[Mayhem 3.21b] Zero Hour 1.10a

Hector0x · Post by **Hector0x** » Sun, 17. Jul 22, 18:23

Please try Hairless-Ape's latest fixes & additions and give feedback to him - Hector, 04/30/2023
>>>viewtopic.php?p=5172143#p5172143

Features:

continuation of Joubarbe's Mayhem 3 Mod
better Tutorials and difficulty scaling. Easy is easier. Hard is more difficult
new strategic faction AI capable of multi-fleet operations, turtling, raiding, non-aggression pacts, blacklisting sectors, fixing resource shortages, etc.
galactic unification when Xenon become too powerful
new 'Nomad' faction with mobile factories and mercs
more believable Pirate behavior
Marine Boarding
working Fleet formations
tons of QoL, automation tools, etc, etc.
infamy system! Choose to play good or evil.
separate customization t-file with 60+ new settings! Disable or tweak anything that you don't like.

Installation:

install Mayhem 3
download Zero Hour (Latest) from GitHub & extract it (separate! Not directly into your game folder)
https://github.com/Hector839/Mayhem-3-Z ... r/releases
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open the extracted download until you see these folders:

Drop them into your X3 root directory (C:/games/x3 terran conflict/). NOT into the 'addon' folder, override everything
get Hairless-Ape's ZMap Generator. (external tool which replaces the standard Mayhem 3 Galaxy Generator)
create a new galaxy in ZMap
save your galaxy in ZMap
activate your galaxy in ZMap
check if your cat/dat files are numbered correctly in an ascending order without gaps.
> x3 terran conflict/addon/
Zero Hour's cat/dat comes named as '12', which fits a stock Mayhem installation. Additional mods or Mayhem 3 graphic options like no engine trails, backgrounds pack, or laser reskins have their own extra cat/dat files. Example:
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start game using the no steam executable

Major Differences to base Mayhem 3 / Tips:

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difficulty settings matter more. Easy is forgiving , Hard should be a nice challenge.
much faster Outpost crafting. You need less shipyards
enemies don't always attack each other on sight. Every unit has certain goals and motivations.
Pirates are more powerful but less aggressive
Zone of Control: (player securing Unknown sectors)
- NPC empires cannot claim unknown sectors until the player has claimed his first one.
- NPCs are able to rush empty sectors quickly without forced waiting in between but won't prefer to do it
- your sectors protect adjacent unknown sectors from being claimed. But your ZoC can get violated, except when playing on easy mode. The protection should still be pretty good, even long into the game. But there are no 100% guarantees anymore and you cannot be sure that your adjacent empty sectors remain unclaimed forever.
- on hard difficulty factions will ignore your ZoC completely and always rush to conquer empty sectors immediately. Here the AI will also counter any strategies where the player tries to wall off areas on the galaxy map by blocking access.
overextending your empire by claiming too many sectors isn't really possible. It will not raise threat levels or make enemies stronger like in Mayhem 2.
some Perk effects have changed. Read their description before unlocking!
the Xenon Empire can escalate fast. This is intended. Don't be afraid to spam SETA. You should never need to be 'ready' to 'save the galaxy'. The NPCs will handle that on their own.
but choose your starting sectors far away from the OCV portal sector! (for your first run best go in the opposite corner)
trading stations are more useful and got an extended range of goods
final tier ship parts like Hull Plating can be much more difficult to obtain. Everything else should be available to buy.
your starter TL has a mobile factory kit. This equipment got a secondary production line which can refine resources on a loop just like a real factory! This works passively in the background, even when you give the ship another command like flying somewhere or building a station.
in Zero Hour your freighters usually still travel quite safe during war with other major empires.
there are neutral civilian Traders which are not affiliated to any of the major empires! Those ships can be destroyed without reputation or cash penalties. This includes all ships of the new 'Nomad' faction.
there is a diplomatic way to get a Truce and repair bad reputation. The AI empires will also do this between each other. The AI needs to have a reason to desire peace with you. Powerful nations generally won't.
heavy pirate activity in your area of the map is often temporary. Don't loose hope! If it gets really crazy, infamy would immediately take a lot of pressure away.

If you need extra firepower:

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don't underestimate Mercenaries in this mod! They allow you to punch above your own weight class
standard mercenaries are reliable
Nomad Mercs are cheaper and more powerful
honorable players will have trouble to keep Nomad Mercs in line. If you don't have infamy you should go straight to battle after hiring them. Because at some point they will end their contract and demand more money.
diplomatic favor actions should be less of a gimmick. Tip: use the 'Priority' favor to get rid of Xenon sectors in your starting area.
to get favor points do many missions or choose a main faction as enemy and kill their bigger ships. This will give you loyalty with their enemies. Save up enough loyalty points to buy 1 favor point but don't spend it. Reach high ranks with your allies. All that decreases favor costs.

Tips to make money:

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get a solar power plant + satellite factory and open it for traders. Set auto-cash transfer to 1 credit
go bounty hunting! Pirate raid carriers are quite safe but often difficult to catch
doing combat missions with a police license can be surprisingly profitable.
bring a TS into an empty Xenon sector. NPC Salvage Crews don't dare to go here, so you can often find valuable loot which can be sold to trading stations. But stay on the lookout because new Xenon patrols or roaming pirate gangs might enter the sector. If you're bold you can also go in while some Xenons are present, but only pick loot close to the jumpgate. Or follow some faction squadron which is passing through the sector to get a bodyguard.
get a small wing of fighters or fly an M6 and have a TS follow you. Then scan neutral traders and search for any fat cargo loads to steal. This is especially profitable if you manage to intercept a trader which was about to close a deal with a factory. Then you can scoop up the goods and finish this trade with your own TS. Unless you're planning to be a criminal for very long you should not do this too often and generally stay below 5-10 infamy points so that it can still decay back to 0 in any reasonable amount of time.
About Trading:
in Zero Hour you will see lower trade margins because there are fewer trades from 1 factory to another without a trading station or Outpost as a middle man. That's just how it needs to be so that this mod can work. The typical vanilla X3 or Litcube logic of 'UTs earning lots of money' will not be very profitable (it never truly was in Mayhem 3). There are many other ways to get passive income. Like the Tax perk, producing lasers & shields to sell, selling resources, food, selling loot, etc.
A few of those methods work even better than before. Maintenance and other expenses are also generally cheaper, the entire money game should be easier. As a rule of thumb: if you want big money you need to be selling something from your stations. And don't underestimate the more active ways to earn money during the earlygame.

Now go and play already!

New Mechanics

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Strategic AI:
In base Mayhem 3 factions would sometimes do stupid things like starting new wars while they were already getting completely owned by the Xenon. Or that they never did anything to try and fix their strategic ship component shortages.
To a very large degree their behavior was simply random. They just didn't know any better.

But in Zero Hour the AI empires will understand a couple of very important things like:

how large their territory is
how powerful their military
how well the other factions are doing
how many ship components they have
how dangerous the Xenon/OCV are
how many freighters they are loosing lately
if enemy capships are roaming around their sectors for ages and just endlessly killing all their small patrols

Each AI empire will evaluate all these parameters and might react to them, or solve certain problems in pretty creative ways. The full documentation contains a long list of all possible reactions and their respective AI triggers.
This new strategic AI is definitely not perfect, but probably better than the one in X4

AI reactions include:

blacklisting sectors/factions, telling ships to fly around dangerous sectors
smart invasion target selection, choosing deep strikes vs. short range, synchronized overkill invasions
separate peace agreements with other factions, trying to unite the galaxy against the Xenon Empire
fleet retreat & overmatch factors
evacuating valuable offensive forces from the area around the OCV Maelstrom sector (Exodus)
force concentration & fleet grouping, cutting own losses
alternate squadron roles & behavior. Multipurpose fleets.
using raider fleets to fight asymetric war
fixing pirate problems, getting more police, trying harder to locate pirate bases
fixing strategic component shortages, building the required factories, recycling unnecessary ones.
hiring mercenaries to supplement fleets

Some Examples:
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Not all factions will play smart!

there are also sentimental motivations with more reckless or even stupid behavior!
for example every faction wants to control their own dejure sectors, even if the sector stats are complete crap (its like an ancestral homeworld for them)
the general rule is this. If a faction struggles in the game it tries to play smarter (minMaxing). But if they do well they can also pursue sentimental goals with no real gameplay advantage
galactic superpowers which have basically already won the game and nothing really left to do will eventually develop a good or evil personality, which affects their entire behavior. A personality generally makes them less effective and allows weaker factions to topple them.
good vs. evil depends mostly on the species (Borons tend to become benevolent protectors, Split mostly become tyrants) You can customize the ethos of each race in the t-file. Note that this only determines their chance to become good OR evil. Not HOW good or evil they will be.

General Changes:

improved tactical combat AI, mostly for fighters and capships, both in-sector and OOS
cargo scanning without the correct police license has no additional penalties anymore. You loose a tiny bit of reputation if you scan a ship of a major NPC empire but scanning neutrals is always free
loot drops from freighters (TS/TP) always include all resources they carried, but only partial equipment loot like weapons or shields
your starting TL has a Mobile Factory Kit and the Crystal Transmuter
Docking Computer is no longer a default equipment for TPs. But if you choose to start with a TP it will have one.
Police License reworked. You no longer buy it. It is automatically awarded at rank 6 and retracted if you drop below rank 6 or have any infamy. Also added notifiications.
all ships which are docked to other ships don't cost upkeep (makes carriers more useful)
the Drydock perk still keeps a quarter of your capship maintenance cost. It doesn't remove it entirely.
TM also have the Carrier Repair Module preinstalled
free saving with lots of salvage insurance
Explorer and Tug workers never react to any attacks and just continue flying. This is assuming that you use fast ships!
player Trader tweaks (they should do less hauls with no profit but its impossible to prevent that completely)
the player is being held accountable for any kills scored by Mercs he has hired (not including the hardcoded reputation gain)
lots of small tweaks

Terraformers:

this mod is centered around a cyclic Xenon Armaggedon. The Xenon Empire eventually grows quite powerful and threatens a large part of the galaxy. This leads to a massive war between biological life and machines. All factions including player can influence Terracorp, which has the authority to declare a forced unification of the galaxy.
the OCV also got a rudimentary strategic AI. It can detect when the Terraformer offensive gets stuck. They can decide to grind out massive fleets and then simply use brute force concentration to overrun whatever obstacle was blocking them. But this is generally only used near the OCV Maelstrom sector. Further away they're much easier to stop.
On normal and especially easy game difficulty the OCV and Xenon tend to focus a bit more on the other empires. Only on hard difficulty the player gets treated like any other faction.
the Terraformers just have too many changes to list them here, including some new t-file settings. Check out the manual if you want to learn more.

