Hector0x wrote: ↑Fri, 3. Jan 20, 19:35
Does the problem affect DA and SA or just one of them? And do they eventually get the stuff after those 10 min?
I am using DAs only and it affects all of them, yeah. And they eventually start moving - it's just that the searching for sellers part takes a while. Seems to take similar times in and out of SETA
Incidentally - I followed the same videos that are in your signature . If you are the creator, awesome work!
captainyesterday555 wrote: ↑Fri, 3. Jan 20, 19:38
What type station are the SA's working for, and what resources are lacking? Are you possibly funneling resources from third-party stations to your sanctuaries with your Dock Agents and inadvertently making them unavailable for the SA's?
They are working for the Sanctuary, and importing scruffing/ore/energy cells etc from Trade.
Also - these are dock agent ships, set with the Trade - Dock Agent command, and homebased at the sanctuary. I haven't set up any station agents.
Stormbuilder wrote: ↑Fri, 3. Jan 20, 19:55
They are working for the Sanctuary, and importing scruffing/ore/energy cells etc from Trade.
Also - these are dock agent ships, set with the Trade - Dock Agent command, and homebased at the sanctuary. I haven't set up any station agents.
Thanks. Try to do a "Trade Product Search" from your own command console. Search for these goods based on "availability". This shows you the place where you can buy the most of these wares. Maybe all possible trading partners are running out of resources and your DA's have to wait until they've produced more. But this should only happen if you've bought a lot of this stuff, because ore and energy is widely available until you begin to seriously drain the market.
Stormbuilder wrote: ↑Fri, 3. Jan 20, 19:55
They are working for the Sanctuary, and importing scruffing/ore/energy cells etc from Trade.
Also - these are dock agent ships, set with the Trade - Dock Agent command, and homebased at the sanctuary. I haven't set up any station agents.
Thanks. Try to do a "Trade Product Search" from your own command console. Search for these goods based on "availability". This shows you the place where you can buy the most of these wares. Maybe all possible trading partners are running out of resources and your DA's have to wait until they've produced more. But this should only happen if you've bought a lot of this stuff, because ore and energy is widely available until you begin to seriously drain the market.
So, searching for Scruffin Fruits identifies 12k available 13 jumps away at 33 Cr (vs avg 44). Sanctuary is set to 20 jumps range.
I waited for about 4 minutes, but this is still what I am looking at:
EDIT: I noticed that in the encyclopedia, "best buy and best sell" softwares are said to reduce searching time. Will try to install them and report back on my findings.
SECOND EDIT: Yup, now the "searching" phase only lasted for about 20 seconds. Massive change.
I found another strange behavior. If I claim a Xenon sector and set a M5 ship to scan the asteroids, it will just fly away from the sector unless I set the ship to be friendly to Xenons. I think the scan script just avoid sectors with Xenon in their name-title.
So if I understand "Opportune Deliveries" correctly, it means that when my DA goes to pick up (let's say) Silicon Wafers from the mine, it will also deliver energy cells at the same time.
Amazing stuff. Two questions however:
1) Does that mean that I should prioritize Acquire jobs higher than Distribute jobs? Since the Acquire can fulful the distirbute part in some cases, I don't want a free DA to first check up Distributes, right?
2) Will an opportune deliver provide multiple resources, or is it limited to a single one?
It's incredible how much this system improves on the underlying abilities...it takes a bit of time to figure out but it's worth the effort.
EDIT: unfortunately I noticed that sometimes the coordination is a bit off. Right now I have 4 traders going to take away Silicon Wafers from a mine, and all of them are carrying full shipment of Energy Cells...but unfortunate the mine will only be able to take two of those, so trader 3 and 4 will have to go back as they won't have spare cargo space.
seularts wrote: ↑Wed, 1. Jan 20, 10:15
I found a Shield Exploit. When my capital ships are low on their Shields, I just park them in the Sanctuary and un-equip and re-equip the shields and they are magically back at 100% and ready to redeploy into action. The easiest solution is to make all shields be at 0% when you equip them on a ship so they slowly recharge, just like they do on Orbital Bases.
seularts wrote: ↑Wed, 1. Jan 20, 10:15
I found a Shield Exploit. When my capital ships are low on their Shields, I just park them in the Sanctuary and un-equip and re-equip the shields and they are magically back at 100% and ready to redeploy into action. The easiest solution is to make all shields be at 0% when you equip them on a ship so they slowly recharge, just like they do on Orbital Bases.
