[Mayhem 3.21b] Zero Hour 2.2

[8Lamaton]

I ran into several problems.
1) When choosing a chaotic start map, after finding a chaotic map, goods at stations disappear and appear only after the owner of the sector has changed.
2) The impossibility of combining weapons on ships. Even if you transfer weapons from another ship and save the template, the new ship is still built with the old set of weapons.
3) When using the command, create a fleet by appointing a commander and giving the commander the command to patrol the sector, ships chasing pirate transport and flying pirates behind in fighter jets shooting at the ships.
4) when a phenon is received in a sector, the turrets in adjacent sectors on the player’s ship are turned off, and slave ships do not carry out commands related to the attack, but at the same time, when using the player’s console with quick commands, you can force the ships to attack enemies through the command to attack the selected target.

This text was created with the help of a translator.

[SyntheticGoat]

Pleasantly surprised to see that the mod got an update. Last time I played in spring, 2023. There were two Xenon crisis cycles and all factions were left completely devastated by the second one because they couldn't do anything and their pathfinding was bottlenecked by tiny jumpgates. So it was down to me to step in with my five Forsettis and ten Aegirs, and basically play endless tower defense against OCV at the borders of my domain. Of course, I could only do that remotely because the traffic was atrocious while attempting to get anywhere by myself: whenever I was about to enter or leave a jumpgate, either of the two things would happen:

a) a random tiny freighter or fighter would appear inside me; I would instantly destroy it through collision and lose rep.

b) a random big ship would appear inside me and either of us would destroy one another through collision. Of course, if I end up destroying my accidental prey, I lose rep.


Other than that, my gameplay boiled down to waiting in max SETA for hours waiting for research, construction and outfitting of my new Forsettis to complete. I wonder if the updates changed or fixed either of these aspects of the game.

[Hairless-Ape]

I could only offer some limited advice to enjoy your game better given the problems you noted. You should never have collisions if you make some minor adjustments.
Never sit next to a jump beacon or gate. This isn't a bug, it's the nature of X3. When you personally go through a gate or beacon, don't sit there at speed 0, accelerate away from it and you should be able to play for weeks without any collisions.
Don't personally sit right near a gate when doing an in-system battle. Back off a short distance from the gate. The entry mechanics of the game don't handle in-system players sitting around gates very well at all, but it's built into the game
and not something script'able. You just learn not to sit at a gate or beacon, and especially not in the middle of a huge fleet fight.
Waiting on SETA is certainly going to happen and is normal, but can become extreme if you are playing a completely "turtle" style game. You can either play on Hard Difficulty, and expect a war to liven things up, or you can go out and stir up trouble to make it less boring. I personally like to start a war with a faction that is far away from me as it allows me to do a lot of attacking and not so much defense needed. However, like you, I do get bored with what little there is to do when you are waiting for your Forseti's to finish My own opinion is that the major plot lines have their limits and are all 'very slow' and that there should be a more periodic and smaller threats that you should be forced to deal with, and appropriate rewards for it. In previous releases, the OCV came at you in waves, and honestly, that was frightening as hell and got my blood pumping and I'm seriously thinking of adding some more of that type of activity back into the game.
Cheers.

a) a random tiny freighter or fighter would appear inside me; I would instantly destroy it through collision and lose rep.
b) a random big ship would appear inside me and either of us would destroy one another through collision. Of course, if I end up destroying my accidental prey, I lose rep.
Other than that, my gameplay boiled down to waiting in max SETA for hours waiting for research, construction and outfitting of my new Forsettis to complete. I wonder if the updates changed or fixed either of these aspects of the game.

[Hairless-Ape]

I can reproduce this issue. This will be fixed my release, along with a lot more. Soon.

The "phantom" itself refuses to shorten the distance or fire it's main cannons, just sitting at range of 20k firing it's turrets at enemies it's not facing until target they are locket on enters range bellow 10k, then it start firing it's cannons.
The problem is both for fleet formation behavior and 2.combat->attack command. I did test only against enemy m3,m6,ts targets. Did order it attack random capital but it didn't live long enough for any proper observation.

[VoidSoul]

Not sure if it's intended, but after you appoint terran blueprint to auto-research queue on station with terran memory, all research stations start this blueprint regardless of having terran memory in it's system. Rushing Tobosaku with only one 1 terran memory system in half a day before establishing nation is odd.

Also M6 Logich texture mapping seems broken. There is some mesh clipping too or at least it seems so.
Screenshot1
Screenshot2
Clipping

[SyntheticGoat]

Never sit next to a jump beacon or gate. This isn't a bug, it's the nature of X3. When you personally go through a gate or beacon, don't sit there at speed 0, accelerate away from it and you should be able to play for weeks without any collisions.
Don't personally sit right near a gate when doing an in-system battle. Back off a short distance from the gate. The entry mechanics of the game don't handle in-system players sitting around gates very well at all, but it's built into the game
and not something script'able. You just learn not to sit at a gate or beacon, and especially not in the middle of a huge fleet fight.

