[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Silencer_2021]

3.21b released to fix Quickstart not properly completing the Ascension mission. You don't have to restart, the fix works on current savegames.

Thanks! I install it and will check in near future when buy sector condition will be allowed.
Checked it works as expected.

[Metallumere]

Mayhem Galaxy Map Editor

Yoooo, this is awesome, exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see to make some fun galaxy configurations!
Thank you!

Seems you might have set it to look for a directory that doesn't exist though:

Code: Select all

Unhandled exception: Could not find a part of the path "D:\Docs\Egosoft\X3AP"

Might want to add a config file that can have the game's directory specified? Or just have it assume the folder outside the executable should be the game's install?

Any plans to add more features to this?
Like, say, being able to swap sectors with empty grid space, or delete sectors entirely. Adding new sectors probably isn't easy(or even possible?), and deleting or swapping them with empty space might cause some funny problems to happen, but it'd be truly awesome.
I guess the issue with swapping a sector into empty space is that gates would need to be added, removed, and relinked. Probably not too difficult of a process with some positioning guess-work, but maybe more trouble than it'd be worth.
Another suggestion would be editable sector entries, things like; drop-down menus to change selected-sector outpost production and consumption, a checkbox for terran memory, and entries to change the numeric values like research rate and max population and such.
If you wanted to go even further; a drop-down menu to rename sectors would be snazzy, it's a bit more work getting a sector renamed though. I've done it exactly once and never want to do it again.

[Hairless-Ape]

Just curious if this was intended. Looking at the M8's for each race, there seems to be a huge disparity between the missile sizes allowed. For example, Split and Argon M8's are both limited to LIGHT missiles only, while Paranid can use Heavies.. Teladi and Boron M8's show MEDIUM missiles.
Why such a huge difference? I would think the M8 class vessel would be at least capable of Medium missiles.


Also, can someone point me to (or explain) how one capitalizes from the new Perk for space weed? How do you go about finding clients to buy this? Sorry.. weak part of my game for sure but it's hard ferreting out the info from the forum. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

[Silencer_2021]

I have a question, so I try to invade boron sector with my fleet, sometime I see inconming messages that I was billed by 1 mil.credits because I attack asset and this is against terracorp law, can somebody explain what the rules about that?
And one more question, how can I export / import my outposts presets (or at least look into jobs content) to use them in the another game?

[Hector0x]

I have a question, so I try to invade boron sector with my fleet, sometime I see inconming messages that I was billed by 1 mil.credits because I attack asset and this is against terracorp law, can somebody explain what the rules about that?
And one more question, how can I export / import my outposts presets (or at least look into jobs content) to use them in the another game?

1) think of the Mayhem galaxy like the Hunger games. Argon, Boron, Split and you, etc. are all just tributes, Terracorp is the Capitol, the game master.
They want to prevent that 1 faction can win the game too quickly. So after each sector got conquered they just say that its illegal for everyone to try and conquer it back. You can see this protectorate status in the sector list of the ministry of war. It will expire after a few hours.

2) don't think this is possible

[iHaku]

Is there a way to make the "move to position" and "move to coordinates" navigational commands actually move to those specific locations, instead of stopping a few km short of it (especially the later)? it's really annoying, especially with move to coordinates, when i'm distributing satelites for example. i like having them at specific locations in a sector but ships never seem to want to go to the position i specifically tell them to fly to.

[temetvince]

Alaankwa uplifted to work with Mayhem 3.21b. Note: This drops support for M3:R and SWM3, which now require an old version specified in the Readme.
viewtopic.php?f=94&t=441824

[temetvince]

Is there a way to make the "move to position" and "move to coordinates" navigational commands actually move to those specific locations, instead of stopping a few km short of it (especially the later)? it's really annoying, especially with move to coordinates, when i'm distributing satelites for example. i like having them at specific locations in a sector but ships never seem to want to go to the position i specifically tell them to fly to.

Precision is hard coded into the move scripts. This helps with collisions. In your case we know that you're putting a sat somewhere in empty space, but what if you told your ship to move to a position occupied by a factory or another ship? Allowing the commands to be imprecise is part of the solution to this issue.

[SheepleShooter]

I'm new to Mayhem 3 and still on the learning curve but post the steepest part (I think). It's been fantastic. I've come across two issues . Not sure if the first is intentional.

1. I had one of my sectors attached by Xenon and rather than have them destroy the one station in the sector, I recycled it before they destroyed it. What I thought was strange was that afterwards the sector didn't show up as abandoned. It still showed as mine even though it didn't have any stations in it. I don't know if there is some kind of timer and it would have shown as abandoned had I not rebuilt in the sector later on.

