Towing ship missions

[Sturmer]

Is it possible to script missions where you have to go out, find a certain capital ship that was damaged in battle and had engine failure and tow them to safety? Or maybe be a tug to a derelict capital ship, meant for the scrapyard and you tow it from one place to where it would be scrapped?

These are regular jobs in RL, but is it possible in TC to somehow "force" engines of a capital ship to stop working and thus require a tug? More than that, how to script that without making that ship think you're attacking it when grabbing it with tractor beam?

[Requiemfang]

that's funny XTC mod has missions like that but vanilla doesn't XTC appears to be the only mod that has that type of mission.

[Sturmer]

that's funny XTC mod has missions like that but vanilla doesn't XTC appears to be the only mod that has that type of mission.

Figures... *sigh*

Explanation: XTC doesn't work for me. For some reason the game always freezes when trying to start a new XTC game. Then if I uninstall it, all sound vanishes from vanilla, leaving me with no other choice but to reinstall the whole game again.

Would be nice if XTC creators would release it as a standalone script.

Btw., is it just me or does the Ion Disruptor really do nothing but keep the shields down? It's said to also be able to destroy systems, but one day when curious, I set got mode on, filled Barracuda's front banks with ID's (8 of them IIRC) and attacked a Q and kept at it for at least 10 minutes. Even though I constantly bombarded it with Ions it still kept it's speed up and all of it's weapons still worked flawlessly.

Any script to have IDs destroy weapons, etc.?

[dillpickle]

that's funny XTC mod has missions like that but vanilla doesn't XTC appears to be the only mod that has that type of mission.

Not really, considering it was written for XTC...

Would be nice if XTC creators would release it as a standalone script.

Won't happen any time soon, if ever...
First off efforts are being concentrated on releasing 2.0, so no time for this sort of thing.
Secondly, as it was written specifically for XTC, it relies heavily on a lot of its support files also written for XTC, which handle mission difficulty, notoriety increases, as well as being integrated with XTC's Galactic News Service - all stuff that would need to be pulled out and then replaced for it to work with TC...

[Sturmer]

Won't happen any time soon, if ever...
First off efforts are being concentrated on releasing 2.0, so no time for this sort of thing.
Secondly, as it was written specifically for XTC, it relies heavily on a lot of its support files also written for XTC, which handle mission difficulty, notoriety increases, as well as being integrated with XTC's Galactic News Service - all stuff that would need to be pulled out and then replaced for it to work with TC...

Thanks for the reply!

Do the normal X3TC scripts (CAG, MARS, MEFOS, etc.) work for XTC? I'm not ready to abandon my regular X3TC game as I've finally gotten to the stage I wanted, money wise; but maybe in the future I'll be willing to give itanother try.

[apricotslice]

Won't happen any time soon, if ever...
First off efforts are being concentrated on releasing 2.0, so no time for this sort of thing.
Secondly, as it was written specifically for XTC, it relies heavily on a lot of its support files also written for XTC, which handle mission difficulty, notoriety increases, as well as being integrated with XTC's Galactic News Service - all stuff that would need to be pulled out and then replaced for it to work with TC...

Thats one of my biggest gripes about XTC.

It takes all of a couple of minutes to package something up and release it as a stand alone. But nothing much from that development group ever is.

If a mission generator is so complex that it needs all that other stuff as well to function, then its probably too complicated in the first place. But even so, its still only a couple of minutes more to identify and copy over the files needed and package them. To use "no time because...." is just a cop out. imo.

A lot of good features that imo should have been released as stand alones for anyone to use, never were, and the same old reasons of "too busy on the next release" and "dont want to release 'secret' stuff, always get trotted out.

Seriously, it puts people like me off using the mod. I used it for X3R, and made my mod work with it, but since then, I've avoided it like the plague because of the attitude of the group to releasing good features for everyone to use.

Its one of the only groups here that dont share their innovations, and frankly, I find that disturbing. But its always been the case, and one accepts the disturbing as normal behaviour for some, and just ignores it. (most of the time.)

Sorry to be griping, but that "dont have time" excuse is getting old. I've been hearing it since the original xtended mod, and its sounds just as false now as it did back then.

*gripe over*

[dillpickle]

Won't happen any time soon, if ever...
First off efforts are being concentrated on releasing 2.0, so no time for this sort of thing.
Secondly, as it was written specifically for XTC, it relies heavily on a lot of its support files also written for XTC, which handle mission difficulty, notoriety increases, as well as being integrated with XTC's Galactic News Service - all stuff that would need to be pulled out and then replaced for it to work with TC...

Thats one of my biggest gripes about XTC.

It takes all of a couple of minutes to package something up and release it as a stand alone. But nothing much from that development group ever is.

If a mission generator is so complex that it needs all that other stuff as well to function, then its probably too complicated in the first place. But even so, its still only a couple of minutes more to identify and copy over the files needed and package them. To use "no time because...." is just a cop out. imo.

I'm glad you took the time to 'actually' read my post, it is not just a case of just packaging it up and releasing it. It's a case of re-writing it or modifying it so that it would work in X3TC, and then testing. All this takes time, which not all of us are blessed with an infinite amount of time to spend on these things - pesky things like Real Life get in the way.

If a mission generator is so complex that it needs all that other stuff as well to function, then its probably too complicated in the first place. But even so, its still only a couple of minutes more to identify and copy over the files needed and package them. To use "no time because...." is just a cop out. imo.

The mission generator is essentially the same one as X3TC, and not complicated. What has changed is how mission difficulties are chosen so it's based on the pilots experience, rank with the offer race etc.. rather than a random difficulty, and the notoriety has been changed so a couple of dozen missions doesn't get you from enemy of a race to 'let us sell you a destroyer..' It is easier to write library files for these than duplicate the code a couple of dozen times...

