[SCR] Economy and Supply Trader [2009-10-12 X3TC 3.2.05]

Vicrry06 · Post by **Vicrry06** » Mon, 17. Nov 08, 18:24

The English language files are complete, but the documentation is not quite finished translating.. It'll work but there's no instruction sheet yet.

Seathal · Post by **Seathal** » Mon, 17. Nov 08, 19:22

This sounds good but I have a few questions:

What's the different with this and a UT? Confiugration? If it is, then it's an enhanced UT? sorta?

What's the difference between an Mk3 EST and one with just Mk1/2?

What uses does it have? TS and autotrade like if it was an UT? Equip it with a fast thing like M5 and use it as some sort of co-manager for your complexes and stations?

bumpinthenight · Post by **bumpinthenight** » Mon, 17. Nov 08, 19:43

Approach: this doesn't differ between sector vs universe trading. You can configure it to stay within 0 to 50 jumps (whole map) of its home sector so it can be much more specifically tailored to a need. The pilots also take a wage.

Mk1&2 vs +Mk3: Without MK3 you have to manually setup what goods and profit margin its going to seek, otherwise you just give it a home sector and a leash (max jump radius) if you want and let it go do its thing.

Performance: Vastly more effective at trading and gathering cash vs the current ST & UT scripting. They're just much more active, notice how UTs tend to 'stand by' constantly? Not these guys, busy bees, very busy indeed.

Aside: After setting up the global enemies list correctly I've also yet to lose one of these guys to a classic UT 'wandered through a xenon sector' move.

ED: You can also configure their jumpdrive usage and needs individually and being able to tell a slow tanker to jump more frequently over vast distances vs the little fast guys is highly appreciated. You can also manually set the amount of ecells each of them carry for those purposes.

Seathal · Post by **Seathal** » Mon, 17. Nov 08, 20:16

bumpinthenight wrote:Approach: this doesn't differ between sector vs universe trading. You can configure it to stay within 0 to 50 jumps (whole map) of its home sector so it can be much more specifically tailored to a need. The pilots also take a wage.

Mk1&2 vs +Mk3: Without MK3 you have to manually setup what goods and profit margin its going to seek, otherwise you just give it a home sector and a leash (max jump radius) if you want and let it go do its thing.

Performance: Vastly more effective at trading and gathering cash vs the current ST & UT scripting. They're just much more active, notice how UTs tend to 'stand by' constantly? Not these guys, busy bees, very busy indeed.

Aside: After setting up the global enemies list correctly I've also yet to lose one of these guys to a classic UT 'wandered through a xenon sector' move.

ED: You can also configure their jumpdrive usage and needs individually and being able to tell a slow tanker to jump more frequently over vast distances vs the little fast guys is highly appreciated. You can also manually set the amount of ecells each of them carry for those purposes.

Thank you ver much... it sounds like ahrd to get back to UT once they fixed them having this...

Vicrry06 · Post by **Vicrry06** » Mon, 17. Nov 08, 20:40

In Reunion I did not use ST/UT's after I'd found this. One of the big selling points to me is that the pilots get better with time and not credits earned, so a trader in a less profitable corner of the universe will gain ranks as fast as one put in Empire's Edge or other trading hotspot. Useful once you've got several running and buying three or four new EST ships and the good trading sectors start filling up..

wyvern11 · Post by **wyvern11** » Mon, 17. Nov 08, 22:56

Massive Use of EST can unbalance your game a bit though. In X3R a fully trained trader in a demeter miner ripped off 650.000 per hour on soybeans only. Again in X3R about 80 EST turned the 1300 KI-traders to gawking bystanders never finishing a deal again

Vicrry06 · Post by **Vicrry06** » Tue, 18. Nov 08, 00:26

How do you think I've made 85mil or so, and don't own a station yet..

In actuality though, I do like having many EST's running about as I have lots of cash, and the NPC stations tend to keep stocked so I have things to spend on.

Tiberiumkyle · Post by **Tiberiumkyle** » Tue, 18. Nov 08, 01:00

And it's great if you're doing like me, making a trading empire, with aims to wipe out a race (or 2)

wyvern11 · Post by **wyvern11** » Tue, 18. Nov 08, 07:13

It looks like, on the other hand, that some people prefer their game a bit unbalanced

a mere trading empire is probably the fastest way to get rich in X3 (I'm sure you will not make similar amounts capturing and factories have smaller ROIs)

thats how I ended my short XTM-game (2days12hours and 200mill, no factory - bored me)

Tiberiumkyle · Post by **Tiberiumkyle** » Tue, 18. Nov 08, 09:03

eh, I have a habit of liberally throwing Xenon and Kha'ak fleets into random sectors, even my own

I've had plenty of 3 way fights devastate several sectors at once. Equally fun rebuilding as helping blow it all up.

