[SCRIPT] Board Station v1.05 :: updated 26-06-2009

The place to discuss scripting and game modifications for X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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Alan Phipps
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Post by Alan Phipps » Fri, 19. Jun 09, 20:57

OK xiriod, thanks for checking and that's a relief I think!

It is a change from X3R where once you had control of such a station you could 'adjust station parameters' with docked ships - transferring tunings and extensions both in and out of stock. Typically they held up to a couple of thousand tunings which, other than cargobay increase, could be indefinitely overtuned on docked ships. Also they held 10-30 of each stocked ship extension, which were similarly transferrable in and out. That availability, to my mind, would have broken the game balance (and did in X3R IMO).

If you can only sell single stock items for cash and only restock one at a time, then that's probably OK. (So both extensions and tunings can be restocked - and how does cash work when the station is player owned?) Still, all is now well. Good luck with this mod.

uberex
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Post by uberex » Fri, 19. Jun 09, 22:27

Actually, Alan Phipps is correct. I have just tried it on clean 2.1 install with just Board Station and Cheats Collection in a fresh game and was able to transfer 1000 engine tunings from freshly captured EQ dock to my ship.

As for other upgrades, it only had 1 of each, which is OK. I think AI keeps upgrades stocked to amount of upgrades that can be sold in one transaction, and since you cannot have more than one Docking Computer, for example, they only keep one in permanent stock. As a nice effect, I was able to transfer my equipment (Fight Software MK1) to the EQ stock, which I think is a great option, as before I had to keep some of capped ships just because it had a jumpdrive installed, which I could use later on. Now I can just dump jumpdrive in EQ stock and sell the ship. 8)

New version (which I will post soon) radically fixes the tunings problem (removes them from available products) along with another bug I have discovered.

Thank you both for weeding this one out :D
xiriod wrote: The odd thing though, if you have a trader going he might sell some of his upgrades to the EQ dock. And you don't want that to happen. It happened to me when I took control over the Hub in the story mission. My trader sold his jumpdrive and chugged along without it until I found out.

Might as well script in to remove upgrades for that reason alone
If the trading script checks everything in the cargo bay that can be sold that could pose a problem. In "vanilla" upgrades cannot be sold back, thus always stay with the ship. But, damn, it is also so nice to be able to stock up on jumpdrives and transporter devices for future fleet.

draffutt
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Post by draffutt » Sat, 20. Jun 09, 05:13

you think at some point in development you'd be able to give this "ability" to npc's? this would encourage players to protect their own assets. :D
None of us is as smart as all of us. ~Ken Blanchard

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Alan Phipps
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Post by Alan Phipps » Sat, 20. Jun 09, 13:34

@ uberex: I'm glad I recalled this tunings issue correctly. The other thing is that though they only show a stock of one of each extension on capture, you used to be able in X3R to transfer up to 20 odd of each type into the station through 'adjust parameters' and several donor hulks. You could even increase the number of tunings held above the stock 1000 that way, but you are sorting that issue I gather.

So you might have your wish to store and fit player extensions after all. One word of caution though, anything adjusted into stock that the station did not trade in before it was captured, including both wares and extensions, will rapidly reduce over time as they do in NPC stations. So you may be able to drop 5 jumpdrives into a capped Equipment Dock (which doesn't normally stock them) only to come back later to find none left.

xiriod
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Post by xiriod » Sat, 20. Jun 09, 14:13

This script is so excellent, I can't praise it enough :) When I can, with this or another script, capture OWPs the circle is complete for me :D

uberex
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Post by uberex » Sat, 20. Jun 09, 16:33

draffutt wrote:you think at some point in development you'd be able to give this "ability" to npc's? this would encourage players to protect their own assets. :D
Sounds definitely intriguing, but that would be a job for an AL plugin. A task, which I'm not ready to take on yet :P
Alan Phipps wrote:So you might have your wish to store and fit player extensions after all. One word of caution though, anything adjusted into stock that the station did not trade in before it was captured, including both wares and extensions, will rapidly reduce over time as they do in NPC stations.
I sure hope that won't be the case. Maybe NPCs buy them out? :sceptic: I'll set my EQ to "not to trade with other races" and time will tell. Thanks for heads up, though :)
xiriod wrote:This script is so excellent, I can't praise it enough :) When I can, with this or another script, capture OWPs the circle is complete for me :D
Orbital Weapons Platforms are on my to do list. However, I have to emulate space-walk drill as close as possible. To get your marines to reach hull safely under fire is a challenge on its own :pirat:

Alan Phipps
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Post by Alan Phipps » Sat, 20. Jun 09, 16:40

No it's not NPC buying, the reduction over time is coded into stations to get rid of wares etc that they don't normally trade in. Like when you sell weapons to a dock even though you can't buy them there - they just disappear. Unfortunately they apply this to everything that they don't normally sell, albeit a bit more slowly for extensions.

uberex
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Post by uberex » Sat, 20. Jun 09, 18:23

Hmmm, I see. I'll do some testing on this topic, as it would be highly undesirable for the loot to disappear on its own.

xiriod
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Post by xiriod » Sun, 21. Jun 09, 21:20

uberex wrote:Hmmm, I see. I'll do some testing on this topic, as it would be highly undesirable for the loot to disappear on its own.

Seriously, let this be a boarding script and leave it at that. Let upgrades and tunings be removed from EQD's.

For upgrades and tunings and such, refer to the Player Workshop script which is excellent for this matter. Word to the wise ;)

Also, I am not sure if it is possible to have the fighting sounds and such enabled but it does add to atmosphere if it can be done.

And, if I undock while attacking the station it never ends. I wanted to do that to SETA, as it takes quite a while to go through 5 levels.... ;)
Last edited by xiriod on Sun, 21. Jun 09, 21:48, edited 1 time in total.

amirite
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Post by amirite » Sun, 21. Jun 09, 21:47

I'd aggree with that line of thinking as well. As nice as it would be to have tunings act like normal wares, that goal is a mod in and of itself. Plus as was just mentioned, someone already kind of re-invented that system in the form of Player Workshops so it's not really your problem to address.

I'm almost positive that normal wares won't shrink overtime, as long as it's a player-owned station.

I love the features you have planned, it's exactly the station boarding command that I have been wishing for for a while. Godspeed! And hurry the **** up! ;)
-TEVE

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Post by jlehtone » Sun, 21. Jun 09, 21:53

amirite wrote:I love the features you have planned, it's exactly the station boarding command that I have been wishing for for a while. Godspeed! And hurry the **** up! ;)
"for a while", considering that Nividium's Capture Stations has been on the [url=http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=216690]TC Download Library[/url] since February. :gruebel:

xiriod
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Post by xiriod » Sun, 21. Jun 09, 21:54

I've assaulted 3 different stations now, 4-5 time each with reloads and I always get 'its a new encryption algorithm' at the hacking stage and then I am released from the station.

My marines are 5 star in hacking and mechanical, and 4 star in engineering. It can't get much better than that, for hacking at least. How is this calculated really? :)

And the stations doesn't take any damage from boarding, unless it is added after. But I can't board any with my 5 star marines so I do not know ;)


@jhletone

That script was a bit too random for me, and too easy to capture. So far no capture with this script, but I like it harder though ;)

uberex
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Post by uberex » Sun, 21. Jun 09, 22:50

xiriod wrote:Also, I am not sure if it is possible to have the fighting sounds and such enabled but it does add to atmosphere if it can be done.
That is so going on my To Do list!
xiriod wrote:And, if I undock while attacking the station it never ends. I wanted to do that to SETA, as it takes quite a while to go through 5 levels.... ;)
I have not tried to capture station while flying the TP myself. I preferred to fly an M3 or M4 to distract local patrols from TP as usualy I hunt in hostile territories :pirat: . So, I will have to try piloting a transporter myself with un-docking on SETA.
xiriod wrote:I've assaulted 3 different stations now, 4-5 time each with reloads and I always get 'its a new encryption algorithm' at the hacking stage and then I am released from the station.

My marines are 5 star in hacking and mechanical, and 4 star in engineering. It can't get much better than that, for hacking at least. How is this calculated really? :)
Spoiler
Show
The Hacking difficulty threshold at the moment is at 85 + half of "Lucky Hack" bonus. Your marines have a chance of "Lucky Hack" which will temporarily add anywhere from 0 to 10 points to their Hacking skill rating. Thus, a fresh 5 Hacking stars marine (85 hacking rating) will have a 50% chance of success. If you train your marine further in Hacking to rating of 90, which will still show as 5 stars on the chart, then he will have a 100% success rating.
This all granted if your hacker survives combat phase. Because, once team reaches computer core, the hackers get re-queried out of remaining troops. And now, the top 2 survivor hackers will attempt to crack the core. If you are using multi-national troopers (mix of all 5 races) you will hear voices change to the race of who is actually performing the hack.
xiriod wrote:And the stations doesn't take any damage from boarding, unless it is added after. But I can't board any with my 5 star marines so I do not know ;)
The station hull does not take damage as it is not possible to repair the station hull without additional scripts. Instead, throw a bunch of uneducated (Engineering-wise) marines at the station and watch it's stock gradually being destroyed during combat phase, not after. It is calculated and applied as it happens.

