03/04/14 Update: Version 1.3.0 -- Update for Rebirth version 3.20. It will not work with 3.50 beta at this time.
Quick change notes:
- Passenger handling: Adds the ability to move and store employees as passengers on all player stations and capitol ships. If you're familiar with how I've been handling passengers and employees on the Skunk, I've extended things in as similar as possible a way across all player platforms.
- Hiring changes: If you're standing on a ship or station you own and hire employees via remote comm, then they will be transported to the ship or station you're standing on instead of the Skunk. If a work position for that employee is empty, then they'll take that job automatically. Otherwise, they'll be stored as a passenger. If using the Populate Player Stations mod and hiring from your own station, then those employees will be hired in place. Hiring while onboard the Skunk or while on NPC-owned platforms continues to work as before.
- Menu layout: I've reorganized some things yet again.... -.-;; we'll see how this works out....
- Account transfers: when one employee replaces another who's running an expense account, that account will now be transferred to the new worker.
- Employee script initialization: employees provided by shipyards (or some mods) that don't have proper communication settings configured will now be initialized as they're interacted with, giving all employees full functionality rather than the two-tier system that existed previously.
- Localization: I've made some progress on language localization, but it still has a long way to go.
- Mod Compatibility Stuff:
- Added compatibility buttons for Universe Provider by JeanLukePicard to the out-of-squad "new orders" menu and a generic interface for pilots or captains assigned to Univ Provider jobs. The BK Universal Comm Menu or MCE are not required if activated this way, since UP only uses them for menu mounts.
- Added some rebounding gadgets with report-logged indicators to the compatibility buttons for Manager Call by euclid. I also added a "View Logbook" button to the submenu for the sake of convenience.
- updated Autotrader compatibility to the current version (0.9). The alt trigger mechanism is disabled because I find that sort of thing annoying when I'm trying to do something else. As before, the compatibility button is in the out-of-squad "new orders" menu for ships that fit Autotrader's requirements.
- the "backdoor trigger" on jth's Station Destruciton and recylcing is disabled.
- the compatibility button for UT player logos on the Skunk is now found in a "Ship Options" submenu that will appear if that mod is installed rather than on the main engineer dial.
- I spent quite a lot of time playing around with Manual Command Extension, but it's got so many little problems at this point that I've decided to drop it until it gets cleaned up or updated. I'd also been looking at the Versatile Logistics System mod by TheDeliveryMan, but parts of it are outdated and since wysiwyg's MT Logistics mod is available, I've decided to drop Versatile Logistics unless it gets updated.
Aaaannnddd... I'll probably come up with other stuff that need to be said here later tonight, but for now I'm short on time.
EDIT: Well, it seems I accidentally left employee handling of assigned pilots blocked off. That will be fixed in the next update.
It also seems worth mentioning that passengers are currently indicated during dialog by a "(Passenger): ship/station name" tag on the ship/station info button (button 4), while active employees say "Ship/Station Detail: ship/station name" in the same location.
Other stuff on my short list right now:
- - sorting out a 3.50 beta compatibility.
- block off the remaining avenues for this mod to potentially bork up other known mods by replacing the employees running their special scripts.
- a "hire to work over there" option when the Skunk is full is something I've had on my list for a while now, and I've finally got the prep work done that I need to implement it the way i want.
- compatibility stuff for MT Logistics and the new UFO version. Neither of those mods really seem to require buttons right now because they're both sidebar-based, but I need to set up filters to prevent HR from interfering with them unintentionally. I also need to take a closer look at Carriers, and check around for anything else that I might need filters for.
Other things I've been working on --- but that are still a ways away -- are out-of-zone and cross-zone employee transfers, bulk-hiring and crew/staff management tools, and non-instantaneous drone transfers.
I've decided that I'll be packaging these functions as an optional add-on module instead of here in the main mod because handling them way I want to requires some scripting that doesn't uninstall easily, and I want to keep the "main" mod fully savegame safe to uninstall whenever.
That wont happen in the next version -- it's probably still a few months from completion considering how slow I am, tbh -- but that's the general direction that this project is heading in right now.
