[Mayhem 3] Renegades 3.0

[naisha]

[*]Reputation loss should just reduce your reputation, not set it to -3000.

Ok good

[*]I'm unsure why you want to set a home-base for a fleet. What is the end goal here? Do you want each fleet member to have a home-base set for some reason, or perhaps you want the entire fleet to "go home" ?

Well, i guess you wouldnt need to have a homebase for fleet members ... I forgot why i wanted this
EDIT: Ah yes, i remember. This is related to the issue bellow. I was ordering my fleets to return to homebase thinking it would reset their orders ... read bellow to understand what was happening

[*]Not sure about refreshing fleet orders. I generally set my patrol fleets to monitor all sectors of faction "Player" in the fleet settings and then tell the fleet leader to attack all enemies and it seems to always respond quickly. On rare occasions after a big brawl I may have to go to the fleet settings and tell the followers to regroup, but that is perhaps not necessary.

There been a few cases where the fleet wont engage enemy ships in my sectors. Also, if you issue another command to a fleet, sometimes they dont resume their patrol once they finished the previous command.

A particularly hair pulling issue has been with the "Fleet priority attack target" command found in the fleet settings.
The terrans declared war on me and a random Tyr entered my sector. At that point i only had 4 fleets set to patrol sectors (some had a few extra unknown sectors added by me) so my only choice in dealing with this Tyr was to somehow tell all my patrol fleets to attack that Tyr. However, since most of my fleets are set to avoid ships larger than M7s they would not attack that Tyr. I thought that by issuing the "fleet priority attack target" command, they would go and attack that Tyr and once thats been dealt with they would resume their patrol duties.

So here i went, ordered my fleets to attack that tyr. Some ships came, others didnt, idk why but after some time the Tyr left back to terran space. I then issues an all stop command to all my fleets so they dont go chase that Tyr followed by followers join with commander command.
I thought that was it. But apparently, my ships still tried to attack that tyr. I sent them to homebase, reset their patrol orders by removing/adding sectors to patrol. No joy, all ships always tried to go attack that Tyr which by this time was deep in terran space.

I even disbanded the fleets. Send them to homebase. Reformed the fleets and set them to patrol. Even so, some ships continued to try and go after that Tyr.

A command to force them to return to patrol duties which would cancel all other orders would have been good here.

I also think there is something wrong with that Priority attack target. Once i chose the target, the command in fleet settings would not reflect the change. It would still say "none" as the target even tho ships did go and attack that ship.
There also needs to be a command/setting to clear the priority attack command so ships stop going after the target all the time even when its no longer necessary. As it stands, once you give the priorty attack command you cant really clear it, there is no button to do it.

[*]Near the bottom of the fleet settings is a "Build Followers" section where you can set a specific base, and ship type for replacements. This is currently NOT well suited for replacement Fighters for a fleet having a carrier though and this is on my todo list. If you set it for 5 replacement fighters and there's a carrier in your group, it will build 5 at a time until the carrier is full and then build 5 more so that there are 5 that are not-owned by the carrier (and thus 5 actual fleet members) and then it will stop. I will be working on having the auto-replacement feature in the fleet settings so it also counts carrier "owned/support" fighters when determining how many fighters to build, but for now it doesn't and you should just manually build a batch of fighters and direct them to that fleet so that it doesn't keep building more than you want. For any other scenario, other than fighter replacements for a carrier fleet, the auto-replacement feature of the fleet settings works well.

Ah so building followers for fleets with carriers do in fact assign those ships to that carrier? Thats aweosme. I dont care if there are some extra fighters in the fleet if it means carriers would be able to replenish fighter losses. This ofc until you do your magic and make carrier replenishment work well

[*]M1's come with Carrier Repair modules automatically. Just show-info on your carrier and scroll down to it's equipment and you should see it. If you use the cheat menu to make the carrier, I am not sure it will provide one, but if you build it yourself, it should.