Pirates

Pirates are finally the cowards they should've always been. Usually they don't risk their hide and also won't provoke the military.
groups of pirates have special behavior and get routed when their leader dies.
pirates use TMs for tactical redeployment, mobile repairs and hot-drops. These are pretty fast and also smart.
more pirate bases will appear throughout the game. But you can still wipe them out.

Corporations & Civilian Sector

trading stations are now a vital part of the global economy and serve as major resource distributors
there is an entirely new civilian sector with independent Traders and Mercenaries. The companies don't care if you blow up some Trader, nor does the sector police care. Everybody just looks out for himself and his own faction.

Outposts:

a new perk allows you to maintain high population in your shipyard Outposts
too many changes to list here

Favors and Loyalty

favor actions are generally more accessible to the player and you can build a real long term relationship.
you can now earn loyalty outside of missions by destroying ships which are bigger than a fighter. Enemies of this faction will like that. Its less efficient on Xenon, Pirates, etc. and you will get much more loyalty if you help someone in the main faction war and put your own reputation on the line.
the 'Priority' favor action now works on Xenon sectors even when the Xenon are weaker than original.
if your title with a faction drops below rank 0 you will now loose all your loyalty and favor points!
you still get loyalty when you have infamy. And you can also buy favor points. But you cannot spend them on diplomatic favor actions until you're honorable again.

Non-aggression pacts:

factions who believe that they're having some sort of problem will agree to sign peace treaties with each other and the player
this agreement is followed by a Truce that is much longer than usual. If you violate a Truce with other factions you get infamy.

Infamy

the player can do evil things and become known as a criminal. This doesn't need be bad for you. Its just an alternate way to play Mayhem 3.
with the honorable playstyle you are more respected by the major factions. This gives you the diplomatic option to end small scale border wars in an agreement.
with the criminal playstyle you are respected by the Pirates and Nomads, which allows you to settle in the more dangerous areas of the map and steal valuable resources from neutral Traders. You loose the safety that Truces would provide, but you can also recruit massive Merc armies much better and simply defend yourself.
just to be clear. Being a criminal doesn't affect your reputation in any way. No faction other than Xenon, Pirates, etc. can ever decide to attack you. Its just that with infamy you are basically North Korea.

Nomad Faction

intergalactic travellers with a mobile shipyard
lucky survivors from Terraformer attacks will roam the galaxy and eventually join them
their efficient factory ships refine resources on the fly
the Nomad shipyard creates special Mercs for hire

Quality of Life Features:

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Automatic Jump Beacon Protection:

when a Xenon scout fighter tries to infect one of your jump beacons the game will automatically call nearby ships to take him out!
you don't have to worry about which commands or response forces you need to set up to protect your beacons. Just park 2-3 fighters up to 20km away from it
this only works with ships that have no other command or are protecting the jump beacon itself
you also get notified about how many ships got activated or if you need to react yourself
the Xenon scout also won't fall back anymore and cannot wander off while still infecting the beacon
no, i won't make this compatible for docked ships. You have to park them directly in space where they will constantly cost you maintenance and get more expensive over time (game balance)

Bounty Board:

shows jump distance
clicking on a ship activates autopilot to last known position

Map Data Stashes:

Remnant ships often reveal the location of an empty sector that you don't know yet
captured Jump Beacons often reveal an empty sector and all sectors adjacent to it
makes it a bit easier to find a good starting location for your empire and during early game you can send ships to explore a few sectors at once (they automatically avoid goin through Xenon sectors)
added t-file setting to modify the chance to get map data

Miner Worker Early Unloading:

now Miners go and drop their cargo already at 3000 filled volume
many players want their Miners to head home more frequently to get constant access to their color crystals or to reduce the risk of loosing an entire cargo load. Others like me just buy those crystals elsewhere and want their Miners to stay in space as long as possible to maximize overall profit and mining time. Now you can tweak this yourself with a new setting. To disable early unloading set it to 0.
only checked by Player Miners & only after switching to the next asteroid debris chunk

Whitelist for Explorer Workers:

allows you to define sectors which should always be monitored with satellites, even when hostile or blacklisted.
allows to spy on enemy sectors
best used in combination with automatic Worker replacement on your satellite factory (player console > station settings screen)

QuickTrade:

modular trade setting presets. Unlike the base Mayhem presets these are actually useful
optimized for passive income and balanced storage levels. You should have less cash issues. Also saves lots of time/micro and could be useful to learn about trade settings in Mayhem 3 and how to set everything up.
basically you just select a general role for your Outpost (like should it build ships or stations? with or without buying missing parts? or should it just craft lasers to sell for profit? Should it buy the required food and sell the others, etc.) After a few mouse clicks QuickTrade has automatically set up dozens of trade thresholds and auto-cash transfer for you. All in a way that immediately works and makes sense. Afterwards you can still dive in to configure everything in detail.

Storage UI:

the 6 most important ship and station crafting materials simply get highlighted in the Outpost storage overview. At first glance you can see how balanced the total values of your stocks are. Saving up lots of Hull Plating is useless if you don't also have the required Computer Components and Quantum Tubes to back it up. Building ships and stations always consumes all 3 resources at an equal rate (average credit value).

Galaxy News Settings:

greatly reduced on-screen notification clutter!
ministry of war got 4 new toggles for each faction (at the bottom of the diplomacy tab). With those you can control which galaxy news get displayed on screen for this faction. 1) their sector claims, 2) their claims expiring 3) them conquering sectors 4) their protectorates expiring.
For example you can disable everything but still get notified whenever an Argon protectorate times out, so you will know that you can attack the sector.
Also added a new t-file setting which controls how these message settings get first set on a new gamestart. Either showing everything (vanilla Mayhem), showing nothing, or hiding just the often useless info like claims, etc. and only notifying about actually conquered sectors (this is the new default).
any messages concerning player sectors, Xenon, or the creation of new abandoned sectors will always be shown to you

Mobile Factory Passive Loop Production:

TLs with the mobile factory equipment can now be told to produce constantly on a loop!
production will just begin whenever the required resource is detected in the cargohold
it only stops once you turn it off in this screen
this works completely passive in the background. The TL itself can be flying, fighting, docking, even crafting another one time order like a jump beacon !!!
your TL needs some free cargospace. When using Couriers to supply it with resources better use something like the 'Maintain' Courier command as the 'Unload' command could overfill him
your TL warns you when he doesn't have enough free cargospace to finish his current batch of passive crafting. It will wait and you won't loose anything
stopping the loop production will also finish any currently ongoing crafting. You won't loose those resources but you cannot start a new loop production until its done.
don't be impatient with this passive crafting process. It always needs a minute or two before registering new wares in the cargohold and starting a new project.

Automatic station building - Architect Worker:

placing stations lategame was a real micro pain. First you had to produce the station kits at an Outpost, then wait until they were finished, then not forget about them, dock your TL, remember which factories you wanted to build, load the kits up (but not all because cargospace is limited!), tell the TL where to go, wait until its there, remember that you had sent him, now finally build the factories one by one. This chore required hundreds of keystrokes and going through countless sub-menus and commands with lots of waiting in between. This is fine for the first couple sectors, but then...jeez
now you can just queue up factories to build with a single click and everything gets handled by your 'Architect TL'
Each Outpost has a new 'Architect' backlog in the Administration section (where the perks are, not in the internal factory menu)
your empire can only have 1 Architect TL
he doesn't have any jump range restrictions
his homebase needs to be an Outpost (which should be specialized on station crafting and also well connected to your jump beacon network)
the Architect can only build 1 station at a time. Doing it yourself will always be faster and you can select the exact building location, but at some point you just don't care anymore and want it automated
he puts the stations close to the Outpost which ordered them. Mines get placed on the best yield asteroids
he avoids to work in sectors with big or huge enemy ships inside and simply does them later when the danger is clear. He also tries to fly on a safe path (its not always perfect so for large distances you should use jump beacons)
he automatically orders the required station kits from the Outpost internal factory. If he finds a stockpile of station kits he will know that the player has put them there. So he takes one but also orders a replacement.
there is no real Architect ship command for the TL itself. You just define the TL to be your Architect and from this point on he just is, even when you use him for something else. He will always resume back to his Architect task whenever you tell him to dock at his homebase.
he only needs a certain portion of his cargospace to do the Architect work. You are completely free to use the rest of the cargospace. So for example you can still manually order him around to place jump beacons for you, transport goods, craft things with the mobile factory, etc. When you don't want him to do Architect work, either unassign him as Architect, unassign his Outpost homebase, park him in space or at a different Outpost which is not his homebase
if there is any problem, like when you filled up his cargospace too much or want him to build a second research station, or he cannot find a matching asteroid for a mining station that you ordered, etc. he will either fix the build queue himself (and notify you), or request that you empty his cargo a bit more.
added buttons to Outpost Administration to hide the perk and worker lists for easier access to the Architect order list

Fleets (Player):