2. Fleet control: hiding followers from the property menu. It seems if a hidden follower is selected as the new fleet commander, they will remain hidden from property menu even after 'show all followers' is selected - you have to remove them as a leader first (so they become a follower again), change the setting to show followers, re-appoint them as a leader, and then reselect hide followers if desired - the hide/show followers toggle has no impact on the leader even if he is being hidden from when the setting was applied whilst a follower.

If I was to offer a suggestion it would be to add a 'Fleet' tab to the property menu - like we have a 'Wing' tab now or (possibly better as there are already some commands in that menu) add the ability to access the command menu for a leader in the Fleet Settings menu.

I recall reading in this thread for an earlier version of the mod of a 'monitor sectors' command that would get a mobile fleet to jump into monitored sectors if enemies were detected. This sounds like a great option for monitoring dispersed sectors (incl jump beacon protection) especially if the fleet can be docked whilst monitoring. I haven't been able to find the setting. Has it been scrapped? Given that tugs, agents, and traders scan for external activity when docked I think it would be appropriate to have a similar mechanic for combat though even a fleet that jumps around and does a mini patrol close to the beacon in case they need to jump away quickly would be nice too.

Another great feature I think would be for us to be able to direct explorer's to drop satellites at particular coordinates - I like to place them at altitudes where they don't/less likely to get destroyed by hostiles - currently that is a lot of manual work! Funnily enough (and I didn't realize this was possible) I had a satellite show up as destroyed by 'PLANET'! It was only 146km above the baseline haha

Thanks for all your awesome work on this mod!!!

[Betelgeuse97]

I'm new to Mayhem 3 and still on the learning curve but post the steepest part (I think). It's been fantastic. I've come across two issues . Not sure if the first is intentional.

1. I had one of my sectors attached by Xenon and rather than have them destroy the one station in the sector, I recycled it before they destroyed it. What I thought was strange was that afterwards the sector didn't show up as abandoned. It still showed as mine even though it didn't have any stations in it. I don't know if there is some kind of timer and it would have shown as abandoned had I not rebuilt in the sector later on.

2. Fleet control: hiding followers from the property menu. It seems if a hidden follower is selected as the new fleet commander, they will remain hidden from property menu even after 'show all followers' is selected - you have to remove them as a leader first (so they become a follower again), change the setting to show followers, re-appoint them as a leader, and then reselect hide followers if desired - the hide/show followers toggle has no impact on the leader even if he is being hidden from when the setting was applied whilst a follower.

If I was to offer a suggestion it would be to add a 'Fleet' tab to the property menu - like we have a 'Wing' tab now or (possibly better as there are already some commands in that menu) add the ability to access the command menu for a leader in the Fleet Settings menu.

I recall reading in this thread for an earlier version of the mod of a 'monitor sectors' command that would get a mobile fleet to jump into monitored sectors if enemies were detected. This sounds like a great option for monitoring dispersed sectors (incl jump beacon protection) especially if the fleet can be docked whilst monitoring. I haven't been able to find the setting. Has it been scrapped? Given that tugs, agents, and traders scan for external activity when docked I think it would be appropriate to have a similar mechanic for combat though even a fleet that jumps around and does a mini patrol close to the beacon in case they need to jump away quickly would be nice too.

Another great feature I think would be for us to be able to direct explorer's to drop satellites at particular coordinates - I like to place them at altitudes where they don't/less likely to get destroyed by hostiles - currently that is a lot of manual work! Funnily enough (and I didn't realize this was possible) I had a satellite show up as destroyed by 'PLANET'! It was only 146km above the baseline haha

Thanks for all your awesome work on this mod!!!

1. Strange; looks like an exploit. But because your only station in that sector was technically not destroyed by the AI, you don't lose ownership of your sector.

2. Sector monitoring for fleets is already in the game, and it's been updated so that docked fleets respond to threats in monitored sectors.

3. One of the key things of Mayhem 3 is that all the scripts are built for the AI in mind without specialty for the player. This means that the AI and player use the same features; in that case, it wouldn't change anything since the AI would place satellites far away. Since the AI and YOUR ships would do the same thing, your satellites will still get found and destroyed by NPCs that can see your satellites.

Satellites grant vision within a 150km radius, so AI that have satellites can see your satellites even if you place then at high altitudes.

