[X3LU] Phanon Plus 4.04

[Wanabe]

Phanon Plus

This is my attempt at increasing the early and mid-game challenge by improving Phanons capabilities. I am interested in feedback regarding opinions on balance and of course bug reports.



Very Brief Features:

Phanon Builds and deploys M7M ships in defensive operations.

Phanon Builds and utilizes mining ships, eventually forming a mining fleet with dedicated escorts.

Phanon TS ships can become salvagers which will look for wares and ships to claim/salvage for profit.

Phanon is capable of changing ship building priorities such as focusing on improving economy.

Phanon can now assign more ship types as escorts and as Hunters including M6,M7,M1 and M2.

Phanon Hunters led by M1/M2/M7 can call in more reinforcements in a battle situation

Phanon Hunters can now specifically target sectors with player assets (stations) to attack. The more substantial the Hunter ship class the higher the odds they will decide to attack.

Miscellaneous Optimizations and also bug Fixes to some Phanon scripts.



Download Links:

Zip Archive (Mediafire):



Full Feature List (Mediafire):


Previous versions (for LU 1.6.0):

Version 4.03

Previous versions (for LU 1.5.2):

Version 4.02
Version 4.01
Version 4.0
Version 3.03
Version 3.02
Version 3.01
Version 3.0



Notes:

When installing this with any other mods that modify Phanon script files make sure this is installed last, overriding any files. This must be done to prevent any possible bugs such as for example complete game freezes shortly after activating Phanon in a new game.

Starting a new game is recommended though not required for the changes to take full effect. To clarify: this is designed to be able to update anything necessary for the game when loading from an older Phanon version and should run as intended without doing anything special for the installation. Make a backup of your savegames prior to using this on an existing game just in case.

Because I'm overwriting LUV Phanon files for most of my changes I've included the original scripts and t file (based on LUV version 1.6.0) in the package to make it easier to replace the files to revert the changes. If restoring an old backed up save from LUV replace the scripts from the included backup scripts and t folders and reload the old backed up save. If wanting to continue the game but without Phanon Plus I recommend loading the current game and export (backup the export for extra safety). After the export is complete replace the Phanon Plus scripts with the originals and then run an Import to restore the game but without Phanon Plus running.

Some not entirely Phanon related files are also required and are included (these are based on LU 1.6.0):

Cmd.EmergencyJump – Altered to go to a Phanon specific emergency jump
!fight.attack.object – Altered to not enable emergency jump at 30% if it's already turned on
Lib.cmd.mine – Non player ships no longer care if what debris they're looking at is known by the player

There are some extra values added to the (currently English only) T file. If the values aren't found (non English players) the default values will be loaded from the relevant scripts. Added values to the 8384 (Phanon T file):
261 – Text string for AMTA report, registered salvagers
262 – Text string for AMTA report, registered miners
348 – Percentage for salary bonus, based on player trade rank
349 – Percentage for salary bonus, based on player fight rank
380 – Phanon starting generation
390 – Percentage for extra cash injection on generation advancement (IE Phanon upgrades itself from TandiTech to Nova, they'll get a percentage of the funds that Nova would have started with as a bonus for doing so well)
400 – Super sales modifier for Miners
401 – Super sales modifier for Traders and Salvagers
402 – Super Sales base value for Sales agents

[Wanabe]

Version 4.04 (the not very hotfix version) - 25th September , 2017

Implemented Xo3oToC's and rw602's changes to hopefully fix Phanon breaking itself (thanks a lot guys)

Version 4.04 - 8th February, 2016

Small adjustments to the credits amount that Phanon saves up before trying to buy various ship types as their prices have changed in LU 1.6.0 and onwards.

