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

[robalexhall]

Dunno. I've found the game freezing (looping music etc) after 10ish mins play.

sooo i'm making wild guesses as to what might be the cause. ADS came to mind since it locks things up a good while starting a new game.

[Quixotic-Neutral]

On an another note, am I the only person around here who hears talk of X3TC's "steep learning curve" and... can't relate to that at all?

Meh. Some of us came late to the party. If you think any X game has an easy learning curve, you've been playing them waaaaay too long.

But I followed JoelR's suggestion (thank you sir!) and made the all-important change (well, the current all-important change) and now my discoverer can pick up dropped missiles and launch an adv sat. Exploration can now begin in earnest.

As I said before, I like most of the changes. I just think some went overboard for anyone not expecting to cheat their way into the end-game.

Give the standard M5 a purpose! It needs a reason to live, and has none currently.

Of course, if that purpose is "standard civilian transport, so suck it up, princess", (which I can understand) then the Anonymous Argon start needs a different ship for this mod. That thing is a non-starter for a non-cheating-type-guy.

Anyway, off to explore. Thanks for the mod... for all my noise I think I'm going to enjoy it.

[Mizuchi]

Meh. Some of us came late to the party. If you think any X game has an easy learning curve, you've been playing them waaaaay too long.

You may be right.

I have fond memories of ducking and diving around Xenon ships in the original X, only to wrap my ship around a Jump Gate because I wasn't paying attention and writing off five hours of gameplay because I hadn't bothered to save.

I also have less fond memories of having to play the game in real-time without SETA because you had to earn enough money on your own to buy it and then pay that Teladi back.

I also seem to recall that I had a picture of Jennifer Aniston on my hull. You know... back when people liked her (hair). Man...

Of course, if that purpose is "standard civilian transport, so suck it up, princess", (which I can understand) then the Anonymous Argon start needs a different ship for this mod. That thing is a non-starter for a non-cheating-type-guy.

Listen: we can totally do that. We have the technology.

Make a suggestion as to what might fit better, and I'll see about making it happen for the next update if Paul is cool with the idea.

ADS came to mind since it locks things up a good while starting a new game.

Is it ADS that does that? I never knew.

Man, I've been using ADS for as long as I can remember (but never actually using it, if you know what I mean; I just have it installed) and I've always put down the game-start pause to a bunch of other things.

I didn't realize that ADS is one of the prime suspects for the "Incoming Messa... Incoming Messa... Incoming Messa..." pause.

Anyhow, let me know how you get on, and I'll try to help if it persists.

Really, anything that worked with CMOD and SRM should work with XRM, as things have become more streamlined rather than more complex (even with all the added extras).

[Kadatherion]

Will XRM work fine with ADS (anarkis defence system)?

ADS might have just some very collateral limitations because of the new ware sizes. Specifically, to be able to do beamed docking your fighters (not your carrier... seems strange, I know, but this is what's written in the documentation) have to mount the transporter device. It is now an L sized ware instead of an M size like in vanilla, so only M3s (and bigger, possibly... honestly never tried if it does work for things such as an Aran-Springblossom combo, but I think it should) will be able to take advantage from the feature. M4s are capped at M sized cargo in XRM.

By re-checking the manual it seems they just need the transporter device, not the docking computer (which would rule out every fighter class from the feature).

I'm using it and no issues noticed for now (but I'm very early in a new game, so I haven't activated any automated carrier, or defense grid).
Never had any trouble with it in SRM+CMOD. And actually, never noticed it caused such pauses... but on that point, I could just have overlooked it and blamed something else.

[paulwheeler]

Re: Ware sizes and my reasons for the change.

Firstly scanners...

If you look closely you'll see the standard ship scanner has had its range increased, so has the duplex and the triplex too.

So the standard scanner has now taken the role the duplex used to fill, the duplex now does the vanilla triplex role, and the triplex is snowball much larger scanner that can only be mounted on XXL compatible ships.

