[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Hairless-Ape]

Still trying to get a game started without going broke so quickly and easily.

I'm trying to use the Trade Run command for the first couple haulers I found. So far, it's not working well. My assumptions seem flawed about this command.

When you make a trade run: buy, the Average Price listed is NOT the average price. It's the total price for the amount you are buying. Seems like a bug. So if you're trying to figure out whether the price is decent, you always have to pick 1 unit to buy to see what it's buying for first. If you don't, you could end up buying Energy Cells for 24 credits each if you just assume it's finding a good price for you (which I did).

The same goes for the Sell, but it's even harder to tell if you're selling for more than you bought. Again, you can't see the actual Per-Unit selling price when you run this command.
Like an Idiot, I assumed the Trade Run Sell command would sell for a decent price, but so far, with 2 game starts it's consistently been selling for less than I'm buying for according to my trade reports, so it seems rather disappointing.
I don't know if it's possible, but perhaps by the time the trade ship gets to that station to sell it's cargo, the station has lowered it's buying price a ton and the sale ends up sucking bad? If that's the case, the trade run command wouldn't be useful for anyone.

I don't know if anyone else is having this issue, but I guess I'm just going to have to manually search for best price and manage it by hand, rather than using Trade Run commands. Does this seem to be what you all are doing?
So hard to get started.. broke before I can do much of anything.

[Betelgeuse97]

https://ibb.co/Yyxnx26
Looks like this kind of galaxy makes it so that empires cannot expand if there's Xenon sectors nearby. Shouldn't they have a way to clear xenon sectors but only if they have no other options to expand?

EDIT: Bug report below. Ships don't collect astronauts without transporter device even though it's possible for the player ship to do so.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Location: Thyn's Abyss (bottom left corner of universe map; I haven't finished exploring!)

EDIT 2: I have a question. How much food is consumed per population on each tick? I know that each pop produces 2 food and 6 waste per tick, but I want to calculate how much I need to optimize my trade routes.

[Edna]

https://ibb.co/Yyxnx26
Looks like this kind of galaxy makes it so that empires cannot expand if there's Xenon sectors nearby. Shouldn't they have a way to clear xenon sectors but only if they have no other options to expand?

That's intentional. NPC empires may raid through Xenon sectors but never attack the stations, as that is tied to the player's quest in the first stage. That means if you generated a galaxy where a race is surrounded by Xenon, they will not expand until the Xenon sectors are abandoned. It's something you need to consider when you generate the new galaxy.

I don't know if anyone else is having this issue, but I guess I'm just going to have to manually search for best price and manage it by hand, rather than using Trade Run commands. Does this seem to be what you all are doing?
So hard to get started.. broke before I can do much of anything.

I never bothered with traders as I rely on the Tax perk and tugs. The few resources I need to get my own economy going I buy manually, as it's usually only two loads of Ore, one load of Rastar Oil and one load of Teladianium. Then I build the very barebones of the economy (1x Chem, 1x Tela, 1x Chelt, 1x Rastar, 3x Protein, 3x Food, 1x Ore Mine) and only then I build any other station. Abandoned ships usually give me everything I need for early game ship construction - thus tugs, and money I get enough from the taxes. If I ever need a cash boost, I fill up a TS with Energy Cells from an Outpost with Solar Panel Perk and sell them. There are enough sellpoints around me.

[Hector0x]

I don't know if anyone else is having this issue, but I guess I'm just going to have to manually search for best price and manage it by hand, rather than using Trade Run commands. Does this seem to be what you all are doing?
So hard to get started.. broke before I can do much of anything.

Yes, i only use automated Trade Runs to get stuff or rarely to get rid of stuff if profits are not important. For early trading i always try Trade Product Search and if that fails it means that no station is over the required 40% export threshold. Below 40% no automated trade and no trade command will work. But you can still achieve a profit manually if you find a factory at 35% and sell to a factory which is empty.

The overall low profit margins are the result of an increased number of civilian traders after Mayhem version 3.0 RC. The NPC's are mostly fine without your traders now and they don't offer good prices. This change was necessary because too many traders got killed before and without transportation the economy and shipbuilding didn't work. With restrained pirates and all, maybe too many sectors are quite peaceful now and civilian ships could be scaled down again. But i don't think they should, because the player can buy from factories below 40% export freight level. The AI traders and suppliers can't so they are no competition in this regard. It's also easier for the player to stall parts of a faction's economy if you have to hunt down fewer freighters. On the other hand they waste more time and resources to rebuild more ships. In a perfect world, NPC freighters wouldn't be rebuilt for occupied areas until NPC military is present again or until the enemy leaves. But that's probably too smart for X3 AI. A simple t-file option for overall civilian ship count could also be nice.


