[SCR] Economy and Supply Trader [2009-10-12 X3TC 3.2.05]

leon92100 · Post by **leon92100** » Sun, 21. Dec 08, 13:08

Many thanks for your great 3 o'clock answer

I really agree with your EST+MK3 analysis.
I'm a bit "disapointed" that my MK3 ship who can jump alone when " vanilla", can't jump anymore (for the moment...) when EST is enable...
but the ship is now making good profits

mawi wrote: The payment roll, etc i think they go as follows....
Payment roll: the cash the pilot has earnt to date as flat rate wage/salary/whatever you wanna call it
Achievements: total combined profits of all his sales
Sales Bonusses: a small percentageof the profits the pilot took/earnt as commission
Expenses: cash spent on upgrades/weapons/fighterdrones/repairs/etc

Thanks for this one mate, this really help me !
so, if I'm rigth, the amount of credits that I won = Achievements - (payment roll + sales bonus + expenses) ?

++

mawi · Post by **mawi** » Sun, 21. Dec 08, 14:27

I agree, EST doesn't seem to sit on standby as often as TM3, so once mine lvl they should rake in the profits.

so, if I'm rigth, the amount of credits that I won = Achievements - (payment roll + sales bonus + expenses) ?

Thats the way i understand it too, so i hope your right.
You will have to figure out initial setup cost yourself if you want to take that into account when figureing real profit, but i'm personally not too bothered with that as so long as its making nice profit from that formula, then it will eventually par for itself.

I did partially test your formaula by setting my first EST to a station that doesn't trade and the figures did roughly match up, but it didn't have expenses and only got to Supplier (so no JD fuel costs) before I flooded the station with 9 EST's (dont like traders to take money from main account).

Vicrry06 · Post by **Vicrry06** » Sun, 21. Dec 08, 16:38

Yes EST takes a bit longer to be able to use a Jumpdrive, but I hardly ever have to deal with them after their inital setup (which does include a Trade MkIII). They also are quite able to ensure their survival - the only loss I've had so far is to a SQUASH mine in LooMankSlat's.. Which is now on the exception list for every EST. Trade runs thru a minefield usually a bad idea.

There's two modes of standby for an EST however: if the command it's running is 'EST on standby..' it's looking for another deal, while 'Idle' means that there's a bogey in sector somewhere and the pilot would like you to make it disappear before he moves. Usually if the EST is trapped in a station with hostiles outside waiting he will notify you, but occasionally I notice that it forgets.

I've never bothered figuring out exactly how much money my EST's have made, usually too busy figuring out what to spend my pile of credits on.

wyvern11 · Post by **wyvern11** » Sun, 21. Dec 08, 22:46

After getting a trade station and assigning all EST-traders to it I used the station command to give an EST-summary the roughly 40 ships earned about a 100M in 4 days

MTM1977 · Post by **MTM1977** » Tue, 23. Dec 08, 23:15

Huge thanks for this!
I was getting desperate with my Sector/Universal Traders just hanging around on Standby with my expensive ships

Now they actually do the work they are supposed to which is generate credits to my account

edit:
I am using version 1.4, so far i haven't noticed any problems, so it seems that the script works ok with this version. I don't know if this has been noted already, but on the opening post it said that this is for version 1.2.

MTM1977 · Post by **MTM1977** » Wed, 31. Dec 08, 01:09

I've run in to a strange problem a few times.
A few of my EST controlled ships have suddenly disappeared without any message at all...
I have only noticed it when checking my ships list and seen that some ship is missing from the list.

Only thing that comes to my mind that maybe they have collided with a larger ship while exiting/entering gate?

Has anyone else had this problem and if you have, have you been able to avoid it somehow?

wyvern11 · Post by **wyvern11** » Wed, 31. Dec 08, 11:30

collisions only occur "in sector" - see aldrin-map, where freighters travel through asteroid.

i would think this was an "out of sector" encounter with a heavy opponent (pirate brig, xenon q) where there was no time for a distress signal

MTM1977 · Post by **MTM1977** » Wed, 31. Dec 08, 12:42

wyvern11 wrote:collisions only occur "in sector" - see aldrin-map, where freighters travel through asteroid.

i would think this was an "out of sector" encounter with a heavy opponent (pirate brig, xenon q) where there was no time for a distress signal

Ok, thanks!

One off topic question relating to this matter. Is there a way to make a Xenon sector safe (there are couple of those near my trading sectors)? So, if i for example destroy their factories etc. from the sector and kill all the Xenon ships there, will the sector stay "clean" or will the Xenon rebuild it?

I am quite new to the X universe, so i don't know if that kind of sector "cleaning" is possible or not... I was thinking about clearing a sector and then building my own factories there, kind of making the sector my sector instead of Xenon sector...

Resheph · Post by **Resheph** » Wed, 31. Dec 08, 12:51

Threre was a mod to X3:R that allwed to "capture" sectors, you had to destroy everything within it, and then build a trading station with special prefix, then the sector changed its "possesor" like the sector wasn't Xenon anymore, but its "owner" was Julian, but the xenon always fought back to reclaim their old fief.