Version 4.03 - 6th February, 2016

Compatibility with LU 1.6.0
Phanon hunters that have not fully formed yet will try to return to the Phanon HQ after engaging enemy ships
Phanon ships with dockbays now install Carrier Command Software
Phanon TL now waits for its fighters before leaving to go deploy stations
Various minor tweaks to balance IE spending priorities and fleet configurations etc
Fixed: Phanon would sometimes leave behind their fighters after jumping away when finishing a sortie mission

Version 4.02 - 11th December, 2015

Phanon M7M ships can decide to disengage from combat if they have run out of offensive missiles and don't have any laser weapons equipped

Version 4.01 - 10th December, 2015

Phanon ships that are in need of repair will no longer be sent out to defend Phanon HQ unless Phanon HQ is under direct attack
Phanon ships that have recently become Reserve ships can be retasked earlier
Phanon ships that are engaging enemies within their HQ sector are allowed to become Sortie ships for other stations
Phanon requirements for resending a sortie for a station that has already had one recently has improved
Phanon ships that have CCDS installed can try to keep a minimum level of Chaff equipped
Phanon laser tower defenses are now positioned better around the station they are protecting
Phanon HQ and station build locations have more variance in their positioning
Fixed: Phanon ships emergency jumping in Sanctuary of Darkness that do not have a Quantum Jumpgate Extension will no longer attempt to jump back to the HQ
Fixed: Certain Phanon ship classes would sometimes fail to find a location to emergency jump to
Fixed: Bug introduced in Version 4, ships changing its task would tell their docked ships to go home
Fixed: Various bugs relating to the Phanon HQ thinking it could use certain ships for defense when it should not be trying to use them

Version 4 - 5th December, 2015

Phanon satellite hunters are disabled by default
Phanon can now mothball Miner Hauler ships if their cargo is full
Fixed: Phanon TS can no longer attempt to retreat from a player if the Phanon TS is already docked
Fixed: Phanon Sales ships could very rarely get stuck in a “buy loop” if they didn't have cargo room free to actually buy the wares they want
Fixed: Phanon maximum quantity of sortie ships was not being set correctly
Fixed: Phanon Hauler TS couldn't sell goods properly when their HQ station was full
Fixed: Phanon HQ could not store Silver and Gold minerals

Version 3.03 - 8th October, 2015

Phanon chance of using missiles in every generation is lowered. M8 and M7M missile chance set to 0
Phanon ships retreating from Sancturary of Darkness now pick a random sector to retreat to. Retreating traders now also choose a (nearby) random sector
Phanon traders,miners and miner overseer now use the same 30 drone limit rule as combat ships when launching them in defense
Phanon TS can now check if the player is too close to them (if in a big ship) and will attempt to jump away. Their sensitivity to this increases each generation
Phanon TS that are in the process of retreating and have jumped away to another sector are allowed to attempt retreating again if they're being followed
Phanon salvagers no longer wonder locally between sector scans, travel between sectors less often as they increase in level, recheck what the closest ship/crate to them is and salvage that after salvaging each object and can jump to an object it wants to salvage if it is too far from its current position
Various minor tweaks to balance IE spending priorities and fleet configurations etc.
Fixed: In certain circumstances Phanon couldn't order more stations to be built when it wanted to build them because of a little bit of a priority mixup

Version 3.02 - 16th September, 2015

Phanon salvagers, miners and sales agents no longer sell wares at maximum price
Added value 420 to T file, toggle to disable or enable Phanon M5 satellite hunters

Version 3.01 - 9th September, 2015

Phanon traders no longer buy wares at a guaranteed minimum price and no longer sell them at maximum ware price
Increased Phanon bonus cash when upgrading generation from 1% to 2%
Improved miner hauler logic a little bit
Fixed: Sometimes Phanon fighter lead hunter squads would not leave their HQ system

Version 3 - 6th August, 2015

Fixed: Accidentally had some left over Notoriety changes from testing some stuff which made the core Races angry at the player for killing Phanon ships (thanks for reporting, zanzammar)

