Strafing speed boost, space suits, upgrades and repair lasers

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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glenmcd
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Strafing speed boost, space suits, upgrades and repair lasers

Post by glenmcd » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 08:35

I usually get to find stuff out after everyone else, and strafing certainly was one of these. Yes, I had read references to speed increases from strafing but only connected it with when I was in spacesuit. So just how much faster can you travel while strafing? I decided to measure it for myself. I measured the speed of a Paranid TS at start of "Poisoned Paranid" on its way to the furtherest gate:

Normal speed: 74 m/s
Left/right strafe: 112 m/s
Up/Down strafe: 112 m/s
Combined up/down left/right strafe: 133 m/s

I haven't worked out how to use SETA while strafing, and so would normally only use this if there was no other way. But with this much speed difference it could make getting away from a slightly faster enemy ship possible. The faster a ship is, the less impact that strafing has on it in percentage terms. Conversely, the lowly spacesuit "ship" gets the biggest boost of all:

The spacesuit:
normal speed: 14 m/s
After full engine tuning, no strafe: 28 m/s
untuned engine, up/down strafe speed: 63 m/s
untuned engine, left/right strafe speed: 63 m/s
untuned engine, double strafe: 98 m/s
fully tuned engine, double strafe: 116.2 m/s

Another thing I didn't know about the space suit was how much it could be upgraded. You can fit almost any software upgrade, with a few exceptions - transporter device, jumpdrive and turbo being noteworthy. Unfortunately any upgrades must be picked up from ejected cargo, and as soon as you dock or enter a ship, they disappear. If you need to pickup many upgrades from space crates, pickup the special command software upgrade first, and then you can command it to pickup the rest in autopilot.

I tried valiantly to somehow transport the repair laser or even to eject it but to no avail. You can dock the spacesuit and even use the docking computer to do so. But you can't exchange freight or even software, and if you change "ships", the spacesuit disappears. Why am I pursuing this? Because I simply can't believe that Egosoft put in a place for repair lasers in so many ships without it somehow being possible to fit it. Even if they made a late decision to not allow the fitment of repair lasers, I would expect them to remove all mention of the "white" laser slot allowing these. If I see a post from an Egosoft official that specifically states that the repair laser cannot be fitted to a normal ship in vanilla TC, then I'll gladly accept that. (TIA for the link :-) )

JAFA_NZ
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Post by JAFA_NZ » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 09:14

Egosoft didn't put the Repair Laser in place for "so many ships".

Because the TC engine is essentially (I believe) an "upgrade" of the Reunion engine, there are only so many categories into which weapons can be slotted, thus the colour coding.

The Repair Laser is coded as "White", & so it appears on the equippable list for any ship which can use "White" lasers, IOW anything intended to equip the Mobile Drilling System or Tractor Beam, as a side-effect, if you play a "modified" game which makes Repair Lasers available via other means (such as factories), then yes, those ships can also equip them.

For Egosoft to prevent this behaviour without a significant change to the engine & data files they'd have to have assigned the Repair Laser to another Colour, & reduced the number of Weapons-grade lasers available by 1, whereas "White" is currently used as the catch-all category for "Non-Combat" lasers...

Jawms
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Post by Jawms » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 14:28

Alot like the Phased Array Laser Cannon.. i spent so long looking for that weapon.. only to find that i missed my chance to get it

AL'42
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Re: Strafing speed boost, space suits, upgrades and repair lasers

Post by AL'42 » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 15:17

glenmcd wrote:Another thing I didn't know about the space suit was how much it could be upgraded
That’s right. I remember one game start doing spacefuel runs in Herron’s Nebula, thought maybe do it faster OOS and avoid the roids and police if I ejected and picked up the trading extension and SETA. So that’s what I did… found a nice safe place in the next sectors trading station docking bay, engaged SETA and did the whole thing in my spacesuit :)

Oh, and you can dock in your spacesuit to replenish O2 without losing your upgrades.

pjknibbs
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Post by pjknibbs » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 18:46

JAFA_NZ is correct about the Repair Laser--it only appears in the equip list for ships because it shares a slot with Mobile Drilling System and Tractor Beam. This leads to other quirks--for instance, there are quite a number of TS class ships that can mount a Tractor Beam but don't actually have the laser energy to fire the weapon, making it somewhat pointless!

