[script] Improved Kha'ak 1.1: Updated June 10, 2008

[kevso]

Love the latest update. Any chance of the Xenon update..... please

Kevso

[X2-Eliah]

Not necromancing or anything, but why is this script in the trading/station section of the Community script & mod sticky?

On topic, it seems the latest version does work better, but I still encounter "Deserted" nividium/other 2 things containers with no Kha'ak in sector to finish the job..
(Might be a misinterpretation though, this should be confirmed by others too, as it may be a unique script conflct or something like that)

[narn]

I have to say you have become like my favorite scripter now. You were willing to see that I had an issue with an aspect of the script and you were perfectly willing to make it into an option. You were also willing to listen to other peoples good ideas. Now to me its like the perfect script. I hope you get the Improved Xenon script working soon.

Thanks for making the game more fun for me and many other X3 fans.

[7ate9tin11s]

Ok, work has finally calmed down so I can begin playing around in X a little. I plan to finish up 1.0 of IX then work on the next rendition of IK. It may take until next week for release though. So far the new things for IK are:

1. More P2P options
2. Some tweaking of the station building routine, including removal of the floating boxes after a time
3. AI upgrade on big ships to deal with the new p2p options
4. Tweaking of suicide scouts to counter fighter drone floods for Andraxxus. As an option to a single concentrated explosion they will be allowed to do a weaker wide range explosion to impede swarms of small craft. Technically they will spread the multiple squash mines their explosions consist of out slightly instead of concentrating on one point when there are multiple small enemies around.
5. Tweaking of invasion mode for friend/foe settings
6. Adjusting of p2p jump landing range to depend on ship size. So now it will be ship size + 100 + beam range instead of beam range + 100
7. Sector re-taking award of: race rep * fight rank * Random(15 - 25) credits (only awarded if > 0). Also fight rank * Random(12 - 20) rep with the race.

Not necromancing or anything, but why is this script in the trading/station section of the Community script & mod sticky?

...

Because it makes stations and interferes with trade?

...and how does one necromance a thread that had a post on the same day...

In other news I have a nasty new script almost ready that lets me calculate actual intercepts to ships. It is really scary to have ships properly intercept you instead of the normal 'only catch you if your stupid or I'm faster' behavior . I need to check how process intensive it is though since it requires a bit of math . Not sure where I am going to use it, but it is nice to have the option for cpu intercepts .

[7ate9tin11s]

A bit of a delay for the next release of IK. IX revisions are taking longer than anticipated. Once you see the new version of IX posted I will begin working on IK again

[7ate9tin11s]

IX is almost done and I actually got my toybox script to work...someone needs to use it so you may be seeing improved pirates at some point

Basically the toybox is a deployable missile launcher with random missiles which will launch at everything around. It looks alot like a party popper with all the missile trail colors in XTM . Originally it was not random though and the testing with firestorms was...entertaining in Argon Prime. For those concerned about mods and such there are none used and it is all scripting magic.

So far for my Improved Pirates I have completed:
Terrorism - Another trade ship, ho hum. Why is it dropping lasertowers and mines...around my station?
Toybox - That looks like something from that silly asteroid plot mission what is it doing out here? Why does the name say 'Suprise in' 5...4...3...

Still needs work:
Ambushes - Look at all these friendly fighters escorting me...wait a sec...
Raids - Wheres my Agnu Beef!
Blockades - These are not the races your looking for...
Sector Takeover - No police? No fighters? No ownership!

Don't worry, the update to IK comes first

[Tenlar Scarflame]

IX is almost done and I actually got my toybox script to work...someone needs to use it so you may be seeing improved pirates at some point

Basically the toybox is a deployable missile launcher with random missiles which will launch at everything around. It looks alot like a party popper with all the missile trail colors in XTM . Originally it was not random though and the testing with firestorms was...entertaining in Argon Prime. For those concerned about mods and such there are none used and it is all scripting magic.

So far for my Improved Pirates I have completed:
Terrorism - Another trade ship, ho hum. Why is it dropping lasertowers and mines...around my station?
Toybox - That looks like something from that silly asteroid plot mission what is it doing out here? Why does the name say 'Suprise in' 5...4...3...

Still needs work:
Ambushes - Look at all these friendly fighters escorting me...wait a sec...
Raids - Wheres my Agnu Beef!
Blockades - These are not the races your looking for...
Sector Takeover - No police? No fighters? No ownership!

Don't worry, the update to IK comes first

Wow. They sound like sneaky bastards now. These guys will be murderous in XTM. O.O
Maybe build something in so that if the pirates are obviously outgunned, depending on the morale/aggression of the pilot, they'll flee and, when out of scanner range, change their ID to blend in with the populace again...

[Sandalpocalypse]

The silly khaak are using the wrong sort of nividium - it's not the same kind you mine from asteroids - i guess the paranid didn't start the war after all.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

One thing I might suggest for the Pirates- perhaps, since they're pirates, shouldn't they, you know, steal ships? And loot?