Yeah i saw that after posting my message.

[Hairless-Ape]

Yea, that's a tough proposition getting fleets to always attack what you want. If you tell them to avoid Large ships and then give them a large ship as a priority target, what should win? Sometimes they get low in hull and one script tells them to go repair and another tells them to keep attacking because they are being shot at. Sometimes the problem is that there are multiple conflicting scripts all vying for power over a ships actions and they "interrupt" each other. I'm all for the simple-is-better approach, but over many years, this particular area has become a straw house. Believe me when I tell you I'd love to go in and rip it up, but that would be arrogance talking. It is easily the most complex and fragile area of the entire code-base imo. Hector might be able to tackle it, but not me.. not yet.

I've had several situations like the one you were in, where I had a few fleets hanging around patrolling or whatever, and I needed ALL of them to focus on one immediate threat, and it was like pulling teeth. I've often had huge fleet battles where somehow half my fleet members simply seem to forget they are in a fleet when it's all done, and I have to tell them to join the leader to get them to move. Anyway, I share your pain. Just know that I agree, but there's a real challenge there and high risk of breaking things if I start mucking with it. There is one desperate side-measure you can take to sort of override all the fleet operations and get all the ships in a sector to do one thing... it's a hack, but I've had to resort to it when the stuff hits the fan and my ships are wandering around like dopes on meth. Select a ship's command console and "Broadcast" an order. I think you can broadcast system wide orders to 2 or 3 classes of ships, but essentially with a couple broadcasts, you can tell every attack ship in a system to attack a target. This essentially puts your broadcast order on the top of their "stack" to execute. Afterwards though, you'll have to tell all your fleets to regroup. Wish I could be more helpful on that front.. I'll keep looking at it though.

[naisha]

Hey, we talked a few posts ago about those freezes i was getting when flying the Aegir (m7) and trying to leave the sector while in the middle of the battle. You said something about the long range guns trying to still shoot even when i was going through the gate (or something along those lines)

Did you try to fix this in the latest versions? If yes then you should know im still experiencing the same issue.

If no then, its that fixable or not?

If its not fixed then i need to find myself another ship to pilot or be very careful with a ship that has long range guns/turrets so i dont try to leave a system while fighting. Or when an enemy ship i am shooting leaves the system and the game freezes.

EDIT: I forgot to report a "bug"? When naming fleets, if you put *l*inv i think it should name all ships as invasion and also append L for the leader of the fleet. However with *inv in the naming string, *l doesnt work. It does not append the L prefix to the lead ship. Ive tried all sort of variants to do this but wont work. Infact both *inv and *sc (security) dont allow other expressions to be used.

Its a minor thing so ultimately i dont think it matters. I cant imagine a lot of people using these naming expressions.

EDIT 2: i keep forgetting things

Near the bottom of the fleet settings is a "Build Followers" section where you can set a specific base, and ship type for replacements. This is currently NOT well suited for replacement Fighters for a fleet having a carrier though and this is on my todo list. If you set it for 5 replacement fighters and there's a carrier in your group, it will build 5 at a time until the carrier is full and then build 5 more so that there are 5 that are not-owned by the carrier (and thus 5 actual fleet members) and then it will stop. I will be working on having the auto-replacement feature in the fleet settings so it also counts carrier "owned/support" fighters when determining how many fighters to build, but for now it doesn't and you should just manually build a batch of fighters and direct them to that fleet so that it doesn't keep building more than you want. For any other scenario, other than fighter replacements for a carrier fleet, the auto-replacement feature of the fleet settings works well

Ive been playing around with this and it seems the auto-replacement in fleet settings is smart enough to figure out that there are carriers in the fleet. At first i tried to set auto replenishment to 5 fighters as you suggested thinking it would build those ships until the carrier is full and then built 5 more but nope, it built exactly how many a carrier in the fleet has and then stopped. So, thats good, no extra ships in fleet.
I also tried just setting the max capacity for the carrier (in my case its an Odin with 40 fighters) so thats 40 fighters. The outpost built 40 and hten stopped. Once a ship got blown up from the carrier it built just the one that got blown up.