NewtSoup · Post by **NewtSoup** » Tue, 13. Jan 09, 20:41

I have a conundrum if someone can help me.

I have 2 Demeter Super Freighters

Both have:

Fight 1
Fight 2
Jump Drive
Trade 1
Trade 2
Trade 3
Nav 1
SETA
Special Command Software
Trading System Extension
5x25MJ Shield.

Both were UT's but I gave up on them and installed the EST scripts. One was level 9 the other 14.

My trade Rank is Petty Financier (Way above Trader)

Yet one will start EST the other will not (the command is greyed out but in the list) . Anyone have a clue why this should be?

*Edit*
I worked it out. And I think this should be in the top post if it's intentional - the difference between the 2 was when I issued the command for the first time one ship was docked the other was not. When I docked the ship at a station and re-issued the Start EST command it worked just fine.

After this the EST menu is always enabled it seems.

bblasphemous · Post by **bblasphemous** » Wed, 14. Jan 09, 14:32

Luke Skyscraper wrote:When I docked the ship at a station and re-issued the Start EST command it worked just fine.

Yeah, this threw me off a bit too at first. Didn't see any mention of it in the first post.

It's a very minor thing, and this works MUCH MUCH better than the trader scripts that came with the game for me. Very happy with the profitsss.

wyvern11 · Post by **wyvern11** » Wed, 14. Jan 09, 17:46

given the fact, that the EST skripter is a bit of a perfectionist one should expect, that pilots can only enter shipts when docked and do not appear in open space

you are correct that this should have been in first post, but this feature has not been active then and has been added later on. thus it simply slipped my mind ...

bblasphemous · Post by **bblasphemous** » Wed, 14. Jan 09, 19:35

Well when you put it that way, it makes complete sense.

NewtSoup · Post by **NewtSoup** » Thu, 15. Jan 09, 12:30

Fair Comment

I have a new puzzle though.

My EST03 is a Vulture super freighter. He has reached the rank of supplier, filled up with E-Cells and then stopped.

I got a message saying that EST03-VUSF325 had finished it's job and was waiting for new orders. I checked. It was docked at a SPP had a full cargo bay of Cells that had been bought at 12cr each. There was a station in sector offering 17cr each. I went to the trade menu but the EST section has gone. So I sold the Cells Manually and the EST menu has still not re-appeared. Any idea why this might happen?

*Edit*

It's not just the Vulture.
It's ALL 3 of them.
However this is the first time I've played since yesterday. Last night I changed my OS from XP to Vista and had to reinstall X3TC from steam. However I don't see why this should make a difference. Oh yes I do.. I forgot to put the scripts back in DOH!

Just slap me.

Loner87 · Post by **Loner87** » Thu, 15. Jan 09, 16:35

I use vanilla X3TC but to be honest I begin to be worried to see long wierd idling period for my MK3 sector or universe traders (and when I check manually they are many opportunities profits at no more than 1 sector for my lvl 16 UT... No comment).

I m ok to test this script but I like to be able to revert something I don't like. So can you tell me if you can still use the 'classic' MK3 UT mode once EST is installed or if installing EST overrides (or bug) the normal UT ?

Behind that is the fact that EST uses its own experience system starting from 0 and it's the same for the vanilla UT so I fear to lose all pilots xp at both installation/desinstallation if I can't choose which system to use (EST or 'classic' UT.

Any hint ?

XhavocX · Post by **XhavocX** » Sat, 17. Jan 09, 02:52

I am having a problem with the grayed out EST functions as well, all my freighters are docked and undocking them and redocking does not help. Am I missing something? I am on version 1.4.

kelmen · Post by **kelmen** » Sat, 17. Jan 09, 15:00

How's this different with the vanilla, and Commercial Agent ?

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... sc&start=0

wyvern11 · Post by **wyvern11** » Sat, 17. Jan 09, 19:45

@loner
- EST will not take over the levelling system of UT's
- EST will probably not disable the standard egosoft commands (they are still there and look active)
- EST will have an uninstaller on board to remove EST
- EST will level over time (a level every two hours of flying), not earnings
- EST does not in all cases need Mk3-soft installed (if you manually set wares)

Theres a fair chance that UT levels persist after having tried out EST (but you will never need them again *g*)

and finally

EST will kick Mk3's a** blindfolded

@xhavoc

sufficient player trade rank? required gadgets installed?

@keimen

CAG -> factories
EST -> free trader

Jeix · Post by **Jeix** » Sat, 17. Jan 09, 20:09

Only a smal q

Can the EST buy upgrade

Loner87 · Post by **Loner87** » Sat, 17. Jan 09, 23:46

Thx for your answer wivern.
I m decided after having seen again this afternoon all my fleet of low level MK3 stuck in standby (sic).

One technical question now. This is the first time I install a script for an X game. I first unrared the files like it's described in the main post. But finally I have discovered the X Plugin Manager and I want him to manage this script. Problem : there are many .pck files contained in the .rar. So is it feasible ?