Formations & waiting on each other when in different sectors
new fleet setting: monitor all sectors of a specific faction. Very useful on yourself because that completely removes the need to update the monitored sectors list on every response fleet each time your territory grows. This works as an addition to the monitored sectors list. So for example you can tell a fleet to monitor the player faction + that Paranid sector XY at your border + another Unknown sector Z with a pirate base
monitoring can no longer take control of leaders who are currently going for repairs or detailed inspection
new fleet setting: retreat from a specific enemy ship class! Your fleet will gtfo once it detects a particular enemy ship class or anything bigger entering the sector. Very useful to keep fighter or corvette fleets generally away from things they can't or shouldn't handle.
It works as an addition to the standard strength based retreat threshold. So for example if you set this to 'M6' and combine it with a retreat threshold of '3:1', then your fleet would only respond into monitored sectors which don't have any hostile M6, M7, M1 or M2 and the combined enemy strength can also not be higher than 3 times of your strength. Your fleet will also retreat if any of those conditions suddenly appear in their current sector.
added an even lower retreat threshold '1:1'. With this one your fleet only engages when the enemy is weaker than you. Now you can set up very careful rapid fighter response fleets to monitor your own sectors with almost zero losses. For enemy sectors this new 1:1 setting is often too sensitive because there are usually multiple small patrols roaming around which also stack up some combined power. And your fleet could be too afraid and not go there at all
fixed the bug that the retreat threshold was actually always 1 higher than displayed
freighters are now always excluded from any military strength comparisons because they are never such a threat that any fleet should ever retreat from them (or refuse to enter these sectors)
strength comparisons now always take all enemies into account. Even the ones that you have set to be ignored for sector monitoring (fighters, big ships or huge ships) Just because you don't want to attack these targets doesn't mean that your fleet should ignore them when considering enemy military presence.
player fleets don't attack hostile freighters or satellites anymore and will never get distracted by them.
3 new fleet targeting priorities have been added.
- 'Enemy Freighters'. Use this together with faction monitoring and the Explorer whitelist to get automatic raider fleets which can hit the supply lines of a hostile empire.
- 'Satellites'. (factions need vision to be able to start invasions against sectors)
- 'Only neutral Traders with Cargo'. This is automatic Piracy! Your fleet ONLY picks freighter targets which actually carry some loot and which can be attacked without causing a reputation hit with anyone. But you will gain infamy for each kill. This does not include refugee transports (TP) or Nomad factory ships (TL), even though they might also carry resources. There are just too many innocent civilians on board and destroying those targets is considered to be too much of a war crime to be fully automated.

E-War Overhaul

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Hacking Guide

Hacking system more viable & convenient
new 'Cyberwar' perk for automation & remote hacking
Terraformers can now be hacked!
no more persistent system lockdowns
major cost & risk rebalance (going for higher Virus efficiency vs. security is much more viable)
when your cyberattack gets backtraced if you were honorable you get 1 infamy. If you already had infamy there will be retaliation hacks like before.
less firewalls on NPC ships
all Outposts can craft Hackerchips instantly
Hacker Rootkit range increased: 9km > 20km

Terraformer Hacks

Xenon & OCV ships are very susceptible to cyberattacks
cannot use Advanced Firewalls
have lots more open ports
but no systems for 'Accounting' or 'Oxygen' (those ports always closed)

Cyberwar Center

passive Outpost perk
automatically prepares opportunities to debuff enemy capships
slowly generates Hackerchips for free

How it works exactly:
- it performs automatic port scans on random ships in range. This rids you of about 80% of the annoying grind with Mayhem's hacking system.
- if a Cyberwar Outpost holds Hackerchips, then it automatically consumes them to install backdoors into vulnerable ports. A backdoor is basically an opportunity to upload a virus. For example to turn off shields on multiple enemy ships before a battle, or make them drop some of their weapons.
- you cannot control which factions, ships or subsystems get targeted by the Cyberwar center. So this perk can be pretty wasteful with your hackerchips. But the port research that you have completed will determine which targets are available to it. Lets say you want to debuff a Teladi fleet of 2 Condor M1 by disabling some of their weapons. You would research the port for the Condor cargo system and put a Cyberwar center nearby. Eventually your Outpost might've installed backdoors into the cargo subsystem on those Condors. Doing it yourself with the Hacker Rootkit will likely be faster, but you would need to fly close to those ships. Which is a lot of manual work and could also be impossible if they are your enemy.
- Cyberwar center only chooses capships for the automatic backdoor installation (anything smaller is usually not worth it, except for stealing money with 'Accounting')
- it can only target ship subsystems which are directly related to combat (for game balance reasons). This excludes systems for Accounting (stealing money) and Oxygen (bailing the ship). Those 2 subsystems can only be compromised by the playership using the Hacker Rootkit. But the Cyberwar center will still scan and uncover those system ports.
- systems which are available to the Cyberwar Center are cooling (hull damage), power (shield shutdown), cargo (ejects some weapons), radar (forced pacifism) and navigation (forced retreat). Basically stuff which messes with the target but without giving the player anything of value, like money or a free ship.
- max range for auto port scans and auto backdoors is 5 jumps on the galaxy map
- the Cyberwar Center does not actively search for ships of a specific type. It rather just selects a random sector to scan all ships instantly and check if there are any vulnerable ports to install backdoors into.
  The delay between checking different sectors is very long (about 30 min) But it also depends on your sector research stat.
  Specific backdoors can be difficult to get. What's more likely is that you keep this perk running for a very long time to have multiple backdoors ready and then decide which ones might be useful. That's the price you're paying for the automation. The perk slot and a very wasteful usage of your hackerchips. Manual hacking with Rootkit is surgical precision. Auto hacking with Cyberwar center is a shotgun blast. But both methods also work well together.
- a high research sector stat increases the frequency for this perk. Your chances also get much better if the Cyberwar center Outpost is located within 2 jumps of the ships that you want to target. Nearby sectors within 2 jumps get checked more frequently. Multiple Cyberwar centers can also overlap each other to increase the frequency even more.
- the Outpost does not launch any virus attacks. It basically only gathers the info that unlocks port research for every ship and then prepares capships for virus uploads according to the research you completed. What you still need to do are basically only 3 things: Port research. Virus creation & final upload.
- Cyberwar does not require the Hacking station perk! You can use a sector with high research for a research station but also set up an effective Cyberwar Outpost there!
- as a secondary effect the Outpost very slowly generates Hackerchips for free. This is more of a bonus and might not be enough for extensive hacking. But it also gets boosted by higher sector research stat
- 'Faster research' perk also improves the Cyberwar perk in every way
- installing backdoors to steal money or to bail a ship cannot be automated. You must always install them manually with the Hacker Rootkit (full automation would be too profitable). But all the port scanning can be automated with a Cyberwar Outpost

Ship Software Updates

TLDR: if your virus gets detected the system locks down, but after a day or so you can research a new vulnerability and hack it once more

Factions sometimes release new firmware for a specific ship type. This resets any E-War progress that the player might have unlocked for that ship type (port research, active backdoors).
This is bad for you. But there is also a benefit. Such an update resets any patches that the faction might've applied after they discovered one of your hacks. In the base Mayhem ruleset ship subsystems would just lock down and you could simply never hack them again. Now once the new firmware arrives the ship gets rerolled and you can research new vulnerabilities for it.

There are 2 ways how ships receive these updates
1. random
  Every 4 hours a completely random ship type in the gameworld receives a system update. When this happens you loose all the vulnerabilities (ports) that you have researched for that ship type and all the backdoors that you might have installed on ships of that same type. The new firmware basically unintentionally fixes all the exploits that you had unlocked. There is always some risk that you loose your E-War progress like that, but there are hundreds of different ship types in the game so it should not happen very often.
2. reaction
  Whenever a faction detects one of your virus uploads they will patch the vulnerability and lock that system down for you (this works just like base Mayhem).
  What's new is that the faction will now also suspect that you have compromised other subsystems on the same ship type. Therefore they will order a new software update to wipe everything clean.
developing a reaction update will take them very long (20-30 hours). After the update your entire port research and active backdoors for that ship type are lost. But the subsystem where you got detected will also be available again. So this delay often works more like a cooldown to limit your hacking ability after you went too aggresive and spammed lots of virus uploads.
after a firmware update you need to do the port research for that ship type again and your old virus designs might also not work anymore because the new port on that subsystem likely requires a different attack vector (added 2 more types of vectors so that its less likely that you can reuse the same virus again)

Hector0x · Post by **Hector0x** » Sun, 17. Jul 22, 18:23

Changelog:

2.0 - TBD[

NEW: faction
NEW: main quest

You can already help us by giving feedback on Hairless-Ape's fixes & additions.
>>>viewtopic.php?p=5172143#p5172143

1.10a [Mayhem 3.21b] 01/13/2023

NEW: playable OCV ships but there is a catch:
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- can now be researched and produced. For now the AI doesn't use them.
- OCV technology is always infected with the OCV virus. Eventually these ships betray you and join with the Terraformers. The virus mechanics have changed
- research for OCV ships is highly dependent on abnormal signals in a sector. At 0% signals its super slow and each 1% signals gives a massive bonus.
- OCV ships are very cheap. Base cost reduced by 66%
- no crew cost
- no maintenance cost
- free lasers and shields! OCV ships build their own equipment internally using nanomachines
- Terraformer stealth. Player controlled OCV ships don't get attacked by the Xenon or OCV.
- imbalanced resource cost, much more energy cell based. Consumes double Computer Components and half Hull Plating + Quantum Tubes
- can only be produced in sectors with at least 1% abnormal signals. The signal strength provides a production discount (similar to Outpost crafting specialization)
- a few special rules about getting rid of these ships:
  - self-destructing is illegal. If your OCV ship dies but there is no killer you have to pay a fine to Terracorp
  - you cannot recycle or sell OCV lasers
  - all OCV ship designs can only be recycled once for the reverse engineering research bonus. You can no longer recycle them when you have at least 75% of the blueprint.
OCV Virus Mechanics:
- OCV type ships are always infected. The bad Outpost event 'OCV Virus' also still exists and infects all ships that you build during the event.
- when an infected ship finally joins the OCV it doesn't infect other nearby ships anymore
- the delay between initial infection and the virus triggering is longer and more random (up to half a day. Before it was only 20-30 min). The duration depends mostly on abnormal signal strength % in the sector. High signals means that the virus triggers sooner. The construction UI shows you an estimate of how long the virus will take for ships built in that sector. Ship quality further modifies the randomness of the virus delay and makes this estimate more accurate.
- Tip: the ship info panel shows you how long a ship has been alive (flying time at the top)
- when the virus triggers there is a new chain reaction which causes all OCV type ships in the same sector to also join with the OCV. This happens instantly and includes any docked ships in the same sector. Only OCV ship designs are affected. All other ships (including Xenon types) are unaffected.
- when a chain reaction happens you loose reputation with one of the 7 main factions that is closest. Either its the sector owner, or the one who has the closest sector nearby. They just hate it when you dump corrupted OCV tech at their doorstep.
- the amount of rep loss depends on all the OCV ships which got turned during the chain reaction. Ships which are not OCV types and which were just infected by the Outpost event won't cause a rep loss
- boarding an OCV ship does not wipe the OCV virus from the ship computer. Eventually it will take control again. The delay until that happens is based on abnormal signals in the boarding sector.
- infected ships cannot be used against the Xenon or OCV. The virus will detect this and immediately join your ships with the enemy.
- your OCV type ships will also not engage hostile Terraformer ships unless you make them attack a specific Xenon/OCV target or tell them to protect something which gets attacked by Xenon/OCV
NEW: Yaki/Pirate ship roster quirk:
- Good connections to the criminal underworld give you easier access to blueprints, pilots & spare parts for these ships.
- Half maintenance cost and crew requirements when you have at least 1 infamy. Also double research speed (including Data Scanner)
- No infamy gives the opposite effect
NEW: ship roster quirks get listed in research screen
CHANGE: improved auto fleet naming. Now active on default. Added an alternate numbering pattern (*dc) which resets numbers between ship classes. The old numbering (*d) also still works but is not used on default. Added a new optional pattern (*l) which adds ( L ) to the fleet leader only.
Example 7 ship fleet:
Spoiler
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OLD pattern (My Fleet *d). Player must activate auto-naming and then customize further:
My Fleet 001
My Fleet 002
My Fleet 003
My Fleet 004
My Fleet 005
My Fleet 006
My Fleet 007

