CLS problems

darth_adversor · Post by **darth_adversor** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 03:33

I posted this in another thread already, but decided to give it its own thread, to hopefully increase visibility. Thank you to those who already replied in the other thread.

Anyway, I've been experiencing some strange behavior with some of my CLS ships. I'm curious to know if anyone else has also experienced any of these issues:

- Most troubling occurrence was when my e-cell resupply ship jumped into a sector where I was in the middle of a patrol mission, Xenon everywhere. It was sitting idle, full stop, and it hadn't resupplied me yet. I never gave the order to Stop Command. I don't know if the presence of enemies made something go haywire, or...?

Reinitializing CLS did nothing. It still stayed idle. Ultimately, I ordered it dock at the nearest station, and later after I had moved on, I gave the CLS command again, and that finally fixed it.

- Ships sometimes won't use their jumpdrives, in spite of being setup to do so. They have plenty of jump fuel (above and beyond whatever e-cells they might be transporting, if applicable), yet I'll spot them flying to another sector manually. Usually reinitializing CLS fixes this, and they jump out.

- Ships jump headlong into sectors with enemies (this actually affects my CAG's mostly), in spite of having advanced satellite coverage, and often wind up dead or sustaining heavy damage. All my pilots are Logisticians/Major Dealers. I was under the impression they would avoid sectors with enemies, assuming some sort of satellite or ship coverage.

So there you have it. These...glitches don't happen constantly, but enough to where I'm starting to have to micromanage things. Which sort of negates the whole point of having it. Any insights would be appreciated.

darth_adversor · Post by **darth_adversor** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 15:25

Man, I was really hoping to wake up to some comments on this. It's starting to really bug me.

It happened again last night. Another patrol mission, this time it refueled me, then went idle. It should've immediately jumped back home to refuel itself and wait for further orders. Instead, it was just drifting, while I mercilessly slaughtered pirates.

If nobody ends up having any ideas/suggestions, I guess I'll just stop accepting patrol missions.

Happy 4th!

heratik · Post by **heratik** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 15:48

What are it's waypoints and any other relevant settings?

Triaxx2 · Post by **Triaxx2** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 15:48

Open it up and look and see how much it's supposed to be below before it refuels. It will sit idle in space if it doesn't drop below that amount when it fuels you.

I get around it by having my ships have multiple fuel targets. So it jumps in, gives me a thousand fuel, then jumps off to another ship to fuel that one with 1k, and so on.

heratik · Post by **heratik** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 16:36

Or you could forget the refuel waypoint altogether, so as soon as it drops off to you it goes back to stock up, just as long as the amount you tell it to stock up is always enough to jump to wherever you are in the universe, refuel you, and jump back again...

Infekted · Post by **Infekted** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 16:50

1. Auto refueller. Whilst reducing management is good, it tends to be best if you retain some control over certain things. When your fragile/slow supply ships come to refuel your combat vessels is one of them.
I usually have a fleet base sector, where my fleet returns to after action, and that's where refuelling/rearming occurs. Thats where my energy supplier stays the majority of the time. If required I can start it's CLS settings and it will jump after the fleet. But only if it's safe.

2. Something I have noticed with CAG and CLS is that if you use the keyboard to issue commands you can end up with some odd effects, that do not seem to happen to me if I use the mouse. It could be purely anecdotal evidence, but something that I did notice. Prime errors would be CAGs losing their homebase when you press enter on Start CAG, but not if you click it with the mouse. With CLS they don't seem to start right sometimes either.
Anyway you do it, it's usually good practise to ensure they are performing as desired when you start them. Basically if they do not immediately say "jumping" in their info, restart them.

3. The detect enemies thing doesn't seem to work very well. Or at all in some cases. You could set every faction to enemy and broadcast to all your properties and I think they would still keep running.
About the only way to deal with it is to be careful with homebase positions and jump ranges. Plus keeping the map tidy of enemies. A whole different discussion heh.

darth_adversor · Post by **darth_adversor** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 17:32

Triaxx2, I've ordered it set to refuel at 600. So as soon it jumps anywhere, it's below 600, and should therefore refuel itself. Whatever "freight" e-cells it has on-board (for me) should be irrelevant...?

heratik, its CLS setup is something like this:

1. Refuel @ my e-cell complex
1b. Load up to 1000 e-cells

2. Unload 600 e-cells @ my Springblossom

3-6. Unload e-cells @ various other ships I own and occasionally use/pilot

Minimum delivery: 30% (so it's not jumping in for 10 e-cells)
Jump drive: yes
Jump energy: 600

Usually it works just fine. But on these patrol missions...something is going wrong.

