Please give all caps PACs and PBEs back!

[wwdragon]

I've recently continued playing XTC after a long break. I've gotten into complexing and ship collection; I own several cap ships now. It's a lot of fun. :)

Something I've found to be very frustrating is defending against missiles, M4s and M5s!

I'm using MARS, so the turrets on my ship are pretty intelligent. 8)
I'll give two personal examples as to why all cap ships need to be able to use the common minimalist anti fighter weapons:

Boreas: Beta flaks work great to take out heavy fighters. They miss half the time, but are devastating when they hit. The weapon generator can completely support them.
Now an M7M or M8 swarms me with missiles... If I have no fighter drones, I die! :(
If I had PACs or PBEs, the turrets using them would've prioritized the missiles and have the fire rate to take most of them down; FLAKs lack the fire rate.
When swarmed by M5s, FLAKs hit very rarely and anything below 1km range, FLAKs can't seem to hit at all. :x
This leaves a significant period of time and close area where there's no way to hit these enemies!

Condor: An ammunition based carrier that can do significant damage to capitals, without using energy. It's a great support ship with fighters or solo playership when hunting fighters and just a few M6/M7s.
The problem comes in because there is no ammo based anti fighter weapon available on it! :shock:
It has the ability to use alpha and beta flaks, but **** all laser and laser gen; it gets a couple rounds off before depletion. :x
If this ship had PAC & PBEs, it would be able to defend against missiles and small things without completely draining the weapon energy in seconds! :cry:
Considering it's other ammo based weapons, even Mass Drivers make sense. ;)

[K.J.]

Missile defence-> that's what flares and ECM are for. Use them, it will make your life much easier.
Using Beta Flak all around is a waste of laser juice. I would only use about 2 guns in each flak turrets. 3 if you use alpha. 1 if you are swarmed by M5. M5 are not a big thread after all and one hit will vaporize them.
No idea why they have no small weapons, Galder is propably the only one who knows for sure.

[wwdragon]

MARS automatically switches to the best weapon to use against the current enemy. Condor simply has no where near enough energy to support flaks.

I've used ECM a few times, but it is rather slow refire and won't get anywhere near all the missiles. It's like that accessory you wear just cause it looks cool. ;-)

[K.J.]

Chaff can be used as fast as you can hit the button. And is more effective against torpedoes then ECM.
Mars uses only the most effective weapon that it thinks is effective - the laserstats for the mars laser selection and the true stats of a weapon can differ. (I've used mars as well) Just because it uses the most effective weapon against a target doesn't prevent it from wasting alot of energy - it was never meant to be energy efficient. Once the turret actually targets the missile it usually destroys them very effectively, even with capital lasers. So M6 weapons should be usefull for that task, high rate of fire and higher turret turning rates. You have to tweak the mars setting for this so that it prioritises them.

You propably don't want to hear those circumventions :P so i'll just recommend that you grab yourself X3editor 2 and tweak it for yourself - it's very easy and makes the game more enjoyable for you, since you can change many things you don't like in an instant.

[H-K]

Imho XTC does not need MARS at all because there are enough ways in this mod to defend against fighters or missles.

If you add MARS to XTC which does not need MARS and it creates an annoyance for you then why not drop MARS?

This probably is not XTC's fault, I think that adding MARS to XTC is possible but not intended by the team because not using MARS makes this mod even more different which is exactly why I play this total conversion modification to Terran Confilct called XTC :)

[wwdragon]

Wow, neither of you seem to actually know MARS. It's efficient, convenient and powerful.

The problem is XTC not including those basic weapons, which the manual says all races can use.
I don't want laborious alternatives. I want the most basic staple item included where it should be... on every single ship!

XTC is not a total conversion. It's an extension of the original game, intended to be true to lore and the original universe. No pacs doesn't seem true to me.

Thanks for the editor tip!
I found the Boreas with the editor; I dunno how this tells the game what lasers it can use. :? Are there any comprehensive tutorial writeups?

[stemardue]

XTC is not a total conversion. It's an extension of the original game, intended to be true to lore and the original universe. No pacs doesn't seem true to me.

ahem... XTC is what WE, the XTC team, want to be.

Now, we have been and still are accepting suggestions and indications by all the fellow players, but still it remains a mod that we are making to be as we would like to be.

MARS has never been part of it as a project, but if it works adding it on top of it, you are free to use it at your taste... just don't pretend we change our project to suit your personal (and a bit arrogant) request ;)

Thanks!

