[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[sataricon]

That is true i have SA on all factories but how else will my factories get basic matrials?
Is there a better way to do things?

[Hector0x]

Try Dock Agents.

Distribute job > Destination > Factories in sector > Local (or any other sector, but i recommend local to keep it simple)
Oh and one ship per factory is overkill. For example i only use 2 DA's to serve a sector with 8 Teladianium factories and they can keep up well (sanctuary doesn't produce anything, factories are close to the sanctuary)

[Joubarbe]

I know, it looks simple to implement back a vanilla feature, but if only you knew!
Anyway, this time, it's no longer possible to build an Ore Mine on a Silicon asteroid, and no longer possible to remote drop a mine in the middle of a sector, "outside" of an asteroid (LU bug). And the yield is now properly saved and restored.
And that little feature actually means that you can backlog stations, and that they are directly added to the Outpost cargo, waiting for a TL to pick them up.

[aurelcourt]

Several possibilities:

1/ no SA, only DA in your sanctuaries, with acquire+distribute orders for all wares

-Pros : everything is centralized in a big hub (or several ones).
-Cons : that's a lot of trips for your DA to get the resources and distribute them once again... (even if the "opportune delivery" is a great addition for this)

2/ SA in every factory

-Pros : no double trip for 1 resource, everything goes straight where it is supposed to go = less agents needed for the same work.
-Cons : you need more "configuring" for this to avoid your scenario when wares are distributed where you don't expect them. Check the logistic tabs of all your sanctuaries and adjust ALL your import thresholds.

Also SA are not coordinated so sometimes 2 factories send the same resource to the same other factory (energy for example) and the second to arrive can't deliver because it's full...

And if the factory has a slow output... your DA will be idle a lot of time waiting for the "export threshold" of the factory to be met.

3/ a mix of both. Some factories have SA, some don't

I usually have SA in my Solar Power Plants because they produce very quickly and by the time the SA is back it can basically go again with a full load.
I make sure to check all my sanctuaries import thresholds : I want (for example) 200 000 ECells in major sanctuaries producing weapons or ships and only 20 000 ECells in other secondary sanctuaries, just for refuel purposes...

That could also work for ore/silicon as they easily fill your TS.

Big TS work well as SA for factories with a big output, and smaller (quicker) TS as DA in a "hub"...

Lots of possibilities, depending a lot in how your empire is set up

[Joubarbe]

Mayhem 3 New Economy (PDF)
Feedback welcome.

RelVal is a global value that defines the average price of wares.
Modifiers is how big the range between min. price and max. price is. Generally speaking, I try to increase this range on finished products (those that are at the end of the production chain). It scales to RelVal.

[KurTr]

More I play this mod, the more I appreciate and respect the work that is put into it. Without doubt, this mod is one of the best thing that happened to X series. Absolutely amazing.

I have a couple more questions:

In instalation instructions it is stated that nosteam exe. is required to play it, but I like steam so I changed the nosteam exe.'s name to normal exe., then replaced it. Can start the game through steam without problem(steam didnt modify the "nosteam exe." when i started the game). Does this mean It's ok to play through steam? Will I face any problems down the line?

Have you, joubarbe, considered putting your mod in steam? Old games like First Deus Ex game has community mods that have its own store page (Deus Ex: Revision), as with Skyrim's Enderal mod or other games. This mod is so extensive, so polished(at least I never see any bugs) and so enjoyable to play. If you want it, you can definitely have a store page for this mod.

Can you elaborate on the "Economy PDF" a bit, I read a bit but didn't understand much.

Edit: One more question: In the future, would you consider working on x4, or any other X games that may be published in the future?

[Hector0x]

@KurTr: i strongly advice against using steam for modded X3. If it somehow verifies your gamefiles it will break everything. The best way to do this:
- make sure you're unsubscribed to the bonus pack!
- copy whole steam game folder to another location
- add nosteam.exe
- install any mod

This way you can keep as many installations of different mods as you like. You only have to swap out your savegames if you switch playing them.

[Joubarbe]

I don't know how Steam page works, but the install process of Mayhem (that requires LU) is quite complex (LU has its own setup) and it's not just one click to install everything. Besides, the creators of the mods you're speaking about probably have some agreements with the editors.

I don't recommend Steam because you lose your vanilla folder, and if you want to install another mod (go back to LU for instance), you have to reinstall everything. Plus, if the game or any used tools are updated, it can mess up with LU and Mayhem.

I edited my previous post to explain the two most important columns.

EDIT: X4... Yeah, if Egosoft hires me

[Hector0x]

Mayhem 3 New Economy (PDF)
Feedback welcome.

Is this what i think it is?
- waste = foundation for ship and station construction
- waste produced by outpost population
- population increased either by expanding into sectors (additional outposts) but also by providing consumer goods to attract more citizens into each sector (levelling up the outpost).

If so, resource supply and production speed for ships and stations is directly tied to population and a consumer market. It sounds brilliant because it connects everything. Egosoft used to tell us that we can drive prices by preventing cargo ships to reach their destinations. But it never slowed down actual ship production which would be a whole new level.

In your chart building ships and stations requires three resources each. I thought you'd go for a single universal ship component. Aren't you afraid that only one needs to run out and the npc's get stuck? Or can they still build new ships and it only takes them longer if they're missing wares? (like the discontinued "Timelines" mod was supposed to work)

[Joubarbe]

Waste and E-Cells are the two base resources, yeah. Waste is auto-produced by Outposts, and I don't know yet if it's going to be tied to the population or not (probably). The reason for that is that "population" is now "manpower", it doesn't vary over time. Each Outpost requires one of the resources that are at the bottom of the sheet (and also auto-produces another one). If it misses the resource, all productions are paused.