Super awesome. Did you also have time to look into the exploit of stealing sectors from Dirty Wars that I mentioned above?
I believe I found another interesting exploit. If a race is waging a dirty war against the yaki/pirates/xenon and I am in the sector when they destroy the last station (and there are no more enemy ships in the sectors by that point), I can quickly snatch it right under their noses (by spamming the claim button). The messages displays that the race took over the sector even if I already claimed it and set my own sanctuary and then the message changes and says I am the new owner. I'm not sure if this is by design or if it takes a bit of time for an NPC race to claim the sector and place their own station in there.
Yeah, well... Don't spam the claim key This will change in Mayhem 3, and these little things tend to consume a lot more time than I first anticipate (the shield fix was harder to fix than I thought).
Joubarbe wrote: ↑Sun, 5. Jan 20, 21:56
Yeah, well... Don't spam the claim key This will change in Mayhem 3, and these little things tend to consume a lot more time than I first anticipate (the shield fix was harder to fix than I thought).
Also, would it be possible to remove or increase the 75km range from the center of the sector when placing orbital platforms. I tend to put my sanctuaries next to Ore Mines that are on asteroids that generate way out of that range and I kind of am left defenseless. Or maybe set the 75km range to be relative to the position of the sanctuary instead of the center of the sector. This is just a mild inconvenience but it does feel very restricted since I can place my sanctuary anywhere else other than the center and there are some huge sectors in the game that makes them difficult to defend against invasions.
I finally took a big decision in Mayhem 3: all ships will have these equipment pre-installed (including Space Suit), no matter where they're coming from. Most equipment, such as Special Command Software, will be totally removed from the game. Why not removing all of them completely? Because they actually have some hardcoded features (for instance, Combat Command Software MK2 allows you to set Auto-Aim to ON). However, these equipment will not show in cargo, only in the ship information menu, in the pre-installed equipment section. That should make things easier, and avoid always have to look at the encyclopedia to know what softwares are needed to run a specific command (Mayhem 3 should generally be friendlier than Mayhem 2, and maybe Vanilla).
I've also rearranged most of the commands. Now you have a new category of commands named "Workers":
These are the automated ships that you and the AI will use (same scripts for both). That's actually one of my focus in Mayhem 3: make scripts for AI that the player can use, and not the contrary. In my opinion, that's how a credible "semi-realistic" universe can be achieved. Same thing will apply to military ships: it will be possible to assign each of your fleet to a "sub-fleet" that is automated and used by the AI, such as Rearguard, Battle Group, Task Force, etc. That will allow you to have a "Defense Grid", like ADS has (without the cheaty behavior).
Not because my game is over (far from it), but because:
1) I thought it might provide some amusement to the veteran players here to read the (mis)adventures of a total novice
2) I am about to restart the game since "I can do it so much better now"
Before doing Mayhem, I've played about 15hrs of LU - and that's pretty much it.
I shifted from LU to Mayhem because I felt that I had "solved" the game - in the sense that I had left Phanon in the dust, the OCV was expanding very slowly, and my credit growth was accelerating; so despite the fact that I had not even seen combats for M7 or above ships, I felt that it was just an inevitability to "finish" the game, and I didn't feel like grinding it out.
My first few tries of Mayhem were...problematic. I tried the Basic and the Quickstart, but I struggled with the bare basics of the mod, and I was unhappy with being far out in the corner of the map (with what I perceived as poor systems).
So I shifted to the Normal starts; the fighter ones were abject failures, the miner one was simple (in the sense that i provided an immediate boost of money) but not easy (because it takes a while).
I resolved to start again, with a trader start. I immediately sold the extra TS (too slow to be useful, and it gave me a money injection). My rough plan was:
1) Do money through manual trades
2) Claim 1st sanctuary in a decent spot asap, in order to be able to upgrade the ship with the quantum entanglement thingy and the docking computer
3) Once the manual trades get me to rank 12-13ish, switch to doing hard and very hard freight missions, as they bring tons of money
4) Stay at 1 sanctuary until the 1st OCV wave to manage the threat
5) Right after the OCV threat, expand rapidly to another 3-4 sanctuaries, and then halt expansion for another 3-4 days while I gear up
It ... kinda worked, but looking back I made so many mistakes.
The manual trade and freight missions went fine. Terran space is the best I've found for that. In terms of (max price - min price) / cargo space per unit, Terran MREs are one of the best (if not the best) trade goods. They sit at 140 (for reference, energy cells are 16, BoFu is 41 etc. I made a spreadsheet and everything). Now, usually MREs are that available at min prices, however, there's an enormous supply of them at average prices. And even at max-avg price, they still make for a better trade then most other items, and the demand for them is enormous.
