[Mod] Hull Engineer v.6 released 12-3-13

Kierk · Post by **Kierk** » Tue, 26. Nov 13, 22:54

Version .40 out, main post updated with details.

Kaliuga · Post by **Kaliuga** » Wed, 27. Nov 13, 18:43

Repairing 100% of hull seems good but some cheating. Maybe add dependency max repairing hull from enginer skill "mechanics"? One "star" in "mechanics" up to a maximum 20% of hull, two "stars" up to a maximum 40% of hull... five "stars"(never see) up to a maximum 100% of hull. It's look more realistic.

Kierk · Post by **Kierk** » Wed, 27. Nov 13, 19:13

Completed work on Complete version .50, adds secondary feature the ability to repair nearby friendly ships.

If an engineer has over 100 drones available they will search for friendly ships within a 3km radius of themselves and if found will run a single repair tic on each of them for a number of seconds equal to the number of drones they control. After that the 20-25 second cooldown occurs.

Damage to the repairing ship will no interrupt these tics but will prevent new tics from occuring until the repairship has fixed itself.

Also updated max hull repair % to 75 as I've never been really happy with 100% free repairs. Old version still available if you liked that.

My plan for max hull repairs in the future is actually quite different. This is how I'm planning for it to work

Damage on the ships hull falls into a few different categories

90-100% hull is superficial damage
80-90% is light damage
60-80% is moderate
40-60% is severe
25-40% is extensive
0-25% is structural

What can be fixed depends on the skill of your engineer. No engineer can fix structural damage, needs a shipyard. 5 star can handle extensive and above, 4 star severe and above, etc. I don't plan on morale or leadership effects here as this strikes me as just basic engineering ability/knowledge.

Kaliuga · Post by **Kaliuga** » Thu, 28. Nov 13, 18:00

Impressive! You for a few days doing things that developers have not been done in the 5 years of development.

OpiWanktGenObi · Post by **OpiWanktGenObi** » Thu, 28. Nov 13, 18:08

Kaliuga wrote:Impressive! You for a few days doing things that developers have not been done in the 5 years of development.

how do you know?
what if they talked about the whole repair system, but went away from the way this mod works because of design reasons?
the game is as it is because of design decisions. they aren't bad only because some people don't like them. would you buy a car if you don't like it? would you NOT buy a car only because you don't like the color of the ashtray? ^^

Kaliuga · Post by **Kaliuga** » Fri, 29. Nov 13, 09:09

design reasons?

The fact that the price of repairing the ship is > !MORE! > than the price of a new ship have the "design reasons?"

Or the fact that you have(in campaing) only one place in all Universe to repair your ships have the "design reasons?"

Or the fack that yours ships time to time had damage without any reason and your fleet all time in "bad condition" have the "design reasons?"

I don't think soo.

For what needs the engineers with they skills, for what needs construction drones then?

We all know that the game was released in bad condition, without many necessary elements, like things in this and others mods.

spartanheyho · Post by **spartanheyho** » Sat, 30. Nov 13, 13:51

Getting this debug text for this mod when launching new game in free play mode:

Code: Select all


[General] ======================================
[General] ======================================
[=ERROR=] extensions\Hull Engineer Complete\aiscripts\remoteengineer.ai.xml(23): Script node 'label' is not allowed in this context.
[General] ======================================
[General] ======================================
[=ERROR=] extensions\Hull Engineer Complete\aiscripts\remoteengineer.ai.xml(75): Script node 'label' is not allowed in this context.
[General] ======================================
[General] ======================================
[=ERROR=] extensions\Hull Engineer Complete\aiscripts\remoteengineer.ai.xml(93): Script node 'label' is not allowed in this context.

Kierk · Post by **Kierk** » Sat, 30. Nov 13, 21:42

Ah yeah, that's just messy coding on my part. I swiped the repair component code from vanilla engineer.ai and ended up not using the label portions (set label, return label). Gameplay wise it causes no problems, but will print the debug message until i clean it up.

spartanheyho · Post by **spartanheyho** » Sun, 1. Dec 13, 06:33

Roger. Thanks for the response. Moving on.

spartanheyho · Post by **spartanheyho** » Sun, 1. Dec 13, 13:17

Does your on-board engineer use drones to fix any blue npc ships you dock into? Or just ships owned by the player?