Version 2 - 4th August 2015

Phanon sets their emergency retreat shield percentage dependent on their current generation (rather than being static at 50%), becoming more and more cautious each generation. Their starting point is slightly lower than LUV Phanon settings.
Phanon tries to disable its emergency retreat on ships when its HQ is in danger
Phanon replace their Unseen (satellite destroying M5) ships less often
Phanon has a Station filter list, filtering out certain stations as it increases in generation (it won't build the stations it filters out)
Phanon now pays for or profits from the goods dropped off or bought from their stations by Race traders
Phanon will now send Sales agents back to reserves if their station doesn't currently have any demands. This results in Phanon requiring less Sales agents overall as they're used more efficiently
Phanon HQ Sales agent will help distribute energy cells to its factories from the HQ if it doesn't have anything else to do and there's a good surplus of energy at the HQ.
Phanon are now more likely to build their stations in Unknown and Goner sectors.
Phanon is a bit better at assigning extra haulers for their mining fleet. It was a little too overzealous previously.
Added value 380 to T file to change Phanon starting generation, default 1.
Added value 402 to T file to change Phanon super sales base level for stations and reduced value from 5 to 3.
Various tweaks to balance IE spending priorities and fleet configurations etc.
Fixed: Phanon would send more than 1 wave of sortie ships for stations sometimes (damn typos)
Fixed: Sometimes Laser Towers weren't named after the current corporation correctly upon upgrading
Workaround: Sometimes Phanon built Solar Power Plant class stations don't produce resources for an unknown reason. Phanon will now sell stations that haven't started producing wares for a certain amount of time to partially rectify this.

Version 1.01 - 16th July, 2015

Small balance tweaks
Fixed: Phanon wasn't setting its emergency jump values properly
Fixed: Phanon Laser Towers weren't calling for help on behalf of their station as intended
Fixed: Phanon forgot what generation it was last on when defeated (big oops on this one and thanks ColeTahn for reporting)

Version 1 - 7th July, 2015

Initial Release

[Joubarbe]

Nice work !

[Wanabe]

V1.01 released.

Nice work !

Thanks.

[Wanabe]

V2.0 released.

Overall Phanon should be a bit easier in this version due to reduced economy cheats and a couple other changes.

[zanzammar]

I have a bug to report.

It seems with your mod installed, I lose reputation with the owner of a sector whenever I destroy a phanon ship. It makes it rather difficult to combat them when I can't engage while in commonwealth/terran space without ruining my reputation.

I followed your uninstall instructions to revert to the original scripts and the reputation losses stopped, so I am fairly certain it must be in this mod's scripts.

[Wanabe]

I have a bug to report.

It seems with your mod installed, I lose reputation with the owner of a sector whenever I destroy a phanon ship. It makes it rather difficult to combat them when I can't engage while in commonwealth/terran space without ruining my reputation.

I followed your uninstall instructions to revert to the original scripts and the reputation losses stopped, so I am fairly certain it must be in this mod's scripts.

Thanks for the bug report and sorry about any inconvenience. I forgot to test and/or remove some notoriety stuff I was fiddling with before releasing V2 of Phanon Plus. I've uploaded a newer version which fixes it. You can either continue your current game that you've exported or load your game before the export if you still have it and it should continue as intended.

[ltdan81]

Phanom was a static part the game for me the first time so decided to try this out.... Holy snowballs batman!! I saw the difference within the first few hours. They actually grow and I've got hunters swarming the galaxy only 15 hours in.. defiantly going to be challenging to steal their ships this time! lol

This is a perfect upgrade but I'm feeling that they might be too strong too early. with the enhanced ability to grow they seem to have perhaps you can nerf their starting resouurces, or perhaps set the script so Phanom doesn't start for maybe 6-12 hours?

I thought Phanom was supposed to follow the rules that the player has to, such as having to konw a sector before building there. also their relations with all reaces appear to be set high with all races from the start or something as they can trade with everyone and it appears even xenon leave them alone. I think this makes them too much with your enhancements as they're a serious threat from the start and have no other enemies. at least make them enemies with pirates and yaki.

another idea i had to the relations issue is to buy protection from races... basically you'd be dropping their notoriety with that race for a fee.

Also I don't think their traders are respecting PPP as the players traders must. this is a definate upset early on especially with their hunters keep wiping out my explorers.

You've done a great job so far, I just feel they're starting off with too much.

