Life Cycle of RRF ships ?

[Bill Huntington]

I've hit the Paranid sectors long enough to notice a few things. I've built up a bank balance of $1.1 Bil boarding and selling Oddy and Zeus. I never did it in AP after seeing the RRF in action. They defend a sector pretty well. That was before station bombing became a choice. Actually a Cobra with Hammers and Flails, or a bomber with Tomahawks could do okay too. Or a Skirnir with Shadows, of course. Later in the game a Tyr could do its thing too.

I'll be refining an answer as I play further but why not all of us? What's the life cycle of the RRF ships? Do they spawn on some kind of schedule after they're lost? I wonder if it's one ship at a time? Or if the big capitals take longer? Do they get built in the owning races SY? I've noticed them many times appearing near a SY. Not conclusive proof but suggestive. At the same time those SY are busy replacing the regular ship losses that I've given them.

That's another question. There seems to be a limit to the regular capital forces in a sector, perhaps 2 Oddys in key sectors, perhaps a random combination of Oddy and Zeus totalling two. They get rebuilt to that limit if they're lost. Comments? Better suggestions?

There seems to be only one set of RRF ships for a race. It might be 2 Oddy, 2 Zeus, an Ares, 2 Deimos, 2 Nems, 3 Hades. I haven't seen numbers higher than this at one time. They come back piecemeal after they're destroyed.

If we pool our info, we'll all know more. What the Forum was born for.

[RAVEN.myst]

Well, I have no answers to the specific questions you asked, but here are a couple of morsels related to RRF (of dubious value, heheheh)

- The RRF ships you saw near shipyards may be ones that have been repaired there, as damaged RRF vessels that jump out will soon go to a shipyard for this purpose.
- In terms of trying to determine the total size of a race's, it may be possible to scout out the areas where off-duty ones hang out. I know that you will often find some of the Paranid RRF fleet at Perpetual Sin (at least, I often find them floating around there during the course of my explorations, though I don't know whether they return thither after engagements - it may simply be the sector some of them start in.)

[jlehtone]

- The RRF ships you saw near shipyards may be ones that have been repaired there, as damaged RRF vessels that jump out will soon go to a shipyard for this purpose.

Easy to reproduce (without going to SY sectors):
1. Let RRF M1 launch fighters.
2. Let RRF M1 escape alive.
3. Watch how the fighters left behind forget you and start an arduous journey back to their home and check the destination of those fighters.

- In terms of trying to determine the total size of a race's, it may be possible to scout out the areas where off-duty ones hang out.

Additional options:
- S&M allows one to write a facts reporting script.
- Study the readable RRF code (if game has none, then the LV's original script).

There seems to be a limit to the regular capital forces in a sector, perhaps 2 Oddys in key sectors, perhaps a random combination of Oddy and Zeus totalling two. They get rebuilt to that limit if they're lost. Comments? Better suggestions?

Jobs. The game has a table of NPC "jobs" and "jobwings". What, where, and how many. The game attempts to maintain the listed strenght. How to read that table is again an S&M endeavour.

The jobs are usually discussed with NPC Free Traders and the Xenon. We know that NPC traders tend to die and that new ships do show up.

In X3R the Xenon had two "well-known" job limits: maximum force in one sector and global force size. The global force did fit into a subset of Xenon sectors and therefore it was possible to keep at least one Xenon sector clear.

The "native" Military of races seems to loiter somewhat, so they are not as fixed to individual sectors as their Xenon counterparts. Their job descriptions probably have some leeway.

[Bill Huntington]

A summary: the usual order of battle for RRF ships is 2 each of the bigger ships. That is, 2 Oddy, 2 Zeus, 2 Ares, 2 Nem, 2 Hades. The bigger ships take longer to come back after you kill them. After you kill this group there are no others. They come back piecemeal.

This is for the Paranids but it's probably true for each race.

The RRF Ares and Hades really spam some missiles at you.

Thanks for the help!