[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

The place to discuss scripting and game modifications for X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

Moderators: Moderators for English X Forum, Scripting / Modding Moderators

Post Reply
4square425
Posts: 85
Joined: Fri, 14. Jun 13, 02:52
x3tc

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by 4square425 » Wed, 23. Dec 20, 17:49

Joubarbe wrote:
Wed, 23. Dec 20, 15:32
Mayhem 3.5 released

Have fun!
Thanks for the Christmas gift! Those post-truce changes will make the experience must less frustrating.

What ended up being the cause of the marine corruption bug BTW?

User avatar
Hector0x
Posts: 994
Joined: Mon, 18. Nov 13, 18:03
x3tc

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Hector0x » Wed, 23. Dec 20, 18:08

Epic work!

i wish you all enjoyable christmas days.

User avatar
Joubarbe
Posts: 4796
Joined: Tue, 31. Oct 06, 12:11
xr

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Joubarbe » Wed, 23. Dec 20, 18:10

I have no way of testing it, so it’s a guess, but I think it’s a good one. I think it comes from the script that destroys Marine missions (Mayhem.MarineMission.Destroy). Due to the complexity of data structure, I have to "delete" (ie. assign 'null' values to make the garbage collector do its job) manually a number of things, and I’ve just removed all that part. Some may shout "Memory leak!!!", but I don’t think it’s a problem (one mission represents very very.... very little data compared to how much RAM we have today on our computers). And if you don’t know what a memory leak is, it’s actually not a real leak, everything is under control :)

Would be good if someone can test that, but I reckon it will be tedious. Use your 10 savegame slots, and the save hotkey :)

4square425
Posts: 85
Joined: Fri, 14. Jun 13, 02:52
x3tc

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by 4square425 » Wed, 23. Dec 20, 19:41

Well, I'll try some boarding the next session. Now that I don't have to monitor my fleets from starting a whole new war after a truce, I'll have the time.

EDIT: Unfortunately the corruption bug persists when successfully boarding and taking a M7 Panther. I have a save so I'll try to do some step by step testing, but here's the preliminary files:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Save #3 is right before EMP and Boarding.
Save #10 is corrupt.
The video details my process.

temetvince
Posts: 228
Joined: Fri, 29. Jul 11, 20:58
x4

Re:

Post by temetvince » Thu, 24. Dec 20, 19:40

Fureimuu wrote:
Sat, 14. Jul 18, 21:31
tatakau wrote:I think I read somewhere buried in this thread on or on ModDB that the EVE Online music on CCP's Soundcloud works really well with Mayhem. Or maybe LU. Not sure where I read it.

https://soundcloud.com/ccpgames/sets/ev ... ame-tracks

But if I'm going to be getting a fresh install together for the impending 2.5, I figured I might as well take a stab at bringing in their music.

Do you have any recommended procedures, for what files to replace in the X3>Soundtrack folder?
A lot of EVE music is installed with LU (Soundtrack.exe), not sure if that's all tracks though. For example Doomed Forever is playing in Belt of Aguilar. If you want to add more (in case some songs are missing), open galaxy editor and check all sectors' settings. You can change the BGM there.
Wow, I just found this in a search for something unrelated, and it's been a long time, but I want to follow up on this. I did the release version of the soundtrack for lu, and iirc we used a lot of eve music because it was free at the time. It's hard to find that information these days on the net... maybe the wayback machine? Anyway, funny to see how things morph over time and it ends up that choosing music because "we won't get sued" leads to it "being good music for playing the game" :D It IS good music to play along to, though :D

temetvince
Posts: 228
Joined: Fri, 29. Jul 11, 20:58
x4

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by temetvince » Thu, 24. Dec 20, 20:37

I've been considering doing a complete Mayhem 3 run to see how far I can go, but during beta testing I was (perhaps overly) concerned with maintenance. Is there a cap on how expensive it gets on old ships? If I can afford it now on a group of ships, will I always be able to afford it on that same group of ships? The mechanics are a bit alien to me and I know things have probably changed since I last played.

Does it ever make sense to get rid of a ship that you've had for too long due to ongoing cost?

4square425
Posts: 85
Joined: Fri, 14. Jun 13, 02:52
x3tc

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by 4square425 » Thu, 24. Dec 20, 22:16

temetvince wrote:
Thu, 24. Dec 20, 20:37
I've been considering doing a complete Mayhem 3 run to see how far I can go, but during beta testing I was (perhaps overly) concerned with maintenance. Is there a cap on how expensive it gets on old ships? If I can afford it now on a group of ships, will I always be able to afford it on that same group of ships? The mechanics are a bit alien to me and I know things have probably changed since I last played.