So yeah, pretty neat, it seems to work fine

[Hairless-Ape]

If you're still experiencing that same issue with game freezes and trying to leave sector while someone is shooting at you.. please send me your save if at all possible.
I need to see what you're seeing. I will try to duplicate it, but it's tricky as you know.

I will look at the fleet naming issue, although I'm not familiar with that code so it may take a bit.

Yes, I was looking at the auto replacement thing for fighters, and I forgot that I already had that one handled, so yes, it should work correctly. So many things going on, I still had it on my todo list when it was already done.

[naisha]

If you're still experiencing that same issue with game freezes and trying to leave sector while someone is shooting at you.. please send me your save if at all possible.
I need to see what you're seeing. I will try to duplicate it, but it's tricky as you know.

I will look at the fleet naming issue, although I'm not familiar with that code so it may take a bit.

Yes, I was looking at the auto replacement thing for fighters, and I forgot that I already had that one handled, so yes, it should work correctly. So many things going on, I still had it on my todo list when it was already done.

Yeah, when i get into another situation like that where the game freezes i will make sure to save prior and post the save here. There is an OSV fleet coming to attack me so i think its not going to be long until i can replicate that.

[naisha]

Another bug report (maybe?)

Maybe im doing something wrong but, when you give a sector to the Phanon, the first sector, one of the quests you get in the journal is to place a jump beacon in their sector.

I had 1 jump beacon lying around so i sent a ship to their sector and from the freight screen ejected said jump beacon. The beacon turned neutral. Its not mine and its not Phanon's (at least it doesnt say "Phanon Jump Beacon). They already have a jump beacon there, called Phanon Jump Beacon. The beacon i dropped just says "Jump Beacon". I cant claim it back and i cand pick it up.
The phanon seem to be using it , i think ... i think i saw some ships teleport there.

However, the quest did not update. It still says deploy a jump beacon in that sector

EDIT: Is there a jump limit for the Architect? I conquered a system that is 12 jumps away (has a jump beacon ... well the jump station perk) from my architect base and ordered a few stations there. Waited, and waited and waited some more but the architect doesnt do anything. I was looking at the system he is checking to see if there are orders for stations but that particular system he never checks

[Hairless-Ape]

Naisha,

Yea, the phanon jump beacon mission is something I have to address. It goes against the entire idea of restricting a player's owned jump beacons to player owned systems only. Beacons are a huge player bonus that the A.I. doesn't share, making many games an easy-win button just because the player can put down a jump beacon in an enemy system and jump their entire fleet through. The A.I. can't do that, and imo, this ability ruins the game entirely. Jump drives were removed by Hector for the very same reason. With the change, the player can use beacons still, but they are limited in number on hard difficulty, and they can't put one down in any sector they don't own. Unfortunately, as you've seen, there is no way to "detect" if the player ejects a jump beacon, and so no way to intercept that action and stop it.. So there is a task that periodically looks for player beacons that have been dropped where they don't belong and it reverts ownership of those back to "terran jump beacon" so that you can't use it. It warns you, but it still does it. Note, this is mentioned in the release notes I think.

I can attempt to allow player owned beacons in Phanon owned sectors, and make those not-count towards the player's beacon total. That's one solution. I can probably live with it, but understand it can be easily exploited by simply giving the phanon an un-owned sector right next to your enemy, pushing down a beacon and once again, dropping your entire fleet through there across the entire map.. which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid if at all possible. The other option, is to change that mission so it is simply satisfied when the phanon are given a sector, rendering the mission useless. I could also change that mission so that it's not looking at you giving them a beacon, but rather giving them a load of hull parts or something of that order (which frankly, they need more). Let me know your thoughts.. Thanks for the feedback.

