[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Joubarbe]

Needless to say, having my own random galaxy system changes a lot of things (for instance, the possibility to completely annihilate a faction). But I'm trying to be as non-destructive as possible, so you wouldn't have a new tutorial series to make
New economy and new jumping system are amongst the new stuff, even though the latter is currently giving me headaches.

[djmidex]

Needless to say, having my own random galaxy system changes a lot of things (for instance, the possibility to completely annihilate a faction). But I'm trying to be as non-destructive as possible, so you wouldn't have a new tutorial series to make
New economy and new jumping system are amongst the new stuff, even though the latter is currently giving me headaches.

Let me know if you need a beta tester

[Shepp]

Needless to say, having my own random galaxy system changes a lot of things (for instance, the possibility to completely annihilate a faction). But I'm trying to be as non-destructive as possible, so you wouldn't have a new tutorial series to make
New economy and new jumping system are amongst the new stuff, even though the latter is currently giving me headaches.

Could you give a couple of examples if what you have in mind?

[Joubarbe]

I could give you 112 to-do list items that I want in Mayhem 3
But let's be patient!

[Joubarbe]

Mayhem 3 Showcase #1: Jump System

[Shepp]

I like the beacon jumping idea. This is almost identical to something I posted over on the X4 page as a suggestion to add jumping into that game. My only question is wouldn't the no jump drive and no fuel requirement sort of make carrier ship's obsolete? For me the entire advantage to using a carrier is so I don't have to put a jump drive on the individual fighters and can put more missiles onto them. How about if this required a L or XL ware so that only capital class ships could jump? You could call it something like "beacon drive".

[XenonArchitect7]

So I've been playing a lot of Mayhem lately and I've been wondering why there is such a speed difference between the Kha'ak Cluster and the Kha'ak Corvettes/Destroyers. The battles always play out the same for me: The corvettes rush forwards and I engage them in the first battle, and then my fleet moves on to the clusters, which are always left behind in the dust by the other Kha'ak ships so they can't offer any support for the rest of their attack. They proceed to get mopped up pretty easily after the main Kha'ak vanguard is destroyed.

So shouldn't the clusters have a speed equal to that of the other Kha'ak ships? That way the fleet doesn't split itself in half for each attack. I've already made the changes for my own personal game (made clusters and corvettes go around 120m/s) but I was just wondering if there was a good reasoning behind the decision.

PS: The upcoming jump beacon mechanics look very cool. I imagine that took a ton of work to accomplish and a lot of script re-writing.

[Joubarbe]

@Shepp: Carriers will be less important, and that's really not a problem to me. Still, there are three points worth mentioning:
1/ Tactically, it can be a good idea to have the possibility to unload a ton of ships at a specific point, at the same time.
2/ With the new jump system, having a ship to retreat to, like a safe point, will probably be helpful.
3/ Hull will regenerate over time if the environment (station, sector or ship) is of the same race.

@XenonArchitect7: I didn't give much love to Kha'aks to be honest. You're talking about "decisions", but that's just their default values, or some modifications I blindly applied to all ships.
Yeah... The jump system was... "fun" to design... (Jack08 did the hardest part). It was about going against the engine, and I'm trying to really reduce these kind of mechanics.

[nebbish]

I was just about to start a new game but now you got such a major update in the works I feel like I need to wait that bit longer.

New jumping looks and sounds awesome. Sounds like a tactical dream. I always hated you could just retreat anywhere at any time with zero consequences. Or attack from one side the map to the other. So you given us one spoiler.

Now what did you mean by new economy??

(Pokes the panda for more information)

[Edna]

Hi Joubarbe! I wrote a review on ModDB today, which brought me to the character limit. There is so much to praise about Mayhem (and Litcube's in general). Earlier this morning I wanted to continue the review, but I guess the best place for that would be here as for the content I'll refer to.

I feel like you have a good knowledge about player mentality and modern game design philosophy and designed many changes of X3 and LU to adjust to them, which is pretty cool. Especially the emphasis on using less money and more resources as well as giving resources more use is pretty well done. I also like the new/improved/revamped features like boarding and the perk system of the sanctuaries. Generally limiting empire-building to your own sectors is a great twist as it is the only reason to actually go down the route of building your own empire including fleet and defenses and economy.

While I admittedly didn't check the previous 450+ pages of feedback for constructive suggestions already having been given, I hope you don't mind me listing some things that may or may not could use your skillful attention:

Boarding Repercussions

• I'm currently at day 4 of my latest playthrough attempt and, thanks to the helpful suggestions of Darth Fiscus on Youtube about boarding, I got my hands to a few M2 Dreadnoughts after going up the entire boarding ladder. Generally a pretty cool, fun and entertaining new boarding system, a lot less inconvenient and being able to name your guys makes you grow attached to them. However, I noticed something rather questionable. When you build up a satellite network, you obviously have more insight about allied space than over hostile space. That means, you have an easier time finding boardable ships of your allies instead of looking for hostile ships to take over. There is a limitation to that, of course, as the boardable ship needs to be hostile to you. What I do is set my turrets to Attack My Target, set my ship's IFF to hostile to the target and let the turrets do their job to deshield and provoke the target, which turns it hostile in the end, so I can launch ma bois.
  
