[MOD TC/AP] Combat Mod 4 - v4.16 17/06/13 - AP 3.0 Compatibility

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HotSake
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Post by HotSake »

Re: conversion kits

I was trying to fall asleep and had a brainstorm. Tell me if this makes any sense:

This method requires a restart, unfortunately. Define a weapon group in TLasers for kit weapons. It should contain copies of all weapons you wish to be available by conversion kit. They should be volume 0, cost 0. Add compatibility with this group in TShips so they can be mounted where you like. Define custom wares for each kit of the volume, size, and cost of the weapon they adapt, or whatever values you think best. Define a custom ship command to mount kits, dependent on having the appropriate kit ware in the cargo bay. Inside the script, you can do all sorts of cleverness to decide what kits are mountable on what ships, under what conditions, check the kit wares in cargo vs. currently mounted kit weapons to ensure availability, etc. (this is all trivial). Then spawn and mount a kit weapon in the specified slot. The volume and ware size restrictions are already handled by the kit ware, which is why the kit weapons are size 0. They are not sold in any stations, and only appear when called by a script to mount them. When unmounted, they are destroyed. Even if the player somehow preserves one, they have no value. Some cleverness in the TLasers ordering and Jobs files should prevent NPCs from spawning with them, although you can play around with that if you're willing to use equipment scripts like Litcube's Enhanced Equipment Spawner.

This wouldn't play nice with MARS, of course, unless someone made a 3rd party MARS patch to get it to understand kit weapons and mount/unmount them properly. So, what do the experienced modders say? Is this approach feasible?
Last edited by HotSake on Sat, 8. Jan 11, 20:20, edited 1 time in total.
paulwheeler
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Post by paulwheeler »

Osiris454 wrote:
paulwheeler wrote:RE: PRG - I have incresed the hitbox of the PRG in the next release so it should hit things a little easier making it more effective.
OK, cool, but what about my other questions?

Granted, I probably could have tried to seperate them rather than smashing several questions into one paragraph.

The repair one I'm really concerned about. All the available mods reguarding repairs don't seem to work well or at all with v3.0 or CMOD4 + SRM + MARS. All I really want to be able to do is buy repair lasers from equipment docks or trading stations in the least. At most there could be a few repair laser factories in the universe. A price of about 500k should be good.
I would have thought many people would consider buyable repair lasers a bit of a cheat. Afterall, its on the special weapons subtype, so any ship that can mount the tractor beam would also be able to mount the repair laser. Imagine have six in a turret - you'd be able to repair capital ships in no time.

One thing I could do (although it would have to be in the srm) would be to add a player flyable repair ship with perhaps two repair lasers up front. This would make repairs a little easier without being too much of a cheat I guess.

If you could give me a link to a repair script you're having trouble with and a brief description of what its doing and what it's supposed to be doing, ill look into it.
Osiris454
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Post by Osiris454 »

RE: Thanks Paul. I appreciate the help. :)

I definitely think repair lasers would be 'cheating' if they were cheap and easy to get to. Making them expensive and hard to find seemed like a better idea.

Auto Prep Ships:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=252575

I haven't tried this one yet but since the last update was before v3.0 was released I'm not to optimistic about it working. It's also a bit more than I was looking for.


Mobile Ship Repairs:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=221081

This was the one I was having trouble with. I seemed to work OK but when I tried to put 2 repair lasers in one of the Mistral Super Freighter's turrets, I could not control the ship anymore. It also caused conflicts with CMOD4 as weapons like the HEPT reverted to the vanilla stats. Repair lasers required a LONG time to build and you could only get 2 of them at a time while costing about 500k each. It seemed like a fair trade off.


Marine Repairs:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=221116

Last update was in 2009. Not sure if it works. I generally don't do the marine boarding thing.


Nanite Hull Repairs:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=243418

Last update was for v2.7. Not sure if it works. No repair lasers and the ships could 'heal' themselves. It was close but it felt like cheating.




1. The range of the Flak Artillery Array listed on the weapon stat sheet seems incorrect. The range in-game is about 1.75km. On the sheet it's listed at nearly 8Km. I think this would have to do with the lifetime of the projectile being only .5 seconds.

2. The Ion Disruptor it say's that it's a 'Flash Beam', but what does that mean? When I use it, it's just a blue projectile with a long trail.
kotorone1
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Post by kotorone1 »

when can you add the the new verson of the xtra ship pack?
also, will this mod work with the new ship pack?
paulwheeler
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Post by paulwheeler »

kotorone1 wrote:when can you add the the new verson of the xtra ship pack?
also, will this mod work with the new ship pack?
The cmod4 works with the latest xtra release as it is.