What I'm thinking is, pirate ships will swoop in and gobble up any wares that are floating around- including space suits.

And if there are any abandoned ships lying around (The Bail Signal Extension would be perfect for this), they'd park an M3 or captured TS next to it, send a space suit over to it and commandeer it. The new ship would fly back to a pirate base for repairs and refit (maybe not very good repairs but enough to get it moving) and would enter service as either a raider (if it's a combat ship) or a covert smuggler (if it's a TS or TP.) If the pirates were to get their grubby mitts on an M6, M2, M1, TL... well, that's just bad news, now isn't it.

To make the stealing of resources more troublesome, perhaps that would be the only way the pirates can construct a base for sector takeover- as in, they could only assemble whatever station they need for a sector conquest once they've bought enough parts and amassed enough salvage from the spoils of their raids.

Anyway, that's my 2 creds.

[7ate9tin11s]

Version 1.1 Released

Basically added everything suggested but the sector payouts. Oh, and I made them a little nastier since you all were just getting used to them . Highlights include:

1) There are a variety of options that you can use to customize Kha'ak p2p jumping to suite your playing style and needs. This includes changing the minimum distance that can be jumped and which types of ships can jump.

2) The tiny scout ships have refined their capabilities at annoyance and have been seen to seek out and self-destruct against enemies dealing heavy damage to a small area. Furthermore, they have been known to explode into small missiles to clean out heavy concentrations of light units.

3) Carrier Production - While the effects of 50 fighters launching from a heavily armed Xenon carrier are huge and debilitating, the Kha'ak carriers is a bit...lacking. With this option enabled carriers will produce ships as the overmind manages the battle. While usually just scouts there are diminishing chances of interceptors and fighters being produced as well. The carrier will no longer be the minor threat to leave for later!

4) Also tweaked the station building, invasion mode, and p2p landing range

As usual, if you spot a bug or needed feature please post it here

[Tenlar Scarflame]

Okay, just gotta say this-

my booze wonderplex (also my temporary headquarters sector, before I set up a PHQ in Bala Gi's Joy) is in Olmancketslat's Treaty. Very nice, out of the way of police so I can be as illegal as I want. All was well and good until a couple of Khaak wandered into Brennan's Triumph to the south. No matter, I said, and jumped in with my wingmen to go squash them. However, this threat continued to mount... and mount... and mount... until a carrier and destroyer decided to grace the system with their presence. "Oh dear," I said, as my firepower was not sufficient to deal with such enemies. So I let them be (for now) and retreated to Olmancketslat's Treaty. My freighters don't generally go through Brennan's anyway, so it wasn't a terribly big problem.

A few game days later, I wonder why my CAG's stationed at my booze wonderplex are on constant standby. So I go and personally investigate Olmancketslat's, to find nothing in the way of enemies... until a Khaak Interceptor jumps through from the north gate. This has me a bit worried and as I dispatch him, three more come through the same gate. I have my wingmen set to "smoke anything red that you see" and pop my head through the north gate to take a look.

Bala Gi's Joy has FIFTEEN KHAAK DESTROYERS IN IT. <----my face as my shields start to drop. I very quickly do a 180 and head back through the gate, with a good twenty or so interceptors and fighters following me through.

I was able to save my own hide and those of my wingmen, but I imagine the attacks will continue to mount on Olmancketslat's. And being in pirate space means no help will be coming. Cut off from both directions, no ships able to come in or out. I'm royally screwed.

I love it.

EDIT

Oh, forgot to mention- nobody in the Treaty has any energy cells on them, including myself and the wonderplex. So no jumping for me! Yaaaaay!

[ezra-r]

Okay, just gotta say this-

my booze wonderplex (also my temporary headquarters sector, before I set up a PHQ in Bala Gi's Joy) is in Olmancketslat's Treaty. Very nice, out of the way of police so I can be as illegal as I want. All was well and good until a couple of Khaak wandered into Brennan's Triumph to the south. No matter, I said, and jumped in with my wingmen to go squash them. However, this threat continued to mount... and mount... and mount... until a carrier and destroyer decided to grace the system with their presence. "Oh dear," I said, as my firepower was not sufficient to deal with such enemies. So I let them be (for now) and retreated to Olmancketslat's Treaty. My freighters don't generally go through Brennan's anyway, so it wasn't a terribly big problem.

A few game days later, I wonder why my CAG's stationed at my booze wonderplex are on constant standby. So I go and personally investigate Olmancketslat's, to find nothing in the way of enemies... until a Khaak Interceptor jumps through from the north gate. This has me a bit worried and as I dispatch him, three more come through the same gate. I have my wingmen set to "smoke anything red that you see" and pop my head through the north gate to take a look.

Bala Gi's Joy has FIFTEEN KHAAK DESTROYERS IN IT. <----my face as my shields start to drop. I very quickly do a 180 and head back through the gate, with a good twenty or so interceptors and fighters following me through.

I was able to save my own hide and those of my wingmen, but I imagine the attacks will continue to mount on Olmancketslat's. And being in pirate space means no help will be coming. Cut off from both directions, no ships able to come in or out. I'm royally screwed.

