[SCR] MARS Fire Control (v3.05 - 06.10.09)

[Mr Tibbs]

True. Looks like I'll have to live with it.
I just tried a new game and there was only 1 goblin in there. It's only effected my save game. Tried to have a play by butchering your uninstall script but as you mentioned they're lost keys so i'll just leave do atm.
Just a shame there's no way of getting a list of all hotkeys then scanning through each and removing if they match the mars goblin criterea.

[Tritous]

if you really know what you are doing you can check through your list of setup scripts and if you have them available for all the scripts you wish to have hotkeys it may be plauseable to blitz them all and reinit all the scripts (thus restoring the hotkeys)

[Gazz]

Well, it is technically possible but yes, you "really have to know what you're doing".
Read the hotkey number from the MARS hotkey storage and nuke your way down from there until all MARS keys are gone.
Then run mars.uninstall and they will be recreated.

If you start losing other scripts you can't just rerun them but have to identify and manually clear the global hotkey storage variable of every such script to force a reinit of the key. Usually that works unless the coder used a less explicit way to check for each hotkey, such as the scripts global data array existing.
In the latter case you have to hack the setup script, unpacking it first if the scripter decided to make it a .PCK.
Possible? Yes. Advisable? I think not.

I could do that, of course, but since I don't define new hotkeys all the time... why bother?

[Tritous]

Surely the majority of hotkeys could be restored by rerunning the setup script? It would need you to know which are the ones which are indirect though and still is a risk.

still, 56 hotkeys...by rule of russian roulette you are more likely to do good than harm at first and i thought my 16 was bad?

[Gazz]

Surely the majority of hotkeys could be restored by rerunning the setup script?

No.


Version 2.60 released.

Fixed a setup bug that caused wrong values to be read.
Mainly turrets were doing a 7 minute coffee break when holding fire to give an enemy pilot a chance to bail.
7 seconds were intended. =)

Minor tweaks to laser selection that may or may not be noticable...

Default time for goblin launch restriction increased from 1 to 10 minutes.

[Nadrek]

Nice! Thank you.

Two questions:
1) Is there a way to tell which turrets on MARS Standby are set to Defense, and which to Offense?

2) Has anyone run any tests of how MARS does in a missile defense role against some of the missile-boat scripts?

One informational notification:
I haven't tried duplicating it yet, but at least once with v2.43 my front armament got switched around to all BHEPTs while I was docked at a station and, probably, messing around in the sector or universe map buying stations before or during the docking.

And my thanks:
It's really, really interesting to be able to drive something as small as a Hyperion through groups of pirates... on autopilot... while buying stations in the universe map, and still watch pirates melt. Going through pirate alley with a MARS equipped Python is almost as entertaining - certainly watching ships die and weapons switch in and out is neat.

[Tritous]

hyperion is great with mars, it's turret coverage is second to none
I find the joy is I can just ignore the m5s and let mars handle them while i target the bigger ships.

out of interest: ive been playing XTM and capping OWPs (stationary defense platforms, counts as m2s). when collecting the drops it includes a lot of the software and goblins try to collect this even through there is no room for ti in the ships. What is odd though is the goblin gets to the ship and is suddenly damaged for some reason. Could there be a reason for this? maybe it is crashing into the ware it's meant to be towing in?

[Gazz]

One informational notification:
I haven't tried duplicating it yet, but at least once with v2.43 my front armament got switched around to all BHEPTs while I was docked at a station and, probably, messing around in the sector or universe map buying stations before or during the docking.

That's the OOS weapon switching. It's also connected to being docked but I forgot to disable it for the playership. =)

[Meros]

That's the OOS weapon switching. It's also connected to being docked but I forgot to disable it for the playership. =)

Any quick way I can stop this from happening myself, what to edit?

[Gazz]

Actually, I did not forget to check for that. It can never switch main guns on any ship in the same sector as the playership.

Are you sure you have the current version?

[Nadrek]

That behavior (dock/undock main weapon switching) happened with v2.43.

With v2.60, I'm trying to track down the cause of why sometimes my ships patrolling sector X fail to load the full OOS armament when I jump out of the sector.
My two ideas to test right now are A) the 2.43 to 2.60 upgrade requires MARS to be re-initialized, and B) using SETA 1000% to shorten the delay on a "J" manual jump also interferes with the MARS OOS weapon switching.

As it is, I'm almost wanting to face a pirate patrol with my Elephant or Mammoth, just to see how it works.

[Gazz]

Version 2.70 released.