Its the srm where they need to be merged. The srm release and the next cmod release are coming on Monday. It will have 1.85 of the xtra pack merged. I'll work on merging the 1.86 release next week.

The cmod will work with any mod that adds ships. Any new ship mod needs to be merged into the srm before it will work correctly.
Last edited by paulwheeler on Sun, 9. Jan 11, 11:47, edited 1 time in total.
paulwheeler
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Post by paulwheeler »

Osiris454 wrote:RE: Thanks Paul. I appreciate the help. :)

I definitely think repair lasers would be 'cheating' if they were cheap and easy to get to. Making them expensive and hard to find seemed like a better idea.

Auto Prep Ships:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=252575

I haven't tried this one yet but since the last update was before v3.0 was released I'm not to optimistic about it working. It's also a bit more than I was looking for.


Mobile Ship Repairs:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=221081

This was the one I was having trouble with. I seemed to work OK but when I tried to put 2 repair lasers in one of the Mistral Super Freighter's turrets, I could not control the ship anymore. It also caused conflicts with CMOD4 as weapons like the HEPT reverted to the vanilla stats. Repair lasers required a LONG time to build and you could only get 2 of them at a time while costing about 500k each. It seemed like a fair trade off.


Marine Repairs:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=221116

Last update was in 2009. Not sure if it works. I generally don't do the marine boarding thing.


Nanite Hull Repairs:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=243418

Last update was for v2.7. Not sure if it works. No repair lasers and the ships could 'heal' themselves. It was close but it felt like cheating.




1. The range of the Flak Artillery Array listed on the weapon stat sheet seems incorrect. The range in-game is about 1.75km. On the sheet it's listed at nearly 8Km. I think this would have to do with the lifetime of the projectile being only .5 seconds.

2. The Ion Disruptor it say's that it's a 'Flash Beam', but what does that mean? When I use it, it's just a blue projectile with a long trail.
Well the second one on your list must add a tlasers, which is why it overrides cmod weapons values.

Ill have a look at the others when I get a chance, but perhaps an optional addon for the srm is the best way to go.

The stats sheets in the main post are from an older version so are not correct. The guy who made them hasn't been around recently so ill remove them with the next release.

The ion disruptor should be exactly the same as it is in vanilla. It should be a zigzag beam. If you're not seeing that then another mod is interfering.
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Sam L.R. Griffiths
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Post by Sam L.R. Griffiths »

paulwheeler wrote:
Osiris454 wrote:...
Well the second one on your list must add a tlasers, which is why it overrides cmod weapons values.

Ill have a look at the others when I get a chance, but perhaps an optional addon for the srm is the best way to go.

The stats sheets in the main post are from an older version so are not correct. The guy who made them hasn't been around recently so ill remove them with the next release.

The ion disruptor should be exactly the same as it is in vanilla. It should be a zigzag beam. If you're not seeing that then another mod is interfering.
AWRM includes an ammo based ship mountable Terran Repair Laser (uses Hull Plating as ammo) priced at around 300k. It should be easy to merge AWRM v0.19 with CMOD v4.3 - just install the the AWRM mod and copy the CMOD v4.3 TLaser/TBullet/TMissile entries into the AWRM v0.19 TLaser/TBullet/TMissile extracted files. At some point I will release a patch for AWRM v0.19 with the CMOD v4.3 entries pre-merged and the AWRM kit rebalanced against CMOD v4.3.
Lenna (aka [SRK] The_Rabbit)

"Understanding is a three edged sword... your side, their side... and the Truth!" - J.J. Sheriden, Babylon 5 S4E6 T28:55

"May god stand between you and harm in all the dark places you must walk." - Ancient Egyption Proverb

"When eating an elephant take one bite at a time" - Creighton Abrams
paulwheeler
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Post by paulwheeler »

Roger L.S. Griffiths wrote:
paulwheeler wrote:
Osiris454 wrote:...
Well the second one on your list must add a tlasers, which is why it overrides cmod weapons values.

Ill have a look at the others when I get a chance, but perhaps an optional addon for the srm is the best way to go.

The stats sheets in the main post are from an older version so are not correct. The guy who made them hasn't been around recently so ill remove them with the next release.

