[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Quixotic-Neutral]

Quick question:

I am attempting to install 3.0. I have a fresh X3AP folder, and have followed all the install instructions.

However, my starts are all the LU Damyath starts. Choosing one gives me the Damyath ships.... and then I start getting the Mayhem 3.0 questions. (But not all of them, I think. They are different from the tutorial videos, at least)

I have reinstalled twice, with the same result. Any idea what I am doing wrong?

Thanks much!

[Joubarbe]

Graphics pack installed in the root folder?
Main pack properly installed in the root folder?
Game started with the galaxy generator?

[Quixotic-Neutral]

Yessir. I'm in a separate folder from steam, and using the nosteam exe. I've installed the main RC, Graphics pack, and alternate soundtrack. I made a default galaxy in the galaxy generator. But I am still getting the Damyath starts and ships. (I can do the whole M3 and 6 M5 start.) It drops me in Argon Prime, and then starts the Mayhem 3 questions and messages about populating the galaxy with everyone's ships.

If this isn't a known bug it is probably something I did wrong. I will try a complete reinstall and see what happens.

[Joubarbe]

And you click "Run" in the Galaxy generator? This tool makes the whole galaxy and the gamestarts, so there is something wrong, and it's definitely not a known bug (it's not a bug)

[Quixotic-Neutral]

And you click "Run" in the Galaxy generator? This tool makes the whole galaxy and the gamestarts, so there is something wrong, and it's definitely not a known bug (it's not a bug)

THAT WAS IT. I generated the galaxy, but then ran the game using the nosteam exe file.

I figured it was something I had done wrong. (First time trying Mayhem 3... I played the HELL out of Mayhem 2.)

Thanks much for the clarification. Time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

[Joubarbe]

Yeah you can have multiple galaxies, so the little Run button does all the copying before launching the game.
Have fun!

[Joubarbe]

Mayhem 3.0 is now out.

Main page
Install instructions
In-depth presentation
Community links

[Edna]

Great job on the write-up and in general, Joubarbe! I recommend copying your installation guide on the ModDB-page and add it for X3 TC/AP as Guide on Steam, as it's where I assume most people would find it first before checking ModDB - just like I found Hector's video "Reasons to play Mayhem" in the X3 AP Community Hub.

Vacation will start on wednesday for me, then I'll take a very deep dive into your world and re-emerge after three weeks as fat blob that only speaks in Teladi.

[VoidSoul]

Hi there! I have a question about OOS battle calculations. For some reason my ships horribly suck in OOS battles. An m6 escorted by 4x m3 and 6x m4 losses to a single pirate m6. All battles do happen with heavy losses in OOS. I do understand that there are some differences in ships specs, but not to such degree. Any of my ships, in all specs superior, always losses duel to same class pirate ship.
3.0RC version. Is it somehow related to "hard difficulty setting" I've chosen in the "beginning questions" or is it the way mod tweaks the game in general? Did not find information about this anywhere.

And how do you normalize ship maintenance factor? Do you recycle and rebuild the ship? So little information on game mechanics in in-game wiki.

[Edna]

And how do you normalize ship maintenance factor? Do you recycle and rebuild the ship? So little information on game mechanics in in-game wiki.

There are ways to reduce maintenance costs.