• Compatibility fix for the Racial Laser Mod.
• More CPU time saved under certain conditions.
• Added a config option (47) for salvo firing.
  This has no practical purpose whatsoever. All it does is to cause turrets to take a cinematic break of configurable length after each salvo.
  Useful? I think not. But it was only 1 line of script. =)
  Of course, this is disabled by default.
• There is an AL Plugin switch to prevent all your ships from automatically launching goblins for combat missions.
• TS have the annoying habit of launching lots of Fighter Drones when under attack.
  
  If MARS Cargo Collection is active on a ship (not only TS!) then the number of regular fighter drones allowed to Follow/Protect this ship is limited to Missile Fire Probability / 5.
  (You can set this value in 5 % increments)
  
  So if you set MFProbability to 10%, all but 2 regular fighter drones will automatically be recovered when the Egosoft script launched 10...
  If the ship's attacker is destroyed or no longer in the same sector, all drones are recovered.
  
  This can also be useful to transfer drones all across a sector.
  The donor ship merely ejects all 50 drones into space.
  You order all drones to protect the receiving ship.
  If the receiving ship has the cargo collect script active it will recover most or all (Missile % setting) of these drones when they get there.
  (And drones are considerably faster than a freighter =)

[oskari]

I was hoping to do some scripting me self today but all I do is watch them Goblins do their thingie.

For You !:

[ external image ]

(...medical equipment ready... aaaargh!!)

[Gazz]

Version 2.80 released.

Enemy ships like Xenon no longer defend the Playership against their own missiles.

Some Friend/Foe setting oddities researched and corrected.

Better reaction to not finding any lasers.

[nitromethane]

i realy like your script. i used to use the x0netcs turret script and when switching to this one it seemed rather annoying that it would suddenly switch targets before it was dead. however after running both of them one after the other ive noticed that i can take on more ships faster and have more shields left when the battle is over using mars. thanks

[Gazz]

when switching to this one it seemed rather annoying that it would suddenly switch targets before it was dead.

Yeah, it's supposed to annoy you like that.

Of course it doesn't switch because the target is hurt but because it's evading.
A fighter is then near impossible to hit and... no immediate threat.
Instead it fires at the next fighter doing an attack run, often making that one evade, too.
Keeping the enemy on the defensive is an effective strategy for a turret script and results in... taking less damage overall. =)

Every turret script has it's pros and cons. I'm not perfectly happy with the MARS missile defense, for instance.
Due to the organisation of the script, picking up missile targets will never be as quick as with some other scripts.
Sometimes it chooses to simply ignore a missile. It can do that...
Some find that annoying as well. =P

[Jashashunter]

I find that the missile defense bonus script is a great combo with MARSs anyway. Turrets get the ship and my mosquitos get the missles. And after the battle the Goblins usually get enough mosquitos to refill what I used.

Anyway just wanted to say thank you for your scripts Gazz. I use a LOT of them.

[Andy.B]

Hi everyone ! ...And thanks Gazz for this script, it looks awesome.
But it doesn' t work I don't understand.

I've read all the topic and didn't found someone with the same problem.
I have :

-X3 2.5 French
-Pilote IA 3.7
-Cheatpack 2.0

What i have done :

*Downloaded "script" and "t" files, copied them in my X folder.
*Run the game with scripts enabled.
*Started a new game, and spawned a Python with all equipements and its various weapons in quantity with the cheatpack.
*Saved and reloaded

I guess the turret command "offensive" or "defensive" is in the turret order menu. I open it and, cool, i have 2 new turret command, but ...

1 little and 2 big problems :

- Two "Read-text" in place of the commands. Nevermind, i choose the second one, wich i guess, is in fact, the "offensive" command.

- My turrets can mount only 1 weapon. Just one gun per turret... ( I saw someone had this problem too )

- Turret order shows "unknown command" for all weapons on all turrets.

I have tried an encounter, all my "one-gun-turrets" doesn't fire any bullet (or laser) at all. I tried the other command, same, tried to lock en ennemy, go close, same, absolutely nothing happens... My ship doesn't fight.

Maybe i did something wrong, or perhaps i need to buy Mars properly at a dock, but where ? I even don't know that ...

P.S : Excuse my poor English.

[Gazz]

MARS does not contain a french T-File.
That's where all the errors are from.
It does not have any texts in your game and will not work at all.

Copy either of the 2 language files and rename it so the first 2 digits correspond to your language code.
(The one in Reunion\language.dat)

Then edit the T-File with something like Notepad and edit the language entry at the start to the same number.
After that, X3 can find the text.

Note that MARS has two T-Files and will need both.


Or you ask subaluigi. He's using it in a french game.

[Andy.B]

Ok, it is working Thanks