How realistic is this? Is Egosoft planning this?

[Phezzan]

If I could have a magic Rebirth unicorn, I would use it to:
- pilot M3, M4, M5, M6+ (some with turrets dammit - I don't care if these are technically drones)
- rebalance ship combat (not sure exactly how, but it would be challenging)
- make the default station manager AI efficient with it's ships.
- make captains and defense officers respond appropriately to threats.
- give each faction a 'General' who would manage defense / offense deployments.
- give each faction an 'CEO' who would manage galactic productive activities and modify faction hostility settings,
- make Xenon live (mostly) within their productive capacity.
- make Pirates board ships for $$.
- make Pirates live within their economic capacity, but allow pirate factions to be paid off by CEOs to ignore or attack factions.

I understand some of these things are done:
WW X has general offensive / defensive script.
OOZ / IZ combat rebalances exist - an attempt to refine vanilla combat.
I believe the author of the improved mining script is experimenting with defensive responses

It should be possible to do these things, but jobs and dynamic sectors has always been somewhat troublesome in the X games.
Previous games had an 'Economy God' who would create and destroy stations, and the war in X3TC was pretty flippant about destroying ... everything.

I'm also wondering what the engine's limits are - both in zone and out of zone.
I understand there are two main processing threads, so I imagine the performance of running several dozen large scale AI scripts would be ... fun.

I have some experience here.
I've written a station manager for X3 and a rudimentary navigation script with threat avoidance. (the manager is brilliant, the navigation, not so much)
I've added turrets to X3 ships (and learned that I hate quaternions)

[w.evans]

Hey Phezzan,

- pilot M3, M4, M5, M6+ (some with turrets dammit - I don't care if these are technically drones)

Lander1979 has been working on something like this here. Still don't how feasible it is. Unless the plan has changed, Lander's plan was to create various ship models to replace the Skunk, then find a way to dynamically replace the Skunk's model in-game. That should be possible, but is going to take a whole lot of work.

- rebalance ship combat (not sure exactly how, but it would be challenging)

"How" is important.

- make the default station manager AI efficient with it's ships.

This is doable. You'll be wanting (if I remember correctly) aiscripts\trade.station.player.xml, aiscripts\trade.station.xml, and the trade scripts that they call for the station trading aspect. Not sure which combat scripts are used for station-based ships.

- make captains and defense officers respond appropriately to threats.

These are in various ai scripts. interrupt.attacked and fight.attack.object might be particularly useful.

- give each faction a 'General' who would manage defense / offense deployments.
- give each faction an 'CEO' who would manage galactic productive activities and modify faction hostility settings,

Why particular NPCs rather than abstracted the way it is now? Yorrick did something like this a while back, but the CEO was more a way to manage a faction's funds with the faction's funds set to a finite amount.

Sorry, should clarify that question. How would having a particular NPC manage a faction's activities be better than the way it is now? A concrete personification of a faction to talk with, ask missions from, assassinate, molest, and generally interact with to more directly influence a faction? Something like kings in Mount and Blade?

Hm, Mount and Blade, there's an idea. I wonder if it would be fun to have station-based warlords or station security chiefs or something like that, have them have a limited budget depending upon a station's finite funds, and have them spawn fleets depending on how much money a station has. Would be better to have ships be built entirely by shipyards of course, but that can take a very long time before a fleet of any size could be built.

- make Xenon live (mostly) within their productive capacity.

Could be wrong, but I don't think the Xenon have any productive capacity. For this to work, the Xenon productive infrastructure has to be written, and it has to be robust enough to be entirely self-sufficient unless it'll be possible to trade with them or they take what they need via piracy.

- make Pirates board ships for $$.

I think this is possible, but am not sure. The way variables are defined in the boarding script are very general and seem to imply the possibility of other entities in the universe initiating boarding. A ship in the plot does that too, although I'm not sure if it actually runs the boarding script or if the whole thing is scripted.

- make Pirates live within their economic capacity, but allow pirate factions to be paid off by CEOs to ignore or attack factions.

Same problems, and possible solutions, as with the Xenon.

Looking forward to your work!

[UniTrader]

- give each faction a 'General' who would manage defense / offense deployments.
- give each faction an 'CEO' who would manage galactic productive activities and modify faction hostility settings,

Why particular NPCs rather than abstracted the way it is now? Yorrick did something like this a while back, but the CEO was more a way to manage a faction's funds with the faction's funds set to a finite amount.

aiscripts can only be executed on an NPC. reason enough?

[w.evans]

- give each faction a 'General' who would manage defense / offense deployments.
- give each faction an 'CEO' who would manage galactic productive activities and modify faction hostility settings,

Why particular NPCs rather than abstracted the way it is now? Yorrick did something like this a while back, but the CEO was more a way to manage a faction's funds with the faction's funds set to a finite amount.

aiscripts can only be executed on an NPC. reason enough?

