[SCRIPT] Board Station v1.05 :: updated 26-06-2009

[uberex]

Description

This script allows player to use marines to board friendly and hostile stations. Team leader will provide voice report during combat stages, while hacker in-charge will provide report during pre-docking (if necessary) and computer core stages.

If target station is hostile 2 top hackers on-board will attempt to override target’s docking controls. Once docking is allowed, marine carrier will dock with the station and boarding will begin. During combat phase marines will cause collateral damage to the goods currently stored on station. Amount of destroyed goods depends on marines' individual Engineering skill. Marines will have to go through several decks to get to the station's computer core. Once core is reached surviving 2 top hackers will attempt to transfer ownership to you.

If boarding failed during docking controls hacking stage, in addition to feedback from hacking crew your internal computer will inform you that docking is denied.

If boarding team is eliminated during deck to deck combat, your internal computer will inform you of boarding operation failure. Troops carrier will be forced to undock and will wait further instructions.

If boarding failed during computer hacking stage, the surviving marines will gain combat experience and return to the original boarding ship if it is still docked, otherwise the troops become no longer available. Troops carrier will be forced to undock and will wait further instructions.

If boarding is successful, the surviving marines will gain combat experience and return to the original boarding ship if it is still docked, otherwise the troops become no longer available. Troops carrier will remain docked until further instructions.

Requirements

:: TP, TM, TL, M1, M2, M6 or M7 class ship.

:: Docking Computer is required for the menu option to appear in Piracy menu.

:: At least one marine on-board is required for the command to become available.

:: System Software Override is required to override docking controls of hostile stations.

Download

:: RAR
[ external image ]

:: SPK
[ external image ]

[uberex]

Known Limitations

:: Station boarding is not possible from a player-piloted ship. Script is being terminated upon docking.

To Do

:: Implement boarding of Orbital Weapons Platforms.

:: Allow for simultaneous multiple teams boarding to aid during combat phase.

:: Que in combat sounds for the added atmosphere.

:: Fix any discovered bugs.

Changelog

:: 1.05

(+) Hacking / Fighting difficulty now varies based on notoriety required to purchase products available at the station.

(+) Reputation loss is also now based on notoriety required to purchase products available at the station.

(+) Boarding stations in core sectors is easier due to relaxed security and reliance on sector military presence, however, reputation loss is doubled for core sectors.

:: 1.04

(+) Station security alerts local Police and Military patrols once on-deck fight breaks out.

:: 1.03

(+) Number of decks now determined by station type.

(*) Bug fix: Station boarding is no longer possible from a player-piloted ship (until further notice).

:: 1.02

(+) Marines cause collateral damage to the goods in stock during combat phase.

:: 1.01

(*) Bug fix: Hostile station after successful dock-hack would no longer belong to the original owner race if team wiped out during combat phase.

(*) Exploit fix: Removed tunings as a product from captured stations.

(*) Bug fix: Player can no longer board shipyards.

:: 1.00

(+) Initial release.

[arcana75]

Wow... this means I can start taking over pirate and yaki stations!

[uberex]

Or you can now become a true pirate since, as long as you have marines supply and place to train them, you no longer have to rely on reputation with commonwealth to purchase said stations

[rtwesen]

wow this is awesome, I will try soon


Have you considered an option to ransom it back to the owners

i can finally become a true criminal

[arcana75]

Or you can now become a true pirate since, as long as you have marines supply and place to train them, you no longer have to rely on reputation with commonwealth to purchase said stations

Actually I'm thinking along the lines of capturing the IBL and PBG forges

[uberex]

Have you considered an option to ransom it back to the owners

Not in the nearest future. If you have a team of capable marines, there are far more profitable ways to use them

Script was built not as much as a money maker, but to acquire supply of technology not obtainable otherwise.

Actually I'm thinking along the lines of capturing the IBL and PBG forges

Oh yeah, sure beats capping 40+ Galleons in a row with a slim chance of loot Not to mention the chance of someone bailing with PBGs intact in the hold... has yet to happen to me

[xiriod]

This is one of the better script ideas to be launched in a long time, and well thought up. This, combined with the Station Re-packer, is excellent if you play a pirate. Which I incidentally do

Personally though, I will edit it to allow me to only use TP class ships. To make it harder on myself a little bit, but also because TP class is almost never used except maybe for the first one or two times you capture something in the beginning.

