[S] Race Patrols v1.43 22/01/09 ; Military logic + less CPU load

[ThisIsHarsh]

Forgot a suggestion. It would be good if the assault ships jumped in docked to a TM (initially, then M7, M1). Even better create loaded TM (or other carrier) at nearest military base (there's a script command to find it), load it with jumpdrive and ecells and have it 'properly' jump into the sector...

[paulms1980]

dude i really want this script as the thousands of military ships that are swarming in the main sectors im using are doin my headin!
BUT im already running the reduced weapons effect mini mod
i havnt a clue how 2 merge mini mods, so what do i hav 2 do exactly with this 1 to use them both?

[ttl]

paulms: You can have several mods installed as fake patches. They won't overlap as long as they mod different files. Thus you can run the mod here with any other mod that doesn't modify the Jobs file. Just follow the install instructions: name the mod files one higher number than the highest that is there.

In regard to Race Response Fleets, I never liked the massive and overbearing power of the response fleets, not to mention the increased CPU load. But it's a beautifully done script, if you're into that. I felt it created too massive conflicts too easily, and kept race sectors too safe, to the point of it being totally pointless for the player to defend his own assets. Which this is at a risk of doing, too. Using both (once RRF gets ported) can have unexpected consequences, as RRF at least used to hook to any capital ships flying about, thus totally breaking the logic of the assault ships, when it interlopes on one. If this can be prevented, with say a local variable on the ships, I can make this combatible with RRF, but we cross that bridge when we get there.

As for using carriers at military bases, it's possible, but not entirely simple. If I have that kind of time and will to put to this, instead of neat tricks like carriers (the ships still come in and do their job), I'd rather focus into assault logics, to do what I can to improve the hostile aspects of the Xverse. It's a fair suggestion, however, thank you.

Running scripts on every single station and then calling in assaults is unecessarily complicated. It is a way to tell invasion ships to the patrols, but it's horribly complicated, and potentially unreliable, at that. There has got to be a simpler way.

[ttl]

Version 1.3 out. See OP for changes.

Next in line, the notifications to player. That will make this need a page file.

Before that, though, I'd need some feedback on how it turns out with the invasions. Please tell me how you see the patrols behave, when race vs. race invasions happen (Argon vs. Paranid and/or Split vs. Boron). Will they assault the invaders, and call for backup, as they should?

[OOZ662]

Is there not supposed to be a nopatrol_nociv.dat in 1.3? The package only contains a .cat and spk.

[lLongshanks]

Erm i just tried it out and for no reason a paranid patrol went red and started attacking my ships.

I reloaded 3 times just to be sure and each time they still went red.
So i removed and and now they are blue.

Other add ons i got are
MARS
Complex cleaner
Easy boarding.

[ttl]

OOZ:
The mod remains the same, only scripts updated. Will include the .dat , though, thanks for the notice.

ILongshanks:

The patrols attack ships that have the race of the patrols set as hostile, in order to respond to the invasions. The player should be an exception, however. Sounds like something could have gone wrong there. To help me debug, please check the following :
-Does any one of your ships (in the sector the attack took place in) have Paranid set as hostile?
-Did the patrol have name "Patrol .shiptype." or "Patrol Paranid .shiptype."
-Did you manually run the update script ?
-If you can nail down when they turn hostile, what happens if you remove your ships from the sector before that?

Please also tell some more of the general conditions under which this happened. What type of ships you have in the sector? Which one they attack? Are there other hostiles (pirate, xenon, khaak, yaki) present in the sector? Is there some missions activity going on?

Thank you.

[lLongshanks]

My ship was a minstrel didnt have paranid set as enemy.
Red ships where Patrol Paranid .shiptype."
I watched the sector after the first time. The ships just appear out of the fog of war and are red. There was a few nemisis in the sector that was blue.

None of my warships was in that sector and there was no sign of any other hostiles. I also tried comming them but only got the option for surrender.

Could be what i did wrong.
I installed it using the plugin manager.

I dont think they could still be annoyed at me for "borrowing" a few ships a couple days ago. This was before i instill the plugin

[ttl]

The patrols might get pissed at you, if some of your ships got pissed to Paranid. Or if they have "show as hostile if hostile to me" turned on, and one of Paranid ships is hostile to them. For example, a ship left hostile after a "borrowing" session. Should not, but, things are tricky that way.

I have added an additional safeguard to prevent them going hostile on the player, for water under the bridge, so to say. Mini-update released to 1.31.

Also, fixed the cat/dat issue with the download.

[lLongshanks]

Cool thanks.

Im sure it wasnt my ships as i dont arm my TSs and my patrol was 2 sectors away.

Ill give it another try as it was pretty nice what happened when i decided to take out them out as it was "only 3 m3s"

[ttl]

In case there are more cases of uncalled for attacks by the patrols, please report. It is possible to make the patrols not attack player at all unless notoriety is low enough, but then they will not properly react to player aggression, until it causes kill-on-sight notoriety. Thus it is a last resort, in case the friend/foe settings just like to go haywire.

A way to redeem the situation should an isolated case happen, is to manually run the script "racepatrol.changeofguard". It will start the process of replacing the patrols, with ones with default friend/foe settings. It will take upto hours to go through the entire universe, though, but soon enough the sector of red patrols will be safe again. This script is run periodically anyway, but you might have to wait upto 10hours for it to go next on its own.