In short - manual trade in Terran space is free money, and if you memorize the key sectors you don't even need adv satellites.
For the 1st sanctuary, the choice was between Split space and Teladi. I had been burned by the Teladi before, because they allowed tons of frikking pirates to literally walz through their core safe sector, and park in my 1st Sanctuary (that's how one of the previous games ended). I hoped that the Split would be tougher on crime, and I settled into Rhonkar Clouds - which is great, because there's a ton of traffic, as well as frequent presence of Split M7 and M2s. I was hoping that they would help me defend the sector
So I plopped down a sanctuary, and decided to spec it for ships + shipbuilding industry.
I didn't want to use the perk, so i opted to go for 1 of each factories for ship (chips, tubes, and computer components). In retrospect, that might have been a mistake (or I should not have wasted an oasis sector on it). The issue is that the basic nucleus of 3 components + supporting food factories takes up something like 8-9 slots. If you add up 1 more of the core 3, I end up with up unbalanced production, and you don't have enough slots left to balance it. Hrrm.
Then I started hunting for bailed ships. I found 2 M6, but one of them got destroyed before I could limp it to a place where it can buy EC (again in retrospect - I should have invested into transporation devices, and fed it EC for an immediate jump). I also saved a few M3s (again in retrospect - i wouldn't do it. I had to buy jump drives for most of them, and it was a painful manual affair)
The first attack was easy to handle - at threat 2 I just got a few fighters. I read here that the 2nd attack gets locked (in terms of target) after the 1st one, so I knew that I can expand without fearing the new sectors being attacked right away.
So I expanded into a few nearby sectors, with the special prize being an 8 support, 250% sunshine Y alpha. (where I managed to place the factories so that they clip, and they steadily damaged themselves. Oopsies).
My big (though maybe unavoidable) issue was that despite the sectors being at least 2-4 sectors away from pirates...they still got regular visits, which was so frustrating given my poor navy (and navy management skills). One sector in particular had a steady West to South traffic that included M7s and M2s, so i could not place a defending navy or OWP. The only good part of it was that I managed to scan an M7 Marauder before an Argon M2 blew it to pieces. Yay, new flagships!
I lucked out with finding an Appolox, which is fenomenal because it serves as both player ship, and if I stumble on a very hard freight mission, I can easily do it and nab myself another 5-7 million credits (at my current trade rank)
Setting up the core sectors industries took me a lot of time. I had planned to have 1 for solar, 1 for teladianium and 1 for weapon components. But I ended up being distracted by great yield asteroids and mixing stuff...so I ended up with the need to put in so many different logistical orders that it drove me nuts.
Speaking about logistics, I went for a "Hub" approach. The core sector pulls all the resources, and pushes resources to all factories in all sectors. Then each sanctuary pulls all of its resources from the Hub, and pulls nothing. It worked out pretty well, except for 2 things:
1) I basically could not spend more than 10 seconds in the Hub sector, because all TS would grind to a halt since they couldn't dock in an out due to collision avoidance
2) I was producing so much EC, that even 10 DAs could not sell the overflow fast enough; I ended up also having the weapon production factory pull from that sector and sell the overflow
I also took the time to build something like 40 UT Mistrals and let them run around (shieldless. Ain't anyone got time for shields). Hard to say how much money they were making, but I could definitely feel their effect, and I like having passive income and rep building.
I also started doing boarding stuff (so fun!), but had major issues finding TM targets (since I am playing peaceful - I don't want to go to war with a major faction before learning a bit better). I ended up going straight for a pirate M6, and to my surprise only lost 2 marines (though all the remaining ones were pretty hurt).
The run "ended" when I received the review of the 2nd OCV invasion. While it's a bit higher than I thought (1 M7 and 6 M6), I am confident that I can easily beat her, and then handle the stuff for the next few days. But I am at the point where just want to restart to "do it better".
Some things I will need to be more mindful of:
1) Avoid pirate sectors as the plague when setting up the first few sanctuaries - stay as far away from them as possible, or at least put a Shipyard sector between us.
2) Don't bother with bailing T3
3) Don't specialise the 1st sector in ship building - do a ship hangar yes, but then go marines to start on that game earlier
4) Once the specialized sectors are up and running, don't be afraid to set up a looped build order and sell the stuff, in order to increase specialization. I was too timid of doing this, because I was afraid of the hit on my credits needed to buy all the resources. Also, I had thought that "auto credit balance" works without me visiting the sanctuary, but I think you still need to dock to make the transfer. I would often get distracted for long stretches.
