[REALSPACE MODS] "STARS" - "XRSGE" - "REM" - various

[Realspace]

Realspace, my antivirus software detects a trojan in latest patch
Trojan: Script/Wacatac.B!ml

I downloaded latest version of zzip, could I have used a fake site? It did not seem, I always look for developer's page, not mirrors.
And it is the same used in 7.2 so it should detect it there too.
The nexus also scans all that is uploaded. Maybe a false positive?

[ziplock815]

Maybe it's really false warning
Anyway, the antivirus reacts only to the patch

[icon41gimp]

Can someone explain how I'm supposed to play this? I'm in Barren Shores V trying to "hit" what appears to be a super highway that runs east-west across the map but my ship just continually misses it and slides in a direction I can't counteract? Everything is like multiple thousand kms away so I don't think I'm supposed to just use travel mode to get around.

Also the REM description makes it sound like regular drive will be super fast but my speed drops if I leave travel mode (first boron ship ~3km/s in travel). I tried ctrl+enter or shift+enter modes and it doesn't seem to do anything with my speed?

Also the prism text color for some good types is really rough on the light blue background of the inventory screen when you're looking at station inventory. Is there a way to change the text color?

[Realspace]

Some hw can have issues (not superhw, they all work fine). Is not common but can happen. This is due to the length and scripted logic. Vanilla hws have it too but they are so short that it does not show. But if some hw has a direction pathway that is inverted, please write it here, I can look for errors (I wrote tens of hws).

REM 6 is made for increasing immersion bc in xrgse 7 gates are close together but you can use REM 5 with doubled speeds, or even rem 4 for 4x speeds. Or just vanilla if inertia is not for you.

To use the speedup in rem 6 you can use travel drive, cut engine, return to normal drive (all without autopilot). You'll notice that the ship keeps momentum. So you can use SETA while travelling.

You probably have to install the rem_inertia module to use this trick (see link in first page), it increases inertial speed. Keep in mind that values for ship's behaviour are quite tricky in this engine. They are not separated for flight assist on/off so I had to do a compromise.

Another trick is using booster with flight assist on. Since mk3 engines have boosters that last long, you can boost for travel (as in Rebirth) while using SETA. All this oc is for S and M ships. On ships that have a second seat for the player, you can simply use seta while travelling.

In miscellaneus files tab you find a patch for no-prism

[ziplock815]

Hi Realspace. Seems you've been in a vacation

I've found a small bug here - jumpgate from Thynn's Abuss to Heart of Acrimony doesn't work. Also my ship can't jump to the jump beacon there (I'm using jumpdrive mod), the order always fails. I've not tried to jump manually though, but I think the effect is the same. Only teleportation via cheat mod seems to work.

[Realspace]

You mean thyn's excavation? Thyn's abyss is a system far in the southern quadrant. If so, the gate works normally. It is an eccelerator thou. I changed from gate to accel in one of the updates. Unfortunelly some gates don't seem to update from old saves (zone positions do).

A real issue I found instead is with the split plot. My game stucked at the "take control of an S ship". I solved the bug, but had to restart the game. I do the procedure as explained in the article in the nexus, i.e. create a new custom game with all assets then copy/paste in my valselton minimod.

Anyway this bug will be fixed in next update. Together with some more gates moved closer together.

[ziplock815]

I've had the "take control of an S ship" bug too. Had to start a new custom game and the mission proceeded. The split guy happened to be waiting in player's HQ.
As for the jumpgate bug from Thyn's Excavation to Heart of Acrimony and vice versa - yeah, it really looks like that's because of the latest update where you've changed the jumpgate and my jumpgate just didn't update.