xiriod
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Post by xiriod » Sun, 21. Jun 09, 23:08

uberex wrote:The station hull does not take damage as it is not possible to repair the station hull without additional scripts. Instead, throw a bunch of uneducated (Engineering-wise) marines at the station and watch it's stock gradually being destroyed during combat phase, not after. It is calculated and applied as it happens.
Actually this makes more sense than damaging the hull itself :) Also what you describe in the spoiler tag makes perfect sense, as this really give you an edge it should be hard to get to too. Brilliant! :)

uberex
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Post by uberex » Mon, 22. Jun 09, 07:11

Version 1.03 is up!
Alan Phipps wrote:No it's not NPC buying, the reduction over time is coded into stations to get rid of wares etc that they don't normally trade in. Like when you sell weapons to a dock even though you can't buy them there - they just disappear. Unfortunately they apply this to everything that they don't normally sell, albeit a bit more slowly for extensions.
I've tested this theory in-game and I could not transfer upgrades that the station did not have a shelf for. Also, monitored captured EQ dock on SETA for awhile and no changes to the stock numbers. For now, this issue is considered solved. 8)
amirite wrote:I'm almost positive that normal wares won't shrink overtime, as long as it's a player-owned station.

I love the features you have planned, it's exactly the station boarding command that I have been wishing for for a while. Godspeed! And hurry the **** up! ;)
I came to the same conclusion and welcome :)
xiriod wrote:And, if I undock while attacking the station it never ends. I wanted to do that to SETA, as it takes quite a while to go through 5 levels.... ;)
I have tried piloting the TP myself and after docking on auto-pilot my script is terminated for reasons unknown. Most likely due to how PLAYERSHIP is being handled by the game engine, which is a bit out of my reach for now. So, for the time being, station boarding from player-flown ship is disabled, your internal computer will notify you of it and will ask pilot to switch to remote command mode.

XxNe0xX
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Post by XxNe0xX » Mon, 22. Jun 09, 14:29

I haven't had time to play over the last couple of days and thus haven't had a chance to try this script out so if the following feature is already implemented just ignore me ^^

I'd like to be able to send more than one ship on a boarding mission so that the marines on board would be able to assist each other in combat (not in the hacking stuff as that wouldn't really make any sense). A Force of 50 marines (boarding via 5 different TPs) for example could finish a boarding mission much faster than only 10 and they'd have less casualties (at least on their side hehe).
Do you like secrets?
Try to find some.....
Goner-Secrets Mod

uberex
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Post by uberex » Mon, 22. Jun 09, 16:18

XxNe0xX wrote:I'd like to be able to send more than one ship on a boarding mission so that the marines on board would be able to assist each other in combat (not in the hacking stuff as that wouldn't really make any sense). A Force of 50 marines (boarding via 5 different TPs) for example could finish a boarding mission much faster than only 10 and they'd have less casualties (at least on their side hehe).
That sounds reasonable and seems doable - goes on my To Do list :)

uberex
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Post by uberex » Thu, 25. Jun 09, 05:08

Version 1.04 is out.

Watch out for local patrols if station boarding is your kind of business :pirat:
Sure, bulky military M2s are slow, but once they get to the place of the incidents - fireworks are guaranteed if you do not take action into your own hands.

dmichailcz
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Post by dmichailcz » Thu, 25. Jun 09, 14:55

Hello, really nice mod, thanks a lot...

What about to make your script even larger by adding possibility to board ships/station via transporter device? I was asking about this script and somebody suggested to ask you, because your mod uses 3/4 of code needed even for boarding via transporter device.

I really don't want to babysit all my marines just to lost them in turret fire... What do you think?
I am not very good in english, so please, forgive me...

uberex
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Post by uberex » Thu, 25. Jun 09, 17:06

dmichailcz wrote:What about to make your script even larger by adding possibility to board ships/station via transporter device? I was asking about this script and somebody suggested to ask you, because your mod uses 3/4 of code needed even for boarding via transporter device.
Thank you, but, unfortunately, I do not plan to extend this script beyond boarding Stations and OWPs.

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