[Aragon Speed]

The reason they were removed is because of the re-balancing of the game we did. Capital ships are not designed to fight against fighters, they never should be. They should have minimal defenses against the odd fighter getting close to them (i.e. flak), but should not be able to deal with swarms of them. In a proper fleet set-up a capital ship should have smaller vessels which are there to protect it from fighters.

[King of the World]

I think they know, what MARS is and how it works. I used it in times when I was playing XTM. But now, playing XTC I see, that battles between fighters against fighters were harder. The time is over where you have a big one ship which knock all enemies out. That's not realistic. This is if you sat in in a Sohnen Scylla or Incubus and no enemy ship can hit you. That's not funny. I want fun and no "HAHAHAHAHA - have you seen how I blew out that ship?". I don't know if you know "Supreme Commander- Forged Alliance". Think about the situation the enemy air defense is at a high level e.g. the enemy has 100 air defense stations und you are coming with 500 planes. Yes, you will lose some ships but you will break his defense. That's the same in XTC. If you are sitting in vessel and I'm coming with my fighter squadrons your ship will lose at all time. Did you ever seen a huge ship in history which was without escorts on way?

You don't know the plans for XTC v2.0 who knew, probably the team developped a feature that will work like MARS.^^

[Aragon Speed]

IIRC we already have light-weight turret scripts in 1.2a. Not as complex as MARS but better than vanilla turrets. You should be able to see them in the normal turret commands section of your ship.

If they aren't in 1.2 (been way to long to remember now as 2.0 has been installed for ages on my machine) they are definitely there in 2.0.

[Nemoricus]

I found the Boreas with the editor; I dunno how this tells the game what lasers it can use. :? Are there any comprehensive tutorial writeups?

The Egosoft scripting and modding forum is usually a good place to look up information on those topics.

Now, to change the lasers a ship is allowed to use, the first thing you do is open up the VFS by going to Plugins, then CAT Manager. This creates a virtual directory that has the files that the game will actually be using, ie, the ones in the last CAT/DAT pair or the ones in the X3 Terran Conflict directory folders. Then open up TShips and TCockpits with the T File editor by double clicking on them. They're under the 'types' folder.

Once you have those open, go to TShips. There are two tabs that you're interested there, Turrets and Compatible guns. In Compatible guns, you can add weapons by the group they're in. Terran Alpha and Beta EMPC are grouped under the SG_TERRAN_LASER_LIGHT type, for example, and you can only add both at once because of this. These choices are only for the ship's main battery. Note that the name for each laser group is somewhat nonindicative, as the XTC team only has a limited number of these available and had to make the most of what they had.

For the turrets, in the Turrets tab there is an entry labeled Viewport for each turret a ship has. This tells the game what lasers are allowed to be installed in that turret, as defined in the TCockpits file. Each entry there acts like the Compatible guns tab in the TShips file in that all weapons are added to a cockpit type in groups. SS_COCKPIT_TR_BLUE just has the light Terran lasers, for example, while SS_COCKPIT_TR_VIOLET has both SSC and Alpha and Beta EMPC. For the Teladi Condor, to give it PAC and PBE, change all SS_COCKPIT_T_YELLOW entries to SS_COCKPIT_T_WHITE. Now all weapons that can mount the anti-fighter flak weapons can also mount the smaller weapons, too.

Alternatively, you can modify the SS_COCKPIT_T_YELLOW entry, and add SG_LASER_TELADI_LIGHT to it, which will also give it PAC and PBE. However, all ships that use that cockpit type can now mount them, so think carefully about it before you do.

That's how to give them those weapons. As for whether they should have them....well that depends on how effective flaks are in the anti-fighter role and how much of a mixed-type fleet you want to see. The less effective capital ships are at defending themselves from fighter attack, the more they'll need smaller ships for support. Personally, I think have a mix of ship types is more interesting, so limiting the effectiveness of destroyers as solo do-everything ships is more likely to provide that.

[Mangar]

My 2 cents about enjoying a great space fight. I never like the fun of going in with a single ship and fighting say 12 ships and coming out with out a dent in my hull.

THINK: I realistically have a M6 up to a M1, sure the M1 can not take down an M5 because they are so fast, nor can a few M5's hurt a M1's shields. For fun I have the M5's protect my cap ship which is focused on killing other Cap ships, OR I take the seat of a fighter taking down those enemy fighters bothering my Cap ship.

