken too and don't recognize fleet power, need to test.
After i started a nation, it became boring station building. In Zero Hour i was able to spice some time until i was recognized as nation by farming rep in patrols and defend missions... Just running fleet of jaguars, placing sats and scanning asteroids is fun only so much.

[VoidSoul]

I also observed in Zero Hour that loyalty point did not matter in war declaration on player. Even if you had 100 of them, neighbour will always attack you as soon as you are recognized. But should you convert your loyalty points in Favor points, they give a **** about you and never attack. 0 loyalty and 3 Favor is enough to make them forever friendly. Is it still the same?

[VoidSoul]

Also, now slow fighters can't dock back to fast TMs. I tend to use fastest TM with m3s to hund down enemies all across the space, TM can catch any target with it's speed, start attacking it and unleash it's complement of fighters, tanking all the damage, then dock fighters and seek new targets. Not any more. Now it just zoom forward leaving fighters forever chase it. Even LXs can't catch up with 400m\s Zepherus. Did something break?

[Hairless-Ape]

Voidsoul,

Nothing involving loyalty points was changed from Zero hour. It's the same there as it is in Renegades.

TM's are supposed to be very fast so they can get in and out of enemy space. I don't personally feel it's necessary in their role that they be slower than the fighters they carry. If they are too fast for the fighters you are using, then consider using faster fighters, or stopping your TM if you want to reload the fighters. If that's not sufficient, then make a case about what speed the TM's should travel at.

With respect to the missions being broken because you can't obtain weapons anymore, this was Hector's decision and this was done in Zero hour and I've not changed it. I understand you want those missions to fill the boredom and to a large extent I feel the same, but understand my goal was not to usurp Hector's decisions if at all possible, but rather to just enhance the game. When he changed fittings to be optimal and removed the ability to buy or build weapons and shields, I was not happy at all, and I let him know, but I've grown somewhat used to it. I can see how it would piss people off though for these missions that can't be completed anymore. Bottom line though, is rather than just tell me what you don't like, why don't you tell me an option or two regarding how YOU would go about fixing the issue? I know what options are possible, but you need to tell me what fix you're looking for and not just what's broken.