X-Tended -Terran Conflict V2.2 Released. [06/09/2013] (X3:AP prototype available)

[plynak]

I think its silly that races will allow random traders through yet they wont allow the player or his ships through. Take the terran start for instance, i can see the paranid being mad at me and not letting me dock but shooting at me is stupid.

Anyone knows, how to make Paranids at least not red? It is becoming tiring when I jump out of a gate and my turrets start to fire at the Paranid transport making local police hunting me. I tried to enter their sectors to do some missions and guess what. Everyone was after me. What the hell have I done to them??

[Alan Phipps]

@ plynak: Not answering your main question, but turrets set on 'missile defence' or 'protect ship' worked for me in avoiding unwanted firefights with still-red Paranids.

[malanthor]

Arghy: if a plane from say hmm Iran flies over Israeli air space, that plane will first get a warning and will then get shot down if it dont vacate pronto. Similiar to how it is in game and very realistic imo. Why would the paranids allow someone not on good terms with them to fly around in their sectors, and just not dock. That would be like the Us allowing potential terrorists into the country they would just not be allowed to shop in their stores or sumthing.

Also in regard to ship balance are you taking into consideration price and rarity. If you look at figther planes today you will easily see that a very few are at the top and alot are below, why then would any country use the worse planes. Price and accecebility. You cant balance up 20 ships to all be good but different.

Some more balance might be in order though, not saying that everything is perfect now.

[plynak]

Arghy: if a plane from say hmm Iran flies over Israeli air space, that plane will first get a warning and will then get shot down if it dont vacate pronto. Similiar to how it is in game and very realistic imo. Why would the paranids allow someone not on good terms with them to fly around in their sectors, and just not dock. That would be like the Us allowing potential terrorists into the country they would just not be allowed to shop in their stores or sumthing.

Also in regard to ship balance are you taking into consideration price and rarity. If you look at figther planes today you will easily see that a very few are at the top and alot are below, why then would any country use the worse planes. Price and accecebility. You cant balance up 20 ships to all be good but different.

Some more balance might be in order though, not saying that everything is perfect now.

Wrong analogy. That would mean that Paranids will shoot EVERY terran ship in their space. But they shoot only me. And even Iran can ask Israeli embassy to allow the plane to fly over, but I can not do ANYTHING to make a good term with Paranids.

[Arghy]

Yeah if a Iranian civilian air liner flew over israel it would fly over israel and they'd be cool because if they shot down every plane from a country they dont agree with they'd get attacked by every world power due to them being crazy and uncivilized. Theres a difference between a 747/TS and a bomber/capital ship.

Unless either race is on war footing i dont see them authorizing random acts of violence. I could see the paranid not giving terrans/argons a second chance which could be achieved by 1 rank above hostile so they'd drop to hostile if they ever did anything. According to your logic every single paranid trader would be destroyed going through argon/terran space.

We already have multiple pirate factions and random hostiles(xenon/khak) so i dont see any justification on making a player start as hostile to one of the major races. You of course can have options so make a few start options start hostile if you'd like but options they should be not something forced upon you.

Its true you cant balance 20 ships to be equals but you can balance 20 ships with the same scales, terran fighters 1/2/3, argon fighters 2/2/2, teladi 3/2/1 and so on. This now means you can choose whatever balance suits you and you could mix it some more so the different ships make up for each others weaknesses. If one races ships are entirely deficient compared to another races ships then you have no reason to play that race due to it being ******.

So far from what i've seen the terran capitals are pretty horrible compared to the other races capitals. The paranids for instance have more shields, speed with better turret coverage. I've found the weapons to be pretty balanced but just look at the terran M7 compared to every other races M7.

The terran M7 moves at 112ms and carries 7 500MJ shields with a very limp 2/2/2/2 turret coverage. It can only fit fighter class weapons into 4 of those turrets with horrible coverage and its a giant box that loves to get hit. The paranid M7 has better speed and better or comparable shields(i forget whether it was 6 or coupled with way more turrets with better coverage and weapon options.

I figured it was ok since the terrans would make up for it with their corvettes or capital ships. Nope the only 2 capital ships available have worse speed and shielding then the other capitals and anything they have better is mediocre at best. The 2 available terran M6's are a joke compared to other M6's available but lets be honest some M6's are down right terrible. If my capitals are terrible then i should be relying on the next ship up or down to make up for that gap but a terran fleet arrayed against another races fleet will simply get smashed.

I did notice the terran fighters are on average better then their counterparts with more shielding and speed but lets be honest they seem to be way overpowered or the other races have some retarded designs. A good example is the terran rapier--486ms with 5 1MJ shields when most other races have 100ms less speed with laughable shields. I'm inclined to believe its more of unfinished balancing then anything planned. The fighters are nice but they arent going going to carry the fight when theres capitals involved.

