[MOD] [TC/AP] X3 Rebalance Mod (XRM) - Total conversion - v1.30d (02.12.13)

dougeye · Post by **dougeye** » Wed, 27. Jul 11, 23:24

the friendly pirates mod seems to work ok with xrm. basicly just monitors what you do with pirates and gives you a rep similar to the main races apart from you dont realy have ranks just an imaginary rep lol

Mizuchi · Post by **Mizuchi** » Wed, 27. Jul 11, 23:36

Just a note: I'll be disabling (or removing) the Xenon and Pirate "Battle Group" events in XRM Jobs 1.04.

They're cool, but they lay waste to entire Sectors if you don't have some kind of response-script installed, so I'm going to replace them with smaller but a little more numerous patrols instead.

The Xenon ones will begin in Xenon Sectors and then likely wander into Commonwealth Sectors and cause mischief, which will make those Sectors adjacent to Xenon ones a little more dangerous (and you won't have to rely on "Hold Position" missions to have stuff coming through the Gate).

Non-Adjacent Commonwealth Sectors will be relatively safe aside from the occasional (random) M6 Xenon patrol.

I'll be doing the same with Pirates (so there will be a number of individual M1, M2, and M7 groups instead of one big fleet, for example) but I'm not sure on how to go about where to spawn them yet.

Should I spawn them in Pirate Sectors and let them wander out? Or spawn them in Gates and let them appear ANYWHERE?

Opinions are required over the next two or three hours.

Sorkvild · Post by **Sorkvild** » Wed, 27. Jul 11, 23:44

Good direction of changes.

paulwheeler · Post by **paulwheeler** » Wed, 27. Jul 11, 23:45

Just don't make it too safe!

Halconnen · Post by **Halconnen** » Wed, 27. Jul 11, 23:50

While we are on the topic of jobs, I'm still wondering about those rear guard bomber squads that seem to patrol the sectors of other races.

Paranid still hate me, and I keep randomly losing ships I let out of my eyesight to wandering Paranid Hades trios in Argon space.

And the Argon don't care. =/

Sorkvild · Post by **Sorkvild** » Wed, 27. Jul 11, 23:54

I was also thinking about Xenon migrations. A standard Xenon behaviour in X2 mostly consisting of smaller ships.

Later on Cycrow made this excellent script for X3R http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=143135 The same idea with implemented difficulty from smaller fighter groups to larger brigades supported by 1-2 capships.

Nevertheless after few hours of gameplay, the migration routes were cluttered with both Xenon and Commonwealth wrecked ships, just waiting to be picked up ( very easy cash :/ too easy )

freelancer91 · Post by **freelancer91** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 00:26

So there isn't any practical way to have a sector trader in a pirate sector, since you would get a rogue pirate that would attack your ship, the ship would try to defend itself, and then the entire sector would become hostile and destroy everything you might have in the sector...

Perhaps it would be practical to make two sub races of pirates. One that is civilized and will become friendly to you if you do right by them, and another rogue faction that will occasionally spawn to attack your ships. Attacking one of the rogue pirates would not make you unfriendly with the civilized pirates.

Gazz · Post by **Gazz** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 01:07

Pirates are no "race". They are a bunch of criminals who got lumped together under a common label by the ship's computer.
Some are organised and respect friends of "the organisation", others are... sociopathic nutcases.

It makes no sense to be able to completely befriend every single sociopath in the universe.
Oh, it may be inconvenient to you but well, the universe doesn't care about you enough. =P

Kadatherion · Post by **Kadatherion** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 01:26

I would make the Pirates spawn in their core sectors and then move onto adjacent commonwealth space, apart from maybe just a couple of rare unhindered spawns. Sounds more realistic to me: while the odd occasion of finding pirates preying far away from their sectors is nice once in a while, if that happens too often once again this would be one of those little things that concur in making the universe feel so small, everything can jump to and from - and be found - everywhere.
I much more prefer seeing serious pirate forces only in certain areas. This gives some flavour to certain corners of the universe (not to mention it might be helpful when setting up your traders to avoid specific more dangerous areas).

About those traders, I was thinking about what has being said a while ago about the MK3 traders being a bit of a magic cash-in.

[ external image ]

EST traders are way smarter than vanilla Universal Traders. They especially gain an advantage towards them in XRM as they search for the best profitable routes rather than just random profitable routes, and in XRM the weapons dealers represent very profitable ones.
As you can see from the screenshot, a mistral superfreighter averages at about 250k profits per hour. This in a very peaceful universe where I'm friendly with just about everyone (for now, I'm building my infrastructures to be self sufficient... the war will come later

), so they can freely roam where they see fit.
Buying and fully kitting out such a trader with weapons, shields, tunings, cargo space, and the ship systems is now gonna easily cost around 10 millions credits. This means the investment is balanced after more or less 40 hours (and I'm very prone to say these ESTs must have about twice the efficiency than a vanilla UT).

