[Script] SatelliteDeploy v1.12 (18/01/2006)

Gazz · Post by **Gazz** » Sun, 15. Apr 07, 14:07

It is... now... possible. =)

I have been using Bhruic's awesome script like forever and added little things as I went.

He hasn't been around for quite some time and I have been unable to reach him so I will offer this version until he asks me to remove it.

Code: Select all

1.) Required:  Special Command Software
    Optional:  Boost Extension           (illuminate gates)
    Optional:  Trading System Extension  (illuminate trade routes)
    Optional:  Video Enhancement Goggles (also deploy sats below the ecliptic)
    Optional:  Fight Cmd Software Mk2    (work in moderatly hostile sectors)

2.) One button operation. Configuration is done through ship extensions.
3.) Automatically buys and deploys Advanced Satellites
4.) Continuously scans for destroyed Sats and replaces those

5.) Satellites are always deployed in "Box-Formation"
6.) Optional: Boost Extension
    Jumpgates are illuminated if they are beyond the scanning range of the
    8 inner sats. Satellites will be placed 10 km towards the sector center.
7.) Optional: Trading System Extension + Boost Extension
    Trade routes (all space lanes between all jump gates) are illuminated
    if they are beyond the scanning range of 5. and 6.
8.) Optional: Video Enhancement Goggles
    6. and 7. only deploy one set of satellites 20km above the ecliptic.
    With VEG installed, a second set is placed below the ecliptic.
9.) If the player possesses < 2.000.000 Cr then only the first Sat for every
    sector will be deployed.
    In the early game you will want to "tag" sectors quickly to simplify
    trading. The typical "place 1 Sat in the center" routine would waste this
    sat or create additional work later on with collecting those.
    Since only the first sat of the full formation is placed your ships will
    automatically start filling up the formation once you earn more credits.
    (can be changed in  bhr.satdep.deploy.addpos.xml  )

10.) Route planning:
  * Undisdovered sectors are ignored. Period.
  * Sectors, that are set to Foe for THIS ship are not passed and no sats
    are deployed there.
  * If Fight Cmd Software Mk2 is installed then hostile sectors
    (except for Khaak/Xenon!) are treated as neutral.
  * If the player is in the same sector as the ship *while* the script is
    started then no rules of any kind apply and sats are deployed.
    Note that other deployment ships will still not *enter* this sector.
    This only allows for sat deployment in any hostile
    sector while you are fighting there.
    The deployment ship will finish deployment and hightail it outta there.

Download as ZIP or SPK. English and german version.

Yes, this will eventually deploy a ***load of satellites but you can always decide to use Bhruic's original script instead for a far more modest approach. =)

omegaxypher · Post by **omegaxypher** » Sun, 24. Jun 07, 06:10

i have only one issue to bing up to this marvoulus script. and thats jus the small problem of the extremely massive sectors. a box formation barely covers half the 100% zoomed map. and once go to max range... well you get the idea. it really dosent help when im using one of those large sectors as my home sector.

shadowdemon2 · Post by **shadowdemon2** » Sat, 15. Sep 07, 10:21

I had to stop my deployer to prevent it from being suicidal. Now that I have eliminated the threat, I want to restart it, but it won't do anything anymore.

I have version 1.12. I always start it without homebase, adn with single-sat configuration. I tried with and without "remember" (which I don't know what it's for anyway), but it won't do anything in either case, although it's in a friendly sector without sat (Goner) and it has 5 adv sat in it's hull. What can I do?

bruteman · Post by **bruteman** » Wed, 20. Aug 08, 02:22

I am a old fart and scripting is gibberish to me but id like to see a drummed down version of this with the 4 corners only option ie in Gazz's script only deploy sat named B1 T2 B3 and T4 which would make this much more friendly with outher scripts out there such as the warning networks and the MK3 UT Sat based trader (which only looks thru 5 sats for one with the name its looking for b4 it gives up. so if i had B1 T2 B3 T4 Id get most of the coverage i need and still have the 5th i can deploy for the Sat trader and security network.

I know the posts here are really old dont know if anyone with the natural ability would like to take on this alteration.

Or better yet make something that can clean up this network of over 850 sats i have going now LoL!

Brute.

Tritous · Post by **Tritous** » Wed, 20. Aug 08, 10:34

the problem with the trapped ship may be a case of FF settings.