Graxster · Post by **Graxster** » Tue, 18. Nov 08, 17:59

wyvern11 wrote:Massive Use of EST can unbalance your game a bit though. In X3R a fully trained trader in a demeter miner ripped off 650.000 per hour on soybeans only. Again in X3R about 80 EST turned the 1300 KI-traders to gawking bystanders never finishing a deal again

I have to agree. These Traders are awesome at making money! I don't even care if Egosoft fixes the UT scripts, lol. In light of how good they are, I think I'll keep their numbers to a minimum. I want to build factories/complexes!

Big thumbs up for this script package!

-Grax

wyvern11 · Post by **wyvern11** » Tue, 18. Nov 08, 20:22

So don't miss the commercial agent thread lucike has just opened up

Seathal · Post by **Seathal** » Tue, 18. Nov 08, 21:59

Theyw rok really good... some minutes in SETA and they raised my trading rank like 5 or 6 levels. just 5 of them, definetly I'm gonna invest more money on them to get 15 or 20 of them... Which TS should work better for them? Normal TS? Haulers? Super-Freighters? I'm so far using normal mercuries as I did with the normal ST/UT's in X3R since the majority of the time they just use the 10% or the 20% of the cargo space (haven't checked with EST's though... Does anyone have any idea?

Hubricide · Post by **Hubricide** » Wed, 19. Nov 08, 03:01

Check out the Mistral in Legend's Home. 120m/sec, 3000-4000 cargo, 4 turrets, you can even throw in a jump drive and triplex, and it's only about 4-5 sectors away from a Teladi Equipment Dock.

Enjoy

Elestia · Post by **Elestia** » Wed, 19. Nov 08, 06:06

I've noticed that whenever my ships get attacked and run to the nearest station to dock, that they will sometimes be stuck Idling in the station until the end of time. Even when no enemies are near they will not continue their operations, even with my intervention. Most of the commands, like start EST command will not reset it and will still idle in the station.

Waiting for them to move on their own doesn't seem to do anything either, and having idle Mistral Super Freighter not doing their job is a huge loss in my profit margin. I have had 2-3 of my Mistrals get stuck in this cycle. The most extreme method I chose is to jump them to a whole another sector and it'll work. But that might also cause them to just idle in space for a couple of minutes before they actually continue their operations.

Normally, I just let my Trading Mk 3 software do the jobs of managing their routes, as I've already spent a couple million credits buying them before I installed the script. I'm going to try to fiddle around with their settings to see if I can avoid this.

Elestia · Post by **Elestia** » Wed, 19. Nov 08, 07:56

Alright, after a couple more similar situations, I found out that my ships entered and Unknown Center next to the PTNI HQ sector and get shot up by the pirate's laser towers. After I set the exceptions sectors command, it immediately fixed the problem. I'm not quite sure why they get stuck in idle mode, but the fix is there.

wyvern11 · Post by **wyvern11** » Wed, 19. Nov 08, 09:05

the fact that you do no see enemies is no evidence for lack of enemies in sector. there may be enemies far out (clusters e.g.)

better to manually jump out (set enemy notification to true in reporting-menu, that you do not overlook idling)

Graxster · Post by **Graxster** » Wed, 19. Nov 08, 22:08

It's possible (I'm guessing here) that they get stuck idling because the enemy is still alive/around. In the case of laser towers, unless you destroy them you have to resort to doing what you did. IIRC from UT's, they usually run and land at a station, message you, then wait for you to deal with the attackers before going off standby. Just a guess, as I haven't looked at the scripts for either UT's or EST's.

-Grax

wyvern11 · Post by **wyvern11** » Thu, 20. Nov 08, 07:46

In X3R lucike's script had an indicator in standby text (command being run) for enemy-induced standby

He used to repeat it on and on when asked why the EST stood by. When I'm home and have enough time I'll check if this indicator survived lucikes porting to TC and my translation (If not, I think I'll reintroduce it with lucike)

tontonfred · Post by **tontonfred** » Thu, 20. Nov 08, 12:53

Hi,

using the full Lucike's script collection (can't live without it!), I can confirm there are still a few glitches with the EST scripts.

1) the ESTs will sometimes fly to a sector where enemies are clearly present (satellites). I am not positive, but I think this happens only by flying through the warpgates (ie, they will not jump in a sector with enemies inside). Sometimes, my ESTs even venture in Xenon sectors (X347), but same thing : it was passing through the sector, not jumping (since there is nothing to trade in X sectors). I also noticed it had almost no energy cells. Maybe something to do with energy cells reserve going out, and then the EST trying to resupply without checking for enemy presence ?

2) ESTs will sometimes Idle in stations for no reason : no warning message in the log (although they do usually send one if they are trapped by enemies), when I jump in-sector, there are no enemies, but the EST will refuse to move until I make him undock and restart EST.

I just happen to have a savegame with both of these problems happening, if you are interested...

Fred

PS : I also have a glitch using the SRS script, but cannot find a related thread in the English or German forum ; is someone testing this ?

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

[SCR] Economy and Supply Trader [2009-10-12 X3TC 3.2.05]