So you have not lost anything, but gained a new huge scanner for cap ships!

It also makes satellites more important early on in the game.


Re: docking computer.

I hate it. I wish it wasn't in the game at all with the silly teleporting of ships. Its an immersion breaker for me, but is still necessary for capital ships in some circumstances due to the poor autopilot. I made it not available for fighters because if you ask me its a cheat, and can be used to teleport your ship out of trouble.

Remember Elite where you had to manually dock and the docking computer was the autopilot?


Re: jumpdrive.

My first experience with the XUniverse was playing X2 and it was a far stronger game despite only having half the content. I put this down to the jumpdrive being much less accessible which makes the universe feel bigger.

Also, as has been said, the change gives carriers and TMs in particular a purpose.


I will not be putting them back to vanilla sizes. I will provide an addon that puts the docking computer back, but that's all.

[paulwheeler]

wee question about the ships that are pre outfitted, with regards to MPM if I was to get my carrier to build these how would I activate all the ships with you script will it need to be on a one by one method or can I target the carrier and it would activate all onboard?

If you have a carrier full of PAR ships you can just target the carrier and hit the hotkey.

[Kadatherion]

As I'm slowly progressing in my new Yaki Insurgent game, I'm beginning to spot the first little odd things in the universe to report:

1 - The Solar Power Plant in Weaver's Tempest doesn't seem to be affiliated to the Yaki. I can dock to other stations in the Yaki sectors from the very beginning (of course) but she refuses me docking permission. Don't think it was intended.

2 - The East gate in Unknown Sector 20 - 8 (the one you reach from the W gate in Ocracoke's Storm) is 180° misaligned: instead of exiting from it going towards the center of the sector you go the opposite way.


Also, but this is definitely not a "bug", I seem to notice quite more commonwealth ships trying to go past the blockade in Savage Spur. I guess a similar thing happens in several other bottleneck pirate/xenon sectors like this, thanks to the new connections, routes and stations the AI can find.
With some of the first nice details in the jobs file I'm discovering (an OTAS intelligence Sirokos trying to break the blockade and almost making it? It was awesome ) this looks very cool, but all those suicidal transports look a bit lame

Finally, just to state a personal taste about the expanded map: I'm not very fond of direct connections between the eastern and western side of the universe. Makes it feel a bit "smaller" imho. And... urr... I'm not actually really sure - lore wise - about the physics of the X3 universe, but unless we are in a spherical galaxy populated only on the outer "surface", it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me...

[paulwheeler]

The official lore is that the sectors that are adjacent in the map are not necessarily adjacent in space terms. The gates can go anywhere in spacial terms.

Thanks for the bug reports. Hopefully we can get them all ironed out on monday.

[NOValdemar]

Im guessing an update on monday will require a restart because of the map issues?

[Sn4kemaster]

Remember Elite where you had to manually dock and the docking computer was the autopilot?

Ahhhh the good old days......

[Halconnen]

I'd agree that most, if not all, of the gamestarts need an overhaul. Most of them just make the early game painful, but after a few hours it's smooth sailing, irregardless of SSRP changes.

Starting in an empty, basic Argon discoverer for the Anonymous Argon start is completely ridiculous, for one. Well, I suppose you can just flag it 'very hard' or something and tell people that want better stuff to use different starts. Even then, I understand the sort-of roleplaying want to start as a nobody. But if this nobody starts with nothing but underwear and the equivalent of a rusty wheelbarrow, that is a bit silly.

I'd argue the Patriotic Argon start is okay as-is, probably mostly because the Elite as a M4+ is a very decent ship for it's size. The turret + 50MJ shields are a major lifesaver with the more missile-happy enemies (Khaak, I'm looking at you.), so you can start on combat missions as soon as you scrounge together some equipment (and the Terran plot with the free M5s after relatively easy missions makes this part rather easy), and then the cash comes rolling in.