Does it ever make sense to get rid of a ship that you've had for too long due to ongoing cost?
There's no cap as far as I can tell, but a mobile maintenance kit brings it back to 100%. I tend to do it on M7s, M1s and M2s. There's also the Drydock Outpost perk that eliminates it for ships docked there, so while a fleet isn't in action, it can substantially reduce costs.

I know Hector is working on a rebalance mod that eliminates maintenance for non-combat ships, like agents and miners. Since they stay in space practically forever, and you can have many of them, it adds up. I've thought about recycling my oldest ships, but my oldest one at 1145% maintenance is still costing less than a M7 at 100%.

temetvince
Posts: 228
Joined: Fri, 29. Jul 11, 20:58
x4

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by temetvince » Fri, 25. Dec 20, 02:46

4square425 wrote:
Thu, 24. Dec 20, 22:16
There's no cap as far as I can tell, but a mobile maintenance kit brings it back to 100%. I tend to do it on M7s, M1s and M2s. There's also the Drydock Outpost perk that eliminates it for ships docked there, so while a fleet isn't in action, it can substantially reduce costs.

I know Hector is working on a rebalance mod that eliminates maintenance for non-combat ships, like agents and miners. Since they stay in space practically forever, and you can have many of them, it adds up. I've thought about recycling my oldest ships, but my oldest one at 1145% maintenance is still costing less than a M7 at 100%.
That sums everything up wonderfully. Thank you.

User avatar
Black--Snow
Posts: 59
Joined: Mon, 18. Jul 16, 13:18
x3ap

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Black--Snow » Fri, 25. Dec 20, 05:34

Enjoying the new Mayhem a lot, wouldn't mind an option for a single game-wide perk reset though. It's easy enough to do manually via running the perk init script, but I have no idea how to integrate it into an option/menu.

I was considering writing a loadout calculator that parses the game files to get the ship & Weapon stats, though I'm not sure where those are stored/written. Can I get a hint, Joubarbe? :3

Also the AI fines you for illegal scanning even if you're at war with them, which seems... odd.

User avatar
XenonArchitect7
Posts: 110
Joined: Fri, 5. Jul 19, 07:19

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by XenonArchitect7 » Fri, 25. Dec 20, 08:40

Black--Snow wrote:
Fri, 25. Dec 20, 05:34
I was considering writing a loadout calculator that parses the game files to get the ship & Weapon stats, though I'm not sure where those are stored/written. Can I get a hint, Joubarbe? :3
The in-game ship compendium is likely your best bet for ship stats. It is located in the Mayhem player console.

If you really want to parse the game files to get a detailed readout of weapon and ship stats, look for Litcube's excel tools on the LU wiki's downloads section. You will first need to know how to extract files out of the cat/dat directories, so it is a bit advanced.

User avatar
Black--Snow
Posts: 59
Joined: Mon, 18. Jul 16, 13:18
x3ap

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Black--Snow » Fri, 25. Dec 20, 15:21

XenonArchitect7 wrote:
Fri, 25. Dec 20, 08:40
Black--Snow wrote:
Fri, 25. Dec 20, 05:34
I was considering writing a loadout calculator that parses the game files to get the ship & Weapon stats, though I'm not sure where those are stored/written. Can I get a hint, Joubarbe? :3
The in-game ship compendium is likely your best bet for ship stats. It is located in the Mayhem player console.

If you really want to parse the game files to get a detailed readout of weapon and ship stats, look for Litcube's excel tools on the LU wiki's downloads section. You will first need to know how to extract files out of the cat/dat directories, so it is a bit advanced.
I'm aware of the ship compendium, but interfacing with the game and reading from the screen is significantly less viable than parsing Mayhem files for ship stats. :)

I've similarly parsed Skyrim save and mod files, compared to that most things are a walk in the park.

Also, does the "Build full template" option in Outposts build and ship the gear from nearby outposts somehow, or does it require a multi-specced single outpost?

User avatar
XenonArchitect7
Posts: 110
Joined: Fri, 5. Jul 19, 07:19

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by XenonArchitect7 » Fri, 25. Dec 20, 15:36

Black--Snow wrote:
Fri, 25. Dec 20, 15:21
.
Also, does the "Build full template" option in Outposts build and ship the gear from nearby outposts somehow, or does it require a multi-specced single outpost?
Joubarbe can correct me if I am wrong, but I think it just requires that the outpost have the lasers and shields in its inventory, which can be brought in from other outposts. I think there is also a smart system where completed ships will wait for equipment if it is not readily available and auto-equip once it is.

