[MOD] UFO - Ultimate Fleet Overhaul (V0.6.1 Beta, 3rd February 2015)

[Kierk]

Straight up spawning is a great solution. Losing out on the build time and build animation is a small price to pay for function ships without save editing .

UFO is still needed for creating non-player led fleets. Sometimes you don't want every ship you own chasing you around the galaxy. Picture a Taranis two balors and a support rahanes set to patrol a dangerous area while you run a massive trade route through.

The next step in making that kind of thing a reality is to work on combat AI. As PREDATOR490 notes combat AI right now is minimal, point move and shoot. I'm going to do a few adjustments to Hull Engineer over the next few days and then I'm going to try to clean that up a bit.

Examples:
Taranis is the capship I'm most familiar with, has powerful anti-cap primary weapons fore with some secondaries and major anti-fighter armaments on the sides. Basic AI plan is prioritize capships, point towards them and depending on stance stay stationary or move into range. If attackers are all smaller ships (XS to M) stay stationary to avoid problems with turret tracking.

Missile boats like the Balor should face toward capship enemies and hold position even at long range, its turrets are really only for anti-fighter.

Support ships should try to stay 20km from nearest enemy. (thought is find nearest enemy, point away, if distance less than 20km move).

[PREDATOR490]

Took a trip to the Xenon hub with a Taranis and Balor.

I actually got the fight I was looking for and the Balor had a good whack against a Xenon Branch 9 with its missiles.

The missiles of the Balor are way too slow and have awful tracking times which only further amplifies the Balor's need to close distance which is suicide because it is not going to last long.

Not to mention the Balor only launches 4 missiles at a time with a significant delay while looking at the ship would make you think it can fire in large volleys... however...

With the fight in the Xenon system, I tried setting the Taranis as the commander of the Balor - It did not move even when the Taranis was happily blowing the Xenon station away
I had to manually order both of them to patrol before they decided to go after the Branch 9

Patrol command from MCE worked wonderfully with these two ships as they actively tag teamed the Branch 9 with the Taranis chasing it while the Xenon was closing with the Balor.
Until the Balor decided to close with the Xenon and do a broadside things looked good.

[ external image ]

The weapons in this game are awful for capital ships, they seem fixed on the idea of spray and pray but the speed and range of the weapons are bad.

I saw the Balor launching missiles from 10km but they never connected until the ship closed into 5km.
Ideally, the weapon ranges need to be increased for capitals with the speed of the projectiles increased to match.

[G3n0c1de]

The Balors are really poor - I have yet to see one of them use their missile payload because they dont like to engage a target head on and when they do... they still dont fire anything.

I'd love to have my Balors use their novadrones too, so I poked around in the save file and tried seeing if they needed something in their ammunition block. Looking at other Balors I found this

Code: Select all

<connection connection="connection_weapon_small01" macro="connection_weapon_small01">
<component class="missilelauncher" macro="missilelauncher_invisible_torpedo_macro" connection="connection_component01" lastshottime="102804" ammunition="1" targetseen="0" id="[0x393a]">
<offset>
<position x="-71.2898" y="29.1" z="304.055"/>
</offset>
<connections/>
</component>
</connection>

There are four instances of that, for the four launchers. When I captured a Balor, I noticed that it said

Code: Select all

ammunition="0"

instead of

Code: Select all

ammunition="1"

like on other Balors.

I changed my Balor so it was set to 1, but it still never fired. So either it's something in the combat AI, or something else is needed to give it ammunition.

[shane1022]

so does this remove the Take Me To command? i dont seem to have it when i talk to my cap ships anymore

[Architekton]

I had a good play and congrats on the hard work thus far!

Some observations:

-Suplementing the reset ship command, I'd welcome a Reset Fleet
combined with adding all required crew if there's a need to do so.
Also, if you find yourself inclined this might be a good idea for testing purposes alone, please max. their stars out.

-The hierarchy is slow to setup and delays testing.
Not your fault but XR's intelligently crafted layered menu design.
If you can combine commands into les complicated menu structures (I was thinking: Assign Flagship and the script assigns your entire fleet under the command of that Flagship while slaving the Flagship to the player) please consider it.

-Please consider creating enemy Xenon only (I'd personally love it just that bit more if I could just spawn waves of Xenon fighters and Capital ships where I could maybe also select what types of ships I'd wanted...just so I could get rid of those ugly X3 Split ships)

-I agree with the post above that the Balor is an utter turd, fighters have absolutely zero use against capital ships and capital ships are just spamming so many bullets around, it's fairly easy to bring even a high-end rig to it's knees. I'm not sure this is your cup of tea but if you'd be willing to have a look at rebalancing everything basically lagging the game to death during combat> Most welcome! (less bullets, more speed per bullet, extended range for large calibre turrets would be a nice start)

-Noticed odd sliding, skimming, colliding, standing up right etc. etc.
Seems to be all part of the wonderful sandbox we've been given.
Eventually the battle grinds to a halt. I had 8 enemy Arawans entangled in a giant cluster-**** and none of them were moving anymore except for spamming the odd drone. Meanwhile my 2 surving Arawans were
standing upright in mid-air as if looking for a devine interventon

Please keep up the awesome work.
Maybe ES will adress the occassional bug that will make your life
a bit easier but I reckon it's pretty safe to say, any significant improvements on combat will have to come from you.