Hm. I'd give especially the harder-to-unlock starts better stuff, though. The USC commander starting with an M3 that is not much better than the M4 of the basic Terran start is a bit silly for one. Having the USC commander start means you finished the Terran plot before, so you have gained a Machete and a Vidar in the past, unless you cheated the gamestarts. Giving the USC Commander a Vidar or Machete sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

This is actually a more difficult subject than I thought it would be.

___

@Quixotic-Neutral: I recommend grabbing several scripts, though. Lucike's Travel Drive (A must for slower JDless ships, really) and Missile Defense Mosquito (at least, I'd just grab the entire script pack), Gazz' Auto-Aim (mostly for spacewalk repairs and missile defense in turretless ships), Gazz' MARS (for when it includes a lasers file for XRM, currently I only use it because it has Gazz' Missile Defense MK2 included, which makes stock turrets a -lot- smarter), and several of Gazz' other scripts (just look at his page, a lot of that stuff is useful), there's a lot of stuff here that can be used. I'd also grab Tatakau's Marine Repairs.

Also, selling two M3s for one engine tuning seems... strange? Are you repairing the ships with your repair laser? There's no way that 2 M3s should net you less than 2 million creds, unless they are like... damaged MK1s or something.

___

As for personal requests as far as the mod is concerned:

1. APPC replacement pack. Pretty, pretty please.

2. Please include any stock files you overwrite in a seperate folder somewhere as part of the download, or as seperate download in the OP. I personally keep an unmodded install, so there's no problem, but especially the !move.follow.template you currently use breaks several plot missions, and requires replacing the original to finish them. For people that just throw the MOD onto thier only install this can mean a lot of extra work.

___

As for feedback about the current mod:

First of all, since I feel like I haven't stressed this enough before: Awesome job, it's easy to tell that a huge amount of work went into this, and I love it. A lot.

I played with the SSRP before too, and really welcome the changes. I like using TMs as fighter-bus, I hate the DC for the same reasons paul does (especially when you allow other ships to use them, vanishing/teleporting NPC ships looks ridiculous), and the higher equipment prices are not over-the-top but feel adequate, and keep even smaller ships as a noticable investment later on. (That is, after you get a running start, though. I too tried starting with Anonymous Argon, and that just felt like I was pulling my own teeth.)

Performance is awesome, too. (Except when I have to replace the follow template for the original one to do some of the plot mission. Performance degrades over time rather a lot with that.)

___

There's some things that do need work in my opinion, though. The underpriced stuff in some of the research stations is a bit silly. Unfocused jump drive, polarized hull plating and friends are very cheap compared to the other SSRP prices. There's a few more wares like that, but I can't think of em from the top of my head. >:

And then there is this, sorry about German screens:
http://imageshack.us/f/715/khaaksectorcorsairspira.jpg/
This is one of the Khaak sectors you have to jump into for O.F.F.. There's a corsair TS in there, and 4 pirate busters that -seem- to have spawned seperately.

http://imageshack.us/f/819/unfocusedjdtraders.jpg/
Here we have 11(!) racial TS in one of the unfocused JD sectors, happily lumbering around while Khaak poke at them.

I'm not sure what causes this. The modified jobs file? In general I have the feeling there are traders in lots of places where they shouldn't be, but these are the only two instances where I had the presence of mind to take screens.

On the topic of traders, I also have the feeling that they don't do enough work. (Could be related to many spawning in places they can't get out of?) I kept an eye on the stocks of stations in sectors I am currently frequently in, and noone but me has sold as much as a single energy cell to any of the stations in M148 and Eta Psi for the last 6 ingame hours. Especially the mines in Eta Psi (the ones built as part of the O.F.F. plot) are still at 0 ECs so it's obvious they haven't been touched. S.P.Ps also tend to be full enough to sell at 12-13 Cr., even the ones in close proximity to Eta Psi.