1. Better quality ships have lower maintenance costs, but they are more expensive to build (but keep in mind that TLs have no maintenance, so you can build them with garbage quality as it won't affect anything else than the maintenance factor).
2. Docked ships don't increase the maintenance factor as long as they are docked. It's useful to invest in high-capacity transports and let them fill up fully instead of having them move around all the time.
3. Check for mining ships with low maintenance. They will be out there for a long, long time, so they will get a high maintenance factor. 500% of 90 are way less than 100% of 150.
4. When your miners return the first colored crystals from mining, you'll be able to build Mobile Maintenance Kits in the Hangar section of the outpost, which lowers the maintenance cost to 100% as long as this upgrade is installed. However, the MMK is sort of expensive in the early stages of the game. You can speed up the production of colored crystals once you have two Black Crystals, which allow you the Crystal Transmutation upgrade for capital ships. You should use it on a capital ship with huge shields - the Ryu will suffice for this, though. Turn Crystals into Red Crystals, Reds into Yellows, and so on. That way you will consume large amounts of crystals which can be easily produced but you will be able to outfit costly ships with MMKs.
5. Use TLs for Outpost-to-Outpost commodity transfers. An Outpost can have four capital ships docked and you can use as many TLs as you want. You can also use TLs as frigate-level Carriers. They are quite good in OOS-combat, too.
6. When you have a few days of ingame time, don't hesitate to rebuild your transport fleet to reduce maintenance levels. It's a bit of micromanagement but it's still easier than equipping all workers with MMKs.
7. Avoid ships with the Prototype modifier in the class name, as they have quite nice perks but are usually the most maintenance-heavy variants of a class.

A good rule of thumb is to never have more maintenance costs than your Outposts bring in with taxes, if you use the taxes perk. That way you know your Outposts cover your expenses while the trade profits give you a nice surplus for anything else you may or may not need to buy from other races.

[Hector0x]

Hi there! I have a question about OOS battle calculations. For some reason my ships horribly suck in OOS battles. An m6 escorted by 4x m3 and 6x m4 losses to a single pirate m6. All battles do happen with heavy losses in OOS. I do understand that there are some differences in ships specs, but not to such degree. Any of my ships, in all specs superior, always losses duel to same class pirate ship.
3.0RC version. Is it somehow related to "hard difficulty setting" I've chosen in the "beginning questions" or is it the way mod tweaks the game in general? Did not find information about this anywhere.

The problem at hand is quite hard to grasp. How do you control your ships? You say "escorted", but do you use an Escort command for all fighters or is your M6 their fleet commander?
I suspect that your fastest and most fragile ships (M4) are rushing in first somehow. Could you observe such behavior?

What you could try:
- M6 as fleet leader. Set scanning range very low (10-20km). Follower scanning range at 0km. The downside is that you have to park your fleet close to where you expect the enemy to be. But not too close to a gate or the pirate can slip through. The advantage is that your fighters will only break formation once the enemy is inside the fleet leader's short scanning range. And the whole fleet can overwhelm him quickly. They will also return back inside the commander scanning range once their target is down. This keeps the fleet fairly close together, where they can reach and kill anything quickly.
- use ships with similar speed so that they all arrive at the same time. Tbh, i would use the M6 somewhere else. It probably halves your potential fleet speed.

My favourite early game fleet is pure M3's and the settings are follower scanning range set higher than leader scanning range (so that the leader mostly stays in the rear and survives).
Also retreat setting to 2:1 or 3:1 and the fleet will simply avoid any suicide situations. Against a pirate M6 i hardly see any losses if i use roughly 10 M3. (but only thanks to the fallback maneuvre)

From my experience most M3's will survive against a M6, even if the fighter engages alone. Because he will perform a fallback retreat maneuvre and his homies usually kill the M6 before the damaged fighter turns around. And then he will simply return to base, repair, and rejoin the fleet. (if you are using a fleet commander)

And how do you normalize ship maintenance factor? Do you recycle and rebuild the ship? So little information on game mechanics in in-game wiki.

What Edna said. Build long lasting ships like miners and agents at high quality. Use carriers to dock smaller ships. And install mobile maintenance kits on very large ships.
Since you can't emergency jump away in this mod, you will naturally suffer losses. Keeping the meat grinder going during late game also keeps maintenance factors in check. Afaik, ships are a lot easier to replace than in any other X3 mod. Both from a cost and required user input perspective.