Btw I'd like to ask. Why did you decide to add Jupiter to the Asteroid Belt sector? It has a visual size bigger than even the Moon from Earth's point of view so the feelin is that you are in Jupiter's orbit. As I remember, the Asteroid Belt is located somewhere between Mars and Jupiter and the distance to either planet is huge, so you can't really see them (maybe you can, but they should be veeery small, a little bigger than large stars in the background)... I might be wrong of course , but since your nickname is "Realspace", I thought you might be interested in my small realistic observation

P. S. Very nice scenery in Jupiter, Hewa's twin and Sacrosanct conclave. Made lots of screenshots there.
Still no plans to add Oort Cloud btw?

[Realspace]

Yes Jupiter is a bit too big, but remember that Jupiter is indeed huge. I think it should be quite visible from ast belt, it is from earth (a big dot bigger than a star). Probably not that big. I thought about making it smaller but damn it is so cool to see it through the asteroid belt so I discarded the realism ..and I had worked so hard on its materials in order to make it nice both from distance and very close

Oort is a bit redundant. It would make sense if turned into a dark creepy sector infested by khaak or xenon, with hidden bases or solar gates. I don't remember now, I think it was such in my X3FL RGE mod.

Also, universe is full of oort like sectors..

[ziplock815]

Yeah, I'd say it too, despite of being maybe not very realistic, the scenery is very cool. Didn't really like terran sectors until now.
As for the Oort Cloud... well it has it's own vibe. It could be really dark sector with abandoned or hidden bases and even without xenons and khaak lurking in the darkness this sector is still going to give me chills. Especially if there will be a description like in X3. I really felt uncomfortable every time I was entering this sector.
Anyway, who knows, maybee I'll manage to sell yo this idea like the idea to bring back Neptune... Eventually

[Realspace]

I've updated XRSGE Seven to version 7.2.2

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/1140

It includes a lot of small fixes and moves quite a bit zones to have faster connections (gates closer together but resources far).
I forgot to remove vanilla highways before packing (I use them to see how they look in the mod), but this is no issue, they can be added/removed anytime.
If you don't like them use any mod that removes vanilla hw and make it dependent from XRSGE (loads after)..

[ziplock815]

Much thanks for the update

Any thoughts about upcoming 7.0 and Dlc? Will you continue to support this awesome mod to work with future versions of the game?

[Realspace]

Well that was the idea behind redoing XRSGE with better patch methods and calling it Seven. Hopefully it'll be compatible out of the box.
I am having lot of fun playing Seven either, it is the perfect fusion of the old concept with a faster gameplay and immersion so I think I will continue after next update.

I've not got exactly what the DLC will be but seems like it will add multiple maps/scenarios, not adding on top of vanilla map, right? We will see,..

Edit: had missed the beta reveal trailer, now I see they add some sectors. I will have some work to do to match the map, nothing difficult. I am more scared for REM compatibility thou..

..................

Btw I've focused on another feature to make L and XL ships more fitting to the big universe. They can not use the highways, we know. I thought about several solutions: changing the script in order to make them too use the hw; using again my jump minimod for them.

These solutions can have bugs and don't fit the game's logic (not made for jumping ships) and we know thar hw are already buggy by themselves.

I had experimented with huge sectors in the past, I mean 80.000 km not 8.000 (more than this can cause issue) and discarded bc doing crazy travel speed or using hws for long distances are both not good solutions....but, sectors can host internal gates. Means I can make as many gates I want leading from point a to point b INSIDE the same sectors. This is revolutionary bc gates have no glitch and all ships can use them.

In terran dlc ego added a new model of accelerator that was not used. It was conceived as terran accelerator but to me it looks like a very nice internal accelerator for all races.

Having huge sectors with multiple internal connections seems very interesting to me, not only bc of immersion but bc gameplay can be very different. We know there is a limit in the area where resources can be mined but that is for npc only. So there can be different zones very far from each other. Connected through accelerators that are heavily guarded so pirates can not use them or risk to do it. Zones with different districts. In theory also different planets as in XR bc I used new models that are smaller so jumping from planet to moon is possible (wihout superhighways that cut the sector in two) within 80.000 km and having the space between that can be crossed.