[jimhsu77479]

This is looking to be a great alternative to RRF, but the thing missing now are missile/bombing ships. RRF on occassions spawned (slightly overpowered) M6's that lobbed dozens of typhoon missiles around causing general havoc and nice fireworks. Now with proper missile ships (M8/M7M's), perhaps you can do something similar?

[smbh]

Accepted a Xenon patrol mission in Paranid Prime, it spawned about 15 K/J's , ok, fps took a drop. A few minutes later the game apparently tried to summon the whole combined might of the Paranid Empire , with my poor PC hardlocking. I waited for about 10 minutes then had to kill the process. Tried the same mission a few times, same results till I disabled the Race Patrol in the AL.

[ThisIsHarsh]

Found a problem I think. I have some patrol ships just waiting at a gate in an otherwise empty sector, apparently waiting for backup ships.

Screenshots: sector map and leader's script task

[ttl]

ThisIsHarsh:
If there are no other gates or stations in the system, then yes, the patrol will "patrol" the only one available, i.e. just float near it. It is "normal". Everything seems ok by the scripts, and I don't see another station or gate on that map. Is this so? Thanks for the pics, btw, helps alot.

smbh:

Uh, yes, 15 K/Js should call for the response with a similar number of assault ships. I've never tried that kinda amounts, but it definetly should not "hardlock", i.e. not do anything, for 10 minutes. It probably would degenerate to a slideshow, though, no matter what. Can you describe what happens before? Do you see Paranid Assault ships coming in? How many destroyers? It looks as though I will need to at least cut down fighter support for the heaviest wings, so as to not generate hundredrs of ships if 15 destroyers come in. They should not all come in at once, though, but in small intervals.

This does sound like a possible bug with the heavy end of responses, though.

[smbh]

The forces were more of less equal in terms of capital ships, maybe 10-15% more of the Paranid, it was a bit hard to tell, there were more M7-6th though, from the Paranid side, while Xenon only had a handful of P's and just a couple of Q's. Just for the hell of it, I enabled god mod and went out with the dogs when it locked up again. Came back 40 minutes later, no Paranid in sight, around 20 Xenon L/M's and a smaller contingent of Argon.

So I'm not sure what to make out of it, guess I missed the big show but what I know is that disabling the Race patrol did not make it lock up.
It's not really your fault I think, since some missions like the Xenon patrol ones are obviously broken, but maybe it would be worthwhile toning down the responses to overly spawn-friendly missions like patrols till a patch is out?

[Ymarsakar]

Here's some ideas I had for the script. I would like to see a feature that allows bombers in invasions to target space stations.

The goal of an invasion could be set to destroy the closet station and then leave. Making it more of a raid than an invasion.

Interceptors and m5s can serve a more useful role in combat by intercepting bombers and taking them out before they reach the station.

This gives military attacks more logical sense in terms of their missions and attacks. It should also give the player a mini mission to complete should the player want to save the stations being attacked for economic reasons.

For more balance reasons, I believe this may require some changes in terms of the response fleets. Core sectors would receive higher reinforcements at a faster rate, while border sectors far away (not sure how much coding that would require) would receive slower reinforcements. If there is a population check per sector, that may also be used to scale the response to attacks. This would make the universe a little more dynamic and dangerous out in the border sectors but still keep the core sectors stable for trading.

[ttl]

smbh: Good, so no complete lockdown, just slowing down alot. I will put a cap on the maximum response in core sectors, and remove escorts on the destroyers that come in en masse. Could you answer a few questions to help me :
- How complete was the "lockup"? Did the music and sounds degerate to repeating a tone for 10mins (meaning loop without waits implemented), or did the FPS just drop to like 1?
- Were the assault forces (mostly) spawned before the "lockup"?
- Were you in-sector the whole time?
- Were the stations in Paranid Prime destroyed?
- Was the Argon fleet an invasion group (a large group of military xxx ships)?
- Just to make sure : There were no Paranid patrol or assaults ships left in the sector?

Ymarsakar: This script is purely defensive. What happens with attacks is beyond the scope, at least for now and for the near future. As for the balance, the cap on max. responses in core sectors would likely help some.

[xiriod]

Ok, I'm not good at scripting or such but is it possible to make the race patrols ignore ships spawned in missions? The current patrols can of course engage, but not call in reinforcements.

[smbh]

smbh: Good, so no complete lockdown, just slowing down alot. I will put a cap on the maximum response in core sectors, and remove escorts on the destroyers that come in en masse. Could you answer a few questions to help me :
- How complete was the "lockup"? Did the music and sounds degerate to repeating a tone for 10mins (meaning loop without waits implemented), or did the FPS just drop to like 1?
- Were the assault forces (mostly) spawned before the "lockup"?
- Were you in-sector the whole time?
- Were the stations in Paranid Prime destroyed?
- Was the Argon fleet an invasion group (a large group of military xxx ships)?
- Just to make sure : There were no Paranid patrol or assaults ships left in the sector?
....

It was pretty much a complete one. There was a slight delay and then dead stop with a couple seconds music loop.
Yeah, there were plenty of assault forces spawned before the lockup but to be honest I've never seen such an invasion before, with race patrol disabled, I played it through, and got over 260 million, the J's and K's were spawning everywhere.
There were 3 stations left in Paranid Prime at the end of it, with no "assault" Paranid ships but a handful of Argon ones. To be honest I did not notice exactly which ships, but I _think_ they were Novas, Centaurs and possibly the bombers (forgot the name).
Sorry if it all sounds a bit vague, the save is gone now