The ion disruptor should be exactly the same as it is in vanilla. It should be a zigzag beam. If you're not seeing that then another mod is interfering.
AWRM includes an ammo based ship mountable Terran Repair Laser (uses Hull Plating as ammo) priced at around 300k. It should be easy to merge AWRM v0.19 with CMOD v4.3 - just install the the AWRM mod and copy the CMOD v4.3 TLaser/TBullet/TMissile entries into the AWRM v0.19 TLaser/TBullet/TMissile extracted files. At some point I will release a patch for AWRM v0.19 with the CMOD v4.3 entries pre-merged and the AWRM kit rebalanced against CMOD v4.3.
That sounds like a good idea... Adding ammo to it is great as then you're not getting something for nothing. Seems like a good compromise for allowing easy repairing without it being too much of a cheat.

I was thinking that this sounds more like something Otas would come up with though.
Delta417
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Post by Delta417 »

Im just waiting for a mod that makes the beam weapons insanely deadly! Before I started using Cmod, I had edited my own files and changed the damage of a beam weapon to about 500,000 for both shields and hull. I also changed their fire rate to 1/minute. Is there a way to edit the "Cmod" files for myself and change damage for beam weapons?
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Sam L.R. Griffiths
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Post by Sam L.R. Griffiths »

Delta417 wrote:Im just waiting for a mod that makes the beam weapons insanely deadly! Before I started using Cmod, I had edited my own files and changed the damage of a beam weapon to about 500,000 for both shields and hull. I also changed their fire rate to 1/minute. Is there a way to edit the "Cmod" files for myself and change damage for beam weapons?
For a mod with "insanely deadly" beam weapons, AWRM may meet your criteria (Most powerful AWRM beam weapon does vanilla PPC class damage per second). As for modifying CMOD, you will need to use XEditor 2, browse the CMOD CAT file explicitly and either modify the TLasers/TBullets files in situ OR extract them and edit the values in the extracted version.
Lenna (aka [SRK] The_Rabbit)

"Understanding is a three edged sword... your side, their side... and the Truth!" - J.J. Sheriden, Babylon 5 S4E6 T28:55

"May god stand between you and harm in all the dark places you must walk." - Ancient Egyption Proverb

"When eating an elephant take one bite at a time" - Creighton Abrams
Olazabal
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Taking advantage of beam weapons

Post by Olazabal »

Hey Guys,

I've got a quick question: Since we now have beautiful beam weapons like the Ion Cannon and Plasma Beam Cannon, how can I make total use of the fire power without firing manually from the turrets? Are scripts like MARS or MEFOS enabling the turrets for continues fire?

It takes 8 PBC's ca. 35 seconds taking down 2GJ of shield with continues fire. But 95 seconds when fired automatically.
paulwheeler
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Re: Taking advantage of beam weapons

Post by paulwheeler »

Olazabal wrote:Hey Guys,

I've got a quick question: Since we now have beautiful beam weapons like the Ion Cannon and Plasma Beam Cannon, how can I make total use of the fire power without firing manually from the turrets? Are scripts like MARS or MEFOS enabling the turrets for continues fire?

It takes 8 PBC's ca. 35 seconds taking down 2GJ of shield with continues fire. But 95 seconds when fired automatically.
Continuous firing of the beams (as happens when you fire manually) is a bug in the game and I consider it a bit of a cheat.

The beams are balanced with fire rates and damage so that they do nearly as much damage as PPC and PSP, with huge range advantages and the "instant hit" ability of beams.

The beams are getting a slight tweak in the next release. The PBC and FBC have had their fire rates increased slightly and beam durations reduced to make them a little more effective.
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Sam L.R. Griffiths
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Re: Taking advantage of beam weapons

Post by Sam L.R. Griffiths »

paulwheeler wrote:
Olazabal wrote:Hey Guys,

I've got a quick question: Since we now have beautiful beam weapons like the Ion Cannon and Plasma Beam Cannon, how can I make total use of the fire power without firing manually from the turrets? Are scripts like MARS or MEFOS enabling the turrets for continues fire?

It takes 8 PBC's ca. 35 seconds taking down 2GJ of shield with continues fire. But 95 seconds when fired automatically.
Continuous firing of the beams (as happens when you fire manually) is a bug in the game and I consider it a bit of a cheat.
My understanding is that the so called "continuous firing of beams" is just the view of the carrier beam and not the bullets which do the actual damage. It is also my understanding that the AI does not necessarily fire turretted weapons at maximum refire rate, which in turn would mean that the rate of damage would be reduced (I believe there are some scripts that attempt to resolve this in one way or another).