What the NPC's actually need are not just your traders, but additional resources from your factories. Using all your resources for yourself won't work and you end up broke most of the time. You have two options. Create goods and turn part of them into money. Or spam the Tax perk in a no expansion galaxy.

The AI economy is uneven. They try to build it somewhat self sufficient, but they are limited to factory slots and can only replace factories after they get destroyed. Quite often they won't put new factories near where they are needed and the shortages in these areas remain. This is where you come into play. Filling these shortages yields all the money you ever need. If factories are saturated, selling ship parts and crystals to NPC outposts can often continue on high volumes, but with lesser margins (prices are locked at average on NPC dock stations and it's hardcoded).
But each faction will have a different component shortage. Boron might be low on crystals, Teladi not and might need quantum tubes instead. Check various outposts and see what they have and what is almost empty all the time.


For pure external trading the situation is that if an area is peaceful, profits are low. If it's dangerous and not many traders can make it, profits are high. High competition means that your traders will often buy something they end up dumping in their outpost because they can't sell anymore. It may get sold later, but thats the reason why you need some capital before you use trader workers.

- Missions are your manual pre-Ascension small and very safe money maker
- Trading from "below 40% factories" towards "close to 0% factories" is your manual pre-Ascension medium trading money maker.
- Selling free resources like Energy or products produced from your free waste are your automated post-Ascension medium money maker if you have nothing else.
- Traders selling part of your resources and doing the ocasional external trade are your automated huge post-Ascension to endgame money maker once you have enough investment cash.
- Killing enemies with a police license can be your medium to large pre to post -Ascension manual money maker (the real money comes from killing large xenon patrols or faction squadrons)
- Tax is your only money maker once you clicked the permanent war button five times

[sigurhel]

Still trying to get a game started without going broke so quickly and easily.

I'm trying to use the Trade Run command for the first couple haulers I found. So far, it's not working well. My assumptions seem flawed about this command.

When you make a trade run: buy, the Average Price listed is NOT the average price. It's the total price for the amount you are buying. Seems like a bug. So if you're trying to figure out whether the price is decent, you always have to pick 1 unit to buy to see what it's buying for first. If you don't, you could end up buying Energy Cells for 24 credits each if you just assume it's finding a good price for you (which I did).

The same goes for the Sell, but it's even harder to tell if you're selling for more than you bought. Again, you can't see the actual Per-Unit selling price when you run this command.
Like an Idiot, I assumed the Trade Run Sell command would sell for a decent price, but so far, with 2 game starts it's consistently been selling for less than I'm buying for according to my trade reports, so it seems rather disappointing.
I don't know if it's possible, but perhaps by the time the trade ship gets to that station to sell it's cargo, the station has lowered it's buying price a ton and the sale ends up sucking bad? If that's the case, the trade run command wouldn't be useful for anyone.

I don't know if anyone else is having this issue, but I guess I'm just going to have to manually search for best price and manage it by hand, rather than using Trade Run commands. Does this seem to be what you all are doing?
So hard to get started.. broke before I can do much of anything.

Don't use trade run early game, that command gives you best place to buy/sell at the time you issue the command. Often NPC traders make it there before you and you get a bad deal.
I use Trade product search and then use the dock command that pops up there to dock at the factory. With my traders set on notify me when the command is done. Then I check if the trade is still good, else I search again.
I put like 8-10 sats in an area of the galaxy and made 7 million with 6 traders while exploring the galaxy. I mostly traded Ore with big TS and microchips with a TP (need to be fast and max chips you can sell at once is 2500).

[Hairless-Ape]

Excellent Help. Thank you all so much!

[azxcvbnm321]

Just went through hours of non-stop fighting. I first defended against two xenon raids with 2 M6 P's each. Then I took out the Pirate Base to my south. After that I went ahead and took out the Xenon Station to my North. Finally I took out the Pirate Station to my North East. Bad news is that there are still 2 more Xenon sectors within 2 sectors of my closest outposts. I have 3 sectors now and am building my first research station.