[Edna]

What bothers me is the lack of weapon platforms right now. I usually try to bottleneck pirates and other hostiles to have them all come through one gate, so I can place something there to intercept them. In Mayhem 2 and LU, that was easily done by placing Weapon Platforms at the gates. Mayhem 3 is lacking them, and with the "Defend Position" command gone now, too, I have to choose between "Attack all enemies" which makes my ship follow them through other sectors if they manage to break through or "defend sector" which makes the ships move randomly throughout the sector, allowing hostiles to slip through as the defending ships are feeling the need to patrol literally anywhere except for key positions.

Does anyone know a workaround for this, except for staying in the same sector and placing anything with long range turrets at the gate?

[Hector0x]

Does anyone know a workaround for this, except for staying in the same sector and placing anything with long range turrets at the gate?

Move to position/Rally to (on a fleet commander)
With scanning ranges set between 10 and 30km.

If you want completely static defenses, use scanning range 0 and only increase follower scanning range.

You can even use a cheap M4 as fleet commander. Followers will kill anything inside scanning range and the commander won't move at all.

[Edna]

That sounds like a good idea. I tried something similar last night, using a heavy TS as fleet leader in the hopes that the pirates will go for it, which work partially. Luckily we have the combat TS types like Orinoco and Snotra.

Edit: Wings still have the Defend Position command available, which is neat.

[aurelcourt]

Hi there! I have a question about OOS battle calculations. For some reason my ships horribly suck in OOS battles. An m6 escorted by 4x m3 and 6x m4 losses to a single pirate m6. All battles do happen with heavy losses in OOS.

Hi, I second this,

Just starting a new game with 3.0, medium difficulty, early expansion,
Couple of pirate M6 roaming the galaxy, I tried to send a squad of 5 M3 + 3 M4 to deal with one of them... all got destroyed quickly. M6 barely lost 40% shield. They did attack all at the same time. I expected a few losses, but not all of them that quickly!!

I still don't have any operational production chains, only 1 sector and 2 factories, 3 traders + 1 agent... loosing all my fleet to 1 M6 is tough!!

It seems that shield regen is reeeeally high for the M6?

My TL finally dealt with it but now is down to 20% hull... gonna take ages to repair :-p

[VoidSoul]

Hi there! I have a question about OOS battle calculations. For some reason my ships horribly suck in OOS battles. An m6 escorted by 4x m3 and 6x m4 losses to a single pirate m6. All battles do happen with heavy losses in OOS. I do understand that there are some differences in ships specs, but not to such degree. Any of my ships, in all specs superior, always losses duel to same class pirate ship.
3.0RC version. Is it somehow related to "hard difficulty setting" I've chosen in the "beginning questions" or is it the way mod tweaks the game in general? Did not find information about this anywhere.

And how do you normalize ship maintenance factor? Do you recycle and rebuild the ship? So little information on game mechanics in in-game wiki.

Has done some more observation on the problem. It clearly seems, that in OOS enemy ships always have two or three rounds of fire before my ships start doing any damage. That is why my m6 in pack always dies against enemy m6. Enemy m6 strips shield and 50% of hull om my m6 before my pack start damaging it. Both ships had CIGs, m3 and m4 ships clearly made fire contact beforehand and done nothing. I use fleet with m6 as leader, 0 scan range for escort.

Migrated to normal difficulty and that problem is gone. OOS battles are now fine.

Another fun moment - keep loosing my TS fleets (ts as leader and 3 m3 ships follow for auto-repair at outposts, a lot of pirate m3 flying everywhere) to enemy randomly generated m6 now *laughs sadly*. m3 escort does not help as expected. It seems, they do not generate in player sectors, but in NPCs and unclaimed ones. No pirate bases were found in range of 1000km where they came up at. How do you get rid of them?

[VoidSoul]

And how do you normalize ship maintenance factor? Do you recycle and rebuild the ship? So little information on game mechanics in in-game wiki.

There are ways to reduce maintenance costs.