*edit*- at 47 game hours I'm admitting defeat. This level of intensity would be awsome if Phanon didn't make an entrance until game day two or three. I've already lost at least 20 explorers and 50 sats to hunters... I managed to upgrade my explorers to M6's but Phanon also managed to upgrade their hunters to M7's (straight from M3's).

Phonon should have to use sats as the player does... I've invested over 10 million in sats while Phonnon doesn't have this cost. Of coarse it really doesn't matter until Phanon is made to abide by the PPP rules.

[Wanabe]

Phanom was a static part the game for me the first time so decided to try this out.... Holy snowballs batman!! I saw the difference within the first few hours. They actually grow and I've got hunters swarming the galaxy only 15 hours in.. defiantly going to be challenging to steal their ships this time! lol

This is a perfect upgrade but I'm feeling that they might be too strong too early. with the enhanced ability to grow they seem to have perhaps you can nerf their starting resouurces, or perhaps set the script so Phanom doesn't start for maybe 6-12 hours?

I agree I've also observed that they're unreasonably fast at the moment. Generally as I make things "better" they can end up pulling ahead a bit at which point I need to reduce some economic aids to get them back to a more reasonable default level. I haven't kept up very well on that front though.

I thought Phanom was supposed to follow the rules that the player has to, such as having to konw a sector before building there. also their relations with all reaces appear to be set high with all races from the start or something as they can trade with everyone and it appears even xenon leave them alone. I think this makes them too much with your enhancements as they're a serious threat from the start and have no other enemies. at least make them enemies with pirates and yaki.

Ideally in my mind Phanon should follow as many of the same rules as the player to bring a plausible competitor to the game. Thing is though that some of those rules may hamper CPU performance or be minor enough that it can kind of be emulated in some other way. Having knowledge of sectors was never part of its original design and neither was laying down satellites. I do somewhat like the idea of them making use of satellites though. If they were to do that they could likely start respecting the PPP rule which would add in the ability to damage their trade network beyond just killing their traders.

So far I've kept their relationship the same as vanilla Phanon. They're still enemies of OCV and I can say it's very interesting when OCV invades a sector with an Phanon station in it. Being enemies of the pirates would possibly be reasonably interesting however I'm fairly sure there's enough economic cheats that can be reduced instead.

another idea i had to the relations issue is to buy protection from races... basically you'd be dropping their notoriety with that race for a fee.

Also I don't think their traders are respecting PPP as the players traders must. this is a definite upset early on especially with their hunters keep wiping out my explorers.

You've done a great job so far, I just feel they're starting off with too much.

If there were multiple corporations with similar aspects as Phanon (IE a wallet and need to make money to expand etc) then having some sort of front end menu for corporate espionage and what-not could be kinda cool. I'm not really looking at doing any significant modding though at the moment.

Thanks very much for your feedback. Balancing mods like this take a lot of time and so feedback is very valuable. I absolutely agree that Phanon are currently too powerful and I have begun re-balancing some of their economy aids to get them to better default settings.

[ltdan81]

Lol, you were responding as I was editing. ;P

as for balancing try reducing their starting capital or just delaying the script...

I think if this scipt was to kick in full throttle as it is on like day three it'd be awesome!

OR... make your version an add on to the original Phanon so that it the game continues.

^^^^^^ That's what I was really wanting my last play through when I had 9x excalibers in the dock and OCV pushed back ready to be finished.... The big question that inspired this mod came to mind... "Now What?"

Haveing a Phanon come back from the grave with this kind of brutal force would have been fantastice and make for some epic battles as I played cat and mouse with their fleets.

[Cedric_FP]

I plan on trying out this script my next playthrough.

But to be honest, from a total-lay perspective, I'd love it if Phanon were enemies with the pirates, and if pirates were beefed up in strength. The idea of a deadly universe with constant battles raging between OCV/Phanon/Pirates just sounds incredibly exciting.

[Wanabe]

V3.01 released.

Phanon has some reduced cheats so should be a little more reasonable. There are more cheats I could disable of a similar nature if this is not enough but I did not want to do too many tweaks simultaneously and go from very hard to too easy in one go.