My question is how do I use my personal jump drive? Unfortunately I clicked through the message that detailed how to use it and I can't get that message back. Do you need energy cells? I have energy cells and I set both the unfocused jump button and normal jump button to new keys, but neither work. What is the key that activates the personal jump drive?

Also do the colored crystals I get from mining have any use? I have colored minerals and colored crystals, but trading stations don't take all of them, they only take certain ones so it's a pain to find a way to sell them. Thanks for the help.

[Edna]

Just went through hours of non-stop fighting. I first defended against two xenon raids with 2 M6 P's each. Then I took out the Pirate Base to my south. After that I went ahead and took out the Xenon Station to my North. Finally I took out the Pirate Station to my North East. Bad news is that there are still 2 more Xenon sectors within 2 sectors of my closest outposts. I have 3 sectors now and am building my first research station.

My question is how do I use my personal jump drive? Unfortunately I clicked through the message that detailed how to use it and I can't get that message back. Do you need energy cells? I have energy cells and I set both the unfocused jump button and normal jump button to new keys, but neither work. What is the key that activates the personal jump drive?

Also do the colored crystals I get from mining have any use? I have colored minerals and colored crystals, but trading stations don't take all of them, they only take certain ones so it's a pain to find a way to sell them. Thanks for the help.

The Experimental Jump Drive and the Experimental Transporter Device use the same hotkey that needs to be mapped beforehand. You basically can't miss it since it's actually called "Experimental Jump Drive" in the Hotkey Menu. You will need Energy Cells, and since Energy Cells are bigger now, ships smaller than Corvettes aren't really suited for using the EJD due to lack of cargo capacity. You also won't get the option to jump in through a gate but will transfered to the very center of the sector.

Colored Crystals are used for Upgrades in the Hangar Upgrade Screen of Outposts and for the construction of Hacker Chips in the Marine Section of the Outpost, once you unlocked the feature through Story Progression and Perk (both). The Colored Minerals seem to merely be a trading commodity to sell to Salecrest Trading Stations. Colored Crystals can be sold and bought at Oceania Inc. Trading Stations and PontifexCorp Trading Stations.

[Betelgeuse97]

RIght now Mayhem doesn't have any unique starts other than starting as the same species as an existing faction. Will there be additional starts/challenges other than self-imposed ones?

Coming from the beta version, I decided that my beta game was done (OCV takes forever to finish). To spice things up and encourage using different ships rather than the same ones in every playthrough (let's admit that the ideal goal is to use Terran ships in EVERY game as their M3s are the best inherently), I started a new game with the following rules:

• No making ships from alive factions (this includes Terran since Terracorp is alive according to the lore). Blueprints are "unlocked" only after annihilating or befriending a faction with +9 rank or better. Other words, the only ships I can feasibily get are abandoned ships and Goner (private corp).

• After a faction goes extinct, I'm allowed to use their ships if I choose that faction. If multiple factions are killed, I can choose but I may pick only one faction's blueprints as long as I have not selected a faction yet. No second pick after picking my first and only faction.

• Xenon, pirates, and Terran require their stages in the plot completed (stage 1, 2, and 3 respectively), and they count as factions (even though Terrans are remnants).

Lore reason is that the blueprints are "copyrighted" and it would be "illegal" to obtain blueprints and use them while its faction is alive. Outside of that, I recall Mayhem 2 did not give players access to research and the ships had to be scanned before they could be researched. Would such a system strictly imposing game rules be viable (e.g. the OCV hunter start forced the player to take OCV invasions every 12 hours instead of 24 in Mayhem 2).

[Hairless-Ape]

Can someone summarize these system properties? Maybe just a sentence on what these mean. I searched through forums, but can't find much, or anything on some. Thanks

System:

• Alert Level
• Dejure Owner
• Abnormal Signals
• Terran Memory
• Company

[Hector0x]

System:

• Alert Level - normal or hot. Gets hot when combat occurs in this sector. Nearby NPC squadrons (battlegroups, rearguard, task forces etc.) are called to help defending.
• Dejure Owner - dejure faction will try to conquer this sector in priority if possible
• Abnormal Signals - dangerous endboss faction spawns in high signal sectors first
• Terran Memory - can unlock terran and ATF ships with a research station
• Company - once player or faction controls this sector a neutral faction trading station will appear.