It does seem to me that terrans players are supposed to be able to access ATF ships to compare to the other races capital ships which is silly on multiple levels. The terrans are supposed to be the most technologically advanced race but they put most of that into the ATF ships hence why their so awesome but if the ATF ships are supposed to be an equal to the other ships capital ships what makes them so special? The ATF ships should always be a step above the other ships because their not ordinary.

I do realize the terran M2+ isent deployed yet and i did not compare the terran M1/2's to the other races available M2+'s.

[X2-Eliah]

First off, if you want to talk about iranians etc, and terrorism, take it to off-topic or preferably to another forum entirely. This is the only time I'll say this before directly reporting to a moderator.

Second, you have your opinions on balance - all well and good. We have our own opinions, and we're assembling the mod in a way that feels right to us. There are a lot of gamestarts, and not all of them are hostile to the main races. Nobody is forcing you to start as terran all the time.

Third, if you believe that balancing is as simple as 1/2/3 & 2/2/2, or can be looked at in only individual class terms, or just say '20 ships', then please don't even bother to pursue the subject.. If you are inclined to learn more about the subject, instead of just saying oversimplifications, then you can take a look here: http://www.thexuniverse.com/entries/194-XTC-background
, that's part 1 of 3 about the very basics on xtc's balance.

Bottom line - you have your opinion on balance, we have ours. With all due respect, we'll keep our balance ideas and direction

[Arghy]

Yeah i do realize this is a mod and not even complete at that so yelling about balancing isent exactly smart.

I feel really strongly about the game starts though as i love to do pure race styles since i feel you get more out of the game through playing with that races planned advantages and disadvantages. There are multiple race starts yes but unless the custom start becomes viable your going to run into complaining. Regardless of the start or race i dont feel that it helps a player for one of the main races to be shooting hostile--would it really compromise the planned start to make them 1 step above shooting hostile?

[Aragon Speed]

*Almost forgot--tried the blank mission text fix(unzipped it into my X3 folder creating a 'director' folder) and received 2 blank missions. So far the only blank missions i've seen have been the little light bulb ones.

About the blank missions.

There was one mission not working because of a bug in the code. This has been fixed with the hotfix. Unfortunately there is another mission that has correctly working code, but it is not working now because of the ES signature in the file itself. With the file being altered the sig is now incorrect and the game is blocking it from running.

For 2.0 we will remove all of the ES sigs from the files so this doesn't happen again. You can do this yourself if you wish as it is basically just a bit of text editing. I would release a patch for this but we have already integrated a lot of new stuff for 2.0 into our main file repository and the files will no longer work with a 1.2a install.

I know it's annoying, but as it is only one mission, please just ignore it for now.

[Arghy]

Just saw the pirate M7 for the first time the one with the T name and holy crap was it beautiful blazing away at a swarm of khak fighters. Heh i recognized the TV show from which it was inspired and i gotta say it got better with the cross over!

After seeing some of the pirate stuff i kinda wish i could start with 0 on all relations because it would be pretty fun being a dedicated pirate with fancy ships like those! I'm flying a blastclaw atm and for a M3 the turret placement is wonderful esp when you put 4 plasma generators in the front hahahaha.

A few things i forgot to mention:

My traders dont seem to want to jump outside of the races space they started in--4 UTs in terran space have never jumped to argon or boron space even though they have advanced sats in them. I have 3 traders in teladi space who also refuse to leave teladi space.

I upped all of the bail %'s by alot so it happens fairly often(M5's are at 95% but they usually get blown up like the glass cannons they are after bailing) and i noticed that ships nearby the abandoned ships stop and seem to be stuck. In armstrong i had a yaki M4 sitting motionless by an abandoned caiman hauler and the M4 dident react even with me shooting it. It seems to be only an OOS problem because right after that i had a wonderful 3 way brawl with the khak, yaki and aldrins with multiple disabled/abandoned khak fighters and dident have a problem.

I had 2 carriers deploy and withdraw fighters in a busy system at the same time without any glitches which impressed me since there was disabled ships and floating loot all over. I also had a problem with the castrum at the otas shipyard because it launched its fighters but then became stuck on the shipyard so it just had a massive line of fighters spinning around it trying to land(spent 16 hours in SETA with 4 M5's scouring the system trying to find it until i saw the fighter arm spinning by the gate haha).

[plynak]

*Almost forgot--tried the blank mission text fix(unzipped it into my X3 folder creating a 'director' folder) and received 2 blank missions. So far the only blank missions i've seen have been the little light bulb ones.

About the blank missions.

