3.1 - M4 "Drones Haulers" are still in

LTerSlash · Post by **LTerSlash** » Wed, 9. Jul 14, 14:08

Man i cant belive it, i trought they where removed, but after a day or so they start to show up...

I placed sats in the Argon and Boron sectors aroung Argon Prime, and the Argon and Boron are now in my wiki.

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/543 ... 603CCDF81/

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/543 ... F3123C25A/

The Boron one is what im hunting
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/543 ... 2FEA3B371/

Those things takes like 1 minute to produce, cost almost nothing and already come fully equiped and ready to use, whiout weapons.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Wed, 9. Jul 14, 14:24

Yes they show up among the race task force/heavy patrol escorts now and again. I wish the different race drone types had been called different variants (hauler, raider, vanguard, sentinel, etc) to better reflect their relative stats. I know the name was originally intended to reflect a drone regeneration facility preinstalled in the new M7C ships that never made it successfully working in X3AP from its X3:R XTM design work.

LTerSlash · Post by **LTerSlash** » Wed, 9. Jul 14, 15:19

I was increible lucky but i got it...

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/543 ... 6DCFD0D26/

http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/543 ... FEAD73D92/

Ill post resources and cost once i got RE it.

I will try to find the Paranid one now, thats the other one along with the Terran that looks good.

LTerSlash · Post by **LTerSlash** » Thu, 10. Jul 14, 15:01

Got the Split one today, this one is interesting, the hitbox is so small that the shoots go thought him, its really hard to kill with conventional weapons, i gona test run them with the Terrans.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/543 ... 90067864B/

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/543 ... 8F4775CA8/

LTerSlash · Post by **LTerSlash** » Thu, 17. Jul 14, 02:39

No matter how hard i try, i dont seem to come across the Paranid one...

and im flying around their sectors killing every fighter i see...

phoenix-it · Post by **phoenix-it** » Thu, 17. Jul 14, 04:59

I saw one of these flying with a race patrol in pirate alley... Before that I didn't know it was something that could fly outside the ship, it had a model I've not seen before... sorta looked like a missile.

I wondered where it came from, and didn't know it started in the community, but that's fairly common now I guess.

LTerSlash · Post by **LTerSlash** » Sun, 20. Jul 14, 23:58

Found the Argon Drone today.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/509 ... 72D6032A5/

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Mon, 21. Jul 14, 10:43

I haven't come across either the Teladi or Terran Drone Haulers in extensive vanilla X3AP gameplay so far even with all the respective race sectors monitored fairly thoroughly by Advanced Satellites. Looking in earlier similar threads, others had similar problems finding those two versions in use. Can anyone confirm that they are or have been used in-game as escorts etc in vanilla?

jack775544 · Post by **jack775544** » Mon, 21. Jul 14, 14:55

@Alan
The only time that any drone hauler can spawn is by a script command (not jobs which is responsible for 95% of ships in the galaxy).

Explanation:
Every ship has a variation index which gives the ship a suffix to its name (raider, hauler, tanker ect.) and all of the drone haulers have a variation index of 19, which means that they have the hauler suffix. However this is not the standard hauler variation index (which is 4). This second hauler prefix is blacklisted by jobs to never spawn. Therefore the drone hauler is so rare since it can only ever be spawned by scripts, and script created ships aren't that common.

So the Teladi and Terran drone haulers *should* be able to spawn, and I would say the only reason why you haven't seen one is since RNG is not on your side.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Mon, 21. Jul 14, 17:00

@ jack775544: Thanks for that info.

I expect that whatever scripts create them are called only in certain cases and then perhaps with a frequency partly determined by previous related losses. With Teladi and perhaps Terrans (after the war is ended via the plot option), they may not see so many such relevant losses as other races (before RNG effects).

I certainly see different Argon Drone Haulers now and again in my vanilla game. I'll keep an eye out for Teladi and Terran ones now that I know their appearance is at least possible in theory. Thanks again. I'll let this thread know if any crop up.

LTerSlash · Post by **LTerSlash** » Mon, 21. Jul 14, 17:08

I never see the Teladi or Terran drones either, not sure why. I dont think the Terran drone will be of any use, it cost as much as the Boron, that probably means it has a 2H production cycle on HQ. And the Paranid drone its way better than the Teladi, and you cant save ammo setting on HQ loadout.

The Paranid drone still manages to elude me.

LTerSlash · Post by **LTerSlash** » Tue, 22. Jul 14, 06:14

Im not sure what script its responsable for them to spawn, but im certain of one thing, they do spawn in a race patrol intro non-race owned sectors, and have no "military" or "escort" prefix on them, just Race+name, and im not sure if it has anything to do with it, but they where part of a patrol leaded by an M6 every time i found one.

To me its looks like to be part of a VERY legacy and basic patrol system. back from X3R era.

jack775544 · Post by **jack775544** » Tue, 22. Jul 14, 14:34

For a little bit of futher reading about how jobs spawns work (and why the drone haulers can't spawn from it)
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... &view=next

LTerSlash · Post by **LTerSlash** » Wed, 23. Jul 14, 04:11

And to be honest, M4 haulers does not seems to exist, also, not sure its its related, but in two games i have no Hauler version of the Buster/Mako/Scorpion/Pericles on my enclyclopedia, i have the Drone hauler instead, i dont have the Teladi Drone hauler, But i have the Buzzard Hauler, and no especial versions of the Sabre at all.

LTerSlash · Post by **LTerSlash** » Wed, 23. Jul 14, 05:07

Well, i finally found it...

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/464 ... 07703F329/

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/464 ... E15FC25BA/

RE/Production time for this is 55m, half the time it takes to build the Boron Drone, still a lot more than the 5m it takes to build the Argon/Split drones.

Its powerfull, i even used it in a try run and i took out a TM with 4 fighters on it whiout even scraching the paint lol
It can load up 2x5MJ, 3xPAC and 9x Dragonflys.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/464 ... AB293EF3A/

As with EVERY ONE of the other drones, it was part of a patrol with no additional prefix on them, as soon i attack him i pissed off all other fighters in his group.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/464 ... 611DBAA9B/

jack775544 · Post by **jack775544** » Wed, 23. Jul 14, 07:19

@LTerSlash
Congrats on finding it at last.
And BTW, the buster and the Buzzard are the only M4 class ships with the hauler variant, and the Terrans have no ship variants at all.

Edit, thanks alan, i always get the harrier and buzzard confused

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Wed, 23. Jul 14, 11:19

Small correction. Pirate Buster and Buzzard M4s have Hauler versions in vanilla X3AP. Harrier is an M5.

RayF · Post by **RayF** » Tue, 29. Jul 14, 09:52

i was reading this and if i may i have a quick question.
What is a drone hauler!?

I am playing TC 3.2, are they available?? how do you acquire them??

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Tue, 29. Jul 14, 11:31

In X3AP the 'drone hauler' is both a broken piece of kit pre-installed in the various M7Cs (light/drone carriers) derived from the X3R XTM mod and it is also the name given to a number of unoptimised M4 ships from the races that were supposed to be directly associated with the M7Cs.

The closest that you get to such an M7C in X3TC is the Griffon and perhaps the Panther, but there are no drone hauler ships in the vanilla X3TC game.

RayF · Post by **RayF** » Tue, 29. Jul 14, 13:26

thanks Alan.

So i guess they are like fighting drones, correct?
I do have the griffon. (parked is some corner of the galaxy)

havent seen any special drones for it though..