Edit: It seems like I almost always use the mouse to click the orders. I'll keep an eye on that.

Also, as I said in the other thread, the only way a ship should go idle is if it has no orders (i.e. you give the Stop Command order). If it's just a matter of a CLS ship waiting for conditions to be met, it should say CLS on standby.

heratik · Post by **heratik** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 17:40

You say waypoints 3-6 are to unload at other ships, are there 'up to...' limits on these? If so, if the next ship in it's list is at that limit, it will just sit there...

darth_adversor · Post by **darth_adversor** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 17:47

But shouldn't it just sit there with CLS on standby at the very least? This seems to be the point I cannot get across.

This has only happened while on patrol missions. If I jumped to the other side of the universe for the heck of it, my ship swoops in, refuels me, and goes back home again. As it's supposed to, regardless if my other ships are full or not.

heratik · Post by **heratik** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 18:14

We see your point, but sometimes those ship actions notifications can be a bit flakey, so we are trying to cover all possible options with regard to setup before going down the 'your game is broken...' line

You said it has happened twice now on two consecutive nights, did it work properly at any time between these two occurrences? Has the next ship in it's waypoint list been blown up without you noticing it maybe?

Triaxx2 · Post by **Triaxx2** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 18:23

Have you issued a specific Refuel Jump Energy order? If not, it only refuels when it lands somewhere with available energy.

TheDeliveryMan · Post by **TheDeliveryMan** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 20:31

In my experience, CLS/CAG pilots go into idle mode if

a) they didn't get paid, or
b) there are enemies en route
c) there may be other reasons I'm currently not aware of

Check your message log, you may find a hint there.

Snafu_X3 · Post by **Snafu_X3** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 21:19

TheDeliveryMan wrote:Check your message log, you may find a hint there.

You should also enable CLS logging & check that too

darth_adversor · Post by **darth_adversor** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 23:51

heratik, I got a little concerned when you asked if the next ship in the list had been destroyed...that's my Hyperion. Fortunately, no...all the ships in the list are accounted for.

Also, yes, I've made many jumps where the CLS ship jumps in, refuels me, and jumps out. Even if enemies are present it works (but they were a ways off and I wasn't engaging them). It's only happened on patrol missions where I'm actually in combat.

Other tidbits: the CLS ship has a specific refuel order at the top of the list. Always plenty of e-cells at the complex, and cash at the homebase to pay him. I check my message log constantly, because Betty sometimes sucks at notifying me of problems.

I don't know how to enable CLS logging.

I appreciate your help guys.

Triaxx2 · Post by **Triaxx2** » Thu, 4. Jul 13, 23:58

Of all the things that are a pain in the [expletive] to do with CLS or any of Lucikes scripts, this one is easy. Open the Logistics menu, go to configure reports, and click Analysis to Log. It'll write out what's going on to a file in the save game folder. My Documents/Egosoft/save by default.

darth_adversor · Post by **darth_adversor** » Fri, 5. Jul 13, 03:47

I lost my first CAG the other day, and today I lost 2 more within a 5 minute period. I remember seeing someone post that you shouldn't equip CAG's with fight software. Any opinions on this?

And thanks for the instructions, Triaxx2.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Fri, 5. Jul 13, 09:25

darth_adversor wrote:I remember seeing someone post that you shouldn't equip CAG's with fight software.

That's just another variant of "Don't equip factory traders with fight software because they'll stay and fight rather than run", which has been doing the rounds for a very long time--and was, in fact, true, back in 2003 when X2 was first released. It was fixed in a very early patch for that game and has *never* been true in X3, but somehow it keeps coming up regular as clockwork...

Triaxx2 · Post by **Triaxx2** » Fri, 5. Jul 13, 14:04

I don't do it for factory traders because it's an unnecessary expense. CAG's on the other hand are smart enough to bring their own protection in the form of Fighter Drones, and they'll drop them when something attacks to distract it until they can get away.

My problem is that occasionally it doesn't work because the AI is a little missile happy.

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CLS problems

CLS problems