[MOD] [TC/AP] X3 Rebalance Mod (XRM) - Total conversion - v1.30d (02.12.13)

[swatti]

Basicly what im asking is: "is it possible to make turreted gun shooting in _less_ then 180 decree angle"
A spinal mount with just a _few_ decrees of "auto-aim / correction" and a turret to bypass AI-stupidity with mains. Also a turret since beams dont work too well as "main" guns.

Why no bounty filtering?
Tracking bounties on friendlies is fairly useless to most ppl. Dont know how much but it might improve performance for some who need it. Personaly im more interested in bounty-list with "bad guys in my books" in it, not every Commonwealth W-platform and flagship in it. Also flying around in friendly space with 70% of ships having $ behind their name is kinda silly.

Terran, Pirate, Yaki, Xenon flagships and W-platforms only in the list, now that would sound like a list worth clearing ^^
And a bit more easy to browse too.

Cant remember seeing TPs fly MILES off course when hit with big guns or big missiles in TC or AP... Update borked?
CIG used to throw around some small ships but not miles like Gauss Gun does to TPs, a TS on the other hand seems un-effected.
Big guns and ESPECIALLY big missiles should throw small ships around a lot. A visible blast-wave animation would make some amazing stuff to look at too.
Just may be worth checking TP "ship-weight" in physics or weapon impact-force if those can be changed.
Not much of a problem, more of silly moment every now and then since only TP seem to be effected.

Wasnt there a bug once that made ships swap missiles and fire them at huge pace? Could be another issue due to a borked update tho, but MULTIBLE times a Katana unloaded missiles at insane rate, atleast 2 different types, both swarm-type. Katanas were RRF-units jumping in only minute or so ago.
The target Katana was also under fire from the Megaloldon, cant remember if it was taking hull dmg allready, it was also flying away from the Mega, unloading massive loads of missiles as it went on, i was looking at it rather close.
I remember ships tended to shoot missiles when taking hull dmg, add multible flaks hitting the hull, mid hull-pack...

Hmm. Looks like a fresh install incoming. Again...

[Jumee]

can someone else check ware production as it is still 0 seconds for me, even after recreating a PHQ, but I want someone else to try too

note regarding the above post - as far as I remember CIG's used to throw TP's around in vanilla too

[paulwheeler]

@swatti

As I said before, you can make a gun shoot less than 180, but the turret will still track targets across the full 180 it just won't be able to shoot. So you'll find most of the time the turret just won't fire. What you want is just not possible.

I will not tailor the bounty script to your personal tastes. Adding a filtering system is a hell of a lot of work. I don't want to put it in, so that's that. You could always try and learn scripting yourself.

TP's and TSs have always been thrown around by the push effect from CIG and heavy weapons. The effect treats them like M5s. There's nothing I can do.

In AP I have noticed that ships often fire all their remaining missiles in quick succession when they are close to destruction. But they fly at the same speed as normal. Again, this is vanilla behaviour.

[paulwheeler]

Hello. I give this mod a try and enjoy it so far.

But now I have a question about the duplex/triplex scanner and M5 ships.

The scanners have been altered, they got renamed, size and range has been increased. Duplux is "Advanced version scanner" (size: M) and triplex is now "Military scanner" (size: XXL). I understand that the triplex/"Military scanner" is reserved for capital ships.

I use the Codea script. Now the problem is for Codea you need to equip a M5 ship with either a duplex or a triplex scanner.
But with the changes no ordinary M5 can use the duplex/"advanced version scanner" because it's size M and almost all M5 have size S.
The exception is the new introduced "Explorer" version of each M5 which can handle ware size M and the "advanced version scanner" - BUT such an equiped M5 ship has "Military scanner" range!

So this is a nothing or all situation. Ordinary M5 are useless but M5 Explorer version gives you max scanner range. There is nothing between.

Is this intended? Or a bug? What is the idea of the size change?

Cheers and thanks in advance.

You need to throw everything you know about scanners from vanilla out of the window. They have completely changed, which is why I renamed them.

Essentially the built in ship scanner, which M5s and all other ships come with, does the job of the duplex scanner. The advanced Scanner does the job of the Triplex. The military Scanner is a new capital class scanner. Explorer M5s have the military Scanner built in because that's their job. They can do little else.