In this solution, hw would remain as mean to reach closer points or can be even removed by patch without slowing down economy.

[Realspace]

I've started implementing the use of orbital accelerators (different from the known transorbital ones). They work very well, are good looking and I have not seen any glitch when L and XL ships use them.

Yes if you use a different model, then any change is not exported save to save. We saw when I changed gates into accelerators or viceversa. But these models are peculiar for intra-sector connections, not between sectors, so they will never be replaced as can happen with gates and regular accelerators.

I've tested huge sectors (50.000 km) but the map does not stretch beyond 10.000-12.0000 and, in general, I don't want to change the current layout that looks the best in tems of compromise between immersion and smooth playing

[ziplock815]

Yes, I remember old transorbital accelerators too, a shame Egosoft didn't add them to the game, it'd make perfect sense in terran sectors.
In X-tended terran conflict these accelerators are located not only in terran sectors, which make sense too, because of the fact that terrans are the most technologically advanced in all Commonwealth, the rest of the races could simply buy transorbital accelerator tech and use it in their own sectors (or transform and make their own models as in X4) , but it makes completely no sense why terrans have changed their own accelerators .

Btw I've tested 7.0 with the mod, and it seems everything works well, except of repeating and overlaying of some sectors (Loomanckstrat's Legacy, Mists of Artemis)
(Okay, maybe not everything - some wharfs and shipyards in Argon and Split space vanished )

P.S. Explored some new sectors in vanilla 7.0 and found out that new sectors (Loomanckstrat's Legacy, Mi Ton's Refuge, Moo Kye's Revenge and Freedom's Reach) are almost as they were in X3 (with the exception of lacking descriptions). It's great, I wish all vanilla sectors would be lore friendly as well. But the point is that nebulae, planets and space itself haven't been updated since release. I don't understand what's the reason of a space game if space looks fake. That could be seen easily in dark sectors where you can see repeating star patterns and in new CEO's Doubt sector. Jeez, the nebulae is great, but it looks like it has been сut out of the piece of paper and just glued to the star pattern , it looks like a major downgrade since X3 and X-Rebirth

Egosoft absolutely should have hired you to create space stuff, their designers are really lazy in this particular part of the game.

[Realspace]

Yes their universe designers have not really shined. There is a gap between universe design and the rest of the game's mechanics and designs. In general, the more complex this X game becomes the more it seems to be lacking creativity in favor of complexity. Many trivial activities are also result of a bad design, as f.i. shooting traffic to gain rep.

You can see that they had no time to finalize some things. For instance planets are made with a shader creator, not a true handmade texture mapping (as I did and as X3 was). This could work if you do procedurally generated sectors, so you can generate infinite planets randomly. It makes no sense to use such a tool in a small number of iterations as in the vanilla map. Because automated things always look worse and vanilla X4 planets indeed look worse than X3's. So I guess they had planned some kind of randomization for the backgrounds but did not implement it in the game. Or simply decided to use this shader tool instead of mapping each planet, which requires long time.

Actually for how the backgrounds are structured, and the possible animations, we could at least have sectors that change internally at each player's visit, like sun, stars and planets moving around and changing position. This also is a cheap and doable solution to improve "spacey" immersion. But seems to me that their resources are limited, many things probably needed to be fixed and most of the players seem not to care about the space design, maybe. The universe designers are probably busy doing other things too that are not design-related.

------------------------------------------

XRSGE 7.2.3 is available.

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/1140

This update is NOT made for X4 7.0 beta.
XRSGE will be updated for 7 after the BETA test is finished.
X4 6.2 + ALL DLCs is required

This update introduces the (SUB-)ORBITAL ACCELERATORS.

These are used to connect the far gates and the main planets (shipyards, etc) inside the SAME sector. This is particularly useful for L and XL traders (REM adds XL traders, if you use it) that can not use the local highways.
In general all economy is faster thanks to these connections and some sectors are spectacular (from far orbit of a planet up to low orbit, inside the same sector) without trade slowdowns.