NEW default (*l*st-*dc) already active for any fleet:
L Tempestine-002
Tempestine-001
Chimera-001
Chimera-002
Chimera-003
Mako-001
Mako-002

The new alternatve number pattern (*dc) gives the leader the highest number for his type. So if you only have one ship type in your fleet you can see immediately how many are left. Example for a leader of 98 Cougar fighters:
CHANGE: ship rebalance
- some of these ships are quite niche and don't get used in AI fleets anymore (most of them still got plenty of alternatives)
- Argon Phantom: dedicated boarding corvette - double marine capacity, better stats overall but expensive, can equip Boron Ion cannon
- Terran Cikyu: fast and very tanky shield frigate but limited to lower grade weapons
- Argon AP Gunner: corvette that uses fighter combat logic
- Argon Griffon / Paranid Ariadne - dedicated carriers (external docking bays). Now limited to medium weapons.
- Terran Logich + Logich Raider: just better shields and speed. Sort of a small tank unit. Deals low damage due to lack of a main laser battery
- Terran Tokyo: can now equip the almighty Point Singularity Projector
CHANGE: much lower chances that the AI uses coordinated invasions against player sectors when the player has not reached nation status yet
CHANGE: the Architect can put stations much closer to Outposts which are far up/down in the sector (Y-axis)
CHANGE: Xenon scouts who try to infect your jump beacons are easier to catch and won't fall back when their shields get low
CHANGE: Architect now deletes your order of a second Research Station (Hotfix a)
FIX: wrong maintenance cost display in ship production screen
FIX: reverse engineering also worked the other way around (reducing your research progress if you had more than 75% progress)
FIX: Architect getting stuck after building a mining station
FIx: Outposts from 1.9 savegames did not update properly (Hotfix a)

________________________________________________________________

previous versions:

Spoiler

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1.9a [Mayhem 3.21b] 12/02/2022

NEW: Mission Board
NEW: merged Alaankwa features by temetvince
- Map Gates command
- Autorotate + options hotkey
NEW: production screens
- much cleaner spacing
- shows already existing cargo when ordering items or stations
- ship & station production also displays total number of already owned assets in the universe
CHANGE: Ship Rebalance
Spoiler
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Phase 1 - More Unique Races
Many ships now have a certain twist, based on their original manufacturer race. These rules always apply, regardless who owns these ships. But certain effects like crew requirements or maintenance are only relevant for the player. The ship production screen highlights most race boni and mali in different colors.
- Argon ships don't have special quirks
- Boron ships are slower overall but get passive hull regeneration
- Split ships are faster but they require a lot more crew and extra maintenance cost
- Paranid ships require a lot less crew but also have extra maintenance cost
- Teladi ships are very cheap, but slightly slower than average and their shielding is very bad. Teladi fleets are larger than before (many trash units).
- Terran ships got extra strong shields but are expensive to build and even have a bit of extra maintenance cost on top of that high base price. Terran fleets are smaller than before (few powerful units)
- Xenon ships are cloaked against the Xenon & OCV (they ignore them unless being attacked). They are expensive but don't require any crew. You can only produce them in sectors with 0% abnormal signals. And their resource requirements are imbalanced. Meaning that Xenon ship types consume only half the amount of Computer components and Hull plating, but double the amount of Quantum Tubes.
Phase 2 - More Unique Ship Classes
Original Mayhem ship balance was based on physical ship size. This created a bit of a blended mush with only few interesting exceptions. A large portion of the smaller ships also seemed darn slow for some reason. Giving you absolutely no reason to ever use them.
- Fighters have more clear cut roles. M3 are still the most viable combat option. Most of the super slow M3 are now a bit faster and the extreme speedos were slowed down a bit. M4 are still hardly combat worthy, but at least now almost all of them are super fast, even when damaged. So there could be some niche usage for effective rapid response fleets or when you just want many lasers on the field for cheap. M5 are now more like hyper-specialized scouts. They are really not made for combat. Extremely fast but quite pricey for what they do.
- M6 & M7 have less speed variance within their class spectrum and a flat cost increase to nerf the cheapest designs. Because even the cheapest ships can already mount the bigger sized lasers like their more expensive peers. The cost gap to fighters is generally larger now.
- M1 & M2 have more battle endurance with extra hull hitpoints but also a slightly higher cost
These general class changes are often outweighed by the race effects which are much stronger. For example Teladi M6 are actually cheaper than before, even when all M6 have generally become more expensive. Boron M3 are slower than before, even when most fighters got a speed buff, etc.
CHANGE: boarding Xenon & OCV ships is more difficult (Hull Polarisation Device + Internal Sentry Lasers)
FIX: Drydock maintenance calculation
FIX: rare issues with 2 Outposts in the same sector now eventually sort themselves out and the wrong one which doesn't belong to the current sector owner gets destroyed.
FIX: initial Xenon ships getting deleted also with normal galaxy start
FIX: wrong resource ratio for the mobile factory loop production
FIX: boarding now gives you the bounty of a ship (Hotfix a)
FIX: better install instructions