Over all it has been more exciting, challanging, better fire light show, chance to make a ship bail one on one for each ship I take on (fighters). In a way I actually like that over sitting very still in my seat leeting a single ship kill everything to quickly.

I like to wiggle a little bit in my seat dogding fighter fire maybe scream at those enemies about shooting green stuff at me.;)

sometimes when things are too easy, it completely takes all of the fun, excitement and thinking out of the game.:)

Remeber when when you were in a fighter, you could never approch an M2 or bigger 2-3 times without getting killed in 2 shots. Now I can fly around them longer actaully fighting the other Fighters, and let the heavy fire to the large ships I go in with.

To me its the thrill when you first start a new game and all you have is a small fighter collecting stuff. Now I get to stay in that hot seat much longer, not forced to uprade to a heavy ship all the time. but you can if you want. :)

[Eliah]

Hrmmm. I remember my fondest experiences in X3-reunion and X2-the threat as attacking captial ships and making incursions in xenon/pirate space in a KM3/LX... At those times, I'm rather thankful for blindspots and suboptimal weapon loadouts.

[K.J.]

Wow, neither of you seem to actually know MARS. It's efficient, convenient and powerful.
I always used it in vanilla / modified vanilla -as in no total conversion- ,propably several hundred hours. In XTC i just didn't use it (or any other external script) to not cause any conflicts with the mod while testing.
Mars certainly is usefull, but it's not energy conserving at all, it always equips the most suited weapons in the biggest number it can, which appears to be your main problem. I don't think there are other turret script that take this into consideration either.

the do-it-yourself suggestions should not be understood in a negative way. There are hundred of different opinions out there about how the balancing should work, it's impossible to please everyone. Even in the team each one has a slightly different idea, but we needed to agree on something after all, or there would have never been a mod.

The most tutorials can be found in the tutorial-sticky in the scripts&modding forum at egosoft.com

[wwdragon]

it's not energy conserving at all, it always equips the most suited weapons in the biggest number it can
It certainly does put in all weapons it can. I'm not saying its perfect, however it is vastly more efficient than the defaults. :mrgreen:
It conserves energy by not firing when it won't hit; I think it calculates transverse velocity to determine when to fire.


the do-it-yourself suggestions should not be understood in a negative way. There are hundred of different opinions out there about how the balancing should work, it's impossible to please everyone. Even in the team each one has a slightly different idea, but we needed to agree on something after all, or there would have never been a mod.
Good point. I'm not refusing to do it myself; I thought I couldn't do it myself! :x Actually I tried to make two serious efforts to mod XTC before, with each of my previous posts on this forum; I quit both previous times out of frustration.
Thanks to Nemoricus precise description, only tonight I realize that I've been using Tdebug, instead of the easy to understand one. :lol:

Nemoricus Thank you! That was a huge help; even more than I thought it would be! :grin:
I even understand precisely how military shields work after looking at the editor. 8)

Mangar Sounds fun! 8) I don't enjoy combat like that. I'm not good at it; I usually die when doing what you describe. :( For me it's just something to get through... or in the case of capping M7s, a way to earn income. This is why I automate everything possible.

Aragon Speed There arn't any XTC turret commands. :? Although the npc M8's are spamming missiles, so maybe they overwrite the default ones and use the same commands...?
For me, it's one ship to rule them all. The game is about collecting ships and I rather hate losing any. ;)

King of the World You know, I never did cap a Sohnen ship in XTM, despite many tries! If I did, it'd have become my personal combat ship. 8)

stemardue Maybe you should re-read the XTC manual introduction. It's more then just a personal mod. It's a legacy and an ideal! ;)
I'm hoping it is just as much fun, full featured, as the orginal XTM... or even moreso! 8)
If I come across arrogant to get things done, I'm cool with that; it means I'm bold. :lol:


Now I'm off to rule the universe... confident I can change it myself. 8)
See ya all at 2.0 release!

[Eliah]

Maybe you should re-read the XTC manual introduction. It's more then just a personal mod. It's a legacy and an ideal!
Yes, our idea on how that legacy would look. Nowhere is it said that we'd be pandering to every single player's opinion on what is right and what isn't.

[Aragon Speed]

Aragon Speed There arn't any XTC turret commands. Although the npc M8's are spamming missiles, so maybe they overwrite the default ones and use the same commands...?
They must be in 2.0 then. Sorry about that. :)

[wwdragon]

No worries. I'll try it when 2.0 is out. :)