Single universal crafting ware? Would be quite dull to play. And there's a golden rule that needs to be respected: 1 station = 1 resource. AI has 1 Agent (previously "SA") in each of its stations. AI has infinite money, because that's way too tedious to manage, but other than that, if they want to craft something, they have to get the resources from somewhere.

[Hector0x]

Ah, ok. Somehow i thought it would be like Anno where population would grow up to a very low amount and then they would ask for increasingly elaborate luxury goods, starting with basics like fish and vegetables, up to textiles and jewelry. But this is probably too complicated for X3.

Anyway, so an outpost always produces a fixed amount of waste and also exactly the amount of fruits, biscuits, etc. a single other sector needs? Empires have to establish supply lines to get these goods hauled to where they are needed and aquiring more outposts is the only way to produce more waste.

If manpower always stays the same, couldn't the player remove those consumer goods from the outpost when he is currently not building? He doesn't seem to loose anything and if no production works without those wares they seem very valuable. Or are they only consumed during construction?

[Joubarbe]

1/ I've tried the Anno approach in Mayhem 1, was tedious to manage.
2/ True.
3/ For now, I'm not sure how I want to proceed. Consuming food could be the only way to produce waste. And having no resource could deactivate some of the Outpost features. TBD.

Or maybe I should keep the old population system.

[alexalsp]

Mayhem 3 is not a total rewrite. I won't change how I deal with multiple language (ie. I won't deal with it). You can't imagine how tedious it is to have a t-file line for every words I put into every menu. I've done that for a while for other mods, then switched to "100% script", except for some long messages. So yeah, you'll have to dig the scripts if you want to localize Mayhem in Russian.

That would not be such a problem. But I came across the fact that if you translate one line, then the mod does not work properly.

Therefore, it would be good to know, if possible, which places cannot be translated.

The process of finding such places takes a lot of time. And this is strange. Although there are not many, it’s still strange to create a mod specifically for a certain social group of people.

Maybe it’s impossible in another way, I don’t know, I'm not a programmer. Although, other mods work in different languages without problems.

Many do not play mod, just because they do not understand English. And translated scripts may not work correctly.

[Joubarbe]

The process of finding such places takes a lot of time. And this is strange. Although there are not many, it’s still strange to create a mod specifically for a certain social group of people.

There's nothing strange. It requires a ton of work, and I don't want to do it. That's as simple as that.
I would be happy to help you if you notice one line that break the mod once translated, but don't tell me that I'm making this mod "for a certain social group of people". I don't target any specific audience. The more people play my mod, the happier I am.

[Joubarbe]

So yeah, I kinda overlooked my new food system and invented something that wasn't needed. So now, back to the old system. People are growing over time, producing waste and consuming one type of food that is bound to the sector. They also produce one specific product, also bound to the sector the Outpost is in.


(visible in sector description)

When they starve, some of them die and every production and crafting is stopped until they can eat again.

[alexalsp]

After some time, the fractions begin to capture sectors.

But if the names of the fractions are translated, then the capture of sectors does not occur.

Also initialization, sector Unknown. If you translate, then at the start of the game the hyper tunnel does not appear. It is necessary to change the name in the main game file and in the script, for example, to "НС".

And now the problem has appeared with boarding. All boarding ends with success. My paratroopers do not receive damage at all.

But boarding must be checked on the new game, to be completely sure.
This is a couple of points from those that were.

And do not be offended by the words, you must understand that English is not my language. Therefore, some text may seem offensive, but it is not.
I appreciate your work. But I would like to play fully in my native language.

Everything is fine, but there are a couple of problems that need to be checked and compared with the English game.

[Joubarbe]

Yeah... To be honest, I think the task of translating all LU and Mayhem is impossible. Some scripts heavily depend on English terms ("miner" for instance, if you translate that, miners won't work), because we have to deal with hardcoded limitations and sometimes the only way to accomplish a specific task is to compare or manipulate strings. It would need a serious rework of many many scripts (and impossible to maintain)... All you can hope is to have the general game in Russian, but expecting to translate everything is a waste of time IMO.

On the other hand, I can make the game creator of Mayhem 3 easily translatable. That's easy, that's another language and my own tool developed from scratch, which is not the case for X3.

[alexalsp]

("miner" for instance, if you translate that, miners won't work),

Yes, I already considered and corrected this moment. But I haven't figured out the marines yet. They're not dying.)
I did it)) Now the paratroopers are dying. )))

On the other hand, I can make the game creator of Mayhem 3 easily translatable. That's easy, that's another language and my own tool developed from scratch, which is not the case for X3.

That would be excellent. I take off my hat and bow low ....

[KurTr]

Yet another question

After declaring a permanent war, I should expect hostilities from the declared faction. How do their Invasion system works? Are they only able to invade my sectors if they have a bordering sector, or will they be able to invade regardless of distance?

[Hector0x]

Battlegroups (the ones at shipyard sectors) can only attack into sectors to which the faction has a border. So unless you sit next to your permanent enemy you can't be their target. After you run out of pirate and xenon sectors it will be worth it to go for these dangerous sectors, even if this would mean to open yourself up to get invaded. But after doing so you may want to close this border soon, like conquering the danger zone for an ally. If you can't do that at least take defensive perks like reduced invasion strength or EMP. Later you can try to wipe a small sector pocket before serious counterattacks have a chance to trigger.

Some vanilla job ships might also try to reach certain destination which originally belonged to them and might travel through any sector to get there. For example border control ships (M6) and weapon traders (TM).