The apparent tripling of time would be because the rate of damage after deducting the target shield recharge rate has been reduced to about one third. For example:
  • Shield damage rate of 100k/s
    and a target shield recharge rate of 70k/s
    with a drop in effective refire rate to say 80%
    would result in an effective damage rate of 80k/s or only 10k/s over the recharge
    compared with 30k/s when fired manually/continously.
These values are a simple illustration and not related to any values taken from the game, but the concept is still valid.
Lenna (aka [SRK] The_Rabbit)

"Understanding is a three edged sword... your side, their side... and the Truth!" - J.J. Sheriden, Babylon 5 S4E6 T28:55

"May god stand between you and harm in all the dark places you must walk." - Ancient Egyption Proverb

"When eating an elephant take one bite at a time" - Creighton Abrams
paulwheeler
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Re: Taking advantage of beam weapons

Post by paulwheeler »

Roger L.S. Griffiths wrote:
paulwheeler wrote:
Olazabal wrote:Hey Guys,

I've got a quick question: Since we now have beautiful beam weapons like the Ion Cannon and Plasma Beam Cannon, how can I make total use of the fire power without firing manually from the turrets? Are scripts like MARS or MEFOS enabling the turrets for continues fire?

It takes 8 PBC's ca. 35 seconds taking down 2GJ of shield with continues fire. But 95 seconds when fired automatically.
Continuous firing of the beams (as happens when you fire manually) is a bug in the game and I consider it a bit of a cheat.
My understanding is that the so called "continuous firing of beams" is just the view of the carrier beam and not the bullets which do the actual damage. It is also my understanding that the AI does not necessarily fire turretted weapons at maximum refire rate, which in turn would mean that the rate of damage would be reduced (I believe there are some scripts that attempt to resolve this in one way or another).

The apparent tripling of time would be because the rate of damage after deducting the target shield recharge rate has been reduced to about one third. For example:
  • Shield damage rate of 100k/s
    and a target shield recharge rate of 70k/s
    with a drop in effective refire rate to say 80%
    would result in an effective damage rate of 80k/s or only 10k/s over the recharge
    compared with 30k/s when fired manually/continously.
These values are a simple illustration and not related to any values taken from the game, but the concept is still valid.
I my tests (which admittedly was a while ago), the continuous firing seemed to also mean continuous damage. Also the beam keeps firing even when the laser energy has run out. This is why I took all beams out of main guns in the SRM.

The only thing that slows down firing rate from turrets is if the turrets turn rate cant keep up with the target. Otherwise, they certainly seem to me to be firing at the correct rate.
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Post by paulwheeler »

UPDATE RELEASED v4.4
----------------------------

- PBC + FBC – slight reduction in beam durations.
- ISR – Further reduction in rate of fire and bullet speed. Reduced hit box so its less effective against fighters.
- Added rep requirements for all missiles that were missing them - for use with scripts where these
missiles are available for purchase.
- Added weapons dealers AL plugin.
- Added new Terran medium weapon – Fusion Pulse Disruptor
- Updated factory pack with forges for FPD and the EMR/FPD compatibility pack to add FPD to vanilla ships.
- PRG + PBE + FAA + CFA + HEPT – increased hit box so they are more effective against fighters.
- CFA + FBL – Removed fragmentation flag as it was pointless. They don’t actually get created unless the bullet misses its target so they are just a waste of CPU cycles. Both gain a little damage to compensate.
- Removed hit effects from all beams except Gamma Kyons to increase frames.


Please make sure you update ALL your addon packs with this update.

The full factory pack is required to run the Weapons Dealers script if you are not already running the SRM.

Make sure you are not in the same sector as any EMR forges as their model has been changed slightly in this release.

If you are running any SRM trails packs please make sure these are updated before you install this release.

Two scripts from the previous version are now obsolete. Please remove these from your scripts directory:

setup.emr2.cmod.xml

setup.emr3.cmod.xml
Last edited by paulwheeler on Tue, 11. Jan 11, 10:04, edited 1 time in total.
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Sam L.R. Griffiths
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Post by Sam L.R. Griffiths »

paulwheeler wrote:UPDATE RELEASED v4.4
----------------------------

- Added new Terran medium weapon – Fusion Pulse Disruptor
For the sake of those of us who are interested in creating CMOD compatability patches for their own weapon mods I have a couple of questions...
  1. Are you planning to add more lasers/missiles
  2. Is your mod sensitive to the position of said lasers/missiles
If the answer to the above is yes, then I propose reserving a number of entries (say 10-20) in the TLasers/TBullets/TMissiles files so that other mods can be merged with future versions of CMOD without massivly impacting on scripts/wares lists.