1.8a [Mayhem 3.21b] 11/12/2022

NEW: 6th main faction - the Terrans return!
- requires Hairless-Ape's ZMap Generator (1.6+). Huge thanks to him! Note that you can still play Zero Hour without ZMap, using just the original Mayhem 3 Galaxy Generator. But then the Terrans won't have any starting sectors.
- default Ethos: 50% evil
- Terrans don't have any dejure sectors and focus on terran memory research sectors instead. Terran Battlegroups want to invade these and when playing on hard difficulty the Terrans might even start a war to take them away from you.
- company: Industritech -> sells terran weapons and missles + 2 random food types on each individual station (like Salecrest company)
NEW: Marine Boarding!
Spoiler
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Overview
- modified Litcube boarding system. More viable for earlygame but less overpowered in the long run. Balancing is likely not final.
- most ships can fit 15 marines and fire boarding pods. TPs fit 60 marines
- pirate bases sell boarding pods and marines but the high skilled ones are pretty expensive.
- marine volunteers can also be recruited for free from Outposts when the population has grown a bit. Volunteers always start with low fighting skill of 10/100 and no other skills.
- boarding pods can also be crafted via missle perk.
- the pods are faster, more nimble, with longer range and can be fired in quick succession (5 marines per pod)
- new black market special decision: after your Ascension you can get a headstart on boarding by inviting a crew of escaped Yaki slave warriors to join your empire. You must have 5 infamy and this decision triggers the Yaki revolution and turns them hostile to you.
New Rewards
- boarding unlocks some basic understanding of the ship design. You get the first 25% of the blueprint. If you already have more research progress you get nothing.
- your team has a chance to find money. Amount depends on ship value
New Consequences:
- boarding increases your global infamy
- the faction will always turn hostile to you. Cheesy vanilla exploits with high reputation have been removed. Because of technical limitations and game balance reasons its not the actual ship owner race who will hate you, but the original manufacturer race of the ship type. This means that when you board a neutral mercenary Tiger M7 you will still make the Split angry. Boarding of Xenons always gets ignored.
- most factions classify boarding as terrorism. This means that some completely uninvolved third party might get triggered by your boarding activities.
  - the chance for this depends on ship value and their race Ethos. Evil factions like Yaki or Split are less likely to care about you stealing ships from others, but good aligned factions like the Borons want you to play by the rules.
  - these complaints always come delayed so that you cannot savescum
  - you will loose all your good reputation with them and they turn neutral to you (reputation rank 0)
  - if an already neutral faction (rank 0) complains about your boarding activities and you play with AI war declarations vs. player (that's when either playing on hard difficulty OR when activating the separate t-file option), then they will suddenly hate you completely. So be careful with doing any boarding when you have rep rank 0 with major factions. On normal difficulty this is no problem because your reputation can only ever drop down to 0 here.
  - between two complaints by the same faction there will always be multiple hours. So you should always get at least 1 warning before they can turn hostile.
Marine Rebalance
- this mod adds an additional round of fighting which happens on the ship bridge right after the vanilla boarding operation is already over. Think of the enemy team attempting a last stand, or an ambush, or some boobytrap explosion, whatever. This will happen all the time and it can kill additional marines.
- the difference between this final battle to the previous fighting through the ship's decks 1-5 is that your marine fighting skill is irrelevant. It only ever matters how many marines are standing on the bridge in total. The more crowded it is, the more extra losses you tend to suffer. The idea is that this is a chaotic close quarters situation where multiple soldiers only hinder and get each other killed.
- these 'extra' losses always lead to completely random casualties. At this point marine fighting skill does NOT increase chance of survival anymore. The only thing that helps here is to have fewer guys reach the final deck.
- you won't be able to keep marines alive forever. Its mostly about getting a healthy 'rotation' of bodies going to keep your entire roster effective. It is possible to 'waste' elite marines. A less skilled team can often win the ship with similar losses.
- you cannot train marines anywhere. Secondary skills like hacking or engineering now also level up passively after boarding, but those level-ups get concentrated on just a few guys who already started with the best skills in your team.
- Fighting skill levels up for every marine like in vanilla, but at a much faster rate. Rookie marines get a massive one time increase to their fighting skill right after surviving their very first boarding op. Veterans have a small chance for it.
NPC Defense Items:
- Advanced Firewall is rare
- Internal Sentry Lasers are common on capships. It adds 200 fighting skill to the ship's defense.
- all Mercs and Nomads have Advanced Firewall, Hull Polarising Device and Internal Sentry Lasers on all their ships. Its not really worth to board them, but its possible.
- all Terran ships are 4 times more difficult to board. Xenon ships 5 times more difficult. This is hardcoded and there is nothing i can do other than building a new boarding system from scratch. Not sure about OCV. I'm sure some players will try
Tips:
- you can monitor boarding progress from your property screen -> personnel tab. If you start loosing marines on the first decks you can quickly fire another boarding pod to top up your marines to full numbers again. This can prevent early death spirals. Towards the end its probably not worth it because you will risk more random losses on the bridge.
- to protect your elite or specialist marines from getting killed in the final casualty round you can send less marines than the allowed maximum of 15. Of course their combined fighting needs to be good enough to pass all deck fights. You can also mix a few rookies in to act as a meatshield and be random casualties instead of your important guys.
- you should have 1-2 decent mechanics for each boarding pod in use. Their skill check will help breaching the hull for all buddies in the same pod
- 1-2 hackers must reach the final deck. You can send them in later to reduce the risk that they die on early decks. Have them wait in a TP or some other second ship and fire them with another boarding pod when your guys have passed deck 2 or so.
- what you should almost never do is sending an overkill team of elite marines, because you might loose too many good soldiers in the random casualty round. Only do this if you are done with boarding and just want to steal that one last ship. Otherwise try to board with just enough skilled marines to win.
- boarding ops always allow +1 marine (hardcoded). So if you have a second ship you can send 16 marines with 4 pods to raise your total fighting strength a bit.
- if boarding fails: Transporter Device > special commands > collect all marines
NEW: the AI can declare war on the player
Spoiler
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Don't freak out!
- only on hard difficulty!
- earlygame is safe! in the beginning you are too insignificant and will be left alone
- you loose this cover status once you stop being regarded as just a pilot and more like a real nation. This happens automatically when the galaxy becomes aware that you have accumulated a decent amount of strategic assets like:
  1. military ship strength
  2. number of sectors
  3. cash
  4. ship construction resources
- you don't need to complete all 4 of those goals. Even just 1 can blow your cover!
- none of these goals will trigger instantly. The galactic public checks your progress very infrequently. Sometimes they simply notice only much later how much you have already progressed in one area.
  For example you might've already completed the resource milestone and have lots of hull plating stored. But the public recently just observed your bank account and amount of sectors. If those were small enough you still float under the radar for a while longer until you get treated like a proper nation.
- If you want a true survival challenge you can reduce all 4 nation goals in the t-file. At 0 you would only need to complete your Ascension quest to become a valid war target! (basically an 'impossible' difficulty setting)
Who can declare war on you?
- any of your neighbors (adjacent sector)
- the evil 'Tyrant' AI personality. He doesn't even need a shared border
How it works:
- the faction just sends a message and turns hostile without warning
- most AI empires have a certain desire to attack you. But its highly dependent on their ingame situation.
- dejure sectors are the biggest factor. If you control any Paranid dejure sector they are much more likely to attack you. Its irrelevant how many dejure sectors you got. They only care about if you have any.
- your total military fleet power works as a passive deterrence against all foreign aggression. NPC factions will only declare war on you if you appear weak to them.
- there is no need to exactly match their fleet size. The AI takes into account that a player can create really powerful single fleets. Every military ship under your control helps to scare potential aggressors away and reduces the chance that they risk to declare war on you
- it never matters where your ships are located in the galaxy
- to deter someone completely, so that he can definitely not declare war you would only need about 50% of his total military power. Obviously that's much easier to do against smaller factions.
- overextending your empire provokes foreign aggression. That is when you own many sectors without having a sufficient military power to defend yourself. The AI sees this as an opportunity to take your sectors by force.
- your origin race that you selected at gamestart is much less likely to betray you (but it can still happen)
- the AI's current goals are super important. For example:
  - if they have suffered heavy losses they want to rebuild lots of ships and its unlikely that they declare a new war
  - if they have trouble with the Xenon they generally want to get along with all other factions
  - coalition members have to focus on their shared enemy
  - 2 NPCs in a total war are less inclined to declare war on third parties like you, but it can still happen.
  - an evil 'Tyrant' AI is so obsessed with showing his force that he will not get deterred by your military power
  - the new race 'Ethos' from this mod is taken into account (Borons are less likely to declare war on you. Split are more aggressive, etc.)
- having infamy makes it more likely that someone attacks you but getting even more infamy doesn't make it worse
- hired mercenaries never count towards an empire's military strength level
The new Meta
- you want to avoid being framed as a nation for as long as possible. Always try to progress your early empire fairly balanced. Don't pile up too much of only one thing, like money that you're not spending, too many sectors that you're not using, or only stockpiling huge amounts of 1 ship component without having all the rest that's also required to actually build ships. Having too much of something can draw attention before you're ready, when you're still missing critical assets like a proper military fleet!
- expect that strong neighbors will eventually betray you
- weak neighbors tend to leave you alone because they are either too scared or just busy
- you can join a coalition to completely eliminate all risk of getting backstabbed by your partner
- try to claim some sectors inside the territory of your starting origin race as they will probably not attack you.
- keep your military alive! If you suffer too many losses you might invite third parties to take advantage when they see that sudden drop of your military power level!
- if the AI starts a war against you, Terracorp will intervene and force them to convert any 'Truce' that they're offering into a 'Non-Aggression-Pact'. Thats basically the same but it lasts much longer, depending on size difference between both of your empires. So usually it should not the end of the world if some big bully nation decides to attack you because they won't be able to do that very often.
- good reputation doesn't help you! Nations don't have 'friends', only interests.
NEW: player can create or join coalitions!
- you just declare that you want to form a coalition against someone. If there is at least 1 likeminded partner the coaltion gets created
- relations tab in ministry of war now shows who wants to form a coalition against whom
- free diplomatic favor actions with all coalition allies
- coalition partners won't mind if you claim adjacent sectors
- your ships cannot attack coalition allies
- you won't get truces offered by your shared enemy and cannot leave the coalition until it dissolves
- coalitions are more likely. Reduced minimum required size difference between empires from 15% to 8%
NEW: reverse engineering -> recycling a ship for the first time also unlocks the first 75% of the blueprint. If you already have more research progress you get nothing.
NEW: can choose to reveal the galaxy map at gamestart
NEW: Outpost production screens show available resources
CHANGE: Quickstart gives you all the stuff that you usually gather during the normal Ascension (extra ships, resources, money and reputation)
CHANGE: Yaki can be part of coalitions
CHANGE: factions require less military power advantage to develop a good or evil AI personality
CHANGE: on hard difficulty its more likely that the AI becomes evil
CHANGE: on hard difficulty the AI does not need to become evil to be able to send overkill invasions against important player sectors. Like Outposts where you tend to build your ships or store lots of resources. Or sectors where you have built all your factories of a certain type.
CHANGE: mobile drilling system range +50%. Attempt to fix miner collisions with debris.
CHANGE: Tutorial overhaul. Removed useless info and added new messages which suggest useful strategies or explain mechanics.
CHANGE: Space Weed not traded by Salecrest stations
CHANGE: Fleet commanders will not respond to attack enemies (sector monitoring) when you have sent them to a station or when docked at an Outpost and their hull is still getting repaired
CHANGE: Trade Product Search never shows any player stations. Added clarifications about the different uses of Trade-Run:Buy/Sell commands and Trade Product Search command
CHANGE: you cannot disassemble stations or abandon/transfer a sector that is currently getting claimed by another faction (exploit/technical issues)
CHANGE: signing a truce resets all your own ships back to friendly and reminds you to update your Global Friend-Foe settings
FIX: if player reputation to Private Corp. (Trading Stations) ever changes it gets reset back to neutral
FIX: Architect issues
FIX: Space Weed was missing in Courier screen (in Zero Hour its not illegal to carry, only difficult to establish buyers)
FIX: Pirate Bases were refusing docking clearance
FIX: workaround for Pirate Base hardcoded consumption rates. Now they constantly cheat-spawn more Hackerchips and Boarding Pods to maintain small stockpiles for these 2 wares.
FIX: mysterious message from 'Unknown'. This was just a typo in the refugee tutorial when they visit one of your Outposts for the first time
FIX: truces and non-aggression pacts expired too fast due to bugs. Relations tab now differentiates between Truces and Non-Aggression Pacts (longer Truces)
HOTFIX a: Xenon sectors conquered by player during global crisis getting gifted to random factions
HOTFIX a: ownership of former Xenon sectors reverting back to Xenon when player conquered them by placing a factory instead of an Outpost
HOTFIX b: sector ownership issues because player was not being held accountable for station kills scored by hired mercenaries