Now, complexes are more or less balanced to level off the investment spent on them after 48 hours (weapon and shield fabs almost twice as much, as they cost more). Consider stations are much less prone at being destroyed, while an UT loss in an unlucky encounter still happens from time to time even though the 200MJ shielding of the superfreighters helps quite a bit. I'd say ESTs and stations are as such pretty much balanced out, with the UTs being a less profitable source of income: just easier to setup in the early game before having enough millions to build decent complexes that don't need more than a CAG overseeing them.

They both are "fire and forget" solutions to make profits, and god bless 'em for being so: there are so many quirks, unintended AI behaviours and dumb UI design choices that those few things that actually - usually - work without frustrating you every so often are a godsend. As you advance in the game, there are so many things you have to take care of, that you often don't have any more time to just take a mission or have some fun with xenons without being swarmed by other things you have to check, oversee, solve yourself.
I definitely wouldn't add any more to the mix. I mean, people use scripts such as Lucike's ones instead of relying to vanilla exactly for that reason: having a smarter AI fleet that doesn't need so much micromanaging to be somewhat functional. Adding more micromanaging to one of the few already working (at least somewhat) fire and forget game features would seem a bit masochistic to me.

Poppa7563 · Post by **Poppa7563** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 01:27

Thank you for all your hard work on this Mod.
Very nice!

Scoob · Post by **Scoob** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 01:31

Hi,

I think if generally you are on good terms with the pirates then rogue elements within their ranks should almost be set to no race. We see this sometimes in missions where you have to "kill the split bad guy" who's in a split ship but not actually affiliated with that race. Still, if we're talking hard coding here it's unlikely to happen, unless a script can trap each hostile spawn and reassign it to the generic enemy race? Maybe something already does just that and I've missed it.

It IS frustrating if you try to roleplay as a Pirate only to have an asset attacked by one, fight back and start a war...sorta funny if a rogue Harrier attacks one of your M2's, not so funny when it's your first undershielded trade ship going kaputt...

With many creating some excellent Pirate and Yaki starts, it's almost like such a script needs to be bundled with them to keep things sane.

Cheers,

Scoob.

freelancer91 · Post by **freelancer91** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 01:37

Gazz wrote:Pirates are no "race". They are a bunch of criminals who got lumped together under a common label by the ship's computer.
Some are organised and respect friends of "the organisation", others are... sociopathic nutcases.

It makes no sense to be able to completely befriend every single sociopath in the universe.
Oh, it may be inconvenient to you but well, the universe doesn't care about you enough. =P

I know, but what I'm saying is that defending yourself against the rogue pirates should not make the pirates who are friendly to you turn hostile. More than once I have been trying to sneak by a pirate sector only to have a little hostile scout get to close to my MARS turrents and turn the entire sector hostile rather than just a few scouts.

Mizuchi · Post by **Mizuchi** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 01:54

Scoob wrote:Still, if we're talking hard coding here it's unlikely to happen, unless a script can trap each hostile spawn and reassign it to the generic enemy race? Maybe something already does just that and I've missed it.

The "Friendly Pirates" script is pretty much the next best thing to that (via the removal of the rogue elements) and it's already out there so it saves everyone the work of making it.

freelancer91 wrote:More than once I have been trying to sneak by a pirate sector only to have a little hostile scout get to close to my MARS turrets and turn the entire sector hostile rather than just a few scouts.

More than once I've had a trader ram into my stationary capital ship, blame me for it, turn hostile, have MARS politely correct him, and then had war break out. :3

Kadatherion wrote:I would make the Pirates spawn in their core sectors and then move onto adjacent commonwealth space, apart from maybe just a couple of rare unhindered spawns.

I think I'm going to do that, but make them spawn in any Pirate Sector rather than just the Core ones (which I don't think existed until XRM).

I want the frequent skirmishes that I saw happen in Elena's Fortune in the past happen in XRM, too.

The added bonus is that when they're patrolling Pirate Sectors... well, they're patrolling Pirate Sectors, so that shores up the defenses a little more (and will make Pirate space even more perilous to traverse!).

Halconnen wrote:While we are on the topic of jobs, I'm still wondering about those rear guard bomber squads that seem to patrol the sectors of other races.

I've set them to patrol.short for the next XRM Jobs file, so that shouldn't happen anymore.

NOValdemar · Post by **NOValdemar** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 02:12

Mizuchi,

any chance you would consider expanding the role of the ATF? possibly allowing small patrols of atf m6 battle groups ships outside ATF strongholds and into main terran space? (if this already happens sorry but i havnt seen it yet!) Even a few that jump around commonwealth space just outside Xenon areas could be cool in my opinion... not to mention convenient for persons looking to pick up some cool new fighters for a the beginnings of a shiny white pirate fleet....

Mizuchi · Post by **Mizuchi** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 02:30

NOValdemar wrote:Any chance you would consider expanding the role of the ATF?

