[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Hairless-Ape]

Support ships once had the problem of docking mid-battle when switching their targets, which made the very vulnerable. This got changed and they stay in space longer to prevent this. But i'm not 100% sure how this works now.

As a rule of thumb avoid carriers as fleet leaders. Support fighters undock and attack what their carrier attacks (or gets attacked from). Carriers work better as fleet followers. This gives you the scanning range to define what and when your carrier and his fighters attack.

Example:
If your fleet is currently 100km away and you tell your fleet to attack.

1) carrier fleet leader will launch his fighters immediately. Scanning range setting will get ignored. Fighters will rush to the enemy, kill him and if there are other enemies in the sector they attack them afterwards. You got no control over your fighters.

2) carrier follower will still follow the leader on his attack run and only switch to attack when the enemy is inside the customizable scanning range. That's when he launches fighters, for example 10km away. Once the enemy nearby is dead the fighters are docking back on their carrier, even if another enemy is in the same sector but 50km away from the fleet leader.

I still think this would be solved with a command that forces fighters to dock. I LIKE using the carrier as my ship. It works for me with this one limitation. Being forced to fly some other ship because of a limitation that was introduced into the game isn't ideal. I know that is going to rub the developer wrong and that you all are guiding me to fly something else to work around the issue, but understand in the X3 universe, flying whatever ship I like is a major part of the game, and having a command that tells fighters to dock at a carrier isn't rocket science.. looks like one more thing I'm going to have to implement myself.

[dunderhead327]

I haven't played for several releases, so this may not be viable, but couldn't you put the fighters from your flagship into a wing and dock that with a single command?

[Hector0x]

problem with that is that ships in a fleet choose to dock at available carrier. So if your carrier is part of a fleet you will have fleet fighters docking with you.

@Hairless-Ape: for your player controlled carrier it seems that QuickAccess hotkeys could be a solution. Maybe even combine it with fleets. A return to homebase command should set fleet fighters to be "currently not with fleet" and then dock. The fleet reinforcement feature should still work.

[Hwitvlf]

Don't know if it's of any use to you, but I tag my fighters as "wingmen" in the 'owned ships' command console menu and then use the 'broadcast to my ships in the sector' > 'wingmen return home' command to force them to dock.

I'll mention a scripting quirk in case there's another update: I use a courier to fetch mined minerals/crystals from multiple stations using the wonderful "load + all crystals, minerals, ore". For stations that need to maintain a supply of ore (like factory manufacturers) I add an "Unload Ore" task after the 'load'. The quirk is that "load + all crystals, minerals, ore" appears to load max ore before trying to load crystals/minerals. Since the station maintains a large supply of ore, it fills the freighter's cargo bay and it can't load any crystals/minerals. If you changed the order in the script to load the small minerals/crystals first, then ore/silicon, I think it might make the task even more helpful.

[shanbahak]

Hmmm so far i really like laser changes for capitals~
But Tri-beam cannon gives some weird DPS charts in my compendium (like, it shows 3 times more damage than PAA? Weird.)
Also, maaaaybe it will be good idea to keep one or two really heavy cannons with low fire rate, which can be only installed as main caliber for heavy ships (like, only frontal turrets or only broadside).
It may give more realistic feeling for capitals, to have one main caliber big scary gun?

[azxcvbnm321]

How do you terraform a planet? I went into the War of Ministry UI, but when I try and click on a sector (it lists sectors by name, number of planets, etc.) all that happens is I get sent to the sector map view with the stations. I've tried to change the menu in the War of Ministry, but there is no terraforming menu, just the race relations, declare war, and sector stats views. And yes, I've clicked on my own sectors and stations, but nothing but the sector map view pops up and if I click on a station, it goes into the outpost manager view. Please help.

[Hwitvlf]

I don't think terraforming is unlocked in early game, but is enabled as a plot point later. After it's unlocked, the second heading in the Ministry of War window is 'Click For', which you can set to 'sector view' or 'terraforming'. When set to the latter, the sector list will expand when clicked to show the available options for that sector.

[azxcvbnm321]

That's strange. I received the quest, "Terracorp wants you to terraform 10 planets". I didn't help the Yakis conquer any sectors, they just starting taking over sectors themselves after I destroyed the Xenon bases. I'll try looking harder at the Ministry of War options.

[Hector0x]

Ok, asking for opinions guys.
Factions with real economy suck against Xenon. Some latest game reports are fully in line with this observation. This was actually the main reason for my rebalance patch (eventually update it).
Main empires have cool stuff like retreating fleets, coalition wars, construction time and resources. Xenon simply respawn on a timer, often with overpowered weapons. I don't want Xenons dominating the NPCs. Xenon steal the show too much.