[naisha]

What about the architect? Currently I can't make it work for my farthest outpost

As for the jump beacon, if you want to restrict the player usage of them then the third option seems fine. Like, give th phanon some resources or something.

I don't really care if the jump beacons are restricted or not. I only mentioned this issue because of the quest that I couldn't complete.

But yeah with jump beacons restricted it makes the game be more strategic which I think it's the whole idea of mayhem. Being able to place jump beacons in phanon sectors makes this whole thing easily exploitable defeating the purpose of the limitations to the jump beacons. More so if you consider that giving phanon more sectors doesn't lower your reputation to the other faction if that sector bothers them

[Ghost140]

What about the architect? Currently I can't make it work for my farthest outpost

As for the jump beacon, if you want to restrict the player usage of them then the third option seems fine. Like, give th phanon some resources or something.

I don't really care if the jump beacons are restricted or not. I only mentioned this issue because of the quest that I couldn't complete.

But yeah with jump beacons restricted it makes the game be more strategic which I think it's the whole idea of mayhem. Being able to place jump beacons in phanon sectors makes this whole thing easily exploitable defeating the purpose of the limitations to the jump beacons. More so if you consider that giving phanon more sectors doesn't lower your reputation to the other faction if that sector bothers them

Try changing your outpost sector limit to however far it is plus one so 13 in your case then reassign the architect after the change. It may or may not mess with your traders going to far for trades but maybe this will work in the mean time.

[Hector0x]

the architect was actually supposed to be just new type of worker where you could have up to 1 homebased to every Outpost. But at the time it seemed difficult to synchronize multiple architects so i ended up limiting you to 1 TL globally. I figured that this would suffice and if the player needs to build faster then he can still do it manually, which would be a one time affair and not require constant attention.
The worker range could be an issue when you can only have 1 architect but iirc the architect ignores this setting and can always reach every sector which has a build order.

Phanon really benefits from nearby player jumpbeacons and will use them naturally. The idea was that the player probably has to set up multiple isolated Phanon sectors at first. If these areas are not connected via jumpbeacons then Phanon sends their fleets across the entire galaxy to reach their other sectors. Then they can easily loose these ships if they run into a faction which is currently at war with Phanon. Jump beacons allow Phanon to move fleets around very quickly. You can even use their favor actions to call them to your aid or mark sectors that they should invade.

[Hairless-Ape]

At present, in Renegades, the Phanon get their OWN jump beacons automatically for every sector that is gifted to them, other than their very first sector (fixed as of 3/16/24). They absolutely DO use their own jump beacons now and are no longer able to travel through player beacons, which currently, can only exist in player owned sectors. You must still drop a jump beacon in the very first Phanon sector to complete the "Close Bonds" mission, but the beacon will transfer to Phanon ownership and only they can use it thereafter.

-- New Patch is out today ---
If you're in the middle of a game, just grab the \addon\scripts from it and overwrite yours and it will work. If you overwrite the other files from "\t", you'll lose your player configuration settings and will have to re-do them and start a new game. This patch fixes the Phanon Close Bonds mission and some other issues.

[sendrock]

Hi, I made the update but now everytime I open my message log in-game (shift+M), my game start freezing for minutes and minutes if I have a lot of logs in it.

I have to force-quit or spam esc-key and hope it close the message log windows and then the game run fine again.

I can open it after clearing (shift+F6 in my keybinds), but if I have something like 20 entries in it, it start to freeze again.

Here is the save(X06)+galaxy if needed : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... drive_link

Before the update (03/16/24) I think I never encounter this bug but I'm not 100% sure about it !

It's not gamebreaking, I juste have to clear the message log from time to time and it's fine.


EDIT : Now I have the same bug with the "fleets settings" windows, in the X04 save. When I open the L Marauder-003(YM7GL-86) fleet setting, my game starts to lag. If I close it, the game is fine again.