[Hairless-Ape]

1. Strange; looks like an exploit. But because your only station in that sector was technically not destroyed by the AI, you don't lose ownership of your sector.
2. Sector monitoring for fleets is already in the game, and it's been updated so that docked fleets respond to threats in monitored sectors.
3. One of the key things of Mayhem 3 is that all the scripts are built for the AI in mind without specialty for the player. This means that the AI and player use the same features; in that case, it wouldn't change anything since the AI would place satellites far away. Since the AI and YOUR ships would do the same thing, your satellites will still get found and destroyed by NPCs that can see your satellites.
Satellites grant vision within a 150km radius, so AI that have satellites can see your satellites even if you place then at high altitudes.

1. Definitely a bug. Doubt it's worth fixing even though it's probably an easy fix.
2. First, you MUST go into the Fleet Management screen for the fleet you wish to respond, and you must add each monitored sector to the patrol list there, or else they will not patrol that sector or automatically respond there.
Once you do however, that fleet automatically moves to that sector when an enemy appears and then engages it. Unfortunately they are too stupid to dock back up when they are done if they were docked to start with, which is annoying.
3. Not technically true. The script that places satellites has separate code for A.I. placed satellites and player owned explorers placing satellites. You can easily change the code in one and not the other. I am annoyed also at satellite placement and may change it in my own code.

Regarding Hiding Followers, definitely another bug and one worth fixing imo. Once the old fleet leader dies, if that ship was Visible on the overview then the new follower should be as well and unfortunately this is not tracked or done, making it a pain to direct your fleet once the leader dies.

I've not heard from Joubarbe in quite some time, and if you look at his last 3 or 4 releases, it's been nearly entirely a massive swath of Nerfs and pointless wasted changes to balance rather than adding new features, so I'm hoping he will get active again and add some of the many things back into the game that he's slowly removed. (or at least smak me down in this thread). There are some really cool things in Mayhem 2, and later in 3 that were completely disabled and many more that were nerfed to the point where they have no use now. These were creative and inspired ideas that just need a little love.. oh, and as always, Mayhem 3 needs a MANUAL or it will continue to be an inspired creation that dies a slow death. Nothing like looking through a thousand posts trying to figure out each and every feature, or being forced to actually look through hundreds of code files to decipher how something works.

[alexalsp]

The game has an encyclopedia.

[Hairless-Ape]

The game has an encyclopedia.

And a dictionary teaches children how to speak.

[arkcheung]

I've not heard from Joubarbe in quite some time, and if you look at his last 3 or 4 releases, it's been nearly entirely a massive swath of Nerfs and pointless wasted changes to balance rather than adding new features, so I'm hoping he will get active again and add some of the many things back into the game that he's slowly removed. (or at least smak me down in this thread). There are some really cool things in Mayhem 2, and later in 3 that were completely disabled and many more that were nerfed to the point where they have no use now. These were creative and inspired ideas that just need a little love.. oh, and as always, Mayhem 3 needs a MANUAL or it will continue to be an inspired creation that dies a slow death. Nothing like looking through a thousand posts trying to figure out each and every feature, or being forced to actually look through hundreds of code files to decipher how something works.

Never tried Mayhem 2, curious to know what are the cool things in M2 and were disabled in M3?

[Hairless-Ape]

Never tried Mayhem 2, curious to know what are the cool things in M2 and were disabled in M3?

OCV came at you in waves and it was more directed at you rather than just being "out there". I thought it was more interesting and fun.
You could build and place fixed Defensive stations like they had in the original albion prelude. That was especially fun, as you could place one near a gate and essentially wall-off an area, or you could accept a combat mission and then simply park your ship behind one of them and watch it decimate the incoming enemies..
Ship weapons weren't so nerfed.. He said it was for performance reasons, but I never had performance issues. Tons of ship balance changes that imo have no benefit in the end to play.
You could do Marine boarding.. Very fun.
Gambling Cassino's. Very fun.
He removed a lot of elements.. such as the push-back effect of certain weapons. Not everyone liked those, but I did. Kha'ak weapons used to penetrate shields.. no longer.
Jump Drives totally removed from the game. I'm sure some like that. I didn't. That was no small nerf to the game. It completely upended things and to my knowledge, no one was complaining before.
Yaki's seem extremely inactive compared to mayhem 2.


The problem is that Mayhem 3 added quite a few new features that are quite nice and especially the dynamic universe creation. So it's nearly impossible to go back to Mayhem 2 and not miss that stuff.
Much of it didn't have to be removed though. I just think the author kept re-thinking what he wanted. From one perspective it's his game and it's free so who can complain with a straight face From another perspective, it is maddening.
Imagine the Mona-lisa being repainted by the artist 10 times over the same canvas while you were forced to watch.