User avatar
Black--Snow
Posts: 59
Joined: Mon, 18. Jul 16, 13:18
x3ap

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Black--Snow » Fri, 25. Dec 20, 16:22

XenonArchitect7 wrote:
Fri, 25. Dec 20, 15:36
Black--Snow wrote:
Fri, 25. Dec 20, 15:21
.
Also, does the "Build full template" option in Outposts build and ship the gear from nearby outposts somehow, or does it require a multi-specced single outpost?
Joubarbe can correct me if I am wrong, but I think it just requires that the outpost have the lasers and shields in its inventory, which can be brought in from other outposts. I think there is also a smart system where completed ships will wait for equipment if it is not readily available and auto-equip once it is.
They do seem to wait. Is there a way to automatically stock x amount of equipment in an outpost? For example, build 25MJ shields until you have 50, another station imports up to 50 from the producer?

User avatar
Joubarbe
Posts: 4796
Joined: Tue, 31. Oct 06, 12:11
xr

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Joubarbe » Sat, 26. Dec 20, 08:56

@Black--Snow

Ship & weapon stats are stored in .cat files only. The compendium is just using functions that access these files.

Full template requires to have the gear inside the Outpost the ship is built from.

With production queue and the logistics screen, you can achieve what you’re trying to do.

@PoneyMaster: thanks for the bug report, I’m confident that I will be able to fix that soon. This is the last critical bug in Mayhem :)

User avatar
Black--Snow
Posts: 59
Joined: Mon, 18. Jul 16, 13:18
x3ap

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Black--Snow » Sat, 26. Dec 20, 10:18

Joubarbe wrote:
Sat, 26. Dec 20, 08:56
@Black--Snow

Ship & weapon stats are stored in .cat files only. The compendium is just using functions that access these files.

Full template requires to have the gear inside the Outpost the ship is built from.

With production queue and the logistics screen, you can achieve what you’re trying to do.
How do you limit production via logistics? I know you can set things on loop, but "loop until x" is not something I've seen.

Guess I'll do some digging through X3 Editor 2's source code then. Thanks!

User avatar
Joubarbe
Posts: 4796
Joined: Tue, 31. Oct 06, 12:11
xr

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Joubarbe » Sat, 26. Dec 20, 11:00

@4square425: So I cannot reproduce the bug. I actually never had it, and all 4 tries I made were not corrupting my saves. However, I was doing some strange things in the Marine mission destroy scripts, so please retry with these scripts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DmDI7x ... sp=sharing (EDIT: included in 3.5b)

Also, there is a debug cheat at the very bottom of the player console: '...instant_tasks'. That removes all timers. You can make some very quick tests that way.
Last edited by Joubarbe on Wed, 30. Dec 20, 15:30, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Hector0x
Posts: 994
Joined: Mon, 18. Nov 13, 18:03
x3tc

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Hector0x » Sat, 26. Dec 20, 14:54

temetvince wrote:
Thu, 24. Dec 20, 20:37
Is there a cap on how expensive it gets on old ships? If I can afford it now on a group of ships, will I always be able to afford it on that same group of ships? The mechanics are a bit alien to me and I know things have probably changed since I last played.

Does it ever make sense to get rid of a ship that you've had for too long due to ongoing cost?
maintenance can grow very large over time. But we are mostly talking about ingame days here. As long as you don't run SETA overnight you should be fine.
What i like to do is just forming new fleets from time to time. That way you can send your oldest fleets into battles first and get a healthy ship rotation going. That's usually better than recycling. But i also like to do that when maintenance factors reach 300-500%. Anything higher and i end up ask myself if this ship is really providing enough benefit to justify such a cost explosion and it gets recycled or i install a maintenance kit (which locks maintenance factor at base level forever).
You will definitely loose ships in Mayhem 3 because they got no emergency jumpdrive like in Mayhem 2. Avoiding ship losses entirely is almost impossible in bigger fights. So it might as well be your oldest most expensive ships which get destroyed.

One thing you could try is lowering the cost increase over time. You can tweak maintenance cycle (which is 1% cost increase) to last longer than 10 min. For example taking 6 times longer (1 hour). But then i would also increase the base maintenance cost a bit. For example doubling it. This would give you a much more predictable and forgiving maintenance mechanic.

User avatar
Hector0x
Posts: 994
Joined: Mon, 18. Nov 13, 18:03
x3tc

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Hector0x » Sat, 26. Dec 20, 15:29

Black--Snow wrote:
Fri, 25. Dec 20, 15:21
Also, does the "Build full template" option in Outposts build and ship the gear from nearby outposts somehow, or does it require a multi-specced single outpost?

TLDR: Only use multi-specced outposts for ship/laser/shield production!


