Repeat Orders Enhancement

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Eyeklops
Posts: 329
Joined: Tue, 23. Mar 21, 17:58
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Repeat Orders Enhancement

Post by Eyeklops » Fri, 15. Oct 21, 21:21

First I want to say the Repeat Orders behavior is a phenomenal addition to the game, thank you for that. This is just a suggestion/idea for the features enhancement.

Currently when using Repeat Orders (RO) only a specific subset of commands can be used (Mine X->Sell Here, Buy X->Sell Here, etc...). There may be utility and QOL improvements in the ability to queue-up commands as one-shot events. Possibly differentiated via yellow text in the command queue. Sometimes I would even like to designate RO compatible commands one-shot events. Scenarios where I see this being useful:

1. A number of enemy ships is nearing a loot collector. Instead of waiting for them to aggress there may be a strategic advantage by initiating the attack. Currently this is done by switching off RO, invoking attack command, waiting for the battle to finish, and then setting RO back up.
Vision for enhancement: Invoke the attack command, press a button on the command in the queue that essentially means "DO THIS RIGHT NOW". Then afterward it resumes where it left off in the RO queue.

2. While a miner or trader successfully fought off a pirate/Khaak raid it's sustained some hull and/or equipment damage. Getting the ship in for repair requires something similar to #1. Turn off RO behavior, command to dock & repair, wait for ship to dock & repair, rebuild RO commands. Instances like these may not use the "DO THIS RIGHT NOW" button and could be fine if the ship waited until the end of the RO queue to do the repairs.
Vision for enhancement: Ship is ordered to dock & repair. Ship completes RO queue, docks & repairs, resumes RO queue.

3. A trade ship is en-route to sell off some wares and is passing buy a large field of loot.
Vision for enhancement: Command ship to collect all drops, invoke "DO THIS NOW" & "DO NOT REPEAT" buttons, ship collects all drops and resumes RO queue (without collect orders).


Secondary thought (although this may not be possible): Does RO even have to be specified/controlled as a "behavior"? Could it be utilized via a checkbox next to each command in the queue? This way a list of commands could be queued up and the player can select which to repeat.
Example 1: A new ship is leaving the faction shipyard. It's ordered to dock up and change out equipment at a specified (different) shipyard, then a typical RO mining/trading loop is queued up and selected to be RO commands.

I know these ideas are a bit rough and I may have some missed something or got some of the technical details a bit off but I hope the general idea for the area of improvement is clear enough. Thank you for reading.

Imperial Good
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Re: Repeat Orders Enhancement

Post by Imperial Good » Sat, 16. Oct 21, 01:31

I think there has to be more intelligent behaviour responses in general to dangerous situations.

For example you have a repeat trader or station trader that is selling a ware from a station to a remote NPC station. After the sale has completed there are no more trades to make for a while, the result of short supply, so the trader hangs around the NPC station it last sold to.

Currently the traders will park by the NPC station irrespective of what happens nearby. A Branch 9 I and 2 Ks show up? Trader sits dead still waiting to be destroyed... If the trader still has some wares it just sits there waiting to be pirated. The casualties to this are innumerable, with my ships alone being dozens lost to it. NPCs probably lose dozens or even hundreds an hour like this.

Ideally what should happen is the ship reacts to these situations in a more survivable way. For example when it sees an enemy fleet nearby where it parked it recalls to its commander. If the ship has wares on it after an auto trader order, it remains docked until either a threat shows up causing it to flee the area as described previously, or a trade is found. This should be expanded to miners as well, so that M miners try to flee from KHK or XEN instead of continuing to mine while an individual miner nearby tries to dog fight the Khaak or Xenon aggressors in a doomed battle. Even repeat order collect ware ships could benefit from this sort of behaviour, with fast S salvage ships aborting their collect order to flee to safety should dangerous ships show up long before the collection ship is as good as destroyed in combat.

Thourion
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Joined: Tue, 17. Mar 09, 16:41
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Re: Repeat Orders Enhancement

Post by Thourion » Sat, 16. Oct 21, 05:04

First of all i dont understand why the Repeat Order does not work like, for example, Patrol Sector behavior.
You set behavior as patrol, then you have to click the empty box, in order to add the sector you want. (some other commands also have extra parameters if needed here).
Now if you give an order to the ship, it does it, then goes back to the behavior, in our example case the patrol.

In the case of repeat commands, you dont have that empty box, as click and then issue the command, to be in the queue, instead you just make commands as normal. But of course now the problem is that you cannot give a simple command to the ship, without that order getting added to the repeat queue. And the bigger problem for me, is that you cannot give some commands like to repair at the station, because it doesnt recognize it as a repeat command.

The solution, seems to me, is kinda simple. Make the repeat orders UI act like any other behavior, where you need to hit, dunno, the "Add Order" button, in order to put the next command in queue.

@Imperial Of course we could could have a ton of things that require some extensive coding for the AI, or even simpler things that still need a bit of work, like a "save order list" for the commands, or 1 click (top priority/one time) override commands, for example "Repair at closest friendly shipyard" and whatever, but really for just the repeat orders i really cant think the reasons it works as it is now.

SirConnery
Posts: 284
Joined: Mon, 10. Dec 18, 07:26

Re: Repeat Orders Enhancement

Post by SirConnery » Sat, 16. Oct 21, 19:54

Agree, especially needing to repair while doing Repeat Oders is quite essential.

Also would be nice if for Repeat orders it was possible to do double buy/sell orders. Meaning you buy a full load > sell it to a station. Buy another full load from another station and sell it again. Then repeat this 4 step loop.

At least I was not able to get it to work. If you don't buy a full storage then you can do this but if you want to get one full set somewhere, sell it, and get another full set it says "Storage full" .

Jaskan
Posts: 192
Joined: Fri, 31. Jan 20, 10:42

Re: Repeat Orders Enhancement

Post by Jaskan » Sat, 16. Oct 21, 23:10

repeat orders would be so great if one could use it for fleets

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