  For example, in my playthrough (2. Quickstart) I set Paranids and ATF/Terrans to hostile, permanent war. On the other hand, I am allied with Argons, Borons, Split and Teladi. My reputation with my allies is 6 and above. So when I do my technique, I rarely lose notable values of reputation. Since the ship does not get destroyed but boarded, there is no reputation repercussion. Effectively, that means that boarding your ally's ships is more convenient than boarding those of your enemies (as you need to locate those first and you rarely can ambush them as effectively as you can ambush your ally).
  
  I believe there are two ways to deal with that. One would be to force reputational repercussions in case of stealing allied ships. I'm not a fan of that, because that just causes the player to take another mission after doing the boarding launch, to increase the reputation again (same with piracy, by the way). Reputation grinding is always boring and repetitive, in my opinion.
  
  The other option would be to disable boarding for everything that is, diplomatically, green, meaning it works for only neutral and hostiles. Entirely. Not sure about how realistically that can be done.
  
  That being said, while I love to have my Ocelotes, Excaliburs and Megalodongers around me and capture Xenon sectors with them, I would prefer if there was a third option, one for people with Reputation Rank 10 with a race. That would be buying an existing allied ship from the race you are Rank 10 with, for a good amount of cash. First of all, that would add some more spice to the diplomatic menu, and also would give credits another nice function for those that have too many. Of course, those that have less credits and more economy can instead just build their favourite reseached ships. Still, I think buying at least capital ships (since you can buy smaller ones already from the companies) would be nifty, while not being able to capture allied ships means you are going to focus on boarding hostile capitals.

Excess Scraps

• The boarding feature revamp is awesome as hell. But after setting up your 50 Elite Marines, you will get a huge amount of scraps and can't do anything with them. I think it would be cool if they could be recycled into the components of Desintegrator Rifles of their respective factory.

Research Additions

• The scan/research system is pretty awesome and I had a lot of fun doing scans, almost like achievement hunting. Once you are out of the early game, there is often no need to scan any ship anymore, since you already scanned or even boarded the ships you favor (in my case, the Kestrel for M5, the Springblossom M6, the Acinonyx M7 and the Aquilo M7M and the Ocelote M2 as well as the Baldric TS and the Elephant TL).
  
  Of course, that is personal preference, but after having those, I see no reason to scan or research any new ships. Research then covers the remaining boarding buffs, and when that is done, I just pick the next best high cost research, just for the research win condition. Boarding also takes away the need to scan. While it was probably intended to be something of convenience, it sort of takes something away from that feature.
  
  I remember in X-Tension there were job offers from NPCs to "take pictures" of ships for a magazine (basically a euphemistic way of getting you to spy on other races). Maybe this could get turned into a mission again? Maybe for the companies. Not that their mission board is particularly intriguing, as the declaration of permanent wars already puts you at 10.000 reputation with them. I'm honestly unsure on how to make better use of the feature other than this.
  
  As for research additions themselves, would it be possible to add one singular perk research at a very high research point cost? Or, if not that, then maybe researches for complex blueprints or the production of jump beacons (pardon me if that is already a reward of a plot, I am not through everything at this point. Ascension Level 4, no Khaak progression, currently hunting OCV stations, no global OCV attacks, not far in the company stuff).

Swamped Universe

• As mentioned earlier, I'm at day 4 now. Thanks to the joy of boarding, I stopped claiming bailed ships. Generally, these were a massive help in the early game and it was fun to set up the satellite network to find them, then sneak in and get them. I do think the rate of bailing is pretty okay the way it is, but when you stop claiming them, they just pile up everywhere in space for long times. I think increasing the amount of salvagers would be good, as I do think it is more comfortable to simply buy ships off those companies in the mid-game (since in the early game, you rarely can afford it). I generally like the idea of being able to buy smaller ships (up to M6/TM) from those companies while being able to buy capital ships from Rank 10 allies for huge moneys.
  
  The alternative would be the ability of setting up auto claimers, but I think that would be game-breaking, looking at the amount of ships you can get if you have an Elephant with QT-Upgraded Jumpdrive to tug ships from all over the map if you have a good network.

AI Issues

• That's purely subjective and might be a wrong perception on my end, but I get the feeling that the Universal Traders and Dock Agents are not bright at all, in fact they have become worse than in LU and Vanilla, iirc.
  