[Hector0x]

There is no denying that Mayhem 2 had a few additional features which got cut for 3. I can understand where you're coming from. In the end its just a game and you could also go back or play something else like improved races mod.

From my POV all the things you mentioned like defense platforms or Boarding are only 'gimmick' features. They can be fun and might often seem special or cool. But they don't really fit into the general concept of the mod or even go against it. Big problem is that only the player can effectively use most of them and they feel disconnected to the core gameplay loop. Its basically minigames.

The ultimate vision for Mayhem has always been this sandbox where the player personally builds his empire on a small scale, so that his actions actually matter. You are not just the fleet commander like in LU, you are the warchief who can make a difference in the frontline or by helping the industry at home. The AI was also supposed to play a bit more like a player and fight for territory.
This is the Mayhem concept in a nutshell. Naturally the mod slowly went more and more into this direction to create a single coherent game experience. Streamlining and cutting that which didn't fit in. Removing or replacing features due to reported bugs or problems. Not everything was perfectly planned and certain things got cut because something didn't work. Best example are the Terrans and their hardcoded relation with the ATF, so they got removed. I think there have been massive improvements with each Mayhem iteration.

Mayhem 1 only had the 1st basic version of the turf war but without any more content which was tailored for the new game environment.
Mayhem 2 covered this part and added every vanilla X feature in existence in some altered form to get lots of gameplay content. By doing that, here and there it strayed a bit away from the base concept in my opinion. When i read about tactics which are basically exploits like the defense platforms in front of gates i don't get where the fun is with these. Sure its necessary because of the OCV that only attacks the player. But the idea was that player and NPC are not much different, no?

Mayhem 3 mostly wanted to get rid of the jumpdrive and add NPC ship building with real resources.
To me the removal of the jumpdrive is a feature. Suddenly you have undefended sectors where the enemy also cannot bring forces in quickly. So concepts like 'attack' or 'defense' got a real meaning for the very first time. You cannot jump everything around so you need multiple fleets.
Additionally all these little stories unfold, when you just hop in a freighter and personally buy a load of Ore to finish building an important factory, evading pirates on the way home. Unlike LU, here your personal actions actually matter because that one load of Ore actually gets a lot of things done and matters a lot for your further progress. In any other mod it would just be another load of Ore that you don't even need because you buy stations with credits. So everyone can play his favourite gimmick features to grind credits and that gets called empire building.

But Mayhem has actual hands on empire building. Its one coherent game loop.

[arkcheung]

Never tried Mayhem 2, curious to know what are the cool things in M2 and were disabled in M3?

OCV came at you in waves and it was more directed at you rather than just being "out there". I thought it was more interesting and fun.
You could build and place fixed Defensive stations like they had in the original albion prelude. That was especially fun, as you could place one near a gate and essentially wall-off an area, or you could accept a combat mission and then simply park your ship behind one of them and watch it decimate the incoming enemies..
Ship weapons weren't so nerfed.. He said it was for performance reasons, but I never had performance issues. Tons of ship balance changes that imo have no benefit in the end to play.
You could do Marine boarding.. Very fun.
Gambling Cassino's. Very fun.
He removed a lot of elements.. such as the push-back effect of certain weapons. Not everyone liked those, but I did. Kha'ak weapons used to penetrate shields.. no longer.
Jump Drives totally removed from the game. I'm sure some like that. I didn't. That was no small nerf to the game. It completely upended things and to my knowledge, no one was complaining before.
Yaki's seem extremely inactive compared to mayhem 2.


The problem is that Mayhem 3 added quite a few new features that are quite nice and especially the dynamic universe creation. So it's nearly impossible to go back to Mayhem 2 and not miss that stuff.
Much of it didn't have to be removed though. I just think the author kept re-thinking what he wanted. From one perspective it's his game and it's free so who can complain with a straight face From another perspective, it is maddening.
Imagine the Mona-lisa being repainted by the artist 10 times over the same canvas while you were forced to watch.

