[AL PLUGIN] Yaki Armada: Nomadic Pirate Tribe | v1.08 | 11 Oct 06

[Dread]

Yeehaa. Using Cycrows installer to update the prev version now. From I have just read it sounds good and definately adds a new option of gameplay that had been missing till now - to be a Norty Piwate

[Serial Kicked]

Hehe I hope you'll like it, even if it still need some tuning.


Oops, by the way, i've just spotted a small text issue with one of the guild missions:

The mission is labeled as "take supplies at a station". But it should be called "Deliver important supplies to a station", as the goal is in fact to bring an important device to an agent in a given station. Not really a big deal but as it could be confusing if the player doesn't read the whole briefing message.


Anyway, for a realtime report on the plugin development, give a look at our bugtracker.

[Hieronymos]

Serial,
glad to hear you're not among the deceased. And the changes sound great. FYI, I read on another thread that you incorporated a 'weapons rebalance' in YA. Is this true? For some reason IonD's and PBE's--as well as many missles--don't work as they used to in my last few campaigns, and I'm wondering if this is due to YA. Please advise.

P.S. Just downloaded v1.0...which is sort of a beta, right? Was also wondering if relations and rep with regular pirates are changed with plugin. I.e., player rep with Yaki and pirates are still unlinked, right?

Oh,...and if you could let me know about weapon performance changes, if any, 'cause I'm going crazy trying to determine which script is messing with my game (as I'm involved in quite a few betatesting projects simultaneously). Thanks

[Serial Kicked]

lol thanks, no i'm not dead !

My Yaki ships use custom weapons including PSG and PBE, but it's only for the Yaki ships handled by my plugin. None of the other ships have this kind of upgrades.

Yup, 1.00 is a "Release candidate". It's not a "Beta", because most of the "serious" bugs have been removed. It just need some tuning. In other words, if you find some bugs i'll correct them to produce a "bugless" 1.0.1 Final and I won't add new features until i reach a 100% stable version.

Pirate rep is still unlinked with yaki rep. You can be a friend of the Yakis and be the worst enemy of the Pirates. It'll be updated when i'll release the Pirate Guild plugin for X3, relations will be much more complex in this case

My script should not make any mess with your game. My coding is "clean" and should not interact with any mod or other plugin. EXCEPT if this mod/plugin remove the Yaki owned sector, or if this mod/plugin remove the "Pirate Mobile Base" model.

Btw, if you want my armada to be "decorative" in your universe, just join them and none of your ship will be attacked by them. If you want to be a pirate, join them and follow the mobile bases, you'll be able to gain a nice amount of money, special ships and rewards. And, finally, if you want to be a cop, kill the mobile bases to gain huge amounts of money

[Serial Kicked]

1.00.rc2 is out !

This version correct a bug that prevents the player from talking with Yaki ships and mobile bases. Do not forget to go in your control panel to configure a key to communicate with my ships (as it's explained in the first post).

Some minor text issues have also been removed.


// Edit // It should not happen, but just in case:

If the ECS:Comm a ship/station still doesn't appear in your control panel, go in Artificial Life settings and set "ECS: Extended Communication System" to FALSE, wait 10 seconds, and set it back to TRUE.

[Hieronymos]

So Serial,
is your intention same as back in March (?) to keep Yaki as purely nomadic? This would make sense, as any 'Yaki factories' would become instant targets of retaliation by all the races they raid.

But the Yaki have to be coming from somewhere. Their mobile bases would need a shipyard, as would their excellent M4's and M5's. Perhaps their shipyard is mobile too, and located in an as yet undiscovered sector...

Deadly Da I believe has toyed with the idea of a mobile shipyard. It would be perfect for pirates, Yaki, and other undesirables...

If you ever do expand yr Pirate plugin, you could place their stations and fabs in a manner similar to how DDRS does: ~100km from a sector's center. This effectively 'hides' the DDRS special race s-yards. Makes it a real pain to find them (think: Jaguars loaded up with Xai-Corp explorer software)...but feels weirdly realistic. Especially if there are occassional BBS entries to '..the mythical pirate industrial complex in Maelstrom sector..' and the like.

Keep up the good work. The news of your revival was welcome indeed!

[Aradiel1]

Gj on this mod although i have noticed 2 problems,

1. i cannot set the yaki to my enemy in the option menu ?

2. Why do their ships have so extraordinary strong shields ?

a M4 with 3x 25 mj shields !? in my current game they wiped
out the whole homeworld of the boron, i mean any military presence
is gone, that cant be serious. Noone can beat small and mediun fighters with shields as strong as a nova heavy fighter. If this is intended the balance is a fake, can i mod the ship stats on my own ??

greetz aradiel

[Saint-Ashley]

2. Why do their ships have so extraordinary strong shields ?

First off, its not a mod. Its a script. Keep that in mind...