So i came up with a new catchup mechanic which works like revanchism in EU4 but only for NPCs

- on default Mayhem 3 all outposts can level up production specialization which gives a direct building cost and time discount
- player outposts always start at 0% and can level up to 50% (half ship cost and build time)
- NPC outposts always start maxed out at 50%. So technically they are already cheating. But still. Once their most important capships get destroyed they are typically screwed and take too long to rebuild (especially against the player) so this is not enough

- i would add +1% production specialization on all remaining outposts when an NPC faction looses a sector
- this could stack up to 25 times per outpost (so 75% maximum = 1/4 ship building cost and time)

Supposed effects:
- first off i think it would be rare and take very long to level outposts up to 75%
- but loser factions could develop very powerful production centers in few remaining sectors and keep on replacing ships faster
- for a rebounding NPC empire which turns the tide and gets strong again the effect will slow down greatly because only the hinterland is levelled up. Their new outposts all started fresh at 50%. (and NPCs won't ever consider this bonus to decide which outpost they want to use to build ships)
- maybe this mechanic helps faction wars to not tip over too soon so that the player can have greater impact on their outcomes
- complete destruction of a faction could be more difficult (but i think actually only slightly harder)
- over the long run the overall NPC production specialization will tend to go up. This would be intended to ramp up faction difficulty as the game goes on.
- frontline areas where outposts frequently get destroyed and rebuilt all the time won't level up at all or only very little

Waddaya think?

[Hwitvlf]

I think that would be a definite improvement to gameplay in general, but probably not a complete fix for the issue you mention.

A faction which has an active xenon sector in their territory is destined to lose one or two capital ship fleets per single group of spawned Xenon. Before the Xenon fleet is defeated, they generally lose at least a couple sectors too. Other factions swoop in and capture the relatively undefended sectors left in the Xenon fleet's wake. Whatever faction is capturing the undefended rear xenon sectors becomes the superpower of the game. Obviously, there are many other factors, but in my playthroughs this appears to be what decides the dominant NPC faction.

Your tweak would help slow the advance of the Xenon against weakened factions, but it wouldn't prevent xenon 'rear sectors' from being easily conquered into another faction to produce a superpower.

Personally, I was big fan of how Litcube handles it with the OCV: rather than insta-spawning a whole xenon fleet who goes on a 'straight line' rampage, the Xenon outposts slowly spawned ships which act as sector defenders until a whole new fleet is produced. When a new fleet is complete, they invade an adjoining sector. If the invasion is a success, the invaders become its permanent defender and the cycle starts over. If like other factions, Xenon had a shared 'income' which paid for all their new ships and was based on the number of sectors they control, it would create a fun min-game where every Xenon ship which was destroyed slowed down their advance universally. As with Litcube's OCV, if you had a Xenon sector next door who was building up an invasion fleet, it would be a viable delay tactic to keep destroying their weaker ships in that sector, forcing them to rebuild the loses and delaying their next invasion.

Anyways, I think your proposal would be quite beneficial and make things more fun without feeling 'unfair'.

[4square425]

Personally, I was big fan of how Litcube handles it with the OCV: rather than insta-spawning a whole xenon fleet who goes on a 'straight line' rampage, the Xenon outposts slowly spawned ships which act as sector defenders until a whole new fleet is produced. When a new fleet is complete, they invade an adjoining sector. If the invasion is a success, the invaders become its permanent defender and the cycle starts over. If like other factions, Xenon had a shared 'income' which paid for all their new ships and was based on the number of sectors they control, it would create a fun min-game where every Xenon ship which was destroyed slowed down their advance universally. As with Litcube's OCV, if you had a Xenon sector next door who was building up an invasion fleet, it would be a viable delay tactic to keep destroying their weaker ships in that sector, forcing them to rebuild the loses and delaying their next invasion.

I had the exact same thought about a solution. It'd be different since the Xenon stations are spread out instead of a channel like in vanilla Litcube. If one or a few stations passively generated resources and then a fast ship delivered them to others, it could be a closer replication of the rest of the economy. I don't know if the AI would attack Xenon freighters effectively though.

Another interesting thing could be if the Xenon had the ability to build their own jump beacon network instead of just infecting yours. Any sectors with a Xenon jump beacon would have a shortcut for those freighters. It would make incursions into Xenon space more necessary.

[shanbahak]

Hmm after some reinstalling and testing.
Guys, are Tri-beam cannons really supposed to be THIS powerful?
I mean its pretty fun to cut down enemy dreadnouts in mere seconds in close range.
Its also draining generators like crazy, but still feels too op. Tri-beam DPS is liiike twice higher than PSPs.

[Hwitvlf]

I think maybe there's a typo in the fire rate as it reads "1,63.9" instead of "163.9" which could account for the high DPS. The damage shown in the weapon compendium is about 1/3 of what's listed in the weapon's description. I couldn't tell for sure if it was actually overpowered in game. It only killed a single M7 before running out of juice in-system, but I did notice that a badly damaged Cyclops nearly destroyed my minty-fresh Forseti in out-of-system combat so it probably is really doing 14,000 damage per second.

