Laser Towers change Friend to Foe when Global is Friend

[WeedWhackerDood]

I have tested this over several days, starting with a saved game, I am creating numerous laser towers to protect a sector and my stations. I have verified GLOBAL setting to be FRIEND of SPLIT, however, when I drop more laser towers, SPLIT gets changed to FOE. Also, ARGON hate me, but I have set to FRIEND becuase I need their business, but I can have all properly configured in GLOBAL, ARGON show up as FOE in specific laser tower settings. I change to FRIEND, but it immediately changes to FOE. My GLOBAL is FRIEND, shouldnt GLOBAL override settings for the laser tower? Note that NO ARGON or SPLIT has fired upon my property, it just changes. I have tested on 2 separate computers and the same thing happens. I have tried looking in the forums, but I have not been able to locate anything similar. Thanks

[Alan Phipps]

Changing the Global settings has no effect until you use 'transmit to all reachable assets' or one of the similar options. Have you done that yet? Moving to Universe (gameplay) forum for exposure to more players.

[Infekted]

Welcome to the joys of laser towers. Kind of notorious for being a pain with FoF settings.
What you describe sounds like more of a bug than usual tho, as most people reporting problems with FoF settings have had it with pirates. This is why I tend not to use laser towers, preferring fighters for chaff.

If there is any red ships of the race concerned within range of the towers, they will fire on it, or get fired upon, which seems to affect the FoF settings of a laser tower. Is that the case here?

[Bill Huntington]

I reported bad behavior by the LTs years ago. Egosoft keeps it. I assume that means they don't want to give us the perfect weapon.

The root of it is Show as Enemy If Enemy to Me. You can't change it with the Global Settings, for LTs. You have to do it manually for each one. An LT will fire on a red enemy, and if the enemy fires back, then the whole race is the enemy, not just the red ones.

Even the Global settings you can change only changes a few LTs in a sector, not all of them, in my experience. Perhaps it is a timing thing with the program. Don't really know about that.

So I use LTs out of the regular traffic lanes, or on gates where pirates or whatever don't go regularly. They can be devastating to the enemy. I've watched a Q or K approach a block of LTs, fire on the LTs once and then just disappear.

[WeedWhackerDood]

Changing the Global settings has no effect until you use 'transmit to all reachable assets' or one of the similar options. Have you done that yet? Moving to Universe (gameplay) forum for exposure to more players.

Yes I did that and it has no affect on any LT settings. LT's do what they want to do and all of my hard work is gone. In Zyarths Dominion, spent many hours setting up LT net to kill Xenon, and now my LT's are attacking my allies SPLIT! I have 50 LT's setup and i cannot keep going back and resetting everytime X3 decides to take a dump and change my settings at will.

[WeedWhackerDood]

I reported bad behavior by the LTs years ago. Egosoft keeps it. I assume that means they don't want to give us the perfect weapon.

The root of it is Show as Enemy If Enemy to Me. You can't change it with the Global Settings, for LTs. You have to do it manually for each one. An LT will fire on a red enemy, and if the enemy fires back, then the whole race is the enemy, not just the red ones.

Even the Global settings you can change only changes a few LTs in a sector, not all of them, in my experience. Perhaps it is a timing thing with the program. Don't really know about that.

So I use LTs out of the regular traffic lanes, or on gates where pirates or whatever don't go regularly. They can be devastating to the enemy. I've watched a Q or K approach a block of LTs, fire on the LTs once and then just disappear.

Esentially, all of my hours and days of hard work to get to this point are wasted and the money I spent on this game now seems worthless to me if I cannot use the tools provided to me within the game.

Either I start over or alienate those I ahve allied with to this point. What a WASTE!

[Infekted]

Not a waste by any means. You can always pick them up and save them for some where less problematical.
They also sell reasonably well, so you can just get rid of them for a decent amount of credits if they are surplus to requirements.

There are also scripts in the S&M forums which improve the behaviours of towers in basically every way. Gaz's ring of fire script is well worth a look.

[WeedWhackerDood]

I can pick them up???? I have tried! Please excuse me for side-tracking the thread, but I have tried picking them up and cannot; even with the same ship I used to distribute them....:

[Infekted]

Well it's been a while for me too so I had to have a quick check. To set them up you just throw them out the freight bay, and to pick them up fly over them again. Same as sats.