One thing, would it be possible for you to make something like this to capture Orbital Weapons Platforms as well? Or integrate it? I know you can't dock, but I have a wild guess some of the procedures you use could be used none-the-less. Just a humble request though

Great work! Will test, and report if I find any bugs.

[Alan Phipps]

This script will require great self-control from the player if it allows capping of Pirate Stations, Outposts, Equipment Docks, etc that sell ship tunings and extensions as that would be a game-breaker. Soon the player fleet could be far faster and more agile than ever intended for balance. Even if the script destroys held stocks on capture, players can replenish them from capped ship hulks.

[xiriod]

This script will require great self-control from the player if it allows capping of Pirate Stations, Outposts, Equipment Docks, etc that sell ship tunings and extensions as that would be a game-breaker. Soon the player fleet could be far faster and more agile than ever intended for balance. Even if the script destroys held stocks on capture, players can replenish them from capped ship hulks.

Most scripts require self-control by the player, as lets face it scripts are cheats outside the vanilla release. You can call it mods, add-ons or what ever. But it is just a cheat to make the game the way you want it

And there's already an excellent script to get ship tunings, at the normal price, from your PHQ or EQ. So that's covered. As for capturing an EQ dock from the AI, you'd only get the tuning amount in the station when you took it over which should be 1 for each. After that it's empty.

[Alan Phipps]

Unless it has changed dramatically since X3R, these stations stored up to 2000 tunings (so they never appeared to run out in-game) and the player with the station cap mod was able to overtune docked ships as many times as they wanted from that stock (for free!), and replenish from other hulks.

My point was that a player might just want a mod to help get technology that GOD had removed and then suddenly finds the unforeseen capability to overclock his fleet to be irresistable. I know that a modder can do anything, I am on about the player using a mod.

[uberex]

This is one of the better script ideas to be launched in a long time, and well thought up. This, combined with the Station Re-packer, is excellent if you play a pirate. Which I incidentally do

Personally though, I will edit it to allow me to only use TP class ships. To make it harder on myself a little bit, but also because TP class is almost never used except maybe for the first one or two times you capture something in the beginning.

One thing, would it be possible for you to make something like this to capture Orbital Weapons Platforms as well? Or integrate it? I know you can't dock, but I have a wild guess some of the procedures you use could be used none-the-less. Just a humble request though

Great work! Will test, and report if I find any bugs.

Thank you, bugs reports and hands-on feedback is much appreciated

Though, the original idea was by Nividium, but he implemented it differently and playing a pirate gave me extra motivation to write my own from grounds up.

To board Orbital Weapons Platforms is grand idea, and I definitely will attempt it, but I doubt I could simulate the launch/space-walk/reaching hull part. So, since docking is not possible, the only way I see it is by lowering shield below threshold and "beaming" troops aboard using Transporter Device. At least at my current scripting level

[xiriod]

Unless it has changed dramatically since X3R, these stations stored up to 2000 tunings (so they never appeared to run out in-game) and the player with the station cap mod was able to overtune docked ships as many times as they wanted from that stock (for free!), and replenish from other hulks.

My point was that a player might just want a mod to help get technology that GOD had removed and then suddenly finds the unforeseen capability to overclock his fleet to be irresistable. I know that a modder can do anything, I am on about the player using a mod.

My point is, if the player wants to cheat that way there are far better scripts for those options than this If the player wants to cheat, he will. And if any player wants to, then that's fine too. There was a player that wanted to have like 500 billion credits at start so he could have anything he wanted. Well, if that made him happy then cool. For him

If a player wants a mod to let him supercharge all his ships, then Cycrow's cheat package is superior to any script. For anything that lets you have it all at once.

Said package is also great for when you are making scripts, as you can spawn anything you like at a whim and test things out.

Most scripts lets the door swing both ways, and could let you exploit it if you really wanted to.

[uberex]

This script will require great self-control from the player if it allows capping of Pirate Stations, Outposts, Equipment Docks, etc that sell ship tunings and extensions as that would be a game-breaker. Soon the player fleet could be far faster and more agile than ever intended for balance. Even if the script destroys held stocks on capture, players can replenish them from capped ship hulks.