Icons for regular accelerators are back to how they look in vanilla game while their icon (which is the Super-HW icon) is used for the orbital accelerators (called "sector accelerators" by Betty).

A new icon has been added to the map that shows planets or moons in the sector. It is even targettable.

In Argon Prime, the main planet and its closer moon are within reach inside the same sector.
Some sectors have been changed, Sonra system in particular is different, because Argon Prime's closest moon is now inside the main sector, not in a separated sector.

I've addressed all the main sectors in dire need of these accelerators, in other sectors I used the usual solution of putting all gates very close (while resources are far).

A few distances here and there have been reduced (gates to accelerators or highways), to speed up trade ships. Sectors remain big, this reduction does not change the immersion.

There are also some bug fixes and small cosmetic changes in the backgrounds.
I've started reducing the intensity of some background nebulae, but these changes will be available through a patch for STARS.

............

I am expanding some more sectors the same way as Argon Prime or President's End, more will follow with each update.

[ziplock815]

Cool things those orbital accelerators. Wish they'd work as superhighways, when you fly to the planet with 0,1c velocity...ehh, miss them a lot So rare now, remember them only in plenty of sectors, Omicron B , maybe some more, but so cool and immersive...
I know they were quite buggy and difficult to make them...less buggy , but anyways
Am I right that orbital accelerators can't be made to replace old ones in Sol without save breaking? They'd fit so well to Sol sectors.
About the nebulae. You sure that you need to reduce their intensity? I'd like them to be more intensive instead, for example (because they are just too good, I just like to watch the sky while traveling and do nothing). Hope you'll make two versions

Btw, very intensive nebulae in such sectors like Aldrin or Akeela's Beacon would be very nice/lore friendly. More nebulae, MOREEEE

P.S. Still no plans to implement terraforming missions in the mod?

P.P.S. Explored Argon Prime a little more, some shw's are on the place, I'm relieved some leading to some very nice dark gas clouds with ship's debris, just awesome...really love these places with lightnings.

[Realspace]

Superhighways are not bugged at all. I removed some bc of variety and not liking the sector cut in two or three. I wanted to implement a real big space that you can populate with things inbetween while connections can reach different parts inside the same sector.

Problem is, I am seeing now, terran accelerators are bugged! That's probably why ego did not use them. L and XL ships don't use them

This is a real problem, I have added many and more in my actual xrsge (next update). I am experimenting now the use of superhighways inside the same sector without cutting it in two, but have not big hopes..

Edit: well this is funny, SUPERhighways inside the same sector (not cut in 2 subsectors)... work!
This changes everything

[ziplock815]

Yeah, I've found the issue too that L/XL don't use sector accelerators, but didn't report because I try to play with 7.0 beta
So the issue with SHWs occurs only when cutting sector in two? So you've finally found the solution?

[Realspace]

There is no issue with SHW. The terran accelerators are what is bugged.
About the SHW, what was never tried by anyone, is having a superhighway connecting two points inside the SAME sector. When there is a superhighway, you see the sector is split into 2 or 3 (sub)sectors. You remember the old xrsge had many. And that is how vanilla or any mod works, sector is cut.
So this is revolutionary, I can use superhighways to connect as many points inside a SINGLE sector. One could have the entire solar system in one single sector and fly from planet to planet using superhighways. And the space inbetween is real space you could cross (well it'd take months).
Of course I won't do that, we don't need such an hardcore simulation. I will (am doing) simply change the actual sector accelerators (aka the terran accel model) with superhighways. So for instance flying from Argon Prime to its close moon, as you can already do now using the sector accelerator, will happens through a superhighway inside the same sector. With animation and all.

To say otherwise, Rebirth style system with multiple superhighways inside a sector(system) can be done. One sector is one system.

[ziplock815]

Sounds way too cool to be true
So, hypothetically we could have a whole system inside one big sector. It'd feel like a really good mix of X4, X3 and X-Rebirth.