[WeedWhackerDood]

That is funny as I tried that before. I shall try again. Thanks!

[Infekted]

No problems! It can be easy to miss them if travelling at speed in a ship that's not massive. TLs make great tower swatters.

[WeedWhackerDood]

Not a waste by any means. You can always pick them up and save them for some where less problematical.
They also sell reasonably well, so you can just get rid of them for a decent amount of credits if they are surplus to requirements.

There are also scripts in the S&M forums which improve the behaviours of towers in basically every way. Gaz's ring of fire script is well worth a look.

Going to look into this as I am getting killer bonus money from the SPLIT for killing the XENON I come across and I dont want to lose that money due to my LT's going rogue on me.

Thank you sooo much for taking the time to reply to my questions.

[Bill Huntington]

If you really want to kill Xenon, you can set up a gate blockade INSIDE the Xenon sector. The Xenon sector between Grand Ex and Zyarth is a key sector. If you set up your blockade on the East gate, there is little NP traffic and little pirate traffic, and you will get all the big J and K coming out from the SY and Q and smaller from the other sectors. You won't get the ones that spawn in X598, and decide to exit. But that is not much.

I build forts with LTs on the four corners, maybe 100 in each block. The forts consist of two long and narrow stations like Snail Ranch Ls. Cahoona Bakery Ls might work too. Then I park a Tyr, Osaka, or in a pinch a Boreas between the two stations, facing the gate. I put two similiar forts facing the rest of the sector, so the gate fort can't be attacked by the sector Xenon forces.

As the M2s lose shields over time, they can be rotated out.

I have maintained this blockade for as long as I wanted, and still conducted some other TC business besides this. When you kill all the other Xenon SY, ALL the Xenon bigs come out this gate. You can jump into Xenon Core 023 if you want a good Xenon killing spree.

These forts have to be built under fire, but it can be done. It is a good exchange to kill a K and only lose 3 LTs. But over time the blocks have to be serviced with a new load of LTs. That is where the fort really pays off. You jump in, and sit in the middle of the fort while you replace LTs!

So don't kill the other Xenon SYs until your forts are built. Less pressure from the East Gate. Until you are ready.

Happy Hunting!

[WeedWhackerDood]

Bill,

Thanks for that tip. I am trying to amass a healthly supply of LT plants and building my empire so I can have enough gear to fend off the Xenon while my LT's are spooling up to full power. I have been reviewing GAZZ's plugins as suggested above and am about to implement South Gate protections in Z sector.

I like your plan very much and will try to get that rolling soon too.

Thanks for everyones energy with this game, it is pretty cool all-in-all. Just got frustrated until I was referred to GAZZ's really sweet dedication and handywork.

[firestorm79]

I've got this prob too.... I heard this happens specifically with LTs that are defending players' illegal factories. Mine was defending my bliss place. Although it was in Teladi sector, an Argon might have come along and try to shoot it down, which meant my LT responded... which meant the Teladi didn't like having an ally shot at, which meant my LT went rogue....

don't know if that's the explanation, but I'm going to pick them all up. Not worth having them reduce my Teladi rep whilst getting self-emmoliated...

[WeedWhackerDood]

Mine are not guarding anything illegal, they are just in space, and shooting down SPLIT allies.

For a while, GAZZ's mod went well I thought, but only realized the game never sent any Aragon by to get shot down.

My towers still shoot down Aragon, even after installing GAZZ's mod, so I took them all down. Fortunately I have not had any I welcomed visits from XENON yet.

I have installed the RING OF FIRE mod and found the 'Tractor Beam' so I am going to try and install that in XENON Space around the gate entering Zyarth. I am hoping this kills any ARAGON trying to enter my space.

Not sure how they can even make it by the XENON guarding the sector before Zyarth but that is the game.

Thanks for your insight.

[Infekted]

Whats with the capitols? And do you mean Argon?

Questions and issues about scripts should be put in the relevant S&M topics. But I can quickly tell you here that if you make those towers stealth towers, they will regularly take FoF settings from your global settings.