Mod Question?

[Cursed Ghost]

Hi all

So I have been playing X3TC for a while and there are a bunch of niggling little issues that where never addressed by Ego that irritate me every time I come back to the game, to that end I’m wondering if there are any mods that can address my complaints.

1.) Currently the special command software has no command to collect drones therefore I’d like to add this command.

2.) Currently when equipped with a transporter device there are no commands to beam Wares, Astronauts, Marines & Drones therefore I’d like to add these commands

3.) Currently I’m unable to do a site to site jump within a sector, as far as I’m concerned there is no reason that I shouldn’t be able to use the move to position command in conjunction with the jump drive to help me get around faster therefore I’d like to add a jump to position command, and this should also work with ships that you aren’t personally flying if auto jump is enabled and the jump threshold is set to 0 in addition if using the site to site jump ability with ships you aren’t personally flying then the player should be able to specify a minimum jump range so that the ship will only do a site to site jump if the target is outside the minimum jump range saving jump fuel

4.) My trade ships keep getting destroyed because instead of initiating an emergency jump when they get targeted they wait to get attacked before activating jump which is often to little to late therefore I’d like to be able to command all my ships to jump away as soon as they get targeted rather then waiting to get attacked before jumping away this should also work with MK3 universe and sector traders.

5.) Currently when I want to swap weapons I have to do it manually this is slow time consuming, irritating and impractical especially in the middle of combat this has also gotten me killed on innumerable occasions therefore I’d like to be able to save different weapon configurations so that I can quickly swap weapons at the click of a button assuming that I have set up each of my weapons configurations before hand.

6.) When my ships get destroyed more often then not I an not notified, also the audible alert that your ship is under attack fails to activate if your ships is one shotted out of sector by a Q for example which has resulted in me loosing days worth of progress on numerous occasions because I didn’t notice that my ship had been destroyed therefore when ever one of my ships is attacked or destroyed I should receive an email telling me what ship was attacked/destroyed where and what by so that I can then choose how to respond

7.) While weapon swapping for turrets was implemented in AP to make using capital ships a bit better so far as I’m aware no such feature exists in TC therefore I’d like to get this implemented

8.) Using drones in TC is a pain in the backside because most of the commands can’t be issued at a group level for example if I want to tell my drones to stop command I have to order each drone individually I can’t just do

Broadcast to all drones > stop command

If I want to instruct a pack of drones to attack the shields of a ship I’m trying to capture then again I have to order each drone individually I can’t just do

Broadcast to all drones > attack shields of target

I also can’t instruct my drones to return to the ship once the threat has been dealt with, instead I have to order each drone to stop command individually and then I have to collect them manually.

Needless to say this more or less renders drone useless since I’m unable to control them properly therefore all orders that can be given to a single drone should be able to be given to an entire pack of drones, in addition there needs to be a new command to order drones to return to ship, it would also be good if I could order drones to do missile defence.

It would also be good if you could set a power threshold on your drones so when there power gets to say 10% or less they will automatically return to the ship this should be settable by the player

Some new MK3 drones that act more like fighters and have there own built in generator so they wont self destruct when there power runs would be nice while you could outfit a carrier with fighters MK3 drones would be better since they already come pre assembled with all the equipment they need so its much less set up and much less expense you don’t need a carrier ship since drones are small enough to be carrier by any ship and a sufficient number of drones can easily take out any ship plus drones are disposable so it doesn’t matter if they get destroyed which is not the case with a pack of fighters launched from a carrier which represent a significant investment

One that is a total waste of time and resources since the computer can’t fly and will usually get your ships killed which is why I never user carriers what I prefer to do is jump in a mistral super freighter carrying a whole bunch of Keris Drones because it doesn’t matter if these get destroyed since they where designed to be disposable anyway

One possible candidate for a MK3 drone would be retrofit laser towers give laser towers engines and a bit more manoeuvrability and they would actually make pretty effective fighter drones.