  Situation A: A UT is launched in the Omicron Channel. Half of the map are visible via network. The UT is fully equipped. It pretends to browse through possible trades, then goes to standby. This happens rarely to single UTs and more often the more UTs are launched. I feel like I can have only up to five UTs active without them going to standby again rather quickly despite many good trades being available (like buying Energy Cells cheap and selling them for big moneys). I do not recall having had this issue in LU or Vanilla, but then again, Vanilla and LU were offering more trades, especially for high-tech products like QTs, CCs and MCs.
  
  Situation B: My dock agents and UTs get attacked in other systems. They have the ability to jump, have energy cells with them and are allowed to use the jump drive by default. They instead flee to closest station instead of jumping to another, secure system. They quickly die because they are trading ships and those are generally not good at fighting.
  
  It is a bit straining to set up these ships over and over again, although, thanks to the Dock Agent system, it is a lot less painful, which is good. I just wonder why they are behaving like they do.

Recycling en masse

• If you ever boarded a missile frigate or other big capital, you will know what I mean. I'd love to see a change of the recycling system that does not recycle one item per click/enter button. I am facing Chaffs and Flail amounts in the thousands sometimes, and would prefer to not liquify them into credits but recycle them for my RGWs and Hammers.

EDIT
Perks

• As for the perks, I think perks to alter/trade the sector values would be cool. When you have many sanctuaries, there is only so much to do with the ones you have. So I like to set up unused sanctuaries as, well, city stations. So I would like to see perks that nullify research/take the research slot away and instead offer more population space either on the sanctuary itself or as a habitat dock. Nice for taxing or labor. On the other way around, I think it would be cool to lower the pop count in trade for research points or station slots, or an additional dock slot (although I don't know whether that would be abused for a second Goner Temple).
  
  EDIT 2
  Additional Weapon Platform slots

I think that is all I could think of. I hope you keep up the great work. Litcube and you did something incredible here, and I'd like to give another shoutout to Darth Fiscus for his YouTube videos and helpful comment responses!

[Joubarbe]

@nebbish: You should start a new game, Mayhem 3 is not coming soon.

@Edna: I saw your review, thank you! I'm not going to answer each of your point. I'm aware of most of those problems (and you're describing them pretty well) and I think Mayhem 3 will address pretty much all of them. Just a word about boarding: Factions will answer by raiding your assets after each boarding attempt (a bit more dangerous every time). It's a simple and very efficient way of fixing multiple problems concerning boarding.

[Edna]

By the way, is the OCV Station Scanner save-scum proof? You'd easily save a perk slot by taking the perk, checking for OCV stations and if none are in range, you could just reload and take a different perk, or is the OCV station only generated in case of the perk getting activated?

[Hector0x]

I'd say blatant exploits don't need to be fixed
It's a non competitive singleplayer environment. You always have the choice to not do something if it feels wrong.

[sataricon]

Can i ask a question?
I played X3 Terran conflict about 30 hours and i manged to start 3 factories and nearly 10 universal traders and got some combat.
Didn't do any of the plot missions though.

I find the game somehow easy in term of getting cash "as of now my UT and factories bring me alot of money.

If i get this mod will i be able to Trade to my heart's leisure with things like UT and factories?

How hard is this mod compared to a the Vanilla and can a noob like me survive in it without raising my blood level?

Thank you.

[Joubarbe]

3 factories, hmm... Hector0x, how many do you have in your current Mayhem game?

But yeah, this mod is harder, I won't lie. Would be interesting to see if you "survive"; I don't see why not. Know that since a few months back, there is a global difficulty level in the Personal Console, and also an Easy Economy toggle.

[sataricon]

I admit i just started playing the game 5 days ago or something and i love it.
i love the ship design and the feeling of each race.
I actually find the design more distinct than say games like Elite and Star citizen "but that is a whole can of worms"
I even find the ship look better than they do in X4 foundation.


I didn't do too much combat though and i feel that Albion Prelude is more about large scale war than Terran Conflict.
I guess i can give Albion Prelude a play through.

Is there a guide on what to do "and how to do it" beside the one done by Darth Fiscus.
I've learned many things from CDRdave so thankx to him for the amazing effort he have done.

And thank you Joubarbe for all your hard work.

[Hector0x]

how many do you have in your current Mayhem game?

Too much. Your mod must be broken.

[Joubarbe]

Hmm... If you had so many stations, I guess the following tool would be useful



EDIT: If anyone can think of another filter, I'm all ears.

[sataricon]

Why do i need the no-steam exe file?
Can't i run it from steam like normal?

[Joubarbe]

I don't recommend it. Once you install LU and Mayhem, you won't be able to restore your original folder. Besides, if Egosoft patches something, it will erase some mod files. And you also can mess things up by installing the bonus package.