[shane1022]

Is there a reason that the New Order command is always greyed out? i can not seem to get my ships to attack anything still. I added the grav tag to the ships and everything. they fly right next to the enemy ship and the officer says she is attacking, but nothing happens

[foxtrot76]

This mod is a real joy for my eyes, seeing capitals actually behave like capitals is awsome.

I'm not sure if this has been reported before but I found a strange-looking behavior. I'm currently using the beta client 1.18

Running your mod I've noticed that the ship correctly tries to stay close to me and engages enemies by using it's booster. The odd thing is that when it's using the booster it doesn't seem to care in what direction the ship is pointing and will simply boost in that direction. Resulting in the capital flying in the direction it wants to go while maybe the nose (bow) is pointing in the opposite. This looks very strange to say the least

[Etyneo]

Out of curiosity, is UFO compatible with CSE? Or would having CSE be redundant?

[Kierk]

They're not incompatible, but UFO will overwrite CSE for player ships. I use a modified version of CSE to set NPC ships to the proper script and UFO for my ships.

[Etyneo]

They're not incompatible, but UFO will overwrite CSE for player ships. I use a modified version of CSE to set NPC ships to the proper script and UFO for my ships.

Perhaps you could work with CSE's author to release (and update as needed) your variant for those of us using UFO?

[Mad_Joker]

Ladies and Gents,

I have just release UFO V0.4.0, which features the possibility to choose engagement distances, a faster way to assign multiple ships to one commander, and a first "Fleet Command" - "Attack Zone", which allows to send your fleet to attack all enemies in a given zone.

However, I also have to announce that I will put modding X:Rebirth on ice for now, until a couple of more patches are released and the game is in a more complete state.

Until then, hafe vun!

[TheRealBix]

Yeaaah thanks !

[Koritnaciino]

Hi I running on 1.18 beta right now and in this mod I can not select command for my freigthers - defence officier. I can only ask him for skills. I dont want to put the trade ships to the fleets. I just want to make them able to defend it self. What I do wrong? Please help. Thx

[Mad_Joker]

Hi I running on 1.18 beta right now and in this mod I can not select command for my freigthers - defence officier. I can only ask him for skills. I dont want to put the trade ships to the fleets. I just want to make them able to defend it self. What I do wrong? Please help. Thx

Sorry, but that is currently not supported. Maybe CSE (Combat System Extension) can help you.

[Neoxan]

Hi I running on 1.18 beta right now and in this mod I can not select command for my freigthers - defence officier. I can only ask him for skills. I dont want to put the trade ships to the fleets. I just want to make them able to defend it self. What I do wrong? Please help. Thx

What you have to do is assign a commander to the freigther, then you broadcast a stance for this temporary fleet, defenssive is the best for a trading ship, after that, call him again and add him to the squad so the ship will move normally as if the mod is not working, but its working but just for the deffense officer, you can use MCE to give the captain commands and if any enemies engage him he will defend itself.

I do this with my fleet, ive done a lot of assasinations missions and boarded the capital ships, then i put an engie to repair it with the "Improvedengineer" and sell it, ive made a lot of cash, **** trading is completly bugged, its even worst in 1.18 cause as now trade works, it just reveals a huge bug, the NPCs buy all the stuff and theres almost no wares on sales.

I have an Arawn as fleet commander 2 taranis following him and 2 heavy suls following each taranis, the Arawn is in my squad and dont have a fleet commander so i fast travel inside him and move him with MCE, the others ships just follow him and when i want the whole fleet to get into combat i just assign the arawn to the skunk.

[Koritnaciino]

OOOOOO Great thank you verry much.

[jeroll3d]

Nice work

Mad

If possible, increase in other atualization option to 'formation'.

[Mesthione]

However, I also have to announce that I will put modding X:Rebirth on ice for now, until a couple of more patches are released and the game is in a more complete state.

Aw, that's a huge bummer! With the quality of mods rapidly appearing, including yours (esp since it adds fleet functionality!), I was getting hopeful for an eventual X4-like game! Thanks for the effort, and hope you don't stay away too long!

[Neoxan]

Found a little bug in the new version, when i try to move inside my cap ship while is in my squad, i usually use the MCE order "move to zone" and when i do so as always, i get the acknoweledged msg moving to zone blablabla but now i get another one, the cap ship im telling to move says hes attacking zone, then the ship jumps and the game crashes, it also happens when i use the "take me to" command

[not2day]

This mod works perfectly for me. Thank you for creating it.