Then there's these two, but I'm not sure if these are stock egosoft issues that I've never noticed before, or not.

http://imageshack.us/f/585/uranusrings.jpg/
This doesn't look as bad in the screen, but that white outer ring is serious eyecancer. That screen was taken from Uranus 2 (a sector I may not have visited in the stock game for some reason, unless XRM changed it.), but it's pretty visible in Uranus, too. Also, that URL ended up sounding a lot more... incrimianting... than I had intended it to, ha!

http://imageshack.us/f/683/messagedronetrail.jpg/
Another one I haven't noticed before, but eh. The far end of the engine trail of the drone has some blue artifacts floating mid-air, and that looks pretty weird. Again, probably a stock Ego issue, but mentioning it for completeness sake.

___

@ Paul: As for X2 nostalgia, my main memories of X2 are horrible on-station cutscenes, nonsensical station interiors (which had loot hidden inside! The loot part was awesome, at least), massively ruining my notoriety with EVERYONE because TS were unable to dodge my autopiloting Split M2, and getting repeatedly destroyed by gating NPC TLs/M1s/M2s after I got my first Centaur since M6s used the gate-center. Heh. I agree on the JD scarcity making the game feel bigger, though.

___

I feel like I'm forgetting something I wanted to write. Expect more disorganized walls of text from me in the near-future. <.<

[blspblackdeath]

Where can I get the SRM compatible KOG Version?

I have Issues with the KOG Version which was downloaded by Killerogs Download Manager.

There is an Argon Shipyard in the Terran Systems and several Mamoth flying around. They are disappearing when I deinstall KOG. ANd there are no other Mods interfering.

So what is my fault??? Is it the wrong KOG Version, or is KOG incompatible or am I silly?

[dESANT]

Bug found: Pirate Elite from description is able to mount PBE on main guns, but u can mount only 4 out of 6 slots 2 are not avaible for PBE. Besides of this in X Mdels 3d Viever Pirate Elite is unable to mout PBE in main slots.

[paulwheeler]

Im guessing an update on monday will require a restart because of the map issues?

I'm still deciding about that one...

I could write a script which makes all the necessary changes for those who can't stand the idea of a restart, but obviously that would take time and may delay the patch.

Most of the fixes are simple. but as you say wont take affect until a game restart.

Of course, none of them are game breakers either so its not the end of the world if people choose to play on.

I will probably say people have to restart since its only been two days since the initial release so its not the end of the world.

I would say though, if we come across a universe bug two or three weeks down the line I will almost certainly fix it via script so people dont have to restart.

[Halconnen]

@blspblackdeath: You're doing something wrong. MAMMOTHS EVERYWHERE is a sign of a doubled up TShips or messed up jobs file, as far as I know.

I haven't used Killerogg's downloader before, but it SHOULD have a means of selecting an SRM compatible KOG Mod version. You want that, instead of the normal one. The normal one is very much not compatible. Hmm.

[paulwheeler]

RE: Nexus

There is no problem with its main guns. There are only four visible guns, but each fires two salvos, so you effectively have eight.

If I get time I may stick some more guns on it to visually represent the other four guns but its not a priority right now.


BTW - its main advantage over the Centaur Sentinel is its speed.

[paulwheeler]

Bug found: Pirate Elite from description is able to mount PBE on main guns, but u can mount only 4 out of 6 slots 2 are not avaible for PBE. Besides of this in X Mdels 3d Viever Pirate Elite is unable to mout PBE in main slots.

The Pirate Elite cannot mount PBE.

All pirate fighters can now only mount their origin race weapons plus pirate weapons. So pirate elite has PRG, MD, PBG, IRE and PAC.

There is a bug with its main guns which is an Ego vanilla bug which I've fixed for the other Elites in the game. It stops you mounting all the main guns in some circumstances. I will fix these when I can.

[blspblackdeath]

@Halconnen
I know that there is an interfearence with the Tship file, but it is the KOD Mod.

Well, there is no Option to cahnge the Version, thats the problem. I searched ervery inch of thet installer.