Now, the answer to your second question. That is actually the default set by Egosoft.

• Yaki Susanowa Raider - M3 - 2 - 25 MJ
  Yaki Susanowa Hauler - M3 - 2 - 25 MJ
  Yaki Raijin Sentinel - M4 - 4 - 25 MJ
  Yaki Raijin Raider - M4 - 4 - 25 MJ
  Yaki Raijin - M5 - 3 - 25 MJ
  Yaki Raijin Sentinel - M5 - 2 - 25 MJ
  Yaki Raijin Raider - M5 - 2 - 25 MJ
  Yaki Mobile Pirate Station - TL - 8 - 125 MJ

Yes, it does seem a bit odd. Note: I am looking at an unmodified Tships.txt lol. Oh, and that means Serial is not to blame of this ballance. And sure you can modify them if you want to change ES's values.

[Dread]

In extra feedback along with SaintAshley for Serial, the Yaki were designed for X3 as the new 'Reason To Be Afraid' enemy. Problem is that the vanilla version only featured the Yaki really in the plotline versions and there was few and far between. But to make them a force to be reckoned with these stats were made as standard. This script however brings them into main play within the game (and quite rightly so ) and so the increased activity from them may seem to unbalance things, but as Saint said these stats for the Yaki can be changed. Alternatively install the Race Response Fleets script by LV - that'll make things a bit more balanced against them, and a bit more interesting

[Hieronymos]

Indeed, it really seems that LV's Race Response Fleets v1.53 MUST be used along with Yaki Armada to prevent unbalancing the game. This was certainly true with v.91, and presumably with the upgrade too.

Puzzling to me was why the Yaki outfitted their M3 Susanowa variants with poorer shielding compared to most of their Raijin M4 and M5 models. Furthermore, the Susanowa is the only non-alien M3 unable to mount AHEPT's. Does anybody have any idea what the devs at ES were thinking?

[Serial Kicked]

@Hieronymos: Thanks

Yes, Yakis will stay a 100% nomadic tribe. For the reason you stated. The idea of a "mobile shipyard" is good, indeed, but i'm not sure i'll include this in the Yaki plugin atm. Currently, my ships take their ships from pirate bases and it works well, even if it's not very realistic.

In fact, pirate stations handling and interaction with the yaki armada will be the subject of the Pirate Guild plugin i'm currently working on.


@Aradiel1:

1/ It's sadly not moddable nor scriptable.

2/ Like SaintAshley said, it's game default and i can't do anything about it, without creating a mod. And I do not want to make one atm for various reasons. Btw it's a change of pace, usually battles are way too easy in X2/3 and a regular player can easily defeat a pack of 10 M3 without any issue. It won't be the case if you decide to attack the yakis.

hey wiped out the whole homeworld of the boron, i mean any military presence is gone, that cant be serious.

I can understand that you're pissed 'cause those yakis are nasty but, please, do not make things up, it doesn't help me in debugging my plugin. Yakis simply can't erase a whole sector, moreover a core sector like K.E.

Yakis attack "randomly" (it's a bit more complex than that) some ships (usually one to three ships, sometimes a bit more) in a sector and then jump away. Yakis are unable to defeat a M1 or a M2 and avoid sectors with such capital ships. So it's not possible that they wiped out the boron homeworld in your game, because even if they can jump there (and they should not as there's an M2 in this sector) they would need to jump several times in this sector, and obviously it would need several days to achieve the destruction of the whole sector.


@Dread & Hieronymos: Exactly, Yakis are a threat. Imho vanilla X3 is a really, really boring and easy game. I've spent a lot of time to balance things in this 1.0. It' not yet perfect, but it's much better than 0.91.

- Respawn rate has been reduced
- Mobile bases are much slower (Egosoft's default speed was around 300 for this TL)
- They do not attack heavily defended sectors (they probably won't even jump in core sectors at all in the next version)
- Sector attacks have been modified to be less destructive for the targeted sector.

And btw, Yaki ships are easy to cap. And can be sold for a hell lot of money.

About LV's Race Response Fleets (RRF). With all the respect i have to LV's work on the RRF, this plugin is very far from beeing balanced. In fact it works just too well, and annihilate mobile bases too quickly, even if those are able to jump and move very fast. That's why I removed my link as a "best played with" plugin. Moreover :

1) If you want to play the game as a Yaki, the RRF will make things next to impossible for you. Each time a Yaki ship jump in a standard sector (owned by a race), a ridiculously high amount of M1/M2 and M6 will jump in this sector to destroy the mobile base even if the base isn't attacking anything.