*edit*- at 47 game hours I'm admitting defeat. This level of intensity would be awsome if Phanon didn't make an entrance until game day two or three. I've already lost at least 20 explorers and 50 sats to hunters... I managed to upgrade my explorers to M6's but Phanon also managed to upgrade their hunters to M7's (straight from M3's).

Yeah that's pretty serious, I definitely don't want them to be more of a threat than OCV which they accidentally appear to be lol. At the point of launching that first M7 Phanon would of have had a handful of M6s but decided to use the other ones defensively rather than sending them out. That's mostly a number balancing act to get it right and will be tweaked at some point when I focus on it. One thing of note which could perhaps be taken advantage of: Phanon tracks its losses and if it has lost a certain amount of assets in a certain time period it will stop sending out new hunter squads. It won't stop the current hunter squads from hunting but this could help a bit too.

as for balancing try reducing their starting capital or just delaying the script...

I think if this scipt was to kick in full throttle as it is on like day three it'd be awesome!

OR... make your version an add on to the original Phanon so that it the game continues.

^^^^^^ That's what I was really wanting my last play through when I had 9x excalibers in the dock and OCV pushed back ready to be finished.... The big question that inspired this mod came to mind... "Now What?"

Haveing a Phanon come back from the grave with this kind of brutal force would have been fantastice and make for some epic battles as I played cat and mouse with their fleets.

I do agree that having an enemy with the brutality of V3.0 of Phanon Plus would be quite nice for late game. However, Phanon aren't really supposed to be that level of threat. I want them to be better than the original Phanon but not *that* much better =P.

I plan on trying out this script my next playthrough.

But to be honest, from a total-lay perspective, I'd love it if Phanon were enemies with the pirates, and if pirates were beefed up in strength. The idea of a deadly universe with constant battles raging between OCV/Phanon/Pirates just sounds incredibly exciting.

Yes I rather enjoy the possibility of unexpected free for all battles that sort of thing could bring. I may experiment with relations at some point in the future with Xenon and/or Pirates and see how it plays out. For now though my focus is else-ware so I cannot put the proper amount of time to check it out.

[ltdan81]

Nice to see you've already got a new version... I'm already up to Phanon generation 5 in my new game, so I don't want to try it atm.

Can the cheats You're changing be turned on easily with a script call? Are they only on/off or variables that can be increased incrementally?

I had a thought that Phanon could be set up to run a continuous loop without too much trouble while increasing difficulty each cycle.

[Wanabe]

Nice to see you've already got a new version... I'm already up to Phanon generation 5 in my new game, so I don't want to try it atm.

Can the cheats You're changing be turned on easily with a script call? Are they only on/off or variables that can be increased incrementally?

I had a thought that Phanon could be set up to run a continuous loop without too much trouble while increasing difficulty each cycle.

Generation 5. I've seen the amount of ships they get in that generation so good luck dude. There are some extra cheats exposed to the T file (8384-L044.XML) if using english. In your case you could probably turn them off or down. The cheats I'm targeting though are different to those ones and require a tiny amount of script editing to turn off a variable.

The "generation" of Phanon is kind of its own difficulty system as each generation it can get more money earned (builds more economy stuff *and* simply gets more income for a bunch of transactions) and a bunch of stuff then changes such as ship weightings and the ships it wants for hunter squads.

It should be safe to apply 3.01 on top of your current game. It's probably too late but it should ease their ability to replace their lost assets a little since the cheats are reduced.

[ltdan81]

I'm gonna wait till I finish up Phanon vanilla then make a copy of my game folder before installing 3.01...

my plan is to then reset Phanon by setting the generations global, I assume setting it to "null" will make it start from scratch.

With the brutality I experienced in the first try I figured I'd test it out after I have my empire built up, rather than pulling my hair out trying to do anything in a new game ;P

Oh, something I've thought of, have you increased the milestones for each generation to automatically upgrade? With the growth speed they had before it's actually feasible to farm capitals from them... I've tried waiting for the vanilla script to replace their M1 but they aways seem to evolve instead It'd be more fun (and profitable) to toy with each generation for a while in stead of the repetition of rushing their HQ over and over. : /

[Wanabe]

I'm gonna wait till I finish up Phanon vanilla then make a copy of my game folder before installing 3.01...

my plan is to then reset Phanon by setting the generations global, I assume setting it to "null" will make it start from scratch.

