[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Jonzac]

I shall not speak of the "topic which shall NOT BE NAMED".

I'll just have to remember to pay more attention to my personal account.

Great work on this by the way, I love how the game plays out without everyone having jumpdrives.

[Hector0x]

Indeed, some production lines have wierd ratios. Chemical to Tel is 4:3. Chelt to Rastar is 5:4.
But in practice this doesn't really matter. You will be loosing random resources in storage fire events, from haulers getting killed, from factories idling for too long. You can also gain a fair amount of random resources from loot now.

It's likely that there will be some logistical inefficiencies causing further imbalance over time before you finally notice and find the time (mood) to fix them hours later.

There will certainly be times when some factories stop producing during your playthrough. Given the limited UI there is almost nothing you can do about this and it's better to even expect it. Mayhem 3 is like the worst economic game you can choose if you want everything working flawlessly all the time and can't stand situations which require you to adapt or change your initial plan or setups.

Maybe you build more and more factories but forgot to also ramp up your Agent count and end up with too few ships to keep up with the hauling. Maybe your worker range and Agent travel times are too high after a jump beacon got destroyed. Maybe you made a dumb mistake while setting up your Agent jobs, or forgot some of them entirely. Resources might be piling up in the wrong outposts. Or not get hauled away from factories at all. There will be empty factories flashing yellow. Full factories which don't even flash to garner your attention (full factories can only be identified if you specifically look for them).

Your economy can become a fairly well oiled machine. But it's unlikely that you play to a point where it doesn't need to be oiled or expanded at all anymore. And during your pursuit of creating the most well-oiled economy, countless problems will slip your attention. Embrace the change! I think in the end you should be prepared for imbalancies in your production chain and plan accordingly or the game can become very frustrating. A Chelt factory only producing 4/5 of the resources for a Rastar farm will be the least of your problems.

Now imagine you put your entire crystal production in one sector. This is tempting because it simplifies logistics. But it can certainly set you up for disaster if you stick to this playthrough long enough. Could you still haul your crystals to the other end of your empire without jump beacons? And what about some enemy occupying your sector? Could you even produce enough crystals elsewhere if you couldn't reach these factories for the time being?
Creating redundancy for situations like these tends to become the real issue after some time. And it feels quite rewarding to develop your very own solutions.

At least to some crazy niche fanbase with a knack for tycoon games


****, it became a long essay again, so:

TLDR:
1) Mayhem 3 is at least 51% an economy game. (more than Mayhem 2 in my opinion)
2) Managing and expanding your production will likely be a neverending story. The UI is cumbersome, but you generally don't need to act quickly either. (think "Factorio on Valium")
3) Expect problems which can force you to adapt and change your setup later on. You should evolve and treat your economy like an increasingly complex organism. Eventually you loose track or your nerves and stop playing. Or your economy/empire ends up as a very rewarding personal creation. Then you keep playing and most of it gets mapped in your brain which also counters the bad UI.

[Joubarbe]

You quickly get bored in Tycoon games that don't have any variable input / output. In OpenTTD, you can have a perfect economy, you're happy, it's boring (unless you have AI companies). In Transport Fever, you can't, things change (mostly randomly). In Capitalism Lab, even less, because it changes in a smart way (I highly recommend this niche game). The odd ratios of factories are not a big problem to me. IRL, factories are rarely working at 100%.

Actually, it would make more sense to imbalance all factories (but I won't change anything about the economy at this point; that would break all ongoing games for the player and the AI)

[Jonzac]

All of that for the factories is true...I need to, as we say when deployed, "Embrace the Suck" and get on with it.

I do wish the auto money transfer was a thing as I'm ALWAYS forgetting to have enough money.

[Joubarbe]

You didn't read my post:

Personal console -> Station settings

There you can auto transfer.

[Jonzac]

D'oh

Your right I did miss that. Thanks again!

edit

I shall have myself flogged with a wet pool noodle

[azxcvbnm321]

I have a question. One of my ship production outposts got the unfortunate event of the OCV virus. The event passed, but ships produced at that factory still turn into OCV ships and it's been a long time. Is there anything I can do to stop this from happening anymore? Or do I have to destroy the outpost? Thanks.