The first complaint i had with this was the messages, every very short period of time saying no advanced sats for sale, will wait, no sectors needing sats, will wait, etc. When you have 20 of these ships, it's a pain so i modified that

The other possible problem is that the algorithm you use is very very intensive. I seem to find that when I have some sat laying ships, lag increases a lot.

The third peeve is that a waiting ship then follows up by just sitting there in the remote and undefended corners of sectors waiting to be killed. 99% of my lost sat ships was for that reason. would be nice for them to dock while they wait

thE_sAnE · Post by **thE_sAnE** » Wed, 20. Aug 08, 12:20

I was looking for a satellite deployment script last night and this one caught my eye. Although there are a few extra features i was hoping for.

The main thing that i feel is missing from this script is the abillity to use your own stock of sats, instead of the automated buying all the time. For instance, yesterday i set up a small Advanced Satellite complex to supply all the satellites for me to use. But on checking the functionallity of the deployment scripts i found i wouldnt be able to use my own sats in an automated fashion, only sats that were bought by the script.

I have never scripted before but I decided to take a look at the script files for this one thinking i might be able to put in a homebase check as the station selector before it tried to navigate and buy them. I might be able to do it with time, but atm there are a load of commands i cant find / understand so if anyone else can adapt this script or write a new and updated one that would be awsome

My wishful thinking:
- Automated deployment of sats
- Replace destroyed sats
- 'Tether' a ship to a sector
- Automated purchase / restock
- Checks homebase for satellite stock (could be a player owned sat factory, TL, PHQ)
- Wont travell throgh hostile sectors
- Jumpdrive capable? (not vital, but could also get restock of energy cells from homebase if theyre available)
- Variety of deployment patterns (I like the idea of 'illuminate gates' from Gazz's script for those huge sectors that arent covered by standard boxformation)

(If someone really wants to go the distance then they could also have a pilot rank/wage system

(not asking too much am i?))

Tritous · Post by **Tritous** » Wed, 20. Aug 08, 17:28

well this one does all except homebase, illuminate gate and the JD. Would it be taht hard to alter?

thE_sAnE · Post by **thE_sAnE** » Wed, 20. Aug 08, 17:48

Yes it is that hard to alter (for me

) . I havent tried it in game yet but i think it was said somewhere in the thread that the script was a bit of a resource hog. So ideally it could probably be totally rewritten maybe, if that would help performance...?

Probably not worth the effort so.. just my wishful thinking for a 'perfect' script. Even though its a fairly basic concept and has already been covered by other scripts.. mostly.

Tritous · Post by **Tritous** » Thu, 21. Aug 08, 01:57

this one was around very early, and it's one of the better behaved ones.

If it were to be remade, perhaps the way to settle the resource matter would be to preplan routes and not recalculate if possible, also maybe to calculate the routes in stages. Afterall, a ship takes a while to get somewhere, why does it have to plan everything so far ahead?

if it were to be remade then a series of larger deployment systems could be added which automatically select depending on the sector size

shadowdemon2 · Post by **shadowdemon2** » Thu, 21. Aug 08, 07:11

Well, I don't do X3 scripting, but if anyone want to rewrite something like that I can suggest the following, hopefully resource-saving heuristic:

1) If not enough sats in cargo bay, then go buy some.
2) If "global list" of sectors needing sat is NOT empty, go to 5)
3) Scan all sectors, and fill "global list".
4) If list still empty, go to nearest station, take a well earned rest and then go back to 2).
5) Remove nearest sector from the "global list", go there and place sats.
6) Go to 1)

Assuming that no more then one ship access the "global list" at the same time, then I think this would use the least CPU, even if there were several ships deploying. OTOH, if there were only one ship, the following would be better:

3) Scan all sectors, starting from current one in a spiral pattern, until maximum N (say 5) sectors have been found, and fill list.

This would keep a more current view of what has to be done, but would not work well for multi-ship deployment.

Gazz · Post by **Gazz** » Thu, 21. Aug 08, 11:37

Well, "someone should write this" hardly ever works.
If you have time to play X3 you clearly have time to write the scripts you want.
Not "being" a scripter is hardly an excuse. Noone was born as one. =P

thE_sAnE · Post by **thE_sAnE** » Thu, 21. Aug 08, 12:37

I never said 'someone should write this'. I even assumed that noone would think it worth the effort. And as i also said i have been looking at the scripts, but as you can imagine its quite hard understanding a script that isnt commented much(and as a complete novice

). tbh i only originally posted cos it just so happened i was looking at it the night before someone else brought this old thread to the top of the forum.