If that is how capped EQ docks work... that's so cool!!!! Cap'n'scrap ships to improve yours

On the other hand, you can buy EQ docks from "vanilla" shipyards and they do not seem to exhibit this "feature". I could do a check at control transfer point if the station is an EQ dock/millitary base/etc to remove tunings from the list of offered ware. Then it should function identical to those from "vanilla" shipyards... or am I missing something here?

[xiriod]

If that is how capped EQ docks work... that's so cool!!!! Cap'n'scrap ships to improve yours

On the other hand, you can buy EQ docks from "vanilla" shipyards and they do not seem to exhibit this "feature". I could do a check at control transfer point if the station is an EQ dock/millitary base/etc to remove tunings from the list of offered ware. Then it should function identical to those from "vanilla" shipyards... or am I missing something here?

No, this is not what happens

If you take control over a AI EQ dock it will have 1 of each upgrade it had on sale. After that it is empty. If it has 1 in stock, and you sell it 1 the last one will disappear after you get the credit for it. So no matter what it will only sell you one upgrade one time.

I just used the Cheat script to take control over an Argon EQ dock where I had some ships. And that's all the things I could do, nothing more, nothing less.

The odd thing though, if you have a trader going he might sell some of his upgrades to the EQ dock. And you don't want that to happen. It happened to me when I took control over the Hub in the story mission. My trader sold his jumpdrive and chugged along without it until I found out.

Might as well script in to remove upgrades for that reason alone

[Alan Phipps]

OK xiriod, thanks for checking and that's a relief I think!

It is a change from X3R where once you had control of such a station you could 'adjust station parameters' with docked ships - transferring tunings and extensions both in and out of stock. Typically they held up to a couple of thousand tunings which, other than cargobay increase, could be indefinitely overtuned on docked ships. Also they held 10-30 of each stocked ship extension, which were similarly transferrable in and out. That availability, to my mind, would have broken the game balance (and did in X3R IMO).

If you can only sell single stock items for cash and only restock one at a time, then that's probably OK. (So both extensions and tunings can be restocked - and how does cash work when the station is player owned?) Still, all is now well. Good luck with this mod.

[uberex]

Actually, Alan Phipps is correct. I have just tried it on clean 2.1 install with just Board Station and Cheats Collection in a fresh game and was able to transfer 1000 engine tunings from freshly captured EQ dock to my ship.

As for other upgrades, it only had 1 of each, which is OK. I think AI keeps upgrades stocked to amount of upgrades that can be sold in one transaction, and since you cannot have more than one Docking Computer, for example, they only keep one in permanent stock. As a nice effect, I was able to transfer my equipment (Fight Software MK1) to the EQ stock, which I think is a great option, as before I had to keep some of capped ships just because it had a jumpdrive installed, which I could use later on. Now I can just dump jumpdrive in EQ stock and sell the ship.

New version (which I will post soon) radically fixes the tunings problem (removes them from available products) along with another bug I have discovered.

Thank you both for weeding this one out

The odd thing though, if you have a trader going he might sell some of his upgrades to the EQ dock. And you don't want that to happen. It happened to me when I took control over the Hub in the story mission. My trader sold his jumpdrive and chugged along without it until I found out.

Might as well script in to remove upgrades for that reason alone

If the trading script checks everything in the cargo bay that can be sold that could pose a problem. In "vanilla" upgrades cannot be sold back, thus always stay with the ship. But, damn, it is also so nice to be able to stock up on jumpdrives and transporter devices for future fleet.

[draffutt]

you think at some point in development you'd be able to give this "ability" to npc's? this would encourage players to protect their own assets.

[Alan Phipps]

@ uberex: I'm glad I recalled this tunings issue correctly. The other thing is that though they only show a stock of one of each extension on capture, you used to be able in X3R to transfer up to 20 odd of each type into the station through 'adjust parameters' and several donor hulks. You could even increase the number of tunings held above the stock 1000 that way, but you are sorting that issue I gather.

So you might have your wish to store and fit player extensions after all. One word of caution though, anything adjusted into stock that the station did not trade in before it was captured, including both wares and extensions, will rapidly reduce over time as they do in NPC stations. So you may be able to drop 5 jumpdrives into a capped Equipment Dock (which doesn't normally stock them) only to come back later to find none left.

[xiriod]

This script is so excellent, I can't praise it enough When I can, with this or another script, capture OWPs the circle is complete for me