Surprised to know M2 sounds more interesting than M3. And I have the same feeling with M3. I think M3 has great potential espeically with the random universe generation but after a few games I found it doesn't give me too much desire to replay it any more because of below reasons:

1. There is not too much challenge and special events for late game. Once you have a fleet led by 2~3 M2 ships you can beat anyone in the game. While the AI recovers really slow once they lost their starting fleet which makes the game even easier.
2. Most of the time you will just only research and build the same ships for every game since you have access to all the faction's technology right from the start of the game. It just feels not right to be able to research the Xenon and Pirate ships right in the start.
3. It's too easy to build the capital ships in big numbers with the dry dock perk. This is also one of the reason which makes the game not too much challenge.
4. The space economy and station is all simplified which is all about ship production or researches. I kinda still likes the commodity and space station varieties in vanilla game.
5. There isn't much diplomacy gameplay but there was nothing in vanilla so can't complain too much about it. The AI faction just starts war and ends war without obvious reasons.
6. Almost every outpost is the same except the perk selections. I won't mind if all the outpost has the same amount of worker slots but it would be ideal if the worker slots can be adjusted in different quantities. I should not complain that in current game every space has either ore or silicon to mine but it's just not realistic which makes the random universe not really random. I would like to see some of the poor space with more strategy value than economic value.
7. The empire management is too simple and easy without any risk of losing territory in the late game. Anyone who plays a grand strategy sandbox game would miss the stability, civil war, dynamic diplomacy relations, etc. in the Paradox games. I know it's only a dream but it's a good dream.
8. It seems the author is focusing on the balance but to me there is no real balance in any game even those best RTS games like SC. I prefer to have some imbalance things with some limitations or ristrictions.

It's a long list but it's because I realy love the atmosphere of X3 and got so excited when I played the Mayhem 3 the first time. Thanks to Joubarbe for making this excellent mod and I hope to see more new features to be added to Mayhem and maybe more modders to join so we can see this beautiful baby growing up.

[Hairless-Ape]

1. There is not too much challenge and special events for late game. Once you have a fleet led by 2~3 M2 ships you can beat anyone in the game. While the AI recovers really slow once they lost their starting fleet which makes the game even easier.
**I certainly couldn't beat anyone with 2-3 M2's. But I completely agree about the AI recovery/growth being silly slow. With all those systems and stations you'd think the A.I. would be vastly better. The A.I. is really stupid when you watch it closely, running streams of haulers through Xenon space etc..
2. Most of the time you will just only research and build the same ships for every game since you have access to all the faction's technology right from the start of the game. It just feels not right to be able to research the Xenon and Pirate ships right in the start.
**I agree
3. It's too easy to build the capital ships in big numbers with the dry dock perk. This is also one of the reason which makes the game not too much challenge.
**I completely agree. The dry dock is overpowered. Recurring maintenance costs for ships should be higher even with it. Easily changed in code though.
4. The space economy and station is all simplified which is all about ship production or researches. I kinda still likes the commodity and space station varieties in vanilla game.
**Once again, I totally agree. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to build a wheat farm and space weed station and sell weed to my friends. Useless nerf.
5. There isn't much diplomacy gameplay but there was nothing in vanilla so can't complain too much about it. The AI faction just starts war and ends war without obvious reasons.
**You hit at the heart of things here for me. While the favor system is an attempt at diplomacy, it's completely static in nature. The A.I. needs a PERSONALITY.. and it needs to act according to it. This would be the most extreme challenge for a developer, but ultimately the thing that gives it the most character and fun.
6. Almost every outpost is the same except the perk selections. I won't mind if all the outpost has the same amount of worker slots but it would be ideal if the worker slots can be adjusted in different quantities. I should not complain that in current game every space has either ore or silicon to mine but it's just not realistic which makes the random universe not really random. I would like to see some of the poor space with more strategy value than economic value.
**OMG what an awesome concept. It sounds so realistic.
7. The empire management is too simple and easy without any risk of losing territory in the late game. Anyone who plays a grand strategy sandbox game would miss the stability, civil war, dynamic diplomacy relations, etc. in the Paradox games. I know it's only a dream but it's a good dream.
8. It seems the author is focusing on the balance but to me there is no real balance in any game even those best RTS games like SC. I prefer to have some imbalance things with some limitations or ristrictions.
**Yes totally. Balance for one player is different for another. It is dependent on how you play, and isn't helping the game to keep tweeking it when there are so many other things that would spice up the game play.

[Hector0x]

I have something in the pipe that might be right up your alley. It covers pretty much half of your criticisms, including the AI brains and personality. Its been 3 long months of intense development and i'm closing in on the finish line. It will be next level sh*t and should be no more than a few weeks away. Stay tuned. This mod is definitely not dead yet.

[Ysengrin]

Well, that's a teaser !
Will we have to start a new game for this upcoming rebalance mod, Hector0x ?