Please, can someone give me a hint where I can Get SRM compatible KOG?

[paulwheeler]

1. APPC replacement pack. Pretty, pretty please.

You do realise that there was never any real difference between the CIG and APPC... It was just a name change and a different bullet model.

Anyway, the APPC thing is not happening I'm afraid. The CIG is much better than vanilla. Try it. Just imagine Betty saying APPC instead. Or put your hands over your ears!

2. Please include any stock files you overwrite in a seperate folder somewhere as part of the download, or as seperate download in the OP. I personally keep an unmodded install, so there's no problem, but especially the !move.follow.template you currently use breaks several plot missions, and requires replacing the original to finish them. For people that just throw the MOD onto thier only install this can mean a lot of extra work.

Good point. I'll see what I can do.

There's some things that do need work in my opinion, though. The underpriced stuff in some of the research stations is a bit silly. Unfocused jump drive, polarized hull plating and friends are very cheap compared to the other SSRP prices. There's a few more wares like that, but I can't think of em from the top of my head. >:

That was something I didn't have time to address, but will be doing so soon.

And then there is this, sorry about German screens:
http://imageshack.us/f/715/khaaksectorcorsairspira.jpg/
This is one of the Khaak sectors you have to jump into for O.F.F.. There's a corsair TS in there, and 4 pirate busters that -seem- to have spawned seperately.

http://imageshack.us/f/819/unfocusedjdtraders.jpg/
Here we have 11(!) racial TS in one of the unfocused JD sectors, happily lumbering around while Khaak poke at them.

I'm not sure what causes this. The modified jobs file? In general I have the feeling there are traders in lots of places where they shouldn't be, but these are the only two instances where I had the presence of mind to take screens.

On the topic of traders, I also have the feeling that they don't do enough work. (Could be related to many spawning in places they can't get out of?) I kept an eye on the stocks of stations in sectors I am currently frequently in, and noone but me has sold as much as a single energy cell to any of the stations in M148 and Eta Psi for the last 6 ingame hours. Especially the mines in Eta Psi (the ones built as part of the O.F.F. plot) are still at 0 ECs so it's obvious they haven't been touched. S.P.Ps also tend to be full enough to sell at 12-13 Cr., even the ones in close proximity to Eta Psi.

We didn't make many changes to trader jobs except to sort out all the warelists so the right traders trade the right wares.

When a new station gets built it can take quite a while for the traders to pick them up. They have to finish their current job first, and even then theres no guarantee. The job allocation is automatic really.

There will be more traders in various places simply because of the extra routes in getting around the universe.

Not sure whats going on with the Unfocused JD sectors. As far as I'm aware these are script generated on the fly when you jump so there's no way of changing them.

Then there's these two, but I'm not sure if these are stock egosoft issues that I've never noticed before, or not.

http://imageshack.us/f/585/uranusrings.jpg/
This doesn't look as bad in the screen, but that white outer ring is serious eyecancer. That screen was taken from Uranus 2 (a sector I may not have visited in the stock game for some reason, unless XRM changed it.), but it's pretty visible in Uranus, too. Also, that URL ended up sounding a lot more... incrimianting... than I had intended it to, ha!



http://imageshack.us/f/683/messagedronetrail.jpg/
Another one I haven't noticed before, but eh. The far end of the engine trail of the drone has some blue artifacts floating mid-air, and that looks pretty weird. Again, probably a stock Ego issue, but mentioning it for completeness sake.

Yes those are all Egosoft created issues. Not something I'm going to look at for the time being.

[paulwheeler]

@Halconnen
I know that there is an interfearence with the Tship file, but it is the KOD Mod.

Well, there is no Option to cahnge the Version, thats the problem. I searched ervery inch of thet installer.

Please, can someone give me a hint where I can Get SRM compatible KOG?

I would bring it up in the KOG thread. Killerog would have a better idea of what to do.