Edit: oooh, you were probably talking to the other guy, nvm me...

shadowdemon2 · Post by **shadowdemon2** » Thu, 21. Aug 08, 12:45

Gazz wrote:Well, "someone should write this" hardly ever works.
If you have time to play X3 you clearly have time to write the scripts you want.
Not "being" a scripter is hardly an excuse. Noone was born as one. =P

Well, I think you saw what I was up to recently. Actually, I haven't *played* X3 for like 6 months! I don't need those changes; I am happy with this script as it is. I was just suggesting that this would probably be more efficient. I spend at least 9 hours a day programming at work, and "optimizing" is basically what I spend most of my time doing, so I though I would share my expertise on how to make this faster.

I played X3 (+XTM) for like a year, and didn't manage to finish the plot, or build any kind of significant empire in that time, as I just haven't enough time for that. Now I upgraded my PC and the new one won't load my saved games, so I have to start from scratch. I don't want to ever have to start from scratch again, because I know that if I do I will never "finish" it (by whatever definition of "finish" you want to use).

So my personal goal is to start again with the biggest, most complete, collection of scripts that will work together, so as to accelerate my progress as much as possible (but without "cheating"), in the hope that I will then manage to "finish" the game eventually.

To create this "biggest, most complete, collection of scripts" I need to know about all the available scripts, and their incompatibilities. That is why I rewrote the Index. Now I am busy (when I get some free time) trying to find the real download links of all those scripts (and all the unlisted ones I can find through the forum), and try to download every one that is still available.

Once I'm done doing that, I'll put up an online archive where all I found will be available for download, with some simple tool that helps selecting compatible scripts.

When that is done, then I'll be able to build my personal "collection of scripts" and start playing again (with any luck). I would rather hope that I don't have to learn how to script X3, as there are already a lot of scripts out there that do about anything that one might want. I think that spending time finding those, and making them easily available for everyone, is a much more sensible goal. It's not like I couldn't learn it (anyone that managed to learn how to write assembler programs can learn to program in about every language), but I haven't got enough fingers to count all the programming languages I already learned, and I don't want to clutter my head with just another one special-purpose language, with very limited use.

NB: There are already some sites with collections of scripts, but as far as I know that covers at best 1/4 of everything that is "out there".

thE_sAnE wrote:oooh, you were probably talking to the other guy, nvm me...

Yes, I think he was talking to me.

Gazz · Post by **Gazz** » Thu, 21. Aug 08, 14:43

Actually I wan't talking to anyone in particular.
Oh, and in no game I've ever got enough race rank to buy any M2. =)

While your optimisation concept is intended for maximum resource saving it is not very transparent to the user.
The sat deployers would work with old data for hours instead of reacting to changes in their immediate environment first.
Even though the script would work as intended, a lot of users would consider it buggy that a ship buzzes off to deploy sats 5 sectors away when it "should" start in the current sector instead.

Anyway. There are several possible approaches to optimize that script but without someone to implement that, it's not going to happen. =)
I just expanded the deployment patterns a little because they were too ahh... modest for my taste. I want those sectors lit up like christmas trees. =P

shadowdemon2 · Post by **shadowdemon2** » Thu, 21. Aug 08, 20:14

Gazz wrote:Oh, and in no game I've ever got enough race rank to buy any M2. =)

I don't buy M2 (or M1), I steal them from the Xenon...

Gazz wrote:While your optimisation concept is intended for maximum resource saving it is not very transparent to the user.
The sat deployers would work with old data for hours instead of reacting to changes in their immediate environment first.
Even though the script would work as intended, a lot of users would consider it buggy that a ship buzzes off to deploy sats 5 sectors away when it "should" start in the current sector instead.

OMG! You sound like my boss!

Of course you're right. Ideally, one would give the user the choice between "resource usage" and "responsiveness", but that's usually an overkill because it would make the code too complicated. Better two different but simpler scripts, and the user must then decide which one to install.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

[Script] SatelliteDeploy v1.12 (18/01/2006)