2) If you want to be a cop and be paid for the destruction of mobile bases, you don't want the RRF to do your job Btw, you'll see that the RRF will make things much more complicated. Just try to attack a mobile base in a race sector where 10+ capital ships are also attacking this poor unarmed mobile base. You'll see a nice slideshow and the base will be destroyed or will jump away before you can even hope to reach it.

3) If you want a "living" universe, without beeing attacked by the Armada you simply have to contact a mobile base, join the Yakis and none of your ships will be attacked. In this case, using it with the RRF activated can be a good idea.

--

For those who want to start a fresh game. The Yaki Armada is very fun to play with in the "Bankrupt Assassin" scenario. And btw, this plugin has been made to offer a new way to earn your first credits. All the missions pay well, and are much funnier than trading e.cells for days.

--

Puzzling to me was why the Yaki outfitted their M3 Susanowa variants with poorer shielding compared to most of their Raijin M4 and M5 models. Furthermore, the Susanowa is the only non-alien M3 unable to mount AHEPT's. Does anybody have any idea what the devs at ES were thinking?

Good question. I guess it's the same answer than for : Why the pirate mobile base wasn't used ingame ? and why its speed limit is around 300 ? Because X3 is an unfinished game, saved by a great scripting/modding ability.

[Aradiel1]

I see, well in that case i either change the values myself or simply dont use the "script" without the response script.

Oh and if you dont believe me i can add the savegame to proof that the yaki wiped out any serious military force in the boron homeworld. I dunno what happend to the capital ships they are simply gone, possibly lured out or destroyed, it doesnt matter, the game got unbalanced so unplayable.

thanks for the info

greets

Aradiel

[Serial Kicked]

You can also reduce the respawn rate of the mobile bases.

Open the file "anarkis.yaki.al.register.xml" in the script editor:

Code: Select all

024    $interval = 30 * 60
025    al engine: set plugin $plugin.ID timer interval to $interval s

Change in the line [024], 30 by the amount of minutes you want to set for the respawn rate.

[Aradiel1]

thx i will look into that, for the moment ill play without these ueber scripts until i have a decent ammount of cash in case they pick me

I have one more question abit off thread though:

In which file is the pirate respawn rate stored ?
I rarely encounter pirates in argon space, they hang around in their sectors in numbers but thats it, in x2 i was attacked very often i never was in x3 within the argon space yet...

[Serial Kicked]

Pirate ship generation isn't done via scripts. It's in the TJob file included in the game's packed files. In other words it can only be modified by a mod. I'm pretty sure that such a mod exists but i can't recall a name.

[999-JAY-999]

Just noticed this beauty... BRILL !

[Serial Kicked]

v1.01 released !

All bugs listed in the community bugtracker should have been corrected. This includes assassination missions failed due to a captured target, mission debriefings with missing infos, and other little things. As usual, check the first page for a full changelog.

[Mike.Galaxy]

Hi Serial,

if U are interested in a real german translation of Yaki Armada, I might help (to be honest, I already had begun translation yesterday of the 498512.xml and have finished today till

Code: Select all

 <t id="232">

, which also leads me to some question:
why the paragraph in

Code: Select all

 <t id="233">

is just the same?
I had some little look into the french version, which seems already translated for the most part, but this two paragraphs were not.

U might wanna have a look in Your t file an tell me, if its corret to have this paragraphs the same content ...)

Concerning translation work: I will do this in my spare freetime (I' m a working man for "8 days a week", if U know this ol' Beatles song
and sometimes I also just wanna play X3, so I can't promise to do this translation "in no time", but I can do it at least for the Yaki Armada script, since the amount of text is manageable for me ...

Best regards and keep up the good work

Mike

[Serial Kicked]

@Mike.Galaxy: Thanks for your offer that i gladly accept

About your question on 'id 232-233'. Some parts of the textfile are not yet used by the plugin. In fact all the 230-234 (special missions) aren't used, and will anyway probably be changed when the additional missions will be released.

Concerning translation work: I will do this in my spare freetime (I' m a working man for "8 days a week", if U know this ol' Beatles song Wink
and sometimes I also just wanna play X3, so I can't promise to do this translation "in no time", but I can do it at least for the Yaki Armada script, since the amount of text is manageable for me ...

No problem about that, you don't need to translate it "in no time" at all and i should be able to provide the files before the release date Anyway, the textfiles won't be modified a lot now, probably some missions and short communication messages.

I'll send you a PM with my contact informations

[Serial Kicked]

Thanks to Mike.Galaxy, the script now includes a German language file. Additional details can be found in the german board, here.

Cheers