Sorry to be griping, but that "dont have time" excuse is getting old. I've been hearing it since the original xtended mod, and its sounds just as false now as it did back then.

*gripe over*

Oh well, back to work - no time to mod anything this lunch hour...

[apricotslice]

I'm glad you took the time to 'actually' read my post, it is not just a case of just packaging it up and releasing it. It's a case of re-writing it or modifying it so that it would work in X3TC, and then testing. All this takes time, which not all of us are blessed with an infinite amount of time to spend on these things - pesky things like Real Life get in the way.

Why would it need a rewrite ? If it was written right in the first place, you just pack up it and every file it depends on and release it. But I guess we come back to "secret stuff" in the sub-routines that people dont want released.

Dont get me wrong, I respect what you guys do, I just dont like the attitude of building things that cant or wont be shared outside of the "official mod". The take it or leave it attitude of use the mod or lose the feature, just gets up my nose.

Real Life ? It decided I was redundant a long time ago, so we parted company. It knows better than to interrupt me too much these days.

[Sturmer]

Its one of the only groups here that dont share their innovations, and frankly, I find that disturbing. But its always been the case, and one accepts the disturbing as normal behaviour for some, and just ignores it. (most of the time.)

"Cathedral" vs "Foyer", unfortunately in every mod community I've ever been in.

[dillpickle]

Why would it need a rewrite ? If it was written right in the first place, you just pack up it and every file it depends on and release it.

So you're telling me that you just packed up your X3TC scripts for AP and released them? No modifications, no testing?

You'd run into problems using the generic missions from AP in X3TC and vice versa without making changes to the code - fairly pointless as they're identical missions - my point being that they had to be changed to work, not simply packed and released, due to minor differences between the two games. Likewise there are differences in XTC, that a mission written for it couldn't be just packaged (even with the supporting files for that mission) and expected to run faultlessly.

Do the normal X3TC scripts (CAG, MARS, MEFOS, etc.) work for XTC? I'm not ready to abandon my regular X3TC game as I've finally gotten to the stage I wanted, money wise; but maybe in the future I'll be willing to give itanother try.

Apologies Sturmer, I meant to answer your question earlier but got sidetracked...

CAG and MEFOS do - all Lucikes scripts do in fact, as he wrote a compatibility patch for XTC, which can be found Here.

As far as I know MARS has been confirmed as working, though it needs a different 't' file for the lasers data as they have all changed - if you ask in the MARS thread I'm sure someone will be able to help you.

[Sturmer]

Apologies Sturmer, I meant to answer your question earlier but got sidetracked...

CAG and MEFOS do - all Lucikes scripts do in fact, as he wrote a compatibility patch for XTC, which can be found Here.

As far as I know MARS has been confirmed as working, though it needs a different 't' file for the lasers data as they have all changed - if you ask in the MARS thread I'm sure someone will be able to help you.

Thanks!

[apricotslice]

So you're telling me that you just packed up your X3TC scripts for AP and released them? No modifications, no testing?

Pretty much, yes.

I told people to use the TC scripts and let me know of any issues. No-one did. The majority of them were in spk format, so installable into AP without repacking. The ones I've subsequently repacked as AP zips (since I cant get the spk packer to work) are actually the ones I've upgraded while porting the mod across.

As it happened, there was only one that didnt work, and I found that as I was porting the mod across. Probably no-one uses it but me anyway.

Your missing my point though. The point is that most of my stuff in my mods is out there as stand alone already. What isnt, is mod object dependent, so cant be stand alone.

[Jack08]

I understand exactly what Dillpickle is saying.

It is just not feasible pull out a single component of a complex mod, and shove it straight back into vanilla.

Welcome to the world of programming, apricotslice, things have dependency's, dependency's have dependency's, all the way down to the core. There is nothing that can be done about it and the attitude that you adopt, thats what i dislike the most about almost all modding communitys; that attitude is that if someone does not want to pull out a single component of there mod then they must be doing it to be selfish, or to make people play there mod.

It took me mounts to transfer ImprovedRaces2.0 from the XTL mod to the vanilla game, i almost gave up twice times because its just not that simple to convert a feature from one mod to another, or to vanilla.

I can say in advance now, that if there is any component of XTL that people like, then they will have to play XTL to use that component, i will not be converting that to component to vanilla it will be to difficult to unhook from the base mod without releasing at least half of the base mod's scripts standalone, witch is practically a total rewrite.

then its probably too complicated in the first place

Yes, The world of programming; Sometimes things HAVE to be complicated to work, if you don't write them the complicated way, then they usually end up being hundreds, if not thousands of lines longer then they need to be

Complicated is a relativistic construct, what may be complicated to you, is trivial to someone else.

in the end, everything comes down to TIME, now that ive released IR2.0, i feel like im under much more pressure, gotta keep IR functioning, fix bugs, provide support... gutta keep building XTL, writing new scripts, editing hard code...

The more you release the more swamped with bug fixes you are, im sorry but Time is everything.

[apricotslice]

Welcome to the world of programming

Your 35 years too late for that welcome.

[Jack08]

Your 35 years too late for that welcome.

In this specific context, time is meaningless.

[apricotslice]

Your 35 years too late for that welcome.

In this specific context, time is meaningless.

Rubbish.

[TrixX]

Your 35 years too late for that welcome.

In this specific context, time is meaningless.

Rubbish.

Are you referring to most of your own posts there Apricot?

[dillpickle]

Your missing my point though.

I'm not sure I am.

The point is that most of my stuff in my mods is out there as stand alone already. What isnt, is mod object dependent, so cant be stand alone.

Which is the point I originally made about it being dependent on other stuff in the mod, so whilst it may be possible it is not simply a case of packing it up...

One of us is very confused... I'm just not sure which...