[SCRIPT] Advanced Jumpdrive V1.50 : Updated 11/03/2007

[Jaga_Telesin]

Cycrow,

Any chance of slightly modifying this script to provide an "advanced jumpdrive hotkey" for those of us that don't use the nav menu every time we jump? I am really used to using shift-j to invoke my jumpdrive, but can't use that at all with an advanced version due to it not having a hotkey. You could easily have the hotkey routine check for the existence of targeting scanners, and then use the proper interface for either jumping to a sector or to a point.

[Buck_Rogers]

Thats just it though Cycrow. I DO have the EMP installed. It was the very 1st script I put into the PM.

[Cycrow]

Cycrow,

Any chance of slightly modifying this script to provide an "advanced jumpdrive hotkey" for those of us that don't use the nav menu every time we jump? I am really used to using shift-j to invoke my jumpdrive, but can't use that at all with an advanced version due to it not having a hotkey. You could easily have the hotkey routine check for the existence of targeting scanners, and then use the proper interface for either jumping to a sector or to a point.

unfortuatlly its not that easy, hotkeys do not get inputs from the player, so using a hotkey will not be able to get you to select what sector to jump to, making it very hard to actually do.

there are however other hotkeys you can use where you can store a sector then one to jump to the stored sectors.

thats about the best that you can do with the limits in scripts

[DrunkenPirate]

Any way to have the jumpdrive not drain shields? I find it a little silly that you spend all that money on an energy generator or advance jumpdrive just to have it steal power from your shields...

[Jakesnake5]

If you don't have the E-cells in the cargo bay, how else is it to be powered? It'd take to long for your ships generator to create the necessary energy, for the spike the JD needs.

[Jaga_Telesin]

If you don't have the E-cells in the cargo bay, how else is it to be powered? It'd take to long for your ships generator to create the necessary energy, for the spike the JD needs.

I think most people expect the Jumpdrive Energy Generator to slowly siphon that needed energy between jumps, and supply it WHEN you need to jump. That means it wouldn't steal shield energy except very slowly after a jump (not all at once), and it would prevent it from being used many times in quick succession.

I'm comfortable personally with how it works now, but some people using it in smaller ships with less shield power might really feel the sting of jumping. I would vote for a slight change in how it works, if it was up for consideration.

[DrunkenPirate]

If you don't have the E-cells in the cargo bay, how else is it to be powered? It'd take to long for your ships generator to create the necessary energy, for the spike the JD needs.

So why bother throwing away several millions on a so called 'energy generator if it's just going to do nothing and sap shield strength then?
You're telling me that a shield generator is supposed to be a better source of energy then a multi-million credit JD specific component?
The generator is supposed to store the energy required for the jump and that's now how I have modded the script on my machine.

[Jakesnake5]

Consider it more of an Energy Converter And Capacitor.

Unfortunaetly, the only ready source of large amounts of energy a ship has is in it's shield.

Besides, if you're using the AJD in something smaller than a M3+, it really is a waste.

[Jaga_Telesin]

I think the problem most people see is not how it charges, but when and how fast. It stays empty the entire time you fly around, and doesn't charge up until *right* when you need to jump. At that point it drains the shields, leaving you with a potential vulnerability. From a mechanical working standpoint, it is a poor device design. I won't complain because I never use mine on a ship smaller than a M6, and those can handle the drain no problem.

However, if you were going to make it advantageous for all ships, and well worth the multi-million credits for the energy generator, you would make it charge the "capacitor" after the jump, and very slowly (so you couldn't use it more than once in every 2-3 minute period for example). That means you would almost never have a shield drain that could hurt you at a bad moment, and so you also have a "cap" on using it over and over in quick succession - basically you wouldn't.

But, just suggestions on it. I'm merely commenting on other people's complaints that the energy generator is too expensive for being what it really is - a "shunt" which steals shield energy all at once, and not a generator at all.

[Cycrow]

having a capacitor would be a good idea.

the original idea of the shield drain is simply to prevent it from being too over powered. As i dont believe a simple increase in price is good enough to balance something potentional powerful.

but making it charge up means it wont be able to used over and over, so its a good enough to balance the device.

althou im not sure if i will get chance to make any changes.

im sure once TC comes around i will make most of my scripts for that too, like i did from X2 to X3. So i could redesign it then.

[dmbassa]

I would like to have a small Wingman escort for each of my Caiman Super Freighters that works as UT's.

Can I place Advanced Jumpdrives in the Wingmen's crafts so that they can jump with the Freighters?

They don't stock up on Energy Cells themselves like the Freighters do, so I was hoping that this script would help.


Cheers,
dmbassa

[Supergrover1969]

Hey Cycrow,

First of.. let me just say how much I appreciate your sterling, and ongoing work in your mods.. and support of them.. you are on of a rare breed, let me tell ya!

Just out of curiousity I'll mention a little glitch Ive been having so far with the Advanced jump drive in my Nova M3. By way of background I have just about ALL your mods listed in http://www.xpluginmanager.co.uk installed, and they really have made the game fresh and new to me . I have upgraded the speed using the BBS mechanic about 4 times, and the handling a couple of times.. speed in the nova is now 305

I have searched through this thread to see if anyone else has been having this problem.. havent seen it.. but its 25 pages long .. so I apologise if I missed it along the way

My problem is this, with the Advanced Jumpdrive installed, My first energy free jump took me too Argon Prime, got an audio warning "your shields are down", and couldnt jump again... when I looked.. the 9million dollar jumpdrive was gone-ski!.. I thought, well, this is a balance tool to make it not too overpowered.. and I tried to jump too far.. so it penalised my greed, and the finicky Adv. Jump drive melted into slag ... OK.. I can see that.