1.7a [Mayhem 3.21b] 10/09/2022

NEW: select global state of the galaxy before gamestart! Requires ZMap Generator by Hairless-Ape.
1. Peaceful post-Xenon-Crisis:
  The Terraformers just got crushed by a United Commonwealth. All factions still celebrate this costly victory and will continue to work together out of necessity. Once their initial resource starvation is fixed the factions can begin to invade their neighbors. The Xenon & OCV had to withdraw almost all their fleets from this galaxy and must bide their time until major hostilities break out again.
2. Chaotic pre-Xenon-Crisis:
  The Xenon Empire has advanced deep into civilized space. A global initiative to unite all biological lifeforms under one banner is on the rise. This political union is imminent and the player can build his empire during these interesting times and the opportunities or dangers which might present themselves. You start with the entire galaxy map and can also just observe the coming storm if you want.
  (sometimes it takes over an hour before you get the TL (quickstart) and the map reveal)
  (on largest galaxy size with early expansion setting it can take the AI up to 4 days to win the Xenon war. On galaxy expansion setting 'None' the AI might even loose.)
CHANGE: the AI hires fresh mercenaries during a Xenon crisis (not just once at the beginning)
CHANGE: 20% reduced intensity of all discounts & cheats for NPC production (this is just a small t-file change > general catchup intensity multiplier 100% > 80%)
CHANGE: Xenon sector protectorates expire immediately during Xenon crisis
CHANGE: Xenon sectors with multiple Xenon stations inside them already get conquered when the first Xenon station gets destroyed (the other Xenon stations just self destruct)
CHANGE: global crisis can now end much earlier. The Xenon don't need to be reduced to only 1 sector.
CHANGE: reduced average duration of global peace after a Xenon crisis from 2 days to 16 hours.
CHANGE: all protectorates are immediately removed when a Xenon crisis ends
FIX: too many pirates when playing new game for very long without reloading
FIX: global peace period never ended after Xenon crisis
FIX: player immediately lost gifted sectors again (now you get a free station to secure your ownership)
FIX: instances of Xenon stations and faction Outposts in the same sector could cause sector ownership conflicts
FIX: when coordinated invasion forces got wiped out completely the faction operation never ended properly, rendering the target sector unclaimable
FIX: ships without main laser batteries got stuck attacking & could not switch target
FIX: squad leaders could get stuck attacking Xenon stations which didn't exist anymore
FIX: certain protectorates could still time out unintentionally during a Xenon crisis
FIX: custom OCV Maelstrom sector coordinates (ZMap)
1.7a FIX: Nomads were still building carriers. Potential freeze

1.6a [Mayhem 3.21b] 08/21/2022

E-War overhaul + new 'Cyberwar center' perk
jump beacons can be crafted instantly in any Outpost
optional galaxy creation with custom OCV Maelstrom sector! Requires ZMap Generator by Hairless-Ape.
Xenon invasion slower & more spread out (OCV unchanged)
- big invader fleets don't need to spawn at Xenon jump beacons (potential exploit)
- big invader fleets aborting and maybe going somewhere else when targeting player stations did not work.
- the location they go to is now a random Xenon sector.
- can now also happen when targeting NPC stations but the chance is lower
game could freeze when Nomads tried to build ships
Nomads did not build enough TL factory ships
disabled M7C carriers for Nomad Mercs
fixed pirate warlord M7 not bailing
protectorates can expire during a global Xenon crisis when the sector is owned by Xenon
added more safeties to prevent buggy sector ownership
loop production of a ship template pauses when you don't have enough crystals for the lasers/shields (prevents overfilling the production queue)
Hotfix a: Restarting all Outposts. Updating ongoing tasks could fail on some Outposts.

1.5 [Mayhem 3.21b] 08/08/2022

increased range for most heavy lasers (M7 collision fix)
pirate M7 which spawned after a pirate base destruction will now bail if they receive hull damage during the first 10 min of their existence
increased chance to spawn a pirate M7 from 20% to 60%
fixed Architect not building Research Stations
fleet auto-monitoring doesn't take control of the playership
fixed fleet followers not attacking certain targets
improved fleet cohesion!
- player fleets can use formations again
- NPC squadrons and player fleets which are using the option 'Attack Commanders Target: Yes' don't break formation until the enemy is closer than 20km
- if fleet followers are "with the fleet" but fell behind in other sectors or are more than 25km away their commander will fly at low speed so they can catch up

1.4 [Mayhem 3.21b] 08/02/2022

fleet sector monitoring would falsely recognize neutral traders as enemies
fixed trade product search returning outdated intel
Argon Mammoth TL was missing in research & ship compendium
removed a secondary check which caused NPC traders to reconsider and maybe not sell their goods to a player station after they already arrived. This was based on your trade rank and it could spam you with on-screen messages all the time. Now a trader will always sell to you if your price was attractive enough so that he came to your station in the first place. (99% of players don't need to worry about prices at all)

1.3 [Mayhem 3.21b] 07/29/2022

fixed mercenary followers and potentially other ships getting stuck defending stations forever after their leader docked
pirates would not spawn during day 1 in a galaxy with 'none' expansion
'protect' command on jump beacons no longer attacks nearby enemies like pirates but now also responds to Xenon infectors
automated piracy for player fleets using the new target priority now also works with Mayhem's sector monitoring feature
- your entire fleet is in 'piracy monitoring mode' when any of the 3 target priorities for different ship classes Huge/Big/Fighter are set to 'Only neutral TS with cargo'
- in piracy monitoring mode your fleet does no longer search for enemies to kill, but for neutral traders
- actually carried cargo is unknown until your fleet scans it on arrival
- once in-sector your fleet will only attack the TS if it is carrying cargo and if the target priority for the fleet leader's ship class is set to 'Only neutral TS with cargo'

1.2 [Mayhem 3.21b] 07/23/2022

Architect build orders can only fill 1/4 of the outpost's total allowed production queue
Architect no longer orders station kits if there already is one ready for pickup
M8 were missing pre-installed equipment

1.1 [Mayhem 3.21b] 07/21/2022

broken Khaak get restarted
bailed ships keep their paintjob

1.0.2 [Mayhem 3.21b] 07/20/2022

fixed escort
disabled formations for NPC squadron leaders (followers still use them)
disabled formations player ships which are part of a fleet (scanning range setting didn't work with formations)

1.0.1 [Mayhem 3.21b] 07/18/2022

added formations from alaankwa mod. Thanks temetvince!

1.0 initial release [Mayhem 3.21b] 07/17/2022

Hairless-Ape · Post by **Hairless-Ape** » Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:11

First, THANK YOU for continuing the Mayhem Series. This is outstanding and greatly appreciated.

Love
A.I. improvements. Can't wait to see how this plays out. Can't stand the vanilla crap. This area of change is essential.
Especially love the fact that some races play sentimental goals. If that's not realistic I don't know what is.
the ability to change max people in outpost.
The Auto Cash Transfer feature.
Quick-Trade has enormous potential. Love the templates.
The news flashes and settings are very creative and actually fun to read.
Zone of control rules seem far more realistic.
The idea of Infamy and the ability to play as good or evil and have that MEAN something is phenomenal! Love this most of all and hope to see this developed to the maximum possible level.
Love the Nomad faction. Can't wait to see what they do.
The ability to kill neutral freighters without causing a war with a faction is paramount to any pirate style of play. Love it.
"free saving with lots of salvage insurance" - Love it. Thanks for removing stupid administrative burdens that don't add value to the game play.
"Explorer and Tug workers never react to any attacks and just continue flying. This is assuming that you use fast ships!" God, it's about time. Awesome.
"pirates use TM's for tactical redeployment, mobile repairs and hot-drops. These are pretty fast and also smart." LOVE it! Do I hear an eve-online dude in there somewhere?
"favor actions are generally more accessible to the player and you can build a real long term relationship." I sure hope so. Old system of favors was so hard it was useless to me.
The Architect Worker feature is possible a game changer for me. Not tried it yet, but if it works well.. oh what a great feature.
So much more to see.

Hairless-Ape · Post by **Hairless-Ape** » Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16

Ok, now for my first list of irritating questions that will drive you nuts.. but be very helpful for me. Enjoy.

"Architect" section of Administration screen shows a description:
""free support" = after that order." What does this mean??
At the bottom it shows "Free Support: 4/xxx - NO ORDER -xxx"
Again, what is "Free support" and what does it have to do with station building? Is using the Architect slower than doing it yourself? or more costly somehow?

-Quick-Trade-
Why does "Shipyard Supply" setup trade orders for Colored Crystals? Something in particular you upgrade on all your ships?
Why does it setup export trade rules for Hackerchips and Advanced Satellites? I don't see how that plays in with building ships. Perhaps make separate Quick-Trade items to cover these things.
Descriptions in here talk about "full factory loads". No idea what that is.
Why the special features about Fruit? Is this maybe always available from NPC stations? Why fruit and not vegetables or something else? I never use food, as it's a pain.
As soon as I choose one Quick-Trade, my station now shows tons of ware entries and not just the ones I have there. So much clutter showing all those wares when 98% of them are at a stock level of 0. Is this really needed?

I want to play generally as a pirate, and would love to get some gameplay tips for how to play effectively as one of the types you list (Drug Empire, Pirate Kingdom, Merc Warlord). Not sure what is even possible? I never tried before because pirates always attacked and so I naturally killed them all. Can't even dock at a pirate station once you start shooting them, and they don't give you much choice at all early game.. Now it seems there's a real option to play a pirate life and be friends with them. Would love some tips here.

How does the pirate contract perk work in this mod? I can't find a description for that perk anywhere. Seems kind of pointless to have a contract that only works in that one system.. Pirate just goes next door and kills your haulers there right?

"in Zero Hour your freighters usually still travel quite safe during war with other major empires" WHY ? shouldn't they be toast.

What to do with space weed? No one will buy it when I try to "Trade" it. Sorry to ask. Couldn't get an answer from Joubarbe.

Suggestion to combine laser & missile mfg perks. Just seems like these are so similar that it is just more administrative headache for the player and not a feature to have these separate.

Suggestion to re-introduce marines and some of that game play. Hated it when that was nerfed.

You state "in Zero Hour you will see lower trade margins because there are fewer trades from 1 factory to another without a trading station or Outpost as a middle man".
Could you elaborate? This doesn't sound good to me. I don't understand exactly how this has been nerfed and would like to know more. Why can't a trader be a trader?

You state "Docking Computer is no longer a default equipment for TPs. But if you choose to start with a TP it will have one."
How can one "choose" to start with a TP? Don't we always start with a TP ?

I don't understand Automatic Jump Beacon Protection. Here's my question - If I now have to park 2-3 fighters within 20km of the beacon and ensure they have no orders,
why wouldn't I have just assigned those same fighters to guard the beacon in the first place? What's the advantage here?

When you queue up your station Architect "If he finds a stockpile of station kits he will know that the player has put them there. So he takes one but also orders a replacement."
I wish he wouldn't order a replacement.

You state "player fleets don't attack hostile freighters or satellites anymore and will never get distracted by them".
Why wouldn't I want my player fleet to attack hostile freighters? Seems like a primary target to me.