I love it.

EDIT

Oh, forgot to mention- nobody in the Treaty has any energy cells on them, including myself and the wonderplex. So no jumping for me! Yaaaaay!

hjahahaha, sounds impossible! good it is not real.. anyways, you can pray some race response fleets may open a hole in the blockade.

[Tenlar Scarflame]

I just tried for the last few hours to break the blockade.

It didn't work very well. At all.

Looks like I'm either reloading from an autosave, or calling this one quits...

[7ate9tin11s]

Victory again! ->

[ezra-r]

7ate,

I know I may be asking too much but Ill try just in case you or anyone has noticed something similar:

First Of all in this game Im running New Horizons mod along with this scripts:

Autotrader Sector Lock :: halo :: Yes :: 1.0 :: 30/05/2007
BBS Extras :: Cycrow :: Yes :: 1.61 :: 04/12/2006
Improved Kha'ak :: Fallen :: Yes :: 1.1 :: 10/06/2008
Improved Xenon :: Fallen :: Yes :: 0.9 :: 29/05/2008
MARS :: Gazz :: Yes :: 1.45 :: 07/06/2008
MK3 Improvments :: gnasirator :: Yes :: 1.29.8 ::
PiloteIA III :: Azz :: Yes :: 3.56 :: 17/08/2007
Weapon Switcher Fix :: Dr Xavia :: Yes :: X3.0.1 :: 22/08/2006

Is there any incompatibility with Improved Khaak with any of this scripts or Improved Xenon?

When I activate Improved Khaa'k I get sudden hicups in the game and when for example I set the ship on autopilot to do something and I seta sometimes it stops until I turn seta off, same with some npc ships, its like if they can proceed with current command.

For example they end up with the command Follow (my ship) and in the Action you see "none", and the game ends up being unplayable.

Did a fresh install with those scripts and later installed NH.

Did it twice with a previous install in which I had another mod so I did a fresh one to check... but still the same thing..

Why I ask? because the moment I disabled the Improved Khaa'k the problem stopped ocurring.

Not saying it is this script, but.. maybe there are incompatibilities or anything.

"difficulty I have set: Hard", both for Xenon and Khaa'k.


----

I disabled PilotIA and reenabled improved Khaakit seems I dont have further problems even though I sometimes have tiny hicups.

Incompatibility with PilotIA maybe?

[ezra-r]

Also I noticed some kind of bounties for killing ships in conquered sectors and taking the whole sector to the previous owning race should be added right away for the script to be 110% perfect.

And also a little bug or problem, even though I disabled P2P jumping the Khaak scouts keep jumping to me, that behaviour is in vanilla Khaa'k ships too so I dont know if that can be disabled even though in the AI menu I disabled all types of P2P jumping

[kotekzot]

i believe vanilla scouts in kha'ak sectors are spawned on top of you, not jumping to you.

[ezra-r]

i believe vanilla scouts in kha'ak sectors are spawned on top of you, not jumping to you.

yeap, sorry, that's it.

Kind of sucks

Each spawned wave increases difficulty, the third one can kill you in a m3.

[7ate9tin11s]

My apologies for not responding, been in Taiwan for a week . I have a couple questions at the end I would appreciate and answer to if your not interested in the responses .

There very well could be a compatibility issue with PiloteAI since both scripts use SIGNAL_KILLED and SIGNAL_ATTACKED. It may work if you enable IK after PilotAI has completely initialized so the global signals from IK take priority, but that is the only thing I can think of.

Yes the X3 engine itself puts scouts on you in Kha'ak sectors, nothing my script does or can control. It makes it rather impossible to retake a Kha'ak sector in anything smaller than a capship.

I've looked into adding the rewards for retaking a sector, but it would end up being a reward for destroying the Kha'ak station instead. There is no feasible way to track all the kills in a sector for a bounty without incurring too much of a script overhead. The problem with making is station-based is that it is kinda easy to exploit, you just jump in and wipe the station, jump out to let them re-build, etc. I guess I could put in another watcher that only triggers when there are no more Kha'ak in the sector, but the overhead from managing the hundreds of Kha'ak ships is already kinda heavy as you all have probably noticed in seta.

I will try to look into it this weekend, but I will be in Tokyo (and climbing Mt. Fuji ) next week so you prolly won't hear from me for another week or two

I wish the poll was changeable, but since it is not I do have a couple questions for everyone. Please reply to this thread or PM me with answers if you don't want others to know:

Anyone seen/enjoy the new suicidal scout ability of fragmenting into missiles?

Most importantly, what is your options setup in IK?

Thank you very much for your answers

[A5PECT]

When I activate Improved Khaa'k I get sudden hicups in the game...

My game's been having similar difficulties with running the Improved Xenon and Kha'ak scripts. They seem to take up a good deal of CPU.

I just disable the Kha'ak plugin and left the Improved Xenon active. That solved ships from randomly cutting their engines on SETA.