9.) when your rep gets low NPCs become hostile but when you improve your rep to the point where you can get the police licence for that once hostile race for example your rep isn’t properly reset for example laser towers remain hostile some NPC ships will remain hostile, some factories will remain hostile.

now when it come to ships usually you can just apologies and they will turn blue but sometime you can apologies multiple times and they will still remain hostile, or they will just tell you to get lost and there is no option to apologies and for laser towers there doesn’t seem to be any way to reset the hostile status on them and for factories unless you can get a pirate base in range of said station there is no way to reset them either

This sort of a thing can be a particular problem on for example the bankrupt assassin start where both the boron and the paranid will start out hostile until you rebuild your rep

therefore there needs to be a universe wide ability to reset all hostile ships, factories and laser towers assuming that your rep is now high enough with that race to be considered a friend



With all of this in mind I'm wondering how hard it would be to create a series of small simple mods that you could either load individually or as a group that would address these problems so starting with the simplest first

how hard would it be to add the following commands to the special command software

If equipped with only special command software

Collect drone
Collect all drone

if equipped with special command software and a transporter device

Beam ware
Beam all wares
Beam drone
Beam all drones

if equipped with special command software, a transporter device and a cargo life support system

Beam astronaut
Beam all astronauts
Beam marine
Beam all marines

now obviously there would need to be a couple of checks here, so for example you would need to check the ware class of the target to make sure its not to big for your cargo bay so for example no beaming XL cargo in to an L cargo bay.

would also be helpful to check cargo capacity so if the target needs 1000 cargo units but you only have 900 cargo space then you just get an error maybe by email telling you that you don't have enough room in your cargo bay, or you could give the player an option to beam aboard any way and anything they cant carry is destroyed much the same way it is with the standard collect ware and collect all wares commands

you would probably also need to check and see if the ship doing the beam is able to carry marines if not then you would get an error telling you that the ship cant carry marines either that or you could just disable the Beam marine and Beam all marines command for ships that can't carry marines

and what about adding

jump to position

If equipped with Navigation command software and Jump drive

this would represent 2 very simple mods that do nothing more that make some quality of life improvements and add a few commands that Ego should have already done them selves.

[X2-Illuminatus]

Quite a lot of things you're looking for. Have you checked out the Community Scripts and Mods Library already? The majority of scripts and mods provided by the community are listed there together with a short description of what they do helping you to find what you're looking for. Since some of these topics are quite old, finding a working download link can be challenging sometimes. This FAQ article has some hints though.

Looking over your list, most of the things you're asking for should be viable to achieve with existing scripts and mods.

1.), 5.), 7.) and 8.) For Turret switching and drone control, there is MARS by Gazz.

1) To just collect drones, there's Drone Retrieval by Lonark.

2) There are several scripts for that: Space Object Transporter by Lonark, Apricot Cbeam/Abeam/Dbeam by appricotslice, Freight Transporter Upgrade by LV, SpaceLootTransporter by Cadvan, Bulk Transporter Upgrade by Al_main/snwboardn21.

3) Advanced Jumpdrive by Cycrow adds more jumpdrive commands.

4) That's not really how it works. Your ships simply do not know when they are targeted. Think of it like this: Walking down the street, you do not know at all times who is looking at you with malicious intent. You may even closely pass by these people and may still not notice, until they verbally or physically attack you. It's similar in X3. One possible way around this would be constantly checking whether enemies are closeby and acting on that information. Specifically for Lucike's Prospector and Commercial Agent scripts, Tiek wrote scripts to achieve this: Prospector Signal Targeted and Commercial Agent Signal Targeted. This can probably be adjusted to work with the normal jump commands, too.

5) and 7) Besides MARS, there are several scripts providing a weapon switching feature: Weapon Select Extension by WindsOfBoreas, Bombardier by ChemODun, Weapon Switcher by moggy2 or MEFOS Weapon System by Lucike.

6) Gazz has tried to adjust OOS combat with his OOS Combat Rebalance scripts v1 and v2. If it's specific to the Xenon Q, it would also be an idea to just rebalance this specific ship (using the TShips Editor from X3 Editor 2; I think the Plugin Manager has a similar feature). Whereby I do not have a rebalancing suggestion at hand.

9) There's the Advanced Apology Hotkey by (----____JEFF____----).