Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

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CaplinCaplin
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Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by CaplinCaplin » Sun, 10. Feb 19, 01:58

Hi ALl,

So I'm wondering about alternatives to manual dogfighting, which might be kind of difficult for me as a blind pilot. I've got a few ideas and wondered what other people might suggest. I'm mostly talking about the vanilla TC or AP, though if there are really cool mods I'd be open to installing them. Here's what I have so far…
  • Fight Command software on my ships, presumably with actual weapons beyond just a PD turret. This seems to offer the most promise at the moment.
  • Wingmen, fighters or larger ships tasked to protect me or engage enemies.
  • PD turrets with the "missile defense," order, or another similar script.
  • Drones, though I don't know a lot about these yet.
I'd love to hear about other possible suggestions.

Timsup2nothin
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by Timsup2nothin » Sun, 10. Feb 19, 05:34

It is entirely possible to play the game without any manual combat at all. The autopilot in your ship can handle the entire business, at basically the same level of skill as the AI ships, which are the same autopilot, really. What you have to learn then is since the pilots are equal what is the better ship? That has to inform every decision on whether to stand and fight or run away, and only experience can teach you how to judge that correctly. Truthfully, you will probably come to be a better judge of that than the rest of us are, since at least in our own egos we "make up a lot of difference with our mad pilot skills."

I suggest getting in your favorite ship, finding ships of the next smaller size, and just giving your ship the attack order. Most M3s will mulch pretty much any M4 pretty handily, if they can catch it. And, hey, if it runs away I call it a win!
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On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

ConorC
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by ConorC » Sun, 10. Feb 19, 12:17

Hey Caplin, if you're not adverse to mods, there is a very good carrier command now called CODEA which may suit your purposes. It allows you to fly a ship that can carry fighters, anything from a huge M1 all the way down to a TM and the script will control your fighters, automatically launching them when there is a threat nearby, and managing the combat. It works on the ship you're flying and on other carrier ships. It's excellent.

orangenee
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by orangenee » Sun, 10. Feb 19, 14:24

I second CODEA, it takes a lot of manhandling out of the equation with regards to fighter/carrier groups. Without CODEA they have all the coordination of a daddy long legs with chronic alcoholism.

For TC I'd also recommend MARS for more concise turret control (it's already sort of in AP, sort of).

Obviously being blind you're going to have a time of it microing so you'll need to automate as much as possible. There's no way you can avoid combat entirely even if you wanted to.

As a side note, I'd love to see your setup as I'm envisioning a giant command centre.

Triaxx2
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by Triaxx2 » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 00:10

Truthfully any ship with turrets can automate combat, at least as much as possible. Fly towards enemy and let your guns do the work is always a perfectly valid strategy. Combining that with fighters, either controlled by script, or just homebased to the carrier means you only have to get into range, or get shot once for your fighters to deal with your enemies for you.
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zazie
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by zazie » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 16:47

First of all my deepest respect to you, CaplinCaplin, for not letting stop you playing a game that is not only strongly visual but has a quite demanding User Interface for its complex structure of menus.

In consideration of your personal situation as a blind person I would suggest to play X3 Terran Conflict in a style avoiding fighting as much as possible. In this way you will make the best out of hidden mechanisms of the X-engine:

A) The skills of enemies correspond to your fighting rank. If you don't fight, the skills of enemies remain low. If you kill a lot of enemies your fighting rank improves and this will be "compensated" by the engine with more demanding opponents.
B) The "equipment" of the enemies will progress the better your equipment is. Equipment does include ship class here meaning: If you generally avoid fighting, your fighting rank will remain low and you do not need M2 as the ultimate ship class (M2 are Destroyers). As long as you do not own a M2 by yourself, the AI will not spawn M2-ships as enemy patrol leader (or similar). M7 may be difficult enough in a fight when the player is limited to AI-fighting because M7 might spam missiles. But M2 against the game's AI means generally "Game over".
C) As a conclusion of A and B I would advise you to use fast ships as player-ship. M5 and M4 are superfast but have weak shields and hulls, meaning insta-death if the run into a full salvo. M3s have heavier shields (25 MJ or higher). Fastest M3 is the Split Mamba Raider; that ship has a rear turret: if you equip it with the smallest and cheapest laser in the game it will normally 'kill' all missiles coming after you (the ship's speed might even outrun the heavier missile-variants). If you go further into the game you will meet the Springblossom. That ship is incredibly fast, has weapons that are good even in AI-fighting and - as an M6 - may take some hits of heavier and stronger enemy-ships (the story of the game wll tell you its reasons for this ship to be overpowered).

Alas, the Springblossom is not a available from the beginning nor in early game. But i am confident that there is already a Mod making the Springblossom available in early game. I don't have the skills to make such an easy Mod by myself. I am sure that you will find help by other players.

Timsup2nothin
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by Timsup2nothin » Tue, 12. Feb 19, 02:09

zazie wrote:
Mon, 11. Feb 19, 16:47
First of all my deepest respect to you, CaplinCaplin, for not letting stop you playing a game that is not only strongly visual but has a quite demanding User Interface for its complex structure of menus.

