X3TC - Earth Sector and Satellite Network - Idea? (Possible Spoiler for some.)

[Morkonan]

The highest causality rate within any branch of Mork Industries is definitely the Cartography service. (A division of Mork Scouts, LTD.)

Simply put, they do just fine laying satellites and poking around the galaxy. However, inevitably, they come upon Earth Sector's bug-zapper of laser towers while placing Satellite networks... I'm tired of going to their funerals.

Apparently, ordering a ship to construct a satellite network will eventually have them entering Earth Sector, leaving the "Safe" traffic lane and getting extincted and there is no way to blacklist it that I know of, short of using mods/scripts.

Manually attempting to place a satellite in the normal way will result in the same early demise for the player.

Now, what I want to do is effectively "blacklist" that Sector for satellite placement by placing a satellite in it. This will, presumably, put that sector at the bottom of the list of sectors to have satellites placed within them. But, a ship ordered to place satellites will still place satellites in sectors that have them, as long as the location for the satellite to be placed is different, relative to the original satellite. But, they don't appear to place multiple satellites in sectors until all other known sectors have at least one. So, at best, placing a satellite in Earth Sector will not be fool-proof. Eventually, those in the Cartography service are destined to die whenever ordered to place a satellite network. It's only a matter of time..

So, how about this?

a) Take the Inestructible Boron TS acquired from the beginning of the Hub Plot. (Claimed)

b) Load it with one satellite.

c) Manually fly it to Earth and place one satellite at over 100km from any Earth Torus laser tower. (The range for those towers has been reported as being 100km.)

Would that work to, at least, move the Earth Sector down the list for potential sectors to be included in a construct Satellite Network command? Or, would any Terran military ships eventually spot the satellite and destroy it? Or, worse still, would I have every Terran ship go "hostile" to me until the satellite was destroyed?

I'm just trying to avoid having to needlessly spend the lives of my underlings in order to have a decent satellite network in a vanilla game.

[Catra]

satellite layers have a coded in placement for satellites. if its not in that place, then they will assume theres no satellite in that sector and attempt to put one in there.

[Triaxx2]

Try setting that TS as the only member of the mapping service. It won't totally solve the problem, but if it's truly invincible, they can't kill it.

[Morkonan]

satellite layers have a coded in placement for satellites. if its not in that place, then they will assume theres no satellite in that sector and attempt to put one in there.

You're saying that the command only searches for satellites in the specific location coordinates given? If one is not detected at that location, then the ship will attempt to deposit a satellite, even if one is already in the system? Does it only use jump proximity to decide the "Next System" that it will place a satellite in?

I know that behavior occurs. But, it seems that the ship will prefer sectors that do not have satellites, first, before placing additional satellites in sectors already containing them. This might be only anecdotal evidence, though, as I don't know the code/procedure the command uses.

Given that, supposedly, ships can recognize if a satellite is in a sector (I recall something to do with a situation with mining ships using it in that regard.) then one would assume that ability could be hooked into the Satellite Network command. Or, am I totally off-base with that?

Try setting that TS as the only member of the mapping service. It won't totally solve the problem, but if it's truly invincible, they can't kill it.

True. But, IIRC, it's a pretty darn slow ship... Plus, I don't want to "abuse" the bug. I'm just thinking about using it in one situation, a sort of experiment. When I get the chance, I'll see if it works if no others have done it. (Regardless of whether or not it effects the Satellite Network command.)