However.. when playing with it a bit more.. and taking smaller, more reasonable jumps (about 10 to 15 gates long), I found that any time I had energy cells in my freight bay before the jump.. the Adv. Jump drive would disappear after the jump. If it matters, I did still have my original jump drive installed.

Apologies for the long windedness... my question is this.. I understand about the need to feed the Adv. Jump drive with shield energy, so as not to make it overpowered.. fair enough.. but is the other problem with the energy cells causing the Adv. Jump drive to dissapear from your cargo bay a known bug.. unknown bug.. or a game balence design?

Heh heh.. Im going to keep using it anyway, as I played the game for like, 15 hours straight to get my race rep with the Argon up enough to by it ... I'm just being super cautious at the moment, checking the Adv. Jump drive is still there after every new action, if I understood a bit better what was going on.. and what was causing the vanishing act.. I could relax a bit more

Keep up the sterling work man... like so many others here.. I really appreciate your efforts making a great game... as close to perfect as Ive ever seen!

Cleveland.

[Cycrow]

is anything else missing, or just the advanced jumpdrive ?

you see, to make the ship jump, you need to have both the jumpdrive and energy cells, this is hardcoded into the engine.

the advanced jumpdrive fixes this by automatically adding the jumpdrive and energy cells to allow the jump and then remove them after.

however, if you ships cargo is full or theres not enough room for the energy cells. It will also empty the cargo bay to fill it with energy cells.
then returns them back to the ship when the jump is made.

it is possible the advanced jumpdrive was removed for this reason and for some reason it wasn't returned.

its not a problem i've really heard of before, and cant think what else might be caused it

[Supergrover1969]

Thanks for replying so quickly, Cycrow,

After tinkering with it some more... it seems to be related more to the amount that was in the cargo bay just prior to engauging the jump, if I have it mostly filled with anything, not just energy cells, after the jump, everything EXCEPT the Adv. Jump drive has been replaced. With the Nova, as you know, the freight bay is only, I think, around 238 in size. Everytime Ive jumped with a full cargo bay 238/238, I have suffered the loss of the Adv. Jump drive after the jump, when I jump with maybe 10 empty "spaces" in the cargo bay, it seems to work out all right. So far I have not had this problem when using the Adv. Jump Drive in my freight Demeter, which again, may point to the Demeter having more cargo space, and therefore, not an issue.

It isnt a game killing bug, by any means, as if I am careful, and not too fully loaded I can complete the jump with the drive intact. From a roleplaying aspect, I can equate this to having a very advanced and expensive but fussy piece of technology installed in the ship, which can't be taken for granted, and will blow up on you if you dont treat it with the respect it deserves

I thought Id bring it up in here as Ive been reading your posts, and the responses from various community members, and you strike me as someone who is very hands on with his projects, and likes to be informed if they are not behaving as expected. Ive been playing games for many years now, Cycrow, and you are one of the best Modders it has been my pleasure to come across. You have really helped to make a good game, into a GREAT game. Well done.

[Tritous]

I'm having a minor bug atm. It seems that after every jump the advanced JD auto option in the extra commands slot seems to be disactivated. This doesnt seem to affect other ships i have with this option in use

[Tritous]

a slightly more awkward bug: When using the advanced jumpdrive with a TL that is very full it seems to bug the cargo. The drop station command gets lost and the ship cannot use other scripts to aid dropping stations either. It's like it has forgotten that it's cargo is actually full of stations.

I have XTM so i have some considerably long jumps. It happened consistantly with my mammoth packed to the brim with i think 14 complex construction kits. If I jumped from argon prime to oort cloud (580 ecells i think) then it would break. If i broke it into two halfway jumps it was totally fine.

[adach00]

I had a strange experience in using the advanced jumpdrive.
The shield energy is sometimes gone.
More exactly saying, first the shield energy is full, then the adv. jumpdrive is activated, thus a certain amount of the shield enery is drained.
This is normal behavior.
But just after the shield energy is drained, the energy is fully disappeared.
I could see the drained energy for a moment, less than 1 second, then go to zero while the countdown continues.
I looked the scripts.
I found a sort of a timer in the file of "plugin.advjump.shields.xml" at the line number 11.

Code: Select all

011 @  = wait 100 ms

I increased the value to 200 ms.

Code: Select all

011 @  = wait 200 ms

This seems to work fine.

[draffutt]

cycrow,

when you are able to get a chance if you take a look at the fix files i had sent awhile ago it should fix several of these issues as well as update it to bala gi

[Tritous]

there is also a command slot clash with XTM : the auto jump command slot (1237 I think offhand)

incidently you also have a command slot clash with the bounty hunter's claim bounty command (something like 1224)

[drakend]

there is also a command slot clash with XTM : the auto jump command slot (1237 I think offhand)

incidently you also have a command slot clash with the bounty hunter's claim bounty command (something like 1224)

I have the exact same problem. Can this be solved? The auto jumpdrive is crucial for many nice usages...

As an aside: I think the script is still quite unbalanced. It should cost MUCH more, something like 100 milion credits and it should cost 500 credits for each sector passed with the jump plus 1000 for its initialization. This device should be thought for very RICH people (who have >= 2 billions credits).