As for CODEA, and i cant tailor the mod to work with every script out there... I was aware of the docking computer ware size issue with CODEA - there is an optional pack to fix that, but no one has mentioned this scanner issue before. Do you have to use M5s?

[paulwheeler]

can someone else check ware production as it is still 0 seconds for me, even after recreating a PHQ, but I want someone else to try too

note regarding the above post - as far as I remember CIG's used to throw TP's around in vanilla too

Is it zero, or just very quick? I think resources/time are related to the relval of the item being produced. So for cheap weapons this is obviously negligible. There is a multiplication factor you can add. I have upped this to x5 in the last update. I may just need to push this higher.

Of course it could just be that building weapons and stations in the hq just doesn't work properly. Afterall egosoft did not design the hq with that in mind.

[Mizuchi]

Hi Paul,

Could you make it so that XRM turns X3TC into an entirely different game with an entirely different engine with entirely different code?

I'd do it myself, but my time is more valuable than yours.

Thanks in advance.

[Jumee]

Is it zero, or just very quick?

it shows 0:00 in the info, and the production itself kicks in in a few seconds (probably because its the script waiting to be activated - because even ships stay in the queue for a second until being produced) - also I tested on the quantum shockwave cannon so I don't think it is because of low value

Of course it could just be that building weapons and stations in the hq just doesn't work properly

I believe this is the case

edit: I can always just not use them in the first 3-4 hours after they are produced, to imitate production time, so this is not a big issue

[swatti]

Ok, reasons given, thanks.

Someone once told me to never take a negative answer without a reason. In this case "too much work" will suffice for me. I do understand.

Did some testing. Only "Military" (RRF) ships that just spawned seem to salvo-fire missiles, they do it at about 50% of SHIELDS, before any hull dmg, against any target by the looks of it. My M6 was annihilated in seconds when i pulled one RRF Katana down to 50% shields.

If i do fresh install, do i need to uninstall TC too? The base TC is un-modded and i'd imagine deleting "Addon-folder" in TC re-installing AP would suffice.
Re-installing atm.

QUESTIONS:

- Could a turret have both missiles AND guns mountable? Or is missile-turret just missiles and thats it?
- Can a gun create a missile or quided bullet? "Bullet" replaced by a missile or so...

Still thinking that "rocket-pod" idea i had quite some time ago. Massive 500 or so volume "gun" with slow fire rate, shooting bursts of rockets with very small quidance against capital ships.
Less power, range, slow reload, etc BUT infinite ammo.

Right now if a player wants to use bombers and missile-frigates often, it would need millions worth of ammo or a massive chain to produce ammo. A bit of a hassle for quite many.
"Rocket pods" would be a cheaper alternative to make M7Ms and M8s into "every-day usable" and still retain their heavy-hitter role if needed.

If quided ordenance is not possible, un-quided would sertainly suffice too. Former IPG had the looks of a rocket-launcher too so its doable "looks-wise"
Massive volume of the pod would make it impossible to load both into bombers. Im not sure if guns can be made to fire "bursts" tho.

[ericsche21]

First off, thanks for all the hard work. I just started using the mod and have enjoyed it so far.

I have a general question about ship capping. Are there any compatible scripts with XRM and AP to make the process less frustrating, or any improvements made through the mod? I remember back in vanilla TC wanting to tear my hair out trying to spacewalk marines. Anyone have any advice other than to learn to play better?

Thanks in advance, and keep up the good work

[Jumee]

I remember back in vanilla TC wanting to tear my hair out trying to spacewalk marines.

spacewalking has been generally improved in AP, especially the remote control TP one, so it should be a lot less frustrating and is actually a viable way to board stuff

Anyone have any advice other than to learn to play better?

thats also a very good idea (no offense meant)

[swatti]

First off, thanks for all the hard work. I just started using the mod and have enjoyed it so far.

I have a general question about ship capping. Are there any compatible scripts with XRM and AP to make the process less frustrating, or any improvements made through the mod? I remember back in vanilla TC wanting to tear my hair out trying to spacewalk marines. Anyone have any advice other than to learn to play better?