In consideration of your personal situation as a blind person I would suggest to play X3 Terran Conflict in a style avoiding fighting as much as possible. In this way you will make the best out of hidden mechanisms of the X-engine:

A) The skills of enemies correspond to your fighting rank. If you don't fight, the skills of enemies remain low. If you kill a lot of enemies your fighting rank improves and this will be "compensated" by the engine with more demanding opponents.
B) The "equipment" of the enemies will progress the better your equipment is. Equipment does include ship class here meaning: If you generally avoid fighting, your fighting rank will remain low and you do not need M2 as the ultimate ship class (M2 are Destroyers). As long as you do not own a M2 by yourself, the AI will not spawn M2-ships as enemy patrol leader (or similar). M7 may be difficult enough in a fight when the player is limited to AI-fighting because M7 might spam missiles. But M2 against the game's AI means generally "Game over".
C) As a conclusion of A and B I would advise you to use fast ships as player-ship. M5 and M4 are superfast but have weak shields and hulls, meaning insta-death if the run into a full salvo. M3s have heavier shields (25 MJ or higher). Fastest M3 is the Split Mamba Raider; that ship has a rear turret: if you equip it with the smallest and cheapest laser in the game it will normally 'kill' all missiles coming after you (the ship's speed might even outrun the heavier missile-variants). If you go further into the game you will meet the Springblossom. That ship is incredibly fast, has weapons that are good even in AI-fighting and - as an M6 - may take some hits of heavier and stronger enemy-ships (the story of the game wll tell you its reasons for this ship to be overpowered).

Alas, the Springblossom is not a available from the beginning nor in early game. But i am confident that there is already a Mod making the Springblossom available in early game. I don't have the skills to make such an easy Mod by myself. I am sure that you will find help by other players.
Technically that doesn't take a mod. Scripting up a Springblossom at your location isn't much more than opening the script editor and doing it, once the script editor is activated.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

zazie
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by zazie » Tue, 12. Feb 19, 10:01

Even better! You are invited to describe or to link "How to script a fully equipped Springblossom". I can't.

Timsup2nothin
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by Timsup2nothin » Tue, 12. Feb 19, 19:00

zazie wrote:
Tue, 12. Feb 19, 10:01
Even better! You are invited to describe or to link "How to script a fully equipped Springblossom". I can't.
Description might get me booted to the S&M dungeons! It's pretty much just opening the create objects function and filling in the blanks though. Hmmmmm.

Okay, here's a link that saved me from writing my own post.

Hmmm. That's not "fully equipped," and I suppose if you are scripting up a Springblossom you would need to at least script up the guns for it since you can't readily buy them. That's just a matter of finding the various add stuff functions though. They're under trade commands. Again, it's pretty much opening the right function and filling in the blanks.

Here is a YouTube guy. He's more like proving he can do it than showing how to do it since he just flies through faster than you can follow and babbles mindlessly, but it does demonstrate how easy it is and you can always run it in slow motion at the very short important part I guess.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

zazie
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by zazie » Wed, 13. Feb 19, 10:16

Thanks, Tim. But bear in mind that my suggestion "fully equipped Springblossom" was not intended to me but to CaplinCaplin who is playing X3 as a blind person.

jlehtone
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by jlehtone » Wed, 13. Feb 19, 18:35

One on one the bigger ship might win. However, I've seen Pirate M3 take down Split M6. One on one has an additional issue: the NPC are rarely alone.

You could have more ships to even the odds. You could have Drones. Drones are like simple ships. They are cheap, but live only minutes.

Shipyards can sell infinite amount of ships. No waiting. Ships have to be equipped.

Drones require no equipping, but there is a finite amount of them on sale. However, you can manufacture them quite quickly.


Missiles. Some of them, like Tempest and Flail, do auto-target. If current target disappears, then the missile targets next foe. Missiles can be manufactured.
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Timsup2nothin
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Re: Alternatives to manual Dogfighting

Post by Timsup2nothin » Thu, 14. Feb 19, 08:26

zazie wrote:
Wed, 13. Feb 19, 10:16
Thanks, Tim. But bear in mind that my suggestion "fully equipped Springblossom" was not intended to me but to CaplinCaplin who is playing X3 as a blind person.
Yeah...fair point. I can't figure how to explain navigating the script console, because it is kinda beyond me how he is navigating the regular menus.

And now I feel like a schmuck talking about you instead of to you CaplinCaplin. My apologies. For navigating the script console I am far from the best source, but if you want to work with me on it I will do my level best to assist you. I will also assist in anything else that I can. I'm guessing you are using some sort of text to speech program for navigation of the menus...as well as reading this forum. I'm going to back up jlehtone here and say that developing a fleet, or at least a pack of drones, around an autopiloted player ship is a very effective approach to combat and that scripting a Springblossom, or anything else, is unnecessary.

As I said earlier in the thread, like anyone else you have to learn the capacity of your ship and fleet, and learn the discipline to not exceed that capacity. The only way to do that is play the game, and play some more. Every time the screen says "game over" is a lesson in when running away was called for.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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