1. Better quality ships have lower maintenance costs, but they are more expensive to build (but keep in mind that TLs have no maintenance, so you can build them with garbage quality as it won't affect anything else than the maintenance factor).
2. Docked ships don't increase the maintenance factor as long as they are docked. It's useful to invest in high-capacity transports and let them fill up fully instead of having them move around all the time.
3. Check for mining ships with low maintenance. They will be out there for a long, long time, so they will get a high maintenance factor. 500% of 90 are way less than 100% of 150.
4. When your miners return the first colored crystals from mining, you'll be able to build Mobile Maintenance Kits in the Hangar section of the outpost, which lowers the maintenance cost to 100% as long as this upgrade is installed. However, the MMK is sort of expensive in the early stages of the game. You can speed up the production of colored crystals once you have two Black Crystals, which allow you the Crystal Transmutation upgrade for capital ships. You should use it on a capital ship with huge shields - the Ryu will suffice for this, though. Turn Crystals into Red Crystals, Reds into Yellows, and so on. That way you will consume large amounts of crystals which can be easily produced but you will be able to outfit costly ships with MMKs.
5. Use TLs for Outpost-to-Outpost commodity transfers. An Outpost can have four capital ships docked and you can use as many TLs as you want. You can also use TLs as frigate-level Carriers. They are quite good in OOS-combat, too.
6. When you have a few days of ingame time, don't hesitate to rebuild your transport fleet to reduce maintenance levels. It's a bit of micromanagement but it's still easier than equipping all workers with MMKs.
7. Avoid ships with the Prototype modifier in the class name, as they have quite nice perks but are usually the most maintenance-heavy variants of a class.

A good rule of thumb is to never have more maintenance costs than your Outposts bring in with taxes, if you use the taxes perk. That way you know your Outposts cover your expenses while the trade profits give you a nice surplus for anything else you may or may not need to buy from other races.

This is helpful information. It needs to be placed in readme or at moddb site =). But the mod needs some kind of maintenance script that resets "factor" using resources before gaining ability to mount this Mobile Maintenance Kit.

[Hector0x]

It seems, they do not generate in player sectors, but in NPCs and unclaimed ones. No pirate bases were found in range of 1000km where they came up at. How do you get rid of them?

Info from ingame wiki: Pirates spawn at pirate bases. These are hidden in unknown sectors. Pirates get stronger based on your sector count.

Pirates are likely one of the first threats you have to deal with. How many sectors did you claim? It's recommended that you take out all pirate bases in your starting area soon. To destroy a base, you will need a fleet roughly 30 fighters strong. You can track their bases down by tracing back the paths your pirates usually use.

Xenon are the second major threat and they grow stronger like pirates. Finish them off before you extend your territory very far! (i usually try to stay at 4 sectors until i have cleared almost all xenon sectors)

[Edna]

Can anyone assign Explorers? The option is greyed out for me all the time and I don't even find any slots for them in the Outpost Slot Screen.

[Edna]

Save + Galaxy - Release Version 3.0

1. I can't assign Explorers. Try assigning one of the two Buster Raiders as Explorers on any Outpost. (Buster Raider at AFS Equipment Forge Outpost) - Solved
2. Unless it's intentional: I keep gaining reputation with the Teladi for defeating Xenons in their sectors. But I declared perma-war on them. (Check Spring of Belief, I'm currently invading the Teladi)
3. If you use the Crystal Transmuter on a ship with no free cargo space, the freshly generated higher-level crystals do not appear while the required crystals get removed. (I accidentally left my Transmuter on the AFSD Imperieuse, so either move it back to AFS Equipment Forge or cheat-install a Transmuter on the AFSL Crystaline Dream in Atreus' Cloud space, it's right at the AFS Equipment Forge outpost which has a large amount of crystals and other goods to fill the cargo bay)

Edit: ... and yes, I'm currently invading a protectorate sector in that savegame.