Hector0x · Post by **Hector0x** » Sat, 23. Jul 22, 10:50

sips coffee

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
"Architect" section of Administration screen shows a description:
""free support" = after that order." What does this mean??
At the bottom it shows "Free Support: 4/xxx - NO ORDER -xxx"
Again, what is "Free support" and what does it have to do with station building? Is using the Architect slower than doing it yourself? or more costly somehow?

its the station support of that sector. If you place multiple requests for stations you'll see that number shrinking. Its the remaining station support of the sector after your Architect would be finished placing that station.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
-Quick-Trade-
Why does "Shipyard Supply" setup trade orders for Colored Crystals? Something in particular you upgrade on all your ships?

the idea was to get everything going for ship building with a single click. Including some of the more basic color crystals for video goggles, Transporter Device, etc. I'm thinking about separating the color crystals but then he only buys a hand full to not waste money. I think it doesn't hurt to have those crystals at hand. If you don't use them they just stay there and Traders will not buy more of them.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
Why does it setup export trade rules for Hackerchips and Advanced Satellites? I don't see how that plays in with building ships. Perhaps make separate Quick-Trade items to cover these things.

I believe that's actually the SELL ALL template which is doing that. Don't remember exactly why, but i believe it was because hackerchips and satellites were often sold to pirate bases and faction Outposts and this was rarely intended. So it seemed to be a good default setting to keep them.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
Descriptions in here talk about "full factory loads". No idea what that is.

2 loads basically means "enough to completely fill up 2 empty factories with resources"

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
Why the special features about Fruit? Is this maybe always available from NPC stations? Why fruit and not vegetables or something else? I never use food, as it's a pain.

QuickTrade automatically detects what kind of food your Outpost needs and this is the option to buy it. If you do this across all your Outposts they will actually exchange the correct food with each other using Traders and food stops being the pain that you had to manage with complicated Agent jobs.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
As soon as I choose one Quick-Trade, my station now shows tons of ware entries and not just the ones I have there. So much clutter showing all those wares when 98% of them are at a stock level of 0. Is this really needed?

Yes. If a ware does not show up in this list it does not get sold by your Traders. This means the things your Looters bring in don't make you any money and your Traders will dump more and more random crap and slowly fill up your Outpost, which just slowly burns your money. Thats the primary reason why QuickTrade exists. To keep your Outposts clean and to get rid of all the random stuff that would always pile up everywhere in your empire.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
I want to play generally as a pirate, and would love to get some gameplay tips for how to play effectively as one of the types you list (Drug Empire, Pirate Kingdom, Merc Warlord). Not sure what is even possible? I never tried before because pirates always attacked and so I naturally killed them all. Can't even dock at a pirate station once you start shooting them, and they don't give you much choice at all early game.. Now it seems there's a real option to play a pirate life and be friends with them. Would love some tips here.

The feature list needs to be a bit dramatic to catch the eye. You cannot really befriend the pirates. They will just attack you much less and tend to leave the sectors where your freighters are. So its viable to 'live with them' much better. 'Pirate Kingdom' alludes to the fact that now there is a fleet target setting to hunt neutral traders without reputation penalties. 'Drug Empire' would be the spaceweed perk for Outposts, which gets boosted if you have infamy. And 'Merc Warlord' just means that infamy allows you to wield certain mercenaries more effectively. You can combine all these benefits to find your own individual 'criminal playstyle'. Don't read too much into my marketing speech

My tip would be to actually use the opportunity to get free resources from automated piracy fleets in combination with your Looter workers. Your biggest problem would be the missing safety during faction wars. There are no truces for criminals, so if you bite more than you can chew and attack a big empire there won't be any easy way to end the war if you start loosing it.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
How does the pirate contract perk work in this mod? I can't find a description for that perk anywhere. Seems kind of pointless to have a contract that only works in that one system.. Pirate just goes next door and kills your haulers there right?

The benefit of this perk is that pirates cannot attack you at all. Not even their turrets can shoot you. Yes its very situational, but offers 100% protection. Nothing else can do that. So it might enable some exotic strategies. I don't like this perk too much, but i've read that its the favourite of other players.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
"in Zero Hour your freighters usually still travel quite safe during war with other major empires" WHY ? shouldn't they be toast.

Most players never really went to war with factions because it messes up their economy. You had to blacklist factions and make sure that your Workers don't wander off. This was just too much of a hassle and kind of contradicts the main premise of Mayhem, which is fighting for territory. So i decided to make factions stick to 'rules of war' so that they not harm civilians. There is still escalation potential, though. During permanent, total, or coalition wars these rules won't apply and the enemy actually targets your freighters actively with raiding Task Forces.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
What to do with space weed? No one will buy it when I try to "Trade" it. Sorry to ask. Couldn't get an answer from Joubarbe.

Pirate bases buy it. You should always be able to dock but pirate ships will attack you on the way. Second you can build underground connections and unlock spaceweed as secondary resource on any NPC factory just from doing manual cargo hauling jobs. But you need the cargobay shielding item on your freighters or the police would find the illegal spaceweed. In Zero Hour there is a third way. Nomad traders can also come to your outposts and buy spaceweed. But this requires infamy, the more the better (higher chance that they come to you)

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
Suggestion to combine laser & missile mfg perks. Just seems like these are so similar that it is just more administrative headache for the player and not a feature to have these separate.

Don't like that idea. More perks means more headache for the player to choose between them. If you want both that means both are useful to you. Keeping them separate is good then, imho. I would rather combine perks which seem useless on their own.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
Suggestion to re-introduce marines and some of that game play. Hated it when that was nerfed.

Maybe. But its low priority for me and it would be the boarding system from Mayhem 2, as 3 was known to cause unfixable bugs.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
You state "in Zero Hour you will see lower trade margins because there are fewer trades from 1 factory to another without a trading station or Outpost as a middle man".
Could you elaborate? This doesn't sound good to me. I don't understand exactly how this has been nerfed and would like to know more. Why can't a trader be a trader?

Trading stations are considered DOCKS by the game. Docks always have to offer average price for buying and selling. In ZH you have almost every resource which gets consumed in factories available on every trading station. So most traders will go to a trading station to buy a resource and then sell it to a factory that needs it. Or they go to a factory to buy some product and then sell it to a trading station. What they do a lot less is going to a factory to buy a product and then sell it at another factory. That would give the highest margin because factories have dynamic prices. Trading stations always have average price, so the margin is often lower if one of these stations is involved in the trade.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
You state "Docking Computer is no longer a default equipment for TPs. But if you choose to start with a TP it will have one."
How can one "choose" to start with a TP? Don't we always start with a TP ?

No you can choose between an M3, TS, or TP, or nothing

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
I don't understand Automatic Jump Beacon Protection. Here's my question - If I now have to park 2-3 fighters within 20km of the beacon and ensure they have no orders,
why wouldn't I have just assigned those same fighters to guard the beacon in the first place? What's the advantage here?

Ships protecting a jump beacon would not register that a Xenon is trying to infect it. They would just let the Xenon happily complete his malicious task. Now they respond and take him out. But i want to refine automatic jump beacon protection further. Its very unintuitive that you need a ship nearby which is just doing nothing. It should also work when the ship is actually protecting the beacon itself. Because the pirates sometimes (rarely) decide to vandalize your beacon and you need the 'protect' command to respond to actual attacks.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
When you queue up your station Architect "If he finds a stockpile of station kits he will know that the player has put them there. So he takes one but also orders a replacement."
I wish he wouldn't order a replacement.

Removed in 1.2

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Fri, 22. Jul 22, 17:16
You state "player fleets don't attack hostile freighters or satellites anymore and will never get distracted by them".
Why wouldn't I want my player fleet to attack hostile freighters? Seems like a primary target to me.

When my fleet was invading a sector it was always very annoying to me that they would often chase random freighters around the sector. Or stop and go for that satellite that an Explorer had just replaced. I think its better to outsource this to smaller, faster raiding fleets. That's why i added specific targeting priorities for 'Satellites' and 'Freighters'. You can still sort of kill freighters 'on the fly' by teleporting to that sector and setting turrets of all fleet ships to attack.

Ysengrin · Post by **Ysengrin** » Sat, 23. Jul 22, 23:43

Wooh, it's huge !
Can't wait to play zero hour ! You did'nt post any sign on the Mayhem 3 thread, I almost missed that...

Hairless-Ape · Post by **Hairless-Ape** » Mon, 25. Jul 22, 14:47

Now that was a great set of answers. I learned a lot. Thanks !
I especially loved the comments about how to be an effective pirate. This is going to be awesome.

My only remaining questions would be this:

Hector0x wrote: ↑
Sat, 23. Jul 22, 10:50
Ships protecting a jump beacon would not register that a Xenon is trying to infect it. They would just let the Xenon happily complete his malicious task....

I often assigned a ship or two to protect a beacon, and it would absolutely kill any Xenon trying to infect it, so I don't understand why you say they won't.

The last being Marine Boarding. I guess I was curious why the bugs are not fixable, but that would probably just bring on a technical answer that won't serve anyone. In the end though, I thought this entire idea was quite fun to do. I'd also love to see some ability to bring back the fixed defensive stations like Mayhem 2 had, but I'm sure that would bork up the balance big time. Maybe just make them expensive as hell ?

Keep up the great work.

Hector0x · Post by **Hector0x** » Tue, 26. Jul 22, 18:00

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Mon, 25. Jul 22, 14:47
I often assigned a ship or two to protect a beacon, and it would absolutely kill any Xenon trying to infect it, so I don't understand why you say they won't.

Protect command on a jump beacon is not really feasible right now because the ship will attack any nearby enemy. Including random pirates who don't even have an interest in your beacon. Your guardian ship is toast unless you put an actual fleet there. In the next update i'm going to change the protect command so that it does not attack nearby enemies when used on a jump beacon. That creates the issue that your ship does not react to the Xenon because technically the infection attempt does not count like a real attack on your jump beacon.
It worked for you and your ship still attacked the Xenon, but only because he was a nearby enemy, not because he went for your beacon. I'm gonna change it so that its the latter and your ship won't aggro on random pirates.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Mon, 25. Jul 22, 14:47
The last being Marine Boarding. I guess I was curious why the bugs are not fixable, but that would probably just bring on a technical answer that won't serve anyone. In the end though, I thought this entire idea was quite fun to do.