Kierk · Post by **Kierk** » Sun, 1. Dec 13, 15:40

It should only work on player owned ships. I added it as part of a do if player owned section

wwdragon · Post by **wwdragon** » Mon, 2. Dec 13, 08:48

Hello. I've recently found your mod and started using it.

It works great on all new ships captured

However my plot given Taranis is still not repairing hull.
I think this is because that engineer is still using the vanilla repair script.

I looked in the save file and found this:
<component class="npc" macro="character_ar_female_engineer_macro" connection="commandroomslot" name="Marissa Selek" owner="player" page="10110" id="[0x1f88]">

Am I correct in assuming that the macro is the repair script?

If so, how can I change it to use the hull repair mod instead? I tried coppying the macro, page and id from another ship which repaired onto this engineer and that only caused buggs.

mikeck · Post by **mikeck** » Mon, 2. Dec 13, 18:56

I'm a little unclear how to use this mod. Since I don't know of a ship I am attacking had constructive drones or not (or whether I will have to destroy the drone bay)...do I carry a certain amount of constructive drones on te skunk? If I do, will an engineer transferrd to the captured ship automatically use the skunks drones if I stay docked?

All I want to do is repair engines on ships I capture...after all of the discussion and versions, with this mod, how do I do that?

Kierk · Post by **Kierk** » Mon, 2. Dec 13, 21:23

To wwdragon.

In X rebirth a macro is sort of a map of how to build and render an object or character. The macro for your engineer tells it to build an Argon Female for conversation and placement in the docking bay. Hull Engineer modifies the basic engineer script so no change should be necessary to get it to work. As a matter of fact my test ship was the captured Taranis you get in the campaign. Possible reasons the repair might not be happening.

Version .50c places a cap of 75% on hull repairs, if hull is there or over it won't go higher without a shipyard. This should change in the next few days when i get done with the new damage system. Secondly if there are no construction drones on the Taranis it won't work without help. Check the details page under units and if either there is no units page or no construction drones are listed thats why repairs aren't happening. Thirdly if the engineer is still fixing components, like engines, weapons or shields are less than 75% it'll do that first before working on the hull.

To mikeck.

Sorry I haven't been more clear on this. For the latest versions here is how I go about capturing ships. When you find a target check its info panel details to see what drones it has aboard. A typical Rahanes freighter will have anywhere from 0-20 construction drones and a huge amount of cargo drones, I've seen 80+ on one freighter. When getting ready to board you have to decide if you want to keep the drones and deal with the ship repairing itself, or destroy the drone bay killing the drones and making capture easier.

In case 1, keeping the drones alive simply do not destroy the drone bay. If you get a boarding mission to destroy it just wait it out, freighters don't have very good defense forces so your marines should still win. Once captured transfer an engineer to the ship and repairs should being. Like above components will fix before the hull gets touched.

For case 2, with the drone bay destroyed the ship has no drones when you capture it. You now have two options, use the skunk or use a mobile repair ship. If any of your other ships have over 100 construction drones move them within 3km of the target ship (MCE or UFO pretty much required for this). Alternatively buy some construction drones from a drone dealer for the skunk, when you dock at the ship the ship's engineer will count them towards his total. Same as above though components will repair before hull repairs start.

mikeck · Post by **mikeck** » Mon, 2. Dec 13, 21:29

Wow! Great mod..thanks for the work and your quick response. Seems easy enough

Kierk · Post by **Kierk** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 00:22

Version .6 is complete. I did away with the dual track (standalone and complete) as I felt it was too confusing. All behavior will be incorporated into the main mod from now on. If you really dislike particular features or behaviors let me know and I'll tell you how to change them or if enough request it make a separate version.

Due to issues with Nexus maintenance expect file to be available tomorrow, hopefully earlyish eastern US time (GMT -5).

MAJOR CHANGES MADE TO REPAIR FUNCTIONS IN .6

Ship damage is split into 6 categories.
90-100% hull is superficial damage: Any engineer can fix
80-89% is light damage : Need 2 star engineer or better
70-79% is moderate : Need 3 star or better
55-69% is severe : Need 4 star or better
40-54% is extensive : Need 5 star
1-39% is structural damage. : Needs Shipyard.