Also a comment about the economic system. I think it's a refreshing take on this game. However some base prices seem incredibly imbalanced relative to others. Ore and Quantum Tubes are far too cheap given the amount of steps and resources needed to produce them. Prices are relative, so cheap meaning relative to Microchips and Crystals, which have fewer input steps and resources needed. A good strategy for the player is just to buy all the Quantum Tubes, and then Ore if no Tubes left. I know it would probably make the game too generic if relative prices reflected the cost and resources of manufacture, many products would then have the same price (same base price that is) and it would all look the same. But that's something I wanted to point out, it's not game breaking and not even necessarily bad, it's just some feedback.

Edit: I forgot to say I also highly recommend Capitalism Labs. It's a really fun game for many many hours, until you monopolize everything and every product that is, but you can also change the settings to give technological catchup to AI firms that aren't as advanced as yours. This reflects the real world process of other firms copying and reverse engineering what you did so they don't have to invent the light bulb all over again once you've invented it.

[4square425]

I'm pretty sure I've asked this before, but I've started to invade Split territory in my game and are there any good ways to speed up conquering a sector once you've destroyed the enemy combat ships?

I've tried using the Invade Sector and Attack All Enemies fleet commands, but whenever a random Miner emerges from an adjacent wormhole, the whole fleet goes off chasing it instead of concentrating on stations. I've put my M2s and M7s into different fleets and tried using Priority Attack, but it doesn't keep them on the stations. Another thing I've done is send a carrier into the adjacent sector to keep small ships from entering the target sector, but that isn't going to work as well if the target sector has multiple adjacent sectors.

Essentially, is there a way to get multiple ships to concentrate on stations without having to do manually attack commands? It's probably hard-coded, but could the fleet settings of which ship category prioritizes which include stations? So I could set "Huge Ships in this fleet prioritize stations", while others in other fleets focus on enemy ships.

[Joubarbe]

@azxcvbnm321: There's a timer before a ship turns OCV. It's "infected" when you build it, then turns red after some time, meaning that the timer can still be on when the event ends.

@4square425: I can add a "Station" target priority. Combat scripts are entirely rewritten, nothing is hardcoded, except the attack itself (the manoeuvres a ship does to attack its target).

[Hector0x]

whenever a random Miner emerges from an adjacent wormhole, the whole fleet goes off chasing it instead of concentrating on stations.

If you really want to focus on stations:
- scanning range and follower scanning range to 0 and use fleet command "invade".
- but then your fleet won't properly react if a hostile fleet aproaches. (only individual ships would defend themselves when getting shot at)

So what i like to do instead:
- standart (commander) scanning range to 0
- this makes the commander go killing station after station

- follower scanning range @10-20km
- this makes all other ships react to approaching enemies, destroying them, and then get back to station destruction


So you end up with a big fleet blob which goes from station to station and also has a small ship killing zone around the commander.
Not the quickest method, but works well. There doesn't seem to be a way to "swarm out" while ignoring ships (but this wouldn't be needed in my opinion). I realized that the "dry-dock" perk isn't as powerful as i thought. It's good for buildup, but once you attack your fleets will often be in space for a long time.

EDIT: Ninja Panda said a station focus would be easy to implement

[4square425]

@azxcvbnm321: There's a timer before a ship turns OCV. It's "infected" when you build it, then turns red after some time, meaning that the timer can still be on when the event ends.

@4square425: I can add a "Station" target priority. Combat scripts are entirely rewritten, nothing is hardcoded, except the attack itself (the manoeuvres a ship does to attack its target).

That's going to be so helpful, thanks!

[djmidex]

finally, i have completed the xenon stage (i have never come so far before) and here is some feedback:

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I managed to defeat the enemy having 5 sectors. i won, yes, but it was not easy or god damn hard, there were some risky moments for me: two times i had massive xenon invasions in my sectors, they almost destroyed one of my precious, sanctuaries! it was fun to switch my fleet to attack/defend role during the gameplay (i was short on resources to have two fleets). I can say that "Xenon" phase is well balanced in terms of warfare. What i disliked so far:
1) I play on shattered galaxy (12x13) with non-clustered xenon, and i had 11 Xenon sectors all across the map. It took me 4 in-game days to complete the stage! I think it is too much, though i am a big fan of Mayhem gameplay, there were some moments i was thinking to abandon the run. I suppose the amount of Xenon sectors depends on the galaxy size, but i dont think small galaxies are fun to play, I would be happy to have 5-6 Xenon sectors in my size of the galaxy. It would make gameplay more dynamic.
2) Xenons attacking my jumpbeacons spawn too frequently. It was annoying to defend them all the time. I could not win without using the beacons on enemy territory, as the xenon sectors are scattered through the galaxy and it would take ages for my fleet to reach the target otherwise. Another part of the problem is that my ships OOS could not defend them efficiently, I used 3-fighter fleets for each beacon and order "defend ship" to the leader to defend the beacon. Maybe i should experiment with fleet settings, as Hector0x likes to do. dunno. Anyway, in the end it was always me in the cockpit of my Appolox manually doing pew-pew around the beacon. when i left the sector - i lose the beacon. Anyway, less frequent spawns would make my game less stressful.

Lets see what Yakis bring to the party.

[Joubarbe]

Thanks for your feedback. I think the two problems are related and that reducing the number of Xenon sectors would help solve the second problem as well.

[Hector0x]

Amount of Xenon sectors is also dependent on galaxy progression. My galaxy with advanced progression only had 6 to begin with (second largest X/Y size and shattered).

preventing beacon infection:

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1) stationary defense:
- fleet with at least 2 ships
- commander won't do anything and can be a cheap M4 (TM is a bit more expensive but also works well as a carrier)
- scanning range at 0, follower scanning range 10km
- commander "move to postion" to the beacon

Commander will stay on top of the beacon. His followers will kill all incoming xenon scouts. (commander scanning range 0 generally works well to stay at certain positions to camp gates and such).
The downsides are clutter (1 fleet per beacon) and having to move the commander on the beacon again if he needs to retreat (for example from a faction task force which is trying to kill the beacon).

2) rapid response:
- small fast fighter fleet works well
- set to monitor the sectors with beacons (and only those)
- set to ignore freighters and big ships
- maybe set retreat down to 2:1

The fleet will hang around all monitored beacon sectors and quickly respond if the xenon scout is detected. Since they always use beacons to jump in, their speed can be lower than the xenon scout. He will mostly run directly into them.
If a strong enemy fleet with fighters in space enters the sector, your small fleet first responds, but then retreats. And they can always respond again so this generally works fully automated.

Downside is that your fleet always monitors the entire sectors. They engage other fighters or small groups of them, which could make the xenon slip through. And if strong enemies are present anywhere in sector they could also ignore the xenon scout and retreat. But if you'd disable retreat they would suicide into large enemy fleets once they detect any enemy fighters, so don't do that either. I don't know any perfect solutions yet.

Information about when the player needs to intervene could be conveyed better.

suggestion: t-file option for onscreen message everytime a fleet retreats (on by default)
suggestion: Maybe hard to do, and not really necessary. But sector monitoring shouldn't make fleets respond if the current enemy presence would trigger an instant retreat anyway. An onscreen message would be helpful too (fleet X wanted to respond in Y, but enemy presence was too strong.)

[Joubarbe]

Still, I'm going to reduce the beacon killers, because I don't think it's very fun.

[djmidex]

@Hector0x thanks, i knew you always had a proper solution

[Joubarbe]

The number of Xenon sectors is now limited to a maximum of 6. New galaxies only.
The number of beacon killers that the Xenons send from their "small" invasion groups is scaled to the number of beacons you own. ie. having two beacons is less dangerous than having six.

Should be better.

[4square425]

Reducing the laser production time should equalize everything, so ships are ready to go without having to wait for lasers.

[Joubarbe]

Auto-replace your dead Workers!

[Hector0x]

Much appretiated! Instant Explorer replacement

You're introducing a timer? Didn't expect that. Any specific reasons?
Not that i'm complaining or that your mod was dependent on mainstream approval. I always liked the focus only deadlines can bring to the table. But something tells me that timers are a huge reason why people stayed clear of Litcube, or Mayhem 2. Even if the "pressure" is mostly imaginary. Knowing about a background timer puts a lot of folks off. It intimidates us because we believe there is not much wiggle room for trial & error. Even if it's so generous that it could very well be absent (Pathfinder Kingmaker got flak for no rational reason over exactly such thing )

It should activate after the Ascension, right?