Cannot even provide you with a technical answer as i didn't dig into why boarding was broken in M3. I didn't even experience any of the bugs that other people reported. Just know that Joubarbe stated that he cannot fix the savegame corruption that would sometimes appear. Overall i never did much boarding in X3 because it feels a bit like an exploit and is always the same minigame.

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Mon, 25. Jul 22, 14:47
I'd also love to see some ability to bring back the fixed defensive stations like Mayhem 2 had, but I'm sure that would bork up the balance big time. Maybe just make them expensive as hell ?

To me the station defenses in X4 are the main reason why the game sucks. It might be logical to put guns on your installations, but they make the gameworld static and uninteresting. The AI is just not able to overcome a wall of lasers put behind a jumpgate. Countless player complains refer to issues with how ships are unable to engage stations without suiciding. You even got YT guides where they tell you to approach a blind spot in a formation and stop once some of your turrets are outranging the station. You have to trick your own ships into not attacking to overcome the balancing issue that stations are just op.
Other people exploit that by putting a circle of defense modules behind a gate to farm stupid fleets of a handful of ships with half the firepower compared to the defense station and 10% of the hitpoints. Ships die, die and die. Nothing happens in X4 because only the player can crack fortress stations. If i would make a mod for X4 the first thing i would do is nerfing station defenses into the ground. Only mobile assets should be able to fight. And they should travel quite slow and cost upkeep. Its the only way to get an interesting dynamic of attack vs. defense. Permanent cheap defenses should not exist.

But maybe someone adds OWPs back in with a submod

Hairless-Ape · Post by **Hairless-Ape** » Thu, 28. Jul 22, 04:28

Those are fair points and it makes sense.

I do have a question about the pirating though.
I set my M6 fleet settings to attack "neutral TS with Cargo" for M6 sized ships.. I set the fleet to monitor all "Player" sectors. I even went around and scanned neutral traders and they had cargo. However, My M6 fleet justsits there and doesn't go for them. What am I missing?

Also, after completing ascension, I'm given the standard TL.. all good.. but when I go to build another one now, I find I have no blueprint for it. Never happened before. Is this what you intend? Just seems like you should be able to build the ship types you start with but was wondering if this was intended for some reason. Thanks.

fyi, Map editor is coming along well

Thanks.

Hector0x · Post by **Hector0x** » Thu, 28. Jul 22, 09:27

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Thu, 28. Jul 22, 04:28
Those are fair points and it makes sense.

I do have a question about the pirating though.
I set my M6 fleet settings to attack "neutral TS with Cargo" for M6 sized ships.. I set the fleet to monitor all "Player" sectors. I even went around and scanned neutral traders and they had cargo. However, My M6 fleet justsits there and doesn't go for them. What am I missing?

Also, after completing ascension, I'm given the standard TL.. all good.. but when I go to build another one now, I find I have no blueprint for it. Never happened before. Is this what you intend? Just seems like you should be able to build the ship types you start with but was wondering if this was intended for some reason. Thanks.

fyi, Map editor is coming along well

Thanks.

Nice!

Answered the pirate question on Discord. I basically forgot to implement that.

Beginning with the TL bluepring must've been removed by Joubarbe at some point then. I don't remember if there ever was a time when you were just given the TL blueprint. I'd say you always had to research one and its also ok in my opinion. Owning and using one does not necessarily mean that you can replicate the technology. Its like LosTech in Battletech.

sovica · Post by **sovica** » Fri, 29. Jul 22, 20:39

Let me just say what a fantastic mod this is!
Absolutely awesome and can't imagine the work and dedication needed to get all of this running as it is.

Also, kudos to your YT channel, I learned a lot from your videos there.

dantebelmondo · Post by **dantebelmondo** » Sun, 31. Jul 22, 02:47

Hi Hector. When I playing the ZH I found the trade product search command is a little buggy. If the best buy search or best sell search can't find any result, it will report the last found station. It looks like re-initialization of the variable is not functional. This is the original code of PL.TradeProductSearch.SM.xml from line 86-89 opened with X-Studio

Code: Select all

if $CallbackReturn == 'SearchForBestBuy'
	$LastOperation = 'SearchForBestBuy'
	if $SelectedMainType == [SSTYPE_FACTORY] OR $SelectedMainType == [SSTYPE_DOCK]

and apparently, it didn't re-initialize the $FoundStation var.

I fixed it by adding the missing pieces: PL.TradeProductSearch.SM.xml from line 86

Code: Select all

if $CallbackReturn == 'SearchForBestBuy'
	$LastOperation = 'SearchForBestBuy'
	$FoundStation = null
	if $SelectedMainType == [SSTYPE_FACTORY] OR $SelectedMainType == [SSTYPE_DOCK]

from line 167

Code: Select all

if $CallbackReturn == 'SearchForBestSell'
	$LastOperation = 'SearchForBestSell'
	$FoundStation = null
	$SelectedMode = 'Availability'

Feel free to include in your wonderful ZH mod.

Hector0x · Post by **Hector0x** » Sun, 31. Jul 22, 10:52

dantebelmondo wrote: ↑
Sun, 31. Jul 22, 02:47

Thanks. Included in 1.4

Very glad to read that the mod seems to be working quite well.

alexalsp · Post by **alexalsp** » Sun, 31. Jul 22, 12:42

dantebelmondo wrote: ↑
Sun, 31. Jul 22, 02:47
Hi Hector. When I playing the ZH I found the trade product search command is a little buggy. If the best buy search or best sell search can't find any result, it will report the last found station. It looks like re-initialization of the variable is not functional. This is the original code of PL.TradeProductSearch.SM.xml from line 86-89 opened with X-Studio
Code: Select all
if $CallbackReturn == 'SearchForBestBuy'
	$LastOperation = 'SearchForBestBuy'
	if $SelectedMainType == [SSTYPE_FACTORY] OR $SelectedMainType == [SSTYPE_DOCK]
and apparently, it didn't re-initialize the $FoundStation var.

I fixed it by adding the missing pieces: PL.TradeProductSearch.SM.xml from line 86
Code: Select all
if $CallbackReturn == 'SearchForBestBuy'
	$LastOperation = 'SearchForBestBuy'
	$FoundStation = null
	if $SelectedMainType == [SSTYPE_FACTORY] OR $SelectedMainType == [SSTYPE_DOCK]
from line 167
Code: Select all
if $CallbackReturn == 'SearchForBestSell'
	$LastOperation = 'SearchForBestSell'
	$FoundStation = null
	$SelectedMode = 'Availability'
Feel free to include in your wonderful ZH mod.

Is this fix up to date for Mayhem 3.21b? Or only for ZH?

dantebelmondo · Post by **dantebelmondo** » Sun, 31. Jul 22, 13:37

alexalsp wrote: ↑
Sun, 31. Jul 22, 12:42

Is this fix up to date for Mayhem 3.21b? Or only for ZH?

This is the fix for original M3.21b. ZH didn't modify this file.

Hairless-Ape · Post by **Hairless-Ape** » Sun, 7. Aug 22, 19:40

I can't seem to ever dock at Pirate bases. I want to sell my space weed.
Is there some trick to befriending the pirates, or do you know why they would deny my request to dock?
Is there a way to build reputation with Pirates and does it have any effect in the game?
I would think the more neutral traders you kill, the higher your Pirate reputation would be but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Thoughts?

Betelgeuse97 · Post by **Betelgeuse97** » Sun, 7. Aug 22, 20:29

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Sun, 7. Aug 22, 19:40
I can't seem to ever dock at Pirate bases. I want to sell my space weed.
Is there some trick to befriending the pirates, or do you know why they would deny my request to dock?
Is there a way to build reputation with Pirates and does it have any effect in the game?
I would think the more neutral traders you kill, the higher your Pirate reputation would be but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Thoughts?

1. Did you kill a pirate in the same sector as its homebase? If you did, you lost docking privileges at that pirate base.
2. No, pirates aren't intended to be befriended. Pirates are hardcoded to be enemies; this is an intended feature.
3. Not feasible due to pirate behavior being hardcoded, and I think Yaki reputation would probably make more sense since Yakis are organized pirates.

Hairless-Ape · Post by **Hairless-Ape** » Mon, 8. Aug 22, 04:10

Betelgeuse97 wrote: ↑
Sun, 7. Aug 22, 20:29

Hairless-Ape wrote: ↑
Sun, 7. Aug 22, 19:40
I can't seem to ever dock at Pirate bases. I want to sell my space weed.
Is there some trick to befriending the pirates, or do you know why they would deny my request to dock?
Is there a way to build reputation with Pirates and does it have any effect in the game?
I would think the more neutral traders you kill, the higher your Pirate reputation would be but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Thoughts?
1. Did you kill a pirate in the same sector as its homebase? If you did, you lost docking privileges at that pirate base.
2. No, pirates aren't intended to be befriended. Pirates are hardcoded to be enemies; this is an intended feature.
3. Not feasible due to pirate behavior being hardcoded, and I think Yaki reputation would probably make more sense since Yakis are organized pirates.

I must have killed one. That makes sense. Thanks.

I think what I want to change in the game however, is this pirate hard-coded behavior you talk about. It seems to me if one can code a Sector PERK so that pirates will no longer attack any of your ships in that sector, one could also code up something that looks at your infamy level and has the effect anywhere in the universe. Or at least, a tendency.

Hairless-Ape · Post by **Hairless-Ape** » Wed, 10. Aug 22, 16:51

Enjoy the new Map Generator / Editor

viewtopic.php?f=94&t=449012

sk1_ · Post by **sk1_** » Thu, 11. Aug 22, 23:06

Hi,

was trying out your mod and liked it a lot so far, thank you very much! :>

Found some sort of endless loop (I guess), you can download the galaxy and save here. https://www.dropbox.com/s/gffkoyy90g7r2 ... g.zip?dl=0
Sadly only a few seconds until the game hangs, not sure if it is enough time to find the problem.

I'll update this if I can reproduce it with an earlier save or find a cause.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

[Mayhem 3.21b] Zero Hour 1.10a

[Mayhem 3.21b] Zero Hour 1.10a

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