Many thanks in advance.
Lenna (aka [SRK] The_Rabbit)

"Understanding is a three edged sword... your side, their side... and the Truth!" - J.J. Sheriden, Babylon 5 S4E6 T28:55

"May god stand between you and harm in all the dark places you must walk." - Ancient Egyption Proverb

"When eating an elephant take one bite at a time" - Creighton Abrams
paulwheeler
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Post by paulwheeler »

I am not planning on adding any more weapons.

The mod is not sensitive to the position in tlasers. However any change in position will require a game restart. The only thing that will be sensitive is the scripts to add emr and fpd to docks and the weapons dealer script. These would only need very basic changes to work with another mod.

I'm not willing to add blank entries before the current cmod entries as this would force a game restart.
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Sam L.R. Griffiths
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Post by Sam L.R. Griffiths »

paulwheeler wrote:I am not planning on adding any more weapons.

The mod is not sensitive to the position in tlasers. However any change in position will require a game restart. The only thing that will be sensitive is the scripts to add emr and fpd to docks and the weapons dealer script. These would only need very basic changes to work with another mod.

I'm not willing to add blank entries before the current cmod entries as this would force a game restart.
Thanks for the quick response, I was not proposing you adding any reserved entries before the current ones.

As insurance against merging with future versions of CMOD and other mods I will be doing the following in AWRM:-
  1. Introducing a 20 slot reserved area (X3Editor Index 40-59) in the TLasers for existing mods like CMOD
  2. Introducing a 20 slot reserved area (X3Editor Index 46-65) in the TBullets for existing mods like CMOD
  3. Reserving a 50 slot area in TLasers for AWRM (X3Editor Index 60-109)
  4. Reserving a 50 slot area in TBullets for AWRM (X3Editor Index 66-115)
Doing something like this should help to reduce the work for mod mergers. I am considering a similar convention for TMissiles.
Lenna (aka [SRK] The_Rabbit)

"Understanding is a three edged sword... your side, their side... and the Truth!" - J.J. Sheriden, Babylon 5 S4E6 T28:55

"May god stand between you and harm in all the dark places you must walk." - Ancient Egyption Proverb

"When eating an elephant take one bite at a time" - Creighton Abrams
Goncyn
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Post by Goncyn »

Thanks, paulwheeler, look like good changes. I've been having an internal debate for the past week over whether I should be "that guy" and suggest a nerf to the ISR, so I am glad you took the decision away from me. It really was too good -- made fighters a complete non-issue for any ship that could mount a few ISRs. As soon as they were in range, they'd be vaporized in seconds. I'll have to try it myself tonight to see how much worse the new version is.
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Post by paulwheeler »

Roger L.S. Griffiths wrote:
paulwheeler wrote:I am not planning on adding any more weapons.

The mod is not sensitive to the position in tlasers. However any change in position will require a game restart. The only thing that will be sensitive is the scripts to add emr and fpd to docks and the weapons dealer script. These would only need very basic changes to work with another mod.

I'm not willing to add blank entries before the current cmod entries as this would force a game restart.
Thanks for the quick response, I was not proposing you adding any reserved entries before the current ones.

As insurance against merging with future versions of CMOD and other mods I will be doing the following in AWRM:-
  1. Introducing a 20 slot reserved area (X3Editor Index 40-59) in the TLasers for existing mods like CMOD
  2. Introducing a 20 slot reserved area (X3Editor Index 46-65) in the TBullets for existing mods like CMOD
  3. Reserving a 50 slot area in TLasers for AWRM (X3Editor Index 60-109)
  4. Reserving a 50 slot area in TBullets for AWRM (X3Editor Index 66-115)
Doing something like this should help to reduce the work for mod mergers. I am considering a similar convention for TMissiles.
That sounds like a good idea. I usually add placeholders in for types files, but with TLasers, Ulfus had already put the GPPC in after the vanilla entries.

I think its a big limitation of the scripting engine the way it is locked to the line an entry is in in a types file rather than looking for the ID or some other reference. The Missions Director has no such limitation so is much more mod friendly.

I doubt I'll add any more lasers though. The only thing I'm considering at the moment is something along the lines of your ammo based repair laser. I think that was really inspired!

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