Well, yeah, but faction activity (which ships are spawned where, stations being built, trade, patrol patterns) don't require aiscripts. Unless faction-specific behavior in the individual character level is desired, in which case an additional NPC still won't be necessary.

Faction hostility settings can be set via md, couldn't they? Same for ship deployment.

So, to do what Phezzan said, no, not reason enough.

Not saying it shouldn't be done anyway. Just don't understand why.

[Phezzan]

Unless the plan has changed, Lander's plan was to create various ship models to replace the Skunk, then find a way to dynamically replace the Skunk's model in-game. That should be possible, but is going to take a whole lot of work.

Awesome... and a lot more troublesome than what I imagined necessary. Good to know.

"How" is important.

certainly - it depends on all those other changes and what the engine can do. At this point it's an abstract list item, but missiles and beams clearly need to be addressed.

Specifically:
Missiles can't be targeted - so the game mechanic requires them to be either easily evaded or trivially toothless - and only the player attempts to evade them.
Beams can't be evaded - so the game mechanic requires them to be either sniped off the capital ship (missiles ^^) or the fighter to hide in the enemy launchbay.

Shields don't recharge under fire and ships don't run away.., so even large ships are vulnerable to a drone with a mining laser.

These are not fun and immersive mechanics.

Why particular NPCs rather than abstracted the way it is now?

I use the terms 'General' and 'CEO' to conceptualize their function. I didn't know any implementation actually existed. To me as a player who beat the main plot the economy appears to be a credit dispensing macguffin. I understand that ships actually require station products - but those ships don't appear to have a purpose, and I'm guessing the vast majority of ships in the universe spawn perfunctorily according to the jobs spreadsheet.

Hm, Mount and Blade, there's an idea. I wonder if it would be fun to have station-based warlords or station security chiefs or something like that, have them have a limited budget depending upon a station's finite funds, and have them spawn fleets depending on how much money a station has. Would be better to have ships be built entirely by shipyards of course, but that can take a very long time before a fleet of any size could be built.

The delay (while difficult in an AI forecasting sense) is absolutely necessary for immersion IMHO.
I play Mount and Blade, amassing troops is one of the primary challenges the player faces, and I'm pretty sure the AI has some limitations as well.

I don't think the Xenon have any productive capacity.

They have stations in... (I forget) but something the Xenon could 'build' and the player could destroy to affect their economy is probably good enough.
the Xenon 'commander' could simply tally his functioning abstract productive capacity (add a fixed extra galactic stipend) and then spend it to spawn ships in some distant location on a delay timer - probably with a rate limit on the large ships to simulate limited L and XL capacity.

The way variables are defined in the boarding script are very general and seem to imply the possibility of other entities in the universe initiating boarding. A ship in the plot does that too, although I'm not sure if it actually runs the boarding script or if the whole thing is scripted.

I've tweaked boarding - but I don't really understand MD cues properly - instantiate vs normal, what happens to the cues when a boarding target dies / is boarded by several attackers ... etc. I didn't understand MD in previous games either, so no surprises...

The individual ship reaction to threats is probably my first priority. I find vanilla ships are amazingly stupid.
Actually I'm surprised that fixing this is not on Egosoft's immediate priority list.

[UniTrader]

@w.evans:
i think AI is more suited for this purpose than MD

@Phezzan some corrections/additions:

regarding Missiles: although they cannt be Targetted they can still be shot down (only makes sense for slow ones though, like novadrones.. and they are quite fragile, i think 3 or 4 hits with the most basic weapon of the Skunk)
Missile Defense Drones or Escort Ships are also (quite trivially) possible as my tests pointed out, but not sure if i will continue work on that in the near future since it was just a test out of intrest

regarding Shields:
its not tied to the ML, a hit every about 3 seconds is enough to keep them from recharging (thats the Delay to when recharging Starts on average, its longer for more massive shields and shorter for the smaller, faster recharging ones. iirc the min value defined here was 1 second)

regarding Ship "Spawning"/generation: partially true, but not the whole Story:
Small Ships are taken from Shipyard Storage, if available, otherwise the Game falls back to spawning (thats the reason they are quickly sold out)
L and XL Ships are simply spawned because there is no Shipyard holding them in Storage (and its probably better for playability this way because otherwise the SYs wold probably be constantly busy building Ships on all Cradles instead of just one)

and regarding MD instantiated/not instantiated:
instantiated cues can be triggered multiple times and each time a copy of it with all its sub-cues is created (so each sub-cue can be triggered once per instance or also multiple times if instantiated too, but be careful with that)
non-instantiated cuse on the other hand can only be triggered once and when this happens their sub-cues are set to waiting state