[naisha]

Hi, I made the update but now everytime I open my message log in-game (shift+M), my game start freezing for minutes and minutes if I have a lot of logs in it.

I have to force-quit or spam esc-key and hope it close the message log windows and then the game run fine again.

I can open it after clearing (shift+F6 in my keybinds), but if I have something like 20 entries in it, it start to freeze again.

Here is the save(X06)+galaxy if needed : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... drive_link

Before the update (03/16/24) I think I never encounter this bug but I'm not 100% sure about it !

It's not gamebreaking, I juste have to clear the message log from time to time and it's fine.


EDIT : Now I have the same bug with the "fleets settings" windows, in the X04 save. When I open the L Marauder-003(YM7GL-86) fleet setting, my game starts to lag. If I close it, the game is fine again.

The message log lag is a known problem, ive reported on it before. Hoping Hairless-Ape manages to find the issue and fix it or something. I recommend to avoid the message log.

As for the fleet settings, that too. Lags a whole lot. What i found to "fix it" is to scroll down so the names of ships doesnt show. Then it will work somewhat fine. It lags only when you can see the ships in the fleet and their names. . At least thats how it is for me

[Hairless-Ape]

Sendrock,
I loaded up your saved games, and the message log is corrupted. As soon as I open it, it locks up. Load up your game, Clear your message log.
Roughly when did you start that game?


Naisha,
Send me your saved game. I've not seen this issue with the fleet display in any of my games and would like to see it.
When did you start that game?

[sendrock]

I started the game the 03/08/24 (renegade 2.5) and I used the option to randomize weapon stats (+/-30%) and randomize all ship stats (+/-30%) in Zmap, everything else was default i think.
Then I updated to 2.6 by overwriting all the \addon\scripts files with the new one the 03/17/24

I also had the fleet display lag in the X04.sav on the drive but I could work around it in a few differents way and reproduce it

If the marauder and his followers are docked at an Outpost with dry dock : giga lag (seta x10 is the worse)

If the marauder and his followers are in space : no lag

If the marauder and his followers are docked at an Outpost without dry dock : giga lag (seta x10 is the worse)

If the marauder and his followers are docked at an Outpost with or without dry dock BUT I recolour the name of the Outpost to default color : no lag

If the marauder and his followers are docked at an Outpost with or without dry dock BUT I recolour the name of the Outpost to WHITE color : no lag


I don't know why but it seems that color used by the game when you place an Outpost make my fleet setting screen lags
I made a small video showing the bug : https://youtu.be/eh8hs_RUSCE?si=5UKtjoef_lJp0r3r

EDIT :
After more test, the message log crash is due to the same reason. If I self-destruct a ship that his homebased to an Outpost with the default white color, my message log crash
But if I do the same after coloring the outpost name to the default color, no problem at all.
Here is a video showing the message log crash when outpost is colored : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbjPa_xbEhE

[Hairless-Ape]

Sendrock,


First, the Fleet Settings Screen. The fundamental issue, is that the screen is already trying to color each entire (fleet ship) row as "White", but the columns it uses have data (like the outpost name) that are Already colored, so you have a situation where you have a piece of colored text embedded in a string that is also being colored. I.E. The system doesn't like colored words embedded in colored sentences and seems to slow dramatically when it encounters this. This issue has been there since the Fleet Settings screen existed and is nothing I've changed, but I suspect many people never colored their outpost and ship names like they do in Renegades so it's just now being seen. I think it can be fixed though, so you'll have to test my theory.
As a test, I've stripped the Various colors from the Column data (ship name, location and current order), all of which can refer to a colored ship name or a colored outpost name.
Please download this and try it out and let me know if it fixes your Fleet Screen lag issue. Put it in /addon/scripts/
Download Me