I am quite aware of this nature of the game, but I feel like it has never been as prominent in the base game. And I'm not even sitting near gates, the aforementioned collisions always occur when I'm on the move, either when I am just a couple of seconds away from entering the gate or immediately upon appearing on the other side.
Thankfully, jumps using beacond have been smooth.

[Dex_Bot]

I have a save game the freezes in approximately 4 minutes (Faster if SETA is used), and I have no idea what's causing it.

More detailed info is included in the readme.txt located in the file itself.

Spoiler

Show

https://files.catbox.moe/to5gay.zip

Side note: What happened to the "Defend Position" command? Its been acting odd after the ZH 2.0 - Partial Beta release.

[Quixotic-Neutral]

Running a fresh install of Mayhem/Zero Hour, and I seem to be running into an issue with defend/patrol missions. They simply don't spawn enemies.

I get the mission from the station, but the red cross icon remains. The mission shows up in personal console, but not in vanilla mission list.

The opfor never spawns. Landing back at the station gives the "hey, we already gave you a mission, what do you want" dialog, but waiting for literal hours (I left it afk) never spawns enemies.

[VoidSoul]

Found strange behaviour.
Carrier fleet that follow a ship that engage enemy launching it's fighters in very weird path.
On this Screenshot m3's fly away from carriers to assist m2 in action. They make huge detour before attacking enemy that carrier is attacking to assist m2.
Carrier fleet is M7 Griffon with 24 M3 Arrows. 20km engage range and "attack leader target" option, no retreat. Griffon itself is following M2 fleet of two Tobosaku that Invade sector.
The same behaviour is with any carrier as leader with "attack leader target" option. Instead of attacking the enemy that carrier itself is attacking, fighters first make huge detour. I had to make my carrier patrols of TMs to make zero range and turn off "attack leader target" option.

Also during "Defend" missions enemies do not cross the gate to attack the station and wreck havoc in the system they spawn instead.

[orcopoid]

found a bit of an issue: the inventory of my outposts is getting corrupted by something, as in every ware in them becomes listed as "impulse ray emitter" and cant be interacted with.
realoading an older save works, but eventually it happens again. ive never been able to find any visible cause, it looks random.

has anyone encountered this ebfore?

[Betelgeuse97]

found a bit of an issue: the inventory of my outposts is getting corrupted by something, as in every ware in them becomes listed as "impulse ray emitter" and cant be interacted with.
realoading an older save works, but eventually it happens again. ive never been able to find any visible cause, it looks random.

has anyone encountered this ebfore?

Yes, it happens when you salvage either a research station or an SPP.

[SheepleShooter]

I have some questions regarding tax efficiency. I didn't notice any difference when I obtained nation status (except I understand the tax perk is now available). Is there any other impact? I did over expand a bit too fast but my tax efficiency has been slowly deteriorating for a long time. One of them is on 4% and still deteriorating slow. What is the expected natural efficiency in an empire of 22 sectors? Does having a few sectors far away from the main core affect the overall tax efficiency (not just of the remote sector)?
Thanks

[Hector0x]

I have some questions regarding tax efficiency. I didn't notice any difference when I obtained nation status (except I understand the tax perk is now available). Is there any other impact?

Yes, it uplifts the (hidden) resting threshold that your tax efficiency is slowly trending to. Let's say your target value was at 150%. After aquiring nation status it will be at 600%. Your value was just already so low that multiplying it by 4 didn't make much difference anymore.

I did over expand a bit too fast but my tax efficiency has been slowly deteriorating for a long time. One of them is on 4% and still deteriorating slow.
What is the expected natural efficiency in an empire of 22 sectors?

Less than 5% sounds about right for an isolated border sector in an empire with 22 sectors. That's already considered to be an extremely large player empire.

Once you reach about a dozen or so sectors, the natural tax efficiency will become so bad that individual sectors require the tax perk to uplift their efficiency to at least 100%. Since you have so many sectors you should have enough free perk slots to make that happen. Empire size has an exponential negative impact on tax efficiency.

Any already existing tax efficiency from the earlygame will somewhat persist because it deteriorates extremely slowly. But new sectors can only make serious gains while you still have a small pocket empire (like up to 4 sectors).

So you have to choose between early expansion and high tax efficiency. You generally can't have both.

Does having a few sectors far away from the main core affect the overall tax efficiency (not just of the remote sector)?
Thanks

Yes but the core of your empire will be less affected compared to the fringe system. Each sector checks the jump distance to every other sector and uses the average of that to calculate its tax efficiency. That average number will be lower for sectors in the center of your empire.