[Hector0x]

yeah. TriBeam does about 4 times more DPS after update 3.13, while PSP only got slightly better. Definitely looks like a typo somewhere.

[Betelgeuse97]

- player outposts always start at 0% and can level up to 50% (half ship cost and build time)

Specialization does not directly decrease the build time by the specialization % (you are however correct on specialization of 50% halving the resource cost). A specialization of 50% means you will get your projects done 50% faster; in other words, it'll be completed in 2/3 the time that the same project would take at 0% specialization.

New project time = project time at 0% specialization / (1 + specialization), where specialization is in decimal form.

Ok, asking for opinions guys.
Factions with real economy suck against Xenon. Some latest game reports are fully in line with this observation. This was actually the main reason for my rebalance patch (eventually update it).
Main empires have cool stuff like retreating fleets, coalition wars, construction time and resources. Xenon simply respawn on a timer, often with overpowered weapons. I don't want Xenons dominating the NPCs. Xenon steal the show too much.

So i came up with a new catchup mechanic which works like revanchism in EU4 but only for NPCs

- on default Mayhem 3 all outposts can level up production specialization which gives a direct building cost and time discount
- player outposts always start at 0% and can level up to 50% (half ship cost and build time)
- NPC outposts always start maxed out at 50%. So technically they are already cheating. But still. Once their most important capships get destroyed they are typically screwed and take too long to rebuild (especially against the player) so this is not enough

- i would add +1% production specialization on all remaining outposts when an NPC faction looses a sector
- this could stack up to 25 times per outpost (so 75% maximum = 1/4 ship building cost and time)

Supposed effects:
- first off i think it would be rare and take very long to level outposts up to 75%
- but loser factions could develop very powerful production centers in few remaining sectors and keep on replacing ships faster
- for a rebounding NPC empire which turns the tide and gets strong again the effect will slow down greatly because only the hinterland is levelled up. Their new outposts all started fresh at 50%. (and NPCs won't ever consider this bonus to decide which outpost they want to use to build ships)
- maybe this mechanic helps faction wars to not tip over too soon so that the player can have greater impact on their outcomes
- complete destruction of a faction could be more difficult (but i think actually only slightly harder)
- over the long run the overall NPC production specialization will tend to go up. This would be intended to ramp up faction difficulty as the game goes on.
- frontline areas where outposts frequently get destroyed and rebuilt all the time won't level up at all or only very little

Waddaya think?

I like the idea as NPCs don't have as many advantages as the player (in which the player can concentrate his offensive ships into either pure offense or pure defense whereas NPCs have them all over the place). There's still an underlying issue though: what if the weakened faction doesn't have all the production buildings necessary to build more ships and cannot build for free due to having 4 sectors (since 3 sectors is the maximum for an NPC faction to build for free)?

[Hector0x]

what if the weakened faction doesn't have all the production buildings necessary to build more ships and cannot build for free due to having 4 sectors (since 3 sectors is the maximum for an NPC faction to build for free)?

Corporation traders can still ferry resources between factions which are at war with each other. That's the reason why i usually close most of my factories for NPC traders. Otherwise you can't prevent that your enemies get supplied with your very own hull plating.


Thanks for clarification about build times. Maybe the maximum ceiling could be even higher then.

About the player having a very large advantage due to effective ship grouping: i also noticed that this is a huge problem for NPCs in general. Think i got a semi-solution. Will be quite drastic and not everybody will like it. But i think large scale game flow will be better.

[Hwitvlf]

Corporation traders can still ferry resources between factions which are at war with each other.

Also, most small factions I've seen enter a coalition and share resources.

It occurred to me that if specialization boost is tied to losing sectors, then a super-power who owns half the map but gets pushed back, to say 1/4 of the map, would end up with high specialization in a big part of its territory. If specialization was a flat rate based on the number of sectors owned, it would provide a more stable boost to ailing factions.

[Hwitvlf]

A question about the gateless portals in Mayhem: some large ships collide with something in the portals and die. I think this happened in Litcube's also, but it seems significantly worse in Mayhem. Several large ships are impossible to fly through a portal unless they're perfectly centered. Does anyone know what causes the this invisible collision death in gateless portals? if you want to see what I mean, dock a Pteranodon on the Aran and try to fly through a gate.

[vince8290]

Hi,
I have to go to a crystlal fab so that Niklas can teach me how to jump.
Sadly, said station has been destroyed Is there a way around this ?
Thanks

[Hwitvlf]

A similar thing happened to me, where i completed the Ascension before I stopped in to pick up the scanner. I chose the combat path to Ascension which doesn't require scanning. Apparently, this made the quest to pick up the jump drive never triggered. Someone else may know a work around, but all I could figure was to start a new game.

There's a cheat menu at the bottom of the Personal Console. I always disabled it to make the interface cleaner, but it may have something that will fix your game.