There was one mission not working because of a bug in the code. This has been fixed with the hotfix. Unfortunately there is another mission that has correctly working code, but it is not working now because of the ES signature in the file itself. With the file being altered the sig is now incorrect and the game is blocking it from running.

For 2.0 we will remove all of the ES sigs from the files so this doesn't happen again. You can do this yourself if you wish as it is basically just a bit of text editing. I would release a patch for this but we have already integrated a lot of new stuff for 2.0 into our main file repository and the files will no longer work with a 1.2a install.

I know it's annoying, but as it is only one mission, please just ignore it for now.

Well regarding missions, is it just me, or missions to defend a sector against pirates gives no reputation? I made two in a row and nothing. I then took one simple taxi mission and I went from 8% to 66% of reputation. It is not such a big deal, just something you may want to check in 2.0

[Alan Phipps]

@ plynak: Did the the races of the pictured/voiced/named individuals giving you the defend missions (regardless of the race owning the station) correspond with the race whose rep you were checking? (Assuming you are talking about race rep.)

[dillpickle]

Well regarding missions, is it just me, or missions to defend a sector against pirates gives no reputation? I made two in a row and nothing. I then took one simple taxi mission and I went from 8% to 66% of reputation. It is not such a big deal, just something you may want to check in 2.0

It's not you, for some reason, (the answer to which I know not), there is no reputation increase included in this mission.
It is however, on a (very long) list of things to look at for 2.0

[Trickmov]

That's intended - every fight mission has no reputation gain included, because it's too easy to get to highest rank in very short time in Vanilla. It's still going too fast, just because of the gain you get for killed ships.
The taxi-missions however, are imo a bit unbalanced - they give still too much reputation, although it's lower than in Vanilla.

[dougeye]

So on the subject of rep.

i started as paranid and have raised my rep to trusted ally with the argon. i cn trade, take missions etc, even enter there core sectors but there military forces remain red. is this intended or do i need an even higher rep with them?

p.s yeas ive done all the global command settigns etc.

[malanthor]

Plynak: you are not the average trader though, because they are hostile to you they obviously KNOW you and dont want you entering their territory. I dont have a problem with say people from italy, but id rather not have their biggest drug kingpin over for dinner. Thats why they attack you, cause your a dirty bandit. Just kidding, but come on, a little more constructive criticism and polite tone would be nice to have here. That last part was meant for everyone by the way.

[X2-Eliah]

So on the subject of rep.

i started as paranid and have raised my rep to trusted ally with the argon. i cn trade, take missions etc, even enter there core sectors but there military forces remain red. is this intended or do i need an even higher rep with them?

p.s yeas ive done all the global command settings etc.

Old problem with the way X engine handles previously hostile npcs... Basically, you should comm the capital ships (faster that way, can also do for each red individually) in the sector where there are still reds around, and apologize for misfire... many times. That should, in theory, set them straight if your rep is normal. That won't work for stations and lasertowers though, so that can become a bit of a pickle.

[dougeye]

stations are fine, and i have tried comms with caps etc, will try again and see what happens. i think its mainly the border police units giving me trouble. not the end of the world bein g a paranid lol but trying to expand a trade empire

[hlking]

Hello, I need some help regarding performance.

I've Been playing XTC for the past few days and its been all fine ( almost 3 days in my current save ). But lately I've noticed the game getting slower and slower, and at the time I'm writing this its close to unplayable. I've about 20-22 fps right now, and in a new game = 2-300 fps. Expected the fps to drop a bit later in the game, but not like this. If my FPS continues to drop at the same speed it will be unplayable in a few hours.

I've tried pretty much everything I can think off to boost the FPS, which is:

-Freed up more then 400GB hdd space.
-Defrag.
-Cleaned registry.
-Lowered the graphic settings.
Closed all unnecessary background programs.

Nothing of the above helped, still running at same fps. Really weird, haven't had any performance problems with TC before, with or without mods.

Oh, and I was running 2 extra scrips, but I disabled them some time ago.
Scrips are Litcubes Phanon Corp and Serial Kicked's Yaki Armada.

spec:
i7 950 @ 3600 mhz
Ati 5850
Kingston ddr3 @ 1800 mhz

XTC = 1.2a on TC 3.1 ( CD ) with the "blank mission text" hotfix.

Hope anyone can help, thanks.

PS: Tried loading a vanilla save with ~2 weeks played, and I'm running it without any problems. So must be something funky with XTC.

[Arghy]

XTC has alot more stuff running then vanilla so i'm not surprised if theres an FPS cap.

[hlking]

XTC has alot more stuff running then vanilla so i'm not surprised if theres an FPS cap.

If thats true, then I'm really sad. I really enjoy XTC but It aint fun running it at 20 FPS. Any way to increase FPS besides those I mentioned above?