[SheepleShooter]

Thanks for your swift response! That is very helpful. I guess I must like expansion more than the average player haha. I'll have to try playing a tall playstyle some time

[Hector0x]

Rushed expansion is probably still the best strategy but a tall playstyle can be fun.

It’s perfect if you want to get more into trading as you will be constantly short on station slots while having tons of tax money to spend on resource imports or to hire mercs.

A smaller territory is also easier to defend as OCV/Xenon are less likely to pay you a visit. On the higher difficulty it also prevents war declarations if you settle behind a sector of your starter faction.

The big downsides are obviously the low station limit and having to give up most of the unknown sectors. But that's fairly easy to manage if you swap factories and use trade imports. Later on you can still expand and if you fell behind too far you can still upgrade your sectors with terraforming to catch up again

[Xobject]

Hello. I want try to play in hard version of this mod.But in this version perk "Taxes" is disabled. Is there any way to enble this perk somehow?

[alexalsp]

folder addon\t

files 9972-L044.xml and 9973-L044.xml

Look in these files.

[Hector0x]

Hello. I want try to play in hard version of this mod.But in this version perk "Taxes" is disabled. Is there any way to enble this perk somehow?

The Tax perk only becomes available at around midgame.

To get there you need a certain amount of:
- fleet power
- sectors
- money
- ship parts stockpiled in your outposts

Once you have enough of any of those 4 things you will automatically unlock access to the Tax perk. Note that you only need the perk if your empire has many sectors. In a small empire your Outposts already generate more taxes for free than the perk would give you.

[Xenon0213]

@Hairless-Ape, I responded to your PMs, but it looks like my responses never made it to you (they are just sitting in my outbox and sent box), so here's a few files I've changed and a description of what the changes do. The files can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dhMVLD ... share_link feel free to incorporate them, or take a look at the differences for your next roll-out. Due to the change in the turret script, It's highly recommended to start a new game.

-changed the turret script to support firing of turrets with lasers having greater than 10km range. I've also extended and adjusted the speed/ranges of a lot of weapons so that your cap ships can engage each other at meaningful distances, but don't have much chance of hitting smaller faster targets. With my current weapons setup, ranges kinda go in 5km brackets, so weapons designed to hit fighters have around 5km range and are fast, while M2 weapons have around 20km range and are quite slow. A tbullets and tweapons that I've been using are included, but that's sorta just for testing and is in no way balanced at this point.

-modified the fleet following behavior so that ships will now enter the selected formation of your commander. This ends up preventing quite a lot of collisions as larger ships keep a much wider berth when in formation. They will break formation when enemies enter the scanning range and will engage targets. They will re-enter formation once no more targets are left in scanning range.

-fixed the resupply ships following too closely (which keeps collisions down. I simply limited his follow range to slightly below the max transport range. You can now be in sector and he can get his job done without ramming everything. This also speeds up resupply, but that could be controlled by changing the script wait times if you think it's too fast. I also extended the transport teleport range for my game, but its not really necessary. The value can be found in types/globals if you want to change it.

Replacing the turret script mid game can cause issues, but seems to be smooth with a new game. If you replace midgame its advised to run the mayhem.debug.resetshipturrets scripts (not sure if this works correctly though). The current version has gone through 2 days/nights running with no issues and multiple battles consisting of hundreds of ships with a new game.

I'm still messing around with other things and want to really get into making the lasers more visually and racially unique. I finally got it figured out how to change the actual projectile sizes so that big guns from big ships look more impressive. I've also experimented with moving main guns for ships to turrets (since the AI has lots of issues making use of main guns). I've also been experimenting with adding missile turrets, so you can have more unique hybrid ships that's have a mix of missiles/lasers.

Another one of my goals once I figure out more of the menu setups is to be able to better configure the formations and roles of fleet members. Essentially where a fleet has a leader, and then you can setup sub-groups/leaders with their own followers and priority targeting. That and followers assigned to the subleaders will be in the chosen formation of the subleader, instead of all the ships making one giant formation based on only the fleet leader.

As for your original inquiry about the outposts and docks. I just felt that only having 4 huge docks, limited my ability to repair and resupply my fleets that consisted of more than 3 huge ships (since my resupply ship would also usually be taking a spot). It was more of a QoL thing for me to go to a 9 huge docks station since I like to have a mix of an M2, a M1 and some M7s and went sent home they would all just fly around the outpost like fools. There is also an 18 huge dock version, but I think that's a little overkill, but some crazy upgrade path to go to 9 docks, then 18 docks with potentially expanded population and specialization would make for a great military fleet/shipyard. Would also help make use of excess resources later in a campaign, especially if the upgrade took a few Mill in credits and 100-250k of some outpost/ship resources to upgrade. This of course is just an idea, I'm happy just using the 9 huge dock model right now.

Someone actually achieved the turret range to more than 10km. This is really incredible. Can you run this modification as a separate script in the original game? I really want this, but unfortunately your link has expired