For gameplay and design reasons only checks current value, so bring a ship w/5 star engineer and 30% hull to shipyard, repair it to 40% and let engineer take over should work fine.

Additional changes in .6
-Diminishing returns in hull repair for number of drones carried by the ship. Earlier version gave straight .03 percent per drone. New values are as follows

1-10 drones = .03 per
11-40 drones = .02 per
41-100 drones = .01 per
101 and over = .005

-Self component repair rate unchanged so drone stacking works fine to fix your engines and guns and shields.

-Remote repair rate slowed 10 fold. 100 drones repairs really really fast, I don't want mobile repairs to play like healers. In other words I want them to be strategic, not tactical.

Update Instructions

Due to changing my mind about multiple versions, best way to install this is to delete all old extension folders of my files (Hull Engineer, Hull Engineer Complete, Component Fix) and use the new extension folder in the .7z file.

Future Plans
I mostly consider Hull Engineer feature complete at this point, it does almost exactly what I want it to do. The only thing missing at this point as way to transfer construction drones to and from working engineers. I've had the code for that working for about a week now, but after some email exchanges w/EgoSoft found out that the remove_units function doesn't work properly. In other words I can add drones to the target ship just fine, but I can't subtract them from the giving ship.

In the mean time I've been having tons of fun with Mad Joker's UFO mod and general combat. My next focus is going to be capital ship combat AI and I think i'm going to start with the Balor.

wwdragon · Post by **wwdragon** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 01:13

Kierk wrote:To wwdragon.Version .50c places a cap of 75% on hull repairs, if hull is there or over it won't go higher without a shipyard. This should change in the next few days when i get done with the new damage system. Secondly if there are no construction drones on the Taranis it won't work without help. Check the details page under units and if either there is no units page or no construction drones are listed thats why repairs aren't happening. Thirdly if the engineer is still fixing components, like engines, weapons or shields are less than 75% it'll do that first before working on the hull.

Thanks for the info.
All components repaired awhile ago. Hull is at 39% after doing a storyline mission where we have to go through the gate under fire.

I'm going to try turning off all other mods and turn em on one at a time to see if something is interfering.

Re .6: I like the engineer being able to repair the ship, no matter what hull level it's at!

Kierk · Post by **Kierk** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 01:30

.6 changes are atmospheric for the most part, reducing the capability of the engineer to something I feel is more realistic. If you prefer the full heal you can continue with version .4, or alter .50c to repair to 100.

wwdragon · Post by **wwdragon** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 01:35

I will probably use .5 as that's what I've got now.

However this is really weird... I shoot a row of turrets on the taranis and they repair to 98%,95%, etc almost immediately.
I shoot the ones on the Light Sul and it isn't repairing at all.

Both have drones and engineers with 2 or 4 skill in engineering.
Both have drones and the drone bay in tact.

It is almost as if they will repair anything the first time, then never again.

astaldion · Post by **astaldion** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 02:31

May i make a suggestion? I personally don't like the idea of engineer being able to repair a ship fully. Doesn't sound realistic too. Although i like your idea of different "grades" of damage influencing repairs based on the engineers skill.

How about such an addition:

Ship damage is split into 6 categories.
90-100% hull is superficial damage: Any engineer can fix up to 100%
80-89% is light damage : Need 2 star engineer or better to repair up to 89%
70-79% is moderate : Need 3 star or better to repair up to 79%
55-69% is severe : Need 4 star or better to repair up to 69%
40-54% is extensive : Need 5 star to repair up to 54%
1-39% is structural damage. : Needs Shipyard.

Now if you repair your ship up to 100% in a shipyard the damage state would jump back to "undamaged" and allow every engineer to repair up to 100% as long as the ship only receives superficial damage. If you only repair your ship up to i.e. 75%, your ship would still have some moderate damages and engineers would be limited to repairs til 79%.

By the way, could you slow down component repairs a little bit? Or at least increase repair times on engines, jump drives, generators. When you try to board cap ships and disable their components, they will repair almost faster, then you can destroy them..[/u]

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

[Mod] Hull Engineer v.6 released 12-3-13