Thanks in advance, and keep up the good work

Short quide to "vanilla XRM" capping:
- DO NOT BUY LOW FIGHTING SKILL MARINES!
- Military outposts often have high fighting skill marines as the outposts are now stocked up with marines. Search and explore
- Find ATLEAST 8 marines with 70 or more in fighting, rest is irrelevant.
- Train those marines up to 40+ for the rest of skills
- ION-Ds, Heavy Hydra, get one, load it with ION-Ds and cyclone missiles for fighter-kills
- Expensive bit: Missile-frigate for BOARDING PODs, forget spacewalks

Use your Hydra to fry shields to 0, if your marines are low'ish on fighting, as in below 90, fry the sucker till the "internal sentry lasers" are busted if such is present. Bio-scanner helps to id if skilled "Mega-marines" are onboard, avoid such ships if possible.
Targets: Pirate & Yaki M6 or any kind. Kill off escorts, fry off sentry-lasers. Tell your missile-frigate to follow you, he can take the heat, dont give it missiles tho, just boarding pods.

Buy an Argon Express MK1! Youl get some use for it later.

8 marines is good for capping a M6. Dont hesitate to reload if you lose too many good marines, training em is a bitch.
Once your marines reach mainframe, ANY marines onboard are kicked out. Once last'ish deck is being taken, jump your Express in and give it orders to pick up marines. With luck, that mega-marine with 5 stars each skills is waiting for a pickup while your team-meatshield cap you a new vette.

Marines will slowly fly to nearest station and vanish once docked. Picking them up is best done out-of-sector.

Feel free to "dispose" of any useless poorly skilled marines afterwards. Buy some jump-deployment-kits to your missile-frigate and x-fer one to your new vette, then jump it out.

With luck, all your marines are alive, you netted one or more yber-trained marines and new tub.

Once you have 20 good marines. Find a Pirate Galleon, its a carrier that can mount Boarding pods and enough guns to bring down any ships shields to make use of those pods. Godly capture-ship.

[LordGaara]

Hey Paul,

Tested PHQ and blueprints a while ago. Here is the summary:

TEST 1: Cheated in PQH, added wares via TL, added blueprints for Gamma Kyon Emmiter (default set price about 120 000 credits?!!) and Thorn Missile. No production or RE works. Spray shop only.

TEST 2: Bought PHQ from Argon Prime shipyard, added wares via TL, added GKE and Thorn blueprints. Production and RE working properly. Production time - 1 sec. (~3 secs if a batch of 10 is ordered).


Is it possible that production time is set in the reworked "z.cheat.cycrow.action.xml" by Apricotslice, which messes things up? As far as I recall, he mentioned high production costs, but never said anything about production time.

Cheers,
Martin

[paulwheeler]

Are those tests pre or post today's 1.19d update?

I'm pretty sure the production resources, time etc, can only be set in the hq.xml file.

[LordGaara]

Yes, I am using the 1.19d.
Just repeated the test, this time adding Jumpdrive (testing relation price-time). The result is the same.
Weird thing tho: Increasing number of products slightly increases build time i.e. for 10 products (GKE, Jumpdrive) productiong time is ~5-10 secs.

[paulwheeler]

The HQ was never intended to produce weapons and stations, so it's highly likely that it just doesn't work.

Ill try and find time to do some testing myself.

[Jumee]

research stations respawn after destruction, right? there is one in the unknown sector I want to claim

edit: ignore stupid question

[garrry34]

gees, I dissappear for a bit now I'm falling behind whats this about the HQ building weapons and stations, is this something you added paul?

[vvex]

Yes I've worked out why that's happening. A fix for it will be in 1.20. In the mean time, just ignore the bounties on lasertowers. It won't cause any harm.

Except for the rare case when I want to dock at that station (and they shoot me, and I can't shoot back cause I want to dock... ) but yeah, good news and that's really a minor problem.

As an aside. Downloaded the Advanced Universe Pack today, working fine so far. Choose the Goner start and... behold Tuelight Seeker..! what a beast of a ship for early game quite a contrast to the useless ranger in vanilla.

Not only (obviously) great for trade runs/missions... but what an awesome fighting machine. 1.2GJ shelds, fast recharge, great speed and agility... who cares about guns

Lining up those passes can be tricky sometimes, but when I get it right.. what a pretteeey splosion... and the occasional instant ware collection is pretty nice too

once again, cheers, enjoying the mod a lot.

[milquetoast]

Are plot missions disabled for the new character starts? I can't seem to be able to start the Argon M148 sector plot.

[nap_rz]

I'm curious, how many XRM users are also using custom turrets script like mars or smart? do you think turrets script unbalance XRM ships and weapons?

I'd also like to know why paul does not use turrets script? is there any reason for it?