Yes, but not by much. My issue with the ATF is that they're essentially fluff; they're a Task Force who, for some reason, happen to have better ships than the USC Military and more of them. (And also talk down to the USC, or something? What's the deal there?)

So in XRM I want the fact that they are basically just a Task Force and not an entirely different military a little more apparent.

But at the moment their operations are limited to ATF Forseti, The Moon, and Mars. (I made sure that every ship they have is present at least once).

I'd consider adding one or two extra ATF M7 and M6 patrols in Terran Space, and maybe an additional fighter patrol or two in the ATF Sectors, but that's about it.

I'm not 100% sure about what happens in the Unknown Terran Sectors because I've never managed to get that far into the plot (and Vanilla Jobs doesn't seem to have any Jobs assigned to those Sectors, so I assume any ships there are either randomly placed or created by the MD).

What numbers are you thinking, Nova?

Anunnak · Post by **Anunnak** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 02:47

I'm sorry to ask, I have a save game from 1.02, do I really need to start a new game from scratch? if I update or can I continue.

I'm guessing if I want all the benefits of the updated versions I need a new start.

Thanks and sorry for asking.

Kadatherion · Post by **Kadatherion** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 02:54

NOValdemar wrote:Even a few that jump around commonwealth space just outside Xenon areas could be cool in my opinion... not to mention convenient for persons looking to pick up some cool new fighters for a the beginnings of a shiny white pirate fleet....

Aren't ATF fighters coded so that they won't bail without third party plugins? Or maybe that has changed after the BoP plot has been added?
Some more ATF patrols in terran space might be good nevertheless though (could be fun to find a small task force that has gone its long merry way down the almost empty gamma sectors, perfect place to ambush them

), but personally I wouldn't make them wander in commonwealth space. Two reasons:
a) wouldn't want to screw up race relations when you are using "war" scripts that dynamically monitor the engagements going on in the universe;
b) seriously, am I the only one who will never, ever build a fleet with ships that are commonly seen roaming around?

I usually always go for OTAS, Goner or ATF ships exactly for that reason: you don't often see them around, and so your fleet feels a bit unique. Going at war with the Argon with a fleet of Titans of your own? Takes out half the charm from the fireworks in my opinion

And yup, the plot creates a major blockade in TUS3 during the Aldrin plot. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe when using the MD script to skip the plot, that sector was empty even in vanilla, so no jobs there, everything must have been scripted in at that point in the plot.

Anunnak wrote: I'm sorry to ask, I have a save game from 1.02, do I really need to start a new game from scratch? if I update or can I continue.

I'm guessing if I want all the benefits of the updated versions I need a new start.

Thanks and sorry for asking.

Nope, you don't "have to". There's a script you should run manually, though, to let some of the fixes apply in your current game. Only things you would miss are a couple of corrected gate names and two new sector links in terran space. Nothing major

Mizuchi · Post by **Mizuchi** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 03:09

Kadatherion wrote:But personally I wouldn't make them wander in commonwealth space.

The errant ATF and USC ships in Vkerinav's Jobs III caused enough trouble without me wanting to recreate that on purpose.

The major problem with ATF and Pirate Ships is that as far as Jobs is concerned, they aren't actually valid races that it fully recognizes (which is why you came across the missing "ATF..." prefix on ATF fighters recently - it has to be manually set; but that's fixed in the next update).

They basically "piggy back" other races, and you have to manually select which ship each individual job is going to use for those ships to spawn. In a nutshell, they're a total pain in the ass, and the amount of time we spent figuring out how they work (or don't work, as the case may be) was pretty sad.

We're talking hours and hours here.

mrscribbler · Post by **mrscribbler** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 05:49

paulwheeler wrote:RE: Damaged ships - it should be fairly straight forward to simply damage the hull of the starting ship via the director start script... but do people really want to start in a damaged ship?

Putting <set_hull exact="50"/> under start conditions - not inside rewards - will give you fifty percent hull. Still haven't figured out how spawn other properties, such as ships, with damage. Using the hull attribute under create_ship makes the ship start with 0 hull. It was hilarious as I found out the hard way that when hull is zero, any weapon-like interaction, including the repair laser, will kill the ship. Boom went my space fuel loaded MRS. Very big boom. Who knew that the stuff was so flammable, amiright?

aka1nas · Post by **aka1nas** » Thu, 28. Jul 11, 07:40

Kadatherion wrote:I would make the Pirates spawn in their core sectors and then move onto adjacent commonwealth space, apart from maybe just a couple of rare unhindered spawns. Sounds more realistic to me: while the odd occasion of finding pirates preying far away from their sectors is nice once in a while, if that happens too often once again this would be one of those little things that concur in making the universe feel so small, everything can jump to and from - and be found - everywhere.

Would it be possible to limit pirate spawns outside of pirate sectors to only spawn in/around pirate bases? I don't mind pirates cropping up outside pirate sectors, but it gets a little annoying when they spawn from nowhere.