[Edna]

Can someone summarize these system properties? Maybe just a sentence on what these mean. I searched through forums, but can't find much, or anything on some. Thanks

System:

• Alert Level
• Dejure Owner
• Abnormal Signals
• Terran Memory
• Company

• Alert Level - This tells you whether a system is currently contested by two races or not. Normal is normal, Hot is contested.
• Dejure Owner - The dejure owner will have a priority on conquering this system if it is under control of someone else.
• Abnormal Signals - This is relevant for the OCV stage. The higher the chance, the higher the chance that the OCV will spawn in this system.
• Terran Memory - If you have a Research Station in this system, it will be able to research terran blueprints. Otherwise, the terran research won't be available in this Research Station.
• Company - Tells you whether the sector has a Trading Station of Salecrest, MarkusCorp, Oceania Inc., PontifexCorp or Thuruk's Inc.

Edit: Damn, didn't see Hector's response was on the next page

[Dr. Carson]

Below 40% no automated trade and no trade command will work.

Is this true for all wares? (Incl. shields and weapons) Even from Trading Stations?

Could this be why my traders can't import any of those goods?

[Hector0x]

No, the 40% are the export threshold on NPC factories. And it's the default setting for player factories. There are 3 other types of stations with different thesholds.

As you said lasers and shields are only traded by certain corporation trading stations. Maybe you don't have any of those in range?
As far as i understand their "export threshold" is effectively 0% (they are willing to always sell everything) and their import level is 100% (they always buy everything).

NPC Outposts have fixed individual thresholds for different wares (can be viewed via station info from the player console).

Player Outposts have two lists which determine their "thresholds". Agent jobs and the trader list affect different ships but for the outpost they are basically what the 10% and 40% are for factories.

[Dr. Carson]

Yeah, I figured it was only for factories. Since trading stations have such huge stocks it would not make sense for them to have the same thresholds.

I do in fact have three trading stations in range of my outpost, and my traders will travel to them. But they simply will not buy anything.

[sigurhel]

Yeah, I figured it was only for factories. Since trading stations have such huge stocks it would not make sense for them to have the same thresholds.

I do in fact have three trading stations in range of my outpost, and my traders will travel to them. But they simply will not buy anything.

This might be related to the bug I reported just earlier.
Trading system is not healthy atm, at least not for player related searches and I have a strong suspicion about my traders too.

[Hairless-Ape]

Anyone know if there is an EXPLORE command available? Or do we have to explore every corner manually?


Also, Does anyone know what happened to the cute little Video's that used to play during the game. Remember a little animation of a Teladi that would pop up in the top and tell you you're being scanned? Whatever happened to those? They were the best part of X3.


Thanks.

[sigurhel]

Anyone know if there is an EXPLORE command available? Or do we have to explore every corner manually?


Also, Does anyone know what happened to the cute little Video's that used to play during the game. Remember a little animation of a Teladi that would pop up in the top and tell you you're being scanned? Whatever happened to those? They were the best part of X3.


Thanks.

You can assign explorers with the "workers -> explorer" command on a ship homebased at an outpost.

[Hairless-Ape]

Anyone run into a bug where you try to tell a ship to move to a position in a system, and then you try to use the keypad to move the cursor around, and nothing moves? The cursor just sort of disappears.
I've got that happening in a fairly large system; one that has a pirate base about 180k off center. I'm guessing it has something to do with that but not sure. When I started the game I could position ships in the system, but it stopped letting me soon after I sent ships to attack the station, and now even if I restart computer and everything, it just won't let me position anything. Anyway, just reaching here to see if anyone else knows of this. As it is, I'm going to have to start a new game because of this.. sad.




Also, for Satellite Monitoring, what does "Claim: Protectorate" mean for a system?

[sigurhel]

Anyone run into a bug where you try to tell a ship to move to a position in a system, and then you try to use the keypad to move the cursor around, and nothing moves? The cursor just sort of disappears.
I've got that happening in a fairly large system; one that has a pirate base about 180k off center. I'm guessing it has something to do with that but not sure. When I started the game I could position ships in the system, but it stopped letting me soon after I sent ships to attack the station, and now even if I restart computer and everything, it just won't let me position anything. Anyway, just reaching here to see if anyone else knows of this. As it is, I'm going to have to start a new game because of this.. sad.




Also, for Satellite Monitoring, what does "Claim: Protectorate" mean for a system?

Cursor tends to focus on first object in system. If that is the pirate base, then that's where it is.
Move your focus with the (normal) arrow keys so you are highlightning another object if available and press NumPad 5 to bring cursor to that object.