5) Try to pay more attention to invasions, in order to snatch scans. I've seen Darth Fiscus' videos (they are amazing) and he gets notifications for invasions - which I don't. Not sure how to turn them on, I already have war reports enabled
6) Bunch of other stuff I am sure - like being more aggressive with cleaning out the Xenon occupied Goner sector
7) I will confess that I will run a script to place satellites in sectors. I know it makes the game easier (though I will try to avoid taking advantage of it economically), however the part of running around and placing them (or waiting for hapless fighters to do so) is something that is simply not fun for me; and I gotta do thinks that are fun - so I'd rather make the game more difficult in other ways
Overall, Panda: thanks for the AMAZING mod. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface, and this feels the kind of game that I can sink 100s of hours into.
Thank you for the AAR, always interesting to read. That's just the start though FYI, I'm at threat 5 for the first OCV invasion, never tried threat 6 because that's where they start sending big boys.
Also, you should consider one permanent war. It makes things more dynamic.
And yeah, you're right, avoid Pirate sectors. Or make sure that the sectors between you and them are defended by a Battle Group fleet. They can go pretty far and the sectors they patrol vary from a game to another.
@Stormbuilder: Nice work! Seems like you had fun even though those pirates gave you some trouble. Probably a good idea to shield yourself with an NPC shipyard sector if you want a safe position. Teladi really are a double edged sword. They sell great things to strangers, but piracy is rampant on their turf.
Unlock shipyard information in the ministry of war to get invasion notifications (you have to switch them on for each NPC shipyard).
If you are afraid of loosing money due to a loop project you can put two safeguards in. Make sure to limit the loop producing sanctuary to resources from factories of yours. Don't allow it to buy large quantity stocks from NPC factories. And use a high priority job to sell the products. This should ensure good cashflow if you're not importing energy for the factories at the base of this economy. But even then you should make a profit.
1) I remember reading in one of the previous pages about bonuses unlocked at rank 8 with some races (like Boron = no more gradual rep decrease). Are those still in the game? And if so, where can I see what bonus each race gives?
2) If I declare permanent war on a race, can the opposing company sell me the blueprints? I am planning to board and take the ships I like, or otherwise scan them, but I like having a "final backup" option if everything fails and there's a specific ship I want
3) What is the average yield for Asteroids? I know Ore>Silicon>Nividium, but I am not sure what's average and what is good (for all I know, 3 Nividium might be amazing)
4) I remember reading that the "magical" properties of some weapons were removed. Where can I find the bullet sizes though? (what can I say, I like spreadsheets xD)
5) Do you guys go with fighter spam early game, or do you jump straight to M6? I kinda like the idea of M6 because then I need to manage EC less for jumps.
For the next playthrough, I am mulling with the idea of going 2 sectors straight away - 1 in a high sun with solar plants, and 1 with high support with teladianium. Marines in the 1st one, Shields in the 2nd one. Sell shields for profit, as well as all the excess energy cells and don't be afraid to loop the shields; buy all the ore that is needed - it's usually plentiful and cheap.
1/ Reputation decrease over time is no longer a feature.
2/ Companies don't sell blueprints anymore. You need a good reputation with the faction you're interested in (diplomacy section of the ministry of war).
3/ I'd say 100 is average for Ore and Silicon. A lot less for Nividium.
4/ Bullet size? No idea.
5/ Up to you. I'm a Big Ship guy, because I've got a lot to compensate for. I know Hector0x is a fighter guy.
Great work on this! I'm just having some newbie issues (I'm sure) as follows:
1) scanning ships I keep getting "shield energy derivation error" no matter how close I get to them at least <200m distance. How close do I need to get? It says 4000m range...
2) I ran quickstart and set up the sanctuary per the video from Darth for 1MJ shield production and the distribute job will not run even though I have the required 200 shields ready, I'm just not sure if the min price is preventing it...
That's my biggest questions right now as I am still figuring everything out.
There is still a small bug with the shields after the last fix. I have an elephant that carries shields to OWP from my sanctuary. Whenever I pickup the shields of 2G (the elephant can only equip 200M on itself) and undock, my elephant's shields drop to zero. Maybe there is a way to differentiate the shields from equipped ones to the ones that are added extra in the inventory.
. If you are the creator, awesome work!