Cykonaut
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Post by Cykonaut » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 22:54

I recommend the repair laser mod. Works well.

I have a Magnetar parked in Seizewell and send all my crippled ships there to get zapped back in to shape takes no time at all and allows me to keep moving.

After you've spent literally hours going zaaaapp .. zaaaapp .. and waiting for the spacesuit laser to recharge.. over and over and over again you figure its time to delegate as any good mogul should.

JAFA_NZ
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Post by JAFA_NZ » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 23:47

@Cykonaut:
ISTR reading that the Repair Laser running out of energy & then firing once it hits 1% again (if you're holding fire down continuously) makes no detectable increase in time spent repairing over hoping back into then out of your ship for instant recharge, both of which would be quicker than waiting for a full recharge in space.

& have you tried the "SETA Repair" trick? the SETA upgrade is a "tiny"-class ware that can be equipped by your spacesuit if you eject it from another ship & run it over (which is important when repairing larger vessels).

Also, as far as *Modified* goes, I would prefer Takatu's Marine Repairs script if it's 3.1 compatible as you don't need to mod or fake patch, & it gives you another reason to have marines on all your M6s & larger (it's also handy when boarding, 'cos if you leave the boarding crew aboard your recent acquisition they fix it for you without your having to do anything).

glenmcd
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Post by glenmcd » Fri, 18. Mar 11, 23:50

Cykonaut wrote:I recommend the repair laser mod. Works well.

I have a Magnetar parked in Seizewell and send all my crippled ships there to get zapped back in to shape takes no time at all and allows me to keep moving.

After you've spent literally hours going zaaaapp .. zaaaapp .. and waiting for the spacesuit laser to recharge.. over and over and over again you figure its time to delegate as any good mogul should.
This sounds great for anything larger than M5.

There was a guy that did a huge post on using SETA during repairs from your spacesuit. I can repair and I can use SETA with spacesuit. I just can't get them to work together.

When you run your power down with repair laser, enter the ship and then immediately eject (turn off confirmation). In miliseconds your laser power is back up to 100%. But it doesn't help much at all! Turn 90 degrees to right and repair for another 10 seconds. I've got this sequence in a repreating macro but it's still using up precious game time.

Capt_Newbie
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Post by Capt_Newbie » Sat, 19. Mar 11, 16:53

I just wedge down 'Ctrl' and make a cup of tea. If it takes longer that way than letting the laser recharge, at least I'm not sitting with my finger on a button.

There is an alternative, which is moving the cursor to a menu, which stops the wedged laser, then moving it again to resume firing. If I was sure that allowing time for recharge made a big difference to repair rates, I'd use that technique more.
"Once you figure out what a a joke everything is, being the Comedian's the only thing that makes sense."

AL'42
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Post by AL'42 » Sat, 19. Mar 11, 18:26

glenmcd wrote:There was a guy that did a huge post on using SETA during repairs from your spacesuit. I can repair and I can use SETA with spacesuit. I just can't get them to work together
It only works with left Ctrl and SETA

right Ctrl, joystick or mouse fire will not work with SETA.

glenmcd
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Post by glenmcd » Sat, 19. Mar 11, 18:35

AL'42 wrote:
glenmcd wrote:There was a guy that did a huge post on using SETA during repairs from your spacesuit. I can repair and I can use SETA with spacesuit. I just can't get them to work together
It only works with left Ctrl and SETA

right Ctrl, joystick or mouse fire will not work with SETA.
Thanks, it's working now. I had to hold down J as well, was only pressing and letting it go before.

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