I think you need the multi-specced outpost. In my last game i tried to use only very few of those. Most outposts were specialized for a single production line (lasers, shields, ships, missles, factories). The reasoning behind that was that you can be more efficient with your perks and more people in your empire are actually doing something other than producing waste and taxes. I strongly believe that my economy was very powerful in that game because of this decentralized approach. I had tons of stuff and almost every outpost could also use additional wealth generating perks like solar panels, tax, or no food consumption.
But the big problem is that you can never properly find a balance in your total production. You are constantly building up stockpiles of various shields or lasers. All that efficiency that comes from having extra perks and workers is useless because you're often producing stuff just to put it in the shelf.
I had to stop that game after the 22nd outpost because it got way to cumbersome to manage all the logistics and productions. It somewhat worked, but i had to change or restart production lines way too frequently. That killed all the fun for me. Especially since i also had 1 multi-specced outpost which worked SO much better than all the others. But that single one couldn't produce ships fast enough on its own and i already unlocked so many production perks on other outposts.


With multi-specced outposts you will only produce exactly what you need with 1 click, especially if your ship needs more than one type of laser. Some features like auto-reinforcing fleets won't work well either without having multi-specced outposts. If you don't have them then you need to seriously standardize your fleets and use very few different types of ships, shields and lasers. The convenience from multi-specced outposts is always worth it in my opinion. My advice is to try and give every shipyard these 5 perks (eventually):
1) laser production
2) shield production
3) insurance policy (absolute must have if population is big, can be delayed otherwise because the really bad event only appears later into the game :D )
4) increased maximum specialization (insane resource discount, but delay that to mid-/endgame when your outpost is leveled up)
5) optimal parallel tasks (this has the least priority. But for each ship producing outpost without this perk you will need another ship producing outpost to make up for the first one's slow production speed. And you'd need to split up more of you ship components, which makes your logistics more complicated.)

In the end i consider these 5 perks to be almost mandatatory for every ship production line. Once you have them you can start to think about others like engine tuning. And all other perks should be outsourced to other outposts entirely.

User avatar
Black--Snow
Posts: 59
Joined: Mon, 18. Jul 16, 13:18
x3ap

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Black--Snow » Sat, 26. Dec 20, 15:48

Hector0x wrote:
Sat, 26. Dec 20, 15:29
--
Now that is an excellently thorough answer. Thanks a lot! I usually go for multi-specced but I thought maybe it was a naive approach and wanted to try spreading them out. The micromanagement is no fun for me. I think I'll run the perk init script on my production outposts and respec them in a way that gives a single production outpost.

What kind of perks do you like to grab on non-production outposts? I usually grab the no-disasters, and tax. The no food is kinda neat for reducing logistical complexity, but food is such a non-issue supply-wise that it feels like a waste of a slot if you've got something better to put there.

Dry dock doesn't seem like it'd provide much benefit unless it's an attack fleet or something (How long are ships really docked?). The marine perks seem good, but that'd only be on one or two outposts, etc.

User avatar
Hector0x
Posts: 994
Joined: Mon, 18. Nov 13, 18:03
x3tc

Re: [X3LU] Mayhem 3.5

Post by Hector0x » Sat, 26. Dec 20, 17:09

I mostly seem to use 3 types of outposts.

1) one or two out of 10 outposts should be such a multi-tasking Shipyard. They will use up a lot of perks. So their position on the galaxy map is quite important to get those adjacency boni stacked up a bit. I try to avoid any non essential perks like no-food on them. In the long run you seem to gain a lot of convenience if you take those 5 perks i mentioned above.

2) having a few fleet bases/fortress outposts near your borders can be nice. Maybe 2 out of every 10 outposts. That's where new ships from the shipyards can go to dock and get maintenance free with the drydock perk until you need them. Yeah, once your fleet is in actual use they rarely ever dock again. But it is still a good perk to save a lot of maintenance money when you're still building your fleet up to strength. Also seems to be a good place to put your missle production if you use that. And if you're really close to an enemy empire, then EMP can be a gamechanger. Your fleet is safely sitting in drydock. Boom, enemy shields are down, your fleet undocks and attacks = massacre. If you unlock Solar Panels your outpost can even recharge it's own EMP energy over time.

3) all other outposts aren't really needed to produce something or do any kind of special job. So i always end up giving them tax, faster research, solar panels or no-food. Economic boosters like that. Or the marine stuff. And these outposts are always the biggest group after i start to take more sectors. Maybe 7 out of 10 outposts in my games.

Post Reply

Return to “X³: Terran Conflict / Albion Prelude - Scripts and Modding”