With the brutality I experienced in the first try I figured I'd test it out after I have my empire built up, rather than pulling my hair out trying to do anything in a new game ;P

Oh, something I've thought of, have you increased the milestones for each generation to automatically upgrade? With the growth speed they had before it's actually feasible to farm capitals from them... I've tried waiting for the vanilla script to replace their M1 but they aways seem to evolve instead It'd be more fun (and profitable) to toy with each generation for a while in stead of the repetition of rushing their HQ over and over. : /

Setting the generations number to 0 or null will probably automatically set it back to 1 as that's the minimum value I've set. Having an empire prior would be fair enough to ensure if it's still fubar (and it probably is) not all is lost

I did not tweak the strength required for them to increase their generation. It's been a while since I've observed vanilla Phanon but they would want to replace that M1 as long as they haven't lost too many other ships which would upset their fleet ratios and cause them to attempt to get some replacements.

[your.homeseller]

How about Framing possibilities? The ability to Frame Phanon with other races to ruin their rep. Naturally, this would require enormous resources, including captured ships. My Idea is you cap a couple of Phanon. Once you cap them you now have access to their FF ID system. You RE the cap ships copying their IFFID and paint job. Basically a clone instead of a new build. Once you clone enough attack ships, You can take your clone fleet and attack your nearest friendly. For balance you can add a chance at discovery (10-25%) based on rep and fleet size with higher rep giving less chance and fleet size increasing the chance. So, a small attack group with High rep would have a very low chance of discovery, whereas the opposite would be true for a med. rep and large strike group. Any unlcloned ships with the group increases the chance at discover 2x.

Just a thought after reading through all this. I'm about to try LU and I wa doing research. I have zero ability to script.


M.

[Wanabe]

How about Framing possibilities? The ability to Frame Phanon with other races to ruin their rep. Naturally, this would require enormous resources, including captured ships. My Idea is you cap a couple of Phanon. Once you cap them you now have access to their FF ID system. You RE the cap ships copying their IFFID and paint job. Basically a clone instead of a new build. Once you clone enough attack ships, You can take your clone fleet and attack your nearest friendly. For balance you can add a chance at discovery (10-25%) based on rep and fleet size with higher rep giving less chance and fleet size increasing the chance. So, a small attack group with High rep would have a very low chance of discovery, whereas the opposite would be true for a med. rep and large strike group. Any unlcloned ships with the group increases the chance at discover 2x.

Just a thought after reading through all this. I'm about to try LU and I wa doing research. I have zero ability to script.


M.

Thanks for your putting up your idea. I'm not going to be doing any extra features either indefinitely or for sometime though. I'm currently less interested in X3 and don't want to put in too much more time for now.

For your first play with LU I suggest not using Phanon Plus so you can get used to the game. If/when you become a dominating force then perhaps you could chuck it on. The balance of this mod is currently a bit off (too hard) due to the combination of increased capabilities and various economic cheats which they no longer require to offer a good challenge.

[artisauce]

Added value 420 to T file, toggle to disable or enable Phanon M5 satellite hunter

Though honestly I wish the Phanon had their own satallite network for me to mess with. That way, if I got nothing else to do, I can go around killing a few sats like old school mailbox smashing.

[Kadatherion]

Great script. It's true the Phanon are an extremely hard opponent in this version, but I really like it so far: in my first LU playthrough a few months ago I found the Phanon quite disappointing, hardly ever giving me troubles. This time they are really interesting, and not too easy to exploit as a free source of captured ships as they were, thanks to their new emergency jump routines.

The only thing I was coming to hate was them going after my satellites, which is annoying without really adding much when it comes to actual gameplay. But now that you can turn the satellite hunters off I really can't find anything to complain about.