Second, the issue with self-destructing a ship home-based at an outpost with a Colored name is in fact, a similar issue with colors choking the log, but is one I do not believe can be fixed by a modder. When a ship is self destructed, an Built-in Message is sent to your log with with color information, and it's again locking up the Message log. In this specific case, I have no script/code that I can change. That particular message is programmed in the .EXE file by egosoft and I have no access to it. Don't self destruct a ship belonging to an outpost with a colored name, or you will have to clear your message log to get the corrupted message(s) out of it, or just don't color your outpost name. I don't know of any other spots where this is the case, but there could be. I've played for days on end and never had this issue, but I don't self destruct my ships so.. maybe this is a rare exception. Unfortunately, one I can't fix.

Let me know about the fleet setting issue after you try the file above. Thanks.

[naisha]

Ive started this game when 2.6 got released

This is my latest save, i havent played x3 in a few days.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CwuW9u ... sp=sharing

This is the galaxy for that save
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... p=sharing

For the fleet settings you need to open up the fleet settings and select a fleet with a bunch of ships, all colored. In my game i also have a few outposts with different colors so i suspect that ships that are homebased to those outposts make the fleet settings window lag much more

EDIT: Ive downloaded the file you posted and I think it improves the lag a tiny bit? Im not sure. My fleet settings still lag when one fleet is openned. Maybe less than before but i cant tell 100%

[Hairless-Ape]

With regards to your fps issues on the Fleet Settings window, again, that hasn't changed since the beginning of Zero Hour, so other than stripping the colors out of the data to help reduce processing, there's nothing I want to change.
It may be possible your system just doesn't have the horsepower to run a busy fleet settings screen. I recommend you at least take a look at your task manager to see how much cpu etc.. the game is taking when you're trying to view this screen. I only say this because I've not seen this problem, even with your own map and saved game. I loaded it up and tried all sorts of stuff and it was smooth as silk.

One thing you should consider, is that if you started a game back when 2.6 was out, then you are not actually getting all the benefits of some of the latest patches. None of that will affect your Fleet Settings screen performance, but I know a couple of those fixes required that you start a new game. I think those addressed the player log.

[naisha]

With regards to your fps issues on the Fleet Settings window, again, that hasn't changed since the beginning of Zero Hour, so other than stripping the colors out of the data to help reduce processing, there's nothing I want to change.
It may be possible your system just doesn't have the horsepower to run a busy fleet settings screen. I recommend you at least take a look at your task manager to see how much cpu etc.. the game is taking when you're trying to view this screen. I only say this because I've not seen this problem, even with your own map and saved game. I loaded it up and tried all sorts of stuff and it was smooth as silk.

One thing you should consider, is that if you started a game back when 2.6 was out, then you are not actually getting all the benefits of some of the latest patches. None of that will affect your Fleet Settings screen performance, but I know a couple of those fixes required that you start a new game. I think those addressed the player log.

I dont think my system is not beefy enough. I play the game on 2 systems, my gaming pc at home which has an AMD 5800X CPU and a 3080 gpu and at my workstation at work which is a much older and weaker system, having an i7 4790 CPU and a 1660 Super GPU. On both systems, the fleet window lags the same.

Anyway, I personally got used to the lag so its not a big deal for me. I just scroll down and the lag dissapears. As long as ships are not visible on the window, the fleet settings barely lags.

[Hairless-Ape]

Well that certainly sounds beefy.
I have an overclocked Ryzen 9 5900x @4401mhz and an RTX 3070ti card and I'm only using about 3% cpu and 25% of my memory for X3. So I assume your system is probably in the same ballpark and isn't an issue.

I'm not sure what to make of it, but it may be related to your message log getting borked up, or possibly related to you starting a new game without the latest patches in place. I would recommend getting to the point where it's lagging, and looking at your task manager cpu and memory usage. I assume it's fine and not really tasking your system, but it's good to know. If all that looks good.. I'd say start a new game with the latest patches in place, as painful as that may be.